S. AFRICAN RACIAL RIOTS

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25705, 18 January 1949, Page 7

S. AFRICAN RACIAL RIOTS

Immediate Investigation Wanted

“INDIAN EXPLOITATION OF NATIVES”

(N.Z. Press Association-—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) CAPE TOWN. January 17. The pro-Government Afrikaans newspaper “Die Burger" to-day called for an immediate investigation into the racial clashes in Durban. “Thousands of innocent victims are paying to-day for a conception of the Indians built up in the natives’ primitive minds because of Indian businessmen's conduct,” says “Die Burger." “It is the authorities’ task to investigate this tremendous grievance.” Dr. Mabel Palmer, a 73-year-old lecturer, and organiser of the non-European section of Natal University College, said that the Africans had been subjected to considerable exploitation, of which the Indians were the agents, and not the authors. Ths Indian was becoming a middle-class oppressor, and had turned on the African. The Africans' resentment was directed against the Indians for economic reasons. The Natal president of the African National Congress (Mr A. W. Champion) said that the whites had done nothing to check Indian traders’ exploitation of the Africans, whose resentment had been built up over a number of years. _ Mr R. R. Pather, leader of the South African Indian Organisation, denied that Indian black market operations had provoked the disturbances. “The riots are not spontaneous; they are highly organised and Inspired by unknown political forces,” he said.

The Minister at Justice (Mr C. J. Swarts) announced that a commission of inquiry would be appointed by the Cabinet to investigate the cause of the riots. The occupants of a car which last night cruised past an Indian shop in a non-European suburb of Johannesburg hurled an explosive at the shop. There were violent explosions, and windows of the shop were blown in. The car drove off. Nobody was juredLast evening, Durban was quiet after the African-Jndian riots of the previous three days. Indian cafe owners returned to their shops, and some opened up for business behind boarded up shop fronts. In the suburbs some Indians rummaged among their blackened homes seeking any belongings that might have escaped fire or pillage. Armed troops patrolled the streets ready for any fresh outbreaks of fighting. Isolated skirmishes took place between police and Africans on the outskirts of Durban yesterday morning, and the district police commandant at Clairwood, an outlying district of Durban, reported that Indians and Africans were causing some trouble there. Two Africans were killed and three were injured when a carload of armed Indians attacked them at Clairwood yesterday morning. Casualty Figures The exact casualty figures for the three days’ fighting are not known, but the South African Ministries of Justice and Defence said that the number of deaths officially reported was 95 up to noon yesterday. This figure included one European. The deaths were divided about equally between Africans and Indians. The Ministries’ statement said that 309 Africans and 249 Indians had been

detained in hospital, and 313 had been treated and sent home. Router’s Durban correspondent says that the one European included among the deaths in th* racial riots was shot by a police patrol when he was looting from a wrecked Indian shop. The South African Government has given the Mayor of Durban assurances that the present police and military force of 1500 members will be maintained indefinitely, and that the Cabinet will do everything possible to send food and medical supplies to the 35,000 Indian refugees in the city. Relief funds have been opened by both the Transvaal Indian Congress and the African National Congress, Meanwhile, the bodies of victims are still being brought into Durban. Clash In TieteimsrlUhurg persons were injured. w. Wk qust starting." Groups of Indian* ar* roaming the streets to avenge attacks by Africans on their shop*. In New Germany, 15 miles from Durban, troops fired on a mob. killing four persons, At Pinetown, n miles from Durban, Africans cut telephone lines and Europeans barricaded themselves in their homes. The Rev. Michael Seott, a wellknown opponent of the colour bar. who has just returned to London “If you elevate racialism to a political theory, and disseminate it in your schools and colleges, in the end you reap a whirlwind like these riots/ he