COLOUR BAR IN SOUTH AFRICA

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26477, 19 July 1951, Page 6

COLOUR BAR IN SOUTH AFRICA

MALAN GOVERNMENT’S POLICY GROWTH OF COMMUNISM SEEN AS SEQUEL (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 18. The Malan Government’s intensification of the colour bar in South Africa is driving millions of natives into the arms of Communism, according to Mr G. Royle, formerly an officer in the information section of the South African armed forces. He gave an address on Africa to the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Geographical Society to-night. "The European population is riddled with fear, and it is ■ fear that rule? South Africa to-day, a fear that the natives will get the upper hand,” Mr Royle said. The prisons were full, tho -penal system was primitive, and as a result of poor conditions in and around the bigger industrial centres the incidence of crime and violence was absolutely appalling, he said. He added that the chief objective of the Malan Government was to get native labour back on the land, and this was being done nof by offering better wages but by legislative compulsion, much of which was striking at democratic principles. The result was that most of the natives were becoming increasingly frustrated and anti-white.

Laws provided for natives to be forcibly put back into rural employment, and also made it almost impossible for natives to leave the country to come to the towns. He said that the natives were not given the opportunity to learn a skilled trade because of possible competition with white labour. Wages for natives were low, trade unions were illegal, and strikes a crime.

Of a total of 197 representatives in the two Houses of Parliament, 190 represented only 22 per cent, of the population. There was no free or compulsory State education. Abominable slums in the larger centres were the breeding places of disease and crime, “The whole structure of society in South Africa is based on the supposed inferiority of the blacks,” Mr Royle said. "As UNESCO scientists have maintained that pigmentation has no relation to intellectual capacity, this foundation seems a very shaky one. Ihere may be some feasible ways of giving the natives better opportunities for their abilities, but to continue suppressing the natives is pure suicide.”