AFRICAN RACE LAWS

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26855, 7 October 1952, Page 7

AFRICAN RACE LAWS

Second Phase Of Campaign

(N.Z. Pret« AMociction->Copvrioht) (Rec. 8 p.m.) CAPE TOWN, October 6. The “defiance of unjust laws campaign” in South Africa took a graver turn yesterday. In Ladybrand, in the Orange Free State, Mr W. M. Siaulu, secretary-general of the African National Congress, announced the opening of the second phase of the campaign, involving an increase in the number of volunteer lawbreakers in more centres. At Brakpan, near Johannesburg, where 28 volunteers were arrested -when they marched down a street just after the curfew hour, Mr C. Ngake, a branch secretary of the congress, said the volunteers were “the first batch.” Mr Ngake said that from now until October 14, when the United Nations General Assembly will meet in New York, the defiance campaign would be intensified, to focus the attention of the United Nations on it.

Among the volunteers arrested at Brakpan were 10 women.

At Fordsburg, a suburb of Johannesburg, 22 Africans, including 16 women, were arrested for failing to produce night passes. At Vereeninging, in the Transvaal, four coloured persons were arrested for contravening the railway aparthied regulations, and 16 Africans were grrested for failing to produce night passes. Mr Sisuiu told the fortieth conference of the congress branch in the Orange Free State that South Africa’s Nationalist Government had gone ‘completely mad.” Each new statement by Cabinet .Ministers was alarming, and creating chaotic conditions, not only for themselves, but for future generations. Mr Sisuiu said the congress would agitate in the British protectorates of Swaziland, Beehuanaland and Basutoland, for their people never to surrender to the “Fascist Government of Malan.*' Mr J. M. Nthakho, the chairman of the Orange Free State branch, said the objective was efqual rights for all races in South Africa. The defiance campaign had caught the imagination of Africans and stirred the minds of all freedom-loving peoples throughout the world. The test in South Africa today, in the eyes of the world, was whether the white man would live with his fellow man qf a different colour, in harmony, each respecting the other, within a framework of Christian conception. The conference passed a resolution deprecating statements that its aim was to oust the Europeans from South Africa.

In Durban, a joint meeting of the African and Indian Congresses of Natal declared that only direct and equal representation on civic and other governing bodies would satisfy the nopEuropean people.