RIOTING IN AFRICA

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26886, 12 November 1952, Page 9

RIOTING IN AFRICA

Mr Strauss Asks For Inquiry

(Rec. 9 p.m.) CAPE TOWN. Nov. 11. The Leader of the South African Opposition (Mr J. G. N. Strauss) said yesterday that the position in South Africa was getting out of hand. He demanded that the Government investigate the African riots through an impartial judicial commission. A special session of Parliament should be called to debate “this new phenomenon of current bloodshed in South Africa.” Mr Strauss said: “Defenceless people, many of whom have ffiven a lifetime of service to the natives, are being brutally murdered in every corner of South Africa. There is a sense of anxiety and insecurity. Fear haunts not onlv the European, but also the petice-loving non-European.” The Natal branches of the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congress yesterday asked for a judicial commission of inquiry into the recent racial violence at Port Elizabeth. Kimberley, East London, and Johannesburg. The Minister of Justice (Mr C. R. Swart) and Major-General Johannes Frink, the Police Commissioner, arrived by air in East London from Kimberley last night, and immediately held a conference on the riots.

A gunsmith in East London yesterday sold out his stocks of firearnjs to Europeans who rushed first to the police stations for permits to carry them, then to the dealers’ shops. Two small groups of Africans last night burned, down a Roman Catholic church in the western area of East London. Priests rushed to the blazing wood and iron church building, and saved the vestments. The nun killed in the rioting on Sunday, Dr. Elsie Qhinlan. was reported to have gone to her death when she entered the main trouble spot in an attempt to help people wounded in an earlier outbreak of violence.

The police yesterday keot up their patrols in the African location. They confined the trouble to one corner of the location, and the only incident reported bv midday was the stoning of a fire brigade lorry on its way to a fire.