Strydom’s Policy On Republic For Africa

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27538, 21 December 1954, Page 8

Strydom’s Policy On Republic For Africa

(N.Z. Press Association—Copy riant)

LONDON, December 19. South Africa will become a republic only when there is a “clear sign that it represents the broad basis of the people’s will,” says the new South African Prime Minister (Mr Johannes Strydom) in an interview published in the London “Sunday Times” today. Asked whether action to make the Union a republic will be taken during the life of the present Parliament, Mr Strydom said: “No. There will have to be a test, for example, in the form of a plebiscite or special election first”

He said that a General Election majority would not be sufficient—the issue must be clear cut, and unclouded by other issues. The matter was one solely for Europeans, not for an African vote.

Asked if the Republic of South Africa would stay in the Cornmonwealth, the Prime Minister said that ■when the Nationalist Party adopted its republican policy in 1936, the move would have meant severing all Commonwealth ties, but the 1949 declaration that the Indian Republic could remain within the Commonwealth had altered the position. “It will be a matter for the party to decide at the time, according to . whether it would, in the existing circumstances, be advantageous or not,” he said. Mr Strydom described suggestions that the rights of English-speaking South Africans would be prejudiced by the Nationalist Party policy as a “stupid charge.” Their rights would be fully respected.

“In contrast to the treatment received by the Afrikaans-speaking people in the past,” he said, “I can-

not understand how this fear has arisen. It must be a newspaper stunt.”

On apartheid (racial segregation) Mr Strydom said, “Separation is in the interests both of the coloured and white peoples. Without it a clash between them would result in turmoiL There is great scope for African advancement—but it must be in their own areas.

“There is no question of our not granting advancement. If an African

wants to be a doctor or a trader he should serve his own people.” On African education—in particular the closing of church and mission schools—Mr Strydom said that if the Government paid the bill it was entitled to have control.

Asked if this meant that church schools would be squeezed out, he said, it was a question of whether they were prepared to pay. Asked if any steps are contemplated regarding the British protectorates of Swaziland, Buchuanaland, and Basutoland, which the Union wishes to incorporate, he replied: “I am not prepared to say anything on that subject.” In the same issue the “Sunday Times” says that Mr Strydom’s appointment caused some foreboding in Britain. “His nomination by the. party caucus over Mr Havenga seemed to presage a deliberate step towards extremer policies in racial, constitutional, and Commonwealth affairs, towards, in brief, the creation of a Boer republic after the Voortrekker ideal "But his statement,” it says, “has gone some way towards allaying fears of a sudden drastic move beyond the policies already familiarised by Dr, Mai an.”