STRYDOM’S POLICY

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27565, 24 January 1955, Page 9

STRYDOM’S POLICY

Conjecture On Speech (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 22. The Governor-General. Dr. Ernest Jansen, in the Speech from the Throne at the opening of the South African Parliament yesterday, kept everyone guessing about the Strydom Government’s policy on the Constitutional issue over entrenched clauses in the Act of Union, the Cape Town correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” reported.

The relevant sentence read: “Parliament at the appropriate time will be asked to give consideration to the separate registration of voter's and the question of the sovereignty of Parliament.”

This certainly did not echo the Prime Minister’s repeated platform assurances that the “sovereignty of Parliament” (meaning its release from the entrenched clauses of the Act of Union) must now be finally established.

The United Party opposition, which by custom will initiate the first debate of the session in a motion of no-, confidence, is expected to demand a clearer statement on the Government’s intentions, the correspondent said. Its members will argue that public confidence will be undermined unless an assurance is given that there will be no renewal of the conflict between Parliament and the existing Courts. Without a two-thirds majority of both houses—of which he is at present at least nine short—Mr Strydom cannot fulfil the Nationalist ambition of removing Cape Coloured (mixed blood) voters from the common roll unless he is prepared to renew the Constitutional struggle. Even the Nationalist caucus yesterday was not told how he intended to approach the matter. There were no Republican sentiments contained in the speech, the correspondent said. But neither was there any reference to Commonwealth connexion. South African participation in the forthcoming meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers in London was not mentioned. The general legislative programme outlined was one to intensify apartheid (racial segregation), the correspondent said. Measures would be introduced to discourage ttye multi-racial trade unions; to prevent native servants from living on the roofs of blocks of residential flats; and to make the: Group Areas Act more effective.