The Press THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 1960. Vereeniging

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29162, 24 March 1960, Page 12

The Press THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 1960. Vereeniging

The rioting in South Africa this week is shocking enough in all conscience. It would be even more tragic if it marked the point of no return in the racial struggle of this unhappy country. It is pointless to argue whether the police with their aircraft, armoured cars, and machineguns were justified in firing on the mobs, though deficiencies in their discipline and the allegation that they used dumdum bullets should be closely investigated. Sometimes in situations like this police brutality may be necessary to prevent even worse fighting, though no-one can accept calmly the use of firearms in civil commotions. What is certain, however, is that if such a stage has been reached in the enmity between white and coloured the Government of South Africa stands indicted for its failure to reconcile all citizens, black and white, to the facts of South African life. Possibly that was beyond human power, though many will doubt it. It is surely beyond doubt now that the policy of apartheid has failed. It has brought South Africa to the verge of civil war. In the unhappy sequence of oppressive laws, passive resistance, provocation (by whom?), rioting, and gunfire it wmuld be unrealistic to expect the South African Government to reverse immediately its whole ill-chosen progress of the last few years. Dr. Verwoerd and his supporters, shaken as they must be by the violence of Tuesday, will be reluctant to admit that

much of the fault was theirs and conscious that a Government’s first duty is the preservation of civil order. We may hope, however, that on cooler reflection, if indeed events give them time for it, they will see that they must use new methods if they are to save white South Africa from ruin.

Even more than Algeria with its French colony, South Africa is a special case in Africa. It has been a white man’s country for 300 years; many of the Africans are relative newcomers. The French in Algeria are still French: the Boers by 12 generations of descent are South Africans. They have no other homeland. The condition of Africans and of those of mixed blood is tragic in South Africa today. It would be a tragedy, too, if the South Africans who have made their country prosperous and have done much materially even for the African workers were driven into lonely exile. It would be no consolation to them to know that they were the authors of their misfortune by not learning how to live with their black neighbours and by not teaching their black neighbours how to live with them. Those lessons in understanding are much more difficult than they were even 20 years ago, more difficult than they were only a week ago. Perhaps the blood bath at Vereeniging is the last warning the South Africans will get. It is a melancholy postscript to the rosy hopes of reconciliation so justly held at Vereeniging 58 years ago.