Louw Defends Policy Of Apartheid

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29179, 13 April 1960, Page 25

Louw Defends Policy Of Apartheid

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

CAPE TOWN, April 11. The alternative to separate but parallel development of the races (apartheid) in the Union was the “abdication of the white man,” the South African External Affairs Minister (Mr Eric Louw) said today.

Speaking at an unprecedented press conference for a group of foreign journalists, he said: “The permanent white population has as much right to South Africa as the black man, who was him-, self an immigrant from the north.”

Replying to a London journalist who said the black man was being kept down by brutality, the Minister said this was not Government policy.

“But,” he added, “when you are dealing with gangsters you cannot handle them with kid gloves, and the ordinary peaceloving African has to be protected.”

Mr Louw said many leaders of the African congress parties were Communists and that much of the recent troubles were caused by gangsters and intimidators. The Minister said there was complete freedom of the press in South Africa.

He told the journalists: “You can send as much political comment as you like ... If you have something which is not untrue you need not be afraid of anything happening."

He said the case of Mr Norman Phillips, the Canadian journalist retained last Friday under the emergency regulations, was “exceptional.” Mr Louw said Mr Phillips had tried to send an “absolutely untrue” dispatch to his newspaper, the “Toronto Star.” Mr Louw said the Prime Minster (Dr. Verwoerd) was not entirely incapacitated by Saturday’s assassination attempt, and the question of appointing an acting Prime Minister was not contemplated. The chief of the Nationalist Party in Parliament (Mr Paul

Sauer) took over today as Government leader in place of the wounded Prime Minister and promptly pledged to carry on Dr. Verwoerd’s apartheid policies. Other developments in South Africa today were:— David Pratt, the farmer alleged to have shot Dr. Verwoerd. is not to be tried at present, but is being detained under the emergency regulations.

In Johannesburg, armed police with Saracen armoured cars made yet another raid on an African township and took away scores of Africans for screening and a number of weapons.