“Pistol-Happy” Police Blamed For S.A. Riots

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29221, 3 June 1960, Page 12

“Pistol-Happy” Police Blamed For S.A. Riots

(New Zealand Press Association)

DUNEDIN, June 2. Mobs of "pistol happy kids” in police uniforms were mainly responsible for the South African riots, according to Mrs E. A. Kaye, an Auckland woman, who passed through Dunedin today on her way home after 15 months in Cape Town. The handling of the situation there by the police, most of them youths of only 18 or 19 with pistols pushed into their hands, was shocking, she said. The natives were rebelling In

good nature. The police appeared frightened and panicked, firing wildly into the mobs. Living in Durban road, along which demonstrators went, the saw just what the position wat. The natives marched along the road, singing good naturedly, and chanting. Then the police took over. Blood was shed and the mobs became ugly. Mrs Kaye emphasised that the police appeared the aggresaen. A second march along the rqH by the natives was not fttarM such a happy frame of mind. W again they were not looking * trouble, said Mrs Kaye. •* “Howe'er, the same pistol* happy so-called law enforaM were there, and violence and kffl* ing followed,” she said. With apartheid uppermost .!> most people’s minds, the cause of the demonstrations been lost, said Mrs Kaye, ,-j, What the natives were reM> ling against was the system of having to carry passes, ud H was rebellion which to MN Kaye, as a New Zealander, seeoaM completely justified. Apartheid itself was necessary, she said. The native of Son Africa was not like the Maartlf New Zealand. The natives themselves retlitti that apartheid was eeeentW < that was not their great Alfto ment. But there could be M justification for the treatment.!! which they were subjected.