The Press WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1960. White Apartheid

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29333, 12 October 1960, Page 14

The Press WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1960. White Apartheid

The constitutional referendum in South Africa made inevitable a revival of attempts to separate from the Union areas of predominantly British settlement and to create a State free from Afrikaner domination. Natal, whose origins were very different from those of the former Boer republics, is the logical nucleus . for such a State. According to three Englishlanguage newspapers in the Union, the latest suggestion is to incorporate within a new State 120,000 square miles of territory along South Africa’s south-east coast—a region in which the proposal for a republic was rejected by a majority of about 135,000 votes. Opposition to the republican proposal had always been strongest in Natal and parts of Cape Province, where the white; population clung most strenuously to British traditions, British ways, and Commonwealth associations. At each advance of Afrikaner nationalism most of these people resisted encroachment upon their historic British background. As the advances grew more threatening, talk of Natal’s secession became less academic. Opponents of a republic tried unsuccessfully to force the Union Government to hold a separate referendum in Natal. Their resentment against the Nationalists’ policies was heightened by Dr. Verwqerd’s decision to permit a simple majority of white voters throughout the country and in South-west Africa to determine the republican issue. The Union Government may comfort itself by assuming that, because nothing of the kind has yet occurred, Natal will never secede; but after its first 50 years the Union is more than ever unhappily divided between the European races. Perhaps the ideals of Lord Milner’s “ Kinder- “ garten ” may be revived to lend life and purpose to a new Natal. Indeed, it may not be too unrealistic to visualise this development as central to a territorial grouping in which at

least two of Britain’s Protectorates in South Africa—Basutoland and Swaziland—could find a happier future than in the apartheid-ridden Union.

Dr. Verwoerd is devoted to republicanism irrespective of its effect upon South Africa’s membership of the Commonwealth. That South Africa will be excluded appears probable, if only because Nigeria, which achieved independence and full Commonwealth membership on October 1, is committed to this attitude. Ghana, India, and Malaya are other countries hardly less unsympathetic to the future Afrikaner republic. All the efforts of the Commonwealth Relations Office to argue that Commonwealth membership belongs to countries and not to governments are unlikely to avail South Africa. Dr. Verwoerd seems reconciled to the prospect; and in place of the existing trade arrangements with Commonwealth countries he hopes to negotiate bilateral treaties. He sees a precedent for this in the maintenance of Anglo-Irish economic ties. How, then, would plans for a separate, English-speaking South African State fit into the probable economic pattern? The aim of the anti-republicans in Natal and elsewhere is to sever political but not economic links with the rest of the Union. They seem to envisage something on the lines of the nineteenthcentury zollverein in which were associated 26 States of the German Empire; but whereas the zollverein prepared the way for political consolidation and governmental unity, the South African scheme would have a contrary result. A year ago the “ Round Table ” declared that “the drift of South “Africa towards a police State “is, unfortunately, a matter of “ fact ”. Today, as the drift accelerates, apartheid assumes twin shapes, the one poised against the Bantu, the other against the “ English ”. It would be premature to forecast which is the more dangerous to South African cohesion.