Big Racial Explosion In South Africa “Unlikely”

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29782, 27 March 1962, Page 18

Big Racial Explosion In South Africa “Unlikely”

“I would be surprised if, in my lifetime, any major racial explosion occurred in South Africa,” said Mr J. G. Leggat, manager of the New Zealand cricket team on its recent tour, when asked in an interview yesterday to say something of his impressions of life in South Africa,

“I think we all felt that there were not the overt signs of tension and discontent that we had been led to expect,” Mr Leggat said.

"I do not think that the political relationship of European and non-European will remain static in all those years, for there is an increas ing consciouness that some thing will have to be done to advance the non-European races as they develop in their capacity to understand and appreciate Western democracy "Each of ‘ the political parties in South Africa approaches the problem in differing ways. Mr Leggat said. "The governing Nationalist Party wants to set

I up. and has beg an to set up. independent native states called Bantustans. wherein for all practical purposes, the natives have self-government The United Party postulates a racial federation in which all races are represented but exercise particular control over affairs affecting their own. The recently-formed Progressive Party seeks the successive advancement of natives to the point where they themselves qualify for the franchise.

"It is not for me to say which party has the best policy, but at least all three are alive to a very real problem, which becomes more pressing with the passage of time and with the emergence of more highly-educated and competent non-Europeans.” said Mr Leggat "No Wholesale Fear”

There was not, he thought, any wholesale fear among Europeans that they were living, as it were, on a volcano. said Mr Leggat. However. one did notice a certain feeling of uneasiness about the long-terms problems Europeans were rather puzzled about what the future held, not so much for themselves, but for their children and grand-children "One also saw signs of some general uneasiness in the numbers of people who approached me to discuss life in New Zealand and the prospects of emigrating to it,” Mr Leggat said. ‘They felt that the futur'e was sufficiently uncertain that it might be opportune to shift now. On the other hand, quite a number of people who had left South Africa for England and elsewhere are returning. “There was, last year, a flight of capital from South Africa, but it had been halted by the time we arrived there and the trend is now in the other direction —their currency reserves are highei than for a year or two,” said Mr Leggat Sharpeville, Lange

Asked about the incidents at Sharpeville and Lange, Mr Leggat said that the general feeling was that they were discreditable, but that in large measure they were the result of inexperience and ineptness on the part of those in charge when confronted with a potentially ugly situation. “But nobody sought to deny the occurrence, or the badness of the result,” said Mr Leggat. In the whole time the New Zealand team was in South Africa he did not see one native physically ill treated, said Mr Leggat. He did not see any native walk off a footpatl in deference to a European "At times they were spoken to with a sharpness and authority that we found strange and even repugnant, although that was more apparent in Rhodesia than in South Africa,” said Mr Leggat. "We Were not only free to go to see what we wanted to, but we were also given the fullest invitation to do so,” be said.

“On the second day we were in South Africa, the deputy-Mayor of Johannesburg offered us the whole facilities of the municipality to go and inspect the native locations. “As far as one could see. there was a far greater degree of contentment among the non-Europeans than was ever acknowledged in a good many of the overseas cabled reports." Mr Leggat said Majority Attained

“As is inevitable with the advance in education there are emerging highly-educated non-Europeans trained in some cases in American or English universities. who sense the wrongs of political inequality and who in the nature of things are becoming leaders among their own people That process is bound to go on, but at the moment the vast majority of nonEuropeens are more concerned about maiterial wellbeing than abstract conceptions like freedom ”

The lot of opposition parties in South Africa was always likely to be difficult, because the areas where the parties gained their support were so clearly differentiated. Mr Leggat said Because of the practice of delimitation. which corresponded

very roughly to the country quota which used to be in vogue in New Zealand, the Nationalist Party was likely always to have a preponderance of seats, even though it

might lose on a popular vote. Delimitation confined the physical size of electorates to a maximum, so that in the country districts with the scattered population ranging over wide areas there was always a preponderance of support for the Nationalist Party. This was reversed in the cities, where the roll of an electorate might be numerically much greater. “The Government policy of establishing self-governing

Barutustans does have a constitutional finality,” said Mr Leggat, “This might be a mat. ter for legal argument, but it does seem at present that if you grant independence to a Bantustan, then future governments are just as much bound by the grant as the present one—a point forcibly emphasised during the debates by the able and astute Minister of Finance, Dr. T. E. Donges.

Exclusion Reports “We had been told forcibly by people wanting us not to tour that we would be playing at Bloemfontein on ' a ground where non-Europeans were totally excluded,” said Mr Leggat. “In fact we played on the same ground which had been used for years. Non-Europeans were present, and we were never required to play, in any circumstances, where the non-European who wanted to see us could not do so.”

Mr Leggat said it was hard to see what part the South African Sportsmen’s Association. which claimed to represent many thousands of non-Europeans, played in sport in South Africa. ‘ ‘There were non-Euro-pean sports bodies controlling individual sports and doing good work, but quite what part this association is playing is still difficult to appreciate. The vice-captain (M. E. Chapple) and I had an interesting discussion with the secretary of the South African Sportsmen’s Association (Mr D. Brutus) about the problems of multi-racial sport. I think we both recognised the other’s viewpoints, without necessarily agreeing with them.”