Progress Of Separate Development In S.A.

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31542, 2 December 1967, Page 16

Progress Of Separate Development In S.A.

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The South African policy of apartheid is rigorously enforced. In Johannesburg I pressed a button for a lift and took the first that came. I noticed two Bantu passengers looking at me with a faint surprise. When I left the building I realised that I had travelled in a lift reserved for blacks.

At airports there are separate lounges for blacks and, of course, in the public and business premises, separate toilets. I observed in Pretoria separate taxis for whites driven- exclusively by whites.

There are separate and extensive housing estates, one of which I inspected. Here live 60,000 Bantu and Zulu, the Zulu living in a separate group of houses. The manager, a dedicated Afrikaner, received me in his offices. He explained that the

tenants could not own the land, which was vested in the Government, but could acquire the houses and, when paid for, dispose of them. The weekly payment amounts to about 15 per cent of the average income. Transport to business is by rail or bus and charges are said to be reasonable. However, recently the Johannesburg Nbn-European Affairs Department considered that 68 per cent of African families in Johannesburg earned less than they needed for their minimum requirements.

Mr Blair Coetzee, Deputy Minister of Bantu administration, reported that he was rather sceptical about these reports, which he was investigating. The houses in the estate, built of concrete, have four comparatively small rooms, with a front and back yard. They are not fenced because the administration has yet to make up its mind whether it will install a sewerage system. At present the bucket system is in vogue. Single men live in hostels.

Looked Contented The administration has constructed and is still constructing schools in the estate. Industrious occupants can and do add to their houses at their own expense. As everywhere in the world, some look after their homes better than others. The African, even though a litter receptacle is has only too often a tendency to throw rubbish into the backyard. There is a weekly rubbish collection. The administration looks after health and childbirth. There are commodious liquor taverns, although generally speaking the Bantu prefer to drink at home.

The many people I saw on the housing estate looked well fed and contented. Certainly ■ the housing is consistently much better than anything I saw elsewhere in Africa and represents a very large expenditure by the State. The policy of separate development is certainly costly and may well be imposing, as the Opposition claims, a strain on the national economy.

Although Bantus are encouraged to live in the Transkei it is apparent that the great majority will want to work in ' South Africa

proper where, indeed, their labour is essential. 1 did not visit the Transkei as the activities of the New Zealand representatives were occupied for two days in. SouthWest Africa and then in visit-

ing other parts of South Africa. It is clear that the Transkei is one of the most beautifql regions in the Republic. According to an official publication the Xhosas of the Transkei were the first of South Africa’s distinctive Bantu people to achieve selfdetermination within the framework of apartheid. The administration says that the Xhosas “will not be the last Others will follow them, that is firm policy.” Firm policy or not their labour will still, in my opinion, be substantially required in South African industry. <•

Nationalism South African policy is designed to promote nationalism among the various larger groups of the Bantu people. It is emphasised that the 12 million Bantu people comprise several distinctive peoples, each with its own language, culture and customs.

A Government publication emphasises that if all South Africa’s diverse peoples were to share one political system, all the available evidence points to a clash of nationalisms, the result of which would be domination of one or more groups over all the others. The policy of apartheid, while insisting that all the Republic’s peoples are entitled to rule themselves, insists equally that the White nation must continue to rule itself and must not be subjected to “a new colonialism.” That is, of course, tantamount to saying that if the one-man one-vote system were introduced into South Africa as a whole, the whites would be hopelessly outnumbered. As one South African said

to me, referring to his beautiful country: “We have made all this and we will hold it." When questions of majority rule in Africa are mooted, South' Africans readily point to chaos in Nigeria and the Congo. Official policy says that apartheid envisages a number of self-governing Bantu nations alongside and in cooperative association with the White nation—a South African Commonwealth or Community of Nations. In the Transkei legislative power is vested in the President of the Republic of South Africa and the Legislative Assembly of the Transkei. The assembly, consisting of 45 elected members and 64 chiefs and paramount chiefs, may pass laws affecting all the affairs of state—with the important exceptions of defence, foreign affairs, immigration and certain aspects of transport, security and finance. Central government says that these exceptions remain “for the time being” the prerogative of the central government. 1 am not clear about the duration of “for the time being.” The seats of the chiefs are “allotted,” presumably by the South African Government. There are some South Africans who consider that the system will never fully develop because so many Bantu males will want to live and work in South Africa proper.

While 1 was in South Africa, Sir de Villiers Graaf, leader of the main opposition party (Government party, 126 seats; United, 39 seats) challenged the Prime Minister, Mr Vorster, to put his policies to the test by calling upon the public of South Africa to pay the price. “South Africa cannot think straight while people are bluffed that we are progressing towards separate development when, in fact, the opposite, namely, further economic integration, is happening all the time.”

Area Housing At this stage I think it only fair to emphasise the earnestness cf the South Africans in Government to whom I spoke on the subject of the Bantu and Coloured people. The aim, largely achieved, is to confine the housing of the Coloureds

to defined areas. South Africans will say to you: “We understand the Blacks.” The visitor is apt to be told that he does not. Polygamy is common among the Bantu, notably among those who acquire a considerable number of cattle. An Australian who visited the Transkei told me that the males, who are in a minority, did little work, leaving that to the women. At three functions in our honour, on each occasion there were present a Government and a United Party member.

The English press, which the Government and its supporters constantly criticise, employs a remarkable freedom of expression. Mr Vorster has threatened to curtail this freedom where statements are made which the Government considers are untrue but not libellous. I was informed that Mr Vorster is unlikely to carry out this threat.

In November the Education Department, to the surprise of the vice-rector of the Johannesburg College of Education. excluded from the Education Department’s new history syllabus for Transvaal schools these subjects: The growth of National Socialism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. Other features of the new syllabus are considerable repetition of South African history and the inclusion for the first time, as separate topics, of the policy of separate development and the events leading to the formation of the Republic. The “Rand Daily Mail” of November 14, in a leading article “Strange Omission," had this to say: “Could it be that no thorough-going study of Nazism and Fascism can be conducted without certain parallels with events in this country emerging? Could it be that the fate of Germany and Italy as a result of these aberrations provides too uncomfortable an example to those in this country who have built race prejudice into a national creed and seek to institutionalise it in our laws and policies?” It is only fair for me to say that my many South African friends would assert that they have no racial prejudices, but believe in separate racial development. The reader must judge for himself.

This is the third in a series of articles by Sir Leslie Munro, National member of Parliament for Waipa, who was a delegate to the recent conference of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.