WOMAN'S WORLD FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1912. SOUTH AFRICA'S CRISIS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1496, 19 July 1912, Page 4

WOMAN'S WORLD FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1912. SOUTH AFRICA'S CRISIS.

The political situation in South Africa seems daily to become more complicated and bewildering. Last month. Mr. Hull, Minister for Finance, resigned his portfolio, refusing, he explained, to submit to tho autocratic methods of Me. Sauku, Minister for Railways. Now, the Prime Minister, Genejiai, Botha, for reasons not yet available, _ has transferred the portfolio of Agriculture from himself to the autocratic Mr. Sauer. General Botha, it appears, will now hold no portfolio, and in his absence Mn. Saueu will lead the House. We are, in thess times, witnessing some strange "reconstructing" of Ministries. New Zealand probably bears the palm for pure novelty of "reconstruction"; but South Africa's methods possess the same oharacter of. mystery, as well as the suggestion that the whole has_ not yet Deep < revealed. The Union Prime Minister, however, is unlikely to be engaged in any crooked or underground attempts at selfaggrandisement. When Mn. Hull left the Cabinet General Botha promised to reconstruct the Ministry at tho conclusion of the present session of Parliament. But New Zealand's bold and defiant ways of Cabinet reconstruction' during a recess, and therefore independent alike of Parliament and oi people, wee known in South Africa, and the Prime Minister was called upon L o make his proposed changes in the Cabinet while Parliament was still in session. This General Botha has done, thereby displaying the respect that was due to the people and to their representatives. The message from Cape Town seems to indicate that General Botha contemplates retirement from the position of Prime Minister, it may be, from the House of Assembly. At the general election—the first occasion that ho appealed to the electors as Prim. , Minister of the Union—he was badly defeated by Sin Pebcv FitzpatEIOK. Ho, for a time, refused to i ;utcr Parliament, but ultimately a

seat was found for him, and he remained Prime Minister. General Botha is no strong partisan: there has been much strife in his Cabinet: his party is threatened with disruption. His withdrawal from political life will probably cause little surprise iu South Africa. Genehal Botha has given no sign that he is a politician in the true and British sense of the word. Nor has he, so far as we have observed, ever laid claim to the title. The memories of tho old Transvaal and the llaad still linger with him, to influence him, and bring him into embarrassing situations. He is a most placable man. He desires to please all sections of South Africa's extremely diverse community, and, apparently, he is now in danger of arriving at a point where his magnanimity will be wasted. The resignation of the portfolio of Agriculture, unless he proposes to leave the Ministry, is inexplicable. That port folio in General Botha's hands had become of very minor importance, General Botha may merely desire to free 4 himself from the duties attached to any portfolio, as has been done by certain Provincial Premiers in Canada and elsewhere within the Empire., This, however, seems unlikely. In the discussion which took place in the Union House of Assembly over Mr. Hull's departure from the Ministry, probably the most telling fact revealed against General Botha was that evidently from the first Cabinet has been disturbed and divided by dissension among its members. Further, it became knowr that each Minister carried out, tne affairs of his Department with little or no regard to other Departments or other Ministers. General Botha seems to have been seldom consulted as to Departmental details, and the precise actions of Ministers. Therefore, when Mr. Hull charged his colleague, Mr. Sauer, with failing, to consult tha other members of the Ministry touching his railway schemes and expenditure, the Prime Minister was unable to enter into the merits of the dispute and could only bewail the "painful circumstance" that Ministers' quarrels could not bo confined to the Cabinet, but must be threshed out before the public in Parliament. _ Mr., Hull's resignation was considered,, generally, by the non-Dutch press of South Africa as likely to imperil the existence of tha Botha Ministry. The knowledge of the complete divergence of views crevailing in the Cabinet, in particular, seems to have made a profound impression. The Natal Mercury commented on the situation in the following terms: —

A more 6oathing indictment of one Minister by another than that framed by Mr. Hull against Mr. Sauer can hardly ba conceived. It provides an exceedingly interesting commentary on the frequent assertions of, certain members of the Ministry, from General Botha downwards, ffcat rumours of intorrul dissension were all palpably false, tho invention of the enemy, and a wicked device to create tlisptacfi within the ranks of a happy and Joyous family. . . . Mr. Hull cturites Mr. Sauer with breaking the letter of the South Africa Act and violating its spirit. A more damning series of charges as to gravely unconstitutional Ministerial conduct would bs hard to conceive, but Mr. Hull's statement will perhaps be received with much l«ss surprise in South At'rira tbaii out of it, whoro Mr. Salter's domineering nnd despotic disposition is not so well known. ,.

And this Mr. Saber'has become leader of the House "in the absence , ' of General Botha. There is an unpleasant smack of Wardism about this unusual arrangement. A divided Cabinet can no more stand than a divided "house. . Polychromatic Cabinets may be amusing while they last; but, unfortunately for the people who have to pay the piper, their life is destined to be precarious— and not very honourable. This gathering together of dissimilar elu ments and tho consequent absence of homogeneity Ministers, history clearly shows, is but a symptom of inevitable decay. Nor is the explanation difficult to discover. A political party which is weak in numbers as in principles, invariably seeks to reach, power, or to stave off defeat and annihilation, by strengthening itself through the inclusion of politicians regardless of party or principles. Numbers _ alone, not principles, is their object.' Wardism was possible alone by placing votes before principles: Aud Wardism has fallen, never to rise again. The fate of .Sin Joseph Ward promises to bo the fate of General Botha. But General Botha's position will have been brought about by causes different from those which led to Sir Joseph Ward's displacement and downfall.