The Dominion. MONDAY, JUNE 16, 1913. SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1777, 16 June 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, JUNE 16, 1913. SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS.

South African politics, with the progress of time, . seem to become more bewildering. The position occupied by General Botha, Prime Minister of the Union, is truly remarkable. It is a position which can be understood only when the peculiar character of his supporters is fully realised. Since his quarrel with General Hertzog, General Botha has been denounoed by no inconsiderable section of his followers, and ordered to resign. Vigilance committees, formed to advance the interests of General Hertzog, and to enunciate generally the mind of the backveld, have issued instructions to, probably, the majority of Nationalist, or Dutch, members of Parliament to vote on every possible occasion against the Government.. Even that "slim patriarch" Abraham Fischer, Minister for Lands, has been ordered not to further support the Botha Ministry: that is, to join with Botha's rivals to oust the, Government, himself included. General Hertzog has, in the press, on the platform, and in Parliament, described General Botha's so-called policy of conciliation, as between the two races, asa mere, and an obvious sham. In short, no section of the South African community appears to be satisfied with General Botha as •Prime Minister. A general election at the present time would doubtless find favour with the bulk of the electors within the Union. But the same cannot be said of the representatives of those electors in Parliament. Public opinion' has undergone many changes since the first Union elections m 1910, and a general election, this year would, to all appearance, have transformed the House of Assembly. Extensive inroads would have been made in the ranks of the Dutch. The Dutch members aro aware of the fact; therefore, they wholly discountenance the idea of an appeal to the electors. General Botha's present position is thus strengthened owing to the majority of tho Nationalists—sympathisers with General Hertzoq, included—preferring their- seats, with £400 per annum, and the censure of their constituents, to running, the risk of losing both seat and salary in a general election. Moreover, there is the danger, to the Dutch, of the Unionists, or English-speaking section, reaching office, and securing all the chief emoluments. Emoluments, if the history of the two exRepublics be true, have always exercised a wonderful fascination oyer the average Dutch member of Parliament. Circumstances such as these will assist in explaining why, if his own followers arc cold, the Hertzog faction bitter, and the Opposition amiably contemptuous, General Botha in the recent division on a noconfidence motion, emerged victorious, having obtained 68 votes in his favour, as against 42, which were antagonistic. . The latter number represented the combined strength of the Opposition, Labour, and tho Hertzogites." Only six members supported General Hertzog, and Labour members in the Union Parliament, if we mistake not, number five. The self-styled Independents of Natal, most of whom were returned by Unionist electors, and were afterwards "nobbled" on behalf I of General Botha, voted solidly for 1 the Government. The no-confidence . motion was brought forward by tho Leader of the Labour party, and several members who voted against it explained that they would never con--1 sent to assist a combination of malcontents and Socialists to oust any

Government, however indifferent or

effete that Government might be. The voting, therefore, afforded but little indication of the real attitude of members towards the Botha Administration. Ono fact,_ however, stands out clear and indubitable. It is that a large proportion of Nationalist members, in voting for the continuance of the Botha regime, did so against the wishes, and contrary to the specific instructions of their constituents. In the debate, speaker after speaker, on the Nationalist side of the House, acknowledged that their constituents_ had called upon them to vote against the Government. This they declined to do, and General Botha, by their aid, weathered the storm.

The Union House of Assembly, as at present constituted, will reach its constitutional termination, with the close of the session for 1915. There are hopes that General Botha, after his striking victory in Parliament, will bestir himself, and yet retrieve his reputation as a legislator and as an administrator. In the discussion on the Budget, which preceded the no-confidence motion, Me. Long, one of the rising men of the Opposition, laid before the House a summary of the Bills that have been promised so frequently, and of the reforms that have been described so tediously by the Botha Ministry. Along with that summary he gave a list of Bills passed, and of reforms ■achieved. The comparison in many respects was a sad one, revealing as it did the apathy and indifference of tho Government, and more than suggesting that many of their proposed reforms were but hollow pretence. The Prime Minister, say his apologists, has been grievously handicapped by obstructives within, his Cabinet like General Hertzog and Mit. J. W. Saueu. That, however, is not, regarded as a satisfactory oxcukc, and it rather justifies the strictures of Sir Thomas Sjiartt and Sin Percy Fitzpatrick, that General Botha is weak and incapable of shaking himself free from racial and anti-British influences. General Emuoa, the Prime Minister's former colleague, goes a great deal

further than General Botha's severest critics within the Opposition. In the no-confidence debate, for example, General Heiitzog said ho was going to vote for the motion, "because the policy adopted by the Prime Minister was calculated to lead to deception and fraud, and bccauso the Prime Minister had become unfaithful to the principles of his party." General Botha, he added, was responsible, for "all the division and trouble which at present are noticeable in the country." The Opposition, from the first, has linen a good friend to General Botha. Without its_ aid several of tho few Acts passed would never have reached the Statute Book. General Botha's position in Parliament is, for the present, safe, and his opportunities are great.