SOUTH AFRICA

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 110, 5 November 1937, Page 18

SOUTH AFRICA

A POLITICAL ISSUE

THE NATIVE PROTECTORATES

. "Three widely separated protectorate*! within the Union of South Africa are administered by the British Colonial Office, says the "Winnipeg Free Press."

They are territorially within the Union but are not subject to Union laws. When the Union was formed the British Government, fulfilling its trusteeship of the natives in these protectorates, specifically retained jurisdiction over these areas. There was, however, a tentative suggestion vvrit'ten- into the terms of Union in anticipation of when the Union might take over the protectorates.- That future contingency was qualified. The natives within each protectorate would, for one thing, have to be allowed to express their wish before their protectorates could be absorbed in the Union. In South Africa it is easily conceivable that these areas administered by the British Government must be regarded as anomalous. For some years an effort has been made to have them included. That is to say, to have the natives removed from the "protection" of the British Government and transferred under the ordinary jurisdiction of the Government of the Union. ' The matter was indirectly reviewed by'Dr, T. Drummond Shiels, who was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1930-31. His references are taken from his address at the Royal Empire Society's summer meeting at Oxford, as reported in tlie United Empire Journal. MAIN DIFFICULTIES. "Some of our main difficulties in government and administration," Dr. Shiels said, "had arisen in African Colonies where white settlement had taken place." This general statement covers wide Crown Colony jurisdiction not exercised over the Union of South Africa. But Dr. Shiels proceeded: "British communities liked to manage their own affairs. One could, sympathise with this characteristic and try to meet it, without agreeing that it was wise to hand over the Imperial responsibility for the development and welfare of the natives to a local legislature in 'which there were no African representatives.". (There are hot any native-representatives in the Union Parliament.) Dr. Shiels then pointed out: "British colonial policy, as expressed in the Devonshire, Amery, and Passfleld White Papers of 1923, 1927, and 1930, and in the reports of the Joint Committee of Lords and Commons on East Africa in 1931, was quite clear in its acceptance of trusteeship and all that that implied. There was, unfortunately, a wide difference between this policy and that in force in other parts of British Africa. This did not make for co-operation, and explained some part of the difficulty over the transfer of the: South African protectorates."