FORCEFUL PROTEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 74, 29 March 1939, Page 11

FORCEFUL PROTEST

SOUTH AFRICAN NATIVES

SEGREGATION CAMPAIGN

FIGHT WITH POLICE

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright.)

(Received March 29, 11 a.m.)

CAPE TOWN, March 28,

Headed by a band, 4000 coloured men went in a torchlight procession to Parliament and hooted Parliamentarians as a protest against the campaign for the segregation of natives.

The police, in a stiff fight in which they were aided by civilians, closed the gates. Four constables were sent to hospital.

The Minister of Justice, General Smuts, denounced the segregation proposals and also the &nti-Jewish propaganda of the Nationalist Party.

Although it has not yet appeared on the surface of Parliament, it is becoming increasingly clear that the question of segregation of coloured persons will before long be one of the major issues of the session. As always when colour is involved, it is charged with dangerous potentialities, stated the political correspondent of the Johannesburg "Star" recently. Although the campaign for residential segregation is one which the Nationalist Party has adopted as its own, the movement is by no means confined to the Opposition and the forces are already gathering for a trial of strength. With the bigger issue in the background, the purely local matter of the application of the Feetham report recommendations to Johannesburg may well precipitate I this conflict before long. Briefly, it is proposed to legalise the occupation of land by Asiatics in certain parts of Johannesburg in accordance with the recommendation of the Commission, appointed by Dr. Malan in 1932, which spent five years studying the problem of Asiatics resident on proclaimed land. An attempt was made in the dying days of last session to get the necessary resolution through Parliament, but it was abandoned at the first sign of opposition within the United Party itself. If it had been pressed, then it is possible-that the resolution might have been passed. Today there is hardly the faintest possibility of its going through.