Greymouth Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1947. South-West Africa

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 August 1947, Page 6

Greymouth Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1947. South-West Africa

TTJIE South African Government, by its refusal to place South-West Africa under a United Nations trusteeship, has indicated its determination, to proceed with the incorporation in the Union of the territory concerned. General Smuts requested authority for such incorporation

at a meeting of the United Nations last December, but was refused by a large majority. South Africa, buttressed by the belief that it had loyally carried out the mandate granted it by the League of Nations in 1920 to administer the former German colony, had anticipated little difficulty in securing world approval for what was to it, and still is, a foregone conclusion in view of the close ties between the Union and South-West Africa. South Africa’s mandate is unique in

that no other mandated territory has a common frontier with the mandatory Power. The white population of the territory numbers 38,000, of whom about onethird are Germans, some of them naturalised, bnt the majority disfranchised and awaiting citizenship. There is no doubt as to the view of the whites regarding incorporation. Twice already they have, through jtheir Legislative Assembly, petitioned the South African Government to terminate the mandate and formally incorporate the territory in the Union. According to an authoritative report, before submitting to the United Nations its proposal for the future of the territory, South African Government commissioners

experienced in native ways visited all important tribal centres and at indabas explained the issue under debate and invited a plain “Yes” or “No” to the question of incorporation. Official figures quoted to the United Nations show that 208,000 natives expressed approval of incorporation, and 33,000 voted against it. The 49,000 who were not consulted consisted of some 9,000 Bushmen still, living in primitive barbarism in the Kalahari Desert and some 40,000 others so widely scattered that consultation with them was impossible.

There seems little that the United Nations can do to enforce its proposal that the mandate status under which the territory is now administered should be changed to that of trusteeship. Indeed, it would be difficult to deny the x strength of the South African Government’s case that the territory, physically incapable of a separate existence, can only link up voluntarily with the Union, of which it is a natural extension.

The Price Of Tea

|T is no compliment to Mr Nash to describe him as a master of political sophistry. Having announced that the Government is withdrawing or reducing the subsidies on various commodities that most people would regard as being m the essential category, he is now setting out to break the news of the resultant price rises in as gentle a manner as possible. “AVe people in New Zealand, he sajs, “do not want tea at 4s 2d a ]b (the piesent price) if it means that other people have to work for Is a day to produce it. The inference he no doubt wishes to be drawn is that New Zealand has been getting cheap tea because of the exploitation of native labour in the tea-producing countries where, according to his statement, the labour reward has now been increased by a few shilling a day. From the unthinking, Mr Nash’s statement will have a sympathetic response. Anyone with only a meagre knowledge of conditions in the tea-producing countries knows, however, that even if the native labourers were paid £1 a day instead of Is they would be no better off. Native welfare, is not measured in pounds, shillings and pence so far as the return for labour is concerned. To talk in this strain is not to advocate slave conditions; quite the contrary is the case. But even allowing Mr Nash’s argument, it is utter nonsense for him to say that an increase of a few shillings a day in the pay of native workers is responsible for the whole of the increase of 2s per lb. in the price of tea. What Mr Nash is concerned to do, of course, is to provide an adequate reason for the forthcoming sharp rise to the consumer in the price of tea, a rise which has been hidden for so long by his subsidy policy now to be discontinued. Conditions in the producing countries have very little to do with that rise, which is due largely to the factors that have caused all the other numerous rises in living costs. Mr Nash adopted much the same tactics in the last election campaign, in which he quoted the prices of essential commodities in this country aaid compared them with the higher prices of similar lines in the United States. Wliat he did net do, however, was to give the comparable wages rates. If higher wages are paid in America, then naturally the costs of goods to the consumers' will also be relatively higher. The only conclusion possible is that Mr Nash has a rather low opinion of the intelligence of the people.