NATIVE FRANCHISE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 109, 8 April 1936, Page 9

NATIVE FRANCHISE.

SOUTH AFRICAN BILL. SUBSTITUTE ARRANGEMENT. Received April 8, 8.5 a.m. CAPETOWN, April 7. The Senate and the Assembly, at the joint sitting, passed the third reading of the Native Representation Bill by 169 votes to 11, amending the Constitution to deprive Capo natives of the franchise 1 they had previously held subject to qualifications. It substitutes the division of the Union into three native electoral districts, each returning one European, and creates a Native Advisory Council, some of the members of which will be Europeans, which will discuss native legislation before it reaches Parliament, to which the council will report. A feature of the debate was the Minister of the Interior (Hon. J. H. Hofmeyer) voting against the Bill—“whatever the political consequences may be to myself”—because it gave the natives inferior and qualified citizenship, the Government interfering with a franchise that had been enjoyed without abuse for eighty years. “No nation, save at the cost of honour and ultimate security, can remove the franchise once exercised by a section of the community. The Bill might lay the foundations of serious racial conflict,” the Minister declared.