The Northern Advocate TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1913. SOUTH AFRICAN AFFAIRS.

Northern Advocate, 2 September 1913, Page 4

The Northern Advocate TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1913. SOUTH AFRICAN AFFAIRS.

The position developed in South Africa through the recent sanguinary riots on the Rand seems, so far as can be judged from the news occasionally transmitted by cable, to be materially improving. Yet though the present attitude of the Labour party is vastly different from that of imperious insistence upon its demand indicated by the public utterances of a month ago, the situation is undoubtedly one of considerable peril. The mining population of the Rand is very large and any condition of affairs which keeps this great body of men in a state of sullen resentment is almost as grave as an open outbreak such as occurred some weeks ago. The probabilities are that the extremists, having rather overreached themselves in connection with the outrages of June, are inclined to take a more reasonable view in respect to settlement of grievances entertained by the miners and railway men. It is clear, however, that the Government does not intend to deal with the crisis in any kid-glove fashion. At a recent interview General Smuts, the Minister of the Interior, told his audience —representatives of the disaffected railway and mine employees —that the Government was determined not to put up with any more rioting; that it was not going to allow 20,000 men on the Rand to dictate the policy of South Africa; that force would be met by force; that the supply of Imperial and Colonial troops to shoot down rioters was adequate; that the provisioning of Johannesburg was complete and that for any trouble the men's leaders would be held responsible. He hinted at long terms of imprisonment on conviction, and deportation when the sentences were completed. Supported by this declaration, the South African public has been breathing more freely. And it was immediately—the very same night indeed—followed by a remarkable modification in the attitude of at least one of the Labour members of Parliament —Mr F. H. P. Cresswell — a gentleman whose word is magic in

the counsels of the Labour party. Addressing a public meeting on the East Rand, he said, in effect: "Isn't a general election better than a general strike?" This sentence seems to have been the keynote of the more recent negotiations. It is considered very questionable whether a general election will much improve the position of the Labour party in Parliament. At present that party is a mere handful—six or seven —in a House of about a hundred and twenty members, the vast majority of whom are Nationalists, or followers of the General Botha regime, largely representative of the Dutch. The Unionists, who may be said to represent the Imperialists, and trie moderate men of English-Colonial birth are far out-voted by their Nationalist fellow-members, and in a crisis such as the present, it is quite on the cards that Nationalists and Unionists would join hands against the common enemy of the Constitution. In the event of a general election the' Labour party would probably secure a few more seats, chiefly on the Rand. These would, perhaps, bring the Labour representatives in the House of Assembly up to a round dozen. For effective purposes it would be as negligible a quantity as it is at present. The Labour party, as an instrument of real power, can have no place in South Africa for generations to come. It is the most conservative country in the world. Mr J. F. Mer-

riman, a former Prime Minister in the old Cape Parliament, has described the European artisan in Johannesburg as the "aristocrat of labour," and not without much reason, for, on the Witwatersrand at any rate, the electrician, the painter, the bricklayer, the mason, the workmen of a dozen trades, will not move unless they have a native to carry their ladders and tools. The duty of the native is to place the ladder in the proper position, and hand up the tools. He is not permitted to drive in a nail, to handle a brush, to perform any simple action that might give him a glimmering of the rudiments of skilled labour. In the mines it is much the same. The native labourer prepares the path for the rock drill and the charge of dynamite, but he goes no further. Yet the very European workmen who refuse to permit a Kaffir to drive in a nail, were lately summoning him to their side to help them in their fight for better conditions and more wages. Logically, they should withdraw from the position that hitherto has kept the native a mere muscular hack. They should let the mine owners instruct the natives in skilled work. But, of course, they won't. That is 1 a horse of another colour. In the mass of matter bearing upon the situation that is daily, presented by correspondents to the Rand newspapers, from all parts of the Union, it is no easy task to dissect the chief features. What is a certainty is that the Government is playing the game of gaining time, and with every day that passes tlxe tension is becoming less acute.