SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18381, 23 April 1923, Page 6

SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS.

In accordance with an expectation that has grown in definiteness during recent months, the Nationalist and Labour Parties in South Africa have come to an understanding as to their combined opposition, to the Smuts Ministry at the next general election. For some time the two parties have been cooperating in Parliament. In the Rand rising the Nationalists were identified, although only semi-officially, with Labour; and General Hertzog, a year ago, announced confidently that his party would combine with Labour to defeat the Ministry at the next appeal to the country. No fusion of parties was then intended; and, according to information now cabled, it is to be definitely shunned. Three-cornered contests are to be avoided, but the support given by either opposition party to the other's candidates is to depend on the distinct undertaking that they owe allegiance to their own parties. The bonds iof union between the Nationalists and Labour include personal hostility to the Premier and a common hatred of the Government's economic policy. That policy has been characterised by financial schemes— occasioned by the severe depression culminating in the Rand disaster and by the monetary straits of the several Provincial Councils involving large loans from abroad. The more thoroughgoing Labour leaders have opposed these schemes in undisguised hatred of Capitalism, and the Nationalists have objected to them as Imperial entanglements: the points of view have been different, but they have converged in one focus of practical opposition. There have been difficulties in the way of co-operation. Many Nationalists have feared Labour's socialistic objective, and many English-speaking electors favourable to Labour have been equally afraid that a Nationalist Government Would mean a South African Republic outside the Empire. A working basis of joint action against the Smuts Ministry was sought some time ago by Mr. Creswell's proposal that the Labour platform should omit the Socialist plank; and, although unable to carry this, he has succeeded so far as to have his party's aim amended to read "the ultimate achievement of a democratic and socialist commonwealth." This has reduced Socialism from an immediate to a vaguely future objective of the Labour Party, and considerably weakened the Nationalists' hesitation to co-operate. On their part, the Nationalists have given an undertaking that, if the next' elections should place. their party in power, ,no Nationalist member ;of Parliament will use his vote to alter the constitutional relations of South Africa to the British Crown. Against this combination of forces, General Smuts, whose present majority has been reduced in by-elections to twelve,''will- find it hard to make headway. His hope lies in the natural hesitation of many electors, both urban and rural, to risk a change of Government at this serious juncture in ; South African affairs, an d, more particularly, in the Democratic Reform League recently . formed inside the Govern*ment party to extend local autonomy within the Union without endangering the Imperial bond. This project will doubtless attach many electors, hitherto irreconcilably Nationalist, to the Government party.