LOSS OF FRANCHISE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22142, 22 June 1935, Page 10

LOSS OF FRANCHISE

SOUTH AFRICAN NATIVES NO NEW ENROLMENTS / MEASURE OF SEGREGATION [from our own correspondent] CAPETOWN. May i The native franchise in South Africa is to be abolished. This is one of the most important principles of the Government's native bills, the preparation of which has extended over a period of eight years. The native franchise has never been general in South Africa. In the Transvaal, Natal and the Free State natives • have never had the vote and even in Cape Colony out of a total of 410,300 voters, only 11,235 are natives. TJpder the new bills these will retain their franchise, but no names will be added to the register. This principle of the Government's native bills is expected to arouse considerable opposition from those Europeans at the Cape who have grown up in the tradition of equal franchise rights for all civilised citizens without bar of colour or origin. In the only province where natives have been allowed direct representation the system has worked well and has contributed greatly to the peaceful development of native institutions at the Cape and to amicable relations between black and white. The remaining three provinces of the Union, however, have always strenuously opposed the extension of the native franchise.. Natives' Special Council In place of the franchise the bills propose to enable the natives of the Union, voting through an electoral college system, which will give every adult native potential representation, to elect four members of the Senate, over and above the four senators who are nominated to-day by reason of their s]>ecial knowledge of native affairs. Moreover, there is it proposal to constitute a Natives' Representative Council for the Union, to which the natives will return 12 elected members in addition to four Government nominees, and in which only the native members will have the right to' vote. The Council will be of an advisory character only, but all bills affecting native interests and all financial matters in which natives are concerned must be referred to the Council, and the views of the Council must be taken ir to account by the House of Assembly ill reaching its decisions. Cape natives w ill be allowed to elect two represen- , tjitives—whg fiSay be natives—to the Council, but there is no provision for native representation in the House of Assembly itself. In 1929 a proposal was made that ultimately the natives should be authorised to elect three European members of the Assembly. T : iis has apparently been dropped and with it—and the loss of the franchise—goes the work and hopes of nearly 100 years. Land Reservations Seduced The |fative Land Bill is also disappointing to those who have the interests of the natives closely at heart. The Beaumont Commission of 1916 recommended large additions to the areas open to native settlement and local committees were appointed by the Government and made large cuts. Nothing more was done then and disappointingly little is to be done now, for the new bill actually reduces by more than half a million acres the total grudgingly set aside by the local committees. In a word or two, the underlying principles of the new bills may be said / to be parallel rights,, instead of equal rights, and, by degrees, a measure of territorial separation of natives and Europeans. Throughout the bills, the definition of "native" has been drawn so as to exclude coloured people "who will retain all their existing rights as heretofore." This proviso is of no significance whatever to the coloured people of the Transvaal and Free State who have no rights to retain.