RAND REVOLT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18511, 23 March 1922, Page 5

RAND REVOLT

MOTIVES FOR INSURRECTION. SYSTEMATIC RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA. HEADED BY ENGLISH EXTREMISTS. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright CAPETOWN, March 21. Representatives of the Australian Press Association, during their recent visit to the Rand, endeavoured to discover the underlying motives of the insurrection. Investigations were carried out both among the worst ruffians among the prisoners and well-to-do sympathisers with the Labour cause, Dutch inhabitants, lawyers, and financiers of Russian butn. rue conclusion arrived at was that Bolshevist propaganda has been openly carried out on the Rand for years past in Dutch and English, headed chiefly by English extremists, who turned the heads of many of the workers, notably among the illiterate miners of Dutch descent. The promoters of the upheaval included some Russian Jews, but the great majority were of English birth, with a few Dutch extremists. In the fighting, the Dutch were foremost both as regards leadership and numbers, the English second, and the Russians a bad third. There were several Dutch lads among the snipers, who considered that it was sport to pick off passers-by. The rank and file apparently had no clear idea of what object was to be attained. They were told that they must fight to keep out the natives; also for the worthy object of establishing a republic and that they would have big support from the country districts. When the burghers marched into the outskirts of Benoni, they were cheered by the strikers, "who believed they had come to their assistance. This military support was expected from the Free State, which is overwhelmingly republican. The rally of the burghers to the Uovernment came as immense surprise to the revolutionaries.—A. and N.Z. Cable. COMMUNISTIC REGIME. ELABORATE PREPARATIONS. CAPETOWN, March 21. In a room in the Trades Hall at Johannesburg, which was used by Communists, the police found a red robe, two red caps (of the same shape as the cap of liberty which was worn in the French Revolution), also a black skull cap. It is surmised, that the latter was the cap of justice, and would have formed part of the vestments of the judge under -a Communistic regime.—-A. and N.Z. Cable.