SOUTH AFRICAN AFFAIRS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19965, 6 December 1926, Page 12

SOUTH AFRICAN AFFAIRS.

(Fbosi Cue Own Coebespondent.) PIETERMARITZBURG, October £o. HERTZOG AT IMPERIAL CONFER- ■ ENCE. Our Pact Prime Minister, General Hertzog, has opened very uphappily at the Imperial Conference. His head is, evidently, obsessed with the aerial question of the independent national status of South Africa. If, he says, the Empire is to be maintained and flourish, the dominions must see that the will to live in the Empire as a Commonwealth of Free Nations shall be as present and as active in the future as it is to-day. He says that the conditions in South Africa to ensure that will are absent. What he wants, it seems, is for South Africa's independent national status to become internationally recognised. Needless to say, General tlertzog has received no support from his fellow dominion Premiers in this highly imaginativg proposition. But, first of all, does the general represent the majority of South African people —that is to say, the Europeans. He certainly possesses a parliamentary majority, thanks to a certain fortuitous, though somewhat inglorious, circumstance, when the two political parties, with ideals as far distant ae the poles, coalesced for the purpose of turning General Smuts out of otrice. Ibsen says that the majority is always wrong. I do not follow this thesis , in every case, but certainly in this case I think the Norwegian dramatist’s dictum may be accepted for truth. For the parliauionary majority is not a homogenious one. And, again, the majority in Parliament represents but one-half of the electorate. The Pact members represent exactly the same number of electors as the South African Party, led by General Smuts, does. How is this accounted for? By the fact that the Nationalist constituencies, being all rural in character, reap the benefit of the provision in the Constitution giving rural constituencies a representation in the House of Assembly on more favourable terms than urban constituencies are given. So that General Hertzog has no right to speak for “South Africa ’ when he proclaims his Nationalist nostrums. Happily this is, i think, generally understood. THE OPPOSITION. The Opposition, which is .the South African Party, General Smuts s party, is becoming very active at the present time, and with good reason. General Smuts must have regretted long ago having let the Nationalists into power by a Dissolution, when he could have easily gone on with a fairly comfortable majority in Parliament. ‘His task now is to labour and to leaven, in order to .recover lost ground, and this he is doing with his accustomed vigour. 'Hie hot-headed Acting Prime Minister, Mr Tielman Roos, is giving him every chance by his autocratic bearing towards the Civil Service, and the South African Police m particular, when he warns those members of the fo [®? mav be British that they must take, no active part in the doings of the society known as the Sons of England—a patriotic society that he now censures as a political Dar f v having in view, of course, the Union />nn+roversv But Mr Roos will reap no°reward from his- reckless rodomontade. COUNTER-BLA|TS z POR GENERAL The Natal Provincial South African Party Congress, being held in this city this week, has not been idle. Indeed, as the press has put it, it has been >n fighting form. On the motion of S Thomas Watt, it . resolved to-dav that the conference emphatically repudiated the doctrine of international independence propounded by the Prime M inister the Imperial conference, * which has not re ceived the approval of the Parliament or tli© people of bouth Africa. Shot number one. The second shot conthe flag controversy. On the motion of Sir Charles Smith, the chairman of the Natal section of the South African Party, a resolution was passed embracing both a truism and a threat. It is worth giving in full, as it puts the qU “That ‘the design for-a national flag should respect the traditions and sentiments of both white races of the country, and should be emblematic of the Union of the South African people; that the design for the flag should ue chosen in the'same spirit that led to the Union, and this congress, therefore, considers the combination of the Union Jack and the flags of the two Republics would mee that the g event IS o£ fU the he Fla og£ 0 g £ BiSWoming Uv! and with a flag the design of™ch does not include the above combination it will be the duty of. any future South African Party Government to enact the necessary amending legislation. COLONEL DENYS REITZ. A very welcome speaker at the congress was Colonel Denys Reitz, eon of exPresident Reitz, whom those Australian and New Zealand parliamentarians who visited South Africa a while ago will well remember, for be accompanied them in their itinerary, and learned a good deal from them, as he confessed at a valedictory gathering. Mr Reitz was at one time President of the Orange Free State but later was State Secretary ot the Transvaal in the Kruger regime, and had the distinction of declaring war upon Great Britain. His son, Colonel Reitz, was a die-hard for the Transvaal in the Boer war, but, thanks to Genera* Smuts, he changed from being an enemy to being a friend of Britain, and fouglu toi us in France in the Great War. Colonel Reitz was Munster of Lands in General Smuts’s late Government. H. delivered quite a pathetic speech heic. He emphasised the‘fact that he was an old Republican and a proud member ot the Republican Burgher I orces who had fought the British to the last. But now, he said, he had gained a larger view, and held that there was nothing of slavery or humiliation in being a member ot the British Commonwealth. He realised that it was finer and better to forget the old quarrels. “What right,” he asked had General Hertzog to go to England w ith a demand in his pocket for what amounted to a definite breakaway trom the Empire?” Mr Tielman Roos, our present Acting Prime Minister, he called our “pinchbeck Mussolini,” and he warned him that the members of the public service were not likely to lie dow r n under his threats and bullying. , ' „ , , The most pathetic part of Colonel Reitz’s speech was when he referred to the fact that he was called a renegade by the people of his own Dutch race who were in the Nationalist Party. He and those of the Dutch race with him had “heard voices that taunt us, haunt us, and ■would daunt us if they could.” It was Colonel Reitz’s first public appearance in Natal, and he left a very fine impression. PATRIOTS AND “SOVEREIGN INDEPENDENCE.” The following cable has been despatched from Durban to London, addressed to the Right Hon. Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of Great Britain: — “The Empire Group, the Unity League, the' Sons of England Lodges, and the Patriotic Union, all being South African organisations, strongly repudiate in the name of the loyal English and Dutchspeaking population and the native peoples of South Africa the published views of the Union Prime Minister on the ‘Sovereign Independence’ of the British dominions, and also the interpretation given by the Nationalist Government to the constitutional status of dominions under the Treaty of Versailles. “Imperial Government should understand that on these questions General Hertzog speaks only for a section of the South African people. His party has uot abandoned policy of secession, but merely agreed to suspend official secession propaganda during present temporary alliance with Labour Party. ‘Sovereign Independence’ for South Africa is still Nationalist’s declared goal, and Hertzog’s signed official manifesto to nation as Nationalist leader states it is absurd to think that South Africa can attain that independence within the British Empire.” NATIVES AND THE FLAG. The feeling among the natives in the Eastern Province of the Cape and the Transkei with, regard to the Government flag proposal, and the proposed native legislation, has been described to a Cape Argus repesentativd by Dr W. B. Rubusana, formerly member of the Cape Provincial Council for East London, and president of the Native General Vigilance Flag Committee of the Cape Eastern Province. Dr Rubusana said, inter alia: —“The natives regard the flag as an emblem of the King, inasmuch as under their ow T n chiefs the tailbrush of a particular ox which was carried by certain men was regarded as the emblem of the chief. Accordingly, with the natives the symbol of the Union Jack is a sign that the paramount chief although not personally present, is represented by that flag, and it therefore commands from

them the greatest respect, because they feel that under it they have had fair play, and education.” “The natives,” continued Dr Rubusana, “are a conservative people, and any change in the flag is viewed with suspicion, the fear being that they will be denied that justice and fair play that they received under the Union Jack. They go further, and say that they are afraid that the introduction of a South African national flag means the ‘cutting of the painter,’ and handing them over to the tender mercies of the Union Government altogether, at a time when they regard the Imperial Government under the King as their only hope of maintaining that justice to which they have been accustomed under the regime of the revered Queen Victoria’. They have strong objections to anything which savours of eliminating them from the protection of their King. Among other fears actuating the natives represented by Dr Kubusana are the injustice to the natives, as they think, shown by the Premier’s four Native Bills; the withdrawal of the parliamentary franchise after having had it for half a century, the compensation being regarded as inadequate, and the poll tax and other things, -which mean little to Europeans, but a great deal to the natives.