Newspaper Accuses Malan Government of Totalitarian Designs

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27112, 21 June 1949, Page 5

Newspaper Accuses Malan Government of Totalitarian Designs

NZPA Special Correspondent Rec. 10 p.m. LONDON, June 20. Under the heading “South African Fascism,” the weekly newspaper the New Statesman and Nation says: “Wheri he was in London for the recent Commonwealth conference, Dr D. F. Malan, the South African Prime Minister, was on his best behaviour. He even managed to persuade some influential members of the Government that he and his Nationalist colleagues were decent democrats who had been the victims of vicious misrepresentation.

Whatever Dr Malan may have said in London, he and his colleagues with their policy of ‘ apartheid ’ and white supremacy repudiate the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity with all earnestness and much the same sort of theological clap-trap as the Dixiecrats of the United States. But whereas the Dixiecrats are fighting against the still undefeated American liberalism, Dr Malan is in power, and the strength of the extremists behind him. headed by such men as the ardently pro-Nazi Dr Oswald Pirow, former Nationalist and now leader of the New Order Party, is steadily increasing. • “Now in his new South African Citizenship Bill Dr Malan has found a convenient way of disfranchising a large number of potential political opponents. This Bill prevents anyone who immigrated to South Africa during the past two years from voting until 1952. $ “As the Manchester Guardian rightly observed, ‘it transforms British subjects from other parts of the Commonwealth into aliens.’ What this means can best be understood by rereading the draft of the republican constitution which was published with Dr Malan’s full consent as far back as 1942. This extraordinary document, which proposes to make the President 1 directly and only responsible to God,’ rules out parliamentary responsibility and divides the inhabitants of the Union into two classes—burghers and subjects. Negroes and Indians, of course, remain subjects. The white people, however, -are recognised as burghers if 4 it can be expected that they will act as the builders-up of the nation.’

“ It is clear, therefore,” says the New Statesman and Nation, “that, having disfranchised all recent immigrants, Dr Malan intends to subject them to a loyalty test which will exclude from the polling booths anyone who opposes overtly the Nazi designs of the present Government.

“If Dr Malan has his way South Africa will be reshaped as a four-class State. The base of the pyramid will he formed by millions of completely disfranchised and compulsorily illiterate negroes, the next layer by disfranchised . Indians, the next by disfranchised whites, and at the top will stand the compact herrenvolk of reliable Fascist-minded burghers”