PRESERVATION URGED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27211, 14 October 1949, Page 7

PRESERVATION URGED

Constitution Of South Africa GENERAL SMUTS’S WARNING NZPA—Renter—Copyright CAPE TOWN, Oct. 12. General Smuts to-day appealed for the preservation of the Union of South Africa’s Constitution created on a basis that the British King was an integral part of South African life, and not on the basis of an independent republic. General Smuts said that the Constitution gave guarantees about representation in Parliament to natives and coloured people, and should not be altered except by a two-thirds majority vote i n Parliament. “If you honour the word of your forefathers, of whom I was one, you will be very careful how you deal with the South Africa Act,” he said. General Smu,ts emphasised that the declared policy of his United Party was anti-Republican. “ I cannot conceive anything more likely to disrupt South Africa than pressing a Republican policy on the people,” he said. “It would have disastrous results, and I wonder if the Union’s provinces would remain together if faced with a policy of that kind. We want no two nations among Europeans in South Africa.”