SOUTH AFRICA

Southland Times, Issue 21896, 23 December 1932, Page 5

SOUTH AFRICA

UNCERTAIN POLITICAL OUTLOOK. GOVERNMENT MAY BE DEFEATED. (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) Cape Town, December 21. The collapse of the Hertzog Government is foreshadowed by the return to politics of Judge Tielman Roos, who was Minister of Justice in the first Nationalist Government but resigned owing to ill-health. He was subsequently appointed to the Appeal Court. The country was startled a few days ago when Mr Roos, addressing his former constituents, denounced racialism. He has now announced his resignation from the Bench and hopes to form a coalition. The no-confidence motion of the Nationalists is anticipated to be carried by Parliament when it meets on January 20.

Tielman Johannes de Villiers Roos, the South African lawyer and politician, was born at Cape Town in May, 1879, and educated at the South African College there, taking the B.A. and LL.B. degrees. He became an advocate and at the end of the South African War in 1902 started practice at Lichtenburg in the Transvaal and became a K.C. He was elected to the Union House of Assembly in 1915 and joined the Nationalist (Dutch) Party, being one of its most ardent members. As such he was bitterly opposed to the policy of General Smuts, leader of the South African Party, who was working for a union of the two white races in South Africa with a view to their cooperation in the development of the Dominion. Among the Nationalists there was a movement towards trying to secure the independence of South Africa under the control of the Dutchspeaking people. In 1924 the Nationalists came into power with the support of the Labour Party and General Hertzog, the Prime Minister, made Mr Roos Minister of Justice. Two years later the Imperial Conference in London on General Hertzog’s initiative laid down a new definition of the status of the Dominions. Mr Roos then moderated his extremist attitude, as he saw that South Africa had now in effect obtained the essentials of nationhood for which he and his followers had been striving. A bitter controversy arose over the design for the new South African flag, General Hertzog supporting a design which excluded the Union Jack. Mr Roos, seeing’that it was the last point holding the two sections apart, arranged a conference between General Hertzog and General Smuts at which a compromise was effected by the inclusion of the Union Jack as well as the Transvaal and Orange Free State emblems. At the end of 1927 he advocated the deletion of an article in the constitution of the Nationalist Party which declared a republican form of Government to be its ideal. His object was, he said, to pave the way for a union of the Nationalists with the South African Party so that all well-meaning Afrikanders might work solely for the economic prosperity of the Dominion. In 1928 dissensions in the Labour Party threatened to develop into a definite split. As the Nationalists relied on Labour s support in the 1929 elections, he worked hard to heal the breach. He then had much to do with the conclusion of the severely criticized treaty with Germany, which, he held, did not interfere with the preferences given to Britain. In March, 1929, under doctor’s orders he visited Europe to undergo a cure at a German spa. While there he was re-elected in June to the Union Assembly.