REPATRIATION QUESTION

Taranaki Daily News, 27 July 1931, Page 9

REPATRIATION QUESTION

COMPLAINT IN AFRICA.

CRUEL AND INHUMAN SYSTEM.

Capetown, June 1.

As bad as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was the comment made by Colonel. Dcneys Reitz when he drew attention in the House of Assembly to the “cruel and inhuman” manner in which the Mozambique Treaty was being applied in the repatriation of Portuguese natives living in the Northern TransvaalMany of these natives had lived there for the greater part of their lives, Colonel Reitz said, and had niarried native women there. They were being forcibly repatriated at the behest of the Portuguese Government, and under tribal custom their wives were not allowed to follow. This was an iniquitous system engendered by the Mozambique Treaty. It was a new form of mas; slavery, and he wondered what the League of Nations would say about it. Colonel Reitz read a number of letters from farmers protesting against this callous treatment of servants who hat| long b;en in their employ, and declared that it was an immoral system creating hardships which were noi. even outdone scandals revealed in “Uncle Toms Cabin. The Minister, in replying, said these natives were being repatriated because they were Portuguese subjects and they were all prohibited immigrantsA Member: They were in the Union years before the Act was passed. The Minister: Our instructions arc that when natives have been living here for a number of years they are not to be repatriated. If members bring cases to my notice of families being broken up, I shall |je glad to have these instances investigated. If it is a fact that families are being broken up, then I shall certainly put 1 a stop to it.