Wairarapa Daily Times (Established Over 60 Years.) FRIDAY, 26th JUNE, 1936. NAZIS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 26 June 1936, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times (Established Over 60 Years.) FRIDAY, 26th JUNE, 1936. NAZIS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

If the Nazi Government in Germany be peacefully inclined, as Herr Hitler avows, the example of Nazi behaviour in South-west Africa now administered under mandate by the Union Government of South Africa, is an unfortunate advertisement of the contrary. For many years there has been trouble in that territory which the Union Government has done its best to appease. The German settlers have had nothing to complain of in the treatment offered them. After the Great War they were offered the choice of remaining as equal citizens with South African settlers, or repatriation to Germany. Their numbers were then over 14,000; 6374 elected for repatriation and some 7850 remained. The total European population has, with growth of landed settlement, steadily increased to about 33,000 to-day (31.600 in 1034). British and Dutch settlers went in from the South African provinces; some 1500 Boers were assisted to immigrate from Portuguese Angola; German migration was expressly offered every freedom of ingress. Settlement, though a steady small stream, met setbacks; disappointment and bad seasons maintained a . smaller .movement the other way. Earlier bureaucratic administration under the mandate lasted

but a short time. British, Dutch and German residents all petitioned the South African Parliament for some measure of self-govern-ment. Prior to setting up a local Legislature, the South African Government decided to naturalise all Germans by general statute, leaving those wishing to retain their German nationality to remain as alien residents. The League of Nations approved this statute, and so did the German Foreign Office, with which General Smuts conferred on the subject. All Germans were to be allowed to use freely their own language, in public offices or anywhere else. Under this law only some 1700 Germans elected to remain unnaturalised. It is among these, apparently, that the Nazi organisation from Germany has been working.