Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1952-04-06
South Africa
Prime Minister MoIon's Aportheid Plan stirs
CoIored Groups to Passive Resistance
By Belmont Fories


South Africa is celebrating it's
tercentenary today with a ma
tional observance heavily shad-
owed by rising racial tension.
Negro and other non-white
groups plan to mark the Booth
anniversary of the first white
settlement at CapetoWn by
opening a campaign of passive
resistance against South Africa's
rigid segregation laws. Such
demonstrations in the past have
led to violence. An inf1amma-
tory speech or a rash move by
police might set off a bloody
conflict.
A bitterly divided white COM
munity now faces the first
united effort of the non white
groups to weaken the Nationalist
governments policy of "apar-
theid''-strict territorial, polit-
ical, residential and, as far as
possible, industrial separation
of the races.
MoIon Methods
At the center of the fight is
77-year-old Prime Minister
Daniel F. Malan. whose defiance
of a Supreme Court ruling
against one phase of his white
supremacy program set off the
most serious constitutional
crisis in the Union of South
Africa's 42-year history.
His white opponents, who call
his policies Nazi, are not against
segregation as such. But they
fear that the methods he has
used to extend it could be used
against them as we'll.
The Prime Minister, who fire.
uently seems dictatorial even to
his friends, is former minister
of the Dutch Reformed Church.
His support comes chiefly from
the anti-British Beers. Out
numbered 10 to /, these de-
scendants of the early Dutch
settlers rule with a heavy hand.
Europeans Outnumbered
The entire European" popu-
lation of South Africa-Boers.
English and all other whites
totals only 25 million. The nom
white population of 9.5 million
is made up of 8 million ma
tives," Negroes chiefly of Bantu
tribal stock; one million Cape
colored," mixture of races
from all parts of Asia and At
RIGA, including many with white
blood, and 100000 Asiatics,
chiefly from India.
The 8 million Negroes have no
rights at all which cannot be
terminated by a majority vote
of Parliament. They are tied to
their tribal areas. mine COM
pounds, or crime-ridden sections
of the big cities by strict pass
regulations.
The ASiatics have no rights,
but they do have an ardent de-
fender in the present govern
ment of India, which has re-
peatedly taken the question of
their status to the United Ma
tionS.
The Cape coloreds alone,
among the whites. have
one right. Some $4,000 of them
who are able to meet educa-
tional and property qualifica-
lions have the right to vote.
DR.. Malan's determined effort
to remove them from the COM
mon voting rolls brought on the
present political crisis.
Terms of Union
When the two British COL
onies, the Cape and Natal, and
two former Boer republics,
Transvaal and the Orange Free
State, combined to form the
Union Of South Africa, only the
Cape gave substantial rights to
native and colored groups. There
they had enjoyed the vote for
half a century.
Under the terms of union
agreed to by all four colonies
and embodied in the South
Africa Act of the British Parlia-
ment, this voting right was
placed in an "entrenched clause"
which could be revised only by
two-thirds vote of the entire
membership of both houses of
the South African legislature,
meeting jointly.
The Statute of Westminster.
which ended all jurisdiction of
the British Parliament over the