The Dominion. TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1912. UNHAPPY SOUTH AFRICA.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1380, 5 March 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1912. UNHAPPY SOUTH AFRICA.

The brief cable messages arriving from time to time from oouth Africa depict in forcible terms the present unhappy and unfortunate position of that country. General Botha's Government seems to be proceeding from excess to excess. Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet alike, when confronted with stern accusations of violating the Constitution, of jobbery and racialism, deny_ everything with an effrontery and a jauntiness which recall the methods of Sir : Joseph Ward in his palmy moments. A crisis seems to be rapidly developing within the sub-continent. The one bright spot on the political r horizon is the hope that Dutchmen of the moderate school, wearied and disgusted with the weak, shifty Premier and his reactionary colleagues, may finally throw in their lot with the Progressives. General _ Botha's legislation and administration are typically Krugeresque. The legislation is largely British; the administration is conspicuously Dutch. Mr. Kruger on occasion would pass a measure through the two Kaads of which even the most ardent Uitlander cordially approved. But he seldom if ever put Acts of this variety into force. His power lay almost exclusively in the domains of administration. So it is with General Botha. He has deliberately adopted, virtually in its entirety, the platform of the Progressives, which platform -originated with the late Mr. Rhodes. The legislative output has to the present been relatively small. But Acts of Parliament seem to be read in a manner most convenient to Ministers, while the recommendations of committees and commissions are insolently ignored. Colonel Crewe, for example, is found speaking a few days before the latest-arrived mail left as follows:— "No recommendations of the Public Service Commission have been carried out. The Commission has finally ended in smoke, but no reorganised Service. There is chaos everywhere. The general feeling throughout the country is that the Government is not playing fair. There is universal dissatisfaction, and if the Government is not careful the Homo Government may be petitioned in the matter." ; "On the railways there is seething discontent," says the Natal Mercury. "The irritating circulars prohibiting men of all rankß from taking part in political or municipal affairs, the notorious bi-lingual circular, and other attempts to interfere with the rights and the liberties of the men, have undoubtedly caused an immense amount of feeling throughout the entire railway sorvice." Tho same journal in dealing with the Public Service Commission, after pointing out that, as provided in the Constitution, the Civil Service should have been reorganised by a thoroughly capable and impartial Commission, states: "Instead 6f doing so, the Government proceeded hot foot to turn the Ciyil Sorvice inside out. When a Commission was appointed it was not long before the only independent, members resigned owing to the manner in which their recommendations were treated, and the Commission that is now in existence is simply n farce. No one has any confidence whatever in it, mid we are at'present faced with the oxtremo danger of the establishment of a Civil Service Hint will bo largely under political control instead of being, as intended under the Constitution, entirely divorced from political influence, independent of tho favours of the Ministry, and under the management of an independent Commission responsible to Parliament, and not to the Government of the country." • Another branch of the Civil Service —tho PolsUl and ToleßrapH-~»eem» to bo on Uw point of QDOfl roboliiou,.

Public meetings have been held in several of the large centres of population at which both postal and telegraph employees have uttered remarkable things concerning the Botha Government. At Kimborley the principal speaker declared that the campaign "had nothing to do with economic conditions, but was simply a stand for honest and straightforward administration." The Postmaster-General is charged with evasion and equivocation, and the Special Protest Number of the Costal and Tclcijraph Jlcrald concludes its opening article: "We appeal to our joint masters, the public. The demand is made because the position is intolerable, and because nothing less drastic can cleanse the official channels of the foulness which tends to choke them." The members erf the Ministry obviously realised their incapacity, their maladroit acts, their growing unpopularity. They have reached the slander and innuendo stage which New Zealand "Liberalism" reached some time ago. Mr. Malan, the Minister of Education, has been making sundry veiled allegations against members of the Opposition; and the Gape Times has been inviting him to formulate his charges in direct _ and specific language, instead of in vague and malicious insinuations. Libcl-and-lie-low, adds the Cape Times,_ is now becoming a 'common political dodge of the Government in South Africa. Mr. Hertzoo has been describing, in engagingly general and discreet terms, every nonSouth African-born resident .of the country as a "sycophant," or a "parasite." Mr. Hertzog is becoming diplomatic. He has recently emerged the loser from one slander action, and another case of the same class is approaching. But General Botha and his colleagues are making desperate efforts to retain place and power. The legislation promised for the session now open pales into insignificance, of course, beside the mighty programme pitchforked together by Sir Joseph Ward, but the measures proposed are many and important, culled as they are from the policy speeches of Sir Starr Jameson and other prominent Progressives. General Botha, however, places his trust in the Dutch. Retrenchment is proceeding at a rate which is alarming the community; and it is said that only in rare instances do the dismissed or pensioned officers carry Dutch names. All branches of the Civil Service are being removed to Pretoria; even Cape Town, dual capital of the Union though it be, is already practically stripped of Government offices. The aim of the Ministry evidently is to transform Pretoria, which, under the Dutch, was but a small and drowsy dorp, ! into the principal city and the sole 1 capital of the Union. The editor of ■The State for January advocates an

immediate no-confidence motion in Parliament, a suggestion which leads the Gape Times to contrast the -vague charges formulated by the Ministry "with the many direct and specific charges which it will be the duty of the Opposition to formulate against the Government."