AN OMINOUS LEGACY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 166, 31 July 1937, Page 4

AN OMINOUS LEGACY

No one who watches from a distance the passage by the Soutb African Parliament of one enactment after another restricting the rlghts and liberties of the native population can be easy about their future consequences. First fhe native is deprived of his vote in the only province where he had it and compensated by the cr^ation- of a Native Council to which, it is promised, questions affecting him will be referred. Yet, without pretenoe of oonsulting that Council, laws determining his whole future are put through Parliament. The Native Trust and Land Aot has made the way clear for the sodial and economio segregation of the native population, though its failure to provide adequate land on which he can "lead his own life" is notorious. Now the Native Laws Amendment Bill threatens him with further repression. The Daily Dispatoh of East London, says it will "deliver the native peoples of South Afriea, bound hand and foot, into a state of complete subjection and slavery." These are strong words,, but the Bill is ugly enough to provoke them. It will secure the ejection from the towns of all natives in excess of those required for labour purposes, and will confine not only those that remain but all buildings erected for their beneflt, sehools, churches, missions, and the like, to the locations. The ejected native, detribnlised by town life and inadequately provided with altemative means of living, will be forced to accept what conditions he can get as a rural labourer, if indeed he can be so absorbed at all. It is not surprising that the East London paper should "appeal to the conscience of the Europeans of Soutli Afriea to say that such a repressiva piscs of legislation shall not pass."— -Manohefter