SOUTH AFRICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9613, 6 October 1909, Page 5

SOUTH AFRICA.

COALITION SCHEME A FAILURE.

United P.ess Association— oy Telegraph Copyright. Received October 5, 9 a.m. LONDON, October 4, "The Times'" Johannesburg correspondent indicates that the coalition scheme is a failure. It is receiving no support among the general body of the Bond and Het Volk.

In an article dealing with the political situation in South Africa the "Cape Times" says:—"Six years ago on the eve or the general ilection in the Cape Colony which were destined to place the Progressive party in power, a newspaper published no a hundred miles from Capetown warned the Progressives against accepting Dr. Jameson as their leader. The great bulk of ua in the Colony, irrespective of our labels, feel that there should be no place for Dr. Jameson in public life in South Africa His services should be declined by every political party. He is undesirable." This reads to-day in the Cape Colony like a voice from an almost forgotten past; and we had imagined that not only the Cape Colony but South Africa as a whole had arrived at the st6ge when statesmanship was preierred to guide the future destinies of a united country on the merits of rival policies and not on the comparative intensity of rancorous memories. But if we were to judge by some of the recent utter ances of a newspaper which is popularly supposed to represent the sentiments of ' a considerable section of the Dutch population of the Transvaal, we should have to modify its opinion. In a recent article the Pretoria "Volkstem" not only declares that a Union Ministry formed o.i non-party lines is impossible, but proceeds to admonish the Progressive party that whoever is to lead the Opposition, the choice must on no account fall on Dr. Jameson. 'Dr. Jameson,' we are told, 'may have proved to be an irreproachable Progressive leader at the Cape, but here in the Transvaal his name and person, with the great majority of the inhabitants, stand for an aggressive race-hatiel, so fierce that it did not prevent him from going to the utmost extremities. And as it is now the general opinion that the racial factor should be eliminated from our present politics, those who, like the leader of the Cape Progressives, stanrt for ao little else than race hatred, ought discreetly to withdraw themselves from the present conflict." And this the 'Volkstem' has the astounding impudence to tell its readers is written 'with no other object ihao modestly to promote a spirit of toleration in our future political relations.'Think of the toleration which demands on the eve of the elecion cf a Union Parliament, the political ostracism of a statesman whose work on the National Convention in the cause of National Union has been applauded by nobody more heartily than by General Botha, Mr Steyn and Mi Merriman; think of the modesty which imagines that, even if all the Cape Colonial representatives, all the Natal representatives, and all the O.R.C representatives were agreed as to the value and distinction of Dr. Jameson's services, they are to unite in hounding him out of public life at the bidding of the group of Transvaal reactionaries whom the 'Voikstem' presumably represents."