Mr. Strydom's Programm5
Our South African Correspondent writes:
Will Mr. Strydom, to take the three main points of his programme, proceed at once to carve out a republ.c within or outside the Commonwealth; pursue -relentlessly the theory of apartheid; and seek jealously to safeguard Parliament's ' ' sovereignty ' 7 Of these three points, the last has the most immediate importance. Mr. Strydom will subscribe forcefully to apartheid, to the complete segregation of black and white, except where the black man's labour is needed; but the facts of the nation's life still make this policy almost impossible to put into effect. The republic too he must leave to evolve, as he hopes, of itself. Neither the monarchy nor the English language can be hounded out, and this he recognises. He puts his trust in time, and the numerical growth of the Afrikaner.
The first two issues, then, may not come to a ciimax now. But the third, that of the courts, may come up at once. Mr. Strydom may revive the Appellate Division Bill. put into cold storage by Dr. Malan, which would create, in add:t ion to courts of civil and criminal appeal. a court of constitutional appeal, whose members could be relied upon to interpret the law the Nationalist political way. His object would be to see that Parliament could not be challenged, even though it may, for example, choose to deprive, the Cape Coloureds of their 0 -'. standing on the common voters roll by a straight majority, and not a two-thirds majority.. f If this does happen., the country next year will be plunged 2 again into the rancour of controversy. In which case the – United Party, the official Opposition. may all at once acquire a new vibrancy. The party has tried five times to cohere on a policy for governing the Native, culminating in the congress at Bloemfontein in November where it made another slight move towards more liberalism, and therefore away from the Nationalists. But this is slippery ground; .defending the inviolability-of the courts should offer a much firmer hold— one that all its members can grasp. On African affairs, and perhaps also on a republic, the party as a whole will never agree; but on the courts it can. Mr. Strydom may thus indirectly give the Opposition new strength.
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