Christmas is coming
and the heads are getting fat (as Taper once remarked, surveying the House of Commons on a foggy November day). But what are you going to do about it? (Christmas, that is, not the House of Commons.) To your wife, no doubt, you will be giving a mink coat; or to your husband, a new Bentley. Aunt Maud will hardly be satisfied with anything less than a pair of Raeburns, and Cousin Lionel must have that delicious mews cottage off the King's Road. But what of every- body else? What about that charming couple you met at the bridge club? What about that intense blonde you were introduced to at the Royal Court? What about your young nephew at Win- chester, and your old uncle at Wagga-Wagga? What, if it comes to that, about your bank manager? (What, indeed?)
Have you thought about giving them the Spectator?
On note of hand alone—that is, an assurance that they are not already regular readers—you can send the Spectator to as many people as you wish this Christmas for only 25s. ($4.00 from Canada or the USA). Why not throw in a copy for Aunt Maud and Cousin Lionel while you're about it?
The Spectator, then, to as many people as you wish for a year at only half the normal cost of a subscription. And we send them a greetings card explaining that the journal comes from you as a gift.
There is an order form below, but if you prefer not to cut your copy a letter will do. Mr. Segal described. All he can do is to juggle with figures about the number of houses built for Africans (I do wish he and his employers would stop talking about 'Bantu,' to shore up their totter- ing feeling of racial superiority; these people are Africans) and add the final impertinence of describing the police-state control and limitation of education for Africans as the 'new principle' of 'the intimate associating of Bantu schools with the life of the community.'
Unfortunately for Mr. Steward, I have just received some most interesting information from somebody who has recently returned from ten years in South Africa. She is Mrs. Gutch, the wife of the Reverend]. P. Gutch (he had been in South Africa for seventeen years; neither of them could be described as spending too little time there to understand the problems), Minister at St. Mark's Church, Port Elizabeth. Mr. Steward describes the 100,000 houses built since 1955 for Africans—in any case a totally inadequate number—as being built 'to specifications nowhere lower than those laid down for slum clearance in Great Britain.' I don't know whereabouts in Britain Mr. Steward lives, but here is Mrs. Gulch's description of the housing she has lived among in South Africa : The Coloured people are gradually being driven out of the centre of Port Elizabeth as thei, houses are being pulled down to make space for fac- tories. When this occurs, either they pack in with another family in one room, or move out to one of the townships built by the Municipality for the Coloureds. Here the building standards have greatly deteriorated; they used to be able to rent quite decent houses, such as are found on the earlier English housing estates, for about 12s. a week. Later ones cost 21s., and the latest rent is 28s. 6d. a week. These only cost £400 to build, and are supposed to be for the higher class of Coloured people. They are small comfortless bungalows, built of breeze blocks. They have no plaster on the interior walls, and no ceilings; just the corrugated asbestos roof. The rooms are very small, and have no doors fitted; not even the bathroom. Much fuss was made of installing bathrooms in these houses, but the bath is only hip-bath size, and there is no means of heating the water laid on. The kitchen has a cement sink and draining board, very difficult to clean. The estate is a good mile from the bus stop, and there are no shops nearby.
And this accommodation is for the Coloured people (i.e., those of mixed descent), and the highest class of such housing at that. Housing provided for the Africans, Mrs. Gutch assures me, is very much worse. In the new 'township' of Kwazakele (the words means 'we build ourselves,' one room is built by the municipality, the rest the Africans are supposed to build them§elves), new 'houses' are being built with bucket sanitation, and water has to be fetched from stand-pipes in the street. If Mr. Steward believes that this sort of housing is not lower than that provided in slum- clearance schemes today in Britain, Mr. Steward has a very odd idea of what sort of houses are built in Britain today.
It was a pity, too, that he picked on education as another example of the goodness and generosity of the South African Government to the Africans. Here is Mrs. Gutch again : In the past, the Government has been embar- rassed by the large number of Africans who matriculate, and then cannot find suitable em- ployment. Neither can all the trained teachers find schools to teach in. Instead of increasing the number of schools (for there are not nearly enough for the children), the syllabus is being
altered so that it is nearly impossible to matricu- late. [I notice that Mr. Steward does not give the names or qualifications of the 'experts' who pro- nounced the syllabus so fine.] Teachers' Training Colleges and Secondary Schools have been closed, and the Minister of Education recently cut down the grant for evening classes, as he saw no reason why Europeans should help Africans to study further. The Government is setting up Tribal Colleges where the particular language of the tribe is to be used; for example, Bantu. Educa- tionists have opposed this strenuously as most of the technical books are only written in English. and they will be set back years if they have to use an African language.
That is a little of the reality behind what Mr. Steward proudly puts forward to counter the effect of the 'fuss and froth stirred up by Messrs. Segal. Mackenzie and company.'
But even if Mr. Steward's account of what the South African Government is doing for the educa- tion and housing of the Africans were entirely truthful, and indeed even if it were the whole of the truth, can he not see that it is monstrously irrelevant beside the huge-and mounting pile of injustices perpetrated on them in the name of a device that could not work and is not even seri- ously meant to'?
The'questions in the House of Commons about the case of Mr. Garratt, Mr. Brian Rix and Police Constable Eastmond make curious reading—or rather the answers do. Mr. Butler really ought to be incorporated in a perpetual-motion machine; he is so slippery he would solve the friction prob- lem at one go. He said that 'no damages were awarded by the court to the plaintiff.' This is literally true; and that is about all it is. The 000 awarded to Mr. Garratt was not, technically, damages; but would Mr. Butler care to say what it in effect was? Asked further what disciplinary action, if any, was contemplated against PC East- mond, Mr. Butler took refuge behind the Commis- sioner of Police, who had decided that no such action was called for--though, being Mr. Butler, he took good care to get out from under on his own behalf by saying things like, 'There would not be Questions in this House if there were not a certain amount of disquiet about this case, with which I sympathise,' and 'I am afraid that I must accept responsibility in this matter.' But if Mr. Butler thinks that will be satisfactory, he is wrong. He made no reply whatever to Mr. Gaitskell when Mr. Gaitskell said, 'I understand that there is a great deal of evidence that this officer has not behaved at all well on previous occasions . . though Mr. Butler must have (as I have) details of the 'previous occasions' to which Mr. Gaikkell was referring.
To keep the record straight in all directions, I must correct one point in my own report of the affair. I said that Mr. Garratt had, at one moment in his brush with PC Eastmond, refused to give his name and address. This was, I fear, a mis- understanding on my part; Mr. Garratt points out that to refuse one's name and address to a uni- formed police officer would be a childish and, in the circumstances, provocative, thing to do. He never refused his name and address because he was not asked for it. And, as he says, in view of the fact that this business is certainly not finished yet, it is as well to have all the facts straight. I now await developments.
BERNARD LEN IN.
Previous page
