By JEROME CAMINADA
Johannesburg pushed his prize away from him. The Government may be seeking friction with Britain as grist to the republican mill but once South Africa became a republic her prospects o acquiring the Protectorates would be decidedly diminished. I on the other hand, the aim is to add the territories to the blac area in a theoretical apartheid progranupe, this goal has als receded.
A setback of this kind is not a light matter to the Nationalists' Their African policy stands alone on this continent, and the would give a great deal to extend its ramparts. Elsewher as they see it, the White man is In grave peril from a se abnegation which, like some black poison, is spreading, throw the British territories, down the continent. If this is so no they ask themselves, what must happen if and when a Laboul Government returns to power in Britain ? Are the Protect torates too to be hurried towards self-government ? They wis therefore to step in as soon as they can, and forestall any suc development. They are not dismayed by the fact that they would be adding to the Union's population more than on million Africans, against some 7,500 Europeans; or that the would then have to find the money for the vast potenti• development of these territories. It is enough that the' authority would then rule there; and they believe, probably correctly, that financial investments would be handsomely repaid.
When examining the economics of, the issue, Dr. Malan ha e said that the territories could not survive two years independent of South Africa, but that the Union could live without the This must be more or less true of any territory wholly or partl surrounded by another, as the Protectorates are by the Union yet South Africa, on its side, undeniably derives advantages i turn from Swaziland, Bechuanaland and Basutoland. Fo example, though the trading stores in the three territories ar glad enough to stock up with South African merchandise an groceries—the dominating items on their import lists—Sout Africa must be happy too to have this market free of dutyl (Trade across the borders with the Union is customs free, both ways.) Bechuanaland, further, would be glad to go on sellin 35,000 head of cattle—whether on the hoof, or after slaughter to the Union, but South Africa equally has long wanted guarantee that this figure will always be available. Swazilan hopes that the Union will be open to some of the products she is now well on the way towards producing, especially timbal and pulp, rice, bananas and pineapples; but equally the Unioti can hardly wait to get her hands on some of these—certainly pulp.
These are simple instances of give and take in trade; buj there are other deeper mutual ties. In Swaziland this month I found the community—the unofficial European community—, buzzing with talk of a railway, a railway which becomes more necessary to them with every passing year, but seems to com no nearer reality. Last month Swaziland thought that th Union Government had agreed in principle to extend a branc railway from Lothair, in the Eastern Transvaal, to the Swat border, from where it would be continued by the Britistt Government a short distance to the Usutu forests scheme unde the care of the Colonial Develqpment Corporation. Such a. railway would serve the busy western part of Swaziland, and would, if carried across the country, also give the Union the prospect of a new link between the Transvaal and the sea. But suddenly Dr. Malan made his broad political move, and the railway became lost once More in political obscurity, Important though the line would be to South Africa, the Prime Minister apparently will have nothing to do with it if it hag to be built across non-Union territory.
Leaving behind these commercial considerations, we come to the human element—the African. I am not referring to the attitude of the Africans to incorporation within the Union; it is a truism that in all three territories they are, so long at least as the Nationalist Government is in power, absolutely opposed to any change. I am thinking only of the example the African himself provides of the inter-dependence of South Africa and the Protectorates, in circumstances again which make a mockery of Nationalist apartheid theory.
The Africans from Swaziland, Basutoland and Bechuanaland, as well as from Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa, work in very large numbers on the mines and in other South African industry. This much at least has to be said in the Nationalists' favour—their policy towards the African in general does not in the least deter him from coming into the Union.. He needs the money, and that is what interests him. This factor presents the Protectorate with a profitable invisible export. Not only do the Africans absent on short contracts send back some of their wages; agents for the United Kingdom High Commission in South Africa are also allowed to visit them and collect taxes due in their home countries. In the year ended March, 1954, £224,500 was collected in this way. At the same time there is of course advantage to South Africa in this arrangement. The ` foreign African labour is indispens- able to European industry, apartheid or no apartheid. And should the Protectorates ever become a part of the Union, for use nominally as African Reserves, the flow of labour from Them would not decrease, but would become stronger.
Previous page
