Commonwealth and Foreign

THE SOUTH AFRICAN ELECTION

By G. H. CALPIN (Editor, "Natal Witness," Pietermaritzburg)

IT would be difficult to find a people, or for that matter two peoples, living side by side and striving to become one, more politically conscious than the two races that constitute the Union of South Africa, and the general election, to take -place in May, already provides more than sufficient material for leader and correspondence columns of the newspaper.

The Hertzog-Smuts coalition (better known in the Union as the Fusion ministry), brought about five years ago by political and economic necessity, has weathered its first period of office with considerable success. A robust prosperity ushered in after the Government's decision to go off gold has no doubt influenced the favourable position in which the Coalition, or, to give it its proper title, the United South African National Party, now finds itself.

A Minister of Finance, oi a government, whose chief diffi- culty is to discover ways of spending money rather than of raising it, is in a particularly happy position. The work of government is made easy with recurring budget surpluses, and with one for this year estimated at kat millions the Prime Minister can face an election with reasonable confidence.

The last five years has seen departmental progress accelerated to a remarkable degree under the big five of the Cabinet, Generals Hertzog and Smuts, the latter being the Minister of Justice ; Mr. Pirow, the indefatigable realist at the Ministry of Defence and Railways ; Mr. Havenga, the Minister of Finance ; and Mr. Hofmeyr, in charge of Mines and Education. The Prime Minister, in the evening of his political services to South Africa, has brought to a triumphant conclusion the legislation which will set the course of native development for many years to come. In a triad of Bills, the political, economic and social status of the Natives was settled in the last parliament and the beginning of this year sees the Acts in operation. Only time will prove the wisdom or unwisdom of the Union's Native policy, and though in England there is evidence of widespread dissatisfaction with the principles that govern the attitude of European towards Native, it is not enough for the Englishman to condemn without reference to the peculiar tendencies alive in this country. It is possibly true that the policy of political segregation, and all that is implied in the Prime Minister's statement during the debate on the Bills, " The Native, whatever his rights, has no claim on us to give him anything that is inconsistent with our own existence," will one day redound to the disadvantage of the white population, but for the present it can be accepted that the recent legislation has the support of the greater section of the electorate. There is little evidence of the upthrust of the liberalism for which Mr. Hofmeyr stands, though there is plenty of desultory talk about it.

Before any attempt can be made to assess the political situations it is important to get a right perspective of the opposing forces. The Hertzog-Smuts coalition forms the hard core of the electorate and its position is somewhat comparable with that held by the National Government in England at its inception. At its formation two parties split from the con- stituents of the coalition Colonel Stallard, with one or two British stalwarts like Mr. Coulter and Mr. Marwick, left his old chief General Smuts, then the leader of the SA.P. (South African Party) ; from the Nationalist Party, whose chief was General Hertzog, then . in power, a somewhat larger group under Dr. Malan found what has come to be known as the Purified Nationalists relying for their main support on the extreme elements of Afrikanerdom.

On the fringe, then, of the Government party is one, predominantly British in outlook, determined to safeguard the Empire connexion and strongly opposed to the new con- ception of Empire as declared in the Statute of Westminster and more narrowly in the recent constitutional enactments of the Union ; and a second, the Purified Nationalists seeking a response to the aims of republicanism and anti-semitism. Neither is big enough to challenge the coalition, yet of the two, for obvious reasons of population distribution between the races, the Malanites are the stronger. The Dominion Party under the leadership of Colonel Stallard looks to the essentially British (English is banned as a term of national

claiiification) province Natal, and of that to the City of Durban and its leading newspaper, the Natal Mercury, for

support of its principles.

The Labour Party, whose leader is a Mr. Madeley, stands somewhat apart from this development of political thought in the Union. It is less concerned with constitutional changes though• it hotly defends the Empire connexion. It is what a Labour Party should always be, confined to the offer of an alternative government on economic readjustments. At the

moment it is busily engaged in an attempt to settle internal discussions with a hope for the immediate future that it will win sufficient seats to make it the ffirial Opposition. The present distribution in the House of Assembly will indicate the task before them and further how entrenched is the Fusion Party : United South African Party .. .. 121

Nationalist Party • - Dominion Party .. 5

Labour Party .. ' • 5

It is not to be imagined that these figures mean all they suggest. South Africa suffers from a surfeit of riches. It is perhaps, after Canada, the safest country in the world, and it offers a high standard of life for the worker, and higher still, if freedom from domestic labour is a measure, for the worker's wife. Standards, however, are notoriously relative, and the English observer would no doubt remark that neither the worker nor the worker's wife had much to complain about. There would be some substance in the observation. The surfeit of riches, the critical South African would answer, is largely ephemeral. It is, he would maintain, concentrated in the hands of the few and in the larger urban centres, par- ticularly of the Rand. There are still half a million of the European population living on the subsistence level ; still a need for an extension of State-aided schemes for butter, milk, and cheese ; still an agricultural population and rural centres to which the prosperity of the gold mines has not yet per- meated. As for the non-European section, the Bantu, Indian, and Coloured, poverty is the common experience of life for the large proportion of them.

One complaint, and it is among the main problems of South Africa, is the retardation of progress of the inland towns and rural areas while the coastal ports and the Rand advance with increasing acceleration. To adjust agriculture, to stop the flow of population townwards, to increase the industrialdevel- opment of the hinterland, these are but a few of the issues that form part of an increasing problem and in their repercussions are possibly impelling a political cleavage between town and country.

Broadly, however, the general election will be fought on less urgent social deficiencies. The Government will go to . the country on its record of domestic progress, and on its achieve- ment in the all-important sphere of European racial relations. Briton and Boer through it have come together more closely than at any other time, and the first signs of nationhood are apparent with an increased intellectual approach to common purpose. The opposition attack is likely to be of the 'nature of guerilla warfare ; on the one hand from the Dominion Party a detailing of the failure of the Government to recognise its responsibilities to the Empire, its policy of subsidising Italian shipping, its inability to frame a system of tariffs and control of markets to guarantee an increased internal consumption. In the forefront will be such questions as whether South Africa will be neutral in a war that engages Britain, and whether General Hertzog is planning secession from the Empire.

On the other hand, the Purified Nationalists will add to these the demand for complete secession and the substitution of a republic, using the anti-Jew propaganda in districts where accurate knowledge is not a virtue of the electorate. A Govern- ment landslide is not possible; the Press, with one or two rare exceptions, is solid behind coalition, and though it is to be expected that a few seats will be lost to this party or that the results, unless some amazing catastrophe intervenes, assure a victory for General Jjertzog.