Dr. Malan and Apartheid
The Union of South Africa is completely self-governing, and since this country cannot if it would interfere in the Union's internal, or for that matter its external, affairs the impression that in some cases it might like to do so should be avoided. But at a moment when the Union is once more raising the question of acquiring the three British Protectorates lying wholly or in part within its borders the development of Dr. Malan's native policy must be watched with particularly close attention. The text of the threatened apartheid Bill has now been published. It provides, in brief, for complete racial segregation. Throughout the area of the Union, except where segregation prevails already, any area may be set aside as a group area, and only members of that group —Africans, Indians, Mauritian or others—will be allowed to live or hold property there. White South Africans will, of course, be segregated too, which is precisely what they desire to be. The claim is advanced that by enabling each voup to live its racial life the measure will in fact make for harmorly and content. Actually its object is manifestly the repression of the non-white inhabitants of the Union, who number over nine million out of a total popula- tion of eleven million and a half. The nine million will remain com- pletely disfranchised. Even the educated among the different races will be able to mix with one another to only a very limited degree. And it is intended in due course to abolish the right of natives in the Cape Province to elect three members (not themselves native) to represent them in the Union House of Assembly. Nothing can prevent the enactment of the apartheid Bill, but Dr. Malan may be laying up unimagined trouble for the Union. The gulf between the British Government's attitude towards Africans and the, South African Government's is getting wider every year. The contrast will some day be intolerable to South Africa's nine million.
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