African South Vol. 4, No. 2
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African South Vol. 4, No. 2 http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.ASJAN60 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org African South Vol. 4, No. 2 Alternative title Africa South Author/Creator Ronald M. Segal; David Marais; Senator Dr. the Hon Leslie Rubin; Stanley Uys; Professor Leo Kuper; Anthony Delius; John Nieuwenhuysen; Phyllis Ntantala; Alex. Hepple; David Miller; Arnold Benjamin; Terence Ranger; John Reed; Vella Pillay; J. M. Nazareth, M.L.C; Philippee Decraene; Lord Altrincham; James Cameron; Dr. A. C. Jordan; Miriam Koshland; Ivan Hattingh; Professor G. H. Durrant Date 1960-01 - 1960-03 Resource type Journals (Periodicals) Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa Coverage (temporal) 1960 Source Africa South Vol.4 No.2 Jan-Mar 1960 ISSN 0376-4397 Rights Digital Innovation South Africa Description Contents: The two faces of terror; Cartoon; Nationalist contempt of court; The white opposition splits; Rights and riots in Natal; Travels in tribalism; Bantustan fantasia; The abyss of Bantu education; Unemployment by race; The ethics of boycott; Jacobus and the barricades; Devlin in Southern Rhodesia; Portrait of an agitator: Patrick Matimba; The Belgian treasury; Minority rights in Kenya; West African unity; Tories and the Commonwealth; Africa and the British electorate; Towards an African literature (XI): The harp of the nation; The poetry of Madagascar; Car-boy; Book review. Format extent 131 page(s) (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.ASJAN60 http://www.aluka.org IC~A- SOUTH IC~A- SOUTH Vol. 4 No-2Jan.-March 1960 Special Fedlures: RIGTSANDRITSIN NATAL Iu THE! POETY OFMÅDÄGMCAR TH, UNfIONr$OF SOUTH ARICA 3/9 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 75c GRET BRITNAND AFRICA 41- INDIA Aft0 CEYLON Rs. 2.5 VOL. 4 No. 2 EDITOR: RONALD M. SEGAL JAN.-MARCH 1960 CONTENTS TILE Two FACES OF TERROR - - - - - CARTOON by David Marais - - - - - - NATIONALIST CONTEMPT OF COURT by Senator Dr. the fon. Leslie THE WHITE OPPOSITION SPLITS by Stanley UIys RIGHTS AND RIOTS IN NATAL by Professor Leo Kuper TRAVELS IN TRIBALISM by Anthony Delius - BANTUSTAN FANTASIA by John Nieuwenhuysen - THE ABYSS OF BANTU EDUCATION by Phy llis Ntantala UNEMPLOYMENT BY RACE by Alex. Hlepple - THE ETHICS OF BOYCOTT by David Ailler - JACOBUS AND TilE BARRICADES by Arnold Benjamin DEVLIN IN SOUTHIERN RHODESIA by Terence Ranger PORTRAIT OF AN AGITATOR: PATRICK MATIMBA by John Reed TilE BELGIAN TREASURY by Vella Pillay MINORITY RIGHTS IN KENYA by J. M. Nazareth, M.L.C. WEST AFRICAN UNITY by Philippe Decraene - - - TORiES AND THE COMMONWEALTH by Lord Altrincham AFRICA AND THE BRITISH ELECTORATE bv James Cameron TOWARDS AN AFRICAN LITERATURE (XI): THE HARP OF THE NATION by Dr. A. C. Jordan - THE POETRY OF MADAGASCAR by Miriam Koshland - CAR-BOY by Ivan Hattingh - - BOOK REVIEW by Professor G. H. Durrant - - - 4 Rubin 5 12 2o 27 36 42 48 59 67 - - 73 - - 79 87 - - 92 - - 100 - - 10E - - 110 - I I+ - - 120 - - 123 AFRICA SOUTH is published quarterly by Africa South Publications (Pty.) Ltd. Editorial and Advertising Offices are at 2 Vlam Gebou, Parliament Street, Cape Town, South Africa. Price per issue 3s. 9d.; 15s. per year post free, in the Union of South Africa. In the United States, promotion offices are located at 320 W. 87th Street, New York, N.Y., and subscriptions should be sent to Mrs. S. Pauley at that address. Price per issue 75c; $3 per year, post free. Entered as second-class matterat thePost Officeat New York, N.Y. Price per issue in the United Kingdom 4s.; 16s. per year, post free. Representative, Miss R. Ainslie, 31 A, John Adam St., London, W.C.2. Price per issue in West Africa 4s.; 16s. per year, post free. Representative, Mr. E. Mphahlele, Dept. of Extra-Mural Studies, University College, Ibadan, Nigeria. Price per issue in South Asia Rs. 2.50: Rs. 10 per year, post free. Representatives, Messrs. K. V. G. de Silva & Sons, 415 Galle Road, Colombo 4, Ceylon. THE TWO FACES OF TERROR Evt.i,, since the Nationalists seized power in 1948, South Africa has been in a state of suspended terror. The mechanism of tyranny has been developed with patience and care-in the selfperpetuation of Nationalist rule through electoral delimitation and disfranchisement, in the punishments with which the law is loaded against any effective forms of opposition, in the functions and powers with which an obsequious parliament has dressed officialdom and, particularly, the police. Political Opponents are banned and banished without trial; the security police pry everywhere, listening and scribbling, pursuing and interrogating, with all the bland insolence of their inviolable dossiers; passports and permits are seized or refused without reason or appeal. Yet the engine has remained, for all that, securely locked in second gear. On the crudest comparison with consummate terrors, like Nazi Germany or contemporary Portugal, the courts in South Africa have protected the law from persistent outrage. Political antagonists have not just disappeared, while their families endured exemplary victimization; trial in public court has remained the prerequisite of imprisonment and execution. The law may have been defaced beyond recognition, but it is still standing. Whatever one's judgment of the treason trial, its interminable proceedings and the vagrancy of the prosecution, the accused were not simply rounded up and shot, or shovelled secretly into concentration camps. Quite the reverse. Their trial has been conducted with a blare of publicity, and the Crown is attempting to prove its contentions before an increasingly restive bench at home and overseas. Above all, the press has been left fundamentally free. Though vulnerable to persecution under a number of 'public safety' laws and consequently compelled to mince fine much of its comment, it remains in practice secure from seizure and censorship. It is a precarious freedom, of course, and one that may be enjoyed only at constant editorial risk. The Minister of Justice, pressed to give reasons for his five-year ban on the Editor of 'Africa South', cited for the most part various quotations from articles that have appeared in the magazine. Yet it has been, all the same, by the measure of the press under absolute terrors, freedom of a very precious sort, capable, for all its limitations, of having kept reason alive in a race-deranged society. AFRICA SOUTH It is inevitable, of course, that press and judiciary together should be suffocated by the sack-cloth of white supremacy. The Nationalists have only needed time, to condition the country to its ultimate submission. Democracy is never destroyed in a day; it is undermined, gradually, carefully, till it is ready at last to cave in with one sure cut of the spade. For eleven years the Nationalists have been tuning up the engine. And now the time has come to push the pedal down flat to the floor. Some of the recent appointments to both the provincial and appellate divisions of the judiciary are explicable only in terms of political packaging. Promotions have ridden roughshod over reputation and seniority; and lurking in the shadows of Government policy, legislation stirs to ease the retirement of recalcitrant judges. The South African judiciary has long enjoyed a reputation for administering the law uncorrupted by promises of power or fear of place. That it has deserved this reputation so well must be provocation enough to a government whose pursuit of power increasingly collides with the rule of law. No country can contain a free judiciary and the political and economic violence of apartheid peacefully together; the one must by its very nature consume the other in the course of its career. And so the Nationalists must serve notice on South Africa that independence of judgment is to be as tolerable on the bench as it is in parliament. Trial by political opinion stands ready to tie on the blind-fold. How should the press escape? The Deputy-Minister of the Interior has already announced that a bill to provide for internal censorship is being framed in accordance with the Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Undesirable Publications* and is to be introduced by the Government at the coming parliamentary session. It is not yet certain whether newspapers will be covered; but that is not of much moment. If they escape, it will only be for separate execution straight afterwards. It is upon the whole world of free comment that the guns of the Government are now trained. It is not easy to be serious about the recommendations in the 1957 Report. Where it is not almost pathological, as in its thicklensed strictures on underwear advertisements, it is grotesque in its bigotry, defining the politically undesirable with so obvious and profound a contempt for the right of men to hold any conflicting opinions at all that editors will be serving five years *For a detailed analysis of the Report, see 'Africa South', Vol II No.