Say It out Loud - The 1939 Presidential Address, Cape Town, 11th April, 1939

From the book: Say It out Loud by Mohamed Adhikari

The 1939 Presidential Address, Cape Town, 11th April, 1939 ¹

The age of chivalry, tolerance and kindliness has passed away, and an age of fear, of unreasoning suspicion, and of the blind prejudice, which is the deformed offspring of the union of these two, has usurped its place. True learning is in course of liquidation; frank, constructive, far-sighted and dispassionate thinking is at an awful discount, and mere lip service is being paid to the great principle of love already so distorted by racial bias, that its original purity and simplicity can no longer be found or even recognised. It is in this dreary atmosphere that we, the representatives of the Coloured people of South Africa meet together here today.

Council Chambers, City Hall, Cape Townn

South Africa is now passing through a crisis, which even in her chequered history, is fraught with unprecedented and from all present indications, inescapable dangers. South Africa has a right to expect every man ­ white as well as Coloured ­ to do his duty. So to you fellow delegates my advice at the outset of this address is, "Act your part well; there all honour lies. "

The solid foundations of freedom, justice and equality upon which once rested the social and political fabric of the old Cape Colony, are fast crumbling, and that which at one time held out illimitable possibilities for progressive development and upliftment is tottering ­ threatening to engulf in its final crash the hopes which have for so long sustained the Coloured people.

NOTHING MORE OR LESS THAN ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION

The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), by an appeal to racial prejudices, has succeeded in enlisting the support of a large section of its adherents in a campaign of oppression and persecution of the Coloured people, thus defiling the handiwork of the builders of the Constitution ­ Dutch and English, Churchmen and laymen ­ and sundering the religious bonds which once held the two sections together.

There are grave fears that the bitterness this Church has engendered may easily blast the bright hopes, which we all entertain for our beautiful country. This Church is a powerful factor in the life of South Africa. It has it within its power to break down fear and narrow stiff-necked racial pride amongst those who are its disciples; it can, if only it will, preach and enforce the doctrine of tolerance and broad sympathy for the aspirations of the poor and struggling without surrendering itself to mere sentimentality, and without surrendering one jot or title of its Christian principles; and it can, if only it will, advocate the policy of consultation, of mutual readjustment and of mutual sacrifice in an effort to solve a problem complicated by ever-changing and always shifting human values. But will it show itself great enough to rise to the opportunity now presented to it to range itself on the side of those who are seeking only after all that is good and beautiful and truthful and kind in life? If it fails in this it will have confirmed in the minds of many the disturbing belief that the Christianity professed by it is a new kind of religion bearing very little, if any, semblance to the original pattern and especially patented under Divine seal for the edification of a select band of white men and women living in this particular corner of the world's surface.

In order to understand the significance of the changes of the past and those at present contemplated in the social structure and to view them in their proper perspective it is necessary that we should revivify and keep constantly before our eyes the now fast fading historical background of the stage upon which was fought out the great controversy that, having raged for more than a hundred years, culminated in the enactment of Ordinance No. 50 of 1828.

REAL FOUNDATION

That Ordinance was the real foundation of the broad political framework of 1852 within which White and Coloured were joined together by a bond of loyalty as free and equal citizens.

It is impossible within the compass of this address to traverse the full length of the beaten historical track, yet it is very necessary to say a few words about Ordinance No. 50 of 1828. It was the first law that aimed at giving the Hottentots and other "free" persons of colour at the Cape the status of free men, and more than any other enactment it profoundly influenced the subsequent history of the Cape Coloured people.

To understand its full meaning and effect it is necessary to live back imaginatively into the society of 1828 and to breathe the political atmosphere, which pervaded that period. In this way it is possible to note the relationship between the White and the Coloured classes; to observe their relative position in the political structure; to discover the communal psychology of the white colonists; and to appreciate the significance of the laws, customs and traditions which were deliberately designed and inexorably maintained to keep all free persons of colour ­ men, women and children ­ in virtual bondage. In fact, the position of the Coloured people at the time of the passing of the 50th Ordinance was in many respects little better, if not worse than that of slaves. The Pass Laws, Vagrancy Laws, and other restrictive enactments of the period reduced free persons of colour to the position of landless serfs, with virtually no legal status, and with few, if any, rights that need be respected or that could be sustained.

ORDINANCE NO. 50

It was in such circumstances that Ordinance No. 50 of 1828 was enacted. It sought to eliminate certain evils and to redress inequalities; it recognised the right of Coloured persons to purchase or possess land, which until then had been in doubt; it repealed many restrictive laws and put an end to all restraints which had been placed upon persons merely because of their colour.

The Ordinance brought about a sudden break with the past by lifting all free persons of colour out of what had become virtual bondage for them, and by placing them for the first time in the history of the Cape Colony in all respects in the eyes of the law on a level with Europeans. The supporters of the Ordinance hoped and believed that it would release all free persons of colour from the squalid tyranny of the older order and bestow on them the twin blessings of equality and freedom. But as almost inevitably happens with all reforms, which upset the established order of society and are held to offend deeply seated beliefs, laws, customs and prejudices, the measure had its bitter opponents. Immediate consternation at the sudden upliftment of a class of people who had traditionally come to be regarded as essentially inferior to Europeans soon passed amongst a section of the latter at any rate into an attitude of intense and inexorable hostility to the new conditions, and hardened in the fullness of time into a dogmatic intolerance which was carried beyond the confines of the Cape Colony.

By two Ordinances of 1836 and 1840 Municipal Government was first instituted in the Colony, and attention should be drawn to the fact that the right to have a voice in municipal government and even to achieve a position of authority therein was the same for all sections of the community, and that worthiness and fitness to be chosen or to choose a representative upon a Municipal Council were not measured by reference to a man's race or to the complexion of his face. It is an interesting fact that there does not appear to have been any real opposition to these two liberal measures.

TREATMENT OF COLOURED PEOPLE

The subsequent history of the political enfranchisement of the Coloured people is so well known that I need not dwell upon it here, except to quote a relevant passage from an important despatch from Lord Stanley of April, 1842, in reply to a petition from the Cape for a representative form of government. It shows that the Imperial Government entertained grave doubts as to the treatment of Coloured people at the hands of the colonists.

" When I bear in mind, " his Lordship observes, " how powerful, indeed, how nearly irresistible is the authority of an elected legislature in the colony which it represents, I cannot regard as a matter of secondary concern the adjustment and balance of that authority in such a manner as may prevent its being perverted into a means of gratifying the antipathies of a dominant cause or of promoting their own interests or prejudices at the expense of those of other less powerful classes." His Lordship was therefore loath " to throw down the barriers which had hitherto afforded protection in the presence of an authority the abuse of which might work out a great amount of irrevocable injustice. "

LORD STANLEY'S MISGIVING

To Lord Stanley's misgivings, however, Mr. Porter, the then Attorney-General, replied "that in the form of representative government it was proposed to grant to the Colony, the Coloured people should be regarded not as a class separate and distinct from, or inferior to any other racial group, but merely as individuals of equal political value; and that in completing the necessary electoral and franchise details there were to be no privileged or unprivileged classes based on colour. "

With respect to the enfranchisement of the Coloured people he says: " I deem it to be just and expedient to place the suffrage within the reach of the more intelligent and industrious of men of colour because it is a principle which they would prize and a privilege which they deserved; and because by showing to all classes, those above and those below them, that no man's station, in this free country, is determined by the accident of his colour, all ranks of men are stimulated to improve or maintain their relative position. "

Those white colonists who could not adjust themselves to the drastic changes wrought by Ordinance No. 50 of 1828 and other similar legal restraints placed upon abuses, trekked beyond the borders of the Cape and founded Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Time does not permit of our following the Voortrekkers in their wanderings and their conflicts with the Natives.

Attention should be drawn, however, to two important facts, which throw some light on the psychology of those who are responsible for the present agitation in favour of segregation. Firstly, Piet Retief, in his manifesto, after giving the reasons for the Trek, states clearly the intention of the Trekkers. He says, " Whilst we will take care that no one shall be in a state of slavery, it is our determination to maintain such regulations as may suppress crime and preserve proper relations between master and servant. " By " proper relations, " as it is evident from the laws of the old Republic, was meant conditions which once again reduced Coloured persons to a state of servitude.

NO EQUALITY

Secondly, wherever the Voortrekkers settled they proclaimed to the world that there should be no equality between black and white in the Dutch Reformed Church and the Dutch Reformed State.

The brief historical review that I have just given shows that between 1828 and 1852 there evolved in the Cape a system of Government based on the principle of equal civil and political rights for all persons irrespective of race, colour or previous conditions of servitude. This form of government remained unaltered in the Cape until 1910. On the other hand, in the Northern Provinces, the principle of complete segregation instituted by the Voortrekkers a hundred years ago has been invested with all the sanctity of a Divine injunction, and it still stands today firmly entrenched in the social, political and economic life of the country; upheld by the sons of the Voortrekkers; by them accorded afar greater reverence than they manifest towards any of their Christian religious convictions; and by the Dutch Reformed Church observed with such fanaticism as if it were the only way of reaching after God and of achieving a guarantee of eternal salvation in the life which is to come.

THIS SEGREGATION

Before dealing further with this matter of segregation, I desire to say a few words on the economic position of our people which is, after all, the most important aspect of man's life in this materialistic age. Economists hold that man's character is moulded by his every-day work and by the material resources of which he thereby disposes, more than by other influences unless it is that of his religious ideals. The extreme poverty of our people, due to low wages and unemployment, in the slums where they are herded together, numbs their higher faculties, destroys their family life, affords them no opportunity of escaping from the degrading influences which surround them, and mortifies all incentive to cast off the intolerably heavy burdens which weigh them down. Do the champions of segregation and others like them echo the great exhortation of the Master they profess to serve ­ " Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest " ? Or do they rather say to the poor oppressed Coloured man, woman and child struggling against fearful odds for a glimpse of a better world ­ " Begone from us, for with us you will find neither rest nor abiding place"? The answers they render to these questions lie between them and God.

CAPE COLOURED COMMISSION

The appointment of the Cape Coloured Commission in 1934 kindled hopes of an early dawn of brighter days with sweeter manners and purer laws, and thus helped to sustain us in our distress. Its report sets out very clearly the facts which lie behind this complex problem of colour, and it sheds a lurid light upon the ghastly picture of unemployment, low wages, poverty, under-nourishment, ill-health, lack of educational facilities, and deprivation of political rights which is the lot of the Coloured people. From these distressing conditions there seems no means of escape without the assistance of the ruling class in the form to begin with of the repeal of all restrictive legislation.

Furthermore, a careful study of the report will disclose the causes which, springing from many different sources, and flowing through many devious channels, have created and fed the social stream of white South Africa ­ a stream shining and placid upon the surface, but a turbid maelstrom beneath ­ a stream insidiously dangerous in its suggestion of outward calm ­ a stream for the creation and qualities of which the political framework, the customs, traditions and restrictive laws of this fair land are largely responsible.

The Commission, as you know, was appointed at the instance of that great liberal statesman, the Hon. J.H. Hofmeyr, whose moral convictions always courageously expressed, high altruistic endeavours and motives in public life, and forceful personality, inspired us with hope that, as a Minister of the Cabinet, he would be able to influence Parliament to redress some of our people's many wrongs, and guide and direct the country towards an enlightened solution of the Coloured problem. We did not expect from him the proclamation of the millennium, which would usher in the " Kingdom of God on Earth, " but we did at least have visions of some release from the worst of the appalling conditions, which hold our people in economic and political bondage. Mr. Hofmeyr's resignation from the Cabinet came as a crushing blow to us.

INDUSTRIAL AND WAGE LEGISLATION

The history of the Industrial and Wage legislation of South Africa is well known to you. Its disastrous effects on Coloured employment may be seen by anyone who cares to compare the position of our people to-day with what it was, say, twenty years ago, and I have dealt with it so fully in previous presidential addresses that there is now no need for me to dwell on the evil designs which underlie this legislation. The opinions expressed by me to you then were afterwards confirmed by no less an authority than the ex-chairman of the Wage Board, whose considered conclusion, after a close first-hand study of the position, is given in these words:

" The effect of the Wage Board's decisions in a number of cases would undoubtedly be that white would be substituted for Coloured workers. " ...

" Among those factors which have been emphasised to the Commission as operating against the employment of the Coloured section have been the introduction of the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924 and the Wage Act of 1925."

It is natural, however, that a few privileged Coloured workers who are benefiting temporarily by the decisions of the Wage Board should continue to believe in the Wage Act.

APPRENTICESHIP ACT

Similarly, the Apprenticeship Act was intended to help the white lad at the expense of the Coloured boys. I condemned it as an iniquitous piece of legislation, and I think you will agree with me when I say that no other Act of Parliament ­ not even that which deprived us of important political rights ­ has reacted so disastrously upon our people. Gradually those in skilled trades are dying off and their places are being taken by white lads, while Coloured boys holding the necessary qualifications are turned away from factories where their fathers once worked or are still working. Look where you will, despite the misstatements of white protagonists of labour legislation, and you will find an ever-increasing number of white artisans where Coloured once formed the majority.

I adhere to my original description of the Apprenticeship Act as the most potent weapon ever forged for the purpose of carrying on a callous and brutal one-sided economic war against the Coloured youth. The Commission states that evidence was submitted that the Apprenticeship Committees exerted their influence to persuade employers to indenture European rather than Coloured youths, but it goes on to express the opinion that this charge has not been substantiated. In this opinion I did not concur. My knowledge of the mentality of white men and their natural solicitude for the future of the white youth; of the anxiety of employers to give effect to the White Labour Policy euphemistically called the "Civilised Labour Policy," and the information I am able to gather from personal contact with unsuccessful applicants for apprenticeship ­ all these warrant my dissenting from the rest of the Commission, and stating in paragraph 275 of the Report that ­

" I accept the evidence to the effect that the Apprenticeship Committees have exercised influence to persuade employers to indenture European rather than Coloured youth. "

Be that as it may, the Commission says that during the period of 1932 to 1935, the total number of apprentices indentured was 5,686, of whom 36 were Coloured and the rest white! I think you will agree with me that the position is even worse today than when the report was published. I shall not dwell longer on the Civilised labour Policy, for many of you are the victims of it. Whatever it was intended to achieve and however generously it might be interpreted in Cape Town, there is no doubt as to its effect. The A.P.O. never entertained any doubts as to its aims, and did not hesitate in 1924 to condemn it when it was hailed even by some Coloured men as a blessing.

CIVILISED LABOUR POLICY

The Civilised Labour Policy originated in the Transvaal before Union, where it was called by its right name, the White Labour Policy. It was the product of the joint efforts of the White Labour Party and of the Transvaal Government, and was after Union gradually introduced into Cape Town until in 1924 the Pact Government gave it the name, which it still bears, viz., "The Civilised Labour Policy."

I now desire to say a few words on the administration of justice and the police.

From reports, which reach me periodically, I am apprehensive that illiberality is also beginning to pollute the administration of justice. A Coloured man generally without skilled defence usually stands little chance against police evidence. He is further handicapped by his complete ignorance of the rules of procedure and evidence, and the court does not always enlighten and assist him, so that in the end he is rather convicted for his ignorance than for the offence with which he has been charged. Then take, for instance, the case of fines. It is obvious that ability to pay a fine must depend upon the economic level upon which the person fined is living; yet in practice no account seems ever to be taken of this factor, and the result then usually is imprisonment, and all the hardship, spiritual as well as physical, which that entails. If a Coloured lorry driver, earning for instance £3 per week, is fined for a motoring offence on the same level as a European motorist earning £1,000 a year, the penalties are patently disproportionate, though the degree of culpability may be identical.

NO EQUALITY IN LAW COURTS

One is reluctantly forced to believe the statement often made that there is no equality in the law courts, but rather that there are two codes of justice, one for the European and another for the rest of us ­ a form of segregation more pernicious than any other. Hope springs so eternal in the human breast that I believe it is not impossible that the mere mention of this differentiation in treatment may lead to its elimination. This at any rate is my hope, my fervent prayer, and my object in giving utterance to these thoughts.

There is one other very difficult question on which I wish to touch ­ that is, the execution of the law in relation to the Coloured man. It is a subject, which has furnished more and more food for thought as the years since Union have rolled on.

It was alleged by some witnesses who gave evidence before the Cape Coloured Commission that the police frequently manhandled their prisoners alleged it. From what I myself have witnessed in Cape Town I have no hesitation in saying that innocent and inoffensive Coloured persons are often brutally assaulted by the police for no proper reason whatever, except, perhaps, for having congregated on the pavement, and even then without causing an obstruction to pedestrians. Incidentally, the Natives are experiencing the same unnecessary violence. This change has taken place simultaneously with the importation into the cities and towns of policemen generally recruited from the poor white class of what has come to be known as the Platteland. I am convinced that the majority of the assaults on the police of which Coloured people are from time to time accused are simply examples of the proverbial turning of the worm. Even the despised Coloured man or Native will not for ever allow himself to be the passive victim of the truculent violence of these " lads of the veld " , as these have been recently described.

Segregation, whatever the term originally implied, has always meant in South Africa nothing neither more nor less than the economic exploitation of the Coloured people. It is an open attempt once again to relegate the Coloured people to a lower and more prostrate position than they occupy at present, where it is intended to hold them, in the words of Piet Retief, by laws "to maintain proper relations between master and servant, " or as some of the purified Nationalists would have it, to thrust them back again into that state of virtual bondage in which they had languished for nearly 200 years before they could be released by Ordinance No. 50 of 1828.

CRUDE ARGUMENTS

The arguments used by segregationists are crude, contemptible, transparent and hypocritical, and will lead to disastrous consequences. By exalting the alleged racial purity of the stock from whence they have sprung, they are simply flattering their own vanity and self-love; their clamorous and noisy demands that this alleged purity shall be maintained by preventing further miscegenation or mixed marriage have come 250 years too late; their arrogant assumption that a white skin has some peculiar virtue in it which raises its possessor above the rest of mankind, is making them the laughing stock of the scientific world; and finally, their declaration that the Almighty has endowed the Coloured people with a sort of second-rate moral and intellectual quality vastly inferior to that which He has so generously bestowed upon the South African European, more particularly of the Platteland, is a clumsy attempt to palliate the soul-withering environment which white South Africa has created for the Coloured child, an environment in which the child is shackled like a thing that is

CURSED FROM BIRTH

" Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed,

To abjectness and bondage. "

But segregationists are astute propagandists; they know that the claims of superiority make their literate but uneducated and often crude followers feel intensely proud when they are told that they belong to a pure and superior ethnic group ­ and it is usually the least worthy in that group who are the most anxious to believe that they are members of an exalted dominant class specially created by the Almighty to rule black men.

The segregationist knows that ­

" What the weak head with the strongest bias rules is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. "

The appeal to racialism in this prejudice sodden land has already produced tragic results. Professors and political Predikants have now taken the lead and the smaller fry are swarming around the very obvious bait that these individuals are throwing out.

This virulent campaign for segregation, which gained force and direction during the Voortrekker Centenary celebrations, and which is being conducted under the blessing of the Dutch Reformed Church, is controlled by an unholy alliance of certain more politically than spiritually minded Predikants, professors and politicians, who with all the subtle sophistry of trained experts in the art of evasiveness and equivocation, invent all kinds of plausible excuses, specious explanations and justifications for the gratification of the unworthy desires of the narrow racialistic section of the white population. In this noble fight, the alliance is led by a leader ²who has become a most accomplished master in the acrobatic art of plain, double or triple somersaulting, of whom it may with justice be said:

" His (political) honour rooted in dishonour stood

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. "

Certain Predikants have deified a narrow Afrikaner Nationalism which seems now to have taken the place in the hearts of their followers of the Deity Himself, and in their campaign of vilification of the Coloured people and of their children they have forgotten the warning that it were better for such as they that a millstone were hung around their necks and that they were cast into the depths of the sea than that one little child who believed in Christ should be offended. There is nothing in the passage I have quoted confining this Divine sentence to those who offend only against the children of the purified Nationalist Party of South Africa.

THE ROOT IDEA

If, however, one examines closely the arguments adduced by this combination of professional tricksters one finds one root idea in all of them. The sole purpose of all those who give the credulous mob the benefit of their reflections on the subject of segregation is the economic exploitation of the Coloured people and the ensuring of an abundant supply of cheap labour. In the country segregation means herding the Coloured people into locations fenced around with barbed wire, with curfew regulations to keep them in their hovels from which their only hope of escape is on to the farms where they may work under conditions which will keep them there until they die, without any hope of ever rising above a bare animal existence. In the towns it means making room for poor whites, who during the Voortrekker Centenary celebrations were exhorted to leave their wretched homes in the country, storm the towns, and displace the Coloured people in the industries. And all this is to be achieved, in terms of the Nationalist petition, by political, economic, industrial and residential segregation.

Times does not permit of my dealing fully with every phase of the present segregation movement, and I must, therefore, be brief. I, as you know, have condemned political segregation, from public platforms in unmistakable terms. All that I desire to say now is that I stand unswervingly to-day where I stood thirty-three years ago, when I condemned the granting of Responsible Government to the Transvaal and Orange Free State without that enfranchisement of the Coloured people in those two Provinces which was promised during the Anglo-Boer War, and which was provided for in the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902. The withholding of political rights from the Coloured people at that time was a distinct breach of faith. We have waited patiently for thirty-seven long years for the fulfilment of the undertaking contained in the 8th clause of that Treaty. How much longer must we wait?

HUGE BETRAYAL

I still hold with regard to the Act of Union that it was a huge betrayal; and that the words of "European Descent" which deprived us of part of our political rights remain to this day as a foul blot upon the political escutcheon of the Union. These words cast an unworthy slur on the Coloured people, and will as long as they are retained in the Constitution besmirch the name of South Africans as constitution builders. But it cannot in the name of all that is reasonable be expected that we should continue to sit down with the quiet resignation of an Indian fakir and consent to any further abridgment of our already attenuated political rights. We must by all the constitutional means at our disposal resist any further attempt to tamper with our rights as is contemplated in the Nationalist petition. Perhaps we shall again be unsuccessful, but that possibility should not deter us from resisting as we have done in the past any further political segregation, in the firm belief that there is a God in Heaven who looks with disapproval on any act of spoliation of human rights and freedom.

Compulsory residential segregation in the Cape Province means depriving 700,000 Coloured people of the only right, which has so far been left untouched. This common right Coloured people enjoy equally with Europeans, and so far no attempt has been made to tamper with it since 1828, when by Ordinance No. 50 of that year all doubts as to the competency of the Coloured people to purchase and own fixed property were dispelled.

You will recollect with what inordinate haste the Administrator of this Province attempted unsuccessfully to force a segregation ordinance through the Municipal Conference last year before that body had even seen the draft. It was also fortunate that the Nationalists were not in a majority in the Cape Provincial Council, otherwise the Ordinance might to-day have been in operation in the Cape Province. Under that Ordinance the Administrator proposes to give powers to municipalities to dispossess Coloured persons of their properties in certain areas and to kraal off special reserves in which Coloured persons will be forced to reside under penalty of being flung into prison if they disobey the law. But the Administrator proposes not only to give to local authorities such powers as I have just indicated; he proposes also to reserve to himself the power to impose whatever conditions he may deem fit on municipalities and private owners if they do not manifest any great enthusiasm in the matter of carrying out thoroughly his ideals of complete segregation. In fact, the Administrator has set himself up as the Dictator of the Cape Province, a sort of minor Hitler, with himself as the ultimate arbiter of the fate of 700,000 defenseless Coloured people.

ABUSE OF POWER

When one thinks of the powers the Administrator proposes to confer upon himself as well as those with which he wishes to invest municipalities, one can hardly be blamed if one is at least strangely tempted to agree with Lord Stanley when he foresaw just such an abuse of power as this amounting almost to barefaced robbery, and when he expressed the fear that authority placed in the hands of the white Cape Colonists might be perverted into gratifying the antipathies, interests and prejudices of whites at the expense of the defenseless Coloured people.

Whether the Provincial Council, in view of the assurance given to us by the Prime Minister, will now proceed with the Ordinance is not certain. But certain it is that if it passes the Ordinance the question will arise whether the Provincial Council has the power to legislate in wholesale manner on racial or colour lines, or to deprive Coloured people of the right to own fixed property.

There is one clause in the Ordinance, which will cause some amusement if not actual tragedy if rigidly enforced. I refer to the definition of a non-European, which reads:

" Every person is a non-European if either his mother or father of the marriage is not a full-blooded European. "

What in the wide world does this mean, and how in practice is it to be ascertained.

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE

Without entering into the perplexing problem of the extent to which Mongolian, Asiatic and even Negro blood mixed with that of other ethnic groups in Europe have helped to produce the different nationalities on that Continent, and even assuming that the original colonists were "full-blooded Europeans", it would be difficult, if not impossible, at present from the available knowledge of the crossings and recrossings that have taken place in the Cape, to say who is or who is not a " full-blooded European " . I think it would be dangerous to lay down a type definition of a "full-blooded European". I have seen many so-called full bloods who betray a mixed ancestry and who could not pass the necessary tests. But to insist upon the "mother" being "full-blooded" is looking for trouble in South Africa. Professor Huxley thinks that the record through the female line usually fades after two generations. I think a too searching enquiry into the ancestry of "mother" might easily break down, or at least produce embarrassing results.

Professor Walker, in his book, " The Great Trek " , records one Voortrekker in Triegaardt's band who was accompanied by his Coloured wife and off Coloured children.

At the outset of this address, I said that South Africa was passing through a crisis fraught with unprecedented and almost inescapable danger ­ danger which might end in disaster, and possibly engulf us all, not by some sudden cataclysm, but rather by a slow general disintegration of our national morale and institutions. There stands recorded in the report of the Cape Coloured Commission a huge catalogue of wrongs, insults and injustices, a mere cursory glance at which should force all decent-minded white South Africans not only to hang their heads in shame and contrition, but to resist vigorously any added burden of jibes and jeers, insults and humiliations to the already intolerable load resting upon the Coloured people, and thus prevent further bitterness, antipathy, hatred, and finally disaster. Will white South Africa now listen to the voice of Christian charity and redress these grievances? Or will she, despite the pathetic appeals for relief perpetuate the existing evils? Or finally, in her unreasoning fear and blind prejudices, will she disregard the warning of sullen murmurs of discontent which, though now only murmurs, may swell into the thunderous demands of a hopeless and desperate people? These are questions she must answer for herself, for she, and she alone, is responsible for the present social structure. She has the power ­ will she exercise it aright? Before she makes the final decision I should like to remind white South Africans who still believe that God is in His heaven, the parliament, and the Dutch Reformed Church, that ­

He from whose hands alone all power proceeds Ranks its abuse among the foulest deeds, Considers all injustices with a frown;

And marks the man who treads his fellows down.

The danger of which I have spoken is not external to white South Africa, and beyond its control. It is not some external material physical force which is threatening us. It is purely psychological, and exists in the minds of white South Africa; it can be avoided only if the wise, the righteous and the strong amongst us will by a fearless campaign re-educate the masses to direct their lives towards the harmonious adjustment of man and man as co-equal partners in the State.

HATRED REIGNS SUPREME

The present political framework of our constitution, our laws, customs and traditions are relics of a dead past, and a legacy of a barbarous age. They rob white men of those spiritual aspirations, which soften the heart, they subtly mould the sub-conscious mind and influence the character of the white youth forming his thoughts, and determining in advance what shall be his attitude towards the non-Europeans. Unless the more courageous white men will step beyond these rigid institutions, and make an end of the poisonous anti-social doctrines that are being preached by a narrow and exclusive Nationalism, and unless they create a basis for harmonious and close co-operation between all sections of the community. South Africa, as surely as the night follows the day, will slowly slip down into the abyss where chaos, confusion and hatred reign supreme.

To divide the population into segregated groups or blocs on racial or colour lines, each exhorted to develop a culture of its own, each instructed to work out its own destiny, must inevitably lead to hostility and strife and clash.

Segregation of non-Europeans will strengthen the colour bond ­ not only in the Union, but also possibly in the whole of Africa ­ the force which is inherent in such a bond will be powerful enough to break any self-exclusive and self-sufficient Afrikaner block such as is now advocated. Some strong Coloured leader will arise, by comparison with whose stature Dr. Malan will be a mere pigmy, and he will preach the same doctrine of racialism among segregated non-European. He will advise them to prepare and ­

" If the Will and Sovereignty of God

Bid suffer it awhile, and kiss the rod.

Wait for the dawning of a brighter day,

And snap the chain the moment when you may. "

And what would it matter to the oppressed in this land whether you call such a leader a constitutional democrat, an autocrat, or a communist, or anything else you like? They will follow the leader, just as blindly as some Afrikaners now follow Dr. Malan, and if such a leader should tell the Coloured people one fine day when the Afrikaner bloc has become an accomplished fact, and is celebrating Dingaan's Day, to abstain from working for one week only on all the farms as well as on the mines, then the Afrikaner bloc will vanish as the mists before the morning sun and there will at long last be peace in this land.

Well, now I must hasten to a conclusion, and here let me say that I wish to close upon a note of hope. Let not your hearts be cast down, for all is not yet lost. The A.P.O. have not been idle in your cause. We have seen the Prime Minister on your behalf and the press report of the interview we had with him is substantially correct. The Government, at any rate, as far as we at present know ­ I emphasise the words at present ­ contemplates no revolutionary changes. But this does not mean that you can sit back and breathe freely once again. Now, more perhaps than ever before in your history, it is necessary for you, the Coloured people of South Africa, to stand firmly and solidly behind your tried, experienced and responsible leaders ­ men who have never swerved in their loyalty to your cause, men whom you can trust, men who will not betray you. Now, more than ever before, is it necessary that you should not be led astray by the specious promises and vapourings of those who come to you preaching political doctrines which are entirely foreign to the whole course of your upbringing, and, indeed to your very nature. Remember that you also have your traditions of which you need not be ashamed. Never forget that your history is one of obedience to the law and those in authority over you, however harsh the one or the other may from time to time have been; but remember, too that self-respect is not the monopoly of the elect who follow the banner of the political Predikant, professors and politicians of one section of the South African people and that you are not called upon to suffer passively for ever all manner of insult which it is sought to put upon you. When, however, the time for resistance comes let such resistance take place constitutionally. Thus, and only thus, will you retain the sympathy which thousands of white people already feel for you, even amongst the adherents of the Dutch Reformed Church ­ for it is against a certain type of individual into whose hands the leadership or some part of the leadership of this Church seems to have passed that in my remarks about it I have inveighed. Thus, and only thus, will you strengthen and not mar what every right thinking and decent European will readily admit is a good cause and a just cause. Abstain from violence misdirected and stupid which can only injure you and embarrass your friends. Be worthy of the memory of those of your own blood who laid down their lives in the Great War that law and freedom and liberty might prevail, and that licentious violence as a means to achieving an end might be put down for all time. An objective secured by violence has never yet been permanent: a victory won by lawful methods backed by a consciousness of right and a determination to win, and by appeals to reason and justice which, though now somewhat at a discount, are not yet dead, is firm and lasting.

I started this passage upon a note of hope; I close it and this address upon a note of hope that, in spite of everything, we shall yet win through.

The Abdurahman's house "Oak Lodge" at 173, Kloof steet, Cape Town