1953 South Africa Article

The Government’s Policy and Practice of Racial Discrimination and Oppression in the Union of South Africa

Spotlight on Africa, August 13, 1953

II. Tyrannical Suppression of Opposition

“…the Natives must be made clearly to understand and to realize that the presence and predominance of the white race will be preserved at all hazards, and that all attempts to destroy its hegemony, whether overt or covert…will promptly punished…”

The quotation is from page 5 of the Report of Natal Native Affairs Committee for the year 1906-7. The idea enunciated has remained the chief principle of South African statecraft down through the decades. The present Nationalist Government ahs observed and applied it with exceptional persistence and severity. “Any organization that does want to acknowledge the color bar has no right to exist in South African,” Malan’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Eric H. Luow, said in 1949. The Government’s record of victimization of individuals and organizations supporting democratic rights for all South Africans shows Mr. Luow’s statement to be in fact state policy.

To silence opposition to its policies the Malan Government was at first content to use the expedient of having a magistrate issue and order banning a scheduled meeting. Thus, for example, Mr. Sam Kahn, Member of Parliament representing Africans and a bitter opponent of the Nationalists’ “apartheid” program, was served with the following magistrate’s order dated 17 March, 1949: “Whereas in terms of Section 1(4) of Act 27 of 1914, as amended, there is reason to apprehend that feelings of hostility between Europeans and Non-Europeans would be engendered by the assembly of a public gathering in any place in this town to which the public has access to hear and address by Mr. Sam Kahn M.P. on the subject of “Apartheid or Equality,” acting under the special authority of the Minister of Justice, I do hereby prohibit such assembly in the municipal area of Springs for the purposes aforesaid.” African and Indian critics of Malanism were similarly muzzled. The Riotous Assemblies Act and other measures were also invoked to curb free assemblage and free speech.

Then, in 1951, with mammouth public demonstrations against the Separate Representation of Voters’ Bill taking place in Cape Town, the Nationalist Government pushed through Parliament, by the narrow margin of 69 votes to 62, the so-called Suppression of Communism Act, the first of its’ own laws for silencing and punishing its opponents. As noted by even anti-Communist newspapers and leaders in South Africa, this law marked the establishment of a police-state fascism in the country.

The implementation of the Suppression of Communism Act has demonstrated the truth of this judgement. Invoking this law the Malan Government has:

--banned the publication of the Guardian, the first instance of the suppression of a newspaper in South Africa;

--ousted Mr. Sam Kahn and Mr. Fred Carneson, the duly elected representatives and spokesmen for Africans, from their respective seats in the House of Assembly and the Cape Provincial Council;

--“named Chief of James A. Luthuli, President General of the African National Congress; Dr. G. Naicker, President of the South African Indian Congress; scores of other leaders of these two organizations; and white and non-white leaders of trade unions and of other organizations, ordering them to (a) not to addressor attend meetings, (b) not to visit certain specified areas for any purpose, (c) to resign from offices and membership in specified organizations in which they served;

--arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced African, Indian, and “Colored” leaders of the organizations which conducted the Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws, and others, white and non-white, who were charged with having violated the “naming” order previously cited;

--conducted police raids and searches of the offices of various organizations and on the homes of leaders of the organizations.

In a vain effort to put a stop to the Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws last year, the Government, in addition to arresting and prosecuting leaders of the resistance movement, imposed heavier sentences (imprisonment up to two months) upon those taking part in the defiance actions, resorted to abusive treatment of some of the volunteers jailed, and imposed humiliating corporal punishment (whipping with a cane) upon youth volunteers under 21 years of age and upon some of the women volunteers.

Next, in February, 1953, the Government introduced and secured speedy passage of the Public Safety Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act. These laws, as Edward Hughes (Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1953) writes, have been “Widely interpreted as removing such basic rights as freedom of speech and press in South Africa.” More than this, they are laws whose excessively harsh, repressive, and fascist provisions can only be compared with Hitler’s edict. The first prosecution under the Criminal Law Amendment Act, against an African leader, Arthur Matyala, occurred in March, only a few days after the Act was gazetted.

Further to intimidate and smash all opposition, the Government has the Government has repeatedly conducted raids and searches on the offices of the African National Congress, South African Indian Congress, Springbok Legion, and African trade unions, and on the homes and offices of these organizations. Such raids were made July 30, 1952, and again during June and July, 1953. The search warrants used in the latter raids authorized the police to seize what they might regard as evidence of treason, sedition, or other offenses among documents relating to the affairs of 14 unspecified organizations (in addition to those raided the list included youth organizations, and other bodies, such as the South African Society for Peace and Friendship with the Soviet Union, the Transvaal Peace Council, and the Congress of Democrats).

Peaceful assemblages of supporters of African rights have been banned or broken up by the police. Thus, for example, a reception planned in Durban, April 25, 1953, for Chief Luthuli was banned by Mayor Osborne, and a meeting of several thousand non-white, people at Umzabalazo Square, Durban, on January 30, 1953, to discuss the need of more schools for their children was interrupted and stopped by police, who grabbed Chief Luthuli and Mr. J.N. Singh and took them off to police headquarters.

The account of the Government’s suppression of peaceful and legitimate protest against racial discrimination and oppression cannot be concluded without reference to the record of wanton killing of Africans by the South African police. It is worth noting that in dispersing crowds of non-whites and in dealing with so-called disorders involving non-whites, the South African police are in the habit of using not tear gas or streams of water from a fire-hose, but their clubs and guns. 1949 saw Africans shot down by the police at Johannesburg’s Western Areas, Randfontein and Krugersdorp. In January, 1950, Newclare was the scene of further police shootings. On May 1st, of the same year the police smashed “Freedom Day” demonstrations killing 18 Africans in the Johannesburg area. Thus the record continues down to 1952, when in the space of a few weeks from October 18 to November 9, Africans were killed and scores wounded by police in disorders at Port Elizabeth (11 dead), Johannesburg (3 dead), Kimberley (13 killed), and East London (11 dead).

It is reported that in four and a half years of Nationalist rule, up to November 15, 1952, there were 29 outbreaks of violence involving Africans and the police, with a total of 238 persons killed and 1,146 injured (N.Y. Times, Jan 3, 1953, p. 60). The tempo of police assaults has increased in ratio to the increased severity of repressive legislation. History has taught us that mass murder is the ultimate form of political repression and control under fascism.

NEXT: Part III:The South African Government Flouts the Rule of Law

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