POLITICAL CRISIS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 24, 24 December 1932, Page 7

POLITICAL CRISIS

DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA. GENERAL SMUTS INTERVIEWED. SUMMONING OF CABINET. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received December 24, 10.20 a.m. CAPETOWN, Dec. 23. A journalist, after a two days’ search, traced General Smuts, who is botanising in North-Eastern Transvaal. “I am very surprised,” was his only remark when acquainted with the political velopments.Ministers who are spending their holidays at thir homes have been summoned to a Cabinet meeting at Pretoria on Monday. Some believo that General Hertzog will dissolve Parliament immediately. Thp banks conferred to-day on devising measures to restrict the transmission of money overseas. The Johannesburg exchange called its 'card to the accompaniment of fireworks. Popular stocks advanced substantially. Pending the disclosure of the relations between General Hertzog and Mr Roos experienced Parliamentarians advise caution.

Cablegrams received earlier this week stated: Judge Tielman Roos has announced his resignation from the Bench and is to re-enter politics, hoping to form a Coalition. The political situation, however, had not developed as anticipated. It transpires that Judge Tielman Roos took the plunge without consulting General Smuts and consequently a Coalition was impracticable. All General Smuts’s supporters had pledged themselves not to allow him to be sidetracked.

GENERAL HERTZOG’S CAREER. ]\ffl ROOS’ PAST POLICY. The Prime Minister of South Africa, General James Barry Munnik Hertzog, has held office since 1924. He is of German origin. He was born in South Africa in 1866 and educated at Amsterdam University. Ho settled in the Orange Free State, and was appointed a Judge in 1895. During the Boer War he was a Boer general and one of the leaders of the Free State Dutch. He took a prominent part in the consultations that preceded the peace of Vereeniging, holding out to the end against the moderate counsels of Generals Botha and Smuts. General Hertzog was one of those who drafted the scheme for the Union of South Africa and he took office under General Botha in the first Union Government as Minister of Justice. He quarrelled with the moderates and was left out of the reconstructed Botha Ministry, and he then formed his Nationalist Party. POLICY IN GREAT WAR.

When the Great War broke out General Hertzog resisted the co-opera-tion of Generals Botha and Smuts with Britain in the campaign. At the 1924 election the Nationalists became the strongest party and General Hertzog became Prime Minister. His administration was successful to a greater degree than had been anticipated. He obtained the support of the Labour Party by pledging himself not to demand secession from the British Empire during the life of that Parliament.

Tielman Johannes de Villiers Roos, the South African lawyer and politician, was born at Capetown in 1879, and educated at the South African College there, taking tlie B.A. and LL.B. degrees. He became an advocate and at the end of the South African War in 1902 started practice at Liclitenburg, in the Transvaal, and became a K.C. He was elected to the i/nion House of Assembly in 1915 and joined the Nationalist (Dutch) Party, being one of its most ardent members. As such ho was bitterly opposed to the policy of General Smuts, Leader of the South African Party, who was working for a union of the two white races in South Africa.,, with a view to their cooperation in the development of the Dominion. Among the Nationalists there was a movement toward trying to secure the independence of South Africa under the control of the Dutchspeaking people. In 1924 the Nationalists came into power with the support of the Labour Party and General Hert20fr the Prime Minister, made Mr Roos Minister of Justice. Two years later the Imperial Conference in London, on General Hertzog’s initiative, laid down a new definition of tlie status of the Dominions. Mr Roos then moderated his extremist attitude, as lie saw that South Africa had now in effect obtained the essentials of nationhood for which he and liis followers had been striving. SOUTH AFRICAN FLAG.

A bitter controversy arose over the design for the new South African flag, General Hertzog supporting a design which excluded the Lmon Jack. Mr Itoos, seeing that it was the last point holding the 'two sections apart, arranged a conference between General Hertzog and General Smuts, at which a compromise was effected by the inclusion of the Union Jack as well as the Transvaal and Orange Free State emblems.! At tho end of 1927 he advocated the deletion of an article in the constitution of the Nationalist Party, which declared a republican fomn of government to be its ideal. His object was, he said, to pave the way for a union of tho Nationalists with the South African Party, so that all well-meaning Afrikanders might work solely for the economic prosperity of the Dominion. In 1928 dissensions in the Labour Party, threatened to develop into a definite split. As the Nationalists relied on Labour’s support in the 1929 elections, Ire worked hard to heal the broach. He then had much to do with the conclusion of the severlycriticised treaty with Germany, which, he held, did not interfere with the preferences given to Britain.