Say It out Loud - Protest against the Women’s Enfranchisement Act, and the Franchise Amendment Bill, 1931

From the book: Say It out Loud by Mohamed Adhikari

Protest against the Women's Enfranchisement Act, and the Franchise Amendment Bill, 1931 ¹

The above two measures weakened the Coloured, African and Indian vote in the Cape in relation to the White vote. The Women's Enfranchisement Act extended the franchise to White women only, and the Franchise Amendment Bill proposed to give the vote to all Whites at the age of twenty-one years, whilst Non-White men had to meet additional qualifications property or education.

At a mass meeting of over 2,000 Coloured citizens held in the Cape Town City Hall on the night of April 27 1931, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted.

1. That the meeting protests against the action of the Government in withholding the franchise from Coloured women and in failing to include in the Franchise Amendment Bill of 1931 adult suffrage for the Coloured man, both these actions being in direct conflict with promises repeatedly made by Ministers of the Crown and members of their political party.
2. That in view of the constant whittling away and gradual elimination of British rights and traditions, as continually evidenced by the Government of this country, coupled with the barefaced repudiation of promises made to the Coloured people from time to time, this mass meeting of Coloured votes and citizens records its firm opinion that discussion of the advisability of separation of the Cape Province from the Union of South Africa is now opportune and should be included within the sphere and scope of practical politics of the day.

At this meeting, Dr Abdurahman delivered the following address.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen ­ In speaking to these resolutions I first desire to say that I do not regret that Mrs. Gool has expressed herself as she did ². I am not surprised that she is going "Red" because if you heard the record of the Government, if you have followed the actions closely from the time she came into power until today, you can come to one conclusion only ­ that Mrs. Gool is still but a very moderate person. It is the Government that has created agitators. The Nationalist Government has already driven men to extremes. Now it is forcing women to speak of starting a " red revolution. "

I do trust, however, that by the time I have finished Mrs. Gool will also see that the question of whether the Cape Province shall revert to that proud position which it occupied prior to Union, is one worth considering and discussing and one which should immediately be brought into the area of practical politics.

POSITION BEFORE UNION

Now, the best way to begin is to ask ourselves this question: What was the position of the Coloured man in the Northern Province before Union, and what was his status in the Cape. It is well known that in Cape Province we were treated with a certain amount of justice. That no one has denied. We were placed politically and industrially on a footing of equality with the Europeans. There were in the old Cape Legislature many benevolent and broad-minded men whose actions showed that they gave unbiassed consideration to the position and interests of the Coloured men.

As a result of that policy in the Cape, the non-Europeans had made such progress that the Cape Colonists were proud of their Native Policy. On the other hand, in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, no educational facilities were offered to the non-European nor was he given any rights.

Non-Europeans were political helots, kept in subjection without any civil rights. The rule of the Transvaal was characterised by injustice, repression and inhumanity. When the Voortrekkers left this Province about a hundred years ago they swept through the country like a desolating pestilence blasting everything in their path laughing pitilessly at the ravages they had created among the natives. They settled in the Transvaal and Free State and adopted a Constitution in which they laid it down that "there shall be no equality between white and black in church or State, a principle which they enforced vigorously up till the time of Union.

FEARS AT UNION

Those of us who have grown up in the Cape Province who have benefited by the old traditional policy of the Cape and were able to compare the two policies, came to the conclusion in 1908 that the Union of the four Provinces was fraught with danger to non-Europeans. In November of that year, when the question of Union was under discussion, I expressed myself as follows: "In a Central Parliament there would be the danger of the policy of the North slowly creeping into our Colony, and undermining our own policy, and that our European friends, numerous and influential as they might be, would not be able to safeguard the interests of the Coloured people. If Union is the wish of Europeans then it should take the form of Federation and not Unification. " Under Federation I mentioned that we would still have a certain amount of self-Government, and would retain the old Cape Policy, a policy that was founded upon the constitution granted to us in 1854, and re-enacted in 1872 wherein it was laid down that there should be no inequality between white and black so far as political rights were concerned.

I want to say, before I go any further, that we, of the Cape Province, feel proud of the work that the white man did in the Cape prior to Union. During the fifty years before Union during the period when our fathers were not well educated, and were not able to guard their political rights, and when it was left entirely in the hands of the Europeans in the Cape Province ­ honest and honourable Europeans safeguarded our rights. We thank them for having protected those rights and for having maintained them intact until 1910. Of course, we still have today European friends in the Union Parliament, and a great many more outside, who will do their utmost to help us, although our cause is not a popular one.

I was in England when the Act of Union was passed. I listened to the speeches in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords. Nevertheless I gave up all hope. It was a sad day for me, one of the saddest in my life. I could foresee what would happen. I could visualise the Voortrekkers returning. I knew it was the turning point in the history of the Coloured man, and a turning point in the history of the amicable relations between black and white in the Cape. That is what I said to the late Hon. W.P. Schreiner. He thought that I was mistaken and too pessimistic. He said: "The men coming from the North, when they see how well educated the Coloured people are, and to what high position they have attained in civilisation, will say that the policy of the Cape is the right policy, and they will treat the Coloured men in the Transvaal and in the Free State according to the standard with which they are treated here. "

Noting that I still appeared to doubt his prophecy he added that in his opinion the learning influence in the Parliament of that noble land who always stood by us ­ it is a little bit smaller today, but I am glad to say we are getting new additions ­ their influence in parliament would soften the asperities of the Transvaal and Free State treatment.

Well, Boer and Briton joined arms. They walked, if it is possible, like one man, singing the praise of the Act of Union, and amid exuberant exultations and a chorus of hosannahs welcomed it as a beacon light that would blaze through the ages, and as heralding the commencement of peace and prosperity as well as the birth of a new nation in South Africa. English-speaking and Dutch-speaking white South Africans walked arm-in-arm to fetch this priceless gift of Union, just as in Shakespeare the prince of Aragon proudly walked to choose the casket. If the Prince chose the right one he was to get the most priceless gift in the country a lady of great wealth and beauty. But he had to choose without looking into the casket. So Boer and Briton walked hand in hand like one man to choose their casket. They did not open it then. They were satisfied that it contained that which they so fervently prayed for.

They have kept it and sung paeans of praise, for a new nation born.

THE COMING OF AGE

The Union of South Africa comes of age this year. Let Boer and Briton now open the casket and see what lies inside it. The English-speaking white South African will find inside the casket of Union exactly what the Prince of Aragon found ­ the picture of a blinking idiot. The Prince when he looked at it, said, "How unlike that which I thought I had chosen. " He expected to see the picture of the lady, instead he say the picture of a " blinking idiot " , with the words written across, "He who chooses me, shall get as much as he deserves. He gets no more and no less than what he deserves." The English people can judge for themselves, now that they have seen the prize, whether when they went along with high hopes and burning incense of self-adulation on the way, they then did the right thing. They can now judge if, in going in for Union, they did what was right. I have seen in the papers and I have heard it, too, that they are disappointed. That, however, is their business.

We Coloureds were not asked whether we wanted Union. We were forced into it. We then chose Federation, for we wished to retain our own tradition and go on developing so that in the process of time we would acquire strength and be able to help non-Europeans in other parts of South Africa. In my opinion, we were right.

What did Unification bring us? By the Colour Bar in the Act of Union, even Christ, an Asiatic, is still prohibited from taking a seat in Parliament ­ as if he would be proud to sit there! And to maintain this Voortrekker principle of "no equality between white and black in church or State, " the first Union Parliament, at its very first sitting, introduced the Dutch Reformed Churches Union Bill, subsequently passed as an Act, which lays down that no Coloured person who is a member of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Cape Province shall by that fact be entitled to claim membership of the same Church in the Transvaal and the Free State. So that if Christ were a member of the Church here in the Cape and went to one of those Northern Province he would find himself not only without a vote, but also banned from the Dutch Reformed Church and forbidden the right to worship therein.

BAN ON COLOURED WOMEN

One of the most recent actions of this Nationalist Parliament sitting in Cape Town now, is to say by virtue of the Women's Suffrage Act, that the Virgin Mary, an Asiatic, may not have a vote. That is a doubly blasphemous thing to do. And the man primarily responsible for his last Act is the very same man who, before Union, stood up in the pulpit Sunday after Sunday preaching the message which Christ brought to the world, that we are all brothers, and repeating the words of St Paul to the Gallileans ­ "That we are all one in Christ Jesus." Now he, the Rev. D.F. Malan, D.D. Minister of the Interior has forced through Parliament an Act that lays down that the Mother of Christ shall not have a seat in Parliament. It is true! There is no blinking the fact: the white woman shall have the vote, but not the Coloured woman. Here you have a Coloured lady (Mrs. Gool) and I say it not because she is my daughter, whom you have heard speak, and she speaks better than 99 per cent of white women in this country. Not only does she speak better, but she has more brains than the majority of the white women of South Africa.

There she sits and yet by this Act she is put down lower than the ordinary uneducated white domestic scullery maid. Furthermore, I ask you to bear in mind that there are 143,000 whites in this country who are either mental defectives or on the border line, besides 100,000 poor whites. So out of a population of 1,750,000 whites you have some 250,000 people who should never be permitted to have the vote. Yet that lady sitting on the platform, and others just as highly endowed and with equally high cultural attainments, shall not have the vote, while mental defectives and poor whites are now fully enfranchised citizens.

JUDGING THE EUROPEANS

Such is the spirit that has dominated the Union parliament since its birth, and just as the institutions of a country constitute a true reflex of the moral standards of the people, so the laws that besmirch our Statute Books are a true expression of the moral standards of South African whites. What must we think of white South Africa if judged by a Parliament like that?

I do not care what my white friends say, and I have many who have been of the greatest assistance to me in my political life ­ I cannot help it. We cannot judge the Europeans by the few friends that we have any more than Parliament judges the Coloured people by the few intellectuals. We must judge the Europeans by what comes from that Parliament. There you have the true reply ­ It is their Parliament not ours, and the standard of morality underlying the ideas and actions of these members of Parliament is more than enough to make any decent white South African hang his head in shame. In the interests of decency and of South Africa, the sooner Union breaks up the better.

Before Union the Parliamentary representatives of the Cape, whether they were Bondsman, Progressive, or Unionist, never talked about taking away rights. Not one had the courage ­ even if he had the inclination ­ to set himself in opposition to the Cape Native and Coloured Policy. They indeed vied with one another in giving more and more rights and privileges to Coloured and other non-Europeans in our Province. That was the attitude on the hustings before Union, and that attitude helped to maintain the benevolent policy of the old Cape Parliament.

THE VOORTREKKER SPIRIT

Policy change has taken place since Union. You will actually find even in the Cape Province certain European aspirants to Parliament asking for the votes of their fellows and basing their claims on the attitude they adopted towards the natives ­ that their votes should be taken away. Instead of extending rights and giving more privileges and facilities for education, we find that the Voortrekker just as I predicted in 1908 has come back from the Transvaal and Free State right into the Cape, his hatred of blacks more intensified, more bitter than before and determined to enslave all of us. Like the rotten potato in the bag, the Voortrekker spirit is infecting the Cape Province and demoralising those who stood by us in the days of the Cape Colony.

It is time that we speak out fearlessly, and I have no hesitation in saying that Coloured people in the Cape Province would be much better off, and the Country would be saved, if we separated from the Union of South Africa. Our fellow men in Transvaal and Free State may say that they will suffer. But let them show me anything that has been done in the past 20 years, and particularly since Hertzog came into power, to improve their position. Our European friends have done their best, but alas; their efforts have not been successful in stemming the cursed Voortrekker spirit, which is now dominating the Union Parliament.

It is well to remember that the Coloured people joined with the whites in 1853 in petitioning Queen Victoria for Representative Government for the Cape. They also stood by them in their agitation for Responsible Government. It is therefore, nothing short of treachery for men like Dr Malan, the ex-parson, bred, born and educated in the Cape, in his White Women's Suffrage Act to deny the vote to our highly cultured Coloured women in the Cape, and to confer that right on the white charwoman. General Hertzog in attempting to justify this stigma shamefacedly declared that a white skin was synonymous with civilization. What stupendous ignorance!

POLICY OF SEGREGATION

Now let us look a little further into the record of the Hertzog Government. Instead of attempting to harmonize the somewhat conflicting elements that make up the South African population, he had in effect segregated all white men from non-Europeans. Furthermore, Natives are to be kraaled within a steel fence: Indians to be treated as aliens; while Coloured people have been tricked into believing that they would be placed on a footing of equality with Europeans, industrially, politically and educationally. General Hertzog ordered the Coloured people to keep away from the Natives. If they did so he promised they would be given the status of the white man. He and his Co-Ministers have even attempted to set Coloured against native, and each against the Indian and vice versa.

When in 1927 I called together a non-European Conference, Dr Malan did his utmost to make the meeting a failure. " Keep away from the native and all will be well with the Coloured people, " he said. We know better now. The Coloured men who did stay away from the first non-European Conference have now publicly declared that they have been betrayed by General Hertzog and Dr Malan, as well as by such lesser lights as Ministers C. Malan, Colonel Creswell, and others now holding Cabinet rank. The Government has brazenly broken every one of its promises. It has deliberately tricked and betrayed the Coloured people and I am certain that should the present policy of the Voortrekkers be persisted in disaster will overtake the Union of South Africa. Already the feeling of resentment has been intensified and transmogrified into hatred for white rule. The non-European is smarting under grave and callous injustices. His soul tells him that he should not suffer them any longer. He sometimes feels like breaking the chains, which bind him in his bondage, and then he speaks, as my daughter spoke tonight, of red-revolution. If I have been able to suppress some of the bitter feelings, which I sometimes entertain towards Europeans, it is because I am older than she is, and I know that

" He always wins who sides with God, For Right is Right since God is God

And right the day shall win;

To doubt would be disloyalty,

To falter would be sin. "

NARROW NATIONALISM

Since Union there is no longer co-operation between white and Coloured in the Cape Province and while we have tried to bring back that spirit at non-European Conferences, the Government is plainly determined to build up a nation, which excludes all non-Europeans.

Unfortunately, Nationalists do not comprehend the meaning of the term " Nation " . They believe that it could consist of a small racial section to the exclusion of everybody else. They are too stupid to understand that a nation may consist of more than one race, may have more than one language, and may follow more than one religion. There is but one essential for the building of a nation namely, the feeling of camaraderie and interdependence and the spirit of loyalty to one's country. With such a feeling and such a spirit there is hope for everyone to attain a higher life according to his capacity. This is exactly what Nationalists do not want. They are trying to build up a nation exclusively out of a narrow, bitter, racial section. Even English-speaking white South Africans are pushed aside, and, of course, natives and Coloureds must be kept in bondage. But they are bound to fail if all who are excluded stand together. If the Nationalists do not change their attitude towards non-Europeans, then one day someone, despite the Riotous Assemblies Act, will consolidate the inherent power which lies in the industrial workers, direct it and burst the claims which withhold from us that status to which all free men are entitled. Possibly the English-speaking whites will also wake up and defend their rights before it is too late; surely they will, before abandoning all hope!

The stupid Nationalist Government should be reminded that even in South Africa it is impossible to reverse the order of things, that they cannot hope to govern unjustly for any lengthy period the non-Europeans; that unless they win the affection and loyalty of our people, unless they demonstrate that they are governing the country in the interests of all, disaster will overwhelm them.

AN UNKEPT PROMISE

Seven years ago General Hertzog promised to give the Coloured people the political status of the Europeans. So far he has made no attempt to give back to them that part of their political rights of which they were robbed at the time of Union. Probably if we would put forward a Coloured representative we might not have elected our friend, the chairman ­ Mr. MacCullum, who we all admit, has fought our battle fearlessly. Even those who did not vote for him now say that he deserves our thanks for his valiant fight in Parliament.

Economically, by their White Labour Policy, and by protecting white industries, the Nationalist Government have reduced the Coloured people to a lower economic status than they ever held before.

It is said that the amount of wages a man earns and the manner in which he earns it are main factors in determining his character. Some holds that those factors effect his character even more than does his religion. You thus see how the White Labour Policy has reacted on our people. Many avenues of employment are closed to us and reserved for poor whites. This Policy besides costing the country about £500,000 a year ­ a burden on all of us ­ has reduced the non-European to an industrial position where he can hardly keep body and soul together, and far less can he maintain a wife and family according to civilised standards.

Take the Native Taxation Act. What an Act of iniquity and injustice: The Voortrekkers first robbed the Natives of their land, and now by the native Taxation Act they are not only collecting one million pounds sterling a year in Poll Taxes, but they are reducing the Natives once more to slavery and serfdom. Mr. Fourie, Minister of Mines, when Administrator of the Cape Province, in his Dingaan's Day speech in 1926, said that the natives should be forced into the mines and back to the farms. He said: " We (the white men) hold supremacy in arms and, we hold it on economic grounds." The Native Land Act has driven thousands of Natives off the land, and now according to Mr. Fourie, they must be driven back to white farms by taxing them and refusing them work in the towns.

Mr. Pirow, Minister of Justice, has a Bill ready to reduce the Native to slavery when once he goes back to the farm. Not only will the native be forced to enter into a contract for three years, but he may be given lashes by the farmer and may be sold or disposed of with other chattels when the farm changes hands.

NATIVE TAXATION

Besides the Native Poll Tax, hundreds of thousands of pounds are annually paid by Natives and Coloureds indirectly in the form of taxes on their blankets and other articles so that the Nationalist Government may send Ministers Plenipotentiary to Italy and elsewhere, aping such Powers as England and America who can afford these luxuries. This money comes out of the pockets of the poor blacks, for whom there is no old age pension, no unemployment dole, no relief work.

Under the Riotous Assemblies Act natives have been banned from their homes without a trial. Non-Europeans are punished only because they presumed to do what those who now prosecute them had done before, and by doing it they have acquired the power no prosecute and persecute those who now dare to follow their example. One of these fine days we shall hear that the lady on the left of the Chairman (Mrs. Gool) has been banned from Cape Town.

UNJUST COLOUR BARS

In the time at my disposal, I can only mention one or two of the many iniquities committed by the nationalist Government. The colour Bar Act deprives non-Europeans from do classes of work which requires some skill, not because they are incompetent, but solely because that work is to be reserved for whites only. As skill is one of the greatest of gifts by the Almighty to the human body, to prevent anyone from developing it is not only a crime against but also civilization but a despicable sin in the eyes of God.

By their latest piece of trickery ­ the White Adult Suffrage Bill, which is still in the Senate, the Government have made it impossible for themselves to carry out their election, General Hertzog in 1923 told the Coloured people that he would raise them to the status of the whites. This promise was amplified and emphasised by Dr Malan, Messrs C.W. Malan, Colonel Creswell and ex-Minister of Justice, Tielman Roos, at the African Congress, and also at the Malay Association congress ­ two organisations which had deliberately created to support the Nationalists. Yet not only have the Government the vote to white women only, but, forgetting their sacred promises, they are now making for the first time in the history of Parliamentary Government in the Cape since 1854, a distinction between white and non-white citizens. Furthermore, the government has practically impossible now for the Coloured man to be raised to the political status of the European. These men have shamefacedly broken every promise they made, and over the franchise question they have been guilty in Parliament of the greatest exhibition of insincerity hypocrisy, and humbug ever-perpetuated in South Africa. Mr. MacCullum, in his speech in Parliament on the Franchise Amendment Bill, taxed them with this and they did not deny allegations. They could not. General Hertzog failed to keep his promises. His excuse is that he has suddenly discovered that the white man has 1,000 years of civilization behind him. Some of us in this vast audience can trace our civilization a good deal further back. Others have as much European blood in them as some of those who sit behind General Hertzog in Parliament and many more have achieved higher intellectual attainments than the vast majority supporters. Our rights have been laid away, and the greatest sinner is the ex-Clergyman. Dr. Malan, now Minister of the Interior. Never has a parliament composed of men with years of civilization behind them sunk so low! Never the white man's prestige in this country suffered as much as in the hands of Hertzog!

IMMORAL POLITICS

Politics should be as sacred as one's religion. It should be founded on deep moral convictions. Not so with the Nationalists. Their political morality is so low, their racial prejudice so intense, that even the complicated fabric of civilization in this country is bound to suffer if they remain in power for any length of time to control the destinies of South Africa.

If we have a Conference to discuss the question of whether we shall remain in the Union or withdraw from it, many sound arguments will be adduced to show that the sooner we send General Hertzog and his supporters back to the Transvaal the better. If there are some of you disagree with me now, ­ if you differ from me on that point, I have no doubt that not a single person in this great audience will stand up and express any confidence in the Nationalist Government

I trust that both resolutions will be carried and that you will show by your unanimity that you have lost faith in the government because it has so shamelessly and so barefacedly broken every pledge it has made to the Coloured people.

The Chairman then put both resolutions, which were carried, amid loud applause, without a single dissentient.