7 o8 SOUTH AFRICA 



tendered, but Botha, fearing to alienate the more extreme Boer element, of which 

 Hertzog was the leading representative, did not accept it. 



General Botha had delayed till October 1911 to urge, officially, that the educational 

 compromise advocated by the Union parliament be adopted by the provincial councils. 1 

 Meantime the Transvaal provincial council had passed (August 1911) an ordinance in 

 which the terms of the compromise were adopted, but with a modification which 

 favoured the Dutch language. The Free State province passed an ordinance containing 

 the same modification, and in August 1912, the Cape provincial council by a majority of 

 three passed a similar ordinance. Meantime the Natal council in view of the departure 

 of the inland provinces from the strict terms of the compromise had refused to alter its 

 education law. But in the Free State the new ordinance was so far accepted that on 

 June 30, 1912, the free schools opened in 1910 as a protest against General Hertzog's 

 compulsory bi-lingual system were handed over to the provincial administration. 



Besides the language problem, the Union parliament during 1911-12 attempted to 

 grapple with great social and political issues which as separate colonies the various 

 provinces of the Union had been unable to solve. They concerned the relation of the 

 Europeans to the native population; the position of Asiatics in South Africa (nearly all 

 the Asiatics in the country were British Indians); and national and imperial 

 defence. In regard to the relation of the white and Kaffir races to each other 

 some little progress was made. Assaults on white women by Kaffirs both on 

 the Rand and in Rhodesia attracted much attention. On the Rand in the first 

 half of 1911 three Kaffirs were shot by white women whom they had attempted 

 to assault. This shooting followed the commutation, in January 1911, by the 

 High Commissioner (Lord Gladstone) of a death sentence on a Rhodesian native 

 convicted of an attempt to assault a white woman; action which roused much indignation 

 against the High Commissioner. Feeling was intensified by the acquittal in August 

 1911, by a Rhodesian jury, of a white man who had shot dead a Kaffir. 2 In all during 

 the year ending March 31, 1912, there was in the Union alone (i.e. Rhodesia excluded) 

 85 cases of outrages upon Europeans by natives, as compared with 69 during 1910. On 

 the initiative of Sir Thomas 'Smartt a commission was appointed June 19, 1912 " to 

 enquire into the prevalence of sexual assaults on women by men of the same or of 

 different race and colour, the extent to which they are attributable to economic and 

 social factors, and to report means for their suppression." Mr. Melius de Villiers (ex- 

 Chief Justice of the Orange Free State and a brother of Lord de Villiers) was appointed 

 chairman of the commission, whose membership included four ladies, one from each 

 province. On the Rand the evil was attributed in part to illicit liquor selling and in 

 part to the fact that the mine labourers were without their women-folk, and a petition 

 signed by 52,000 Rand residents (presented to parliament May 1912) asked inter alia 

 for the provision of compounds in which natives should be permitted to keep their 

 wives, as well as for facilities for training native female servants and for the importation 

 of European domestics. 



This aspect of the case was recognised as but a part of a problem of vital importance, 

 namely, the position of the natives in the body politic. South Africa at present is 

 dependent on the native for unskilled labour. But even the position of the European 

 as an overseer of blacks is threatened. In the Cape province the coloured population 

 already competes with the whites in skilled labour, such as carpentry work, harness- 

 making and boot-making (see e.g. Report on Trade of British South Africa for 1911}. 

 The pure African too has entered the skilled labour market, and is making many sacri- 

 fices in order to become well educated. Moreover in the Cape province and to a 

 slight extent in the other provinces coloured and native men have entered the profes- 



1 The administrators of the various provinces were: Cape, Sir N. F. de Waal; Natal, 

 the Hon. C. J. Smythc (b. 1852), an ex-premier of Natal; Orange Free State, Dr. A. E. W. 

 Ramsbottom; Transvaal. Hon. I. Rissik (formerly member for lands and native affairs, 



nr i \ " 



1 ransvaal). 



2 Subsequently a special jury list was made for the trial of these cases, it being recognised 

 that the ordinary jury could not be trusted to administer impartial justice. 



