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Page 283 the High Commissioner-but he would have greater authority over the Resident Commissioners in each of the Territories.
I intend also to send out to the Territories for short terms officials in my Office who deal with the Territories and bring back for short terms to London some of the officials in the field. I discussed all these matters with the High Commissioner who is in agreement with me about them.
(iii) The Union of South Africa
22. South African politics are extremely sharp and bitter. The Nationalist Party (Malan's) has many of the characteristics of a devoted movement of liberation. It uses Afrikaans as a political weapon; it puts its own people in every possible office; and it believes unshakably in its cause. The leaders have long been in the wilderness and live and dream politics: their wives are as much in the movement as they are.
To some extent the Nationalists are still fighting the Boer War-or rather they have just won it. (When they say
(When they say "the war they mean the Boer War.) They regard as their enemy not so much the United Kingdom as the British in South Africa and they are taking a long-delayed revenge for what they regard as oppression.
A main motive behind the Nationalist faith is that the Afrikaner has no other home but Africa. He resents the way in which the British can look to Britain and often send their children to be educated here. The Afrikaner glories in South Africa and is filled with a desperate determination to keep it as his home and to be master · in his own house.
23. I was extremely disappointed in the British in South Africa. They undoubtedly regarded the Boer War as their victory over the Afrikaners.
For a generation they have been (and still are) very arrogant and despise the Afrikaners. They refuse to learn or use Afrikaans. They have kept all jobs in the great industries they control for. British people. They have excluded Afrikaners from their clubs. Worst of all, they have completely failed to go into national public life. Recently an attempt was made to find a British candidate for Smuts's seat-a safe seat. not one could be found. The British in South Africa deserve the "persecution that is now being visited upon them by the Nationalists.
But
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Incidentally, the worst race relations of all are in cities dominated by the British-Johannesburg and Durban. On the other hand, the best relations I saw were in another British town-Port Elizabeth, the only town without Pass Laws for the Africans. The early English settlers are much better than the British who came in to open up the gold mines of the Transvaal and the sugar estates of Natal.
The British still have a very considerable influence. They command great wealth and they are very efficient indeed in business. The English Press is much larger and more influential than the Afrikaans Press. Nevertheless, the Afrikaners are steadily advancing and colouring the whole nation. They are dominant in the countryside and are gradually entering all the towns, which used to be British preserves.
24. The best people in South Africa seemed to me to be the Afrikaners in the United Party (Smuts's party). They are well-educated, self-confident and have in many respects sensible policies. They are loyal to the British connexion and know much more about the world than the Nationalists. There are a great many Afrikaners who oppose the Nationalists even in its strongholds. This infuriates the Nationalists, who regard them as traitors.
25. The Nationalists have two main objectives which tend to be contradictory: this makes their policy unstable and difficult to predict. In a nutshell, the two objectives may be said to be to pursue simultaneously an anti-Black and an anti- British policy. (The anti-British policy always being more against the local British than against the United Kingdom-though the two become confused, as the local British want to preserve the realities and the symbols of the British connexion.) So long as the Nationalists concentrate on an anti-Black policy they get a good deal of British support in elections. And this they need to keep them in power. But if they push their anti-British policy too far they will lose their British support. It is not always realised how far the Nationalists get British votes and the United Party gets Afrikaner votes. If the Nationalists stressed too strongly their Republicanisof or any policy that involved a breach with the United Kingdom, practically the whole British population would vote against them.
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