SOUTH AFRICA: Nigger Crisis

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Out again, in again. That was the political gymnastic performed last week by gruff, choleric General James Barry Munnik Hertzog, His Majesty's Prime Minister in The Union of South Africa.

The General resigned with his entire Cabinet and in a passion. A short time previously he had met with refusal—blunt refusal—when he had demanded the resignation of his own Minister of Posts & Telegraphs, the Rt. Hon. Walter B. Madeley. Blast Madeley's impertinence! If he wouldn't resign alone, General Hertzog knew well enough how to force the fellow out by bringing down his whole Cabinet. The crash was called, last week, and for a very good reason, a "nigger crisis."

Briefly, the Minister of Posts & Telegraphs had been showing himself entirely too considerate of blackamoor trade unions. In vain Big White General Hertzog and his Nationalist Party had threatened, fumed. Mr. Madeley as a member of the Labor Party could not see his way clear to upholding the Nationalist postulate that blackamoors must be "kept in their place," economically, politically. The crisis was precipitated when Minister Madeley received a Negro deputation from the Industrial & Commercial Workers' Union, officially, at the Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs. That reception brought General Hertzog's demand for the Minister's resignation, and also a demand from Mr. Madeley's own Labor Party that he refuse to resign. Naturally the Rt. Hon. Laborite obeyed his party.

The Governor-General of the Union of South Africa is the Earl of Athene, brother of Queen-Empress Mary. When General Hertzog marched in with the collective resignation of the Cabinet, Her Majesty's brother saw to it that he marched right out again with a mandate to form a new Cabinet. This the General instantly did, appointing the Rt. Hon. H. W. Sampson to be Minister of Posts & Telegraphs, and recalling all his other ministers to their posts. Unofficially the peppery Prime Minister expressed his satisfaction that the Laborites have now come out squarely on the issue of social and every other kind of equality for blackamoors. On that issue they can probably be beaten, when a general election rolls round; and one must legally take place not later than next spring.

Smugly confident, General Hertzog hinted that he might ask the King-Emperor's brother-in-law to dissolve the Dominion Parliament and call a general election as early as next January, perhaps even before Christmas.