(EDITORIAL) Not for the first time is it that Mr. J.H. Hofmeyr, South African Minister of Finance, has supported the claims of Indians to full citizenship rights in the Dominion. Addressing the South African Institute of Race Relations he referred to the Pretoria Agreement “ship-wrecked as a result of the display of mass intolerance, which is one of the least creditable episodes in our history”… Even the Broome Commission appointed to investigate charges of Indian “penetration” into European areas has in its reports defended it as Indian investment seeking the only possible outlet under restrictions imposed by the war...

But what precisely has been the value of such sentiments when we are back again to the obnoxious Pegging Act which seeks to make segregation of Indians statutory in South Africa? The battle over it has to be refought with all its embitterment of relations between the Blacks and the Whites. If the principle of Imperial citizenship is to be sustained, South Africa must in reason shun publicity when it displays the British Commonwealth as a White monopoly treating a quarter of million Indian residents, not to mention the native Africans, in much the same fashion as Hitler treated the Jews.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2020