Senate of South Africa

“ The permanent over-representation of any one part of a kingdom united for common purposes cannot easily be defended, but the South African Constitution furnishes an example of a larger representation being accorded temporarily to the smaller states for the purpose of facilitating the union of all; whilst in South Africa, Australia, and the United States the separate states or provinces have equal representation, irrespective of size, in the Senate. ”

“ The Senate shall be composed of 10 senators for each province, nominated by the parties represented in a provincial legislature within 10 days of—
(a)
the first sitting of such legislature after an election of the legislature; or (b)
an election of the National Assembly held in pursuance of a dissolution of Parliament. (2) Each party represented in a provincial legislature shall be entitled to nominate a senator or senators for the relevant province in accordance with the principle of proportional representation as determined by the following formula ”

“ Upon any such dissolution of the Senate all the members of the Senate, including those members who were elected or nominated under the South-West Africa Affairs Amendment Act, 1949 (Act No. 23 of 1949) , or the Separate Representation of Voters Act, 1951 (Act No. 46 of 1951) , shall vacate their seats. ”

“ The point is well illustrated by looking at the composition of the convention, which, in its sessions at Durban, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein, put together the present constitution. South Africa, from its troubled history, has proved itself a land of strong men. But it was reserved for the recent convention to bring together within the compass of a single council-room the surviving leaders of the period of conflict to work together for the making of a united state. ”

“ Who raised a righteous wail for injured Hindostan.
Let crowding myriads view in tears,
The hero’s grave;
Earth yields to earth; a mortal disappears,
No love can save.
Lost but to sight; in fame alive,
Long shall his name our blinding tears survive,
And numbers from his dust, true virtue long derive.
Repose, great one, in lasting rest
Dear friends among;
What rank, what tribe, what country loved thee best
Remains unsung.
Pride of the Senate and the Bar!
’Tis ours, alas! to wail thy loss afar,
Who ’neath the Southern Cross long hailed thee as a star. ”

“ If I may venture to make a suggestion, the affairs of South Africa should be controlled by a Board or Council, like that which formerly governed India, composed of moderate members of both parties, with an admixture of men possessing practical knowledge of the country. I do not know if any such arrangement would be possible under our constitution, but the present system of government, by which the control of savage races fluctuates in obedience of every variation of English party politics, is most mischievous in its results. ”

“ We also should urge Europeans to go back to the path of justice, to retrace their steps along the route they appear to have been travelling of late. They can influence the Legislature. Whatever Parliament does is done in the name of the white people, and whites should, if they wish to see South Africa a happy, prosperous and peaceful country, check the Parliament in its mad career. It is worse than insensate folly to pursue that path any further. Many people have revolted at less oppression than we have had to suffer. ”

“ The constitution creates for South Africa a union entirely different from that of the provinces of Canada or the States of the American Republic. The government is not federal, but unitary. The provinces become areas of local governments, with local elected councils to administer them, but the South-African Parliament reigns supreme. It is to know nothing of the nice division of jurisdiction set up by the American constitution and by the British North America Act. ”

“ A former senator who is not appointed as a permanent delegate to the National Council of Provinces is entitled to become a full voting member of the legislature of the province from which that person was nominated as a senator in terms of section 48 of the previous Constitution. ”

“ The love of local independence is strong in South Africa, but might be deferred to and appeased, as is being done in Australia, by appropriate constitutional provisions. So far, no fatal obstacle stands in the way; but a difficulty has been thought to arise from the fact that whereas Cape Colony, Natal, and the other British territories are part of the dominions of the British Crown, the Orange Free State is an independent Republic, and the Transvaal may be so when federation becomes a practical issue. ”

“ A new appeal must, therefore, be made to all right-minded South Africans, irrespective of party or race, to join the new Party, which will be strong enough to safeguard the permanent interests of the Union against the disruptive and destructive policy of the Nationalists. Such a central political party will not only continue our great work of the past, but is destined to play a weighty rôle in the future peaceable development of South Africa. ”

“ We are both humbled and elevated by the honour and privilege that you, the people of South Africa, have bestowed on us, as the first President of a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa to lead our country out of the valley of darkness.
We understand it, still, that there is no easy road to freedom.
We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success. ”

“ Indeed it is obvious that not only the British and Dutch inhabitants of South Africa, but also all responsible politicians and competent publicists in Canada and Australia, are now of opinion that complete solutions of the three South African problems of primary importance—the settlement of the native question, agricultural development, and railway administration—can only be obtained through a Federal Parliament, a body which would combine a detailed knowledge of local conditions with the power of seeing each problem as a whole, and devising a general solution. ”

“ Chairman, are two too many-the high cost of apartheid.
The new constitution is an instrument of the politics of exclusion I referred to earlier. Seventy-three percent of South Africa's population, the blacks, have no part in this constitution, which mentions them quite incredibly only once. ”

“ Let us stand manfully by one another. The danger has not yet disappeared; on the contrary, never has the necessity for a policy of a Colonial and Republican Union been greater; now the psychological moment has arrived; now our people have awakened all over South Africa; a new glow illuminates our hearts; let us now lay the foundation stone of a real United South Africa on the soil of a pure and all-comprehensive national sentiment. ”

“ Each of these nations, Australia and South Africa, when it was ready and in its own way, produced for itself a plan of common government. A Britisher in the highest administrative office in South Africa wrote in 1907: "It is a modern axiom of British policy that any attempt to manage the domestic affairs of a white population by a continuous exercise of the direct authority of the Imperial Parliament, in which the people concerned are not represented, is, save under very special circumstances, a certain {214} path to failure." ”

“ Personal influence goes for more than all the defined policies of successive administrations, or excellent theories of Government. A Prince is of more weight than the best of official Governors, and it is not likely that in medieval ages, or even at later periods, such an appanage of the Crown, as we desire South Africa to become, would be unvisited by either the Sovereign, or someone of the Sovereign's family. The visit of their Royal Highnesses Prince Albert Victor, and Prince George of Wales was limited to a brief sojourn at Cape Town, and did not extend to the Colony in general. ”

“ The executive government could deal with the undisputed claims, exchange British for existing titles, etc., thus saving expenditure and delay, while the high court was quite sufficient to deal with disputed claims.
The high commissioner paid no heed to the lieutenant governor’s remonstrance, but came from Capetown to the diamond fields and introduced the draft ordinance into the council himself, while presiding, as he was empowered to do, when in the province. The popularly elected members at first declared that they would not vote for the measure; nor would they even take their seats ”

“ The one exception to this broad division, the one case of self-governing communities in which the majority of the inhabitants are not of European stock, is to be found in South Africa. The general difficulty of adjusting the relations of a higher and a lower race, serious under every kind of government, here presents itself in the special form of the construction of a political system which, while democratic as regards one of the races, cannot safely be made democratic as regards the other. ”

“ In the year 1952 and thereafter at intervals of not less than five years and not more than ten years, the Governor-General shall appoint a delimitation commission consisting of three judges of the Supreme Court of South Africa, which shall divide each province of the Union into so many electoral divisions that their number bears, as nearly as possible, the same ratio to one hundred and fifty as, in terms of the current voters’ lists, duly corrected up to the latest possible date, the number of white voters in the province in question bears to the total number of white voters in the Union. ”

“ The well-worn abuse, in the Dutch press, of the Rand and its capitalists has this additional object, that it may stimulate that jealousy of the Transvaal which is already strong enough in the coast Colonies. Political as well as material considerations—they are inextricably intertwined all through the chapter—require that States as well as individuals should present a united front.
Federation is so plainly the natural goal to which South Africa is tending that adventitious mischief-making can hardly delay it when the time is ripe. ”

“ I know that there is within this Congress a bipartisan commitment to work with the administration, to seek together the modification of policies that are in place right now so that we will at one and the same time develop initiatives that are truly consistent with American principles and values on the one hand, and that will also be equally consistent with American national interests in being identified with the cause of social justice within South Africa. ”

“ Never was such glorious unity of purpose, of opinion and feeling, seen in South Africa. From the Cape to the Zambesi the holy spirit of patriotism and unity was awakened and displayed in beautiful colours of fellow feeling and love of country and people. Never was truer word spoken than when a man of position exclaimed in Pretoria, on receipt of the news of Jameson’s defeat: ‘To-day the nation of South Africa is reborn.’ Afrikander national feeling was reborn indeed, never to die again. The most bitter political opponents of President Kruger in the country became his most staunch supporters. ”

“ As the Reform leaders were aware that they would be out-matched if the Government had time to gather its troops, it has been subsequently hinted that they meant to carry Pretoria by a coup de main, capturing the President, and forthwith, before the Boer militia could assemble, to issue a call for a general popular vote or plebiscite of all the inhabitants, Boers and Uitlanders, which should determine the future form of government. ”

“ And a fourth, wishing to excuse any vehement expression he might use, observed: "We have a proverb which says that a man who makes a mistake in a public assembly cannot be killed." In this proverb there is the germ of the English "privilege of Parliament." It is easy to gather from the whole proceedings of these Pitsos how much more popular government has been among the Basutos than it was among the Zulus or Matabili. Tshaka or Lo Bengula would in a moment have had the neck [Pg 340] twisted of any one who ventured to differ publicly from his opinion. ”

“ Though there are few constitutions anywhere which give such unlimited power to the Legislature, the course of events—oft-recurring troubles of all sorts, native wars, internal dissensions, financial pressure, questions with the British Government—have made the President practically more important than the Legislature, and, in fact, the main force in the Republic. The Executive Council has exerted little power and commanded little deference, while the Volksraad has usually been guided by the President and has never taken the direction of affairs out of his hands. ”

“ They have a slow tenacious intensity, like that of a forest fire, which smoulders long among the prostrate trunks before it bursts into flame. But they are, except when deeply stirred, conservative and slow to move. They dislike change so much as to be unwilling to change their representatives or their ministers. A Cape statesman told me that the Dutch members of the Assembly would often say to him: "We think you wrong in this instance, and we are going to vote against you, but we don't want to turn you out ”

“ By the letters patent of 1900 the High Commissioner is invested with the control of the South African Constabulary in the new colonies and the administration of the Central South African railways, and he is empowered to call together conferences of the self-governing colonies for the discussion of common problems. Here is already existing the administrative machinery of a federation. The rock on which many federal enterprises have split is the election of the supreme head, and in most systems it is the weakest point. But South Africa is saved this part of the problem. ”