Black & White

Of the Union of South Africa's more than 7,000,000 native (Negro) population, nearly 1,000,000 work for the 10,400,000 whites. The Negroes have trade unions but the unions are not recognized by the Government. The average weekly wage of a Negro in industry: $6. In their efforts to get better rights the natives have been swinging steadily leftward.

Last fortnight the Negro problem suddenly boiled over. In teeming Johannesburg thousands of native milk deliverymen, meat workers, municipal laborers and food factory employes went on strike. Negro pickets attacked scabs, defiant municipal workers barricaded themselves in compounds against the police.

Labor Minister Walter Bailey Madeley was helpless. The unrecognized native unions are not subject to anti-strike emergency regulations applicable to white workers in recognized unions. Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts intervened. By decree he forbade native workers to strike, made all labor disputes subject to compulsory arbitration.

The strikes ended and the Negroes won some gains. But last week there was bitterness among the Afrikanders. To them the color bar remained a sacred thing. Die Transvaler, Johannesburg, supported by the fascist-minded Malanite Herenigde, warned of the trend toward equalization, cited "horrifying" instances of white women offering cigarets to black soldiers. Spat Die Transvaler at Premier Smuts: "You have forfeited the right to be mentioned in the same breath with great Afrikanders. Do you want future generations to refer to your name with horror?"

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