YUSUF MOHAMED DADOO
The Pretoria Agreement is a shameful negation of all the noble
principles for which the Indian people have stood and fought during
all the years of their experience in South Africa. It is an outrage
on the honour and existence of the Indian community.
For several decades
the Indians have held their ground against all attacks by the
succeeding Governments to segregate them into
ghettos. Indeed such has been their spirit of resistance by mass
united action that under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in 1913
they successfully obtained the repeal of the unjust and iniquitous £3
tax.
But today the Indian
people are unfortunate in a weak-kneed betraying leadership which
is willing to barter away freedom of movement
and the right of lawful occupation of the whole Indian community
for temporary gain in investment for an inconsiderable but wealthy
class - a class on whom the Prime Minister did not disdain
to pour venomous scorn when he wanted to push the Pegging Bill
through Parliament. But now this very class has received the kind
attention of General Smuts.
General Smuts Embarrassed
The reason for this about face is not far to seek. The Union Government
was target of the indignation and protests aroused by the Pegging
Act in India, Britain, and the United States. General Smuts, to
say the least, was embarrassed to face the Empire Conference in
London.
Thanks to the gross and shameful betrayal by some of the Natal
Indian Congress leaders, he is able to show his face with equanimity
in the councils of the Empire and the United Nations.
But the Pretoria Agreement has more far-reaching significance
for the Indian people. It sounds their death knell as a community
aspiring to full rights of citizenship in this country. Not only
would acquiescence remove the Indian question from the international
field, but it would also isolate the Indian people into separate
areas from whence they can look forward to further and more damaging
restrictions in the economic and social field. It would be a policy
of mass political suicide.
But the Indian people will not fall into such trap. We shall show
by our united efforts and mass struggles in common with other sections
of the non-European people, that the Pegging Act must be repealed
immediately and unconditionally and that elementary democratic
rights and not segregation must be awarded to our people.
