A Legal Basis.

A final Act disfranchising natives living in the Cape and Natal Provinces, passed in 1936 by Generals Smuts and Hertzog government, meant that the last symbol of citizenship was withdrawn. In a word, segregation is absolute. Even this brief review of the conditions in South Africa will surely reveal that slavery is not non-existent in the British Commonwealth of Nations. In these Acts you have a legal basis for slavery, a legal basis for exploitation, that might be paralleled with the days of slave plantations in Virginia. That such conditions exist in a British country may sound amazing and deplorable, yet they do exist, not only in Africa but in India and the West Indies. Occasional riots may figure in small headlines in our newspapers, but the real meaning, the real cause of them is carefully veiled and concealed by those interests who are concerned with exploitation and profits. If they were not hidden, mass indignation would demand justice and democracy for the subjected natives of the world.

—M.L.B.