South African Investigation into White Status of Citizens.
It is reported from Cape Town, South Africa, that the Population Registration Office in Cape Town has been ordered by Dr. Douges, South African Minister of the Interior, to investigate alleged borderline cases of families hitherto claiming white descent. The officials of this Office have power to rule that some Cape citizens at present of white status are in reality Cape coloured people with drastically reduced rights. If a family, it is said, is found to be of coloured descent, it must move out of the white suburbs, the adult members lose their vote and the children must move to segregated schools, etc. All this has aroused deep indignation among the tolerant Cape population. The South African present Government must not be surprised when people outside South Africa view with abhorrence such unscriptural, un-Christian and unfeeling procedure toward their fellowmen. Their apartheid policy, they aver, outsiders do not understand. But the fact is, and we know it, that there is a considerable body of white opinion within South Africa opposed to their policy on moral and humanitarian grounds. The supremacy and the privileges of the white population will never be conserved in a peaceable manner by the suppression of those of another colour. The gospel of Christ recognises no such distinctions as envisaged in the complete separation of the races by the apartheid principle and the Bantu Act in the Union of South Africa. Surely there is more than enough strife in the world in these times without increased strife being stirred up in South Africa?