Defence.
The Dutch community strongly opposed the proposal that Victoria College, Stellenbosch, founded in 1866 as the Stellen- bosch Gymnasium and mainly attended by Dutch students, should be incorporated in the Cape university. A solution of the difficulty was reached in 1916 when Parliament passed Acts establishing three universities: the university of South Africa, the university of Cape Town, and the university of Stellenbosch. The two last were to be teaching universities and the seat of the Cape Town University was to be at Groote Schuur. It was formed by incorporating the South African College (founded at Cape Town in 1829) and to it the 500,000 of the Wernher-Beit be- quests accrued.
The university of South Africa took the place of and was the legal successor of the university of the Cape of Good Hope, headquarters being removed from Cape Town to Pretoria. The new university, like its predecessor, was a federal organization with examining functions. Its first chancellor was the Duke of Connaught. The changes became effective on April 2 1918.
In the 1911-2 session of Parliament an attempt was made to grapple with the relations of the white and Kaffir races, the
position of Asiatics in the Union and with national
and imperial defence. General Botha with two of his colleagues (Sir David de Villiers Graaff and Mr. F. S. Malan) had attended the Imperial Conference held in London in May and June 1911, when the Asiatic question and defence had been con- sidered. The Union Government decided that S. A. should pro- vide for its own internal defence, and a Defence Act was passed in June 1912, creating a citizen force at a cost of about 500,000 a year; this is in addition to a permanent force of five regiments. 1 The Act provided for the military training of 50% of the young men between 18 and 21; the other 50% being compelled to join rifle clubs and similar associations. The 50% for training are obtained in the first place by voluntary enlistment, but if sufficient numbers are not forthcoming by this method, then by ballot. (Recourse to the ballot had not been necessary up to 1922.) Members of the Citizen Force with the colours are paid. Pro- vision was made for artillery, cavalry, infantry, engineer and transport units, uniformity with the units of the other overseas' dominions being aimed at. General C. F. Beyers, one of the Transvaal commandants in the Anglo-Boer War, was appointed commandant-general, while the Council of Defence created by the Act consisted of Gen. Schalk Burger (Transvaal), Col. (afterwards Sir) Charles Crewe (Cape), Gen. de Wet (Orange Free State), and Col. Sir Duncan Mackenzie (Natal).
Objections to the Act came chiefly from the " back-veld " Boers who entertained strong dislike to compulsory- service. The force being established, the reduction of the strength of the British imperial forces in S.A. from 11,500 to about 7,000 was announced in Nov. 1912. With regard to naval policy practically no progress was made. General Botha was fully alive to its im- portance and sought to educate his followers on the subject in several speeches. But in 1920 the situation remained as it was in 1910. The British Admiralty continued to use Simon's Town as headquarters of the Cape and East Coast Squadron. In 1921, however, the Government adopted the principle of the formation of a S.A. navy for home defence.
The policy to be adopted with respect to Asiatics had two aspects: (i) the treatment of Asiatics already in the Union and
(2) whether or not to permit further immigration.
On the second question there was a determination on Question, the part of the great majority of white S. Africans to
prohibit the further entry of Asiatics alike on racial and economic grounds. They had the black man ever with them and they were determined as far as in them lay not to add another racial and disturbing factor. But there were already 150,000 Asiatics in the Union, and except for some 2,000 Chinese they were all British Indians. Of these fully four-fifths lived in Natal. They had gone thither at the invitation of that colony, where the sugar and tea plantations depended upon coolie labour. Indeed almost the only dissidents in the Union from the exclusion
1 Only persons of European descent were allowed to become mem- bers of the Defence Force.
policy were the Natal planters. On the question of immigration the Government of India, however, took a step which eased th& situation. It was a vigilant champion of the rights of Indians- settled in other parts of the Empire and it had been for years dis- satisfied with the treatment of the coolies in Natal. In 1908- it had decided to prohibit the further importation of indentured Indians into Natal and it was at the request of the Natal au- thorities that it permitted the system to continue until July 191 1, when it finaly ceased. This left untouched the question of vol- untary immigration, which among the coolie class was never great. The position in the various provinces of the Union differed. In the Orange Free State as a result of a rigid exclusion policy constantly enforced there was no Indian question; in the Cape province Indians enjoyed equal rights with whites political and municipal, not only in theory but in practice. But comparatively few Indians were attracted to the Cape and in that province the question was not acute. The Cape Immigration Acts of 1902 and 1906 sufficiently guarded the province from the influx of undesirable elements. In Natal the matter was much more- pressing. There the Indians considerably outnumbered the whites and besides the coolie class included many Bombay Mohammedans (often misnamed "Arabs" in S.A), keen and enterprising traders. Measures restrictive of Indian enterprise had been passed by Natal and in that province they had no political rights. They however possessed the municipal fran- chise and, as in the Cape province, had unrestricted rights to own and occupy land. In the Transvaal the Indians had neither political nor municipal rights nor were they allowed to own land, save in specially assigned locations. The Indians in that province were mainly Moslem traders, who had found a favourable field for their activities in the development of the country which followed the discovery of the Rand gold mines. For years the Indians in the Transvaal had been subjected to many restric- tions; it was in this province that feeling against them was most bitter and the agitation against them most strong. The position held by white S. Africans was plainly stated by Gen. Smuts at the Imperial Conference of 1917. What he then said was strictly applicable to the situation in 1911 when the Union Parliament first took up the subject.
In S.A. there has been this fundamental trouble [he said], that the white community has been afraid of opening the door too wide to Indian immigration. We are not a homogeneous population. We are a white minority on a black continent, and the settlers in S.A. have for many years been actuated by the fear that to open the door to another non-white race would make the position of the few whites in S.A. very dangerous indeed. It is because of that fear . . . that they have adopted an attitude which sometimes has assumed the outward form, although not the reality, of intolerance.
Save that among many of the whites in the Transvaal the outward form of intolerance was also its reality, this was a fair statement of the position of white S. Africans. They feared, or a considerable proportion of them feared, being swamped by Asiatics, and, especially in the Transvaal, they greatly feared Indian competition in trade. On its part the Government, of India, when the Union began legislating on the subject was ready to acquiesce in an exclusion policy, but sought in return to secure fair treatment for the Indians already in the Union. And by " fair treatment " the Government of India meant in the long run political and municipal rights weapons by which the Indians would have effective means of self-protection. In 1911 and again in 1912 Immigration Restriction bills were introduced into the Union Parliament, but the bills were dropped, a wider measure being announced for 1913. In Oct. 1912 Mr. G. K. Gokhale, one of the most influential of Indian politicians, visited S.A. on " a mission of peace " and in Nov. went to Pretoria as the guest of the Union Government to confer with them on the forthcoming legislation. Mr. Gokhale's object was primarily to secure concessions for the Indians already in S. Africa. This was also the main object of Mr. M. K. Gandhi, who had first gone to S.A. in 1893 to conduct a law suit, but had stayed there and become the leader of the Indians in Natal and the Transvaal.
In June 1913 the Union Parliament passed an Immigrants Regulation Act, the chief purpose of which was to prevent the
