With the new South African quota bill that limits to 50 the number of immigrants to be admitted annually from all but 12 Nordic countries in Europe, the British Commonwealth and the United States, in committee, General Jan Christian Smuts, leader of the South African or opposition party, who has just returned to South Africa after an extended visit to the United States and England, turned his guns on the bill which has been interpreted here as an attack on the Jews, since it curtails most severely the immigration from those countries from which the majority of South African Jews originate.
Asserting that the fact that his party had voted for the bill during its second reading only meant its agreement that some form of immigration restriction was necessary, General Smuts deprecated the method of the bill as “invidious, illiberal and undoubtedly aimed at a certain section of the people. I should be very sorry to see any law placing a stigma on any of our people. They may be unpopular but they are our own people and have done their share, perhaps more than their share, in the past.”
General Smuts said that if the bill passes “there would be no place in the country for men like Sammy Marks, men by the score who helped build the country. It ill becomes us,” he continued, “a young people, who owe so much to every section of the white races and who in South Africa have preached universal friendship and equality, to single out one section and say ‘we have had enough of you, we want Nordic people.’ We Dutch people in this country have not been hostile to these people. Why now declare war against them?”
Premier Hertzog, defending the bill, attacked General Smuts and his party. He declared that the country was already faced with four national problems, the Native, Colored, Indian and European, and it did not want to add a fifth, immigration. Morris Kentridge, a Jewish member of parliament, attacked the Premier’s insinuation that the Jews constituted a fifth problem and reminded him of his recent eulogistic remarks about the Jews. Mr. Kentridge also accused Dr. Daniel Malan, minister of interior and father of the new immigration bill, of hypocrisy and harshness and resented the suggestion that the Jews’ standard of living is lower than that of any South Africans.
On a division of parties an amendment to the quota law making the basis of admittance all nationalities and not merely the restricted countries, was lost. The amendment of the Nationalists to bring the quota law into operation May 1 instead of July 1 and that only 33 immigrants should be admitted from the restricted countries instead of 50 was carried by a vote of 55 to 47.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
