As the new South African quota bill limiting the number of immigrants to 50 each year from each of the East and South European countries which had hitherto furnished the bulk of immigration into South Africa passed its third reading, thus virtually assuring that it would become a law, M. Kittridge, Jewish member of Parliament, in a last protest blamed the government for aiming the bill at a particular race.
Dr. Daniel Malan, minister of the interior and father of the bill, had stated that 80 percent of the people whom the bill seeks to exclude lived upon producers. Mr. Kittridge produced figures of 1,664 immigrants who arrived in 1929, 749 women and children and 915 men, of whom 436 were producers.
Pointing out that the doors to immigration to South Africa were now virtually closed, Emile Nathan, another Jewish member of Parliament, charged the government with prejudice. Recalling a recent speech of Premier Hertzog in which he had praised the Jews as fine citizens and an asset to any nation, Mr. Nathan asked “did he or did he not mean it? If he did, then why this oppressive piece of legislation?”
Mr. Nathan declared that he was horrified that “we have men in South Africa who say one thing one day and another the next and cannot explain what they meant.”
In Johannesburg, Harry Carter, secretary of the South African Board of Jewish Deputies, proposed that May 1, the day the law goes into effect, be declared a day of mourning and prayer.
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