Natal Boroughs ordinance

WITH the assent given by the Governor-General of the South African Dominion to the Natal Boroughs ordinance, the Indian problem assumes a serious magnitude not only in Natal but the whole of South Africa. By the enactment of this disabling law, all those Indians who do not possess the municipal franchise at present will find the door to that franchise slammed in their face, although almost all of them have acquired a domicile in that colony, having been born of parents who have been carrying on business there or have settled without any intention of returning to India. The significance and sweeping nature of this provision will be evident when it is borne in mind that the effect of this measure would be to exclude from the municipal franchise all future generations of Indians as also all those young people at the present time who have not so far acquired the right to the franchise. The number of Indian electors would thus gradually diminish till — and that is not at all a very far-off time — the Indian would entirely vanish from the voting list and stand helpless in the matter of the protection and safeguarding of his various interests — commercial, social and other — in the civic life of the land he has made his own and to reclaim which from primitive conditions he has sweated so long. Nor is this the only obnoxious feature of this reprehensible measure, which is a “breach of faith” on the part of the Union Government, since the Natal municipal franchise was guaranteed to Indians at the time when they were deprived of the parliamentary franchise.

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