Page 84 - Demo

The advent of apartheid
The gold standard controversy was not the only significant event that occurred between 1931 and 1932. In Great Britain, Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster, a product of the Imperial Conferences of 1926 and 1930. The statute removed British legal authority over the Union of South Africa and other dominions of the Empire. The statute “lays down in most authoritative and official terms that the Parliament of South Africa is a sovereign body (General Smuts in the Rand Daily Mail, 9 December 1932).” Discriminatory laws had been in existence for three decades in the Union, but the passage of the statute bolstered Afrikaner nationalism.
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Excerpt from Rand Daily Mail, 9 December 1932