Bantu Boycott

On a dismal winter's morning last week many a suburban Johannesburger twitched and turned in his last few minutes of troubled sleep, awoke alarmed at the unmistakable rhythm of hoarse-voiced jungle chanting. Early risers discovered the source: 20,000 black men, women & children, packed gutter to gutter on the Pretoria road, marching to wild, weird Bantu songs and war cries.

Anxious whites were relieved to learn that the ruckus was no native uprising but a peaceful "march-to-work" protest against a one-penny (2-c-) hike in bus fares. Owners of the private bus fleet from Alexandria, ten miles north of Johannesburg and home of many of the city's Negro day laborers, pleaded greater costs, upped the one-way fare from four-to fivepence; a total of twopence a day. Negroes, earning from $12 to $20 monthly, had boycotted the busses.

Stung by the spectacle of the trudging blacks, many unshod and coatless, hundreds of gas-rationed white motorists offered them lifts, which the marchers resolutely refused. Other white well-wishers distributed lorryloads of fruit and drinks.

After two days of Negro footslogging, the Government intervened, arranged for the fourpence fare to continue until a commission reported. But Johannesburgers had had two unhappy days.

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