The bitter, pent-up determination of South Africa's low-paid Negro workers to get better pay (TIME, Jan. 4) boiled over last week.
Negro municipal employes earning $4 weekly in Pretoria recently were promised a raise to $5 under a new Government minimum-wage ruling. When the City Council objected to the raise, 2,000 natives, mostly unschooled tribesmen, held a protest meeting. Speeches got hotter and so did the natives. The natives swarmed over Pretoria's broad streets, lined with jacaranda trees, into the low, white-stoned compound buildings, smashed up furnishings and anything smashable, attacked outnumbered police who tried to stop them.
Finally troops in...
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