Hot Night In Pretoria

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 armored cars from military camps close by rolled into the riot, opened fire on the mob after a white soldier had been stabbed to death. Before the bloody night was over, 15 natives lay dead beneath the jacaranda trees and 66 were in the hospital.

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