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PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE.
Johannesburg municipality since 1897, half of the elected members had had to be burghers, whilst power was given to President Kruger and the Executive Council to appoint a Mayor for five years, and also to remove him from the post at any time they thought fit.
Amongst other provisions in the Transvaal municipal law, was one that the President need not carry out the resolutions of his Council if he was of opinion that they were contrary to the law of the State.
The educational grievancesTouching upon education in the Transvaal, the speaker said that, under the original education law, English was on equal terms with Dutch, a system under which the language question was easily solved in the Orange Free State. Later, when Dutch became the predominant medium for education, English had the preference over other foreign languages. From 1892 onwards in the State schools no English was taught in the lower standards, and the time devoted to foreign languages in the upper standards was three or four hours per week. It cost 8l. more per annum to educate a child in the Transvaal than in Cape Colony, and, while in Cape Colony 4*4 per cent, of the children reached standard six, in the Transvaal State schools only 0.4 reached that standard. Meanwhile, the Uitlanders had started schools of their own. By a Volksraad resolution of 1892, a capitation grant of 4l. to 5l. per head was given to schools in which children of other parentage than Dutch were taught under the following conditions: (1) That children should satisfy the inspector in a knowledge of the Dutch language and of South African history from the Dutch point of view—a condition rendering it inoperative in many252
