Native Labour In South Africa

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 70, 16 December 1937, Page 9

Native Labour In South Africa

Sir, —In the report of an interview with Major Kirk which appeared in a recent issue in which Jie spoke of conditions of native labour in South Africa, the last paragraph raises a contentious question. Having lived for many years in tlie Rimdesias, where labour conditions are comparable with South Africa, I wish to correct Major Kirk’s impressions. If the land in South Africa is cheaper than in New Zealand it is also less productive per acre, aud in any case the South African farmer is not responsible for the high price of land in this country. Nor is he to blame for the high wages with tire relative high cost of production in New Zealand. If the people here persist in getting out of step with the world they need not be surprised if they have their heels kicked. If Geneva, at the suggestion of the major, ventured to interfere with the labour question in South Africa the South African Government is quite able to hold its own. The wages paid to the native south of the Zambesi generally represent the full value of his work. He is, where in contact with white people, fully a centuryahead of the last generation, and he is advancing rapidly—too rapidly. Too rapid advance is liable to give the backward races moral indigestion. The great bulk of native labour in the Union and also in Southern Rhodesia is recruited outside those countries, and it is quite voluntary. • That the natives continue to leave their i own countries and work for the whites is’ proof tnat they get something better. Touching the native question, I cannot do better than quote .from Mrs. Tause Jolly, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Southern Rhodesia : — “There was no civilisation before we came, no security, no justice, no peace. . . . Having got here, by what we might call a series of accidents rather than by deliberate policy, the only moral obligation resting on us is to make a good job of it.”

Speaking of diseases, i.e., malaria, bilharzia, hook worm, tsetse fly, plant diseases, drought, pestilencef and famine, she says: “Before the advent of Europeans the natives had no protection from these, and now it is only the money created by European energy and enterprise that makes it possible to cope with them. Let us be frank. We cope with them as much in our own interest as in his—but at all events we do begin to cope. It is characteristic of white civilisation that we do not take the fatalistic view of them as he did and still does.” In conclusion, I can say that the natives of Southern Africa are happy ami carefree, more so than the people of New Zealand. We can confidently leave them to the care of the Governments there ami concentrate on our own problems.-—1 am. etc.,

J. E. HORSFIELD. Hawera, December S.