THE NATIVE PROBLEM OF SOUTH AFRICA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2482, 24 May 1909, Page 2

THE NATIVE PROBLEM OF SOUTH AFRICA.

(By Olive Schreiner.)

No exact census exists of the population of South Africa, but it is roughly calculated that there are about nine million of inhabitants, eight million of dark men and one million of white. The white race consists mainly of twoflßl varieties, or rather mixed European descent, but both largely Teutonic. Our vast, dark native population consists largely of Bantus, who were already in South Africa when we came here; a few expiring yellow varieties of African races, and a small bet important number of halfcastes, largely the descendants of imported slaves, whose blood was mingled with that of their masters, as is always the case where slavery exists; and a very small body of Asiatics. , It is out of this great, heterogeneous mass of humans that the South African nation of the future * will be built. A

The d?,rk man is with us to stay. Not ~ only does the Bantu increase and flourish greatly, as is natural in his native continent, and under the climatic conditions which are best suited to him; not only docs he refuse to die out in contact with our civilisation, as the yellow races have done, rather tries to grasp and make ithis own ; not only can we not exterminate him,--because we cannot even transport him,--because we want him! Wa want more and always more of him, to labor in our mines, to build our railways, to work in our fields, to perform our do- _ inestic labors, and to buy our goods. We V desire to import more of him when we can. It has more than once happened n a house of legislature that bitter complaints have been brought against the government of the day for employing too many natives on public works, and so robbing the land-owner of what he most desires, —native labor. They are the makers of our wealth, the great basic rock on which our state is founded, —our vast laboring class. In our small, to-day dominant, European element we have the descendants cf some of the most virile of the Northern | races; races which, at least for them- * selves, have always loved freedom and justice; in our vast Bantu element we possess one oi the finest breeds of the African stock. A grave and an almost fatal error is sometimes made when persons compare our native question with the negro question in the Southern States of America. Not only is the South African Bantu (a race probably with a large admixture of Arab blood*!) as distinct from the West Coast negro, who was the ancestor of the American slave, as the Norwegian is from the Spaniard, but he has never been subjected to the dissolving and desocialising ordeal of slavery. We fin- him in the land of his growth, with all the instincts of the freeman intact; with all the instinct's of lovalty to his race and its chiefs still warm in his heart; with his social instincts abnormally developed and fully active; we. have only with wisdom and patient justice slowly to transfer them to our own larger society, —they are there! Every man and woman who has studied the Bantu in his native state knows that the proudest of us may envy many of the social virtues which the Bantu displays. We have a great material here, wisely handled. In our small, permanent, and largely South African born, Asiatic population, we have a section of oeople sober, industrious, and intelligent, rich with those deep staying powers which have made many Asiatic peoples so persistent and often dominant in the past and present. Even in the most disorganised element of our population, often without definite race or social traditions, I believe that careful study will show it to compare favorably, and often most favorably, with analogous classes in Europe. This is the material from which our nation must be shaped; and we ,the small and for the moment absolutely dominant white aristocrats, on which the main weight of duty of social reconstruction rests, have reason to be thankful it is what it is. I would not willingly appeal to the low- __ » est motives of self-interest, vet it may be permitted to say this: As long as the population of South Africa is united, ami the conditions of warfare remain what they are, we need fear no foe. With our inaccessible coast and few harbors, our mighty mountain ranges and desolate plains into which the largest armies might be led and left to starve, we are as unassailable as northern Russia, behind her steppes and icefields, —it would take more than a Napoleon to walk over us ; we are, ' indeed, an impregnable fortress in these southern seas, —as the entire population is united. But what if we are not united? What if, when the day comes, as it must, when hostile fleets, —perhaps not European,— gather round our shores, and the vast bulk of our inhabitants should cast eyes of indifference, perhaps of hope, toward them? Having no share in the life of our state, oeiug bound to us by no ties of sympathy, having nothing to lose, might not the stranger even appear in the guise of a deliverer, and every bush nide a possible guide, and the bulk of the men and women in our land whisper, “It is no business of ours; let them fight it out?” As long as nine-tenths of our community have no permanent stake in the land, and no right or share in our government, can we ever feel safe? Can we ever know peace ? We cannot hope ultimately to equal the men of our own race living in more wholly enlightened and humanised communities if our existence is passed among millions of non-free subjected peoples. The physical labor we despise and refuse, because they do it for us, the continual association with human creatures who are not free will ultimately take from us our strength and our own freedom ; and men will see in our faces the reflection of that on which we are always treading and looking down. If we raise the dark man we shall rise with him; if we kick him under our feet he will hold us fast by them. Lastly, if I were asked what in South Africa is our great need at the present moment. I should answer, “Great men to Jead us.” The man .fitted to be the national leader of a great heterogeneous people requires certain qualities not asked for in the leaders, even of a homogeneous race. The man who should help to guide us toward the path of true union and a beneficent organisation must be a man able to understand, a*d understanding to sympathise with, all sections of our people; loving his own race and form of speech intensely, he will never forget it is only one among others, and deserving of no special favor because it is his. At all costs to himself ho will persist in holding up before us the ideal by which he is himself dominated, —of a great South Africa, in which each element of our population, while maintaining its own individuality, shall subserve the interests of others as well as its own. The, hearts of great men unite people. The states and territories of South Africa will ultimately combine in some form of union; it is inevitable; no man can stay it. If among those things which; fate still holds hidden from us in the> hollow of her hand there be such a man, or such men, loving justice and freedom, not only for themselves or their own race, but for all their fellow-countrymen, and able to imbue us with their own larger conception of the national life, and lead toward it, then I see light where the future of South Africa rises; if not—we shall still attain to a unification in some form or other, but it will be a poor, peddling thing when wo hav» ft-

Maud: “How pretty and careless Mabel’s hair always looks.” Gertie: “Yes, and it takes her two hours to make it look thatway.”