THE NATIVE PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1934, Page 21

THE NATIVE PROBLEM

CUSTOMS AND RELIGION

DANGER FROM WHITE MEN

A warning that the coming of the white man had created unparalleled difficulties in connection^with African marriage customs, the core- on which all African society is based was given by Dr. L. S. B. Leakey, of Kenya, in the African Section of the International Congress on Anthropology and Ethnology in London (says the "Manchester Guardian"). European civilisation, Dr. Leakey contended, had been too suddenly and hastily forced into the midst of well-organised systems of African tribal laws.

The- section approved tho principle of a proposition to be submitted to Congress expressing the opinion that all missionaries and Government officers sent to work among the so-called primitive peoples of the world should havo a course of social anthropology included in their training; that missionary societies and others working to spread Christian teaching am6ng primitive peoples should take very great caro not to confuse Christianity with the many social' customs of Western Europe built up on Christianity but not inherent in it; and that missionary societies and Government institutions should,do all in their power to place up-to-dato anthropological knowledge at the disposal of their staffs.

Dr. Leakey said that some missionary societies were already giving anthropological instruction to their ■ recruits. Marriage laws in tribes all over Africa, he said, had been evolved under tribal conditions' and in almost every case were well suited to the conditions in which each tribe lived. Thn, Christian missionaries had introduced new conceptions of marriage and a new code of morals which were usually not suitable or practicable for the African still living under his own tribal conditions. Often the effect of the missionaries' efforts to change things too rapidly was a complete breakdown of both the old sanctions and of the newly introduced code.

Eeferring to a system of payment of "marriage insurance" in certain communities, Dr. Leakey said that a great safeguard in African marriages institutions was being turned into a purchase of wives. The coming of Europeans had brought a great increase in the amounts payable on marriage, which meant that the young men of tho tribe had to delay tho time when they could marry and involved the possibility of children being born out of wedlock. ;

The problem today was to find some

way of getting an adjustment of native African marriage law into something that would fit into present conditions. If changes were to be effoctivo they must come from the natives, perhaps through guidance in education by white people, but they must not be arbitrarily imposed upon the natives.

Has civilisation, which had destroyed so much, done anything constructive in heightening the ideals of marriage? asked the Rev. F. W. Dodds, of Nigeria. "I believe it has," ho said. "If it has done nothing else it has greatly improved the position of women. All is experimental yet, and it cannot bo denied that failure is often all too manifest,'but as women rise higher in their own estimation and in the respect of their menfolk, ideals of marriage must improve." The Rev. W. Groves, also of Nigeria, said it seemed a hopeless task to seek to adapt native tradition and native authority to the changing conditions of this modern world. The present generation of Africans knew very little, if any, native tradition, and for ' nearly thirty years theio had been a weakening of native authority.

Governments, administrators, missionaries, and anthropologists should realise that very little was left of what was called African culture. They should get together to formulate some system. He believed the Christian Gospel would bring moral stability to the African in the welter of things and peoples.