SOUTH AFRICA

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 96, 20 October 1937, Page 15

SOUTH AFRICA

HER HIGH AMBITION SEvOND I'NITED STATES? A GREAT GOLD BOOM Encouraged by General Smuts —always the Compleat Optimist—there has sprung up in South Africa in the last 1 few years a school of thought that firmly believes that the country is entering upon a period of astonishing prosperity, writes the South African correspondent Of the Melbourne "Age." The prospects of the Union are compared to those of the United States of America after the close of the Civil War, and a similar record of rapid development is anticipated. An era of modernisation and vast expansion is predicted, resulting in the formation of a large new nation in the Southern Hemisphere. There is some surface foundation for this dream. Since the Union went off the gold standard, at the end of 1932, the Government has had money to burn. It has been able to spend freely on all kinds of betterment schemes, and on subsidising the poorer whites, until it boasts that there is work for every able-bodied man who will take it. Under this stimulus there has been development everywhere, and especially on the Rand, where the central area of Johannesburg has been practically rebuilt in the last five years, and made to resemble an American city. Millions have been lavished on trying to place agriculture on a sounder basis. Large programmes of railway expansion, road building, housing, and so on are being carried out. New industries have sprung up on all sides, and, though some of them are of the mushroom variety, they have helped to swell the wave of prosperity that has swept across the sub-continent. HAPPILY-PLACED LAND. The Union is certainly one of the happily-placed lands of the world, despite the recent setback on the Stock Exchange. Under these conditions, there has been some increase in immi- • gration, though the influx has not been large, and cannot be compared to the flood of newcomers who helped to build up America so rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nor must it be forgotten that this pleasing progress is due entirely to the gold' mining industry. The valuo of the output of the Rand alone is about £30,000,000 a year more than it was Ave years ago, and the additional wealth has percolated into every corner of the country. If the pyice of gold remains in the neighbourhood of £7 ; n ounce, and there is always a market for it, there can be no doubt that the Union will continue to enjoy good times, though prosperity cannot be ex. pected to go in increasing indefinitely at the rate it has in the last few years. There may, indeed, be a slight reaction o zing tc speculation and over-building; but, with a continuance of present conditions, one may reasonably anticipate stability on approximately the present basis to be assured for a considerable period. What is not so clear is that there is any justification for the belief that there will be any resemblance between the story of South African development and that of the United States. ' • A LOW-GRADE COUNTRY. The obstacle to Immediate and sustained development on a big scale in South Africa is that the country as a whole is a largfc low-grade proposition. Its minerals can'only be profitably worked by low-production costs. The bulk of its soil'is poor, being lacking, in phosphates, and large areas are semi-arid, or suffer from periodical d; oughts. The out-turn of its crops per acre is among the smallest in the world. Until the discovery of diamonds and gold, the whole of South Africa was a very poor country, as is plain from its records from the landing of van Rie- ; beek in 1652, down to the eighties of ; last century. The springing up of a pcor white class is generally ascribed to isolation and lack of educational facilities, but the inherent'povertf pf the soil had a great deal to do with it. There are 10,000,000 people in the Union today. But only 48,081 pay income tax. That fact reveals the real obstacle to rapid and continuous industrial development. It shows that the country lacks a large home market for secondary industries, simply because the vast majority of the inhabitants earn a wage so small that they can scarcely buy the bare necessaries of life. There is practically no export of manufactured goods from the Union. Attempts to capture the somewhat restricted market in the north and in East Africa have failed. The hard fact is that if South Africa is to grow far bigger industrially it must increase its national wage fund by raising the rate of pay of the vast majority of its Inhabitants —that is, the coloured people and natives, the bulk of whom are employed upon the land. But that is no easy matter when the farmer complains that the return on fanning is so small that he can hardly support himself. EFFORT AT EXPANSION. An effort at great national expansion in South Africa must begin at the beginning—that is, on the land itself. The vegetal covering of the country must be improved by the conservation of water, the planting of new grasses, the checking of erosion, and the fertilising of the soil, so that the average quality of meat and dairy produce may be raised, and the out-turn per acre of crops and per unit of labour employed may be increased. South Africa must ■ be made a more fertile country than it is now before it can look for the huge expansion that the optimistic expect. This is more clearly realised than was once the case, and now that ample revenue is being drawn from the mines the Government is embarking upon schemes which will in the long run improve the surface of the country, provided that the mass of the land owners ' co-operate with the experts who have long been studying the problem. With better methods on the farms, and irn- . proved land, agriculture will in the end r be made to pay more generally than it > does now, and all connected with it will be placed upon a higher economic ] level. If this strengthening of the real economic base of the country can be brought about, there will be a solid foundation for that larger superstructure which is desired, and which it is thought by some can be built so easily. But a nation cannot live permanently by gold mines alone, no matter how - pleasant they may make life at the moment. Their value lies in what they ' can enable to be done in preparing for other and more permanent enterprises, which must be based upon the natural wealth of the country—and that lies, as alwavs, chiefly in the land. Gold is . serving South Africa well today, but it can best use it by preparing itself to do without so much of it in the distant future,