BLACKS V. WHITES

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 July 1925, Page 5

BLACKS V. WHITES

SOUTH AFRICA’S DANGER. NATIVE WAR PREPARATIONS. (“Sydney Sun” Service.) LONDON, July 10. .Mr Ward Price, writing to the “Daily Alail” says: “The threatening racial clash between black and white in South Africa is becoming an outstanding problem. Politicians frame legislative, breakwaters against the spreading sea of colour, nevertheless they know they are only weak expedients, and no practical remedy for the impending conflict caused by the rise of racial unity among the blacks, whost tribal jealousies are disappearing, and whose languages are fusing.” “There are eight million natives throughout -South Africa; compared with 1,560,000 whites-. The blacks are multiplying far more rapidly than their white masters, who base economic development on cheap labour. The blacks are developing a contentious spirit and colour consciousness: under the lead of American educated natives, who'brag that their function is to lead the primitive tribes in a racial struggle. Such-conditions may end in rebellion, meaning, first, the massacre of scattered whites, then the massacre of half-armed natives.” “When the Prince of Wales reviewed four thousand natives in traditional fighting kit and feathers, armed with assegais and knob-kernes, singing a war chant, punctuated with the stabbing of imaginary foes, a South Afri can officer told me that every s'oitg was a veiled threat. Alean while, pretty bare-armed • European girre photographed the warriors as if tnev were a Wembley side show-

“The policb-Jiave discovered the existence of a blood-thirsty native’secret society, named Omalita, the membersswearing to ravish a virgin and murder a man before they die.”