Giving Africa Over to the Blacks

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 176, 29 July 1935, Page 11

Giving Africa Over to the Blacks

Mr Bernard Shaw has returned home from South Africa an advocate of intermarriago between the whiro and black inhabitants, says a “Daily Telegraph” contributor. By this means, he suggests, the white population of South Africa can solve the vital problem on which, in his view, its very existence depends.

A few hours after his arrival in Loudon, I had a special interview with him. Pacing vigorously up and down his study, ho told me of tho seriousness of the situation as it appeared to him. He has como back tremendously impressed by tho extraordinary pleasantness of tho climate. But it is the wonderful sunshine that is creating the danger. “The question,” ho said, “is beginning to ariso whether white people can survive in those places. I do not mean that you die of the climate —you don’t.

“Tho question is whether your descendants will breed. While I was in South Africa a rather astonishing thing happened. Mr Oswald Pirow, Minister of Railways, made an appeal for immigrants, who were ‘necessary to keep up tho white population.’ What does that mean?

“The white populaton in America is normally fertile, and it might be thought that there would bo no difficulty in filling up South Africa. But South Africa does not fill up. It is not a question of birth control, because many people are desirous to have children, but they do not have them. “I suppose it may be there is too much sunsliino for people with white skins. Tho probable remedy is for them to darken their skins.

“This means, in South Africa, by marrying Bantus.” “Would not such an idea be highly repugnant to white people ” I asked. “Well,” replied Mr Shaw, “there are a great many half-breeds. In Hawaii they told me that the South Sea Islanders were disappearing and that very few purebred onees are left.

“In South Africa the mixture of the two colours may provide the solution to the problem. It is not a question of black and white. In the first place there is no such thing as a white man on the face of the earth: the Chinese call us the pinks, very properly. “The Zulus are a markedly superior type of person, and all attempts to keep them in an inferior position seem to break down before the fact that they are not inferior. Certainly when you see them working you wish you could see British workmen working that way.” Mr. Shaw suggested that the problem was not confined to South Africa, but extended to a very large part of the African continent.

“People,” he said, “arc speaking glibly now about giving the Germans back their colonies. There is Abyssinia on which Mussolini is thinking of laying his hand. “You may parcel tho country out among the European Powers, but at the back of it ono day Africa will say, ‘None of you will have it.’ Africans, whether Afrikander, black, white, or anything else, will sec that Africa belongs to tho Africans and not to *so many competing European Powers. “There may bo mixture of blood, and so on, but tho native has a good deal of capacity; in the long run it may be seen that ho has the capacity to live in Africa and the others have not.’ ’