Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 30 November 1937, Page 6

Timely Topics

SOUTH AFRICA’S COLOUR. PROBLEM.

“You sky, ‘We cannot anticipate Bishop Carey’s reaction to ’ the statement of General Hertzog that the negroes are living ‘in a land of the white man, where the white man’s law must rule.’ This compels men,” retorts Bishop Carey in the “Church Times,” “either to be silent, which would m'ake me a cowai'd, or to speak out, which may compel me to be a bore. I would sooner risk being a bore than a coward. What Hertzog means is that in the population of, roughly, one and a half millions whites and seven million natives, it is the white man’s civilisation which is to be dominant. For assimilation is impossible; white does not black, nor vice versa. What I wish he had said is: *ln a land peopled by mixed races, 'the white man’s law must rule.’ For South Africa is the country of the native as well >as of the white man. My own ideal is of black and white living largely apart socially and territorially, *and yet both acknowledged citizens of South Africa. Religion, justice, freedom, kindness would be common to all. The black man must accept white law (e.g., as administered by those magnificent courts, the High Courts of South Africa) as supreme.”