COLOUR CONSCIOUSNESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19254, 17 February 1926, Page 10

COLOUR CONSCIOUSNESS.

The unending complications springing from racial mixtures in South Africa have been given a new turn by a development reported from Capetown. A meeting of natives protesting against discriminatory legislation invoked the example of Abd-el-Krim, who has so long defied the French and Spanish in Morocco. The formidable and protracted nature of the Riff rebellion has made some fear that it may act as a spark to ignite inflammable material among the Moslem people of North Africa and the Near East. To see two European Powers —one of them probably the strongest, militarily, in the world—struggling so long against the comparatively small end primitive organisation of the Riffs does not tend to increase Western prestige in the eyes of the Orient. There are difficulties of country and climate to account in part for the situation, but these are not likely to be weighed very judicially by the people on whom the object lesson threatens to work most powerfully. Its effect, therefore, needs to be watched, especially along the Mediterranean littoraL To find it quoted so far away as Capetown, among a primitive race usually supposed to be so remote from world affairs as the South African natives, is indeed a new development, and one not to be taken too lightly. It would, of course, be a mistake to over-estimate its value as indicating African race consciousness, regardless of distance or ethnological differences. Nevertheless it may be just ona of those small things destined to grow great and to influence the future profoundly. The Moroccan is on the far side of that colour line which modern times tend to draw with increasing rigidity, even if he is nearer to the European than to the definitely negroid African. Yet conditions have made him appear an example, and in a remote way an ally, to the Cape native in hia revolt against racial discrimination- One of the unfortunate effects of the colour question, as it has been allowed fco grow, is its creation of colour consciousness, possibly a bond of union in people completely alien in other respectß. Though the invocation of Abd-el-Krim in Capetown may mean little to-day, the feeling of which it is symptomatio may mean much in the future.