THE BLACK MAN’S PLACE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18765, 19 January 1923, Page 6

THE BLACK MAN’S PLACE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Mr Peter Nielsen has written a very thoughtful and judicial essay on the future of the black races in South Africa. He :s not particularly hopeful, because _he recognises that all settlements of social difficulties between black and white are bound to fall short of perfection. He accepts as an unarguable fact that miscegenation is undesirable and that, therefore, there can never be any true mingling of the races. The right aim, he thinks, is to give the black people their place in the sun while ensuring that there shall nor be any such contact in the ordinary way of life as would seem to implv an ultimate fusion. He believes this policy to be as much in the interests of the black as of the white. But he is eminently fair to the black people. He has lived among them and has studied them carefully and very sympathetically. He pronounces in favour of their segregation, not because he thinks there is an intellectual gulf between black and white which cannot he bridged, but because he regards white prejudice against miscegenation as perfectly well founded. The declared policy of the Union is, of course, already one of segregation. Mr Nielsen admits, however, that most careful precautions must be taken against inflicting hardships on the natives when they are removed in the mass from one district to another.

He gives some deeply interesting examples of native argumentation, .which certainly seem to show that the mind ox the black man functions very much like that of the white man. One day he was discussing with tome elderly Matabela native* the subject of miscegenation, and the following conversation ensued with one of the old men:— “ ‘White people,’ said the native, do what they like, they take what they like, and when they like certain girls they take them, and what can we say? And, after all, why should they not do so? Everything belongs to them, we are their people, our girls belong to them, the white peop.o onlv take what is theirs to take.’ ,‘But, I interpolated, ‘white men do not take the girls away from you, it is the girls themselves wlio leave their own kind and go to the white men.’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I say they take the girls because ther know as well as we do that women women —will always go where they can live with ease and have plenty and be without work, and this they can do when they go to the white man, whereas with us they must work. Wherefore I say that the white men take the girls away from us, but 1 do not say that they do wrong so long as they only play with them and have no children by them, for it is the manner of all the world that men and women come together and no law can be made to stop them from doing so, but the white men do wrong when they allow the black women to have children by them because such children grow up without proper homes, and that is very sad and Tvronir. 11 If Mr Nielsen has carefully reported the old man’s statement it is surely wonderfully judicial. Mr Nielsen’s summing-up of his argument for segregation is as follows; — “The policy of territorial separation, which is part’ of the law of the Union of [South Airica, is the only po.icy that will make possible a home existence for the Natives in their own homeland for we know that, however educated and however worthy the civilised Native may become, he cannot hope to find a home, or to feel at home, among the whites. Rightly or wrongly, the whites have uanged, bolted, and barred their-doors against the blacks, and neither moral worth nor educational qualifications will serve to open them. But in their own areas the Natives will have their own homes and their own home-life, without which human existence is indeed miserable. 1 Those among them who long for the privilege of private ownership will be aoie to acquire land in freehold m localities set aside therefor, while those who cling to the old ways wnl be allowed to continue as before under their old svstem of communal land tenure. With freedom of movement and action under a minimum of European supervision and control the Natives will, in their areas, have full opportunity and scope for the development of a home-civilisation of theif own along lines similar to, if not identical with, those by which the Europeans follow their separate ways. It- is an heroic plan, and it. will demand great sacrifice from both peoples, but who can doubt that the end will be worth the effort ? The Natives mav in some places have to leave the land where their ancestors are buried, and the whites will, in many places have to accept the price of expropriation for land and houses hallowed and m..de nrecious by effort and memories, but the great general gain at the end will undoubtedly be wortu all that must be surrendered now. This policy is the only one that holds out hope of peace and happiness for both races. If the fears and objections that are being raised by a few Natives and by individual Europeans here and there are allowed to frustrate this, the only practical plan so far devised, the future generations of both white and black in South Africa will assuredly curse the day their fathers wavered' and failed to make the only just and fair provision that could be made.’’ The spirit in which the Union must work has been finely described in a book by Sir Frederick Lugard, which we reviewed sonic time ago. “There should be,” wrote Sir Frederick, “complete uniformity in ideals, absolute equality in the paths of knowledge and culture, equal opportunity for those who strive, equal admiration for those who achieve; in matters social and racial a separate path, each pursuing his owrf inherited traditions, preserving his own race-purity and race-pride; equality in things spiritual, agreed divergence in the physical and material.”