Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, FRIDAY, DEC. 27, 1929 AFRICAN COLONISATION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17143, 27 December 1929, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, FRIDAY, DEC. 27, 1929 AFRICAN COLONISATION

Boforo a distinguished audience al Rhodes House, Oxford, General Smuts, (he South African statesman, delivered the Rhodes memorial lecture i'or 192!) —an oration which is destined to become historical because of its bold statement of policy and call to the Empire to develop one of the largest and richest undeveloped estates in the world. Taking as his subject the white settlement of Africa, General Smuts defended the work of Rhodes in this direction, and maintained thai the civilisation of Africa would be" a vain dream without the leading hand of the settlor and employer to teach the native the salutary gospel of work. General Smuts then proceeded to propound a policy of colonisation which would confer benefits of first importance upon Africa, the British Empire, and the whole of civilisation. Ho showed that Britain to-day is in control of a vast portion of Africa well suited to European colonisation. British authority extends from Capetown to Abyssinia, and of this enormous territory the highlands which stretch from Kenya to Rhodesia might become within measurable time the home of a strong white community comparable to that in the Union of South Africa. &'The British Government," declared the speaker, "cannot sit on its assets in Africa. It is trustee for civilisaotion and must make the best use of the huge undeveloped resources. The time has come to establish in the heart of Africa, as a bulwark of civilisation, another white Dominion." He declared that there was no limit to the numbers of white people that could be taken and settled upon the land under thoroughly healthy conditions in East Africa, thereby easing the British congestion of population and providing work for much larger numbers at Home. The native population was so sparse that when it had been provided for by reserves of land adequate to all possible future needs a large surplus remains. General Smuts did not shirk this great problem of .white and black. He recognised that since the greater part, of tropical Africa is controlled by Great Britain and since the British Government has always and rightly shown itself sensitive in regard to its trusteeship of the natives, the first thing to be done is to consider liow native interests are affected; The most searching question of all is whether our nation is justified in civilising the native. That is a point that has often been debated concerning other conn, tries than .Africa, and to-day it is recognised that native life before the advent of the European was far from easy. Too often, nature was for the natives "red in tooth and claw." Any policy of preserving native people from the impact of civilisation is hopelessly impracticable. You cannot segregate a continent such as Africa. Civilisation is streaming in through a variety of channels —traders, European clothes and food, and in a hundred other ways. Blacks who were barbarians a' few years ago are driving motor cars or working on the railway to-day. General Smuts, assuming then that "civilisation is inevitable, asked whether we should do it simply by influencing the native from above through civil servants and missionaries or by living beside him on the laud. It would be idlo to deny, tjiat

the incursion of the white man has often reacted most unhappily on the aboriginal. General Smuts quotas Lord Olivier as declaring that "settlements in Africa produce, first, slavery, pined in I or domestic; second, compulsory or indentured labor; third, the expropriation of natives from the land in order to compel them to work for wages; fourth, pressure on the natives, to labor for wages through direct or indirect taxation." All these phases have existed, and the last two are still advocated at times by the sorely-tried farmer. But whether the humanitarians believe him or not, General Smuts, was absolutely linn in stating that public.opinion has so far rtdvanecd in Southern Africa as to put any one of these expedients v out of court. "White settlement," he says, "can proceed in Africa without, and is all the better for being without, the dubious aids of slavery, or forced or indentured labor, or labor taxes, or other forms of labor compulsion." It was certainly significant, he added, that in that part of Africa where a great white community existed alongside the natives they had shown the greatest economic progress, the largest; increase and the greatest advantages in education and civilisation. The fact gave additional force to his argument that the existence of a white community, so far from being contrary to native interests, was indeed a stimulus and guarantee of native progress. ' There was an awakened public conscience among the whites no less than among the natives, which would not tolerate injustice or abuses, and which formed an eliicient safeguard for native interests.. In the sparsely populated highlands of East and Central Africa, where Europeans can live and' flourish, there is ample room for both races. In Kenya, Tanganyika, Xyasaland and Northern Rhodesia a million square miles of territory hold a population of about twelve million natives, which tends rather to decline than to increase. Without wiiite settlement, the bulk of this land must remain for generations unused. Taking a broad view, the development of Central .Africa by white and black cooperation holds far less danger for the black man than for the white, who under tropical conditions may ultimately lose something of his energy and driving force. Just at present, as General Smuts points out, there are signs of doubt and hesitation in Kenya and Tanganyika. The brake has been applied to white settlement, following the Ormsby-Gorc report. General Smuts' heartening review of the problem should go far to remove doubts anil pave the way for the great African Dominion that he dreams of with its seat in the very land where Livingstone toiled and perished gloriously.