A SOUTH AFRICAN PROBLEM.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9409, 1 April 1909, Page 8

A SOUTH AFRICAN PROBLEM.

Much concerned at the - possibility that no great white nation may ever arise to inhabit Africa, Mr L. E. Neame. in Empire, asks whether it is to be black cr white m the future. In the last four years, he rem inds us. some 40.000 white people have loft the country because they coma find no place there. And not many months ago the Transvaal Indigency Commission uttered the solemn warning that unless existing conditions can be altered ‘‘South Africa will at best be numbered among the countries which are owned and governed, but not peopled, _by the white races.” He appears to think it possible for the European labourer to do actual manual work m Africa as efficiently as those accustomed to its tropical or sub-tropical obmates. A white nation will never be built up in South Africa on a basis of colour labour. The only hope uf the sub-Oontinent realising that ideal is to sweep away the system of importing other people’s black and brown workers, and to expunge fro® the Statute Book every law which gives the coloured worker an advantage over the white worker. There are quite enough natives in British South Africa without: attracting additional thousands from Mozambique. It is waste of energy to pass drastic anti-Asiatic laws m the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, when Natal is busily importing Indians at the rate of thousands a year. The policy oft to-day may find employment for overseers. But yon cannot make- a nation out or overseers and landowners alone. The people who do the work of the land must ultimately possess it. Encourage the black man to do ail the real work of South Africa, and in the end Great Britain will have to hold the sub-Oontinent as she holds India and Jamaica. This is the real problem South Africa must f aoe _the problem of attracting white people, and of finding work for them to do.