WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1935, Page 7 (Supplement)

WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

CASE OF SOUTHERN RHODESIA. NATIVES AND THE LAND. ! Southern Rhodesia is one of many places in which a white governing class is trying to settle the native problem. Mr. Lanigan O’Keefe, the High Commissioner, has been speaking on the matter to the Royal Empire Society in London. \ Southern Rhodesia has pursued a policy, he says, whereby the native is lifted out of the slough of savagery, taught to'give up his tribal feuds, and to become law-abiding and contented. This has succeeded; but as a result the native has become a competitor with the white man. The native could produce for less, and so could make it

hard for Ills masters. Th&e was the danger of the lower civilisation, by force of numbers and a lower standard of ijving, ousting or absorbing the higher civilisation and then sinking back into barbarism.

The High Commissioner urged that land was by fai- the most important factor in the life of the native and would remain so. If a new country could make native land tenure safe and equitable it would escape from many problems and disturbances. The Land Appointment Act created generous native reservations. Southern Rhodesia is but a fraction of an enormous problem, the position of the natives of South Africa. In the Union of- South Africa nine-tenths of the land is taken by 2,000,000 whites, while the remaining tenth is allocated to 5,000,000 natives. Outside that tenth it is illegal for the African to own African soil. There is a well-known phrase, the White Man’s Burden, but there is also the fact that the white man has made life a burden for too many of the coloured peoples.