The Possible Advantages of South Africa.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 2498, 29 August 1890, Page 3

The Possible Advantages of South Africa.

South Africa is the only country where, in a temperate climate and under climatic conditions admirably suited to both, the European and the negro are engaged in a struggle for mastery and for occupation of land, not by force of arms, but by the silent process of natural selection, which, if it does its work with less noise, is far more effectual. The conflict is going on, and civilisation or barbarism depend on the result, which is not quite so certain as those who belong to the superior race could wish it to be. In tho West Indies the negro lias won, but there the climate was against the European. In the Southern States of America the same battle is going on, hut there 60,000,000 of Europeans surround 7,000,000 negroes, and yet even under these conditions the question is full of difficulty and danger. In South Africa the proportion is reversed ; half a million Europeans live in the midst of t hreo million black folk, who aae backed up by a great, reservoir of barbarism, from which reinforcements in the shape of labourers are constantly being pushed down to the south to share the means of subsistence with the black, white, and brown races already on the soil. The natives, under the peace kept by the Europeans, increase, apart from the immigration mentioned above, according to the evidence of statistics, far more rapidly than does the white population. They drift into and fill up the country in a silent way that can only be compared to the flowing of the tide. Eifty years ago Natal and the territory now known as the Transvaal Republic were wildernesses depopulated by the Zulus, who had swept off and destroyed man, woman, and child in their ruthless forays. Now there are 400,000 natives in Natal, and at least a million in the Transvaal, outnumberiug the whites by ten to one.

In the Cape Colony the struggle is better maintained, but even there the increase in the black and the brown races is very marked. There are more Kaffirs west of the Fish River than when we took the country eight years ago. We seized the land and cleared with fire and sword, and strenuous laws are framed to prevent landholders from letting their farms to the natives, who are ready to pay a rent far in excess of its market value, but these laws are broken and evaded, and still the black man continues to drift in until in the lapse of a generation he is found in the virtual possession of the lands of his fathers. “Naturam expallas furca tamen usque recurret ” finds a new and often a most unpleasant meaning to the South African colonist.—The Fortnightly Review.