The Black Peril.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 1, 5 July 1911, Page 35

The Black Peril.

POSITION OF WHITE WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA. A SERIOUS NATIONAL PROBLEM. Ihe serious situation in British South Africa created by a recrudescence of what is known as the “black peril” is the subject of a thoughtful article in the current issue of ’‘The Englishwoman,” by Francis Bancroft. The writer pursues her investigation of the

trouble back to its inception, and the story she has to tell indicates that in some respects the present generation owe their problems to the misdeeds of those who went before them. We quote the following extract: — In the earliest days of the Dutch and British occupation of the Cape Colony the position of the white woman colonist was particularly secure so far as attack

by natives was concerned. The colonists sized up the Kallir as idle, sunk in sloth, irretrievably lazy and dirty, and a lover of brandy when he could get it; but he had proved himself to be faithful to a trust reposed in him. honourable to bis own limited ideas of honour, and harmless where white women and white women-children were concerned. Even during the many native wars and rebellions following upon tin* settlement of the whites in tin* Eastern Province of the (’ape Colony the black man created for himself a sense of amazement and admiration throughout the civilised

world by his magnanimity in invariably sparing the wives, sisters, and daughters of his powerful enemy, the strictest measures being enforced among these savage warriors tor the safeguarding inviolate of the honour and lives of all white women prisoners. Such conduct in redblanketed barbarians points to a damning fart, which we are bound search-

iiigl\ to eon-i.I.T, It is worth the most attentive and serious consideration on Jim part of South African legislators. I h(‘ Kallir is essentially imitative ami levengeful. It had not escaped his ’“dice in those early times that the white settler bad left his womenfolk unmolested. The steady class of settlers the sturdy, undaunted British settlers of LS2O bad come into the new country with their wives ami children. Hence the womenfolk of their black neighbours "tillered in no whit from their immediate presence. But in later years a change gradually

came over the scene. With the opening up of the northern territories, with the influx of the cosmopolitan ami greedy hordes of treasure-seekers who flooded the country, a system of legalised bargaining between white ami black was introduced, which bargaining, freely entered into on both sides, has led in its natural consequences to the parlous conditions of to-day. The results of to-day are two-fold: first, the existence in South Africa of a race of ha If-brtx'ds—pitiably placed, vicious, cunning, idle, thoroughly worthless. inheriting the instincts of the whites ami the savairerv of tin* blacks—■

overflowing the country, their miasmic presence felt in every community; and second, the Black Peril of which every white woman in South Africa goes in fear. To-day white humanity throughout the sub-continent is crying aloud for summary vengeance, for the extreme sentence of the law to b passed upon all black violators of their women, for legislation to punish even an attempt on a white woman by death. Women in their thousands have sent a deputation to the Governor-General of the Union urging upon him to instruct the judges of the la ml to pass the death sentence upon any native convicted of the crime

of attempted injury of this nature upon one of their race and sex. Should we inquire into the reason for this instantaneous and alarming outburst of a crime that apparently lay dormant, we cannot but accept the unanimous view of the South African who knows. Public indignation abroad is hot against Lord Gladstone for his error in judgment in reprieving the Umtali native on the pretext', futile and unconvincing, that the unfortunate victim of this brutal attack escaped the greater injury. 'There remains not the slightest doubt in the minds of those who know the disposition of the l\aflir that this extraordinary avf on the part of the Governor-General is the direct cause of the alarming recrudescence of the crime. But while we may deplore the act and its hideous consequences, we must not. in justice to Lord Gladstone, blind ourselves to the very important fact that, though he may have been the recreator, he has not been the creator of the Black Peril in the land. . . . The creators of the

appalling deeds of horror of to-day are those conditions of the past to which we have already referred: the invasion of the northern territories on the opening-up of the mineral districts by treasure-seek ers from the four corners of the globe; the faulty and criminal legislature that provided neither restrictive nor prohibitivel measures against the prostitution en masse of the black women, nor any measures safeguarding from the Black Peril the white women of the future, and for safeguarding also from cont ami nation the future of the races, as purely white and purely coloured.

The authoress then goes on to discuss the effects of the present condition of affairs on South African progress. She finds the country in need of women immigrants—domestic servants, governesses, and so on—but the women brought up in the midst of the peril hesitate to bring young English girls out to face it. Those who are accustomed to the situation are able .'n some measure to defy it; but the raw recJU't from England, blind to the danger, would be exposed to double danger. Until this question is boldly faced, therefore, there must remain a serious bar to South Africa’s progress. The effect of the enfranchisement and general “emancipation” of women on this question is discussed by Mrs. Bancroft. The Kaffir, she says, is essentially a creature of logic. He “sees the white woman standing below her master,” and respects her as he does all the white man’s “possessions”—up to a certain point. But he will occasionally take chances. The writer continues:.—

He sees, too, that he—the black man — has a vote, because he is a man. Woman, therefore, is but an inferior, a possession. Her deprivation of the coveted power to vote amounts to a public proclamation of the fact that her status is on a par with the status of the ordinary black man, and below the par of the status of the black man voter. On this sole point of inferiority the franchise of the white woman of South Africa cannot come too soon. Never, in the opinion of those who can read the workings of the mind of the Kaffir, of those of us who have given years of patient re-

search into his complex and subtle temperament, will South Africa be a safe home for the white woman until her sex is enfranchised. Women and men alike are combined in demanding those legislative measures, those restraining, pronibitive enactments which alone can root out this canker from the heart of tin* vast sub-continent, It is, indeed, not a question as to whether we shall for this crime hang the black man, or brand, or Ilog, or lyneh him; nor as to whether white women shall carry and use revolvers. Amid the many suggestions offered to day by the Press, both at home and abroad, we find not one pointing to the one true and effective remedy. Hang the guilty Kaffir we must, and do, but let us not neglect the guilty white man. Let the legislature of South Africa provide as far as possible for his suppres sion; let it aim at a future White South Africa ami a future Black South Africa, not at a future piebald South Africa! Let legislators and people reflect that a piebald South Africa would be a South Africa lost to England, gained to Af-