The Springboks and their Worries

Cue (NZERS), Issue 18, 28 February 1945, Page 16

The Springboks and their Worries

THERE is no doubt that most New Zealanders were brought up with ' the firmly established illusion that it was only right and proper that New Zealand should be the first in the world to greet the dawn of each new day-r-and that in other ways as well the Dominion was ahead of the rest of the world. If it is true that island-peoples always tend to become parochial, then we were a shining example. Most of us know that now. s

In consequence, it 'was always a refreshing interlude, in more ways than one, when the Springboks periodically arrived just to remind! us that we were not alone in being able to handle a Rugby ball. Apart from these regular visits,’ their three-four-one scrum, and their knack of flicking that 9 ball from their scrum-half to their outside-centre, we did not learn much /about our guests or their manner of life back in (South Africa. Some of them did not even speak our language—which somehow did not iseem quite right considering how similar they were to ourselves in other respects—and their unconscious reaction to certain aspects of New Zealand social life occasionally puzzled ns a little.

However, since those distant days, the war has done much to bring Springboks and Kiwis toward a more intimate , understanding of each other.

For it is not easy either to arrive at conclusions or to pass opinions about South Africa. Since the middle of last century visitors from Great Britain and elsewhere have been attempting this, until today South Africa hais possibly been more written about than any other country in the world, but there are still as many divergent opinion's-as there are problems in the country. High-veldt

Boers (Afrikaans for ’’farmer”), East London sheep^farmors, Durban business-men, Cape wine-producers, members of Parliament, and a host of others, all have separate and distinct viewpoints to be considered. Because of the complexity of South Africa’s problems, anv article written about it must always .be '.tinged with personal opinion; but there can be no doubt that the best way to achieve full and friendly understanding of the 'Springbok is to try to appreciate the difficulties which he f aces. '

Any map shows the size of the Union of South Africa clearly enough, but what maps do not show 2is the amount of useless desert and waste land included in that vast area. Only recently a South African Minister stated that five per cent, of the Union was under agriculture out of a possibly arable fifteen per cent. Fifteen per ceil? is not much cither, and. the various problem of wholesale soilerosion, which no one has yet succeeded in handling effectively, is reducing this percentage yearly. It is asserted that the Transkei. hitherto one of the most fertile parts of the Union, will be a desert within seven years unless drastic action is taken. And this applies generally.

The Union consists of four States--, the Cape Province, the Orange JEree State, the Transvaal, and the Natal, with a total white population, of about two million people, of which sixty percent. are of Afrikaans, and the remainder of British descent. Incidentally, in the s army this same ratio applies. Apart from the whites; there' are at least eight . million natives in iSoiuth Africa, not including the coloured population of the Cape or the Indian population of Nata* (who are referred -to later), l« e

a five population of Bantu stock is ?f a increasing and, naturally enough the two million whites see 1 their own minority a social, industrial and economic problem which is vpnrlv becoming more desperate, and Cl so far shown no sign's of solution. Viewed from this angle it is easier to discern the fundamental reasons for the- ’’colour-consciousness” of the Springboks and, 'in truth, to sympathise with their position. ( But less easy it is, at the outset, to understand the reasons for a lively friction which still persists between certain elements of the Afrikaans population (certain elements only) and South Africans of British descent, a friction which, at the outbreak of this war. threatened to caulse domestic trouble on the lines of what occurred during the last war. Unnecessarily • bitter feelings were aroused in the Orange Free State and Transvaal, while in Johannesburg enlisted troops were ’’beaten up” in front of the City Hall.

However, underlying reasons begin to-’ emerge when we take a glimpse at South African history which, until litlte more than one hundred years ago, .was a history of the birth and growth of the Afrikaans people, an independent sturdy folk, not Dutch, not Huguenot-French, not German, but a welding together of these and other European races- on a Dutch' foundation, carefully (moulded and developed over three centuries of South African 'environment into a new race of people, justifiably proud of their distinctive history, language and culture. The (South African of British descent,, with little more than one hundred years at most of - South. African association behind him, has sometimes been inclined to disregard or to tide rough-shod over ufis mos t patriarchal culture of his Afrikaans neighbour, with unfortunate results. mi'n Provide but one example, since iblO, under the new constitution, agoutli Africa has been bilingual, Afrikaans and English holding equal tmportance as < official languages w A? n ?h° u t the country. But, not- , t standing this, today many Afrianors allege that they are in hp r^ Cr losing their valued cultural lta Se, for though most Afrikaaners

learn English at an early age, far too* few South Africans of British descent attempt to learn Afrikaans. Be this as it may. the result has been a sort of Afrikaans cultural-revival in the universities of (Stellenbosch. Pretoria, and elsewehere, with an all-out attempt to establish a place for Afrikaans culture at least as prominent in South African life as the more recently introduced, . though betterknown British culture. : As might be expected, this 'effort on the part of the universities and other ' organisations to check -the encroachment of the English language

and Anglicized way-of-life at the expense of .Afrikaans, has. led not only to an antipathy * towards anything culturally British but in more extreme cases has tended to establish a revival of anti-British feeling, i which some of the teachers produced by these universities would appear,, perhaps quite unintentionally, to be fostering. ■ r . It is true that, for the most part,, a visitor finds nothing but the wannest hospitality when he stays on any Boer farm out on the veldt. These were the Afrikaaners who ? fought r against the British during the Boer War. whose wives were placed in concentration camps and whose homes and holdings were burned and

destroyed by our troops. Today, these ’’old originals” have long forgotten any grudge they may well have harboured against the British ’ ■uitla.nders,” and. with typically canny realism, are among the first to appreciate. the honoured (Position which the Union holds in the British „Oonmonwealth of Nations. oSomo fought alongside our fathers in the last war, and a great many of their sons are over here with us now. ' Some old Boers there are who still envisage an Independent Afrikaans history has been dotted with small republics from time to time, due to the Afrikaaner s inherent dislike of any form of control, ami his ceaseless striving for isolation and complete independence. Such oldtimers as these have given their support to the Ossewer Brandwag, an anti-British, and in effect pro-Naz*, organisation which seeks to uproot anything and everything non-Afri-kaans from South Africa. But most of the support which this organisation enjoys comes from a more recent generation, one which knew little, if anything* of the Great War, and nothing about the Boer War, and the causey of this can be located m the culture-revival already 7 referred to and the • influence of ardent, if misguided, Teachers in many Afri-kaans-speaking schools, where English is taught as a foreign tongue. -Some writers, such as the <South

African, John Galpin, have alleged that inside the Union there are no South Africans: that only outside the country does cue, find South Africans, while inside everyone . is either -an Afrikaaner or a Britisher. But now-a-days in iSouth Africa a visitor finds this statement far from true. Today

lie soon learns that the Union’s war effort isi a truly national — South African —undertaking, with AMkaancrs contributing toward it just as much as those of British descent. Irrespective of race, people in South Africa are learning to understand each other as never before, and one soon gathers the impression that the Ossewer Brandwag as a disturbing influence is, perhaps, over-estimated"; Certainly South Africans are at last coming to realise that the world in general regards them all ats one people, indivisibly forged together by circumstance, as heir to some of the greatest possibilities*—and • problems —which confront any country in th e world >to day. Their army in the field is, in truth, a South African army in the full. sense of the term, and its members will ever have just pride, in remem- 5 ; bering themselves, not as Afrikaaners or anything else, but as real South Africans. , • ~ Some there are, perhaps, who. like ourselves can stand back and watch, who -detect in this needless toetreading between two' sections of the white. population, an attempt by both sides to divert their own attention; from the overshadowing spectre of the real racial problem, that of the natives and coloureds and Indians, to which no one yet knows the answer. Certain it is that when this, more serious matter, which threatens the whole future of 'South- Africa; reaches a climax, as it probably will within the next ten er fifteen years, the white population there will dissolve its little differences x overnight, and united it will be compelled to. • provide the solution for an occurrence without precedent in world history;.

To be Concluded.