For myself I found it very hard to form an opinion between the two, I do believe most firmly in education. I should cease to believe in any thing if I did not believe that education if continued will at least civilize. I can conceive no way of ultimately overcoming and dispelling what I must call the savagery of the Kafirs, but by education. And when I see the smiling, oily, good humoured, docile, naturally intelligent but still wholly uneducated black man trying to make himself useful and agreeable to his white employers, I still recognise the Savage. With all his good humour and spasmodic efforts at industry he is no better than a Savage. And the white man in many cases does not want him to be better. He is no more anxious that his Kafir should reason than he is that his horse should talk. It requires an effort of genuine philanthropy even to desire that those beneath us should become more nearly equal to us. The man who makes his money by employing Kafir labour is apt to regard the commercial rather than the philanthropic side of the question. I refuse therefore to adopt his view of the matter. A certain instinct of independence, which in the eyes of the employer of labour always takes the form of rebellion, is one of the first and finest effects of education. The Kafir who can argue a question of wages with his master has already become an objectionable animal.
But again the education of the educated Kafir is very apt to “fall off.” So much I have not only heard asserted generally by those who are antikafir-educational in their sympathies, but admitted also by many of those who have been themselves long exercised in Kafir education. And, in regard to religious teaching, we all know that the singing of psalms is easier than the keeping of the ten commandments. When we find much psalm-singing and at the same time a very conspicuous breach of what has to us been a very sacred commandment, we are apt to regard the delinquent as a hypocrite. And the Kafir at school no doubt learns something of that doctrine,—which in his savage state was wholly unknown to him, but with which the white man is generally more or less conversant,—that speech has been given to men to enable them to conceal their thoughts. In learning to talk most of us learn to lie before we learn to speak the truth. While dropping something of his ignorance the Savage drops something also of his simplicity. I can understand therefore why the employer of labour should prefer the unsophisticated Kafir, and am by no means sure that if I were looking out for black labour in order that I might make money out of it I should not eschew the Kafir from the schools.
The difficulty arises probably from our impatience. Nothing will satisfy us unless we find a bath in which we may at once wash the blackamoor white, or a mill and oven in which a Kafir may be ground and baked instantly into a Christian. That much should be lost,—should “fall off” as they say,—of the education imparted to them is natural. Among those of ourselves who have spent, perhaps, nine or ten years of our lives over Latin and Greek how much is lost! Perhaps I might say how little is kept! But something remains to us,—and something to them. There is need of very much patience. Those who expect that a Kafir boy, because he has been at school, should come forth the same as a white lad, all whose training since, and from long previous to his birth, has been a European training, will of course be disappointed. But we may, I think, be sure that no Kafir pupil can remain for years or even for months among European lessons and European habits, without carrying away with him to his own people, when he goes, something of a civilizing influence.
My friend the Wesleyan Minister, who by his eloquence prevailed over me at Fort Beaufort in spite of my weariness and hunger, took me to Healdtown, the Institution over which he himself presides. I had already seen Kafir children and Kafir lads under tuition at Capetown. I had visited Miss Arthur’s orphanage and school, where I had found a most interesting and cosmopolitan collection of all races, and had been taken by the Bishop of Capetown to the Church of England Kafir school at Zonnebloom, and had there been satisfied of the great capability which the young Kafir has for learning his lessons. I had been assured that up to a certain point and a certain age the Kafir quite holds his own with the European. At Zonnebloom a master carpenter was one of the instructors of the place, and, as I thought, by no means the least useful. The Kafir lad may perhaps forget the names of the “five great English poets with their dates and kings,” by recapitulating which he has gained a prize at Lovedale,—or may be unable some years after he has left the school to give an “Outline of Thomson’s Seasons,” but when he has once learned how to make a table stand square upon four legs he has gained a power of helping his brother Kafirs which will never altogether desert him.
At Healdtown I found something less than 50 resident Kafir boys and young men, six of whom were in training as students for the Wesleyan Ministry. Thirteen Kafir girls were being trained as teachers, and two hundred day scholars attended from the native huts in the neighbourhood,—one of whom took her place on the school benches with her own little baby on her back. She did not seem to be in the least inconvenienced by the appendage. I was not lucky in my hours at Healdtown as I arrived late in the evening, and the tuition did not begin till half-past nine in the morning, at which time I was obliged to leave the place. But I had three opportunities of hearing the whole Kafir establishment sing their hymns. The singing of hymns is a thoroughly Kafir accomplishment and the Kafir words are soft and melodious. Hymns are very good, and the singing of hymns, if it be well done, is gratifying. But I remember feeling in the West Indies that they who devoted their lives to the instruction of the young negroes thought too much of this pleasant and easy religious exercise, and were hardly enough alive to the expediency of connecting conduct with religion. The black singers of Healdtown were, I was assured, a very moral and orderly set of people; and if so the hymns will not do them any harm.
For the erudition of such of my readers as have not hitherto made themselves acquainted with the religious literature of Kafirland I here give the words of a hymn which I think to be peculiarly mellifluous in its sounds. I will not annex a translation, as I cannot myself venture upon versifying it, and a prose version would sound bald and almost irreverent. I will merely say that it is in praise of the Redeemer, which name is signified by the oft-repeated word Umkululi.
ICULO 38.
Elamashumi matatu anesibozo.
Ungu-Tixo Umkululi,
Wenza into zonke;
Ungu-Tixo Umkululi,
Ungopezu konke.
Waba ngumntu Umkululi,
Ngezizono zetu;
Waba ngumntu Umkululi,
Wafa ngenxa yetu.