Now that there has been time for sober reflection, the one great fact that seems to emerge, after reviewing the situation in its many aspects, is the inadequacy of organic connection between the Europeans and the Natives. As it is, the needs of the people as a nation are apparently insufficiently expressed. The half-educated Natives, especially if they be those who have, or appear to have, turned their backs on the modes of life of their parents and ancestors, are the ones who succeed most in catching the eye of the European public. The masses, to whom in fact they belong, remain in the meantime practically inarticulate; they are, as Milton might have called them, but 'blind mouths.' Their wants and necessities, from their own peculiar points of view, are given expression to by no one. No one seems to have courage enough to champion their cause and to defend a system of life which, if evolution means anything whatever, must be of intrinsic value, from the mere fact that it exists after the countless generations the people have lived in the land. And yet the Natives, even the uncivilized masses, are, in the fullest sense of the words, British subjects, and, as such, entitled to at least the elementary rights of such subjects. Surely, among these rights (as with all European governments) is the ability to live in accordance with a system sanctioned probably by thousands of years of continuous usage,—the great, natural system of Africa.
Under the form of administration established for the Natives, numerous Magistrates have been appointed in various localities, whilst at least twice as many police stations have also been set up. The Police, however, were unwisely detached from the Magistrates; the unwisdom lay in the fact that the action was taken much too soon. This, in the main, with head offices in Pietermaritzburg, is the machinery for bringing the Chiefs and ordinary Native public into touch with the Government. Aided in subsidiary ways by Missionaries, teachers and other agencies, this is what has aimed at establishing a healthy organic connection between the one race and the other. Was it, is it, sufficient? So long as the great majority of Natives live under the tribal system, many of whose peculiar laws and customs have been embodied in a Code, given the force of law by Parliament, it does not seem that the link between the two people is as strong and effective as it ought to be. If the tribal system is to succeed, it should be given a chance. That chance, it would appear, should be to revive and encourage such unobjectionable and salutary forms of control as were customary under the old system. For
"Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean."
It is absurd to suppose that Magistrates and Police, Missionaries or educationists, the whole varying in their methods as their idiosyncrasies, can so dovetail into a more or less normal system of Native life as to supply such influences, necessary under the system, which Chiefs, assisted by councils and with extensive judicial and administrative functions, were formerly able to afford. In the first place, they have not the time to give that close, expert attention to purely Native matters, social and domestic, which Chiefs and their councils were able to do. In the second, supposing them to have the requisite knowledge, which it is safe to say is very far indeed from being the case, they have not the inclination. Their inclinations are in the direction of their own racial affairs, and rightly so. Thus, the Natives experience a need, a need which no Magistrates, Policemen, Missionaries or teachers are able to supply, even though further assisted by the Secretary for Native Affairs, Native High Court, or Supreme Chief. In consequence of an insufficiently intimate supervision of a thousand and one questions of interior economy, social and domestic, grievances of all descriptions arise and exist for months and years before they are removed. Such state of affairs is by no means peculiar to Natal, one finds it prevailing throughout South Africa, and apparently wherever else in the world a white race presides over the destinies of a coloured one.
The lesson here, then, not only for Natal but the Union of South Africa, seems to be just this. If the tribal system is to exist, and there are a thousand reasons why it should, it should be permitted to nourish and comfort the people more than it does. It should be recognized as a good,—to be maintained and reinforced, although in time doomed to be supplanted by something else,—not as an evil to be suppressed by European, i.e. alien agency, at the earliest possible date.
If the proposal above referred to be gone into, it would, we believe, be found to involve Europeans and Natives living, to a great extent, in separate and clearly-defined areas (always allowing for reasonable exceptions), each with substantially their own organization and controlling machinery, and each developing along lines that accord with common sense and are, at the same time, in harmony with the law of nature. It would also be found that the peoples would be firmly linked together from the mere fact of their independent existences being formally recognized for all purposes, say, in the Constitution itself. In that way and probably in that alone is it possible for such alarming relative positions between white and black, as one sees between Negroes and Europeans in America, to be avoided in South Africa, temporarily and possibly permanently. It would be just as well, too, to bear in mind that the ratio between white and black, so far from being about seven to one, as in the United States, is about one to four.[358] Hence it is not unlikely that the letting loose of such forces as are now operating with so much harm in North America will, before long, bring on a crisis of altogether exceptional severity in South Africa. With the ever-increasing European education we are giving the people, coupled with countless opportunities of increasing their material prosperity, it follows that only lapse of time is necessary for all sorts of demands to be put forward more or less justly, and this by a race that is being compelled against their natural instincts to take on the European character. They will, of course, demand the franchise and press for admission to all grades of the civil service, the bench, and the bar; show cause why existing restrictions in regard to firearms, passes, liquor, etc., etc. shall be removed; and so forth. And so the movement of independence, once the people have fairly broken away from the simple, strong and wholesome restraints of their own systems of life, will go on increasing in volume and intensity, until visions of Hayti and Liberia begin to rise before European imagination.
Thus, the price of our precipitate destruction of Native modes of life, or rather callousness in not subserving these modes to the best of our ability, not by way of amusement or sentiment, but because imperatively necessary for the welfare of the State and the interests of the Natives themselves, is that our own character, traditions, creed, language, etc., will ultimately be undermined and displaced by those of the people. As it is, they are ever laughing at our supreme and obviously suicidal folly. We are, in fact, not competing with the coloured races at all in the way races are supposed to do, and do, in accordance with the theory of evolution, we are rather carefully and continually loading the dice against ourselves. The inevitable result of not permitting free-play to the principle of natural selection will be that, from their greatly preponderating numbers, if for no other reason, they will ultimately survive, whilst the European community will cease as such to exist. No other result apparently can flow from a wanton ignoring of, or running counter to, the immutable principles of nature. Let us but continue as we are doing, to suppress and eradicate the habits, customs, languages, traditions, ideals, etc., etc., of the people, and our ultimate expulsion or absorption by the Bantu races who, in our present ascendancy, we so much neglect, will follow as surely as day follows night. And many are already beginning to see this.
It cannot too often be called to mind that our Natives differ vastly from the Negroes in America through having social systems, creeds, traditions and ideals of their own, all many, many generations old. Why does not the State use these precious assets more than it does? Why are they wilfully allowed to die out, through disuse or being ridiculed and defamed, far more rapidly than they need? As they are congenital, for what reason did the Creator endow the people with these various propensities, if not for some eminently necessary purpose? May man with impunity run counter to and thwart such purpose? Surely no one will contend that Nature must be undone because the people are so plastic as to be capable apparently of assuming the European character in all its attractiveness and defectiveness, as if that were the greatest and final effort of social evolution. Our motive should be to act in accordance with the desires of the majority of the people, and not to impose this or that restriction or condition mainly because, in our limited vision, it appears to be right.
One cannot but see how strongly the case of Dinuzulu supports these views. It shows that the people were in favour of his being appointed, with the assistance of a council or other advisory body, to protect their interests. They knew they were acting wrongly in dealing with him in 1906, but, in the absence of any other national representative, i.e. one of their own flesh and blood, it seemed there was no other course left. Zulus look at the world's affairs in the concrete. To do so in the abstract, as so common amongst ourselves, is foreign to their nature. That is why want of organic connection between their race and that of the white man takes the form of a request for the appointment of a person to act as intermediary, one to whom they can go with their troubles, and one who would lay these before the Government for favourable consideration.
What Dinuzulu himself said about this to the Governor has been briefly noticed. He also observed: "The Natives of India are governed and treated in a correct manner, and according to the law. The Boers, who have recently been at war with the British Government, have also been settled down ... but we who were subdued ... before the Boers and these people I refer to,[359] are not treated in the same manner as they have been treated. The laws are not the same. We cannot help feeling that we Zulu people have been discriminated against.... We are people who have no representatives in the affairs of the country, no one to speak for us,[360] and the laws of the country simply come over us by surprise.... We are all of us in the country like my fingers, each one has his own authority, and does what he thinks right in his own district.... We feel that, whilst we should own obedience and allegiance to the Government ... there should yet be somebody amongst us who represents the people."[361]