The South African Question

by Olive Schreiner

A GREAT NATIONAL CALAMITY,

and measures have been weightily discussed for forcibly excluding them, it will assuredly be clear, to all impartial and truth loving minds, that the problem which the Transvaal Republic has suddenly had to deal with is one of transcendent complexity and difficulty. We put it to all generous and just spirits, whether of statesmen or thinkers, whether the little Republic does not deserve our sympathy, the sympathy which wise minds give to all who have to deal with new and complex problems, where the past experience of humanity has not marked out a path—and whether, if we touch the subject at all, it is not necessary that it should be in that large, impartial, truth-seeking spirit, in which humanity demands we should approach all great social difficulties and questions?

We put it further to such intelligent minds as have impartially watched the action and endeavors of the little Republic in dealing with its great problems, whether, when all the many sides and complex conditions are considered, it has not manfully and wonderfully endeavored to solve them?

It is sometimes said that when one stands looking down from the edge of this hill at the great mining camp of Johannesburg stretching beneath, with its heaps of white sand and debris mountains high, its mining chimneys belching forth smoke, with its seventy thousand Kafirs, and its eighty thousand men and women, white or colored, of all nationalities gathered here in the space of a few years, on the spot where[82] fifteen years ago the Boer’s son guided his sheep to the water and the Boer’s wife sat alone at evening at the house door to watch the sunset, we are looking upon one of the most wonderful spectacles on earth. And it is wonderful; but, as we look at it, the thought always arises within us of something more wonderful yet—the marvelous manner in which a little nation of simple folk, living in peace in the land they loved, far from the rush of cities and the concourse of men, have risen to the difficulties of their condition; how they, without instruction in statecraft, or traditionary rules of policy, have risen to face their great difficulties, and have sincerely endeavored to meet them in a large spirit, and have largely succeeded. Nothing but that

CURIOUS AND WONDERFUL INSTINCT

for statecraft and the organization and arrangement of new social conditions which seem inherent as a gift of the blood to all those peoples who took their rise in the little deltas on the northeast of the continent of Europe, where the English and Dutch peoples alike took their rise, could have made it possible. We do not say that the Transvaal Republic has among its guides and rulers a Solon or a Lycurgus; but it has to-day, among the men guiding its destiny, men of brave and earnest spirit, who are seeking manfully and profoundly to deal with the great problems before them in a wide spirit of humanity and justice. And, we do again repeat, that the strong sympathy of all earnest and thoughtful minds, not only in Africa, but in England, should be with them.

Let us take as an example one of the simplest elements of the question, the enfranchisement of the new arrivals. Even those of us, who with the present writer are sometimes denominated “the fanatics of the franchise,” who hold that that state is healthiest and strongest, in the majority of cases, in which every adult citizen, irrespective of sex or position, possesses a vote, base our assertion on the fact that each individual forming an integral part of the community has their all at stake in that community; that the woman’s stake is likely to be as large as the man’s, and the poor man’s as the rich; for each has only his all, his life; and that their devotion to its future good, and their concern in its health is likely to be equal; that the state gains by giving voice to all its integral parts. But the ground is cut[85] from under our feet when a large mass of persons concerned are not integral portions of the State, but merely temporarily connected with it, have no interest in its remote future, and only a commercial interest in its present. We may hold (and we personally very strongly hold) that the moment a stranger lands in a country, however ignorant he may be of its laws, usages, and interests, if he intends to remain permanently in it, and incorporates all his life and interest with it, he becomes an integral part of the State, and should as soon as possible be given the power of expressing his will through its legislature; but the

PRACTICAL AND OBVIOUS DIFFICULTY