Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

Without exception the writers, from whatever part of the world, understood from how profoundly sympathetic a standpoint their condition had been considered. It was therefore the more surprising when one Englishman in South Africa stated that the paper was intended as an attack on the men of mingled colour.

So far from this being the case, it has always appeared to me that no element in our complex South African community is under so deep an obligation to any other as is the white man racially to the Half-caste. The obligation to cultivate and aid him to overcome the difficulties of his position appears to me morally imperative, and, if possible, more so than in the case of the pure-bred natives. From my earliest childhood a curious and almost painful sympathy has attracted me toward this sad son of man, from the time when, hardly more than an infant, I first heard pure-blooded Bantu servants laugh scornfully at their half-coloured fellows; and yet more when I noted men and women of refinement and culture insulted and made to shrink within themselves by those immeasurably their intellectual inferiors, but who had no trace of the blood of the African race.

To-day the question of the mixture of totally distinct human breeds is one which practically touches South Africa as but a few other countries. In the century which is coming it will be the world's question. Already to-day the swift means of inter-communication and the exploitation of Asia and Africa by European speculators and politicians are breaking down all those walls which for ages have kept man of distinct breeds more or less geographically distinct, and which through the æons of the past have made possible that slow differentiation of the different branches of humanity into stable and fixed varieties. Before the twentieth century is half over, the Mongolian, the Aryan, and the African will be found everywhere inhabiting the same laps of earth and forming parts of the same bodies politic. The Chinaman will be found in every land, the European will have interfiltrated throughout Africa, and the question, which to-day is a practical question for South Africa and a few other countries, will be the master question of the race.

Is it possible, and, if possible, desirable, that the different distinct human breeds, whom it has taken nature countless ages to elaborate in her workshop and turn out in stable form, should, when living side by side as parts of the same social organism, remain distinct?

Is the race of man on earth, in the future, as in the present, to consist of distinct types, or is the whole body of humanity to become racially one fused uniform mass?

To these questions of so weighty an import to humanity, only the ages that are coming can yield an adequate answer; but they are undoubtedly questions of master import to the race.

This one thing at least is certain—that the conviction that it is undesirable that any two distinct human breeds should mingle does not necessarily imply superiority or inferiority in either.

In my kennels I may have greyhounds and mastiffs, poodles and lap-dogs, bulldogs, St. Bernards. Because I desire to keep them distinct I do not therefore hold one breed as superior to the other. My greyhound may not be more interesting and valuable than my puppy lap-dog, or the poodle than the bull. Each may have his own charm and purpose, and if I refuse to mingle them recklessly, it is not because I value any so little, but all so much. It may indeed be said that by mingling my greyhounds with my bulldogs I might at last hit upon a new creature having virtues possessed by neither parent form. This also is true. But shall I move carelessly where my varieties are each so fair and desirable in my eyes in their own way?

It may be that the ideal human creature, for whom the centuries wait, may yet be found a human, half Chinaman, half Aryan, or African-Aryan and Mongolian blend: but the more valuable and rare each human breed is, the more does one shrink from destroying it where all is so dark.

Vandals may in a few hours wreck the Gothic cathedral which it was the work of countless generations to raise; and the rare and multiform human varieties, which it has taken nature countless millenniums to elaborate and fix in her workshop, and which add so greatly to the variety and charm of earth, may in a few generations be destroyed for ever. It is ill destroying the artistic work of man or nature till we know that from its destruction we are able to rear up something more worthy.