[22] It may be truly remarked that among the uncultured in Europe the same faith in ghosts and witches and even more appalling superstitions are rife; and this is certainly the case. But what is peculiar is that this unscientific attitude is formed in men often of unusual ability and high practical gifts.
[23] "I can read," said an intelligent woman in our presence, "but only the first of John and the fifth of Matthew." Who shall say how much she lost and how much she gained!
[24] This is a view we have heard seriously expressed by some Kaffirs.
[25] Kaffir: A loose term, derived from the Arabic, and sometimes employed to signify all dark-skinned Africans, but generally used in the Colony to designate this particular branch of the Bantu people.
[26] So considerable is the aptitude for abstract study displayed by the Bantu, that there are cases in which even Bantu females, preparing for the matriculation examination of the Cape University, are found not to be inferior to the average male Europeans sharing the same course of study.
[27] "I cannot understand you," said a thoughtful Bantu to us once; "a man can have his own cow and his own knife, but land is for all."
[28] There are a few Half-castes now in South Africa who are results of the union of Englishmen with the Boer Half-castes who are the result of slavery; and even a few who are the result of the union of Englishmen, principally soldiers, with the aboriginal natives. But the mass of Half-castes were in existence seventy years ago when the English first began to people the country. It need hardly be said that the preponderance of Half-castes who owe their origin to the Boer in no way indicates any superiority in the matter of sexual self-respect on the part of the English. There exists at the present day in our seaport towns, under the ægis of the English flag, and legislated for by the English Government, a traffic between English soldiers and sailors and the lowest class of Half-caste women, more anti-social, and, if it be possible, more degrading than any relation between the ancient slave-holders and their female slaves. Yet, as the women concerned in this traffic belong very largely to that unhappy class, not one in fifty of whom is fruitful, and whose children, when such are born, generally die in infancy, there is no very great effect produced on the population of the country; the thousands of Half-castes born every year being mainly the result of unions between Half-castes. It should be well borne in mind, in dealing with this subject, that so rapid is the rate of human increase under even tolerably favourable conditions, that four Half-castes born two hundred years ago, might easily be the progenitors of at least two hundred Half-castes at the present day, without any further admixture of European blood.
[29] Except in Johannesburg.
[30] (Added in 1896.) We are not referring to that which takes place when Englishmen, untrammelled by any public opinion, are absolutely dominant over a crushed native race, as in the territories north of the Limpopo to-day. We shall deal with this, to an Englishman most sorrowful matter, at some future date.
[31] We must, of course, be understood to speak generally. There are to be found, among the lowest class of our Half-castes, women of the most spotless sexual integrity and of irreproachable sexual pride. But one is undoubtedly justified in stating, that, generally speaking, the Half-caste is less sexually self-respecting than the white woman, or even than the black woman is till she has been totally severed from her own social surroundings and therefore practically reduced to much the same condition as the Half-caste. In her native state the Bantu woman is in many respects in a higher sexual position than large numbers of civilized females. Of the price paid for her at her marriage she receives nothing, it passes to her family. She not only supports herself by her own labour, but is the mainstay of the society in which she exists, largely feeding and clothing it by her exertions. Her position is probably much farther from that of the female who lives idly and parasitically on society through the sale of her sex functions than is that of most European women, married or single.