Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

Neither is the condition of the Half-caste woman analogous to that of the pure-blooded Bantu in our society. (We again ask no forgiveness for the length of this digression on Half-castism. It will be seen when we come to sum up, and combine the different portions of our South African problem, that no time spent in the consideration of this subject is wasted if it tends to throw any light on it. There are certain questions in South Africa on which no man is qualified to pass an opinion till he has studied as far as possible this matter, and made up his mind as to the direction in which action with regard to them is desirable.) However much the standard of sexual virtue among Bantus may differ from our own with regard to polygamy and other institutions, at least officially disapproved among us, officially approved among them, there does exist a standard, and it is often more closely adhered to than our own. We have it on the most irrefragable evidence that when, after war, a few years back, a regiment of English soldiers was stationed for many months in the heart of a subdued Bantu tribe, not only was the result of the contact between the soldiers and the native women nil as regarding illegitimate births, but it had been practically impossible for the soldiers to purchase women for purposes of degradation throughout the whole time.[30] Even when draggled under the feet of our savage civilization in European seaport towns, the Bantu woman seldom shows the same inveterate tendency to gravitate towards sexual self-abandonment which the Half-caste exhibits, preferring, in a majority of instances, the healthier and more equal sex-relationships with men of her own race, to prostitution under the foot of the white man at any price.

It is impossible that the Half-caste should possess that traditional standard and racial pride which tend to save the black woman from absolute degradation.[31] She necessarily feels it small disgrace to bring her children into the world as her own ancestors were brought; and better to her often is the most degrading relationship, which binds her children closer to the ancestral race she covets, than the most honourable which binds them to the ancestral race she scorns. No ancestral code of honour rises up in her case, strengthening her self-respect.

That almighty "we," the consciousness of which lies at the base of all organic virtue, and which in the perfect socialized man so extends the narrow consciousness of the little individual "I," that it inwraps at last not only all human races, but even broadens itself out till it covers the creatures not yet human, on the good old earth—this consciousness of unity with the living world about it, in the Half-caste often of necessity narrows itself, till nothing is left but an awfully isolated "I."

We all learn our first lesson in the school of human solidarity, and therefore in the true school of virtue, as we lie infants against our mother's breast, white against white, black against black; and, looking to the face above, know dimly we are not alone, it is I and thou—we. Our knowledge widens when we stand betwixt our father's knees, and feel the strong hands guarding us from harm—it is father, mother, and I who are the great human "we" for us. It increases through our contact with the brethren of our blood, who eat of the same bread with us; it spreads wider when in the sports and studies of youth we are linked with certain of our fellows identical with ourselves, and it takes a vast stride when, as adults, beyond the limits of kinship and personal contact, we recognize our union with that vast body of human beings who share our speech and our historic past; till the final expansion takes place when, beyond the limits of the nation, and even of the race, in the heart of the poet, the saint, or the sage, the fully-developed human creature, that little "we," which for the infant meant only "mother, breast, and I," and for the child, kindred; and for the youth, comradeship; and for the adult, nation and race,—so widens itself that it enfolds, not merely kindred or nation, but all sentient life, and the final goal of human morality is reached.

In this high school of the affections and therefore of morality, in which the last steps are attainable only because the first have been passed through, the Half-caste has but very partially been able to graduate. Often without a family, always without a nation or a race, a more or less solitary nomad, his moral training has been often only in that pseudo-school, where repression and fear but ill supply the place of the affections.

The flotsam and jetsam thrown up on the shores of life as the result of contact between the lowest waves of conflicting races, loved by none, honoured by none, where was he to learn those lessons in social feeling from which alone are capable of blossoming the highest social virtues?

In those countries in which the wild elephant is found, it is well known that when, as frequently happens, an individual is expelled from the herd, and compelled to wander alone, his nature frequently undergoes a change. Originally of the same character as the rest of the group, the mild and retiring nature of the social elephant leaves him. He not only attacks man and beast without provocation, but in his spleen rends branches from the trees, and ploughs up the earth with his tusks. He is then known as the rogue elephant, and, hated and feared by man and beast, if he does not in a few years die, worn out with his own ill temper, he is killed by the creatures he attacks.

The Half-caste is our rogue elephant. While he remains severed from our social herds, he does, and must, constitute an element of social danger.

Reviewing, thus, the popular verdict on the Half-caste, it must be granted that there do exist in his external conditions causes more than adequate to account for his low development in social feeling; and this, apart entirely from any necessary or congenital anti-social taint. The cowardice, inveracity, and absence of self-respect and self-restraint with which he is accredited, are exactly those qualities which ostracism, and lack of organic unity with the body social, must always tend to cultivate. Had he been begotten by Cherubim upon Seraphim and born before the throne of God, and then transported to a slave-compound, to grow up raceless, traditionless, and believing himself contraband, we should in all probability have had a being with the same anti-social characteristics we often have to-day. That amongst the most despised class of our labouring Half-castes we have all met individuals, not only of the highest integrity, but of the most rare moral beauty and of heroic and fully developed social feeling, does not impugn the theory of his unfortunate position. If you should sow human seed inside the door of hell, some of it would yet come up white lilies.

We are not able, it is true, dogmatically to assert that the mixture of blood in his veins may not have something to do with his mental and moral attitude. As we have before stated, at the end of the nineteenth century we are still too much in the dark as to the laws which govern inheritance to hazard dogmatic assertion. We are at present as little able to declare what will be the result of the mixture of two human creatures and how they will re-act upon each other in the offspring, as we are unable to assert what will result from the mixture of two unanalysed chemicals which we throw into the crucibles in our laboratories.