Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

To one who wisely studies the history of the African Boer, nothing is more pathetic than this strange, fierce adherence of his to the past. That cry, which unceasingly for generations has rung out from the Boer woman's elbow-chair, "My children, never forget you are white men! Do always as you have seen your father and mother do!" was no cry of a weak conservatism, fearful of change; it was the embodiment of the passionate determination of a powerful little people, not to lose itself in the barbarism about it, and so sink in the scale of being. To laugh at the conservatism of the Boer is to laugh at a man who, floating above a whirlpool, clings fiercely with one hand to the only outstretching rock he can reach, and who will not relax his hold on it by so much as one finger till he has found something firmer to grasp.

That the conservatism of the Boer has in it nothing of the nature of mental ossification, and that he has preserved his pliability intact, is shown by the peculiar facility with which, when the time comes, the Boer leaps in one generation from the rear of the seventeenth-century thought and action to the forefront of the nineteenth.

The descendant of generations of old seventeenth-century Boers returns from his studies in Europe an enthusiast over all the latest inventions, an advocate of new ideas and an upholder of the newest fashions. In colonial life, it is a matter of common remark, none are more attracted to the new and the modern than the nineteenth-century educated Dutch, whether man or woman. It would almost seem as though that very dogged strength of character, which for ages has made him capable of retaining his hold upon the old, when the necessity for doing so passes, makes him equally resolute to grasp the new.

It has been said of the African Boer that he used his old flintlock gun for a generation after Europe had discarded it. That was true; but had he discarded it, it could only have been to adopt the assegai of the Kaffir. The day he was shown the Mauser, he recognized it and grasped it, and he has used it—not without effect!

In very truth, if one should speak frankly of what one most fears for the African Boer, it is a too rapid renunciation of his past, and an acceptance of the new without a sufficient and close examination. Were it possible that our words should reach him, fain would we apostrophise our old-world Boer and his wife thus:—"Hou maar vas, Tant' Annie! Hou maar vas, Oom Piet!"[74] Be not too ready to give up the past, we pray you. All that is new is not true, and that which comes later is not always an improvement on that which went before. We English have an old saying that if you keep your grandmother's wedding-dress sixty years, times will have come round and it will be in the fashion again. For the world goes round, O Oom and Tante!—unwilling as some of you may still be to believe it!—and that which was new becomes old, and that which was old becomes new again! Do not be too anxious to change your old customs, your simple modes of life, your deep faiths, till you know what you are exchanging them for: the world goes round; and the day may come when you, South Africa, and the world will have need of that which you now are so willing to throw away.

"Oom and Tante, I will whisper to you a secret! Here, in the very heart of this great material civilization of ours which swells itself so bravely and makes so much noise—here, in the heart of it, there are some of us men and women who are beginning to have our doubts of it; we are beginning to find it out. We may not be very many now, but we shall be more by and by; and we are beginning to question what all this vast accumulation of material goods in certain hands, this enormous increase in the complexity of the material conditions of life, necessarily leads to?

"We ask ourselves this:—Though we increase endlessly the complexity of our material possessions and our desires, does the human creature who desires and possesses necessarily expand with them? And the answer which comes back to us when we deeply consider this question is: No.

"There are times, when, looking carefully at this nineteenth-century civilization of ours, it appears to us much like that concretion which certain deep-sea creatures build up about themselves out of the sand and rubbish on the deep-sea floor, which after a time becomes hard and solid, and forms their grave. It appears to us that under this vast accumulation of material things, this ceaseless thirst for more and more complex material conditions of life, the human spirit and even the human body are being crushed; that the living creature is building up about itself a tomb, in which it will finally dwindle and die.

"We vary endlessly the nature and shape of the garments we wear; but the bodies for which they exist do not grow more powerful or agile; we multiply endlessly the complexity of our foods; but our digestions grow no stronger to deal with them; we build our houses larger and larger, but the span of life for inhabiting them grows no longer: the Bedouin of the Desert inhabits his tent as long: our cities grow vaster and vaster, but our enjoyment of life in them becomes no more intense: our states expand, but the vitality of their component parts rises no higher: we rush from end to end of the earth with the speed of lightning, but we love it no better than men who lived in their valley and went no further than their feet would carry them: we put the whole world under contribution to supply our physical needs, but the breath of life is no sweeter to us than to our forefathers whom the products of one land could satisfy.

"For the life of the human creature is but a very little cup in relation to the material goods of life; like the bell of a flower which can hold only one drop of dew, all which you pour in after that can only crush and drown it; it cannot contain it.