Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

The same equality in the treatment of the dark races, whichever may be the white race concerned, is illustrated when we consider the condition of the African native in the different States into which South Africa is divided.

In the Cape Colony, where the majority of the white inhabitants are Dutch, though at present a British Colony, the position of the native is more favourable than in most other states. Theoretically the aboriginal native has in the Cape Colony almost the same rights as a white man; he is allowed to vote at elections, and theoretically he is allowed to sit on juries; though practically were he to attempt to substantiate his right to try cases in which white and black men were concerned by sitting on a jury he would probably be lynched; and in no case has a native ever been returned for Parliament. Yet his position, in spite of past laws and recently introduced laws—that he may not walk on the pavement, etc.—is far more satisfactory than in any other state.

In Natal, another British Colony, where the majority of the white inhabitants are English, the position of the aboriginal native is far less satisfactory, and that of the Asiatic as intolerable as it well can be. Large numbers of Indians from India have been deliberately imported on the plantations; but they are both hated and feared, and vigorous endeavours are made to prevent their trading or acquiring property in a land into which they have been deliberately introduced.

In the two Republics of the Free State and the Transvaal, the native has not the same theoretic rights as in the Cape Colony. He has neither the theoretic right to sit on juries or become a member of Parliament, which in theory, though not in fact, he has in the Cape Colony, nor is he recognized by the law as the equal of the white man. Practically, in the Transvaal he increases and multiplies as fast as elsewhere, if not faster, but his condition is in many ways far less desirable than in the Cape Colony.

On the other hand, it is in the purely British possessions of Matabele and Mashonaland that his condition is worst. Probably a larger number of natives have been exterminated in these territories during the last eight years than throughout the whole of the rest of South Africa by Dutch and English together in any like period. And it is here that, during the last few years, a determined and practical attempt has been made to introduce a modified form of slavery under the name of compulsory labour. The unhappy condition of the natives in these territories rises, however, not at all from the fact that the men dominating them are English, nor at all from the fact that the few genuine white settlers in the country are of a lower stamp than those elsewhere in South Africa, for this is emphatically not the case; but to the form of government.

A body of speculators, mainly non-resident in the land, chartered for commercial purposes and given despotic rule over a vast country and its people, must always be the form of rule most productive of evil to the subject people, whether the speculators so incorporated be French, Jewish, English, Belgian, or German. The rule of such a speculative and commercial body must necessarily be devoid of those personal sympathies with the ruled which may soften even the government of an individual tyrant; the conscience of such a body, if in its collective capacity it may be said to have one, must of necessity exercise itself merely in a conscientious striving to extract the largest possible percentage of interest for the corporate shareholders from the land and labour of the subject people. Under no possible circumstances can it exhibit those virtues of consideration and self-abnegation for the subject peoples which even a purely military conqueror might exhibit; and the rule of such a body must always remain the most oppressive for the ruled and the most demoralizing for the ruling people. To blame, primarily, the men who are the mere instruments in carrying out such a form of government would be unjust in the highest degree; and even these speculators and adventurers who form the ruling chartered body can only be blamed in a secondary degree, having but obeyed the instincts of their kind, which compels individuals of a certain class to employ their lives on earth in seeking to attain the largest amount of profit with the smallest amount of outlay to themselves. The primary blame must rest with that people which at the end of the nineteenth century can allow so hoary an anachronism as a commercial chartered company to usurp its place in the government of primitive peoples, and, from under the ægis of its flag, to stretch forth in safety the long, grasping fingers and the grotesque, greedy face of a Financial Chartered Company, which should long since have been relegated to the past among the extinct evils of the human race.

The native is best off and happiest in South Africa where, as amid the mountains of Basutoland, he still maintains a semi-independence. Both Dutchmen and Englishmen have carried on bloody wars against this people, but neither the Boers nor the English have been able wholly as yet to break up their tribal organization; and, guarded by their mountains and their courage, they are slowly absorbing modern civilization, in a manner more healthful than would be possible under a sudden dislocation of their social and moral system. How long this interesting phenomenon in national African development will be allowed by circumstances to continue, it is difficult to say. Should gold or precious stones be found in their territory, it would then be worth while expending many millions in destroying the people and taking complete possession of the land.

Thus, viewing the South African states as a whole, we find that the question of the condition of the native does not depend on the nationality of the governing power, or of the majority of the white inhabitants, but on other and more intricate causes.

The question is frequently asked one when visiting in Europe: "Which treats the African native the best, the Dutchman or the Englishman?" It is a question which awakens a certain silent amusement. It is as though, after spending ten years in Europe in the study of labour problems, one had been asked on one's return to South Africa: "Who treats his employees best, a Scotchman or an Englishman?" The true answer is, that the relation of white man to black, as of employer to employed, depends on far deeper and more complex conditions than any racial variety of the white man or the employer will explain.

The individual equation always tells for much; but, roughly speaking (one can but deal roughly with the delicate, complex, organic intricacies of social life), there are in South Africa, as a whole, four attitudes among white men as regards the native, which attitudes have no causative relation with the matter of race.