Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

In the complex problem of South Africa—the welding together of its peoples—we have the leading part to play; we are at least the cement which must bind into a whole the separate stones. And the main question before us is—how is this to be done?

For the moment, the incomparably more important question, involving, as it does, the world's greatest problem of how the primitive and aboriginal peoples are to be wrought into our social system, is almost obscured by the smaller and comparatively simple problem of the union of the two European folks of the country. That it is desirable may or may not be certain, but that it is inevitable and will take place is certain; how and when are the only questions left open to us.

We have before shown how mixed and interblended already are the two races throughout South Africa. Our so-called English colonies are largely peopled, and in parts almost exclusively, by Boers or their descendants, and the so-called Boer Republics, daily and hourly becoming more densely peopled by English and the nineteenth-century folk who come under their flag and speak their language, till the leading cities of these states are more intensely and really English than the majority of towns in the English colonies. Further, every week and month, as the descendant of the Boer obtains nineteenth-century culture, he learns the English speech, he adopts English methods of dress, and above all he imbibes English ideas. So that to-day in a South African drawing-room you are already unable to tell whether the grandfather and mother of the well-dressed English-speaking man or woman beside you were living on a Yorkshire moor or a Lancashire fen, or trekking in their ox-wagon across South African plains. Already, so mingled are our peoples, that the Free State Boer is often born and reared in the Colony;[76] his parents or his wife's live there; his children are being educated there; while his eldest son is studying medicine in Edinburgh and his daughter married to an Englishman. An English Johannesburg merchant, often born in Europe, may have taken a wife from Natal, have his children at school in Cape Town, and his business connections with the farmers of the Free State. Ten or fifteen years ago, the Boer and the Englishman, though living side by side, kept almost distinct in breed; to-day, throughout the colonies, Free State, and Transvaal, there are few large families some of whose members have not married into families of the other race.

This amalgamation is proceeding always with increasing frequency. In thirty years half the men in South Africa from the Transvaal to Cape Town would have to fight against their own parents in any war of race. And there is no prospect of this process of amalgamation being stayed; it must go on with always increasing velocity as education draws the races together.

In answer to the question, then, how are the Boer and English races to be amalgamated? we would reply: By one who in this case will work unfailingly and without fail—by Time! In fifty years, fight and struggle against it as we wish, there will be no Boer in South Africa speaking the Taal, save as a curiosity: only the great English-speaking South African people. This movement cannot be hindered, it cannot be stayed, it is inevitable.

But it may be said, "Of what use is this amalgamation which may take place only when we are in our grave? The average adult man cannot safely reckon on ten, much less on fifteen or twenty, years of life, and, if we wait for the natural process to complete its work, what chance is there for us to gain the kudos, fame and immortal honour which we desire to make out of the amalgamation of these peoples? Is it not a great chance thrown away? Must we not amalgamate them now—by force, by—well—diplomacy, by anything! You can't lose such a fine chance as this."

To which we would reply: "Yes, the life of the individual is short, but the life of the nation is long; and it is longer, and stronger, more vigorous and more knit, if it grow slowly and spontaneously than if formed by violence or fraud. The individual cannot afford to wait, but the nation can and must wait for true unity, which can only come as the result of internal growth and the union of its atoms, and in no other way whatsoever. For ages England has tried to fasten Ireland artificially on to herself, and after four hundred years it still hangs at her side a dislocated arm, almost as ready to drop off as when four hundred years ago Oliver Cromwell tried to plaster it on with blood and sword. A nation grows, but it cannot be manufactured. Were there no inherent mixture and tendency to sympathy in the different parts of our community, not only would it be impossible to unite them, but it would be undesirable. Were we divided into separate well-organized states without intermixture of peoples, and without that curious racial sympathy which does unite Cape colonials of the old and new races when they are brought together, they would be better left separate; would grow into healthier, stronger and truly greater communities, because they were separate, because they were able to develop their individual genius and gifts untrammelled by alien influences. Mere increase in size never means necessarily increase in vitality and beauty, as little with a country as with an individual man who, as he grows in bulk, so it be only an accretion of superficial adipose tissue, diminishes in vigour and vitality. The world's great nations have never been large; England, Greece, Rome, Holland, Switzerland, have all been nations, minute in territory and small in comparative numbers, and the hour of external expansion is often the hour of internal death."

The reason why the conception of the union of South African peoples is forced on us is that no germs of separate organic national life exist among us (except among the native states). The composition of our states is common, and the little walls that divide us are nothing when compared with the identity of the substance of which we are all internally composed.

If it be suggested: "But if there is so much internal unity, why should we not just hasten on the consummation of the unity by a little external and artificial welding together of the states, so gaining great honour ourselves and helping on a good, at least an inevitable, end?" our reply is that all vital union must be spontaneous and natural, and by attempting to hasten it by a year you may defer it for a century or altogether.

The half-grown youth and maiden, who are slowly and coyly being drawn together, must be left severely alone and untouched if their undeveloped inclinations are to grow into the interknitted sympathy and interest which make the adamantine and indestructible basis of a union that is vital and life-long. Kind aunts and mothers may wish to hasten the matter; they wish to have the pleasure of forming the match; they may even die without seeing the consummation they desire if they let it grow on along nature's delightful lingering ways; and they may succeed—either in rupturing the union altogether, and turning what was still a dream into the revolt of forced inclination—or they may succeed in what they wished, and may wed the still immature boy and girl, whose affections are not yet ripe and who physically are not yet strong enough for union; and the great, healthy fellowship of the ripe man and woman rejoicing in the fulness of freedom in a relation that was their own spontaneous choice, may be supplanted by the sickly fellowship of two souls who never forget that theirs was not a free choice and who, in place of a vital healthy offspring, bear the puny descendants of a premature mating.