Nevertheless, it is not too late to mend. The estrangement between the two races is not irreconcilable. Europeans could, with advantage to the country, if they would only be men, show the Coloured people that the white man's rule is for the good of all, not for the privileged class only. If they grant the Coloured races equal opportunities, and do not penalize them on account of race or colour, they may see a happy realization of the dreams of the wisest statesmen that all classes should be contented, and should work together for the good of all. ==
Dr. Abdurahman's address provided material for leading articles in the South African papers during that and the following week, the criticisms, with very few exceptions, being more or less hostile. Not one of them, however, accused him of telling untruths; but they vehemently resented the tone of his speech, which they characterized as inflammatory. One daily paper showed some inconsistency in the matter. It upbraided the doctor for his attack upon oppressive legislation, and two days later, presumably after second thoughts, came out with a leading article urging Europeans to check their oppression of the blacks, and in their own interests deal justly by the native and coloured sections of the population. By the Natives it was said that under the present circumstances the speech could have been better for a little moderation; but they nevertheless pronounced it the clearest and most accurate representation of their condition under the Union Administration that was ever uttered on a South African platform.
It should be remembered that Dr. Abdurahman delivered his address at a time when the operation of the Land Act was raging like a plague in the Northern Provinces, and its victims included an old man of 119 years, respected by his white neighbours, with his nonogenarian wife, and his sons aged seventy and eighty.
From the point of view of the Native, it is satisfactory to note that such sincere white students of the native question as Dr. J. E. Mackenzie of Kimberley, and Rev. Chas. Phillips of Johannesburg, when asked to dissociate themselves from Dr. Abdurahman's charges of "cruelty, inhumanity," etc., refused to do so until it could be pointed out that he had spoken untruths; that, however, could more easily be done by a shrug of the shoulders than by adducing substantial facts.
Again, it is doubtful if any South African journalist possesses the experience of Mr. Vere Stent, the editor of the `Pretoria News'. Mr. Stent as a Kimberley youth spent many years in the de Beers mining compounds, working with Natives of nearly all African tribes. He was war correspondent in Ashanti and other parts of Africa, and also with the Republican troops under General Joubert in the Northern Transvaal in the 'eighties, and saw the Boers (whose primitive artillery could not dislodge a native tribe that was impregnably entrenched inside a cave) closing up the mouth of the cave and sealing up the masonry, then leaving the Natives, men, women and children, to smother to death with their belongings inside the cave. Further, Mr. Stent accompanied Cecil Rhodes to the Mattopo hills, where the late Colossus went unarmed to hold with the Matabele chiefs the pourparler which brought about the peace of Southern Rhodesia. In the siege of Mafeking, Mr. Stent was Reuter's war correspondent, and all things considered, it must be conceded that he is better qualified to write on a subject of this kind than all the critics of Dr. Abdurahman.
Commenting on Dr. Abdurahman's address, in the course of a leading article
Mr. Stent said:
== Here is no paid agitator, but a professional man and a scholar, who is addressing the Coloured workers of South Africa from the lowest Aborigine to the Bantu, from the Bantu to the Coloured tradesman, from the Coloured tradesman to the professional man, of whom there are a few like himself, a great mass of unenfranchised human beings that suffer under disabilities and actual and obvious injustice.
This vast proletariat is slowly cohering. Tribal feuds are being forgotten. The anti-colour laws of South Africa, and particularly of the north — which makes no difference between the savage Zulu fresh from his kraal and the stately Malay, between the Mashaangan and a man like Dr. Abdurahman himself — are welding together this vast human mass, in the flux of a single grievance, and that grievance, the disability put upon colour qua colour by the law.
What if some day, and sooner than we think, that great mass becomes mobile, learns to co-operate, and moves irresistibly together?
What, again, which is more likely, if its molecules realize the power of their inertia, if they simply decide quite constitutionally and without violence to do nothing, pending a remedy of their grievances?