The difficulty of obtaining labour has hampered the exploitation of the mineral resources of the colony, and during recent years Cape boys have been imported in considerable numbers. The Germans, however, have only themselves to blame for this shortage, as in decimating the Hereros they destroyed the best material for developing the resources of the country. Forced labour was tried with the Herero and Hottentot captives after the wars, and even in 1913 the police were kept busy collecting stray natives and apportioning them to masters in need of servants.
Efforts have been made by the mining authorities lately to attract more labourers from Ovamboland by effecting improvements in respect to the feeding, clothing, housing, and transport of men, and in the hospital arrangements, and the standard wage has been raised 25 per cent. With a more sympathetic administration and an influx of settlers who understand the native, the problem of the native labour supply might find a partial solution, but it will probably continue to be a source of anxiety for some time to come. In many parts of the Union of South Africa the farmers are confronted with a similar difficulty.
Will South-West Africa ever become a manufacturing country? Certainly there is no prospect of it at present. The requisites for producing manufactured articles, such as a big market, cheap sources of mechanical power, and cheap and efficient labour, are all wanting, and they are not likely to be available, at any rate in the present generation. Such demand for manufactured goods as there is can easily be met by importation from Europe. The lack of a good port has been a drawback to German enterprise, but Walvis Bay will now take its proper place as the natural harbour of the country, and its importance is certain to grow.
In regard to the immediate future of the country, Mr. A. Wyatt Tilby has suggested recently in the Nineteenth Century that the land required by the Union Government of South Africa for the bijwoners or “poor whites” lies now at the very door of the Union in Namaqualand and Damaraland. But as we have shown, this is not the country for the small farmer. Very substantial help would have to be forthcoming from the Government before the unenterprising bijwoners could make a living out of the soil. Many parts of South Africa are far more suitable for close settlement schemes than Namaqualand and Damaraland. Germany made many efforts to get the right kind of settler into the country. To the 22,000 soldiers who took part in the native wars the Government made an offer of £300 to each man who wished to establish himself as a farmer in the colony. Only 5 per cent. remained.
Experience has shown that no scheme of colonisation has much chance of success by which men are bribed to become settlers: it is only by making it worth their while to settle, by affording encouragement to energy, initiative and resource, that the right stamp of men are attracted.
To sum up the facts then and state our conclusions; South-West Africa is a country rich in mineral wealth, that needs exploitation; it is a fine grazing country that will carry hundreds of thousands of cattle; it is a comparatively poor agricultural land, whose principal need is irrigation; and it shows no sign of becoming a manufacturing country even on a small scale. The white population will remain scanty in proportion to the area of the country.
That in the course of the next twenty-five years it will become the home of 25,000 white families is as much as a reasoned optimism can expect. The intrusion of the unexpected in the shape of a discovery of valuable minerals in payable quantities would, of course, upset our calculations, but all that we can do is to point out the probable result of present conditions.
A word may be added about the disposal of the country. Sir Harry H. Johnston has raised the question in a recent article contributed to the Edinburgh Review. He expresses the opinion that “at the present time it would not be advisable unduly to increase the area under the Union Government of South Africa where it embraces a large native population,” since “the British and Dutch colonists of temperate South Africa are unwilling to concede to their black and brown fellow-countrymen that equality before the law which England with her larger imperial experience regards as the necessary basis of peaceful government”; so he suggests that the “more negro portions of which are Ovamboland and northern Damaraland,” should, “at any rate for the present, either be governed by the Administrator of Rhodesia or by some other British official appointed from London.”
Without going into the matter of the fitness of the people to govern the natives, it can hardly be expected that South Africans would view such a proposal with equanimity should it be made with any seriousness. To South Africa was given the task of conquering the territory, and in addition to the fact that the country will appropriately “round off the Union,” powerful sentimental considerations will have to be taken into account. A country in which Afrikanders have fallen in war and have been buried will have more than a material value in the eyes of Africa’s sons. For the first time in history British and Dutch have fought side by side on African soil to overthrow the common enemy, and the land won amid such conditions will always have peculiar value to those who have made sacrifices to secure it. No: South-West Africa must drop into its natural place as an integral part of the Union of South Africa.