News and Comment- from Everywhere.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 14, 9 June 1911, Page 14

News and Comment- from Everywhere.

NEMESIS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

WHITE WOMEN REAPING WHAT WHITE MEN HAVE SOW r N.

Prances Bancroft contributes (says " Review of Reviews ") a notable article to the ' : Englishwoman " for March on " White Women in South Africa." Sho admits—nay, porhaps, even exaggerates —the so-called black peril, but she points out that the white race is solely responsible . —

" Even during tho many native wars and rebellions following upon the settlement of the whites in the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony, tho black man created for himself a sense of amazement and admiration throughout the civilised world by his magnanimity in invariably sparing the wives, sisters, and daughters of his powerful enemy, the strictist measures being enforced among these savage warriors for the safeguarding inviolate of the honour and lives of all white women prisoners." Why, then, is there any danger to white women now in the time of peace ? The answer is that the white men have taught the black that no woman is safe from outrage when man is strong : — 4i This debauchery and wholesale prostitution of the black woman by the Etiropean pioneer has for many years flourished, unchecked by a single legislative act, throughout the new territories under British, Crown Colony, and Dutch Governments." Hence the black man is now meting out to the white woman what tho white man has meted out to the black woman all those years. Miss Bancroft says : — " Hang the giulty Kaffir we must, and do, but let us not neglect the guilty white man. L.eb the legislature of South Africa provide as far as possible for his suppression ; let. it aim at a future White South Africa and a future Black South Africa, not at a future jjicbald South Africa." Her other suggestion is that women should bo enfranchised : — '• Her deprivation of the coveted power to vote amounts to a public proclamation of the fact that her status is on a par with the status of the ordinary black man, and below the par of the status of the black man voter. On tho solo point of inferiority the franchise of tho white women of South Africa cannot come too soon."