LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8107, 30 March 1906, Page 3

LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

THE INDIAN DANGER

In no part of Great Britain's Colonial Empire ia it more difficult to define the place which the peoples of the' Eastern nations shall occupy than in South Africa, in no other firitish territory have such varied interests to be conciliated; nowhere the road to a satisfactory solution so encumbered by the acts and promises of the past, says a cor . respondent in a contemporary. Here it is not a case, as in Australia, of simply keeping the door as tightly closed as possible. The advance guard of Asia has already gained admittance. There are a quarter of a million of Asiatics south of the Zambesi to day. The Mahommedan population in the Cape is a legacy of the days when the ties between the sub-continent, and the East were more closely knit; the Indians in Natal and the Chinese on the Sand are sequels to the crisis which was produced in the labor supply of the oountry by the rapid development of industries in a land where the natives had not been accustomed to work. Natal to-day complains of the burden of the British Indian. But many colonials forget that in an address presented to Sir George Grey, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope in 1855, by the poration. there appeared this] passage:— •' . . We believe that Your Excellency will find occasion to sanction the introduction of a limited number of coolie or other laborers from the East in aid of the new enterprises on the uoast lands. . . for the fact cannot be ton strongly borne in mind that on the success or failure of these rising enterprises depend* the advancement of the colony or its oertain and rapid decline." This appeal effectual. Sanction was given, and on November 16th, 1860. the first coohe ship appeared on. the Bluff. Five and forty years have slipped past, aud Natal is prospering. The white population has doubled, trade has increased many fold, land is more valuable. there is a fly in the honey. The "limited number of coolios" Droved a veritable mustard seed. To-day these are more Indians than white people in Natal. Between the census of 1891 and that of 1904 the Asiatic population increased 144.88 , per- cent.: : For .every .100 .Indians: in the colony i"n,4891 vthere are jiow . 24,483. In Natal to-day there are 79,000 whites, but the Asiatic's number 100.918. In the coastal colonies of South Africa there are Immigration Restriction Acts, on the lines of those in force ia Australia and New Zea-, land, keeping out the Asiatic by insisting on applications for admission being made in some European language. But the back door has been left open. Natal has to import Indian labour on the conditions imposed by the Indian Government. The contracts provide that on the termination of the five years' indentures the coolies may remain in the country on nay men t of £3 per annum. Only 10 per cent, return to India. Every year the free Indian population is swelled by Indians who have completed their indentures. and of the 100.000 Indians in Natal to-day, 70,000 are free. The Transvaal has been wiser in her generation. The indentures of the Chinese miners terminate in China, and if the experiments were given up to-morrow not one Chinaman; .brought over under the Labour Ordinance would be allowed to remain in the, colony. Natal's love for the Indian coolie la a menace' to white Soutjh Africa. The trust which imports th»m has just completed the requisitions for 19,000 made in 1902. To-day there are applications for 33,000 more. At this rat** there will be 250,000 more Asiatics in Natal in 1915. That the Indian has been of value to Natal may be admitted. Old inhabstßnts remember the day when a cabbage was 2? 6d in the Maritzburg market. To-day the Indian market gardener supplies the colony with cheap fruit and vegetables. The Indian makes .the tea and sugar plantations a success, he works on the farms, and in the coal mines, he Berves in hotels, run stores, has monopolised the Kaffir trade—in fact, the British Indian is beginning to run Natal. OUSTING THE WHITE MAN. In the Cape and the Transvaal the Asiatic problem is always present —especially in the latter. Lord Selborne as absolutely contradicted the statement that there are more Asiatics in the Transvaal to-day than there were before the war. appear, however, to be more traderß. From inquiries made in different towns I find that the Asiatic invasion is afteoting the trades of a higher class than formerly. The hawker of to-day is the small etorkeeper of to-morrow. At the National Convention at Pretoria it was stated that the turnover at the Indian stores in Potohefstroom in one year was £94,000, and that in consequence of this competition thirteen or fourteen white stores had shut down. In Pietersburg before the war fourteen licenses were issued to Asiatics. To-day there are ninety-one. In Johannesburg today tbers are only 1,293 Asiatic tiading l.censes in existence against 1,684 on December 31st, 1903. But in 1903 all the Asiatics held bawkers licenses, whereas to-day there are but 1,202 hawkers. I agree that if a million Asiatics were distributed over the oountry we should have cheaper food, better servants, more hard-working laborers. But there are two objections whioh outweigh any advantages. If you allow the oountry to be flooded with the Eastern peoples, what is to be the future of the millions of natives. You cannot stop the black masses growing; you cannot turn them out to make room for your Asiatics. They will not die out like the Indians of Amerioa or the aborigines of Australia. In the second place, the inevitable result of a large Asiatic population must be a smaller demand for white men. And this would mean a diminishing trade with the Empire. It is an economic axiom that the white man consumes more than the Asiatic. Fill up Sooth Africa with the brown and yellow races, and her trade in proportion to population will rapidly

| drop. South Africa is not a fertile country. It will never support an unlimited population. Let it contain as many whites as possible. "If we are," Lord Milner said, to the first Municipal Cougress in Johannesburg in lyo3. "strongly and successfully to resist the influx of Asiatics into this, country in a form in which it may endanger our civilisation without appreciably relieving the over population of other countries, I say again let us take the strong unassailable grounds of the social and econotnio reasons which exist for opposing that immigration, and do not let us base our opposition purely on the weak grounds of color. It ib a matter of the very widest importance. The time may come when this colony, and South Africa generally, may wish to enter into relations, commercial or other, with the rulers of the great Asiatic States. . . . It is possible, it would be possible, for V. South African statesman dealing with them to defend legislation 3'estricting the indiscriminate influx into this oountry of Asiatics whom we do not want, of Asiatics of the low cast, of Asiatics who come here to take the bread out of the mouths of the white men who adequately perform work that they would perform, but it would not be possible to enter into any sort of relation with the Asiatic world if we in this country are going to adopt sweeping and indiscriminate legislation against Asiatics, or in upholding that legislation to use language which is insulting to Asiatics as Asiatics."