A SOUTH AFRICAN PROBLEM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3153, 2 April 1909, Page 3

A SOUTH AFRICAN PROBLEM.

Much concerned at the possibility that no great white nation may ever ! arise to inhabit Africa, A"r L. E. Neime, in the magazine "Empire," asks whether it is to be black or white in the future. In the last four years, he reminds us, some 40,000 white people have left the country because they could find not place there. And not many months ago the Transvaal .Indigency Commission ut- i lered Uie solemn warning that unless existing conditions can be altered "South Africa will at best be numbered among the countries which are owned and governed, but not peopled, by the white races." He appears to think it possible for the European labourer to do actual manual work in Africa as efficiently as | those accustomed to its tropical or sub-tropical climates. A white ' nation will never be built up in { South Africa on a basis of colour I labour. The only hope of the sub- | Continent realising that ideal is to sweep away the system of importing | other people's black and brown i workers, and to expunge from the | Statute Book every gives i the coloured worker an advantage ! over the white worker. There are ; quite enough natives in British South Africa without attracting additional thousands from Mozambique. It is waste of energy to ' pass drastic anti-Asiatic laws in I the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, when Natal is busily importing Indians at the rate of thousands a year. The policy of to-day may find employment for overseers. But you cannot make a ' nation out of overseers and landI owners alone. The people who do the work of the land must ultimately possess it. Encourage the black ' man to do all the real work of South | Africa, and in the end Great Britain | will have to hold the sub-Continent as she holds India and Jamaica. This ,is the real problem South Africa j must face—the problem of attracting ! white people, and of finding wcrk lor | them to do.