Our Black Danger in South Africa.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 158, 28 January 1902, Page 4

Our Black Danger in South Africa.

Sou’h Africa bas thrown aside themask and presented itself in its true colours. It used to be a dear, lasiy old country, with little work and big pay for it; but it has suddenly-come forward as the home of many problems, all crying urgently lor an immediate settlement.

Of these problems, perhaps one of the biggest is the Kaffir. In the past he has fallen through many schemes for his betterment, and the missionaries’ hearts that, he has broken, to say nothing of tha political economists’ and sociologists’! are beyond numbering. Ho is half a blessing and half an affliction,"but for the affliction no cure has yet been found adequate.

He is a patient, simple fellow ; capable, like other wild animal*, of domestication and training. He can work, and sometimes does work. Occasionally he leirns a trade, and labours at it in lowliness of heart, not daring to Compete with the white man ; but more commonly he is content to turn his strength to rough labour, such as an intelligent ape might accomplish, and let the higher flights be. What he may yet do is a question of the future i-n how far he is to be allowed to enter the market of trained labour ■constitutes the problem in chief. Up to the present he has shown himself to he ummbitious. Ho finds hi® ('e'tiny in service and and the rule tha/t has best suited him is a benevolent despotism. It is a word among the farmers that the less yon descend to your Kaffir the more they will hold you in esteem Without doubt, the K-.-ffi* is glad to be relieved of the responsibility of thinking for himself. Whire his duty consists in carrying cut an order he shows him elf n honest and trustwor by servant: but where he finds a measure of responsibility devolve upon him he goes all to pieces. You may trust a Kaffir to take your horse to be shod ; but not to judge when the horse shoeing, and to choose between shoes and plate's. But this is not a state that will last Until now, bhe Kaffir has burned his own smoke. There will come the day when that smoke will incommode a whole white people, unless the proper (and only possible) precautions be taken. And we are thus confron ed with the problem a«' to what those necessary precautions are.

Already the Kaffir is chasing th< educational system and the practica' school teaching; he is pushing hi remarkable men to the front, and they, bless their hearts, are forming clubs an ; societies, and editing newspapers, anl touting f r Votes and making class legis, lafion for the men that mean well. These are the forerunners of a new, abnormal, superior, civilised race, of splendid vitality, adaptive morals, and no principles wha'ever. We have heard a lot of b’ither (and, perhaps a little sense) about the “ yellow danger.” But what of the Black Danger! When this great intelligent, short-sighted, warm-bloodtd nation of savages stampedes into our ancient liws and policies, how shall we keep them within due limits, and yet avoid turning the gunso r , the n ? For, sure as the Hereafter, that matter will soon call for an answer.

Can we admit them on an pqnaj footing with ourselves ? Bemember what these Kaffirs arc. Their notions and desires do not coincide with our own in anyone particular. The same causes do not conduce to grief or happiness as with us. Our virtue ie to them a name, forbearance a weakness; chastity an import-d affectation; and the most Christian and he-missionaried of them! all, in all times of supreme emotion, reverts to the fierce and foul old deities of his ancestors. The answer is plain ;it is written on his face and in his history. Either they will swamp South Africa, or we must keep them under. But they increase and multiply every day. They grow like the locusts, and their business is urgent. We must find channels for tbfti; roads of their own and inlustma of their own, if we are to hoi I them under for another fifty years.

This, I take it, is the solution. We have to provide them with a legitimate outlet for their energy, one giving scope for thought and organisation, to be a safety valve to the power that else will blow off into our miditj and yet no poaching more than can be avoided on our own fields. To be brief, we must make for the Kaffir a walk of his own.

At home, in his kraal, the Kaffir makes all things fot his own use, save slop-shop trash he can procure with less trouble and cost at the Kaffir stores. Since the Creation, he has developed some slight skill in basket-work and rough carpentry, ahd ’tis [mighty little for the time he took to learn it. His architecture is, in most particulars, primaeval: but in the building of roof B he shows an ingenuity and sound workmanship it would be bard to excel. There are other things he can do; he is fairly good at tilling the ground, and making the tools necessary to the work* He has a little knowledge of working motal, and for head work and trass wire trinketry you must go far to beat him.

This, then, is the solution. Safeguard to the Kaffir the work he can do; protect him as far as necessary ; grant him monopolies and concessions, and everything else be requires in that line, and let him supply the South African market, and so far as ha is able, other markets, with such goods as be can produce. Let him keep this land. Lord! give him more for the matter of that, but keep him on it—but let us strip ourselves of all false no: ions of our duty to the negro and resolutely deny him all resemblance of an equality with the white man. The world revolves on the principle of the survival of the fittest. We have spared the Kaffir, but we cannot count on hi sparing us when his turn comes < Our manifest duty is ,to remain the top dog.

Think of it 1 Already they outnumber os white men by five or six to one. I they arejto be our equals, under a system of representative Government, they can

'hen you will see what our black brethren are capable of. It ia then yon svill regret your false security of old. It ia then you will win, at the expense of b'ood and death, a true estimate of ’the man and devil behind the black skin.