CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTH AFRICANS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2680, 14 September 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTH AFRICANS.

■ ♦ No one thinks yet of tho South African English as a nation. No national character is assigned to them even in fiction, and the draftsmen of Punch would not attempt to draw one of them without adding explanatory description, either literary or pictorial. We doubt if the idea that there is "a South African " has penetrated tho popular mind, or that it expects of such a man any defined character at all. That particular colonist and his locality are not correlated, aud there are few men who even recollect that such a person as an English born and bred in South Africa may exist. Tho Boor is known, and in a way understood —the grand mistake about him being an entire forgetfulneßS that he may be Huguenot by blood and not necessarily Dutch—and is disliked to a quite extraordinary degree, as a cruel person who despises Englishmen for kindness to coloured men ; but the idea of the English "Africander," as ho ought to be called, has never fully presented itself to the general British mind. He is not a separate individuality, much less a well known one needing no description. Yet it would be no matter of wouder if 100 years hence there were a nationality in South Africa, and if, of all the nationalities which by that time will trace their lineage to this island, it were the most distinctive. Gold, diamonds, broad farms, easy communication and a curious kind of iuterest which in its origin is literary, are drawing Englishmen fast to South Africa ; and those who stay there tend to develop as separate a type iu character as in physical appearance. The parchment colour of the Yankee, the greyness of the Australian, the frosty purple of the Canadian, the wind blown redness of the New Zealander of 00, are replaced in the South African by an even drabiiess or brownness, which is often perfectly unmistakable. He has lived in a dry atmosphere under a iieree sun, and yet has worked energetically ; that is the tale his face usually tells, and the character is as separate. Its note is that of a man who has been forced to make an unplcasaut decision, and has made it. There is no trace of the Australian gladness in the Englishman of South Africa, or of the American tolerance. He lias had a harder life, aud a inoro strenuous contest with a less conquerable nature, has come iu contact I with more disagreeable circumstances, has had to endure a more trying climate, has been surrounded by people he dislikes more, and has been altogether more sharply annealed by his destiny. He has had, as it were, to drive oxen instead of horses, and lias felt tho resulting necessity for severity and patience to tho centro of him. Tho English South African is altogether a harder man than auy other colonist, has less pity for himself or anyone else, and is, in tho way of steady, persistent enduranco, perhaps a stronger one. His very courage, which is splendid, is differentiated by the presence of an extra quantity of determination, of resolve to contend with something which he admits to be almost too strong for him. He has very little eheeriness, but also very little disposition to give way. Take his view of his country. The English South African does not 'blow'like the Australian, and has not the sensitive pride of the American ; but ho has, all the same, an intense feeling about " Africa," and looks forward to planting there a powerful nationality. He talks less of the future than most colonists, and is more disposed to see the gloomy side; yet he will probably be the first, iu a spirit rather of dourness than of hope, to decline further British protection, aud set up for himself. Ho catches rather readily the Dutch dislike for the Britisher at home, and has a contempt for his ignorance of African affairs, not qualified by any perception of his other capacities. Allowing for a brighter intelligence aud a constitutional freedom from pitilessness, the Englishman of South Africa tends to become a Boer, that is a Teuton made hard and persistent, and energetic in endurance, if you can understand that description of his variety of energy by pressing and unpleasant circumstances which he never for a moment forgets. Twenty millions of such people will make a very formidable nation, and one which will, we think, be distinguished among the English nations, by hardness, decisiveness, aud want of attractive

sympathy. It may fee, probably will be, a cruat people, equal to that marvellous destiny which should lie before it in tho sway of all Africa up to the equator, but it willjhardly bean agreeable one.— Spectator.