South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
I have already said something of Zulu labour when speaking of the sugar
districts round Durban. It is the question upon which the prosperity of
South Africa and the civilization of the black races much depend. If a
man can be taught to want, really to desire and to covet the good things
of the world, then he will work for them and by working he will be
civilized. If, when they are presented to his notice, he still despises
them,--if when clothes and houses and regular meals and education come
in his way, he will still go naked, and sleep beneath the sky, and eat
grass or garbage and then starve, and remain in his ignorance though the
schoolmaster be abroad, then he will be a Savage to the end of the
chapter. It is often very hard to find out whether the good things have
been properly proffered to the Savage, and whether the man’s neglect of
them has come from his own intellectual inability to appreciate them or
from the ill manner in which they have been tendered to him. The
aboriginal of Australia has utterly rejected them, as I fear we must say
the North American Indian has done also,--either from his own fault or
from ours. The Maori of New Zealand seemed to be in the way of accepting
them when it was found out that the reception of them was killing him.
He is certainly dying whether from that or other causes. The Chinaman
and the Indian Coolie are fully alive to the advantages of earning
money, and are consequently not to be classed among Savages. The South
Sea Islander has as yet had but few chances of working; but when he is
employed he works well and saves his wages. With the Negro as imported
into the West Indies the good things of the world have, I fear, made but
little way. He despises work and has not even yet learned to value the
advantages which work will procure for him. The Negro in the United
States, who in spite of his prolonged slavery has been brought up in a
better school, gives more promise; but even with him the result to be
desired,--the consciousness that by work only can he raise himself to an
equality with the white man,--seems to be far distant. I cannot say that
it is near with the Kafir or the Zulu;--but to the Kafir and the Zulu
the money market has been opened comparatively but for a short time.
They certainly do not die out under the yoke, and they are not
indifferent to the material comforts of life. Therefore I think there is
a fair hope that they will become a laborious and an educated people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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