South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
white ruler of whose harshness to the blacks he has heard the story
forgets that the very civilization which he is anxious to carry among
the savage races cannot be promulgated without something of
tyranny,--some touch of apparent injustice. Nothing will sanctify
tyranny or justify injustice, says the philanthropist in his wrath. Let
us so decide and so act;--but let us understand the result. In that case
we must leave the Zulus and other races to their barbarities and native
savagery.
In what I have now said I have not described the origin of the
Langalibalele misfortune, having avoided all direct allusion to any of
its incidents,--except that of the firing of a pistol twenty years ago.
But I have endeavoured to make intelligible the way in which untoward
circumstances may too probably rise in the performance of such a work as
the gradual civilization of black men without much fault on either side.
And my readers may probably understand how, in such a matter as that of
Langalibalele, it would be impossible for me as a traveller to unravel
all its mysteries, and how unjust I might be were I to attempt to prove
that either on this side or on that side wrong had been done. The doers
of the wrong, if wrong there was, are still alive; and the avengers of
the wrong,--whether a real or a fancied wrong,--are still keen. In what
I say about Langalibalele I will avoid the name of any white man,--and
as far as possible I will impute no blame. That the intentions on both
sides have been good and altogether friendly to the black man I have no
doubt whatsoever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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