The Black Man's Place in South Africa — John Shaqi
The Black Man's Place in South AfricaNielsen, Peter, active 1922-1937
History
The Black Man's Place in South Africa
Nielsen, Peter, active 1922-1937
Black people -- South Africa
The elementry instinct of self-preservation is no stronger in the Native
than in the white man. Suicide is not at all uncommon among the Bantu. I
have seen many instances of Natives who have shown a calm and
philosophical disregard of death where life has seemed no longer
desirable. This pre-eminently human prerogative--for no animal can rise
to the conscious and deliberate destruction of itself--has often been
exercised, as I have seen, by Natives in their sound and sober senses so
as to preclude entirely that suggestion of temporary insanity which is
so commonly accepted at coroner's inquests in England and elsewhere.
The instinct of direction, the "bump of locality" as it is generally
called, varies with the Natives as it does among the whites, and is no
keener in the individual Native than in the individual white man. All
the hunters and travellers I have met have confirmed the opinion I have
myself formed from personal experience that by training his ordinary
powers of observation and thereby developing his sense of locality and
direction the average European is able, after a comparatively short
time, to find his way in difficult country as well as the Natives, while
some European hunters who have dispensed with Native guides and trackers
have acquired the art of tracking game so well that they surpass even
the local Natives themselves. "Veld-craft" is simply a matter of
training the ordinary faculties of observation and memory for particular
purposes, and the Native shows no such superiority in this respect as
would naturally be expected from him if he were indeed better provided
with animal instincts than the more civilised white man.
The sexual instincts of the Natives seem in no wise different from those
of other people. The African male, like the European male, is generally
more amative than the female who is always more philoprogenitive than
the man. But the notion is common that the Native male is more bestial
when sexually excited than the white man in similar case, and this is
taken to account for the fact that he is so often found guilty of crimes
of violence against females of his own colour, and sometimes even
against European women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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