Such is the life and such are the social conditions of the primitive
Boer wherever he is found to-day from the Zambesi to the Cape.
In our cities and villages, the descendant of the Boer is found in
wholly different forms. He is the law-giver, the magistrate, the
successful barrister, the able doctor; everywhere children of the Boer
fill our schools and bear away the prizes; and in the yearly university
lists of successful candidates, the names of the Huguenot-Dutch youths,
and more especially the girls, rank high, and often equal or exceed in
number those of all other residents in the Colony.[64]
[64] To prevent misunderstanding, it is necessary to state
that the term Boer, like the term Highland clansman, is
more than a mere designation of race. Had Scott been
asked to describe a typical Highland clansman, he would
at once have described him with certain manners, ideas,
virtues and wants, forming an absolutely true picture of
the ancient clansman, which yet might not in any way apply
to the Duke of Argyle or other cultured descendant of the
Highlander, who, though being the Chief of a Highland clan,
and possessing possibly no drop of foreign blood, would
yet belong to a wholly different type of civilization.
Probably not one half of the descendants of the Boers are
Boers to-day, in the sense of speaking only the Taal and
abiding by seventeenth-century manners and customs; and in
twenty-five years there will not, we regret to think, be a
Boer born in South Africa, though there will be more than
half a million South Africans of Dutch-Huguenot descent.
Serious political miscalculation is the result of the
misconception that all Dutch-Huguenot South Africans are
primitive Boers. In childhood we remember having heard
that a Scotch Highlander was coming on a visit; and our
disappointment when, instead of a clansman, speaking
Gaelic, wearing a kilt, and playing the bagpipes, a
delicate young man, much addicted to reading Tennyson and
playing Beethoven, appeared, was probably much like that
which awaits the foreigner who still in all South African
Dutchmen expects to see the Boer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account