To this end the Speculator and Capitalist, among others, have sought to
enter political life in South Africa, and in order that, by the passing
of laws dispossessing the native by indirect means of his hold on the
land, and breaking up his tribal tenure, and by the making of direct
wars upon him, the native, at last being absolutely landless, may be
unable to resist any attempt to lower wages, and may then sink into the
purely proletariat condition of a working class always on the border of
starvation, and therefore always glad to sell his toil for the lowest
sum that will maintain life.
Were this plan entirely successful, South Africa as a whole would lose
all the native now gains, the increased profit going to enlarge the
wealth of the foreign Speculator and often aristocratic shareholder;
and South Africa would then be saddled with a proletariat class of the
very lowest type. For, the only hope of the African native's rising,
and becoming a valuable and intelligent labouring class, lies in his
receiving such remuneration for his labour as shall enable him to grasp
at least some of the subordinate advantages of civilization, along
with those of its evils which are necessarily forced on him. If the
South African native is not in the position to obtain primary education
and in some measure to grasp such advantages and privileges as there
are in our modern civilization, then, as his old tribal ideals and
institutions are destroyed, he must inevitably sink into a condition
lower and more terrible than that of the lowest proletariat in Europe;
and, as he forms (and must do for generations, in a land where white
men refuse to perform the bulk of physical labours) the major part of
the population, South Africa will permanently be weighted and degraded
by the degradation and degeneracy of the great bulk of the inhabitants.
To the Company Director, Capitalist, or Speculator who never visits
South Africa, or remains here only while financial reasons make it
desirable, it can matter nothing what becomes in the present or in
future generations, morally or intellectually, of the native. But to
those of us, to whom South Africa is a home, to whom not only the
present but the future of this land is our most intense human concern,
and who with our descendants have got to sail with the African native
permanently in the same ship across the sea of time, it matters
everything.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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