To the man holding this view the African native always presents
himself as the little dark brother of the great family-human, who
stands looking wistfully through the open door into the great hall of
the nineteenth-century civilization in which we fair-skinned Aryans
disport ourselves; and we are compelled to go to the door and say:
"Come in, little brother, come in; there are many better things out
there in the open where you have been than we have here; yet, if you
must enter, give us your hand, and we will try to show you what in this
great carnival of ours is best, and what most to fear. Walk in, little
brother, this hall was built for the sons of the children of man."
It is manifest that men holding such a view must ever be in deadly
conflict with men holding the financial view. The future of South
Africa depends largely on the result of this struggle. If the financial
attitude predominate absolutely, and the native be dispossessed of his
land by wars and the skilfully devised legislation, which, breaking up
his tribal tenure everywhere, throws him and his lands entirely into
the hands of the financial speculator, and if low wages at the same
time deprive him of the means of education, he must become a helot,
having no stake in the general welfare of the land of his birth--always
its menace, and at length its downfall.
If the other attitude prevail to any large extent, and the men holding
it are strong enough to set their mark on legislation and institutions,
the native may morally and intellectually survive the shock (as he
certainly will physically) of sudden transplantation from his moral
and social atmosphere into ours. He may grasp what is great in our
civilization along with its evils and may yet become the most valuable
element and the ablest defender of a social organization in which he
has much at stake. But even were this not so, the stern demands of
human obligation towards human would yet compel an uncompromising
justice towards him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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