“And he said, ‘My wife, with the sins of the private man, what have I to
do, if so be I have not led him into them? Am I guilty? I have enough to
do looking after my own sins. The sin that a man sins against himself is
his alone, not mine; the sin that a man sins against his fellows is his
and theirs, not mine: but the sins that a man sins, in that he is taken
up by the hands of a people and set up on high, and whose hand they have
armed with their sword, whose power to strike is their power--his sins
are theirs; there is no man so small in the whole nation that he dares
say, ‘I have no responsibility for this man’s action.’ We armed him, we
raised him, we strengthened him, and the evil he accomplishes is more
ours than his. If this man’s end in South Africa should be accomplished,
and the day should come when, from the Zambezi to the sea, white man
should fly at white man’s throat, and every man’s heart burn with
bitterness against his fellow, and the land be bathed with blood as
rain--shall I then dare to pray, who have now feared to speak? Do not
think I wish for punishment upon these men. Let them take the millions
they have wrung out of this land, and go to the lands of their birth,
and live in wealth, luxury, and joy; but let them leave this land they
have tortured and ruined. Let them keep the money they have made here;
we may be the poorer for it; but they cannot then crush our freedom with
it. Shall I ask my God Sunday by Sunday to brood across the land, and
bind all its children’s hearts in a close-knit fellowship;--yet, when I
see its people betrayed, and their jawbone broken by a stroke from the
hand of gold; when I see freedom passing from us, and the whole land
being grasped by the golden claw, so that the generation after us shall
be born without freedom, to labour for the men who have grasped all,
shall I hold my peace? The Boer and the Englishman who have been in this
land, have not always loved mercy, nor have they always sought after
justice; but the little finger of the speculator and monopolist who are
devouring this land will be thicker on the backs of the children of this
land, black and white, than the loins of the Dutchmen and Englishmen who
have been.’
“And she said, ‘I have heard it said that it was our duty to sacrifice
ourselves for the men and women living in the world at the same time as
ourselves; but I never before heard that we had to sacrifice ourselves
for people that are not born. What are they to you? You will be dust,
and lying in your grave, before that time comes. If you believe in God,’
she said, ‘why cannot you leave it to Him to bring good out of all this
evil? Does He need YOU to be made a martyr of? or will the world be lost
without YOU?’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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