The South African Native Problem, Suggested Solution (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

Excerpt from The South African Native Problem, Suggested Solution

In a paper on the native franchise, delivered in Johannesburg last December to the Transvaal Native Affairs Society, I remarked that upon some subsequent occasion opportunity might be afforded for contributing a few ideas regarding native representation. The following reflections are offered as a contribution towards the solution of a problem which admittedly will tax to the utmost the resources of the ablest of South African statesmen.

And here I may remark that though upon the former occasion I had the greatest confidence in my position, and no doubt in my own mind, in the light of all available evidence, that the white race was fully justified in withholding its democratic form of franchise from the native, in the present instance I offer the solutions which have suggested themselves with diffidence, and as no plenary declaration and solution. Regarding the two primary principles I enunciate, however, I have no doubts. The above reservations have allusion merely to matter of detail.

It may be advisable before proceeding clearly to define my own attitude towards the black man in this country. After a personal experience of the native in South Africa extending since boyhood, I repudiate unhesitatingly any feeling of hostility to the black race. I have no sympathy with those who disparage the Kafir by stigmatising him as the "lazy nigger." The necessities of the native have not yet made him the slave of work that the white man has become in the Western world owing to the exactions of our individualistic and competitive systems. Nevertheless, almost all South African railway extension from the seventies onwards, the opening of our diamond mines, the rough work on the mines of the Rand, as well as the manual labour at our ports, ha practically all been performed by the native. I am not contending that this has necessarily been beneficial to South Africa; I merely relate the fact,…

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