• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1007 0

white men get money for nothing out of banks. Or at least, I hope so. But I took him on, and the next thing was old Smith from across the river came to say, did I know that I had a man with a prison record working for me? I said to Smith, I thought that was a dirty trick; and in our law once a man has served time, he has paid for his wrong-doing. Old Smith was upset. He meant it for the best. The next thing was, James started smoking dagga and the Lord knows what. But I talked it over with him, and found that once he was a Christian, because he was at a mission school once for a couple of years before his father’s money ran out and he had to stop his education. I got him back to going to church, and he took an oath not to drug any more. Or drink. But it didn’t last long. He could hardly stand up on a Monday morning sometimes. So I got him in front of the padre to swear a solemn oath on the Bible to give it up, and he was forgiven on condition he gave the names of his drug-ring to the Native Commissioner. So at the moment he’s in the clear. But probably not for long, because he’s heavily in debt.’

‘You could pay him another couple of pounds a month?’

‘I can’t. I’m only the manager here. I have a certain sum given me for wages. Besides, he’s lucky to find anyone who’ll take him on. Though he’s a good worker and he really works. Not like most. The trouble with these natives is they are too backward to understand the simplest things in modern life. Only yesterday I had to talk to a new lot I took on last month. There they were, loafing around. I had them up and I said to them: ‘Now look. I will explain to you this business of a contract. When I take you on, I say I will pay you £2 a month. I pay you £2 a month in return for your labour. Do you understand?”’

‘And do they?’

‘They say, Ah, ah, ah, baas!—as if I were cheating them. I say to them, very well then, go. But if you stay, you work. £2 a month for your work. That’s a contract. And please…’ And with this he turned to me, ‘please do not tell me that £2 a month is not enough. They have good brick huts. I give each of them a plot of land for their wives, because they like to have their women kept out of mischief. I give them proper rations. And I pay a teacher for their kids. All the kids on this place go to school, and they go to school properly all day, Government inspected, not this hole and corner business that goes on on the big farms. What do you want me to do? Well, go on, tell me. I know it all stinks. I know it. It’s all a bloody mess. But is it my fault that the poor damned savages aren’t £10-a-week skilled workers with semi-detached houses, filling in their football coupons, all nice and tidy like Britain? Well, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘it isn’t. But tell me, what do you think is going to come out of all this?’

‘I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that unless the Almighty steps in and takes a hand there isn’t any solution to anything. The whites are as bad as the blacks. It is a case of the blind leading the blind.’

About two years ago I was visited in London by an old friend from Salisbury, who told me it was time I came back home to see how things had changed, how out of date and unfair my books were since Partnership and Federation. ‘Natives are doing very well now,’ he said. ‘In towns they have to be paid £4 a month, and the employers have to pay for the accommodation. Everything is being done for the natives and nothing for the Europeans. And they aren’t grateful.’

I felt bad about this. The reason that I felt bad was that this man had had the advantage of four years’ solid Socialist education in our Left Club; and it was hard to admit that this wasn’t enough to insulate him against becoming so rich. For his story is a familiar one: a refugee, he arrived on the shores of Africa before the last war with not much more than the clothes he stood up in. Now he owns shops, farms and enterprises of one sort or another in large quantities.

In Salisbury he at once demanded that I should go out to his place, or one of his places, to see how well the natives