Native Life in South Africa [176]
African anomaly that compromises the justice of British rule and seems almost to belie the beauty, the sublimity and the sincerity of Christianity.
Shall we appeal to you in vain? I HOPE NOT.
[ Map was inserted here. ]
Report of the Lands Commission
An Analysis
To attempt to place the different people of the country in water-tight compartments is very attractive in a general way, but it is bound to fail.
You have got a comparatively small European population -- a million and a quarter -- and something like half a million mixed race, and then you have got between four and five million of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.
Any policy that aims at setting off a very small proportion of the land of the country for the use and occupation of the very vast majority of the inhabitants, and reserving for the use and occupation of a very small minority of the inhabitants the great majority of the land of the country, is a policy that economically must break somewhere. You can start and move in that direction to a certain extent, but you will be driven back by the exigencies of a law that operates outside the laws of Parliament -- the law of supply and demand.
This theory of segregation is to some minds attractive, but the forgotten point is that you need the Native. You cannot segregate him because you need him. If you drive him out of his existing life and occupation, you run a great risk that you will lose many of your Natives. Hon. W. P. Schreiner, K.C., C.M.G., (High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa, Ex-Premier of Cape Colony,) before the Lands Commission.
If we are to deal fairly with the Natives of this country, then according to population we should give them four-fifths of the country, or at least half. Hon. C. G. Fichardt, M.L.A.
The best way to segregate the races would be by means of a boundary fence along the main line of Railway from Port Elizabeth, straight through to Bloemfontein and Pretoria, to Pietersburg, putting the blacks on one side and the whites on the other side of the Railway line.* M. J. M. Nyokong, before the Native Affairs Commission.
-- * This would give about one-third of the Union to the four and a half million blacks, the one and a quarter million whites retaining two-thirds. --
During the past two years while the Empire was involved in one of the mightiest struggles that ever shook the foundations of the earth, South Africa was wasting time and money in a useless and unprecedented attempt at territorial segregation betwixt white and black. Judging by the recently published Report of the Lands Commission, however, she has failed ignominiously in the task.
Whenever, on behalf of the Natives, the hardships disclosed in this book were mentioned, the South African authorities invariably replied that these hardships would cease as soon as the Commission submits its Report. This has now been done. General Botha laid the Report on the table of the house on May 3, 1916, and intimated as he did so that "the Government propose to take no immediate action upon the recommendations, but will give the country twelve months to consider the Report and the evidence." Meanwhile the eviction of Natives from farms continues in all parts of the country, and the Act debars them from settling anywhere, not even in Natal, although Natal witnesses (like the Chairman of the Commission) have definitely claimed the exemption of their Colony from this form of Union tyranny.
It is a Report of many parts. A good deal of it is instructive and much of it is absurd. Most of the Commissioners and many of the witnesses have expressed themselves with a candid disregard for the rights of other people.
Government publications, at least, should be beyond question; thus, old Government
Shall we appeal to you in vain? I HOPE NOT.
[ Map was inserted here. ]
Report of the Lands Commission
An Analysis
To attempt to place the different people of the country in water-tight compartments is very attractive in a general way, but it is bound to fail.
You have got a comparatively small European population -- a million and a quarter -- and something like half a million mixed race, and then you have got between four and five million of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.
Any policy that aims at setting off a very small proportion of the land of the country for the use and occupation of the very vast majority of the inhabitants, and reserving for the use and occupation of a very small minority of the inhabitants the great majority of the land of the country, is a policy that economically must break somewhere. You can start and move in that direction to a certain extent, but you will be driven back by the exigencies of a law that operates outside the laws of Parliament -- the law of supply and demand.
This theory of segregation is to some minds attractive, but the forgotten point is that you need the Native. You cannot segregate him because you need him. If you drive him out of his existing life and occupation, you run a great risk that you will lose many of your Natives. Hon. W. P. Schreiner, K.C., C.M.G., (High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa, Ex-Premier of Cape Colony,) before the Lands Commission.
If we are to deal fairly with the Natives of this country, then according to population we should give them four-fifths of the country, or at least half. Hon. C. G. Fichardt, M.L.A.
The best way to segregate the races would be by means of a boundary fence along the main line of Railway from Port Elizabeth, straight through to Bloemfontein and Pretoria, to Pietersburg, putting the blacks on one side and the whites on the other side of the Railway line.* M. J. M. Nyokong, before the Native Affairs Commission.
-- * This would give about one-third of the Union to the four and a half million blacks, the one and a quarter million whites retaining two-thirds. --
During the past two years while the Empire was involved in one of the mightiest struggles that ever shook the foundations of the earth, South Africa was wasting time and money in a useless and unprecedented attempt at territorial segregation betwixt white and black. Judging by the recently published Report of the Lands Commission, however, she has failed ignominiously in the task.
Whenever, on behalf of the Natives, the hardships disclosed in this book were mentioned, the South African authorities invariably replied that these hardships would cease as soon as the Commission submits its Report. This has now been done. General Botha laid the Report on the table of the house on May 3, 1916, and intimated as he did so that "the Government propose to take no immediate action upon the recommendations, but will give the country twelve months to consider the Report and the evidence." Meanwhile the eviction of Natives from farms continues in all parts of the country, and the Act debars them from settling anywhere, not even in Natal, although Natal witnesses (like the Chairman of the Commission) have definitely claimed the exemption of their Colony from this form of Union tyranny.
It is a Report of many parts. A good deal of it is instructive and much of it is absurd. Most of the Commissioners and many of the witnesses have expressed themselves with a candid disregard for the rights of other people.
Government publications, at least, should be beyond question; thus, old Government