Page:The empire and the century.djvu/595

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
552
NATIVE QUESTION IN SOUTH AFRICA

clear, however, that no scheme of representation offered as a solution to this problem will be acceptable to Federated South Africa unless it be limited in character, as recommended by the Commission, or assume some similar form, of which the central idea is limitation.

The mainspring of controversy is centred in questions affecting land and representation. Upon the method of handling them depends more than upon all other questions the future prosperity of the natives, and the common understanding which will enable a Federated South Africa to foster it. The matter of native education is also highly important, underlying as it does the whole structure of development; yet it is subject to the willingness and desire of the governing race to promote it. All are agreed that the character and extent of aboriginal teaching should be such as to afford opportunities for the natives to acquire that amount of elementary knowledge which will benefit them in the walks of life for which in their present state they are fitted. There the matter is hung up, and meanwhile harm arises through the propagation of misleading ideas every day that natives are driven to America to seek from the negroes there the higher education not obtainable in South Africa.

Discussion upon the whole subject would not be complete without some inquiry respecting the true aspirations of the natives themselves as expressed through their leaders. Their leaders are of two kinds—tribal leaders, comprising chiefs and councillors, and men of education who have either become teachers or mission workers, or who have drifted away from the tribe to become newspaper editors or carry on some skilled profession at which they have become expert. The chiefs and councillors are generally astute and intelligent men who may be classed as agriculturists. They are soundly acquainted with tribal affairs, and as a rule are wedded to the old communal system, which they show no desire to change. They are not inclined to express ideas, limiting