LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
lab PERMANENT PROBLEM IN SOUTH AFRICA.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THR Elpscrvrolt.") SIR,—Your article in the Spectator of Jane 24th, "The Permanent Problem in South Africa," just received here, dealt with a topic of vital interest to South Africans,—one, however, to which they give little attention. Be that as it may, it will in time force itself upon us as the great problem of the future, immeasurably greater than any such question, for instance, as that of Dutch and English. They, if only left to themselves, will get to understand each other as time goes on. It is much harder to get the white and black man to understand each other. In view of this fact it is to be wished that some powerful voice could give emphatic utterance to the danger you point out, which would lurk in the severance of South Africa as a whole from the Empire. We should, of course, in that case, for a long time to come be liable to invasion by one or other of the Great Powers, sup- posing it conceivable that the Mother-country could ever leave us so entirely to ourselves for it to come to that. But a far more serious danger would be in the conditions you foreshadow,—an aristocratic minority trying to rule an enormous mass of black men. There are some things, however, which you have not taken into account in stating the problem. One of these is that the black man, in the Cape Colony at least, has already started on the ladder of education, and is steadily moving upwards. He has already more than one newspaper of his own, the editors being men of his own colour. He has the possibility of becoming a voter in Parliamentary elections, and this privilege has '#een so far embraced that the native vote is becoming a thing to be carefully looked after by politicians These results are mainly due to the missionary societies, and along with education and civilisation there is a strong Christian element. Colonists are much divided in opinion as to the value of missionary work, but those of us who believe in it are simply unable to understand the attitude of mind which fails to see that any hope for the future of South Africa is in a religious solution of the great problem.
Another thing to which you do not refer will have to be counted in as a factor in the future. It is not alto- gether a pleasant subject ; but there it is, all the same. Between the white men on the one side, and the mass of black men on the other, who may be collectively specified under the late Dr. Bleek's ethnological term as "Bantu," there is another class which cannot be ignored, known as "Mixed" or "Coloured." According to the Census returns of 1891, for every three Europeans in the Cape Colony, there were two persons of this class. There is a wonderful Con- glomeration of Hottentots, Malays, Mozambique negroes, and Malagasy, but there is a strong and unmistakable strain of European blood; and the process of amalgamation on both sides—that is, with the European and the Bantu—is still going on. How far this element in the case will affect our future, I am not bold enough to forecast, but it will come in as a further entnplieation —1 am, Sir, &c.,
Mowbray, Cope Town, July 171h. J. S. MoFF.A.T.
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