South African Problems
Native Labour in South Africa. By Sheila T. van der Horst. (Oxford University Press. as.) As everyone knows, who has ever issued an appeal, it is of the first importance that it shall be properly timed. Dr. van der Horst's scholarly treatise on South African native labour is in effect an appeal to reason in a field of discourse in which logical argument is usually of little avail, and she is to be congratulated on having chosen, either by accident or by design, to publish the results of ten years' research at just the moment when circumstance is on her side. Equally with ourselves, South Africans today find themselves locked in a struggle which demands the full, unimpeded effort of every member of the community. Privilege and interest alike are by common consent swept on one side, as never before. If we are to survive, everyone of every creed and caste and colour must be allowed, encouraged and persuaded to render the highest service of which he is capable.
Dr. van der Horst's aim is to build up from contemporary records a history of economic co-operation between Europeans and the Bantu people in South Africa, from the time when white settlers, pushing north and east from the Cape, first encountered natives advancing westward from what is now Natal. She has endeavoured to set out every new circumstance which materially affected the ability or desire of either race to have dealings with the other, and to analyse and evaluate, so far as may be, the resulting change in their relations. At first, in Adam Smith's time, defence was very decidedly of greater importance than opulence. As the sense of security gradually took hold, the white man's demand for labour, first for farming and road construction, then for mining also, and for railway building and public works, led in practice to the aban- donment of segregation, notwithstanding its persistence or revival as a political red-herring with which leaders have sought from time to time to disguise the identity of their programme with that of their opponents. Dr. van der Horst traces the vacillations and contradictions of official policy, which has sometimes encouraged
and sometimes obstructed the employment of native labour. times it has reflected a genuine concern for native welfare ; recent( under the growing insistence of white trade unionism, it has sou at all costs to preserve and strengthen the privileges of Europ labour. The ingenious devices by which the gold mining indus has contrived to handle that situation, the real significance of I reserves in relation to native wages and employment, the comp cated legislation by which effect is given to what recent Gore ments have seen fit to call a " civilised labour policy," are each ma the subject of illuminating excursions in the field of techni economic analysis. Dr. van der Horst proves herself to be competent guide.
It is reasonable to hope that policy-making will be more log as the result of this book.' Its author will not hope for more th that. Complete rationality in the fieln of native policy is yet to be expected. The races which make up the South Afri community are rapidly and inevitably being drawn closer toge in one economic system, yet the vast majority of Europeans, w they recognise the impossibility of segregation, have continued behave as though a permanent condition of economic tutelage !" the native races were both desirable and feasible. To such wish thinking Dr. van der Horst's admirable study will bring, in present emergency, all the benefits of a very cold douche.
AFRICANUS.
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