11 MAY 1934, Page 21

African Problems

The African To-Day. By Diedrich Vl'estermann. With a fore-

3s. 6d.) Language and Race Problems in South Africa. By Adriaan J. Barnouw. (The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff. Clld. 1.20.)

HERE are three authors of different nationalities turning their trained intelligences upon African problems, and although their scope and intentions and fields of inquiry are widely different, they all agree in one thing—the advocacy of a more liberal and enlightened policy towards the native. Speaking of the Union of South Africa, Mr. Agar-Hamilton puts his view concisely :

" Nothing can be done until it is realized, first, that the native is a fellow-citizen of the State, secondly, that all human beings are capable of development, and thirdly, that it is false economy to keep one section of the community poor in the hope that thereby the rest will be made rich."

This might seem a stressing of the obvious ; but in South Africa, as elsewhere, the obvious is not always easy to see, and the brilliant sunshine has no power to disperse the mists of prejudice. The so-called white aristocracy—who often find " their only claim to aristocracy " in the pigmentation of their skins—have a remarkable talent for shunning the obvious, for, as Dr. Adriaan Barnouw observes, " the un- educated white man's inherited bias is stronger than the testimony of his own eyes." It must be admitted that appearances may be misleading, as in an instance given by Dr. Westermann : " If the traveller on the Upper Nile steamer sees a group of Shilluk, almost or entirely naked, their bodies rubbed with cow- dung and ashes, their long hair bleached (sic) bright-red, with de- pilated eyelashes, lying on the bank in apparently complete apathy, he may well believe that he is dealing with a wholly strange type of being, from whom he is completely separated. He would change his opinion, however, if he could talk with them in their own lan- guage and could learn that they have a tradition extending over 400 years, a complex, well-organized system of government with a king at the head, and a highly-developed religion ' • and that they are as capable of being educated as any man and have a definite feeling for what is dignified and good behaviour."

Dr. Westermann, who is the Director of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, has written a valuable book. Holding the belief that " the fate of Africa is indissolubly linked with that of the white race " and that it will become " what Europe and America make of it," he has produced an excellent summary of the present state of affairs. His survey includes such subjects as the mind of the negro, the economic bases of his existence, his family life, the relations between the group and the individual, African ideas of the supernatural, arts and crafts, language and education, and finally an examination of the clash of races, the disintegra- tion of old ways of life and the possibility of discovering new ones that may be satisfactory. His method is scientific, but he is the first to recognize and show by his own example that science is not a panacea, and that " common sense, personal tact and practical wisdom, as well as sympathy based on an understanding of the human elements concerned, are all necessary." Anthropologists are already aware of the good work being done by the Institute, and will be the first to appreciate this book : it is to be hoped that it will also get into the hands of those Europeans in Africa, to whom, as Lord Lugard says, it should be of great practical help.

Nowhere is Dr. Westermann's wise and civilized spirit more needed than in South Africa, as is clearly suggested by the misgivings of Mr. Agar-Hamilton and Dr. Barnouw. In the course of a neat outline of South Africa's recent history, Mr. Agar-Hamilton makes an attempt to sum up the present assets and liabilities of the country. He gives some informa- tion about the " poor whites," whose fate " depends on the solution of the native question " ; draws attention to the disabilities, including the pass system and the " crushingly heavy " taxation, which weigh upon the natives themselves ; and makes some significant allusions to the state of agriculture and its numerous plagues and handicaps, especially soil erosion, of which the Drought Commission of 1922 wrote : " The logical outcome of it all is ' The Great South African Desert uninhabitable by man.' " Dr. Barnouw, a professor at Columbia University, went to South Africa to make a comparative study of Afrikaans and

of the Dutch language, and found his subject all mixed up with political and racial matters. For an essay of some seventy pages, consisting of the sundry observations of a scholarly tourist, he has chosen rather an awe-inspiring title, but his account of the Afrikaans language movement is useful. The movement has made rapid progress in recent years : it was not until 1917 that the educational authorities took actual steps to introduce the taal into the classrooms, while the Afrikaans translation of the Bible has only recently come from the press. The rise of Afrikaans should interest philologists as an example of a struggle to replace the academic form of a language with the demotic, and it should also interest the sociologist, for it is largely a symptom of the " obstinate self-assertion " of a community of which the old cultural roots have been cut or weakened and which has not yet been able to strike strong new ones. Overshadowed for the last century or more by the power of England, this com- munity has tended to make of that " obstinate self-assertion," so characteristic of " new " countries, something of a habit. " The Nationalist slogans and prejudices," says Dr. Barnouw, drawing a historical analogy, " are the dykes and dunes that must protect the Afrikaaners against the menace of British penetration." But a much greater menace is their unwilling- ness to treat the native as a fellow-citizen and to face up to the situation so clearly set forth in The African To-Day.

WILLIAM PLOMER.