Forty to One
FEW writers are better equipped to present. an up-to-date picture of South Africa's complex and ever-changing problems than Mrs. Millin, who in 1926 published a very readable survey of South Africa from the arrival of Jan Van Riebeeek at the Cape of Good Hope down to our own times. The South African scene changes very rapidly and much water has run down the Vaal River- " this dun-coloured river, which most truly symbolises South Africa "—since 1934, the date of the second edition of The South Africans. Four-fifths of the contents of The People of South Africa are new. To all who arp interested in Africa's " terrific potential " this book can be strongly recommended, for the author deals at length with racial and population problems and makes her survey most readable. The main theme of The People of South Africa is, of course, how the relations between white and black are to be placed on a satisfactory footing ; upon the solution of that question the fate of civilisation may well hang. The author takes the thorn tree—wag-'n-hietjie, "wait-a-bit," a familiar sight in the South African landscape (so called because the name in Afrikaans implies that the thorns on the trees catch at one and make one stop)—as a symbol round which to emphasise the urgency of the problem. South Africa has no longer time to " wait a bit " ; the black man has struck his tents and is on the march.
The last half of the book gives the impression that there has been a certain amount of haste in its proof-reading., The final illness and death of General Smuts—" the greatest of all South Africans " —is movingly and adequately dealt with, but on several pages there are references to him in the present tense. For instance, on page 198 we find: " General Smuts extends, to any guest he has the time to see in his corrugated iron house, the hospitality he himself so naturally receives from the world's princes and premiers."- On page 216: " For voting purposes the Jews are classed with the English. This is because they follow General Smuts, who has been their undeviating friend for half a century." Three paragraphs below the author writes in the past tense: " BUt General Smuts represented that tradition." I hope this is not captious criticism, but Mrs. Millin, the biographer of Smuts and Rhodes, has taught us to expect a high standard in her work.
The People of South Africa is an indispensable aid to the study of the Union's problems. When the early Dutch settlers arrived to establish " a fort, a vegetable garden, a cattle fold and a trading- station " for their ships on the way to the East Indies, they found the Bushmen and the Hottentots " no doubt the real South Africans. But they will not compete for the title ; they are all dead." The reader of Mrs. Millin's book may well agree with Anthony Trollope, who visited South Africa in 1877 and wrote: " South Africa it a country of black men—and not of white men. It has been so ; it is so and it will be so." If at times the two and half million whites south of the Zambesi seem to forget the tenets of democracy, where the majority rules, can we wonder at their determination to safeguard their future and their way of life ? In the whole of Africa there are forty Africans to every white. The European can adopt one of at least three policies: (1) total assimilation, (2) total separation, or (3) establish "a native life among Europeans running parallel to theirs." Even if the Europeans adopt a policy of Apartheid or separation, what if the African refuses to remain behind an iron curtain ? The African is beginning—with outside help—to realise his power, and he " has been started on the road and will not go back."
In both North and South America the effects of miscegenation can be seen. Even in the past half-century the average citizen in the United States has become, in this writer's view, decidedly darker in hue than was his parent. Indeed there are some who fear that North America will sooner or later be populated by a
coffee-coloured race, perhaps as dark as the redskin. The Europeans in South Africa remember General Smuts's words and feel the need of having a care lest some day " little brown children may play among the ruins of the Union Government buildings." After laying down Mrs. Millin's book, the reader will, I think, be less inclined to dogmatise about South African problems. Perhaps this was the- author's object. If present demographic tendencies con- tinue, the ratio of Europeans to the total population of the world will be much smaller than it is at present. The white races must become more fecund or perish. That is the drama of survival taking
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