Southern Rhodesia To-day
TO-DAY Southern Rhodesia controls her own destiny. What use will she make of that control ? It is a matter of intense interest in view of the development of the tropics which the next two generations will witness, development' in which she cannot help but take a hand. And yet to-day the country is an enigma, a series of question marks, and, to some observed, is still groping, sometimes blindly, sometimes seeing, for a hand-grip on her real problems.
A settlement of North-Western Europeans, call them Nordics if you like, within the tropics : not a settlement of planters, traders, missionaries, and administrators, but a genuine " colony " in the fullest sense of the word. How many others are there ? Run your two fingers across the map of the world, along the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and see the answer. Has such a settlement ever succeeded in the paSt ? Can it do so now ? There are people who 'say No, and quote quasi-scientific opinions on the effect of tropical light upon blonde peoples. But the human race is old;. and_civililation, by cOmparison, young.. Through countlessrlifetimes it must have been quite impossible for, blondes to live near, the tropics at all ; then hats were indented; and 'one defeae -of the tropics, sun-stroke, was beaten down. Is it - to be believed, because Man has not yet devised a means of overcoming, other dangers of the tropical climate, during the less than a hundred lifetimes that civilization has existed, or the less than four lifetimes that blonde races and modern science have really faced the 'problem, that therefore the problem is insoluble. To think so would he absurd, surely. The people of Rhodesia, at least, are facing that particular problem on the basis of the hypo- thesis that a North-Western European race can exist and thrive, generation after generation, within the tropics : and that there is nothing, at all events on the high plateau, to prevent white men having the same mental and physical energy, and undertaking the same tasks, as they would in the colder and damper home of the race, wherever it may have been.
Although Southern Rhodesia is wholly in the tropics, it is definitely not part of Black Man's Africa. It is the only British colony in tropical Africa to which the oft- repeated declaration of the Imperial Government as to its policy in tropical Africa—" paramountcy of native interest "—does not apply. Ample native reserves have been set aside, and additional areas within which natives, and natives alone, may purchase land. Within these areas native interests will be paramount : outside them, the interests of the European settler will prevail. It seems a fair division, and numerous passages from the Hilton Young Commission's Report might be cited in support of accepting it as a wise and just segregation. Such a segregation is advocated by many missionaries in the interests of the natives themselves, and by far-seeing publicists in the interests of white settlement and Euro- pean civilization in southern Africa. The question, as yet unanswered, is whether the white people of Southern Rhodesia, accustomed to having natives do all manner of unpleasant, menial, wood-hewing and water-drawing tasks, can steel themselves to eradicate the spirit of dependence upon the native for the performance of this work. If they can, there appears to be no limit to the European population Southern Rhodesia can absorb. One million, five, ten, twenty millions :: even the largest of these would not overcrowd its ample boundaries or overtax its fertile soil. If they cannot so steel themselves, but must exist on the basis of a black proletariat, then the relationship of Southern Rhodesia to the development of other colonies in the tropics, and its own development, must be radically different a .European oligarchy strictly limited in numbers, and gradually making way for the black man as the eventual ruler.
Occupied from the South, from what is now the Union of South Africa, Southern Rhodesia is still determined not to be part of the Union. It is intensely British in sentiment : and-some of its more emphatic manifestations of " Britishism " may be forgiven when it is recollected that it is a numerically small colony alongside a powerful dominion, which dominion has Afrikaans as one of its official languages, has passed a " Flag Bill " distasteful to most Britishers in Africa, has negotiated a commercial' treaty with Germany which appeared to be a deliberate break-away from Imperial Preference, has spoken more about secession than any other part of the British Empire, and has frequently expressed its " natural ambition to expand northwards and absorb Rhodesia in the pro- cess.' Rhodesia wilt not have any official language but English, or any flag but- the Union' Jack ; Rhodesians are prepared to go as far as possible in respect of Imperial Preferencethere is a preference in the tariff and a still greater in the sentiment of the people—and they will ,
not be'abgorbed in the Union. - - -
Economically, Southern Rhodesia rather resembles to=day a young creature that has fed indiscreetly—and is wondering if food will ever taste the same again ! A tobacco " boom," followed by a slump ; a cotton " booni," followed by a slump : then a totally unexpected slump-in the maize market. All these things have hap- pened during the past few years. The process of getting back to normal is accompanied by the usual discomforts that attend upon indiscretions of diet. That Rhodesia will continue to grow, however, is beyond all question. It is the nature of young things to grow ; nothing short of killing them will stop them. Besides its normal youthful vitality, Southern Rhodesia has enormous natural advantages, so great that its economic progress, no matter what else happens, is certain.
Gold production is falling off somewhat, but is likely to recover ; and the deposits of other minerals arc great and varied. Vast coal-fields ; the world's largest chrome- iron production ; the second largest asbestos production ; abundant and cheaply mined iron ; arsenic, copper, tin : these things cannot possibly lie undeveloped. A great range of climates, from the Zambezi valley, less than 1,000 feet above sea-level, to the apple-growing Inyanga district at 6,000 feet : magnificent natural grazing ; fertile soil : many possibilities of hydro-electric power, headed by the Victoria Falls, the greatest waterfall in the world ; temperatures that promote the growth of plant life without reducing the white worker to lassitude : proved capacity to produce excellent maize, tobacco, cotton, wheat : no country with these advantages can possibly be held back. Therefore, whatever the political destiny, union with the South or continued self-government ; whatever the social destiny, develop- ment as a white man's colony, or exploitation as a country where the white man merely supervises the black ; whatever fresh ups and downs the future may have in store : it is as certain as night follows day that economic- ally Southern Rhodesia will progress.
Viewed either as the most northerly extension of southern Africa, or as the most southerly extension of central Africa, in either case, as a high plateau in touch with both, and progressing rapidly itself, its influence on the coming development of tropical Africa must be a powerful, and in certain eventualities a determining, factor.
N. II. WILSON,
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