The Rising Tide
Complex South Africa. By W. M. Macmillan. (Faber and - Faber. 12s. 6d. ).
" THE truth about the Union is of high significance in these days for. Africa as a whole," writes Professor Macmillan, who in Complex South Africa provides an economic footnote to his earlier historical surveys of the colour-clash in South Africa. The truth, in short, is that whereas the eyes of our statesmen are fastened on the immediate problems of the Far East, where the damage has already been done, the same methods are slowly, but infallibly, building up a far greater problem in Africa, which in another fifty years it will be beyond the wit of any statesmairto solve. Mr. PhillipS quotes the late Mr. H. A. Grimsbaw, who was probably more awake to the situation than any man of his day :- "Unless the responsible white races act with a finer prevision than they utilized in their industrialization of Asia we shall have the same basic problem, the same subversion of society, the same suffering and misery and the same eruptive and disruptive tendencies as are visible in Japan and in the industrialized area of China and India to-day . . . Africa is as yet, comparatively speaking, a sheet upon which little has been written."
Little, but enough, as these two volumes show us. They approach the same problems from different angles—Mr. Phillips more emotionally, Professor Macmillan more dis- passionately, and for that reason more convincingly. Pro- fessor Macmillan is content to place the economic situation before his readers, without offering a solution, unless it is to be found in his suggestion that effective direct representation is the only security for native interests. This may be well enough for South Africa, where the economic situation has exceeded the possibilities of a more rational solution based on the indigenous cultures, but it is not the policy for which Africa as a whole is looking. Mr. Phillips offers as a remedy what is only a palliative, a consideration and treatment of natives from the point of view of a Christian society.
Both our authors are at one, however, in their whole- hearted condemnation of the serfdom under. which- South African natives labour. They are gradually being urbanised, their land is insufficient, and they receive wages below the subsistence level, on an average £8 a year. There are more than 300,000 detribalized natives permanently living in towns, and, though they have to pay the same for food as do the whites, they receive from a third to a sixth of the wages which are paid to whites for the same work. The colour bar, though repudiated in principle by labour leaders, is resolutely maintained " as a matter of practical politics " in order that the interests of poor whites may not suffer. The natives to- day are a conquered and economically dependent mass, and three-quarters of the population of South Africa is disregarded in its economic policy.
In these days the fate of the whole of Africa is hanging in the balance. The tide of colour is rising, and.these two books are a terrible indictment of white exploitation and a vindica- tion, if any be needed, of resurgent Africa. " The League of Nations," writes Professor Macmillan, " hardly knowing what it did, has defined our task as ' the sacred trust of civilization.' In Greater Africa this can hardly be devolved upon a handful of masters more concerned for the labour than for the civiliza- tion of their trust "—words pregnant with meaning for those who will shortly have to frame a constitution and policy for East Africa.
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