overcrowded. An African family often spends as much as £8 a year on getting a child educated, in addition to this increase in poll-tax, and the village schools are built by the parents themselves.
In short, it is a hardship and a sacrifice to get an African child educated; yet the white people are bitter because of money spent on African education; for it is taken for granted by white citizenry that all the wealth of the country is created by them and that whatever is ‘done’ for the Africans is a favour on their part.
It was on that first afternoon in Umtali that the note was struck which was sounded so often afterwards, and in so many keys, that I soon recognized it as the theme of Partnership.
The man who is running a Teacher Training College, the first in the country, who devotes fifteen devoted and enthusiastic hours a day to it, said: ‘I supervise all the meals myself, I see that things are done properly, European food and proper china and cutlery, not the usual tin plates and maize porridge. But I hope to God the white people don’t get to know about this .’
The architects of Partnership, which in essence is a last-ditchattempt to stave off an explosion of African bitterness, which is a policy of intelligent self-interest, lie awake at nights not because of the Africans, but because the white voters might suddenly put the brake on.
As I write (July 9th) I see that a ‘Voice of the People Committee’ has been formed in Salisbury, because they feel African advancement is being pushed forward too rapidly. ‘We support African advancement at the right pace. But it is useless and dangerous to try to achieve in 60 or 100 years the level of advancement which it took the people of Britain 1,000 years to reach. It is our view that most people of this country think the same.’
This is the authentic voice of white settlerdom. But what the people of the country—that is, the Africans—think about matters like the doubled poll-tax or segregation at the university is that if the only way they can get education is to humour the spirit of white supremacy, then humour it they will. It is as if a mad dog lay sleeping, which both the Africans and the intelligent among the white people watch fearfully, thinking, ‘Perhaps it might die in its sleep!’
It is a phenomenon which never ceases to fascinate and puzzle me, this unreasoning spirit of self-destruction that is seen at its clearest in white-settler countries. How is it that a tiny handful of white people, surrounded by a mass of black people who could overwhelm them if they wanted—how is it that they persist in a policy that led to the massacres of Kenya, to the slow, bitter stalemate of racial antagonism in the Union?
I remember hearing Lord Malvern, then Dr Huggins, addressing a farmers’ meeting in Lomagundi when I was a little girl. He said that the white people must create a class of privileged blacks to act as a bulwark against revolt. They shouted at him: ‘Who’s going to pay for it?’ And ‘Get back to the operating table.’ And ‘Kaffir-lover!’
What Partnership is actually doing is to give a few privileges, raising the standards of a minority of Africans above their fellows, without altering the basic structure of segregation, which is identical with that of the Union , in the slightest. And even this is regarded by the white people as ‘going too fast’.
Another conversation in Umtali: we sat on a hilltop from which we looked down over Portuguese territory, and discussed the brutal nature of the Portuguese Government.
There is an agreement between the Governments of the two territories, British and Portuguese, by which the police of either country may cross the borders to regain Africans who have escaped one way or the other.
‘My cookboy,’ said my hostess, ‘crossed the mountains into Portuguese East, the police went after him, and found him in a Portuguese prison. He had got up to something he shouldn’t. The prisoners
In short, it is a hardship and a sacrifice to get an African child educated; yet the white people are bitter because of money spent on African education; for it is taken for granted by white citizenry that all the wealth of the country is created by them and that whatever is ‘done’ for the Africans is a favour on their part.
It was on that first afternoon in Umtali that the note was struck which was sounded so often afterwards, and in so many keys, that I soon recognized it as the theme of Partnership.
The man who is running a Teacher Training College, the first in the country, who devotes fifteen devoted and enthusiastic hours a day to it, said: ‘I supervise all the meals myself, I see that things are done properly, European food and proper china and cutlery, not the usual tin plates and maize porridge. But I hope to God the white people don’t get to know about this .’
The architects of Partnership, which in essence is a last-ditchattempt to stave off an explosion of African bitterness, which is a policy of intelligent self-interest, lie awake at nights not because of the Africans, but because the white voters might suddenly put the brake on.
As I write (July 9th) I see that a ‘Voice of the People Committee’ has been formed in Salisbury, because they feel African advancement is being pushed forward too rapidly. ‘We support African advancement at the right pace. But it is useless and dangerous to try to achieve in 60 or 100 years the level of advancement which it took the people of Britain 1,000 years to reach. It is our view that most people of this country think the same.’
This is the authentic voice of white settlerdom. But what the people of the country—that is, the Africans—think about matters like the doubled poll-tax or segregation at the university is that if the only way they can get education is to humour the spirit of white supremacy, then humour it they will. It is as if a mad dog lay sleeping, which both the Africans and the intelligent among the white people watch fearfully, thinking, ‘Perhaps it might die in its sleep!’
It is a phenomenon which never ceases to fascinate and puzzle me, this unreasoning spirit of self-destruction that is seen at its clearest in white-settler countries. How is it that a tiny handful of white people, surrounded by a mass of black people who could overwhelm them if they wanted—how is it that they persist in a policy that led to the massacres of Kenya, to the slow, bitter stalemate of racial antagonism in the Union?
I remember hearing Lord Malvern, then Dr Huggins, addressing a farmers’ meeting in Lomagundi when I was a little girl. He said that the white people must create a class of privileged blacks to act as a bulwark against revolt. They shouted at him: ‘Who’s going to pay for it?’ And ‘Get back to the operating table.’ And ‘Kaffir-lover!’
What Partnership is actually doing is to give a few privileges, raising the standards of a minority of Africans above their fellows, without altering the basic structure of segregation, which is identical with that of the Union , in the slightest. And even this is regarded by the white people as ‘going too fast’.
Another conversation in Umtali: we sat on a hilltop from which we looked down over Portuguese territory, and discussed the brutal nature of the Portuguese Government.
There is an agreement between the Governments of the two territories, British and Portuguese, by which the police of either country may cross the borders to regain Africans who have escaped one way or the other.
‘My cookboy,’ said my hostess, ‘crossed the mountains into Portuguese East, the police went after him, and found him in a Portuguese prison. He had got up to something he shouldn’t. The prisoners
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