PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION E. 85 



ceptions very similar to those some centuries ago, and that 

 remnants of those magic practices are still found amongst 

 the peasantry or the less cultivated portion of the town 

 population. I was shown in Switzerland some years ago by 

 a friend belonging to the medical profession the heart of 

 a goat or of a sheep pierced by at least fifty big" pins Avith 

 large black heads. This object had been found in the hands 

 of a woman at la Chaux-de-Fonds, the town of watchmakers — 

 a very much advanced industrial centre. She had an enemy, 

 and, in order to cause him pain, she was planting a pin in 

 the sheep's heart from time to time, being convinced that, 

 according to the laws of sympathetic magic, the heart of her 

 enemy would be similarly pierced and made to suffer unbear- 

 able agony. A number of such practices are still to be found 

 in all civilised countries. 



Education, scientific training-, higher moral and religious 

 conceptions have delivered most of the Europeans from magic. 

 The same will certainly hajjpen to the Bantus if they submit 

 themselves to the teaching brought to them by us, and there 

 is no doubt that there is amongst them an ever-growing desire 

 of obtaining instruction. They get it more and more now. 



Thus, after so many years of work amongst South African 

 natives, I do not fear to take a position which some may call 

 unduly optimistic. The relation between the races may be 

 difiicult. It will perhaps become very strained, owing to 

 faults which may be committed on both sides. But I trust 

 that in the long run the Christian factor and the educational 

 factor will bring tliem nearer and nearer. Though keeping 

 apart from each other in many ways — I do not believe in 

 intermarriages — they will be able to esteem each other and 

 to reach a fruitful co-operation. 



LABOUR CONDITIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



By R. A. Leheeldt, B.A., D.Sc. 

 Professor of Economics, University College, J oluinneshnrg . 



Fresidenfial Address to Section F, delirered Juhj IT, 1920. 



The racial situation in Soutli Africa is unique — no other 

 country shows the same combination of white and black, and 

 no other country offers, from its experience, a ready-made 

 solution of the racial difficulties that exist there. That is 

 not to say that the experience of other countries is to be 

 ignored. Of course, the history of countries in which two 

 disparate races have to live together should be studied, and 

 lessons should be drawn from it for the guidance of those who 

 control South African policy, but nothing like direct copying 

 is possible. 



