THE FUTURE OF THE BANTU PEOFLE. 253 



We have regarded these people as separated from us by eons 

 of civilization ; folk who may imitate us in several small ways, 

 but who are so far removed from us as East is from West ; so far 

 as to be rightly regarded as racially inferior ; as those who will 

 always be the governed; as our hewers of wood and drawers of 

 water ; as those who are ever to do manual labour and respect 

 their betters, allowing us to rest where it is always afternoon, and 

 sing,— 



Why should we toil alone ; 



We only toil who are the first of things ? 



\Miy should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?'' 



I propose using the short time you are prepared to listen to 

 me now in looking at the present position of the native — the 

 Bantu people as they are called — and enquiring as to their future 

 ]^osition in otu" national life. The great mass is barbarian ; let 

 that be freely admitted. They do not " sit on chairs " ; like the 

 residents of a far off isle, they have no manners, their customs are 

 nasty. In the mass they have hardly touched the border of what 

 we call " civilisation." They are willing to labour for us, but 

 they do not desire to be of us. They are prepared to take our 

 money for valuable service rendered, but they prefer their own 

 society and their own manner of living to anything we can invite 

 them to. We white men, on our part, say " So may it ever be." 

 x\nd yet in the short time that Europeans have been in this 

 country ; in the much shorter period within which a few mission- 

 aries and others have influenced them, the}- have produced a few 

 outstanding men of ability — men who, if civilization means the 

 doing of certain things, can do those things as well as white men 

 can. Allow me to mention three or four of these natives. 



First, the Rev. Tiyo Soga, whom I first met in 1857. His 

 father and mother were barbarians. He himself began his boy 

 life in a sheepskin. He lived among heathen people. He also 

 lived near a missionary — one whom his father respected, whose 

 teaching his mother accepted. Let it be said to the credit of 

 old Soga that he was the first Kaffir who " whistled between the 

 stilts of a plough '' ; the first of his race who utilized the waters 

 of the running brook for agricultural purposes. But he was a 

 heathen — a blanket, or skin-clothed, Kaffir. The boy secured the 

 attention of the Missionary Brownlee, who began his education, 

 subsequently continued at Lovedale. When war broke out his 

 mother fied with him, and every day gathered sneezewood and 

 chopped it up so that at night, by the flame of the fire, the boy 

 might continue to read and learn his book. In due course he pro- 

 ceeded to Scotland, and was the first Bantu enrolled as a student 

 in the University of Glasgow. He proceeded to divinity studies, 

 and was duly licensed and ordained. In 1857 he commenced his 

 labours among his own people, dying in 1871. He was the equal 

 of most European ministers as a preacher ; he was one of the 

 ablest of missionaries ; his translation work was of the best kind ; 

 he had all the manners of an English gentleman. His biographer, 

 writing of his death, says : " The report of it announced the 

 departure from this world of a man of great moral and spiritual 



