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BANTU INDUSTRIES. 



By D. A. Hunter, 

 Lovedale, C.P. 



Read July 11, 1921. 



Bartholomew Diaz discovered South Africa in 1486, six years 

 before Christopher Columbus discovered America. The Nether- 

 lands East India Company took possession of Table Bay and' occu- 

 pied the adjacent lands in 1652, thirty-two years after the Pilgrim 

 Fathers landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts. No doubt many 

 factors have contributed to cause the tremendous disparity in the 

 advance made by the United States as compared with that made 

 by South Africa in approximately the same time. To trace these 

 factors would be an interesting and enlightening historical study. 

 That one of them has been South Africa's backwardness in indus- 

 trial development can hardly be gainsaid. 



Imagine any great civilised country with practically all its 

 more important industries eliminated except farming and mining : 

 idleness and poverty would quickly assert themselves and national 

 bankruptcy and decadence would be hard on their heels. To-day 

 post-war Europe can furnish more than one practical proof of this. 



A country's population is its most valuable asset. Without 

 population the country is dead : land, minerals, and fisheries alone 

 are valueless. It was said in pre-war days that the production 

 of a working man in England added £200 a year in wealth to the 

 State. If, however, the working man is idle, instead of a benefit 

 to the State, he becomes a burden upon it. It follows that a 

 large idle or semi-idle population in any State means not only 

 an immense annual loss in potential wealth but also a serious drain 

 upon its resources. The idle man consumes more than he produces. 



There can be no doubt that by far the greatest undeveloped 

 asset South Africa possesses is its native population. Within the 

 Union there are approximately 5,000,000 Bantu. Reckoning that, 

 including men and women and boys and girls above school age, 

 2,000,000 of these are potential workers, and that they might 

 under proper organisation and training produce half the annual 

 wealth attributed to the white labourer, we have a possible annual 

 increase to the wealth of the State of £200,000,000. 



But the material wealth of the State is only one, and not the 

 main, consideration. A prosperous, progressive, and contented 

 population is of far greater moment than great wealth, and it is 

 quite as necessary to work for the prosperity, progress and con- 

 tentment of the Bantu people as of the whites; for South Africa's 

 whole economic fabric is founded and built up upon the labour 

 of the Natives. Were they as a race to strike, and stop work, 

 South Africa would indeed be in an unhappy plight. 



