THE RACIAL PROSPECT IN SOUTH 



AFRICA' 



THE future of the various races 

 of South African natives can 

 be foretold with much prol)a- 

 bihty. The Bushmen and Koranas are 

 rapidly passing away as distinct races, 

 the remaining" individuals being steadily 

 absorbed by the other races, mainly by 

 the mixed Hottentots, and in one hun- 

 dred years it will be difficult to find a 

 pure Bushman or Korana. The Hot- 

 tentots will survive longer as a distinct 

 race. In Namaqualand, v/here there 

 will never be any very extensive white 

 settlement, they may survive in a state 

 of relative purity for some hundreds 

 of years, and so also in Southwest 

 Africa, but in other parts of South 

 Africa they are bound to become ab- 

 sorbed into the mixed Cape Race or 

 the Bantus. 



But the future of the Bantus is very 

 different and provides those of us who 

 dwell in South Africa with our most 

 alarming political problem. Almost all 

 colored races of man go down before 

 the onslaught of the white man's 

 diseases and alcoholic drinks. The 

 South Sea L'^lander, the Australian, the 

 Bushman are all passing away, but the 

 Bantus thrive, and today are multiply- 

 ing twice as fast as the whites. Every 

 Kafir wishes to have a family and 

 generally marries young. Polygamy 

 has been recognized from time im- 

 memorial and even Christian missions 

 have to compound with it. Since de- 

 vastating native wars have ceased 

 under the Pax Britannica, the sexes 

 have become more equalized, and poly- 

 gamy is now the exception, but it is 

 still largely practiced in the native ter- 

 ritories. Every woman becomes the 

 mother of children and many have 

 large families. At present the Kafirs 

 or Bantus outnumber the whites by 

 about five to one, and every vear the 



proportion of l)lack to white is becom- 

 ing larger. Before very many years 

 it must be ten to one. and before the 

 present century draws to a close it 

 seems very certain that the Kafir will 

 rule the whole of South Africa, and 

 white civilization be replaced by black. 

 There will be no need for the Kafirs 

 to rise in rebellion in order to gain 

 commanding power ; they have only to 

 breed and to study. The Kafir chiefs 

 are often men of great intellect, and 

 they are certainly better statesmen than 

 many of the whites. They look far 

 into the future. In the first half of 

 the nineteenth century there was a 

 continuous succession of Kafir wars, 

 and the blacks showed that they must 

 be classed as formidable warriors. But 

 since the Zulu War in 1879 there has 

 been no serious native war. There 

 has, however, been far more serious 

 native peace. When there was a little 

 rising in Zululand about a dozen years 

 ago and hundreds of Zulus were shot 

 down by machine guns, the Zulu moth- 

 ers quietly said, "We can breed sons 

 quicker than you can shoot them 

 down." 



In olden times the Hottentots were 

 the more or less docile slaves of the 

 Dutch and French immigrants. They 

 were intellectually and physically too 

 inferior to the whites ever to be any 

 source of direct danger. But unfor- 

 tunately the very inferiority of the 

 Hottentots has given rise to the idea 

 in the minds of many of the white 

 colonists that all colored races are in- 

 ferior, and that there is really no dan-_, 

 ger from the Kafirs, and as a result 

 the Kafirs have been encouraged to 

 come into Cape Colony, most of which 

 was really originally the country of 

 the Hottentots and the Bushmen. 



Already the Kafir has displaced the 



^ Reprinted from Natural History, May- June, 1923. 



363 



