SOUTH AFRICAN ASSOCIATION. 17 



Mineans, the Sabaeans, and the Himyarites, radiating eastwards to India 

 and south-westwards to Africa. The extent of their relationship with 

 Africa it has hitherto been most difficult to trace, but linguistic evidence 

 may prove to be of great value. Professor Maingard has pointed out to 

 me that the Makaranga who live near Zimbabwe call water ' Bahri,' a 

 word closely related in form to ' Bahr,' the ' sea ' of the Arabs, although 

 the Makaranga themselves are not a sea-board people, and that ' Shava ' 

 is their word for ' to sell or barter,' while to the Himyarites ' Saba ' meant 

 ' to travel for a commercial purpose.' Not less suggestive is the study 

 of place-names, and while I do not suggest that I have evidence on which 

 any conclusion can be based, I do contend that these investigations may 

 prove to be of a most fruitful character. It would be interesting indeed 

 to see what evidence linguistics can bring in respect of the relationship 

 of South Africa with Madagascar, and also with Polynesia through 

 Madagascar, where the tribe once dominant politically, the copper- 

 coloured Hova, are ethnologically and linguistically Melanesians amid 

 the darker-hued Sakalavas and other negroid tribes. It may even be 

 that such studies will conjure up to our minds pictures of great migratory 

 movements with Arab dhows and South Sea proas cleaving the waters 

 of the Indian Ocean. Only last year a canoe constructed of wood native 

 to South-Eastern Asia was found in Algoa Bay. 



And, finally, in this survey of what Africa can give to Science I would 

 refer, with the utmost brevity perforce, to Africa as a field, favoured as 

 is no other, for the study of all those complicated problems which arise 

 from the contact of races of different colours and at diverse stages of 

 civilisation. Of those problems, ranging from the investigations of the 

 biological factors involved in the conception of race to the practical 

 problems of the administration of backward peoples, I need not speak. 

 They have come to be part almost of the everyday thinking of most 

 civilised men. What I would emphasise is that in Africa, as nowhere 

 else, the factors which constitute these problems can be studied both in 

 isolation and in varying degrees of complexity of inter-relationship, that 

 in Africa we have a great laboratory in which to-day there are going on 

 before our eyes experiments which put to the test diverse social and 

 political theories as to the relations between white and coloured races, 

 that in Africa there are racial problems which demand solution, and the 

 solution of which will affect or determine the handling of similar problems 

 throughout the world. We hear men speak of the clash of colour, and 

 are sometimes told that Africa is the strategic point in that struggle. 

 1929 C 



