Kafir Promise and Capability . 433 



and printers. There is a little monthly Kaffir periodical called 

 the Ihweze, issued at the American Missionary station, at 

 Esiduinbine, which is principally printed by a Kaffir boy. A 

 native lad, named Magema, is the Bishop of Natal' s. principal 

 printer, and during the bishop's recent absence in England, 

 used to correct the proofs of his work as well as to print them. 

 This lad is very clever indeed, in his vocation, and it is no inapt 

 illustration of the change which the light of civilization can 

 work in these people, that the birth-name of the skilful 

 Magema was " skellum/' which, in the Dutch patois, means 

 " rascal." 



The missionaries of various denominations in Natal have 

 all been for some time engaged in creating a "literary Kaffir 

 Lauguage," which is printed in books, and in some measure 

 taught in schools by the aid of dictionary and grammar. The 

 chief argument which the missionaries employ in advocating 

 this proceeding is their urgent desire that every Kaffir shall be 

 able to read the Bible. This argument would have consider- 

 able weight in it, if it were the fact that the general Kaffir 

 population of the land can read the Bible when it is printed in 

 the Kaffir language. This, however, is not the case. When 

 the Bible is printed in Kaffir, the Kaffirs still cannot read, 

 unless the further labour has been performed of specially 

 teaching them to do so. But in practice it is found that it is 

 really quite as easy to teach Kaffirs to read English, as it is to 

 teach them to read a new written language manufactured out 

 of their own rude tongue. There therefore remains the very 

 important consideration, whether when they are taught to read, 

 it would not be better at once to teach them to read in the 

 English language, which would immediately bring them so 

 much more within the pale of white influences. There are 

 many who think that if one-fourth part the labour which has 

 been given to create a new definite and formal language out 

 of the Kaffir elements, and which the wild Kaffirs do not all 

 understand when it is so created, until they are painfully and 

 gradually taught to do so, had been devoted to teaching them 

 to speak, read, and write English, a tenfold larger result in 

 the wry of education would have been gained than is now 

 being realized. Kaffir children who are well taught learn to 

 read and understand the English language much more quickly 

 than to speak it. The faculty of speaking it comes slowly, 

 and with a little difficulty at first; but when mastered, it is 

 spoken well. No doubt the English language seems to them 

 at first a very barbarous one to have to articulate, being so 

 free as it is from clicks and from guttural explosives. The 

 author once asked a young, clever Kaffir girl, who had acquired 

 a fair understanding of English in a school, but manifested a 

 vol. s. — NO. VI. f J? 



