The Black Man's Place in South Africa by Peter Nielsen

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The instinct of direction, the "bump of locality" as it is generally
called, varies with the Natives as it does among the whites, and is no
keener in the individual Native than in the individual white man. All
the hunters and travellers I have met have confirmed the opinion I have
myself formed from personal experience that by training his ordinary
powers of observation and thereby developing his sense of locality and
direction the average European is able, after a comparatively short
time, to find his way in difficult country as well as the Natives, while
some European hunters who have dispensed with Native guides and trackers
have acquired the art of tracking game so well that they surpass even
the local Natives themselves. "Veld-craft" is simply a matter of
training the ordinary faculties of observation and memory for particular
purposes, and the Native shows no such superiority in this respect as
would naturally be expected from him if he were indeed better provided
with animal instincts than the more civilised white man.

The sexual instincts of the Natives seem in no wise different from those
of other people. The African male, like the European male, is generally
more amative than the female who is always more philoprogenitive than
the man. But the notion is common that the Native male is more bestial
when sexually excited than the white man in similar case, and this is
taken to account for the fact that he is so often found guilty of crimes
of violence against females of his own colour, and sometimes even
against European women.

It must be borne in mind that before the white man came the Natives,
like the peasants in many European countries not long ago, conducted
their courtship and love-making with a show of violence which seemed to
them right and proper. The idea, indeed, that any self-respecting Native
girl could yield herself to a lover without, at least, a semblance of
physical resistance, leading to her more or less forcible capture by the
man, would have seemed, and still seems, distinctly improper to the
majority of Native women in their raw state. But since the European code
was set up Native women have not been slow in making use of its
protection, and, as I have seen, have not infrequently abused that
protection by alleging rape or assault where their own action in
simulating flight and resistance served, as they well knew it would, to
stimulate passion and pursuit.

In considering crimes of violence against white women it must also be
remembered that the Native "house-boy" who works in constant and close
physical contact with his European mistress and her daughters is exposed
to sexual excitation which very few European youths are called upon to
withstand. But crimes of this kind are indeed common enough among the
lower orders in Europe and America, and are particularly frequent among
men who have to live for a long time in unnatural abstinence from
natural intercourse with the opposite sex, and who then find themselves
in new surroundings giving opportunities for the gratification of their
natural desires, but without having at the same time the restraining
influences of their home life to help them to overcome the temptations
to which they are exposed. The seaports of Europe and America, and the
Great War furnish too many sad examples of sexual ferocity by white men
to allow us to think that they are in this respect inherently superior
to the men of other races.

The maternal instinct is manifested in the same manner and degree in the
women of both people. I have often asked Native women whether it would
be possible for any mother among them to distinguish her own new-born
baby from a supposed "changeling" of the same sex and of the same
general appearance, and the answer has always been negative. The Native
and the white woman alike would continue to cherish the substituted
child exactly as they would have cherished the issue of their own
bodies. The desire to bear children is the same in all normally
constituted women irrespective of colour or race, and there is no sign
of any special instinct for identification in the Native woman, such as
the sense of smell, which is found in all the higher animals.

There are some students who think that most of the emotions of man are
but the survivals of instinctive habit. Be this as it may, the sexual
attraction which is commonly called love certainly seems to be
essentially instinctive whereas friendship and parental and filial
devotion, when continued throughout life, seem to be emotions that
depend largely upon association and conscious intelligence. Every
natural mother will sacrifice herself for her offspring while it is
young but the tender feeling which continues in her breast towards the
child after it has grown up is sustained by association, or, where the
child is continually absent, by conscious intelligence in the form of
considerations of conventional approbation which in time merge into a
habit or a sense of duty which is hardly recognised as such. Many white
people think that although the average Native mother is capable of the
greatest devotion for her young children she is incapable of the love
which a white mother feels for her children even after they have ceased
to depend upon her care. This, I think, is wrong. I have seen many
instances of elderly Native women who have cherished their grown up
children to the last with every sign of motherly affection.

Joy and sorrow, love and hatred, hope and fear, these are the
fundamental emotions of human kind. Can any difference be detected
between these feelings in the two races?

No one who knows him will say that the Native's capacity for the "joy of
life unquestioned" is less than that of the average white man. Most
Natives are born lovers of song and music, and attain easily to
technical proficiency in the art of harmony. The aesthetic sense is
present in the average Native as it is in the average European and in
both is easily overlooked when not stimulated and developed by education
and culture. That the Natives, as a whole, feel the sorrows of life and
death as keenly as do the people of other races will be readily admitted
by all who know them well, although their way of showing their sorrow
may differ from those prescribed by the canons of conduct of other
communities. It is assumed by many that love, "the grand passion," has
been brought to a finer point, as it were, among the white people than
anywhere else, and it may well be that monogamy is conducive to the
growth of a higher and purer form of sexual reciprocity than is possible
under the polygamous system of the Natives and other peoples. The
monogamous marriage, though based on sexual attraction in the first
instance, tends to become, as the man and the woman grow older, a union
of souls, so to speak, more or less independent of the sexual element
itself. The close and continued association of one man and one woman of
compatible temperaments no doubt brings about a state of mutual
intimacy, dependence and devotion which can hardly be possible in a
polygamous household. But on the other hand may fairly be cited the
frequent instances, familiar to all, of widows and widowers among
Europeans who, despite their repeated and quite honest protestations of
undying and undivided love for the first "one and only" mate,
nevertheless find speedy consolation in a second marriage in which
undying and whole-hearted love for the second "one and only" spouse is
again declared and accepted in all sincerity. The phenomenon of "falling
in love," as it is commonly called, is not peculiar to white people. I
have known many cases where the love-sick Native swain has travelled
hundreds of miles and suffered great hardships in order to reach or
recover the one woman of his choice though other women, no less
desirable, were ready to be had for the asking at his home. The converse
is even more commonly seen. Native women are remarkably like white
women. They look upon marriage as their proper and natural function in
life, but they are not all of them willing to marry according to
parental instructions; there is the same proportion of self-willed
damsels among them as among the whites, who by obdurately refusing to
enter into the marriages arranged for them cause pain and trouble to
their well-meaning parents.

Jealousy, especially from the female side, is an ever-present source of
trouble and unhappiness among the Natives. The length to which a jealous
Native wife will go in winning back the affections of an errant husband
is often extraordinary, though the ways and means she adopts differ but
little from those practised by the superstitious and credulous peasantry
in Europe less than a hundred years ago.

While no one will deny the African Native a capacity for feeling anger
equal to that of the white man when provoked by insult and injury there
are many who believe that he is constitutionally incapable of sustaining
that feeling of hatred which in the European so often leads to
premeditated and prepared revenge. This notion is, no doubt, derivable
from the fact that a Native seldom shows any open vindictiveness against
a European employer by whom he has been insulted or unjustly punished,
but this fact may, I think, be otherwise accounted for. The white man's
prestige, backed up as it is by the established powers of law and order,
makes the attempt at revenge by a Native a difficult and risky
undertaking and, furthermore, there is to be considered the spirit of
traditional submissiveness which at all times and in all places marks
the attitude of the slave or serf towards his master. One has only to
remember the many accounts of abject resignation by the peasants of
France and the moujiks of Russia before the revolutions that changed the
order of the past in those countries. No such considerations affect the
Native where his anger and hatred are directed against one or more of
his own colour. The records of the South African courts are replete with
instances of cattle-maiming, arson, poisoning and other crimes proved to
have been motived solely by feelings of revenge.

Courage and fear are feelings that depend upon conditions that seem to
be fairly evenly distributed all over the world, and where the virtue of
courage in the form of pugnacity is comparatively lacking, as amongst
the bulk of the population of India, other forms thereof are met with,
such as that wonderful contempt of a painful death by burning which was
so often displayed by the widows of that country in following their
ancient custom of _suttee_. The average white man feels assured that no
race can be compared in bravery with his own, and that within that race
no nation can be found equal in courage to the one to which he belongs.
This is a form of elemental patriotism common to all communities, but
those who have shared the dangers of flood and field with African
Natives often testify to acts of sublime courage by Native soldiers,
hunters and miners in the face of real and appreciated danger under
circumstances which show that the Natives as a whole are no less capable
than the white people of conquering instinctive fear and of sacrificing
the individual self when great demands are made. I am not speaking now
of what is commonly called mob-courage. Natives have been known to go
through fire and water alone as well as white men.

Is there any difference of kind or degree in the moral sense of the two
races? In the prevailing view of authoritative students morality is
emotional and not intellectual in its origin, and the warrant of right
doing is attributed not to some hypothetical objective standard, but to
the whisperings of an inner conscience, an innate subjective mental
state, independent of environment and education. Differences,
undoubtedly, exist as to the acts or omissions which are approved or
disapproved by the moral feeling in the two races respectively, but the
feeling is the same. The feelings which prompt a Native woman to condemn
barrenness in other women is the same as that which makes the average
European lady look upon immodesty as a sign of immorality. The
difference is objective, not subjective; it is in the outlook but not in
the inner sense. That immorality is rife amongst Natives no one who
knows them well will deny, but neither can putanism amongst the whites
be denied. Before the white man came the very robust moral sense of the
Natives made them put down theft and, sometimes, adultery, with a
thoroughness which is apparently impossible amongst the most civilised
white people to-day. Now that Western civilisation is spreading over the
land the difference in the moral outlook of the two peoples tends to
decrease; with the savage vices go the savage virtues, and soon there
will be no difference at all.

Having found no difference between the senses, instincts and inner
feelings of the two races we come now to consider the oft-alleged
difference in what is popularly called _pure intellect_ in favour of the
white man. Is there such a thing as pure intellect or pure rationality?
Obviously there is not. The thought that we call abstract is fashioned
in the same way as the thought that is formed by the recognition of
similarities between concrete objects. The abstract thought has its
source like all other forms of thought in the organic and emotional
structure of the individual, and it is, indeed, only by pointing to
instances that we can define what we mean by an abstract idea. But many
people still think that the white race is gifted with a special faculty
for thinking about general attributes as apart from the particular
objects in which the abstracted attributes may be concretely perceived.
There is no foundation in fact for this presumption. The Natives have no
difficulty in finding words wherewith to abstract the general essence
from a plurality of facts or instances; their vocabulary is as apt and
as extensive for this purpose as that which suffices for the mental or
spiritual needs of the bulk of European people, indeed, the capacity for
abstracting the general nature and character from the particular
experience or emotion into pithy expressions by way of simile or
metaphor that admirably convey the perceived generalisation is as highly
evolved in the Native as in any other human variety.[17]

I think that the magistrates, native commissioners, police officers,
missionaries, farmers, miners, and traders in South Africa who have had
first-hand experience of dealing with raw Natives will agree with me
that in sound reasoning ability, as applied to matters with which he is
familiar, the Native is no whit below the white man. It would be easy
for me to give hundreds of instances that have come under my own
observation of arguments stated and deductions made by Natives who were
innocent of all European education that would show a capacity for mental
analysis and clear ratiocination equal to that of the educated European,
but I have to consider the reader's patience and will therefore confine
myself to a few illustrations taken at random from a number that were
written down by me at the time of observation. I may say here that my
translation into English has been made with the most scrupulous regard
to exactness so as to avoid the possibility of importing into the words
used a fuller meaning than that which was actually present in the
speaker's own mind.

In the Northern part of Matabeleland, not far from the Zambesi river,
lives a tribe called Bashankwe who follow a custom of marriage known
locally as "ku garidzela" which is in effect a rendering of personal
service, in the doing of such primitive husbandry as there obtains by
the prospective son-in-law for the parent of the girl chosen instead of
paying for her a consideration in money or cattle as is done by most of
the Natives in South Africa. It is a practice similar to the custom
which may be supposed to have been general in Palestine when Jacob
served for Rachel in the days of the Hebrew patriarchs. Sometime ago I
discussed the nature and present incidence of this custom with a chief
named Sileya of those parts, a wholly untutored Native. A point brought
up for settlement was the validity, under the present _regime_, of the
claim for compensation that under their law might be brought by a
rejected "garidzela" lover for the value of the work done by him during
his period of service when, at the end of such service, he found the
girl unwilling to marry him. I had explained to the chief that the white
man's government would always set its face against any custom whereby it
might be possible for the parents to pledge their daughters in marriage,
and had pointed out that this particular custom was for that reason not
viewed with favour by the authorities. To this Sileya replied: "If you,
the Government, will make it plain that the man who finds himself
refused by the girl for whom he has been serving can claim compensation
for the work he has done then the fathers will become more careful than
they now are and they will refuse to accept the young man's services
save where the girl is old enough to consent for herself, for no man
likes to give up what he has won and held, and in this manner our old
custom will not go against the way of the Government." This reply, which
I have Englished almost literally, is typical of the Native form of
argumentation and it shows good all-round thinking ability; it is not a
particular instance of special intelligence, but a fair example of
average Native perspicacity.

A few months ago, while discussing with some elderly Matabele Natives
the subject of miscegenation in South Africa generally one of the old
men voiced the opinion of the meeting thus:

"White people do what they like, they take what they like, and when they
like certain girls they take them, and what can we say? And, after all,
why should they not do so? Everything belongs to them, we are their
people, our girls belong to them, the white people only take what is
theirs to take."

"But," I interpolated, "white men do not take the girls away from you,
it is the girls themselves who leave their own kind and go to the white
men."

"No," he replied, "I say they take the girls because they know as well
as we do that women--all women--will always go where they can live with
ease and have plenty and be without work, and this they can do when they
go to the white man, whereas with us they must work. Therefore I say
that the white men take the girls away from us, but I do not say that
they do wrong so long as they only play with them and have no children
by them, for it is the manner of all the world that men and women come
together and no law can be made to stop them from doing so, but the
white men do wrong when they allow the black women to have children by
them because such children grow up without proper homes, and that is
very sad and wrong."

I think the average white man, whatever his own opinion may be on this
matter, will acknowledge that there is clear thought and strong
common-sense in the old man's dictum, and this old man is an ordinary
raw Native, without any European education.

My good friend, Mahlabanyane, is a typical Tebele of the old school. In
his youth he accompanied the hunter Selous on many wanderings, and he
never tires of telling of the ways and habits of the game and wild
animals he has seen and shot. One day he told me that he had observed
all the wild animals of Rhodesia, big and small, and that he had
examined them all after they had been killed. He had come to the
conclusion, he said, that many of the bigger animals were related to
one another in some wonderful way, and that they had probably come out
of the earth, all alike, and had then afterwards become different, "as
people do when they separate and live always by themselves away from
other people," he added.

"Look at the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the wild
pig," he said, "they must at one time have been one kind; their teeth
are alike, and none of them chew the cud. I think they must be cousins
to one another, and, one time, perhaps, they were brothers."

Leaving aside the question of the absolute correctness of the old man's
observation there can be no doubt that we have here a thinker who, being
struck with the physiological similarity of some animals is attempting
to account for the fact, and does so along the lines of Darwin and his
predecessors, but without any of the facts and theories that were
recorded before they began their labours. I asked the old fellow if he
had ever heard Selous talk about this matter, and he said he had not;
the idea, he said, had come out of his own head.

One day a Zambesi woman whose husband, a petty chief, was awaiting trial
for murder at my station, sent word to me asking for permission to dance
that night in the compound. Surmising that there was a religious motive
behind this request I gave my consent, and afterwards watched the
dancing for an hour or so.

The element of rhythm in sound and movement has always been one of the
chief means of exciting and expressing religious exaltation as well as
sexual passion, and the two emotions merge easily in all primitive
people whether they be the half-civilised moujiks of Russia, or the
frequenters of modern "Revival Meetings," or the naked Batonka on the
banks of the Zambesi. The Batonka, indeed, are particularly fond of
dancing to the beat of the ubiquitous drum.

The woman, who was accompanied by a few of her female friends, danced
with unusual grace, and her movements were remarkably free from erotic
incitation. Holding a pair of gourds in which little stones rattled not
unmusically, like castanets, she gyrated in the moonlight and pirouetted
on her toes with such lightness and elegance that my curiosity was
roused, and the next morning I had her brought to my office and asked
her to account, if she could, for the marked difference between her way
of dancing and that of the rest of her people.

This is what she said: "I was very sad and my whole body was heavy. I
felt ill, so I asked that I might be allowed to dance. Dancing always
does me good when I feel unwell. I did not learn to dance in the way I
do from anyone. I think the Great Spirit gave to me the gift of dancing,
the power came down on me when I was a child. I have never seen
Europeans or Arabs dancing. I have never seen an Arab dancing woman. I
dance my way because the Spirit gave it to me to do so."

I then asked her what it was that made her well. Was it the dancing or
the profuse sweating which I had noticed? "The Spirit," she said, "made
me well, he gave me to dance, the dancing made we sweat thereby cooling
my body, and that made me well, it brought my heart back to its right
place."

This clear expression of concatenated thought from a Native woman who
had had no missionary tuition or other education of the Western kind
shows to my mind sound reasoning capacity no less developed than that
met with in Europeans generally.

Turning over my notes I select, at random, a few more instances to
illustrate my argument.

A Tebele youth of about twenty years of age, smooth-limbed and good
looking, was charged some years ago in the Rhodesian High Court with the
crime of abducting two young Native girls for his own immoral purposes.
I made a note of the chief part of his speech in his own defence at the
time. This is what he said:

"I have the gift of singing and dancing, my father had it, and his
father before him. When I sing and dance people forget their sorrows,
and when I leave a kraal, singing as I go, the people follow me for the
joy of my song, so that sometimes I have to drive them away. Now it is
easy to drive away old men and women, but who can drive away two pretty
girls like these that have been made to speak against me to-day? When I
sang and danced at their kraal their father gave me a goat because I had
made his heart white and glad, and his daughters followed me and joined
in the play--and I am young! When I become old and can no longer sing
and dance the girls will not follow me. Why should I not be merry while
I may? I never said a word to these girls, they followed me, I did not
call them. But now, if the white men who listen to my words feel
doubtful about what I say, then I would ask the judge to allow me to
show them here and now how I can dance and sing, and if, after hearing
and seeing me do so, they still think I am to blame, then I have no more
to say; I shall go to gaol with a broken heart, and silent."

The offer made by this African Apollo, I need not say, was not accepted,
and he was found guilty and sentenced to a term of imprisonment with
hard labour, but I remember that several of the jurymen expressed their
astonishment afterwards at hearing so good a defence so pleasingly
expressed by a raw Native youth who had never been to any kind of
school.

On one occasion I had some trouble to make a Native complainant
understand that the evidence upon which he relied was entirely hearsay
and therefore of no avail against the man he wished to charge with a
crime of theft. While talking an elderly Tebele arrived and I put the
matter to him. He listened gravely and when I had finished he turned to
the other and said:

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