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PETER SEGALE |
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The suggestion that the Native should be taught in his own language is
futile and most of us suspect that the motive behind this move is not
in any way a good one but is prompted by fear and racial prejudice that
the Natives advance is rather too swift and that in order to stem this
rapid progress which is the source of this fear in the minds of a certain
type of Europeans [that] something must be done. The conclusion arrived
at being this somewhat fine gesture of 'developing the Native on his own
lines' by being taught in his own language. It is most regrettable, this
cheap expression of 'developing the Native on his own lines' for most
of these people who are apt to speak so glibly can never explain what
they mean by that cheap effusion. Where are these [illegible] along which
the Natives should develop? As we are told that our brothers, the American
Negroes, achieved wonderful progress [through] literature, science etc.,
being taught as it were in foreign language---we believe we also can do
likewise. In fact we have in South Africa already produced men and women
who have done wonders in every department of education save where a black
man has been debarred by legislation. Why all the noise then when it is
already too late? We are told that everything Natives was bar him naturally
all efforts were made to adapt ourselves to Western civilizations, It
would, therefore, be most unfair that we should be placed in another state
of confusion by being told to go back and develop along those barbarous
'lines'. That 'educated Natives were asking for the restoration of tribal
life' sounds as if the speaker was uttering these while under the influence
of a nightmare. Tribal life is broken down and the remains are being speedily
by the Government in imposing most primitive laws upon those who are still
bound up by those tribal laws. It is therefore an absurdity to imagine
any single one educated Native asking for the restoration of a primitive
which would only result in retrogression [?]. |
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