R. D. ALFRED HOERNLÉ

The Future of White Civilization in South Africa: The Answer to the Theory of Domination

(1935)

by R. F. Alfred Hoernlé

CAN WHITE, or, better Western, civilization maintain itself in Africa? On what conditions does its survival depend/ Here in South Africa, more particularly, does its continued existence demand the continued dominance of the White population over the Black population?

These important questions have recently been dealt with by the Hon. Mr. Oswald Pirow, Minister of defence and Railways. His reply may be summed up by saying that the survival of Western civilization, certainly in South Africa, and perhaps in the whole of Africa, depends on the maintenance by the White man of his political, social, economic dominance over the Black man. Destiny, so Mr. Pirow holds, has laid upon the White race what is at once a moral duty and a historic mission, viz,. to preserve in a barbarian land, amidst uncivilized or semi-civilized Blacks, the White civilization which it shares with the White peoples in Europe and America. To this end, it is entitled to use whatever means it may find necessary---colour bars to keep the Native out of skilled jobs; exclusion from the franchise, lest by his numbers he gains political power; social discriminations and disabilities of all sorts lest he rise to social equality; in short, whatever will keep the Native in ‘his’ place, which is the place assigned to him in what Mr. Pirow prettily calls the White man’s ‘philosophy of life.’

Stripped of all disguises, this philosophy is nothing more or less than a philosophy of race-war---no doubt, a war meant to be fought mainly by bloodless weapons, legal, political, economic, but a war none the less. Beautiful phrases concerning the ‘obligation’ of the White man ‘to help the Native develop and progress on his own lines towards the highest level of civilization of which he is capable,’ can disguise the naked truth only from the thoughtless and gullible.

The fundamental question, thus, is: can Western civilization be maintained at all by means of a race-war which is in the main bloodless now, but which may one day end, as it began, in the shedding of blood? Mr. Pirow’s answer appears to be ‘Yes.’ I want to put forward some arguments for thinking that the answer should be ‘No’.

(1) Africa is now inescapably in the orbit of Western civilization. The whole of it, with qualifications affecting only Egypt and Abyssinia, is under the overlordship of European powers, or, like South Africa, of peoples of European descent. So long as Africa remains in that orbit, Western civilization will survive, being fed by a constant coming and going, from and to Europe, of administrators, officials, traders, missionaries---a host of men, and women, too, of diverse interests, who, without any desire to settle permanently and found homes for their children and children’s children, yet establish European institutions and spread European civilization. Even the areas of permanent White settlement still need, and certainly maintain, this vital contact with the fountain-heads of European civilization in Europe or America. The leaders of Afrikaans Kultur [Broederbond], in every field of thought and art, have almost without exception, had a period, more or less prolonged, of overseas study. From this point of view, Western civilization is safe in Africa as long as it endures in Europe. Nothing can destroy it in Africa except a collapse in Europe which dethrones European nations, through mutual destruction in internecine war, from the leadership of the world. And even then Western civilization might still survive in Africa if it survived in America, and if Africa came into the orbit of America as it is now in the orbit of Europe.

So considered, Mr. Pirow’s analogies from past history need not disquieten us. He reminds us of the remains of extensive metal-mining in the Northern Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia, the ruins of Zimbabwe, etc., in order to suggest that, just as the high civilization which worked these mines and erected these structures has vanished from Africa, so Western civilization may vanish in its turn.

The most recent investigations throw a somewhat different light on the matter. On the one hand, they suggest that this high civilization reached South Africa at two, if not three, removes. If it had its birthplace, as Frobenius believes, in ancient Sumer, it seems thence to have spread to Southern India, and to have come to South Africa either from Southern India direct, or via the Malay Archipelago.

And, on the other hand, whilst it is possible that it reached South Africa by this rather tortuous route in a somewhat debased form, yet it is clear that, though its irrigation-practices fell into disuse, its religious ideas and ceremonies survived among the African peoples with considerable vigour. It was their very survival to the present day which enabled Frobenius to discover them. Thus, it is certainly not a story of complete disappearance, and should rather lead us to believe that Western civilization, if freely and generously shared with the Africans, will be retained by them likewise.

In any case, with modern facilities for communication, education, and culture-spread, Western civilization is over against the African in a far stronger position than its ancient predecessor. Short of a European cataclysm, Western civilization has come to stay in Africa, even in those parts where there is not now, and is not likely to be ever, any permanent White settlement. Even if European control were to be relaxed in time, contact with Europe would not cease, so long as Africa has raw materials to offer which Europe needs, markets to be exploited, human beings to be converted to Christianity or to be educated. For, Western civilization, perhaps because of the missionary spirit of Christianity woven into its whole tradition, is incurably proselytizing and self-communicating. Western civilization would be untrue to itself were it to abandon the urge to give itself and to mould others to its own pattern.

(2) It is, of course, true that if all Europeans were to withdraw now from Africa, Western civilization would soon dwindle away or degenerate out of all recognition. For the present, and for a long time to come, the survival of Western civilization is bound up with the presence of White men and women as its carriers. Though individual Natives have adopted Western civilization in varying degrees, the vast mass of Black humanity throughout Africa has not yet been sufficiently touched to be able to preserve and develop even what it has got.

But, as every keen observer notes, Africa is changing fast, and the African with it. They are changing under the many-sided impact of Western civilization, and in a direction determined by their desire to assimilate and make their own as much as that civilization as they can, sometimes with a speed and a lack of discrimination which fills us with misgivings.

Still, this phenomenon which is sweeping like an irresistible tide across the whole continent, suggests at least two remarks. The first is that civilization and race, or blood, are independent. Those modern anthropologists who believe that every ‘element’ of human culture has been invented or originated once only, and has then spread from this place of its birth by ‘culture-diffusion’ to other peoples and continents, cannot but agree that culture elements are not bound up with race or blood in the biological sense. And, even those who do not accept this theory of a single origin of every culture element, must still admit, in the light both of history and of contemporary experience, that individuals, especially if caught young, are almost idefinitely mouldable to different culture patterns, and that resistance, and especially strong resistance, to culture-change and ’progress’ in response to the stimulus of foreign example is always a social phenomenon, reflecting the cohesion and individuality of a given social group. A White child brought up exclusively in a Bantu kraal would become, in outlook, manners, ideals, a white-skinned Bantu. A Black child brought up exclusively in European surroundings would become a black-skinned European. There is nothing in white-skinned human nature which predestines it to civilization of the Western type; and there is nothing in black-skinned human nature which makes the adoption, or acquisition, of a civilization of that type in principle impossible.

I am inclined to suspect that Mr. Pirow is of the opposite opinion; that he believes Western civilization to be the exclusive achievements of Whites, if not even merely of Nordics or Aryans, and the South African Native to be, by reason of some congenital inferiority of mental endowment, incapable of assimilating Western civilization except in an externally imitative way. At any rate, something like such a belief in the inseparable connection of race and culture, or civilization, seems to be implied in his remark that he is quite ‘certain’ that the mythological ideas expressed in some of the so-called Bushmen paintings, did not ‘originate in the brains of Bushmen.’ I trust that, from recollections of what he learned in his school-days, he is equally certain that Christianity did not originate in the brains of his Aryan ancestors in the colder climes of Europe. Or will he, perhaps, explain to Calvanistic-minded Afrikaners that Christianity is not an essential part of ‘White’ civilization?

Is not the example of Christianity, and for that matter, of other proselytizing religions, like Buddhism of old, and Mohammedanism, most instructive for our present argument? All these religions have always communicated themselves across all barriers of race or blood, all social fences and political boundaries.

In fact, race, civilization, state, though they often, for historical reasons, go together, are none the less in essence distinct. Elements of civilization may spread across the dividing lines of race and citizenship; members of the same racial stock may belong to different states and participate in different cultures; the same state may comprise within itself diverse racial and cultural elements.

The conclusion which I would suggest is this. At present, the maintenance of Western civilization in Africa is bound up with the presence, whether as permanent settlers, or as temporary workers, of men and women brought up in that civilization, which in practice means men and women brought up in Europe, in America or in those parts of Africa where White settlements have been established. But, this connection of Western civilization with white-skinned human beings is not, in principle, necessary. In proportion as Western civilization communicates itself to, and is adopted by, Black Africans---and there is no good evidence of any congenital obstacle to such adoption---it will become independent of its present ‘White’ basis and be carried on by Black men, even as it is at this present day being carried on by many Hindoos and Japanese. It is perfectly conceivable that the future survival of Western civilization in Africa should come about through its becoming the dominant element in the future civilization of Black Africans. May one not say that a civilization lives through human beings who practise it and express themselves through it; and that the more men own a civilization, the better is its chance of survival. I repeat: Western civilization is one thing; the White race is another. And the fate of the one is not necessarily the fate of the other.

(3) Probably, Mr. Pirow will not accept this reasoning. For he argues in his article that, in South Africa at any rate, the future of Western civilization is dependent on the continued dominance of its White population. And to emphasize his point, he quotes Dr. G. M. Huggins, Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, as having said in London that ‘until human nature has absolutely changed, the White man will not accept the African as an equal socially or politically.’

Blessed word---‘human nature’! To appeal to it is to found one’s argument seemingly on bedrock. Unfortunately, however, human nature, in the fundamental sense, apparently intended by Dr. Huggins, has nothing to do with the matter. For we are not dealing here with fundamental congenital qualities, but with acquired group-attitudes, which are historically conditioned, and changeable with a change in the conditions that produce and now maintain them. If fundamental human nature were involved, how could we explain---to mention only a few examples at random---that on the Gold Coast, White officials meet Black judges and doctors on terms of social equality; that the Anglican clergy, White or Black, marched and sat side by side at the enthronement of the Bishop of Johannesburg; nay, that White South African sprinters, the best of whom we could send, did not disdain to compete against, and be beaten by, two American Negroes at the last Olympic Games? Are we to suppose that all these either are not ‘human,’ or else that they experienced an ‘absolute change of human nature’ for the occasion?

In fact, the situation in South Africa is this: the White population insists on maintaining its social, political, and economic dominance (politely called ‘guardianship’) over the Native people. To justify its policy, it takes advantage of the admitted fact that, at present, the survival of Western civilization in the sub-continent requires the presence of a White population. But this plea can hold ‘for ever’ only if either the Natives are constitutionally incapable of acquiring Western civilization and maintaining it on their own account; or if, in the interests of continued White dominance, they are deliberately prevented from assimilating Western civilization to the best of their ability.

That African Natives are not constitutionally incapable of progress according to Western standards is amply shown, not only by individual examples here in South Africa, but even more by the achievements they have to their credit in those portions of Africa which are recognized and administered as ‘Black Man’s Territories,’ and in which the development of the Native populations does not require to be barred, or at least slowed down indefinitely, lest it become a threat to the economic existence, or political power, or racial purity, of a dominant White minority.

Hence, in spite of all talk of ‘guardianship,’ which sounds so comforting to tender consciences, and of ‘helping the Native to develop along his own lines,’ the fact remains that in the policy of White South Africa towards the Native, the ideal of dominance comes an easy first, and the ideal of guardianship a very poor second.

(4) And this leads me to consider, in conclusion, how this preoccupation with dominance reacts on that very civilization for the sake of which it is declared to be necessary.

There is a well-known saying that you cannot keep a man in the gutter except you stay down there with him. One people cannot keep another down, except at the price of being dragged down itself. The price of dominance is a betrayal, in certain respects, of standards of that very civilization which we profess to be saving. Three-quarters of our population are Natives. Of these only 20 per cent get any education at all, and the majority of these do not get beyond Standard I or II. Yet an uneducated Native is an uneducated South African. Again, Native labour of all kinds is paid at a rate which is designedly kept far below the ‘civilized labour’ rate, i. e., the rate at which a civilized standard of life can maintained. This amounts to saying that the Native is intended to remain uncivilized, or, at any rate, that our system cannot afford to let him rise to a civilized standard of life. Yet an uncivilized Native is an uncivilized South African. Similarly, in countless other ways, our discriminatory measures involve a lowering of the standards of Western civilization, e.g., where else in the world is it still part of Western civilization that the breach of a civil contract committed by a Native employee is treated as a criminal offence? Or what other civilized country keeps the labour-tenants on its farms in legal bonds amounting to practical serfdom?

It is not that we are quite insensitive to this position. When our consciences begin to prick us, we toy with ‘segregation.’ Now, undoubtedly, segregation, in the full sense of the word, would be am alternative to domination. For, it would mean an equitable division of the land between White and Black, and the withdrawal of White control, except perhaps in the form of ‘Protectorate’ supervision or that type of Mandate Government which is intended to administer a country explicitly in the interests of its Native population. It means, in fact, the creation of Black areas in which the interests of the Natives, not of the Whites, are paramount. But, how many White South Africans want his kind of segregation? How many are are ready to pay the price in land and loss of labour for it? Certainly not all those farmers, industrialists, householders, municipalities, etc., who want a plentiful supply of cheap Black labour. As a cheap labourer, the Native is indispensable to the very maintenance of White society in South Africa. Consequently, ‘segregation’ for the Native does not mean what it ought to mean, viz., total exclusion from the area occupied by, and the structure of, the White community. No, it means total subordination in the White community---keeping him at the very bottom of the social structure, when he can be safely fenced off by legal barriers, social convention, and the handicap of his own poverty. In short, segregation, as we interpret the word in South Africa, is not an alternative to domination, but merely another instrument of domination.

In the light of all these facts, and many more of a similar nature, that might have been adduced, can we honestly ask, or without a blush of shame answer, the question what, as the professed ‘guardians’ of the Natives, we are doing to ‘help’ them to ‘achieve the highest form of civilization of which they are capable’?

When a civilization honours its ideals only by a lip-service which comes perilously near to hypocrisy, the moral rot in it has eaten very far.

The truth of the matter everyone can bring home to himself, if he will but faithfully answer to himself these two test-questions:

(a) Do White South Africans mean to share Western civilization with the Native peoples of the Union? Or do they intend to keep it to themselves?

(b) If they mean to share it, will they also draw the logical consequence of ‘equal rights to all civilized men’?

As we all know, every kind of answer will be given to these two questions, revealing with painful clearness the muddle-headedness, or divided counsels, which spring inevitably from our trying to follow two incompatible courses at once. We yearn for the happy days of the past when no Native was educated, when all were ‘goesie skepsels,’ obedient servants and labourers. We try to shut eyes to the slow,, but steady, rise of a group of Natives who are, or are coming to be, as ‘civilized’ as many Whites in their standard of living, their interests, their knowledge. We refuse to acknowledge that these can no longer be lumped together with the ‘raw’ kraal Native or the farm servant who has no education. Let a Native become ever so civilized; let him pass a university degree course with credit and honour, as some of them have done; let him study for a profession, like the medical profession, and practise with a skill which may bring him many White patients as well---still he remains a ‘Native,’ subject to galling discriminations, condemned, through the denial of social and political equality, to permanent subjection and interiority.

All these conflicts, with all they mean in tragic passions and bitter feelings, spring from the bloodless race-war which, as I have tried to show, really belies the highest moral ideals of Western civilization, at least so far as it is a Christian civilization. Complete segregation, honestly carried out, might, were it practicable, be welcomed as an escape from this race-war. Still, though it would be a solution of a kind, it would spell the partial defeat of the ideals of Western civilization---those ideals which lead us to dream of a world in which men of different race and tradition can, none the less, live in peace and co-operation with each other, side by side in the same social and political structure, each with pride in its own distinctive individuality, each with respect for the individuality of the other. Such partnership in the same State, such sharing of substantially the same Western civilization, need not involve the intermingling of the different racial groups through intermarriage. Indeed, until we know more about the causes which have brought these different racial strains into existence in the course of evolution, and of the part which they may be destined to play in the history of the world, it were better that each should keep itself as pure as it can.

On this understanding, it should not be beyond the powers of human statesmanship---it might well be called ‘human engineering’---provided it could rid itself of the incubus of race antagonism and inspire itself with ‘goodwill towards all men,’ to devise and maintain organized relationships between Whites and Blacks, such that, as full members of the same State, and sharing to the full the achievements of the same civilization, they could live and work side by side in harmony. Then, at last, might Western civilization, no longer poisoned at heart by race-war, do its beneficent work for White and Black alike throughout the African continent.

Originally in The South African Opinion, vol. 1 no. 16, 1935. Now assembled in R. F. Alfred Hoernlé’s Race and Reason: Being Mainly a Selection of Contributions to the Race Problem in South Africa, edited with a memoir by I. D. MacCrone, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, 1945.