MADIE HALL XUMA

Let Us Talk It Over

by

Walter M. B. Nhlapho

Speaking to the women’s section of the African National Congress at the Bantu Social Institute, Bloemfontein, recently, Mrs. Madie Hall Xuma, M.A., B.Sc., is reported to have said: “ . . . I notice here, that the fortunate African keeps aloof from his less fortunate people, and this ought not to be . . . “
 
Mrs. Xuma has not been up here long, but because of a broadminded outlook and a fearless nature, she uttered what many of us had in mind but feared to say. Now that she has set the ball rolling, we too burst out like a volcanic eruption and thanks Mrs. Xuma for it.

A noble remark, noble sentiment, from one of the highly educated black women in this country! Every right thinking person will agree that it is deplorable for cultured Bantus to form themselves into exclusive cliques and be barb-wired from the masses. We are not against educated people joining hands together for some purpose such as research work, but we think that they are rather too lost in the self and in their educated air.

Our lot as a whole is a sad one as well as a hard one. We envy others and strive to reach their state. Our educated people grumble over trivial setbacks due to the ignorance of the mass, and they do not always realize that being mere armchair grumblers and critics does not improve the position.

If the highly educated people live and thrive on individual or clique caprice, it is to the detriment of their less fortunate brethren. The tendency to love ones own clique best, and only to strive to uplift ones own soul to heaven and be less concerned whether others head for hell, is fatal to development of the race as a whole.

What Mrs. Xuma pointed out is not a matter for amusement nor amazement, but a problem in itself. The behavior is like cancerous arrest to growth, a refusal of the tissues to follow the law of their being, a stoppage in the development of the human soul.

To quote Edward FitzGerald: “What bothered me in London was all the Clever People going wrong with such Clever Reasons for so doing, which I could not confute . . . “

From: Walter M. B. Nhlapho, The Bantu World, June 24, 1944.