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

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Title: The Black Man's Place in South Africa

Author: Peter Nielsen

Release Date: February 4, 2005 [EBook #14900]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE BLACK MAN'S PLACE IN SOUTH AFRICA

BY

PETER NIELSEN.

JUTA & CO., LTD.,

CAPE TOWN. PORT ELIZABETH. UITENHAGE.

JOHANNESBURG.

1922

_To

MY MOTHER_.

PREFACE.

The reader has a right to ask what qualification the writer may have for
dealing with the subject upon which he offers his opinions.

The author of this book claims the qualifications of an observer who,
during many years, has studied the ways and thoughts of the Natives of
South Africa on the spot, not through interpreters, but at first hand,
through the medium of their own speech, which he professes to know as
well as the Natives themselves.

P.N.

THE BLACK MAN'S PLACE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

THE QUESTION STATED.

The white man has taken up the burden of ruling his dark-skinned fellows
throughout the world, and in South Africa he has so far carried that
burden alone, feeling well assured of his fitness for the task. He has
seen before him a feeble folk, strong only in their numbers and fit only
for service, a people unworthy of sharing with his own race the
privileges of social and political life, and it has seemed right
therefore in his sight that this people should continue to bend under
his dominant will. But to-day the white man is being disturbed by signs
of coming strength among the black and thriving masses; signs of the
awakening of a consciousness of racial manhood that is beginning to find
voice in a demand for those rights of citizenship which hitherto have
been so easily withheld. The white people are beginning to ask
themselves whether they shall sit still and wait till that voice becomes
clamant and insistent throughout the land or whether they shall begin
now to think out and provide means for dealing with those coming events
whose