Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Address Delivered by Lord Selborne Before the Congregation of the University of the Cape of Good Hope, on Saturday, 27th 1909
I am not prepared to apologise for these quest-ions. I think they are questions which must be answered, and which cannot be shirked, and therefore I regret to have to record the fact that no correspondent has favoured me with an answer to any single one of them. I propose to take this opportunity of examining them and answering them myself.
The Bantu native, as we find him in South Africa, is a human being who has been in contact with civilisation for less than a century. When he first came in contact with the white man he was in a state of utter barbarism, and to-day the majority of South African natives have advanced but little beyond that point. A minority of them have, however, undoubtedly advanced be yond that point, and that in varying degrees up to and including a small band of men of marked intellectual capacity, who have become highly educated and civilised. It is impossible for us, who are sprung from races which were in contact with Roman civilisation before the Christian era, to look at questions from the same point of View as these Bantu races, with their totally different history. So far as we can form an opinion, our forefathers, years ago, when they first came into contact with the Romans, were distinctly less barbarous than were the Bantu races when they cameinto contact with the white man less than 100 years ago. Nor has the Bantu hitherto evinced a capacity for civilisa tion equal to that which our forefathers evinced from their first contact with it. We cannot tell what may be the development of the Bantu in intellect or character during the course of centuries. There may be, or rather there certainly will be, because there have been individuals who will catch up with the white man and show an intellect and strength of character which would be re markable even in him; but, speaking generally, it is fair to say, that, so far as we can foresee, the Bantu will never catch up the European either in intellect or in strength of character. As a race, the white race has received a superior intellectual and mental endowment. On the European in South Africa, therefore, devolves as grave a responsibility as has ever been laid on human beings. As a race, he is as responsible for the future of the less endowed race which lives alongside of him as an individual father is for his children. The white man is the racial adult; the black man is the racial child.
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