THE POSITION OF SOUTH AFRICA.
“A list submitted by the Secretary-General to the
members of the Council of the League of Nations on 30th
August 1928 shewed that at that date twenty-four States
had ratified or definitively acceded to the Slavery Conven-~
tion.” One of these States was the Union of South
Africa.
In returning the Draft Convention to the Secretary-
General the South African Government had remarked
that its provisions *“ would not affect any existing condi-
tions or customs obtaining in South Africa.”
This on the face of it is a very fortunate position for this
country to be in, and would seem to justify the claim made
by General Smuts at Oxford that for the solution of Cen-
tral African Native problems the experience of South
Africa should be called in. “ For a century and more
South Africa has laboured and suffered over the very
problems which are beginning to agitate the young com-
munities in the North. This experience should be help-
ful beyond the Union.” A little reflection however
tends to modify the optimism of such a conclusion.
With the exception of the indentured Indian labour
which was brought to Natal to work the sugar estates and
the Chinese employed for a short period at the gold
mines, all, or practically all, the unskilled labour of South
Africa on railways, roads, mines, farms, at the harbours
and in the towns is being done by the Natives and has all
along been done by them. Indeed, though General
Smuts was obviously thinking only of the White people
when he spoke of South Africa having laboured and
suffered, the South African Natives might quite well
claim that the labour had been all on their part and a large
share of the suffering too, and that it is their experience
that would be most instructive as a guide to Central
African policy. No one who knows anything of the con-
ditions under which for many years Native labourers
worked in the gold mines and the coal mines and what the
death-rate was among those unfortunate men will have
any doubt about the suffering.
