CHAPTER XII.
KAFIR SCHOOLS.
The question of Kafir education is perhaps the most important
that has to be solved in South Africa,—and certainly
it is the one as to which there exists the most violent difference
of opinion among those who have lived in South
Africa. A traveller in the land by associating exclusively
with one set of persons would be taught to think that here
was to be found a certain and quick panacea for all the ills
and dangers to which the country is subjected. Here lies
the way by which within an age or two the population
of the country may be made to drop its savagery and
Kafirdom and blanket loving vagabondism and become a
people as fit to say their prayers and vote for members of
parliament as at any rate the ordinary English Christian
constituent. "Let the Kafir be caught young and subjected
to religious education, and he will soon become so good a
man and so docile a citizen that it will be almost a matter
of regret that more of us were not born Kafirs." That is
the view of the question which prevails with those who have
devoted themselves to Kafir education,—and of them it
must be acknowledged that their efforts are continuous and
