The reason for these laws is that all these people are far away from
their homes, and often no one can speak their language. Their
relations and chiefs are far away and cannot help them, and so the
Government has to make laws to prevent bad people robbing and perhaps
killing them. Wherever there is a great deal of money, there are
always thieves and bad people. So the Europeans who own the mines and
pay the workmen make these laws to protect their workmen, until their
time on the mines is finished, and they can go home to their own
chiefs again. There are police ready to see that everyone obeys the
laws, and if they find bad people or thieves they take them to a
police-court and lock them up.
In all the other chapters we have read about people living in their
own homes with their own relations. But in this chapter we read about
Africans who leave their homes to work on the mines. They work hard
and live a very different life from that lived in their village. They
see many different people of other countries, hear many languages, and
find out many new things. But no one wants to make his home there.
High wages are paid for hard work, but everything is strange and
different, and each one longs for his home. So everyone is glad when
at last his work is done and his wages paid, and he is free to go back
to his own village and the people he loves. We must remember that
South Africa is a very large country with a great many Africans in it.
Large numbers do go to work on the mines for a time, as we have been
reading, but we must not forget that all these men have their homes in
villages scattered all over that great country. In these villages
there are chiefs and customs very much like those of Central Africa.
But the great difference between South Africa and Central Africa is
that in cool South Africa Europeans can make their homes, and so the
Africans there see many European customs which they copy. Trains make
it easy to go from one part of the country to another, and no tribe is
allowed to fight. Where there is no fighting, people have tried to
learn and to grow wise. The dark-skinned races of South Africa are
learning to be good workmen, and some to be wise enough to be teachers
and even doctors to serve and help their own people to lead happier
and more useful lives.
VII
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THE GREAT FARMS OF SOUTH AFRICA