FUNDAMENTALS

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3. Permission accorded to all tribes to continue to live upon their ancestral lands without the obligation to pay other than administrative taxation.

Until these modest reforms have been secured, the Matabele and Mashona people have a wellfounded grievance against the British administration of Southern Rhodesia.

The land problem of Africa is fundamental, because upon land tenure rests the superstructure of the whole social life of the people. It divides itself broadly into the two categories-land where white colonization is possible, and tropical lands where the white man can never be other than a temporary resident. In the South of the continent, the Zambesi is the dividing line, and in the Northern part of the continent the Sahara and the Sudan.

In tropical areas the ownership of all lands should be vested in the local States, with a system of leaseholds for white merchants and white industry. To the native inhabitants must be left intact all rights of native lands and all virgin produce.

In both tropical and colonizable regions the State should retain ownership, and in territories where white colonization is possible, native tribes should be given secure title to all lands beneficially occupied by them. The system of Reserves wherever adopted should provide both security, adequacy and fertility, and reserve areas only alienable for indispensable public works, and only

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then upon the same conditions as those attaching to white men when they are called upon to surrender land for public purposes. The difficulties which attach to the ownership of minerals are easily overcome by the simple expedient of declaring all minerals the property of the State. This programme would give to the native contentment, to the white man prosperity, and to the Government peace, progress and the loyalty of its subjects.

PART IV

I. RACIAL CONTACT-THE SALE OF ALCOHOL II. SOCIAL CONTACT-POLYGAMY AND THE RE

LATIONSHIP OF THE SEXES

CHAPTER I

RACIAL CONTACT-THE SALE OF ALCOHOL

IN the social world racial contact between the white and coloured races of Africa involves a whole series of intricate and most difficult problems. The forces of Christianity find themselves confronted by such thorny indigenous problems as polygamy, irregular sexual relationships amongst the natives, and on the other hand the menace of white conduct as expressed in the unrestricted sale and consumption of alcohol, widespread sexual abuses and consequent disease. All these are to a very considerable extent dovetailed one within the other and together constitute the most formidable obstacle to the progress of the Christian faith.

It is impossible for anyone to defend the unrestricted sale of alcohol to the natives of Africa, at the same time so much heat is often engendered in any discussion of this subject that the essential factors are too often submerged beneath floods of almost passionate declamation. The chief difficulty is the tendency which exists to measure African conditions from the insular standpoint of the British islands.

The outstanding fact in the opposition to the sale of ardent spirits is that the forces of Christ