ABSTRACT
There was a heat wave in July of the year 1900. London sweltered in the unaccustomed temperatures. The situation in South Africa had not cooled down: the Boer War went on and on; its final cost to the nation was about £250 million. An article in the Nineteenth Century warned that ‘day by day the power of the native (in the Cape) grows…. To pay white wages for unskilled labour would spell bankruptcy for nine tenths of the industrial enterprises…. The white man instinctively rebels against toiling on an equality with the native…. The white man [must] rigorously exclude the native from political power…. Men are not born equal. They cannot be made equal by education…. ‘ 1
