ABSTRACT
South Africa, like the United States, owes its origin as a state to colonization by Europeans on extra-European soil, but has become fully independent. The problems of racial domination that beset South African society have nothing to do with control by a distant metropolitan Power, but arise from conflicts between national or racial groups whose only home is South Africa, who have no allegiance across the ocean. In particular, the Afrikaners have been as long in the Cape as have the Bantu. Though they are descended from Dutch colonists, they have long since diverged in national character and outlook from the Dutch in Holland, and their Afrikaans language is quite distinct from Dutch. They no more consider themselves Dutchmen than the Americans consider themselves Englishmen. In the United States the original inhabitants were exterminated or numerically overwhelmed by the immigrants, and these were absorbed into an increasingly homogeneous new nation: even the negroes unquesntioably belong to the American nation. In South Africa, with the exception of the Bushmen, the African population was neither destroyed nor outnumbered, and the different races were neither physically nor culturally welded together. English and Afrikaners remain divided against each other, both face the Africans in unresolved antagonism, and the Indian immigrants are separated from all three. The fourth group are the Cape Coloureds, descended from unions of Europeans with Africans or Malays. In short, though South Africa is a sovereign and potentially great country, there is no South African nation.
