ill

ted tho sound ecological conditions that previously prevailed in our country.

“Making the minds of Egyptians fallow by prevention of education ; making the people paupers by preventing indus. trialization and cau1ing the spread of worm infections by abundant irrigation for coi;ton production-those were the three main features of British policy in Egypt from 1882 to 1919. Careful planning was done in all these respects with an eye for future developments.

They prevented us from developing any cotton industry of our own so that we must be totally dependent upon the textiles from” Lancashire. And they opposed the foundation of a university lest the spread of knowledege awaken our minas. Thus they were able to force us to descend into an abyss of ignorance, poverty and weakness. Yet they held these disastors against us as so many arguments as soon as we demanded independence. For in 1919 they dared blazon abroad to the whole world that literacy in Egypt was not more than 2 to 3 per cont and that the vast majority of the people were submerged in tho darkness of poverty, disease o.nd ignorance. What ·made the burden of British occupation even more exorbitant w’as that this period coincided with tho accelerated progress of the industrial revolution, not only in Europe but a.II over the world in so far ae it ~as not affiioted with the · disaster of British imperialism.

Therefore our backwardness increased with the years and became enormous by the end of the first world war.•

The impact of contemporary civilization upon the simpler peoples almost alway, means their dehumanization, depenonal· iza.tion, disintegration and degradation.

This is what Western culture has done to the black people of South Africa.:

“Abel Ngaea is a thin, quick-moving, coffee.brown man

of •6.

He happens to be a Zulu but his story would be much the same if he came from any one of a thousand other tribea.

•The Educ11.tion of Salama Mullla. Salama, Musaa, E.J. Brill, Leiden, lOGI, l’l’• 17C’-171.

Be lives }ust bbhide a South Afri: au city in a racially-segre· gated government housing projec~ called Newtow~. Abel is a Christian. a deacon in his church, a devoted fam1ly man. Yet ori three nights of any average week, he will oome home sodden drunk, rage at his eldest son, flighten his babies, and beat his wife.

He is a sick man.

Yet his clinical diagnosis-chronic malnutrition, chronic alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver-do not explain his ill-health. To understand that: one must know at lea.st a. little of his life histo~y.

“He was born on raw farmland 100 miles away. The fifth of eight children, he grew up in a sprawling company of parents and grandparents, brothers sisters, cousins and uncles. Every one of them worked and no one went hungry. It was a deceptively simple world.

When Abel was five, he cared for the chickens, as his older brother had done before him; when he was six, he wa:tched the goats, when he was

If hie mother had to work in tho

seven he herded cattle.

fields, there were plenty of sisters, cousins and auntlt to bold the newest baby.

If some one was sick, he was nursed. His

child-rearing was the same as hie mother and father had.

“Two things changed the pattern. When Abel was seven, he went t’> a Christian mission school and began to learn about another world. When he was nine, he was catapulted into that other world; his father, mother, two brothers and be move’d to the city.

Their- house was different, their food was different, the people were different, su\<;\\<;\enJy the world. was full of strangers lx>having strangely, speaking diffetent languages.

The family was different too.

There wa’J no network of eupporting ~latives. The fields &nd cattle were gone ;. people worked r~.r money.

There was always talk of police and passes, jobs and j&ils.

Here Abel Nga.sa grew up, went to school, learned-. trade, lea.rned to drink, speak English, and Afrikaans, became• ~Christian and marded.

“Yeare later, hie &1,nily moved to Newtown. After the smells, the filth and a qualor of the slums, Newtown looked pleuantly auburban.

Ita roads a.re paved. Some of the 113 houses have olectric light ;

a.11 ha.ve piped running water. Scattered among t!1e houses a.ro churches, schools, a community centre, shopping centre, nnrl a community health clinic. But anomic a.nd chaos a.re here Loo.

Ninety per cent of the parents are rural born;

73

JJCl’ cent of t he children a.re city-born. Of the children under lG, a third are not living with both parents; 25 percent of tho Newtown mothers work a.way from homo1

Adolescent:; a.re on their own ;

there a.re juvenile delinquent gangs and t.od\<1.y every third ba.by is illegitimate.

“A quick look a.t the next generation-at Hamilton Ngasa, first of the city-hurnrove a.ls tho same story of change but even more rapid. In his mid-twantie11, Hamilton is an entrepreneur , half-owner o f an old lorry, operator of a laundry round.

In hi~ twenty-odd years of life, he has been successively school-boy, truu.nt, delinquent, convict, factoryworker, vagrant, syphilitic o.nd hospital patient, Christian, agnostic, and African nationalist. Now tight-lipped and self-contained, ho has a cold wariucss of white people and cont.empt for his father’s intermittent efforts to pay the patriarch.

“On a. ca.rd in tho N ewtown health centre jg a list of clinical diagnoses for :Eve) yn u.nu H1~m ilt.on and a.II the others who are crowded into

Abel

Nga:;a.’s two-roomed house. Frank, agrd 21 is a delinquent and an alcoholic and has been tr1>atod twice for vcnerna.l

~i :;c o.se.

Holly, aged 16, a gifted high-:;chool student . has nncnmia. Eliza.beth, a.ged 14:

is infested with roundworms.

Faith, aged ten, is blind in one eye.

Mu.be!, aged 0, has tuberculosis. The younger children suffer from malnutrition, ringworm and decaying teeth.

“ The fundamental problorn has been most fo!’cibly stated \Jy the

U.S. diplomat,

Ucurge

Kennan.

“ Whenevtir the authority of the past i’i t oo tmddc11ly a.nd too drastically undormiucd ;

wherever tho past ceases to be the reliable reference book of human problems; whovor the experience of the father becomes irrelevant to the trial:; of the son-there tho fouuda.tion.s of mu.n’s inuer hu.lth and i;tu.IJility beain to crumble. Thesr, unfortunate ly, arc the marks of an era of

“\

I d

. I h rapid tcchnologica. an soc1a e ango.

The same do1rrada.tion and despair is me’ r tl out to the

.l”> black aborigines of Australia :

Herself an aLurigino a.n\<l leader of Au:-;t1·alian aborigine:;’ fi ht for their human rights, Bobbi Sykes claims that aborigine.~ h!ve Jived on the continrnt of Australia from”time immemorial.” There i.-; ccrtai11 ly genera.I a.gn·emcnt that the al)\<)rigino people came· to Australia from southern A”ia at least 30,000 years ago.

The 1’a:;cna.nia11 al1orig in\<’i, cowplt-tcly killed off aftt’r the prginning of European coloui:iatiun, were thought to have been in Australia. C\’en louger, than the mainland aborigine:>.

Australian aborigine,, had a unique ecological culture. Tho uaturo of their land-with no indigenous animals for domes· tication, nu iu\<ligl’noius plants for agricu ltur e, and very few fluwing streams \1 IJl·rl’ dwelling pince-; could lie e::itablishcddcma.nded a nomadic cultun· with a hunting economy!

When Captain Cook ::.Ll:ppctl on tho Australian soil, the aboriginu population wa-; a.liout :.W0,000 an\<l growing. Along with colonization came many new diseases to which the indigenous population haJ uu i mm unity ;

::.mall pox, the common cold, t.lw eye dt ,..\<:a.”‘c” iufoct.ed by the common fly, vc1wrcal . di,,ca.”‘l’S and lupro ·:-.

These disL•a.sos coupled with massacres and en muss poi so11i11g-nca~ly oxcluded from the Australian history Looks- m1·rcilt·ssly reduced the aborigine population within a short ,.;prJI of a bout two hundred yuan! to the prcllcnt \<l i~y rstimak of !j0,000. From bring ::iumc of tho healthiest pt’Oplc on earth. t.lw Llack Australians are now 0 0 [^11] of tho most undernourished p1·uplo on thiti planet. Tho abori· ginal infant mortality rate (in the Northern territory) is 80-86 per thousand births.

,

Bobbi Sykes divides the black Australians into throe categories-tribal, reserve and urban blacks. The life-atyle

•”\\laking :S1oknesa-:Scourae of tbe .:-i ew Afrae-a “ Dr. H. Jack Gea1er, Reodtr•lJigoi,Apnl, [^19]61, pp. 39-~J .

‘ 115 of the tribal blacks, under groat stress, is breaking down because thoy are unaulo to find food in. the traditional manner, and thus a.ro unable to survive as tribes.

Talking of the aborigines confined to rosorves she said ;

“Reserves differ from state to sto.tc ; somo a.re state-run and some are m1sa1on.run.

1’ho only difforonce uotwoen tho two is that on tho mission-run rosurvo::i you have to become a Christian. You are not allowed to WOl’ship in the traditional manner; but still mako art,ofacts iu or\<.lor for them to be sold to tourists.

Loa.ving and ontoriug the reserves is only possiule with spocial po1·mi~~ion though how tllis is enforced varios from sta.to to stato, town and county.

Of course, some of the reserves aro known to bo worso than others and if black poople “misbohave” they are sont. to particular reserves no better than conccnt.ration camps. ‘l’he reserves are run by a managor and his staff.

Some distance away timber and corrugated huwpios, miraculously orect, providt:l a. sort of sholtor for t.he “nati vcs.” ‘.l.’hin hungry children chase after even thinner dogs a.long the dusty unpaved roads.

‘l’he older men laze about. idlo, listless.

Others work for the boss in the white houso raking loaves, tondin~ the garden, the lucky ones rounding up cattlo or luokiug after tho horses, for a pittance. No IJasic wago horc.

Thoro is no running wa.tor in tho aborigine hutments, no olectricit,y.

The floore are dirt, furniture non-oxistonL.

Tinned food is the basir: rliet ; only occasionally 1s thcro frush fruit aud vegetaules. Malnutrition, p ovorty a11d dospair a.uouud.

.llut thore i.s Church on Sunuay and whoa they can !Jo rouudtld up, children a.rn taught tho four H.’i:;, reading, w1·itiug and n.rilhr.netio, rmd ruo::it iwpul’tant, religion.

As rogar\<ls tho urban aborigines, they livo iu u1·uan slums u::iuully

[^011]wclfo.n•.

‘l’ho_v suffor from sovoro cultural trauma. and thoir fa.wily lifo is in pioces—Lhe wen auo often arrest.ell and puL int..o prisuu.

.Many aro 1~lcoholics ; Lhis prolilern is piu·Lic11l11.rly ac11lt> among tho young womou who oft.cu soil Lhoir uuilio:> fur . 1 butt lo of l[^11]·11r.

.’\ recout stuuy Ull a1.nrigiue3 in Vic Loria rovu.i.lo.l “uui vorsally bad tooth, chronic 116 nasal and ear infections, widespread congenital defects and many cases of montal iJl health and a high percentage of tuberculosis. Other reports include “failure to thrive” amoog infants and children, an over large number of invalids and a seriously high number of “burnt out” men of fifty and youngrr.

Firstly thero is the Government’s assimilation policy. Tho reserves are no better than concentration camps. SocoRdly, the racism which has infected all strata of Australian society and prevents tho effective implementation of legi::ilation for human rights even if it is on the statute books.

This racism makes life Hell for the aborigines. Thirdly, the Government’s unwillingness to allow the aborigines land rights. Thie i ~ tho key to tho aborigine regaining their ethnic and cultul’al dignity.

‘l’hoy arc a peoplo with a passion for the natural cuviruument and tho laud.

•” .\bori~iual Lut uoL Ausu·aliau,” Zia ..: attlar, ltt1puclJ[^11]*tcrnotionol* l•’urt11tf1l•ll11, Luuuou, Maruh If, 1U7a, l’l’· li-:i.