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 CHAPTER XII.

KAFIR SCHOOLS.

The question of Kafir education is perhaps the most important that has to be solved in South Africa,—and certainly it is the one as to which there exists the most violent difference of opinion among those who have lived in South Africa. A traveller in the land by associating exclusively with one set of persons would be taught to think that here was to be found a certain and quick panacea for all the ills and dangers to which the country is subjected. Here lies the way by which within an age or two the population of the country may be made to drop its savagery and Kafirdom and blanket loving vagabondism and become a people as fit to say their prayers and vote for members of parliament as at any rate the ordinary English Christian constituent. "Let the Kafir be caught young and subjected to religious education, and he will soon become so good a man and so docile a citizen that it will be almost a matter of regret that more of us were not born Kafirs." That is the view of the question which prevails with those who have devoted themselves to Kafir education,—and of them it must be acknowledged that their efforts are continuous and