Written . 7th, 1911, published September 14, 1911, To the Editor of The New Age, “The

Black Peril in South Africa”

While this letter purports to be about the imminent enfranchisement of Black South Africans,

its sub-text is the history of the American suffrage and abolitionist movements which began

in partnership and subsequently split apart. Black men were granted the vote in the United

States nearly fifty years before women. In the American South this enfranchisement was

resisted until well into the twentieth century. Davison was wrong about the

political future of South Africans, and she reveals that she is a daughter of her time in her

coincidental disparagement of the “primitive and unreasoning mind” of the South African

male, as in her use of the phrase “Black Peril.”

Sir, –May I be allowed to contribute my quota to the correspondence on “The Black Peril in

South Africa”? It seems to me in their zeal to prove their own pet theories, some of your

correspondents are swallowing a camel in straining after a gnat. This Black Peril question

is not a mere race question, as several of them appear to think. It is far more than that: it is

a sex question, and, as such, a world question. The whole trend of civilization is reaching

up to a new plane. The Universal Races Congress proved conclusively, if proof were

needed, that colour-bars no longer exist, or if they do exist, they are only retained in more

humane fashion. Every man nowadays is recognized as having a right to his own

individuality, to his own soul, whether in matters religious, social or political. Thus in

South Africa, for example, it is only a question of a short time as to when the franchise will

be extended to the native population. In Cape Town this is already the case, and the other

States will inevitably follow suit soon. And this is where the short–sightedness of some

critics comes in. The black man knows that his enfranchisement is but a question of time,

but he hears very little word of the enfranchisement of the white woman. What is the

natural result? He believes that the white woman is inferior to the white man. The white

woman occupies in his mind the same subject and degraded position that his own black

woman does towards him. They are the white man’s goods and chattels, and for the

present the black man has no great love or respect for the white man. Perhaps he even has

in his primitive and unreasoning mind the example set by the way in which the white man

takes and despoils his black women. He may even remember the terrible lessons of the

concentration and other camps of the Boer War! And the natural result is that now and

again his furious passions break forth. But we ask, “à qui la faute?” Not on the black man,

but on the white man lies the blame, for he set the hideous example. But he adds to it the

further enormity of expecting to go scot-free himself for a parallel crime, whilst exacting a

fierce penalty from the black. Where is his sense of justice?

The remedy is plain, and indeed shrieks to the skies. Before South Africa takes the

black native into the franchise she is bound to enfranchise her white women. Mr. Smuts,

Oliver Schreiner, and other great South African minds already perceive it, and perceive it

clearly. The Women’s Enfranchisement League is straining every nerve to make this fact

plain. It is the white population’s only chance of peace and salvation. The way lies clear!

Will South Africa give the same wise lead to the Mother Country as has already been given

by Australia and New Zealand? The statesmanlike way to end the Black Peril is to give

votes to white women.

Emily Wilding Davison