African Affairs 43:171-177 (1944)
© The Royal African Society
African Mental Ability
No question is more vital to the future of Africa than the mental capacity of its original inhabitants, whose two main groupings are the Negro and the Bantu-speaking peoples. Nor is any question less exactly known. It was therefore with surprise that many people learned earlier this year that Colonel Deneys Reitz had made the following statement in a war review at the Guildhall in London: "I am not an anthropologist and therefore not qualified to say whether our native tribes will ever be capable of evolving up to European standards. Indeed the balance of scientific evidence appears to lean to the contrary opinion." The Union High Commissioner in London speaks with the authority of a former South African Minister of Native Affairs. Nevertheless this statement has not gone without challenge. The following article was written at our request by the Principal of the Adams Native College in Natal, who also represents the Natives of Natal and Zululand in the South African Senate. But the subject is of such importance and such complexity that we have added an extended summary of a book by Dr. S. Bieshcuvel, a psychologist now working with the R.A.F., on "African Intelligence".Dr. Bieshcuvel‘s work, which has been delayed by the war, is a reply to some of the "scientific evidence" cited by Colonel Reitz. Although in his article Dr. Brookes mentions other work (by Dr. van Rensburg) more recent than Dr. Fick’s, the summary may give some idea of the complexity of the work of investigation required before it acquires a true scientific validity.