Native Races and the War Part 10

But I am especially concerned with what affects the natives.

Article 1 of this section says:--A native must not own fixed property.

(2) He must not marry by civil or ecclesiastical process.

(3) He must not be allowed access to Civil Courts in any action against a white man.

Article 9 of the Grondwet is not only adhered to, but is exaggerated in its application as follows:--"The people shall not permit any equality of coloured persons with white inhabitants, neither in the Church, nor in the State."

"These principles" says Mr. Bovill, "are so engrained in the mind of an average Boer that we can never expect anything to be done by the Volksraad for the natives in this respect. It appears inconceivable," he continues, "that a Government making any pretence of being a civilized power, at the end of the nineteenth century, should be so completely ignorant of the most elementary principles of good government for such a large number of its subjects."

As to the access by the natives to the Courts of Law.

"If you ask a native he will tell you that access to the law-courts is much too easy, but they are the Criminal Courts of the Field Cornets and Landdrosts. He suffers so much from these, that he cannot entertain the idea that the Higher Courts are any better than the ordinary Field Cornets' or Landdrosts'. However, there are times when with fear and trepidation he does appeal to a Higher Court. With what result? If the decision is in favour of the native, the burghers are up in arms, crying out against the injustice of a judgment given in favour of a black against a white man; burghers sigh and say that a great disaster is about to befall the State when a native can have judgment against a white man. The inequality of the blacks and superiority of the white (burghers) is largely discussed. Motions are brought forward in the Volksraad to prohibit natives pleading in the Higher Courts. Such is the usual outcry. Summary justice (?) by a Landdrost or Field Cornet is all the Boer would allow a native. No appeal should be permitted, for may it not lead to a quas.h.i.+ng of the conviction? The Landdrost is the friend of the Boer, and he can always "square" him in a matter against a native.

"It was only to prevent an open breach with England that these appeals to the Higher Courts were permitted in a limited degree."[33]

No. 2.--The Native Marriage Laws. "Think," says Mr. Bovill, "what it would mean to our social life in England if we were a conquered nation, and the conquerors should say: 'All your laws and customs are abrogated; your marriage laws are of no consequence to us; you may follow or leave them as you please, but we do not undertake to support them, and you may live like cattle if you wish; we cannot recognise your marriage laws as binding, nor yet will we legalise any form of marriage among you.' Such is in effect, the present position of the natives in the Transvaal.

"I occasionally took my holidays in Johannesburg, and a.s.sisted the Vicar, during which time I could take charge of Christian native marriages, of which the State took no cognisance. A native may marry, and any time after leave his wife, but the woman would have no legal claim on him. He could marry again as soon as he pleased, and he could not be proceeded against either for support of his first wife or for bigamy. And so he might go on as long as he wished to marry or could get anyone to marry him. The same is applicable to all persons of colour, even if only slightly coloured--half-castes of three or four generations if the colour is at all apparent. All licenses for the marriage of white people must be applied for personally, and signed in the presence of the Landdrost, who is very cautious lest half-castes or persons of colour should get one. Colour is evidently the only test of unfitness to claim recognition of the marriage contract by the Transvaal State.

"The injustice of such a law must be apparent; it places a premium on vice.[34] It gives an excuse to any 'person of colour' to commit the most heinous offences against the laws of morality and social order, and protects such a one from the legal consequences which would necessarily follow in any other civilised State."

Mr. Bovill has an instructive chapter on the "Compound system," and the condition of native compounds. This is a matter which it is to be hoped will be taken seriously to heart by the Chartered Company, and any other company or group of employers throughout African mining districts." The Compound system of huddling hundreds of natives together in tin shanties is the very opposite to the free life to which they are accustomed. If South African mining is to become a settled industry, we must have the conditions of the labour market settled, and also the conditions of living. We cannot expect natives to give up their free open-air style of living, and their home life. They love their homes, and suffer from homesickness as much as, or probably more than most white people. The reason so many leave their work after six months is that they are constantly longing to see their wives and children. Many times have they said to me, 'It would be all right if only we could have our wives and families with us.'"

"The result of this compound life is the worst possible morally."....

"We must treat the native, not as a machine to work when required under any conditions, but as a raw son of nature, very often without any moral force to control him and to raise him much above the lower animal world in his pa.s.sions, except that which native custom has given him."

The writer suggests that "native reserves or locations should be established on the separate mines, or groups of mines, where the natives can have their huts built, and live more or less under the same conditions as they do in their native kraals. If a native found that he could live under similar conditions to those he has been accustomed to, he will soon be anxious to save enough money to bring his wife and children there, and remain in the labour district for a much longer period than at present is the case.

"It would be a distinct gain to the mining industry as well as to the native."

Mr. Bovill goes into much detail on the subject of the "Pa.s.s Laws." I should much desire to reproduce his chapter on that subject, if it were not too long. That system must be wholly abolished, he says: "it is at present worse than any conditions under which slavery exists. It is a criminal-making law. Brand a slave, and you have put him to a certain amount of physical pain for once, but penalties under the Pa.s.s Law system mean lashes innumerable at the direction of any Boer Field Cornet or Landdrost. It is a most barbarous system, as brutal as it is criminal-making, alone worthy of a Boer with an exaggerated fear of and cowardly brutality towards a race he has been taught to despise."

Treating of the prohibition imposed on the Natives as to the possession in any way or by any means of a piece of land, he writes: "Many natives are now earning and saving large sums of money, year by year, at the various labour centres. They return home with every intention of following a peaceful life; why should they not be encouraged to put their money into land, and follow their 'peaceful pursuits' as well as any Boer farmer? They are capable of doing it. Besides, if they held fixed property in the State, it would be to their advantage to maintain law and order, when they had everything they possessed at stake. With no interest in the land, the tendency must always be to a nomadic life.

They are as thoroughly well capable of becoming true, peaceful, and loyal citizens of the State as are any other race of people. Their instincts and training are all towards law and order. Their lives have been disciplined under native rule, and now that the white man is breaking up that rule, what is he going to give as a subst.i.tute? Anarchy and lawlessness, or good government which tends to peace and prosperity?

"We can only hope for better times, and a more humane Government for the natives, to wipe out the wrong that has been done to both black and white under a b.a.s.t.a.r.d civilization which has prevailed in Pretoria for the past fifteen years. The Government which holds down such a large number of its subjects by treating them as cut-throats and outlaws, will one day repent bitterly of its sin of misrule."[35]

Tyranny has a genius for creeping in everywhere, and under any and every form of government. This is being strikingly ill.u.s.trated in these days.

Under the name of a Republic, the traditions of a Military Oligarchy have grown up, and stealthily prevailed.

When a nation has no recorded standard of guiding principles of government, it matters not by what name it may be called--Empire, Republic, Oligarchy, or Democracy--it may fall under the blighting influence of the tyranny of a single individual, or a wealthy clique, or a military despot.

Too much weight is given just now to mere names as applied to governments. The acknowledged principles which underlie the outward forms of government alone are vitally important, and by the adherence to or abdication of these principles each nation will be judged. The revered name of _Republic_ is as capable of being dragged in the mire as that of the t.i.tle of any other form of government. Mere names and words have lately had a strange and even a disastrous power of misleading and deceiving, not persons only, but nations,--even a whole continent of nations. It is needful to beware of being drawn into conclusions leading to action by a.s.sociations attaching merely to a name, or to some crystallized word which may sometimes cover a principle the opposite of that which it was originally used to express. Such names and words are in some cases being as rapidly changed and remodelled as geographical charts are which represent new and rapidly developing or decaying groups of the human race. Yet names are always to a large part of mankind more significant than facts; and names and appearances in this matter appeal to France and to Switzerland, and in a measure to the American people, in favour of the Boers.

Among the concessions made by Lord Derby in the Convention of 1884, none has turned out to be more unfortunate than that of allowing the Transvaal State to resume the t.i.tle of the "South African Republic." In South Africa it embodied an impossible ideal; to the outside world it conveyed a false impression. The t.i.tle has been the reason of widespread error with regard to the real nature of the Transvaal Government and of its struggle with this country. If "Republican Independence" had been all that Mr. Kruger was striving for, there would have been no war. He adopted the name, but not the spirit of a Republic. The "Independence"

claimed by him, and urged even now by some of his friends in the British Parliament, is shown by the whole past history of the Transvaal to be an independence and a freedom which _involve the enslavement of other men._

A friend writes:--"In order to satisfy my own mind I have been looking in Latin Dictionaries for the correct and original meaning of 'impero,'

(I govern,) and 'imperium.' The word 'Empire' has an unpleasant ring from some points of view and to some minds. One thinks of Roman Emperors, Domitian, Nero, Tiberius,--of the word 'imperious,' and of the French 'Empire' under Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. The Latin word means 'the giving of commands.' All depends on whether the commands given are _good_, and the giver of them also good and wise. The Ten Commandments are in one sense 'imperial.' Now, I think the word as used in the phrase _British Empire_ has, in the most modern and best sense, quite a different savour or flavour from that of Napoleon's Empire, or the Turkish or Mahommedan Empires of the past. It has come to mean the 'Dominion of Freedom' or the 'Reign of Liberty,' rather than the giving of despotic or tyrannical or oligarchic commands. In fact, our Imperialism is freedom for all races and peoples who choose to accept it, whilst Boer _Republicanism_ is the exact opposite. How strangely words change their weight and value!

"And yet there still remains the sense of 'command' in 'Empire;' and in the past history of our Government of the Cape Colony there has been too little wholesome command and obedience, and too much opportunism, shuffling off of responsibility, with self-sufficient ignorance and doctrinaire foolishness taking the place of knowledge and insight. Want of courage is, I think, in short, at the bottom of the past mismanagement."

The a.s.sertion is repeatedly made that "England coveted the gold of the Transvaal, and hence went to war." It is necessary it seems, again and again, to remind those who speak thus that England was not the invader.

Kruger invaded British Territory, being fully prepared for war. England was not in the least prepared for war. This last fact is itself a complete answer to those who pretend that she was the aggressor.

In regard to the a.s.sertion that "England coveted the gold of the Transvaal," what is here meant by "England?" Ours is a representative Government. Are the entire people, with their representatives in Parliament and the Government included in this a.s.sertion, or is it meant that certain individuals, desiring gold, went to the Transvaal in search of it? The expression "England" in this relation, is vague and misleading.

The search for gold is not in itself a legal nor a moral offence. But the inordinate desire and pursuit of wealth, becoming the absorbing motive to the exclusion of all n.o.bler aims, is a moral offence and a source of corruption.

Wherever gold is to be found, there is a rush from all sides; among some honest explorers with legitimate aims, there are always found, in such a case, a number of unruly spirits, of scheming, dishonest and careless persons, the sc.u.m of the earth, cheats and vagabonds. The Outlanders who crowded to the Rand were of different nations, French, Belgians and others, besides the English who were in a large majority. The presence and eager rush of this mult.i.tude of gold seekers certainly brought into the country elements which clouded the moral atmosphere, and became the occasion of deeds which so far from being typical of the spirit of "England" and the English people at large, were the very reverse, and have been condemned by public opinion in our country.

But, admitting that unworthy motives and corrupting elements were introduced into the Transvaal by the influx of strangers urged there by self-interest, it is strange that any should imagine and a.s.sert that the "corrupting influence of gold," or the l.u.s.t of gold told upon the British alone. The disasters brought upon the Transvaal seem to be largely attributable to the corrupting effect on President Kruger and his allies in the Government, of the sudden acquisition of enormous wealth, through the development, by other hands than his own, of the hidden riches within his country.

What are the facts? In 1885 the revenue of the Transvaal State was a little over 177,000. This rose, owing to the Outlanders' labours, and the taxes exacted from them by the Transvaal government to 4,400,000 (in 1899). Thus they have increased in the proportion of 1 to 25. "If the admirers of the Transvaal government, who place no confidence in doc.u.ments emanating from English sources, will take the trouble to open the _Almanack de Gotha_, they will there find the financial report for 1897. There they will read that of these 4,400,000, salaries and emoluments amount to nearly one-quarter--we will call it 1,000,000,--that is, 40 per head per adult Boer, for it goes without saying that in all this the Outlanders have no share. If we remember that the great majority of the Boers consist of farmers who do not concern themselves at all about the Administration, and who consequently get no slice of the cake, we can judge of the size of the junks which President Kruger and the chiefly foreign oligarchy on which he leans take to themselves. The President has a salary of 7,000--(the President of the Swiss Confederation has 600)--and besides that, what is called "coffee-money." This is his official income, but his personal resources do not end there. The same table of the _Almanack de Gotha_ shows a sum of nearly 660,000 ent.i.tled "other expenses." Under this head are included secret funds, which in the budget are stated at a little less than 40,000 (more than even England has), but which always exceed that sum, and in 1896 reached about 200,000. Secret Service Funds!--vile name and viler reality--should be unknown in the affairs of small nations. Is not honesty one of the cardinal virtues which we should expect to find amongst small nations, if nowhere else? What can the chief of a small State of 250,000 inhabitants do with such a large amount of Secret funds?

"We can picture to ourselves what the financial administration of the Boers must be in this plethora of money, provided almost entirely by the hated Outlander. An example may be cited. The Raad were discussing the budget of 1898, and one of the members called attention to the fact that for several years past advances to the amount of 2,400,000 had been made to various officials, and were unaccounted for. That is a specimen of what the Boer _regime_ has become in this school of opulence."[36] M.

Naville continues:--"We do not consider the Boers, as a people, to be infected by the corruption which rules the administration. The farmers who live far from Pretoria have preserved their patriarchal virtues: they are upright and honest, but at the same time very proud, and impatient of every kind of authority.... They are ignorant, and read no books or papers--only the Old Testament; but Kruger knew he could rouse these people by waving before them the spectre of England, and crying in their ears the word 'Independence.' And this is what disgusts us, that under cover of principles so dear to us all, independence and national honour, these brave men are sent to the battlefield to preserve for a tyrannical and venal oligarchy the right to share amongst themselves, and distribute as they please, the gold which is levied on the work of foreigners."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Parliamentary Blue Book, 4194, 42.]

[Footnote 31: Austral Africa, Chap. 4, pages 235-250.]

[Footnote 32: Austral Africa, p. 233 and on.]

[Footnote 33: Natives under the Transvaal Flag. Revd. John H. Bovill.]

[Footnote 34: It is stated on the authority of _The Sentinel_ (London, June, 1900), that Mr. Kruger was asked some years ago to permit the introduction in the Johannesburg mining district of the State regulation of vice, and that Mr. Kruger stoutly refused to entertain such an idea.

Very much to his credit! Yet it seems to me that the refusal to legalize native marriages comes rather near, in immorality of principle and tendency, to the legalizing of promiscuous intercourse.]

[Footnote 35: Natives under the Transvaal Flag, by Rev. J. Bovill.]

[Footnote 36: La question du Transvaal, by Professor Ed. Naville, of Geneva.]

VIII.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE BOERS. EXPLOITATION OF NATIVES BY CAPITALISTS.

BRITISH COLONIZING.--ITS CAUSES AND NATURE. CHARACTER OF PAUL KRUGER AS A RULER. THE MORAL TEACHINGS OF THE WAR. OUR RESPONSIBILITIES. HASTY JUDGMENTS. DENUNCIATIONS OF ENGLAND BY ENGLISHMEN. THE OPEN BOOK. MY LAST WORD IS FOR THE NATIVE RACES.