Native Life in South Africa Part 15

The old laws of the dark days are being enforced with relentless rigour.

The sanct.i.ty of homes is violated. Wives are compelled to carry pa.s.ses.

Mothers driven to abandon their offspring of tender years and seek employment.

Daughters are wrenched from parental care and control, and forced into the service of some white scoundrel. Husbands are not allowed to work at their trades for themselves without paying 5s. per month for the privilege. Such is the condition of things in the slave State.

And all this is done behind the power of the British flag which floats over that Province, and yet these acts were impossible while the Free State lacked the power to face British public opinion.

Moreover, in the Cape Colony the Free State laws are gradually being introduced. The Curfew Laws are enforced. A distinct colour line is being drawn in every phase of life, more distinctly since General s.m.u.ts declared that colour and colour only is to be the dividing line.

Such a long list of tyrannical acts of persecutions as I could make out -- persecutions of the Coloured people as a cla.s.s as well as individually -- can point to but one conclusion, and that is that the whites are determined at all hazards to repress all aspirations of the Coloured people for a higher life, to deny all opportunities of betterment, to keep them politically, civilly and industrially as slaves, and even to force those who have risen back into a state worse than slavery.

South Africa is fast becoming

A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves, Where wretches seek dishonourable graves.

Duty of Europeans

What is the duty of Europeans towards the Coloured races of the country?

Take the oft-repeated a.s.sertions of Europeans themselves.

Their leaders are fond of talking of their responsibilities to us. They have everlastingly had, or used to have until quite recently, on their lips these nice-sounding phrases about "our duties and our responsibilities to our Coloured brothers". But are such phrases not hollow and meaningless?

If Europeans have duties towards the Coloured people, what else is implied than the need for humane dealings, and endeavours to ameliorate their lot, and uplift them in the scale of civilization. If that is what their duties mean, let us ask how far they have fulfilled them.

Instead of kindly, humane treatment, we find barbarous cruelty and inhumanity.

Instead of ameliorating our lot they endeavour to accentuate its bitterness.

Instead of aiming at our upliftment they seek to degrade us.

Instead of lending a helping hand to those struggling to improve themselves they thrust them back remorselessly and rigorously.

Instead of making it possible for them to enjoy the blessings of an enlightened Christianity and a n.o.ble civilization, they refuse them the right to live, unless they are content to slave for farmers or descend into the bowels of the earth to delve the gold which enslaves the world, and before whose charms all freedom flies. In short, the object of the white man's rule to-day is not to develop the faculties of the Coloured races so that they may live a full life, but to keep them for ever in a servile position.

The spirit that underlies this view of governing Coloured races spread into this Colony with the Union, and is now universal throughout South Africa.

The Coloured people resent this, and one cannot be astonished at the feeling of violent hostility that has sprung up.

It is a natural result. And, in the words of Carlyle, it may be said that "to whatever other griefs the Coloured people labour under, this bitterest grief -- injustice -- super-adds itself: the unendurable conviction that they are unfairly dealt with, that their lot in this world is not founded on right, nor even on necessity and might, is neither what it should be, nor what it shall be." The Coloured peoples are sentient beings.

Their souls smart under the stigma of injustice. They are nursing a sullen revengeful humour of revolt against the white rule.

They have lost respect for the white man, and are refusing to give their best to the country.

The duty of Europeans is plain. Show the Coloured people that the Government is for the good of all, not for the privileged cla.s.s. Prove that the first aim is not to keep us as hewers of wood and drawers of water to men who have the power. Engage the Coloured races by their affection.

Grant them equal opportunities. If you do so, then the happy harmonization of the whole community will be achieved, and you may be sure of receiving the grateful return of the affection and respect of the Coloured races.

The treatment we might reasonably expect from the dominant race is just what they themselves would expect were they in our position.

We have as much right to the land of South Africa as they.

We have as much right as they to be governed on the same basis of humanity.

In the language of one of England's greatest statesmen, Europeans themselves would have been shut out from all the blessings they enjoy, of peace, of happiness, and of liberty if there had been any truth in these principles which some gentlemen have not hesitated to lay down as applicable to the case of Africa. "Had those principles been true, we ourselves," said William Pitt, "had languished to this hour in that miserable state of ignorance, brutality, and degradation, in which history proves our ancestors to have been immersed.

Had other nations adopted those principles in their conduct towards us; had other nations applied to Great Britain the reasoning which some of the Senators of this very Island now apply to Africa, ages might have pa.s.sed without our emerging from barbarism; and we, who are enjoying the blessings of British civilization, of British laws, and British liberty, might at this hour have been little superior either in morals, in knowledge, or refinement, to the rude inhabitants of the coast of Guinea."

Such were the words of Pitt in a speech he delivered in 1792 in the course of a debate on the Slave Trade. His opinions were vastly different from those of our South African Premier, who only refrains from using the sjambok, so he has told us, on no other ground than that it might also hurt himself, and who is determined to allow no native representative in the Union Parliament as long as the Almighty spares him to be overlord.

He does not look forward as Pitt did to the day when "We (British) might behold the beams of science and philosophy breaking in upon Africa, which, at some happy period, may blaze with full l.u.s.tre."

But this policy of repression cannot last much longer.

If a handful of Indians in a matter of conscience can so firmly resist what they consider injustice, what could the Coloured races not do if they were to adopt this practice of pa.s.sive resistance?

We must all admire what these British Indians have shown, and are showing, in their determination to maintain what they deem to be their rights.

The inhumanity of the Free State has driven our women to resist the law.

Numbers of them went to jail rather than carry pa.s.ses. The Coloured races applaud the n.o.ble actions of those brave daughters of Africa.

I am convinced that if our people as a whole were prepared to suffer likewise we could gain redress of our most serious grievances while General Botha is still alive. Are we to be driven to that course?

Europeans should ask themselves that question, and ask it promptly.

For example, if the 200,000 Natives on the mines were, in the language of the white Labour Party, to "down" tools, and prefer to bask in the sun than to go down the mines; if the farm labourer at harvesting time refused to work for one s.h.i.+lling and sixpence a day, the economic foundation of South Africa would suddenly shake and tremble with such violence that the beautiful white South Africa superstructure which has been built on it would come down with a crash, entailing financial ruin such as the world has never witnessed before. If Europeans wish to prevent such a calamity in this country, they must pursue the right course and encourage the Coloured people of South Africa to improve their position and become more useful citizens than they have ever been. They will themselves partic.i.p.ate in the blessings that spring from our improvement and prosperity, and they will receive "ample recompense for their tardy kindness (if kindness it can be called) in no longer hindering" our progress.

We also should urge Europeans to go back to the path of justice, to retrace their steps along the route they appear to have been travelling of late.

They can influence the Legislature. Whatever Parliament does is done in the name of the white people, and whites should, if they wish to see South Africa a happy, prosperous and peaceful country, check the Parliament in its mad career. It is worse than insensate folly to pursue that path any further. Many people have revolted at less oppression than we have had to suffer. At present we have no other course than to endure in silence the persecution of our tyrants, and conform to the servitude imposed on us. We may well exclaim that this is a country where

The wanton whites new penal statutes draw Whites grind the blacks, and white men rule the law.

Nevertheless, it is not too late to mend. The estrangement between the two races is not irreconcilable. Europeans could, with advantage to the country, if they would only be men, show the Coloured people that the white man's rule is for the good of all, not for the privileged cla.s.s only. If they grant the Coloured races equal opportunities, and do not penalize them on account of race or colour, they may see a happy realization of the dreams of the wisest statesmen that all cla.s.ses should be contented, and should work together for the good of all.

Dr. Abdurahman's address provided material for leading articles in the South African papers during that and the following week, the criticisms, with very few exceptions, being more or less hostile.

Not one of them, however, accused him of telling untruths; but they vehemently resented the tone of his speech, which they characterized as inflammatory. One daily paper showed some inconsistency in the matter.

It upbraided the doctor for his attack upon oppressive legislation, and two days later, presumably after second thoughts, came out with a leading article urging Europeans to check their oppression of the blacks, and in their own interests deal justly by the native and coloured sections of the population.

By the Natives it was said that under the present circ.u.mstances the speech could have been better for a little moderation; but they nevertheless p.r.o.nounced it the clearest and most accurate representation of their condition under the Union Administration that was ever uttered on a South African platform.

It should be remembered that Dr. Abdurahman delivered his address at a time when the operation of the Land Act was raging like a plague in the Northern Provinces, and its victims included an old man of 119 years, respected by his white neighbours, with his nonogenarian wife, and his sons aged seventy and eighty.

From the point of view of the Native, it is satisfactory to note that such sincere white students of the native question as Dr. J. E. Mackenzie of Kimberley, and Rev. Chas. Phillips of Johannesburg, when asked to dissociate themselves from Dr. Abdurahman's charges of "cruelty, inhumanity," etc., refused to do so until it could be pointed out that he had spoken untruths; that, however, could more easily be done by a shrug of the shoulders than by adducing substantial facts.

Again, it is doubtful if any South African journalist possesses the experience of Mr. Vere Stent, the editor of the 'Pretoria News'.

Mr. Stent as a Kimberley youth spent many years in the de Beers mining compounds, working with Natives of nearly all African tribes.

He was war correspondent in Ashanti and other parts of Africa, and also with the Republican troops under General Joubert in the Northern Transvaal in the 'eighties, and saw the Boers (whose primitive artillery could not dislodge a native tribe that was impregnably entrenched inside a cave) closing up the mouth of the cave and sealing up the masonry, then leaving the Natives, men, women and children, to smother to death with their belongings inside the cave. Further, Mr. Stent accompanied Cecil Rhodes to the Mattopo hills, where the late Colossus went unarmed to hold with the Matabele chiefs the pourparler which brought about the peace of Southern Rhodesia. In the siege of Mafeking, Mr. Stent was Reuter's war correspondent, and all things considered, it must be conceded that he is better qualified to write on a subject of this kind than all the critics of Dr. Abdurahman.

Commenting on Dr. Abdurahman's address, in the course of a leading article Mr. Stent said:

== Here is no paid agitator, but a professional man and a scholar, who is addressing the Coloured workers of South Africa from the lowest Aborigine to the Bantu, from the Bantu to the Coloured tradesman, from the Coloured tradesman to the professional man, of whom there are a few like himself, a great ma.s.s of unenfranchised human beings that suffer under disabilities and actual and obvious injustice.

This vast proletariat is slowly cohering. Tribal feuds are being forgotten. The anti-colour laws of South Africa, and particularly of the north -- which makes no difference between the savage Zulu fresh from his kraal and the stately Malay, between the Mashaangan and a man like Dr. Abdurahman himself -- are welding together this vast human ma.s.s, in the flux of a single grievance, and that grievance, the disability put upon colour qua colour by the law.

What if some day, and sooner than we think, that great ma.s.s becomes mobile, learns to co-operate, and moves irresistibly together?

What, again, which is more likely, if its molecules realize the power of their inertia, if they simply decide quite const.i.tutionally and without violence to do nothing, pending a remedy of their grievances?

It will, of course, be said that Dr. Abdurahman is a picturesque extremist; that his position is an abnormal one; that he does not speak for the Coloured people and the Natives as a whole. Do not let us be too certain on the last point.

As to the first, there runs through the speech, holding it together and making it difficult to attack, a single plain statement in it -- a steel strong thread of truth.

He throws quite a new light upon the Voortrekkers when he says: --

"The northward march of the Voortrekkers was a gigantic plundering raid.

They swept like a desolating pestilence through the land, blasting everything in their path, and pitilessly laughing at the ravages from which the native races have not yet recovered."

But from the point of view of the native races, the description is a true one.

To say of the Natives' Land Act, "That tyrannical mandate is scattering mult.i.tudes of Natives from their homes" is extravagant. Only a few so far have been disturbed, but many must be disturbed for the Natives' Land Act is tyrannical. In fact, though couched in the flowing language of an orator, the speech on the whole is not an unfair summing up of the grievances of the coloured people, and there is a very solemn warning in it.

The European labour agitators may well envy Dr. Abdurahman: his logic, his doctrine and his power of invective. He has so much to complain of, he asks for so very little. Just equality of opportunity.

He does not propose to set up any Trades' Hall government within a government; he does not talk about or attempt to incite to riot or revolution; he does not speak for a few skilled artisans who are living in comfort, and sometimes luxury, upon the sweat of the black man's brow; he speaks for the dark, submerged 5,000,000 South Africans upon whom light is very slowly breaking.

It should also be recorded that long before Dr. Abdurahman became President of the Coloured Organization, white men have been delivering speeches, some of them rather indignant, on the treatment of His Majesty's coloured and native subjects in South Africa. We will refer to just a few for example: