Native Life in South Africa Part 17

Our visit to these places took place just after the glorious showers of the early summer. On the wider tracts of land owned by Europeans the gra.s.s looked invitingly green. The maiden soil, looking beautiful and soft after the soaking rains, cried silently for cultivation. The people who had hitherto depended on such cultivation for their subsistence were now prohibited by reason of their colour from earning their usual livelihood, as directed by Almighty G.o.d, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread."

This prohibition seems particularly contemptible when it is remembered that the majority of the Natives of these locations are Fingoes, and that their fathers in the early days joined the British in fighting most of the Kafir wars, side by side with British troops.

They shared in all the ma.s.sacres and devastating raids committed upon the British settlers by unfriendly native tribes.

As a mark of recognition of their loyalty to the Government, and of their co-operation with the British forces in the field of battle, this country was given, in the name of Her late Majesty Victoria, to their chiefs by a British Governor. But in spite of this treaty, the people have been gradually dispossessed of the land during the past three-quarters of a century. Hence the occupation, now crystallized into owners.h.i.+p, pa.s.sed bit by bit into white hands. Hitherto the right to live on, and to cultivate, lands which thus formerly belonged to them was never challenged, but all that is now changed. Naturally the ingrat.i.tude meted out to these people by the authorities in return for services consistently rendered by three successive generations of them will be a blow, not only to the economic independence of a loyal and patriotic people, but to the belief in British sense of justice.

Chapter XII The Pa.s.sing of Cape Ideals

Naboth was right to hold on to his home. There were garnered memories that all the wealth of Ahab could not buy.

Ward Beecher.

From the great meeting place -- Sh.e.s.h.egu -- we went through the Alice district. In this district we met several men who would get no crops -- their annual income -- the next year, as the law had placed an embargo on their ordinary avocation.

King Williamstown was also visited, and there at a meeting held in the Baptist Church, which was kindly lent for the purpose by the Rev. Mr. Pierce, it was unanimously resolved to appeal to His Majesty the King against the Natives' Land Act.

Mr. W. Sebe presided over this meeting of representative Natives, and Mr. Ba.s.sie translated the Act.

At Queenstown a similar resolution was pa.s.sed by practically the whole meeting. Beyond answering questions at each of these meetings, the writer said little else besides reading the Act, which told its own tale.

Many Natives who had never seen a copy of the Act before, but who had heard its praises sung by interested parties and had believed the false teachers, attended the meetings to oppose any undue interference with "the law". But these men were appalled when the law was read to them, sentence by sentence, and translated by their own teachers in their own tongue. Then a discussion would follow, invariably ending with the query: "Can a Parliament capable of pa.s.sing such a law still be trusted by the community concerned?"

The Queenstown meeting, which was held in the Native Baptist School kindly lent by Messrs. Damane and Koti, was more interesting than the others because it is the only one of the many native meetings we attended where there was any dissent. There were four dissentients at Queenstown, and we take this opportunity of congratulating all genuine enemies of native welfare on the fact that they had four staunch protagonists of colour, who showed more manliness than Mr. Tengo-Jabavu because they attended the meeting.

Still, if the courage of these opponents was admirable, we confess we did not like the gross callousness, and what seemed to us an indecent disregard of native suffering that was manifest in their conduct: when the story of the hards.h.i.+ps of unfortunate victims of the Land Act was narrated they laughed, and repeated the newspaper excuse that the evictions were not directly due to the Act.

We agree with them that evictions have always taken place, since the first human couple was sent out of the Garden of Eden, yet they must admit that until the Union Parliament pa.s.sed the Natives' Land Act there never was a law saying to the native population of South Africa, "You must not settle anywhere, under a penalty of 100 Pounds, unless you are a servant." These unsympathetic Natives made no effort to defend the Act itself, but attempted to bluff the meeting with the supposed danger of "reprisals by spiteful Boers, who, they said, will be more vindictive if Natives dared to appeal to the King, over the heads of the Boer Government." But the meeting would not be bluffed.

One speaker especially remarked that the Act embodied the very worst form of vindictiveness, and the sooner the whole world understood the Union Parliament's att.i.tude towards the blacks the better it would be. The meeting agreed that no slavery could be worse than to be outlawed in your own homes, and the motion was carried against the said four dissentients.

We interviewed a number of the Natives pa.s.sing through Queenstown, and the result showed that many and varied were the vicissitudes of the Natives in the eastern districts of the Cape Province.

From Queenstown we touched some of the north-eastern districts of the Cape Province. In one of these districts a fairly prosperous Native was farming as a tenant on a farm. By sheer industry he had earned and enjoyed the respect of all who knew him.

His landlord, a white man, was particularly proud of him.

This Native went into town one morning and as he pa.s.sed the Magistrate's Court on his way to the stores, a messenger hailed him inside.

Having entered the office, the a.s.sistant Magistrate served him with a notice to leave his hired farm, on which he had been a tenant since his youth, and which was as much a home to him as to the proprietor.

The landlord, on hearing of this, naturally resented this usurpation on the part of the authorities, who, he said, had unduly interfered with his private affairs. Next day the Baas drove into the town to interview the Magistrate, and to remonstrate with him on what he thought to be the unauthorized interference of the a.s.sistant Magistrate.

He and the Magistrate read and re-read the Natives' Land Act, and both came to the conclusion that it was a law that was as complicated as it was unnecessary; but the Magistrate, being a representative of the law, decided that, rightly or wrongly, it must be obeyed.

This visit of the Baas to the Magistrate had made our native friend hopeful that it would result in averting the calamity that threatened him and his family, but, to his utter dismay, the landlord on returning soon undeceived him and gave his own opinion of "the most peculiar and wicked law"

that he had ever heard of. Although Dutchmen had known and had heard of some strange laws, yet this Dutchman was so full of indignation at the strangeness of this law that his description of it was made up of largely untranslatable Dutch adjectives. These adjectives, however, could not relieve the suffering of his native tenant from the wound inflicted by the law in his sudden expulsion from his home.

It seems clear that no South African Native, on leaving a Dutch farm, had ever received a more respectable send-off than our friend did on leaving his farm in compliance with the Natives' Land Act.

The white landlord accompanied him right up to the boundary of the farm which for seventeen years had been his home, and which he was so cruelly forced to leave. For the first time in his life, as the Dutchman said, he shook hands with a Kafir. And, as he did so, he called down the direst curses upon the persons responsible for the impa.s.se -- curses, by the way, which seem to be liberally answered.

It would, perhaps, be interesting to add what has happened since.

Our native friend took his family to the town, because the Act is not enforceable in munic.i.p.al areas. Leaving his family there, he started roaming about the districts, looking for a place where he could graze his cattle. In the course of the wandering his stock thinned down, owing to death from starvation and other causes.

At home his old master found he could not get on without him, so learning of the whereabouts of the Native and also of his sad plight, the master sent out to him and advised him to return home, graze his stock there, and "hang the legal consequences."

May they never be found out.

It has now amounted to this that white men who wish to deal humanely with their native friends must resort to clandestine methods, to enable a Native and his stock to drink the fresh water and breathe the pure air in the wide tracts of South Africa, for by law Natives have now less rights than the snakes and scorpions abounding in that country.

Can a law be justified which forces the people to live only by means of chicanery; and which, in order to progress, compels one to cheat the law officers of the Crown? This case is but one of many that came under our own observation, and there may be many more of which we know nothing.

The 'Cape Times', the leading Bothaite daily newspaper of the Cape, has defended every action of the Union, including the dismissal of English Civil servants. It justifies this last act by alleging that the dismissed officials did not know Dutch.

Consequently it could not be expected that this journal could have any qualms about a law enacted specifically to repress black men.

It supported every harsh clause of the Natives' Land Bill, including Clause 1. However, when the native deputation to England gave proofs of the ravages of the "plague law" in Cape Colony, the 'Cape Times', instead of defending its pet law, said: "The complaint to which they give precedence is particularly instructive,"

and so, quoting from the deputation's appeal which says: "In the Cape Colony, where we are repeatedly told that the Act is not in force, the Magistrates of East London, King Williamstown and Alice prohibited native tenants from reploughing their old hired lands last October, and also ordered them to remove their stock from grazing farms,"

this ministerial daily adds: "It is unnecessary to consider the justice or otherwise of this complaint for it is perfectly clear that if a Magistrate oversteps the bounds of the law, it is a matter to be dealt with by the Union Government."

It will be observed that this is an insinuation that the Magistrates who administer the Land Act at the Cape are exceeding their authority and should be "dealt with by the Union Government". Now, what are the facts?

It is well known that all Magistrates, including those at the Cape, are paid to administer every legislative instrument, whether sensible or absurd, pa.s.sed by the partly literate Parliament of the Union of South Africa.

Hence, these Magistrates, in ordering Natives off their farms, and turning native cattle off the grazing areas, are only carrying out Section 1 of the Natives' Land Act. One Cape Magistrate who ruled that to plough on a farm was no breach of the law, WAS "dealt with by the Union Government", for a peremptory order came from Pretoria declaring such a decision to be illegal.

Therefore, so far from the Cape Magistrate "overstepping the bounds of the law" in expelling Natives from the farms and native cattle from their pastures, these Magistrates could legally have done worse, inasmuch as they could, under Section 5, have sent these Natives to prison for contravening Section 1. In justification, then, of its own and of its party's share in this legislative achievement, the 'Cape Times' should have sought a more worthy excuse than thus attempting to make scapegoats of a band of fair-minded men who presumably, prior to the Union, never thought it would be part of their duty to administer from the Cape bench an Act which inflicted such gross cruelty.

Who, in the days of the Murrays, Mr. F. Y. St. Leger, and subsequently of Mr. F. E. Garrett, could have thought that the 'Cape Times'

would in this manner have destroyed its great traditions, built up during the nineteenth century, by sanctioning a law under which Cape Magistrates would be forced to render homeless the Natives of the Cape in their own Cape of Good Hope? The one Colony whose administration, under its wise statesmen of the Victorian era, created for it that tremendous prestige that was felt throughout the dark continent, and that rested largely upon the fact that among its citizens, before its incorporation with the northern states, it knew no distinction of colour, for all were free to qualify for the exercise of electoral rights.

The old Cape Colony of our boyhood days, whose administration, despite occasional lapses, managed during a hundred years to steer clear of the familiar ma.s.sacres and bloodshed of punitive expeditions against primitive tribes, ma.s.sacres and bloodshed so common in other parts of the same continent; the old Cape Colony whose peaceful methods of civilization acted as an incentive to the Bechuana tribes to draw the sword and resist every attempt at annexation by Europeans other than the British: a resistance so determined that it thwarted the efforts to link German South West Africa with the Transvaal Republic, and so kept open the trade route to Rhodesia for the British.

All this done without any effort on the part of the British themselves, and done by the Natives out of regard for Cape Colony ideals.

But alas! these Natives are now debarred from tilling the soil of the Cape, except as Republican serfs. What would Sir George Grey, or Bishop Gray, or Saul Solomon, say of this? What would these Empire builders say if they came back here and found that the hills and valleys of their old Cape Colony have ceased to be a home to many of their million brawny blacks, whose muscles helped the conqueror to secure his present hold of the country?

What would these champions of justice say if they saw how, with her entrance into the Union, Cape Colony had bartered her s.h.i.+ning ideals for the sombre history of the northern states, a history defiled with innocent blood, and a territory soaked with native tears and scandalized by burying Natives alive; and that with one stroke of the pen the so-called federation has demolished the Rhodes's formula of "equal rights for all civilized men, irrespective of colour"? How are the mighty fallen!

But while we sing the funeral dirge of Cape ideals, the Republicans sing songs of gladness. Thus, when Mr. Sauer, a noted disciple of the late Mr. Saul Solomon, died, the 'Bloemfontein Friend', the leading Ministerial daily of the "Free" State, said:

== He stood uncompromisingly for Rhodes's ideal of complete equality, and it was an open secret that Mr. Sauer, who piloted the Natives' Land Act through Parliament last session, would, had circ.u.mstances been different, have been its strongest opponent. It was the irony of fate that made him Minister of Native Affairs when a law had to be pa.s.sed which appeared to be in entire conflict with his cherished lifelong convictions.

The Act he pa.s.sed embodied the hated northern principles which he had consistently opposed during the whole of his political career, and, as in the case of the Act of Union, it was only Mr. Sauer's influence that allayed the feelings of the intransigent section of the native population.

Mr. Sauer was a convinced disciple of the teachings of Saul Solomon, who founded and preached the gospel of the Cape native policy.

In our view that was a mistaken policy. Its princ.i.p.al modern exponent has now been taken away, and if G.o.d, and not man, shapes the destinies of nations, we may be pardoned the belief that Mr. Sauer's death at this juncture means something more than the mere pa.s.sing from the finite into the infinite of one human being.

If this is a brutal utterance, it is at any rate more frank, and therefore more manly, than the vacillating policy of the 'Cape Times', the Ministerial organ of the Cape Colony. It is said that "politics make strange bed-fellows", but not even the shrewdest of our political seers could have predicted that in 1913 the 'Cape Times' would be found in the same camp as its Republican contemporaries which sing glees over the demolished structure of Cape traditions, and over the pa.s.sing away of Victorian statesmen and the principles they stood for -- Victorian principles, which the 'Cape Times' of other days helped to build up in another political camp! How are the mighty fallen!

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth when every sport could please, How often have I loitered o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene!

How often have I paused on every charm: The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, The never failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill,

The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade For talking age and whisp'ring lovers made!

How often have I blest the coming day, When toil remitting lent its turn to play!

And all the village train, from labour free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree; With bashful virgins' sidelong looks of love, The matron's glance that would these looks reprove.

These were thy charms, sweet Province, sports like these, With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please; These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed, These were thy charms -- but all these charms are fled.

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn; Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen And desolation saddens all thy green:

And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away, thy children leave the land.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth acc.u.mulates and men decay.

The Cape Native can thoroughly endorse these sentiments of Oliver Goldsmith, which, however, compared with his own present lot, are mild in the extreme; for it could not have been amid scenes of this description, and with an outlook half as bad as ours, that the same author further sings: