Native Life in South Africa Part 22

It is bound by the terms of its appointment to report within two years, and will probably report by Christmas next.** The whole of this Act is a temporary measure until that Commission reports. A native deputation has come over and seen me, and I believe many other members.

That deputation left Africa against the advice of General Botha, and against almost the entreaties of Lord Gladstone. They knew that the Act would not be disallowed, because it had been announced months before in South Africa. The day the deputation saw me the period of twelve months during which that Act could be disallowed on my recommendation had already expired, and it is now an act which can only be suspended by the Government and Parliament of the Union of South Africa.

-- * Col. Stanford (the Cape Colony representative on the Lagden Commission) and Messrs. Campbell and Samuelson (the Natal representatives) sent in two strongly-worded minority reports against such restrictions.

Vide S.A. Native Affairs Commission, 1903-5, Vol. I. -- Author.

** After Christmas the Commissioners' "terms of appointment" were altered from two years to three years.

Sir W. BYLES: Does it forbid the holding of land by Natives?

Mr. HARCOURT: Perhaps the hon. member will allow me to complete my statement as the time is short.* The suspension of the Act would be worse than useless at the present stage. It would suspend the Inquiry which is taking place at this moment in the interests of the Natives themselves. I cannot believe that any further Commission is necessary, as the existing one seems to me both efficient and sufficient.

-- * Mr. Harcourt would have shortened the time considerably, had he said "Yes" or "No", instead of replying in sixteen words.

It is not clear why Mr. Harcourt made this statement as the Natives, in their pet.i.tion to the King, never asked for a suspension of the whole Act.

All that they wished was that the harshest clauses of the measure might be suspended, leaving the others in operation until the Commission rendered its report.

When Mr. Harcourt's reference to the Commission was made known in South Africa the Commissioners, then sitting in Pretoria, were informed of the plight of evicted Natives. The Commissioners replied that any grievance arising out of the operation of an Act of Parliament was beyond the scope of their enquiry, and that they could not consider such grievances.

This was exactly what they had previously told the Natives at King Williamstown and elsewhere. At Harrismith the Commission heard the complaint of a son of Chief Wietzie, who, during the Basuto wars, had always remained loyal to the "Free" State Boers. The son had been evicted from the ground on which he and his fellow-tribesmen had resided for generations and he was forced to live on an urban location where it is impossible to do any farming. The President (Sir William Beaumont) said he was sorry to hear that a son of Wietzie found himself homeless, but he regretted that the Commission could not help him. Mr. Harcourt, therefore, must have been incorrectly informed regarding the functions of the Commission.

Yet another puzzle. After the appointment of this Commission in September 1913, there was a newspaper report to the effect that the Commission found the native difficulty most acute in the "Free" State, and that it had decided on setting aside without delay a strip of territory in the Western "Free" State as a native settlement.

Immediately after the appearance of this report in the Press, angry meetings of the whites were held in Boshof and Hoopstad to protest against the proposals attributed to the Commission.

In reply to these protests, Mr. Theron, the Minister of Lands, evidently speaking on behalf of the South African Government, not only repudiated the report but he also added significantly that "the Government had no intention of creating a native area in Hoopstad or anywhere else." So, where do we stand? Can it be wondered that the Natives are beginning to conclude that their position under the Union is hopeless?

But, to return to Mr. Harcourt, the Colonial Secretary also gave the Imperial Parliament a fresh explanation of the Natives' Land Act.

It is a pity that we cannot reproduce his explanation side by side with the four explanatory circulars issued by the Union Government in 1913.

Such a reproduction would show the discrepancy between the five explanations.

We wrote to South Africa but could only secure one of these circulars, which purports to be an explanation of a previous explanatory circular -- an explanation of an explanation. However, the definition of the Act, as given by the other three circulars, leaves, as far as we can remember, the root principle of the Act unexplained. Moreover, the statements set forth in these circulars are not in harmony; they have only one point of agreement, namely: that when Natives are driven out of their homes by the law, and are debarred by the same law from establis.h.i.+ng other homes (the only provision made for them being that they should live as servants of the whites) the circ.u.mstances give them no ground for complaint.

Take for instance only two sentences in Mr. Harcourt's explanation.

In the first of these, he appears to approve of the system of forced labour established by the Act; in the second, he denies the evictions that took place in July when he spoke, and those that took place subsequently. He seems to flatly deny not only what is admitted by Lord Gladstone and General Botha, but he likewise contradicts the terms of the Act itself.

Indeed, if we had not been there and heard him we should have felt, on reading this part of his speech, that he had been misreported in Hansard. Thus --

== If the Natives are farm labourers there is no limit to the number who may reside on white property. If not, they are not dispossessed until Parliament acts upon the report of the Commissioners, and then only when suitable land is provided by addition to a native reserve.*

-- * At Downing Street Mr. Harcourt informed the Deputation that he had the "a.s.surance of General Botha" that the Natives have too much land already.

The Imperial explanation being as obscure as the Colonial explanations which preceded it, the reader's remedy is to fall back on the plain English of the Act (Chapter III), which alone has the force of law. Again Mr. Harcourt: --

== If General Botha breaks his word I have no power to enforce it.

I cannot bind his successors. If the Government of South Africa is not to be trusted in this matter they are to be trusted in nothing; and we know perfectly well that they can be trusted in these matters.

NOTE WHAT HAS BEEN DONE WITH RESPECT TO THE INDIAN IMMIGRATION ACT.

THIS WAS Pa.s.sED NOT FROM LOCAL DESIRE, BUT FROM IMPERIAL CONSIDERATIONS.

THE PROVISIONS OF THAT ACT HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE COLONISTS AND BY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE INDIANS, WHO CONSIDER IT THE MAGNA CHARTA OF THE INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA. I think that that should be a sufficient guarantee as to the way in which General Botha proposes to act.

General Botha, too, used THESE WORDS in Parliament: --

"He had told the deputation that he had given standing instructions to the magistrates throughout the country that if they found any one in their districts ejecting Natives from the farms they had to go and make inquiries and report to him. He had in all those cases which had been brought to his notice used the influence of his Department."

All we can say in regard to "these words" is that the Magistrates apparently ignored the "standing instructions" alluded to, for they allowed the officials of the Department of Lands to scatter the native tenants from Government farms at Standerton, Colworth and elsewhere and sent them adrift over the country, well knowing that they could find no other shelter.

On the 31st of January, 1914, the Magistrate of Ladysmith, presumably acting under instructions from one of General Botha's Departments, issued the following notice to 79 native families in his district: --

== "To Vellem Sibisi, Kraal Head residing on one of the following farms, viz. Remainder of Brakfontein, Remainder of Weltevrede, etc.,

"Take notice in terms of Section 4 of Law 41 of 1884 that you are required to remove with your Kraal and inmates from whichever of the said farms you may be residing on, six months from this date, the aforementioned farms having all been purchased by Government for closer settlement purposes."

The Magistrate who so ruthlessly ejected these and other native families acted under the orders of the Government, who settled white people on the farms at the expense of a Treasury maintained also by native taxpayers.

And it seems difficult to conceive how a Government which proved so indifferent regarding the fate of its own native tenants or of tenants on farms freshly acquired at the public expense, could be solicitous about the welfare of Natives evicted by private landowners. The statement, on the face of it, is incongruous.

In his heroic efforts to defend South Africa's giant wrong, Mr. Harcourt gave away his case when he referred approvingly to what he calls "the Magna Charta of the Indians in South Africa".

Now, what is this "Magna Charta"? In 1913, when the South African Parliament was at the noontide of its "mad career", it pa.s.sed this iniquitous land law to repress the native race; and also a law imposing the most humiliating limitations on British Indians. Yet it must be added that the Indian law was the milder of the two, as it did not prohibit Indian residents in South Africa from living on the land.

The Rt. Hon. A. Fischer, Union Minister of the Interior, who died two years ago, called these two laws of 1913, "the Kafir law and the Coolie law".

As already stated, the London Committee of the Wesleyan Methodist Church asked to see Mr. Harcourt and inform him how drastically the "Kafir law"

was operating against their converts and other Natives in South Africa, but Mr. Harcourt discreetly refused to see the Committee.

As for the Indians, no one in South Africa paid any heed to their complaints against the "Coolie law"; but their cry reached India and Lord Hardinge demanded the redress of their grievances. His Lords.h.i.+p insisted so forcibly that (unlike the Wesleyan missionaries) he could not be ignored.

The result was that the South African Parliament, "not from local desire, but from Imperial consideration", was obliged in the next session (1914) to amend the "Coolie law" with a "Magna Charta of the Indians in South Africa", and Mr. Harcourt's reference to this episode conveys the suggestion that what is sauce for the Indian goose, with Lord Hardinge at its back, can be by no means sauce for the native gander without the backing of a Viceroy.

We cannot believe that to boast in one and the same speech about a "Magna Charta of the Indians" and dismiss the native appeal against a vital wrong is true Imperialism. For if Imperialism stands for the protection of a few thousand Indians in South Africa because they are supported by a Viceroy, and the neglect of the groans of five million Natives because (unlike a Viceroy) the missionaries who plead for them cannot enforce their claim with a political or diplomatic blow, then there would appear to be the suggestion of more fear than justice in Imperialism.

Mr. Harcourt further credits the Milner Commission, presided over by Sir G.o.dfrey Lagden, with the origin of the Natives' Land Act. We do not wish to defend the policy of these two former South African Statesmen, as we feel certain that they can take care of themselves. But we must say at once that we read the recommendations of the Lagden Commission ten years ago, as carefully as we have since read the controversy of the Natives' Land Act; and with the knowledge thus gained, we can safely tell the reader that that Commission never recommended that: --

1. "Except with the permission of the Governor-General", Europeans must be debarred from buying land from Natives (who have no land to sell), and Natives must be debarred from buying land or leasing land from Europeans, who alone deal in land. -- (Sect. 1 of the Nat. Land Act).

2. When evicted Natives apply for the said "permission of the Governor-General" they should be told that that permission "will only be granted to a few exceptional applicants"

and that it could under no circ.u.mstances be granted to Natives in the colony in which the applicants resided (The Government's reply to the "Free" State wanderers).

3. The Government should always take from three to six months to deliver this refusal, during which period applicants may have already become serfs or fled the country. (This has been the experience of all applicants within the writer's knowledge.)

4. There should be a fine of 100 Pounds or six months' hard labour on any farmer who provides the Native with a shelter while he is waiting for this disappointing reply to his application (Sect. 5 Nat. Land Act).

5. Native tenants to be hounded out of the Government farms long before the segregation takes place and that white people, who are not debarred from buying or leasing land for themselves, be settled thereon at Government expense. (See magisterial notice above.)

If Mr. Harcourt has been told by any one that the Lagden Commission recommended any of these pitiless iniquities, then we are afraid that his informer is a romancer of the superlative degree.

The Lagden report was never discussed in any South African legislature, much less adopted by any Parliament in South Africa; indeed, it is detested because it recommended a Native Franchise for South Africa like the Maori Franchise of New Zealand.

One member of Parliament (Mr. Joynson-Hicks) said South Africa was a Home Rule country and he wondered what would happen if after Home Rule had been granted to Ireland some one asked the Imperial Parliament to interfere with Irish legislation.

We wonder who could have told this hon. Member that there was Home Rule in South Africa! There used to be Home Rule in the Cape Colony alone, but this has been swamped by the Act of Union, which has since established an oligarchic Government throughout the country.

And if by Home Rule to Ireland it is intended to give the franchise to a selfish, greedy and tyrannical few; and give carte blanche to this few, telling them thereby to do what they wish with the rest of the population of Ireland, and telling them further that they will be accountable to n.o.body for any good legislation that they might enact on the one hand, or any maladministration that they might perform on the other hand as is the case in South Africa -- if that be what is meant by Home Rule for Ireland, then G.o.d have mercy on the Irish.

When the reply of Mr. Harcourt was published in South Africa, supporters of this cruel law bubbled over with joy concerning it.

One Dutch writer, after saying in a Dutch journal some very fine things about Mr. Harcourt, wound up a high-sounding eulogy by congratulating South Africa on having such a good Colonial Secretary at Downing Street. "Had Mr. Harcourt's predecessors been like him,"

said this writer to his readers, "South Africa would have been saved many tears." We doubt if Mr. Harcourt, the object of this appreciation, would feel flattered by it if he knew that all the black victims of this cruel law, and all their European sympathizers, stood firmly by the Imperial Government and by the Colonial Government in the present struggle, while the gentleman at whose instance it was introduced in Parliament, as well as the Dutch editor of the journal alluded to, are at present (May 1915) committed for trial on charges of high treason; and the proprietor of another Dutch journal, in which we read similar vaunting adulations of Mr. Harcourt, was fined 60 Pounds (so his paper says) for alleged complicity in the recent rebellion.

These facts should impel the Rt. Hon. the Colonial Secretary to stop, look round and inquire "who's who" among his South African admirers.