South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 8 (of 8)
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Title: South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 8 (of 8)
Editor: Louis Creswicke
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTH AFRICA AND THE TRANSVAAL WAR, VOL. 8 (OF 8) ***
SOUTH AFRICA AND THE
TRANSVAAL WAR
[Illustration: A STOCK FARM.
After a Photo in the Natal Government Collection, by permission.]
SOUTH AFRICA
AND THE
TRANSVAAL WAR
BY
LOUIS CRESWICKE
AUTHOR OF "ROXANE," ETC.
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
VOL. VIII
SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS FUTURE
EDITED BY
LOUIS CRESWICKE
MANCHESTER: KENNETH MACLENNAN
75 PICCADILLY
PREFACE--VOL. VIII.
Everyone who has followed the story of the War in South Africa from
start to finish will assuredly have acquired a keen and lasting interest
in the land which has been won by the expenditure of so much blood and
treasure. Earnestly will he discuss in his mind all questions connected
with the development of the New Dominions of the King, and vigilantly
will he watch every action of the Government in regard to them.
In order rightly to estimate the difficulties to be overcome and the
issues to be hoped for, and to follow these questions with complete
apprehension, it is necessary to be familiar with their aspect in every
possible light. To this end, the Editor has invited the co-operation of
various well-known Authorities, each of whom has kindly contributed his
opinion on matters coming within his special experience.
The Publishers claim, therefore, that in this Volume is collected the
cream of modern thought, furnished at first-hand by those whose mastery
of their subject, and whose interest in the Empire, render them
competent to instruct in the intricacies of the South African problems,
with which for some time to come we must stand face-to-face. That these
writers do not on all points entirely agree is a matter for
congratulation, as readers are thus enabled to view the political
panorama from every reasonable standpoint, and weigh the pros and cons
of their arguments with perspicuity and without prejudice.
At the present juncture, when Mr. Chamberlain, the greatest of Colonial
Secretaries, is visiting South Africa, the Publishers are convinced that
this Volume is the most valuable book on the new Colonies that has yet
been offered to the Public.
CONTENTS--VOL. VIII.
PAGE
EMIGRATION 1
By His Grace THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, P.C., K.T.; Author of
"Imperial Federation," "The Life and Times of Queen Victoria," &c.
SOUTH AFRICAN FEDERATION: VIEWS OF COLONIAL PREMIERS 16
By E. B. OSBORN, Author of "Greater Canada."
LAW AND LANGUAGE 23
By M. J. FARRELLY, LL.D., Barrister-at-Law; Advocate of the Supreme
Court of Cape Colony.
THE AFRICANDER PARTY: ITS ORIGIN, ITS GROWTH, ITS AIMS 38
By the Hon. A. WILMOT, Member of the Legislative Council, Cape Colony;
Author of "History of Our Own Times in South Africa," &c., &c.
RHODESIA: SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 55
By E. F. KNIGHT, Author of "Where Three Empires Meet," "The Cruise of
the _Falcon_," &c.
PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES 72
By JAMES STANLEY LITTLE, Author of "South Africa," "The Progress of
the British Empire in the Nineteenth Century," "The United States of
Britain," &c. &c.
THE FUTURE OF THE MINING INDUSTRY 86
By F. T. NORRIS.
THE AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK 113
By THE EDITOR.
WOOL-GROWING 133
By ALLEN G. DAVISON, Chief Inspector of Sheep for Cape Colony.
SOUTH AFRICAN RAILWAYS 140
By W. BLELOCH, Author of "The New South Africa."
HEALTH RESORTS OF SOUTH AFRICA 157
By ERNEST GRAHAM LITTLE, B.A., formerly Porter Scholar, of the Cape
University; M.D. University of London; Member of the Royal College
of Physicians; Physician, with charge of the Skin Department, at
St. Mary's Hospital; Senior Assistant Physician to the East London
Hospital for Children and Dispensary for Women, Shadwell; late
House Physician at St. George's Hospital and at the City of London
Hospital for Diseases of the Chest.
COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 174
By WILLIAM EGLINGTON, Editor and Proprietor of "The British and South
African Export Gazette."
THE FUTURE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONSTABULARY: VIEWS OF
MAJOR-GENERAL BADEN-POWELL 186
APPENDIX: MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND THE BOER GENERALS 189
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS--VOL. VIII.
COMMERCIAL MAP OF SOUTH AFRICA _At Front_
1. _COLOURED PLATES_
PAGE
A STOCK FARM _Frontispiece_
CHURCH STREET, PRETORIA--THE APPROACH TO THE TOWN 20
AT THE HEAD OF UMGENI FALLS, HOWICK, NATAL 40
THE OUTLET BELOW VICTORIA FALLS, ZAMBESI RIVER 64
LORD MILNER 80
A KAFFIR VILLAGE 120
PEELING BARK ON A WATTLE PLANTATION IN NATAL 132
BLOEMFONTEIN 160
2. _FULL-PAGE PLATES_
THE DOCKS, CAPE TOWN 8
THE LOW VELDT FROM BOTHA'S HILL 48
A HUNTER'S WAGGON, RHODESIA 56
THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE TRANSVAAL--A BOER FAMILY RETURNING TO THEIR
FARM 72
WASHING PLANT OF DE BEERS DIAMOND MINES AT KIMBERLEY 88
CYANIDE WORKS (NEW COMET MINE) AT JOHANNESBURG 92
MINES ON THE LINE OF REEF AT JOHANNESBURG 96
DRIVING AN "END" IN MAY CONSOLIDATED MINE, JOHANNESBURG 100
GENERAL VIEW OF THE SURFACE WORKS OF A RAND GOLD MINE (KNIGHT'S) 104
PRITCHARD STREET, JOHANNESBURG 108
MILL (OR BATTERY) OF A GOLD MINE (SALISBURY AND JUBILEE,
JOHANNESBURG) 112
TEA FARM, SHOWING COOLIES PICKING 124
A SUGAR-MILL IN NATAL (CENTRIFUGAL ROOM) 128
JOHANNESBURG MAIL TRAIN AT THE FOOT OF MAJUBA 144
COMMISSIONER STREET, JOHANNESBURG 148
MORNING MARKET AT JOHANNESBURG 152
MORNING MARKET AT KIMBERLEY 168
CHURCH STREET EAST, PRETORIA 176
3. _PORTRAITS_
SIR HENRY M'CALLUM, K.C.M.G. 12
HON. SIR W. F. HELY HUTCHINSON 16
RIGHT HON. SIR J. GORDON SPRIGG, K.C.M.G. 24
HON. SIR ARTHUR LAWLEY, K.C.M.G. 32
SIR H. J. GOOLD-ADAMS, C.B., C.M.G. 44
THE COLONIAL CONFERENCE 184
4. _MAPS AND ENGRAVINGS IN THE TEXT_
FIVE-MILE SPRUIT, RHODESIA 56
CAPE TO CAIRO RAILWAY 58
RHODESIAN NATIVES WASHING CLOTHES 63
MACHECKIE RAILWAY BRIDGE 65
THE WANKIE EXPEDITION 68
RHODESIAN MINING--THE DOBIE MILL 70
PROSPECTING FOR GOLD 87
THE INFANCY OF A GOLD MINE 90
SECTION OF A GOLD MINE 93
HEAD-GEAR OF THE WITWATERSRAND GOLD-MINING CO. 100
KAFFIR COMPOUND 102
CYANIDE WORKS 104
GENERAL VIEW OF SURFACE WORKS 106
MAP--TRANSVAAL GOLD-FIELDS 109
MAP--RHODESIAN GOLD-FIELDS 111
WELLWOOD FARM 114
FARM IN THE KARROO PROPER 118
VERMONT MERINO EWES 122
PURE NEGRETTI MERINO RAM 126
ANGORA GOAT (YOUNG EWE) 130
FLOCK OF FAT CROSS-BRED MERINO AND FAT-TAILED SHEEP 133
ANGORA GOATS (YOUNG RAMS) 135
FAT-TAILED HAIRY AFRICANDER SHEEP 136
ANGORA GOAT (RAM) 138
BRIDGE OVER THE TUGELA 142
STATION YARD, DURBAN 146
MAP OF CAPE GOVERNMENT RAILWAY 152, 3
MAP--BRITAIN IN AFRICA 199
[Illustration: COMMERCIAL MAP OF SOUTH AFRICA]
SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS FUTURE
EMIGRATION
BY HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, P.C., K.T.
_Author of "Imperial Federation," "The Life and Times of Queen
Victoria," &c._
Emigration of white men and women to South Africa--how can we best
secure this? The abiding difficulty at the Cape and throughout the
states that will form the future South African Confederation is the
colour question. The "colour" is not that of the gold to be found so
often in many places, but the question of the white and the black races
dwelling in the same country.
Dutchman and Englishman will in time form one race. There is nothing to
part them. They are European cousins. They both come from North Europe.
The blood of the Dutchman runs in the veins of the Englishman. The
parent stock of the Dutch gave off many a swarm wherewith to people the
East Anglian shores. England has been fed and fought by the Dutch since
those old days. We have received many of their sturdy countrymen into
London. Any one who does not know the number and influence of the Dutch
in comparatively recent times in our metropolis should pay a visit to
the Austen Friars, the place where the monks of St. Augustine had their
headquarters in the city, and see the fine old church the Dutch built,
and in which they still worship. We remember well the stiff battles of
Charles II.'s time. We know the names of Van Tromp and De Witt as well
as any Dutchman. We have learned to respect our Dutch cousins, both on
sea and land.
And their religion? There is nothing there to separate us. Has the
Presbyterian form of religion kept Scotland separate? No, save in the
pride of her ancient history. No Scotsman has any objection to marry an
English lass, especially if she has herself more than will give both of
them something better than oatcake. And the Dutch Reformed Church is
much like the Presbyterian. There is nothing that can in its tenets
form any bar to the mixing of the British and Dutch people in South
Africa. To be sure, a "nacht-maal" is not precisely a Church of England
convocation or congress. It approaches much nearer to a Scottish
communion service in out-of-the-way Highland parishes. There is nothing
aggressive or exclusive in the staid and sober faith of our Dutch
friends. And this being so, Scotsmen especially have intermarried often
with the Boers.
As trustee of a Highland estate, some time ago my consent was asked to
the granting of a leasehold to a Scottish gentleman, who had returned
from the Transvaal. The only objection the lawyer who asked the question
mentioned as existing against this man was that he was said to have
married a native. Some canny objectors had written a letter saying that
this ought to form a bar to any grant of land to the man, though he had
originally come from the district. Who was the lady? was the next
inquiry. Was she a Hottentot Venus? Did she "bang her hair" in too
negroid a fashion? Would she introduce among the dim lights of the North
the terrible practices of her people? Would the quiet village be
scandalised by strange feasts and weird howlings? No, by no means. What
was she, then? Why, nothing but a nice flaxen-haired, rather
squab-featured, but withal comely Boer girl! So she entered into her
Highland possession, had a door "stoop," or something like a bit of
raised verandah flooring put outside the entrance, but found, poor soul,
that it was rather a dripping place of observation in her adopted
climate. Nevertheless, the last news of her is that she is a happy,
"sonsie" mother, and has some children, who don't speak Dutch as their
common language, but only a few low Dutch words, with very Highland
accent.
But this is said to be only the case where a Scotsman marries a Boer.
There is apparently something in the Scot that makes him look after his
family more carefully than does the average Englishman or Irishman. It
is therefore only the Scot, as it is said, both in Africa and in Canada,
whose children, if he marry one of another race, do not desert the
accents of their forefathers on the paternal side. As a rule the
children become much what the mother is. I have seen the children of a
naval man who had married an Indian woman on the Pacific Coast become
almost like the small fish-eating savages around them. They were willing
to do a little work for a spurt, and then relapsed into dirt and
laziness. So in the north-west of Canada it is only an Orkney or
Aberdeen east-coast Scot who can keep his family to civilised life, if
he marry a Cree or member of any other Indian tribe. The Frenchman's
children, by an Indian mother, take to hunting only. Even with the Scots
in Old Canada the same rule holds good, at least wherever a Celt has
married a French Canadian. There are numbers of families below Quebec,
on the north side of the river St. Lawrence, whose names are Highland.
They are the descendants chiefly of Fraser's Highlanders, one of the
regiments employed during the war against the French in 1748-49. When
the soldiers obtained grants of land on the conclusion of the war they
married French-Canadian women. Their descendants now can seldom speak
one word of English or of Gaelic. They speak nothing but Canadian French
patois. It is the mother's influence, with rare exceptions, that tells.
So it is in South Africa. In some districts it is as with Fraser's
Highlanders, in Province Quebec. You may visit farm after farm,
especially those whose owners have Irish names, and you will not find
any person in the house, or on the land belonging to the farm, who can
speak a word of either English or Irish! It may be doubted if there
would have been much loyalty taught to any government by the use of the
Erse tongue. The "Taal" may inculcate a certain amount more of respect
for paternal and government authority. Yet if theory distinguishes
between Briton and Boer, or Englishman and Africander, Nature does not,
and you find that the mingling of the races is a practical principle
acted on regularly wherever the races are brought together. We may
congratulate ourselves that this is so. The mixed race will be a
magnificent one, with the size, courage, and tenacity of the Dutch, and
the gentleness, bravery, and power of government and of cohesion of the
Britisher. There are no handsomer women anywhere than there are among
the Dutch ladies of Cape Colony. Many of their sons are sent to English
public schools and universities, and though there are, alas, only too
many who live under British institutions and who do not become British,
there is no reason why, in course of time, they should not become as
good citizens of a British Commonwealth as have the Vanderbilts and Van
Horns and Roosevelts, and many others of Dutch name and lineage in New
York State, for New York was New Amsterdam, and a very flourishing Dutch
colony. On the banks of the Hudson you may still see thoroughly Dutch
houses, built in the old days. What New Yorker would now change his
nationality, though of Dutch descent? The freedom they have in the
United States their cousins will also have in South Africa. They will
mix with the English, whose language most of them speak already. They
will do so all the more readily as time passes, in that they can never
feel themselves to be anything but the equals of the British in all save
in numbers.
It was for the benefit of the union between England and Scotland that
the Scots won Bannockburn and many another hard fight besides. They
could point to their victories as the English could to theirs. And so
with those of Dutch race at the Cape. They can point to famous names of
good soldiers, who have inflicted defeat on the best British troops. And
for this they will be all the greater friends hereafter. Unless each
partner in business or in marriage can bring something into the common
pot, there is not so happy a sense of helpfulness and mutual aid given,
as there is when this union is a more equal one. There is another and a
most weighty consideration which will tend to the union of the European
races. This is the common necessity each has to strengthen the other
against any possible predominance of the blacks. The danger in this
matter will arise more in the warmer regions of the north of the future
confederation than in the more temperate south. Time has proved that the
white races can do well in the Cape. They increase rapidly. The climate
is most favourable. The physical character of the races does not in any
way deteriorate. On the contrary, it improves. They gain, as the
Americans say, in "avoirdupois." An "avoirdupois" Dutchman at the Cape,
whose ancestors have been "avoirdupoising" there for two centuries, is a
better all-round, and very round man, than is his compatriot in race at
home among the canals and tulip gardens of Holland. But the black holds
his own in weight and in numbers even in the temperate climate of the
Cape Colony. Farther north, where the temperature is hotter, it is
certain that he will be a better man than the white. The only exception
to this can be in the mountain districts, where at high elevations in
the plateaus there is probably a possibility that the white man's
children may thrive. In general, however, in all the low ground north of
the Transvaal, and in many districts there, the "Kaffir" will be more
favoured by the climate than will be the white invader. The Europeans
will partially subject them, and partially they will remain,
deteriorated in morals, but by no means likely to remain only the
obedient servants that they are expected to be. There are many who now
say that the next big trouble in South Africa will be with the blacks.
This apprehension, if there be any reason in it, is another incentive
for the whites to combine to make settlements secure and numerous, where
they can defy any movement among the blacks. It is an additional
incentive to us in the old land to see what we may do to make this union
of the whites as British in feeling, as liberty loving, as British
institutions can make it. The Boers in fighting have not lost their
freedom. They have only lost one form of collective and separate
independence. Individually their independence is far better guaranteed
under British than under Dutch Africander forms of government.
But a great help to their seeing and understanding of this will be the
predominance, not the domination, of the English language. In the
schools English history and its modern expansion in the colonies should
be taught. Half of the dislike of England shown in the Republic and
among the people in the United States arises from the teaching of the
school-books, which indoctrinates the young American with the idea that
as all tyranny known to his American fathers was centralised and
expressed in Lord North's Stamp Act and the Tea Duties, so the modern
Britisher must still be imbued with the ideas of Lord North, and
taxation without representation must go hand in hand with British rule.
The young Africander must be taught that we of the old country have
learned our lesson. He must know that each of the British self-governing
colonies is a separate nation in alliance of its own free will with the
mother-land. He must know that even in the wildest dreams of
Africanderism the most separatist of the separatists desired the naval
stations of the Cape to remain one of the chief resorts of the British
fleet. Now that Germany and France have their foot on South African
soil, "marching" with the states of the new confederation to be, the
youth of the states must be taught to know our forms of government and
the history of them, so that they may judge if they would rather be
under the German or French flag. To be under any separate new flag would
of course be to court danger from the powerful countries, who could cut
off their trade from the harbours, were it not for the protection
afforded by the British fleets. Union and education are therefore the
passwords to success.
How can we better help these forces than by well-devised emigration? Our
Dutch friends have given us a good example. They imported in the
eighteenth century 5000 children from Amsterdam. They knew what they
were about. That was at a time when horses were sent round in a ring to
tread corn, that the labour of threshing it might be saved. It was a
time when, near the outlying settlements to which the children were
sent, there were lions and elephants to be met with--real live
animals--recognisable by the Noah's ark toys of the children, whose
delight at the sight of the creatures was not always shared by their
parents! How different is all now! For thousands of miles, up and down
the country, life is as safe as in most parishes in England. The only
thing to fear is probably an enraged ostrich, and these can easily, even
on an ostrich farm where the huge birds are reared for their feathers,
be kept out of the children's way. The little ones had a long time of it
on board ship, three months in some cases; and glad they must have been
to see the coast-line rising as they neared the Bay, and the long flat
top of the precipitous Table Mountain, with a white wreath of mist
looking like snow against the delicate blue of the sky, on its rocky
summit level. They were not all kept in the white town at the base of
the beautiful mountain whose ever-changing hues were a delight to them.
The children were wisely distributed, that they might take a liking to
the place where they were trained, and should have a feeling of home
love for the part of the country they would know while yet young. And so
it should be done by us in these later times when we have more need of
the spread of our own tongue and traditions in this great land. Careful
location is indeed necessary, but there are so many good locations,
especially along the south coast, that we need not be too timid or too
dilatory. Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, two good bays to the northward to
which railways must ultimately come--more settlements again along the
coast in temperate regions to the east, are wanted, where latitude 34
shows that no great heat can be feared--these are the "plums" for
position. And when you turn the corner of that long stretch of coast
lying along latitude 34, you must look out for higher sites than those
on the sea-beach for the young people. And of these higher sites there
are plenty. If Durban be too relaxing there is Pietermaritzburg inland,
and so of most of the ports and bays. Leaving the coast and going inland
by the railways into the "Orange" and Transvaal, we at once meet the
main difficulty of "location" in the want of water. The Transvaal seems
like a gigantic turtle-back, and whereas in Australia you may meet with
water if you dig 1500 feet or more, where there is no appearance of it
on the surface, we must wait for such revelations in the Transvaal. The
territories are fed by few good rivers, and these are apt to be either
raging torrents or dry gravel beds. But there are "fonteins" in many
places, and there is no reason why a fair sprinkling of girls' and boys'
institutions should not be comfortably located both in Transvaal and
"Orange," where along the river of that name there is a more certain
supply of water. The Vaal is of course the largest stream for irrigation
in the north. Very little has been done to husband the water of any of
the African rivers; and the chief work to be done in matters of material
improvement is the adequate damming and storing of the waters of all the
principal streams. The winter floods, copious and overwhelming, have
been allowed to run to waste. Water and wives must for a long time be
the chief wants of South Africa.
Lucas gives briefly the main features of the country now under our flag.
From the south coast to the Zambesi in the neighbourhood of the Victoria
Falls is 1200 miles. The land rises steadily from the sea as you get
into the Hinterlands, and the mountain ranges run parallel to the sea.
Behind these ranges there is everywhere an elevated plateau, and the
highest plains are in the east. There also the rainfall is the
greatest. "It is from the south or east that men come into Southern
Africa, not from the west, where stretch the dreary deserts of Damara
and Namaqua Land." North of the Karoo Desert the principal places are
well situated for altitude. To the west Kimberley is 4000 feet above the
sea. Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange State, is higher by 500
feet than is Kimberley. Mafeking has 4200 feet. Pretoria, the capital of
the Transvaal, is the same as Bloemfontein. Johannesburg, though so near
Pretoria, stands at 5600 feet. In the north, Matebele Land has an
average of 2500 feet. It is possible that deep borings may find water in
the new states where there is none at present. These heights are
sufficient to explain how it is that even far to the north of Cape
Colony European settlement may thrive, and children grow up strong and
healthy. But "location" is everything.
Now, what has been done to foster immigration and settlement up to the
present? Hardly anything has been done by Government. Sir Harry Smith,
who commanded in the fiercest of the Kaffir wars, and after whose wife
Ladysmith received its name, strongly urged the policy of settling
soldiers in the Colony. Between the Fish and the Keiskamma rivers
"military villages" were encouraged, the settlers "being army pensioners
liable to be called on for the defence of the frontier." Then again in
the Queenstown district Governor-General Cathcart proposed to settle two
Swiss Regiments, but his plan was not supported. Then Sir George Grey,
his successor, persuaded the home Government to send out 2300 of the
Foreign Legion, as it was called, recruited for the Crimean War. They
were to be called on for military service, if wanted, during a period of
seven years, and they were to have pay for three years. Each man
received his land free of rent, to become his own at the end of the
seven years, if he had loyally fulfilled his engagements. The Government
of the Cape helped by a grant of money. "At the beginning of 1857," says
Lucas in his _Geography of the British Colonies_, "the German soldiers
arrived and were settled, some at existing towns or stations, such as
East London and King William's Town, some on selected sites, whose
villages were yet to be built. Distributed through the eastern districts
of the Colony, and through British Kaffraria, they held the lines of
communication, as garrisons attached to, and having an interest in the
soil. The divisional district of Stutterheim still bears the name of the
officer in whose charge the soldiers came, and under whose immediate
guidance they were settled on the land. The chief drawback _to the
scheme was that only a few of the emigrants brought wives with them_.
This defect Sir George Grey sought to remedy by proposing to import a
number of German families to be located with and to supplement the
military settlers. Some were brought over, but the total expenditure
which was contemplated was too large to win the assent of the Imperial
Government, and to subsidise an exclusively German immigration, seemed
to the Secretaries of State less politic than to provide the existing
German settlers with English or Irish wives. The Governor therefore sent
on a thousand of the unmarried soldiers to India, and those who
remained behind developed into Cape Colonists, and fell into line with
the civil population."
This experiment has succeeded so well that it is a wonder that it was
not repeated. Considering the enormous disproportion in the old country
between the number of men and the number of women, it would seem a
comparatively simple matter to assist female emigration, especially when
a Colony is young and able to absorb any number sent. Nor need any
Colonial Government Department be alarmed that the worthless will be
sent. There are plenty of useful and excellent women who would be glad
to go. As yet the only woman contingents that have been sent out are the
few dozen teachers who have proceeded to the concentration camps. A
party of these hailing from Toronto and Ottawa were lately in England on
their journey to the Cape. Every one who met these ladies was struck
with the earnestness they showed and the ability they displayed in
conversing on the subject of their hopes and expectations. They seemed a
lot drafted from the best women instructresses in some New England
State. But Ontario can well afford now to be compared with the best of
the New England States in regard to her public instruction. Her schools
of all kinds are excellent. A "send off" meeting was held in the
Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey for a party of fifty. They were
addressed by Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Peel. Now that peace has come and
the camps will have been broken up, these women will doubtless find
equally useful employment under the Education Department in the New
Colonies. The Government here have a large "reservoir" to draw upon in
the women who are employed in the telegraph and postal service in Great
Britain. Any of these persons would immediately find a sphere of
activity in the new lands. The population of these countries is certain
to increase rapidly with the opening of the old mines and the successful
exploitation of new. There are large centres of industry where there is
no want of water, where there is a certainty of good mining success, and
where communities will grow up anxious for good schools, and well able
to pay for instructors and instructresses.
[Illustration: Photo: Wilson, Aberdeen.
THE DOCKS, CAPE TOWN.]
It is a curious thing that while at the Cape and elsewhere you find in
the hotels plenty of Swiss and German and some French waitresses and
housemaids, you find few English. Why? It must be only from want of
organisation. At Grahamstown, not far from the bay called Algoa by the
Portuguese (whose thoughts went to Goa in India, and named Algoa and
Delagoa as calling places for Goa ships) there has been an institution
for instruction lately founded. Let me cite here the work of the South
African Expansion Committee in their own words.
This Association is established to promote Protected
Emigration, due regard being had to the interests both of the
Emigrants and of the countries to which they go.
The Association pledges itself:--
(_a_) To Emigrate only such Women and Girls as are of good
character and capacity.
(_b_) To select only such Men and Families as are suitable to
the requirements of each Colony.
(_c_) To secure for them proper Protection on the voyage, and
adequate Reception on arrival.
(_d_) If possible, not to lose sight of them for a year or two
after their Emigration.
(_e_) To raise a Loan Fund for necessitous cases, repayment
being secured on detained wages.
It is recognised by prominent statesmen of all parties that the
future of our South African possessions depends on their
colonisation--not only by the large bodies of active and
energetic men, who at the close of the war will find permanent
employment there--but also by trained and capable women. Many
situations and professions are already awaiting them, and as
the country becomes more settled, fresh openings of all sorts
will arise.
Women of proved suitability are prepared to go, when the right
time comes, but a great barrier to all extensive development of
this essential movement is lack of funds.
Financial support is needed for the following purposes:--
(1) The establishment, on sound business principles, of Hostels
at Cape Town[1] and at the chief centres, such as Durban,
Pretoria, Kimberley, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Bulawayo,
Salisbury, &c., where women and girls can be received for a
few days on arrival, and where, if they have daily
engagements, they may reside permanently. Each of these
Hostels would be also an employment Bureau for every kind
of women's work, and would require a capable salaried Lady
Superintendent to manage the Home and the Employment
Bureau, and to act as correspondent between Employer and
Employed.
(2) Provision for the proper care and guidance of women
throughout the journey from the British Isles to their final
destination in South Africa.
(3) Grants in aid of passages from the British Isles to South
Africa when the traveller cannot afford the whole cost, or
loans to be repaid within a given period.
(4) Preparation of women at the Leaton Colonial Training Home,
Wellington, Salop.
(5) Secretarial Expenses.
British men and women must alike desire for our new
territories, and for South Africa generally, the same ordered,
wholesome, law-abiding traditions as are to be found in the Old
Country; and these can only be built up on a lasting basis, by
rendering life possible there as here for suitable women,
whether as teachers, nurses, secretaries, typists, telegraph or
telephone clerks, sempstresses, or household assistants.
We would appeal for funds not only to help those who go to earn
their daily bread, but also to enable the wives, the daughters,
and sisters of settlers to join their belongings in the new
country. Many a man could make a home for his wife or sister
but for the initial cost of her passage and the difficulties of
the journey for inexperienced women. Openings in the new
territories are declined by men at the front, because they
cannot bring out those dependent upon them at home. They need
that the ocean be bridged for them by kindly forethought, by
experienced and economical organisation, by suitable
protection, and by carefully adjusted financial assistance.
It is surely not much to ask that those to whom domestic
comfort is a matter of course, should contribute in these ways
to make a home life possible for those upon whom the future of
South Africa depends.
The Lady Knightley, of Fawsley, in regard to the preparation
for women going to South Africa, says:--
"In laying before the public the scheme for assisting the
emigration of women of all classes to South Africa, the Council
are specially anxious to enlist the active co-operation of
ladies in all parts of the country, and with a view to securing
this assistance, they desire to draw the attention, of those
who may be disposed to help, to various methods of forwarding
the scheme, in the hope that some one or other of them may
prove feasible.
"Ladies could insure that those desiring to emigrate should
have the opportunity of fitting themselves for their new life
by helping to provide instruction for them in various
departments of practical life.
"1. Cooking, Dairying, Poultry-keeping.
"2. Breadmaking, Laundry-work.
"3. Needlework, Cutting out.
"4. Gardening, Fruit-packing, Bee-keeping.
"5. Ambulance, Nursing, Health teaching.
"In some parts of the country this will be best accomplished by
arranging for attendance at County Council Classes for
Technical Instruction, or by putting people in the way of
gaining the Scholarships which some County Councils provide for
dairying, others for nursing, &c. In other districts, where
such Classes or Scholarships are not provided by the County
Council, or where the Classes are inconvenient of access, it
might be arranged for such instruction to be given in a country
house. Good, old-fashioned, upper servants, of whom there are
some left, might in some cases be glad to help in this way.
"An even better plan would be to arrange for girls and young
women (especially those from towns) to pass a month or two in a
farmhouse, where, under a capable farmer's wife, much of the
required teaching would come naturally in the routine of the
household. In this way a foundation might be laid which would
render the traveller of far greater use on her first arrival
in South Africa than would otherwise be the case, and also more
able to acquire further knowledge should she obtain a situation
on a poultry or other farm.
"The improved methods of poultry-keeping inaugurated by the
National Poultry Organisation, 12 Hanover Square, should, if
possible, be studied. Ladies might supply intending travellers
with copies of its valuable leaflets.
"Some knowledge of gardening should be acquired, preferably
through the medium of the Swanley Ladies' Horticultural
College. But should this prove too long and expensive a
training, a good deal might be learnt from a head gardener if
ladies would make it easy for such instruction to be given. The
best methods of packing fruit should also be acquired, and in
towns, ladies who are large customers of fruit salesmen might
make interest with them for giving instruction.
"Ladies who are Members of County Bee-keeping Associations
might be able to obtain for intending Emigrants some
instruction from the Expert usually attached to such
Associations. Mr. Theodore Bent has pointed out that in a
country where wild bees do so well as they do in South Africa,
tame bees ought to succeed, and as butter at present is
somewhat scarce, honey might become a valuable article of food.
The same remark applies to jam, and jam-making should be
included in the subjects to be taught.
"If possible, intending travellers should attend some
ambulance, health, and nursing lectures, which would prove a
valuable possession in their future lives. Of course, such
instruction would be a good deal better than nothing, but
regular Ambulance Lectures, with an Examination to follow,
would be far better, and in many instances ladies could use
their influence in the country in getting such lectures
arranged, not of course specially for Emigrants, but to give
them the opportunity of attending. They might also, in some
cases, pay the necessary fees. There are many ladies,
especially among the younger ones, who have acquired a
considerable knowledge of nursing, and who might do invaluable
service by imparting to intending emigrants some acquaintance
with, at all events, such rudiments of nursing as are comprised
in changing sheets, improvised cradles, bed rests, and the
hundred and one little dodges--if they may be so termed--which
make the whole difference in illness, and which so many people
are utterly ignorant of.
"It is hoped that it may be found possible for nurses to go out
on the same ships with parties of emigrants, with a view to
their giving nursing and ambulance lectures on the voyage.
"Ladies may also help by contributing to the libraries for use
on board ship and at the Hostels, which it is intended to
establish for the reception of emigrants on their arrival at
Cape Town, and also in other South African Centres.
"Another form of assistance would be to undertake to pay for
the instruction of emigrants in South African languages. Miss
Alice Werner (20 Dry Hill, Park Road, Tonbridge) is holding
classes for the study of the Zulu language, and also for Taal
or Cape Dutch, at King's College, Strand. Besides these, she is
prepared to give lessons in some of the languages spoken in
British Central Africa.
"Clothes are not unfrequently needed for intending emigrants.
Working parties could be organised to provide new
underclothing, which could also be purchased from institutions
and bazaars. These working parties would also furnish a
valuable opportunity for making known the scheme among the
daughters of the farmers and tradesmen, who are just the class
most likely to prove desirable denizens of the new Colonies.
"Useful but fashionable slightly-used clothes for middle-class
women might also be collected.
"Ladies with friends in South Africa may also give valuable
assistance by writing to tell them of the scheme, being careful
to enclose a prospectus issued by the Association, so that
there may be no mistake as to terms, conditions, &c. Ladies in
Cape Town should be asked to confer with Mrs. Bairnsfather,
Grange Avenue, Rondebosch, Cape Town, and with the Committee
which has recently been formed.
"It should be known to all who are kindly willing to interest
themselves in this undertaking that a Colonial Training Home
has been established at Leaton, Wrockwardine, Wellington,
Salop, the object of which is to give practical training in
domestic work to ladies and girls wishing to proceed to the
Colonies, to join their families or as Mothers' Helps. The
training given is of the most thorough description, and no
servants being kept, the pupils do all the work of the house.
The course lasts for three or six months, and the terms are
15s. weekly for a single bedroom, 10s. for sharing a double
one. But as only twelve pupils can be received at a time, it
will be impossible by this means only, to train the many girls
who, it is hoped, will be willing and anxious to avail
themselves of the advantages offered by this scheme; and
therefore it is that the Council confidently appeal for help on
the simple but practicable lines indicated in the foregoing
pages."
In application to the British Women's Emigration Association (South
African Expansion), replies to the following questions have to be
forwarded to the Hon. Secretary, South African Expansion, Imperial
Institute, London, S. W.:--
1. Christian and Surname in full; Postal Address in full.
2. Date and Place of Birth; Religious Denomination.
3. (_a_) Parents or near relative living; (_b_) Home Address;
(_c_) Father's Profession.
4. To which Colony do you wish to go?
5. Have you friends or relatives there with whom you are in
correspondence? if so, give name and address.
6. What line of life do you propose to pursue in that Colony?
7. Have you hitherto had any experience in practical work?
8. Do you propose--(_a_) to invest capital? (_b_) to seek
employment in (1) Poultry, Fruit, Vegetable Farming or
Dairy? (2) Business, Boarding-house, Tea-shop, Dressmaking,
Photography, &c.
9. If from a Colonial or other Training Home, give address.
10. Is your health good? (a Medical Certificate will be
required); when were you last vaccinated?
11. Can you meet your travelling expenses, or are you likely to
require a small loan?
12. Three references are required. Give name and address if
possible of--(_a_) Minister of Religion or Justice of the
Peace; (_b_) two ladies or other responsible persons.
13. Space to be left blank for Referee's signature.
14. Length of time Referee has known Applicant.
The ordinary ocean fares are as follow:--
Union-Castle Line, from Southampton.
_Second Class._ _Mail Steamer._ _Intermediate._
Cape Town 25 to 29 guineas 23 to 26 guineas.
Port Elizabeth 17 to 31 " 24 to 28 "
East London 28 to 32 " 25 to 29 "
Natal 29 to 33 " 26 to 30 "
_Third Class._ _Mail Steamer._ _Intermediate._
Cape Town 15 to 17 guineas 12 to 14 guineas.
Port Elizabeth 16 to 18 " 13 to 15 "
East London 17 to 19 " 14 to 16 "
Natal 18 to 20 " 15 to 17 "
Aberdeen (Rennie) Line, direct from London.
Natal, First Class, £34 13s.; Second Class, £21.
Beira, " £40 19s.; " £26.
Intermediate Steamers carrying First Class only.
Natal, £25, 4s. Beira, £34.
Shaw Savill Line to Cape Town only, from London--
Third Class, £9, 9s. to £11, 11s. No Second Class.
Also White Star Line to Cape Town occasionally, from Liverpool.
Luggage allowed free; 20 cubic feet second class; 10 cubic feet
third class, extra at 1s. 6d. per foot. By Aberdeen Line, 40
feet first class; 30 feet intermediate.
At the present time there are no assisted passages to Cape
Colony. When these are granted, they enable an employer to
obtain an employee by paying to the Immigration Office at Cape
Town a portion of the passage money, the Government of Cape
Colony paying the remainder. Women availing themselves of the
advantage of a practically free passage are obliged to sign a
contract, which is legally binding, to remain one year or
longer, according to the agreement made with the employer.
NATAL.--Persons resident in Natal can obtain third class
assisted passages from their female relatives and domestic
servants through the Immigration Department in the Colony.
Adults, £5; children, half-price.
Persons travelling under the auspices of the Association are
grouped in reserved cabins under an escort. When larger parties
are collected they will have the comfort of travelling with an
experienced matron, whose authority they will be expected to
uphold.
Hostels and Employment Bureaux are established for receiving
travellers and for Registry Work at Cape Town, Johannesburg,
and Salisbury. Reception and forwarding arranged at all
seaports.
Employment for Elementary and High School Teachers, Trained
Nurses, Typists, Dressmakers and Milliners, Useful Helps,
Matrons, Business Hands, and Laundresses, can be obtained
through the Correspondents of the Association.
In Cape Colony and the larger towns of South Africa, the
openings will be chiefly for all-round Domestics, and women in
Professions and Business; up the country in the New
Territories, for women who as Working Housekeepers can utilise
native labour. Teachers will be wanted in all the Provinces.
Employees will be sent out as soon as employers apply for them
and Government Authorities consent. Women who intend to settle
up-country should meanwhile perfect themselves in cooking and
all household matters, adding a knowledge of dairy work,
poultry, and bee-keeping.
Travellers going through the Association who have to sleep in
London, can be received at 3s. 6d. per day. Three days' notice
must be given.
Only women of good character, health, and capability, are
accepted by the South African Expansion Committee, in whose
hands the selection of women to South Africa has been placed.
Protection is secured to them till they enter the situations
found for them in the Colonies.
[Illustration: Photo: Elliott & Fry, London.
SIR HENRY M'CALLUM, K.C.M.G.
Governor of Natal.]
But fully as important as the emigration of adults will be the placing
of children in well-selected places in South Africa. The object to be
attained is to let children grow up in the country so that they may
regard it as their own, and that their early home affection may be
largely connected with their adopted land. The difficulty of the
selection of children is as nothing compared with the difficulty of the
selection of adults. Nor are the objections often raised in a new
community against the importation of the last, heard against the first.
A wide experience has shown that children are eagerly sought by farmers,
and are "placed out" with ease. The remarkable success Dr. Barnardo has
had in Canada, to which country he has sent between twelve and thirteen
thousand children, has proved this. The number of failures has been only
about 1 per cent. Nor is this a haphazard statement. Watch and ward have
been kept over the fortunes of the youngsters. They have been carefully
placed after due negotiation and correspondence, and each has been
reported upon after settlement. The success obtained is best gauged by
the ever-increasing number of applications for just such boys and girls
as have been previously "located." Every year of late years there have
been three great parties sent across the Atlantic, and the cry is ever
for more to come. In spring, in midsummer, and in "the fall," the
children have been taken out. Entrained on arriving in Canada, the
farmers have come down to meet them at the various stations, and they
have been at once taken to their new homes, where they have almost
uniformly given satisfaction to their employers. They are growing up
hearty, happy Canadians, and many hundred letters arrive from them at
Stepney where they were trained, telling how they are "getting on."
Every penny spent on their teaching in England has had a double return
in making room when they go for another boy or girl to be similarly
brought up, and in providing Canada and Britain with a small citizen
"cut out of whole cloth," as the Americans say, ready to fight for the
Empire whether in Canada, in Europe, or in Africa.
Now though the East End philanthropist has the greatest number from
which to draw his recruits, he does not stand alone. There is Mr.
Quarrier, near Alloa in Scotland, who is doing similar work. In London
no child who knocks at the door of the many institutions is refused.
Each is admitted, and the change in a year is marvellous. The child has
already become a good little mechanic or workman of some kind or other.
He is cleanly, disciplined, and has many an example ahead of him and
around him, to make him follow in the good road on which he has been
set. In London £5000 is now asked for by Dr. Barnardo for the African
scheme. The greatest care is to be taken to watch over the children sent
out. They are to be carefully placed where climate and water is good,
and there, after a course of instruction in all that is most useful in
South Africa, they will be placed out as in Canada with farmers, with
miners, with mechanics, and with any who want them, if the employers can
only show that a good home is provided. But until a good home is
provided by the Colonists, they are to have a good home out there of
their own. There are opportunities of education in the local farming
pursuits that "make the mouth water," to have children thus placed. The
pastoral work of dairying, as well as the healthy occupations of
gardening and produce-raising will all be studied and taught on the
spot. What a happy change from the crowded thoroughfares of the east of
London! And if these children succeed, as they assuredly will, why
should not the Government do a little useful work of the same kind as
that undertaken by Dr. Barnardo and by Mr. Quarrier on its own account?
Why not utilise for Africa some of the industrial school children? They,
if settled together, and sent to English-speaking farmers, will not
forget that they are English. They will not make their farms when they
get them, after their useful school career, resound only with the
expressive but illiterate "Taal" tongue. Good Saxon (even if shorn of a
few h's) will be heard in their homesteads in the future. They will add
a good reinforcement to those who know that freedom is not to be got by
racial separation, and the condemnation of everything British. They will
permeate the districts where they grow up to manhood and womanhood with
the British idea and practice of common obedience to law and justice as
the best security for freedom.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The generosity of Mr. Rhodes and of the De Beers Company has made it
possible to the influential South African Immigration Committee which
has been formed at Cape Town to open a Hostel there already.
SOUTH AFRICAN FEDERATION
VIEWS OF COLONIAL PREMIERS
BY E. B. OSBORN
_Author of "Greater Canada"_
I
Unification has always been an ideal of South African statesmen, and
twice, at least, it has been within measurable distance of realisation.
In 1858 Sir George Grey, who had federated the New Zealand settlements
despite the intensity of their local jealousies, promulgated the first
practical scheme of South African Federation. So well had he ruled the
Kaffir tribes on the eastern border of Cape Colony, that the Free State,
weary of warfare with the Basutos, made overtures for a federal
alliance, and the proposition of the Volksraad was actually laid before
the Cape Parliament by Sir George Grey, before the opinion of the
British Ministry in regard to his scheme of federation on New Zealand
lines and their sanction for the course actually pursued had been
received. Sir George Grey was recalled; though on his arrival off the
British coast he found that he had been reinstated by a new Secretary of
State, the delay led to the loss of an excellent opportunity for
carrying through a measure comparable in importance with the Act which
brought about the legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada.
[Illustration: Photo: Elliott & Fry, London.
HON. SIR W. F. HELY HUTCHINSON,
Governor of Cape Colony.]
For many years after the failure of Sir George Grey's attempt,
unification was a little-regarded counsel of perfection. It is true that
the Duke of Buckingham, Secretary of State for the Colonies in the
Disraeli Ministry of 1868, admitted that it would be politic to consider
seriously any further overtures for a federal alliance from the Boers,
but the Free State was no longer in the mood to make them, our
annexation of Basutoland being resented, and the discovery of diamonds
on its western border in 1867 having created fresh causes of irritation.
When the second Disraeli Ministry came into power, and Lord Carnarvon,
who had collaborated with the Canadian Fathers of Federation (he himself
may be described as the Godfather of the Dominion), undertook the charge
of colonial affairs, the plan proposed by Sir Henry Barkly for a
confederation of South Africa, which should be the logical
consequence of the grant of autonomy to Cape Colony, was cordially
received. Unfortunately the Free State held aloof, the Cape Ministry
remembered only too well the object lessons in anti-Imperialism received
from Lord Carnarvon's predecessors, and a _grain de sable_--the
tactlessness of Mr. Froude--caused a vast amount of friction. Even then,
but for the revival at home of the belief that political quietism and a
policy of non-interference with Colonial affairs would enable Great
Britain to retain the commercial hegemony of the world, Lord Carnarvon's
hopes might have been realised; for he had grasped the all-important
fact that South Africa was, and must always remain, a single-minded
community, whenever the native question was discussed, and that this
unity of opinion was a stronger motive for unification than any or all
of those political or commercial considerations which had already led to
the making of the Dominion, and seemed certain, sooner or later, to
bring about the federation of the Australian Colonies.
In more recent years three men of commanding influence have, each in his
own way, attempted to realise the ideal of unity. Mr. Kruger's attempt
to lay the foundation of a Dutch confederacy, the future greatness of
which would have been based (can we doubt it?) on some form of slavery,
may be dismissed as an instance of the adage, _corruptio optimi
pessima_. Mr. Cecil Rhodes worked for a federation on the model of the
United States; since the Cape was half Dutch, the Transvaal was to be
made half British, and the settlement of Rhodesia was to insure the
preponderance of Imperial ideas in the Union of the future. He saw that
the Boers must be persuaded to co-operate, and for that reason he allied
himself to Mr. Hofmeyr, the unofficial leader of the Boer party in Cape
Colony, who also had his federal scheme. Had the two Boer leaders agreed
to work loyally together in their disloyalty, it is conceivable that
they might have brought about an act of federation in the Boer interest,
and have constitutionally demanded from Great Britain the removal of her
garrisons from South Africa, a naval station at Simon's Bay being
conceded in order to retain the essential measure of Imperial
protection. Such, at any rate, seems to have been Mr. Hofmeyr's dream.
But, instead of being content to widen and deepen the influence of the
Afrikander Bond until such time as the term "suzerainty" should have
been interpreted by the heirs to Mr. Gladstone's South African policy,
Mr. Kruger decided to make use of his hoarded armaments, and the future
of his great raid involved the failure of Mr. Hofmeyr's long-meditated
plan of--shall we call it?--constitutional disloyalty. Nevertheless the
twofold ideal of unity, which inspired the acts both of those who
deserved and those who did not deserve to succeed, has survived all
these vicissitudes, and was never more strong than at the present
moment. Indeed it is obvious that not only the British and Dutch
inhabitants of South Africa, but also all responsible politicians and
competent publicists in Canada and Australia, are now of opinion that
complete solutions of the three South African problems of primary
importance--the settlement of the native question, agricultural
development, and railway administration--can only be obtained through a
Federal Parliament, a body which would combine a detailed knowledge of
local conditions with the power of seeing each problem as a whole, and
devising a general solution.
II
The foregoing contains the gist of many conversations with those who
have a special knowledge of South Africa and South African affairs. The
opinions of Sir Albert Hime, the Prime Minister of Natal, who may
certainly claim to speak in this matter on behalf of the South African
loyalists, were expressed as follows in an interview with the writer:--
"I am convinced that the majority of South Africans are anxious to see a
'United South Africa,' and I believe they will see it before long. I
cannot, of course, speak for the Dutch; but I am sure that every
'Britisher' in Natal and in Rhodesia, and nine out of every ten
'Britishers' in the rest of South Africa, are in favour of federation.
The great problems of South African development can only be completely
solved by a central authority. The native problem, for example, which is
the most serious of all, is a case in point. The difficulty of obtaining
a sufficient supply of native labour--a difficulty only to be overcome
by increasing the wants of the natives--is only one phase of this
problem, but it will supply an illustration of the necessity of
considering the interests of the whole country in dealing with such
matters. As things are arranged at present, the planters and farmers of
Natal have a reasonable cause of complaint in the fact that all their
available supply of native labour is drawn away to the Rand mines. I may
add that the solidarity of South African opinion in regard to the
treatment of the natives--all white men in South Africa are agreed, for
example, that they must never have the franchise, and that no attempt
should be made to create a navvy class in South Africa to compete with
the natives in the unskilled labour market--is a great unifying
influence. The matter of agricultural settlement is another problem
which should be considered with reference to the general interests of
the whole country. There is an impression current in certain quarters
that immigration should be diverted into the new Colonies. But once the
conception of a United South Africa is grasped, it is obvious that a new
British settler in Natal will do as much for the maintenance of British
supremacy as a new British settler in the Transvaal. If South Africa is
not to become a country of two or three large cities in a huge, sparsely
settled territory, the problem of agricultural development should be
dealt with on the broadest lines, and in the interest of the whole
country. Natal has no intention whatever of pursuing a selfish policy in
regard to the work of procuring settlers or of obtaining a share of the
Transvaal traffic."
Asked to express his opinion as to when the "United South Africa" of his
hopes would come into being, Sir Albert Hime naturally enough refused to
suggest a date. "But I am strongly of opinion that federation should
take place before the new Colonies receive self-government, or, at any
rate, concurrently with that event. That would be the safest course; for
it is quite possible that the new Colonies, after they had received
autonomy, would refuse to join. Once they have attained the privileges
of self-government as part and parcel of a 'United South Africa,' I do
not think there would be any special friction; if there was, it would
gradually disappear as local jealousies grew less."
"Though I do not regard the question of South African Federation as a
matter of merely academic interest," continued Sir Albert Hime, "yet I
think it would serve no useful purpose to discuss the details of a
federal scheme at the present moment. But, for my own part, I do not
regard the arguments of Mr. Cecil Rhodes in favour of making Cape Town
the federal capital as conclusive. In a speech at Bulawayo, Mr. Cecil
Rhodes summed up those arguments in a forcible manner, and his bequest
of Groote Schuur as a residence for the Premier of the United South
Africa that is to be, is an additional argument of considerable weight.
But I am inclined to think that the fact that the Cape Peninsula is, as
Mr. Rhodes said, the seaside sanatorium of South Africa, would not
compensate for the remoteness of Cape Town from the centre of the new
federation. And, again, if Cape Town were chosen there would be a
tendency to make too much of Cape politics, and the spirit of Cape
politicians might tend to dominate the Federal Parliament. Johannesburg
would be a bad choice. Living will always be costly there, and the
influence of cosmopolitan capitalists might be exerted with bad results.
Of course we should be glad to have the capital in Natal, but I do not
expect we shall have that honour. All things considered, Bloemfontein
would perhaps be the best choice. Or we might follow the example of the
United States, Canada, and Australia, and settle the claims of the
existing capitals by creating a new city for our federal capital."
III
Sir Edward Barton was at first unwilling to express an opinion on a
subject "in which many with better knowledge have a deep interest." "But
I am confident," he continued, "that before many years have passed away
we shall see a Federated South Africa, and that no South African will
wish to return to the old order of things once that federation has come
into being. I still believe that the form chosen for the constitution of
the Australian Commonwealth was the best available, and I think that it
would be better suited to South Africa than the Canadian form. But
whichever form is chosen, the whole community will benefit by
federation.
"We in Australia have had great difficulties to overcome, and a certain
amount of friction has necessarily arisen between the States and the
federal authority, but the history of the United States and of the
Dominion shows that such difficulties and friction cannot be avoided,
but can always be surmounted. With the exception of a few discontented
persons, I think nobody in Australia would be in favour of a return to
the old order of things, and it is already clear that the local
jealousies which hampered Australian progress are vanishing. When I was
in British Columbia nine years ago, I tried hard to find a man who
believed that the act of confederation should be undone; but I could not
discover such a person. There may be a few 'Blue Noses' in Nova Scotia
who would like to see confederation abolished, but I never met one. In
either case, the fact that Annexationists are few--too few to be
counted--in Canada, explains my failure. And once South African
Federation is an accomplished fact--and though the racial antithesis, as
was the case in Canada, renders the accomplishment more difficult than
in Australia, where a difference in opinion as to fiscal policy was the
chief obstacle--I am very sure that the vast majority of South Africans,
whether British or Dutch, will refuse to contemplate a change to the old
state of local jealousies. The sooner South African Federation comes,
the better for South Africa."
[Illustration: CHURCH STREET, PRETORIA THE APPROACH TO THE TOWN.
Drawn by Donald E. M'Cracken.]
Asked to answer the question: Should federation come before the new
Colonies receive self-government, or concurrently with that event? Sir
Edward Barton replied that in his opinion either course would create
difficulties for the future.
"Australian Federation," he continued, "came out of the will of the
people. The result of a referendum proved that a majority of the people
was in favour of federation, and all the States consented to the terms
thereof. Now if the Transvaal and the Orange River Colonies, communities
that have enjoyed a form of self-government in the past, had not free
choice of assent or refusal, and joined the South African Federation
under compulsion (no matter how slight a measure of compulsion),
constitutional difficulties might spring up in the hereafter. Disputes
might arise between the federal authority and these two States, and they
would say, 'We were not asked for our consent, we had not complete
freedom of choice.' In any case, representation must be given to them,
and it would be awkward if two out of the five Federal States or
Provinces were trying to overthrow the federation. I do not say this
would happen, but the possibility of such an emergency should be
seriously considered. It would be safe, I think, to work and wait for a
majority in favour of federation; more especially as there has existed
and still exists, as I am informed, a strong feeling that the interests
of both peoples in South Africa would be furthered by such a measure."
IV
Neither Mr. Seddon nor Sir Wilfrid Laurier granted the writer's request
for an expression of opinion in regard to the possibility or probability
of South African Federation. Mr. Seddon, though he is always ready to
advise the various Provinces of the Empire in commercial matters, is
averse to interfering in other people's politics. Moreover the word
"federation" has a discomfortable sound in the ears of his New Zealand
constituents; to a few it suggests Rossetti's "might-have-been," to most
its echo is a more or less decided "certainly not."
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who has suffered much from the too imaginative
interviewer, both in the United States and in France, makes it a
principle not to be interviewed. But a day or two after he had
courteously declined to grant the writer's request, he was good enough
to allude to the subject of South African Federation in a speech at
Edinburgh, from which the following excerpt is taken: "In my humble
opinion," said the Canadian Premier, with reference to the attempt of
Mr. Rhodes to secure the unification of South Africa, "Mr. Rhodes made
one mistake. He made the mistake of being too impatient. Had he allowed
time for development, had he allowed the Dutch population to get
reconciled to the idea of British citizenship, they would have had much
sooner than will be the case the federation of South Africa, _which is
the only future of that great country_."
To judge from the spirit of his utterances in Canada on the subject of
South Africa, it would appear that Sir Wilfrid Laurier's opinions as to
the best means of working towards the end of South African Federation
do not materially differ from those of Sir Edmund Barton. He believes
that the free consent of the new Colonies should be obtained, and that
the policy pursued with regard to Manitoba by the "Fathers of
Confederation"--a policy of which he disapproved at the time, a policy
which led to a long series of disputes between Manitoba and the Dominion
Government--should not be pursued in the case of the Transvaal and
Orange River Colonies. It will be remembered that the "Red River
Settlement" received Provincial status on condition of becoming a member
of confederation, and that the terms of membership were accepted under
compulsion, and in the hope that they could be bettered.
LAW AND LANGUAGE
BY MR. M. J. FARRELLY, LL.D.
_Barrister-at-Law; Advocate of the Supreme Court of Cape Colony_
I.--THE ROMAN DUTCH LAW AND THE LAW OF ENGLAND
The Roman Dutch Law--the body of legal principles and enactments
codified under the later Roman Empire by the Emperor Justinian, as
modified by legislation of the States-General and decisions of the
tribunals of Holland up to the end of the eighteenth century--the date
of the British occupation of Cape Colony--constitutes the Common Law of
all British South Africa from the Zambesi to the sea. Indeed its sway
stretches farther north, if we include the province of Northern
Rhodesia.
The recent annexation to the Empire of the territories of the two Boer
Republics must necessarily have many effects not alone in the sphere of
politics, but also in that of law. But no unsettling of the general
principles of private law, regulating the rights and duties of the
citizens in private relations, can be the result. The invariable
practice of the Imperial Government--the only possible one to prevent
inextricable confusion of personal status and property rights--has
always been to enforce, as the unaltered law of the land, any system of
European Law already in operation in territories annexed or ceded to the
Empire, being already a portion of the dominion of any State of the
European Family of Nations. In this respect the Imperial Government but
follows the general practice of other European States: a practice so
uniform that it may almost be regarded as a portion of the Law of
Nations, of that custom of the European race which for a century we are
accustomed to speak of as International Law. The committee of the Privy
Council, which, as regards the Empire outside of Europe, may be viewed
as the Imperial Court of Appeal, has therefore to adjudicate on systems
of law more numerous than these that come before any other tribunal in
the world. Not alone questions to be determined under the Common Law of
England, but suits to be decided under that law, as modified by the
legislation of the self-governing Colonies, come under the cognisance of
that unique tribunal. From the Channel Islands, whose people boast that
they were never conquered by England, are heard appeals, based on the
_Grand Coutumier de Normandie_, unknown in France since the French
Revolution. The French Law of Lower Canada, still administered under
British authority, is lifeless and unknown in the Paris which gave it
birth. Similarly the Roman Dutch Law of the United Provinces, now
enforced in the former over-sea possessions of Holland, has long ago
been swept away in Low Countries, surviving as the law of the land only
in the British possessions, in South America, in Ceylon, and in South
Africa. With one result, arresting the attention of the historical
student, that in our own day British tribunals accept, as of the highest
authority--in many matters most vitally affecting the status and
property of British citizens from the Lion's Head to the Line, the
recorded opinions of a Pretorian prefect of the Roman Empire in
York--the brightest of the five stars of the _Loi des Citations_.
The tribunals of the Empire constitute a museum of former systems of
law, flourishing far from their parent springs. But every change is not
necessarily progress. The marked liking of British colonists, born in
the United Kingdom, for the Roman Law under whose sway they have passed
is a very instructive phenomenon. Wisdom, they seem to think, did not
die with the fashioners of that "codeless myriad of precedents, that
wilderness of single instances" which, evolved according to
imperturbable theory from the bosom of the English judiciary, is known
as the Law of England.
This preference is the more impressive, seeing that on many vital
matters, not mere abstractions of jurisprudence, the Roman Dutch Law
differs from the English systemless system.
The personal status of all residents in the new British Colonies falls
under rules quite different from the English rules as to capacity to
enter into and to perform contracts, as to property rights, and as to
family relations. Results of some importance may chiefly be expected
from the fact that, since the annexation and the transformation of the
Republics into British Colonies, the presumption in law that British
immigrants intend to adopt a new domicile, and subject themselves and
their property to a new legal system, must necessarily be stronger than
when residence was being taken up in the territory, then foreign, of two
Boer Republics. In the future, not alone, as hitherto, contracts of
service and contracts as regards property, but the relationship,
personal and as affecting property, of marriage and succession, will
fall under the jurisdiction of a High Court administering primarily the
Law of Rome. The Court will apply the Law of England to those latter
conditions only in cases in which they consider that, in accordance with
the principles of Private International Law, the English system is
applicable--the presumption now being that, as a general rule, it is not
applicable.
[Illustration: Photo: Russell, London.
RIGHT HON. SIR J. GORDON SPRIGG, K.C.M.G.,
Prime Minister of Cape Colony.]
As regards the capacity of adults to enter into and be bound by
contract, the most striking difference between the English and Roman
Dutch systems is the survival, under the latter, of a modified form of
the Roman Interdiction of the Prodigal. Under certain circumstances, on
application of friends or relatives, such an order can issue. Again,
contracts of service made out of South Africa are not binding unless
entered into again before a public official in South Africa.
In respect to the tenure of property, more especially of property in
land, the differences which exist are all in favour of Roman Dutch Law.
An admirable system of registering titles to land, whether of ownership
or mortgage, exists in South Africa, as on the Continent of Europe,
where that most valuable legacy from the Roman Empire has remained
unchanged in principle to our day. No tedious scrutiny of documents
attesting title to land is necessary, as it is in England. The official
register is sufficient proof of ownership. Transfer is rapid and
inexpensive. Again, unavoidable calamity, amounting to a condition of
impossibility of beneficial occupation, excuses from the necessity of
payment of rent of land. Such excuse is not known to the Law of England.
Unlike the Law of England, but like the Law of Scotland, desertion by
either party to a marriage furnishes ground for absolute divorce, with
right of re-marriage. The system, flowing directly from the Roman Law,
both in Scotland and South Africa, is understood to work satisfactorily,
comparatively few divorces being sought for.
II.--THE MODERN LAW OF SOUTH AFRICA
Leaving the general principles of the law affecting personal status,
family relations, and property rights, the difference between the Law of
England and that of South Africa practically disappears as regards
Europeans in social relations. In the whole field of Commercial Law, and
in that of the Law of Crimes and Punishments, the Law of England has
practically been adopted in all the States and Colonies. The origin of
this state of the law is, of course, to be found in the fact that the
Roman Law conceptions were out of harmony with modern commercial
conditions and the competition of the World Market; and also that their
code of Crimes and Punishments has become inappropriate to the later
forms of European civilisation.
Several features of South African legislation require more special
notice. The Transvaal Law may be taken as typical of that of the other
States, and political and economical conditions make the law of the late
Republics of most importance and interest to the British public. The
most salient topics are those dealt with by the Law of Mines, the law as
to the natives, and the Law of Universal Military Service.
The law as to minerals, including not alone gold and silver, but all
precious metals and precious stones, is based on State ownership. It is
expressly declared: "The right of mining for and disposal of all
precious stones and precious metals belongs to the State."
The State, however, does not undertake the work of mining, but grants,
under certain conditions, that privilege to various classes in the
community. The Government is authorised by law to proclaim a specified
area to be public "diggings." Thereupon, certain rights are reserved to
the owner of the farm wherein the area is situated. These rights are in
effect to select certain portions of the proclaimed area as mining
"claims" belonging to the owner, and to mark off these portions. The
remainder of the area is then open to appropriation by the public, the
first comer having the first right. Shortly before the war of 1899, in
consequence of scenes of disorder attending the marking off of these
"claims" by the general public, steps were taken to introduce a system
of assigning the mining areas by lot among the residents in each
district.
The taxation of the mineral grounds was, and is, based on a dual system.
The one is taxation, by means of levying a monthly due, called a "claim
licence," in the mere possession of a mining area, called a "claim,"
whether or not the area is being developed. The other principle,
superadded to the first, was that of taxing the profits of each mine.
Before the war this latter tax amounted to five per cent.
In relation to gold mining, in one very important respect the Law of the
Transvaal, like that of Cape Colony, is in striking opposition to the
rules of civilised law all over the world. The famous I. D. B. (Illicit
Diamond Buying) enactments passed to protect diamond mining in Kimberley
have a parallel in the I. G. B. (Illicit Gold Buying) provisions of the
Transvaal Law. It is incumbent on the possessor of rough diamonds to
prove his innocence. Similarly, under the Gold Law of the Transvaal,
"Any one who is found in possession of amalgam or unwrought gold, or
uncut precious stones, and can give no proof that he obtained possession
of the same in a lawful manner," is punishable with fine and
imprisonment. For a third offence, the amount of fine and imprisonment
with hard labour is at the discretion of the Court, and forfeiture of
the unwrought gold, or uncut precious stones, follows conviction.
It is true that in England, for instance, a similar exception is in
force with reference to the possession of explosives, a measure intended
to prevent Anarchist outrages. But the difference is very great between
the two classes of cases. The manufacture and sale of explosives is not
the staple industry of England, as the production of gold and diamonds
is in South Africa. The chief occupation of the industrial population of
England is not affected; the provision remains only one of some
inconsiderable exceptions to the general rule, that every one is
presumed innocent until he is proved guilty.
The law relating to natives, under which head are included all the
coloured races, is equally strange to those familiar only with the Law
of England. The so-called Pass Law provides that every native in
districts or towns inhabited by Europeans--everywhere, in fact, except
in the native villages--must be in possession of an official passport,
showing he is registered in an official State registry. Other
regulations limit the action of the native--the Curfew regulations,
compelling Kaffirs in town districts to remain indoors after sunset.
Municipal rules, prohibiting Kaffirs from walking on the footpath of the
street, and special rules of the Criminal Law affect them. The lash is
presented as the penalty for various offences. The death penalty is
inflicted for Kaffir outrages on women of the European race. By the
imposition of a Hut Tax, payable annually, the Kaffir is induced to
labour; an occupation which, if left to himself, he prefers to leave to
women.
The Law of Universal Military Service, applying to all Europeans who are
burghers--a law of all the States of South Africa--furnishes another
point of divergence from the Law of England. In the Transvaal all
burghers over the age of sixteen and up to the age of sixty are under
the military command of the elected Field Cornet of the district. In
time of war the age begins at fourteen and has no fixed limit for
ending. This, be it noted, is not a case of conscription; it is a levy
_en masse_, taken as a normal condition of life. Burghers on commando
are exempt from civil process, and are exempt from the obligation of
paying claim licenses for the period they are on commando.
III.--RECENT BRITISH MODIFICATIONS
It is, of course, in the present stage of our information impossible to
state fully the various modifications which have been introduced in the
new Colonies since the British annexation two years ago.
Some changes worth noticing have, however, been published.
In Private Law, the chief change of which we have information appears to
have been the abolition of the Orphan Chamber of Roman Dutch Law--a
State department concerned with the administration of infants' estates.
The change, however, seems only to have been one of administration and
title, the duties of the abolished Chamber being transferred to the
Attorney-General's Department.
As regards the Gold Law, an enactment by the late Republic of a war-tax
on the gold output of from forty to fifty per cent. has been abolished.
The British tax on the mines has been fixed by proclamation at ten per
cent. on the profits of each mine. The system of claim licenses--taxation
on the possession of mining areas--is continued.
Minor modifications of the details of the Native Pass Law have also been
announced, including the restriction of the number of cases, and of the
power of magistrates to sentence Kaffirs to the punishment of the lash.
The Law of Military Service appears to remain up to the present
unmodified. Indeed, a recent decision in the newly established British
High Court of the Transvaal has very rigidly construed a provision of
the Gold Law, protecting burghers on commando from liability to pay
license dues. The Court refuses to allow to Uitlanders the same
privilege as that allowed to burghers in arms. The Uitlander, according
to that decision, is liable to pay these arrears accruing during the war
to the present British administration.
IV.--PRINCIPLES OF IMPERIAL POLICY--OBSTACLES IN THE WAY OF THEIR BEING
CARRIED OUT
Before considering specific suggestions as to actual legislation
required in the new Colonies, it is necessary to set clearly before us
what are the objects to be aimed at by Imperial statesmen. Most of the
errors of the past century of Imperial rule in South Africa are
traceable to the fact that no steady and consistent policy has been
adopted for any definite period. With every change of government in the
United Kingdom the British policy in South Africa altered. As I have
written elsewhere, it swung with bewildering inconsistency, according to
whether an Imperialist or a Little Englander Government was in power,
from an expansionist to a "retrenchment" policy. Alternately
negrophilist and anti-Kaffir, alternately conciliatory to the Dutch and
aggressively British. "Nothing more fixed than the certainty of Imperial
change, unless, indeed, it were the cruelty of Imperial ingratitude."
I shall take it, then, that consistency is the least we may expect as
the result of the late war. The maintenance of the integrity of the
world-wide Empire, plainly bound up with the retention of South Africa,
involving the possession of the only secure sea-route to Australia and
India; the upholding of the banner of European justice and humanity in
Africa, the British portion of the mission of the European race the
world over--to this end, the fusion of all strains of the European
people in a new nationality to form a constituent part of the
Empire--these I take to be the objects of Imperial statesmen in the
United Kingdom and the Colonies, and of all loyal citizens of the
Empire.
Now, these principles being fixed, we have next to consider what are the
dangers threatening the successful carrying out of a policy based on
these principles.
The first, and most formidable, danger is that arising from the
existence in all the Colonies of South Africa of a Separatist party
among the Boer section of the population, usually described as the Young
Afrikander party. Its origin is due to many historic causes; among which
not the least has been the unwise and vacillating policy of the Imperial
Government. That party is by no means extinct as a result of the late
war. No matter what professions are made in the Land of Diplomatists, it
has to be reckoned with for our time and generation. It relies for the
ultimate success of its policy of substituting a Boer-ruled independent
State for British citizenship of the Empire on many causes. In the first
place, the stubborn tenacity of the Boer people, and their slowness to
abandon any long-held purpose. Again, on their military skill, their
religious fanaticism, their conviction that they are the Lord's elect,
and that His sword will smite not in vain. Yet again, and most of all,
on the enormous birth-rate among the Boers--families of twelve sons
being not uncommon. Boer ignorance of the power and purpose of the
Empire--of the real character of that federation of freemen--figures
also in their calculations; and as well the barrier against fusion of
the European strains kept up by the use of that _patois_ of the
Hollander tongue, the South African _Taal_. Lastly, their main reliance
is on future inefficiency of the Imperial administration--marred by
negrophilist British missionaries and English society nepotism and
favouritism--on the see-saw of British party politics, and on the
prospects of the Empire becoming involved in war with some great
European Power.
The next danger is that arising from the presence on the goldfields of
the Transvaal of vast agglomerations of cosmopolitan finance owning most
of the mineral wealth of the State. On many points, the interest of
these groups is not the same as those of the Imperial Government and
those of the rank and file of the British settlers. Taxation of the
mines for Imperial purposes, such as those of State-aided British
immigration and State-constructed irrigation works, cannot be in the
interest of the mining groups. The lowering of the wages of the white
miners is clearly in their interest; while opposed to the prospects of
welfare of British miners and British merchants in the towns, to those
of the professional classes, and, above all, to the interests of British
agricultural settlers, whose occupation cannot be profitable for many
years to come unless their market is at their door. Mining profits
remitted to Berlin and Paris, instead of going to the pockets of
resident British miners, cannot benefit the British agricultural
settler. Again, the truck system, by which employers supply goods to
their workers (a system illegal in England), while it may increase the
profits of the mining groups, would be destruction of the trade of the
British dwellers in the towns. This aspect of the question is rendered
more serious by the fact that practically all the press of South Africa
is owned or controlled by the financiers of the mining groups.
Lastly, a danger which has existed for generations is that arising from
the existence of a body of sentiment in the United Kingdom which, for
want of a better word, is called negrophilism. This sentiment is usually
voiced by British missionaries, and advocates an impossible black man
and brother theory. Its effect on British legislation and administration
in South Africa caused the first dissension of moment between Boers and
British at the time of the abolition of negro slavery in 1836. The whole
theory is felt by all Europeans of South African experience to be based
on a flat contradiction of the facts of life and the teaching of the 250
years of European contact with the South African native--Bushman,
Hottentot, or Kaffir. Allied with this is the colour-blindness of some
Anglo-Indians, who favour the disastrous measure of flooding South
Africa with Asiatics from India.
V.--LINES OF LEGISLATION TO CARRY OUT THE IMPERIAL POLICY
Having defined the Imperial policy in South Africa to be the maintenance
of the integrity of that federation of freemen which is the British
Empire, the upholding of the banner of European justice and humanity in
the Dark Continent, and for the promotion of these ends the fusion of
all strains of the European race in one community, let us now consider
the general lines of State action requisite to carry out that policy.
All parties loyal to the Empire are agreed that the first requisite
from the standpoint of the Imperial welfare is the promotion of the
immigration of British agriculturists to South Africa. The enormous
birth-rate of the Boer people will prevent any prospect of fusion
between British and Boers--anything, in fact, but the swamping of the
British element--unless this immigration be organised by the State. The
life of the gold and diamond mines cannot last longer--so those
qualified to speak are agreed--than a few generations. With the
exhaustion of the mines, the British population, if confined to the
towns, would inevitably disappear. Again, the Boers being essentially
country folk, could never have that close association with the British
necessary for the coalition of a united people, unless the British are
settled as agriculturists. A most encouraging precedent of the success
of State-organised immigration of British settlers on the land is to be
found in the State-aided immigration of 1820 into the Eastern Province
of Cape Colony.
Exactly as in Egypt and in India, agriculture, to be prosperous and to
extend over large areas, is impossible in South Africa unless with the
aid of State-constructed irrigation works. The water supply, both from
rainfall and underground natural reservoirs, is ample; but engineering
skill is required to enable these sources to be utilised all the year
round. The recently published report of Mr. W. Willcocks shows what
favourable prospects exist for the carrying out of a general system of
State irrigation works.
One word of warning is necessary. The general impression, so sedulously
created for many years past, of the unsuitability of South Africa as a
sphere for British immigration, is, as Mr. Rudyard Kipling has pointed
out, only a part of a political propaganda, intended to exclude British
influence. It may be entirely ignored.
The next requisite of State action is the promotion, by legislation and
administration, of the development of the present and future goldfields,
and other mineral fields, in such manner as may tend to further the
general ends of the Imperial policy as already described. The taxation
of the mines should be so adjusted as to favour British immigration and
the creation of a prosperous and loyal British community. The
development of new fields should be encouraged; adequate sums should be
raised for public objects; the minerals, expressly declared to be
property of the State, should be primarily regarded as a fund for State
purposes, not one for the creation of millionaires or the undue
enriching of shareholders in Hamburg or Paris or Vienna. The welfare of
the mass of British residents in the towns engaged in trade should be
considered in legislation affecting the gold mines.
In view of the presence of an overwhelming majority of the subject
Kaffir race, all Europeans should be trained to arms, on the model of
the laws already in existence in the two new Colonies. From an Imperial,
as distinguished from a European standpoint, this measure is equally
necessary. The Boers are born soldiers: a nation in arms. No reliance on
a professional army or professional police can afford any assurance of
stability for the Imperial rule. The Boers would regard such a régime as
merely one of transitory military domination.
An efficient system of education, from primary school to university,
should be organised and carried out. In the new Colonies great progress
has already been made in this direction, and a recently published
address by Mr. W. Sargent, the Director of Education, shows that the
principles to be kept in mind are clearly apprehended.
A sane and consistent policy with regard to the status of the Kaffir and
other non-European people should be adopted and adhered to. The Boer
position, that the Kaffir is not in justice entitled to equality, social
or political, with Europeans, should be upheld, as that plainly
sanctioned by European experience of two centuries and a half.
Efficiency should be insisted on as the test for appointment in the
public service. Salaries on an adequate scale should be given, bearing
in mind the standard of payment usually obtaining in gold-bearing
districts. The obstacles in the way of making efficiency the test of
appointment should be clearly understood, and as far as possible guarded
against; the persistence of Young Afrikander Separatist ideals, and the
readiness of the propagandists to accept office under the Imperial
Government; the danger of undue weight being given to the influence of
the great capitalists; the equal danger of the intrigue, favouritism,
and nepotism of London society--of which so much was heard at the late
Committee of Inquiry into the training of army officers--being brought
to bear on appointments to office in the new Colonies.
The language question--that of the degree of recognition necessary or
expedient of the Dutch language in the courts and public offices--is so
important that it is better to consider it separately.
[Illustration: Photo: Russell, London.
HON. SIR ARTHUR LAWLEY, K.C.M.G.,
Lieutenant-Governor of the Transvaal.]
VI.--THE LANGUAGE QUESTION
The question of the degree of recognition of the Dutch language in the
new Colonies to be accorded by the new administration is one of the most
difficult, and at the same time one of the most urgent and altogether
inevitable, presented by the altered situation, the result of the late
war. It is one of the cases where not to decide is to decide. Let us
endeavour to understand the conditions of the problem, bearing steadily
in mind the objects to be aimed at by the Imperial policy.
No responsible statesman in the United Kingdom or in the Colonies can
desire to take any step other than conciliatory to Boer sentiment,
provided the main object of creating a united and prosperous European
community is obtained. Anything like a persecution of the Boer tongue or
traditions would not only be unjust, but most unwise. At the same time,
Imperial statesmen must remember that British-descended citizens of the
Empire in South Africa hold that their sentiment and their opinion is
not to be taken as a matter to be ignored. Now, Imperialist sentiment in
South Africa is united as to the desirability of having only one
official language, and of doing away with the dual language system
introduced in Cape Colony twenty years ago.
Limiting any action of the Imperial Government, must necessarily be the
conditions as to the recognition of Dutch agreed upon with the Boer
generals as one of the terms of peace. These conditions were that the
Dutch language is to be taught in the schools, in cases where the
parents of the children desire it; and in the courts of law in cases
where, in the opinion of the court, the ends of justice will be
furthered by its use. The wish of the parents and the discretion of the
law-courts are, therefore, to be arbiters. The peace terms, in this
matter, seem wholly reasonable; but the main question of a dual language
remains unaffected.
Let us first deal with the cause of much misapprehension in the United
Kingdom in this matter. Here I will quote from an article of mine
published some time before the peace agreement:--
"There is no question here of the suppression of the language of a
people. The language of the Boer people of South Africa is a patois
called the Taal, based on the seventeenth-century Hollander Dutch, with
a mixture of many strange words, Kaffir and English, and with the
omission of most grammatical inflexions. In that happy tongue you are
permitted to say: 'I is.' It is needless to say there is no literature
in this patois, as there is in the Hollander Dutch of this century. Now,
it is only to Hollander Dutch that it is proposed to accord equal
audience as an official language. The official recognition of Hollander
Dutch dates from 1882 in the Cape Colony, and is a result of the
political propaganda of the Afrikander Bond. It was openly announced and
hailed as the 'thin end of the wedge' to prevent the fusion of the Boer
and British strains of the European people, and to drive the British
into the sea. It is almost as grotesque a misrepresentation to call this
claim for the official recognition of Hollander Dutch a popular demand,
as if, in regard to modern Italy, we were told that the peasants of
Umbria or the Marches were hungering and thirsting for the recognition
of Augustan Latin as entitled to equal audience with Italian in the
courts and public offices of Italy.
"The veld Boer does not understand Hollander Dutch. He only hears the
Hollander tongue, or, rather, the seventeenth-century predecessor of it,
in the text from the seventeenth-century Dutch Bible read out in the
churches on Sundays by the predikant, or in the hymns, once chanted by
his forefathers of the Lowlands, who worsted Alva, persecutor of the
Saints of the Lord.
"It will clear the air greatly if people at home will realise what is
the force behind this Hollander Dutch language movement. It is the Young
Afrikander party.
"For sixty years English was the sole official language in South Africa.
The experiment of two official languages is one of only twenty years'
duration, and has not been crowned with any conspicuous success, unless
racial cleavage, political and social, be counted as such.
"No other course can so speedily promote the fusion of all Europeans.
Judging by the trend of events, the future among the European people
belongs to one or two of the great languages. It is significant that, at
the present moment of time, with a knowledge of English and French, one
can travel the world. The fusion of European strains, so happily
accomplished in the United States of America, is admittedly due to the
determined enforcement of a single language as the sole official
language of the Republic. Immigrants of all European nationalities learn
to speak and write English--their children of the next generation become
Americans. As a London Consul-General of the United States pointed out
to me, the reunion of the European race, as a political measure on a
vast scale, has been first accomplished in the American Commonwealth.
Never since the pre-historic time of the root-origins of our language,
never since the corporate unity of the Roman Empire, has there been so
vast a breaking down of barriers between Europeans.
"The matter is one of political expediency, not of æsthetics. The unity
of the European people is a greater historic fact and present reality
than any of those brief heritages of common life for a few short
centuries of one or other sections of the race, giving rise to the
national tongues. Personally, one may sympathise with the scholar's
preference for a survival of Latin as the language of Europe, as it was
during the Roman Empire, as it was during the Middle Ages, and as it
would have remained but for the outburst of Nationalist particularism
during the sixteenth century. One may lament, with a loyal European like
Talleyrand, what that outburst has cost Europe; led by the ambition of
the House of Capet in France, of the Tudor in England, and the princes
of North Germany, plunderers of the Teutonic knights. No doubt it is
true that thousands of millions of pounds and millions of lives have
been wasted by that particularism--strange step-child of the unifying
Renaissance. From the æsthetic side, it is vain to argue whether Keltic
be a purer tongue, more passionately expressive, Spanish more majestic,
or Italian liquid music. The sieve of the gods seems hitherto to let
through, for the world of the European race, only two of the great
tongues--French and English."
In a word, for all æsthetic purposes, let the various harmonies of all
the tongues of the European race continue to enrich the choir,
enshrining memories of the past. But for the political field of action
the trumpet of command and order should sound a note clear from its
being single.
Any incidental inconvenience, such as must arise to the first generation
of immigrants to the American Commonwealth, must only be treated as
transitory, and, as far as possible, provided against. Very few
Europeans who do not know English have business in the law-courts or
public offices. In the years preceding the late war, only five out of
every hundred cases in the Transvaal law-courts were between people not
conversant with English. For this small minority, in all the public
offices and the courts, competent interpreters can be provided.
VII.--LEGISLATIVE MEASURES
It may be well that I should add some suggestions as to the measures
which I at present hold should be taken to put into force the general
lines of legislation, already sketched out as suitable for the carrying
out of the Imperial policy as already defined. But it should be
understood that these suggestions are only intended as furnishing
material for discussion. In the absence of fuller information as to
future needs and emergencies, it would be unwise to finally advocate
concrete measures. What is, in my mind, of importance is not any
specific measure, but the principles of Imperial policy on which I have
insisted. If it can be shown to me, in the future discussions on these
matters, in which I hope to take part on my return to South Africa, that
other measures are better suited to carry out the consistent policy I
have defined, I shall be prepared to advocate such other measures.
In the first place, I think that in view of the wide divergence of
opinion and interest, among the British residents quite as much as among
the Boers, a consultative body, nominated by the High Commissioner,
should be appointed to advise on any projected legislation. For some
time, while the form of Crown Colony Government is continued, advice
from such a body will be specially needful. Apart from the maintenance
of law and order, the interests of the great mining groups,
representation of shareholders resident in Europe is by no means
necessarily the same as those of the rest of the British residents, or
indeed those of the Imperial Government. Among such matters of
divergence of interest may be enumerated the scale and method of
taxation on the mines, no matter for what Imperial purpose--British
immigration, State irrigation works, or university and general
education. The maintenance of the present very high rate of wages of the
European miners is another subject. British residents in the towns,
shopkeepers, importers, professional men and their employees, are
concerned in the maintenance of a high rate of wages for the miners, as
the money is spent in the country, not in Paris or Berlin. Again, the
introduction of the truck system, the supply of goods by the miners to
their employees, European or Kaffir, while it would increase the profits
of mining shareholders in Europe, would destroy the means of existence
of the bulk of the British residents in the towns.
Amongst the Boers, there is almost as great divergence of interest
between the wealthy farmers, desirous of keeping together their vast
cattle ranches of 6000 acres, and the class of Bijwoners (tenants at
will on an over-lord's land), whose interest would be favoured by the
dividing up of cattle ranches, and the encouragement of small farmers
who would be agriculturists.
For this reason, a consultation body should be thoroughly representative
of all classes.
Direct legislation favouring British immigration of agriculturists is
plainly necessary, and as well the creation of State irrigation works.
Such steps, it is reassuring to know, have already been taken.
Personally, I am in favour of village ownership of agricultural lands
being instituted, a system with which the Boers are already familiar, in
connection with the cultivation of the lands owned by the towns.
To promote the prosperity of British residents in the towns, and as well
to secure a market for agricultural produce, the truck system should be
prohibited by law; and the compound system, under which the Kaffir
workmen in mines are not only supplied with goods but confined to
barracks called "compounds," should also be prohibited. Neither system
has hitherto been in force in the new Colonies.
As regards the Gold Law, the new British administration has established
a tax of ten per cent. on the net profits of each mine, and has retained
the previous system as well, of taxing the possession of mining areas.
It will require some time to see how the present method of levy affects
the growth of the British population. Personally, I have not been
convinced by the arguments in favour of the "claim license" system: it
is held by its opponents that it tends to throw all the mining areas
into the possession of the great mining groups, the areas being
forfeited to the State in times of depression by poorer men who are
unable to continue to pay. Suggestions deserving consideration have been
made as to the advisability of the State developing gold areas already
in the possession of the State.
As regards the arrears of claim licenses accruing during the war against
the expelled British inhabitants, I have strongly advocated in the
London press their entire remission. The Boer burgher on commando is
held to be exempted; it is difficult to see why the expelled British
should not also be exempted.
Another measure which I have supported is that of the arming of all
British civilians, for reasons already enumerated. An essential to the
measure being successful, being loyally supported, is that, on the Boer
model, the officers of the corps should be elected by their men. British
colonists, with their traditions of liberty and independence, will never
submit to being compulsorily placed on military service and subjected to
the orders of officers whom they have not chosen.
No measure of greater political moment can be taken than the thorough
organising of a system of education, from the university to the school.
I am one of those who support the making of the Gold Reef city a great
university centre.
As regards the Native Law, I advocate as little as possible alteration
in the laws already in force. The Boer theory of the position of the
Kaffir--as not an equal, but entitled to justice, under tutelage to a
government directed by European ideals--is the sound one.[2]
Asiatic immigration in any form, whether of British Indians from India,
or Chinese from Hong-Kong or elsewhere, would be a measure fraught with
disaster to the future of European civilisation. With the exception of
some employers of labour in Rhodesia and Natal, South African
opinion--British, Boer, even Kaffir--is opposed to Asiatic immigration.
Even the employers referred to only desire to encourage the importation
of Asiatics as manual labourers, not as owners of the land or traders in
the towns.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] In the _Fortnightly Review_, August 1902. Ideal with this subject:
"Negrophilism in South Africa."
THE AFRICANDER PARTY
ITS ORIGIN, ITS GROWTH, ITS AIMS
BY THE HON. A. WILMOT
_Member of the Legislative Council, Cape Colony; Author of "History of
Our Own Times in South Africa," &c., &c._
One of the greatest statesmen whose experience and ability have assisted
the Imperial Government declares that it was only after two years'
residence that he understood the political problems affecting South
Africa. Hundreds rush in where Milners fear to tread, and the little
knowledge which induces superficial views and rash judgment on a merely
_primâ facie_ case are now at present, as they have been in the past,
among the causes which impede the progress of a vast country which we
hope will yet become a great federated dominion under the British crown.
It is because of the vital importance of going to the root of the
political questions affecting South Africa that this paper is written.
The origin of the Africander party is traceable principally to
discontent with British rule. The Cape Colony, as our readers know, was
obtained by conquest in 1806, and by purchase from the Netherlands for
six million pounds sterling in the year 1814. Mr. Paul M. Botha, Member
of the Orange Free State Volksraad for Kroonstadt, states the case from
the Dutchman's point of view, and tells us that as England said that
South Africa was her country she ought to have governed it, instead of
which she shirked responsibilities and was guilty of the most glaring
inconsistencies. One day England blew hot and the next cold. "One moment
she insisted on swallowing us, and the next moment she insisted on
disgorging us." For example, the Orange Free State was declared British
territory because a governor said, "You can never escape British
jurisdiction." Then we were abandoned because the next governor said,
"The country was a howling wilderness." The Transvaal was annexed, and
Sir Garnet Wolseley declared: "The rivers will sooner run back in their
courses than that England will give back the Transvaal." Shortly after
that the Transvaal was retroceded, after Majuba, because the British
Ministry said, "We have been unjust in annexing this country."[3]
The slavery question, Mr. Botha tells us, was handled with astounding
negligence and ignorance of the circumstances of the people. Although
England was perfectly right in emancipating the slaves, yet the way it
was done irritated, annoyed, and disgusted the people, and sowed seeds
of distrust which have never been eradicated. England failed to carry
out effectively her promises of compensation.
On the minor grievances, such as Slagter's Nek and other so-called
injustices of England, Mr. Botha lays no stress. "It was a rough period,
and rough measures were used by all Governments." He significantly adds
that what he has heard of the cruelty of the Dutch East India Company's
officials makes him think that anyhow British rule was heaven to that of
the Dutch. Whatever a well-educated man like Mr. Botha may say, we know
that the rank and file of the Dutch throughout South Africa are taught
to "Remember Slagter's Nek." Nothing can be more unjust than to blame
the British power for executing rebels, caught red-handed and sentenced
to death in perfect accord with both evidence and law by a competent
Court, whose members were themselves of Dutch extraction. Nevertheless
this is one of the heavy popular grievances.
Mr. Botha says that England's weak and spasmodic policy in South Africa
has made the Boer what he is to-day--distrustful and contemptuous of
British statesmen. By further receding into the interior, and having to
fight wild beasts and hordes of Kaffirs, the Boer became blown out with
vanity at his own prowess, and more and more ignorant. Through this
ignorance it is easier to mislead than to lead him. A man who plays upon
his vanity and prejudices against England quickly obtains influence. A
loud talker and blusterer gets a better hearing than a quiet reasoner.
"I ascribe this to want of education and complete isolation on the
veldt."
As a marked illustration in support of Mr. Botha's view which has come
under the present writer's observation, let us tell what occurred
shortly before the war to a nephew of the Speaker of the House of
Assembly who had to travel through the Transvaal to look after some
landed property. This gentleman, who spoke the Taal perfectly, met at
one place about two dozen Dutchmen who were, like the Laird of Cockpen,
"greatly ta'en up with the 'fairs of the State." The first question,
"Can we beat the British?" was answered by a unanimous "Yes, we have
done so before, and can, of course, easily do so again." Second. "Tell
me, Carls, could we beat England and France united?" "Certainly," said
every one, "there can be no doubt about it." But now interposed a new
speaker. "How if we had to fight England, France, and Germany?" The
reply was unanimous. "We can beat them all three." No wonder that the
people of the Lord, as they believed themselves to be, took the bit
between their teeth at the time of the ultimatum. Not even Paul Kruger
could then have stopped the war, for they felt perfectly assured of
victory.
With a religion which has not unfitly been described as a superstition
based upon the Old Testament, there is profound ignorance accompanied by
prejudice of the most deep-rooted character. Mr. Botha tells us that
unfortunately the ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, "greedy for
the fat lamb, the fowl, and the purse," foster this ignorance. One
Predikant had actually the audacity to tell his congregation that God
_must_ help His chosen people, otherwise He would lose His influence.
Mr. Botha defends his own people against charges of treachery, and gives
it as his fixed opinion that a just and firm Government with uniformity
of treatment will not only control and satisfy the Boers, but eradicate
in time that feeling of distrust and fear which was engendered in their
minds by the halting and unequal policy of England. He admits at the
same time that it is to Britain that they owe peace, and that it was
Britain that protected them from foreign invasion and saved them from
continual civil strife. Then comes most important evidence. President
Brand of the Free State recognised in the misgoverned Transvaal a subtle
enemy. Indeed, it is scarcely remembered that in 1857 the burghers of
the South African Republic invaded the Orange Free State territory and
declared that it belonged to them. Paul Kruger was subsequently raised
up, in the opinion of his followers, to be a Moses, whose mission was to
deliver "De Africander Natie" from British bondage. Mr. Botha asks us to
let him tear this veil of false romance away. "We know him," he tells
us, "as an avaricious, unscrupulous, and hypocritical man, who
sacrificed a whole people to his cupidity." Krugerism spread over South
Africa, using the Bond, the press, and the pulpit to further its
schemes.
[Illustration: AT THE HEAD OF UMGENI FALLS, HOWICK, NATAL.]
Let it be fully understood--the Bond was the _fons_ and _origo_ of the
South African war--Krugerism powerfully co-operating. The idea of the
Africander Bond took root at the Paarl in the Cape Colony in the years
1879 and 1880. Of course, as we have seen, there was abundant
preparation, but events in the Transvaal hastened proceedings.
Enthusiastic, educated men, such as Reitz, Te Water, and the students of
the Theological Seminary at Stellenbosch felt patriotic desires wildly
coursing in their veins, but the honour of formulating a definite
plan of organisation belongs to the Rev. S. J. du Toit, who then edited
_De Patriot_ newspaper at the Paarl. _De Transvaalse Oorlag_ was
published by Messrs. D. T. du Toit & Co. of the Paarl in the year 1881.
It was the retrocession of the Transvaal under the direction of Mr.
Gladstone in the last-mentioned year that enabled the Bond to assume a
very definite shape, and to obtain immense and widespread power.
Carl Borckenhagen, editor of the _Bloemfontein Express_, and F. W.
Reitz, who succeeded Sir J. Brand as President of the Orange Free State,
and was subsequently State Secretary of the Transvaal, earnestly joined
the Bond. The former was a German, whose honest and intense hatred of
England was apparent in all his leading articles, while the life-dream
of the latter was to see the establishment of the Dutch Republican
United States of South Africa.
Branches of the Bond were formed in the Cape Colony, the Transvaal, and
the Orange Free State, and in 1882 the first Congress of the Bond was
held at Graaff Reinet. A very astute and profoundly able plotter was
already at work in the person of Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr, who had started "The
Farmers' Protection Society" with the expressed purpose of watching over
Dutch farmers, and stirring them up to take an interest in politics.
Hitherto the Dutch bucolic mind had lain fallow. It was now to be
cultivated in order that it might produce fruit at parliamentary
elections, and, as a more powerful means to that end, "The Farmers'
Protection Society" was amalgamated with the Bond in the year 1883. Mr.
J. H. Hofmeyr then assumed the reins of management, and, as a Member in
the House of Assembly for Stellenbosch, began to wield a power which at
last developed into that of a colonial Earl of Warwick, or king-maker.
Ministries were formed at his bidding, and cabinets accepted his
control.
Certainly Mr. Hofmeyr very wisely and astutely modified the ostensible
objects of the Bond, and he was helped to do so by the fact that the
Hollander party in the Government at Pretoria became stronger than the
Africanders. Indeed, the Rev. S. J. Du Toit, the founder of the Bond,
was worsted in the Transvaal by the men from the old country. But to
make up for this, their march in the Cape Colony was so triumphant that
the President of the Bond at the Paarl Congress in June 1900 was able to
glory in the fact that since 1884 the Cape Colony had been ruled under
responsible government almost exclusively by the aid of the Africander
Bond. In 1885 there were twenty-five Bond Members of Parliament who held
the balance of power, and there can be no doubt that Sir Thomas
Upington, Sir Gordon Sprigg, and Mr. Rhodes sought and accepted their
support.
When Mr. Rhodes became Prime Minister in 1890 he was in harmony with the
Bond, but certainly did not sympathise with its real object. Each party
masked its idea, and each party thought that it was successfully using
the other for its own objects. Objects diametrically opposite: Mr.
Rhodes desired the supremacy of the British Imperial Power, and the
Africander party really aimed at the formation of a Republican South
Africa.
The Bond, says Mr. Theo. Schreiner ("The Africander Bond," &c., p. 29)
was for many years the only organised political body in the Cape Colony,
and it exercised a political tyranny which crushed all true political
life and thought under its iron heel. While it deliberately refused to
take the reins of Government, it constantly aimed at increasing the
number of its Members in Parliament, and at making it impossible for any
Ministry to exist without its support. Arguing apparently from facts,
Sir Hercules Robinson, in his farewell speech at Cape Town in April
1889, went so far as to say that there was no longer any permanent place
in South Africa for direct Imperial rule.
A Bond Congress was held at Kimberley in 1891, when Mr. Rhodes made a
very bold but unsuccessful attempt to get the Dutch to join with the
English of the Cape Colony against the iniquitous rule and anti-British
policy of the South African Republic. Another Congress was held at Port
Elizabeth, when there was an attempt made to capture the Bond by means
of British friendship. Indeed the changed attitude of this Association
deceived many people, as under the extremely able leadership of Mr.
Hofmeyr it assumed the position of a great benevolent society, which
desired all Colonists, both English and Dutch, to join it, in order to
help forward the progress of South Africa. Nevertheless, it is very
significant that the Rev. S. J. du Toit lost the high position he had
previously held in consequence of his supposed anti-Transvaal
sympathies, and at the same time the influence of the South African
Republic greatly increased. "Blood is thicker than water." The close
alliance of sympathy more and more knit together the Dutchmen of the
States and of the Colonies.
But the Jameson Raid of 1895 removed every estrangement. Just before
this event President Kruger showed his hand by venturing on a dangerous
step, which really meant an open breach of the Convention. He closed the
drifts, or fords, by which goods carried on the Cape and Natal railways
entered the Transvaal, intending by this act to force traffic over his
own Delagoa Bay line. He was informed by a joint ultimatum from the
Imperial Government and the Cape Colony that his action could not be
permitted, and he rescinded his declaration.
It is not necessary to give a history of the Jameson Raid. No event
since Majuba had so much played into the hands of the party in favour of
an "Africander Natie." Cromwell's words when General Leslie's army left
its strong position, "The Lord has delivered them into our hands,"
clearly expressed the sentiment which on this occasion animated the
minds of Bond members. The Transvaal enormously increased its armaments,
preparations for war virtually commenced, and the entire sympathy of the
Africander party in the Cape Colony went out to their brethren of the
South African Republic.
Mr. Hofmeyr was a leader who thoroughly deserved the title of "the
mole," as he metaphorically burrowed under the political platform, and
concealed his methods and aims with great subtlety. He saw the danger of
pursuing openly the programme expressed in the motto of his party, and
clothed the ideas of Africanderism in a constitutional garb. However,
when considering the real aim of the Bond, we shall prove that this
association never abandoned its original programme.
It must be admitted that, in some respects, there is an analogy between
Daniel O'Connell, as leader of the Irish National party, and J. H.
Hofmeyr, the "Ons Jan" of Africanderism. Both ostensibly were in favour
of working only on constitutional lines, and both were defeated by
extremists, who saw no other way of obtaining success than by recourse
to arms. In the case of the Young Ireland party, with such leaders as
John Michell, Smith O'Brien, and Gavan Duffy, a very futile insurrection
was quickly crushed; while, so far as J. H. Hofmeyr was concerned, a
much greater conflagration resulted. The great fire was really lit by
him--at least he constantly added fuel to it--and when too late made
futile efforts to extinguish the flames. O'Connell was much more honest,
as he openly opposed the Young Irelanders, and retired broken-hearted
from the arena.
Hofmeyr undoubtedly did not raise a finger to stop the furious onward
march of his party. _Ons Land_ indeed encouraged this movement, and the
editor, Mr. Malun, was completely under the great leader's influence.
Certainly at the end, as will be seen if the correspondence ever comes
to light, Hofmeyr tried to stop the mad career of the Republics. No one
saw more clearly than he did that it was absolute folly to fight the
British nation, but his interference came too late.
O'Connell fought more straightforwardly. Never for a moment did he admit
that the policy of force was justifiable; while, on the contrary,
Hofmeyr had not the moral courage to step publicly into the arena and
denounce it. He was always occult in his mode of fighting.
Unfortunately, in posing as a friend, he became the most dangerous enemy
of his own people.
The policy of the Africander Bond in the Cape Colony pandered to mean
interests and base prejudices. The corn farmers and brandy producers
were banded together in an unholy compact. Heavy duties of five
shillings per hundred pounds on flour and half-a-crown on wheat were
levied, while excise was abolished on spirits made from the grape, in
order that members of the Bond who grew cereals and made very bad brandy
might be benefited. The shameful result was that bread became dear and
bad alcohol cheap. As a Nemesis the producers got into the hands of
middlemen, and their condition was rather injured than improved. In the
case of both wines and spirits, careless, unscientific methods were
generally adopted, quantity was preferred to quality, and in many cases
acetous fermentation resulted. Although spirit produced from the grape
paid not a farthing of excise, and was carried at a non-paying rate on
the railways, it was so miserably full of fusel oil and dangerous in
character as to be discarded generally by the white population, and sent
broadcast among the aboriginal natives for their degradation,
demoralisation, and destruction. In a shameful manner Mr. Hofmeyr and
the Bond politicians persistently resisted every proposed law for the
restriction of the sale of bad alcohol among aboriginal natives, and
indeed by insidious methods did all in their power to remove every
barrier between the native and the deadly poison made carelessly in
thousands of "pot stills" in the Dutch districts of the Western
Province.
At the same time the true Phariseeism of this people was demonstrated by
their fanatical observance of the Lord's Day, which they styled the
Sabbath, and their absurd opposition to any Sunday trains, even when
absolutely necessary in general public interests. Mr. Merriman, in one
of his saner moments, reprobated this hypocrisy.
[Illustration: Photo: Maull & Fox, London.
SIR H. J. GOOLD-ADAMS, C.B., C.M.G
Lieutenant-Governor of Orange River Colony.]
In South Africa the Native Laws Commission, which comprised such men as
Sir Thomas Upington, Sir Thomas Scanlen, and Sir Jacob Barry, took
evidence in a very complete form in the early eighties, and as a result
reported unanimously in favour of prohibiting the sale of intoxicants to
the aboriginal natives. Accordingly by Act of Parliament this
recommendation was given full effect to in the Transkeian Territories.
Subsequently the Drink Commission reported in favour of this prohibition
being extended to natives throughout the Colony. In Bechuanaland and
Basutoland, as well as in Natal, the law was adopted long ago, and
invariably worked well; nevertheless, to the shame of the Bond
organisation, it persistently preferred Mammon to God, and in the
strongest manner opposed any legislation whose result would be to save
the black man from destruction. Eventually an Act introduced by Sir
James Rose Innes was maimed before it was allowed to pass, so that
licensing Boards were only empowered to pass restrictive regulations on
the sale of alcohol to the coloured races "short of total prohibition."
During the entire term of Bond rule in the Cape Colony not a sixpence
could be obtained for the encouragement of emigration from the United
Kingdom to the Cape Colony--nor would any land be ever granted for the
purpose. "Africa for the Africanders" has a very real and exact meaning,
and this was shown to demonstration when even the petty vote for
granting assisted passages to domestic servants and artisans was
objected to and refused. These people might in many cases come from
England, and therefore must be shut out.
The subtlety and diplomacy of the Bond were evinced in voting a grant
for the British Navy, and Mr. Hofmeyr took many opportunities of posing
as a loyal subject, but, as we shall prove in the context, the one great
underlying principle of the organisation was to obtain the mastery in
South Africa. All nationalities were invited to join. Africa must be
made great by a union of all its people, but those who read between the
lines and ascertained the real opinions of those who were guiding the
movement knew perfectly well that although the Imperial power might be
allowed at first to be a _faineant_ king, the Mayor of the Palace with
real authority was to be the people of Dutch extraction--the
Africanders--throughout Southern Africa.
We now come to the last days before the war, when Lord Milner could have
been easily checkmated if Mr. Hofmeyr had been able to influence the
Republican Governments. As every one knew, Mr. Kruger had positively
promised equal franchise rights to British subjects at the retrocession
of the Transvaal, and this promise was shamefully broken. In a
constitutional manner the Uitlanders vainly endeavoured to obtain
redress, and now appealed to the Imperial Government. The High
Commissioner merely did his evident duty, when at the Bloemfontein
Conference he insisted that at least a portion of the franchise rights
promised should be given. No doubt Mr. Hofmeyr would have seen his
opportunity here, and have consented in such a manner, and with such a
purpose, as to really render British interference nugatory, but the
Dutch Republicans had now the bit between their teeth. They were the
Lord's people, they had made all their preparations, and were perfectly
sure of victory. Mr. Kruger himself could not now stop the war, and the
astounding ultimatum came forth from the little Republic to the great
Empire: "Recall your troops and send no more, or we will punish you." If
this gage had not been taken up the United Kingdom would have been
forced to take a back seat as a third-class power among the nations of
the world.
Having referred to the origin and growth of the Africander party, we
must now consider its aims. It must be admitted that its originators
were perfectly candid. We find them declaring in _De Patriot_ in 1882,
when referring to Confederation, that "There is just one hindrance, and
that is the British flag. Let them take that away, and within a year the
confederation under the free Africander flag will be established. The
British must just have Simon's Bay as a naval and military station on
the road to India, and give over all the rest of Africa to the
Africanders.... It is we on top or they on top. They must be under or we
under.... Two things are wanted, artillery for the Transvaal ... to make
their own ammunition and to be well supplied with cannon. Now that the
war against the English Government is over (at Majuba Hill), the war
against the English language must begin. By Anglifying the girls they
infect the whole family life with the English speech."
We must now put into the box witnesses of a very important character
whose testimony, so far as the aims of the Bond are concerned, is
perfectly unexceptionable. These witnesses are Mr. Burgers, President of
the South African Republic, Sir John Brand, President of the Orange Free
State, Mr. Reitz, State Secretary of the South African Republic and
previously President of the Orange Free State, and Mr. Steyn,
Attorney-General and subsequently President of the Orange Free State. In
1875 President Burgers stated at a meeting held in Holland to consider
the Delagoa Bay railway scheme, that he hoped to see a New Holland eight
millions strong in South Africa, whence England shall have been
expelled. It was President Brand who said, "Bartle Frere dreams of
United South Africa under the British flag; and so do I, but not under
the same flag." And when conducting a controversy with Kruger on the
subject of a Customs Union, Sir John Brand, disgusted with treachery,
cried aloud, "The Bond seeks to raise a Republican flag in a country
with which we are at peace."[4]
Mr. Theo. Schreiner, whose honesty and truthfulness no man in South
Africa will deny, furnishes us with a circumstantial account of an
interview between himself and Mr. Reitz in the early eighties.[5] Then
Mr. Reitz was a judge at Bloemfontein, and was one of that band of
Africander patriots whose aspiration and conduct remind us naturally of
the aims, objects, and aspirations of the Young Ireland party under
Smith O'Brien. After in vain trying to enlist Mr. Schreiner as a
recruit, Mr. Reitz asked him to state the reason of his refusal. The
reply was, "Because the ultimate object aimed at was the overthrow of
British power and the expulsion of the British flag from South Africa."
"Well, what if it is so?" was the rejoinder, to which Mr. Schreiner
replied, "You don't suppose, do you, that the flag is going to disappear
without a tremendous struggle and fight?" "Well," said Mr. Reitz, "I
suppose not, but what of that?"
Mr. Steyn, of the Orange Free State, made the following statement to the
Rev. W. Tees, Presbyterian Minister in Durban:--
"Great Britain has been completely taken by surprise."
"Sir, this has been preparing since the year 1884."[6]
"In both States?" asked the clergyman.
"Yes," was the reply, "in both, and in the Colony also. The Transvaal
has been the arsenal, but those in the know in the Free State and in the
Colony have worked in unison with Kruger. The object was to oust the
British from South Africa, but it was not intended to do it all at once.
The first step was the consolidation of the two Republics as a Sovereign
International State, and later on an Africander rising at the right
moment."
Mr. Tees then asked a very pertinent question. "Then do you mean to say
that when President Kruger attended the Bloemfontein Conference he knew
perfectly well that the proceedings were a farce, and that he really
meant to fight?"
Mr. Steyn's reply was "Yes."
At a conference between the Governments of the South African Republic
and Orange Free States held in 1887[7] relative to railways, we find Mr.
Kruger declaring: "If you hook on to the Colony you cut our throat....
Let us speak frankly; we are not going to be dependent on England." Mr.
Wolmarans, following, declared: "We have had much experience of her
Majesty's Government, and we will and must shake ourselves free. We are
still insufficiently prepared. We wish to get to the sea, especially
with an eye to future complications--you know our secret policy."
Subsequently the blunt soldier, General Joubert, said on the occasion of
an Uitlander complaining to him of the constant breach of Article 14 of
the 1884 Convention providing equality of treatment for the Uitlanders:
"Equality! We don't want equality! We want to see who is to be boss in
South Africa."
Apropos to this subject it is not uninteresting to note from the debates
in the Volksraad of the South African Republic (see the _Johannesburg
Star_ of August 17, 1895) that the laws of the Transvaal were intended
to make the acquisition of the franchise by Uitlanders morally
impossible, and that at the end of one debate Mr. Otto merely became the
mouthpiece of the Burghers when he said, without any rebuke from the
chairman, "Come on and fight. I say, come on and have it out; and the
sooner the better."
We must now put in documentary evidence to prove the real aims and
objects of the Africander Bond. The declaration of the Rev. S. J. Du
Toit, Judge Reitz, and Carl Borckenhagen is perfectly explicit. They
declare that "The object of the Africander Bond is the establishment of
a South African Nationality through the cultivation of a true love of
this our fatherland. This object must be attained by the promotion and
defence of the national language, and by Africanders, both politically
and socially, making their power to be felt as a nation."
After the retrocession of the Transvaal the "Africander Natie" took a
very definite shape, as we find the _Patriot_ newspaper declaring that
"God's hand has been visible in a more marked manner than ever before
seen since the days of the children of Israel. Proud England is
compelled to give the Boers back their land after they had been defeated
by a mere handful." The little respect which Africanders entertained for
British troops had entirely departed.
One of the articles of the Bond programme of principles contained the
following words: "In itself acknowledging no single form of Government
as the only suitable form, and whilst acknowledging the form of
Government existing at present, it (the Bond) means that the aim of our
national development must be a United South Africa under its own flag."
With the subtlety which always distinguished the party, a change was
made in this some years afterwards.
The language of the Bond organ, _De Patriot_, is perfectly explicit, and
shows very clearly the spirit and intentions of the party. The English
must be boycotted. There must be no English shops, signboards,
advertisements, or bookkeepers. Manufacture of munitions of war must be
started in the two Republics. "At Heidelberg there are already 4000
cartridges made daily, and a few skilful Africanders have begun to make
shells too. That is right; so we must become a nation." It must be
considered a disgrace to speak English, and war must be waged in the
Church against that language. "It is the Dutch Reformed Church. What has
England to do with it?" In family life no quarter was to be given.
[Illustration: THE LOW VELDT FROM BOTHA'S HILL
Photo by Wilson, Aberdeen]
As we have already said, the junction of the Farmers' Protection Society
with the Bond exercised a moderating influence, but the spirit,
intentions, and object of the party remained the same, although Mr.
J. H. Hofmeyr attempted, in a manner as astute as it was dangerous, to
unite the Dutch and English people in South Africa in a common
antagonism to Great Britain's power, influence, and presence. Even Mr.
Merriman saw through this trick, as he declared in a speech delivered at
Grahamstown in 1885. "It is now the cue of the Bond to pretend to be
loyal, and if it were not painful it would be ridiculous to hear the
editor of _De Zuid Afrikaan_ cheering the Queen, and to hear Du Toit
praying for her while resolutions are passed round to the branches in
direct opposition to the honour of England.... Each one of you will have
to make up his mind whether he is prepared to see the colony remain a
part of the British Empire, which carries with it obligations as well as
privileges, or whether he is prepared to obey the dictates of the Bond.
From the very first time, some years ago, when first the poison began to
be distilled in this country, I felt that it must come to this: Was
England or the Transvaal to be the paramount force in South Africa?...
What could they think of the objects of the Bond when they found Judge
Reitz advocating a Republic of South Africa under one flag?... No one
who wishes well to the British Government could have read the leading
articles of the _Zuid Afrikaan_ and _Express_ and _De Patriot_, in
expounding the Bond principles, without seeing that the maintenance of
law and order under the British Crown and the object they have in view
are absolutely different things.... My quarrel with the Bond is that it
stirs up race difference. Its main object is to make the South African
Republic the paramount power in South Africa."
To do justice to the Bond, we must quote Mr. Theron, their secretary,
who is reported by the _South African News_ of May 5, 1900, to have
said:--
"One other question may be asked, 'What is the object of the Bond?' My
reply is, its object, its only object, is expressed in sec. 2 of the
General Constitution, which is worded as follows: 'The nearest object of
the Bond is the formation of a South African Nationality by means of
union and co-operation, as a preparation for the ultimate object, a
united South Africa. The Bond tries to attain this object by
constitutional means, giving to respective governments and legislatures
all the support they are entitled to, and respecting everybody's
rights.'" This was perfectly understood. It was a Dutch Nationality and
a Dutch Republican South Africa that was aimed at, and the context fully
proved this assertion when the vast majority of the Bond party fought
against England, either as belligerents in the Republics or as
rebels--active and passive--within the Cape Colony. Nine out of every
ten ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church were rebels, according to
the testimony of one of their own number--the Rev. Mr. Vlok of
Piquetberg. In such circumstances it is impossible to come to any other
conclusion than that the departure from the original, straightforward
declaration of the aims of the Bond was nothing but a diplomatic effort
to throw dust in the eyes of the enemy.
Certainly such a man as Mr. Cronwright Schreiner was in no way deceived
by this attitude, as we find him saying in 1893[8] that the Africander
Bond is anti-English in its aims; its officers and its language are
Dutch, and it is striving to gain such power as absolutely to control
the Cape Parliament. It had "paralysed our political life." "In fact,"
he goes on to say, "the Bond has sacrificed the welfare of the country
for years to the selfish attainment of one object, namely, the supremacy
of the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the Cape Colony, regardless of the
rights of others; the imagined good of an ignorant clique of the Dutch
has been preferred to the good of the country. These men must not have
power; they are wholly unfit to have it. The Bond is a body striving
solely for its own benighted ends, and founded and conducted on race
lines." This was a correct judgment passed from the English Cape Colony
farmer's point of view; men who, quite unlike the pro-Boers in England,
perfectly understood their subject by means of adequate evidence
obtained on the spot, as well as by bitter personal experience.
Can anything be more significant than the following facts. The Hon. Mr.
Bellingan, a Dutch member of the Legislative Council, in the session
immediately previous to the war is reported by the _Cape Times_ to have
said: "If the policy of annexation were adhered to, they (the
Africanders) would take advantage of England's calamity;" while the Bond
paper, _Ons Land_, reports the honourable member as saying that when the
Queen came to die and storms burst over the empire the Africanders would
not side with England if the Republics were annexed. Then the member
himself, in a letter to the _Cape Times_, declared that what he said
was: "He saw difficulty for the British Empire after the death of our
beloved Queen. By giving the Republicans their independence England
could reckon upon them as friends, but if the Republics were annexed she
could not do so."
The Bond undoubtedly during many years prepared the materials for a
conflagration. The great never-dying, ever-present aspiration was fully
expressed in its motto, "Africa for the Africanders." It was nothing if
not diplomatic, and professed very loudly a loyalty which showed itself
in its true colours when the Bond party was in power just prior to the
war. Then we find its aims exhibited by the Bond party in Parliament,
backed up by the Bond Congress, fighting most strenuously against the
absurdly lenient provisions of the Treason Bill.
As Mr. Theo. Schreiner aptly says, "Rebellion in fact is no rebellion in
the eyes of the Bond so long as it be in accord with the Africander
national ideal." The ministers of their political party allowed
ammunition and guns to be carried to the Republics over the railways of
the Colony in immense quantities, and the W. P. Schreiner ministry was
split up rather than consent to the very mild punishment of deprivation
of the franchise being inflicted on rebels. Then came the war, when a
large majority of the Bond party were either active or passive rebels.
But no one more clearly points out the real objects of the Bond than Mr.
Reitz, one of its original founders, and to the end one of its principal
leaders. He does not hesitate to say in his brochure entitled "A Century
of Wrong," largely circulated in more than one language over the
continent of Europe:--
"May the hope which glowed in our hearts during 1880, and which buoyed
us up during that struggle, burn on steadily. May it prove a beacon of
light in our path, invincibly moving onwards through blood and through
tears until it leads us to a real union of South Africa.... Whether the
result be victory or death, liberty will assuredly rise in South Africa
... just as freedom dawned over the United States of America a little
more than a century ago. Then from Zambesi to Simonstown it will be
'AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANDER.'"
A Bond object-lesson was really to be seen in a practical manner in the
South African Republic under the rule of Dutch Africanders. There indeed
the Transvaal portion of Africa was clearly ruled for one section of the
population--the Africander--to the utter exclusion of the rights of the
English population largely in a majority within Johannesburg. There was
an election system leading to the corrupt and unjust rule of Boer Raads
and a Boer oligarchy. Protection, Concessions, the Master and Servants
Acts were all managed in accordance with Africander ideas. Bond views of
native policy were carried out in such a way that no coloured person
however civilised could vote, nor hold title to fixed property nor trade
freely, nor even marry as white people might. All this found
encouragement in the Cape Colony, and eventually the absurd fiction of
Boers fighting for liberty in the Transvaal was proclaimed as a fact
over all Europe, although literally they commenced a war in which they
felt sure of success for the purpose of subverting liberty and obtaining
complete freedom to carry on government by a section of the people
purely for the interests of a section--the Africanders--ignoring
altogether equal rights for all other men.
When we consider clearly and definitely all the facts, remember that
history repeats itself and that the Africanders are profoundly tenacious
of their political opinions and have proved themselves to be a people
who are able to wait, can we not see at once how desirable it is to
suspend temporarily the constitution of the Cape Colony? The body
politic requires a physician. No one better understands the subject or
is more competent to prescribe than Lord Milner. Why do we not take his
advice? Nothing is more significant than the fact that in the Cape
Colony two years ago heated parliamentary debates and a violent
political agitation, following immediately upon the suppression of the
first rebellion, were in their turn succeeded by a second rebellion more
ruinous than the former one.
In asking for suspension there is no idea of defection from the
principle of responsible government. The Imperial system requires local
independence, and in due course this will be extended to all parts of
South Africa. A necessary interregnum is required for purposes of true
liberty and sound rule, in order that breakdown may be prevented and
true constitutionalism take the place of the tyranny of any section of
the population. The Imperial Government is no step-mother, and the
federation of Southern Africa will doubtless be on similar lines to
those of the Canadian Dominion. Certainly no system will be forced upon
the people contrary to their wishes, but the resurrection of Bond power
in the Cape Colony would absolutely prevent any well-considered and
statesmanlike plan, in which all men would receive fair play utterly
regardless of race extraction. In fact the British and the Africander
Bond theories are diametrically opposed. The first makes every civilised
man equal from the Zambesi to Cape Town, the other specially and always
means "Africa for the Africanders."
Heated discussions in Parliament, and the intense excitement connected
with contested elections, cannot but accentuate race hatred in the Cape
Colony. Surely South Africa should have a rest. As in the Transvaal and
in the Orange Colony, so at the Cape, the great healer, time, ought to
be allowed to do its work.
But perhaps the strongest, because the most practical, argument in
favour of "suspension" is based upon the fact that a re-distribution Act
is absolutely necessary if fair play is to be bestowed on all
nationalities, and the reign of the Bond be not allowed to again become
supreme. The suspensionists are really fighting for liberty against the
rule of a section. Their motto is that of the Union Jack--"Equal rights
for all"--whereas, as we know, the Africanders will in the future, as in
the past, demand "Africa for the Africanders." No delusion is greater
than to imagine that they will change their purpose. Their plan is to
adhere to their principles, consolidate their party, and wait for an
opportunity. After spending more than two hundred millions of money, and
much more than this--40,000 noble lives--for the sake of upholding
British supremacy in Southern Africa, nothing should be done even to
risk a recurrence of the trouble. This certainly was the opinion of Lord
Milner, and of the great majority of the British people in the Cape
Colony. The advice now referred to was not taken, and history must
record the result.
The real aims and objects of the Bond are as decipherable to-day as they
were three years or ten years ago. The people who belong to it are
thoroughly tenacious of these opinions, and to do them justice, make no
pretence of having changed them. At the Paarl the popular General Botha
has just declared that they are not vanquished, retain their traditions,
and will yet conquer. They look with unutterable scorn on the men who
joined the National Scouts, and entertain feelings of coldness and
dislike for those who did not join the enemy either actively or
passively. In the great Dutch Church of Cape Town, the Republican
Generals received an unanimous ovation, and were carried shoulder high,
in triumph, from the edifice. The truth is that the Bond exists, remains
extremely powerful, and is only waiting and watching for an opportunity.
British rule is now comparatively easy both in the Transvaal and Orange
Colonies. Effective progress is being made under the rule of wise and
firm Governments; but it is in the Cape Colony, where a treacherous and
powerful enemy is allowed to plot with impunity, that the real danger to
British Imperial interests lies.
How history repeats itself! When the fatuous policy of abandoning 35,000
square miles of excellent territory styled the Orange River Sovereignty
was pursued in 1853, there was only one man in the House of Commons who
opposed it,[9] and subsequent circumstances amply justified his
judgment. In 1902, Mr. Chamberlain would have found it absolutely
impossible to obtain a majority in the House of Commons favourable to
suspension of the Cape Colony Constitution. What is now to be done? Our
answer is, "Accept with loyalty the decision of the Government, and show
by wise moderation that we are most desirous to be friends with our
fellow-subjects of Dutch extraction. No recriminations nor abuse should
proceed from our side. Nothing will please us better than to find the
Bond abandoned and all men cordially uniting as one free people under
the British flag. If this be not done--and masses of the people have
already declared that it will not--we will have to fight the Bond again
at elections, on public platforms, and in the press, as well as in
Parliament. It would have been well for both nationalities if this could
have been avoided, but this is now impossible."
LET GOD DEFEND THE RIGHT.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] See "From Boer to Boer and Englishman," by Paul M. Botha. London:
Hugh Rees, 1901.
[4] See _Macmillan's Magazine_, May 1900.
[5] This is published in full in the _Weekly Times_ of December 1, 1899,
and is fully referred to in Wilmot's "History of Our Own Times in South
Africa." See also "The Truth about the Transvaal" and various other
publications.
[6] See _Daily News_ of May 10, 1900.
[7] Reported in the _Times_ of May 24, 1900.
[8] Paper read at the Cradock Farmers' Association in October 1893.
[9] This was Mr. Norton. See the dramatic manner in which this is
referred to in the second volume of "The Life of Sir Harry Smith."
RHODESIA
SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
BY E. F. KNIGHT
_Author of "Where Three Empires Meet"; "The Cruise of the 'Falcon,'"
&c._
In all the long romantic story of the making of the British Empire, no
episode more strongly appeals to the imagination than the foundation of
Rhodesia. Well is it named Rhodesia; for the history of Great Britain's
acquisitions on either side of the Zambesi, the 750,000 square miles of
magnificent territories which lie under the sway of the British South
Africa Company, is the history of the Englishman, Cecil John Rhodes: had
it not been for whose foresight, statesmanship, untiring vigilance,
determined but patient endeavour for years towards the accomplishment of
his mighty schemes, the South African Plateau, with its gold-bearing
reefs, its vast tracts of rich arable and pastoral lands, would have
fallen into the hands of one or other of the foreign Powers which keenly
contested with him its possession.
It is a trite saying that when the time is ripe for great doings on the
part of a nation the necessary man invariably appears. It is a saying
hardly warranted by fact, for many a golden opportunity have nations,
Great Britain as often as others, lost because the right man was not
forthcoming. Happily it has not been so in South Africa. It is almost
certain that, had it not been for the accident of Mr. Rhodes seeking the
South African shores for his health when a lad, the Germans and the
Boers would have cut off the Cape Colony from all possibility of
expansion to the north. Those Powers had even found their right men. The
Transvaal had her stubborn Kruger; Germany had her shrewd and energetic
agents and explorers preparing the way to annexation in different
portions of the Dark Continent; while even Portugal had her D'Andrade, a
man who displayed much of the spirit and enterprise of the Portuguese
discoverers and conquerors of olden days. Cecil Rhodes took his place in
South African affairs but just in time. The Transvaal War had been
followed by a period of extraordinary apathy both in England and in the
Cape Colony. No one seemed to care in the least what became of the
territory lying beyond our then limits. At home men were sick of the
very name of South Africa. Many would have gladly abandoned all our
possessions about the Cape of Storms, and abdicated an Empire which
seemed to bring us nothing but futile wars, disaster, and disgrace. It
was at this critical period that Mr. Rhodes came to the front to save
our supremacy in South Africa--too late, indeed, to save for us much
that should have been ours; too late, for example, to secure our
sovereignty over Namaqualand and Damaraland, territories which had been
long recognised as being within Britain's sphere of influence, which
formerly had been annexed to the Cape, but which latterly had been
totally neglected both by the Imperial and Cape Governments, so that the
watchful Germans were left at liberty, first to establish their trading
missions, and finally to assert their sovereignty over those extensive
regions.
[Illustration: FIVE-MILE SPRUIT ON MELSETTER ROAD, RHODESIA]
The richness and beauty of the highlands, extending over an immense area
both north and south of the Zambesi, had for many years been known to
both English and Boer travellers. Mr. Rhodes, in his early days at
Kimberley, met many an adventurous wanderer who had come from that
wonderful region, and their glowing tales perhaps first inspired in him
that ambitious dream of the creation of a great new British colony that
should include all the finest country in South and Central Africa. As
far back as 1882, having commenced to take an active part in Cape
politics, Mr. Rhodes took the initial steps towards the attainment of
the one absorbing purpose of his life.
[Illustration: A HUNTER'S WAGGON, RHODESIA
Photo by Wilson, Aberdeen]
Of fascinating interest is the story--a story for the most part yet
untold to the world--of Cecil Rhodes' long struggle with the Boers and
Portuguese who attempted to keep the Empire-builder out of the Promised
Land, and of his frequent forestallings of further German expansion at
our expense. The first, the most critical and anxious period of all, was
occupied with the contest for the very gate of the country, the
right-of-way to the north, which we were so nearly losing, and without
which our advance would have been hopelessly barred. The only outlet to
the north from the Cape Colony lay through Bechuanaland, a vast region
that was divided into several independent native kingdoms, and hemmed in
between the Germans, then advancing from the west, and the Transvaal
Boers on the east. This gateway to the north has been likened to the
neck of a bottle; the narrow neck which, once passed, opens out into the
broad and precious Zambesia. Kruger, clever and obstinate, commenced his
career of attempted expansion by seizing this neck with the intention of
thus cutting us off completely from the north. It was his ambition to
extend the Boer rule westward to the German line, eastward to Delagoa
Bay and the Indian Ocean, and northwards over the steppes of Zambesia.
Pretorius had declared that the Transvaal had no boundary on the west,
unless it were the Atlantic Ocean. The first struggle therefore between
Rhodes and Kruger was for this vital point of vantage, the neck. Had
Kruger grasped it the British flag would never have floated on the
northern plateau, the Boers and Germans would have joined hands--there
had been a talk of a German Protectorate over the Transvaal--and theirs,
not ours, would have been the splendid prize. And what is more, seeing
what a vast conspiracy had been organised against us, we should probably
have lost the Cape Colony itself: the foundations of our Empire would
have been shaken. Immense was the threatening peril to which we shut our
eyes. The Transvaal War had left the Cape Colonists in a distinctly
anti-British frame of mind. Disgusted at the follies of the Imperial
Government, even those of British blood sympathised with the Transvaal
Boers, and had no objection to the north falling into the hands of the
Dutch Republicans. Indeed, the general feeling at the Cape at that time
appears to have been republican. Cecil Rhodes had not only to
out-manoeuvre Germany, the Transvaal, and Portugal, but had also to
overcome the opposition of colonial prejudice, and the complete
indifference of the English to all affairs South African. He stood
almost alone, and had to create a party for himself. Not only man of
action, but diplomatist and opportunist in the best sense of the word,
he played his game with wondrous skill, and succeeded at last in winning
over the reluctant colonists to his views. The very Africander Bond
became his ally for a time.
[Illustration: CAPE TO CAIRO RAILWAY. LAYING THE RAILS]
That struggle for the neck of Bechuanaland is an interesting story that
cannot be told here. First Kruger attempted to establish himself in
Mankoroane's territory. Mankoroane, to protect himself, offered to cede
his country to the Cape Colony, which point-blank refused it. Rhodes, in
1882, went himself to the chieftain, and so arranged matters that the
Imperial Government found itself compelled to take over the district.
Thwarted at this point, Kruger attempted to cut us off further to the
north, and sent his agents to establish the freebooting republics of
Goshen and Stellaland. Again Rhodes checked him. Going himself to
Stellaland, he persuaded the Boers in possession to accept the British
flag on the condition that our Government ratified their titles to the
land they had occupied. The Warren expedition, despatched at last in
consequence of the strong representations of Rhodes and his far-seeing
ally, Sir Hercules Robinson, the then High Commissioner, resulted in the
expulsion of the Boer freebooters from Montsioa's country, where
Mafeking now stands, and the extension of our protectorate over the
whole of Bechuanaland. Then Rhodes arranged for the taking over of
Khama's land, and the gateway to the north was won. Foiled again, and
thus hemmed in on the west, the stubborn Kruger sent his very able agent
Grobler to Lobengula to obtain from him a Matabele concession to the
Transvaal. Rhodes found that it was hopeless to attempt to bring the
Imperial Government to a sense of the danger of the position, so now,
before it was too late, he had to act promptly for himself. He sent
Maguire Thomson and Rudd to Lobengula to obtain a concession from him
before Grobler had carried out his mission. They were successful; the
Governor ratified the concession. Dr. Jameson and Dr. Harris went to
Matabeleland to deliver to the king the stipulated arms and ammunition;
and despite the bitter opposition of the Cape statesman and consistently
anti-British Englishman, Mr. Merriman, the deed of concession was
sealed, and its validity was recognised by the Government. And thus in
1888, after years of patient endeavour, Cecil Rhodes at last had made
the way clear for the realisation of his mighty scheme.
The sinews of war had now to be found; and Rhodes, in anticipation,
before the granting of the concession, had made his provisions. First he
had brought about the amalgamation of the diamond-mining companies, and
then, as head of the great De Beers Corporation with its rent-roll of
four millions sterling a year, he, in 1887, effected the alteration of
the De Beers Trust Deed by a liquidation of the Company, so as to give
the De Beers directors power to apply the Company's funds to outside
objects, that is, to the development of the North. Messrs. Barnato and
Beit agreed to this on the condition of being made life governors, and
ever since loyally co-operated with Rhodes in the execution of his
scheme.
The next step was the granting of the charter by the British Government
in 1889, and the creation of the British South Africa Company. Then
Rhodes sent out the famous Pioneer Expedition to Mashonaland, and the
white men established themselves in Rhodesia. It must be borne in mind
that at that time and for years afterwards Rhodes had to be ever closely
watching and cunningly circumventing the German Boers and Portuguese,
who spared no effort to keep us from the north. Bismarck's agent, Count
Pffeil, was sent on a secret mission to South Africa and all but
succeeded in anticipating Rhodes, and in winning for Germany a broad
strip of territory that would have connected her eastern and western
possessions, so forming a bar across Africa from ocean to ocean that
would have effectually shut us out. Then there was the Boer trek into
Mashonaland in 1891, when the Rhodesians guarded the drifts against the
invaders--a scheme of Kruger's that was frustrated without the shedding
of blood. Even when the Pioneer Expedition was on its way, the
energetic Portuguese D'Andrade was distributing the flags of his country
among the chiefs, and attempting to get concessions that would cut
Mashonaland off from Matabeleland. To defeat his plans Rhodes entered
into a treaty with Umtassa, and obtained the Gazaland concession from
Gungunyana, a concession which would have extended the Chartered
Company's possessions to the shores of the Indian Ocean had not Lord
Salisbury refused to ratify it and acknowledged the claims of Portugal.
Then again in 1889 Rhodes, whose Intelligence Department always supplied
him in good time with information as to the doings of his rivals,
hearing that Germany intended to cut us off at the head of Lake Nyassa,
secretly sent Mr. H. H. Johnson to hoist British flags at Port Abercorn
on Lake Tanganyika and other places, as proof of our occupation. The
Portuguese also hoped to erect a wall against our expansion by
connecting her eastern and western territories, and for this purpose an
expedition set out from Angola to seize the Barotse country, but here
Rhodes again forestalled them; his mission was the first to arrive in
the country, and Barotseland was placed under our protection. The way
these things were done by Rhodes' agents, the hardships endured, the
perils incurred by these adventurous men who--unlike the Portuguese
agents who were always accompanied by large bands of armed men--plunged
alone into these savage regions to carry out their hazardous missions,
makes a wonderful story indeed of British pluck and enterprise.
The Pioneer Expedition set out in June 1890. The Pioneer Column, which
had been enrolled by Major Frank Johnson, consisted of 187 men who had
decided to try their fortunes in the new country, and it was accompanied
by 650 mounted police, under the command of Lieut.-Colonel Pennefather.
The famous hunter, Selous, acted as guide. The ox-waggons carried
provisions and other stores sufficient to supply the whole force for six
months. For four hundred miles the Pioneers marched into Mashonaland,
constructing a road as they went, and making drifts at the many rivers
to enable the waggons to cross. Forts were built at intervals, and small
garrisons were left in them. At last they came to their objective point,
Mount Hampden; and hard by it they built Fort Salisbury, now the capital
of all Rhodesia. The Pioneer Force was now disbanded, each man
receiving, in addition to his pay, the right to peg out fifteen gold
claims and 3000 acres of land. The men scattered over the country,
prospecting for gold and pegging out their claims and farms. The first
rainy season was a terrible one for them; it was an exceptionally bad
year; all transport was interrupted, supplies fell short; the men had to
live on native foodstuffs; great privations were endured; many died;
and, as in every other part of our Empire, the ways of Rhodesia are
strewn with the bones of the men who won the land for their country.
But the men who go out as the pioneers of the Empire are not easily
discouraged. The settlement and development of the country was at once
undertaken with energy. Arrangements were made for the administration of
the new State; a legal system was created; roads were constructed;
mining plant was brought up; mining operations commenced; land was
brought under cultivation; stores were opened; townships were surveyed,
and rose rapidly from the wilderness, handsome brick buildings taking
the place of the huts in which the pioneers roughed it at first. But the
development of the country was much retarded by the difficulty of
communication and the enormous cost of transport. Little could be done
until Rhodesia was afforded railway communication with the coast; so Mr.
Rhodes made arrangements for the extension of the Cape railway from its
then terminus at Kimberley, and for the construction of a line to Beira
on the east coast.
The Chartered Company had not long effected its active occupation of
Mashonaland before the Matabele impis resumed their murderous raids on
the Mashonas, and in 1893 the Matabele war broke out, leading to the
overthrow of Lobengula and the absorption of Matabeleland by the
Chartered Company. Nearly every able-bodied white man in Mashonaland
volunteered his services. Three columns, numbering nine hundred men in
all, marched through the country, defeating the Matabele impis on the
Shangani and Zambesi; Bulawayo was occupied, and with the gallant stand
of Wilson and his little force, the war was brought to a conclusion.
Then the white man's city began to rise from the veldt, hard by the
burnt kraal of Lobengula. Towards the close of the war I travelled in an
ox-waggon with some Boer transport riders from the Marico Valley in the
Transvaal--about thirty miles from Mafeking--to Bulawayo. This beautiful
valley ("the Granary of the Transvaal") was the old home of Moselekatse,
Lobengula's father. It was a fat land; there is none so rich for a
hundred leagues around; for tribes of Zulu blood will establish
themselves in none but the best country, and they will trek far to find
it. The rolling land of Marico is as fertile as it is beautiful. It is
as green as Devon, and the pretty farmhouses of the prosperous people
are scattered among rich pastures, great fields of corn, and fruit
orchards. Fifty years ago the Boers and their Baralong allies drove
Moselekatse and his raiding warriors out of Marico, and sent them
trekking north to seek a new home. So northward they travelled,
murdering and cattle-lifting as they went, traversing good country, but
not such as would satisfy the Zulu, until at last, nearly five hundred
miles from Marico, they came to a land even more favoured than that
they had left, and settled down in what is now called Matabeleland. I
followed their route, and could then understand their choice. Fair
indeed to the eye appears the green, well-watered high veldt of
Matabeleland as the traveller from the south opens it out on reaching
the watershed between the Crocodile and the Zambesi rivers. Lieutenant
Maund, who some years before had been sent to spy out Matabeleland, with
justice reported that, "when compared to the country south of it, it was
as Canaan after the wilderness." When I reached the place where
Bulawayo, with its stately buildings, now stands, I found a few hundred
white men occupying a little temporary settlement of native huts and
tattered tents that had sprung up round the newly-constructed fort; the
building of the modern city had not commenced. A little later I was
present at the first auction of township stands. The alternate land lots
bearing even numbers, lining one side of what was to be the chief
street, were sold. They fetched about £50 apiece. A few months
afterwards the alternate stands bearing odd numbers were sold by
auction; they all fetched over £400 apiece, the highest price realised
being £900. Some of the stands, that could have been purchased for £50
each in 1893, are at the present time worth six or seven thousand pounds
apiece, and realise that price when put on the market. I quote these
figures to show that whatever critics at home may think of the future of
Rhodesia, those on the spot have confidence in it. The Matabele War was
scarcely over before the volunteers, having received their mining, farm,
and loot rights, scattered over the country to prospect and peg out
their claims. It was wonderful to observe how quickly, under Dr.
Jameson's able administration, everything was put in order, and
Matabeleland began to assume the aspect of a settled country. Bulawayo
was soon a fine city, having its water-works, electric lighting,
hospitals, public schools, its imposing court-house and other handsome
public buildings. Townships sprang up like mushrooms all over the high
veldt in the vicinity of the gold-bearing reefs. The population rapidly
increased. The Chartered Company, in the meanwhile, pushed on the
railway from Mafeking towards Bulawayo, proceeded to construct the line
from Umtali to Beira, and quickly placed Bulawayo into telegraphic
communication with the outer world. And now there was every sign of
prosperity; the development of the gold mines gave encouraging results;
trade was good; the value of the land for farming was proved, and
excellent crops were raised; Rhodesia's future seemed assured. But it
was fated that its progress should be retarded by an extraordinary
succession of disasters; surely no new country was ever so sorely
tried.
All was going well until the early part of 1896, when the first of its
many scourges swept down on the unhappy land--the dreaded rinderpest
came from the North, and despite every precaution that could be taken to
prevent its spreading, it destroyed over 90 per cent. of the cattle in
the country, and played like havoc among the wild game. It is difficult
for one who was not in Rhodesia at the time to realise the magnitude of
this misfortune. As this was a land then entirely dependent upon oxen
for transport, a stoppage was put to agricultural and mining operations;
and the cattle-owning native population suffered greatly. Before the
rinderpest broke out the average price of an ox in Rhodesia was £6, and
now, though it is over five years since the rinderpest was stamped out,
the price is about £28. Transport rates rose from 10s. to £5 per 100
lbs., and all the necessaries of life went up to famine prices. These
figures, which will be found in an interesting pamphlet written by Mr.
P. S. Inskip of the British South Africa Company's service, will convey
some idea of the situation. Absolute ruin faced the settlers; it is
wonderful that the bulk of them did not abandon the country in despair,
but pioneers are not easily disheartened, and they stubbornly struggled
on, taking every possible measure to mitigate the effect of the plague.
[Illustration: RHODESIAN NATIVES WASHING CLOTHES]
But misfortune followed on misfortune. The rinderpest was raging when
the Matabele rose, and the Rhodesians had to suppress a formidable
rebellion, which was rendered the more difficult to cope with by the
scarcity of oxen. The white settlers were massacred in outlying
districts; there were heroic rescues, the rising spread to Mashonaland,
and it was not until 1897 that the rebellion was crushed and peace for a
little while came to the troubled land. Our total casualties were 690;
and of the white settlers in the country alone 390 were killed and 150
were wounded, that is, 10 per cent. of the population. The Company spent
£360,000 in compensating the settlers for the losses the rebellion had
brought upon them.
It had fortunately been discovered that the rinderpest could be stamped
out by inoculation, but no sooner had this plague been conquered by
science than a terrible outbreak of red-water decimated the remaining
cattle. Locusts, too, came in unwonted numbers to devour the crops, and
horse sickness was very destructive. Then, on the top of all Rhodesia's
troubles, came the but just concluded Boer war cutting off this inland
territory from its communications with its commercial and military bases
on the coast, retarding its development, and once more calling on its
manhood to abandon industry and take up arms for their country. The
Rhodesians responded well to the call; twelve and a half per cent. of
the population fought in the war, and it will be in the memory of all
how well they acquitted themselves in the defence of Bechuanaland and
the relief of Mafeking. Thanks to the foresight of Cecil Rhodes,
Matabeleland was ours. Had it not been so, the Boers when defeated in
war would have trekked north into the rough country--through which it
would have been almost impossible for us to follow them--there to form
new independent states, to intrigue against us as before. It would have
been the old story over again; and after a few years we should have been
plunged into another Boer war. But Rhodes had hemmed in the two Boer
Republics. The quarrel had to be fought out within their boundaries.
There was no outlet for them into the wilderness this time.
[Illustration: THE OUTLET BELOW VICTORIA FALLS, ZAMBESI RIVER.
After Photo by G. W. Wilson, Aberdeen.]
Notwithstanding these successive disasters the Chartered Company and the
settlers had done much during those few troublous years to develop the
country. The rinderpest and the native rebellion made it all the more
urgent to complete the railway system that was to open communication
with the coast. The Company hurried on the construction. In November
1897 the line had been extended from Mafeking to Bulawayo, and in 1899
the line from Salisbury to Beira was completed. Then the line from
Bulawayo to Salisbury was pushed on; this connection has just been
completed, and one can now travel by rail without changing carriage from
Capetown to Beira _viâ_ Bulawayo and Salisbury. Another line is being
constructed through the Wankie coalfields which will cross the
Zambesi near the Victoria Falls. How short a time ago it seems since the
man who had visited the Falls was regarded as a great explorer! Other
branches, too, will shortly open communication to the various
goldfields.
[Illustration: MACHECKIE RAILWAY BRIDGE ON THE SALISBURY LINE,
MASHONALAND RAILWAY]
It is worthy of notice that Rhodesia, though the most remote from the
coast, was the one State in South Africa whose industries were kept
going during the war, so that the conclusion of peace found her ready
for an immediate expansion of her trade. This was due to the wise policy
of the Company. Early in 1900 it was represented to the Administration
that unless communication, which had been interrupted at the
commencement of the war, was soon restored, work could not proceed on
the mines; the native labourers would have to be discharged, and the
mines would have to be closed down. The Administration realised that it
would not only be disastrous to throw so many Europeans and natives out
of work, but that the closing down of the mines would convince the
Matabele that there was truth in the report which the Boer agents were
diligently spreading to the effect that the English were being driven
out of the country, and that the opportunity for rebellion had arrived.
The Administration therefore came to the assistance of the mining
community by making arrangements for the importation of sufficient
necessaries for six months through Beira, at a fixed transport rate of
£25 per ton from Port Elizabeth. The Company found itself about £5 a ton
out of pocket by this arrangement, but great distress was saved. At the
opening of the war the price of grain and meal rose 100 per cent.; but
the Hon. Sir Arthur Lawley, the then Administrator of Matabeleland,
warned the Chamber of Commerce at Bulawayo that if the cost of
necessaries rose too high he would open the Government Stores--in which
a large reserve of supplies had been laid up at the outbreak of the
war--and sell to white men at a reasonable rate. This had the desired
effect for a time, but later on the merchants took an unfair advantage
of the situation, whereupon the Administrator carried out his threat,
and so brought prices sharply down again. The result of this policy was
excellent; the development of the mines proceeded, even if slowly; the
crops were sown and there was a good harvest; the natives remained quiet
and readily paid their hut-tax, which amounted to a larger sum than had
been raised in any previous year.
Considering all the disasters, from the rinderpest down to the Boer War,
that have befallen the country, it is indeed wonderful that so much has
already been done towards the development of the resources of Rhodesia.
There are critics at home who maintain that the country is valueless,
that there are no payable gold reefs in it, else the mines would by this
time have been working at a profit. People in the old days spoke in the
same way of the Rand. Now, it was not until 1897, when the railway
reached Bulawayo, that the real development of the mines commenced, and
since then the country has produced gold to the value of a million and a
quarter sterling, and this with a very limited number of stamps running.
The gold belt extends for about 500 miles. Out of the 114,000 claims
that have been pegged out, only 737 have been worked at all. Some of the
mines have already paid dividends. The future possibilities of these yet
practically untouched goldfields no one can estimate.
It had been naturally expected that so soon as the opening of the
Rhodesian railways lowered the cost of transport rapid progress would be
made in the working of the mines, and critics at home express their
wonder that more has not been done; but the enormous increase in the
cost of local transport due to the rinderpest has cancelled the
advantage gained by the low railway rates from the south. Before the
railway was constructed or the rinderpest appeared, the transport from
Mafeking to Bulawayo, a distance of 500 miles, was ten shillings per 100
lbs. It costs as much as that now to transport mining machinery by
ox-waggon from the Bulawayo railway-yard to a mine only 50 miles
distant; and some of the mines are as far as 200 miles from a railway
station. The branch lines that are being constructed will bring many of
the mines within easy reach of the railway, but no great general
progress can be made throughout Rhodesia until cattle become plentiful
and cheap again. The Chartered Company is taking active steps to restock
the country. The importation of cattle on a large scale, both by the
various companies and by individuals, is now proceeding. Cattle of an
excellent breed, suitable to the climate, are being brought from
Angoniland, and will be crossed with Kerry or Jersey bulls. Importers of
stock intended for breeding purposes can carry them over the Rhodesian
railways at considerably reduced rates. Moreover, the Administration
advances money to farmers on easy terms, on the security of their farms,
to enable them to purchase cattle. With regard to the rinderpest,
inoculation has proved successful, and the Government should be able to
subdue any fresh outbreak by using the serum which is now manufactured
at Kimberley.
Now that peace has come to South Africa, all that Rhodesia wants to
enable her to make rapid progress is cheap transport, which she will
shortly have, and abundant and efficient native labour; for surely the
sore trials of her youth, which she so pluckily endured and survived,
are over at last. The gold is there; the majority of the reefs are
permanent, and to quote from the report of the Chartered Company's
Resident Consulting Engineer:--"What the future may hold it is
impossible to say, but the most grievous pessimist must surely admit
that the experimental stage has been safely passed, and that Rhodesia
has been proved to be a valuable gold-mining country of which the
possibilities are enormous." The recent discovery of valuable coal
deposits will greatly assist the development of the country's resources,
more especially benefiting the gold-mining industry, for the timber is
becoming exhausted in the vicinity of the mines, and the price of wood
fuel is ever advancing. A careful examination of one small section of
the Wankie bed shows that it will yield 1000 tons a day of coal of
excellent quality for the next hundred years. It is too early yet to
discuss the value of the iron, copper, and other ores which exist in
Rhodesia.
To turn to agriculture. There seems to be no production of the temperate
and sub-tropical zones that does not flourish on the favoured,
well-watered soil of Southern Rhodesia. The area under cultivation is
rapidly extending. The one great drawback is the locust. However,
farming pays well despite occasional bad seasons. Here is a story that
exemplifies the tenacity, under disaster, of the Rhodesian settler. In
one year, when the successive locust swarms ate up the land, a certain
farmer sowed his farm with mealies. The locusts devoured the crop:
undiscouraged, he sowed his fields a second time: again he lost his
crop. Yet a third time he sowed, and got his harvest in safely. Despite
the two failures, he now realised a handsome profit. Happily, in the
season of 1898-99 locusts almost entirely disappeared, and apparently
they have never since invaded the country in their former numbers. It is
claimed that this is due to the extensive use of toxine, with which for
the last few years a campaign of extermination has, with apparent
success, been carried on against these scourges of the land. The toxine
has been distributed among the white farmers and the native chiefs, with
instructions for its use, and satisfaction with the results has been
generally expressed. An energetic farmer does well in Rhodesia, and
finds among the mining communities an ever-increasing market for his
produce. At present the principal products are mealies, barley, wheat,
oats, forage, and potatoes, and excellent crops are raised. Market
farming and dairy farming in the vicinity of the towns are industries
that require little capital, and are exceedingly profitable. Boer
tobacco is produced in large quantities, and experiments that have been
tried with American seed have proved the suitability of soil and climate
for the cultivation of the superior qualities of tobacco. Oranges,
peaches, walnuts, apples, bananas, figs, cherries, vines, and other
fruits do very well in Rhodesia. In the yet uncolonised north of this
vast territory wild rubber of high commercial value covers large tracts
of country. The Chartered Company is taking steps to protect the plant
against the destructive native methods of extraction, and to make it a
source of wealth to Rhodesia as well of revenue to itself. In several
districts the cultivation of coffee and tea promises to prove
successful.
[Illustration: THE WANKIE EXPEDITION]
As elsewhere in South Africa, the chief difficulty in the way of the
development of the country is the disinclination of the idle natives to
work on the mines or elsewhere, all the more so now that so many have
been spoilt by the excessive wages paid to them by the military
authorities during the war. The native of Mashonaland, for example,
living in a country blessed with a fruitful soil and splendid climate,
protected by our rule from the raids that used to devastate his lands,
reaping his crops in security, assisted by the Administration in hard
times of rinderpest or locust scourge, is now more than ever loth to
work. He can earn as much as £3 a month with food and lodging. But for
the protection which he enjoys, and which enables him to wax rich, he
only contributes to the expenses of Government his hut-tax of ten
shillings. An increase in his hut-tax might induce him to work for a few
weeks in the year. If nothing will overcome his deep-rooted indolence,
other labour must be imported. Arabs from Aden are already working in
some of the mines.
The pay of the skilled white miner is 30s. a day. Throughout Rhodesia
the artisan earns good wages, the blacksmith and the bricklayer, for
example, receiving respectively 30s. and 35s. a day in Salisbury.
Detractors of Rhodesia are constantly asserting that the white
population is outrageously taxed, each settler, they state, having to
pay £40 per annum to the Chartered Company in the shape of taxes; and a
well-known politician, beloved of Little Englanders, has publicly
declared that this is the case. It appears that these ingenious people
arrived at this conclusion by dividing the amount of the Company's
revenue, £440,000, by the number of Europeans in the country, namely,
12,000, which certainly does give a result of nearly £40 per head. It is
thus assumed that all the Company's revenue is derived from the taxation
of the settlers. Now, in the first place, out of this £440,000 of
revenue, £113,000 represents the amount of the native hut-tax, and is
therefore not contributed by white people at all. Another £23,000 is
derived from the sales and rent of land, the Company's property; and
another £58,000 from the telegraph and postal services, which up till
now have been worked at a loss. No one can maintain that these items
fall under the head of taxation. To go further, another £86,000 of the
Company's revenue is paid directly by the mining companies that have
been floated--that is, by the shareholders in England, not by the people
of Rhodesia. These figures added up amount to £280,000, which leaves a
balance of £160,000--the taxation laid on the settlers, that is, about
£13 per head. To go still further, of this £160,000, £73,000 is derived
from the duties on wines, spirits, and tobacco. Therefore if one puts
these luxuries out of the calculation the taxation amounts to only £7
a head per year, which is anything but high when one bears in mind that
there are no paupers in Rhodesia, that women and children are few, and
that the large bulk of the population are adult males in the prime of
life earning high wages.
[Illustration: RHODESIAN MINING. THE DOBIE MILL]
The climate of the Rhodesian plateau is undoubtedly healthy and well
suited to British colonists. It is a land where the white man can work
in the fields. The British children reared here are as rosy of cheek and
as sturdy of limb as those at home. There is, of course, malaria in the
lowlands, but that will disappear before occupation and civilisation,
even as it has done in once unhealthy districts of the Transvaal and the
Cape Colony. It is the same with the diseases that affect domestic
animals: thus horse-sickness once prevailed far to the south, and
gradually has been driven north before advancing civilisation. The
dreaded tsetse fly too, fatal to horses and cattle, can only exist where
the larger wild beasts abound, and vanishes with the latter wherever the
white man establishes himself. The rinderpest, in killing off the wild
buffalo, did one good service: the tsetse disappeared with the buffalo,
and now only frequents remote and unfrequented regions.
From every point of view the future of Rhodesia now looks hopeful. The
young State suffered from every calamity that can befall a new country,
but was too vigorous to succumb. The Company and the Rhodesian community
have displayed pluck, energy, and patriotism in the hour of Britain's
danger, and every loyal Englishman must sincerely wish Rhodesia
prosperity. As regards the prospects of the Chartered Company itself, I
will conclude by calling attention to one point. Up till now the Company
has been compelled to maintain a large and expensive military force,
costing £276,000 a year. Now that the Boer war has been brought to a
conclusion, the necessity for so large a force has ceased to exist, and
Mr. W. H. Milton, the Senior Administrator of Southern Rhodesia, has
recommended, as sufficient to meet the requirements of the country, the
maintenance of a force of 400 Europeans and 400 natives, with a simple
organisation on the lines of the Cape Police. The cost of this, he
maintains, should not exceed £100,000 per annum. If his proposal is
accepted, the revenue of the Chartered Company should balance its
expenditure, and the corner will be turned.
PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES
BY JAMES STANLEY LITTLE
_Author of "South Africa," "The Progress of the British Empire in the
Nineteenth Century," "The United States of Britain," &c. &c._
The magnificent vagueness of the subject the editor of this volume has,
in his wisdom, thought fit to apportion to me might have its
conveniences, were it not that such pregnant matters as emigration,
federation, education, irrigation, and half-a-dozen subjects besides,
all of which bristle with problems and possibilities of the most clamant
kind, are ruled out of this paper, in that their consideration has been
entrusted to highly competent and patriotic writers, upon whose
preserves it would be unbecoming to poach. Nevertheless, it must be
obvious to everybody that it will not be possible to attempt a
comprehensive analysis of the problems and possibilities of the future,
and to keep entirely clear of these all-important factors in the case;
seeing that every political, ethnical, financial, and economic problem
impinges on these special subjects of which one and all are a part.
[Illustration: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE TRANSVAAL A BOER FAMILY RETURNING
TO THEIR FARM.
Drawing by Chas. M. Sheldon.]
As to the political situation to-day, it seems scarcely to be
apprehended in this country that the lines of cleavage between parties
and factions at the Cape, and indeed in the new colonies, are by no
means simple ones. In South Africa generally it is not merely a case of
Briton _versus_ Boer; it is not in Cape Colony simply a case of Dutch
Africander _versus_ British loyalist. In the Transvaal the problem is
not solely how to bring the Boers and English together, or how to
conciliate and retain the loyalty of those men, largely of British
origin, formerly known as Uitlanders. A labour party, championing a
programme practically identical with that with which all students of
later-day politico-social questions are familiar, is coming into
existence, and is, I think, certain to make itself a power in the land
as time advances. It has been frequently, if somewhat hastily, assumed
that in South Africa generally parties will follow the lines of division
common to most civilised communities, and range themselves in camps, the
composition of which will be determined respectively by the place of
residence and occupation of the units of the people; the interests,
sentiments, and aspirations of the town dwellers being at variance with
those of the rural inhabitants. In a sense, we may take the people of
Johannesburg to represent what passes for the urban population of
old-settled countries. Roughly speaking, the citizens of the older
established and smaller towns were dependent for their existence, and
are likely to continue to be so dependent, on the agriculturists, since
outside the Rand the Transvaal had no industries, no manufactures worth
considering: for some time to come she is not likely to have any. So the
Rand stood and stands for the towns, and the Uitlanders for the
townsmen. The rest of the State stood and stands for the country, and,
the agriculturists being mainly Dutch, the Boers stand for the
countrymen. In the future, however, the race question, which has
practically overruled any dividing lines drawn on the basis of townsmen
and countrymen in Cape Colony, should cease to govern, in quite the old
way, the political antagonisms of the inhabitants of the Transvaal; in
any case, if the various schemes for settling British farmers in the
land are crowned with reasonable success, it will no longer be possible
to regard the rural Transvaalers as simply Boers, and the townsmen as
simply Britishers. At present in the Transvaal there exists, of course,
the great and principal division of its people, the British and
philo-British _versus_ the Dutch and philo-Dutch. But the interests of
the great mining companies are not now, and never can be, on all-fours
with those of the operatives; while the traders are likely to find their
ideals at variance with those of the mining magnates and operatives
alike. Obviously there will be no immediate community of interest and
aim between the old Boer farmers and the new British elements introduced
on to the land. The differences of the townsmen are likely to be more
strictly economic than political; but they must necessarily take a
political complexion in the process of their devolution. It would be
rash to attempt anything in the shape of a precise forecast; but it
certainly seems to me quite unlikely that the future divisions into
parties of the citizens of the Transvaal can take the simple form of
Briton _versus_ Boer. No doubt the existence of the two races, living
side by side, with the remembrance of a century's differences between
them, will continue to give a decided tincture to the parties to be
formed in the future. It depends entirely on the kind of statecraft
Great Britain brings to bear on the settlement of the new colonies and
on its results, whether the progressive elements in the existing
population--the population waiting for the gates to be opened to it may,
for the purposes of this argument, be considered as entirely
progressive--range themselves on the side of British imperialism, or
whether they will join themselves to those forces, already existing,
which openly or secretly aim at the establishment of a republican
régime. It is quite a mistake to suppose that these forces--republican
sympathies, that is to say--are at the moment entirely to be sought for
in the Boer camp. It is, or it ought to be, common knowledge that the
internal movement for reform on the Rand, and for the elimination of the
Dopper-Hollander dominance of Pretoria, was not exactly inspired or
sustained by men who wished to see the Transvaal an integral portion of
the British Empire. At the same time, it is not denied that a great many
sympathisers with this movement, and not a few of its active
supporters--the late Mr. Rhodes, for instance--were above all things
anxious that when the Transvaal flag was hauled down the Union Jack
should be run up.
Apart, however, from such considerations, matters of history, it may be
allowed that whatever the nationality or preferences of respective
Uitlanders at that time of day, a rough sense of justice would reconcile
most of them now to the flag of the country, which at enormous sacrifice
of treasure and men has procured their release from the bondage of
Pretoria. It is equally certain, more so in fact, that their acceptance
of the British flag, now and hereafter, is and will be contingent on the
treatment they receive at the hands of the new Government. Already many
voices are heard in the land declaring that, so far from the new
Government having brought relief to the mining industry and to the
Uitlanders--and it must be clearly understood by all Englishmen, however
much they may resent the fact, that upon the prosperity of the mines not
only the welfare of the Transvaal but of all South Africa depends--it
has increased its burdens. The limits of space will not permit any
exhaustive examination into the basis of this complaint. Mr.
Chamberlain, before these lines are in the hands of the public, will
doubtless be on the spot examining into the grounds of the complaint. It
would be clearly impossible for any one to accuse me, of all persons, of
favouring the millionaires, or of holding a brief for their views and
interests. But this is not a millionaires', or a mining question; it is
the question of the to be or not to be of South Africa as a British
dependency. It may be said at once, that if, as Mr. Chamberlain at one
time indicated, the somewhat contradictory and superficial report drawn
up
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