South Africa and the Boer-British War Part 11

[2] _Missionary Travels_. By David Livingstone. London, 1857.

[2] Martineau's _Life of Sir Bartle Frere_. Vol. II., p. 174.

[Sidenote: English Abhorrence of Slavery]

Such were some of the causes of British dislike for Boer methods and for naturally unfriendly contact with them through strong sympathy for oppressed races and utter abhorrence of slavery in every shape and form. The relation of the Boer and the native was indeed at the root of much to of British expansion during the last thirty years of the century. The threatened subjugation of Moshesh caused the annexation of Basutoland. The Transvaal attack upon the Bapedi under Sekukuni and its failure precipitated the annexation of 1877. The danger of a Zulu invasion of the same country and of Natal, as a consequence of this attack, caused the war with Cetywayo and the establishment of a feeble and tentative protectorate over Zululand. The raids of the Boers into the latter region and the formation of what they called the "New Republic" caused the ultimate annexation of a greater portion of the whole country and of Pondoland. Their attempt to crush the Batlapins and Barolongs in Bechua.n.a.land and to establish the so-called Republics of Stellaland and Goshen caused the expedition of General Warren and the annexation of the territory. Their effort in 1891 to trek north of the Limpopo and to take possession of a portion of Rhodesia had to be repressed by Dr. Jameson under threats of force. Their previously well-known ambition in this connection had much to do with Mr. Rhodes'

determination to extend British power northwards by means of his Chartered Company. Similar efforts in Tongaland had, meanwhile, compelled its ruler to appeal to the Queen's Government for protection in 1887. The complications of British policy with the natives of South Africa north and east of Cape Colony, in the latter half of the century, were, therefore, as much the fault of Boer ambition and arrogance and ill-treatment of the Blacks as were the difficulties in the earlier part of the century with the Hottentots and Bushmen and Kosas.

[Sidenote: The Napoleon of South Africa]

Of these natives--Bantu, or Kaffirs, or whatever their local names might be--much has been written and much might be said here. The race has produced some great men. Merciless in war they generally were, but it is a question whether the cruelties perpetrated by Matabele or Zulu chiefs have not been excelled by leaders of Christian nations without the aggravation of continuous warfare or the excuse of natural savagery. The religious strife of mediaeval Europe, or the fire and sword and tortures of Spain in Mexico and Peru, will occur to every mind. Bravery was an almost universal quality amongst the Bantu, though it varied in degree. Tshaka, the founder of the Zulu nation, possessed boundless ambition, a powerful and ruthless will, a genuine genius for military organization and rule. He was emphatically the native Napoleon of South Africa. Dingaan, his successor, had a few of his qualities; Cetywayo enough of them to const.i.tute him an interesting figure and to give him a permanent place in history. Had he not been obliged to contest his supremacy with the firearms and cannon of the white man, he might have extended his sway up to the Zambesi and been a greater warrior than Tshaka. Moselkatze, until he came into conflict with the emigrant farmers, was a savage potentate of considerable ability. Like Tshaka with his Zulus, he organized the Matabele into a strong military power and ruled the west and north with a rod of iron for many years. His successor, Lobengula, resembled the Zulu Cetywayo in many respects, and in none more than in his final overthrow by the white man. Had conditions been otherwise the two chiefs might have disputed the primacy of South Africa; and it is hard to say which would have won. These men were all warriors by nature and environment and generals by instinct. Moshesh the Basuto was, however, a statesman as well, and his rise and progress and career afford most striking evidence of the natural ability which a savage may possess. Of a somewhat similar character is Khama, the present Chief of the Bechuanas. So much for the greater names among the Bantu.

[Sidenote: Native Bravery]

Their customs and characteristics are, and have always been, somewhat varied in detail amongst the different tribes, though the main points are the same. In a military sense they all possess bravery, skill in ambush, and resourcefulness in attack or defence. The a.s.segai is certainly a manly weapon in many respects, as well as a deadly one. It required physical strength, skill and courage in a.s.sault, and marked powers of endurance in the long marches which they have so often undertaken to surprise a foe or raid a kraal, to attack a British force or a Dutch commando. The southern tribes--Zulus, Pondos, Tembus and Kosas--have been perhaps the fiercest and strongest warriors, but the Matabele of the north ran them pretty close. On the west coast, however, owing to intermixture with the Bushmen and Hottentots, the Bantu have deteriorated in both physique and intellect. As a whole, they knew something in earlier days of agriculture and tilling the soil, though their women performed the labor; could work in metals to some extent; had a common language, fairly developed, and a sort of general law of custom. In government they were, with certain exceptions, autocratic, and the chiefs possessed great personal power.

Cattle const.i.tuted and still comprise the princ.i.p.al source of wealth and measure of value. Slavery amongst the tribes of the interior was common up to the days of British rule, and was a natural result of wars of conquest or predatory excursions. With the Zulu and the Matabele, as with the Boer, it was a matter of course to keep prisoners of strength or usefulness as slaves, and to the Kaffir, being const.i.tutionally lazy, it was a great advantage to have some in his possession. If he had none, his wife, or wives, occupied a position of practical serfdom.

[Sidenote: Religion and Superst.i.tions]

Religion has always been a strong factor in Kaffir life. It is not, however, a principle of Deity wors.h.i.+p, nor has it ever been potent in morals, or government, or military enthusiasm. It is more like the Chinese deification of ancestors, and consists chiefly in a wors.h.i.+p of the spirits of the dead. The greater the dead chiefs or warriors, the more p.r.o.nounced the wors.h.i.+p, and the system has, therefore, some influence in maintaining loyalty to the living chiefs. Spirits are supposed to pa.s.s into animals, and at different times and places, snakes and lions and antelopes and crocodiles are revered, and have been propitiated by the sacrifice of other animals--but never of human beings. It is a moot question as to whether a Supreme Being has ever been so much as thought of in their original conception of religion, and the probabilities seem to be against it. Of proof there is practically none. With a simple superst.i.tion which peoples the world with spirits of no higher character than their own gross or wild imaginations it has, therefore, been a matter of course that the Kaffir religion should not influence for good the morals and habits of the tribes or inspire them even with the religious and military enthusiasm of the Mahommedan dervish or the Hindoo devotee. Such power as it had, up to recent years, lay with the wizards, or witch-doctors, who took the place of the priests in other creeds, and, like the medicine men of the Red Indians, revelled in cruelties and ruled by playing upon superst.i.tious fears. The practice of "smelling-out" persons suspected of witchcraft or of causing sickness, or drought, or cattle-disease, gave a tremendous power into the hands of chiefs and their unscrupulous allies. Once a victim was "smelled-out" little chance was left him, and, no matter how wealthy in person, or strong in influence, his end had usually come. His property then went to the chief. The murders and terrorism this system gave rise to const.i.tuted perhaps the darkest side of native life, and its suppression has caused at least one war between the British and the Kaffirs; while it was for long the greatest obstacle in the way of the missionary. Of morals the Kaffirs never knew much, and could not, therefore, lose by a.s.sociation with the white man in as important a degree as other savage races have done. They were distinctly inferior in their conception of woman's position to even the Indian of North America, and females appear to have always held a very degraded place amongst them. Hence the easy immorality of the Boers and the practical impossibility of abolis.h.i.+ng the polygamous system amongst semi-independent tribes despite all the efforts of generations of missionaries.

[Sidenote: Tribal Divisions]

These general characteristics were, of course, modified by surroundings and external influences. Roughly speaking, the Kaffirs are divided into the military and industrial Bantu. The former live largely in the fertile regions between the Drakensberg mountains and the Indian Ocean, in the Zoutpansberg district of the Transvaal and in Kaffraria. The latter prefer the mountainous country, and are to be found in Basutoland, in the greater part of the two Boer republics and in the regions south of the Orange River or on the confines of the Kalahari Desert. The differences between these cla.s.ses of the same race are p.r.o.nounced. The military Bantu is stronger, fleeter of foot and sterner in battle. His a.s.segai has a short handle and a long blade, and is used for fighting at close quarters; while the other tribes have a weapon with a long shaft and light blade intended primarily for hunting. Among the former the chief is a despot; amongst the Mashonas and Bechuanas and Basutos his power is limited by a council and sometimes by a general a.s.semblage of the people. The town, or kraal, of the former is designed chiefly for defence; that of the latter for purposes of open intercourse and barter. The sole business of the one has, up to recent years, been warfare and the raising of corn and cattle as a subsidiary pursuit. The latter cultivated gardens, sowed fields of grain and could smelt ore and work in iron. Their seats of power and influence were, and are, in Basutoland and Bechua.n.a.land.

Outside of the steadily improved civilization and character of the Basutos themselves their country is noteworthy for the career of Moshesh; his almost final words in 1868, after twenty years of intermittent conflict with the Boers: "Let me and my people rest and live under the large folds of the flag of England before I am no more;"

and for the general and sincere loyalty of its people in these later days. Bechua.n.a.land is famous as the scene of the labors of Robert Moffat, David Livingstone and John Mackenzie; as being the trade route from Cape Colony to Central Africa; and as the scene of a prolonged struggle voiced in the words of Livingstone: "The Boers resolved to shut up the interior and I determined to open it." Eventually it was opened, and the work of the great missionary became triumphant.

[Sidenote: British Efforts at Civilizing the Natives]

Meanwhile, much was being done by the British in the various parts of South Africa which they controlled, from time to time, to elevate the life and pursuits and character of the natives. In regions governed by the Dutch no such idea was ever tolerated. Dr. Moffat tells a story in this connection which describes much in a few words. He was visiting a Dutchman's house, and suggested that the servants be brought in to the Sunday service. His host roared with laughter. "Preach to Hottentots!" he exclaimed. "Call in my dogs and the preach to them!

Go to the mountains and preach to the baboons! Preach to the Hottentots! A good joke." Aside from the missionaries, Sir George Grey was probably the first prominent Englishman to even partially understand the natives, and he was certainly the first to put his views into effect as Governor. He was greatly respected by all the tribes with whom he came into contact personally or by policy. Yet he had his limitations. Mr. Rees in his biography of the Governor tells an amusing story of his having upon some public occasion remonstrated against the extravagant folly of a number of the native women in wearing bra.s.s ornaments. One of the chiefs promptly rose and pointed out that there were bounds to human power. "Rest content, O great chief," said he, "with what you have accomplished. You have made us pay taxes. You have made our people work. These things we thought could never be. But think not you can stop women wearing ornaments.

If you try to do this, O Governor, you will most surely fail."

[Sidenote: Education of Natives]

The first and most important point in the improvement of the native races is the matter of education. To be really effective it must take the form of an organized system with plenty of pliability and machinery; and there should be a fair number of Europeans in the general community to prevent the native children, after they have once been trained and taught, from relapsing by degrees into the barbarism of their natural a.s.sociates and older relatives. For this reason little has been done in Natal to educate the Kaffirs; although there are some seventy-three native schools and the natives appear to be improving in general character and even in willingness to perform mild sorts of intermittent labor. Nothing of importance has been achieved in the purely native territories except such isolated teaching as the missionaries can manage. Nothing has been even attempted in the two Republics. But in Cape Colony very successful results have followed the labors of many men during a number of years--a.s.sisted by special provision made through the Government for purposes of native education.

Sir Langham Dale, Superintendent-General of Education, reported in 1883 that there were 396 mission schools in the Colony, with an attendance of 44,307 pupils; 226 aborigines' schools, with 13,817 pupils; and 21 boarding and trade schools, with 2,519 pupils. About one-third of the annual Education Grant, which amounted in 1866 to $110,000, and in 1889 to $425,000, and in 1897 to nearly a million dollars, was appropriated to these purposes. In the latter year, it may be added, the number of mission schools had risen to 551, and the aborigines' schools to 420.

Of the various native schools, or inst.i.tutions, that at Lovedale is the most important. In 1883 there were 300 pupils in attendance, and it had a yearly revenue of $125,000. Native clergy and teachers are trained in its College department; young men are taught book-binding, printing and other trades in its workshops; young women are instructed in sewing and laundress work, and there is also an elementary school for children.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MATABELE CHIEF. A KAFFIR CHIEF. PRESIDENT STEYN, ORANGE FREE STATE. SIR W. HALY-HUTCHINSON. GOVERNOR OF NATAL.

ENGLISH, DUTCH AND NATIVE TYPES, SOUTH AFRICA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DERVISH CHARGE, SOUDAN WAR. A battle of the Soudan in which Sir Herbert Kitchener avenged the ma.s.sacre of Hicks Pasha and his 12,000 men; also the death of the heroic Gordon which occurred a year later.]

[Sidenote: Progress of the Natives]

The Superintendent-General of Education, already quoted, in a supplementary Report published in 1884, speaks of the general opposition he has had to meet as coming from two cla.s.ses of people--one which describes the schools as worthless and decries educated natives as useless, and another which describes the aborigines as getting a better education than white people and denounces the system as consequently increasing the compet.i.tion in industrial employments. And then he appeals to such evidences of progress and success as: "The large interchange among natives of letters pa.s.sing through the Post-Office; of the utilization of educated natives as carriers of letters, telegrams and parcels; of the hundreds who fill responsible posts as clerks, interpreters, school-masters, sewing-mistresses; and of the still larger number engaged in industrial pursuits, as carpenters, blacksmiths, tin-smiths, wagon-makers, shoe-makers, printers, sail-makers, saddlers, etc., earning good wages and helping to spread civilization amongst their own people." This is a good record, and there is no doubt that amongst the million natives of Cape Colony the influence of the system is steadily spreading. There is the natural defect, however, of the refusal of the white population to mix with the black either in school or elsewhere, outside of politics. The native schools and the native system are things apart and isolated, although, throughout the Colony, there are wealthy and influential Kaffirs, many of whom are substantial owners of property. And, as a matter of fact, there are more negro children now attending Government schools than there are pupils of white extraction.

Everywhere in British territory an effort has been made to utilize Kaffir free labor and to make the native appreciate the money value of his work and his time. But although some progress may be seen, it has not been very great. In Natal, for instance, the sugar industry, with an invested capital of nearly five million dollars, finds colored labor absolutely essential. But the Kaffirs cannot be got to work with any degree of permanence, or effectiveness, and the planters have had to import coolies in thousands, while all around them are mult.i.tudes of natives admirably suited to the work. At the Diamond Mines of Kimberley, Mr. Rhodes has employed thousands of black laborers, but it has only been for short periods and in successive relays. They make a little money and then go back to their huts, or kraals, as miniature millionaires--able to obtain cattle enough to buy a wife and to settle down in Kaffir comfort. Of the important matter of liquor drinking and liquor selling to natives a word must be said here. In Natal, where there are at least half a million Zulus, scattered around the villages and settlements of the fifty thousand white men, it is naturally a vital question--as in a lesser degree it is all through South Africa.

The law is therefore very strictly administered, and the penalty for a European selling liquor to a native is severe. It is practical prohibition, and a similar law has been enforced in the vast territories of the Chartered Company. Incidentally, it may be said that in the Colony of Natal the general native management approximates somewhat to the model of India. The tribal organization has been largely preserved, instead of being broken up, as it was in Cape Colony by Sir George Grey. The native ma.s.s was too great to be merged in the small white population. European Courts, mixed Courts of native and European Judges, and Courts composed of Kaffir chiefs alone, administer the law in a peculiar form which admits the validity of Kaffir custom and precedents and law--modified, of course, by Colonial statutes.

Order is maintained, and splendidly so, by a system of pa.s.ses and by a code of special police regulations applicable to natives alone.

Written permission from a magistrate must be obtained before a Kaffir can change his abode, and in the towns all natives must retire to their huts when curfew rings at nine o'clock. Registration of firearms is imperative, and the sale to natives is guarded by very strict enactments. Every native who is responsible for a hut has to pay a yearly tax of 14s., and this is very cheerfully done.

[Sidenote: The Liquor Laws]

Drunkenness amongst the Kaffirs of Natal is limited, as may be inferred from this sketch of their management. But in Cape Colony the natives are not nearly so well guarded from its evils--partly because of the aversion of the Dutch electorate to legislate in their behalf or to enforce laws of this kind when they are made; partly from the influence of the wine-growers and distillers, who naturally have something to say; partly, in general result, from the intermixture of lower races such as the Hottentot and Bushmen, and the creation of a type of negro and half-breed much inferior in parts of the Colony to the Kosa of the east or the Zulu of Natal. [Sidenote: Civil Rights and Qualifications]

In the important matter of civil rights there is a common feeling among all settlers of British origin in South Africa, as elsewhere in the Empire, that no color line should exist in the franchise--other things being reasonably equal. The qualification is, of course, vital, although the Dutch part of the community make no qualification or admission of equality in any way, shape or form, and were, for instance, greatly disgusted when, in 1895, Khama, the educated, Christianized and civilized Chief of the Bechuanas, was received in England with respect and consideration, and entertained by prominent personages. The principle of political equality is, however, firmly established in British South Africa. But, so far as the natives are concerned, the tribal system must be given up, and this debars the greater part of the population of Natal. In that Colony, also, a native must have lived for seven years exempt from tribal laws before he can share in the franchise under qualifications of the same kind as affect the white population. In Cape Colony there are similar conditions, with an added proviso that the would-be native voter must be able to sign his name and write his occupation and address.

[Sidenote: Native Suffrage]

Practically it is only at the Cape that the experiment of native suffrage has been fairly tried. In Jamaica it failed for various reasons, and in Natal it did not work when first tried, and at present has little more than a theoretical existence. In the eastern part of Cape Colony, which contains the chief native population--including the Kaffraria of earlier days and the Transkei region--a member of the Legislative Council is apportioned to mixed const.i.tuencies containing an average respectively of 227,000 colored people and 18,000 whites; and a member of the House of a.s.sembly is similarly given to every 56,000 natives and 4,500 whites.[4] There are, as yet, not very many const.i.tuencies where this colored vote is an important consideration.

The chief exceptions are to be found amongst the Malays in and around Cape Town, the Hottentots of the Kat River Settlement, and the Kaffirs at King Williamstown, Beaufort and Alice. But the number of voters is growing, and in the eastern part of the Colony their influence appears to be very good. The educated Kaffir is very unlike the educated Hindoo, who is apt to become a sort of skeptic in patriotism as well as in creed. He is intensely conservative in a natural fondness for land and aversion to change. He is also loyal in the extreme to the British inst.i.tutions from which his opportunities and position are derived; and in this respect has set an example of grat.i.tude worthy the appreciation of some more civilized peoples. Practically, he is an Imperialist, and one student of the subject has recently expressed a belief that the wiping out of the native vote in Cape Colony would mean the loss of eight or ten seats to the Progressive party in the a.s.sembly. Most instructive of all, and even more striking than the fact of their being adherents of Mr. Rhodes' advanced British policy, has been the support given by educated natives to measures presented to the Legislature for the prohibition of the sale of liquor to colored people--proposals defeated from time to time largely by the Afrikander vote. This is, indeed, a fitting statement to conclude a brief sketch of native history and development.

[4] Tables of Director of Census. Cape Town. 1891.

CHAPTER IX.

Character of the South African Boer.

[Sidenote: A Peculiar Type]

The Dutchmen of South Africa present in character and type one of the most peculiar racial results of all history. They came originally of a people who had proved its love of liberty and its faith in religion on many a well-fought field and in the pages of n.o.ble national annals.

Yet they did not carry their qualities with them to the new land in any sufficient measure to overcome surrounding influences of a pernicious nature. They were raised from the lowest cla.s.s in the home community and migrated practically for the wages offered them by the Dutch East India Company. In this respect the origin of the Colony was greatly different from that of New England, to which men of high character and earnest thought had migrated in order to obtain religious freedom; of Virginia, where men of the best English families and culture came in that adventurous spirit which has made the British Empire or the United States a present possibility; of French Canada, where Jesuits roamed the vast forests in a spirit of intense missionary zeal and where the scions of n.o.ble French families hunted in the wilderness of the West, or fought the Iroquois on the banks of the St. Lawrence; of English Canada, to which the United Empire Loyalists came from motives of loyalty to King and country.

[Sidenote: Their Religious Life]

As these Dutch settlers drifted into the Colony, over a period of a hundred years, they left every source of knowledge, refinement and high principle behind them. It is true they had their Bible. Upon its interpretation depended greatly their future development of character amid surroundings of absolute isolation, and it has been a permanent misfortune that they chose the natural view of narrow and ignorant men, and made their religious life one of practical devotion to the Old Testament dispensation in a most crude and sometimes cruel application.

Around them on all sides were the moral laxities of savage life, the dangerous powers of slavery, the looseness incident to any small population of whites in the midst of great numbers of ignorant and superst.i.tious natives. Their Government was intolerant in the extreme, they had no books or newspapers, they saw no intelligent visitors, and the naturally somewhat sombre character of the Dutchman developed under these conditions into a unique mixture of religious zeal, intolerant ignorance and qualified immorality. To this character was added the quality of undoubted bravery and into the general melting pot was thrown the further attributes, as time went on, of intense dislike and distrust of the Englishman and of absolute confidence and belief in themselves.

[Sidenote: Mixture of Huguenots and Dutch Culture]

The Huguenots, who joined the small Dutch population of 1689, brought a considerable element of culture and liberality of thought with them, but although many of the best families in Cape Colony, and South Africa generally, to-day trace their descent from these settlers, the effect upon the scattered ma.s.ses of the people was very slight. The distinctive language and religion and culture to a large extent disappeared under laws which enforced uniformity and in time merged the Frenchman in the Boer. Of course, the influence was to some extent a good one and it yet dwells on the surface of affairs in such names as De Villiers and Joubert, Du Plessis and Le Seuer, or their local corruptions. A more potent factor in this evolution of character was the solitary nature of the settler's life. [Sidenote: Boer and American Colonist] Pioneers on the American continent were often alone with their families for a time in some advanced frontier location, but it was not usually a continuous isolation. As the years pa.s.sed on other families joined them, settlements grew rapidly, and with these villages came the various amenities of social and civilized life. But the Boer seemed to catch from the wandering savages around him something of the spirit of their roaming life, and in this he was encouraged by the nature of his occupation and by the Government regulations, which simply charged him rental for three thousand acres of grazing ground without confining him to any specific location. He did not carve his farm out of some primeval forest, build a permanent home for his family on his own land, or cultivate the soil with the strenuous labor of his hands. During the century in which his racial type was developing the Dutch settler moved from point to point with his cattle in accordance with the season and the pasture, and lived an almost nomadic life. His covered wagon was to him what the wigwam has been to the savage of the American continent, while his skill in shooting held a somewhat similar place to that of the bow and arrow in Indian economy. Hence the accentuation of his intellectual narrowness by continued isolation and the strengthening of the physical frame at the expense of mental power.

[Sidenote: Boer Characteristics]

As the years pa.s.sed on, however, and settlement increased; as the effects of English administration and laws were felt more and more throughout the regions owning the authority of the Cape Government; as, unfortunately, the growing inroads of the Kaffirs and their continuous raids made combination necessary amongst the Dutch farmers; as villages grew more numerous and occasional schools were to be found in the communities; some modification of these personal conditions might have been expected. Amongst the Dutch farmers of Cape Colony changes of this kind did occur. They adopted some of the customs of civilization, they lost a part of the more intense Boer narrowness and ignorance of the past, they developed a qualified interest in education of a racial character, they lived upon terms of slightly freer intercourse with their neighbors of both races, they had drilled into them a wholesome respect for the law and a more humane, or, at any rate, legal view of the natives position. But to the emigrant farmers of Natal, of the Orange River and the Vaal, these modifications of character were long indeed in coming, and to a great ma.s.s of them have never come at all.

In their main pursuits the Boers of all South Africa are the same--owners of cattle and horses and dwellers upon ranches as widely separated from each other as conditions of population and law will permit. Of course, in Cape Colony and Natal, there are town and village Dutchmen sufficient to const.i.tute a small cla.s.s by themselves; and the slow-spreading influence of a persistent educational system is having its effect in other directions; while the natural increase of population has been doing its work in lessening the isolation of the farmers. So to some extent in the Orange Free State. Physically and mentally, however, the Dutch farmer is much the same everywhere in South Africa--tall, raw-boned, awkward in manner, slow of speech, fond of hunting whenever and wherever possible, accustomed to the open air, lazy as regards work, but active in pursuits involving personal pleasure. Especially has this latter quality been apparent in such amus.e.m.e.nts as war with the natives, or the English, or in predatory excursions into alien territory and the shooting of big game.

[Sidenote: Livingstone's Description of the Boers]