Native Races and the War Part 2

"Stayers at home, as we Frenchmen are, forming our opinions from newspapers whose editors know no more than ourselves what goes on in foreign countries, we too willingly see in the British nation an egotistical and rapacious people, thinking of nothing but the extension of their commerce and the prosperity of their industry. We are apt to pretend that their philanthropic enterprises and religious works are a mere hypocrisy. Courage is absolutely needed in order to affirm, at the risk of exciting the indignation of our _soi-disant_ patriots, that although England knows perfectly well how to take care of her commercial interests in her colonies, she knows equally well how to pre-occupy and occupy herself with the moral interests of the people whom she places by agreement or by force under the sceptre of her Queen.

Those who have seen and who know, have the duty of saying to those who have not seen, and who cannot, or who do not desire to see, and who do not know, that these two currents flowing from the British nation,--the one commercial and the other philanthropic,--are equally active amongst the uncivilized nations of Africa, and that if one wishes to find colonies in which exist real and complete liberty of conscience, where the education and moralisation of the natives are the object of serious concern, drawing largely upon the budget of the metropolis, it is always and above all in English possessions that you must look for them.

"Under the domination of the Boers, Lessuto would have been devoted to destruction, to ignorance, and to semi-slavery. Under the English regime reign security and progress. Lessuto became a territory reserved solely for its native proprietors, the sale of strong liquors was prohibited, and the schools received generous subvention. Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, French and English Missionaries, could then enjoy the most absolute liberty in order to spread, each one in his own manner, and in the measure in which he possessed it, evangelic truth.

"It is for this reason that the French missionaries feared to see the Basutos fall under the Boers' yoke, and that they hailed with joy the intervention of the English Government in their field of work, hoping and expecting for the missionary work the happiest fruits. Their hope has not been deceived by the results."

The clash of opposing principles, and even the violence of party feeling continued to send its echoes to the far regions of South Africa, confusing the minds of the various populations there, and preventing any real coherence and continuity in our Government of that great Colony. A good and successful Administrator has sometimes been withdrawn to be superseded by another, equally well-intentioned, perhaps, but whose policy was on wholly different lines, thus undoing the work of his predecessor. This has introduced not only confusion, but sometimes an appearance of real injustice into our management of the colony. In all this chequered history, the interests of the native races have been too often postponed to those of the ruling races. This was certainly the case in connexion with Mr. Gladstone's well-intentioned act in giving back to the Transvaal its independent government.

It has been an anxious question for many among us whether this source of vacillation, with its attendant misfortunes, is to continue in the future.

The early history of the South African Colony has become, by this time, pretty well known by means of the numberless books lately written on the subject. I will only briefly recapitulate here a few of the princ.i.p.al facts, these being, in part, derived from the annals and reports of the Aborigines Protection Society, which may be considered impartial, seeing that that Society has had a keen eye at all times for the faults of British colonists and the British Government, while constrained, as a truthful recorder, to publish the offences of other peoples and Governments. I have also constantly referred to Parliamentary papers, and the words of accredited historians and travellers.

The first attempt at a regular settlement by the Dutch at the Cape was made by Jan Van Riebeck, in 1652, for the convenience of the trading vessels of the Netherlands East India Company, pa.s.sing from Europe to Asia. Almost from the first these colonists were involved in quarrels with the natives, which furnished excuse for appropriating their lands and making slaves of them. The intruders stole the natives' cattle, and the natives' efforts to recover their property were denounced by Van Riebeck as "a matter most displeasing to the Almighty, when committed by such as they." Apologising to his employers in Holland for his show of kindness to one group of natives, Van Riebeck wrote: "This we only did to make them less shy, so as to find hereafter a better opportunity to seize them--1,100 or 1,200 in number, and about 600 cattle, the best in the whole country. We have every day the finest opportunities for effecting this without bloodshed, and could derive good service from the people, _in chains_, in killing seals or in labouring in the silver mines which we trust will be found here."

The Netherlands Company frequently deprecated such acts of treachery and cruelty, and counselled moderation. Their protests however were of no avail. The mischief had been done. The unhappy natives, with whom lasting friends.h.i.+p might have been established by fair treatment, had been converted into enemies; and the ruthless punishment inflicted on them for each futile effort to recover some of the property stolen from them, had rendered inevitable the continuance and constant extension of the strife all through the five generations of Dutch rule, and furnished cogent precedent for like action afterwards,[7] After 1652, Colonists of the baser sort kept arriving in cargoes, and gradually the Netherlands Company allowed persons not of their own nation to land and settle under severe fiscal and other restrictions. Among these were a number of French Huguenots, good men, driven from their homes by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1690. Then Flemings, Germans, Poles, and others constantly swelled the ranks. All these Europeans were forced to submit to the arbitrary rules of the Netherlands Company's agents, scarcely at all restrained from Amsterdam. Unofficial residents, known as Burghers, came to be admitted to share in the management of affairs. It was for their benefit chiefly, that as soon as the Hottentots were found to be unworkable as slaves, Negroes from West Africa and Malays from the East Indies began to be imported for the purpose. In 1772, when the settlement was a hundred and twenty years old, and had been in what was considered working order for a century, Cape Town and its suburbs had a population of 1,963 officials and servants of the Company, 4,628 male and 3,750 female colonists, and 8,335 slaves. In these figures no account is taken of the Hottentots and others employed in menial capacities, nor of the black prisoners, among whom, in 1772, a Swedish traveller saw 950 men, women, and children of the Bushman race, who had been captured about a hundred and fifty miles from Cape Town in a war brought about by encroachment on their lands.[8]

The Aborigines Protection Society endorses the following statement of Sparrman (visit to the Cape of Good Hope, 1786, Vol. II, p. 165,) who says, "The Slave business, that violent outrage against the natural rights of man, which is always a crime and leads to all manner of wickedness, is exercised by the Colonists with a cruelty that merits the abhorrence of everyone, though I have been told that they pique themselves upon it; and not only is the capture of the Hottentots considered by them merely as a party of pleasure, but in cold blood they destroy the bands which nature has knit between husband and wife, and between parents and their children. Does a Colonist at any time get sight of a Bushman, he takes fire immediately, and spirits up his horse and dogs, in order to hunt him with more ardour and fury than he would a wolf or any other wild beast.".

"I am far from accusing all the colonists," he continues, "of these cruelties, which are too frequently committed. While some of them plumed themselves upon them, there were many who, on the contrary, held them in abomination, and feared lest the vengeance of Heaven should, for all their crimes, fall upon their posterity."

The inability of the Amsterdam authorities to control the filibustering zeal of the colonists rendered it easy for the people at the Cape to establish among themselves, in 1793, what purported to be an independent Republic. One of their proclamations contained the following resolution, aimed especially at the efforts of the missionaries--most of whom were then Moravians--to save the natives from utter ruin: "We will not permit any Moravians to live here and instruct the Hottentots; for, as there are many Christians who receive no instruction, it is not proper that the Hottentots should be taught; they must remain in the same state as before. Hottentots born on the estate of a farmer must live there, and serve him until they are twenty-five years old, before they receive any wages. All Bushmen or wild Hottentots caught by us must remain slaves for life."[9]

I have given these facts of more than a hundred years ago to show for how long a time the traditions of the usefulness and lawfulness of Slavery had been engrained in the minds of the Dutch settlers. We ought not, perhaps, to censure too severely the Boer proclivities in favour of that ancient inst.i.tution, nor to be surprised if it should be a work of time, accompanied with severe Providential chastis.e.m.e.nt, to uproot that fixed idea from the minds of the present generation, of Boer descent.

The sin of enslaving their fellow-men may perhaps be reckoned, for them, among the "sins of ignorance." Nevertheless, the Recording Angel has not failed through all these generations to mark the woes of the slaves; and the historic vengeance, which sooner or later infallibly follows a century or centuries of the violation of the Divine Law and of human rights, will not be postponed or averted even by a late repentance on the part of the transgressors. It is striking to note how often in history the sore judgment of oppressors has fallen (in this world), not on those who were first in the guilt, but on their successors, just as they were entering on an amended course of "ceasing to do evil and learning to do well."

In 1795, Cape Town was formally ceded by the Prince of Orange to Great Britain, as an incident of the great war with France, for which, six million pounds sterling was paid by Great Britain to Holland. British supremacy was formally recognized in this part of South Africa by a Convention signed in 1814, which was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris in 1815.

British rule for some thirty years after 1806 was perforce despotic, but for the most part, with some exceptions, it was a benevolent despotism.

"They had the difficult task of controlling a straggling white community, at first almost exclusively composed of Boers, who had been too st.u.r.dy and stubborn to tolerate any effective interference by the Netherlands Company and other authorities in Holland, and who resented both English domination and the advent of English colonists which more than doubled the white population in less than two decades." "The Governors sent out from Downing Street had tasks imposed upon them which were beyond the powers of even the wisest and worthiest. Most of the English colonists found it easier to fall in with the thoughts and habits of the Boers than to uphold the purer traditions of life and conduct in the mother country, and it is not strange that many of the officials should have been in like case."[10]

Great Britain abolished the Slave Trade in 1807, which prevented the further importation of Slaves, and the traffic in them.

The great Emanc.i.p.ation Act, by which Great Britain abolished Slavery in all lands over which she had control, was pa.s.sed in 1834.

The great grievance for the Burghers was this abolition of slavery by Great Britain. According to a Parliamentary Return of March, 1838, the slaves of all sorts liberated in Cape Colony numbered 35,750. The British Parliament awarded as compensation to the slave owners throughout the British dominions a sum of 20,000,000, of which, nearly 1,500,000 fell to the share of the Burghers. Concerning this Act of Compensation there have been very divided opinions; there is not a doubt that the British Government intended to deal fairly by the former slave owners, but it is stated that there was great and culpable carelessness on the part of the British agents in distributing this compensation money. It seems that many of the Burghers to whom it was due never obtained it, and these considered themselves aggrieved and defrauded by the British Government. On the other hand, there are persons who have continually disapproved of the principle of compensation for a wrong given up, or the loss of an advantage unrighteously purchased. It is however to be regretted, that an excuse should have been given for the Boers' complaints by irregularities attributed to the British in the part.i.tion of the compensation money.

It has often been a.s.serted that the first great Dutch emigration from the Cape was instigated simply by love of freedom on their part, and their dislike of British Government. But why did they dislike British Government? There may have been minor reasons, but the one great grievance complained of by themselves, from the first, was the abolition of slavery. They desired to be free to deal with the natives in their own manner.

Taking with them their household belongings and as much cattle as they could collect, they went forth in search of homes in which they hoped they would be no longer controlled, and as they thought, sorely wronged by the nation which had invaded their Colony. But they did not all trek; only about half, it was estimated, did so. The rest remained, finding it possible to live and prosper without slavery.

They crossed the Orange River, and finally trekked beyond the Vaal.

From 1833, Cape Colony, under British rule, began to be endowed with representative inst.i.tutions. In 1854, the Magna Charta of the Hottentots, as it was called, was created. It was a measure of remarkable liberality. "It conferred on all Hottentots and other free persons of colour lawfully residing in the Colony, the right to become burghers, and to exercise and enjoy all the privileges of burghers.h.i.+p.

It enabled them to acquire land and other property. It exempted them from any compulsory service to which other subjects of the Crown were not liable, and from 'any hindrance, molestation, fine, imprisonment or other punishment' not awarded to them after trial in due course of law, 'any custom or usage to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding.' Among other provisions it was stipulated that wages should no longer be paid to them in liquor or tobacco, and that, in the event of a servant having reasonable ground of complaint against his master for ill-usage, and not being able to bear the expense of a summons, one should be issued to him free of charge. By this ordinance a stop was put, as far as the law could be enforced, to the bondage, other than admitted and legalized slavery, by which through nearly two centuries the Dutch farmers and others had oppressed the natives whom they had deprived of their lands."[11]

The Boers who had trekked resented every attempt at interference with them on the part of the Cape Government with a view to their acceptance of such principles of British Government as are expressed above. Wearied by its hopeless efforts to restore order among the emigrant farmers, the British Government abandoned the task, and contented itself with the arrangement made with Andries Pretorius, in 1852, called the Sand River Convention. This Convention conceded to "the emigrant farmers beyond the Vaal River" "the right to manage their own affairs and to govern themselves, without any interference on the part of Her Majesty the Queen's Government." It was stipulated, however, that "no slavery is or shall be permitted or practised in the country to the north of the Vaal River by the emigrant farmers." This stipulation has been made in every succeeding Convention down to that of 1884. These Conventions have been regularly agreed to and signed by successive Boer Leaders, and have been as regularly and successively violated.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: South Africa, Past and Present (1899), by n.o.ble.]

[Footnote 6: Adolphe Mabille, Published in Paris, 1898.]

[Footnote 7: These and other details which follow are taken from Dutch official papers, giving a succinct account of the treatment of the natives between 1649 and 1809. These papers were translated from the Dutch by Lieut. Moodie (1838). See Moodie's "_Record_."]

[Footnote 8: Thunberg. "Travels in Europe, Africa, and Asia, between 1770 and 1779."]

[Footnote 9: Sir John Barrow (Travels in South Africa, 1806.) Vol ii. p.

165.]

[Footnote 10: Mr. Fox Bourne, Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society.]

[Footnote 11: Parliamentary paper quoted by Mr. Fox Bourne. "Black and White," page 18.]

III.

DR. LIVINGSTONE'S EXPERIENCES IN THE TRANSVAAL AND IN SURROUNDING NATIVE DISTRICTS. LETTER OF DR. MOFFAT IN 1877. LETTER OF HIS SON, REV. J. MOFFAT, 1899. REPORT OF M. DIETERLEN TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE MISSIONS' EVANGeLIQUES OF PARIS.

The following is an extract from the "Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa," of the venerable pioneer, David Livingstone.[12]

"An adverse influence with which the mission had to contend was the vicinity of the Boers of the Cashan Mountains,[13] otherwise named 'Magaliesberg.' These are not to be confounded with the Cape Colonists, who sometimes pa.s.s by the name. The word 'Boer,' simply means 'farmer,'

and is not synonymous with our word boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. Those, however, who have fled from English Law on various pretexts, and have been joined by English deserters, and every other variety of bad character in their distant localities, are unfortunately of a very different stamp. The great objection many of the Boers had, and still have, to English law, is that it makes no distinction between black men and white. They felt aggrieved by their supposed losses in the emanc.i.p.ation of their Hottentot slaves, and determined to erect themselves into a republic, in which they might pursue, without molestation, the 'proper treatment' of the blacks. It is almost needless to add, that the 'proper treatment'

has always contained in it the essential element of slavery, namely, compulsory unpaid labour.

"One section of this body, under the late Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter, penetrated the interior as far as the Cashan Mountains, whence a Zulu chief, named Mosilikatze, had been expelled by the well known Kaffir Dingaan, and a glad welcome was given these Boers by the Bechuana tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway of that cruel chieftain. They came with the prestige of white men and deliverers; but the Bechuanas soon found, as they expressed it, 'that Mosilikatze was cruel to his enemies, and kind to those he conquered; but that the Boers destroyed their enemies, and made slaves of their friends." The tribes who still retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the labour of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping, building, making dams and ca.n.a.ls, and at the same time to support themselves. I have myself been an eye-witness of Boers coming to a village, and according to their usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty women to weed their gardens, and have seen these women proceed to the scene of unrequited toil, carrying their own food on their heads, their children on their backs, and instruments of labour on their shoulders.

Nor have the Boers any wish to conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid labour; on the contrary, every one of them, from Mr. Potgeiter and Mr. Gert Kruger, the commandants, downwards, lauded his own humanity and justice in making such an equitable regulation. 'We make the people work for us, in consideration of allowing them to live in our country.'

"I can appeal to the Commandant Kruger if the foregoing is not a fair and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. I am sensible of no mental bias towards or against these Boers; and during the several journeys I made to the poor enslaved tribes, I never avoided the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick, without money and without price. It is due to them to state that I was invariably treated with respect; but it is most unfortunate that they should have been left by their own Church for so many years to deteriorate and become as degraded as the blacks, whom the stupid prejudice against colour leads them to detest.

"This new species of slavery which they have adopted serves to supply the lack of field labour only. The demand for domestic servants must be met by forays on tribes which have good supplies of cattle. The Portuguese can quote instances in which blacks become so degraded by the love of strong drink as actually to sell themselves; but never in any one case, within the memory of man, has a Bechuana Chief sold any of his people, or a Bechuana man his child. Hence the necessity for a foray to seize children. And those individual Boers who would not engage in it for the sake of slaves, can seldom resist the twofold plea of a well-told story of an intended uprising of the devoted tribe, and the prospect of handsome pay in the division of captured cattle besides. It is difficult for a person in a civilized country to conceive that any body of men possessing the common attributes of humanity, (and these Boers are by no means dest.i.tute of the better feelings of our nature,) should with one accord set out, after loading their own wives and children with caresses, and proceed to shoot down in cold blood, men and women of a different colour, it is true, but possessed of domestic feelings and affections equal to their own. I saw and conversed with children in the houses of Boers who had by their own and their master's account been captured, and in several instances I traced the parents of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the long-headed among the burghers is to take children so young that they soon forget their parents and their native language also. It was long before I could give credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I received no other testimony but theirs, I should probably have continued sceptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when I found the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in the b.l.o.o.d.y scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, I was compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for the cruel anomaly. They are all traditionally religious, tracing their descent from some of the best men (Huguenots and Dutch) the world ever saw. Hence they claim to themselves the t.i.tle of 'Christians,' and all the coloured race are 'black property' or 'creatures.' They being the chosen people of G.o.d, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance, and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the Jews of old.

"Living in the midst of a native population much larger than themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they feel somewhat in the same insecure position as do the Americans in the Southern States. The first question put by them to strangers is respecting peace; and when they receive reports from disaffected or envious natives against any tribe, the case a.s.sumes all the appearance and proportions of a regular insurrection. Severe measures then appear to the most mildly disposed among them as imperatively called for, and, however b.l.o.o.d.y the ma.s.sacre that follows, no qualms of conscience ensue: it is a dire necessity for the sake of peace. Indeed, the late Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter most devoutly believed himself to be the great peace-maker of the country.

"But how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to the Boers, do not rise and annihilate them? The people among whom they live are Bechuanas, not Kaffirs, though no one would ever learn that distinction from a Boer; and history does not contain one single instance in which the Bechuanas, even those of them who possess firearms, have attacked either the Boers or the English. If there is such an instance, I am certain it is not generally known, either beyond or in the Cape Colony. They have defended themselves when attacked, as in the case of Sechele, but have never engaged in offensive war with Europeans. We have a very different tale to tell of the Kaffirs, and the difference has always been so evident to these border Boers that, ever since 'those magnificent savages,' (the Kaffirs,) obtained possession of firearms, not one Boer has ever attempted to settle in Kaffirland, or even face them as an enemy in the field. The Boers have generally manifested a marked antipathy to anything but 'long-shot' warfare, and, sidling away in their emigrations towards the more effeminate Bechuanas, they have left their quarrels with the Kaffirs to be settled by the English, and their wars to be paid for by English gold.

"The Bechuanas at Kolobeng had the spectacle of various tribes enslaved before their eyes;--the Bakatla, the Batlo'kua, the Bahukeng, the Bamosetla, and two other tribes of Bechuanas, were all groaning under the oppression of unrequited labour. This would not have been felt as so great an evil, but that the young men of those tribes, anxious to obtain cattle, the only means of rising to respectability and importance among their own people, were in the habit of sallying forth, like our Irish and Highland reapers, to procure work in the Cape Colony. After labouring there three or four years, in building stone d.y.k.es and dams for the Dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time they could return with as many cows. On presenting one to the chief, they ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterwards. These volunteers were highly esteemed among the Dutch, under the name of Mantatees. They were paid at the rate of one s.h.i.+lling a day, and a large loaf of bread among six of them. Numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, recognised me with the loud laughter of joy when I was pa.s.sing them at their work in the Roggefelt and Bokkefelt, within a few days of Cape Town. I conversed with them, and with Elders of the Dutch Church, for whom they were working, and found that the system was thoroughly satisfactory to both parties. I do not believe that there is a Boer, in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country, who would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labour pa.s.sing to the Colony, to deprive these labourers of their hardly-earned cattle, for the very urgent reason that, "if they want to work, let them work for us, their masters," though boasting that in their case their work would not be paid.

"I can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that I was not born in a land of slaves. No one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of the slave system on the minds of those who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, would be equal in virtue to ourselves."

After giving his experience of eight years in Sechele's country, in Bechua.n.a.land, Livingstone continues:--"During that time, no winter pa.s.sed without one or two of the tribes in the east country being plundered of both cattle and children by the Boers. The plan pursued is the following: one or two friendly tribes are forced to accompany a party of mounted Boers. When they reach the tribe to be attacked, the friendly natives are ranged in front, to form, as they say, 'a s.h.i.+eld;'

the Boers then coolly fire over their heads till the devoted people flee and leave cattle, wives and children to their captors. This was done in nine cases during my residence in the interior, and on no occasion was a drop of Boer's blood shed. News of these deeds spread quickly among the Bechuanas, and letters were repeatedly sent by the Boers to Sechele, ordering him to come and surrender himself as their va.s.sal, and stop English traders from proceeding into the country. But the discovery of lake Ngami, hereafter to be described, made the traders come in five-fold greater numbers, and Sechele replied, 'I was made an independent chief and placed here by G.o.d, and not by you. I was never conquered by Mosilikatze, as those tribes whom you rule over; and the English are my friends; I get everything I wish from them; I cannot hinder them from going where they like.' Those who are old enough to remember the threatened invasion of our own island, may understand the effect which the constant danger of a Boer invasion had on the minds of the Bechuanas; but no others can conceive how worrying were the messages and threats from the endless self-const.i.tuted authorities of the Magaliesberg Boers, and when to all this hara.s.sing annoyance was added the scarcity produced by the drought, we could not wonder at, though we felt sorry for, their indisposition to receive instruction.