This little volume consists of the letters I wrote from Bulawayo,
Johannesburg and Pretoria for the journal _South Africa_, which is
exclusively devoted to matters relating to the region whence it derives
its title. Each letter contains the researches of a week. As the
public had already a sufficiency of books dealing with the history,
geography, politics, raids and revolts, I confined myself to such
impressions as one, who since 1867 had been closely connected with
equatorial, northern and western Africa, might derive from a first view
of the interior of South Africa. Being in no way associated with any
political or pecuniary concern relating to the country, it struck me
that my open-minded, disinterested and fresh impressions might be of
some interest to others, who like myself had only a general sympathy
with its civilisation and commercial development. And as I had
necessarily to qualify myself for appearing in a journal which had for
years treated of South African subjects, it involved much personal
inquiry and careful consideration of facts communicated to roe, and an
impartial weighing of their merits. To this motive, whatever may be the
value of what I have written, I am greatly indebted personally; for
henceforth I must carry with me for a long time a valuable kind of
knowledge concerning the colonies and states I traversed, which no
number of books could have given to me.
If, from my point of judgment, I differ in any way from other writers,
all I care to urge is, that I have had some experience of my own in
several new lands like the South African interior, and I have lived long
enough to have seen the effects of what was good and what was bad policy
in them. I prefer peaceful relations between England and the Boers of
South Africa, if possible; I love what is just, fair, and best to and
for both Britons and Boers. I naturally admire large-minded enterprise.
I pity narrow-mindedness, and dislike to see a people refusing to
advance, when all the world is so sympathetic and helpfully inclined
towards them. These explanations, I think, will enable anyone to
understand the spirit of these letters.
A curious thing occurred in connection with my sudden departure for
South Africa. In the latter part of September, 1897, I was debating
with my family, at a seaside hotel near Dieppe, as to the place we
should visit after the adjournment of Parliament in 1898. After
discussing the merits of many suggestions, it was finally determined
that we should all try South Africa, because it was said to have such a
divine climate; the country was, moreover, so interesting politically,
and as it loomed so much in public interest it would be worth while to
obtain some personal knowledge of South Africans at home. We had
scarcely arrived at this conclusion, when the postman brought to us a
telegram, which, to our intense surprise, was a request from the
Bulawayo Festivities Committee that I would go to Bulawayo to attend the
celebration of the arrival of the Great Peninsular Railway at the
Capital of Matabele Land. We regarded it as a strange coincidence.
This opportunity to visit Bulawayo I considered rather premature, as
towards the end of autumn many engagements crowd upon one, but after
another animated family council it was resolved that I should accept the
invitation were it only to qualify myself as a pioneer for the ladies.
We left Southampton on the _Norman_ on the 9th October. I found then
that there were five other members of the House of Commons on board--
Messrs. Saunderson, Llewellyn, Hayes Fisher, Peace, and Paullton, and
the Duke of Roxburghe representing the House of Lords. Among the
passengers there were Boers from Pretoria and Cape Colony, British
Uitlanders from Johannesburg, English residents from the Cape and the
two Dutch Republics, Afrikander farmers and vine-growers, and
townspeople, some from the Cape District, others from the Eastern and
Western Provinces, and not a few from Kimberley and Natal, besides a few
ex-Raiders and Reformers. As may be imagined, there was no lack of
instructive material, and naturally much divergence of political
opinion. The smoking-room soon become like a debating club, but,
notwithstanding the frankness and partisan character of the debates, the
good temper with which each person delivered himself of his opinions was
most astonishing.
From the Boers and Afrikanders I heard not one favourable remark about
England, but all indulged in banter and irony, to prove that argument
with them was of no avail. So extreme was their dislike that they even
said "English servants and clerks are of no use, and they are most
unreliable, as for instance," and here followed incidents to prove what
they said. While the English were false and could not be trusted, it
was said that the Germans were "good" in the colonial sense, and made
the best citizens. They were industrious and thrifty, and their
improved condition did not alter their habits. The indenturing of the
Bechuana rebels was a subject upon which much was said on both sides.
But a Boer's way of putting it was characteristic. "England, you say,
considers it illegal. Ah, well, the English know nothing of the matter,
and what they say don't count. Rose-Innes, however, ought to have known
better. Had he been asked by a Cape farmer whether, to keep the rebels
from starving, we should give them work to do for wages, Rose-Innes
would have said, `It is a good thing, and the best that can be done for
them;' but with the view of forming a party against the Government, of
course, he denounces indenturing as illegal and iniquitous." I have
cited these extracts to show the process of how we became initiated into
South African politics.
The treatment of natives by the Rhodesian Government was, according to
the general opinion of Cape people, more liberal than they deserved, and
such as any white colonist of no matter what country would approve. It
was said, "Why, if we were to be governed by what these sentimental
English societies--referring to the A.P.S.--think is right, we should
have to abandon Africa altogether, for neither our lives nor property
would be safe. Law-abiding men and lawless natives cannot live together
unless one or the other is compelled to, and as we have taken the
country and intend to live in it, common sense tells us that the natives
must submit to the same law under which we must live."
The greatest majority by far denounced the Raid, and yet everyone spoke
kindly of the personality of Dr Jameson. A gentleman from the Eastern
Province informed me that the Jameson family has suffered greatly in
public estimation. One of the brothers who lived at King Williamstown
had felt himself obliged to leave the Province and return to England,
and if the Doctor succeeded in being elected to the Cape Parliament, it
was said he would be certain to meet with much unpleasantness.
I believe there were 1,097 souls on board the _Norman_ on this voyage.
The noise was therefore terrific and continuous, and if any of the
weaker constitutions suffered as much as I did through want of sleep and
rest, they must on arrival at Cape Town have been in a pitiable state.
Above and below it was perpetual unrest and uproar. Though large and
beautiful, these Cape steamers are badly designed internally, and the
cabins are extremely small, and so arranged that a passenger is subject
to the caprices of his neighbours on either side. My neighbours were
unfortunately quite ignorant of the meaning of the word "considerate."
When an Ismay, such as he who reformed the Anglo-American service,
becomes interested in the passenger traffic to the Cape, he will find a
multitude of little things to improve. On returning to England, I found
the S.S. _Moor_ much superior for passenger accommodation.
The inconveniences arising from an overcrowded steamer are too many to
be disposed of in a paragraph, but it is enough to say that I was
uncommonly glad when the voyage was ended, and I was free to seek a
hotel.
It must impress anyone who takes a sympathetic interest in what he sees
in South Africa, that in some things the country is far behind New
Zealand, Tasmania, or any of the Australian Colonies. It is more
backward than any of them in its hotels. There are, within my
knowledge, only three hotels in all South Africa to which I would
venture to recommend a lady to go. South Africans, of course, are able
to endure anything, and as the Veld is comparatively but a step from
most towns, any place that offers a decent lodging must be regarded by
the men at least as infinitely superior to an ox-wagon, a zinc hut, or a
farm shed. But I am thinking more of the effect such hotels as those of
Cape Town must have on people from Europe. This city, which is the
capital of Cape Colony, contains a population of about 52,000, exclusive
of the suburbs, but it does not possess a single hotel that would bear
comparison with those of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Auckland,
Christchurch or Dunedin. The very best is only just suited for
commercial travellers, who must needs be satisfied with whatever may
offer. The suburbs, however, which are peopled by about 32,000--and it
is well that invalids and tourists should remember it--contain hotels
where rest and quiet may be found, in the midst of oak and fir groves
and scenes of surpassing beauty. No city that I know of in our colonies
possesses superior suburbs. They are simply lovely. They are stretched
along the base of Table Mountain, and an entire day's carriage-drive
would not exhaust the exquisite beauty for which the suburbs of Cape
Town are famed.
Cape Colony possesses three valuable assets, which seem to me to have
received scant attention. A traveller who has visited Southern
California and Arizona will understand immediately he visits South
Africa what fortunes might be made of the waste land, the rainfall, and
the glorious climate with which Nature has blessed it. The land is
unworthily despised, the rainfall is allowed to waste itself in thirsty
sands deep down beneath the level of hungry plains, while the climate
does not seem to have suggested to any capitalist that a revenue
superior to that obtained from the Main Reef at Johannesburg might be
drawn from it. The leaders of South African enterprise appear all
absorbed in diamonds, gold mines, or dynamite.
If I were to follow the authorities of Worsfold in his "South Africa,"
pages 126, 127, I should have to admit that this indifference to the
land, the rainfall and climate, is due to the Boers. Captain Percival,
in 1796, a hundred years ago, wrote:--
"The Dutch farmers never assist the soil by flooding; their only labour
is sowing the seed, leaving the rest to chance and the excellent
climate."
"No part of the world has had its natural advantages so abused as the
Cape of Good Hope. The very minds and dispositions of the settlers
interfere with every plan of improvement and public utility."
It may be that the Boers do cling to old-fashioned ideas somewhat more
tenaciously than they ought to do; but they cannot possibly interfere
with capitalists uniting to build up-to-date hotels on the most
salubrious and scenic sites in Cape Colony, and beautifying their
neighbourhoods with shade trees and gardens, so that the thousands of
invalids who throng the watering-places and hydros of Europe, endure the
snows of Davos, and the winter of the Engadine, might be tempted to try
the Karroo of the Colony. They did not interfere with John D. Logan
when he bought 100,000 acres of the Karroo at Matjesfontein and
proceeded to turn it to remunerative account. They do not object to
private companies or individuals making irrigation works, or planting
groves, which thrive so wonderfully; and as Cape Colony has been British
for over ninety years, it is rather hard that the Boers should bear all
the blame.
Now the Cape Government may well plead guilty to having left many things
undone which they ought to have done. I sincerely believe that the time
will come when the climate, which has the quality of making old men
young, and the consumptive strong, will become universally known and
appreciated; but to attract invalids from the crowded Riviera and
Switzerland, visitors must not be lodged in third-rate hotels, near
noisy tram-lines, and fed on tinned meats.
I was about concluding this preface, when a South African appeared at my
house and drew my attention to the Scriptural quotation in my
Johannesburg letter--"It is expedient that one man should die for many,"
and begged me to make my meaning clear. I read the paragraph over
again, and as I see that to a wilfully contentious mind it might be
construed into a meaning very different to what I intended, I will try
to make it clearer.
Certain Johannesburgers at the Club had related to us the story of the
various efforts they had made to obtain their political rights, and the
reforms which were needed to work their mines profitably; and after they
had finished, I replied that everyone was well aware of the
demonstrations, mass-meetings, speeches, petitions to Kruger, menaces,
Jameson's Raid, and so on, and they themselves had just informed me how
often they had yielded to bribery of officials, and yet withal they
confessed they were not a whit further advanced. Their position had not
been bettered, but was somewhat worse. "The corrective of it all," I
said, "seems to me to lie in the Scriptural verse, `it is expedient that
one man should die for many.' There is a vast mass of sympathy in
England with you, but it is inert and inactive. To make that sympathy a
living force in your behalf, it must be proved that you are in earnest,
that nothing sordid lies behind this dissatisfaction. You must prove
that you have a cause for which you are willing to suffer, even to the
death. You say that you can do nothing without arms. You do not need
any arms that I see. If you fight with weapons, you will be overcome,
and I do not think your defeat will excite great sympathy. But if it be
true that the impositions on you are intolerable, your taxes heavy, the
claims of Government extortionate, and the demands excessive, why submit
to them? It seems to me that if you were all united in the
determination to pay no more of these claims, taxes and bribes, and
folded your arms and dared them to do their worst, that Kruger must
either yield or proceed to compulsion of some kind. He would probably
confiscate your property, or put you in prison or banish you. Whatever
he does that is violent and tyrannical will cause such an explosion of
opinion that will prove to you all that England does not forget her
children. No cause was ever won without suffering, and I am afraid that
your cause, however good it may be, cannot be won without sacrifice and
suffering of some kind. The leader of any movement is sure to be the
object of a tyrant's hate, and the leader or leaders of your cause ought
not to venture in it without being prepared to suffer and endure
whatever ills may follow."
Having explained the Scriptural quotation at the request of others, I
now proceed to be more definite in my own behalf with regard to the
statement in the same letter, that "we cannot interfere until we know
what Johannesburg has resolved upon doing."
A gentleman present said that, during his recent visit to London, an
English statesman asked him, "What would be the effect of sending 30,000
British troops to the Transvaal." Whereupon he answered that he would
be the first man who would take up his rifle against them.
This gentleman was an Englishman by birth. He had been the loudest and
the most eloquent against the British Government for their disregard of
the rights guaranteed by the Convention of 1884, he knew as well as
anyone present the tenour of the despatches that had been exchanged
between the British Government and the Transvaal Republic, and was
perfectly acquainted with the patient and continuous efforts the
Colonial Office had made to obtain a just consideration for the
grievances of the Uitlanders. It was obvious to us that, if a British
statesman had asked such a question, it must have been with the view of
knowing--if diplomacy failed--what result would follow the final attempt
to induce Kruger to listen to reason. From the shock this declaration
from such a prominent Uitlander gave me and a colleague of mine, we
understood what the feelings of the statesman referred to must have
been, and we had no option left than to suppose the Uitlanders, despite
all their clamour and affected indignation against the Transvaal
Government, would prefer the Colonial Office to continue writing
despatches than to take coercive measures. It must be an immense relief
to Englishmen all over the country, as well as it was to me, to know
that we were not expected to be at the trouble and cost of sending
troops, and we may all feel sure that as despatch-writing is considered
to be so efficacious, the Colonial Office will not begrudge the labour
nor spare expense in stationery.
At any rate, seeing that the Uitlanders have told us frankly what to
expect if we resort to force for their assistance, it is too obvious
that nothing more can be done by our Government further than courteous
diplomacy permits--until the united voice and the united action of the
whole body of the Uitlanders certify to us in what other way England can
serve them.
Henry M. Stanley.
London, January 28th, 1898.