GRIQUALAND WEST--WHY WE TOOK IT.
Griqualand West is the proper, or official, name for that part of South
Africa which is generally known in England as the Diamond Fields, and
which is at the period of my writing,--the latter part of 1877,--a
separate Colony belonging to the British Crown, under the jurisdiction
of the Governor of the Cape Colony, but in truth governed by a resident
administrator. Major Lanyon is now the occupier of the Government House,
and is “His Excellency of Griqualand” to all the Queen’s loyal British
subjects living in and about the mines. This is the present position of
things;--but the British Government has offered to annex the Province to
the Cape Colony, and the Cape Colony has at length agreed to accept the
charge,--subject to certain conditions as to representation and other
details. Those conditions are, I believe, now under consideration, and
if they be found acceptable,--as will probably be the case,--the
Colonial Office at home being apparently anxious to avoid the expense
and trouble of an additional little Colony,--Griqualand West and the
Diamond Fields will become a part of the Cape Colony in the course of
1878. The proposed conditions offer but one member for the Legislative
Council, and four for the Assembly, to join twenty-one members in the
former house, and sixty-eight in the latter. It is alleged very loudly
and perhaps correctly at the Fields that this number is smaller than
that to which the District is entitled if it is to be put on the same
footing with other portions of the great Colony. It is alleged also that
a class of the community which has shewn itself to be singularly
energetic should be treated at any rate not worse than its neighbours
who have been very much more slow in their movements, and less useful by
their industry to the world at large. Whether such remonstrances will
avail anything I doubt much. If they do not, I presume that the
annexation will almost be immediate.
The history of Griqualand West does not go back to a distant antiquity,
but it is one which has given rise to a singularly large amount of
controversy and hot feeling, and has been debated at home with more than
usual animation and more than usual acerbity. In the course of last year
(1877) the “Quarterly” and the “Edinburgh Reviews” warmed themselves in
a contest respecting the Hottentot Waterboer and his West Griquas, and
the other Hottentot Adam Kok and his East Griquas, till South African
sparks were flying which reminded one of the glorious days of Sidney
Smith and Wilson Croker. Such writings are anonymous, and though one
knows in a certain sense who were the authors, in another sense one is
ignorant of anything except that an old-fashioned battle was carried on
about Kok and Waterboer in our two highly esteemed and reverend
Quarterlies. But as the conduct, not only of our Colonial Office, but
of Great Britain as an administrator of Colonies, was at stake,--as on
one side it was stated that an egregious wrong had been done from
questionable motives, and on the other that perfect state-craft and
perfect wisdom had been combined in the happy manner in which Griqualand
West with its diamonds had become British territory, I thought it might
be of interest to endeavour to get at the truth when I was on the spot.
But I have to own that I have failed in the attempt to find any exact
truth or to ascertain what abstract justice would have demanded. In
order to get at a semblance of truth and justice in the matter it has to
be presumed that a Hottentot Chief has understood the exact nature of a
treaty and the power of a treaty with the accuracy of an accomplished
European diplomate; and it has to be presumed also that the Hottentot’s
right to execute a treaty binding his tribe or nation is as well defined
and as firmly founded as that of a Minister of a great nation who has
the throne of his Sovereign and the constitutional omnipotence of his
country’s parliament at his back. In our many dealings with native
tribes we have repeatedly had to make treaties. These treaties we have
endeavoured to define, have endeavoured to explain; but it has always
been with the conviction that they can be trusted only to a certain very
limited extent.
The question in dispute is whether we did an injustice to the Orange
Free State by taking possession of Griqualand West in 1871 when diamonds
had already been discovered there and the value of the district had been
acknowledged. At that time it was claimed by the Orange Free State
whose subjects had inhabited the land before a diamond had been found,
and which had levied taxes on the Boers who had taken up land there as
though the country had belonged to the Republic. Since the annexation
has been effected by us we have, in a measure, acknowledged the claim of
the Free State by agreeing to pay to it a sum of £90,000--as
compensation for what injustice we may have done; and we have so far
admitted that the Free State has had something to say for itself.
The district in question at a period not very remote was as little
valuable perhaps as any land on the earth’s surface lying adjacent to
British territory. The first mention I find of the Griquas is of their
existence as a bastard Hottentot tribe in 1811 when one Adam Kok was
their captain. The word Griqua signifies bastard, and Adam Kok was
probably half Dutchman and half Hottentot. In 1821 Adam Kok was
dismissed or resigned, and Andreas Waterboer was elected in his place.
Kok then went eastwards with perhaps half the tribe, and settled himself
at a place which the reader will find on the map, under the name of
Philipolis, north of the Orange river in the now existing Orange Free
State. Then some line of demarcation was made between Waterboer’s lands
and Kok’s lands, which line leaves the Diamond Fields on one side or--on
the other. Adam Kok then trekked further eastward with the Griquas of
Griqualand East, as they had come to be called, to a territory south of
Natal, which had probably been depopulated by the Zulus. This territory
was then called No Man’s Land, but is now marked on the maps as Adam
Kok’s Land. But he gave some power of attorney enabling an agent to
sell the lands he left behind him, and under this power his lands were
sold to the Orange Free State which had established itself in 1854. The
Free State claims to have bought the Diamond Fields,--diamonds having
been then unknown,--under this deed. But it is alleged that the deed
only empowered the agent to sell the lands in and round Philipolis on
which Adam Kok’s Griquas had been living. It is certain, however, that
Adam Kok had continued to exercise a certain right of sovereignty over
the territory in question after his deposition or resignation, and that
he made over land to the Boers of the Free State by some deed which the
Boers had accepted as giving a good title. It is equally certain that
old Waterboer’s son had remonstrated against these proceedings and had
objected to the coming in of the Boers under Kok’s authority.
We will now go back to old Andreas Waterboer, who for a Hottentot seems
to have been a remarkably good sort of person, and who as I have said
had been chosen chief of the Griquas when Adam Kok went out. In 1834 Sir
Benjamin D’Urban, that best and most ill-used of Cape Colony Governors,
made a treaty with old Andreas undertaking to recognise him in all his
rights, and obtaining a promise from the Hottentot to assist in
defending the British border from the hordes of savagery to the north.
There was also a clause under which the Hottentot was to receive a
stipend of £150 per annum. This treaty seems to have been kept with
faith on both sides till Waterboer died in December, 1852. The stipend
was punctually paid, and the Hottentot did a considerable quantity of
hard fighting on behalf of the British. On his death his son Nicholas
Waterboer came to reign in his stead. Nicholas is a Christian as was his
father, and is comparatively civilized;--but he is by no means so good a
Christian as was the old man, and his father’s old friends were not at
first inclined to keep up the acquaintance on the same terms.
Nicholas, no doubt mindful of the annual stipend, asked to have the
treaty renewed in his favour. But other complications had arisen. In
1852 Messrs. Hogge and Owen had acted as Commissioners for giving over
the Transvaal as a separate Republic and in the deed of transference it
was agreed that there should not be any special treaties between the
Cape Colony and the Natives north of the Orange river, as it was thought
that such treaties would interfere with the independence of the
Republic. Poor Nicholas for a time suffered under this arrangement, but
in 1858 a letter was written to him saying that all that had been done
for his father should be done for him,--and the payment of the £150 per
annum was continued though no treaty was made.[5]
In the mean time, in 1854, the severance had been made of the Orange
Free State from the Colony, the bounds of which were not then settled
with much precision. Had they been declared to be the Orange and the
Vaal rivers in reference to the North, East, and South, the Diamond
Fields would have been included,--or the greater part of the Diamond
Fields. But that would not have settled the question, as England could
not have ceded what she did not possess. Thus there was a corner of land
as there have been many corners in South Africa, respecting which there
was doubts as to ownership. Waterboer alleged that the line which his
father and old Adam Kok had made so long ago as 1821,--with what
geometrical resources they might then have,--gave him a certain
apparently valueless tract of land, and those again who assumed a right
to Adam Kok’s land, asserted that the line gave it to them. The Kokites,
however, had this point in their favour, that they had in some sort
occupied the land,--having sold it or granted leases on it to Dutch
Boers who paid taxes to the Orange Free State in spite of Waterboer’s
remonstrances.
But the matter at the time was in truth unimportant. Encroachments were
made also into this very district of Griqualand from the other Republic
also. In speaking of the Transvaal I have already described the position
there to which such encroachments had led. A treaty became necessary to
check the Transvaal Boers from establishing themselves on Griqualand,
and the Transvaal authorities with the native Chiefs, and our Governor
at the Cape, agreed that the matter should be referred to an umpire. Mr.
Keate, the Lieut. Governor of Natal, was chosen and the Keate award was
made. But the land in question was not valuable; diamonds had not yet
been found, and the question was not weighty enough to create determined
action. The Transvaal rejected the treaty, and the Transvaal Boers, as
well as those from the Free State, continued to occupy land in
Griqualand West. Now the land of the Transvaal Republic has come back
into our hands, and there is one little difficulty the more to solve.
Then, in 1869, the first diamond was found on a farm possessed by an
Orange Free State Boer, and in 1871 Nicholas Waterboer, claiming
possession of the land, and making his claim good to British colonial
intellects, executed a treaty ceding to the British the whole district
of Griqualand West,--a tract of land about half as big as Scotland,
containing 17,800 square miles. There had by this time grown up a vast
diamond seeking population which was manifestly in want of government.
Waterboer himself could certainly do nothing to govern the free,
loudspeaking, resolute body of men which had suddenly settled itself
upon the territory which he claimed. Though he considered himself to be
Captain of the Country, he would have been treated with no more respect
than any other Hottentot had he shown himself at the diggings. Yet he no
doubt felt that such a piece of luck having turned up on what he
considered to be his own soil, he ought to get something out of it. So
he made a treaty, ceding the country to Great Britain in 1871. In 1872
his stipend was raised to £250,--in 1873 to £500; and an agreement has
now been made, dated I think in October 1877, increasing this to £1,000
a year, with an allowance of £500 to his widow and children after his
death. It was upon this deed that we took possession of Griqualand West
with all its diamonds; but the Orange Free State at once asserted its
claim,--based on present possession and on the purchase of Adam Kok’s
rights.
I think I shall not be contradicted when I say that amidst such a
condition of things it is very hard to determine where is precisely the
truth and what perfect abstract justice would have demanded. I cannot
myself feel altogether content with the title to a country which we have
bought from a Hottentot for an allowance of £1,000 a year with a pension
of £500 to his wife and children. Much less can I assent to the title
put forward by the Free State in consequence of their negotiation with
Adam Kok’s Agent. The excuse for annexation does not in my mind rest on
such buyings and sellings. I have always felt that my sense of justice
could not be satisfied as to any purchase of territory by civilized from
uncivilized people,--first because the idea of the value of the land is
essentially different in the minds of the two contracting parties; and
secondly because whatever may be the tribal customs of a people as to
land I cannot acknowledge the right of a Chieftain to alienate the
property of his tribe,--and the less so when the price given takes the
form of an annuity for life to one or two individuals.
The real excuse is to be found in that order of things which has often
in the affairs of our Colonies made a duty clear to us, though we have
been unable to reconcile that duty with abstract justice. When we
accepted the cession of the Province in 1871 the Free State was no doubt
making an attempt to regulate affairs at the Diamond Fields; but it was
but a feeble attempt. The Republic had not at its back the power needed
for saying this shall be law, and that shall be law, and for enforcing
the laws so enacted. And if the claim of Great Britain to the land was
imperfect, so was that of the Free State. The persons most interested in
the matter prayed for our interference, and felt that they could live
only under our Government. There had no doubt been occupation after a
kind. A few Boers here and there had possessed themselves of the lands,
buying them by some shifty means either from the Natives or from those
who alleged that they had purchased them from the Natives. And, as I
have said, taxes were levied. But I cannot learn that any direct and
absolute claim had ever been made to national dominion,--as is made by
ourselves and other nations when on a new-found shore we fly our
national flags. The Dutch had encroached over the border of the Griquas
and then justified their encroachment by their dealings with Adam Kok.
We have done much the same and have justified our encroachment by our
dealings with Nicholas Waterboer. But history will justify us because it
was essentially necessary that an English speaking population of a
peculiarly bold and aggressive nature should be made subject to law and
order.
The accusation against our Colonial Office of having stolen the Diamond
Fields because Diamonds are peculiarly rich and desirable can not hold
water for an instant. If that were so in what bosom did the passion rise
and how was it to be gratified? A man may have a lust for power as
Alexander had, and Napoleon,--a lust to which many a British Minister
has in former days been a prey; but, even though we might possibly have
a Colonial Secretary at this time so opposed in his ideas to the
existing theories and feelings of our statesmen as to be willing to
increase his responsibilities by adding new Colonies to our long list of
dependencies, I cannot conceive that his ambition should take the shape
of annexing an additional digging population. Has any individual either
claimed or received glory by annexing Griqualand West? From the
operations of such a Province as the Diamond Fields it is not the mother
country that reaps the reward, but the population whether they be
English, Dutch, or Americans,--the difficult task of ruling whom the
mother country is driven to assume.
It is known to all Englishmen who have watched the course of our
colonial history for the last forty years that nothing can be so little
pleasant to a Secretary of State for the Colonies as the idea of a new
Colony. Though they have accrued to us, one after the other, with
terrible rapidity there has always been an attempt made to reject them.
The Colonial Secretary has been like an old hen to whose large brood
another and another chick is ever being added,--as though her powers of
stretching her wings were unlimited. She does stretch them, like a good
old mother with her maternal instincts, but with most unwilling efforts,
till the bystander thinks that not a feather of protection could be
given to another youngling. But another comes and the old hen stretches
herself still wider,--most painfully.
New Zealand is now perhaps the pet of our colonial family; and yet what
efforts were made when Lord Normanby and afterwards when Lord John
Russell were at the Colonies to stave off the necessity of taking
possession of the land! But Englishmen had settled themselves in such
numbers on her shores that England was forced to send forth the means of
governing her own children. The same thing happened, as I have attempted
to tell, both in British Kafraria and Natal. The same thing happened the
other day in the Fiji Islands. The same feeling, acting in an inverse
way,--repudiating the chicks instead of taking them in,--induced us to
give over the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to Republicanism. Our
repudiation of the former has lasted but for a quarter of a century, and
there are many now of British race to be found in South Africa who are
confident that we shall have to take the Orange Free State in among the
brood in about the same period from her birth. British rule in distant
parts, much as it is abused, is so precious a blessing that men will
have it, and the old hen is forced to stretch her poor old wings again
and still again.
This I hold to be the real and unanswerable excuse for what we have done
in Griqualand West and not our treaty with Waterboer. As far as right
devolving from any treaty goes I think that we have the best of it,--but
not so much the best, that even could I recognize those treaties as
conveying all they are held to convey, I should declare our title to be
complete. But, that such treaties are for the most part powerless when
pressure comes, is proved by our own doings and by those of other
nations all round the world. We have just annexed the Transvaal,--with
the approbation of both sides in the House of Commons. Our excuse is
that though the Transvaal was an independent State she was so little
able to take care of herself that we were obliged to enter in upon her,
as the law does on the estate of a lunatic. But how would it have been
if the Transvaal instead of the Orange Free State had been our
competitor for the government of the Diamond Fields? If we can justify
ourselves in annexing a whole Republic surely we should not have
scrupled to take the assumed dependency of a Republic. In such doings we
have to reconcile ourselves to expedience, however abhorrent such a
doctrine may be to us in our own private affairs. Here it was expedient
that a large body, chiefly of Englishmen, should, for their own comfort
and well being, be brought under rule. If in following out the doctrine
any abstract injustice was done, it was not against the Orange Free
State, but against the tribes whom no Waterboer and no Adam Kok could in
truth be authorized to hand over either to British or to Dutch
Republican rule.
For a while I was minded to go closely into the question of Kok v.
Waterboer and to put forward what might probably have been a crude
expression of the right either of the one Hottentot or of the other to
make over at any rate his power and his privileges of government. But I
convinced myself, when on the spot, that neither could have much right,
and that whatever right either might have, was so far buried in the
obscurity of savagery in general, that I could not possibly get at the
bottom of it so as to form any valid opinion. Books have been written on
the subject, on the one side and on the other, which have not I think
been much studied. Were I to write no more than a chapter on it my
readers would pass it by. The intelligence of England will not engage
itself on unravelling the geographical facts of a line of demarcation
made between two Hottentot Chieftains when the land was comparatively
valueless, and when such line could only be signified by the names of
places of which the exact position can hardly even now be ascertained.
When subsequently I read the report which the Secretary of State for the
Colonies made to the Governor of the Cape Colony on 5 August 1876,
informing the Governor of the terms under which he and the President of
the Orange Free State had agreed to compromise the matter, I was glad to
find that he, in his final discussions with the President, had come to
the same conclusion. I here quote the words in which Lord Carnarvon
expressed himself to Sir Henry Barkly;--and I would say that I fully
agree with him were it not that such testimony might seem to be
impertinent. “At the earlier interviews Mr. Brand repeatedly expressed
his desire to submit proof of the claim preferred by his Government to a
great part of Griqualand West. I had however determined from the first
that there would be no advantage in entering upon such on enquiry. It
was obvious that there could be no prospect of our coming to an
agreement on a question which teemed with local details and personal
contentions.”
The Secretary of State goes on to explain the circumstances under which
the £90,000 are to be given. I will confess for myself that I should
almost have preferred to have stuck to the territory without paying the
money. If it be our “destiny” to rule people I do not think that we
ought to pay for assuming an office which we cannot avoid. The Secretary
of State in this report strongly reasserts the British right to
Griqualand West,--though he acknowledges that he cannot hope by mere
eloquence to convince President Brand of that right. “As you think you
are wronged,” the Secretary goes on to argue, “we will consent to
compensate the wrong which we feel sure you have not suffered, but which
you think you have endured, so that there need be no quarrel between
us.” Probably it was the easiest way out of the difficulty; but there is
something in it to regret. It must of course be understood that the
£90,000 will not be paid by the British taxpayer, but will be gathered
from the riches of Griqualand West herself.
On the 27 October 1871 the Diamond Fields were declared to be British
territory. But such a declaration, even had it not been opposed by the
Free State and the friends of the Free State, would by no means have
made the course of British rule plain and simple. There have, from that
day to this, arisen a series of questions to settle and difficulties to
solve which, as they crop up to the enquirer’s mind, would seem to have
been sufficient to have overcome the patience of any Colonial Secretary
even though he had not another Colony on his shoulders. If there was any
Colonial sinner,--Secretary, Governor, or subordinate,--who carried away
by the lust of empire had sought to gratify his ambition by annexing
Griqualand West, he must certainly have repented himself in sackcloth
and ashes before this time (the end of 1877) when the vexed question of
annexation or non-annexation to the Cape Colony is hardly yet settled.
When the territory was first accepted by Great Britain it was done on an
understanding that the Cape Colony should take it and rule it, and pay
for it,--or make it pay for itself. The Colonial Secretary of the day
declared in an official dispatch that he would not consent to the
annexation unless, “the Cape Parliament would personally bind itself to
accept the responsibility of governing the territory which was to be
united to it, together with the entire maintenance of any force which
might be necessary for the preservation of order.” It must be presumed
therefore that the lust for empire did not exist in Downing Street. The
Cape Parliament did so far accede to the stipulation made by the
Secretary of State, as to pass a resolution of assent. They would
agree,--seeing that British rule could not in any other way be obtained.
But an intermediate moment was necessary,--a moment which should admit
of the arrangement of terms,--between the absolute act of assumption by
Great Britain and the annexation by the Colony. That moment has been
much prolonged, and has not yet, as I write, been brought to an end. So
that the lust for rule over the richest diamond fields in the world
seems hardly to be very strong even in the Colony. Though the Parliament
of the Colony had assented to the requisition from Downing Street, it
afterwards,--not unnaturally,--declined to take the matter in hand till
the Government at home had settled its difficulties with the Orange Free
State. The Free State had withdrawn whatever officers it had had on the
Fields, and had remonstrated. That difficulty is now solved;--and the
Cape Colony has passed a bill shewing on what terms it will annex the
territory. The terms are very unpopular in the district,--as indeed is
the idea of annexation to the Cape Colony at all. Griqualand would very
much prefer to continue a separate dependency, with a little Council of
its own. The intention however of the mother country and of the Colony
has been too clearly expressed for doubt on that subject. They are both
determined that the annexation shall take place, and the Colony will
probably be able to dictate the terms.
But there have been other difficulties sufficient almost to break the
heart of all concerned. Who did the land belong to on which the diamonds
were being found, and what were the rights of the owners either to the
stones beneath the surface, or to the use of the surface for the purpose
of searching? The most valuable spot in the district, called at first
the Colesberg Kopje,--Kopje being little hill,--and now known as the
Kimberley mine, had been on a farm called Vooruitzuit belonging to a
Dutchman named De Beer. This farm he sold to a firm of Englishmen for
the very moderate sum of £6,600,[6]--a sum however which to him must
have appeared enormous,--and the firm soon afterwards sold it to the
Government for £100,000. To this purchase the Government was driven by
the difficulties of the position. Diggers were digging and paying 10s. a
month for their claims to the owners of the soil, justifying themselves
in that payment by the original edict of the Free State, while the
owners were claiming £10 a month, and asserting their right to do as
they pleased with their own property. The diggers declared their purpose
of resisting by force any who interfered with them;--and the owners of
the soil were probably in league with the diggers, so as to enhance the
difficulties, and force the Government to purchase. The Government was
obliged to buy and paid the enormous sum of £100,000 for the farm. Many
stories could be told of the almost inextricable complexities which
attended the settlement of claims to property while the diggers were
arming and drilling and declaring that they would take the law into
their own hands if they were interfered with in their industry.
In 1872 the population had become so great,--and, as was natural in such
circumstances, so unruly,--that the Governor of the Cape Colony, who is
also High Commissioner for all our South African territories, was
obliged to recommend that a separate Lieutenant Governor should be
appointed, and Mr. Southey who had long held official employment in the
Cape Colony was sent to fill the place. Here he remained till 1875,
encumbered by hardships of which the difficulty of raising a sufficient
revenue to pay the expenses of the place was not the least. Diamonds
were being extracted worth many millions, but the diamonds did not come
into the pocket of the Government. In such localities the great source
of revenue,--that which is generally most available,--is found in the
Custom duties levied on the goods consumed by the diggers. But here,
though the diggers consumed manfully, the Custom duties levied went
elsewhere. Griqualand West possessed no port and could maintain no
cordon of officers to prevent goods coming over her borders without
taxation. The Cape Colony which has been so slow to annex the land got
the chief advantages from the consumption of the Diamond Fields, sharing
it, however, with Natal. Mr. Southey is said to have had but thirty
policemen with him to assist in keeping the peace, and was forced to ask
for the assistance of troops from the Cape. Troops were at last sent
from Capetown,--at an expense of about £20,000 to Griqualand West.
During all this time it may easily be conceived that no British
aggressor had as yet obtained the fruition of that rich empire for which
he is supposed to have lusted when annexing the country.
The Lieutenant Governor with his thirty policemen,--and the sudden
influx of about 300 soldiers from the Cape--was found to be too
expensive for the capabilities of the place. “In 1875,” says the
Colonial Office List for 1877, “the condition of the finances rendered
it necessary to reduce the civil establishment, and the office of
Lieutenant Governor, as well as that of Secretary to Government, was
discontinued, and an administrator appointed.” That administrator has
been Major Lanyon who has simply been a Lieutenant Governor with a
salary somewhat less than that of his predecessor. That the difficulty
of administering the affairs of the Colony have been lessened during his
period of office, may in part be due to circumstances and the more
settled condition of men’s minds. But with such a task as he has had not
to have failed is sufficient claim for praise. There have been no
serious outrages since he reached the Fields.
Annexation to the Cape Colony will probably take place. But what will
come next? The Province does not want annexation;--but specially wants
an adequate, we may say a large share in the constituencies of the joint
Colonies should annexation be carried out. I sympathise with Griqualand
West in the first feeling. I do not think that the diggers of the
Diamond Fields will be satisfied with legislation carried on at
Capetown. I do not think that a parliamentary majority at Capetown will
know how to manage the diggers. Kimberley is so peculiar a place, and so
likely to shew its feeling of offence against the Government if it be
offended, that I fear it will be a very thorn in the side of any
possible Cape Colony Prime Minister. That Downing Street should wish to
make over to the Colony the rich treasure, which we are told has been
acquired with so much violence and avarice, I am not surprised,--though
such annexation must be prejudicial to that desire for South African
Confederation which is now strong in Colonial Office bosoms;--but that
the Colony should accept the burden while she already possesses that
which generally makes such burdens acceptable,--viz., the Custom duties
on the goods consumed by the people,--is to me a marvel. It may be that
the Cape Parliament was induced to give its first assent by the strongly
expressed wishes of the Secretary of State at home, and that it can
hardly now recede from the promise it then made.
But in regard to the share which Griqualand claims in the two
legislative Houses of the future combined Colonies I cannot at all wish
her to prevail. It may be natural that a community should desire to be
largely represented without looking forward to all the circumstances by
which such representation may be affected. The population of the Diamond
Fields is supposed to consist of about 15,000 whites and 30,000 natives.
Of the latter number about 12,000 are men employed in the mines. The
other 18,000 natives who are living on their own lands may he eliminated
from our present enquiry. Of the 15,000 white persons we will say that a
half are men who would be entitled to vote under the present franchise
of the Cape Colony. The number would shew a very large proportion of
adult males, but a digging population will always have an excessive
population of men. But the 12,000 natives would, with a very small
deduction on account of women, all be enabled to claim a right to be
registered.
The Cape Colony franchise is given to all men with certain
qualifications. One qualification, and that the broadest,--is that a man
shall be earning wages at the rate of £25 a year and his diet. And he
must either have been born a British subject, or born in a Dutch South
African territory taken over by the British Government. The latter
clause was inserted no doubt with the intention of saving from exclusion
any men then still living who might have been born when the Cape of Good
Hope was a Dutch Colony; but in justice must be held to include also
those born in the Transvaal when the Transvaal was a Dutch Republic. The
meaning is that all shall vote, who are otherwise qualified, who have
been born English subjects or have become English subjects by annexation
from Dutch rule. The majority of the Kafirs now working at the Diamond
Fields have been born in the Transvaal; some indeed at Natal, some few
in Zululand which is not English, and some few beyond the Limpopo, on
native territory which has never been either Dutch or English. But the
great majority are from the distant parts of the Transvaal;--and, with a
Kafir as with a white man who should assert himself to be born an
English subject or a Transvaalian, the onus probandi would be with those
who objected to, or denied, the claim. Every Kafir about the mines earns
at the lowest 10s. a week, or £26 10s. per annum and his diet, and it
would be found I think impossible to reject their claim to be registered
as voters if their names were brought up on the lists.
There will be those at home who will say,--why should they not vote if
they are industrious labourers earning wages at so high a rate? But no
white man who has been in South Africa and knows anything of South
Africa will say that. A very eminent member of the House of Commons,--a
friend of my own whom I respect as a politician as highly as any man of
the present day,--gently murmured a complaint in discussing the South
African permissive bill as to the statement which had been made by the
Secretary of State “that until the civilization of the Natives
throughout South Africa had made considerable progress it would be
desirable that they should not have direct representation in the
Legislative Assembly of the Union;”--that is in the Confederated Union
sanctioned by the permissive bill. My friend’s philanthropic feelings
were hurt by the idea that the coloured man should be excluded from the
franchise. But the suggestion contained in this speech that the Kafir
should have a vote is received by Europeans in South Africa simply with
a smile. Were it granted and could it be generally used at the will and
in accordance with the judgment of the Kafir himself all Europeans
would at once leave the country, and South Africa would again become the
prey of the strongest handed among the Natives then existing. That
Englishmen should live under a policy devised or depending upon Negroes
I believe to be altogether impossible. Nor will such an attempt be made.
Let the law say what it will as to suffrage that state of things will be
avoided,--if not otherwise, then by force.
It is not that I think that the Kafirs about the Diamond Fields will at
once swarm to the poll as soon as the franchise of the Cape Colony shall
make it possible for them to do so. That is not the way the evil will
shew itself. They will care nothing for the franchise and will not be at
the trouble to understand its nature. But certain Europeans will
understand it,--politicians not of the first class,--and they will
endeavour to use for their own purposes a privilege which will have been
thoughtlessly conferred. Such politicians will not improbably secure
election by Kafir votes, and will cause to be done exactly that which
the most respectable employers of labour in the place will think most
prejudicial to the interests of the place. And after a while the Negroes
of Griqualand West will learn the powers which they possess as have the
Negroes of the Southern American States, and thus there will spring up a
contest as to the party in which is to be vested the political power of
the district. I do not doubt how the contest would end. The white men
would certainly prevail however small might be their numbers, and
however great the majority of the Kafirs. But I am sure that no part of
South Africa would willingly subject itself to the possibility of such
a condition. I think that the franchise of the Cape Colony has been,--I
will not say fixed too low, but arranged injudiciously in regard to the
population of the Colony itself;--but I am even more strongly of opinion
that that franchise is not at all adapted to the population of the
Diamond Fields. Considering the nature of the task it may be doubted
whether the country of the diamonds would not be best ruled as a Crown
Colony.
At the present moment, pending annexation, the Government is carried on
by an administrator with a Council of seven besides himself,--eight in
all. Four are appointed and enjoy salaries, while four are elected and
are not paid. If necessary for a majority the administrator has two
votes. But a quorum of five is necessary of which quorum two must be
elected members. The consequence is that unless two of the elected
members are staunch to the Government, every thing is liable to be
brought to a stand still. One or two elected members take up their hats
and walk out,--and all business is at an end for the day. This, to say
the least of it, is awkward. The evil would be much remedied, if it were
required that in forming the quorum of five one elected member would be
sufficient. Out of eight a quorum of four might be held to suffice of
which one might be an elected member.