THE GROWTH OF TERRORISM
When Mr. Lyttelton said that flogging must cease, flogging ceased on
the Rand, and the Oriental methods of torture were adopted instead.
But even this penal system--reminding one so strongly of the days of
Stephen, when the wretched, tortured peasantry openly said that Christ
and His saints slept, for Pity had veiled her face and Mercy had
forgotten--had to be practised with great secrecy owing to the force of
public opinion at home.
These methods were, however, unavailing to check the growing insolence
and insubordination of the Chinese slaves. No better idea of the
condition of the Rand during the last few months can be gathered
than from the new Ordinance, which was drafted at the beginning of
last October. This Ordinance took the power of punishing the Chinese
coolies from the hands of the resident magistrates and placed it
in the hands of the inspectors, thereby giving the welfare of the
Chinese slaves solely and entirely into the mercy of the Rand lords.
Before, an attempt had been made to cloak the slave Ordinance with a
pretence of law and justice as conceived by the British public. But the
draft Ordinance of August put an end to this piece of hypocrisy. The
superintendents and the inspectors of the Chinese, for all practical
purposes the servants of the mine owners, were to be not only the judge
and the jury, but the plaintiff. It conferred on the superintendents
and inspectors jurisdiction, in respect of offences against the
Ordinance, of a resident magistrate.
Clause I states--"This power will be granted provided such offences
are committed under the Ordinance and within the area of any mine or
mine compound where such labourer resides. The fines to be inflicted
in the case of conviction will be the same as those imposed by the
magistrates under the existing laws, and on conviction the labourer's
employer will be notified, and the amount of the fine will be deducted
from the labourer's wages and paid over for the benefit of the Colonial
Treasury."
Another clause states that--"For the purpose of confining prisoners
awaiting trial, it is provided that the employers of labourers shall
erect a lock-up on their properties, which lock-up shall be deemed to
be a jail."
Again, in the event of labourers on the mines organizing a conspiracy,
refusing to work, creating a disturbance, intimidating or molesting any
person on the mine, the superintendent or inspector is empowered to
impose a collective fine on the labourers.
Insomuch as this new Ordinance once and for all destroys the myth with
which Rand lords endeavoured to surround their slave-owning ideals, I
consider it to be a decided improvement upon the original Ordinance,
with its innumerable pleasures and pretences for the moral and
spiritual welfare of the Chinamen.
That unfortunate and much-deluded man the Colonial Secretary, once
declared in the House of Commons that the Chinaman would have just as
free access to a court of justice as any British subject. He certainly
now-a-days possesses free access to a court, if not to a court of
justice. Access is so easy to it that the court actually follows him
wherever he goes, watches him while he works in the mine, watches him
while he is in the compound, and is ready to punish and fine him, or to
lock him up in the compound prison, without any of those old-fashioned
formalities which, while they may embody the machinery of justice, are
at least guarantees of its purity and disinterestedness.
It would of course be very interesting to know how many of these fines
have ever reached the Colonial Treasury. Armed with such extraordinary
powers as these, it is highly probable that the Rand lords imposed
through their superintendents and inspectors unlimited fines which,
instead of benefiting the Colonial Revenue, merely reduced the wage
bill.
The last clause which I have quoted contains the phrase "organizing a
conspiracy." A conspiracy, of course, is anything in the nature of a
trade union.
I don't say that this new Ordinance was not justified. I think it was
fully justified. No efficiency can be obtained by half measures. The
ablest political trimmers are incapable of serving both God and Mammon.
If God is out of the question, a whole-hearted worship of Mammon is
really better. In short, it would have been far more in the interests
of the Transvaal if the Rand lords had from the first gone the whole
hog and insisted on having Chinese slaves in name as well as in fact.
The state of affairs in August last wanted extraordinary legislation.
But, of course, this must not be held to justify Chinese labour.
That was criminal. But once the principle of Chinese labour had been
accepted by the Government on behalf of an unwilling and protesting
nation, I fail to see how the unfortunate remnants of British subjects
in the Transvaal could be properly protected without these measures.
I don't see how, when once the Chinese had been brought into the
country, the brutalities that have been committed could have been
avoided. I think the superintendent and the inspector and the overseer
should have the right to shoot men down in cold blood. I think the
compounds should be surrounded by artillery. I think all the ideals
of Russian autocratic rule should be brought to bear upon these men.
The awful brutality with which they have been treated is justified.
The superintendent, the inspector and the overseer should be forced to
make a special study of the methods adopted by Hawkins and Magree.
The British Government wanted Chinese labour to be introduced into the
Transvaal, and if they had been efficient and sensible they should
have accumulated in their Ordinance the wisdom of all the slave-owning
traditions of centuries.
But from an unbiassed perusal of the Rand press one would have imagined
that all these extraordinary measures were unjustified.
The statements that the Chinese were committing outrages, were
insolent, were bestial, which have from time to time appeared in the
British press, were referred to by the Rand press as "more Chinese
lies," "Chinese canards," and such headings. They persistently
impressed upon their readers that the Chinese were leading an
industrious, idyllic life, that they were treated with kindness and
humanity by the overseers, that no happier community ever existed on
the face of the earth than the 40,000 odd Chinamen in their compounds
on the Rand.
Of course, they only kept up this pretence for a time. It was
impossible for long to pretend to be a newspaper at all and yet deny
facts which were personally known to the majority of their readers.
The object of this extraordinary legislation was, of course, that the
Chinese preferred to go to prison rather than pay fines.
At the beginning of August there were more than one thousand Chinamen
in jail undergoing various terms of imprisonment, rather than deduct
from their shilling a day, the amounts they were called upon to pay for
disobeying the laws laid down in the Ordinance.
The amended Ordinance now forced them to pay by withholding from them
a portion of their wage equal to the amount of the fine. It has been
found useless, in fact, to pretend that other than a reign of terror
pertains in the Transvaal. The Chinamen have broken loose, and only
their prompt deportation can prevent a very grave crisis. Neither fines
nor floggings have any terror for them, and from their earliest years
they have been accustomed to regard death without a semblance of fear.
I will relate some of the more notorious instances in which these
yellow slaves have figured in the last year. The list includes, murder,
rape, robbery with violence, and that class of criminal assault with
which we deal in England under the Criminal Law Amendment Act.
While working in the mines the Chinaman does exactly what he pleases.
The overseers dare not interfere. Their policy of putting the black
man on to the yellow man has resulted in murder. The Chinaman has a
short way with any white or black man who tries to interfere with his
sense of liberty. He kills the man. Every Chinaman belongs to a secret
society, and when he has determined to kill a white or a black man he
reports his decision to the society. He knows that the deed which he
meditates will be rewarded by his own death: but for this he cares
nothing. All his preparations are made beforehand. His secret society
probably consists of from four to five thousand members. All these
members contribute something like sixpence a-piece to make up a sum,
say of £100. When this amount is collected, it is sent over to his wife
and family in China. Having thus made all the necessary provision for
his wife and children, the Chinaman perpetrates the deed. He is then
arrested, sentenced and hanged. And he meets his end with a stoical
indifference, quite content that he has secured his revenge and set his
worldly affairs in order.
In the face of such sentiments compulsion is futile.
On Wednesday, September 13, a gang of Chinese coolies working at the
Geldenhuis Deep Mine decided to take a holiday. The management of the
mine were instructed to offer them extra pay if they would work. They
refused, and took their holiday. They promised, however, that they
would start their first shift at midnight on the following Sunday,
September 17. When midnight on Sunday, September 17, arrived, they
determined to keep their holiday up. The compound manager endeavoured
to use force. The Chinese met force by force. The police were called
in. The riot at that juncture had reached a most alarming state.
The police were ordered to fire: they obeyed, killing one Chinaman
and wounding another; but not before the compound manager had been
attacked and somewhat seriously injured. Finally the Chinamen were
driven to their work.
On the same Sunday the utter uselessness of the compound system
was proved. One hundred Chinamen bolted from the French Rand Mine.
Somebody, it is supposed, had spread among them the report that the
Boers were enlisting coolies at £4 a month to fight the English. In
vain has the number of police in the Witwatersrand district been
increased. Gangs of deserters are wandering about the country murdering
and looting.
"Last night," wrote a young South African policeman to his parents in
England, "I captured six Chinamen who had run away from the mines. They
are giving a lot of trouble--5000 of them started rioting last week,
and 100 foot police and 200 South African Constabulary had to go to
stop them, and a nice old job we had. They threw broken bottles and
stones when we charged them. Some of our fellows were very badly cut.
The Chinamen also made dynamite bombs and threw them at us, and we had
to shoot into the crowd to drive them back. We aimed low and wounded
a good many of them. They are nasty devils to tackle, and always show
fight when there are a lot of them together. The six I captured were
trekking across the veld. I chased them on horseback and they ran on
top of a kopje and commenced to roll rocks down. I managed to get a
shot at one with my revolver: the bullet struck him on the wrist. Then
they all put up their hands and surrendered. I managed to get some
niggers working in the mealie patch to escort them back to our camp.
The niggers were very proud of themselves. When they passed through the
other native kraals I think if I had not been there the Kaffirs would
have assegaied them. They hate the Chinamen like poison."
These are the sort of incidents that occur daily. All the measures
taken by the Government and the mine owners to prevent desertion have
proved ineffective. The country around the Witwatersrand Mines has
taken upon itself the aspect of the whole of the colony during the late
war. Mounted constables with loaded revolvers organize drives. The
whole district is patrolled, and every effort is made to bring back the
deserters to the compounds. But as soon as one lot has returned another
escapes. Every day you may see a mounted policeman riding down towards
the law courts, followed by a string of Chinese deserters.
The Johannesburger lives in a daily state of terror. He rarely meets a
Chinaman without immediately seeking the protection of the police and
insisting on an inquiry being held then and there, as to whether the
man has a permit to be at large in the Golden City.
Writing on October 2, the Johannesburg correspondent--one L. E. N.--of
a London morning paper gives a graphic account of the wonderful City
of Gold at that date. "Gold of the value of over £20,000,000 a year,"
he says, "is extracted from that stretch of dusty upland called
The Reef.... But look closer. The white workers on the mines carry
revolvers; the police are armed with ball cartridge and bayonet; camped
yonder at Auckland Park is a mobile column of mounted men ready to move
against an enemy at a moment's notice; the country folk on the other
side of the swelling rise are armed to the teeth, and live at night in
barricaded and fortified houses." What a beautiful commentary on life
as it is lived--under the British flag--in the commercial and political
hub of the great sub-continent!
The Boers, who through their political organization the Het Volk have
refused to take any active part in the management of the country,
determined with a sort of grim humour, since the British sought to
destroy the corrupt Government of their late President, they shall be
allowed to mismanage the country as they will, have been led to break
their political silence to petition the Government for more protection.
At a meeting held at Krugersdoorp at the beginning of October, they
decided to forward a resolution to the Imperial Government requesting
that the importation of Chinese coolies should be discontinued, and
those already in the country should be repatriated. Regret was further
expressed at the danger to life and property, and it was pointed
out that the policy of not allowing the Boers to carry firearms
prevented them from properly protecting the lives of their families.
[Illustration: GOOD SPORT.]
General Botha did not exaggerate the dangers which resulted from the
importation of Chinamen, and he voiced the common sentiment of Boer
and Briton when he asked that a Commission should be appointed to
investigate the treatment of the Chinese coolies, and ascertain the
cause of the disturbances.
The mine owners' press informed the public that there are very few
cases of desertion; that when any number of Chinamen do desert the
South African Constabulary deal with them efficiently. They are hunted
down, rounded up, and brought in by their pigtails for trial. At the
trial they are convicted, or were before the amendment of the Ordinance
in August last, and locked up.
Any one going through the Transvaal will see hundreds of these Chinese
convicts working in large batches on the roads. White men are placed
in charge of these convicts, and when the repairing and macadamizing
of the roads is not done to their liking, the Chinamen are flogged,
and flogged in the open. They are subjected to every kind of brutal
treatment; and it is probable that almost as many desert from the
convict prisons as desert from the slave compounds.
In "C" Court, Johannesburg, on October 3 (or 4, I am not sure of the
exact date), before Mr. Schuurman, several Chinese labourers were
prosecuted for wandering from the mines in which they were employed,
without possessing the necessary permission. They all pleaded guilty,
and were fined £1 each. When asked what excuse they had to offer, three
of them said they were homesick, and were on their way to China; two
others stated that they had only gone for a short walk, and were close
to the mine when arrested. The policeman, however, declared they were
twenty-five miles from the mine. A few of the accused stated that they
were ill-treated, and consequently deserted. The magistrate sapiently
advised them that in such a case, instead of absconding, they should
complain to the representative of the Labour Importation Association
when he called at the mine.
Under the new regulations, sixty-five Chinamen, including an alleged
professional robber, were arrested on October 18. A Johannesburg
correspondent describes them as "a band of 450 coolies of bad
character." What has Lieut.-Colonel W. Dalrymple, the Rand mining man
who lately at Tunbridge Wells denounced the "infamous lies" which were
circulated in this country about the Chinese labour question--what, I
repeat, has Lieut.-Colonel Dalrymple to say to _that_?
From the same telegram I learn that the measures which are now being
taken to prevent desertions are proving effective. The roll-call
of October 8--I am now quoting the immaculate Reuter--"showed 278
absentees, and during the following week 245 were captured and brought
back to work. Last night," adds the correspondent, meaning the night
of October 17, "nine coolies attempted to raid a homestead in the
Krugersdoorp district. The farmer fired through a window, and shot one
Chinaman dead; the others fled." I commend these statements, together
with those quoted hereafter, to the earnest attention of the editor of
a certain yellow-covered weekly journal, devoted to the interests of
South Africa--the organ of the Rand lords in London--which persistently
pooh-poohs the "yellow slavery" cry.
Meanwhile gangs of escaped Chinamen are wandering over the country
spreading terror everywhere. The Boer farmer goes to bed at night in
his lonely farmhouse on the veld as if he were still at war with Great
Britain. Long hidden rifles are brought out from the hay-ricks and
other hiding-places and got ready. Windows are boarded up, doors are
double locked. Every preparation is made to warn off the ever expected
attack of the yellow desperadoes.
At the beginning of October two homesteads in the Boksburg district
were attacked by a party of Chinese, who attempted to gain an entrance
by breaking in the back doors and windows. In both cases, however, the
farmers had made every preparation for such an attack, and fired on
the marauders, one of whom was wounded in the chest and another in the
abdomen. The remainder made off.
A similar outrage occurred in the middle of November. A lonely
farmhouse near Germiston, occupied by an Englishman and his wife,
was attacked by a band of Chinese, who were armed with crowbars and
stones. The farmer opened fire, seriously wounding one of the Chinamen
in the jaw, and the rest decamped without entering. The injured man
was captured, but the whereabouts and identity of the others were not
discovered.
In Johannesburg the talk is of nothing but murders and assaults by
gangs of ten or fourteen escaped labourers. House after house away on
the veld has been broken into and looted, and the inhabitants murdered
if they showed any signs of resistance; they have indeed in some cases
been murdered without showing any sign of resistance at all.
Quite recently the Legislative Council of the Transvaal has re-amended
for about the tenth time the Ordinance. It has proposed to offer £1 a
head for the recapture of these yellow hooligans, an amendment which
would have placed the very much-bepatched Ordinance on a level with
the laws that prevailed in the Southern States of America before
the abolition of slavery. It is charged, however, with that strange
spirit of hypocrisy which has characterized all the proceedings of the
Rand lords into a reimbursement to the capturer of his out-of-pocket
expenses. This of course is only another way of offering £1 for
every recaptured Chinaman, for it may be taken for granted that the
capturer's expenses will always include the wear and tear of horseflesh
and moral damages and other matters which can only be estimated in the
abstract. According to the schedule of fees payable in respect of the
capture of Chinese deserters, which was published early in October,
they ranged from 1s. per mile for one or two arrests to 3s. for eight
or more.
Here is a letter from another member of the South African Constabulary
to his people at home which emphasizes the state of affairs which exist
at present on the Rand.
"The Chinese have been causing a lot of trouble. There was a whole
family murdered about a month ago. Several places have been broken
into. Last Sunday there was a storekeeper murdered about ten miles from
where I am staying. We have orders on no account to go out on patrol
without a revolver. The people are seeking police protection, and
are frightened out of their wits. I believe it is as much as a South
African Constabulary man's life is worth to be seen at some places on
the Rand in uniform. I am determined that if I meet any Chinamen, and
they show fight, I will shoot the first one dead."
This is the spirit abroad--a spirit which every right-minded man
must regard as the inevitable result of the criminal action of the
Government in sanctioning the Chinese Labour Ordinance.
Here is another case which has never been reported in the press:--
At Germiston railway station twelve Chinamen were waiting on the
platform for a train. A white woman happened to pass by, and as she
passed the Chinamen hurled some bestial insult at her. One of the
railway officials immediately called a policeman, who tried to take
the offending Chinaman into custody. He was promptly knocked down.
Three more policemen were hurried to the scene. These met with like
treatment, and even when two other comrades came to their assistance
they were utterly unable to effect the arrest. After twenty minutes'
violent fighting, during which the gang of Chinamen were absolutely
unhurt, six policemen were taken on stretchers to the hospital.
Here are two or three more instances taken at random from the
"Butcher's Bill" of a Johannesburg correspondent, whose letter appeared
in the _Daily Mail_ a few weeks ago:--
"_Sept. 5._--Chinese attack Kaffirs in the Lancaster Mine. They throw
one Kaffir in front of a train of ore, so that he is cut to pieces. A
second Kaffir dies of his injuries.
"_Sept. 8._--Homestead at Rand Klipfontein attacked and looted, and
£150 in money taken. The Chinese try to fire the house by throwing a
fire-ball through the window.
"_Sept. 16._--Band of Chinese rush a Kaffir kraal at Wilgespruit, on
the West Rand. Native woman's head nearly severed. Chinese armed with
knives 2 feet 6 inches long, made by a Sheffield firm.
"_Sept. 18._--Riot Geldenhuis Deep. Compound manager assaulted. Mounted
police attacked by 1500 coolies armed with drills, stones, bottles,
etc., and forced to fire their revolvers. One Chinaman killed and a
number wounded."
And so on and so forth. One more instance to show to what length
the Chinamen will go. A gang of the breed employed at the Van Ryn
Mine, where there had previously been a number of disturbances,
struck work and attacked the whites underground. A white man pulled
the signal cord, and police, galloping up, descended the shaft and
saved the whites. The ringleaders were arrested, and, adds the
correspondent somewhat ingenuously--"This phase of attacks underground
is disquieting." From the adjacent colony of Natal, too, come words
of complaint about Chinese stragglers; and it is significant in this
connection that "over a thousand rifles" were issued to the farmers in
the Transvaal at the end of September last. These are facts which Mr.
Reyersbach, of Messrs. H. Eckstein & Co., would be well advised to put
in his pipe and ponder.
Of course the immediate cause which leads to the Chinese committing the
above-recorded acts of violence is the result of bad treatment.
The murder of Mr. Joubert in the Bronkhorst Spruit Mine--for which, on
November 20, four Chinamen were executed in Pretoria jail--who received
some fifty stabs before succumbing, was due to starvation. The men
wanted to find food. They were not allowed to eat apparently, and so,
maddened by ill-treatment, overwork, and starvation, they committed
murder. Perhaps the most tragic part of the whole business is that one
cannot completely blame them for such an awful act. They have grown to
hate the white man. It is small wonder.
There are now nearly 50,000 Chinamen on the Rand, and in the breasts of
all these men there seems to have been imbued a hatred and detestation
of the white man. It seems almost as if these slaves considered it fair
game to commit any outrage, however brutal, on white men and white
women whenever the opportunity occurs. They are treated outrageously
themselves. They get little justice from magistrates, so it is small
wonder that they are indulging themselves in a sort of blood carnival
of revenge.
Discussing this question the other day with a representative of the
London journal _South Africa_, Dr. Corstorphine seriously declared
that the difficulties attendant on the Chinese labour question had
been magnified out of all proportion to the main facts. "We must
expect to find a few black sheep amongst the Chinese," sagely observed
the doctor. Ye gods!--a _few_. It would be interesting to know
what constitutes a "few" in the mind of the worthy geologist. Dr.
Corstorphine would probably indignantly deny the existence of yellow
slavery on the Rand. But possibly he would admit its existence under
another name, just as Sir Edward Grey did at Alnwick the other night.
Addressing his constituents, Sir Edward said he had never said that the
working of the mines by the Chinese in South Africa was slavery; but
the question he would put to those who said it was not, would be--"Was
it _Freedom_?" That is a question that I would put to Dr. Corstorphine,
Mr. Fricker, Mr. E. P. Mathers, and others of their kidney. If Chinese
labour on the Rand isn't slavery, what is it--is it _Freedom_? I pause
for a reply.