OPPRESSION, SHAME, AND TORTURE
My new slavery—How our villagers fared at home—The white man’s
meat—How it was got—The white men of God and their pity—How the
women were enslaved—Feeding the idle—Endeavours to evade
oppression—Results—How would you like our conditions?—Forest
work—Its hardships—The day of reckoning—Back to the village and
home—An ominous silence—A sad discovery—Redeeming our wives—An
offending villager—A poor victim—A ghastly punishment—The woman’s
death—Another village—The monkey-hunters—The old man who stayed at
home—How he was tortured—No redress.
I think you white people who hear my story will see that by this time
my name Bokwala (slave) was being verified for the second time; for
though the slavery to the black man was bad and caused me much shame,
that which we had to undergo now was, in some ways, worse; and, though
most of the very worst things were done by the sentries, the white man
agreed to them.
At least, we thought he did, as he scarcely ever lost a palaver for
them. This kind of treatment, constant rubber collecting, no rest, and
sometimes no pay—what can it be called but another kind of slavery?
I want to tell you some of the things which happened during this time
of oppression. It is not only we men who go into the forest who suffer;
but also those who are left at home in the villages, our old fathers
and mothers, our wives and little children.
The white man wanted fresh meat for his table, so he ordered the old
men in the villages to hunt antelopes in the forest for him, and bring
them in alive. The hunting was easy, but not so the catching of animals
alive. That meant great care in dealing with such animals as were
inside our enclosures of nets, so as not to allow their escape while
endeavouring not to kill them.
Then other kinds, the water antelopes especially, are dangerous, and
cannot be caught alive without the captor receiving wounds from their
sharp teeth. When once caught, their legs were broken in order to
prevent their escape on the journey to the white man’s compound, and
thus our fathers supplied the white man’s table with fresh meat.
Some of the villages had to supply one, two, or even four animals
weekly, and one white man would not take them with broken legs because
he wanted to keep them alive on his own place.
I have been told also that some of the white men of God and their wives
remonstrated with the carriers of these broken-legged animals who
happened to pass their houses, with regard to the cruelty of breaking
the legs. They say they feel pity for the antelopes! Of course, the men
laughed at that, because who pities animals? They are not men, or we
should pity them. White men are strange kind of people!
Again, when the white man’s compound grew large and he had many people
working for him, he needed food with which to provide for their needs.
Not only his actual servants but their wives and families, and
sometimes others went and sat down, as we say, on the white man’s
place, for there they had an easy time.
In order to supply all that was needed the women in the villages had to
work very large gardens, much larger than would otherwise have been
necessary; then dig the roots of the manioca; peel and steep it in the
river for four or five days; carry it back again to their homes in
heavily laden baskets up steep hillsides; pound, mould into long
strips, wrap in leaves, bind with creeper-string, and finally boil the
tökö or kwanga, our native bread. All this meant much work for our
women; firewood must be cut and carried from the forest, special leaves
sought and gathered, and creeper cut for string; and every week the
food must be taken to the white man’s place punctually.
And for a large bundle of ten pieces one brass rod (5 centimes) is paid
to the women!
What seems hardest of all is that much of the food goes to supply
families in which are plenty of strong women, who are perfectly well
able to cook for themselves and their husbands.
These women live a life of idleness, and very often of vice, on the
land of the white man, and frequently treat the village women with
disdain and shower contumely upon them. If, as sometimes happens, high
words ensue, the village women have no chance whatever, for the others
can say a word to their husbands or paramours, who are armed with guns,
and it is an easy thing for them to avenge such quarrels on their next
visit to the village of which the women happen to be natives.
There are generally a few villages in close proximity to the white
man’s place the natives of which are set apart to supply paddlers,
carriers, dried fish for employees’ rations, manioca bread, &c., and
who are not reckoned amongst the rubber workers. We used to envy the
inhabitants of these places, and some of our people tried to leave
their own homes and go to reside where the people seemed to us to be
better off than we were.
But this was not allowed by the white man; if found out, the offence
was punished severely either with the whip or prison, so we gave it up.
And even in these favoured villages they had their trials; fowls and
eggs were required as well as other little things, and they had to be
supplied somehow, and it was often anyhow.
As long as the supplies came to hand regularly, and no complaints were
made by the villagers against the sentries who were sent out to collect
the food or call the people, all went well. But it could not possibly
be peaceful for long, because our people were treated in ways that no
one, not even an animal, would put up with quietly. And although I know
you white people do not like to hear of bad doings, I must tell you of
some now, or you cannot understand how we feel about this rubber and
other work which we are compelled to do by strangers of whom we know
nothing, and to whom we think we owe nothing.
Think how you would feel, if you had been out in the forest for eleven
or twelve days and nights, perhaps in the wet season, when the wind
blows so that you cannot climb the trees for fear of either the tree or
yourself being blown down; and the rain pours in torrents and quickly
soaks through the leaf thatch of your temporary hut (just a roof
supported on four sticks) and puts out your fire, so that all night
long you sit and shiver; you cannot sleep for the mosquitoes; and,
strong man as you are, you weep, because the day which is past has
passed in vain, you have no rubber!
Then, if a fine morning follows, and you manage to make a fire, (with
tinder and flint,) eat a little food you have kept over, and start off
again in feverish haste to find a vine before some one else gets it.
You find one, make several incisions, place your calabash under the
dripping sap, and your hopes begin to rise. Towards evening it rains
again, and again you can scarcely sleep for the cold; you have nothing
to cover yourself with, and the only source of warmth is a few
smouldering embers in the centre of the hut.
In the middle of the night you have a feeling that something is near,
something moving stealthily in the darkness, and you see two glaring
eyes gazing at you—a leopard or civet cat is prowling round your
shelter. You throw a burning firebrand at it, and with a growl it
dashes off into the bush.
In the morning you tie another knot in your string, by which you count
the days, and say, “If only I can get a lot to-day! The time grows
short, I shall soon go home.”
Day after day passes in this way, and at last the rubber is ready, or
even if it is not, the day has dawned; you must start for the white
man’s place—and home is on the way!
One or two nights are passed on the road, and you draw near to the
village.
“What a welcome I shall have! Bamatafe with the baby, Isekokwala, my
father, now an old man, and my mother, and a feast of good things as I
always find.”
As we get near the village, I begin to sing and feel happy, and tell
the other men what a good wife I have, and what a feast she will have
ready for me!
But how quiet it all is—and yes, surely I hear a wail! What can it be?
I rush on ahead, and hear the following story.
In the morning some sentries arrived to bring the rubber men to the
white man’s place. We had not come in from the forest, so they took our
wives, quite a number of them—Bamatafe amongst them with her baby at
her breast—away to the white man’s prison, or hostage house as he calls
it, and my relatives are crying over it!
I was mad with rage, but it was too late to do anything that night.
In the morning we took our rubber in to the white man, who received it,
refused to pay anything for it, but allowed it to pass for the
redemption of our wives! Of course, we did not say anything; we were
only too glad to get them free at any price; for what could we do
without them?
You, white men in Europe, who say you feel pity for us, how would you
feel if such a thing happened to you and your wife and little child? We
were treated like that not once, but many times.
In a village not far from my father’s the men were all away on one
occasion trying to procure what was required of them as their weekly
tax. When the day for bringing it in fell due, they did not arrive in
good time, and as usual sentries were sent out to inquire into it.
Finding no men in town, and most of the women having fled into the bush
in fear at the approach of the sentries, they seized the wife of one of
the absent men. She had recently become a mother; perhaps she was not
strong enough to run away with her companions. Anyway she was arrested
with her babe at her breast, and taken off to the white man’s place,
where it was decided to give the village a lesson that they would not
soon forget.
In the presence of the white man the poor thing was stretched on the
ground, and the awful hippo-hide whip was brought into requisition. The
man who started the whipping became tired, and passed the whip over to
another to continue it, until at last, when the woman was more dead
than alive, and in a condition which cannot be described to you, the
white man gave the order to cease, and she was—set free, did you
say?—No, sent into the prison house!
An hour or two later her husband arrived and was told that if he wanted
to redeem his wife he must bring the white man twenty fowls. He
succeeded in collecting sixteen, which were refused, then he made up
the number, and so redeemed his wife and babe. This redemption must
have cost him a great deal of money, and he was a poor man.
Three days after her return to her home the wife died.
It seems strange, but the child lived, and is alive to-day, a puny,
ill-nourished child, as you may imagine.
O white women, can you listen to such things unmoved? Think, then, how
much worse it must be to see them, and live in the midst of them,
knowing that the same thing might happen to you any day?
In a village situated at some distance from the white man’s compound
the sentries had established themselves in their usual style of living,
in the best houses the village could boast of, and began to supply
themselves lavishly from the gardens and poultry-houses of the
villagers. They ordered the old men who were past rubber collecting out
into the bush to hunt monkeys for them to feast upon.
Day after day the old men went, and brought back the animals required,
but one morning there was a heavy fall of rain.
One old man refused to go out in the wet, he said that he could not
stand the cold, and so remained in his house. His failure to go to the
hunt was discovered by the sentries, and he was arrested by two of
them, stripped, and held down on the ground in the open street of the
village.
Then they—but I must not tell you what they did, white people do not
talk of such things.
After that one of the sentries held the left arm of the old man out
straight on the ground, while another, with his walking-staff (a square
sawn stick), beat him on the wrist until at last his hand fell off. His
sister came to his assistance, and he went away with her to his hut to
suffer agonies of pain for months.
A long time after the white man of God and his wife were visiting a
neighbouring village, teaching the people, and this old man found
courage to go and tell them his story, and show them his arm. Then the
wound was green, the bones protruding, and he was in a hopeless
condition.
But the strange thing was that the arm appeared to have been cut a
little below the elbow. The explanation was that the ends of the bones
had become sharp, and were constantly scratching other parts of his
body, so he had cut them off from time to time with his own knife. He,
with the white man of God, went a long journey to the white man in
charge of the rubber work, and showed him the wound.
But nothing was done, as all his people were too much afraid to bear
witness to the deeds of the sentries. If they had done so they might
have been treated in the same way, or even worse. For there was
nothing, not even murder, that the sentries were afraid to do, and
nothing too cruel for them to think of and put in practice.
I think I have told you enough to make you see that we rubber men were
not the only ones who suffered from the presence of the white men; and
now I must tell you more of my own story.