THE SUBJECT RACES.
No question is more fraught with difficulties for the home philosopher
than this, but there is none on which practical men have made up their
mind with such bitter completeness. The root of the trouble is that
England and South Africa talk, and will continue to talk, in different
languages on the matter. The Englishman, using the speech of
conventional politics, seems to the colonist to talk academic
nonsense; while the South African, speaking the rough and ready words
of the practical man, appears as the champion of brutality and
coercion. The difficulties are so real that one cannot but regret that
they are complicated by verbal misunderstandings. There is no real
divergence of views on the native question: the distinction is rather
between a seriously held opinion and a slipshod prejudice. "Exeter
Hall" is less the name of a party than of an attitude, as common among
the robust colonists as ever it was among the mild pietists of
Clapham. It consists in a disinclination to look simply on facts, to
reason soberly, and to speak accurately,--a tendency to lap a question
in turgid emotion. The man who consigns all native races to perdition
in round terms, and declares that the only solution of the difficulty
is to clear out the Kaffir, is as truly a votary of Exeter Hall as the
gentle old lady to whom the aborigine is a model of primeval
innocence, whose only joy is the singing of missionary hymns.
Out of the confusion of interests and issues two main problems emerge
which may form useful guides in our inquiry. One is economic. What
part are the native races to play in the labour-supply and the
production of South Africa? what is to be their tenure of land? what
is to be their economic destiny in face of the competition of modern
life and the industrial development of the country? The second is the
moral question, of which the political is one aspect. A coloured race
living side by side with a white people furnishes one of the gravest
of moral cruces. The existence of a subject race on whatever terms is
apt to lead to the deterioration in moral and mental vigour of its
masters. Perpetual tutelage tends to this result; full social and
civic rights, on the other hand, lead to political anomalies and, too
often, to the lowest forms of political chicanery. A doctrinaire
idealism is fraught with dire social evils; but an obstinate
maintenance of the "practical man's" _status quo_ is apt to bring about
that very degeneration which justifies the doctrinaire. How to
reconcile freedom of development for the native by means of spontaneous
labour, education, and social rights with the degree of compulsion
necessary to bring them into line with social and industrial needs, or,
to put it shortly, how to keep the white man from deterioration without
spoiling the Kaffir,--this is the kernel of the most insistent of South
African problems.
The native races south of the Zambesi present a curious problem to the
student of primitive societies. All, or nearly all, of kindred race,
they are not autochthonous, and the date of their arrival in the
country can in most cases be fixed within the last five centuries.
Five centuries do not give a long title to a country, as savage titles
go, but even this period must be cut down in most cases, since the
wars of the great Zulu kings scattered the other races about as from a
pepper-box, with the result that few tribes save the Zulus, some of
the Cape Colony Kaffirs, the Swazis, and small peoples like the
Barolongs, can claim an occupation title of more than a hundred years.
This state of affairs, so rare in our dealings with savage peoples,
has, politically, both merits and defects. The absence of the
autochthonous hold of the soil and of long-settled immovable
traditions of tribal life makes the native more malleable under the
forces of civilisation. It is easier to break up the tribes and to
acclimatise the Kaffir to new localities and new conditions. But this
lack of a strong, settled, racial life makes it fatally easy for him
to fall a victim to the vices of civilisation, and to come upon our
hands as a derelict creature without faith or stamina, having lost his
old taboos, and being as yet unable to understand the laws of the
white man. This process of disintegration has been going on for a
century, and the result is a clearly marked division. We have the
tribal natives, who are still more or less strictly under the rule of
a chief, and subject to tribal laws sanctioned and enforced by the
Governments. The native population of the Transkeian territories in
Cape Colony, such as the Pondos, the Amaxosas, and the Tembus;
Bechuanaland, with the people of Khama, Bathoen, Sebele, and Linchwe;
Basutoland; Zululand; the northern and eastern parts of the Transvaal
under such chiefs as Magata, 'Mpefu, and Siwasa; Swaziland; and the
Matabele and Mashona tribes of the vast districts of Northern and
Southern Rhodesia are the main instances of this first class. The aim
of the different Governments has always been to keep the tribal
organisation intact, and, after eliminating certain tribal laws and
customs which are inconsistent with the ideas of white men, to give
their sanction to the remainder. Basutoland is a Crown colony; the
Transkeian territories are a native reserve; Bechuanaland is a native
protectorate; in Rhodesia a number of native chiefs control large
tracts of land under the Chartered Company's administration. Elsewhere
the tribes live in Government reserves, or in certain cases in
locations situated on private land. Between Pretoria and the Limpopo
there are dozens of small chieftains and chieftainesses, with tribes
varying in numbers from a hundred to several thousands. The second
class, the detribalised natives, are to be found scattered over the
whole country, notably in the western province of Cape Colony, and in
the vicinity of all South African towns. They live as a rule in
locations under municipal or Government supervision. In many cases
such locations are far larger than those of a small chief; but their
distinguishing feature is that they are governed solely by the law of
the country or by municipal regulations framed for the purpose, and
owe no allegiance to any chief or tribal system.
It is obvious that for purposes of policy this distinction cannot
maintain its importance. The rule of the chief is being rapidly
undermined by natural causes, and no taking thought can bolster it up
for ever. Education, too, and the closer settlement of the country by
white men, are rapidly breaking down tribal customs and beliefs,
which, as a rule, have more vitality than the isolated sentiment of
allegiance. For us the real distinction is between the natives who
can be kept in large reserves or locations, whether tribal or
otherwise, and the floating native population, which is every day
growing in numbers. Sooner or later we must face the problem of the
overcrowding of all reserves, and the consequent efflux of homeless
and masterless men. The needs of progress, too, are daily tending to
change the tribal native into the isolated native attached to some
industry or other. Politically the question is, How far and on what
lines the large reserves and locations can be best maintained, and
what provision can be made for incorporating the overflow, which
exists now and will soon exist in far greater numbers, on sane and
rational lines in the body politic?
* * * * *
Such being the main requirements of the problem, it remains to
consider the forms in which they present themselves to the ordinary
man. For the working aspect of a question is generally very different
from the form it takes in an academic analysis. The translation into
the terms of everyday life is conditioned by many accidental causes,
so that to one section of the community the labour problem is the sole
one, to another the educational, to a third the social. It is
important to realise that all are part of one question, and that no
single one can be truly solved unless the whole is dealt with. This
incompleteness of view, more than any other cause, has complicated the
native question, and produced spurious antagonisms, and policies which
are apparently rival, but in reality are complementary.
The first is the grave difficulty which must always attend the
existence of a subject race. Slavery is the extreme form of the
situation, and in it we see the evils and dangers on a colossal scale.
A subject population, to whom legal rights are denied, tends in the
long-run to degrade the value of human life, and to depreciate the
moral currency,--a result so deadly for true progress that the
consensus of civilised races has utterly condemned it. The denial of
social and political rights is almost equally dangerous, since, apart
from the risks of perpetual tutelage in a progressive community, there
follows necessarily a depreciation of those political truths upon
which all free societies are based. Many honest men have clearly
perceived this; but after the fashion of headstrong honesty, they have
confused the issues by an inaccurate use of words. Legal rights must
be granted, and since the law is the child of the fundamental
principles of human justice, legal equality should follow. Social and
political rights also must be given; but why social and political
equality? The most embittered employer of native labour does not deny
that the black man should share certain social privileges, and be made
to feel his place in the political organism, but he rightly denies
that rights mean equality of rights; while his doctrinaire opponent,
arguing from exactly the same premises, claims a foolish equality on a
misunderstanding of words. The essence of social and political
equality must be a standard of education and moral and intellectual
equipment, which can be roughly attributed to all members of the
community concerned. But in this case there can be no such common
standard. Between the most ignorant white man and the black man there
is fixed for the present an impassable gulf, not of colour but of
mind. The native is often quick of understanding, industrious,
curiously logical, but he lives and moves in a mental world incredibly
distant from ours. The medium of his thought, so to speak, is so
unique that the results are out of all relation to ourselves.
Mentally he is as crude and naive as a child, with a child's curiosity
and ingenuity, and a child's practical inconsequence. Morally he has
none of the traditions of self-discipline and order, which are
implicit, though often in a degraded form, in white people. In a word,
he cannot be depended upon as an individual save under fairly vigilant
restraint; and in the mass he forms an unknown quantity, compared with
which a Paris mob is a Quaker meeting. With all his merits, this
instability of character and intellectual childishness make him
politically far more impossible than even the lowest class of
Europeans. High property or educational qualifications for the
franchise, or any other of the expedients of Europe, are logically out
of place, though they were raised to the possession of a fortune and a
university degree; for the mind is still there, unaltered, though it
may be superficially ornamented. Give the native the full franchise,
argues one class of observer, and he will in time show himself worthy
of it, for in itself it is an education. On a strictly logical view it
would be as reasonable to put a child on a steam-engine as driver,
trusting that the responsibility of his position would be in itself an
education and would teach him the necessary art.
Social and political equality will seem to most men familiar with the
subject a chimera, but social and political rights the native must
have, and in most cases has already obtained. But unless such rights
are carefully adjusted the absolute cleavage remains. We have two
races, physically different, socially incapable of amalgamation: if we
make the gulf final, there is no possibility of a united state; if we
bridge it carelessly, the possibility is still more distant. We may
scruple to grant rights, such as the political franchise, which are
based in the last resort on a common moral and intellectual standard;
but we can grant rights which are substantive and educative and
capable of judicious extension. The Glen Grey Act, as we shall see,
made a valuable experiment in securing to the native the social status
which attends individual tenure of land. Some form of representation
might be devised, by which a chief might have a voice on a district
council, or a representative elected by an industrial location assist
in local government. Such measures, joined with a rational system of
education, will leave the door open for the extension of rights till
such time as the native has finally shown whether he is worthy of
equality or condemned by nature to rank for ever as a subject race.
There are men, able men with the courage of their opinions, who see no
hope in the matter, and who would segregate the natives in a separate
territory under British protection. The chief objection to this policy
is that it is impossible. The native is in our midst, and we must
face the facts. We have a chance to solve a burning question which no
other nation has had, since, as in the United States, the matter has
either been complicated by initial slavery, or, as also in the
States, a thoughtless plunge has been made into European doctrines of
liberty, equality, and fraternity. If we patiently and skilfully
bring to bear upon the black man the solvent and formative influences
of civilisation, one of two things must happen. Either the native
will prove himself worthy of an equal share in the body politic; or,
the experiment having been honestly tried, he will sink back to his
old place and gradually go the way of the Red Indian and the
Hottentot. For it is inevitable that civilisation, if wisely applied,
must either raise him or choke him,--raise him to the rank of equal
citizenship, or, by its hostility to his ineradicable qualities,
prove a burden too heavy to support.
The second is the ever-recurring problem of labour. In an earlier
chapter the economic aspect of the question has been discussed; for the
present we have to face that aspect which is connected with a native
policy. The Kaffir is fundamentally an agriculturist, and when his
lands are well situated he reaps enough for his simple existence with a
minimum of labour. If he is rich enough to have several wives, they do
the necessary picking and hoeing, and their lord and master sits in the
shade of his hut and eats the bread of idleness. This was well enough
in the old hunting and fighting days, when the male folk lived a
strenuous life in the pursuit of game and the slaughter of their
neighbours. But with civilisation close to their gates, the old system
means a degraded somnolent life for the man, and the continuance of a
real, though not necessarily unpleasant, form of slavery for the woman.
And this in a country which is crying aloud for labour and development!
To be sure, the foregoing is not a complete picture of all Kaffir life,
but it is true of the larger reserves and the wealthier kraals. To most
men it is an offence that the native, who is saved by British power
from insecurity of life and limb, should be allowed to remain, by the
happy accident of nature, an idler dependent only on the kindness of
mother earth, multiplying his kind at an alarming rate, and untouched
by the industrial struggle where his sinews are so sorely needed. The
Kaffir owes his existence to the white man; in return he should be
compelled to labour for hire and take his proper place in a world which
has no room for his vegetating habits. He holds his land by our favour,
he is protected from extinction by our arms, he enjoys the benefits of
our laws; and he must pay for it all, not only in taxes but by a
particular tax, a certain quantity of labour. This mode of argument
sounds so serenely reasonable that one is apt to miss the very
dangerous political doctrine which underlies it. Stated shortly, it
runs thus. Compulsory labour without payment is to be reprobated like
all forms of _corvee_, but if we pay what we regard as a fair price and
make the compulsion indirect, then we get rid of such an objection.
This doctrine involves two principles which seem to me to be subversive
of all social order, and in particular of that civilisation which they
profess to support. The Kaffir would be placed outside the play of
economic forces. His wages would be arbitrarily established on an
artificial basis, unalterable save at the will of his white masters. In
the second place, compulsion by high taxation is not indirect
compulsion, but one of the most direct forms of coercion known to
history. To constrain a man indirectly is to use unseen forces and
half-understood conditions which, being unrealised, do not impair his
consciousness of liberty; but this is not the method which is proposed.
A white man, it is argued, suffers want if he does not work. Well and
good,--so does the Kaffir; but the work which he does, unless he is
rich enough to have it vicariously performed, is different in kind from
the work which others want him to do, and hence the trouble arises. To
force a man, black or white, to enter on labour for which he is
disinclined, is to rank him with beasts of burden, and prevent him, as
an industrial creature, from ever attaining the conscious freedom which
labour bestows. The old truth, so often misapplied, that a man who does
not work shall not eat, is a statement of economic conditions to which
those who quote it in this connection would seek to do violence.
But such truisms do not exhaust the question. It is not the Kaffir who
chiefly matters, for in his present stage of development he might be
as well off one way as another; it is the white man's interests which
must decide. If the whole of Kaffirdom were sunk in a state of
feminine slavery and male indolence, violence might be done to
political axioms with some show of reason; but the Kaffir is emerging
from his savagery and has shown in more ways than one a capacity for
industrial development. But, taking the Kaffir on the lowest plane,
what is to be the effect on the white population of South Africa if
forced labour is to stereotype for ever a lower race, to which the
free selection of labour, the first requisite of progress, is denied?
"The safety of the commonwealth," wrote John Mackenzie, "absolutely
demands that no hatches be battened down over the heads of any part of
the community." At the back of all the many excellent cases which have
been made out for compulsory labour by high taxation, there lie the
immediate needs of the great gold industry--needs which it is now clear
can never be met in South Africa alone by any native legislation. An
instant industrial demand is apt to blind many good men for the moment
to those wider truths, which on other occasions they are ready enough
to assent to. The case has been further prejudiced for most people by
the bad arguments used on the native side, and the intolerable cant
with which obvious truths have been sicklied over. We need not concern
ourselves with the so-called degradation of Kaffir manhood implied in
compulsory labour, for such self-conscious manhood does not exist; but
we are very deeply concerned with the degradation of white manhood,
which will inevitably follow any of the facile solutions which are
cried in the market-place. If by violent methods economic laws are
checked in their play, a subject race in a low state of civilisation is
checked on the only side on which development can be reasonably looked
for. The harder and lower forms of toil will fall into Kaffir hands for
good; the white population will become an aristocracy based on a kind
of slave labour; and with the abolition of an honest hierarchy of work,
degeneration will set in with terrible swiftness. It is a pleasing
dream this, of a community of cultivated white men above the needs of
squalid or menial toil, but on such a dream no free nation was ever
built. The old tribal system is crumbling, and in a hundred years or
less we shall see the Kaffirs abroad in the land, closely knit to all
industries and touching social and political life at countless points.
If they are a portion, however small, of the civic organism, there is
hope for the future; but if they are a thing apart, denied the
commonest of all rights, and remaining in their present crude and
stagnant condition, they will be a menace, political and moral, which
no one can contemplate with equanimity. There are, indeed, only two
entirely logical policies towards the native. Either remove him, bag
and baggage, to some Central African reserve and leave him to fight his
wars and live as he lived before the days of Tchaka, or bring him into
close and organic relation with those forces of a high civilisation
which must inevitably mend or end him.
There is a third chief aspect in which the native problem presents
itself to the ordinary man. The Kaffir, south of the Zambesi, already
outnumbers the white man by fully five to one, and he increases with
at least twice the rapidity. Most native reserves and locations are
overcrowded, the Kaffir is being driven on to private land as an
unauthorised squatter, and the floating population in and around the
towns is daily increasing. What is to be the end of this fecundity?
Living on little, subject apparently to none of the natural or
prudential checks on over-population, there seems a real danger of
black ultimately swamping white by mere gross quantity. In any case
there will soon be a grave economic crisis, for, unless prompt
measures are adopted, a large loose vagabondage will grow up all over
the land. It is to be noted that this danger is the converse of the
two problems we have already discussed. They referred to the
stereotyping of the Kaffir races as a settled agricultural people out
of line with industrial progress; this concerns the inevitable
break-up of the old agricultural condition by mere excess of
population and the difficulty of dealing with the overflow. This
complementary character which the problems assume is one of the most
hopeful features of the case. Natural forces are bringing the Kaffir
to our hands. The _debacle_ of his old life is turning him upon the
world to be formed and constrained at our pleasure. The field is clear
for experiment, and it behoves us to make up our minds clearly on the
forms which the experiment must take.
* * * * *
To recapitulate the results of the preceding pages. The central
problem is how to bring the native races under the play of civilising
forces, so that they may either approve themselves as capable of
incorporation in the body politic, or show themselves eternally
incapable, in which case history would lead us to believe that they
will gradually disappear. To effect this vital experiment, no rigid
economic or social barrier should be placed between them and the white
inhabitants. Since the old tribal organisation is breaking up, the
ground is being rapidly prepared for the trial. It is our business,
therefore, to consider how best the system of tribes and reserves can
be maintained, so long as there is in it the stuff of life, and what
new elements can be introduced which will make its fall more safe and
gradual; and, in the second place, to devise ways and means for
dealing with the rapidly increasing loose native population, for
replacing the former tribal traditions with some rudiments of
civilised law, and for leaving an open door for such development as
may be within their capacity. It will be convenient to look at ways
and means under three heads. There is, first, the general question of
taxation, which is common to all. There is, secondly, the problem of
the larger reserves, and the maintenance, so far as is desirable, of
the old rural life, with the kindred questions of land tenure, of
local government, of surplus population, and of labour. And, finally,
there is the problem of the class which in the last resort is
destined to be most numerous, the wholly non-tribal and unattached
natives, whose mode of life must be created afresh and controlled by
Government. This is the most difficult problem, since such natives
are peculiarly exposed to the solvents of white civilisation, and
everything depends upon the method in which the solvents are used.
The native is, for the most part, under special taxes. In certain
parts of Cape Colony and Natal the fiscal system is in practice the
same for black and white, but for the purposes of this inquiry the
native who has adopted the white man's life may be disregarded. In
Cape Colony the hut tax is 10s. per annum, whether the hut is situated
on private or Crown lands, and on locations within municipalities a
similar municipal tax is paid. In Natal the hut tax is 14s., in
Basutoland L1, in Rhodesia 10s., and in the Transvaal and Orange River
Colony 10s. under the old _regime_. In Natal, the Orange River Colony,
the Transvaal, and Rhodesia, there was also a native pass law, under
which certain sums were charged on travelling passes, varying from 6d.
in the Orange River Colony to 2s. per month in the mining areas of the
Transvaal. It is unnecessary to go into the numerous details of native
taxation, which within narrow limits are constantly varied, but it is
worth while to look at two instances which may be taken as the extreme
types of such taxation, the Transvaal under the former Government and
the districts of Cape Colony subject to the Glen Grey Act. In the
Transvaal the natives for the most part are tribal, and the system of
taxation was based on tribal considerations; but the bulk of the
revenue under the Pass Law came from the large fluctuating population
of natives at work on the mines. Under the old Government the ordinary
native paid 10s. as hut tax, L2 as capitation fee, with sundry other
charges for passes, &c., which brought the whole amount which might be
levied up to fully L4. The tax was loosely collected, but on the whole
the taxation per head was reasonably high. One of the first acts of
the new administration was to consolidate all native taxes in one
general poll tax of L2, with a further charge of L2 per wife for
natives who had more than one. The pass fee was also charged upon the
employer in districts where it fell to be levied. The net result,
therefore, is that for a native, who is the husband of not more than
one wife, the sum payable yearly is about L3, made up of the poll tax
and the registration fee. A native may have to pay more than the old
Government exacted, but if he pleases he can pay less. In the
districts under the Glen Grey Act individual ownership of land is
encouraged, and the native who has attained to such tenure is
practically in the position of a white citizen--that is, he pays no
hut tax or poll tax, and his contributions to revenue consist in the
payment of such rates as his district council or the Transkeian
General Council may levy. For the native who holds no land either on
quit-rent or freehold title, there is a labour tax of 10s. per annum,
which he can avoid by showing that he has been at work outside the
district for a period of three months during the previous year, and
from which he can gain complete exemption by showing that at some time
he has worked for a total period of three years. Such a tax is not a
compulsory labour tax, but should rather be regarded as a modification
of the hut tax, which can be remitted as a bonus on outside labour.
The contrast between the two forms of taxation is obvious, the one
being a special and peculiar type, the other a modification of the
general fiscal system of the colony. It is to the latter type that all
systems of native taxation must tend to approximate. There are certain
obvious objections to the hut tax, of which the chief is that it leads
to overcrowding and bad sanitation, and prevents young men from
building huts of their own; and perhaps it would be well if,
following the new Transvaal precedent, all native taxes were
consolidated into one comprehensive poll tax. But, speaking generally,
natives are not heavily taxed[28] having regard to their wage-earning
capacity, though hitherto the Customs have been unduly hard upon their
simple commodities. In the Transvaal, for example, there is little
doubt that the native population could bear for revenue purposes in
most years a poll tax of L3 per head. This might be reduced in case of
natives in industrial employment, in consideration of the fact that
such natives contribute otherwise to revenue through the Pass Law. It
is one of the ironies of this South African problem that increased and
reasonable taxation for revenue purposes will continue to be
identified in many minds with compulsory labour through high taxation.
The two things are as wide apart as the poles. The native, in return
for protection and good government, is required to pay a certain sum
per annum calculated solely on fiscal needs and his earning capacity.
That is the only basis of native taxation; but when the sum has been
fixed, it may be expedient as a matter of policy to reduce the tax in
the case of natives working under an employer, partly because such
natives contribute to the Exchequer in another way, and partly as a
bonus to encourage outside labour. But the general form of taxation
might well be altered, slowly and cautiously, as the time ripened. The
hut tax might be gradually transmuted into a form of rent which, as in
the Glen Grey districts, could be lowered as a bonus on outside
labour, and the extension of local government might provide for the
rating of locations and reserves on some system common to all
districts. Taxation may have an educative force, and to ask from the
native a contribution for something of which the purpose is apparent
and the justification obvious, is to bestow on him a kind of freedom.
It is the first step to taxation with representation to provide that
taxation should be accompanied by understanding.
* * * * *
The second question is that of existing reserves and the possibility
and method of their maintenance. In the case of many the problem is
still simple. Basutoland, the chief tribes of the Bechuanaland
Protectorate and Southern Rhodesia, Swaziland, Zululand, the races of
the north and north-eastern Transvaal, and a considerable part of the
Transkeian territories, will find for many years protected tribal
government suitable to their needs. Tribal customs and laws, in so far
as they are not _contra bonos mores_, are recognised by the protecting
Governments, and given effect to by any white courts which may have
jurisdiction in the district. The old modes of land tenure, the
succession to the chieftainship, the tribal religion, if any exists,
should be given the sanction of the sovereign Power till such time as
they crumble from their own baselessness. The disintegrating forces
are many and potent. Taxation will compel the acquisition of wealth
other than in kind, and will therefore strengthen existing trade, and,
if gradually modified in character till it approach a rating system,
will replace the tribe by the district as a local unit. The growth of
population will compel a certain overflow, which must either be
accommodated on new land under special conditions, or must go to
swell the general industrial community. Education, the greatest of
all disintegrators, is loosening slowly the old ties, and is
increasing the wants of the native by enlarging his mental horizon.
Outside labour, whether undertaken from love of novelty or from sheer
economic pressure, leaves its indelible mark on the labourer. The
Kaffir who has worked for two years in Kimberley or Johannesburg may
seem to have returned completely to his old stagnant life, but there
is a new element at work in him and his kindred, a new curiosity, a
weakening of his regard for his traditional system. Agriculture
itself, which has hitherto been the mainstay of his conservatism, is
rapidly becoming a force of revolution. Formerly no self-respecting
native would engage in cultivation, leaving such tasks to his women;
but a native who would not touch pick or hoe is ready enough to work a
plough, if he is so fortunate as to possess one. The growth of wealth
and a spirit of enterprise among the tribes leads to improved tillage,
and once the native is content to labour himself in the fields, his
old scheme of society is already crumbling.
But, in addition to natural solvents, there is one which we might well
apply in our own interest against the time when the tribal system
shall have finally disappeared. Any form of political franchise,
however safeguarded, is in my opinion illogical and dangerous. It is
inequitable to create barriers which are themselves artificial, but it
is both inequitable and impolitic to disregard natural barriers when
the basis of our politics is a presumed natural equality. But it may
be possible to admit the Kaffir to a share in self-government without
giving any adherence to the doctrine involved in a grant of a national
franchise. Local government is still in its infancy all over South
Africa, but the common type is some form of urban or district council.
The questions which such councils discuss do not involve high
considerations of statescraft, but simple practical matters, such as
roads and bridges, sanitary restrictions, precautions against stock
diseases, and market rules. Supposing that in any district there
exists a tribe or a location sufficiently progressive and orderly, I
see no real difficulty in bringing the chief or induna sooner or later
directly or indirectly into the local council. It is a matter on
which it is idle to dogmatise, being one of the many questions on
which South Africa must say the last word, and being further
dependent on the status of the natives in each district; but on a
nominated or elective council a native, or a white member with
natives in his constituency, might do valuable work in assisting with
matters in which natives were largely concerned. A native who cannot
reasonably be asked to decide on questions such as fiscal reform or
military organisation, may be very well fitted to advise, as a large
stock-holder, on precautionary measures against rinderpest. If such a
step is ever taken--and the present exclusive attitude of South
Africa is rather a sign of the growing solidarity of the community
than an index of a permanent conviction--an advance of enormous
import will have been made in that branch of native education in
which we are almost powerless to move directly, namely, his training
as a responsible citizen.
As the tribal system breaks down from whatever cause, the tribesmen must
do one of three things--either settle on the land on new conditions, or
live permanently in the service of employers, or swell the loose
population of town and country. The second course does not concern us,
being a matter for the private law of master and servant. But in each of
the other courses the State is profoundly interested. For the sake of
the future it is necessary to have the existing reserves thoroughly
examined, for, since the fluctuations of native populations are very
great, many are too small for their present occupants and a few are too
spacious. Majajie's location in Zoutpansberg, and one or two of the
reserves on the western border of the Transvaal, may be quoted as
instances of tribes which have shrunk from the original number on
which the grant of land was based. In such cases the land might
reasonably be curtailed, since it is still Crown land held in trust
for the natives' use, and not private land purchased by the chiefs
themselves. But it is more usual to find locations far too narrow, and
the result in many parts is that a certain number of natives who have
been compelled to leave their old reserves are farming private lands
on precarious and burdensome terms, or are squatting on Crown lands
with no legal tenure at all. A law of the late Transvaal Government
(No. 21 of 1895) made it illegal to have more than five native
households on one private farm; but this law, like many others which
conflicted with the interests of the governing class, was quietly
allowed to become a dead letter. There are men to-day who have a
hundred and more native families on a farm, paying often exorbitant
rents either in money or in forced labour, and liable to be turned
adrift at a moment's notice. The old Boer system was to allow natives
to squat on land in return for six months' labour; but this mode of
payment is never satisfactory with a Kaffir, who soon forgets the
tenure on which he holds his land, regards it as his own, and makes
every attempt to evade his tenant's service. The whole position is
unsatisfactory, the master being cumbered with unwilling and often
worthless labour, the tenant subject to a capricious rent and a
permanent possibility of eviction. In the interests of both white and
black it is desirable to end this anomaly. Some form of the Squatters'
Law might be re-enacted and enforced, a farmer being allowed a
reasonable number of native families, who give work for wages and pay
a fair rent for their land. The balance might well be accommodated as
tenants on such portions of Crown land as are suitable for Kaffirs and
incapable of successful white settlement. Such lands exist in the
parts where the native population is densest, as in the northern and
eastern districts of the Transvaal. The situation affords an
opportunity for the Government policy towards outside labour. If the
rent per holding were fixed at some figure like L10 (which is less
than many natives pay to private owners) it might be reduced to L5, if
a certain proportion of the males of a household went out to labour
for a part of the year in the towns or in some rural employment other
than farming. Such a policy would give immediate relief to the really
serious congestion in many districts, would establish a better system
of native tenure, and would pave the way for a closer connection
between the industrial native and the country kraal.
* * * * *
The wholly detribalised native is a more important problem, because he
represents the type of what the Kaffir will in some remote future
become--a man who has forgotten his race traditions, and has become an
unpopular attache of the white community. Towards other natives our
policy must be only to maintain an amended _status quo_, but for him
we must make an effort at construction. It is no business of mine to
frame policies, but only to sketch, roughly and imperfectly, the
conditions of the problem which the constructive statesman (and South
Africa will long have need of constructive statesmen) must face.
Individual tenure of land--and by this is not necessarily meant
freehold, even under the Glen Grey restrictions as to alienation, for
a long lease may be more politic and equally attractive[29]--and the
spread of education and commerce will work to the same effect in the
rural districts as industrial employment in the towns. But for the
present the towns furnish the gravest problem--how to make adequate
provision for the increasing native population, which is neither
living permanently in the households of white masters nor working in
the mines under a time contract. It is desirable to have locations for
natives, as it is fitting to provide bazaars for Asiatics, since the
native should be concentrated both for administrative and educational
purposes. Those municipal locations, which already exist in many
towns, will have to be taken vigorously in hand. Something must
replace the biscuit-tin shanties where the native, ignorant of
sanitation, lives, under more wretched conditions, what is practically
the life of a country kraal, and with the reform of their habitations
a new attraction to industry will exist for the better class of
Kaffir. It is a common mistake to class all natives together, a
mistake which a little knowledge of South African ethnology and
history would prevent. Many have highly developed instincts of
cleanliness, and much race pride, and will not endure to be huddled in
squalid locations with the refuse of inferior tribes. Given decent
dwelling-places, education on rational lines, and after a time,
perhaps, a share in municipal government, might lay the foundation of
a civic life and an industrial usefulness far more lasting than can be
expected from casual labourers brought from distant homes for a few
months' work, and carried back again.
South Africa has in her day possessed one man who desired to look at
things as they are, a murky and distorted genius at times, but at his
best inspired with something of a prophet's insight. The fruit of Mr
Rhodes' native administration was the Glen Grey Act, which still
remains the only attempt at a constructive native policy. It is hard
enough to govern, but sometimes, looking to the iron necessities in
the womb of time, it is wise to essay a harder task, and build. We
must keep open our communications with the future, and begin by
recognising the fundamental truths, which are apt to get a little
dimmed by the dust of the political arena. The first is that the
native is psychologically a child, and must be treated as such; that
is, he is in need of a stricter discipline and a more paternal
government than the white man. South Africa has already recognised
this by the remarkable consensus of opinion which she has shown in the
prohibition of the sale of intoxicants to coloured people. He is as
incapable of complete liberty as he is undeserving of an unintelligent
censure. The second is that he is with us, a permanent factor which
must be reckoned with, in spite of the advocates of a crude Bismarckian
policy; and because his fortunes are irrevocably linked to ours, it is
only provident to take care that the partnership does not tend to our
moral and political disadvantage. For there is always in the distance a
grim alternative of over-population resulting in pauperism and anarchy,
or a hard despotism producing the moral effects which the conscience of
the world has long ago in slave systems diagnosed and condemned. There
are three forces already at work which, if judiciously fostered, will
achieve the experiment which South Africa is bound to make, and either
raise the Kaffir to some form of decent citizenship, or prove to all
time that he is incapable of true progress. Since we are destroying the
old life, with its moral and social codes and its checks upon economic
disaster, we are bound to provide an honest substitute. The forces
referred to are those of a modified self-government, of labour, and of
an enlightened education. The first is an experiment which must be
undertaken very carefully, unless our case is to be prejudiced from the
outset. I have given reasons for the view that a political franchise
for the native is logically unjustifiable; but on district councils and
within municipal areas the native, wherever he is living under
conditions of tolerable decency and comfort, might well play a part in
his own control. It may be doomed to failure or it may be the beginning
of political education, but it is an experiment we can scarcely fail to
make. In labour, short of a crude compulsion, every means must be used
to bring the Kaffir within the industrial circle. We shall be assisted
in our task by many secret forces, but it should be our business so to
frame our future native legislation as to place a bonus on labour
outside the kraal. The matter is so intimately bound up with the
wellbeing of the whole population that there is less fear of neglect
than of undue and capricious haste.
A word remains to be said on native education. In this province there
is much need of effective Government control, since in the past the
energies of educationalists have tended to flow in mistaken channels
or be dissipated over too wide an area. The native is apt to learn in
a kind of parrot fashion, and this aptitude has misled many who have
devoted their lives to his interests. But in the present state of his
culture what we are used to call the "humanities" have little
educational importance. At the best the result is to turn out native
pastors and schoolmasters in undue numbers, unfortunate men who have
no proper professional field and no footing in the society to which
their education might entitle them. It is a truth which the wiser sort
of missionaries all over the world are now recognising in connection
with the propagation of Christianity--that the ground must be slowly
prepared before the materialist savage mind can be familiarised with
the truths of a spiritual religion. Otherwise the result is a glib
confession of faith which ends in scandal. The case is the same with
what we call "secondary education." The teaching of natives, if it is
to produce any practical good, should, to begin with, be confined to
the elements and to technical instruction. The native mind is very
ready to learn anything which can be taught by concrete instances, and
most forms of manual dexterity, even some of the more highly skilled,
come as easily to him as to the white man. When the boys are taught
everywhere carpentry and ironwork and the rudiments of trade, and the
girls sewing and basket-making and domestic employments, a far more
potent influence will have been introduced than the Latin grammar or
the primer of history. The wisest missionary I have ever met had a
station which was a kind of ideal city for order and industry, with
carpenters' and blacksmiths' shops, a model farm, basket-making,
orchards, and dairies. "By these means," he said, "I am teaching my
children the elements of religion, which are honesty, cleanliness, and
discipline." "And dogma?" I asked. "Ah," he said, "as to dogma, I
think we must be content for the present with a few stories and
hymns."
[28] It is proposed to assimilate native taxation in Southern
Rhodesia to the system now in vogue in the Transvaal,
and impose a poll tax of L2, with a tax of 10s. for
each extra wife. In the Orange River Colony it is
proposed to raise the hut tax to L1.
[29] The question of native ownership of land in the new
colonies is not very clear. In the Transvaal land was
generally held in trust for natives by the Native
Commissioners; but apparently half-castes could own
land, and Asiatics under certain restrictions. In the
Orange River Colony ownership by Asiatics is forbidden;
but certain native tribes, such as the Barolongs in
Maroka, and the Oppermans at Jacobsdaal, as well as
half-castes and the people known as the Bastards, were
allowed freehold titles, subject to certain restrictions
on alienation.