spectacle of a subject, lower and uncivilized race rising against its
conquerors and lawful masters, with whom it had lived at peace for
many years, could not fail to evoke the best energies of the latter
to maintain its prestige, though to have to do this in the face of
the odds possibly becoming one to ten, demanded the greatest energy,
and a drawing on all available resources. It was not a time for
half-measures. Rebellion had broken out. Rebellion by subjects, so
long in a state of subjection, was expected to be capable of rapidly
infecting the entire mass, unless sternly repressed. The possibility
of universal massacres of women and children arose before the calmest
minds. Such wanton butchery had taken place in the Matabele Rebellion
in 1896, the Matabeles being, as is well known, off-shoots of the
Zulus. It was a fire that had started, and in a country covered with
long, dry grass. If allowed to spread, it would soon have given rise to
winds that would have swept it still further along in every direction.
Once out of control of their Chiefs, as many were known to have got,
others would have followed the example. The best way of pandering to
such condition was to have dealt leniently, patiently and mercifully
with every transgressor. But, with the elemental forces of human fury
let loose, Dinuzulu, as rebel or as loyalist, would have been unable
to control or to check them; he was largely a figurehead. Nor, as has
already been pointed out, were the ordinary Chiefs able to control. It,
therefore, behoved the Government to deal with the situation promptly,
and with the same severity that any wise man would be expected to use
towards a fire threatening to destroy his house and all his belongings.
That is why the ablest soldiers were employed. That is why McKenzie
was placed in supreme command, and that is why he, almost in spite
of himself, became the exponent of a drastic policy--the policy of
necessity. The Government was manifestly under every obligation to
protect the people, not less Native loyalists than members of its own
and other European and Asiatic races. After all, there is such a law
as that of self-preservation. That is what mainly warranted these
undoubtedly severe, but unavoidable measures. And yet the troops were
exceedingly well-disposed to the Zulu race as a whole. Satisfactory
relations exist to-day between the Natives and the colonists, and will
long continue to exist, unless petty, misguided policies be brought
into practice.
The severity of the punishment during actual hostilities, or rather
until such moment as it appeared certain the Rebellion had been "got
under," received the fullest approval of every loyalist Native.[356]
Nor was their commendation other than sincere. It was spontaneously
and repeatedly, though, of course, cautiously expressed. There were,
indeed, isolated actions which did not meet with such or anybody
else's approval. The commission of irregularities in the circumstances
depicted, under a general licence to stamp out rebellion at the
earliest moment--a rebellion started by the Natives themselves--was
only to be expected, just as they occur and are rightly condemned in
every war.
It may be pointed out here that, on leaving Zululand, after witnessing
the operations for several weeks, Major-General Stephenson expressed
his satisfaction with the way in which they had been conducted, and
also testified to "the gallantry displayed by the men, and to the
readiness with which they fought their way through the scrub."
Since the Rebellion came to an end, Natal has made special endeavours
to remove all reasonable and remediable complaints. Her efforts
to improve the relations between the two races, especially by
appointing a sympathetic Council for Native Affairs, as well as Native
Commissioners, have met with success, so that restoration of mutual
confidence and good feeling on a satisfactory basis is rapidly becoming
an accomplished fact.[357]
The arrest of Dinuzulu and his subsequent removal to the Transvaal
have completely put an end to the unrest that existed both before and
after the disturbances. Zululand and Natal are in a more peaceful state
now than they have been at any time since Dinuzulu came back from St.
Helena.
It is generally allowed that, after a man has been tried and punished,
he is entitled to enjoy once more all the rights of citizenship, but
the circumstances connected with Dinuzulu being what they are, we
cannot but consider the haste with which he was appointed one of
the Presidents of the newly-formed South African Native Congress as
somewhat unseemly and unwise.
(iv) _Remarks concerning Native policy._
Now that there has been time for sober reflection, the one great
fact that seems to emerge, after reviewing the situation in its many
aspects, is the inadequacy of organic connection between the Europeans
and the Natives. As it is, the needs of the people as a nation are
apparently insufficiently expressed. The half-educated Natives,
especially if they be those who have, or appear to have, turned their
backs on the modes of life of their parents and ancestors, are the
ones who succeed most in catching the eye of the European public.
The masses, to whom in fact they belong, remain in the meantime
practically inarticulate; they are, as Milton might have called them,
but 'blind mouths.' Their wants and necessities, _from their own
peculiar points of view_, are given expression to by no one. No one
seems to have courage enough to champion their cause and to defend
a system of life which, if evolution means anything whatever, must
be of intrinsic value, from the mere fact that it exists after the
countless generations the people have lived in the land. And yet the
Natives, even the uncivilized masses, are, in the fullest sense of
the words, British subjects, and, as such, entitled to at least the
elementary rights of such subjects. Surely, among these rights (as
with all European governments) is the ability to live in accordance
with a system sanctioned probably by thousands of years of continuous
usage,--the great, natural system of Africa.
Under the form of administration established for the Natives, numerous
Magistrates have been appointed in various localities, whilst at least
twice as many police stations have also been set up. The Police,
however, were unwisely detached from the Magistrates; the unwisdom lay
in the fact that the action was taken much too soon. This, in the main,
with head offices in Pietermaritzburg, is the machinery for bringing
the Chiefs and ordinary Native public into touch with the Government.
Aided in subsidiary ways by Missionaries, teachers and other agencies,
this is what has aimed at establishing a healthy organic connection
between the one race and the other. Was it, is it, sufficient? So long
as the great majority of Natives live under the tribal system, many of
whose peculiar laws and customs have been embodied in a Code, given
the force of law by Parliament, it does not seem that the link between
the two people is as strong and effective as it ought to be. If the
tribal system is to succeed, it should be given a chance. That chance,
it would appear, should be to revive and encourage such unobjectionable
and salutary forms of control as were customary under the old system.
For
"Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean."
It is absurd to suppose that Magistrates and Police, Missionaries
or educationists, the whole varying in their methods as their
idiosyncrasies, can so dovetail into a more or less normal system of
Native life as to supply such influences, necessary under the system,
which Chiefs, assisted by councils and with extensive judicial and
administrative functions, were formerly able to afford. In the first
place, they have not the time to give that close, expert attention to
purely Native matters, social and domestic, which Chiefs and their
councils were able to do. In the second, supposing them to have the
requisite knowledge, which it is safe to say is very far indeed from
being the case, they have not the inclination. Their inclinations are
in the direction of their own racial affairs, and rightly so. Thus,
the Natives experience a need, a need which no Magistrates, Policemen,
Missionaries or teachers are able to supply, even though further
assisted by the Secretary for Native Affairs, Native High Court, or
Supreme Chief. In consequence of an insufficiently intimate supervision
of a thousand and one questions of interior economy, social and
domestic, grievances of all descriptions arise and exist for months
and years before they are removed. Such state of affairs is by no means
peculiar to Natal, one finds it prevailing throughout South Africa, and
apparently wherever else in the world a white race presides over the
destinies of a coloured one.
The lesson here, then, not only for Natal but the Union of South
Africa, seems to be just this. If the tribal system is to exist, and
there are a thousand reasons why it should, it should be permitted
to nourish and comfort the people more than it does. It should be
recognized as a good,--to be maintained and reinforced, although in
time doomed to be supplanted by something else,--not as an evil to be
suppressed by European, _i.e._ _alien_ agency, at the earliest possible
date.
If the proposal above referred to be gone into, it would, we believe,
be found to involve Europeans and Natives living, to a great extent,
in separate and clearly-defined areas (always allowing for reasonable
exceptions), each with substantially their own organization and
controlling machinery, and each developing along lines that accord with
common sense and are, at the same time, in harmony with the law of
nature. It would also be found that the peoples would be firmly linked
together from the mere fact of their independent existences being
formally recognized for all purposes, say, in the Constitution itself.
In that way and probably in that alone is it possible for such alarming
relative positions between white and black, as one sees between Negroes
and Europeans in America, to be avoided in South Africa, temporarily
and possibly permanently. It would be just as well, too, to bear in
mind that the ratio between white and black, so far from being about
seven to one, as in the United States, is about one to four.[358]
Hence it is not unlikely that the letting loose of such forces as are
now operating with so much harm in North America will, before long,
bring on a crisis of altogether exceptional severity in South Africa.
With the ever-increasing European education we are giving the people,
coupled with countless opportunities of increasing their material
prosperity, it follows that only lapse of time is necessary for all
sorts of demands to be put forward more or less justly, and this by a
race that is being compelled _against their natural instincts_ to take
on the European character. They will, of course, demand the franchise
and press for admission to all grades of the civil service, the
bench, and the bar; show cause why existing restrictions in regard to
firearms, passes, liquor, etc., etc. shall be removed; and so forth.
And so the movement of independence, once the people have fairly broken
away from the simple, strong and wholesome restraints of their own
systems of life, will go on increasing in volume and intensity, until
visions of Hayti and Liberia begin to rise before European imagination.
Thus, the price of our precipitate destruction of Native modes of
life, or rather callousness in not subserving these modes to the best
of our ability, not by way of amusement or sentiment, but because
imperatively necessary for the welfare of the State and the interests
of the Natives themselves, is that our own character, traditions,
creed, language, etc., will ultimately be undermined and displaced by
those of the people. As it is, they are ever laughing at our supreme
and obviously suicidal folly. We are, in fact, not competing with the
coloured races at all in the way races are supposed to do, and do, in
accordance with the theory of evolution, we are rather carefully and
continually loading the dice against ourselves. The inevitable result
of not permitting free-play to the principle of natural selection will
be that, from their greatly preponderating numbers, if for no other
reason, they will ultimately survive, whilst the European community
will cease as such to exist. No other result apparently can flow from a
wanton ignoring of, or running counter to, the immutable principles of
nature. Let us but continue as we are doing, to suppress and eradicate
the habits, customs, languages, traditions, ideals, etc., etc., of the
people, and our ultimate expulsion or absorption by the Bantu races
who, in our present ascendancy, we so much neglect, will follow as
surely as day follows night. And many are already beginning to see this.
It cannot too often be called to mind that our Natives differ vastly
from the Negroes in America through having social systems, creeds,
traditions and ideals of their own, all many, many generations old. Why
does not the State use these precious assets more than it does? Why are
they wilfully allowed to die out, through disuse or being ridiculed
and defamed, far more rapidly than they need? As they are congenital,
for what reason did the Creator endow the people with these various
propensities, if not for some eminently necessary purpose? May man with
impunity run counter to and thwart such purpose? Surely no one will
contend that Nature must be undone because the people are so plastic
as to be capable apparently of assuming the European character in all
its attractiveness and defectiveness, as if that were the greatest
and final effort of social evolution. Our motive should be to act in
accordance with the desires of the majority of the people, and not to
impose this or that restriction or condition mainly because, in our
limited vision, it appears to be right.
One cannot but see how strongly the case of Dinuzulu supports these
views. It shows that the people were in favour of his being appointed,
with the assistance of a council or other advisory body, to protect
their interests. They knew they were acting wrongly in dealing with
him in 1906, but, in the absence of any other national representative,
_i.e._ one of their own flesh and blood, it seemed there was no other
course left. Zulus look at the world's affairs in the concrete. To do
so in the abstract, as so common amongst ourselves, is foreign to their
nature. That is why want of organic connection between their race and
that of the white man takes the form of a request for the appointment
of a _person_ to act as intermediary, one to whom they can go with
their troubles, and one who would lay these before the Government for
favourable consideration.
What Dinuzulu himself said about this to the Governor has been briefly
noticed. He also observed: "The Natives of India are governed and
treated in a correct manner, and according to the law. The Boers,
who have recently been at war with the British Government, have also
been settled down ... but we who were subdued ... before the Boers
and these people I refer to,[359] are not treated in the same manner
as they have been treated. The laws are not the same. We cannot help
feeling that we Zulu people have been discriminated against.... We are
people who have no representatives in the affairs of the country, no
one to speak for us,[360] and the laws of the country simply come over
us by surprise.... We are all of us in the country like my fingers,
each one has his own authority, and does what he thinks right in his
own district.... We feel that, whilst we should own obedience and
allegiance to the Government ... there should yet be somebody amongst
us who represents the people."[361]
When the Native Affairs Commission met the local Chiefs and headmen
at Vryheid in January, 1907, the first speaker said: "I would ask
the Commission this: Of whom are they making the inquiry as to what
the Zulu people as a whole feel; who is that spokesman? Where is he?
Where is he who is the eyes and ears of the Zulu nation, the guardian
of the people?" Another Chief said: "Why is it the Governor puts such
questions, as the Commission has itself put, to mere blades of grass?
Where is our guardian? Where is that guardian that should have been
given to us by the Governor?... The Government does not rule us with
its right, but with its left, hand.... When a State is conquered, there
always remains, according to our ideas, some representative or another
who carries on the government of the conquered people.... The King
will continue to be at a loss as to exactly what we feel, because His
Majesty has failed to appoint somebody in a way that we are accustomed
to to represent our interests."
Others said: "The whole Zulu people are unanimous as to the need of
some person to voice their feelings." "Formerly Cetshwayo used to
conduct negotiations, etc., with Sir Theophilus Shepstone. Who was in
his (Cetshwayo's) place now?... Dinuzulu was their great induna, and
nothing had occurred between the Natives and him which should cause
them to pass by him and affiliate themselves to the Government." "They
were all in a state of dispersion; sheep without a shepherd."
Although, for years, many Chiefs were opposed to being "governed" by
a Paramount Chief, such as Cetshwayo was (after his restoration), it
is remarkable how widespread this desire latterly became, particularly
in 1905 when the poll tax was imposed. That such aspiration assumed
exaggerated proportions during a time of rebellion is not to be
surprised at. The universal use by insurgents of the "Usutu" war-cry,
of the Usutu badge (_tshokobezi_), and of Dinuzulu's name, only shows
the need they felt for a head. As this need existed then, is it not
possible that the Rebellion was brought about largely through the need
not having been seen and satisfied in one way or another?
And this need still exists and will continue to do so until adequate
steps have been taken to supply it. How often has it not happened in
the world's affairs that large and liberal action towards a people, so
far from making foes, has transformed them into loyal and permanent
allies. Let us, therefore, not blind ourselves too much to the fact
that our Native races, although they may have fought us in the past,
stand in as great, if not greater, need of similar consideration,
though on humbler, simpler lines, than any other corporate people.
Stress has been laid on the foregoing point because the Commission
omitted to face and deal with it with the directness obviously desired
by the Natives. And yet that a general and permanent protector of their
interests should be appointed, because, no doubt, of Ministers for
Native Affairs being movable officers, was the most important of their
requests.[362] It may be said to have come, although often unassociated
with Dinuzulu's name, from no less than 95 per cent. of the people. The
great body of Native opinion was emphatically in favour of the existing
tribal system being maintained, and steps being taken to remove as far
as possible the numerous abuses that had crept into it.
* * * * *
The position of the Native races is worthy of attention from many
points of view. The dying out of many of their habits and customs,
interesting and picturesque to us, but the very life-blood of the
people themselves, is inevitable. With such disappearance, the social
system itself has begun to decay. Many persons, indeed, have for
long observed these disintegrating tendencies and proposed various
religious, political, social or economic makeshifts. That is to say,
that these tribes, hastening on as they are doing to the collapse of
their tribal organizations, have nothing else to stem the universal
undermining that is going on, always with acceleration, than the
creeds, moral code, habits, customs, social and political systems of
Western Civilization, that is, the equipment of a people differing
essentially,--physically, morally, and intellectually. It seems to
occur to no one that a State policy which resolutely and deliberately
aims at maintaining the _status quo ante_ in a sane and judicious
manner, instead of assuming its downfall as inevitable, and forthwith
setting about in a thousand ways to make it even more ruinously rapid
and catastrophic than it would be without these reckless methods, is
worthy of serious and sober consideration. Misreading the religious,
political and other aspirations of a few half-educated Natives, many
of the dominant European race fondly believe it is along the same
road that the great inarticulate majority desire to travel. No one,
of course, is infallible, ourselves among the number, but a personal
experience of over forty years in the country, together with an
intimate knowledge of the people, does tend to convince us that such is
not the general desire,--not at present, whatever may be the case in
the future,--and has only become that of the half-educated because, the
various European administrations being what they have been and are, it
seems to them so inevitable that nothing remains but to adopt European
civilization in its entirety, and that as speedily as possible.
The doing of justice to the Natives, in the sense of eventually
conferring practically every privilege which Europeans enjoy, is to
blind oneself to the fact that the two races are congenitally separate.
Ideal justice can be said to be possible only when meted out within the
limits of a country in which the people are all of one race. Within
such environment, privileges are and should be capable of extension
to all. But when there are two or more separate races in a country,
that is not justice which extends privileges peculiar to the dominant
race to the radically-differing subject race or races. It is simply a
_belief_, resting on no proper foundation, that justice is being done.
The result of following it is gross injustice to the masses, and, later
on, to the dominant race itself. The situation is manifestly governed
by the idea of nationality and consanguinity. Thus, the highest justice
becomes not the concession of rights and privileges of the dominant
class, but a plain and constant recognition of the fact of nationality,
and keeping the sense of justice well in hand, instead of allowing it
to wander away to the clouds.
The spectacle of so many Natives in South Africa pressing on as
they are doing to obtain higher rights and privileges than they
already possess, and of forming a general Congress to give force to
their demands and supposed necessities, is due to nothing else than
the failure of the State to recognize the aborigines as a distinct
nationality, and as, therefore, worthy of being specifically provided
for in the Constitution to enable them to be managed on lines different
from those of the other and widely-differing race. The misdirected
energy of these 'enlightened' Natives, in the event of such provision
being made, would exert itself within its proper sphere, not in
agitating eternally against the Government for superior rights, but by
promoting the positive welfare of the tribes or races to which they
belong.
All this, we believe, was the underlying meaning of the Rebellion,
and the situation will not be cured by granting the franchise, or
initiating elaborate systems of land occupation as exist in the Cape
Province. Fundamental experimenting of this kind may, for a season,
appear to satisfy, but the day is coming when the Natives, in spite
of all our education and evangelization, our concessions of the
franchise and other so-called privileges, will remember that they, for
the most part, are members of the Bantu family, in spite of the fact
that some have already been persuaded to think, and speak, and act
like Europeans,--at least, that is what is naïvely supposed by their
teachers, as well as by themselves, to be the case.