Native Life in South Africa Part 10

At this, the men could scarcely suppress a laugh. The Missus looked round again, and said:

"Anna, have you Kafirs plotted to fool me this morning? Because I take such a deep interest in your welfare, you have so far forgotten yourselves that you connived with your parents to come over to my house and fool me on my own farm? What is the meaning of all this?"

Auta Gert unfolded his story. The Baas was at the native settlement the previous day. He called a meeting of the native peasants and told them of the new law, under which no Kafir can buy a farm or hire a farm.

He added that, according to this law, their former relations of landlord and tenants have been made a criminal offence, for which they could be fined a hundred pounds, and he gave them ten days to decide whether they would become his servants or leave the farm.

"Go away, Auta Gert; you were dreaming, my husband would never talk such nonsense. You have been with him from childhood, long before I ever knew him, and yet you do not know that my husband is incapable of uttering anything half so wicked?"

"He said it was the law, the new law."

"Of course you need some stringent measures against the useless, sneaking and prowling loafers, but there is no fear that such laws could apply to Natives like you and Mietje and your children."

"But, Nooi, the Baas told us to leave the farm as the law did not permit him to ----"

"Get you gone, Auta Gert, he was joking. You must know that the law did not buy this farm. The old Baas purchased it from Baas Philander.

I personally helped to add up the number of morgen and to calculate the money, and there was not a penny piece from any Government. Go home, Auta Gert, and leave everything to me, and do not let me hear you saying Dashfontein is no longer your home."

"Well, Nooi," a.s.sented the Natives with some relief, "if you say it is all right, then it must be so, and we will go back and reap our mealies in peace, and if a policeman comes round demanding a hundred pounds we will tell him to arrest us and take us to the Nooi of the farm.

Good-bye, Nooi."

"Good-bye, Auta Gert; good-bye, Auta Jan ---- Poor Anna, my dear little maid, why did you not tell Nooi this morning that you were worried over this matter.

Really, Anna, I was thinking that you were lovesick. How did poor old Mietje take it? Sadly, did she. Well, I will speak to the Baas about it.

He had no business to attempt to bring bad luck over us by disturbing our peaceful Natives with such G.o.dless tidings.

Tell your mother that Nooi says it will be all right."

A few days later, Hendrik Prins, the farm manager in the employ of Mr. V., was due at the native settlement to see the steam sh.e.l.ler at work and also to receive the landowner's share of the produce. Instead of Prins, Mr. V. attended in person. Each Native regarded this unusual occurrence as the signal for their impending eviction and thought that day would see their last transaction with their old master and landlord.

Mr. V. counted the separate bags filled with mealies and Kafir corn placed in groups around the sh.e.l.ler. He counted no fewer than 12,300 bags, and knew that his share would total 6,150, representing about 3,000 Pounds gross. Could he ever succeed in getting so much, with so little trouble, if poor whites tilled his lands instead of these Natives? he thought. After all, his dear Johanna was right.

This law is blind and must be resisted. It gives more consideration to the so-called poor whites (a respectable term for lazy whites), than to the owners of the ground. He, there and then, resolved to resist it and take the consequences.

The grain was all threshed; a number of native girls were busy sewing up the bags, and the engine-driver ordered his men to yoke his oxen and pull the machine away. Mr. V. ordered Auta Gert to call all the 'volk' together as he had something to tell them.

Auta Gert, knowing the determination of his mistress, did so in confidence that they were about to receive some glad tidings.

But the other folks came forward with a grievous sense of wrong.

The fact that some Natives on the adjoining property had been turned away three days before and sent homeless about the country, their places being taken by others, who, tired of roaming about and losing nearly everything, had come in as serfs did not allay their fears.

Auta Hans was already conjuring up visions of a Johannesburg speculator literally "taking" his Cape shorthorns for a mere bagatelle, as they did to William Ranco, another evicted squatter from Hoopstad.

Mr. V., the farmer, mounted a handy wagon hard by and commenced to address the crowd of blacks who gathered around the wagon at the call of Gert.

"Attention! Listen," he said. "You will remember that I was here last month and explained to you the new law. Well, I understand that that explanation created the greatest amount of unrest amongst the Natives in the huts on my farm. Personally, I am very sorry that it ever came to that, but let me tell you that your Nooi, my wife, says it is not right that the terms under which we have lived in the past should be disturbed.

I agree with her that it is unjust, and that the good Lord, who has always blessed us, will turn His face from us if people are unsettled and sent away from the farm in a discontented mood."

(Loud and continued applause, during which Mr. V. took out his pouch of Magaliesburg tobacco and lit his pipe.) "The Nooi," he continued after a few puffs, "says we must not obey this law: she even says, if it comes to physical ejectment, or if they take me to prison, she is prepared to go to Pretoria in person and interview General Botha."

(More cheers, during which the Natives dispersed to cart away their mealies amidst general satisfaction.)

The writer visited Dashfontein in July, 1913, when the above narrative was given him word for word by old Gert.

As old Gert narrated the story, Aunt Mietje, his wife, who had had timely notice of the impending visit of the morulaganyi (editor) from her husband (who slaughtered a sheep in honour of the occasion), superintended with interesting expectations over frizzling items in the frying-pan on her fireplace. Her bright eyes, beaming from under her headkerchief, suggested how she must have been the undisputed belle of her day. The rough wooden table was covered with the best linen in the native settlement, and on it were laid some clean plates, and the old yet shining cutlery reserved for special occasions, besides other signs of an approaching evening meal.

Having learnt the art from an experienced housewife on whose farm her people were squatting, and improved upon her teaching, she was famous in the neighbourhood for the excellence of her cooking.

Her only worry in that department was her seeming lack of success in training her daughters up to her elevation. She is usually sent for when important visitors come to Dashfontein, and would then don her best costume of coloured German print, and carry down with her the spotless ap.r.o.n which Mrs. V. gave her the preceding New Year; and in spite of her advancing years, she would cause Anna, and every other upstart at the homestead, instinctively to play second fiddle to her. And when we suggested that our wife could measure swords (or, shall we say, forks) with her as a cook, she giggled and remembered some white man's proverb about the proof of the pudding being in the eating.

After the harrowing experience of the previous week, during which we were forced to see our fellow-beings hounded out of their homes, and the homes broken up; their lifelong earnings frittered away by a law of the land, their only crime being the atrocious one of having the same colour of skin as our own, and finding ourselves suddenly landed on an oasis, the farm of a kind Dutchman and his n.o.ble wife, on whose property, and by whose leave, little black piccaninnies still played about in spite of the law, it can be readily understood with what comfort we sat down and did justice to the good things provided by Aunt Mietje. In the course of her preparation every step of hers suggested that she entertained no sort of misprised opinion about her superiority over her compeers; and nothing pleased her better than when she dazzled her husband and family connexions with deeds which proved her superiority over her contemporaries, in everything that tends to make the virtuous and industrious house-wife.

She gave a dramatic ending to her husband's narrative when she said --

"Who would have thought that Hannetje, naughty little Hannetje, who was so troublesome when my sister used to nurse her -- who would have thought that she would ever prove to be the salvation of our people? Who ever antic.i.p.ated that all the strong Boers, on whom we had relied, would desert us when the fate of our whole tribe hung in the balance? Natives have been moving from north to south, and from south to north, all searching at the same time for homes and grazing for their cattle. During the last few weeks the roads were hidden in clouds of dust, sent up by hundreds of hoofs of hundreds of cattle, their owners with them, vainly seeking places of refuge; but in the case of Dashfontein, we reclined on a veritable Mount Ararat, by grace of naughty little Hannetje, whom G.o.d in His mysterious foresight had raised up to be Mrs. van V., proprietress of Dashfontein. If my prayers are of any value, G.o.d will appoint in heaven a special place for her when she gets there, though, for the sake of our people, I hope that time is very far distant.

However, I hope to be somewhere near: in truth, I should like to accompany her, when Elijah's chariot comes for her soul, so as to render her what little aid I can on board, when she soars through unknown tracts of s.p.a.ce to the spirit world on high, so that if there be any uncomfortable questions about her maiden vagaries, I may be there to attest that she has since atoned a hundred fold for each, and thus accelerate her promotion. No no, Hannetje is not a Boer vrouw, she is an angel."

Chapter VII Persecution of Coloured Women in the Orange Free State

Ripe persecution, like the plant Whose nascence Mocha boasted, Some bitter fruit produced, whose worth Was never known till roasted.

When the Free State ex-Republicans made use of the South African Const.i.tution -- a Const.i.tution which Lord Gladstone says is one after the Boer sentiment -- to ruin the coloured population, they should at least have confined their persecution to the male portion of the blacks (as is done in a milder manner in the other three Provinces), and have left the women and children alone. According to this cla.s.s legislation, no native woman in the Province of the Orange "Free" State can reside within a munic.i.p.ality (whether with or without her parents, or her husband) unless she can produce a permit showing that she is a servant in the employ of a white person, this permit being signed by the Town Clerk. All repressive measures under the old Republic (which, in matters of this kind, always showed a regard for the suzerainty of Great Britain) were mildly applied.

Now, under the Union, the Republicans are told by the Imperial authorities that since they are self-governing they have the utmost freedom of action, including freedom to do wrong, without any fear of Imperial interference.

Of this licence the white inhabitants of the Union are making the fullest use.

Like a mastiff long held in the leash they are urging the application of all the former stringent measures enacted against the blacks, and the authorities, in obedience to their electoral supporters, are enforcing these measures with the utmost rigour against the blacks because they have no votes.

Hence, whereas the pa.s.s regulations were formerly never enforced by the Boers against clergymen's wives or against the families of respectable native inhabitants, now a minister's wife has not only to produce a pa.s.s on demand, but, like every woman of colour, she has to pay a shilling for a fresh pa.s.s at the end of the month, so that a family consisting of, say, a mother and five daughters pay the munic.i.p.ality 6s. every month, whether as a penalty for the colour of their skins or a penalty for their s.e.x it is not clear which.

There is some unexplained anomaly in this woman's pa.s.s business.

If the writer were to go and live in the "Free" State, he could apply for and obtain letters of exemption from the ordinary pa.s.s laws; but if his wife, who has had a better schooling and enjoyed an older civilization than he, were to go and reside in the "Free" State with her daughters, all of them would be forced to carry pa.s.ses on their persons, and be called upon to ransack their skirt pockets at any time in the public streets at the behest of male policemen in quest of their pa.s.ses. Several white men are at present undergoing long terms of imprisonment inflicted by the Orange "Free" State Circuit Courts for criminally outraging coloured women whom the pa.s.s laws had placed in the hollow of the hands of these ruffians. Still many more mothers are smothering evidence of similar outrages upon innocent daughters -- cases that could never have happened under ordinary circ.u.mstances.

The Natives of the "Free" State have made all possible const.i.tutional appeals against these outrages. In reply to their pet.i.tions the Provincial Government blames the munic.i.p.alities. The latter blame the law and the Union Parliament, and there the matter ends. We have read the "Free" State law which empowers the munic.i.p.alities to frame regulations for the control of Natives, etc., but it must be confessed that our limited intelligence could discern nothing in it which could be construed as imposing any dire penalties on munic.i.p.alities which emanc.i.p.ate their coloured women from the burden of the insidious pa.s.s law and tax. Hon. Mr. H. Burton, as already stated, was Minister for Native Affairs before the Union Government surrendered to the "Free" State reactionaries. A deputation consisting of Mrs. A. S. Gabashane, Mrs. Kotsi and Mrs. Louw, women from Bloemfontein -- the first-named being a clergyman's wife -- waited on him in Capetown on the subject of these grievances, and he a.s.sured them that in response to representations made by the Native Congress, he had already written to Dr. Ramsbottom, the Provincial Administrator, asking him to persuade the "Free" State munic.i.p.alities to relieve the native women from this burden.

And if to relieve native women in the "Free" State from a burden which obtains nowhere else in the Union were unlawful, as the munic.i.p.alities aver, Mr. Burton -- a K.C. -- would have been the last person to ask them to break the law.

Subsequently the women pet.i.tioned Lady Gladstone for her intercession.

But we wonder if the pet.i.tion was ever handed to Lady Gladstone by the responsible authority who, in this instance, would have been the Department of Native Affairs. Notwithstanding all these efforts, native women in the "Free" State are still forced to buy pa.s.ses every month or go to prison, and they are still exposed to the indecent provision of the law authorizing male constables to insult them by day and by night, without distinction.

After exhausting all these const.i.tutional means on behalf of their women, and witnessing the spread of the trouble to the women and children of the country districts under the Natives' Land Act, the male Natives of the munic.i.p.alities of the Province of the Orange "Free" State saw their women folk throwing off their shawls and taking the "law"

into their own hands. A crowd of 600 women, in July, 1913, marched to the Munic.i.p.al Offices at Bloemfontein and asked to see the Mayor. He was not in, so they called for the Town Clerk.

The Deputy-Mayor came out, and they deposited before him a bag containing their pa.s.ses of the previous month and politely signified their intention not to buy any more pa.s.ses. Then there occurred what 'John Bull' would call, "----l with the lid off".

At Jagersfontein there was a similar demonstration, led by a jet-black Mozambique lady. She and a number of others were arrested and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

The sentences ranged from about three weeks to three months, and the fines from 10s. to 3 Pounds. They all refused to pay the fines, and said their little ones could be entrusted to the care of Providence till their mothers and sisters have broken the shackles of oppression by means of pa.s.sive resistance. As the prison authorities were scarcely prepared for such a sudden influx of prisoners there was not sufficient accommodation for fifty-two women, who were conveyed on donkey carts to the adjoining village of Fauresmith.

When this happened, Winburg, the old capital of the "Free" State, also had a similar trouble. Eight hundred women marched from the native location to the Town Hall, singing hymns, and addressed the authorities. They were tired of making friendly appeals which bore no fruit from year's end to year's end, so they had resolved, they said, to carry no more pa.s.ses, much less to pay a shilling each per month, PER CAPITA, for pa.s.ses. A procession of so many women would attract attention even in Piccadilly, but in a "Free" State dorp it was a stupendous event, and it made a striking impression.

The result was that many of the women were arrested and sent to prison, but they all resolutely refused to pay their fines, and there was a rumour that the Central Government had been appealed to for funds and for material to fit out a new jail to cope with the difficulty.

This movement served to exasperate the authorities, who rigorously enforced the law and sent them to jail. The first batch of prisoners from Bloemfontein were conveyed south to Edenburg; and as further batches came down from Bloemfontein they had to be retransferred north to Kroonstad.

In the course of our tour in connexion with the Natives' Land Act in August, 1913, we spent a week-end with the Rev. A. P. Pitso, of the last-named town. Thirty-four of the women pa.s.sive resisters were still incarcerated there, doing hard labour. Mrs. Pitso and Mrs. Michael Petrus went with us on the Sunday morning to visit the prisoners at the jail.

A severe shock burst upon us, inside the prison walls, when the matron withdrew the barriers and the emaciated figures of ladies and young girls of our acquaintance filed out and greeted us.

It was an exceptionally cold week, and our hearts bled to see young women of Bloemfontein, who had spent all their lives in the capital and never knew what it was to walk without socks, walking the chilly cemented floors and the cold and sharp pebbles without boots. Their own boots and shoes had been taken off, they told us, and they were, throughout the winter, forced to perform hard labour barefooted.