Native Life in South Africa Part 7

(b) he renders or promises to render to any person a share of the produce of that land, or any valuable consideration of any kind whatever other than his own labour or services or the labour or services of his family.

11. This Act may be cited for all purposes as the Natives' Land Act, 1913.

The foregoing result of a legislative jumble is "the law", and this law, like Alexander the coppersmith, "hath done us much harm".

Mr. Sauer carried his Bill less by reason than by sheer force of numbers, and partly by promises which he afterwards broke. Among these broken promises was the definite a.s.surance he gave Parliament that the Bill would be referred to the Select Committee on Native Affairs, so that the Natives, who are not represented in Parliament, their European friends and the Missionary bodies on behalf of the Natives, could be able at the proper time to appear before this committee and state any objection which they might have to the Bill. But when that time came, the Minister flatly refused to refer it to the committee.

This change of front is easily explained, because the weight of evidence which could have been given before any Parliamentary committee would have imperilled the pa.s.sage of the Bill.

As might have been expected, the debate on the Bill created the greatest alarm amongst the native population, for they had followed its course with the keenest interest. Nothing short of a declaration of war against them could have created a similar excitement, although the hope was entertained in some quarters, that a body of men like the Ministerialists in Parliament (a majority of whom are never happier than when attesting the Christian character of their race) would in course of days attend the Holy Communion, remember the 11th Commandment, and do unto others as they would that men should do unto them.

Our people, in fact a number of them, said amongst themselves that even Dutchmen sing Psalms -- all the Psalms, including the 24th; and, believing as they did that Dutchmen could have no other religion besides the one recommended in the New Testament and preached by the predikants of the Dutch Reformed Church, were prepared to commend their safety to the influence of that sweet and peaceable religion.

However, some other Natives, remembering what took place before the South African war, took a different view of these religious incidents.

Those Natives, especially of the old Republics, knew that the only dividing fence between the Transvaal Natives and complete slavery was the London Convention; they, therefore, now that the London Convention in fact had ceased to exist, had evil forebodings regarding the average Republican's treatment of the Natives, which was seldom influenced by religious scruples, and they did not hesitate to express their fears.

Personally we must say that if any one had told us at the beginning of 1913, that a majority of members of the Union Parliament were capable of pa.s.sing a law like the Natives' Land Act, whose object is to prevent the Natives from ever rising above the position of servants to the whites, we would have regarded that person as a fit subject for the lunatic asylum.

But the pa.s.sing of that Act and its operation have rudely forced the fact upon us that the Union Parliament is capable of producing any measure that is subversive of native interests; and that the complete arrest of native progress is the object aimed at in their efforts to include the Protectorates in their Union.

Thus we think that their sole reason for seeking to incorporate Basutoland, Swaziland and Bechua.n.a.land is that, when they have definitely eliminated the Imperial factor from South Africa, as they are unmistakably trying to do, they may have a million more slaves than if the Protectorates were excluded.

In this connexion, the realization of the prophecy of an old Basuto became increasingly believable to us. It was to this effect, namely: "That the Imperial Government, after conquering the Boers, handed back to them their old Republics, and a nice little present in the shape of the Cape Colony and Natal -- the two English Colonies.

That the Boers are now ousting the Englishmen from the public service, and when they have finished with them, they will make a law declaring it a crime for a Native to live in South Africa, unless he is a servant in the employ of a Boer, and that from this it will be just one step to complete slavery." This is being realized, for to-day we have, extended throughout the Union of South Africa, a "Free" State law which makes it illegal for Natives to live on farms except as servants in the employ of Europeans.

There is another "Free" State law, under which no Native may live in a munic.i.p.al area or own property in urban localities.

He can only live in town as a servant in the employ of a European.

And if the followers of General Hertzog are permitted to dragoon the Union Government into enforcing "Free" State ideals against the Natives of the Union, as they have successfully done under the Natives' Land Act, it will only be a matter of time before we have a Natives' Urban Act enforced throughout South Africa.

Then we will have the banner of slavery fully unfurled (of course, under another name) throughout the length and breadth of the land.

When the Natives' Land Bill was before Parliament, meetings were held in many villages and locations in protest against the Ministerial surrender to the Republicans, of which the Bill was the outcome.

At the end of March, 1913, the Native National Congress met in Johannesburg, and there a deputation was appointed to go to Capetown and point out to the Government some, at least, of the harm that would follow legislation of the character mapped out in Parliament on February 28 when the Land Act was first announced. They were to urge that such a measure would be exploitation of the cruelest kind, that it would not only interfere with the economic independence of the Natives, but would reduce them for ever to a state of serfdom, and degrade them as nothing has done since slavery was abolished at the Cape.

Missionaries also, and European friends of the Natives, did not sit still.

Resolution after resolution, telegraphic and other representations, were made to Mr. Sauer, from meetings in various parts of the country, counselling prudence. Even such societies as the Transvaal Landowners, who had long been crying for a measure to separate whites from blacks, and vice versa, urged that the Bill should not be pa.s.sed during the same session in which it was introduced, that the country should be given an opportunity to digest it, in order, if necessary, to suggest amendments.

The Missionary bodies, too, represent a following of Natives numbering hundreds of thousands of souls, on whose behalf they pleaded for justice. These bodies urged that before pa.s.sing a law, prohibiting the sale and lease of land to Natives, and expelling squatters from their homes, the Government should provide locations to which the evicted Natives could go. But all these representations made no impression upon the Government, who, instead, preferred to act upon the recommendation of thirteen diminutive pet.i.tions (signed in all by 304 Dutchmen in favour of the Bill)* than to be guided by the overwhelming weight of public opinion that was against its pa.s.sage.

Thus it became clear that the Native's position in his own country was not an enviable one, for once a law was made prohibiting the sale of landed property to Natives, it would be almost impossible to get a South African Parliament to amend it.

-- * One of these thirteen pet.i.tions had only four signatures, which was but one better than that of the Tooley Street tailors.

The Government, which at the beginning a.s.sured Parliament of their humane intentions, proceeded to delete the mildest clauses of the measure and to insert some very harsh ones; and almost each time that the Bill came before the House, one or two fresh drastic clauses were added. But it is comforting to note that even Parliament was not entirely satisfied with this, its heroic piece of legislation.

Thus Mr. Meyler of Natal did, as only a lawyer could with a view to recasting the Bill, some very useful work in pointing out the possible harm with which the Bill was fraught. We wish that his clever speeches and observations (much of which have come true), might yet be sifted out of the big Parliamentary Reports, and published in a concise little pamphlet.

Sir David Hunter, another member of Natal, expressed himself as follows: --

== While every one seemed animated with a desire to do what was right and just to the Natives, there was a feeling that certain of the details of the measure required amendment. He was more than pleased when the Minister closed the debate by a speech in which he seemed to be willing to meet the wishes of those in the House who thought that amendment was required.

He could not have imagined that the Bill would develop into the shape into which it had developed, and had he known that so great an alteration would take place in the general effect of the measure from what was foreshadowed by the hon. Minister when he had made that interesting speech on the second reading he (the speaker) could not have conscientiously voted for the second reading.

He would have been better pleased had a resolution been taken not to bring in a Bill until the Commission had reported.

That was the position he had taken up all through and he would much rather now that the matter should be dealt with in that way. If, however, the Bill was to be pressed through there should be guarantees in it which should allay all suspicion. Anything affecting the native people required to be done gradually and should be placed before them a long time before the change took place. He hoped there would yet be some steps taken to give them a greater sense of security.

To give some idea of the feeling in the minds of the Natives he read a letter from a gentleman in Natal, largely interested in the Natives, which had expressed the opinion that the Natives stood uncompromisingly against any change in their present status until the Commission had reported. He hoped the hon. Minister would even yet endeavour to do something to meet their views.

Mr. C. H. Haggar (Roodepoort) said that from the point of those who had worked successfully in turning the uncivilized man into the civilized man the Bill was bound to be a failure.

It was necessary not only to have legislation theoretically just, but also practically right and good. But there were many who felt that so far from the effect of that Bill being good it would be disastrous to a very large extent. The great sin which they had been committing was that they had always been legislating ahead of the people, and there had not been sufficient preparation for the changes which were proposed in that Bill; the Natives were not ready for it.

The hon. member for Victoria West had said that there was a disposition in certain directions to repress the Natives. He (the speaker) believed that there was a feeling that white men had some divine right to the labour of the black, that the black people were to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, and he wanted to say that while men were obsessed with that feeling they would never be able to legislate fairly.

They had no more divine right to the labour of the black people than they had to the labour of the white. To his mind the great point was, should their policy be one of repression or a policy of inspiration?

They had inspired the Natives to a certain extent, but no sooner had they created an appet.i.te than they had told the Natives they should go no further. Their policy was the policy of Tantalus.

That Bill would create a feeling of insecurity in the minds of the Natives.

There were those who said that if the Natives would not submit to dictation they should be wiped out. But that should not be their policy.

They must cease the policy of repression and let it be one of wide inspiration.

But alas! these and similar pleadings had about as much effect upon the Ministerial steam-roller as the proverbial water on a duck's back.

With a rush the Natives' Land Bill was dispatched from the Lower House to the Senate, adopted hurriedly by the Senate, returned to the Lower House, and went at the same pace to Government House, and there receiving the Governor-General's signature, it immediately became law.

As regards the Governor-General's signature, His Excellency, if Ministers are to be believed, was ready to sign the Bill (or rather signified his intention of doing so) long before it was introduced into Parliament. This excited haste suggests grave misgivings as to the character of the Bill. Why all the hurry and scurry, and why the Governor-General's approval in advance? Other Bills are pa.s.sed and approved by the Governor, yet they do not come into operation until some given day -- the beginning of the next calendar year, or of the next financial year. But the Natives' Land Act became law and was operating as soon as it could be promulgated.

After desperately protesting, with individual members of Parliament and with Cabinet Ministers, and getting nothing for their pains, the delegates from the Native Congress wrote Lord Gladstone, from an office about two hundred yards distant from Government House, requesting His Excellency to withhold his a.s.sent to the Natives' Land Bill until the people mostly concerned (i.e. the Natives) had had a chance of making known to His Majesty the King their objection to the measure.

His Excellency replied that such a course "was not within his const.i.tutional functions." Thereby the die was cast, and the mandate went forth that the land laws of the Orange "Free" State, which is commonly known as "the Only Slave State", shall be the laws of the whole Union of South Africa. The worst feature in the case is the fact that, even with the Governments of the late Republics, the Presidents always had the power to exempt some Natives from the operation of those laws, and that prerogative had been liberally used by successive Presidents. Now, however, without a President, and with the prerogative of the King (by the exercise of which the evils of such a law could have been averted) disowned by the King's own Ministers on the spot, G.o.d in the heavens alone knows what will become of the hapless, because voteless, Natives, who are without a President, "without a King", and with a Governor-General without const.i.tutional functions, under task-masters whose national traditions are to enslave the dark races.

Chapter IV One Night with the Fugitives

Es ist unkoeniglich zu weinen -- ach, Und hier nicht weinen ist unvaeterlich.

Schiller.

"Pray that your flight be not in winter," said Jesus Christ; but it was only during the winter of 1913 that the full significance of this New Testament pa.s.sage was revealed to us. We left Kimberley by the early morning train during the first week in July, on a tour of observation regarding the operation of the Natives' Land Act; and we arrived at Bloemhof, in Transvaal, at about noon.

On the River Diggings there were no actual cases representing the effects of the Act, but traces of these effects were everywhere manifest.

Some fugitives of the Natives' Land Act had crossed the river in full flight.

The fact that they reached the diggings a fortnight before our visit would seem to show that while the debates were proceeding in Parliament some farmers already viewed with eager eyes the impending opportunity for at once making slaves of their tenants and appropriating their stock; for, acting on the powers conferred on them by an Act signed by Lord Gladstone, so lately as June 16, they had during that very week (probably a couple of days after, and in some cases, it would seem, a couple of days before the actual signing of the Bill) approached their tenants with stories about a new Act which makes it criminal for any one to have black tenants and lawful to have black servants.

Few of these Natives, of course, would object to be servants, especially if the white man is worth working for, but this is where the shoe pinches: one of the conditions is that the black man's (that is the servant's) cattle shall henceforth work for the landlord free of charge. Then the Natives would decide to leave the farm rather than make the landlord a present of all their life's savings, and some of them had pa.s.sed through the diggings in search of a place in the Transvaal. But the higher up they went the more gloomy was their prospect as the news about the new law was now penetrating every part of the country.

One farmer met a wandering native family in the town of Bloemhof a week before our visit. He was willing to employ the Native and many more homeless families as follows: A monthly wage of 2 Pounds 10s. for each such family, the husband working in the fields, the wife in the house, with an additional 10s. a month for each son, and 5s. for each daughter, but on condition that the Native's cattle were also handed over to work for him. It must be clearly understood, we are told that the Dutchman added, that occasionally the Native would have to leave his family at work on the farm, and go out with his wagon and his oxen to earn money whenever and wherever he was told to go, in order that the master may be enabled to pay the stipulated wage. The Natives were at first inclined to laugh at the idea of working for a master with their families and goods and chattels, and then to have the additional pleasure of paying their own small wages, besides bringing money to pay the "Baas" for employing them.

But the Dutchman's serious demeanour told them that his suggestion was "no joke". He himself had for some time been in need of a native cattle owner, to a.s.sist him as transport rider between Bloemhof, Mooifontein, London, and other diggings, in return for the occupation and cultivation of some of his waste lands in the district, but that was now illegal. He could only "employ" them; but, as he had no money to pay wages, their cattle would have to go out and earn it for him. Had they not heard of the law before?

he inquired. Of course they had; in fact that is why they left the other place, but as they thought that it was but a "Free" State law, they took the anomalous situation for one of the multifarious aspects of the freedom of the "Free" State whence they came; they had scarcely thought that the Transvaal was similarly afflicted.

Needless to say the Natives did not see their way to agree with such a one-sided bargain. They moved up country, but only to find the next farmer offering the same terms, however, with a good many more disturbing details -- and the next farmer and the next -- so that after this native farmer had wandered from farm to farm, occasionally getting into trouble for travelling with unknown stock, "across my ground without my permission", and at times escaping arrest for he knew not what, and further, being abused for the crimes of having a black skin and no master, he sold some of his stock along the way, beside losing many which died of cold and starvation; and after thus having lost much of his substance, he eventually worked his way back to Bloemhof with the remainder, sold them for anything they could fetch, and went to work for a digger.

The experience of another native sufferer was similar to the above, except that instead of working for a digger he sold his stock for a mere bagatelle, and left with his family by the Johannesburg night train for an unknown destination. More native families crossed the river and went inland during the previous week, and as nothing had since been heard of them, it would seem that they were still wandering somewhere, and incidentally becoming well versed in the law that was responsible for their compulsory unsettlement.

Well, we knew that this law was as harsh as its instigators were callous, and we knew that it would, if pa.s.sed, render many poor people homeless, but it must be confessed that we were scarcely prepared for such a rapid and widespread crash as it caused in the lives of the Natives in this neighbourhood. We left our luggage the next morning with the local Mission School teacher, and crossed the river to find out some more about this wonderful law of extermination.

It was about 10 a.m. when we landed on the south bank of the Vaal River -- the picturesque Vaal River, upon whose banks a hundred miles farther west we spent the best and happiest days of our boyhood. It was interesting to walk on one portion of the banks of that beautiful river -- a portion which we had never traversed except as an infant in mother's arms more than thirty years before. How the subsequent happy days at Barkly West, so long past, came crowding upon our memory! -- days when there were no railways, no bridges, and no system of irrigation.

In rainy seasons, which at that time were far more regular and certain, the river used to overflow its high banks and flood the surrounding valleys to such an extent, that no punt could carry the wagons across.

Thereby the transport service used to be hung up, and numbers of wagons would congregate for weeks on both sides of the river until the floods subsided. At such times the price of fresh milk used to mount up to 1s. per pint. There being next to no compet.i.tion, we boys had a monopoly over the milk trade. We recalled the number of haversacks full of bottles of milk we youngsters often carried to those wagons, how we returned with empty bottles and with just that number of shillings. Mother and our elder brothers had leather bags full of gold and did not care for the "boy's money"; and unlike the boys of the neighbouring village, having no sisters of our own, we gave away some of our money to fair cousins, and jingled the rest in our pockets. We had been told from boyhood that sweets were injurious to the teeth, and so spurning these delights we had hardly any use for money, for all we wanted to eat, drink and wear was at hand in plenty.

We could then get six or eight shillings every morning from the pastime of washing that number of bottles, filling them with fresh milk and carrying them down to the wagons; there was always such an abundance of the liquid that our shepherd's hunting dog could not possibly miss what we took, for while the flocks were feeding on the luscious buds of the haak-doorns and the orange-coloured blossoms of the rich mimosa and other wild vegetation that abounded on the banks of the Vaal River, the cows, similarly engaged, were gathering more and more milk.

The G.o.ds are cruel, and one of their cruellest acts of omission was that of giving us no hint that in very much less than a quarter of a century all those hundreds of heads of cattle, and sheep and horses belonging to the family would vanish like a morning mist, and that we ourselves would live to pay 30s. per month for a daily supply of this same precious fluid, and in very limited quant.i.ties. They might have warned us that Englishmen would agree with Dutchmen to make it unlawful for black men to keep milch cows of their own on the banks of that river, and gradually have prepared us for the shock.

Crossing the river from the Transvaal side brings one into the Province of the Orange "Free" State, in which, in the adjoining division of Boshof, we were born thirty-six years back.

We remember the name of the farm, but not having been in this neighbourhood since infancy, we could not tell its whereabouts, nor could we say whether the present owner was a Dutchman, his lawyer, or a Hebrew merchant; one thing we do know, however: it is that even if we had the money and the owner was willing to sell the spot upon which we first saw the light of day and breathed the pure air of heaven, the sale would be followed with a fine of one hundred pounds.

The law of the country forbids the sale of land to a Native.

Russia is one of the most abused countries in the world, but it is extremely doubtful if the statute book of that Empire contains a law debarring the peasant from purchasing the land whereon he was born, or from building a home wherein he might end his days.