Native Life in South Africa Part 8

At this time we felt something rising from our heels along our back, gripping us in a spasm, as we were cycling along; a needlelike pang, too, pierced our heart with a sharp thrill. What was it? We remembered feeling something nearly like it when our father died eighteen years ago; but at that time our physical organs were fresh and grief was easily thrown off in tears, but then we lived in a happy South Africa that was full of pleasant antic.i.p.ations, and now -- what changes for the worse have we undergone! For to crown all our calamities, South Africa has by law ceased to be the home of any of her native children whose skins are dyed with a pigment that does not conform with the regulation hue.

We are told to forgive our enemies and not to let the sun go down upon our wrath, so we breathe the prayer that peace may be to the white races, and that they, including our present persecutors of the Union Parliament, may never live to find themselves deprived of all occupation and property rights in their native country as is now the case with the Native.

History does not tell us of any other continent where the Bantu lived besides Africa, and if this systematic ill-treatment of the Natives by the colonists is to be the guiding principle of Europe's scramble for Africa, slavery is our only alternative; for now it is only as serfs that the Natives are legally ent.i.tled to live here. Is it to be thought that G.o.d is using the South African Parliament to hound us out of our ancestral homes in order to quicken our pace heavenward?

But go from where to heaven? In the beginning, we are told, G.o.d created heaven and earth, and peopled the earth, for people do not shoot up to heaven from nowhere. They must have had an earthly home. Enoch, Melchizedek, Elijah, and other saints, came to heaven from earth. G.o.d did not say to the Israelites in their bondage: "Cheer up, boys; bear it all in good part for I have bright mansions on high awaiting you all." But he said: "I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows, and I am come down to bring them out of the hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey."

And He used Moses to carry out the promise He made to their ancestor Abraham in Canaan, that "unto thy seed will I give this land." It is to be hoped that in the Boer churches, entrance to which is barred against coloured people during divine service, they also read the Pentateuch.

It is doubtful if we ever thought so much on a single bicycle ride as we did on this journey; however, the sight of a policeman ahead of us disturbed these meditations and gave place to thoughts of quite another kind, for -- we had no pa.s.s. Dutchmen, Englishmen, Jews, Germans, and other foreigners may roam the "Free" State without permission -- but not Natives. To us it would mean a fine and imprisonment to be without a pa.s.s. The "pa.s.s" law was first inst.i.tuted to check the movement of livestock over spa.r.s.ely populated areas.

In a sense it was a wise provision, in that it served to identify the livestock which one happened to be driving along the high road, to prove the bona fides of the driver and his t.i.tle to the stock.

Although white men still steal large droves of horses in Basutoland and sell them in Natal or in East Griqualand, they, of course, are not required to carry any pa.s.ses. These white horse-thieves, to escape the clutches of the police, employ Natives to go and sell the stolen stock and write the pa.s.ses for these Natives, forging the names of Magistrates and Justices of the Peace.

Such native thieves in some instances ceasing to be hirelings in the criminal business, trade on their own, but it is not clear what purpose it is intended to serve by subjecting native pedestrians to the degrading requirement of carrying pa.s.ses when they are not in charge of any stock.

In a few moments the policeman was before us and we alighted in presence of the representative of the law, with our feet on the accursed soil of the district in which we were born.

The policeman stopped. By his looks and his familiar "Dag jong"

we noticed that the policeman was Dutch, and the embodiment of affability.

He spoke and we were glad to notice that he had no intention of dragging an innocent man to prison. We were many miles from the nearest police station, and in such a case one is generally able to gather the real views of the man on patrol, as distinct from the written code of his office, but our friend was becoming very companionable. Naturally we asked him about the operation of the plague law. He was a Transvaaler, he said, and he knew that Kafirs were inferior beings, but they had rights, and were always left in undisturbed possession of their property when Paul Kruger was alive. "The poor devils must be sorry now," he said, "that they ever sang 'G.o.d save the Queen' when the British troops came into the Transvaal, for I have seen, in the course of my duties, that a Kafir's life nowadays was not worth a ----, and I believe that no man regretted the change of flags now more than the Kafirs of Transvaal."

This information was superfluous, for personal contact with the Natives of Transvaal had convinced us of the fact.

They say it is only the criminal who has any reason to rejoice over the presence of the Union Jack, because in his case the cat-o'-nine-tails, except for very serious crimes, has been abolished.

"Some of the poor creatures," continued the policeman, "I knew to be fairly comfortable, if not rich, and they enjoyed the possession of their stock, living in many instances just like Dutchmen.

Many of these are now being forced to leave their homes.

Cycling along this road you will meet several of them in search of new homes, and if ever there was a fool's errand, it is that of a Kafir trying to find a new home for his stock and family just now."

"And what do you think, Baas Officer, must eventually be the lot of a people under such unfortunate circ.u.mstances?" we asked.

"I think," said the policeman, "that it must serve them right.

They had no business to hanker after British rule, to cheat and plot with the enemies of their Republic for the overthrow of their Government.

Why did they not a.s.sist the forces of their Republic during the war instead of supplying the English with scouts and intelligence?

Oom Paul would not have died of a broken heart and he would still be there to protect them. Serve them right, I say."

So saying he spurred his horse, which showed a clean pair of hoofs.

He left us rather abruptly, for we were about to ask why we, too, of Natal and the Cape were suffering, for we, being originally British subjects, never "cheated and plotted with the enemies of our Colonies", but he was gone and left us still cogitating by the roadside.

Proceeding on our journey we next came upon a native trek and heard the same old story of prosperity on a Dutch farm: they had raised an average 800 bags of grain each season, which, with the increase of stock and sale of wool, gave a steady income of about 150 Pounds per year after the farmer had taken his share.

There were gossipy rumours about somebody having met some one who said that some one else had overheard a conversation between the Baas and somebody else, to the effect that the Kafirs were getting too rich on his property. This much involved tale incidentally conveys the idea that the Baas was himself getting too rich on his farm. For the Native provides his own seed, his own cattle, his own labour for the ploughing, the weeding and the reaping, and after bagging his grain he calls in the landlord to receive his share, which is fifty per cent of the entire crop.

All had gone well till the previous week when the Baas came to the native tenants with the story that a new law had been pa.s.sed under which "all my oxen and cows must belong to him, and my family to work for 2 Pounds a month, failing which he gave me four days to leave the farm."

We pa.s.sed several farm-houses along the road, where all appeared pretty tranquil as we went along, until the evening which we spent in the open country, somewhere near the boundaries of the Hoopstad and Boshof districts; here a regular circus had gathered.

By a "circus" we mean the meeting of groups of families, moving to every point of the compa.s.s, and all bivouacked at this point in the open country where we were pa.s.sing. It was heartrending to listen to the tales of their cruel experiences derived from the rigour of the Natives' Land Act. Some of their cattle had perished on the journey, from poverty and lack of fodder, and the native owners ran a serious risk of imprisonment for travelling with dying stock.

The experience of one of these evicted tenants is typical of the rest, and ill.u.s.trates the cases of several we met in other parts of the country.

Kgobadi, for instance, had received a message describing the eviction of his father-in-law in the Transvaal Province, without notice, because he had refused to place his stock, his family, and his person at the disposal of his former landlord, who now refuses to let him remain on his farm except on these conditions.

The father-in-law asked that Kgobadi should try and secure a place for him in the much dreaded "Free" State as the Transvaal had suddenly become uninhabitable to Natives who cannot become servants; but "greedy folk hae lang airms", and Kgobadi himself was proceeding with his family and his belongings in a wagon, to inform his people-in-law of his own eviction, without notice, in the "Free" State, for a similar reason to that which sent his father-in-law adrift. The Baas had exacted from him the services of himself, his wife and his oxen, for wages of 30s. a month, whereas Kgobadi had been making over 100 Pounds a year, besides retaining the services of his wife and of his cattle for himself.

When he refused the extortionate terms the Baas retaliated with a Dutch note, dated the 30th day of June, 1913, which ordered him to "betake himself from the farm of the undersigned, by sunset of the same day, failing which his stock would be seized and impounded, and himself handed over to the authorities for trespa.s.sing on the farm."

A drowning man catches at every straw, and so we were again and again appealed to for advice by these sorely afflicted people.

To those who were not yet evicted we counselled patience and submission to the absurd terms, pending an appeal to a higher authority than the South African Parliament and finally to His Majesty the King who, we believed, would certainly disapprove of all that we saw on that day had it been brought to his notice. As for those who were already evicted, as a Bechuana we could not help thanking G.o.d that Bechua.n.a.land (on the western boundary of this quasi-British Republic) was still entirely British. In the early days it was the base of David Livingstone's activities and peaceful mission against the Portuguese and Arab slave trade.

We suggested that they might negotiate the numerous restrictions against the transfer of cattle from the Western Transvaal and seek an asylum in Bechua.n.a.land. We wondered what consolation we could give to these roving wanderers if the whole of Bechua.n.a.land were under the jurisdiction of the relentless Union Parliament.

It was cold that afternoon as we cycled into the "Free" State from Transvaal, and towards evening the southern winds rose. A cutting blizzard raged during the night, and native mothers evicted from their homes shivered with their babies by their sides. When we saw on that night the teeth of the little children clattering through the cold, we thought of our own little ones in their Kimberley home of an evening after gambolling in their winter frocks with their schoolmates, and we wondered what these little mites had done that a home should suddenly become to them a thing of the past.

Kgobadi's goats had been to kid when he trekked from his farm; but the kids, which in halcyon times represented the interest on his capital, were now one by one dying as fast as they were born and left by the roadside for the jackals and vultures to feast upon.

This visitation was not confined to Kgobadi's stock, Mrs. Kgobadi carried a sick baby when the eviction took place, and she had to transfer her darling from the cottage to the jolting ox-wagon in which they left the farm. Two days out the little one began to sink as the result of privation and exposure on the road, and the night before we met them its little soul was released from its earthly bonds.

The death of the child added a fresh perplexity to the stricken parents.

They had no right or t.i.tle to the farm lands through which they trekked: they must keep to the public roads -- the only places in the country open to the outcasts if they are possessed of a travelling permit.

The deceased child had to be buried, but where, when, and how?

This young wandering family decided to dig a grave under cover of the darkness of that night, when no one was looking, and in that crude manner the dead child was interred -- and interred amid fear and trembling, as well as the throbs of a torturing anguish, in a stolen grave, lest the proprietor of the spot, or any of his servants, should surprise them in the act. Even criminals dropping straight from the gallows have an undisputed claim to six feet of ground on which to rest their criminal remains, but under the cruel operation of the Natives' Land Act little children, whose only crime is that G.o.d did not make them white, are sometimes denied that right in their ancestral home.

Numerous details narrated by these victims of an Act of Parliament kept us awake all that night, and by next morning we were glad enough to hear no more of the sickening procedure of extermination voluntarily inst.i.tuted by the South African Parliament.

We had spent a hideous night under a bitterly cold sky, conditions to which hundreds of our unfortunate countrymen and countrywomen in various parts of the country are condemned by the provisions of this Parliamentary land plague. At five o'clock in the morning the cold seemed to redouble its energies; and never before did we so fully appreciate the Master's saying: "But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter."

Chapter V Another Night with the Sufferers

Heureux ceux qui sont morts dans le calme des soirs, Avant ces jours affreux de carnage et de haine!

Ils se sont endormis, le coeur rempli d'espoirs, Dans un reve d'amour et de concorde humaine!

Ils n'ont pas entendu la sinistre remeur Qui monte des hameaux consumes par la flamme, Ni les cris des enfants et des vierges en pleurs, Ni le gemiss.e.m.e.nt des vieillards et des femmes!

Heureux les morts!

Maurice Kufferath.

We parted sadly from these unfortunate nomads of an ungrateful and inhospitable country, after advising them to trek from the Union into the arid deserts of Bechua.n.a.land. In our advice we laid special stress upon the costliness of such an expedition as theirs and upon the many and varying regulations to be complied with, on such a trek, through the Western Transvaal. But, cost whatever it may, they, like ourselves, understood that as the law stood they would be better off and safer beyond the boundaries of the Union.

From here we worked our way into the Hoopstad district. There we saw some Natives who were, as it were, on pins and needles, their landlords having given them a few days in which to consider the advisability of either accepting the new conditions or leaving their houses.

Our advice to these tenants was to accept, for the time being, any terms offered by their landlords, pending an appeal to His Majesty the King; we also pa.s.sed through a few farms where the white farmers were visibly sympathetic towards the harried Natives. Some of the white farmers were accepting Natives as tenants on their farms in defiance of the law.

We naturally thanked these for their humanity and went our way, promising never to disclose their magnanimity to the Government officials.

"What has suddenly happened?" one of these landlords asked.

"We were living so nicely with your people, and why should the law unsettle them in this manner?"

We may here mention that a fortnight later we were in General Botha's const.i.tuency in the Transvaal. A few days before we arrived there a meeting of white farmers was held at one of the Dutch farm-houses at which it was resolved to take the fullest advantage of the new law, which had placed the entire native population in the hands of the farmers.

It was further resolved that a Kafir who refused to become a servant should at once be consigned to the road.

A similar resolution was pa.s.sed at another meeting of landlords at another place. Part of the proceedings of this meeting was reported in some, though not all, of the Dutch newspapers.

Without breaking our promise not to disclose any names of landlords who felt it a duty to resist injustice, even though it bears the garb of law, we will mention Mr. X., a Boer farmer, of the farm ----, near Thingamejig, between the town of ---- and the river ----. He protested at the meeting, stating that the Transvaalers were not compelled to turn the Natives out, and that they were only debarred from taking any new native tenants; that it was wicked to expel a Kafir from the farm for no reason whatever, and so make him homeless, since he could not, if evicted, go either to another farm or back to his old place. For expressing his views so frankly Mr. X. was threatened by his compatriots with physical violence!

His opponents also said that, if he continued to harbour Kafirs on his farm as tenants, they would hold him responsible for any stock that they might lose. The incidents of the meeting were related to the Natives by Mr. X. himself. He told the Natives, further, that he would go to the expense of fencing his farm with the Natives inside, so that they may be out of the reach of his infuriated neighbours.

We spent the next night in some native huts on a farm in the district of Hoopstad. On that occasion we met a man who had had a month's notice to leave his farm, and was going from farm to farm in search of a new place. He had heard alarming stories about evictions wherever he went. During that evening we were treated to some more pitiful stories concerning the atrocities of the wretched land Act. Many native wanderers had actually pa.s.sed that farm during the preceding few days, trudging aimlessly from place to place in search of some farmer who might give them a shelter. At first they thought the stories about a new law were inventions or exaggerations, but their own desperate straits and the prevailing native dislocation soon taught them otherwise.

The similarity in the experiences of the sufferers would make monotonous reading if given individually, but there are instances here and there which give variety to the painful record, and these should yield the utmost satisfaction to the promoters of the Act, in proving to them the fell measure of their achievement.

One example of these experiences was that of a white farmer who had induced a thrifty Native in another district to come and farm on his estate. The contract was duly executed about the end of May, 1913.

It was agreed that the Native should move over to the new place after gathering his crops and sharing them with his old landlord, which he did in the third week in June. On his arrival, however, the new landlord's att.i.tude towards him aroused his suspicions; his suspicions were confirmed when, after some hesitation, the landlord told him that their contract was illegal. Having already left his old place the legal embargo was also against his return there, and so his only course was to leave that place and wander about with his stock and family. They went in the direction of Kroonstad, and they have not been heard of since.

The next example is that of the oldest man in the "Free" State.