Native Life in South Africa Part 9

He had been evicted (so we were told during that evening on the farm) along with his aged wife, his grey-headed children, the children's children and grandchildren. We may here add that we read a confirmation of this case in the English weekly newspaper of Harrismith.

The paper's reference to this case will also ill.u.s.trate the easy manner in which these outrageous evictions are reported in white newspapers.

There is no reference to the sinister undercurrent and hardships attending these evictions. The paper in question, the 'Harrismith Chronicle', simply says: --

== AN ANCIENT COUPLE

A venerable Native whose age is no less than 119 years, accompanied by his wife, aged 98, and a son who is approaching 80, left Harrismith on Tuesday by train for Volksrust. The old man acquired some property in the Transvaal, and is leaving this district to start a new home with as much interest in the venture as if he were a stripling of twenty. The old lady had to be carried to the train, but the old man walked fairly firmly. The aged couple were the centre of much kindly attraction, and were made as comfortable as possible for their journey by the railway officials.

It is difficult to realize in these days of rapid change that in the departure from the "Free" State of this venerable party we are losing from our midst a man who was born in 1794, and has lived in no less than three centuries of time.

Good luck to them both; may they still live long and prosper!

Now, as a matter of fact, this "ancient couple" had not left the "Free" State of their own free will. Their stock had been expelled from their grazing areas, and they were told that they could only continue to graze if the centenarian tenant agreed to supply a certain number of labourers to work on the landowner's farm and with his sons ceased to do any ploughing as tenants. This system of sharing the crops has been followed ever since the Boers planted themselves in the "Free" State, and the family had had no other means of support. Happily the aid of Providence in the case of this "ancient couple" was speedy, as the old people quickly found an asylum on the farm of Mr. P. ka I. Seme, a native solicitor in the Transvaal.

At the same place on the same evening we were told of a conversation between a well-known Dutchman and a Native. "The object of this law,"

said the Burgher, "is to goad the Natives into rebellion, so that the Government may legally confiscate what little ground was left to them, and hand over the dispossessed Kafirs and their families to work for the farmers, just for their food." The policy of goading the Natives into rebellion is not wholly foreign to Colonial policy; but the horrible cruelty to which live stock is exposed under the new Act is altogether a new departure. King Solomon says, "The righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel"; but there is a Government of professed Bible readers who, in defiance of all Scriptural precepts, pa.s.s a law which penalizes a section of the community along with their oxen, sheep, goats, horses and donkeys on account of the colour of their owners.

The penalty clause (Section 5) imposes a fine of 100 Pounds on a landowner who accommodates a Native on his farm; and if after the fine is paid the Native leaves his stock on the farm to go and look for a fresh place, there will be an additional fine of 5 Pounds for every day that the Native's cattle remain on that farm. They must take the road immediately and be kept moving day and night until they die of starvation, or until the owner (who is debarred, by Section 1, from purchasing a pasturage for his cattle) disposes of them to a white man.

Such cruelty to dumb animals is as unwarranted as it is unprecedented.

It reads cruel enough on paper, but we wish that the reader had accompanied us on one journey, say, during the cold snap in the first week in August, when we travelled from Potchefstroom to Vereeniging, and seen the flocks of those evicted Natives that we met.

We frequently met those roving pariahs, with their hungry cattle, and wondered if the animals were not more deserving of pity than their owners.

It may be the cattle's misfortune that they have a black owner, but it is certainly not their fault, for sheep have no choice in the selection of a colour for their owners, and no cows or goats are ever asked to decide if the black boy who milks them shall be their owner, or but a herd in the employ of a white man; so why should they be starved on account of the colour of their owners? We knew of a law to prevent cruelty to animals, but had never thought that we should live to meet in one day so many dumb creatures making silent appeals to Heaven for protection against the law. "What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to see", and oh! if those gifted Parliamentarians could have been mustered here to witness the wretched results of one of their fine days' work for a fine day's pay! But "they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne", then draw their Parliamentary emoluments and retire to the quiet of their comfortable homes, to enjoy more rest than is due to toilers who have served both G.o.d and humanity.

During this same night in Hoopstad district we were also told of the visit of a Dutch farmer in the middle of June, 1913, to his native tenants.

One of the Natives -- named Kgabale -- was rather old. His two sons are delving in the gold mines of Johannesburg, and return home each spring time to help the old man and their two young sisters to do the ploughing.

The daughters tend the fields and Kgabale looks after the stock.

By this means they have been enabled to lead a respectable life and to pay the landowner fifty per cent. of the produce every year, besides the taxes levied by the Government on Natives.

Three weeks before our visit, the farmer came to cancel Kgabale's verbal contract with him and to turn the family into unpaid servants, in return for the privilege of squatting on his farm.

As Kgabale himself was too old to work, the farmer demanded of him that his two sons should return immediately from Johannesburg to render manual service on his farm, failing which, the old man should forthwith betake himself from the place. He gave Kgabale seven days to deliver his two sons.

Naturally this decision came upon Kgabale and his daughters like a bolt from the blue. The poor old man wandered from place to place, trying to find some one -- and it took him two days to do so -- who could write, so as to dictate a letter to his sons in Johannesburg, informing them of what had happened. The week expired before he could get a reply from Johannesburg. The landlord, in a very abusive mood, again demanded the instant arrival of his two sons from Johannesburg, to commence work at the farm-house the very next morning.

Kgabale spent the whole night praying that at least one of his sons might come. By daybreak next morning no answer had arrived, and the Dutchman came and set fire to the old man's houses, and ordered him then and there to quit the farm. It was a sad sight to see the feeble old man, his aged wife and his daughters driven in this way from a place which they had regarded as their home.

In the ordinary course, such a calamity could have been made more tolerable by moving to the next farm and there await the arrival and advice of his sons; but now, under the Natives' Land Act, no sympathetic landowner would be permitted to shelter them for a single day. So Kgabale was said to have gone in the direction of Klerksdorp.

One of the sons arrived a week after the catastrophe. He found his old home in ruins, and that his aged parents and their children had become victims of the turpitude of an Act of Parliament.

The son went in search of his relatives across the Vaal, but it was not known if they succeeded in finding the refuge which the law had made unlawful.

Among the squatters on the same farm as Kgabale was a widow named Maria.

Her husband in his lifetime had lived as a tenant on the farm, ploughing in shares until his death. After his death Maria kept on the contract and made a fair living. Her son and daughter, aged fourteen and sixteen respectively, took turns at herding her cattle and a.s.sisting the mother in other ways. During the ploughing season, they hired a.s.sistance to till the fields, but they themselves tended and reaped the harvest and delivered 50 per cent of the produce to the landowner. Such were the conditions on which she was allowed to live on the farm. Maria, being a widow, and her son being but a youth, it was hoped that the landlord would propose reasonable terms for her; but instead, his proposal was that she should dispose of her stock and indenture her children to him. This sinister proposal makes it evident that farmers not only expect Natives to render them free labour, but they actually wish the Natives to breed slaves for them.

Maria found it difficult to comply with her landlord's demand, and as she had no husband, from whom labour could be exacted, the Dutchman ordered her to "clear out, and," he added with an oath, "you must get another man before you reach your next place of abode, as the law will not permit you to stay there till you have a man to work for the Baas." Having given this counsel the landlord is said to have set fire to Maria's thatched cottage, and as the chilly south-easter blew the smoke of her burning home towards the north-west, Maria, with her bedclothes on her head, and on the heads of her son and daughter, and carrying her three-year-old boy tied to her back, walked off from the farm, driving her cows before her.

In parting from the endeared a.s.sociations of their late home, for one blank and unknown, the children were weeping bitterly.

Nor has any news of the fate of this family been received since they were forced out on this perilous adventure.

Chapter VI Our Indebtedness to White Women

O woman! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou.

Scott.

Some farmers (unfortunately too few) who had at first intended to change the status of their native tenants, had been obliged to abandon the idea owing to the determined opposition of their wives.

One such case was particularly interesting. Thus, at Dashfontein, the wife of a Dutch farmer, a Mr. V., on whose property some native families were squatting, got up, one morning, and found the kitchen-maid very disagreeable. The morning coffee had been made right enough, but the maid's "Morre, Nooi" (Good morning, ma'am) was rather sullen and almost bordering on insolence. She did her scullery work as usual, but did not seem to care, that morning, about wasting time inquiring how baby slept, and if Nonnie had got rid of her neuralgia, and so on.

She spoke only when spoken to and answered mainly in monosyllables.

Mrs. V. was perplexed.

"What is the matter, Anna?" she asked.

"Nothing, Nooi," replied Anna curtly.

Mrs. V. tried some of her witty jokes, but they seemed to be wasted on Anna.

After jesting with the servant had failed, scolding was next tried, but nothing seemed to bring back the girl's usual cheerfulness.

"Oh, Anna," said the mistress at length, "you make me think of the olden days, when such disagreeable whims on the part of frowning maids used to be cured by ----"

Anna was evidently not listening, and, if she had heard the mistress, she did not care two straws (or one straw for that matter) what cures Mrs. V.'s great-grandmother had prescribed for sullen servant girls.

In fact, Anna had become a wild Kafir, for though she went about her work in silence, her face bore an expression which seemed to speak louder than her mouth could have done. She was clearly engaged in serious thought. The mistress tried to dismiss from her mind the inexplicable att.i.tude of her servant, but the frowning look on Anna's face made the attempts unsuccessful. The fact that when Anna went home, the previous night, she was happiness personified, did not decrease Mrs. V.'s perplexity.

"There must be something wrong," Mrs. V. concluded, after vainly trying ruse after ruse to get a smile out of her servant girl. "Something is amiss.

I wonder if one of those well-dressed Kafirs from Potchefstroom had been prowling about the farm and instilling in Anna's simple mind all kinds of silly notions, about town flirts and black dandies, silk dresses in Potchefstroom and similar vuilgoed (rubbish).

And if a town Kafir is going to marry Anna, where on earth am I going to get a reliable servant to whom I could securely entrust my home when I have occasion to go to town or to the seaside on a shorter or longer vacation?

Who could cook and attend to my husband's and children's peculiar wants, if Anna is going to leave us? It seems certain that Anna's heart is not on the farm," she said to herself. "It was there right enough when she went home last night, but it is clear that some one has stolen it during the night. Anna is helplessly lovesick. I must find out who it is.

The swain must be found and induced to come and join, or supervise, our squatters. We cannot let him take her away, for what will the homestead be without Anna? I was looking forward to her marrying on the farm and giving her a superior cottage so that other Kafir girls may see how profitable it is to be good. Anna leaving the farm, O, nee wat! (Oh, no).

We must find out who it is; but wait, there is old Gert (her father) coming, with old Jan (her uncle). I must find out from them who had been intruding into the company of their daughters last night. I should warn them to be on the alert lest Anna elopes to Potchefstroom with somebody, probably to take the train and go farther -- to Johannesburg or Kimberley, as did Klein Mietje, whom I had hoped to train as our housemaid ----"

"Good morning, Auta Gert, how is Mietje and the kleintjes (little ones)?"

Auta Gert's demeanour was a greater puzzle to Mrs. V. than his daughter's when he replied, "So, so."

Mrs. V. (between horns of the same dilemma): "And you, Auta Jan?"

"Ja, Missus," replied Jan.

Mrs. V.'s perplexity was intense, for it became evident that the two Natives were there as a deputation, charged with some grave mission.

Before she uttered another word the two Natives asked for an interview.

"Not to waste much time, Missus," began old Gert, "a thunderbolt has burst on the native settlement on the farm, and Dashfontein is no longer a home to us ----"

"No longer a home!" exclaimed Mrs. V. "I hope you idiotic Kafirs are not going to be so foolhardy as to leave me, leave the Baas, and leave the farm upon which your fathers and mothers lie buried.

Do not you know that during this very week numbers of Natives have been calling on the Baas, asking him for places of abode, complaining that they have been turned adrift, with their little ones and their hungry animals, for refusing to become servants to farmers on whose property they had been ploughing on shares? White men have suddenly become brutes and have expelled Natives with whom they have lived from childhood -- Natives whose labour made the white man wealthy are turned away by people who should treat them with grat.i.tude.

And are you going to leave your old home just when the Devil appears to have possessed himself of the hearts of most farmers?

In your own interest, apart from my own and the Baas's, Auta Gert, you should have left us long ago when you could find a place elsewhere.

Are you so deaf and blind as not to hear and see the change which has come over the country of late? White men formerly punished a Kafir who had done some wrong, now they worry him from sheer cussedness.

You must be mad, Auta Gert, to try and leave us. What is going to become of your family and your beautiful cattle. No wonder that Anna is so upset. I have been thinking that some rondlooper (vagabond) from the towns had been trying to take her away."

As Mrs. V. spoke she was agreeably surprised to find the sobering effect which her rebuke seemed to have upon her husband's native tenants.

She knew her influence over them, especially over the old native families, but in all her dealings and close a.s.sociation with them she could not remember an impromptu speech of hers that produced such immediate results.

The faces of the two Natives brightened up, and they kept looking at one another as she spoke. At length she turned round towards the stoep and there was Anna, for the first time that morning, interested in and delighted by what she said. Usually it would have been a serious breach of the rules of the house for Anna to listen when the Missus was speaking about something that did not immediately concern her scullery duties; but Mrs. V.'s satisfaction was unbounded on seeing the bright look on her servant's face, which she had hitherto vainly sought.

"Now, you see," said Anna to her father, "I told you it would never happen if the Missus can help it."