SOUTHERN BRANCH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, iRARY, ANGELES, CALIF. THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA HPHE REAL SOUTH AFRICA BY AMBROSE PRATT Author of " David Syme : Father of Protection in Australia " etc. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE RIGHT HON. ANDREW FISHER, P.C., PRIME MINISTER OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA With Eight Illustrations and a Map p- - r > A ^ \) O U i 73Z sy INTRODUCTION I GLADLY respond to the Author's wish that a few introductory lines of mine should appear as a preface to his book. Mr. Ambrose Pratt accompanied me on the visit to , South Africa and had ample opportunities of col- lecting information which I think adds a useful and interesting contribution to the literature deal- ing with what is happily now a portion of the j British Empire. Prior to my visit a new political South Africa jw had been created, the first Union Govern- ment formed, the Members of the first Union Parliament elected and waiting to be sworn in. Few people thought at the termination of the War in 1902 that in 1910 a Constitution would vii INTRODUCTION be granted giving full power of self-government to the Union, but it was my privilege to be pre- sent as the representative of the Government of Australia, at the opening of the Parliament. My mission was to convey to the people of the South African Union the fraternal greet- ings and good wishes of the people of the Com- monwealth of Australia on their achievement of Union and offer congratulations on the birth of another Dominion Nation within the British Empire. Men who a few short years before had been engaged in a bitter struggle against the Mother Country were standing in that Parliament and proclaiming to the world the inestim- able boon of a free Constitution under the British Crown. Amongst these men we find General Botha who took such a prominent part in the War and to-day stands as the Prime Minister of the Union and lately visited London in that capacity to attend the Imperial Confer- ence. Associated with him are men of marked ability. It is not to be understood, however, that all the men of high ideals and great public ser- viii INTRODUCTION vice are on one side in politics, or of the same nationality of origin. When the time comes to do honour to whom honour is due, other names will appear in the historian's impartial record of acts and deeds done in the nation's interests, not less prominent and honoured than that of the Union's first Minister himself. In Cape Town I saw, heard and met many South Africans during a week of rejoicing and festivities and formed the opinion, which I then publicly expressed, that the arena for the settle- ment of disputes between the British and Dutch people in South Africa had by the Act of Union, been finally removed from the field to the floor of Parliament House. It would not be true to say there was no reserve nor any sullenness in the minds of the two contracting parties. That feeling will, I feel sure eventually be supplanted by a friendship between the peoples of the two races as surpris- ing to those who witness it as was the act of Union itself. I cannot believe that the main cause of the hastening of real union will be fear of native he INTRODUCTION and subject races, serious as the solution of that problem is now and is likely to remain. I do not fear the destruction of the civilization within the Union by armed or other attacks of the colored races, powerful and numerous as they are, within and adjacent to the Union. In their savage state they seem to me to be a greater worry, menace and danger than they would be if they knew sufficient to be aware of the penalty they would have to pay if they made war on the white race. I saw the great mines as a miner only can see them. The figures quoted in this work re- garding the mortality in the mines are very un- satisfactory and indeed sad reading, and I hope to see great improvements in this direction. I should be happy to think that the author had overstated the case, but I saw enough during my sojourn to form the opinion that very great im- provement can be made. The Native Races of South Africa are re- nowned throughout the world for their splendid physique and great vitality, but town life does not seem to agree with them. The mortality at INTRODUCTION the mines is exceedingly high, and the life of the casual workers about the towns appears to cause deterioration. There is no finer example of manhood than many of the Bantu tribes in the native state, but the semi-civilised native as seen in the towns of South Africa is not what could be described as an elevating moral spectacle. Useful, suitable and profitable work must be found for them and there must be a line of demarcation between white and colored labor. White men cannot and will not do work that colored men usually perform. In Africa nearly all manual labor at present is done by the natives, and there are few avenues for white men, except as overseers, etc. The British and Dutch seem to hold dif- ferent ideas as to how this problem should be solved. Some urge the education of the colored races, others think they should be left in their present primitive state. The thing that strikes an Australian is the scarcity of timber in a great part of the country. Our despised gum trees we saw there. They were originally intended for mine timber, xl INTRODUCTION but now lend beauty to the landscape. South Africa would gladly welcome the timber that we in Australia ruthlessly destroy every year and do not value. I was charmed with the appearance of the rugged country which had been so fruitful of romantic and tragic stories. During the time spent in South Africa I had opportunities of visiting every Province, travelling as far north as Livingstone, and the appended map shows the route traversed. An impressive feature of Mr. Ambrose Pratt's book is the mass of official statistical evidence which he brings to bear in support of his statements. Whether or not one may agree with his deductions, the figures themselves are sufficiently striking to call for earnest thought. During my travels in South Africa I was happy to meet many old friends. Some had prospered and were satisfied with their lot, others spoke well of their new home but longed for the scenes of their youth. Such is the life of our race. I cannot close this brief introduction with- xii INTRODUCTION out expressing my good wishes for the pros- perity of the people of our new sister nation who showed us such kindness and consideration while we were amongst them. ANDREW FISHER. Xlll ACKNOWLEDGMENT C OME of the material in this book has been published in another form in " The Age " newspaper of Melbourne, on behalf of which journal I made my last visit to South Africa. I am indebted to Messrs. David Syme & Co., the proprietors of " The Age," for per- mission to include the same in the present volume. The illustrations are from photographs taken by Mr. M. L. Shepherd, Secretary to the Prime Minister of Australia and also (a few) by the Rt. Hon. A. Fisher, the Prime Minister. I desire to express my grateful acknowledgments to Mr. Shepherd for the use of his photographs and to the Rt. Hon. A. Fisher for his pictures and also for the Introduction which he has kindly contributed to this volume. AMBROSE PRATT. MELBOURNE, December 14, 1912. XV CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW i II. THE BLACK MAN - 12 III. THE BLACK MENACE - 33 IV. THE EFFECT OF THE NATIVE ON THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CON- DITIONS OF THE WHITE POPULA- TION - 48 V. THE BOER - 58 VI. THE BOER CONTINUED - - 79 VII. POLITICS - 94 VIII. THE RULERS OF THE COUNTRY - 102 v IX. GEOLOGICAL AND GENERAL - - 109 X. PROVINCIAL CENTRES - 124 XL THE RAND - 147 XII CRIME - 168 XIII. RHODESIA AND THE VICTORIA FALLS 179 XIV. THE MATOPPAS AND RHODES' GRAVE 192 XV. AFRIKANDER LITERATURE & LITERACY 199 XVI. MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE - - 206 xvii CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XVII. SOCIAL NOTES - 213 XVIIL RACIALISM 229 XIX. THE PASTORAL AND AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK - 240 XX. To ENGLISHMEN IN ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD EXCEPT SOUTH AFRICA - 256 APPENDIX A. NATIVE CRIME - 262 B. - 276 C- - 277 D. THE PARLIAMENT OF THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA - 280 xvm ILLUSTRATIONS MAP - - Facing title-page LEWINIKA'S BAND AND TRIBESMEN page 44 DRAKENSBURG MOUNTAINS 124 VICTORIA FALLS - 178 CECIL RHODES'S GRAVE - ,,192 XIX THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA CHAPTER I A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW C OUTH Africa is a haunting country : in- finitely mysterious, forbidding, beautiful and strange. Amongst all the countries of the world it stands out a lonely and distract- ing figure, compelling interest and prolonged attention by reason of its unlikeness to any other, its essential peculiarity and its boding aspect of aloofness. Everybody who has visited the place bears willing or grudging witness to its penetrating lure. At first it repels, but even in the first shock of repulsion a vivid curiosity awakens in the breast of the intruder I THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA and very soon this curiosity expands into a reluctantly admitted consciousness of some un- defined, deep and inexplicable charm. Afri- kanders boast that they who leave South Africa are never satisfied till they return, and they claim that the witchery is potent to with- stand the flight of years. More than a grain of truth is buried in the statement. My own experience may be given as an instance. I paid my initial visit to the country more than ten years ago. I left it gladly and after a decade spent in other lands I seized with an eagerness I cannot explain upon the first opportunity that reached me to visit it again. Now the lure has double force. No man can forecast the future, but it seems to me that if I live long I shall die in Southern Africa. Yet truth constrains me to confess that the charm of South Africa's attraction works like a subtle poison in the veins. To many have I spoken who have felt the lure and all made admission that close at heart they knew a counter-irritant which warned them to resist and whispered like the voice of conscience " Better keep away ! " The reason who can say? Is it that the lure, like the fascination 2 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA of an opiate, is to the senses rather than to the spirit? Is it addressed to death rather than to life to the instincts of luxury and still repose and not to the sources of vigorous endeavour? Is it, in brief, a narcotic and not a stimulant? But the problem may have a less complex psychological significance. It may be merely a question of man's eternal covetousness of forbidden fruit. Let those blink the fact who choose or can, South Africa is a black man's country. It belongs of natural right to the negroid races. The white man is its over-lord, has been for centuries, but its owner and enduring occupant No : at least, not yet. Natural forces are massed and ranged against him of which he is only now beginning to acquire an adequate conception. Climate, Disease, Increase, so are the forces named. And there are intrinsic political difficulties to reckon with as well the resultant outcome of his tamperings with Nature. Whatever the port through which a stranger may enter South Africa he is instantly struck with astonishment at the numbers of natives everywhere in evidence. Long before the ship " ties up " numerous blacks appear, in boats, 3 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA in tugs, even on the pilot steamer. Immedi- ately the ship touches the wharf hundreds of natives swarm aboard to coal her. The pas- senger lands, and is promptly assailed by crowds of rickshaw Kaffirs, big magnificent fellows, most fantastically attired, wearing startling head dresses, from which great horns sprout out fiercely. In self-defence the visitor chooses a rickshaw, and is dragged at a rapid pace to his hotel. The ride takes him through the city, and ever his wonder grows. For each white man he sees he meets seven or eight blacks. The natives are all decently attired, wearing more or less the white man's clothes, yet modified to suit their savage tastes. The women (wonder- fully comely creatures they are) have a Roman fancy for toga-like drapings : the men affect the smock and knee breeches legs and feet bare and shiny. Both men and women adore crude blazing colors scarlet for choice, a flaunting, blaring scarlet. So many blacks : so few whites ! One begins to be curious. " Ah," one says, " but- the blacks are an open air race they don't mind this burning sun : the whites are indoors. That is the explanation." Of course, the notion is illusory, but then one is always reluctant to 4 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA accept unpleasant facts. Yet one must at last. One glance at the population statistics and the cold douche is over. Durban, population 67,000 of whom 37,000 are blacks : Capetown, popula- tion 77,000, of whom 35,000 are blacks : Johan- nesburg, population (approx.) 200,000, of whom 105,000 are blacks : and similiar proportions ob- tain in nearly all the other cities and larger towns. Of the country there is a still more interesting tale to tell. The census returns of 1904 show that there are 4,652,662 blacks as against 1,135,000 whites within the Union: and it has been estimated that fully another 2,000,000 natives live south of the Zambesi. Another startling fact lurks in the official blue book. The blacks are increasing at a more rapid rate relatively than the whites. It is hardly strange that they should. South Africa is their country. It is a tropical country, controlled by a handful of whites. How long the whites will continue to control it no man can say. The colored problem is the deepest and most vital of all political issues in South Africa. It dominates every other, even the racial antipathy now divid- ing Boers and British, and it is quite likely that it will eventually be the means of bringing Boers 5 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA and British together in some great struggle undertaken to determine finally which force is stronger, white or black. At present the whites are absolutely paramount. The aristocratic re- lation between the races which originated in the slave system of the early days, has been kept alive by the smashing of the power of the great native chiefs, and the consequent acceptance by the natives of the white man's rule. The white man has a natural instinct that he is superior to the uneducated native, and the native appears to have a reciprocal sense of inferiority. But the white man's higher plane cannot possibly sub- sist any longer than he can prevent the native from developing the qualities of intellect, initia- tive and resource which have given the former the mastery. The truth seems to be that the white man's rule depends on keeping the blacks ignorant and mentally benighted. Yet this cannot be done for ever. Just now the native is doing all the rough and unskilled work in South Africa, He is the industrial basis of the African economic system. The whites are merely overseers. White men scorn to do unskilled work, because it has come to be regarded as Kaffir's work, and 6 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the feeling of caste (caste has replaced the old slave system) is so universal and so strong that unskilled work is looked upon as degrading, and would lead to the ostracism of any white man who transgressed the unwritten social law by touching it. There is hardly a white artisan at work in South Africa who has not one or two natives in his employ. Every white workman insists upon having a native assistant to carry and hold his tools, and perform the rougher parts of his task. A carpenter walks to his job with a Kaffir behind him carrying his bag. Bricklayers do nothing but put the bricks in place in a lordly fashion : the rest of their work is performed by blacks. Every artisan is essentially an overseer, and the blacks are his industrial valets. The practice is injurious and shortsighted to the last degree. It undermines and diminishes the white man's in- dustrial efficiency, and it trains the native to sup- plant him. But it is the iron custom of South Africa, and nobody dares to break it. It would be well in these circumstances for the whites if the natives were a stupid and truly inferior race, like the aboriginals of Australia. But they are nothing of the sort. They are naturally a cap- 7 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA able and gifted people, and it is proving quite impossible to restrict them to unskilled work. Their intense desire for education is the subject of universal comment. The vast majority of the natives in domestic employment have books in their possession with -which they are continu- ally attempting to instruct themselves. In Pre- toria there are 1,600 native children under 14, of whom 1,200 are attending school. In the Cape Colony there are 103,000 native children attend- ing school, as against 73,000 white children. It is true that the standard of education given at the schools is low, but so general a diffusion of new knowledge must have an immense effect on the capacities of the rising generation. Perhaps the root reason why natives so absolutely monopolise the unskilled labor market is be- cause they accept low wages. In domestic ser- vice the average wage paid to Kaffirs is io/- a month and keep. Farm native laborers get I5/- a month and keep. In the mines the natives earn much more, and are often paid from 2/6 to 5/- a day. White workers demand and receive enormously higher pay. A carpenter gets 2O/- or 22/6 per day, and white mine workers receive from ,15 to ^30 per month. 8 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA The natives can afford to accept low wages, because they have a subsidiary source of liveli- hood in their tribal lands, and the labor of their women and children. Every native is a culti- vator. Every native has a patch of tribal land, which he regularly plants with mealies once a year, and which yields him and his family a suffi- ciency of food to support life. Once a year, wherever he may be, he repairs to his small farm (however distant it may be from his ordinary work) and sows his mealies. When that is done he returns to his employment on Boer farm, or in the city, or on the mines, and resumes the task of earning the white man's money and doing the white man's work. To travel across South Africa is a revelation. Wherever one may go native kraals abound. For every white settler's homestead there are three or four native kraals. The inland cities are all flanked with densely peopled native habi- tations. And behind all this there are the native reserves in Bechuanaland, the Cape, the Orange River Colony, and in the Vaal, all of which are teeming with natives. Right in the heart of the Union lies Basutoland, a province half as large as Victoria, and as fine a piece of fertile territory THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA as can be found in the world. This belongs absolutely to the Basuto nation, and is merely subject to British protection. It is inhabited by nearly 400,000 Basuto natives (there are only 800 whites in the territory), and it is productively occupied. These blacks are a very superior race. They are skilled stockmen and farmers : they own large herds of cattle, sheep and horses : and they are armed with modern rifles. One day they will prove a terrible thorn to their white over-lords. Many of the chiefs are wealthy and highly educated men. The richer natives have long since adopted the practice of sending their sons abroad to Britain and America to be educated, and to re- ceive University training.* Sprinkled all over South Africa are scores of these cultured natives. They are a power in the land, and already one of them, a doctor, has been returned a full- fledged member to a Provincial Council under the new constitution. Each province .of the Union treats the natives differently. In the Vaal and the O.R.C. they are denied the smallest semblance of political rights. In the Cape they are on a par with the *See note to chapter 3, page 35. 10 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA whites, and possess the suffrage. In Natal they can acquire the suffrage, although by no means easily. The great mass of them as yet do not understand the value or meaning of the vote, and stand aloof from politics. But they are waking up. The educated minority is beginning to infect the majority with a sense of injustice and a feeling of unrest, and it may be said with confidence that the coming generation of natives will put forward a demand for full political en- franchisement so powerful that the whites will be unable to resist it, except in arms. ii CHAPTER II THE BLACK MAN / TPHE six million blacks who are estimated to live at this moment South of the Zambesi are nearly all members of some division or sub-division of the Bantu race. They speak in many dialects, but all these have a common origin and are localised corruptions of the Bantu tongue. The Bantu people are not aboriginals. They invaded South Africa from the North, and probably they overflowed in prehistoric times from the Nile Valley, which would appear to have been the cradle of all the more virile negro tribes and nations. The indigenous inhabitants of South Africa, the Hottentots and Bushmen, are a degenerate and disappearing type. They un- 12 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA successfully opposed the Bantu invasion and in modern times they have been ground to powder between the upper and nether mill stones of the Bantu rule and white supremacy. The dominant natives in South Africa to-day are the Zulus,. the Matabeles, and the Basutos. The Kaffirs and Bechuanas are numerous, but their political im- portance is comparatively insignificant owing to the fact that they lack the qualities of potential greatness which naturally distinguish the purer blooded Bantu stock. It is a custom among White Afrikanders to apply indiscriminately the term " Kaffir " to all black men. Really it is a cognomen of contempt and the Zulus in par- ticular resent it keenly. The higher negroes are men of matchless courage and magnificent physique. They are born fighters and when constrained by circumstances to work they make splendid workers. Ethnologists declare the negro the supreme type of arrested development. They point to his prognathous jaw, his retreat- ing forehead, his lesser brain space and his rela- tively fewer brain folds as conclusive proofs of his irremediable inferiority to the white man. Left to himself, they say, the negro will never rise much above the level of the brute creation. 13 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA All that may be perfectly true. Between the white man and the black there is an obvious and essential inequality, and to deny it would be utterly futile. But when these premises are granted only half the problem is stated, after all. The great color question in South Africa is not " Can the negro make himself the equal of the whites ? " but " Can he develop to such a pass that he will be able to shake off the white man's yoke and thereafter maintain himself as an inde- pendent factor in the affairs of civilised man- kind ? " This question has long been forcing it- self on the attention of the thinking minority of White South Africans, and it is my sincere con- viction that before many years are gone it will constitute a problem of Imperial and world wide interest. Let us consider the negro's natural capaci- ties and limitations. In his wild native state he is a cruel and sordid savage. His pas- sions are violent and inexplicably capricious : his will power is fiery but unstable. He is gifted with an intense imaginative power and a vivid sense of the reality of immaterial conceptions ; that is to say, he is frantically superstitious and a devout believer in the supernatural. He has a THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA great love of ostentation. His impassivity to suffering is almost monstrous and can only be the result of an undeveloped nervous system. He sets little or no value on human life. His disposition is extremely sensual. He has a keen sense of the ludicrous, a deep love of music. Most of these qualities necessarily range on the wrong side of the ledger. Now take the credit side. The negro's courage is beyond either praise or criticism it is unparalleled in any white race. The world knows nothing like it. He has an ingrained reverence for discipline that is also peculiar to himself. This finds expres- sion in a superlatively slavish and continuously abject subserviency to his priests and chiefs and kings. This characteristic is one of weakness, but on account of its very weakness it endows the negro with a tremendous source of potential strength. It unalterably fixes his destiny in the hands of his native rulers. If they are wise the negro race, however imbecile in itself, will do wise things should its rulers so direct. The tribesman will blindly obey to life or to death. It all depends on the negro potentates what the issue will be continued subjection to white dominion or emancipation into independent 15 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA sovereignity. To proceed, the negro is by no means an imbecile. His mental development has undoubtedly been arrested. For many ages he has lived like a little child, perfectly unam- bitionless of self improvement. But that fact proves little except that -he has lacked a sufficient spur to develop his capacities. The question arises Does he possess capacities that are sus- ceptible to material improvement? The answer to that is clear. Experience is our respondent. Experience both in S. Africa and in America has indisputably demonstrated that the negro has a brain which is capable of immense develop- ment. With a very little scientific instruction the average negro becomes a skilled and dex- terous craftsman in every branch of industrial technique. There is no trade beyond his ability to master. He is equally good as a gold miner, a cabinet maker, and a compositor. He prefers always to work out of doors, but when put to it he will render good service in the machine room. As a scholar he learns to read and write fluently with astonishing rapidity and ease. Of late years the entire negro population of S. Africa has become infected with an enthusiasm for education which amounts to a craze. It is the 16 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA subject of universal comment in the Union and the whites regard the phenomenon with a grow- ing sense of uneasy dissatisfaction. They do not understand it; what does the portent mean? The negro schools are crowded with pupils. There are many more black than white children attending the public schools. The negro arti- sans all over the sub-continent spend half their leisure poring over A.B.C.'s and primers. Even the house servants have caught the fever and neglect their duty to their masters to teach them- selves the three R's. When in Bulawayo I was the guest of an English lady who had five black servants. She rang the bell for afternoon tea. There was no response. She rang again and more insistently : still no response. She smiled mysteriously and beckoned me to follow her into the passage. Behind a curtain at the end of the hall we found two burly squatting negros abso- lutely immersed in the study of an infant's alphabet book. I had a very similar experience at Bloemfontein. At Johannesburg and at Capetown a favorite item of domestic gossip concerned the mysterious absorption of the Kaffirs in education. I heard the topic discussed wherever I went. At the Zambesi River the 17 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA steward on my train had occasion to employ an assistant in the kitchen. He secured a young black boy of about 1 2 years of age, a Barotse, who came from a kraal north of Livingstone. The lad knew not a single word of English when he joined the train, but a iew days later when we reached Johannesburg he could understand sim- plicities and make himself clearly understood. One of our party gave him 6d. to buy sweetmeats. The child spent the money instead on a gorgeous A.B.C., and when we resumed our journey he was a public nuisance, for he shirked his duty and did little save pester us to teach him to read. Just before finally quitting the train I got this lad in my cabin and put him to question. Why was he so anxious to learn how to read? He did not know. Who put the idea into his head? No answer. His father? He shook his head. His mother? The boy laughed disdain- fully. His chief? The lad's eyes flashed. ' Yes. Inkoos," he replied decisively. " My chief he tell um what um do. Me do him quick. C.A.T. cat. That fellow right. Inkoos?" Straws show how the wind blows. But I was far from being satisfied. I wanted something more definite. Enquiring on all hands I met with 18 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA some indifference, much positive ignorance, a vast deal of fanciful assertion : but at length a journalist supplied me with a vital hint. " Nearly all the big chiefs' sons are educated abroad. They come back with ideas ? " Where could one such returned student emigrant be found? A dozen names and addresses were forthcoming. I chose the nearest address and made a special journey to the spot. I may not specify the place nor name the man, but am under no other pledge. At my journey's end was a decent house, half bungalow, half villa, surrounded with an infant garden trimly paled. I knocked at the hall door and presented my letter of introduction to a suave, white-smocked Hindoo. I was shown into a smoking room furnished with comfortable leather covered lounge chairs and a galaxy of fixed and turning bookshelves. Large colored portraits (prints) in gilt frames of the King and Queen graced the mantelpiece. At one end of the apartment was a table littered with filed papers and piled with works of reference from Whittaker to Who's Who. Such a table might be found in any sub-editor's office in the United Kingdom. A nattily dressed Kaffir servant (who was probably a Zulu) brought me a decanter 19 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA of spirit and a soda syphon on a tray. " Funa Manzi," I remarked. He produced iced water in a twinkling. Left to myself I examined the bookshelves and was mildly astonished to find Herbert Spencer rubbing shoulders with Paul de Kock and Guy de Maupassant : Kant, Fichte and Neitzche separated by Zola, Boccacio and Casanova : and Adam Smith, Bacon, John Stuart Mill, Comte and Marcus Aurelius indiscrimin- ately sandwiched between the bawdiest novelists of the last two centuries. Not many minutes later I was shaking the hand of a tall negro clad in white flannel trousers, a black silk cummer- band and a scarlet blazer. I noticed that he tendered me his hand with diffidence, but on my alacritous response his hesitation vanished and his grasp was cordial to the point of friendliness. The man's coal black face was good humoured and intelligent. His voice particularly im- pressed me. It was sonorous but beautifully modulated and full of deep toned music. His greeting was European in expression but tropic in intensity. He spoke perfect English as known to cultured Americans, but subtly accented as to certain words with the fascinating Bantu click. We were very soon on excellent terms. 20 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA Made aware of my quest he promised to answer all my questions freely on one condition, that his identity should not be demonstrated. Short- hand notes enable me to reproduce the conver- sation with exactitude. " I understand that you are a man of influence among your people," I suggested. " When my father dies I shall be chief," he replied. "Chief of many?" " There are thirty thousand kraals in my father's kingdom." ' You were educated abroad ? " " Yes, at - University. I graduated with third class honours in - " " Is yours an exceptional case ? " " I am not the only college graduate in my tribe there is one other now in Africa. Still another of my people at this moment is studying " And in other tribes ? " ' The movement is becoming general and grows apace." " How many educated negroes would you say the movement has already produced ? " " Some hundred or so. Perhaps two hundred, 21 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA perhaps three.* It is guess work. True figures are not available. But I can tell you that the need of education has long since appealed to all our head men speaking of us as a nation." "A nation?" " Why not, sir ? Are we not a nation ? " " Nationality implies cohesion, also an articu- late and definite sense of nationality a common purpose and common aims intelligently shared in unison. Have you that? " My host threw out his arms excitedly. ' We begin to acquire it. We begin," he cried. " Per- haps in the real sense we are not a nation yet. The kraals are dull and sleep. But the chiefs are awake and active. We know what we want and are working towards our goal. The chiefs are everything. You who know us little will not easily comprehend. But all depends on us on us. (He struck his breast.) What the kraals do * On December igth, 1910, a debate took place in the Senate of the Union on the question of providing higher education for negroes in South Africa. In the course of the discussion Senators Stanford, Shreiner and Campbell pointed out that " considerable numbers " of natives are emigrating to other countries in search of higher edu- cation and returning "with ideas of social and political equality," and the Minister of Education was strongly urged to grapple with the problem. The Minister made a temporising reply. Debates of the Senate, page 157. 22 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA is nothing. What we think, what we say, what we do that is what counts and is important, for the kraals will follow and obey. We are the brain, they are the body. The brain is master. That is right." " But can a nation endure which " " Sir, the chiefs are not fools. We realise the need of universal education but an education strictly limited in quality. It is essential to in- struct the rabble to a certain point, but not beyond. To read and write that is enough. We are students of history. Some of us are philosophers ." He pointed to his book- shelves. 1 The white people," said I, " complain that too many natives are seeking to educate them- selves." ' Would they keep my people ignorant and dumb for ever? " His eyes flashed angrily and he bared his splendid teeth. I expected an out- burst, but he controlled himself. " They can- not," he laughed. " The word has been spoken. It will not be recalled." He spoke conclusively. " Am I to understand, then, that the kraals are learning the white man's lore at the bidding of the chiefs?" 23 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " Undoubtedly." " But will it help you that the kraals shall learn to read? To read is to think?" " Not so, but to think of what one reads." " And will you put bonds upon the reading of your people ? " " Sir, you dream. The trouble will be to in- duce them to read enough of what we shall give them." " Ah ! You aspire, then, to supply them with reading matter : a native Press? " "Why not?" " Newspapers are costly institutions." " Sir, I know a dozen chiefs whose incomes run to great sums. Myself, I am not a pauper. The Press is a great power, a great instrument to form opinion, sentiment, a sense of nationality to organise emancipation. But rest assured, sir, our ambitions are peaceful and perfectly legiti- mate according to your strictest laws." " Indeed ! Would you be so courteous as to define them ? " ' This country once belonged to us. Essen- tially it is ours still. We outnumber you as six to one : but we are serfs. You give us freely none but mean and dirty work to do. You ex- 24 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA elude us from Parliament and the public service. You deny us the suffrage. You coop us up in compounds without your cities. You walk on the footpaths : you force us to tread the roads. You are Christians and preach in your churches that all men are equal in the sight of God who made us. Yet you exclude us from the churches which are God's Houses and wherein equality should reign ; you spit upon our color and repudi- ate our rights. I tell you, sir, we are quickly becoming a nation because of what you do to us. Our nationality will be a nationality of color. You ask what is our ambition. I will tell you. It is to live and work in the country that belongs to us as the social equals and political peers of the white men. There are those who say that our aspiration spells war. I am not of them. But I am no prophet. I confess it freely. All I can do to prevent violence I shall." " But if violence cannot be prevented ? " " Sir, I beg you to excuse me. I will not admit the proposition. I am a loyal British subject. The Englishman makes mistakes, but in his heart he is just. Your people in a little time will see and confess the justice of our cause. They will help us. Do you think me over sanguine ? " 25 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " Yes." " Will you tell me frankly why ? Do not fear to hurt my feelings. We are talking heart to heart and I have shown you all that is in my mind." Thus adjured, I answered candidly : " There is a phrase fathered by ethnologists which passes muster as an axiom among the whites. They say the negro is the supreme type of arrested de- velopment. They regard your people as their irredeemable natural inferiors. I think it will not be easy while such an opinion exists for the whites to admit the blacks to be their peers. A prejudice of barbarism intervenes." My host gravely shook his head. " What you say is true," he said. " The prejudice is there. But it is not unconquerable. It cannot be; be- cause it is a false judgment and all false judg- ments must eventually die and disappear." " You claim, then, that the black man is not irredeemably inferior to the white man ? " " I do. I confess freely that in his present state the negro is a cycle behind the white man. But his capacities of development are infinite. He has the world and eternity before him. I admit that he requires a constant spur to keep 26 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA progressing and to prevent him from going back. But you whites have given him that spur. Under your rule he has been given a security of life that has caused him to increase enormously and he must adopt your industrial and cultural arts in order to feed himself. More and more will this be necessary as time goes on. He is becoming more closely pushed every day. He knows it. His chiefs saw it long ago. The future of the black man depends on self-assertion. He is be- ginning to organise in a way never before dreamed of. One of these days he will surprise the world." " Is your ultimate ideal self government ? " " Let me quote you a passage from Mill that I know by heart. Lots of us black men know it by heart, although you whites have forgotten it. It is a passage that will some day be painted in letters of fire across the African firmament. Listen : ' The government of a people by itself ' has a meaning and a reality, but such a thing as ' the government of one people by another does ' not and cannot exist. Either a people governs ' itself or that people has no real government but ' only a system of provisional administration/ That is my answer to your question, sir." 27 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " One final question, Mr. . How long do you propose to put up with the present system of what I suppose you would call ' provisional administration ' ? " " Not an hour longer than we can help, sir. As we become progressively educated and organised I speak of my people in the mass we shall progressively demand our rights. That is our policy in a nutshell." The inquisition at an end, curiosity and an underlying sense of distrust prompted me to re- mark speculatively upon the astonishing frank- ness of my host. It was the signal for a storm of indignation. He assured me that he and his con- geners were always ready and willing to talk candidly about their cause and purposes and mis- sion with the whites. But the whites held dis- dainfully aloof and contumeliously ignored them. He complained mordantly that there was a tacit conspiracy among the ruling whites to treat the negro educational movement as an evanescent and elusive shadow, and educated negroes as dime-shows and monstrosities. He was a Uni- versity man, a person of culture and refinement, fit to meet any white gentleman on his own ground, yet the whole white race shunned him 28 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA and despised him. Did he venture to stroll through the city he would have to march along the road like a horse the pavement being rigidly forbidden him. He wound up by assur- ing me that I was the first white man in Africa who had condescended to shake him by the hand, and he warned me that I would be violently censured and abused if the fact were made known. Subsequently I tested these statements and I cannot say they were in any great wise exaggerations of the truth. v All over South Africa I found the whites animated with an im- placable determination to keep the blacks under foot to treat them as sub-humans. Public opinion regards any white who would stoop to friendly intercourse with any black as something very like a public enemy. Public opinion, how- ever, is divided into two planes. The Boers look upon the blacks as unruly animals who must be kept in their proper place by brute force and the sjambok. The British also look upon them as animals, but counsel milder measures and eschew the whip. The difference is really rather one of policy rather than of belief, and it arises from temperament. The Boer has a cruel heart. He beats his horse indifferently when he should and THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA when he should not. The Britisher only beats his horse when punishment seems unavoid- able. My clearest-cut impression of the chief's son has yet to be recorded. In response to a slipped word that I had wished at once but of course in vain to have retracted (the hearing of the negro is marvellously acute), he started afoot and began to pace the floor rapidly yet restrainedly, like a wild animal angry but always conscious that its cage has iron bars. I watched him somewhat anxiously, yet filled with admiration at the sinu- ous strength of him, the grace and majesty of his stride, the statuesque beauty of his swift un- studied attitudes. Of a sudden he stopped and faced me, pouring out a flood of scornful protest. " You think the negro has no message for man- kind," he said. " And why ? Because he has been dumb? Because he has no history? You do not know the negro. You do not even under- stand your own conceited, white skinned race. Until you had a language could you have had a Chaucer, a Spencer or a Byron? The negro is not literate yet. What is the supremest type of intellect the poet? We have no poets. We have no language. We study yours. It is a 30 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA foreign tongue to us, but it will liberate our minds. Listen to these lines " * Know you winds that blow your course Down the verdant valleys, That, somewhere, you must perforce Kiss the brow of Alice? When her gentle face you find Kiss it softly, naughty wind.' " Is not that a dainty verse ? Listen again " ' Out of the sunshine and out of the heat, Out of the dust of the grimy street, A song fluttered down in the form of a dove And it bore me a message, the one word Love. " ' Ah ! I was toiling and oh ! I was sad : I had forgotten the way to be glad Now, smiles for my sadness and for my toil rest Since the dove fluttered down to its home in my breast.' " Keats would not have felt disgraced to have been named the author of that verse, I think. " Another ! It is called ' Night ' : " ' Silence and whirling worlds afar Through all-encircling skies, What floods come o'er the spirit's bar What wondrous thoughts arise. " ' The Earth, a mantle, falls away, And, winged, we leave the sod : Where shines in its eternal sway The majesty of God.' ' Your face, sir, is a question. Yes, I shall answer it. The fragments I have recited to you are from a book of poems which was hailed by THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA William Dean Howells as a ' human event/ a ' human event/ Yes, yes, the writer was Paul Lawrence Dunbar, a full blooded African negro, a Bantu, born in America educated mark me, educated the son, too,, of an educated man." He paused, drawing himself up to his full height, with a pride that almost touched mag- nificence, then he said impressively " Here, sir, in Africa we have no second educated generation, yet. We play the ape yet. We are imitators yet. But wait a bit. Give us time, a little time, and you will see that we can profit by instruction. I say, I say, I say the negro has his message. I say it. He has his message and he will speak it. Ah ! but you had nearly angered me ! " His voice lowered to a sort of croon. " Listen once more, sir, please, to my poet's truthful picture of the negro's present state and future fate " ' It is still a little dark with him, but there are warnings of the day, ' And somewhere out of the darkness a bird is singing to the dawn. ' " A full blooded negro, sir a Bantu ! May all the Gods of Heaven bless him ! He has given Hope and an Ideal to the whole negro race." 32 CHAPTER III THE BLACK MENACE 'THHE hope of the black race and the centre of all negro inspiration, intrigue and activity is Basutoland. This province is in every possible political sense an anomaly and an enigma. It lies near the heart of the South African Union : it comprises much of the best agricultural land in South Africa : it is sur- rounded on every side by the white man's terri- tory ; yet to all intents and purposes it is an inde- pendent negro State. Basutoland has an area of about 10,300 square miles. It is bounded on the South by Cape Colony, on the East by Natal, and on the North and West by the Orange River Colony. In shape and configuration it is a fortress. The Drakensburg Mountains but- 33 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA tress its eastern and southern borders. Its northern frontage is defended by the precipitous Maluti range, and its western frontiers are pro- tected by a score of spurs and rugged chains. Rising like a gargantuan Gibraltar from the lower circumscribing levels, its top is a magnifi- cently fertile table land, with a mean height of 6,000 feet above the sea. On this table land reside some 360,000 Basutos, the most intelligent of all the colored peoples of the continent. In all the territory there are fewer than 1,000 whites. The country belongs exclusively to the Basutos. They acknowledge the suzerainty of Britain (King George is represented by an Imperial Commissioner, who resides at Maseru, the capital), but the native chiefs administer their own affairs and they owe no allegiance to the South African Union Government. Save for the slender tie which binds them to Britain they are an absolutely autonomous and independent community. The province is the one place in South Africa where the black man's power is un- questioned and supreme. It is the only part of interior South Africa blessed with a consistently temperate, healthy and stimulating climate. No white man is allowed into the territory except as 34 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA a special act of grace, and no white man can re- main beyond a certain time except with the ex- press permission of the chiefs. The Basuto system of government is a curious admixture of socialism and patriarchalism. Land is divided on the communal principle and is inalienable. Individual proprietorship in real property is against the rule. Moveable property is prac- tically subject to individual ownership, but in theory everything belongs to the chiefs, to whom the natives pay fief for their possessions. Many of the chiefs are enormously rich : they are all wealthy and powerful men. The chief para- mount is loyally reverenced by his subordinates and in his hands is focussed the entire strength of the nation. The tribesmen pay him the homage due to a demi-god. He administers life and death and is blindly obeyed worshipped one might say. On the whole the government of the province is wise and liberal. The chiefs do everything in their power to encourage indus- trial progress and the arts of civilization. There are three great industrial institutions* in the * On February 32nd, 1911, Senator Byron spoke concerning the Basutos in the Union Senate as follows : " It would, I think, sur- prise non-members to see what clever, intelligent and industrious native workmen are being turned out from the industrial schools in 35 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA province run by white and native missionaries and about 260 public schools, subsidised by the Government, which are attended daily by some 13,000 negro children. Every year the chiefs send a number of picked scholars abroad to be educated at foreign colleges and universities at the public cost. These scholars return to be local schoolmasters and to carry over all South Africa the light of the white man's learning. Maseru, the capital city of Basutoland, is con- nected by railway with the O.R.C., but there are no other railways in the province. The chiefs have a prejudice against railways, but they main- tain excellent roads, and all the towns are con- nected with the telegraph and served with Basutoland. I live close beside that country and I confess that the progress of many of the Basutos gives one much room for thought. There are already many of this race and their number is increasing to whom it would be absurd to apply the four to one factor [of efficiency] with respect to the whites. We cannot deny the fact that the native can readily and relatively make greater strides towards progress than the white. Therefore it would seem that we cannot hope to retain our present position and our determination to make this country a suitable home for white men unless we endeavour to restore the balance in our favor by greater numbers recruited from oversea. Relatively the natives are advancing more rapidly than we are. A veneer of civilisation that would not last may deceive or stimulate some Chaka or Moshesh of the future, and if, unfortunately, there should arise a life and death contest between the races, Provi- dence as ever will incline to the side of the big battalions." Debates of the Senate, 1910-1911, pages 193-194. 36 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA telephones. The British system of currency has long since displaced the primeval method of barter. Savings banks abound. The black population is thrifty and industrious. Agricul- ture is the principal industry, but manufacture is steadily increasing. The outstanding feature of the industrial life of Basutoland consists in the rapidly developing popularity of new methods. The Basutos are putting their old savage life behind them with a celerity and unanimity be- yond praise. Their foreign trade is expanding by leaps and bounds. They export horses, cattle, wool, wheat, mealies, hides and mohair. In exchange they import iron, agricultural imple- ments and machinery of the latest types, groceries and large quantities of clothes. The nation is becoming more notably Europeanised every day. The old style of huts is giving place to well built houses : the kraals are beginning to wear the appearance of civilised towns and modern sanitary methods are gradually coming into vogue. Taking all things into consideration it can- not be denied that the Basutos deserve the name of a nation. Their sense of nationality is strong and well defined. They cherish their 37 55307 independence above wealth and life itself. They have an army, and above all they have a history short perhaps, but not inglorious. This branch of the Bantu race took possession of the table land in 1820, wresting it from the aboriginal Bushmen, whom they .well nigh exterminated. The usurping invaders were led by a chief named Moshesh, a man of extraordinary bravery, talent and resource. Moshesh instantly divined the wonderful natural strength and the climatic and agricultural advantages of the country, and he determined to keep it and build there a stable, self-supporting nation. But he was not allowed to work in peace. Chaka, the famous Zulu king, had long coveted the table land, and the inter- vention of Moshesh threw him into a furv. He t declared war upon the Basutos and marched against them with a powerful army. The war lasted nearly four years and was decided by the battle of Thaba Bosigo, in which Chaka was overwhelmingly defeated. From that time until about 1850 the Basutos were left comparatively undisturbed. They then came into collision successively with the Boers, the Zulus, and the British. The military genius of Moshesh enabled him to defeat the Zulus and the Boers, 38 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA and in 1852 he crushingly repulsed the attack of the British forces under Sir George Cathcart. But Moshesh was far too clever a man to take comfort from his latest victory. He knew the British well, and foreseeing disaster he turned promptly from arms to diplomacy. The able manner in which he succeeded in conciliating Britain constitutes one of the most notable and dramatic features of South African history. The Boers were his next assailants. In 1858 they declared war upon him and invaded the table land. The campaign lasted ten years. In 1865 Moshesh defeated and killed General Wepener in a pitched battle at the hill of Thaba Bosigo (where he had formerly routed Chaka) and he drove the Boers over the border. The Boers, however, soon returned in augmented strength to the assault, and after three more years of de- sultory fighting Moshesh saw all his forces exhausted and he was brought face to face with ruin. In this crisis he suddenly offered his country to Britain as a fief of the Imperial Crown. The offering was accepted, and the Boers were compelled to retire. Moshesh died soon afterwards and was buried on the scene of his two greatest victories. The Basutos wor- 39 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ship his memory and always will. Subsequently, in 1871, Basutoland was annexed to Cape Colony: but in 1879 the natives rebelled against the Colonial rule. The war lasted two years. The Colonial forces were generally victorious, but they failed to reduce the rebels, and the dis- pute was finally settled by arbitration. In 1883 the Imperial Government once more took over the country from Cape Colony, and ever since then the Basutos have dwelt more or less contentedly under the protection of Great Britain. Really their subjection is nominal only, and none knows this better than themselves. During the late Boer-British war they remained perfectly neutral, but they were always ready to take arms at a moment's notice, and the Boers were extremely careful to refrain from giving them any excuse for intervention. I come now to a piece of their history which to my knowledge has not before been published. When the idea of South African Union swam into the sphere of practical politics the Basutos were profoundly disturbed. They conceived it probable that the white Colonists would attempt to include Basutoland as a political part and parcel of the projected new Dominion, and they 40 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA began to tremble for their treasured integrity and independence. I am unable to say whether or not the statesmen of South Africa who formed the Union were actually ambitious of taking over Basutoland from Britain, for this is a subject on which South African politicians maintain a diplomatic silence : but it is clear that the Basutos thought sa The chiefs protested with energy to the Resident Imperial High Commissioner, and demanded and received assur- ances that their treaty rights with Britain would be preserved. Every possible effort was made to soothe their anxiety and allay their appre- hensions, but with inconspicuous success. The people remained uneasy and the chiefs made quiet preparations for eventualities. Some three or four days before the Union was proclaimed almost every Zulu servant in the O.R.C. sud- denly vacated his employment. Some of the boys made fictitious excuses; others frankly ex- plained that they were wanted at their kraals; many said nothing. All disappeared. Dr. Ward, of Bloemfontein, a leading citizen and publicist of the O.R.C., told me that he strenu- ously endeavoured to prevent the departure of one of his favourite servants, but failed. The THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA man's chief had mysteriously sent for him, and physical compulsion only could have kept him in the city. On the Basutoland plateau, mean- while, many thousands of natives stood to their ponies under arms, waiting the word of their chiefs to pour down through the passes on the comparatively defenceless plains below. Hap- pily the threatened rebellion was peacefully frus- trated, but only with the utmost difficulty (so hard were the chiefs to persuade that the Union would not affect their status), and it was not until the clearest assurances had been conveyed to them that the Basuto chiefs were finally con- vinced they need not fight to keep their precious liberty. The incident passed harmlessly, but it conveyed a lesson which only madmen could ignore. It confirmed the general impression that a secret confederacy between the Basutos and their ancient enemies the Zulus is in exist- ence : and it proved to the last doubter that Basutoland is a volcano in the core of the Dominion from which a destroying eruption must be continuously expected. The effect of the incident upon the Blacks is more a matter of conjecture. It seems logically inevitable to act 42 as a spur to their developing sense of color nationality; but one must not dogmatise on a quality so uncertain as the negro mind. Many white South Africans have assured me that, since the Union, the natives from Rhodesia to the Cape have displayed a distinctly new tone of self assertion and diminished subserviency and that they begin to " lift up their heads." In Basutoland itself the tribesmen tenaciously attribute their exclusion from the Union to the bold methods of their chiefs, and I am reliably informed that they consider they won a tre- mendous victory over the whites, a victory which was all the more significant because bloodless. That they overawed the Union is their fixed be- lief. However this may be, it is indisputable that the prestige of the Basutos throughout the sub-continent is enormous and growing steadily. The Basutos alone among the various black tribes and racial sub-divisions have never been beaten by the whites. As soldiers, their es- cutcheon is not disfigured by a single serious blemish. They vanquished the Boers, they con- quered the Zulus, they repulsed and withstood the British. It is true that at last they bowed to Britain and took England for their suzerain, 43 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA but they did so voluntarily and not because Britain compelled them. So much for the military aspect. As re- gards civic life and social self-govermnent the Basutos attract and fill the eyes of the millions of blacks dwelling beyond the borders of Basutoland, as a living proof and object lesson that negro capacity is comparable with European talent. The Basutos are admittedly better farmers than the Boers. They use steam ploughs. They till much of their lands according to the rules of up-to-date agricultural science, and they harvest their crops with machinery. For the rest, they are building fac- tories and beginning to make their own clothes. The unlettered outer hordes stare at the table- land with eyes in which begins to dawn a light of hope and emulation. Basutoland is the shrine of their dreams, the Mecca of their pilgrimage, the source and fountain of their nascent inspir- ation. And on the caverned slope of Thaba Bosigo lies the body of Moshesh, the negro who broke Chaka, conquered and slew General Wepener and defeated Sir George Cathcart Moshesh, " the chief who was never conquered and died unbeaten." 44 LEWIXIKA'S BAND AND TRIBESMEN THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA The negro has no literature, but he has a his- tory, a history of traditions. Every native living" in South Africa to-day has learned the story of Moshesh : knew it by heart before his teens, and he sings his hero's exploits every holiday. The Basutos are well mounted and fairly well armed. They have plenty of carbines and mauser rifles : and a few machine guns. It is a crime under the white man's law punishable with a ^500 fine and penal servitude to carry arms into Basutoland. But the Basutos are rich and their money tempts. An illicit trade in arms flourishes beneath the rose : and the Basutos are steadily increasing their stock of modern weapons. They are born fighters, men of dauntless courage and classical physique : tough in fibre, virile, strong and incredibly enduring. They drill well. Their discipline is superb. They ride like centaurs. They shoot straight. All their stories are of fighting; all their songs are of battle. Their country is a stronghold. It was found impregnable to white assault when the Basutos knew no better weapon than the assegai and were less than 50,000 strong. The Basutos are seven times more numerous to-day and they are armed with the white man's guns. Their eerie look- 45 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA outs and mountain passes command three provinces of the Union. In a few hours they can mobilise an army of tens of thousands of cavalry. They have shown that they can do it. What will happen if such a horde irrupts? I put that question to a leading politician at Cape- town. He frowned and half closed his eyes. That is the matter with the whole of white South Africa to-day. The whites are mentally color- blind. Their eyes are shut to the negro problem. The Basutos are black. The whites affect not to see in them aught but shadows. It is a stupid atti- tude, because the natives, right throughout South Africa, have already crystallised their earlier vague feelings of dissatisfaction under white rule into a definite propaganda. The propa- gandists are black school teachers and church- men. They preach the gospel to-day " Africa for the Africans." Once they preached only that the natives should make assertion of qualified equality with the whites, but in the last few years they have progressed far beyond that modest doctrine and now they disavow it with contempt. The movement is of episcopalian management. It centres in the Ethiopian Church, which is a purely native offshoot of that white missionary 46 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA enterprise which first brought Christianity under the negro's notice. The Ethiopian Church is a most formidable political organisation. It is affili- ated with the American Negro Methodist Church and is really a secret society having for its object the driving of the white race into the sea. That is its ultimate ambition. At present it is laboring to cement into a single political body the many different tribes which compose the native population of the sub-continent. It is meeting with success in all directions. The blacks are beginning to feel that all colored men are brethren and ought to be brothers in arms. The religious complexion of the movement appeals strongly to their superstitious instincts. The Ethiopian Church makes scores of converts every day. It is spreading over the country as quietly and noiselessly as a disease. The black minister is becoming a feature in every camp and compound, in almost every kraal. Behind the Church are the chiefs. They watch and work and wait. 47 CHAPTER IV THE EFFECT OF THE NATIVE ON THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE WHITE POPULATION TTNTIL well on towards the middle of last century South Africa was organised on the economic basis of slavery. The emancipation of the slaves nominally took place in 1834, but was not completed until several years later. The existence of legal slavery up to that date has profoundly influenced the development of the country. The whites of that period had grown to maturity believing that the proper re- lation of white to black is that of master to serf ; and this tradition was handed down to their descendants. It still persists and steadily con- THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA tinues to govern the relations between the white and colored races. Before the emancipation all rough and menial work was performed by the slaves, and the white men were a supervising non- laboring aristocracy. The blacks are now free, but they still do all the menial work, i.e. (in the words of Mr. J. H. Hofmeyer), " labor for another," and the whites still regard rough and menial work as work fit for the black man only. The attitude of the white population towards all forms of unskilled labor is lucidly depicted in the Report of the Royal Commission on Indi- gency presented to the Transvaal Government at the close of 1908. Paragraph 39 states :< We have taken evidence on the question of " the effect of the presence of the native on the " habits and institutions of the white population " from all parts of South Africa. It is a subject " which it is impossible to neglect. It enters " into every aspect of the social, political and " economic life of the country, and no problem, " such as that with which we are dealing, can be " properly understood until the bearing of the " native question upon it is taken into account. " We have also found that in all parts of South " Africa it exercises a dominant influence on the 49 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " life and habits of the white population. This " influence, whilst uniform in its character, pro- " duces varying results, according to geo- " graphical, historical, and other conditions." Paragraph 46 observes " Though the legal status of slavery has long " been abolished, the actual social and economic " relation between white and black remains very " much as it did before : it is still the general " practice for the native to do the rough manual " labor under the supervision and direction of " the white man. The system of slavery has " simply given way to the system of caste. It is " not remarkable that these conditions should " have given rise to the idea that it is derogatory " to the dignity of the white man that he should " do work of which the native was capable and " in the habit of doing. How widely this view " is held in the Transvaal and throughout the " whole of South Africa, will appear constantly " in the course of this Report. For the present " we shall, in addition to the evidence of Mr. ' J. H. Hofmeyr, to which we have already re- " f erred (see p. 22), limit our quotations to the " evidence of two witnesses. Mr. F. S. Malan " said 50 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " ' I think a great deal of harm has been done " ' to the white people in South Africa by the " ' false idea that there is a certain class of work " ' which is infra dig. for the white man to do, " * and the more we can preach against that doc- " * trine the better.' " The Rev. D. Theron, of Fordsburg, told us " that " * There are many white people who have ' thought it a disgrace to go into a carpenter's " * shop and work.' " We have been impressed with the frequency " with which it has been stated in evidence that " unskilled labor was ' Kaffir's work,' and as " such not the kind of work which a white man " should perform. This opinion is due not to " anything which is inherently unpleasant or de- " grading in the work, but to the fact that such " labor is ordinarily performed in South Africa " by the native. ' This attitude of the white man has greatly " affected his efficiency as a laborer. He has " never regarded unskilled labor as an ordinary " field of employment. When he has had to do " unskilled work he has done it grudgingly as " being Kaffir's work, and therefore badly. The 5' THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " standard of efficiency of white unskilled labor " in South Africa has fallen very much lower " than in countries where there is no colored " labor. The white laborer, moreover, requires " a high scale of wages as compared with the " native. Black labor is cheap because the " native lives very cheaply and has a subsidiary " source of livelihood in the produce of his tribal " lands and in the labor of his women and " children. Hence there is little or no demand " for white unskilled labor even if the white " man's prejudices against * Kaffir's work ' would " permit him to accept such employment/' It would be quite impossible to exaggerate the importance of the native monopoly of unskilled labor. Let the Royal Commission speak again. Paragraph 50 says " So long as these conditions continue, any " white man who has to depend for his livelihood " on his power of earning wages, and who has " not the knowledge or the training to qualify " him for doing skilled or semi-skilled work, is " almost certain to become indigent. The virtual " closing, therefore, of the unskilled labor mar- " ket to the white population is a fact of the " utmost importance. If large numbers of white 52 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " South Africans who are now approaching man- " hood have few, if any, qualifications for getting " skilled employment, and if, as at present, they " refuse to abandon the objection to do unskilled " work because they regard it as Kaffir's work, " and are inefficient and expensive, most of them " are bound to join the ranks of those who have " already become the victims of the caste system " the poor whites" Paragraph 52 says " It has been clearly proved to us that the re- " striction of the native to the sphere of unskilled " work cannot be permanent. His intense desire " for education is everywhere the subject of com- " ment. For instance, witnesses have pointed " out that the great majority of the natives in " domestic employment have books in their " possession, with which they are continually " attempting to teach themselves. A school "mistress near Heidelberg told us that the " native children used regularly to walk three " miles to attend a native school in the vicinity, " and witnesses in other parts of the country have " made similar statements. The Rev. Andrew " Murray, of Rustenburg, told us that native ' servants are removed because they have to go 53 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " ' to school. They are removed from service " ' for that purpose.' A native Commissioner " was asked, ' Are you in a position to say " * whether the desire for education is keener " ' among the natives, or the poor whites ? ' and " replied, ' Amongst the natives, from my ex- " * perience.' The Report of the Native Affairs " Department for 1905-6 is full of references to " this intense desire for education amongst the " natives in all parts of the Transvaal. There "are in Pretoria about 1,528 native and colored "children under 14, and of these about 1,000 " are attending School. In Cape Colony the " facts are still more striking. According to the " Report of the Director of Education for 1906, " there were 102,849 native and colored children " at school, as against 73,000 white children." Paragraph 55 of the Report shows that the black man has already entered successfully into many skilled trades. It states that 85 per cent, of the mechanics employed in the building trade in Kimberley are colored : that the waggon build- ing trade has fallen almost completely into the hands of the negro : that 30 per cent, of those engaged in the printing trade are negroes : and that black competition is already acute in the 54 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA trades of carpentering, plastering, saddlery, painting, tailoring and bricklaying. The para- graph concludes as follows : " It is not neces- " sary for us to labor this point further ... we " are satisfied that carpentry, painting, plastering " and similar skilled work (hitherto the exclusive " preserves of the white man) are being done to " an increasing extent by colored labor." The whole teaching of this Royal Commission stresses the conclusion that a considerable part of the white population of South Africa is " doomed to indigency " unless the prejudice against " Kaffir's work " is speedily abandoned. But that after all is only a phase of the problem. The black monopoly of unskilled labor undoubt- edly originated in the slave system which created the prejudice complained of : but the strength of the monopoly is not dependent on the prejudice. The truth of the matter is that if the white man's aversion to " Kaffir " work were broken down completely and universally to-morrow the posi- tion would hardly be one whit altered : for there would be little or no unskilled work for the white man to do. The negro owns it all and must con- tinue to monopolise it indefinitely for the reason that his labor is far cheaper to the employer than 55 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA that of the white man. The native gladly accepts wages which would not suffice to keep a white man's body and soul together. His labor is efficient and he thrives on the pittance that would bring his white competitor to starvation. In my opinion the only possible cure is the statu- tory establishment of a minimum wage for all workers both white and black : but the expedient is at present impracticable and would probably create a revolution if suddenly enforced. The Royal Commission found that there is an im- mence amount of white indigency prevailing in all parts of South Africa. Many thousands of white men are living as vagrants and on charity. Thousands more live by vice and crime. And there is no immediate hope or prospect of relief. The market for skilled labor is strictly limited and the negro encroaches on it more and more as time proceeds. The market for unskilled labor belongs wholly to the blacks : it is ensured to them by the cheapness of their labor and it is sealed to them by a public sentiment which shows no symptoms of wearing out. British citizens whose thoughts have been turned towards South Africa should take sober heed of these conditions. The immigrant who is a skilled THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA artisan may possibly find employment, but for the unskilled worker there is no room. South Africa promises much to the agricultural immi- grant possessed of brains, energy, adaptability and a substantial capital, but has no real welcome for any other class. If a poor man goes there it will only be to increase his poverty unless he is a highly trained craftsman. The country is cursed with a large pauper population of un- skilled white workers. To increase it by immi- gration would be a calamity to all concerned. 57 CHAPTER V THE BOER T N order to understand the Boer, some know- ledge of his early history is essential. Originally he was a pioneer and voor- trekker. His occupation of the High and Low Velds dates back only about sixty years. After the defeat of Mosolekatze in the Transvaal and of Dingaan in Natal the Boers spread over the High Veld and parcelled out the land : taking up very large farms, which they worked as pastoral - ists. The daily life of the average farmer con- sisted mainly in supervising the work of Kaffirs in the mealie plantations or among the stock and in shooting game for the pot. The early land owners did not cultivate the soil because there 58 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA was no market for their produce. They lived almost wholly on game. Their cattle were less a source of food supply than a form (the only form available) in which they might accumulate wealth. Their homesteads were leagues apart. They seldom met in social intercourse. Their lives were extremely primitive : their outlook was absolutely uncommercial. Population gradually accumulated on the farms, both by natural in- crease and by the advent of late comers who found no land to take up, but were welcomed by the early settlers and permitted to squat wherever they pleased. Mealies and meat were always plentiful in those days, and the pioneers made their big farms free to the immigrant families the more readily because of the additional pro- tection thus afforded against native attack. In course of time nearly every farm on the veld was settled with numerous families. There was the family of the owner and tfce families of his children who always settled around the home- stead of the pioneer : and next the families of the tenant immigrants. These latter paid no rent and had no defined duties or responsibilities to the owner. They were, in law, merely tenants at will, yet they could not be driven out because of 59 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the custom of the country. They were called " by-woners." The general system of land tenure followed the precepts of the old Roman- Dutch law. As the pioneers died, the farms fell into the undivided ownership of their descend- ants. The second and third generations of owners and " by-woners " grew up together and all looked to a living from the farm and by hunting. Gradually, despite the huge size of the farms, the population became too great for the land to support by the old method of farm- ing. Game, too, died out and disappeared. The peoples' wants were few, nevertheless the pressure began to be felt. The Boers, however, seemed incapable of farming properly. The idea of trying new methods to increase the soil's productivity never occurred to them. When this stage was reached, the " by-woners " were marked out by the landowners for expulsion and a general movement of population from the land to the town was actually beginning, when of a sudden, gold was discovered on the Witwaters- rand. This event relieved the pressure by creating a large amount of new employment for the rural population as transport riders and pro- ducers of foodstuffs for the miners. It also 60 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA caused the distribution of large sums of cash among the land owners for options of purchase. An era of unprecedented prosperity ensued, but it soon came to an end. The option money gave out. Railways were built and the transport riders were thus deprived of occupation and livelihood. The farmers, too, lost much of their market for food stuffs through the same agency, the miners preferring to import food rather than depend on the inferior produce of the backward local farms. Once more a crisis supervened and the exodus from country to town re-commenced. Thousands of " by-woners " flocked to the mines and cities in search of work. But they found little or none. The unskilled labor market was monopolised by cheap black workers and closed to white men by caste prejudice* Skilled work the Boers could not do, for they were utterly un- educated and untrained. A horrible drifting back and forth between country and city suc- ceeded. Thousands left the land. Thousands were thrust back on the land. The rinderpest came to complete the trouble. In a single twelve months this dreadful scourge reduced the herds of all South Africa by one half and left the 61 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA country a shambles of disease and desolation. The Government did its best to help the people : but its best was a poor thing. Great congre- gations of poor whites settled along the Rand, in Pretoria and on the outskirts of other towns. Crime and charity kept them from starvation. At last came the war. Before the war a great proportion of the rural population had already declined into indigency. The war intensified the evil. It impoverished the richest pioneers and it swept the poorer farmers along with the remaining " by-woners " into the towns in desti- tute hordes. The Royal Commission on Indi- gency of 1908 points the situation of to-day. Paragraph 25 says " Indigency is still increasing among the " country population. During the period imme- " diately following the war, the dislocation of the " farming industry forced almost all classes of " the community to import from the neighbour- " ing colonies and from oversea the supplies " which they had previously obtained -in the ' Transvaal. The Transvaal farmer, therefore, " had to force his way back into what had pre- " viously been his own natural markets. The " distribution of prospecting and option money 62 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " by speculators and of food and stock by the " Repatriation Department enabled part of the "farming population for a time to live without " doing much work. Both of these means of " livelihood soon disappeared, and the people " were left to their own resources with acquired " habits of idleness and dependence upon others. " In the face of the harder conditions many were " unable to make a living, and became indigents. " Moreover, diseases and pests have scourged " the Transvaal in the years succeeding the war. " The war set back agriculture many years, and " in spite of much industry and enterprise East " Coast fever and locusts have checked the " process of its recovery. Not only does cattle " disease destroy the stock, but owing to the " quarantine regulations which are necessary to " stamp it out in many cases it deprives a farmer " for years of all access to his natural markets. ' Those who owned large areas in healthy dis- " tricts, farmed according to up-to-date methods, " and had a reserve of capital to enable them to " live over the bad years, are now improving their " position, and are tending to buy up the hold- " ings of their poorer neighbours. But most of " the rest the by-woners and many of the 63 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " owners of small farms who have been unable " to cope with the difficulties which have beset " them have migrated to the towns or are living " as indigent squatters on their own lands." The report proceeds to say " To begin with, these people were well enough " off. They got a rude but sufficient living by " trekking about, shooting game and buying " with the proceeds of the sale of the skins and " horns what other necessaries in the way of " clothes and groceries they required. But later, " when game became scarce or was protected, and " especially after the rinderpest had destroyed " their cattle, they sunk into a condition of indi- " gency. It might have been expected that as " the country became occupied they would settle " down and make a living by farming, but this " they were quite unfitted to do. They were " pioneers and averse to the routine and steady " work of a settler's life. As Mr. Kleinenburg, " of Pietersburg, said to us ' What with annual hunting trips to the un- ' known interior, native wars and other un- ' settling influences, the real son of the soil has ' never considered it necessary or been obliged ' to consider the necessity of close application THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " ' to the working of his farm. Besides this, the " ' quantity of native labor at his command has ' strengthened him in the idea that the native " * has to do the work and the white man indulge " ' in ease and comfort as far as the circumstances " * would admit.' " Most of the descendants of these early immi- " grants are more or less indigent to-day. Their " condition is clearly described in the evidence " which we have received. Thus Mr. Gelden- " buys, the Town Clerk of Potgietersrust, said to "us- " ' Most of the people came in here and lived " * on hunting, and then, especially in the Water- " ' berg and Zoutpansberg, the climate is such ' that if a man does without work for a week or ' a month he gets so lazy that he will not work " ' any more : and, therefore, after all the game ' was killed they got to this stage of indolence, " ' and then the people coming in later on were ' more energetic and so passed them. Most of ' the people who are in poverty to-day are those ' who have been here from the beginning. " ' They mostly had cattle before the war, and ' during the war lost that, and immediately after " ' the war we had droughts and locusts. They 65 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " * have not the energy to uplift themselves. In " ' the late Government's time they were living " * on charities, later on there was the Repatri- " * ation, and they thought they could get things " ' for nothing. All that assisted them to get ' lower down/ Another witness explained that " * Gradually they got into worse circum- * stances, and they never learnt to work, for ' the simple reason that there was no object in ' working. It could not be turned to account. " * There was never a market for this district. ' It has now become their nature not to work.' ' Mr. McKechnie, of Pietersburg, also said ' The majority of poor whites here are neither " ' willing nor able to do a hard day's work as ' agriculturists. They have been accustomed * to riding wood to the market, loafing about at ' home and hunting. They really do not know ' what it means to put in a hard day's work * from early morning to late at night, which is ' the only way in which a farmer can make ' both ends meet, with the drawbacks in this " ' country.' " Mr. Krogh stated that " many of them do not " earn i a month and yet they live." 66 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA The condition in the towns is no better than in the country. Every large Transvaal town has a considerable population of indigents : and to a lesser degree poor whites are to be found in most of the towns of the other provinces. In addition there are special State subsidised " poor white " settlements at several places, notably Goe- dodeorp, Donkey Camp, and Vrededorp, in which the residents are all paupers living mostly on charity. The Report says (paragraph 35, page 19) " Another class of indigents in the towns of " the Transvaal are the unemployed. They " mainly consist of people who have emigrated " from other Colonies or from oversea. Un- " employment has been the natural product of " the rapidly developing, and therefore unstable, " conditions which existed in the Transvaal " towns after the opening up of the goldfields. ' The discovery of gold in the Pilgrims Rest, " Barberton and Leydsdorp Districts, and later " the far more notorious discovery of the blanket " gold-bearing reef of the Witwatersrand, " attracted to the Transvaal large numbers of " people of every class and every profession. ' They came to the Transvaal in the expectation 67 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " of being able to find wealth with certainty, if " not with ease. The great bulk of the immi- " grants, however, especially of those who came " to the Witwatersrand, found that their only " chance of livelihood lay in getting employment " under conditions very similar to those which " obtained elsewhere. Moreover, many of them " were in no way qualified to do the skilled work " for which white labor was required. There " were too many * handy men,' general workers, " and people whose main experience was in " clerical and other sedentary occupations. " Further, the process of blanket mining took " some time to set in motion. Capital had to be " attracted from Europe, engineers had to make " their plans and draw their designs, and " machinery had to be imported. As a result, " there were from the beginning large numbers " of the white population in the Witwatersrand " who were unemployed. The lot of the early " immigrants was made still more trying by the " high cost of living which obtained in the towns " of the Transvaal owing to the long distance " from which most of its supplies even of the " necessaries of life had to be brought. It made " it extremely difficult for those who were out of 68 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " work to get even the bare means of subsistence. " It also, by making high wages necessary for " those who were in employment, tended to " accentuate the very evil from which the un- " employed were suffering. For the high wages " served to attract to the country more white men " from outside when there was not sufficient " employment for those who were already there. " These conditions have persisted more or less " ever since. After the war there was a renewed " influx of people, anxious to take advantage of " the rapid development which was expected to " take place in mining, commerce and agricul- " ture. Large number of ex-volunteers, ex- " soldiers, and others remained in the country." Paragraph 36 says " People sitting by their camp fires and chat- " ting about things here, explained to strangers " how they had got on here, and induced those " men to remain here, and they did remain, and " they immediately flocked to Johannesburg as " being the centre. " Many of these men were quite unqualified to " become miners or to ply any trade which re- " quired skill or experience. If they got employ- " ment at all it was because there was an 69 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " insufficient supply of really qualified men. " They were therefore the first to be thrown out " of employment as soon as work grew slack or " better trained men were to be had. The lack " of employment from which these people suf- " fered was greatly accentuated in 1906-7 by the " check given to mining and other industrial " development work, by the uncertainty in re- " gard to the supply of colored labor. The " distress resulting from the lack of employment " would have been far worse if the high wages " earned by the better class of artizan had not " enabled them to put by savings with which they " were able to travel elsewhere in search of work. " Besides the poor whites and the unemployed " there are two other classes of indigents in the " towns of the Transvaal. Loafers, good-for- " nothings, and those who live by criminal " means, are always attracted to mining camps, " where money is easily come by without regular " hard work. Johannesburg was no exception to " the rule. The opportunities which it presented " of making a living by such means as illicit gold " buying or liquor selling, and the proverbial " generosity of a mining population soon made it " the resort of a large idle, semi-criminal popula- 70 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " tion. As is but natural, a considerable propor- " tion of this class are in a constant state of want. " There are also the aged, the infirm and the " incapable. This class of indigents exists to a " greater or less degree in every community, and " are everywhere the product of the same causes. " Their number is comparatively small in Johan- " nesburg, because it is a young city, and people " have not had time to grow old in it. In Pre- " toria conditions are much the same as in ' Johannesburg, but as it is an older town, and " a larger proportion of its population is married, " the proportion of those entirely dependent upon " charity appears to be greater than in Johannes- burg." Paragraph 71 states " Another obstacle which stands in the way of " the white man getting unskilled work is the dif- " ference between the present scale of white and " native wages. This difference is largely due " to the fact that the economic conditions which " fix the rate of native wages are different tc those " which govern the wages of the white man. It " is also, however, to a great extent caused by "two other factors, the high cost of living and " the very high standards of living adopted by THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " the white man in South Africa as compared " with the ordinary standards of white working " men in similar positions elsewhere. For " example, the cost of living in Johannesburg is " about twice as great as it is in England, both " for the artisan and laborer class. The cost " of living in the other towns of South Africa is " less than it is in Johannesburg, but not sub- " stantially less. A qualified artisan in England " earns, according to a recent Board of Trade " enquiry, between 355. and 405. a week. In " order to live at the same standards in Johannes- " burg, that is, buying the same amount of food, " clothing, crockery and other household requi- " sites, and occupying the same style of house, "he would require rather more than ^3 IDS. a " week, or between l 5 and 17 a month. The " laboring classes in England, such as brick- " layers' assistants, earn from 2os. to 255. a week. " If they live in Johannesburg at English " standards they would need from 375. to 475. a "week, or from 8 to ^10 a month, according " to the style of house they occupied. These "figures refer to the better class of unskilled " laborer, who in normal conditions of trade " would be in regular employment. Many un- 72 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " skilled workers in England are paid far less "than 2 is. a week. The ordinary qualified " artisan in Johannesburg, however, expects a "wage of at least ^26 a month, and the com- " monest answer received to the question as to " what should be the lowest wage which should " be paid to white unskilled labor, was IDS. a " day. Thus the standards of living of the " working classes are also considerably higher " than the standards which prevail in England. ' The extravagant mode of living affects all " classes of the community. ' There is no question that the methods of " farming which obtain amongst the rural popu- " lation, especially those dwelling far from the " railways, are extremely backward. Large " numbers of farmers are accustomed to raise " from their land a mere subsistence for their " families. So long as the farm will give them " a living they prefer to spend their days in other " pursuits, such as hunting and attending meet- " ings, rather than in trying to make their land " more productive. Many of them are opposed " to new ideas and are content to follow the " simple methods which suited their ancestors " but which are unfitted for times when land is 73 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " becoming scarce, population is increasing and " competition is keen." Paragraph 101 says " Most of the population in the remote districts " and many of those who dwell near to the rail- " way and the towns continue to live in much the " same manner as the earliest immigrants to the " Transvaal. The pioneer settlers entered the " country before modern methods of farming had " been evolved. Most of them were men who " had received little or no education, and their " habits were pastoral and nomadic, rather than " agricultural and settled. The Boer farmer did " not attempt to learn new methods, and the con- " ditions of farming in the Transvaal never, till " a few years ago, attracted settlers with farming " experience from elsewhere, who could set an " example to the rest. It is, therefore, but natural " that, cut off from the world as they have been, " many of the country population are ignorant " and unable to modify their manner of life to " suit modern conditions. The Rev. J. H. van :< Wijk, of Adelaide, Cape Colony, informed the " Commissioner he considered ignorance to be " ' the greatest and chief cause ' of indigency. " ' We have the poor because we have the " ' ignorant white.' 74 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " In spite of the great strides which the spread " of education has made during the past few " years, many do not really appreciate its value. " The Rev. Andrew Murray (Rustenburg) " stated that " * Very many parents wish to be paid for send- " ' ing their children to school. That seems " ' strange, but it is a fact. Not long ago I heard " ' from an Inspector of a man who was getting ' so much for transport (of children to school) ' and the parents said : You must give me ' half of what you get for transport because I ' give you my child to transport to school.' " Another witness said ' We cannot get the farmers to send their ' children to school for long enough : they have ' an idea that a youngster, if he has been in ' school for a year, ought to be pretty well " ' educated.' " Mr. du Plessis stated ' My experience has been that the people ' living in my neighbourhood are not very ' anxious to have their children educated, and * are ready to seize on any excuse they can * make to keep their child away from school.' ' Paragraph 104 : 75 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " Idleness is a pronounced feature of the " backwardness of the country population. Wit- " nesses examined before the Royal Commission " have ascribed the indigency in the country "more frequently to idleness than to any other " cause. The presence of the native as a docile " manual worker, and the easy life which a pas- " toral style of farming permits, have naturally " led the country population to take a lazy, " indolent view of life. A low standard of liv- " ing, the absence of any stimulus to effort, either " from the climate or the example of their neigh- " bours, and a profound ignorance of improved " methods of farming, have prevented them from " realising the value of hard labor intelligently " applied, and made it easy for them to acquiesce " readily in existing conditions. These charac- " teristics obtain among the bushveld and low " country population. Unfortunately, they are " common among a great part of the high veld " population as well. One witness said ' I consider that there is a general dis- " ' inclination to manual labor by the country " ' people, and a great objection to working for ' wages, because they are usually nearly as low " ' as Kaffir wages. This is due to idleness and 76 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ' sentiment, because most of those termed as ' indigent would be far better off and compara- ' tively comfortable if they earned 6 per ' month, at which rate I think there would be * employment all round/ ' Paragraph no: " Perhaps the best way of illustrating the back- " ward condition of the back-country people is " to describe the home life of some typical repre- " sentatives of the older population. There are, " of course, a large number of progressive and " up-to-date Boer farmers in the Transvaal, just " as there are many indolent and backward immi- " grant settlers. But the older Boer population " is resolutely retrogressive. The system of " farming of the Boer is still that of the voor- " trekker. It cannot really be called farming at " all. It is unsystematic, primitive and wasteful. " It consists mainly in tending a few cattle and a " flock of sheep and goats. The principles of " scientific stock-breeding are not understood " and their importance is not appreciated. Cattle " are simply treated as a convenient form of pro- " perty and are left mainly to themselves. Agri- " culture is limited to scratching a patch of " ground in which to grow the mealies, which 77 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " form the staple food of the inhabitants of the " farm, and of which a few bags may be sold to " a neighbouring storekeeper. The whole exist- " ence of the backward -Boer farmer is arranged " on a hand-to-mouth basis. His dwelling- " house is generally of poor quality, his outhouse " accommodation ramshackle and inadequate, his " garden, if he has one at all, untidy and unkept. ' There are no plantations of trees to shelter " the homestead and supply fuel or fencing " wood. When he has money it is often spent " in tinned provisions inferior to the food which " he might grow for himself. Mealie porridge is " cooked in large quantities on one or two days " in the week and left in a bowl on the table, and " the children come in and take a piece when they " feel hungry, without ever sitting down to a " proper meal. The clothing is usually old and " dirty, except in the case of the young girls, who " are often dressed in cheap finery. While they " have the greatest attachment to the land which " they own they do not seem to think of making " a home upon it, as the farmers in the older dis- " tricts of the Cape Colony do. On the contrary, " their whole scheme of life still suggests ' the " trek.' " 78 CHAPTER VI THE BOER CONTINUED I" F in the foregoing chapter I have occupied myself largely with the Report of the Royal Commission on Indigency of 1908, it is be- cause I desire to obviate any charge of exagger- ation. The true conditions of South Africa are known to so few people abroad that any writer's unsupported statement of the actual facts might well be regarded with suspicion. For my own part I freely confess that when I was first informed that a considerable proportion of the meagre white population consisted of illiterate indigents I could not accept the assertion. Per- sonal experience and observation, however, soon compelled conviction. Moving about among 79 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the people in the rural districts, I found archaic habits and manners the rule, modern methods and ways of life the exception. In the larger towns most of the people are decently educated and their views more or less progressive, but in the villages and " dorps " the situation is re- versed; and the outer veld is populated almost exclusively with men and women who are anachronistic survivals of a bygone age. The official census for Cape Colony, the most forward of all the provinces of the Union, taken in 1904, shows that out of a total white population of 568,000 souls there are 134,000 who can neither read nor write. No other state in the civilised world has such a staggering proportion of illiterates except the Transvaal and the O.R.C. provinces, where the conditions are as bad and probably worse. South African illiteracy per- tains chiefly to the Boer, i.e., to the farmer of Dutch origin. The term " Boer " has come of late years to signify the Dutch Afrikander in a generic sense : but its real meaning is " farmer," and the Dutch themselves limit its application to those of their race who dwell upon the soil. The genesis of the Boer is curiously mixed. Accord- ing to the popular idea both in South Africa and 80 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA elsewhere, he is a pure-blooded Dutchman, but that is far from being the case. South Africa was originally colonised by Dutchmen and French Huguenots, in the proportion of about 70 to 30. The Dutch being in so large a majority lost no time in assuming the upper hand. They passed laws sternly prohibiting the use of the French tongue, and banning it under heavy penalties from the schools. The Hugue- nots long, yet fruitlessly, protested against this tyranny, and finally they submitted to the inevit- able. There followed a gradual amalgamation of the two races : but, despite the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Dutch, the French blood strongly asserted itself in the resultant pro- duct of admixture, and one of the most striking features of Boerdom observable throughout South Africa to-day is the survival of distinctive French names, manners and characteristics. In fact, nearly all the leading Boer families, together with most of those Dutchmen who, because of their superior education and advanced habits of thought, occupy positions of commanding influ- ence in the provinces and in the sphere of national politics are direct descendants of Huguenot chieftains, and very many of them 81 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA retain their French ancestral patronymics. This curious line of racial cleavage so universally obtains that it may be laid down as a general rule that the progressive Boers are those in whose veins the proportion of French blood is comparatively large, and that the backward and unprogressive Boers are those in whose veins the proportion of French blood is comparatively small. Four centuries of Dutch and French inter- marriage and mutual absorption have not availed as yet completely to merge and submerge the rival national peculiarities : and we see in South Africa at this moment two separate classes of Boers, although only one prevailing type. This type is highly distinctive, original and interest- ing. The average Boer, whatever may be the accident of his relative agents of ancestry, nearly always rings true to the evolved racial model. The women are large of frame, fleshy, and in a florid sense, comely. The men are magnificent. The typical Boer farmer from the veld stands well over six feet high. He has the body of a Hercules, and a big, shapely brachycephalic head, with limitless capacities of mental de- velopment. The men usually wear beards, 82 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA beards that are always thin and as long as the hair can be trained to grow. To deal first with the majority that is to say, the unprogressive Boers it should be said at once that they con- stitute one of the gravest immediate social problems of United South Africa. They dislike the towns, and dwell in large numbers in the outer veld, remote from civilising influences. For hundreds of years they have led isolated lives, and the standard of civilisation of the existing generation belongs to the sixteenth century. The languorous climate of the veld, the loneliness, laziness and simple method of their lives, and the ease with which they have always been able to maintain themselves on their big holdings without personal exertion, by compelling the natives to perform all the work required on their farms, are factors which have combined to pro- duce a singularly ignorant, conservative and slothful people. An illustration will make my meaning clear. It was my privilege when In the Transvaal to spend a night and a day in the home of a Boer who, as I took care to ascertain beforehand, was a representative specimen of the backward class. His farm embraced 2,000 acres of excellent 83 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA country, bordering the Vaal River. His house was a small hovel consisting of one room divided into two by a dirty Hessian bag curtain. One of these compartments belonged to the Boer and his wife : the other was occupied by his children, four in number, two boys and two girls, all over sixteen years of age. When the sleeping hour arrived the Boer and his wife retired to their chamber, and the boys and I went out on the " stoep," or verandah, while the girls undressed and went to bed. When the girls had effected their dispositions for the night, we entered, took off merely our coats and lay down upon shake- downs on the floor beside the girls' beds. Soon the whole family was sleeping like the dead. I am assured that the Boer lads seldom com- pletely undress and hardly ever wash all of their bodies. In the morning we were up betimes. I bathed in the river, and was the subject of amazed comment. " Surely only dirty people wash ! " The Boer, on my return, was smoking on the stoep, and drinking coffee. My breakfast consisted of some mealie meal, goat's milk and coffee. The coffee was atrocious. The family ate from the common porridge pot as often as they felt inclined. There were no regular meals, 84 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA except dinner, when meat was served mutton. About 10 a.m. the Boer left off smoking and ordered a Kaffir to inspan. Very leisurely then he slaughtered a sheep, skinned the beast, and drove away to a distant Kaffir store in an ox cart to trade the skin for a few pence worth of butter and snuff. I roamed about the farm and found it sparsely and poorly stocked. There were a few cattle, a few goats, a trifling flock of sheep. There was no cultivation on the farm, except about four acres of mealies planted for the sub- sistence of the family, and about an eighth of an acre of tobacco planted in the back yard of the homestead. Throughout the day nobody worked except the Kaffirs (for about i^ hours), one of whom was severely thrashed with a sjambok for an inappreciable offence. The family loafed consistently from dawn till eve, lounging or sitting on the stoep, smoking, occasionally drinking coffee, and sometimes, but rarely, indulging in a little conversation. They were all, from the father to the youngest child, hopelessly illiterate, and hardly less ignorant than brute beasts. There are thousands of Boers scattered over South Africa who live from year's end to year's end in much the same manner 85 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA that I have described. They have no ambition. They do not want to better themselves. Their outlook is absolutely uncommercial, and their sole desire is to slide through life as lazily as lotus eaters. Their only amusements are the dance and attendance at a periodical nachtmaal. They live by choice just as their forbears, the first settlers, lived of necessity : and they detest the thought of any other plan of life. The national trouble is that those rootedly un- progressive people own much of the best land in South Africa. They will not use it properly themselves : they will not let others use it pro- perly : and the majority of them will not or can- not sell. In the last-named regard, the existing law is a deadly enemy of progress. Nearly all the land in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony is held on the tenure of the old Roman- Dutch laws, which permits of entail and un- divided ownership. The Roman-Dutch law pro- vided that every child is entitled to a " legitimate portion " of its father's estate. Freedom of be- quest is now allowed throughout South Africa, but the tradition that every child should be left a share in the paternal estate still survives. Scores of the largest Boer farms, in consequence, have 86 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA many owners, each of whom holds an undivided share of the estate. Many of them are " poor whites " who have been driven to the cities, owing to an excess of population growing up and indo- lently squatting on the soil. But before any such farms can be sold, all the several owners how- ever infinitesimal their portion have to be per- suaded to join in the transfer or to break the entail, a process that is fearfully costly, and which (according to the Master of the Supreme Court in the Transvaal) often takes from three to five years to effectuate, even though most of the owners are willing to sell. Undivided ownership, in short, makes land practically un- saleable and withdraws it from the market. It leads to bad farming, indolence and general backwardness. All the owners have equal rights everywhere, and on a question for the common good they cannot readily agree. The one thing on which they find it easy to concur is to let things slide and trust the issue to Providence. Under these conditions the indigent rural population has been produced, and indigence is continually increasing. If the land were pro- ductively utilised there need not be a " poor white " in the country : but the backward Boers 87 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA will not cultivate more of their holdings than barely sufficient to support life, and the dreadful caste system, which gives the Kaffirs a rigid monopoly of all rough labor, both in town and country, effectually excludes poor whites from employment on the soil. Boer backwardness and the land tenure system, which so powerfully operates to bar more progressive settlement, are largely accountable for the racial feeling that rages between the Boers and British. The British want land, but cannot get it. They are therefore forced to remain cooped up in the towns and cities. They cannot galvanise the un- progressive Boers into activity, and their impo- tence to improve what cries so sorely for improve- ment makes them bitterly intolerant of the human agents of stagnation. The Boers re- taliate by sticking closely to their farms, and by disdainfully refusing any intercourse with the British. All told, it is a most sorry and futile situation, and it cannot be cured until the tenures created under the Roman-Dutch law have been abrogated, and until some enlightened scheme of compulsory universal education shall have wrested the rising generation of Boers from the 88 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA old ways of thinking and the miserably inept fashion of their lives. It is a relief to turn from contemplation of the idle, listless and ignorant back veld Boers to the modernised and educated section of the race. Unfortunately, the cultured Boers are not yet a numerous class, but they are nevertheless already a tremendous power in the land, and the future of South Africa is in their hands. It would be impossible to discover, the wide world over, a stronger, and in every sense a more satisfactory, human type. The women are bright, intelligent and witty. The men are little short of intel- lectual giants. Educate the average Boer, and the result is a man whose mentality, strength of character, energy, initiative and resource can compare favorably with the highest types of the Anglo-Saxon race. Many of the Boer Minis- terialists now legislating in the Union Parlia- ment, although mostly self taught, are men of extraordinary culture and capacity, and man for man they completely overshadow the intellectual forces of the British Opposition. My experience has impressed upon me a profound conviction that the average Boer however uneducated he may be is possessed of natural abilities which 89 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA only need development to make him intellectu- ally the equal of the best European minds. Nor is it surprising that this should be so, for the average Boer, whether educated or unedu- cated, is farm-bred, and he has lived most of his life in the open air, and if we examine the con- ditions of his birth and breeding, we always find that the magnificent stature which surprises us afresh every time we look upon him, represents a practical illustration of the truth of Darwin's doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The truth is that the average Boer farm house is no nursery of weaklings. The surroundings are so filthy, insanitary and rough, and the Boer housewife's ignorance of the simplest duties of motherhood is so dense, that, although many babies are born, few outlast their infancy. Child mortality on the veld is positively appalling, and were it not that the Boers are enormously prolific the race would have long since tapered towards extinc- tion. The secret of the astonishing physical and mental virility of this people is that death promptly and remorselessly culls out the in- efficients. Those only survive who are born strong and hardy enough to be disease-proof from their birth, and that is why the stranger to 90 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA this country searches in vain for an undersized or sickly Boer. There are many such, but they are infants, and nearly all are underground. The Boers of the veld have hands like women : soft, white (when washed), and unmarked with the signs of labor. Imagine a British working farmer with soft white hands, the skin as smooth as satin ! The Boer farmer, however, does not work. He owes his manual exquisiteness to the Kaffir. The Kaffir's hands are rough enough. He works. The veld Boer's ideals of life are sensual. He exists for the pleasures of the flesh. He eats hugely. He marries early. He lives in his wife's apron pocket. The woman who commands universal Boer admiration is the sturdily built, well-sexed house frau, the big feeder and big breeder. The following account of an exalted specimen of the popular type was published in a recent number of the " Volks- stem " : ' Theilar M. de Beer : born October 2Oth, " 1832, married at 18, Petrus Jacobus Lubbe, I " child. Husband died in two years. After " being 10 months a widow married Nicolaas " Marthinius Pretorious, a widower with 3 "children. Lived with him 17 months when he 91 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " died, leaving her with 4 children. After 5 " months widowhood she married David Steph- " anus Pieterse, a widower with 7 children. " Lived with him 1 1 years and bore 7 children. " He died. After 5 years singleness married " Daniel Lodewiekus Cronje, a widower with 8 " children. She lived with him 1 1 years and " had 4 children. He died. Five years later " she married Hendrik Klopper. Lived with " him 1 1 years and bore 10 children. He died. " Two years later married Coenraad Hendrik von " Wijk, a widower with 5 children. Lived with " him 1 1 years and bore him 4 children. He " died. Theila M. de Beer is still alive, aged " 78 years. There are 50 persons living who " call her mother. She has 270 grandchildren." The Boers are proud of this lady's record. Such women are patterns and exemplars : objects of public veneration. The veld Boers are evi- dently not a decadent race despite their stubborn backwardness : yet they have the aggressiveness of a type that is assailed. They are aggressive in everything. Their voices are harsh and strident and challenging. They are extremely clannish. Their solidarity is absolute. Their attitude to outsiders is sullen, suspicious and 92 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA vindictive. Their moral sense is primitive. " Verneukery " is a practice which wins smiles of approbation whenever an instance of its suc- cessful operation is related. Verneukery is the art of getting the better of an opponent by trickery and deception. To be " slim," that is to say, to show cleverness in the management of affairs of the wily and less scrupulous sort, is to be admired. " Slimness " in fact, is accounted as something very like a social virtue, and it rather inspires confidence than provokes distrust. The Boers have a proverb : " One can have too much regard for the truth." It expresses their moral sense very accurately. NOTE. Up to the present moment (December, 1912) the only noteworthy attempt that has been made by the South African Government to grapple with the problems of the " by-woner " and the indigent white population, consists in the enaction during the session of 1912 of a Land Settlement Bill. This measure permits of the granting of small areas of land to the indigents and by-woners, and also provides for advances of public money to the grantees at lower rates of interest than would be charged in the usual course of business, in order to facilitate productive settlement on the granted holdings. The measure has potentialities of usefulness if it be wisely, patiently, and capably administered, but it has not yet achieved any results and, of necessity, many years must elapse be- fore it can possibly ameliorate the conditions with which it proposes to deal. Of itself it can never abrogate indigence, for the reason that it does not strike at the causes of the disease, but merely treats the symptoms. In short, it is a palliative and nothing more. 93 CHAPTER VII POLITICS the least remarkable feature in South African life is the fact that the political thought of the country is, broadly speak- ing, unprogressive. There are two great oppos- ing parties in the National Parliament, but the only serious issue which divides them is the racial question. Apart from that, they aim at cognate goals, they profess the same ideals, and their policies are undistinguishable. Both parties are essentially conservative. The Dutch National- ists, led by General Botha, represent in chief the people of the veld, and their fundamental raison d'etre is to protect the farmer from taxation, to preserve him in the undisturbed possession of his 94 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA holdings, to maintain his old-time privileges intact, and to assure him a continued supply of cheap black labor. The Unionists represent the people of the cities and the mines, and they have kindred objects to promote. The mining mag- nate is their special protege. It is their business to see that the mines shall never lack an abun- dance of colored labor : to take care that the capitalists shall not be distressed with any such legislative attempts to redress social evils and industrial grievances as might result in increas- ing the cost of gold and diamond production : to protect the aristocracy of skilled white workers from the encroachments of educated blacks, and finally to maintain undisturbed the negro monopoly of the unskilled labor market. The two parties regard each other's special objects with sympathy. They are at daggers drawn on the language and education, that is to say, the racial question, but on most other matters they are perfectly willing to give and take. There is a tacit agreement between them to scratch each other's backs. No Dutchman wants to hurt the mining magnate, and on the other hand no British Unionist is at all eager to hurt the farmer. Everybody recognises that the agri- 95 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA cultural progress of the country is being ob- structed and retarded by the curse of over large and unwieldy estates, and by the laziness, general thriftlessness and archaic methods of the Boer agrestic population. But there is no serious in- tention anywhere manifest to apply legislative pressure to make the farmer reduce the size of his holding or bring his land into productive occu- pation. There is talk of reform, it is true, but it is all in the direction of persuasive effort. The Boer farmer must be taught, both parties say, that it is in his own best interest to put his land to the best possible use : but when asked how they propose to accomplish this important duty, they reply : " We will gradually wean him from " his old-fashioned ways by showing him what " well managed State farms can do." In other words, the South African farmer, who has always been the petted darling of the State, who has always been held immune from any form of tax- ation, who has always been, and still is, the greatest obstacle to the national development, and who has shown himself in a thousand ways to be conservative and scornfully impervious to instruction, is to have his ancient privileges, exemptions and immunities preserved inviolate. 96 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA By way of a graceful return to the Unionists for so kindly consenting to leave the Boer farmer alone, the Dutch Nationalists are prepared to help the mining magnates and other capitalists in every way possible. It is evident to all who have eyes to see that the white laborer must ulti- mately go to the wall in South Africa unless the caste prejudice which now prevents a white man doing unskilled work is broken down. The mining magnate, however, cares nothing for the future of white labor. His fixed ambition is to earn big dividends as long as he can : therefore, he cries continually for more cheap unskilled black workers, and does his utmost to fortify the prevailing caste prejudice. Strange to say, he is helped in both directions by the expert white artisans in his employ. The reason is that the vast majority of the artisans now working on the mines and in other trades in South Africa con- sists of foreign immigrants drawn from the over- crowded European centres of population. Accustomed in the countries of their origin to labor for a pittance, they are supremely content with the superior conditions and high wages obtaining at present in the land of their adoption. They get from i to 3O/- a day in South Africa 97 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA where in Europe they hardly earned as much per week. They have all the rough parts of their work performed for them by Kaffirs. They seldom need to soil their hands, and they live like gentlemen. Being, for the most part, unedu- cated, selfish and short-sighted men, it is impos- sible to persuade them that the advantages they now enjoy will not last for ever. They see their children growing up deprived of any opportunity to become skilled workers because shut off by the caste prejudice from the ordinary primary avenues of trade instruction. They see trained Kaffirs constantly taking the place of the whites. They see the number of expert white workers constantly reduced in proportion to the rapidly increasing numbers of colored laborers. But these facts carry little or no meaning to their minds. Their attitude may be expressed in a sentence : " We are happy after us the deluge. " Who cares for that ? We shan't be there to " see." Their sole thought is to restrict com- petition in the skilled labor market in order to ensure the maintenance of their own good for- tune, and so they vote the conservative ticket every time, decry immigration, and shut their eyes and ears to all other liberal ideals. 98 In these circumstances the captains of South African industry experience no difficulty worthy of mention in doing and getting what they want. Assisted by their purblind tools, the white labor- ing aristocrats in their employ, they have secured a political power and representation of inordinate dimensions, and as the Dutch Nationalists neither desire nor dare to oppose them they may be described with perfect truth to-day as the industrial dictators of the country. There is, of course, one cloud on their political horizon the political labor party. But it is a very small cloud consisting of only three members in a House of 75, and it causes the magnates no serious alarm. Poor little Labor party ! There is something infinitely pathetic in its present posi- tion. Of right, the support of every white manual worker in South Africa belongs to it. for its ideals are broad-minded, progressive and democratic, without being tainted or defaced with rabid Socialistic doctrine. It aims at the estab- lishment of a South African democracy : the opening up of the unskilled labor market to the whites : the destruction of caste prejudice : uni- versal compulsory education : a standard living wage : an eight hours day, and equality of oppor- 99 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA tunity for all. Yet it is scorned and despised by the people whom, and whose children, it seeks to benefit. The unions look at it askance. The mining magnates fear it, and have declared war against it penalising with dismissal any of their employes who venture to join its ranks. The Dutch Nationalists ignore its existence, and the Unionists treat it as a joke. As an illustration of its absolute insignificance in this thoroughly and essentially aristocratic country, it is worth while recalling the incident of the Australian Prime Minister's departure from Capetown on loth December, 1910. Mr. Fisher sailed about five o'clock in the afternoon. The day was bright, the weather mild and balmy : it was Saturday, and all the manual workers in the city were, in consequence, at liberty. The occasion seemed to demand a great Labor demonstration. An attempt was made, indeed, to arrange one. The result was pitiful. There assembled on the wharf to bid good-bye to the Prime Minister and leader of the Labor party in Australia, two Labor members of the Union Parliament and exactly five local Labor sympathisers. One of the Labor mem- bers present pointed to the little gathering and 100 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA said in a tone between tears and laughter, " Now, " perhaps, you will understand more clearly the " place we occupy, the forces we have to fight." Yet on this meagre party, numerically con- temptible as it now is, rest all the hopes which any well-wisher can form of South Africa's social, industrial and political development. It is the only force in the continent which has dared to part company with laissez-faire, and it repre- sents the only section of the people which is pro- foundly dissatisfied with existing conditions and is determinedly bent upon reforms. The fight will be a long one and a hard one, for all too many of the present generation are rootedly conservative. The movement has not been auspiciously started, nevertheless it is bound to grow and gather strength as it proceeds, for it is controlled by generous, able and rarely unselfish spirits men like Mr. Cresswell and Senator Whiteside, who have made great personal sacri- fices for the sake of the ideal inspiring them and it stands for all that is best and most creative in the political thought and social aspirations of the State. 101 CHAPTER VIII THE RULERS OF THE COUNTRY nPHERE are three big men in South Africa in whose hands it may be said with truth the country's political destinies of the near future reside. All three are Boer patriots and soldiers Generals Botha, Smuts and Hertzog. They lead and control the present Union Minis- try and its supporters. General Louis Botha is a tall, heavily built man, just entering his $oth year. His com- plexion is sallow, his eyes and hair are jetty black, and he wears a tire-bouchon beard, as though to emphasise deliberately the characteris- tics of his Huguenot descent, which uncon- sciously display themselves in gestures when- 102 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ever he is strongly moved. General Botha began life as a farmer. In 1884 he trekked to Vryheid, and played an active part in the creation of the new Republic, holding office as Native Commissioner until the incorporation of the Republic in the Transvaal in 1888. For eight years subsequently he was a commissioner and field-cornet for the Transvaal Government. His rapid rise to fame during the last South African war need not be recalled. It is sufficient to say that he evinced qualities of heart and mind in the course of his campaigning which not only en- deared him to his countrymen, but marked him out as pre-eminently fitted to be the first Prime Minister of a united Boer-British South Africa. General Botha is a supreme type of the self- made man. He had little if any schooling. He taught himself to read and write, and it is only during quite recent years that he has troubled his head about the graces of life. Such, however, is his genius that to-day no more highly cultured gentleman can be found in the sub-continent. Undoubtedly his most valuable personal asset is a fund of tact which enables him to reconcile the bitterest antagonisms and to win the confidence and sympathy of friends and opponents with 103 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA almost equal facility. In conversing with him one is charmed into at least a temporary acqui- escence with his point of view, and so gentle are his methods, so magnetically engaging his man- ners, that all sense of the virility and unbending strength of purpose of the man is forgotten. It is only when time and consideration have worn through the influences exerted by his personality that one remembers and fully recognises the iron forces that operate behind his velvety, soft, im- penetrable mask. General Botha is a man of mystery. He is liked by all the people of South Africa, and no less by the Dutch extremists than by those British who most intemperately abhor the Dutch. He speaks all parties fair, and each party believes that his utterances to it alone are true. Whether he is a sincere Imperialist, or, on the contrary, a Boer of the old school, but one man in the world can say for certain. That man is General Louis Botha. General J. C. Smuts, who is eight years younger than his chief, is a very different sort of man. He was educated at Victoria College, where he graduated with double honours in 1891. Proceeding to Cambridge University, he gradu- ated at law with a double first, and then repaired 104 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA to Capetown and Johannesburg, where he prac- tised at the bar until 1898, when he became Attorney- General in Paul Kruger's Government. When the war broke out he served with distinc- tion under Joubert in Natal, and at a later stage he held an independent command, and was one of the principal negotiators of the Treaty of Vereeniging. After the peace he returned to his practice at the bar, and also played a prominent part in the political life of the Transvaal, joining the Botha Cabinet as Colonial Secretary on the grant of responsible government in 1907. General Smuts was formerly Minister of Internal Affairs and Defence for the Union, but since the reconstruction of the Ministry he has re- linquished the Department of the Interior and become Minister of Finance. He may be best described as a born politician and Parliamen- tarian. He appears to possess a deep intuitive knowledge of every trick and turn of the game, and nothing delights him more than an oppor- tunity to display his cleverness. He is a brilliant man in every sense of the expression, and is generally admitted to be the " brains of the " Ministry." General Smuts's outstanding ability, however, is marred to some extent and 105 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA despoiled of its proper merit and reward by an unfortunate disposition to reach his goal by strategical rather than by direct paths. Pride of intellect, perhaps, is the cause of it : but the trait is not one to be extolled, and it is accumulating for the General a formidable list of enemies amongst those he has outmatched in political dexterity. His reputation is already tainted with a suspicion of " slimness," but he is either unconscious or indifferent. He is indispensable to the Government, and General Botha leans upon his talents without concealment. In per- son, General Smuts is quite the representative Boer of the better class. He is broad shouldered, tall and slim; strong of limb and abounding in vital energy. His features are regular, his ex- pression is full of cheer : he wears a fair Vandyck beard which masks a mouth now mobile and suave as that of a Borgia, now stark, hard and unyielding. General J. Barry Munnik Hertzog, Minister of Justice and Minister of Native Affairs for the Union, is just turned 46 years of age. ' Like General Smuts, he has had a brilliant University career (he is Doctor of Laws) : he held a dis- tinguished command in the Boer War, and he 1 06 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA helped to negotiate the peace of Vereeniging. But there all resemblance between the pair ceases. General Hertzog is a man utterly in- capable of dissimulation, slimness or diplomacy. He is a stout patriot and a Boer of extremist views. His character is downright and trans- parently simple. Nothing could induce him to compromise with his convictions or to withhold their fullest and frankest utterance. He is as staunch and as honest as the sun : an unfailing friend, a relentless enemy. The Boers have given their hearts beyond recall into his keeping. He is their most completely trusted champion, and his inclusion in the Botha Ministry is re- garded as the surest pledge and guarantee of Dutch solidarity and the continuexl supremacy of the race. The simplicity, sincerity, and sterl- ing honesty of General Hertzog are forces that promise him a greater career in South Africa than could be ensured by mere capacity. Yet he is a remarkably able man as well. His range of learning is wide and deep. He is familiar with the best literature of the three greatest languages. He fully understands the problems that confront his country, and he has devoted his life to their solution. Unhappily, he likes Englishmen so 107 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA little that it would be impossible for him to break bread at the table of a British Prince. His physique is less commanding than that of any of his colleagues. Slightly under the average height of his countrymen, his figure, nevertheless, is strong and stocky. His face is grim and stern, the brows broad, the eyes suggest a cast, the mouth is firm and stubborn. He wears a short moustache : his chin, breaking all Boer rules, is shaven. The description may appear unattrac- tive, but no mere description of his person could do General Hertzog justice, since all manifesta- tion of his power and charm (and he has much of both) reside in his manner. That is rarely fascinating, and he is moreover one of the most fluent, witty and entertaining conversationalists that the community can boast. NOTE. General Hertzog is no longer a member of the Union Government. About the middle of last December he gave utterance to a strongly anti-Imperial speech, which caused so much offence to the Prime Minister that General Botha promptly tendered his resignation to the Governor. General Botha subsequently formed a new Administration, from which General Hertzog was excluded. More than ever, now, General Hertzog leads and represents that section of the South African community which is anti-British in sentiment, which is irreconcilably antipathetic to Imperial ideals, and aims at the " Dutchification " of the sub-continent. The action of General Christian De Wet in resigning from the Union Council of Defence, as a protest against the exclusion of General Hertzog from the reconstructed Cabinet, demonstrates how idolatrously the latter is regarded by Boers of the older school. As a free-lance politician General Hertzog bids fair to prove a thorn in the side of his late Ministerial associates. The formation of an extremist Dutch Party in the constituencies and in Parliament may be confidently predicted. 1 08 CHAPTER IX GEOLOGICAL AND GENERAL T N its geological structure, South Africa may be roughly divided into three great regions (i) that of the ancient rocks of the interior, comprising the Transvaal, Rhodesia, Bechuana- land and the Western plains : (2) the Karoo region, and (3) the mountainous region between the Karroo and the south coast. The first of these regions consists of very old sedimentary rocks that have been intruded upon by granite and diorite; and of still more ancient sedi- mentary beds. These rocks yield the whole of the country's output of metallic wealth. In the flat interior they are overlain with thick deposits of sand. The greater part of this area is grass- 109 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA covered veld, and the rainfall ranges from 18 to 20 inches. The second region is a dry and monotonous tract, infinitely dreary and desolate. Great piles of volcanic rocks, with frequent sheets and dykes of ironstone, rise from the flat beds, and the only mineral to be found is coal. The chief feature in the Karroo scenery is the repeated apparition of table-shaped and sharp pointed mountains formed by the denudation of soft rocks capped with hard diorite or sandstone. There are more than 100,000 square miles of this waste. Verdure is unknown. Few deserts have a more stern and forbidding aspect, and the average annual rainfall is only about 10 inches. The land is destitute of grass, but is covered with sparse growths of a tiny brown shrub (the " karroo " plant), which looks like stunted sun- parched broom : nevertheless this uninviting stuff supports animal life, and wherever water can be conserved yields nourishment to thousands of sheep and goats. The third region is built up principally of rocks, intermediate in age between those of the first and second regions, thrown into arches and troughs. It is distinguished by a well distributed no THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA rainfall of from 20 to 39 inches, and by frequent rich strips of alluvium, and in consequence is the chief agricultural region of South Africa. Most of the South African diamonds come from peculiar rocks that fill the vents of extinct vol- canoes. The productive " pipes " are few, and the river diamonds have all been washed from such pipes in ancient times. The rivers are not numerous, and far between. None are navigable beyond their estuaries, save the Limpopo, the Zangwe, and the Zambesi, and the more southern streams do not run all the year round. All are liable to sudden floods, which sweep down from the glassy, treeless mountains with torrential violence as often as rain falls, and render the fords impassable till they subside. In my journey of more than 5,000 miles through and across the sub-continent, I found evidence at almost every turn of the ter- rible mischief caused to the country through its lack of larger vegetation. The hills and moun- tains, being for the most part absolutely destitute of trees, are unable to hold or check the down- ward flow of the waters which fall from the heavens on their sides. They are usually as bare and bleak as polished steel. When it rains, in THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA therefore, a thousand foaming cataracts dash of a sudden like destructive furies into the valleys and upon the plains, and every rain storm tears and scores new and unnumbered watercourses through the alluvial overburden of the foothills and the flats. Thus whole districts are laid waste in the course of a few moments, and the patient labor of the farmer may vanish into nothingness before his eyes. The people call these " wash- outs " dongas. Their number is legion, and every district groans perennially beneath their accursed visitations. There is no blinking the fact that the major portion of South Africa is a desert and can never be aught else. The agricultural future of the sub-continent is beset with innumerable difficul- ties, hardships, handicaps and perils. The culti- vation of wheat and other cereals can only be prosperously undertaken in certain highly favored and rigidly restricted localities, owing to the circumstance that in most places rain only falls in the summer months, and in winter the country becomes a parched, cold and arid wilder- ness. Few of the South African rivers are used extensively for irrigation, and there are no great national irrigation works. A large aggregate 112 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA area is under irrigated culture, especially in the Paarl, Worcester, Oudtshoorn and Robertson districts of the Cape and the Transvaal : but there is no cohesion or co-ordination in this form of enterprise, and the Victorian farmers would regard the individual efforts of their South African cousins, separately or en masse, with astonishment not unmingled with contempt. Much of the Cape's irrigable north-west is given over to the cultivation of fruits, especially the vine. Few fruits thrive in the Australian sense, but the grape is an exception. South Africa has built up a considerable wine industry. There are about 32,000 acres of vineyards in Cape Colony, and they produce with an abundance unknown in any other part of the world, the average yield exceeding 500 gal- lons from 1,000 vines. The average annual* production is about 6,000,000 gallons of red and white wines, about 1,500,000 gallons of brandy or other spirit, 115,000 gallons of vinegar, and 2,000,000 Ib. of raisins. The native wine is for the most part somewhat crude to the palate, being * There was a material shrinkage of grape and wine production throughout the Union in 1912, due in a measure to the drought. A. P. THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA sour and thin, but there are some very excellent wines on sale, and the majority only need to be properly fortified and matured to command attention. Gradually the people of South Africa are becoming a wine drinking race, but the indus- try can hardly be said to flourish yet, for the viti- culturists have not merely the phylloxera to con- tend with, they have to fight a local prejudice against their produce, and hitherto the wine duties of Britain have prevented their acquiring a strong foothold in the English market. Prob- ably Australia has more to fear from South African competition in the wine trade than in any other form of agricultural competitive enter- prise. It is certain, at any rate, that Australian wines can never find a profitable market in South Africa. They are practically unknown there, and will, in all likelihood, continue to remain unknown. For the rest, Australia has to face the prospect of a continuous diminution in her large present export of cereals and butter to the Union. The farmers of South Africa are beginning, however slowly, to appreciate the disgrace of being fed from abroad. (Vide Appendix " D.") The spirit of the people has been aroused. A de- 114 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA mand for protectionist duties is heard from many sides, and despite all difficulties, wheat cul- tivation and dairying enterprise are increasing. However, a point must eventually be reached beyond which such forms of agricultural produc- tion cannot extend, and when that time comes (it will be expedited by an increase of population) the demand for Australian flour and butter must revive and be enlarged. Just now South Africa is living on gold, dia- monds, ostrich feathers, wine and wool and mealies. Next to gold and diamonds, feather raising is the most profitable of the country's in- dustries. The ostrich yields between ; 2,000,000 and ; 3,000,000 per annum to the sub-continent There are some 500,000 birds in South Africa, and they yield an average of from $ to ^5 worth of feathers per caput per annum. The people are buying Australian rams of the best quality in wholesale fashion, in the hope of im- proving their own breeds : but they are jealously determined to prevent the export of a single ostrich or ostrich egg to the Commonwealth. A statute is on the tapis to constitute such a thing a criminal offence, and to punish offenders with a fine of ^500, and twelve months' penal servi- "5 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA tude. All signs point to the enaction of this law in the near future, but alas ! for the vanity of such mean spirited effort. The people like the ostrich they wish to guard and keep to them- selves having sensed a danger, bury their heads in the sand. They are bound by an inviolable treaty with the Portuguese not to prevent the export of birds to Portuguese territory. Austra- lians, therefore, need only go to Delagoa Bay to obtain all the ostriches they may require, and thus they may quite legally, although indirectly, de- feat the Union's mean and panic stricken pre- cautions. Stock raising in South Africa hardly deserves the name of an industry. The goats run to millions, but most are rubbish. Most of the sheep are only useful for food, being the ancient fat-tailed breed, whose wool is worthless. Good dairy herds are almost non-existent : and the cattle, generally speaking, are of so small and wretched a type that they can never take a place in the meat markets of the world. Disease holds this industry in the hollow of its yellow palm, and sternly prohibits its expansion and improve- ment. Apart from all political problems, the travel- 116 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ler's general impression of South Africa is one of gloom and desolation. The vast bulk of the sub-continent is a barren, pest-ridden wilderness, where only the black man can live or hope to thrive. One passes across thousands of miles of monotonous veld, and sees no cultivation, no stock worth owning, no sign of comfortable or civilised habitation. The British are walled and cooped up in the mushroom cities : the Boers are scattered sparsely through the lonely plains. The British think only of winning riches from the mines. The Boers, absolutely ambitionless, think only of winning a meagre livelihood from the sour and reluctant soil : and both races alike, corrupted and enervated by their long and un- interrupted dependence on the blacks, " laze " along, do no work themselves save overseeing work, and prosper, or exist, as they prefer, on the slavish toil of the downtrodden aboriginal inhabitants. I can conceive no life more lonely and intel- lectually hideous than life on the veld. There is none save infrequent, dull and brutish com- panionship. Culture is an unknown quality. Hardships abound. The blacks are everywhere, and contact with them brutalises and depraves 117 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the whites. The landscape is either dreadfully monotonous or appallingly grand, but always the eye wanders in a miserable baffled quest for a sign of trees. The veld farms are fenced with wire stretched on stone or iron fences wood there is none. Thousands of miles of iron fences gird the railway lines. The railways are all built on the narrow 3 feet 6 inch gauge, and the lines lie on girders of steel. They pay well be- cause they are the only means of transportation that the country boasts, and because they charge high freights and fares. But the trains are slow and tedious and uncomfortable. Dust storms sweep across the plains with every wind whirling maelstroms of blinding sand and powdered soil and this even in the heart of the rainy season of the year. They call the herbage that covers these plains grass : and when at its greenest it is rather brown than green. It grows in far separated clumps bundles of wires and weeds. No wonder the stock that browses on such miserable fodder is small and wretched. And what if gorgeous lilies, tubers and other blooms intersperse the tussocks and light the veld with a thousand colored glories now and then? They are beautiful beyond a doubt, but 118 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA nearly all are poisonous, and in any case one cannot live on flowers. All this brings one back inexorably to the root fact of South African his- tory. South Africa has been settled for several hundreds of years : it has been fought and bled for by many peoples : to-day its total white population scarcely exceeds 1,200,000 souls. Here is a truth which tells its own tale. There are classes in South Africa, but amongst the whites at least there are no masses. The caste system which has replaced the older insti- tution of slavery has effectually compelled even the poorest of the wage earning whites to join forces with the plutocrats in a tacit conspiracy of co-operation to maintain their pride of race and to prevent the social elevation and political emancipation of the blacks. There are probably hundreds of humanely disposed and broad- minded folk in the sub-continent who sympathise deeply with the unfortunate condition of the sub- merged yet ambitious and ever-restless negro hordes, and who, if they had their way, would remove^ all obstacles to the education and im- provement of the Kaffirs. But the voice of these visionaries is seldom raised and their utterances are never heeded by the powerful majority. The 119 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA rulers of the country seem to be fully conscious of the fact that they are dealing tyrannously and cruelly with the people whose territory and pos- sessions they have usurped : but they excuse themselves by appealing to the primal law of self-preservation. They must continue, they plead, in the way they have begun as the sole alternative to being racially overwhelmed and politically extinguished. And one cannot deny the force of their contention. The natives are so physically vigorous and mentally virile, their numbers are so vast, their rate of natural increase is so great and rapid, and their desire to exceed the bounds of the white man's caste prejudice is so keen that it is staringly obvious that their aspirations must be restricted and repressed as a condition precedent to the preservation of white supremacy. Undoubtedly the time will come when they will try conclusions with their present masters and put to some final test the white man's ancient claim to be their overlord and governor. Possibly not for two or three generations will that day arrive, but sooner or later it will come, and the fear of it is a dark shadow that shrouds every white South African's horizon and adds a meed of cruelty to every 1 20 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA stroke he lays upon his negro servant's shoulders. The original sin of slavery has banded the whites together in a community of ethical criminality. The existing generation blames its fathers for the sin, blames them bitterly, but clings tena- ciously to slavery's modern prototype cheap labor ruled by caste. The whites at one and the same time hate, fear, despise and use the blacks. They cannot do without them. South African civilisation is a marble palace built upon a quag- mire of black, heaving human bodies. Shake or disturb the essential foundation of cheap colored labor, and it would crumble on instant. The blacks are an ever-shifting problem. They are docile to-day, but their present docility is turbulence contrasted with their pristine slavishness, and as education spreads among them, their diminishing submissiveness is bound to develop into rebellious independence. By far the most striking feature of social life in South Africa at this moment is the mailed front of insolent and intolerant aristocracy which the whites turn everywhere on the blacks, and on black efforts at encroachment. In most South African towns a curfew bell tolls at a certain hour each night. It is the signal for all natives to re- 121 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA tire from the white man's precincts and hie them home to their miserable huts and habitations in the neighboring black " location." Christianised negroes have churches of their own, and did any black venture to invade the portals of the white man's house of worship he would not merely be driven forth ; his impertinence would be rewarded with the whip. Millionaires and mechanics view the negro through cognate sets of spectacles. The millionaire wants plenty of unskilled cheap labor. The mechanic wants a monopoly of the skilled labor market and, being lazy, he also wants cheap black industrial valets to perform the rougher portions of his work. The millionaire and the mechanic, therefore, have combined to secure the satisfaction of their kindred needs. The blacks are given all the unskilled labor in the land to do, and because they do it at the call of caste, that labor is proscribed from white perform- ance. Thus the class of " poor whites " origin- ated. Every town and city has its unlisted legion of such men. They are unskilled laborers. They would be glad to do unskilled work in any other land : but in South Africa they would not if they dared, and dare not if they would, for the punishment of their offence would be eternal 122 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ostracism from their kind. " Kaffir's work " is invested with such a horror in the public mind that the very thought of any white engaging in it is a degradation. The " poor whites " must live, however. They live too often by felonious devices, and are mostly rascals. There are no servant girls in South Africa. Domestic service is " Kaffir's work " : conse- quently no white woman can perform it. De- prived of this great avenue of female employ- ment, the white daughters of the poor turn to the tea houses and restaurants, which are too few for their needs. Factories there are almost none. The half-caste population is, compara- tively speaking, enormous, especially in the southern towns, and the numbers of " nearly whites " may not be counted. Innumerable Boer families are of tainted blood. Wherever found, the product of miscegenation is usually an out- cast from white society. 123 CHAPTER X PROVINCIAL CENTRES IETERMARITZBURG, the old capital of Natal, is an exceedingly pretty little city, situated in a hollow at the foot of the towering Drakensburg Mountains, some 70 miles from the coast. Coming from the bleak and lonely Transvaal veld into the rich green garden of Natal is a blessed relief to the traveller : nor is it less delightful to exchange the Babylon-like tumult of Johannesburg for the languorous re- pose of the only truly British town in South Africa. In Maritzburg (as the city is locally called) there is a white population of about 15,000, and nearly all the citizens are of British blood. Truly enough the natives and coolies 124 >.^3fc*- j?~- DRAKENSBURG MOUNTAINS THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA outnumber the whites, and are everywhere in evidence : but that is a feature universal in South Africa. The English tongue is omnipresently in use and English manners and customs are notably predominant. But it is not a progressive city. It is beautiful beyond words, with its well paved roads, its splendid public buildings, its fine parks and gardens, and its wonderfully planted streets, shaded everywhere with avenues of lovely tropic trees : but it is a decadent town and its pristine greatness has departed. As a business centre it is a " has been." Commerce has evaded its charming precincts, and, lacking the old spur of political encouragement, as hence- forth it must, it seems doomed to oblivion and decay. The people are somnolent and easy going. The spirit of South Africa, which says eternally " Wacht-een-beetje," has settled heavily upon the citizens. " We have always to-morrow," the national proverb of the Boers, has infected every- body in Maritzburg with a dull sense of listless apathy. The days of bustle and money-making have gone by. The present day is given up to an easy-going, lotus-eating life, and the gentle pleasures of hope indulged. " Some day," say 125 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the Maritzburghers, " the glories of our city will revive." The South Africans are perpetually full of hope : it is the energy required to realise their dim yet sanguine dreaming that they lack. Of course the town is enormously burdened with debt. Equally, of course, its appointments are luxurious. Fine hotels abound. The city is lighted throughout with electricity. Electric trams (which do not pay, because the people would rather disburse 6d. to ride in a rickshaw and be deposited at their very doors than id. to ride in a tram and have to walk perhaps 50 yards) pervade all the main streets : and the city rejoices also in excellent water and sewerage systems, municipal enterprises every one. But the people groan under heavy rates and taxes whenever they wake up and yet, to do them justice, they nearly always sleep. My journey to Bloemfontein was interesting in that it dissipated an illusion. I was told that I should pass on the way through the granary of Africa. The country was rich and seemingly fertile enough while we remained in Natal, but no sooner had we surmounted the flying buttresses of the Drakensburg and entered the high veld of the O.R.C., than we resumed acquaintance with 126 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA vast stretches of bare and gloomy plains, sour- soiled, treeless and almost grassless steppes, without beginning and without end. Wheat fields were pointed out to us with pride at Beth- lehem and other places as being typical of South Africa's agricultural development and marvellous " potentialities " blessed word ! Those wheat fields were enough to reduce any spectator pos- sessed of kindly sensibilities to tears. Never have I seen such wretched looking areas, such miserable produce of tilled and tended earth. I could hardly believe my eyes, and to listen to the self-complacent language of our guides was to be divided between mirth and pity. At Bloemfontein, the old capital of the late Orange River Free State Republic, I saw a stagnant, almost dying town, but pretentious above comparison. Built in a hollow and sur- rounded with kopjes, it has few claims to be styled beautiful, for on that hard and unfriendly land trees do not flourish, and few of all the trees which the people have planted and culti- vated with an infinity of care, looked healthy or like to live. Dead trees I counted by the score. The white population numbers about 10,000, the blacks about 15,000: and there are some 3,000 127 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA British troops cantoned near the town. The citizens live on the farmers : it is a purely agri- cultural neighbourhood, and farming is the only industry: but so poor are the crops and yields that the citizens do not thrive in the Australian sense, and my marvel was that they exist at all. Nevertheless, the town has an astounding cor- porate energy. It has lighted the city with elec- tricity : it has built great flood works : it owns and runs fine abattoirs : it has constructed and owns the largest swimming baths in Africa : it has a splendid water system, bringing the water from 1 8 miles away: it owns a large sewerage farm : and it has a big municipal laundry, where the clothes of the citizens are laundered at prices that would break the heart of a British housewife. Naturally the town is heavily in debt, and the citizens have to pay through the nose for all their conveniences. Why the receivers are not in pos- session is an abiding mystery. Most of the townspeople are British, but the tone of the city is strictly Dutch. The Taal is spoken indiffer- ently with English by all except the flag-waving section of the ultra-English civil servant class. Here I met with many of the more cultured type of Boers, and was most hospitably entertained 128 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA by all : but they none denied a strong racial sentiment, and several were frank enough to admit in conversation their belief in a Dutch South Africa, and their firm resolve to help strenuously in the work of complete Dutchifica- tion. Every Englishman I met confessed an irreconcilable hatred of the Boers en masse. Individually the two races rub along without friction : but their amity is on the surface. Leaving Bloemfontein, I traversed the Con- quered Territory, a strip of valuable land wrested from the Basutos and never returned, and entered the south-eastern section of the Cape. In the Conquered Territory I saw a good deal more of cultivation than in any part of the sub- continent I visited. Here the soil is not sour, and virgin land will yield fairly well without a long course of preliminary treatment. But it was not my good fortune to see any considerable area fit to compare with even the second rate agricul- tural territory of the Commonwealth. I was fed and feasted everywhere on splendid sights, sombre, grand and imposing spectacles and magnificent scenery : but always the query ''When shall I see the rich farm lands of Africa ? " was met with a Spanish " Manana." 129 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA Promises were made by the drove. Not one was ever fulfilled. The Conquered Territory was another disappointment. It showed a deal of passable land, a fairish amount of desultory cul- tivation, an unmeasured quantity of crops, poor, but here called rich and nothing more. That is to say, nothing more except scenery scenery wild and majestic enough to beggar the resources of a Byron, yet uncultivable. One grows weary of mountains, however awe inspiring and stupendous, that cannot bear trees, and are as barren as the sun scorched rocks of Araby. They may breed poetry, but they will not breed stock, and of all the treeless wastes here called the veld we saw none (in the best season of the year) but infrequent little patches that could be held capable of tempting an Australian farmer's eyes. East London, long the seaport of the Orange River Colony, and of Kimberley as well, is another example of South African municipal ex- travagance. There is a riot of splendid public buildings and expensive works. Electric light, electric trams and a host of other municipal enter- prises are in operation. The place is fearfully in debt, and its 14,000 white residents labor under 130 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA a heavy strain of local taxation gallantly if groanfully. One wonders how they contrive to make ends meet. The town is perched on a little plateau, 200 feet high, at the mouth of the Buffalo River. It has harbour works which cost over ; 2, 000,000. The city is kept busy because it is a railway terminus and a port, and because it has a fishing industry. But it is not really prosperous, as its lines of deserted buildings and semi-occupied offices too clearly prove. It is one more of those places so frequently found in this country which trades on the glories of the past. Port Elizabeth styles itself the Liverpool of South Africa. It is the briskest and most busi- ness like city in the Union and the people are exceptionally enterprising and energetic. It is the centre of the South African ostrich trade. Feather markets are held three times a week and a feather emporium is to be found in every street. Enough feathers repose in the stores and shops to stock the world. In the surrounding district sheep farming is largely carried on and the breeders are beginning to evolve a good stock by crossing with sheep imported from Australia. Port Elizabeth has a poor harbour THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA (it is really an open roadstead) and it is remote from the main districts of production, but it is controlled by men of courage and ideas. Its importance grows in spite of natural handicaps, and it seems likely to be and remain the chief port of export of the Union since it has com- pletely captured the feather trade and is building up a large trade in wool. Ostrich farming is chiefly carried on round Oudtshoorn and Lady- smith and on the Ghama Karro, but the feathers nearly all go to Port Elizabeth for sale, even those grown in Rhodesia and the western por- tions of the Cape Province. I liked this part of the country well. The white people know what they want and they are not afraid of work. Hardships do not daunt them. They lean less upon the Kaffir here than elsewhere, and " wait a bit " is not their motto. All is life, bustle and activity. Durban, the chief port of Natal, is a beautiful city the pleasure resort of the Union. It is the Brighton of South Africa. The women of the Transvaal and of Rhodesia and the O.R.C. troop to Durban for two or three months every year to recuperate from the trying climate of the veld. It is a city of big hotels and places 132 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA of amusement. The population is semi-amphibi- ous and mixed bathing is the perennial pastime. Pretoria is a fair type of the Dutch city. Like all the Dutch towns it is built in a hollow and surrounded with a low rampart of hills. The Boers always chose such spots for the dual pur- pose of obtaining shelter from the fierce winds that sweep across the veld and to minimise the difficulties of armed defence against the natives and other possible invaders. The streets run in parallels. Every kopje is dotted with white and orange color houses built in the quaint Dutch style. The public buildings are large and imposing. The Volsraad Housse, where the public business of the Transvaal Re- public used to be conducted, is particularly in- teresting. It is preserved exactly as when Paul Kruger occupied it as President of the Republic. The memory of that crude and rugged figure dominates the city. His private dwelling house stands intact as when he left it, save that his study has been converted into a museum hung with funeral wreaths sent by the Sovereigns of Europe on his death, and a great weird painting by a Dutch artist luridly pictures his apotheosis in a curious Boer Valhalla. And before the door 133 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA lie the marble lions presented to the late ex- President by Cecil Rhodes, which gift caused Kruger so much wrath and suspicion and mis- giving. In the centre of the town is an immense square, which is filled every market day with the produce-laden waggons of the farmers. Every Dutch town has just such a market square, even Johannesburg and Capetown, and it is one of the sights of South Africa to see these spaces and their teeming traffic on market mornings. They resemble nothing so much as old time Irish fairs. Pretoria is being rapidly changed in character now by the great Administrative offices of the Union Government that are being erected on the slopes above the town, at a cost of ; 2,000,000. There are nothing like them in the Southern Hemisphere. The town has many lovely resi- dences and not the least attractive is that which Lord Roberts occupied after his defeat of Cronje. It was my privilege to spend an evening in this pretty mansion and to dine at the table on which the famous Peace Treaty of Vereeniging was signed by General Botha and Lord Kitchener. Pretoria is the administrative capital of the Union, and it is likely to be also the legislative capital before many years elapse. Circum- 134 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA stances are conspiring towards that end, and con- siderations of economy will sooner or later force it into fact. The city is lighted with electricity and it has a good service of electric tramways. Kimberley is a big sprawling town, irregularly arranged and built without design around the diamond mines. Sordid little cottages rub shoulders with palatial dwellings. There are many gardens, but few fine public buildings. It is a city of dreadful dust. Almost every day there is a dust storm. Dust is called " Kimber- ley rain." When the storm threatens the in- habitants retire indoors and close every crack and crevice to exclude the penetrating curse. Almost as well one might live in the Sahara. The mines are the only cause and raison d'etre of this dry and dust smitten city. They, of course, have their peculiar and abiding interest. Every year they produce shining pebbles to the value of many millions sterling. Kimberley lives on the vanity of women. I spent some days in and about the mines and found the processes of absorbing interest. Most of the larger mines are " deep workers " nowadays. The " blue stone " is dug out of the bowels of the earth, hoisted by magnificent machinery, and then car- US THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ried in trolleys to the reserves where the mineral is spread out over the face of the land and ex- posed for a year or two to the disintegrating action of the atmosphere before it is crushed and treated. All around the mines stretch wide areas of " blue " covered ground, which are sur- rounded with high fences topped with rows cf barbed wire and guarded night and day by mine police. In that decaying mould repose treasures immeasurable. Each trolly load of dirt has an average value of i5/-, but each piece of rock the size of a fist may be worth an emperor's ransom. The visitor, therefore, is not permitted to carry away a specimen of the " blue," for it might con- tain a Koh-i-Noor. Every pebble is watched most jealously. There are hundreds of thou- sands of tons at grass, but one may only look at them. Yet in spite of all this care, the mines are robbed steadily and greatly. The negro has the eye of a hawk for precious stones, and he cannot be kept always under observation. As he loads or unloads his trolly he often sees a shining speck, and then well illicit diamond buying is a custom of the country. It is called I.D.B. for short, because it is so often in men's mouths. Hundreds of whites and blacks thrive 136 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA on it. The law sometimes grasps a victim, but for each robber caught and punished, a score go undetected. The processes of crushing the " weathered blue " and washing the precious dirt are marvellously vast, but wonderfully simple. The rock is first roughly stamped and broken to a certain size, then passed automatically through a long series of batteries and crushers, each one of which reduces it to a specific smaller size. Keen eyed watchers stand at each break in the chain of operations in search of shining specks. They sometimes find them. These are the biggest diamonds. The smaller stones go with the finer dust and debris to the grease covered tables, and are caught in the grease over which the valueless sand passes smoothly. The dis- covery that grease has a strong power of attrac- tion for diamonds was made by an engineer in the employ of the De Beers Company. He was made a present of ,5,000 for his acuteness and promoted to high rank in the works. He was slain during the late war. The discovery has saved the mines half a million already in work- ing expenses. The mould which covers the diamond is filled with garnets. Every mullock heap on the mines glistens as with the fire of 137 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA manifold rubies. Visitors are given as many garnets as they please to take. They are pretty baubles, but have little market worth. The native miners of Kimberley are nearly all kept in vast compounds. Picture a square plot of ground 5 acres in extent surrounded by roofed sheds open to the square, but stoutly walled externally. In the sheds are even rows of bunks arranged in tiers from floor to roof. Thousands of bunks there are, and to each bunk a native. They live (when not asleep or at work) in the square, where they do their cooking at open fires in tribal groups and sub-groups. Their principal amusement is to play on the queer gambling machine (described by Herodotus) which was popular among the Ethiopians of ancient Egypt. It consists of a board about six feet long, set out in transverse little slatted squares. The gambling is done with small pebbles and stones that fly about the board and settle in the squares, each of which has its fixed value. The negroes love the pastime, and they gamble night and day. Such is the com- pound and compound life. Virtually it is slavery, for the mine natives are not free to quit their compounds during their employment, and the compounds are really gaols. But the natives 138 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA do not seem to mind. They are fed fairly well and they all appear happy and contented. They have banks wherein to store their wages, and many of them return to their kraals comparatively rich men. A director of the De Beers showed me one native who is a philosopher and a humor- ist. " This man," said he, " is now doing his second term. He returned to us of his own will. Question him !" I glanced at the burly Kaffir, who at once bared his splendid teeth in a beaming smile. ' Why did you come back ?" I asked. "Oh," replied the negro, " me go to kraal first time from mine with plenty money and buy wife. She got temper like devil fight me all day long. Much better come long back here and work to get more money ! " " Oh ! I see. But what will you do when you have more money ? " The native grinned atrociously. " When get more money me go back kraal and buy another wife. Then me happy. One wife no good. Two wives good. They fight each other and leave me alone." In the course of my travels I visited many small Boer towns and " dorps " ; but they are 139 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA little worth describing. Each one is a replica of the next. There is neither life nor movement in them. They are collections of squalid humpies, grouped in straggling form about an inn. The inhabitants do no work except to force the natives to work for them. Some tipple stolidly and steadily the liquor is an infamous doctored spirit to drink which is to " dop " i.e., to be doped; the rest sip coffee, live on mealies and milk, and smoke and laugh and dream. Than the dwellers in these back veld villages there is not a more torpid, ignorant and back- ward people on the planet. If addressed, they invariably answer, " Wacht-een-beetje." Their minds are so dull and lethargic that it requires a considerable effort to formulate a thought. Everything is a trouble to them. They are perambulating human vegetables. Cape Town is by far the most civilised city in South Africa, and it takes high rank among the " beauty " places of the world. Excluding the suburbs, the population numbers about 80,000, of whom a little more than 50 per cent, are whites of European extraction. The remainder are negroes, Malays, and half-castes. In the suburbs there is a population of 100,000. The evil of 140 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA miscegenation (which is practised more or less throughout the Union) finds its sharpest accentu- ation in Cape Town. The half-castes and their piebald product, the " Cape-boys," teem in and around the city and overflow the surrounding districts. As elsewhere in South Africa, the Kaffirs monopolise the rough work, but the Cape boys have captured the sphere of skilled labor and bar the avenues of artisan employment to the whites. They are capable industrialists, but lazy and insolent, and their ever-increasing num- bers and growing political power constitute a bitter problem and something of a special menace to the future of the country. In their veins flows the blood of fifty races. They are mongrels of the mongrels. The whites use them and despise them. They serve and hate the whites. Although fairly well educated, they are for the most part morally depraved. They have all the faults of pampered menials, all the vices of pariahs and social outcasts. Their condition is infinitely sad. Their outlook is dark. They cumber and blot the earth. They are the living symbols of de- pravity and sin. Their existence is a tragedy, their lives are a curse. They contemn and will not associate with the blacks. The whites will 141 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA not associate with them. Ostracising and ostra- cised by the pure blooded races, they cling to- gether and breed solidarity by brooding on their fate and " wrongs." The thoughtful whites see in them potential agents of revolution and dis- aster. Such fears appear to me well based. The wind has been sown, the whirlwind has still to be reaped. The factors of a destructive whirl- wind exist and grow and continually gather force. In a war between the white and black races, the Cape Boys would win their chance. Experience indicates that they make fine soldiers. Probably, if war were to break out they would throw in their lot with the blacks, cunningly hid- ing an opportunity to massacre their white mas- ters. Nations as well as individuals must pay for their sins. The great charm and fascination of Cape Town consist in the splendid mountain that rises in a steep walled precipice behind the city, and for a space of two miles draws a horizontal line 3,600 feet in height against the blue dome of the sky. This magnificent tower slopes abruptly on both sides to the sea. The upper parapets are covered with dark green vegetation and scarred with multitudinous ravines that drip 142 eternally with scores of tiny, fairy-like cascades. On either side of the Table are peaks of pyra- midal shape which enclose the horse-shoe valley on which the town is perched. The level sum- mit of the giant Table is nearly always veiled with dense white masses of vapor, that drift con- stantly across the verge and pour like vast avalanching waves into the sheer void beneath. The effect produced is of a colossal cataract of storm-driven water tumbling into space and dis- solving into gases by reason of their mighty fall. The clouds are never still. They assume the most grotesque and fantastic shapes of stark and awe inspiring majesty. Cecil Rhodes was never tired of gazing at the mountain and its marvellous covering. On the stoep of his house, " De Groote Schuur," at Rondebosch (5 miles from the city), he used to spend all his leisure hours building dream castles to match the castellated mystery of the great Table top. That house belongs to the nation now. It is one of Rhodes's finest gifts to the nation that he helped so much to build. He be- queathed it, together with the splendid garden that surrounds it, to the people, to be used as the official residence of the Prime Minister of S. 143 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA Africa, and he provided for the upkeep with a permanent endowment of ,1,000 a year. De Groote Schuur is one of the most beautiful and interesting houses in the world. A splendid specimen of the old Dutch school of architecture, it has a history of its own. Van Riebeck dwelt in it, and other famous statesmen, governors, and merchants before Rhodes. It has been twice partially destroyed by fire, and each rebuilding has added to its usefulness and beauty. Lofty, pillared, ground-balconies, stone paved and wide, and graced with a score of ancient bronze-bound treasure chests, surround it. The rooms are small but superbly plenished with carven wooden linings, and its deep mullioned windows look out upon a scene of mingled loveliness and grandeur that has no parallel in the five Con- tinents that compose and sprawl across the globe. General Botha occupies the house at present. He maintains it as Rhodes left it; and the bed and living rooms of the great South African are preserved sacro-sanct, as though Rhodes were expected any moment to return and inhabit them again. Table Mountain is circled with a woof of roads that lure the traveller into countless places of 144 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA enchantment. This commands far stretching scapes of mead and sea and sky. There is a causeway that hangs a thousand feet on high, rocking dizzily, 'twixt surf and cloud. Yonder is a path that dips into dark, dim aromatic valleys, where the sunlight is excluded by the dense olive foliage of forest giants, whose tall straight boles stalk in multitudinous and interminable proces- sion across a wide brown carpet of needles into the very home of silence and of shade. Here again the road winds lazily among a charming welter of suburban dwellings that nestle bowered with vines and flowers in the midst of towering oaks and eucalyptus. Then come lanes thickly hedged with hawthorn, privet and sweet briar, and rustic bridges that straddle gurgling fern- grown brooks. Suddenly there will flash out an old world village avenued with oaks and elm trees, its gabled houses built in the fashion of our childish dreams, the belfried church, all green with moss and roofed with thatch. But hardly is one's wonder still, when lo ! the traveller is gazing into a forest of the Swartz-Wald, where the sable faces of a myriad pines outstare the gaunt and naked grimness of steep, crag-piled towers of shimmering black rock, and the wind sweeps THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA languidly across the tree tops and among the granite pinnacles with a soughing lamentation that strikes chill upon the heart. No place on earth resembles Cape Town, howsoever remotely. It is scarce four hundred years old, as civilisation measures time, but the Spirit of Antiquity has elected to reside there, and has moulded the city and its environs to enshrine and to reflect becom- ingly the complex witchery and graces of a thou- sand ages. Every house looks old as soon as it is built, and every tree, born yesterday, will cast an immemorial deep shade to-morrow. Every suburb is a fairyland of restful beauty : every valley is a brooding sanctuary of mystery and thrilling loveliness : every lane seems to have been a lovers' walk for centuries. Above all stands the incomparable Mountain, keeping ceaseless watch and ward upon the lower world, and through its curtain of alabaster, drift clouds holding eternal communion with the gods. 146 CHAPTER XI THE RAND T N the year 1886 there was not a house where Johannesburg now stands, and the popula- tion of the entire district consisted of a few scattered farmers. To-day Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa, the economic capital of the Union, and the pivot round which the in dustrial and commercial machinery of the whole sub-continent revolves. The white population exceeds 100,000 (of whom some 20,000 are Jews) and the blacks number about 105,000. The city is most picturesquely situated on the southern slope of the Witwatersrand range, 5,763 feet above sea level. The great gold reefs of the Rand (they pronounce the word " Ront " in South Africa) stretch out in long wings on either side of 147 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the town for a total distance of 130 miles, of which some 40 miles are now continuously mined. One sees from the hill tops above the city an un- broken chain of poppet lieads and gigantic white quartz mullock heaps extending east and west farther than the telescope can reach : the great lines dotted on either side with an endless suc- cession of nigger compounds, iron huts and cot- tages. North and south the residential suburbs form a cross and a contrast too, without pre- cedent in the world. Here wealth has been poured out with astonishing prodigality, even on to the roads. The roads are superb. They wind for scores of miles among a wealth of splendid mansions, hard, smooth and level, every inch of them painted extravagantly thick with tar. On every side between the flower-surrounded houses are plantations of gum and firs and wattles. Valleys drop precipitously down into the bowels of the veld, densely clothed with pines. Kopjes tower into the sky, garlanded with trees and crowned with jagged tors. In all these places the scenery is magnificently beautiful. These places are the homes of the rich. They live like princes, waited on by retinues of liveried flunkies, rushing about in their motor cars, enter- 148 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA taining, receiving, squandering money like water, yet growing richer day by day. What wonder that they care little for the condition of the poorer portion of the city? They have splendid city offices, and at least two gorgeous city streets wherein to do their business. The rest can " go hang." Within a few minutes' walk of the two main thoroughfares of Johannesburg is a network of streets and lanes that cries shame upon the Rand. Dirty, mean little houses, broken, almost impassable roadways, squalor unspeakable. And these streets stretch out for miles. Here is the quarter of the " poor whites," wretched victims of the Kaffirs' monopoly of the unskilled labor market, who drive an infamous living by the laundry labor of their wives, the prostitution of their daughters, and by selling liquor in secret to the native hordes. There is the Malay and Arab quarter. Yonder, again, the quarter of the blacks. In these dismal thoroughfares one hears the clashing polyglot of a score of diverse foreign tongues. The niggers impudently litter the pavement and laugh and gibe at wayfarers. The Malays and Arabs chew their opiate leaves and spit and dream. One sees white 149 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA children scattered through this murk playing in the gutters, picking up the words and vices of the colored scum. Many are the offspring of skilled artisans. They^are nearly all doomed to degradation, because they can never become skilled workers like their fathers the educa- tional avenue of unskilled labor being barred to them and therefore, as the Kaffirs and Arabs and Chinese who surround them, they must live and die. The Rand lords are very hospitable. They entertained us in a princely fashion, and took us to see some of their greatest mines. We were shown how the gold is won ,30,000,000 worth of it every year and how their giant dividends are earned. The experience was full of a most penetrating interest. What stupendous works, what marvellous machinery, what hordes of miners ! What a multiplicity of diverse occupa- tions ! Yet everywhere order most admirable ; and reigning over every section of the vast con- glomerate mass of effort we sensed a grand, almost inexplicable simplicity. We saw electric power stations fed by coal extracted from amidst the gold, and erected at a cost of millions sterling, the whole forming a linked system of prodigious 150 force supplying the city with light and all the mines with a common source of energy. Coal mining and gold mining interlink their processes and co-operate to form a wealth-producing com- bination that is without a parallel in the outer world. All matter here and around is the servile bond-slave of the triumphant mind. The Rand is a mighty palpitating engine squatted across the heart of a wilderness. Grinding ceaselessly everything, it touches into gold not rocks only, but men's lives. Those who drive the engine are surely not philanthropists. And yet, super- ficially, they seem most kind. There are hos- pitals in all directions. The sick workers, both white and black, are treated with the sweetest charity but they die like flies. Let us delve into the Rand underworld a little. On nth May, 1907, the Earl of Selborne appointed a Commission to enquire into the working of the Mining Regulations, with a view to making recommendations for the better protection of the health of miners. This Commission issued its final report in 1910. Some of its findings, con- clusions and recommendations deserve to be quoted fully and published widely. The follow- THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ing paragraphs are transcribed from pages 253, 254 and 255 of the report " 5. That from the figures before us the " nominal general death-rate amongst surface and " underground white ' mining males ' on the " Rand during the triennium 1905-06-07, would " at first sight appear to have been comparatively " low : but that this apparently low death-rate " amongst white ' mining males ' generally con- " cealed a very high mortality amongst a limited " class (13 per cent.) viz., white ' rock drillers.' ' " 6. That the death-rate from ' All Diseases ' " amongst white ' mining males of twenty and * over,' was greatly in excess of that amongst " white ' non-mining males of twenty and over ' : " when the necessary correction for age-constitu- " tion of white ' mining males ' is made, this " excess was about 60 per cent. " 7. That the death-rate from ' phthisis ' (in- " eluding miners' phthisis) at ages of twenty and " over, was more than six times greater amongst " white ' mining males ' than amongst white ' non- " ' mining males.' " 8. That as most of the white miners who die " locally from phthisis are rock-drillers, the ratio " of 6 to i by no means represents the actual dis- 152 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " proportion in their particular case, especially as " a considerable number go back to die in Corn- " wall and elsewhere. " 9. That no conclusive evidence has been " adduced that there has been any alteration in " the phthisis death-rate amongst white * mining ' males ' on the Rand during the years 1905- " 06-07. " 10. That the death-rate from ' respiratory ' diseases and other phthisis ' amongst white ' mining males ' at ages of twenty and over was " 70 per cent, greater than that amongst similar "white 'non-mining males,' viz., 1.7 to i.o. " 12. That as regards white miners, there is " little doubt that the incidence of pneumonia is " materially heavier than amongst non-miners : " that certain conditions incidental to under- " ground mining work no doubt favour its de- " velopment : that the disease is usually caused " by the pneumococcus, and is predisposed to by " devitalizing influences, such as irregularities " and excesses of life, overcrowding and air-pol- " lution, and neglect of precaution against chill, " and, amongst natives, by the presence of calci- " fied bilharzia ova in the lungs. "15. That natives from the purely tropical 153 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " districts, Northern Rhodesia, British Central " Africa, Quillimane, and Mozambique, show " very high death rates. Pneumonia is the most " important direct cause of this excessive mor- " tality. " 1 6. That pneumonia accounts for almost 40 " per cent, of native deaths from ' all causes/ " and is nearly six times higher amongst tropical " than amongst British South African natives, " excluding natives of Basutoland. " 17. That tuberculosis ranks next to pneu- " monia as a cause of death and contributes 1 8 " per cent, of the total native mortality : that its " incidence is heaviest on tropical natives, and " that the majority of cases appear to originate on " the Rand." " 1 8. That by far the most important factor " in miners' phthisis is the inhalation of irritating " dust created by rock-drilling, shovelling, and " blasting, and that though other sources of air- " vitiation, e.g., noxious fumes, are adjuvant " causes, the condition is essentially a ' silicosis ' " or ' pneumokoniosis/ to which, in the later " stages, tubercular infection is often super- " added." " 20. That the average period of rock-drill 154 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " employment on the Rand is from 7 to 9 years, " and the average age at death from silicosis is "35 years, as compared with about 50 years at " Bendigo, where, however, the incidence of the " disease is considerably higher. "21. That the inhalation of dust can be pre- " vented by the free use of water in connection " with the operations (rock-drilling, blasting, and " lashing) which create or raise dust : that the " provision of a constant supply of suitably clean " water for this purpose should be most rigor- " ously insisted upon whenever and wherever " developmental work is carried on, where the " natural strata are not wet, and in every dry and " dusty stope : that, with equal rigor miners " should be compelled to make use of the water " thus provided : and that no exception whatever " should be permitted as regards the enforce- " ment of this or some equally effective measure. "22. That on 5th November, 1908, special " representation was made to the Hon. the " Minister of Mines by this Commission, as to " the outstanding importance of this matter : and " that on the 24th December, 1908, very explicit " regulations embodying the Commission's " recommendations were gazetted 155 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " 23. That we now further recommend that " where rock-drilling is being carried on, the floor " and sides of the working place to a distance of " i oft. from the face, be kept sufficiently damped " to prevent dust being raised by the escape of " exhaust air : and that the damping of dry and " dusty rock be carried out not only before lash- " ing commences, but be repeated as often as " necessary while lashing proceeds (Draft Regu- " lation 97 (i) I (2) ). " 24. That there has been a fairly ready com- " pliance on the part of mine managers with the " dust-laying regulations gazetted 24th Decem- " ber, 1908 : but that there is considerable diffi- " culty in keeping rock-drillers up to the mark, " owing to their incredible indifference, not to " say recklessness, and also, in some degree, to " the absence of direct and responsible super- " vision in this respect : that we have therefore "in draft Regulation No. 167, made such super- " vision a specified duty of the shift-bosses : and " that if this measure fail of its object, then the " institution of a system of continuous inde- " pendent policing will be imperatively called " for ; for nothing short of the strictest legal en- " forcement of the regulations in question will 156 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " meet the necessities of the position in regard to " miners' phthisis. " 26. That the prevention and removal of " noxious fumes generated from explosives is " very important. "27. That the employment after blasting of " some such apparatus as James' water-blast or " Roberts' exhaust apparatus should be obliga- " tory in all close ends (vide Draft Regulation " 58). " 28. That the adoption, where practicable, " of the single-shift system is desirable, because " it allows a much longer period for dust to settle " and fumes to disperse after blasting." "31. That, after careful consideration, we " recommend the exclusion from work under- " ground of all persons infected with tuberculosis " of the respiratory organs. " 32. That this measure will involve medical " examination before engagement, and compul- " sory notification of the disease amongst white " miners, as soon as symptoms manifest them- " selves. No recommendation as to notification " of cases amongst natives is necessary, as they " quickly come under medical care, and a monthly " return of sickness and mortality is already " rendered." 157 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " 34. That the prevention of spitting in mines " is of the greatest importance, but with hordes of " semi-savages is an almost hopeless problem. "35. That the disinfection of working places " in mines is essentially an impracticable pro- " position, but that the frequent cleansing and " disinfection of shaft-stations and of compound " rooms is both practicable and desirable." The true significance of the paragraphs above quoted can only be grasped by careful analytic thinking. The statement, for example, that mining males of 20 years of age and over have a total death rate of 60 per cent, in excess of non- mining males must be considered in relation to the fact that in the non-mining population there is always a large proportion of old people who have a high death rate, whereas on the mines there are no old people at all. The death statis- tics of England, reckoned over long periods, show that the general death rate of a mixed popu- lation is approximately from twice to 2\ times greater than the death rate of men from 20 to 35 years old. The Commission makes it fairly clear that the death rate for white underground workers on the Rand must be from about 25 to 30 per 1,000 per annum, which is nearly 4 times 158 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the normal death rate of men of their age. The rock drillers of the Rand work from 7 to 9 years, and their average age at death is 35 years. In order to realise what this means, we must picture a death rate at all ages of a general population increased in the same proportion. We should then have a death rate of 75 per thousand, which would be sufficient to obliterate the whole popu- lation in a few years, since infants could not be produced rapidly enough to make up for the deaths. A glance at the Official History of the Boer War shows the recorded death-rate of British soldiers who were " killed in action " is much less than that suffered by the Rand rock drillers from 1905 to 1907; and the death-rate " from all causes " in the British Army during the war was also substantially lower than amongst the underground white miners. Manifestly mining on the Rand is more mortally perilous than war. The death-rate amongst the negro workers on the Rand for 1906-7 is given on page 47 of the Report. The Commission says that the average annual death rate for tropical natives has de- clined from 130 per 1,000 in 1904 to 70.5 per 1,000 in 1906, and that the average death-rate 159 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA for " all natives " in the same year is 30.8. The native death-rate (see Appendix B) for various places of origin is as follows Quilimane natives, 96.8; Mozambique natives, 67.5; Central Africa natives, 62.9; Rhodesia natives, 46.2; East Coast natives (south of lat. 22), 33.7; Transvaal natives, 22.8; Cape Colony natives, 14.2; and Natal natives, n.6. These rates are for men who are all in the first flush and prime of life, and to find their equivalent in a mixed population we should multiply each of the various figures by 2\. This would give us a general death-rate for " tropical natives " of 175 per 1,000 and for " all " natives " of 75 per 1,000. The crude rates stated in the report are arrived at without making any allowance for natives who fall sick in the mines and who die after leaving the mines. Merely those who actually die on the mines' premises are counted. On page 263 of Vol. n of the Report, the following words are to be found in the sworn evidence of Dr. Irvine : " The remainder, when fit to travel, are dis- 11 charged and repatriated, but of those who have " long distances to travel, few reach their kraals." We can only guess at what the death-rates would truly be if the " kraal " rates were added. 160 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA But the official mines' rates are quite terrible enough. They prove beyond a doubt that the Rand is an engine of wholesale destruction. The mines " polish off " tropical natives with re- morseless expedition, practically decimating them every year, indeed : and they do not treat the whites much better. The annual fatal accident death-rate is over 8 per 1,000, a rate that is about equal to the normal death-rate of men of that age, 20 to 40 years. The Chamber of Mines Report for the year 1909, on pages 372, 373, shows that 29,942 workers perished on the Transvaal mines during the five years ending 1909. As the Regulation Commission, p. 34, Vol. I., admits that a large proportion of deaths of white workers due to the mines is not credited to them, and the actual words used are " at least " one third, and probably more, of the disabled " Rand miners leave the country and die else- " where," and states, in Vol. II., that numbers of natives are repatriated in the last stages of disease, " VERY FEW OF WHOM REACH THEIR " KRAALS," it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Rand is a death trap. That it ought not to be is clear. The Native Affairs Report for 1909 shows that some of the mines have a death- 161 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA rate exceeding 100 per 1,000, and others of a precisely similar character a rate as low as 8.1 per 1,000. These figures prove that mining on the Rand is not necessarily unhealthy, and that the high average death-rate is due to some of the mines working in a manner that disgraces humanity. On page 46, Vol. I., of the Regula- tions Commission's Report, the following para- graph occurs " In this connection we would quote the con- " viction of Dr. Haldane, Mr. J. S. Martin, " Government Inspector of Mines, and Mr. "Arthur Thomas, manager of the Dolcoath " Mines, as recorded in their report on the " ' Health of Cornish Miners/ viz. : * that there " ' is no reason why work underground, in what- " ' ever kind of mine, should not be a perfectly " ' healthy employment : the work itself is " * thoroughly wholesome both to body and mind, " ' and the special dangers, whether to health or " ' to life and limb, associated with different " ' varieties of mining are such as, if recognised * and faced, can be avoided, provided that both ' employers and employed will co-operate in ' bringing this end about.' ' It is therefore clear that the death-rate, both 162 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA for blacks and whites, of these mines is " abnormal and higher than the death-rate of " other mining and industrial centres." The Commissioner's report, paragraph 24, hereinbefore quoted, blames the men for reckless- ness and carelessness, and would seem to charge them with being responsible for their own hideous mortality. The accusation is scarcely just and lacks a deal in chanty. The miners are unedu- cated men, who are not capable of defending themselves from the death that haunts them underground. They do not know the actual gravity of the risk they run, and can only make the discovery by dying. The men are castigated by the Commission for being such fools as to work when sick, and for not leaving rock-drill employment when they have got phthisis. There are two reasons for these facts which are known to medical science, if not to the general public. Miners whose health is bad generally, feel stronger and better in every way below ground than on the surface. Why this should be so it would be hard to say : it may be due to the increased air-pressure below ground : but it is a fact. It is only natural that men should not think " mining " is undermining their 163 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA health when they feel better below than when they are above ground. Again, the average consumptive patient is possessed by the " spes thisica/' the " hopeful " madness " to which nearly all miners suffering from miners' phthisis are subject. It makes them talk hopefully of what they are going to do in half a dozen years, when as a fact they will be lying in their coffins within as many weeks. It explains why rock-drill men, once they get phthisis, usually proceed with their work until it destroys them. The Mines Managers and the Government ought to protect these poor wretches from the consequences of their own ignorance. It is gratifying to know that the Union Government has lately wakened up to a sense of its duty and that laws have already been passed in the hope of bringing about a better state of things. These laws, however, have yet to demonstrate their efficacy. Meanwhile, I am personally thankful that I do not own any Rand shares. Mr. E. J. Moynihan, of Johannesburg, a publicist of note and an expert mining statist, has carefully analysed the death rates and the productive 164 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA figures of the Rand, and his investigations have led him to indict the mines as follows "Every ,1,200 paid in dividends on these "fields, in the five years ending with 1909, has " meant the known and avoidable loss of a human " life, without counting serious accidents and at " least twenty illnesses known to the doctors. " If all the criminals in the Fort had been turned " loose for five years, they would have done less " harm to the community than this mining indus- " try did in that time in this gold-stricken place, " where blood is spilt like water, human lives " thrown away like dirt, where lungs are turned " to stone below ground, and above ground " hearts turned to flint." That is a dreadful charge ; but, unhappily, the charge rings true. The facts that I have set down above are odious to relate, yet they ought to be related. They indicate that the Rand gold is rather a curse than a blessing to South Africa. South Africa to a very large extent lives upon it, but how many victims die ! The system is one of thinly disguised, blood-smeared slavery. The foundations of it are the blacks, who toil for a pittance and perish like locusts. A little higher 165 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA up are the white workers. They earn on an aver- age jC 1 P er day, but they live only from seven to nine years ! On top are the magnates, who hold their feasts and levees and dwell in imperial luxury. The money they lavish keeps the wheels of South African commerce moving steadily. Ancient Nineveh and Babylon have been revived. Johannesburg is their twentieth century prototype. It is a city of unbridled squander and unfathomable squalor. Living is more costly than one's wildest dreams. All the necessaries of life are impudently dear. Miners of England and Australia, however poor may be your lot, however dark your present prospects, let no man tempt you to South Africa with tales of the wages that are paid upon the Rand ! The wages are high indeed, but the price the workers pay for them is paid in suffering and blood. Better a thousand times to perish as paupers in your own country, if such a chance should hap, than race to an early tomb in a hot, deep African cavern. NOTE. During the 1910-11 Session, the Union Parliament passed the Miners' Phthisis Allowances Act, an avowedly temporary measure designed to alleviate the distress of sufferers, pending a fuller under- standing of the problem. A Commission was immediately afterwards appointed by the Government to enquire into the whole question of 1 66 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA Miners' Phthisis and the means of its prevention. The Commission issued a preliminary report on ist August, 1912, strongly urging the enaction of special legislation to enforce certain practical precautions in all mining operations against the dust, which is the chief source and provocative agent of the disease. The Commission's Report in- ferentially denounced the existing laws and regulations as being insufficient for the purpose. It stated that on many mines the pre- ventive measures recommended are already being carried out with pronounced success, but suggested that universal adoption of them would be necessary to effect " a considerable all-round improvement "on existing conditions." The Commission's Report has not yet resulted in legislative action for reform. So far the Union Parlia- ment has been content to pass an Act making provision for persons who have already contracted Miners' Phthisis. This Act came into force in August, 1912. It provides for the compulsory medical in- spection of all underground miners and for the compensation of those who have become diseased or disabled by the scourge. The measure is a humane and useful one, no doubt, but it cannot be described as other than a palliative, for it leaves the main problem the preven- tion of Miners' Phthisis and the protection of miners from its ravages practically untouched. Let us hope that when the Com- mission's final report is presented the Union Parliament will no longer hesitate to do its duty. 167 CHAPTER XII CRIME / T~"*HE supreme test of indigency and unem- ployment in any country is always to be found in its criminal statistics. The Union of South Africa has no " Year Book " like other British Dominions, neither have the provincial Governments under the Union. The people of South Africa, indeed, have habitually displayed a singular reticence in submitting their public affairs to critical examination, and the usual work of the statist has too often been left for special Commissions to accomplish when the need of obtaining reliable information on which to build reforms became too acute for urgent special reasons to be neglected. During my recent visit to the sub-continent I made many futile efforts 1 68 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA to ascertain the actual criminality of the com- munity. I saw much evidence of indigence around me, and everywhere I went many signs and symbols of unemployment (especially among the juvenile population), but I hesitated, never theless, to pass judgment on those facts until I should be in a position to compare them with the figures of crime : for in my opinion (based on a prolonged experience in Australia and elsewhere) crime is the surest, if not the only sure, index of the real gravity and extent and character of that deadliest of social evils, unemployment. There are two brands of indigency temporary indi- gency, caused usually by commercial depression of a casual nature or seasonal trade vicissitudes ; and permanent indigency, which is, per contra, the offspring of industrial decrepitude, trade de- cline, or a general repletion of the labor market. It is true that I recognised the existence of many peculiar industrial conditions in South Africa which do not pertain to any other country, and which appeared to attest the sincerity of the pre- vailing manifestations of indigency, and to sig- nify their quality of permanence. But not even when I had perused and studied the Report of the Transvaal Indigency Commission (which I 169 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA have quoted extensively in earlier chapters) did I feel justified in accepting its findings as con- clusively confirmatory of my own impressions : and I would certainly not have written this book in its present form if the criminal statistics of the Union had continued to elude me. I had my opinion, but I would have kept it to myself. No man has the right to accuse a great country unless he can support his charges, and I like the people of South Africa too well to libel them even by suggestions grounded on irrefutable verities. However, during the last few days of my sojourn in Cape Town official statements of the condition of criminality within the Union were made in Parliament, which banished the last cause of reasonable doubt. The figures I had vainly searched were extracted from the departmental pigeon-holes by the hon. member for Troyeville, Mr. Quinn, and published to the world. The final method of testing South Africa's indigency was thus made available to me. Mr. Quinn's speech was printed in extenso in the Cape Times of the 7th December, 1910; and on the same date that journal published a weighty leading article on the subject, which accepted Mr. Quinn's statistics as absolutely genuine and praised him 170 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA warmly for " the good service " he did the country in making them public, and for urging that " the " alarming growth of the prison population " should be checked. Further evidence of the accuracy of the hon. gentleman's figures is con- tained in the facts that the Union Government had neither reply to make nor remark to offer, and that every member of both Houses of Parlia- ment tacitly admitted their truth. The figures were supplied to Mr. Quinn by the Secretary of the Law Department, and they have never been disputed. They are remarkable in the fullest meaning of the term. The main facts may be summarised as follows (1) Since the war, in the Transvaal alone, ; 500,000 has been spent in new prison buildings, yet the prison accommodation is still inadequate. (2) The average daily prison population in the Union is 15,000. (3) The average daily prison population in the Transvaal is 6,637. (4) Of all the people within the Union one in every 366 is in prison each day of the year. (5) Of all the people within the Transvaal one 171 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA in every 245 is in prison each day of the year. (6) In England, the corresponding figure is one person in 1,600. (7) The Union spends ,2,145,000 on the ad- ministration of justice every ten months, and of this ,1,583,000 is spent on police and prisons. (8) The expenditure on Education for the same period is ,1,384,000. (9) Every child in South Africa costs the State 12 per annum to educate, every prisoner ,100 per annum to maintain. (10) During the year 1908-9, some 59,000 prisoners were housed in the Transvaal gaols alone, (n) The criminality of all South Africa is more than four times as great as the criminality of England. (12) The criminality of the Transvaal is nearly seven times as great as the criminality of England. (13) Crime in all parts of S. Africa is steadily and seriously increasing. (14) White juvenile crime is increasing more rapidly (especially in the Transvaal) than adult crime. 172 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA (15) The reason officially suggested for the larger increase of white juvenile crime is the absence of educational facilities afforded children of white people to become skilled workers, " whereby they are condemned to idleness and unemployment." (16) There are 200,000 white children now at school in South Africa. In present cir- cumstances, no adequate means exist to train more than a small fraction of them as skilled artisans or to give them any sort of real industrial efficiency. The skilled trades are thereby barred to them. The unskilled trades are monopolised by the Kaffirs. They seem predestined to indi- gency, indolence and crime. As Mr. Quinn remarked ; " Newspapers are not " numerous enough in South Africa to " give all these children jobs of selling " papers in the streets. What is to be- " come of them ? " The question rests unanswered. A defect in Mr. Quinn's disclosures that must be noted is their failure to separate the white and colored prison population. The Cape Times notices this failure but treats it as of no great 173 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA practical importance, and gravely warns the white South African that he cannot on thit account afford to " let things take their course." The fact appears to be that- while the negroes are to some extent responsible for the unfavourable figure that South African criminality presents in gross comparison with other countries, the whites are chiefly to blame. The increase of crime in recent years has not been specified in mathemati- cal terms, but it is admitted to be " deplorably " great " and to be due chiefly to an excessive proportional increase in crime among the juvenile white population. While the departmental records are silent on the point, there is a general consensus of opinion that crime among the natives is decreasing. (Vide Appendix A.) The natives, broadly speaking, are an extremely servile, duti- ful and law abiding class. Their presence among the white community is only suffered on condition that they work. Those amenable to the white man's legal discipline are workers every one, and in continuous employment. Crime may possibly be serious in the kraals, but in the kraals the white man's law does not hold sway, and the kraals do not contribute directly to the prison population of the country. The negroes who 174 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA work for and live among the whites are the best of their race, and the universal testimony of the greatest employers of black labor in South Africa is that the native worker is a remarkably good citizen. As bearing out this view the Cape Times explicitly refers South Africa's deplorable general criminality to the " indigent white prob- " lem," and to the absence of a proper system of industrial and technical education; and it specifically connects the untaught pupil with the prisoner. For the rest Mr. Quinn's figures tell their own story. Unemployment is the parent of idleness. Idleness breeds indigency. Indi- gency is both the father and mother of crime. In South Africa we have the vicious circle com- plete. The Indigency Commission tells us of an amount of permanent unemployment and idle- ness, the proportions of which it shrinks from specifying, but admits are " lamentably great." The criminal statistics carry the tale forward to the bounds of horror, then back to the creative agencies of crime. If crime in the Union had been relatively comparable with, although exceed- ing, crime in other countries, some ground would have been left to question still the persistency of South Africa's indigent conditions, because the 175 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA native population is large and wholesale crime does not spring out of indigency in a day or in a year. But here the ground of disputation is cut away from beneath our' feet. The criminality of South Africa is unparalleled in the civilised world. It has been too great for several years : its dimensions are now appalling and steadily in- creasing. And the worst form of crime, " juvenile " crime," shows the highest rate of increase. Public opinion in South Africa, as expressed in Parliament and the Press, attributes juvenile crime to the lack of a proper system of industrial education. But the explanation is insufficient. It is merely valuable to note, because it proves that the people begin to realise that enforced idleness both occasions and excuses crime. Men must live in spite of Talleyrand's ironical sug- gestion to the contrary, and if they cannot make a living honestly the major fault lies with the conditions, social or political, which drive them to certain ways of crime for the bread which they must get to live. One of these culpable con- ditions may well reside in South Africa's educa- tional hiatus, but a more important factor stares us in the face. The rough work of the country is all performed by native labor. The white 176 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA population has got into a fixed habit of leaning on the negro race. If there were no blacks in South Africa there would be sufficient permanent employment immediately available to support in comfort a million more whites than the country now possesses. But the blacks teem and their labor is cheap. They cannot be displaced from industry and their advance upon the avenues of skilled employment cannot be arrested. The country belongs to them of natural right, and so, too, the work of the country which they are fitted to perform. Their presence, their numbers, the cheapness of their labor, and their natural indis- putable right to work, all conspire to restrict within narrow and almost immutable limits the scope of white employment. The fact is that the white laboring population of South Africa largely exceeds the present industrial capacity of the country to absorb. Many thousands of whites could be spared to the benefit, in every sense, of the body politic. These thousands are superflu- ous units. They are a public burden and a national disgrace. In the Transvaal, as the prison records above quoted prove, there are no fewer than 59,000 criminals. Most of these are men and women who live by charity, by casual 177 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA employment, and by crime. Only the negroes among this dreadful herd can make sure of get- ting even casual employment. The white criminals are unskilled workers and " Kaffir "work" is not for them to do. Of skilled workers among the criminal population there is scarcely any trace : and that is natural, because skilled artisans are industrious of habit and they can make more money by honest effort than by crime. The rising generation of the white popu- lation in South Africa deserves the heartfelt pity of mankind. There are 200,000 white children at school in the Union to-day. The outside chances are that no more than 100,000 of these hapless innocents have a decent career before them. This estimate is, in my honest opinion, far too liberal, but I advance it to obviate any suspicion of exaggeration. And what is to be- come of the remainder? The hon. member for Troyeville does not know. The Government of the Union does not know. Parliament does not know. Meanwhile juvenile crime is increasing horribly and the prison population mounts apace. 178 VICTORIA FALLS CHAPTER XIII RHODESIA AND THE VICTORIA FALLS / T"^O reach the Zambesi one must journey 1,642 miles north from Kimberley, through Rho- desia, in a crawling railway train, running on a 3 ft. 6 inch gauge. The party with which I travelled was luxuriously catered for by the hos- pitality of the Union Government, but when we arrived at our destination we were fervently re- joiced. Everybody was train tired and incredibly dusty. Overnight we had traversed a long stretch of Rhodesian desert : the diurnal rain storm had disappointed us on the evening previous; the thermometer approached 100 deg. in the shade, and nobody had slept. We " landed " from the train weary, dishevelled, in spite of all our efforts to " furbish up," and 179 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA generally confessing an inclination to be cynical. The truth is, Rhodesia failed to approach our expectations. We had been promised that we should see a country so rich, so originally lovely, and so variously beautiful, that we should fall out of love with our own land and make prompt tender of our allegiance and our strayed affections to this new Dark Lady of the Torrid Zone. The event did little except seal our faith in the superior beauties and bounties of Australia. From Kimberley to Bulawayo we travelled across a boundless table land, a treeless plain, hardly broken by a single hill or kopje, that can surely have no rival for monotony of scenery the wide world over. Of running rivers we saw no sign : of creeks there were a few, but nearly all were dry. The plain was fairly well grassed (the rainy season had commenced), and widely clothed with green, but destitute of shelter for stock and unspeakably desolate, being swept night and day with winds that sough and search over the limit- less expanse, tear the soil from under the very roots of the grasses and scatter blinding clouds of dust upon the world. Now and then, at far flung intervals, we passed white men's villages, and we saw a white face or two : but they looked 1 80 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA sadly out of place, and only served to emphasise the message of the teeming Kaffir kraals " South " Africa belongs to the blacks." We saw many herds of cattle, many flocks of goats. They were all of inferior type, small, sun- hardened beasties, ill-conditioned and unkempt. The houses we encountered were wretched little iron-roofed hovels pity the sturdy pioneers who dwell in them ! and no hint or trace of cultiva- tion, save of mealie crops by native farmers, did we meet with. A poor, ill watered, hungry country it appeared to us : rich in nought save what stands involved within the signification of that blessed word " potentialities." The Cana- dian Minister, M. Lemieux, voiced the opinion of us all when he said " I wonder that any " white man can be found to leave his own " country to settle in such a dour, unlovely "wilderness." Later on we came to trees and hills. But the hills were bleak and bare, and the trees thin, scrubby, stunted rubbish, fit, per- haps, to burn and elsewise useless. True enough, as we steamed into the heart of Africa, the trees acquired a more imposing stature, and their foliage assumed many gaudy hues, giving the landscape an opulent autumnal tone : but they 181 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA spoke nearly always of a hard struggle with grudging nature, and the biggest timber (the biggest trees are pigmies to Australian gums) are dubbed in sinister fashion " fever trees," be- cause they grow where fever flourishes. They grow in places that are too many. Bean trees and mimosa thorns (a multitude of thinly sprinkled shrubs that look like starved little quinces and crab apples) : all the trees and shrubs planted far apart as in a park such is the South African bush. The country seems incapable of supporting more than an apparition of vegetable life. They say that it is an ideal land for horses and cattle. We saw no proof of it, though we saw the country at its utmost best, and everywhere we heard melancholy tales of rinderpest, East Coast fever, and other dreadful stock diseases. I would rather have ten acres of Australian land than ten times as many square miles of such " ideal " cattle country. I admit that on the ground grow myriads of flaunting lilies and tubers (some of the blooms are exquisitely beautiful), and orchids, too : but botanists are not the best settlers, and the farmer needs more than spiritual nourish- ment, also his stock. Cattle do not thrive on 182 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA tiger lilies, and it is poor comfort to overlook a wilderness of blooms when one's stock is famish- ing for homely grass or being ravaged by the rinderpest. And the country is destitute of game. Once it was the home of millions of deer, eland, springbok, and other fauna. But the rinderpest came and stamped the seal of death and desolation over all the land, and now the hunter must ride a hundred miles to find a single opportunity to use his rifle. For these and other reasons we reached the Falls station not less dispirited than we were dusty. We found a scattered cottage hotel, facing a splendid gorge that is spanned with one of the largest suspension bridges in the world, a veritable triumph of engineering craft a single arch of chilled steel flung 600 feet across a chasm 140 yards deep. The sight was encouraging. We plucked up our dashed energies, and without waiting for dinner, hurried to see what Sir Gilbert Parker called "The Eighth Wonder of the World," boasting his inability to describe it in more definitive terminology. Ten minutes later we halted of a sudden, stricken dumb and spell- bound, on the verge of a stupendous cliff. Con- ceive a cleft hacked by colossal forces out of the 183 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA solid rock surface of the table land, a sheer 400 feet in depth, a mile and a quarter long, 500 feet across : and .conceive, tumbling over the entire extent of one face edge of this gigantic chasm, the massed waters of one of the largest and noblest rivers known to man. The Kaffirs alone, out of all the people who have been privileged to see this incomparable marvel, have been in- spired with sufficient poetry and feeling to supply it with a fittingly poetic name. The English have styled it the Victoria Falls. The Kaffirs call it " Mosi-oa-tunya " The Smoke that Sounds. The waters dash in great broken volumes into the abyss with a tumultuous roar that can be heard for fully sixteen miles. The " Great Fall " is 573 yards broad. The " Leap- " ing Water " is 30 yards wide. Rainbow Fall has a breadth of 200 feet. The Eastern Cataract measures 600 yards across its foaming surface. These are the principal cascades : but between them gush an innumerable host of smaller founts that foam and leap into the void in slender crystal threads, and whose waters fall athwart the lus- trous green and grey and purple facets of the cliff in shining, streaming bandoliers that stab the shadows of the chasm with a thousand needle 184 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA points of frosted light before they finally dissolve in multi-colored mist clouds. The waters fall to rise again in the shape of inverted pyramids of spray : which often mount to the dizzy height of full 3,000 feet a welter of wondrous vapor clouds that overhang the valley night and day in in great white palls and pillars of moving, drift- ing smoke The Smoke that Sounds. As the sunlight strikes along the spray, a score of splendid rainbows flash and form, and melt and form again, to fill the eye with loveliness, the mind with dazzled wonderment. The spray, in- deed, is the most marvellous of all the marvels clustered there. It rises so gently, so slowly, yet so irresistibly. As one watches its ascent, the breathless thought says instant after instant, " Now," and the eye expects its fall. But ever it surges upwards, upwards, till it melts into the blue, and only the iridescent glamor of the rain- bows tell that it is climbing still. The cliff edge that confronts the falls is always garlanded with thin resurgent rain. For twice ten thousand years (or as many centuries, may be) the spray from the massed cataracts has been falling over all the countryside in a steady drench of clear, fine, scintillating jewelled rain, that has fostered 185 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA under the tropic sun a growth as luxuriant as the jungles of Arabian dreams. There are trees too large to measure readily, too old to contemplate without a sentiment of reverence : weird, twisted shapes of trees that gloom and glimmer through the hot, dank mist, and drip and drip eternally. Under foot are streaming lawns, rank with sodden herbage, star strewn with thousands of flame- colored lilies and ferns and orchids manifold. The place is under a perpetual shade the shadow of the spray. It reeks with scented damp, and all its glades and dells and hollows are charged with gorgeous mystery. It is called the Rain Forest, but really it is the home and nursery of the rainbow, for all the rainbows issue from its splashing halls, and thither they return when the sun sets or the moon wanes, and " the " smoke that sounds " fades out of sight and sonorously sleeps. One night we saw a company of lunar rainbows float across the gorge, and the beauty of the scene was such that no one cared or dared to speak, and our homeward walk was silent. Men say of the Niagara Falls a natural wonder, unsurpassably magnificent and grand. Contrasted with " The Smoke that Sounds," Niagara is as a cup of beauty thrown into a well. 1 86 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA Its volume of falling water may be seasonally greater, but in all else it is smaller and less awfully beautiful than Mosi-oa-Tunya : nor need the Smoke that Sounds shrink from the compari- son of volume all the year, for when the Zambesi is at full, the torrent that is poured into the long, deep boiling pot of the abyss is greater than the greatest engineers can reckon easily, and at the river's very lowest, it is capable of generating power equivalent, in economic terms, to the mus- cular vigor of 300,00x3 horses. Already there is a talk of harnessing the Falls to human uses, and a public company has been formed to carry elec- tric current from Victoria to Johannesburg (more than 700 miles), to light the city, move the trams, and run the gold mines of the Rand. I rejoice to have seen the Falls before these vandals of commerce have commenced their work. One morning, after an early breakfast, we traversed the Zambesi a short distance above the suspension bridge, intent upon viewing the Falls from the side of the leaping water. The cross- ing was effected in a small flotilla of canoes, manned by half a score of ebony paddlers. We found the river at this point only in pools, yet never really shallow, and, spread as it is, over a THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA breadth of nearly i mile, some faint notion can be gleaned of the enormous body of water that it carries to the cliff. Our voyage had the merit of a thrilling novelty. When half across stream, we encountered a current ten times stronger than the swift prevailing drift. For a few moments the dusky oarsmen struggled like Titans with the flow, and made gallant headway too : but on a sudden the headman gave a cry, the canoes spun round as on a magic pivot, and then off we flew like hawks upon the wing, down a mile long foaming waste of rapids, towards the roaring Falls. On each side of the canoes, frowning scarps and crags of rock raised their black heads every moment hungrily upon the flying craft. Our lives hung vitally upon the steersmen's nerve. One false movement, one accidental paddle dip, one slip or unintended turn of wrist, and no human power could have saved us from being swirled a lot of helpless flotsam down the pass, and tossed at last into the Boiling Pot or the Devil's Caldron. But no such accidents occurred. The dusky paddlers plied their blades with as much stolid indifference as though they were paddling in a pond, and all the steersmen showed a skill 1 88 so superbly perfect and unconscious, that for very shame we concealed the excitement that con- sumed us, and endeavoured to look as though we had spent our youth shooting rapids above falls at least 1,000 feet in depth. Mr. Fisher, of the whole party, succeeded best, but then he is a Scotsman, and his nerves are made of flint. When some 50 yards from the face of the cliff, the native oarsmen cleverly manoeuvred the canoes out of the main current into a patch of smooth backwash, under the lee of a little island. Here we landed at the same spot where David Livingstone landed when he discovered the Falls, in the year 1855, and we paid a visit of homage to the great tree whereon he carved the initials of his name. Livingstone was only once in his life guilty of such vanity, as he tells us in his ' Travels in South Africa " : he has for his apologist the grandest natural marvel that the world contains. From the cliffs of Livingstone Island, we looked steeply down into the gorge, and obtained an unbroken view of more than a mile of sparkling, tumbling water, falling sheer over the knife edges of that marvellous basalt precipice into an abyss which transcends in gloom and dark, majestic horror the wildest 189 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA dream of gloom and beauty that Dante ever dreamed. Words are utterly inadequate to de- pict the awful splendour of that spectacle and its effect upon the mind-. The soul shrivels while one stands at gaze, and one's whole consciousness becomes oppressed and overpowered with a sense of man's appalling insignificance before forces so immeasurably impetuous and vast. Here we moved and breathed among a welter of gaudy rainbows. Every rock and crag shone with a living fire of bright metallic lights, golds and lustrous greens predominating : and the tortured milk white spray rose before our faces in immense masses of vapor, spouting to the highest sky in geyser shoots of whipping, driving spindrift, that seemed to be stirred and separated and hurled upwards from the boiling caldron by the furious efforts of a multitude of unseen witches. Peering down into the cavern darkness of the chasm we saw all the waters of the river collect and concentrate into one mighty whirlpool of boiling foam, thence dash with vertiginous rapidity through a single narrow gap and pour in a mad ruthless torrent down the rapids of the gorge into the 4O-mile long canon of the Pass, making billows in their passage fifty feet and 190 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA more in height, and flinging great jets of stinging spray against the dark walls of the steep. Never was there a more silent party. Sometimes we ex- changed timid, sympathetic glances, but we were bereft of the capacity to speak. Mr. Fisher for- got his politics : most of us forgot the world. We all felt very small and strange and weak. To depart was a profound relief. 191 CHAPTER XIV THE MATOPPOS AND RHODES's GRAVE A T about noon on the i7th November, I reached Buluwayo from " the Falls," and at once transhipped from the train into motor car, to pay a visit to the grave of the father of Rhodesia. This proved to be one of the most interesting incidents of a long and intensely in- teresting journey. Between Buluwayo and the Matoppo Hills lies a 30 mile tract of unusually picturesque and fertile veld, broken with tower- ing stony kopjes and interspersed with many steep banked spruits and flowing streams. After a swift ride of an hour, I came upon the late Cecil Rhodes's famous irrigation farm, a lovely oasis situated in a deep hollow among the hills, where several hundred acres have been reclaimed from 192 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the wilderness and converted by the uses of irri- gation into one of the most beautiful and pros- perous farms in Africa. Here a branch of the river has been dammed back for a distance of about two miles by a huge stone weir a fine bit of engineering work and a reservoir has been thus constructed providing more than sufficient water at all seasons of the year to irrigate 1,000 acres. The farm is now occupied by an expert irrigationist, a tenant of the Rhodes' estate, and so kindly does the soil respond to his efforts that he is at the same time building up a fortune and paying a rent high enough to cover the interest charges on the works, and to provide a large part of the maintenance endowment on the Matoppo Park Rhodes's last splendid gift to the people of Rhodesia. Other objects of interest examined were the head kraals of the late celebrated paramount Kaffir chief, Lobengula, and the far-famed Indaba tree, under which that crafty old savage slaughtered remorselessly some 100 rebel chief- tains whom he had induced to meet him in coun- cil, by treacherously promising to consider and redress their grievances. Soon afterwards I entered the private territory of the Rhodes estate, 193 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA and was confronted with visual evidence of the vast landed wealth which in his lifetime that great Englishman had owned. One may stand to-day on a certain kopje in the heart of the Matoppos, and look around for thirty miles in all directions, and still not see the bounds of Rhodes's former holding. Every foot of that country once was his, and his too was all the huge treasure of agricultural and mineral wealth that it contains. During my whole stay in Africa, the name of Rhodes, lovingly and rever- ently spoken, met me at every turn. Almost every town and city that I visited boasts some grand piece of sculptured art or other striking public memorial to record his genius and his generosity. His works are everywhere in evidence, and nearly all are imperishable monu- ments. Here is a stretching province added to the possessions of the Empire : there a great road or bridge or town or railway built out of his private purse : there again some public institution magnificently and perpetually endowed by him. The man was big in every sense of the term. He took a world's view of everything. He amassed stupendous fortunes. He employed his wealth in the immediate service of the Empire, in the 194 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ultimate service of humanity. His memory is simply worshipped by all the British people in South Africa. The Boers pay him the compli- ment of an unbroken Sphinx-like silence they owe it to him that they are Britons now. Such at least is the belief. His tomb is worthy of a man whose life was spent thinking great thoughts and putting into practice the pursuit and realisation of magnificent ideals. Many years ago, when roaming one day with a companion through the Matoppos, Rhodes discovered a splendid granite tor that soared above the neighbouring crags and kopjes, that commanded a breathless panoramic view of hill and veld in all directions, and whose smooth, rounded, weather-worn summit was topped with four great oval granite boulders, separated each from the other by some little space, and strangely pointing north, south, east and west, like the barred ends of a four square needle magnet made of stone. Climbing to the crest of this wonderful peak, Rhodes turned from a long unhurried contempla- tion of the landscape, to his friend. " I shall be " buried here," he said. His grave rests in the central space between the compass boulders. The tomb has been hollowed from the solid 195 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA stone : its lowly surface is almost level with the granite surface of the mound. No headstone marks the spot, nought but a recumbent sheet of bronze, embedded athwart the rock, and inscribed with these simple words " Here lie the remains " of Cecil John Rhodes." This is a world of diverse views and con- trary opinions. To one of my companions the sight of Rhodes's grave brought cynical reflections, and evoked from him this rather mordant comment, " The vanity of the man ! " Others of the party were almost painfully affected with the simplicity, the majesty and the solitary aloofness of spirit which seemed to have inspired the conception of such a grave. I re- membered that it had been Rhodes's custom for years before his end, whenever he was worried by the sordid little things of life, or whenever he wished to be alone to give freer scope to the work- ings of his imperial mind, to retire unattended to the witching and mysterious solitude of the hill where now he lies in death. On that lonely rock he planned the conquest and acquisition of a ter- ritory nearly 450,000 square miles in extent. On that spot he formulated schemes and policies whose fruition subsequently shook the world. 196 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA On that spot he dreamed dreams as vast and romantic as ever fired the imagination of a Caesar or an Alexander, and there at last he made his will which gave parks to the people, provinces to the nation, and perpetual education bequests to the whole British speaking race. None other than Rhodes should sleep on the World's View Hill. None other ever shall, although he gave it as a cemetery to South Africa, and he did not declare any wish to sleep alone. Happily, the people have decided that question for good and all, and have thus proved beyond dispute their veneration of his greatness. It is, I think, the most remotely silent place that I have ever visited, the most seriously thought-inspiring, the most sombre, forbidding and desolately grand. While one stands gazing at the tomb, scores of lizards, blue, green and grey, crawl from the crevices among the rocks, and steal like brilliant phantom streaks across the tor. They are almost fearless of intruders, but they make no sound. Sometimes the distant shrilling of cicadae wounds the stillness with a faint yet piercing dagger-thrust of song. But soon and always the eternal hush returns, and silence reigns supreme again. What must this place of isolated 197 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA gloom be like at night, when in the tropic noon- tide blaze it spreads a pall of gentle horror on the sensibilities at night, when the lions that teem among these pathless hills, roam abroad in search of prey, and bend their prowling steps, perhaps, across the simple, moveless tomb of the maker of a nation ? Involuntarily, a quatrain of Omar, the Persian, swims into recollection " They say the lion and the lizard keep The court where Jamsheyd gloried and drank deep. And Balaam, that great hunter the wild ass Stamps o'er his head, yet cannot break his sleep." Certainly the lion and the lizard keep nightly watch by Cecil Rhodes's grave. The world is full of great tombs, great and awe-inspiring : but there is neither pyramid, nor tomb, nor monu- ment in all the world which can equal that of Rhodes's sleeping place in simplicity and majesty. I think its grandeur somewhat over- tops the bigness of the man who chose it for his final home. But if he showed vanity in his selec- tion, he showed courage too, and one must re- member that he owned the Hill. 198 CHAPTER XV AFRIKANDER LITERATURE AND LITERACY f\P all the dominions of the British Empire, South Africa has had the most varied and romantic history. From north to south, from east to west, the country is dotted with monuments to commemorate battles, treaties and other critical events. Not once, but many times, the land has been drenched in blood. For more than three centuries various races have been con- tending at intervals for its possession, and the limitless veld is strewn with a myriad graves, each marked with a little white cross or headstone, each containing the dust of a brave man slain with his rifle in his hand fighting for a cause. South Africa, moreover, is a land of extraordinary scenic splendor, of fascination and of mystery. 199 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA In no other part of the world are there to be found vaster stretches of high tableland so weirdly broken and relieved with strange shaped hills, deep gorges and dongas, and dark inacces- sible ravines. There are taller mountains else- where, but none more bold and starkly menacing in form : none that fling out such endless succes- sions of jagged, frowning spurs : none that offer a more powerful appeal to the imagination. The most experienced traveller meets startling surprises in South Africa at every turn. The country has been built on a fashion peculiar to it- self. The veld is without a foreign prototype. It resembles nothing so much as the flat roof of a mighty battlemented Gothic castle pushed sheer upward into the blue on tier on tier of pre- cipitous Cyclopean rocks, and supported and de- fended from the lower world by a multitude of giant flying buttresses each rock a straight and lofty mountain, each buttress a naked mountain spur incomparably bleak, magnificent and stern. The air has a quality of clarity that makes even the limpid brightness of the Australian atmos- phere seem like mist. The sunsets surpass in gorgeousness and brazen glory the sunsets of all other lands : and the vivid coloring of the 200 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " bush," the dour scarlet starred monotone of the veld, are facts and contrasts that strike like shafts of fire into the fancy. Inexorably the thought arises in the traveller's mind, " Here is a country " to compel into existence an original and peer- " less literature, to breed a race of poets, with a " brand new message for mankind." He merely prepares for himself another astonishment. This wonderful land is practically destitute of an indigenous literature : it has almost absolutely failed to inspire its own children. Olive Schreiner has written " The Story of a South " African Farm." Sir Percy Fitzgerald has written " Jock of the Bushveld." The prose achievements of South Africa that are worthy of note very nearly begin and end with those two books. The country is equally tongue-tied in poetry. One hears of a few English versifiers, and reads their songs only to be sharply dis- appointed. The Dutch Afrikanders have no prose literature deserving of the name at all, and but one singer, Mr. Jan Celliers, has ever reached a reputation. The Taal has no grammar. It is a wretched patois, merely the slang of half a dozen languages jumbled together. That Mr. Jan Celliers is acclaimed a poet at all, confining 201 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA himself to such a medium, is remarkable : yet even his warmest admirers admit that his voice is " still and soft," and his range narrow. The lamentable failure of the Dutch to give adequate literary expression to the spirit of their country after so many centuries and generations of possession, seems to proclaim them mentally a dull and torpid race. They have no folk songs, no sagas. The brave deeds of their forefathers, their own stirring achievements by forest, flood and field, have left them tuneless and tongue- tied. They sing no heroes, though their heroes number in scores : they utterly neglect their dead. The Zulus are of a more melodious and sprightly turn of mind. The Zulus have a multitude of songs, stories and traditions. Almost every war- rior is also a minstrel, and his mind teems with sweet and splendid memories, which burst forth in a sonorous and melodious recital whenever he is strongly moved. When the typical Boer is moved he is even more incapable of song than when he is still. He is first and last a man of vigorous action and profound repose. When the call for action comes, his brain operates briskly enough, and he displays an astonishing ingenuity and fertility of resource, but always on the physi- 202 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA cal plane. When the need of action passes, he sinks cheerfully into a condition of ox-like sloth. He looks upon all forms of effort not directed towards the clothing of his body and the filling of his belly, as wasteful and contemptible. He lives to eat and drink, and to procreate his species : and he is the most indolent man on earth. Many of his finest deeds have been in- spired by his incurable natural laziness. It has been of late the fashion to attribute the " great trek " and the subsequent Boer dis- covery, seizure and occupation of the Transvaal, wholly to the Dutchman's admirable independ- ence of character, and his magnificent love of liberty. Nothing could be more absurd. The Boer, in all likelihood, would never have trekked from Cape Colony if it had not been for the abolition of slavery. The Emancipation of 1834 threw the industrial motive power of the country out of gear. The Boer had up to that date never done a stroke of work which he could avoid. His slaves did everything. Deprived of his slaves, he awoke from his lethargy and, scared in his in- most being at the horrid thought of work, he be- came a hero, and trekked into the unknown wild beyond the Vaal not half so much in order to 203 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA escape British rule as to discover lands where he might resume his old indolent habits, and live idly on the proceeds of forced Kaffir labor. Slavery in name no longer exists, of course, but slavery in deed continues on the veld, and the back veld farmer boasts that he can manage the " m g er " perfectly, if let alone. And indeed he does with the rifle and the sjambok. Take any Boer farmer, however poor, and examine his hands. They are soft as any woman's : and, if washed, quite as white. Examine his mind. If literate, he will confess having read one book the Bible or, rather, a part of it the Old Testament. But one in every five Boers can neither read nor write. Educa- tion is now compulsory in the Transvaal : it has never been compulsory elsewhere in South Africa, and is not yet. In consequence, ignor- ance, illiteracy and dulness pervade the land. The penultimate census (taken in 1904) showed 434,000 literate whites of all ages in the Cape and 134,000 who could not tell one letter of the alpha- bet from another this in the most populous, cul- tured and progressive province of the Union. In the light of this discreditable fact, one's wonder at the dearth of an indigenous South African 204 literature diminishes, and one gains a clearer understanding why both the British and the better educated Dutch attach so tremendous an import- ance to the language and education problem which is at this moment still unsettled (December 14, 1912), and is still engrossing the attention of all classes of the body politic. 205 CHAPTER XVI MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE A LMOST every town of note in South Africa supports the burden of an immense public debt. Here are a few instances White Debt Town. Population. Debt. Per head. Port Elizabeth - 21,277 766,032 36 Pretoria - 21,000 1,000,000 47 Durban - 30,000 2,540,000 84 Capetown - 60,000 2,926,950 48 Bloemfontein - 12,000 972,977 81 Pietermaritzberg 11,000 1,000,000 62 East London - 13,000 380,000 29 When one learns that in nearly every instance there are no ratepayers amongst the colored population, and the whites have to carry the entire 206 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA burden unassisted, the wonder arises that these towns have steered clear of the insolvency court. Yet although the average rate is fairly high it amounts to about 2^d. in the pound of capital valuation no complaints are heard, the towns are all paying their way, and many of them pos- sess large sinking funds, and have begun to re- deem their debts. How do they do it? The answer is simple they are more fortunately situated than appears, and manage their affairs on up-to-date lines. Almost every municipality in the Union is a great trading corporation, own- ing and controlling most of the public utilities in its domain. In no other British speaking country has municipal socialism been carried to such lengths. With few exceptions, the South African municipalities own and manage the tramways, lighting, water supply, drainage and sewerage, food, produce and live stock markets, baths, abat- toirs, laundries, wash houses, cemeteries, parks, libraries, museums and amusements of the towns : and some have their own bakeries and telephones. In each of these trades the municipal authorities enjoy monopolistic privileges, and permit no competition. The enterprises in their control are, generally speaking, conducted by highly 207 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA qualified and highly paid experts, and managed according to the soundest economic principles. Most of them return handsome yearly profits. To cite Durban as an illustration, the trading concerns of the town have yielded during several years past a net trade profit exceeding 90,000 a sum which, if capitalised at 4 per cent., would almost liquidate the entire public debt. Pre- toria's total annual revenue is ,190,000. Of that amount only ^48,000 is raised by rates the bulk of the balance comes from the municipal trading enterprises of the city. Capetown has an annual revenue from all sources of some ,536,000: the rates merely account for ,151,000. Johannesburg's annual income is approximately .709,000, and no more than half that sum comes from the rates the balance represents trading profits and the proceeds of municipal land rents. The financial position of the South African municipalities is further fortified by the fact that they nearly all own extensive areas of town land. These areas commonages they are called usually lie immediately beyond and surrounding the range of habitation. Some municipalities measure their commonages by hundreds, others 208 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA by thousands of acres. The methods of dealing with such lands vary in instances, but are gener- ally similar. Part is fenced and leased to individual citizens : the balance is held open and unfenced as a common pasture for the use of the ratepayers, each ratepayer having the right to graze thereon a certain number of live stock. Such rights, however, are in no sense permanent, for the municipality is empowered, whenever it chooses, to sell the freehold of any portion of the commonage lands. As the towns increase in population, commonage sales continually take place, and the towns increase in size at the ex- pense of a corresponding shrinkage in the municipal commonage area. Wisely governed towns apply the proceeds of their land sales to the reduction of their public debts, but there are a few which treat the money as ordinary revenue, and their charters are so loosely framed that there is no means of stopping the stupid practice of thus eating up their capital. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of South African municipal enterprise consists in the pre- dilection everywhere exhibited for the exploita- tion of advanced ideas. All the municipalities are keenly progressive, and they vie with each 209 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA other in improving and beautifying the towns. They have no use for antique services. They are constantly striving, not merely to keep abreast with, but to get ahead of the times. Thus gas is almost unknown in South Africa. Nearly every large town is lighted exclusively with elec- tricity, and the tramways have electricity for their motive power. The municipal tram are exceed- ingly comfortable and convenient, and they are all run in sections. The sectional fares are usually 3d. The fares seem dear to the casual visitor, but one has to remember that they reflect the condition of high priced living which obtains universally in a country which has whole provinces wherein copper currency is almost non-existent, and wherein the " tickie," or three- penny bit is the lowest coin in circulation. The rates charged by the municipalities for lighting range from 6d. to I/- per unit, and for power from id. to 5d. per unit. What little manufac- turing is done in South Africa is effected with the aid of electric power. The charges for light- ing and power are high, but so are the charges for everything else in the sub-continent, and that the rates in question are not popularly regarded as excessive is shown by the fact that there is an 210 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA entire absence of any agitation for their reduc- tion. On the whole, the South African municipalities may truthfully claim to manage their affairs in a fashion that compares favorably with any other land, and which demonstrates a high capacity for municipal government. Most of the big towns are well built, splendidly lighted, well drained and sewered, and handsomely equipped with public parks, gardens, libraries, baths, museums, and transit facilities. The experiment of collec- tive ownership and control of civic utilities, wherever it has been tried, has proved such a convincing economic success that municipal Socialism is now a fixed national establishment, and the whole bearing of public opinion is towards its indefinite expansion. The municipal bakery is one of the latest expressions of the economic trend of thought of this essentially aristocratic community. One town not long ago made the essay, and with such encouraging re- sults, that several others are preparing now to follow suit. Already a municipal dairy has been mooted as the next step to be taken, and authori- tative advocates of the municipalisation of all the agencies of food production and distribution are to be found in every centre of population. 211 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA The Australian Labor party might advan- tageously ponder these South African develop- ments. The average Australian Laborite de- ludes himself of custom with the flattering notion that to Labor exclusively belongs all the credit of the various movements towards economy in government and social betterment, through col- lective effort which have taken place during the last half century. South Africa is a standing proof to the contrary. That country has never yet had any room for a Labor party. It is governed by wealth. Its ideals are pertinaciously aristocratic, and the masses of the people are bigoted Tories. The people, however, although Conservative in most directions, almost beyond relief, are as sensitive to the demands of their pockets as the keenest Radicals alive. When their public utilities were managed by private enterprise, they found themselves so ruthlessly exploited that, in despair, they sanctioned the ex- periment of municipal control. It turned out so well that the whole community was speedily con- verted to the new idea, and thus the world has been afforded the anomalous and amusing spectacle of a purely capitalistic State outdistanc- ing in Socialism the Socialists themselves. 212 CHAPTER XVII SOCIAL NOTES HT^HE Spanish people have a saying which is very widely believed (justly or unjustly) to express one of their least admirable national characteristics. " Manana," is the word. It typifies the Latin spirit of procrastination. The people of South Africa continually use a phrase of not dissimilar significance. " Wacht- " een-beetje " is ever on their lips. They pro- nounce it " vok-kun-beachy." It is taken from the Taal and means " Wait a bit." There is a queer little native bird which ranges over the veld of Transvaal and Natal and has the queerest flight in the world. It rejoices in a very long and most pretentious tail. This bird flies leisurely for a few yards, then rests upon its outspread 213 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA wings, and sinks slowly towards the ground : but just when its fall to earth would appear inevit- able, it flutters its wings and mounts once more into the blue, only to repeat the manoeuvre of resting and sinking. Its progress is a series of indolent flops, and to watch its flight is to be im- pressed with the idea that the bird is the very laziest of all the feathered species known to man. The Boers call it the Wacht-een-beetje bird. The pretty little creature ought to be a part and parcel of the Afrikanders' coat of arms. Wacht-een-beetje is the spirit of South Africa. It pervades the continent. It permeates the atmosphere. It is the protest of the soil against the husbandmen. It is the protest of the sun against exertion. ' We have always to-morrow," is the national proverb of the Boers. But climate is not more than partially accountable for the somnolent and easy-going manners of the white Afrikander. The root cause is closely associated with the omnipresent servile Kaffir. The negro is naturally lazy, but there are so many of him that even though he idles nine-tenths of his day, he is able to do all the work of the white race with a margin to spare. The white man need not work at all except as an overseer, and, to do him bare 214 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA justice, he rarely does. He lives like the lotus eater of the legend. All his days are trances. He dreams and dreams. The rising generation deserves the pity of mankind. It is being brought up cradled in a luxury that physically debilitates and morally corrodes. The white child in its swaddling clothes is taught to lean upon the Kaffir and disdain his post. As soon as a babe is born to a white family, a negro boy or girl is pro- cured to be the infant's special playmate, servant and slave. The pair grow up together. The white child is the king, the black is the white child's serf and vassal. Most white children born in South Africa acquire incurable habits of pride and indolence before they reach their teens. It is a common thing to see young boys and slips of girls treating the natives like dogs. By turns they are brutal and affectionate to their black attendants. Their manners are haughty and over- bearing. They hold themselves like princes and princesses of the old-time feudal world. During my visit to Bulawayo I was the guest of an Australian lady who had married an Afrikander Englishman. One morning she took me for a drive, promising mysteriously to show me a sight that would convince me at one blow of the impas- 215 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA sable chasm which separates Africa from the democratic dominions of the Empire. She drove me into the town, and presently drew up opposite the gates of a building that was obviously a public school. I plied her with questions, but she would not be drawn. I must wait and discover the phenomenon for myself. The hour was early, but very soon the school bell began a-ringing lazily. The summons did not lack response. Within a few moments, numbers of neatly dressed white children came trickling from all directions towards the gates. Behind each child stalked a burly Kaffir, carrying the urchin's books and luncheon bag ! The first day I landed in South Africa I wit- nessed a small incident that will tell its own story. Strolling through the city of Durban in the early morning, I saw a great hulking Kaffir carry a bundle of papers to the door of a news agency, where a little white boy, about 10 years of age, was waiting to receive them. The Kaffir very respectfully placed the bundle on the steps at the child's feet, and moved away. He was immediately recalled, and most imperiously. " You cheeky devil," shrilled the child. " How " dare you leave the papers there. Take the 216 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " bundle into the shop at once, and untie it." The Kaffir silently and humbly obeyed. " Now sort the papers," ordered the child. Again the Kaffir obeyed. When his task was completed, the little boy contemptuously pointed to the door. " Get out ! " he said. The Kaffir inclined reverently, and backed out of the shop, as though taking leave of royalty. The child did not even smile. The sneer on his face was fixed. Mr. Fisher, the Prime Minister of Australia, paid a visit to an old Scottish " towney " who had settled down in Kimberley. His friend had a garden, of which he was extremely proud. He took Mr. Fisher to see it, and while the pair strolled along one of the paths they observed a broken border that seemed to call for prompt attention. The Afrikander said to his son a youngster, who stood near " Jack, my lad, fetch " me a spade, will you ? " The lad turned slowly on his heel and shouted insolently to a distant Kaffir, " Boy, fetch the boss a spade ! " Mr. Fisher glanced at his friend inquiringly. The Afrikander shrugged his shoulders. " It is " not Jack's fault," he murmured apologetically. " I would be wrong to reprove him. It is the " universal custom of the country." 217 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA The white must do no work. It is an iron social law. It is a law that means ultimate advancement to the Kaffirs, but that bodes de- generation to the whites, and, if not subverted, crass industrial inefficiency. Already the white Afrikander has lost all sense of the dignity of labor. Manual effort of any sort is a horrible thing, a disgusting, almost a nauseating thing. It is for the native to do. It is " Kaffir's work." The English language faints, exhausted in its powers of expressing infamy, when that phrase is uttered, " Kaffir's work." The white people of South Africa are hospit- able to a degree that very nearly exceeds the bounds of common sense. The Boers make hos- pitality a part of their religion. On the veld every white traveller is welcomed to the farmer's homestead as though he were a dear and long lost friend. He may stay as long as he pleases. He is the " nephew " of the host : and the Boer is his " uncle," the Boer's wife his " aunt." In the cities and towns some distinction in the visitor is demanded, but the claim once made good, the Afrikander's hospitality is limited only by his bank account. The gold and diamond magnates set the pace. In Kimberley, the principal hotel 218 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA is owned by the De Beers Company. It is main- tained on a scale of lavish magnificence that has not even a nodding acquaintanceship with divi- dends. The hotel, in fact, is kept but for one purpose, to entertain the friends of the Company who visit Kimberley from overseas. No sooner does any foreign visitor arrive in South Africa than he is handed a telegram which invites him to Kimberley as the Company's honored guest. In Johannesburg, the Rand lords entertain the elect like princes. When preparing a dinner party they fix the menu and cable it to London, whence the feast is transferred bodily by steam- ship and train to be eaten on the Rand. In almost all the large population centres of South Africa, the " rational Sunday " is the rule. In Pietersburg, the headquarters of the Calvinis- tic Dutch, and a few other purely Boer towns, Sunday is the " Sabbath," and a day of sour and Puritanical gloom. But in Johannesburg and elsewhere, Sunday is the day of rational amuse- ment, rest, and recreation. Business stops, but every other form of active life proceeds. Cricket and football matches are played in all the public pleasure grounds, which thousands of spectators pay to see : the volunteers and militia 219 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA drill and manoeuvre in the halls and on the parade reserves, and the whole populace gives itself up to open air enjoyment, sight seeing and sport. Yet the churches are filled and the Sunday Schools well attended. The social life of the people is wonderfully free and easy. Women are everywhere largely outnumbered by men. The proportions of the sexes throughout the Union are, broadly speak- ing, as 100 men to 86 women. Women, there- fore, occupy a position of exceptional advantage. They are courted and sought after as in no other country in the world. They are wanted every- where as wives. There are no female white domestic servants in South Africa. All house work is done by natives : and few white house wives are so poor (even the wives of artisans) that they do not keep two or more black servants. The daily life of the average Afri- kander women is a dream of indolence and effort- less repose. They seldom need to lift a finger for themselves. The native saves them from all the severer and meaner forms of exertion, and the diligent attention of their husbands is secured by the fact that thousands of mateless bachelors roam abroad seeking whom they may devour. 220 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA Large families are rare except among the Boers. The Afrikander woman of British origin customarily shirks the duties of maternity. She prefers to be a butterfly, and her circumstances are such that she is able to be a law unto herself. Women of the upper classes are usually fairly well educated. They read vast quantities of novels. Literature, indeed, is their only resource for most of their day against the demons of ennui. They must either read, or sleep, or yawn them- selves into a state of boredom. They claim and enjoy a licence unknown save in England's " smartest sets." Their manners are languid, arrogant, and perhaps a little bold. They smoke cigarettes and, not a few of them, cigars. A sort of gracefully subdued eroticism is in general cult. Their talk is broad, exciting and subtly challenging. They diffuse an atmosphere of sex. Women of the lower class are less irritating and less interesting. As a rule their mental re- sources are scanty. They sink easily into apathy and sloth. They are " ladies " every one do not they keep servants? and they cherish a burning resentment against women of the " upper " ten " who, " proud hussies," will not recognise 221 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA nor mix with them. Of course, they are inveter- ate gossipers. Scandal is the universal language of female white South Africa. The baby girleens lisp it in their cots. Reverting to the women who constitute " Society," the feature concerning them which most deeply impressed itself upon my mind was this. They are dissatisfied. They have every- thing at their command that man supposes the heart of women can desire, and yet they are leagues separated from content. They are rich. They have no work to do. Their responsibilities are indiscernible. They have all the masculine admiration which the most exacting disposition of a hardened coquette could covet. Motor cars are theirs. Paris supplies their frocks. Their homes are mansions. They are treated like queens. Yet there it is, as a rule they are not happy. I saw few really happy women's faces any- where : so few that each time I encountered one I was arrested with surprise. Melancholy sits on almost every woman's countenance. Their eyes brood, their lips murmur veiled criticisms on their fruitless lives. Their attitude is one of patient, semi-tragical complaint. Poor slaves of luxury and self-indulgence, they are the victims, the un- 222 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA conscious victims, of the Kaffir system of racial- ism, and of color prejudice against honest work. In their opinion, work is a degrading thing. The opinion is degrading them and wasting their lives. And what of their children, whom they will infect with the appalling fallacy that work is infamous ? Such women ought not to be mothers. They are a menace to the future of the race. I met much evidence to show that white men's ideals of justice in South Africa are becoming corrupted by contact with the colored hordes. The negro is a lusty animal, and he casts envious eyes upon the beauty of the white woman. While I was at Kimberley several sexual and semi- sexual outrages (of a most weird and uncanny character) were reported. Only one of the cul- prits was caught, and summary punishment was meted out to him by his white captor. The white community, far from being shocked, quietly applauded. There was no fuss of any sort. The law said nothing. It ignored the incident. The case of Mr. Lewis, at Buluwayo, is chiefly remarkable in that it passed to the knowledge of the outer world. The doings of Judge Lynch in South Africa are seldom published in the news- papers. There seems to be a tacit conspiracy 223 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA among the whites to be silent on such matters. Mr. Justice Lynch is an energetic personage. His usual weapon is the sjambok, but he carries a revolver too, and uses it whenever the occasion gives him warrant. Lord Gladstone was so con- cerned when he discovered that the Afrikander's laws and customs give inadequate protection to the natives from white tyranny and violence, that he spoke out pretty plainly. He became in con- sequence an unpopular governor. The British section distrusts his views and considers them dangerous. The Dutch section repudiates and despises them. Fully a score of Afrikanders, in more or less responsible positions (one was a Cabinet Minister), volunteered to me the in- formation that in their opinion Lord Gladstone was likely to do an immense amount of harm by his championship of negro rights. I believe that any viceroy holding and admitting such views must notably contribute to the cause of negro self- assertion. It is clear that the natives are quite sufficiently educated already to understand the difference between lynch law and justice, and once they acquire the notion that they are legiti- mately entitled to be saved inviolate, whatever they may do, from Mr. Lynch, a new and powerful 224 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA grievance will reinforce their inspiration towards solidarity and revolution. The Afrikanders are devoted to sport. Racing is the pastime held in foremost esteem. Every- body bets on horse races, and the topic seems to monopolise all casual conversation. The news- papers give many columns daily, and even pages, to racing information. This sport has a tre- mendous hold on the people, and it grows in favor steadily among the Boers. But if racing is a passion, rinking is a craze. Almost every city and town within the Union has a large and well appointed skating rink (many have several), where big crowds nightly gather and roller-skate the evening through. Probably not less than half the white population skate, and seven out of every ten skaters are experts. It is one of the prettiest sights imaginable to see the South African people awheel. They have made the practice of skating a perfect science, and their evolutions, dances and gyrations are incredibly clever and fascinating, performed as they are by large concourses moving like a single person. Dancing of the old fashioned country sort is the favorite amusement of the back veld Boer population : but they are taking very kindly 225 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA to cricket (both men and women), and golfing too is drifting into vogue. I saw golf links not far south of the Zambesi, and decent players too, Britons of course. The sports which the British have introduced to the Boers are very likely to act as strong civilising agents on the veld. At first the Boers regarded them suspiciously, on the principle " Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." But the Boer men have so little to do, or the women either, and they are of so curious a turn of mind, that it was inevitable they should make experiment. Now it is no uncommon thing to see an entire family spend day after day at the wickets often enough an up-ended gin case. They play as solemnly as owls, but the point is that they play, who used to loaf and drowse the hours and years away. One of the clearest object lessons I received of the temperamental difference between the Boer and the British was given to me in Johannes- burg. One afternoon a Dutch acquaintance took me for a ride in his motor round the city. We went first to visit at an imposing establish- ment, beautifully designed and situated, which was evidently a great boarding school. As we entered the gates, an immense walled playground 226 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA spread before our eyes. It was filled with happy children at play. All was noise, bustle, and orderly confusion. Every child was in the flood tide of holiday enjoyment, and such a babel of shouts, singing and laughter was proceeding, as made the watcher glad to be alive to hear and see. " This school/' said my Boer friend, " is " the orphanage asylum erected by the Transvaal " public for the maintenance and education of " the children of Britons who were slain in the " recent war. You would not take those kiddies " for orphans, eh ? " I cordially agreed that I would not. We departed presently and drove to another academy about half a mile away. It was a small and unpretentious place, of Dutch architecture, dull and rather sordid looking. My friend explained : " That is the orphanage asylum " erected by the Transvaal public for the main- " tenance and education of the children of Boers " who were slain in the recent war." We entered the gates and peered into the play- ground. It was filled with morose and silent little ones. There was no laughter, no noise, no singing, and extremely little movement. The poor little Dutch children lounged about like bored old people. Many were quite alone. 227 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA The others stood or strolled about in pairs or small groups. They seemed to know no games. They appeared to take no interest in each other, to have no hope in life. One's heart ached to see them. Said my mentor : " Do you wonder that > * " we Boers hate the British ? " "But why?" I demanded, startled and sur- prised. His answer was amazing. " You British are a " happy race. We are not. You have conquered " us, and have thereby added to our gloom." Oh ! but it was a cruel mistake not to have put the Boer and British children together, and have brought them up as one bright family. Gloom is catching, but happiness also is infectious. I confess I feel inclined to groan whenever the pic- ture swims back into my memory of those sad little Boer orphans as they brooded in their sunlit but most melancholy playground. Their brown eyes haunt me, their downcast little faces, their deeply meditative, unhappy and reproachful looks. We Britons slew their fathers. Are we doing all our duty by those dead men's sons ? 228 CHAPTER XVIII 'TpHE racialism of which so much has been talked and written (that is to say the senti- ment dividing the Dutch and British people of South Africa) is very largely wrapped up in the question of public service administration. In all parts of South Africa one hears that British officials are being removed and their places filled with Dutchmen. The police force has been subjected to so many such changes that its effici- ency has been sensibly impaired. The school teachers (especially those in the Free State) are dissatisfied with their new grading and the language regulations recently thrust upon them : and, broadly speaking, British civil servants in all 229 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA four provinces exist in a state of excitement and anxiety, being uncertain from hour to hour where they will be sent, or if they will be summarily dismissed. Everywhere one goes among the British one hears this angry whisper, " The Dutch " are on top. Spoils to the victors." The public service policy of the Government seems to be one of studied concentration. Transvaal influence has effectually destroyed the hopes of those who favored a sane compromise between the extremes of concentration and de- centralisation. It appears to have been realised at an early date that the dual capital compromise in the constitution would prove unworkable. The Ministry then had the matter exclusively in its hands to decide, because Parliament had not yet been elected. Very promptly Ministers divided into two camps. By tacit consent it was admitted that a fight to the death between the two capitals would soon commence, and that eventually the fitter would survive to be both the legislative and administrative capital, and that the other would be abandoned. The Government rehearsed this struggle in Cabinet. Cape Ministers fought hard for Capetown, but the Transvaal section triumphed. They signalised their victory by 230 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA doing everything possible to aggrandise the position of Pretoria. They induced General Botha to sign contracts for the erection in Pre- toria of enormous national offices and public buildings, to cost a sum exceeding .2,000,000: and from that moment to this they have been hurrying selected civil servants from all parts of South Africa to the administrative capital, as though the fate of the country depended on con- verting Pretoria into a city peopled with officials at the earliest possible moment. The results of this policy peep out. When Parliament is sit- ting in the legislative capital of Capetown, 1,000 miles away from the administrative capital at Pretoria, official Pretoria is in a state of chaos. Ministers are away at Capetown, heads of de- partments are away, leading officers are away, and all important official papers are away. The Government offices are abodes of loafing and con- fusion. The service resembles an army that has lost its leaders, and with its commanders its re- spect for order and discipline. Hundreds of clerks sit twiddling their thumbs all day, smok- ing and chatting. There is work for all to do, but nobody knows what to do, and in any case very little efficient work can be done, because all 231 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the superiors and all important papers and docu- ments are in Capetown. A great waste of time and money is proceeding, but the Government has not yet devised a better system. Obviously a better system must be invented, but what it will be cannot now be predicted. The only thing that may be surely foretold is that soon or late one of the capitals will have to be abandoned. The outstanding political issue of South Africa is the language and education problem. The constitution having enjoined an absolute equality between the Dutch and British tongues, the Government has had no choice except to begin establishing the prescribed duality. Possibly no policy that it could have devised would have given more than partial satisfaction, but, unfor- tunately, it has adumbrated a policy which has applied a stimulus to racial hatreds. General Botha's desire is for a system of education elastic enough to permit of the teaching of both languages without imposing on either Dutch or English teachers the duty of understanding and teaching in both tongues. General Hertzog, on the other hand, has declared for a system where- by, if enforced, the schools should be exclusively officered by bi-lingual adepts. The distinction 232 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA may not appear a vital one to outsiders, but it would have the effect of Dutchifying the State schools, for whereas British is the commercial language of South Africa, and all State school teachers, whether British or Dutch, understand it, British teachers are few and far between who are adepts in both tongues. I made it my business to talk with a number of Dutchmen in order to get at their side, if pos- sible. The Pretorian Boers were far less re- served than those I met elsewhere, and they were all men of education and refinement. They did not scruple to give me their point of view. It is, briefly, as follows The English beat us in the war. They have treated us ever since generously according to their lights. But they are the conquerors. We are now enjoying their free in- stitutions, but we never forget that they were thrust upon us, and we prefer our own, which have been abrogated. The Union has been con- summated. We are now a part and parcel of the British Empire. Very well, we accept the position : but don't blame us if, in trying to make the best of it, we do our utmost to procure our own advantage. We intend to make every use we can of the democratic institutions under which 233 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA we now dwell, to aggrandise the Dutch at the expense of the British. The situation is peculiar, and the most amaz- ing part of it is the candor of both races. Under the constitution, it is laid down that both tongues shall have exactly equal rights. The Dutch interpret this to mean that they have the right to demand that every child in the country shall be compulsorily taught in all subjects, from euclid to geography, through the medium of both languages. In other words, every subject shall be twice taught one hour in the medium of Dutch, one hour in the medium of English. That is the Hertzog policy in a nutshell, and every Boer approves of it. A necessary conse- quence of this policy is that every teacher shall be able to impart instruction equally in both tongues, that every State servant and Govern- ment official shall be able to speak both languages with the same ease, and that efficiency in speak- ing and writing Dutch equally well as British shall be the supreme test of all State employ- ment. The Dutch being, politically speaking, " top dogs," are enforcing this policy in all direc- tions. School teachers in the O.R.C. (the pro- vince in which the Hertzog teaching system has 234 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA been established) have been degraded in a whole- sale fashion, whatever their qualifications, who will not speak Dutch as well as English, and all over the Union the language test is displacing British by Dutch officials in all branches of the Government service. The racial sentiment of the British has thereby been violently inflamed. The trouble of the British is, that whereas almost every Boer can speak English, very few British know Dutch. The dual language test, therefore, hits them hard, and they see in it nought but a political weapon to Dutchify the country and to ensure a permanent mastery (through a monopoly of public service adminis- tration) to the Boers. Their point of view is not quite fair. They consented, at the Convention, to the language equality clause being incorporated in the Constitution, without, it seems, fully realis- ing what it meant, and now that steps are being taken to make the two languages equal (it should be remembered that throughout the Crown colony regime English was the sole official language of South Africa), and to carry out the constitution, instead of blaming their own shortsightedness, they are wreaking their fury on the Dutch, and reproaching their Boer neighbours with im- 235 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA measurable infamies. It may be perfectly true that the Dutch are over sternly and over hastily proceeding to equalise the languages, but their constitutional right to do so cannot be questioned, and the British are only hurting themselves by their vituperative impatience. Wisdom suggests that they should bend their efforts to procure such a sane modification of the Hertzog policy as would do away with the compulsory dual medium ideal a severe handicap on the child and substitute a plan whereby one medium of instruc- tion alone should be employed (Dutch in Dutch centres and English in English centres) and the other language (not locally used as the medium) be made merely a compulsory subject every- where. But the British extremists are considering neither the educational interests of the child nor the future of the country. They can see nothing but the fact that the bi-lingual clause in the con- stitution threatens to Dutchify the public ser- vice, owing to the present inability of the average Britisher to speak Dutch, and their minds are quite oblivious of the larger issue. Their anger and resentment have taken the form of the creation of a great British secret society, called 236 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA the " Sons of England." Pretoria is the head- centre of this organisation. Its membership is enormous, and it is spreading its ramifications at railroad speed all over South Africa. The objects of the Society are to exalt the material interests of the British and to " down the Dutch." Members swear to stick together on all points of common interest, and it is freely whispered that their weapon is the boycott. The Dutch regard the society with open scorn, but with covert mis- giving and profound dissatisfaction. They say of it " It is a secret order, therefore must be a " bad order, with shameful objects to serve. We " Boers fight openly. The British are cowards. ' They fight in the dark." In good truth the British never made a greater mistake than in starting this foolish and most reckless movement It can do no good : it is actually doing a large amount of harm. Personally, I think that the British and Boers are far less antipathetic than appears. At pre- sent there is much clash and contest, but it is all in words, and much of the inspiration flows from aggressively ambitious or disgruntled official sources. When the common people of the rival races meet, they are nearly always friendly, and 237 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA they live everywhere, except on the back veld, in terms of amity. Extremists are numerous, but they seem more numerous than they really are because they make themselves conspicuous. The racial aversion will simmer down as soon as the language problem is settled, and I am hope- ful that it will eventually disappear. Soon or late it is inevitable that the two white races must combine to act in concert against the increasing power of the negro. That is the real racial diffi- culty in South Africa, and it is destined to obliterate the other. The natives in the Cape province have the same political rights as the whites. In Natal, the Transvaal, and the O.R.C. they have no political rights worthy of the name. The natives are beginning to display a strong tendency to self-assertion throughout the Union. The whisper is heard in all directions, " The " native wants the franchise." When that whisper grows into a voice and be assured it will learn some day to a shout the Boer and Briton will be at one. The universal opinion among the whites is that they cannot give way on that point. If they did they would be swamped. " We cannot " have any mixing," they say, " either political " or social." The barrier must be defended and 238 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA strengthened. To break it down anywhere would be to court destruction. How to stave off the encroachments of the negro how to prevent the natives from developing their latent powers and extorting equal political rights from the whites those are the vital questions that Boers and Britons must soon face vitally : and the first serious attempt to answer them will force the white races irresistibly to a solid and permanent amalgamation. 239 CHAPTER XIX THE PASTORAL AND AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK A FEATURE of South Africa that greatly astonished me is the paucity of its timber resources. More than three-fourths of South Africa is destitute of trees : the rest is sparsely covered with what the Afrikanders call " bush " a thin melange of stunted, weedy growths, which hardly deserve the name of trees. There are, of course, a few species of fair sized and economically valuable indigenous plants, such as the Stink-wood, the Sneeze-wood, the Yellow- wood, the Assegai-wood, the Mlanje-Cedar, and the Mopani, but outside of Natal the garden province of the Union they do not flourish un- less protected and painstakingly cultivated, and 240 f THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA there is no good native tree in the entire sub- continent which grows to a height of more than 60 feet. The few forests worthy of being so called are nearly all composed of exotics im- ported from Australia. Small plantations of blue and red gum, and the black and silver wattle abound. The gums seldom achieve a large stature, but the wattle does exceedingly well, and the Afrikanders are gradually building up a lucrative export industry in tanin, especially in Natal, where some 35,000 acres are at this moment under black wattle alone. Other tim- bers imported from Australia are the camphor, the jarrah, and the cypress pine. Progressive farmers all plant some or other of these trees about their holdings to provide shelter for their stock. Without them the country would be deso- late indeed. The great Karoo table-land, the whole of the Orange River Colony, and the vast bulk of the High Veld in the Transvaal, are quite barren of native trees. Tens of thousands of square miles sweep on all sides to the horizon without the slightest sign of big plant life to break the monotony of the landscape. The soil looks good; in many places there are huge tracts of 241 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA dark chocolate colored volcanic soil, resembling the land in the neighborhood of Ballarat, Vic- toria; but it is all given up to pasture, and one asks for a reason after seeing the stock at grass cattle, sheep and goats so small, so ill- conditioned and unkempt that any European farmer would be ashamed to own them. It is a mystery that haunts the mind. The rainfall is always fair, seldom under 20 inches, and the grass to all seeming is abundant. Why, then, is the stock (generally speaking) so wretched, and why is it that these enormous spreading plains have never been brought under the plough? Above all, why is it that South Africa, after more than three centuries of colonisation, possesses a paltry white population of 1,150,000, whereas Australia, after a bare cen- tury of settlement, has more than 4,350,000? It is all very well to point to the rootedly non-pro- gressive habits and methods of the Boers, but the explanation is insufficient. There are as many British as Boers in South Africa, and not all the land is tied up. Much of it in the south and south-west is cultivated and fairly well closely settled. More than 500,000 acres in the Union are under irrigation, yet South Africa is unable 242 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA to feed herself. Such a thing as the export of cereals was, until quite recently, unknown, and large quantities of grain always have had to be imported every year from abroad. Evidently the problem cannot be solved by a mere reference to Boer non-progressiveness. Looking a little deeper into the agricultural question, one soon arrives at an understanding why the old-fashioned Boer preferred squatting to the plough. Here in South Africa the rule, in a very peculiar sense, holds true, that land which does not support big timber is not natur- ally well adapted to cultivation. Probably there is only a small fraction of South African land which will not grow mealies (Indian corn) instantly and profitably. Maize, in consequence, is the staple crop. Every farmer raises enough maize for his own wants, and a little to spare. But with the exception of this happy circum- stance, the land of South Africa needs careful treatment before it will respond to the wooing of the husbandman. The virgin soil of the veld is crude and sour. The native grass is a mean and currish forage, and it is mingled with such a varied multitude of tubers (many of them poison- ous) that it yields only a poor sustenance to 243 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA stock, and will rarely support more than one beast to several acres. Hence we see large farms farms of 3,000 morgen, i.e., 6,300 acres everywhere the rule, and when cultivated, culti- vated only in tiny patches, with nought save mealies and a little tobacco. Nobody would accuse General Smuts or General Hertzog of a desire to malign their country. Both of them own farms. Yet they have admitted that the difficulties of the farmer in South Africa are exceptional. " Agriculture is a matter of great difficulty " with us," said General Smuts. :< We cannot rely on getting a good crop. The " soil must be treated for years," said General Hertzog. South Africa is not feeding herself.* In 1909 (the latest figures I have been able to pro- cure) she imported articles of food and drink to the value of ; 5, 723,260.! The imports in- cluded * Vide Appendix " D." t It was stated in the Senate during the session of 1911 that the imports of food stuffs for the year 1910 had reached .6,000,000. A. P. 244 Wheat - 756,416 Flour and wheatmeal 681,575 Beans and peas 21,319 Butter - 219,634 Butter substitutes - 45,464 Cheese - 116,364 Eggs 50,767 Fresh Meat - 73,oi7 Preserved meat 293,696 Coffee (raw) - 446,165 Fruit and nuts 112,566 Condensed milk - 331,909 Sugar and products - 494,728 Tea 201,394 Vegetables 61,251 Every one of the articles named in the above table is listed by the statist as a staple product of South Africa for export, but the quantities exported are so small as to occasion surprise that they have been recorded. More than four-fifths of the exported produce for 1909 consisted of minerals and precious stones. The following table shows the various items 245 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA Minerals and precious stones - Sheep's wool Ostrich feathers Hides and skins Articles of food and drink Goats' hair Bark Fodder and forage Tobacco Animals Aloes Buchu leaves Other products ^50,532,427 An analysis of the " articles of food and " drink " demonstrates that the export of meat, grain and butter is positively insignificant. Much wine is produced and sent abroad, but little else. In 1909, South Africa exported ^780 worth of wheaten flour and the same amount in 1908. The butter export trade increased in the same period from .318 to 459. The export of oats fell away from ; 109,436 to ^83,789. Bar- ley exports decreased from ^424 to 216, and 246 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA bran from ^i,545 to 388. The only large advance was in maize (mealies), which increased from 207,364 to ^655,994, a gain of ,448,630. The grand total of export of food and drink in 1908 was ^479,842, and in 1909 ; 92 1, 470, so it is clear that without the increase in maize, the agricultural output of the country would actually have diminished. South Africa has proved that she can grow maize abundantly, but she has still to establish her claim to be a granary. Her pastoral and agricultural resources are, broadly speaking, quite undeveloped. It is claimed for her that she is about to launch out on great enterprises in food production, and immense improvements are expected in the next few years. The people talk of these things everywhere and hopes run high. Undoubtedly, a farming revival has already commenced. The imports of agricultural machinery are steadily expanding, and the im- ports of food stuffs have already been reduced. But she has a great way yet to travel to overtake her food necessities. And there are great obstacles in the road. One is that the average farmer cannot hope to make a profit from wheat cultivation until he has cured the crudeness of 247 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA his soil. To do that he must either manure the land extensively, or else for a period of at least three years sow his holdings with certain grasses, that will at the same time exterminate the native herbage and absorb the acidity of the soil. Such a thing as a good crop of cereals from virgin land is hardly known in South Africa, save and except in a few favored districts where irrigation is practised largely, and in the Conquered Terri- tory, a small strip of country south of Basuto land, which is exceptionally rich and seems to have been intended by nature for the cultivation of wheat. Added to all this, the farmer who conquers the soil is immediately assaulted with a legion of grain blights, grubs, locusts and other pests, which damage or destroy his crops and rob him of his profits. The Government is making war upon grain and animal pests in the laboratory. At Pre- toria and at Bloemfontein, scientists are busily at work investigating and experimenting. But years of labor must elapse before much real good can be achieved. South Africa has direct con- nection with the torrid zone, and until quarantine areas are established across the full extent of her vast northern borders, the pests of the tropic 248 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA jungles of Central Africa will continue to invade the Union and to play havoc with all forms of pastoral and cultural enterprise. The labora- tory, moreover, is a new departure, and it is not yet a popular one. It starves for lack of money, and its usefulness is severely restricted. When all things are considered it is scarcely astonishing that early South African farmers turned their attention almost exclusively to stock, and their descendants have not yet been per- suaded to depart from the old traditions. If settled lands of the Union were properly stocked, South Africa would most certainly be the greatest stock raising and dairying country in the world. But it is one of the poorest. In certain districts, a good deal of dairying is carried on, and some fair breeds of cows may be met with. But, speaking comprehensively, the cattle, goats and sheep of the Union are the most miserable speci- mens of their kind to be found in the universe, and the less said about the horses the better. The answer to the riddle may be given in two / words Disease and Drought. Never was there a more fearfully pest-ridden and plague-smitten land. There is not a pest or a plague known to man which does not find a congenial atmosphere 249 in the Union. In 1896 rinderpest destroyed nearly all the native game in the Union, and car- ried off in one fell swoop one-half of all the cattle in the Cape, some 600,000 head. The horse sickness is so dreadful a scourge, and it rages so widely that fully five-sixths of the country is quite uninhabitable for horses : and donkeys, which are immune, have to take their place in the industrial sphere. The farmers of South Africa lose annually from ',350,000 to . i, 000,000 in wool alone, owing to the scab, which periodically sweeps across the continent, attacking both sheep and goats, injuring the wool and mohair, and frequently destroying the poor creature it assails. There are four different kinds of red water, which are all equally deadly, and kill tens of thousands of stock. The South African East Coast Fever the latest big plague to assert it- self is now ravaging all parts of the sub- continent. Its deadly destructiveness is simply appalling, its death rate being 95 per cent. Some few years ago, in 1901, the Chartered Company of Rhodesia imported 1,000 head of prime cattle from Australia, with which to im- prove, by crossing, the strain of their Afrikander 250 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA stock. The cattle were landed at Beira, and were immediately attacked by the South African Coast Fever. In a short time, 997 succumbed to the disease. The three remaining alive were promptly transported inland. One died at Umtali on the journey ; the two survivors died the day after they reached Salisbury. There is an historic fact that may be left to point its own moral. At this moment the Union Government is taking- strong measures to try to arrest the plague, but as it confessedly dare not apply the principle of com- pulsory segregation and destruction to the ignorant back veld Boer population, the chances of success are infinitesimal. The East Coast Fever has already cost the country many millions sterling : it threatens to make pastoral pro- gress an impossibility. The reason is that this dreadful plague has a particular fondness for imported cattle. If the wretched little Afri- kander cattle, " salted " to the fever, are crossed with good imported blood, the susceptibility of the progeny increases at once by 50 per cent., and the more fresh blood is introduced, the more liable become the resultant strains to the disease. Science has been laboring busily to invent a cure for years, but, so far, completely in vain. If the 251 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA fever is not speedily conquered, much of the country will revert at length to desert conditions. True it is that the "salted" Afrikander cattle and their unmixed progeny, are gradually acquir- ing a sort of immunity, but in a large sense they are worthless animals. They can never take a place in the food markets of the world, and dairy herds cannot by any means, except by crossing, be cultivated from their ranks. The more one knows of South Africa, the more keenly one marvels at the courage and tenacity of purpose of the veld farmers, and the less at their unprogressive habits and backward ways. They have innumerable difficulties and trials to face from which the people of other countries are held free. Not alone is their soil sour, grudging and hard to treat : not alone are their cattle, sheep and goats continuously ravaged by a multitude of deadly pests : but the climate of the country is unhealthy to mankind. Save on the high veld, malaria holds almost universal sway. Through- out the low veld, and even wherever a hollow is met with on the high plateaus, the bacteria carry the ague far and wide, and scatter death and suffering around. Whenever virgin soil is up- turned, the disease acquires a fearful access of 252 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA vitality. Typhoid ceaselessly ravages both veld and town. White men dwelling in the high veld and in the cities of the elevated tablelands, must send their women folk to the seaside for at least four months in every year if they desire to keep them from disease and decay : and the high alti- tudes (most of South African settlement ranges from 3,000 to 6,000 feet above sea level) breed a species of meningitis which attacks children with deadly vigor and causes a serious infant mortality. I have seen few women in South Africa, except the sturdy Boer vraus, who look reasonably vigor- ous. And even the Boer women have pallid or sallow and sickly complexions, and they are in- variably languid and heavy eyed. " The country " is very hard upon our women folk," is a daily heard complaint wherever one may go. As for the agricultural future of the country, even the political rulers of South Africa are dubious about it. They have declared for a policy of closer settlement and irrigation, and they boast that South Africa will yet rival the Argentine, but , ' they admit unanimously that it is no country for a poor farmer, and that no man can hope to make a success of agriculture unless he is possessed both of a considerable cash capital and a sound 253 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA knowledge of the soil, climatic and other prob- lems with which he must deal. Drought is a subject on which it is needless to enlarge, in view of the fearful experiences of the year ending December, 1912. The drought of 1912 was no doubt exceptionally severe, but it demonstrates what South African farmers have to expect and must periodically endure. For more than twelve months no rain fell in the Transkei the most productive district of Kaf- fraria and elsewhere right throughout the Union, the rainfall was too scanty to permit of progress. In Natal the drought broke towards the close of last November, and about the same time Johannesburg was saved from a water famine by a welcome downpour. The drought, however, still continued to ravage many large areas in the first weeks of December, and at the time of writ- ing (i4th December, 1912) the general conditions remain most gloomy, and thousands of natives are said to be on the edge of starvation. General Botha, in a public speech at Pretoria, on 2ist November, used the following words " The drought will cause a set-back to the Union and " will result in heavy losses to the people." It 254 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA would be alike unnecessary and cruel to add to General Botha's sorry declaration. 2 55 CHAPTER XX T ET me frankly admit that this book has been written with a purpose. It is one that the people of South Africa will not like, and with which they cannot reasonably be expected to sympathise. It concerns them greatly, but it concerns other Britons more : there- fore I address it to the larger Imperial world. My purpose is to suggest to the adventurous spirits of Great Britain, Canada and Australia, that the jewel most lately added to our Imperial diadem is no fit country for the average English emigrant to invade in quest of fortune or in the hope of finding or building there a profitable liv- ing and a home. South Africa has room for a 256 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA limited number of skilled artisans and agricul- turists, but for no other sorts or conditions of men. The trained artisan who goes there should be equipped with enough money to maintain him- self for at least two or three months, while he looks about him for suitable employment, other- wise he will run a terrible risk of being victimised. The agriculturist who hopes to succeed must pos- sess at lowest a couple of thousand pounds, and before he purchases a holding or a farm he should spend a full year studying the climate, the soil, the rainfall, the diseases of animals and crops peculiar to the country, against which he will have to fight, and the local conditions of market and transport and labor. Such a man, if intel- ligent, industrious and persistent, may do well. But the agriculturist who rushes into the country and settles down immediately without a proper foreknowledge of the difficulties that inevitably will beset him, had far better throw his money into the sea at once. He is doomed to failure. For the unskilled laborer, the farm hand, the moneyless agriculturist, the shop assisant, the clerk, and the professional man, South Africa has little to offer save a miserable existence and a pauper's grave. There are thousands of such 257 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA people scattered all over the country, seeking work and finding none : eating the bread of charity and living by crime. They were good men once, for the most part, but they could not help themselves. They are industrial super- fluities. Inexorable circumstance has degraded them nearly to the level of beasts. There is no work for them to do. They are " poor whites." While I was in South Africa with the Prime Minister of Australia, a deputation representing 5,000 " poor whites," who had once been Austra- lian citizens, implored Mr. Fisher to charter steamers and take them back to Australia, so that they might be saved from the dreadful fate of indigence which had overtaken them as Africans. Evidence was also forthcoming that 10,000 other ex-Australians would have jumped at such a chance to fly from the country where the starving white man may not do " Kaffir's work," even though he would. I have written this book in the hope and trust of saving my countrymen the world over the bitter disappointment that must overtake them should they emigrate unwarned and indifferently equipped to southern Africa. The task has not been a pleasant one. I fear that it will earn for 258 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA me the ill-will of thousands dwelling in the Union : but I have performed it in the honest belief that a duty lay upon me to relate facts of which the world at large is unaware. And I have performed it honestly. I have set down nought on hearsay or in malice, but have dealt only with proven and indisputable facts, not extenu- ating them and not exaggerating them. My con- clusions are vindicable, my statements are true. On page 24 of the Report of the Mining Indus- try Commission of 1908 (appointed by the Earl of Selborne, in 1907) occurs the following para- graph ' The theory that the native is a * mere mus- ' cular machine ' must be discarded. As will " presently appear, experience has shown that he " can no longer be looked upon as debarred by " lack of brain and industrial training from inter- " fering with the white man's opportunities of " employment, and as merely an aid to enable " the white man to earn wages sufficient to keep " him in contentment. It is clear from the evid- " ence that the position as between white man " and native is one of very unstable equilibrium, " and that so far from an increase in the supply " of colored labor necessarily creating an increase 259 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA " of white employment, the tendency to-day is " for colored labor to be employed in an in- " creasing proportion, and with the effect of dis- " placing white labor." That statement of facts cradles the most im- portant of the issues presented to the political genius of South Africa for determination. The present labor system of the country gives the native a monopoly of all unskilled work : and in all that class of work in which he is the assistant and industrial valet of the skilled artisan he has a practical monopoly of the opportunities of acquiring the training which enables a man to rise from the ranks of the unskilled to the ranks of skilled labor. Until this system is altered in the most drastic and revolutionary manner, the lot of the white race must be clouded with peril and uncertainty. Until it is so altered, the Union Government cannot invite white European immi- grants to South Africa without being guilty of flagrant dishonesty. While present conditions endure, merely to talk of a policy of immigration is to play a confidence trick upon the world. The ever-increasing mass of local colored labor is year by year encroaching on the field of employment and the means of livelihood of the white man. 260 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA South Africa can never be the home of a great white people until the tide is turned and white labor is given entrance to, and secured in the pos- session of, the entire field of industry. Nothing is more certain than that the people who do the work of a country will eventually inherit it. The negroes are doing the work of South Africa to- day. 261 APPENDIX A NATIVE CRIME 'TpHE following tables are extracted from the " Blue Book on Native Affairs for 1910," that was presented during the year 1911 to the Union Parliament by the Department of Native Affairs. They are of special interest in the proof they furnish that the negroes are a law-abiding race, and that crime, speaking generally, is notably decreasing among them. The tables contain short remarks extracted from the summarised reports of Magistrates, Commissioners and Inspectors of all the terri- tories and districts of the Union (pp. 275-298 of the Blue Book), and these remarks briefly, but accurately, reflect the condition of native criminality throughout South Africa. The figures on the margin represent the native population of the territory or district against which they are set. (This Appendix should be 262 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA studied in relation with Chapter 12, ante page i6S). CAPE OF GOOD HOPE 1,400 Aberdeen " The Sobriety and welfare " of the population have materially " advanced." 2,950 Adelaide " Serious crime has greatly " decreased during the last five " years." 20,500 Albany " Very little serious crime." 14,178 Albert " No great increase of crime." 6,587 Alexandria " Very little." 4,303 Aliwal North " Very little crime of a " serious nature." Lady Cresy " Crime generally on the " increase." 4,245 Barkly East " The number of crimes " for 1910 about equals that for " 1909." 22,000 Barkly West " Crime practically un- " known in the Government loca- " tions." 8,000 Bathurst " I cannot say crime is on the " decrease." 500 Beaufort West " Serious crime is not " on the increase." 263 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 11,262 Bedford "Difficult to say whether " crime is actually on the increase or " not." 2,000 Bristotown " No increase of crime." 9,800 Cape " Slight increase." 3,500 Carnarvon " Serious crime has much " diminished." 9,500 Cathcart " On the decrease." 7,000 Colesburg " No increase. No very " serious crime." 800 Naauwpoort " Very little crime." 2,120 Cradook " Small increase." 1,570 Maraisburg " Marked absence of seri- " ous crime." De Aaar " Stationary." 32,277 East London " Very free of crime." 11,650 Fort Beaufort "Very little crime." Fraserberg " Little serious crime." 33,703 Glen Gray " Very rare." Lady Frere " No crime of a serious " nature." 3,450 Gordonia " No improvement." 1,400 Hay " Very little crime." 46,357 Herschel "Comparatively little crime." 6,000 Humansdorp " Very few offences." 6,600 Jansenville " Not much crime." 264 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 12,332 Kimberley " Slight increase due to " fact that natives can obtain as much " liquor as they require." 74,999 King William Town " Very little crime " of any description." 30,000 Middledrift " The people are law- " abiding. Less crime than in any " of preceding five years." 19,000 Keishama Hock " Very little crime." 11,631 Komgha "Very little crime." 4,500 Middleburg " A general decrease of " crime." 6,268 Moltend " Normal." 14,412 Namagualand " Crime has decreased." 3,500 Caries " Very little crime." 20,365 Peddie " People are well behaved and " law-abiding." 1,500 Phillipstown "About the same as dur- " ing the past five years." Petrosville " A marked absence of " crime." 3,604 Port Elizabeth " A marked decrease " during the last two years." Port Nolloth " Serious crime almost " unknown." Priska " Little crime." 265 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 28,250 Queenstown " Crime diminishes every " year, and markedly last year." 350 Sterkstroon Indecisive. Whittlesea " No crime of a serious " nature." 3,271 Richmond Slight increase. 176 Somerset East " Slight increase due to " liquor." 2,500 Steynesburg Slight increase. 8,670 Stockenstrom " A decrease of crime " as compared with previous five " years." 8,850 Stuterhenin " Very little." 6,411 Tarka Indecisive. What crime there is, is largely due to liquor. 20,860 Witenhage " Distinct decrease in " number of offences compared with " former years, especially in respect " of serious crimes." 2,000 Van Rhynsdorp Increasing. 15,568 Victoria East "Serious crimes very " few and far between." Walpoole Bay " Crime is practically " non-existent." 2,308 Wodehouse " Very little crime and " very marked decrease in stock " thefts." 266 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 5,332 Indwe Decreasing. " Stock thefts " show a big reduction." BRITISH BECHUANALAND 10,150 Kurnman "No crime of a serious " nature was committed." 1 6,439 Maf eking " Compares favorably with " any other district containing same " number of natives." 28,000 Taung " Would appear to be very " little crime." 18,030 Vryburg " The natives are law-abid- " ing, and crime, either of a serious " or trivial nature, is not frequent." TRANSKEEIAN TERRITORIES 38,024 Bizana " Very rare." 20,500 Butterworth " Not increasing." 6,550 Elliot " I cannot say that serious crime " is on the increase." 38,800 Elliotdale " Very little serious crime." 61,400 Engcobo " Little serious crime." 32,200 Flagstaff " Very little crime." 28,000 Idutywa " Marked decrease of crime." 38,854 Rentani Decreasing. 30,345 Libode " Not much crime." 267 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 45,000 Lusikisiki Not increasing. 3,500 Maclear " Satisfactory." 8,500 Matatriele " No increase of serious " crime during last five years." 22,540 Mount Ayliff " Diminishing." Mount Currie " Not much serious " crime." 26,934 Mount Fletcher " Past year compares " favorably with previous five years." 37,000 Mount Frere " It is wonderful what " little crime there is considering the " large number of natives." Moanduli " Few serious cases." 41,170 Nggsleni "Very few cases." 35,310 Ngamakwe " Decreasing yearly." 16,000 Port St. Johns " Not increasing." 32,000 Qumbu Indecisive : no increase shown. 43,665 St. Marks " Matter for surprise, so " little crime." 34,600 Tabankulu " Markedly decreasing." 35,300 Tsolo " Very little crime." 30,340 Tsomo " Marked decrease in crime " generally." 43>589 Umtaka " No increase of crime and " almost entire absence of serious " offences." 268 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 35,100 Umgimkulu " Noticeable increase of " murder charges." 49,805 Willowvale " No very serious cases." 13,500 "Xalanga" "Remarkably few cases " of crime." NATAL 40,578 Alexandra " No increase whatever." 28,478 Alfred " But few cases." 13,613 Bergville What crime there is, is largely due to beer-drinking. Inde- cisive. 26,630 Camperdown Indecisive, no increase shown. 25,932 Dundee Serious crime is decreasing. 16.639 Durban Indecisive, but the less serious crimes are apparently increasing. 33,846 Estcourt " Serious crime appears to " be decreasing." 23,915 Helpmakaar Indecisive, no increase shown. 10.640 Impendhle " Not increasing." 31,980 Manda No report. 51,500 Ixopo No increase shown. 29,000 Krauhzkop Indecisive, no increase shown. 269 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 12,500 Lions River "Not much crime." 29,185 Lower Tugela " Natives committed no " serious crimes during the year." Lower Nuzimkula, Mapumulo, New- castle, Charlestown, Ngolshe, Paul- pietersburg, Poleda, Underberg, Richmond, Mulazi, Utrechet, and Weehea, all report marked decreases of crime. On the other hand, Pieter- maritzburg, Umgerie, and Vryheid report increases. ZULULAND Of the eleven districts of Zululand, all save one report either no serious crimes or a marked decrease in crime. The exception is Lower Umfolozi, which reports five serious crimes. The population of Lower Umfolozi is 15,000: the population of other districts is 1,034,000. TRANSVAAL 21,792 Barberton "Serious crime is confined " to assaults in most cases arising out " of beer drinks." 270 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 4,700 Bethal Indecisive. Liquor laws again complained of. No increase shown. 9,900 Carolina " Satisfactory." Liquor laws complained of. 18,500 Ermelo Indecisive, but apparently satisfactory, and no increase. 59,500 Hamans Kraal " Very little crime." 14,000 Heidelberg " Not a large amount of " serious crime." 10,644 Lidetenburg " Considerably on the in- " crease." 79,600 Louis Trichardt " Convictions for seri- " ous crimes totalled 2 1 ." No in- crease shown. 1 1, 800 Marico "Little serious crime." Middleburg Stationary. 27,580 Mylstroom " Beer drinking extensively " indulged in, but serious crime sel- " dom results." 27,891 Pilansberg " Majority of cases are for " contravention of the tax and pass " laws." 38,016 Pretoria "A marked decrease in seri- " ous crime." 54,885 Potgietessrust " No increase in crime " in general." 271 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 31,200 Piet Relief " Serious crime has de- " creased considerably." Pietersburg No report. 23,834 Potchefstroorri " No increase." 1 3,400 Rustenberh " A marked absence of " serious crime." 73,498 Shelonken Marked decrease in crime. 9,464 Standerton " A decrease of crime " generally." 82,036 Sibasa " Surprisingly small." 27,000 Wakkerstroom " Shows a decrease." 3,760 Wolmerausstad " Cases of serious " crime are of rare occurrence." 9,000 Vereeniging Crime confined to deser- tions from the Rand. Witwatersrand Report is indetermin- ate. It remarks that approximately half the convictions are for drunken- ness. It is significant that almost every Report on native crime in the Transvaal rails against the bad liquor laws, which enable the natives to get drink freely, and thus cause a great proportion of crime. 272 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ORANGE FREE STATE 21,000 Bethlehem " No increase." 3,000 Bethulie " But little crime." 30,445 Bloemfontein " The chief offences are " contraventions of the municipal by- " laws and regulations relating to " passes." 4,200 Brandfort " Crime on the whole is of a " trivial nature." 5,000 Boshof " Only one conviction for seri- " ous crime." 5,100 Edenburg " Natives are very law- " abiding, no serious crimes with the " exception of one case of murder." 2,415 Trompsburg "Not prevalent." 2,145 Fauresnuth "Very little crime." 1,650 Jagersfontein " Decided increase in " number of assaults. Beer drinking " responsible." 4,145 Roffyfontein " Crime on the increase, " but that is due to the large number " of natives residing here compared " with that of last five years." 13,093 Ficksburg "Stock thefts frequent." 3,650 Frankfort " Very little crime." 35.000 Harrismith " Up to the average." 273 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 8,145 Heilbron "Outside native assaults on " one another, serious crime is prac- " tically nil." 2,100 Viljoeu's Drift "Mostly petty of- " fences." 3,000 Hoofstad " Extremely small. No serious crimes." Jacobsdal Table shows a very marked decrease during year 1910. Kroonstad Increased during 1910, owing to illicit liquor traffic. 7,000 Ladybrand " Is and has been rare." 6,376 Philippolis " Serious crime appears to " be on the increase." 3,018 Rouxville No Report. 12,000 Senekal "Very little serious crime." 2,549 Smithfield " Very little crime." 24,360 Thabra'ncho " Very little crime." 11,500 Vrede "Percentage of crime is not " high." 6,000 Vredefort " Very little serious crime." 4>335 Wepeuer " There was no serious crime." 16,000 Winburg Supplies table which shows a substantial diminution since 1908. 274 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA NOTE. The official general reports from the Heads of Depart- ments of each Province either expressly or inferentially concur in the opinion that native crime is declining both in volume and the serious nature of the offences committed. They agree that the natives are a law-abiding folk, and that the prevailing tendency of the natives is to become even better citizens as time proceeds. The statement is repeatedly made that the greater bulk of native crime consists of trivial offences, such as evasions of municipal by- laws, the hut tax, and the pass regulations. Drunkenness is a com- mon offence, and it often leads to crime, but the whites are more responsible for this than the natives, for they break the liquor laws to supply the natives with strong drink for profit. Were this iniquitous traffic put down with a strong hand, there is good reason to believe that the negroes of South Africa would compare favorably, as to criminality, with any other people in the world. 275 APPENDIX B 'TPHE appended table, extracted from the Blue Book on Native Affairs for 1910, pages 399 407, shows the mortality among natives employed on some of the leading Diamond Mines, Gold Mines, and Coal Mines of the Transvaal (deep levels) for the year ended 3ist December, 1910. Comment on the table would be utterly super- fluous. It tells its own appalling story only too well. Mine or Company. Premier Nourse Mines ... City Deep Durban Roodepoort Dp. Modderfontein Consd.... Cinderella Consd. Von Rhyn Deep Simmer East Rose Deep Greduld Vogelsthirs Consl. Dp. Clydesdale (Coal) *Bantgis Consd. 'Princess State *East Rand Proprietary * These are outcrop mines. 276 Average number of natives employed. 10,565 Deaths from Disease. 477 Deaths from Accidents. 32 Total Death Rate per 1,000 per annum 48-2 4,373 178 18 44-8 i>787 1 08 7 64-4 2,486 132 ii 57'5 334 15 4 57-o 2,260 116 37 67-7 491 29 5 69-2 2,527 145 44 74-8 2,984 127 '9 48-9 L4I5 89 i 63-5 643 62 2 99'S 312 29 3 102-5 2,439 35 10 59-5 1.3^7 84 3 66-1 15.478 409 73 31-1 APPENDIX C HP^HE returns of the census taken in 1910 de- serve Imperial attention. The statistics are ominous, and when compared with the figures of the census of 1904 they tell a story replete with menace to the white race. The white population of the whole Union increased by only 161,219 in the last seven years. The natives and colored population during the same period increased by 621,456. In 1904, the blacks formed 78^42 per centum of the Union's popula- tion. To-day they form 78*55 per centum. In the Union to-day there are 51,336 more male whites than in 1904 : and there are 336,039 more black and colored males. These figures do not include Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, or Basutoland, in all of which provinces the natives enormously outnumber the whites. In the Cape province, the white male population has decreased by 16,825 since 1904, a percentage diminution of 5*28. The native population increased by 277 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA 54,346 in the same period. In the Natal province there are more Indians than whites, and the negro population amounts nearly to 1,000,000. The returns show that the black death rate is de- creasing and the birth rate increasing. The whites in South Africa are not holding their ground. They are steadily receding. South Africa is continuously becoming blacker and browner, and the disproportion between white and black becomes greater every year. The In- dustrial statistics are not one whit more encourag- ing. Whole industries have fallen into the hands of the natives, and although the prejudice against " Kaffir's work " is said to be breaking down a little, the prejudice is still " terribly " strong " and a " gentlemanly " subsistence on charity (and crime) is still almost universally pre- ferred to the indignity of unskilled labor. The census demonstrates that the Union Government, as yet, has done absolutely nothing to strengthen the white man's tenure of the country. On the contrary, since the Union was formed, there has been a marked slipping back in almost every direction. Black labor is encouraged by the law of the land, and every inducement is given to employers by the Pass law, the Workmen's 278 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA Compensation Acts, and other statutes, to prefer black to white labor, even in the sphere of skilled employment. The consequences are plain for all eyes to see. The black monopoly of the un- skilled labor market survives unshaken, and the native is making rapid inroads on the skilled market, once the exclusive preserve of the white. Unless there is a revolutionary change of policy, it appears inevitable that the white race will dwindle in significance and in capacity, until at last it will only be able to hold its place at the favor of the black and colored horde. 279 APPENDIX D THE PARLIAMENT OF THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA Extract from Report of Select Committee on Closer Land Settlement, $tk April, 1911. H '. The Importance of Closer Settlement on the Land. 1. There are many conditions peculiar to South Africa which indicate that a steady and substantial increase in the white population is of vital importance. No one disputes this, and con- sequently it is liable to be treated as a trite and commonplace fact, thus becoming unimpressive. Public or general indifference to this subject con- stitutes a national danger and involves risk to the very life of the nation. 2. Your Committee is of opinion that the im- perative necessity of Closer Settlement to the Union would be better appreciated if the white population more fully realised the following con- siderations 280 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA (a) That the Union does not at present pro- duce nearly sufficient foodstuffs for its own needs, and that a sudden outbreak of war, or even threat of war, would there- fore greatly affect all oversea supplies and entail much distress amongst the white population and economic disturbance throughout the Union ; (b) That the future development of South Africa on civilised lines will only be pos- sible by the -presence of a virile white race in sufficient numbers to counteract the forces, both within and without the Union, acting in the direction of barbarism and reversion; (c) That the trend of existing conditions indi- cates that there is substantial risk of the gravest consequence to the white popula- tion, unless it can be greatly strengthened and constantly recruited. (d) That the sparse white population of the Union, coupled with its great extent and the general excellence of its climate and resources, will necessarily attract the attention of those nations who desire land for their surplus population, and as lead- 281 THE REAL SOUTH AFRICA ing principles are capable of application to large affairs as to small, it must eventu- ally occur to some powerful nation that the Union is not -" beneficially occupied." J. J. BYRON, Chairman. Committee Rooms, The Senate, 4th April, 1911. FINIS Ptinted by Ebenezer Baylis Sr Son, Worcester, England. Thia book is DUE on the last date stamped below LD-URB DEC 3 Ul t ^ -WL 2 4 18% 30*9* DEC 8 1931 JAN 221932 'JAW ? 1933 Form L-9-35m-8,'28 JUN 5 1933 I 1 29 MOV 5 193^ ma JAN 2 19^ 2^1953 . DEC 12198* DEC 21968 , SFP2 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000798375 2 i: A PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD ! ^LIBRARY University Research Library jj ill a