CHAPTER IV THE GROWTH OF TERRORISM
When Mr. Lyttelton said that flogging must cease, flogging ceased on the Rand, and the Oriental methods of torture were adopted instead.
But even this penal system—reminding one so strongly of the days of Stephen, when the wretched, tortured peasantry openly said that Christ and His saints slept, for Pity had veiled her face and Mercy had forgotten—had to be practised with great secrecy owing to the force of public opinion at home.
These methods were, however, unavailing to check the growing insolence and insubordination of the Chinese slaves. No better idea of the condition of the Rand during the last few months can be gathered than from the new Ordinance, which was drafted at the beginning of last October. This Ordinance took the power of punishing the Chinese coolies from the hands of the resident magistrates and placed it in the hands of the inspectors, thereby giving the welfare of the Chinese slaves solely and entirely into the mercy of the Rand lords. Before, an attempt had been made to cloak the slave Ordinance with a pretence of law and justice as conceived by the British public. But the draft Ordinance of August put an end to this piece of hypocrisy. The superintendents and the inspectors of the Chinese, for all practical purposes the servants of the mine owners, were to be not only the judge and the jury, but the plaintiff. It conferred on the superintendents and inspectors jurisdiction, in respect of offences against the Ordinance, of a resident magistrate.
Clause I states—"This power will be granted provided such offences are committed under the Ordinance and within the area of any mine or mine compound where such labourer resides. The fines to be inflicted in the case of conviction will be the same as those imposed by the magistrates under the existing laws, and on conviction the labourer's employer will be notified, and the amount of the fine will be deducted from the labourer's wages and paid over for the benefit of the Colonial Treasury."
Another clause states that—"For the purpose of confining prisoners awaiting trial, it is provided that the employers of labourers shall erect a lock-up on their properties, which lock-up shall be deemed to be a jail."
Again, in the event of labourers on the mines organizing a conspiracy, refusing to work, creating a disturbance, intimidating or molesting any person on the mine, the superintendent or inspector is empowered to impose a collective fine on the labourers.
Insomuch as this new Ordinance once and for all destroys the myth with which Rand lords endeavoured to surround their slave-owning ideals, I consider it to be a decided improvement upon the original Ordinance, with its innumerable pleasures and pretences for the moral and spiritual welfare of the Chinamen.
That unfortunate and much-deluded man the Colonial Secretary, once declared in the House of Commons that the Chinaman would have just as free access to a court of justice as any British subject. He certainly now-a-days possesses free access to a court, if not to a court of justice. Access is so easy to it that the court actually follows him wherever he goes, watches him while he works in the mine, watches him while he is in the compound, and is ready to punish and fine him, or to lock him up in the compound prison, without any of those old-fashioned formalities which, while they may embody the machinery of justice, are at least guarantees of its purity and disinterestedness.