South Africa; vol I.

by Anthony Trollope

I have said that the ordinary Kafir is found by the sugar grower not to be worth £20 a year. The sugar grower will put the matter in a different way and will declare that the Kafir will not work for £20 a year,—will not work as a man should work for any consideration that can be offered to him. I have no doubt that sugar can for the present be best made by Coolie labour,—and that of course is all in all with the manufacturer of sugar. It cannot be otherwise. But it is impossible not to see that under it all there is an aversion to the Kafir,—or Zulu as I had perhaps better call him now,—because he cannot be controlled, because his labour cannot be made compulsory. The Zulu is not an idle man,—not so idle I think as were the negroes in the West Indies who after the emancipation were able to squat on the deserted grounds and live on yams. But he loves to be independent. I heard of one man who on being offered work at certain wages, answered the European by offering him work at higher wages. This he would do,—if the story be true,—with perfect good humour and a thorough appreciation of the joke. But the European in Natal, and, indeed, the European throughout South Africa, cannot rid himself of the feeling that the man having thews and sinews, and being a Savage in want of training, should be made to work,—say nine hours a day for six days a week,—should be made to do as much as a poor Englishman who can barely feed himself and his wife and children. But the Zulu is a gentleman and will only work as it suits him.

This angers the European. The Coolie has been brought into the land under a contract and must work. The Coolie is himself conscious of this and does not strive to rebel. He is as closely bound as is the English labourer himself who would have to encounter at once all the awful horrors of the Board of Guardians, if it were to enter into his poor head to say that he intended to be idle for a week. The Zulu has his hut and his stack of Kafir corn, and can kill an animal out in the veld, and does not care a straw for any Board of Guardians. He is under no contract by which he can be brought before a magistrate. Therefore the sugar planter hates him and loves the Coolie.

I was once interrogating a young and intelligent superintendent of machinery in the Colony as to the labour he employed and asked him at last whether he had any Kafirs about the place. He almost flew at me in his wrath,—not against me but against the Kafirs. He would not, he said, admit one under the same roof with him. All work was impossible if a Kafir were allowed even to come near it. They were in his opinion a set of human wretches whom it was a clear mistake to have upon the earth. His work was all done by Coolies, and if he could not get Coolies the work would not be worth doing at all by him. His was not a sugar mill, but he was in the sugar country, and he was simply expressing unguardedly,—with too little reserve,—the feelings of those around him.

I have no doubt that before long the Zulus will make sugar, and will make it on terms cheaper to the Colony at large than those paid for the Coolies. But the Indian Coolie has been for a long time in the world’s workshop, whereas the Zulu has been introduced to it only quite of late.

The drive from the railway station at Umgeni, about four miles from Durban, through the sugar district to Verulam is very pretty. Some of the rapid pitches into little valleys, and steep rapid rises put me in mind of Devonshire. And, as in Devonshire, the hills fall here and there in a small chaos of broken twisted ridges which is to me always agreeable and picturesque. After a few turns the traveller, ignorant of the locality, hardly knows which way he is going, and when he is shewn some object which he is to approach cannot tell how he will get there. And then the growth of the sugar cane is always in some degree green, even in the driest weather. I had hardly seen anything that was not brown in the Cape Colony, so long and severe had been the drought. In Natal there was still no rain, but there was a green growth around which was grateful to the eyes. Altogether I was much pleased with what I saw of the sugar district of Natal, although I should have been better satisfied could I have seen Natives at work instead of imported Coolies.

Immediately west of the town as you make the first ascent up from the sea level towards the interior there is the hill called the Berea on and about which the more wealthy inhabitants of Durban have built their villas. Some few of them are certainly among the best houses in South Africa, and command views down upon the town and sea which would be very precious to many an opulent suburb in England. Durban is proud of its Berea and the visitor is taken to see it as the first among the sights of the place. And as he goes he is called upon to notice the road on which he is riding. It is no doubt a very good road,—as good as an ordinary road leading out of an ordinary town in England, and therefore does not at first attract the attention of the ordinary English traveller. But roads in young countries are a difficulty and sometimes a subject of soreness;—and the roads close to the towns and even in the towns are often so imperfect that it is felt to be almost rude to allude to them specially. In a new town very much has to be done before the roads can be macadamized. I was driven along one road into Durban in company with the Mayor which was certainly not all that a road ought to be. But this road which we were on now was, when I came to observe it, a very good road indeed. “And so it ought,” said my companion. “It cost the Colony——,” I forget what he said it cost. £30,000, I think, for three or four miles. There had been some blundering, probably some peculation, and thus the money of the young community had been squandered. Then, at the other side of Durban, £100,000 had been thrown into the sea in a vain attempt to keep out the sand. These are the heartrending struggles which new countries have to make. It is not only that they must spend their hard-earned money, but that they are so often compelled to throw it away because in their infancy they have not as yet learned how to spend it profitably.

Natal has had many hardships to endure and Durban perhaps more than its share. But there it is now, a prosperous and pleasant seaport town with a beautiful country round it and thriving merchants in its streets. It has a park in the middle of it,—not very well kept. I may suggest that it was not improved in general appearance when I saw it by having a couple of old horses tethered on its bare grass. Perhaps the grass is not bare now and perhaps the horses have been taken away. The combination when I was there suggested poverty on the part of the municipality and starvation on the part of the horses. There is also a botanical garden a little way up the hill very rich in plants but not altogether well kept. The wonder is how so much is done in these places, rather than why so little;—that efforts so great should be made by young and therefore poor municipalities to do something for the recreation and for the relief of the inhabitants! I think that there is not a town in South Africa,—so to be called,—which has not its hospital and its public garden. The struggles for these institutions have to come from men who are making a dash for fortune, generally under hard circumstances in which every energy is required; and the money has to be collected from pockets which at first are never very full. But a colonial town is ashamed of itself if it has not its garden, its hospital, its public library, and its two or three churches, even in its early days.

I can say nothing of the hotels at Durban because I was allowed to live at the club,—which is so peculiarly a colonial institution. Somebody puts your name down beforehand and then you drive up to the door and ask for your bedroom. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are provided at stated hours. At Durban two lunches were provided in separate rooms, a hot lunch and a cold lunch,—an arrangement which I did not see elsewhere. I imagine that the hot lunch is intended as a dinner to those who like to dine early. But, if I am not mistaken, I have seen the same faces coming out of the hot lunch and going in to the hot dinner. I should imagine that these clubs cannot be regarded with much favour by the Innkeepers as they take away a large proportion of the male travellers.

The population of Durban is a little in excess of that of the capital of the Colony, the one town running the other very close. They each have something above 4,000 white inhabitants, and something above half that number of coloured people. In regard to the latter there must I think be much uncertainty as they fluctuate greatly and live, many of them, nobody quite knows where. They are in fact beyond the power of accurate counting, and can only be computed. In Durban, as in Pieter Maritzburg, every thing is done by the Zulus,—or by other coloured people;—and when anything has to be done there is always a Zulu boy to do it. Nothing of manual work seems ever to be done by an European. The stranger would thus be led to believe that the coloured population is greater than the white. But Durban is a sea port town requiring many clerks and having no manufactures. Clerks are generally white, as are also the attendants in the shops. It is not till the traveller gets further up the country that he finds a Hottentot selling him a pockethandkerchief. I am bound to say that on leaving Durban I felt that I had visited a place at which the settlers had done the very utmost for themselves and had fought bravely and successfully with the difficulties which always beset new comers into strange lands. I wish the town and the sugar growers of its neighbourhood every success,—merely suggesting to them that in a few years’ time a Zulu may become quite as handy at making sugar as a Coolie.

Pieter Maritzburg is about 55 miles from Durban, and there are two public conveyances running daily. The mail cart starts in the morning, and what is called a Cobb’s coach follows at noon. I chose the latter as it travels somewhat faster than the other and reaches its destination in time for dinner. The troubles of the long road before me,—from Durban through Natal and the Transvaal to Pretoria, the Diamond Fields, Bloemfontein—the capital of the Orange Free State,—and thence back through the Cape Colony to Capetown were already beginning to lie heavy on my mind. But I had no cause for immediate action at Durban. Whatever I might do, whatever resolution I might finally take, must be done and taken at Pieter Maritzburg. I could therefore make this little journey without doubt, though my mind misgave me as to the other wanderings before me.