Thus, in 1877, we are again attempting to do that which was recommended twenty years before. On this occasion I presume that no sanction from the Colonial Office at home was needed, as at the date of the notice such sanction could hardly have been received. This is a matter which I do not profess to understand, but the present Governor of the Cape Colony,—who in this war acts as High Commissioner and in that capacity is not responsible to his Ministers,—is certainly not the man to take such a step without proper authority. I hope we are not counting our chickens before they are hatched. I feel little doubt myself but that the hatching will at last be complete.
Though the disturbance has hardly been a war,—if a war, it would have to be reckoned as the sixth Kafir war,—it may be well to say a few words as to its commencement. To do so it will be necessary to bring another tribe under the reader’s notice. These are the Fingos, who among South African natives are the special friends of the Britisher,—having precedence in this respect even of the Basutos. They appear to have been originally,—as originally, at least, as we can trace them back,—inhabitants of some portion of the country now called Natal, and to have been driven by Chaka, the great King of the Zulus, down among the Galekas. Here they were absolutely enslaved, and in the time of Hintsa, the father of Kreli, were called the Kafirs’ dogs. Their original name I do not know, but Fingo means a dog. After one of the Kafir wars, in 1834, they were taken out from among the Galekas by British authority, relieved from the condition of slavery, and settled on locations which were given to them. They were first placed near the coast between the Great Fish River and the Keiskamma; but many were subsequently moved up to a district which they still occupy, across the Kei, and close to their old masters the Galekas,—but on land which was under British government and which became part of British Kafraria. Here they have been as good as their old masters,—and as being special occupants of British favour perhaps something better. They have been a money-making people, possessing oxen and waggons, and going much ahead of other Kafirs in the way of trade. And as they grew in prosperity, so probably they grew in pride. They were still Fingos;—but not a Fingo was any longer a Galeka’s dog,—which was a state of things not agreeable to the Galekas. This too must have been the more intolerable as the area given up to the Fingos in this locality comprised about 2,000 square miles, while that left to the Galekas was no more than 1,600: The Galekas living on this curtailed territory were about 66,600 souls, whereas only 50,000 Fingos drew their easier bread from the larger region. In August last the row began by a quarrel between the Galekas and the Fingos. There was a beer-drinking together on the occasion of a Fingo wedding to which certain Galekas had been invited. The guests misbehaved themselves, and the Fingos drove them away. Upon that a body of armed Galekas returned, and a tribal war was started. But the Fingos as being British subjects were not empowered to conduct a war on their own account. It was necessary that we should fight for them or that there should be no fighting. The Galekas were armed,—as they might choose to arm themselves, or might be able; while the Fingos could only possess such arms as we permitted them to use. It thus became necessary that we should defend them.
When it came to this pass Kreli, the old Chief, is supposed to have been urgent against any further fighting. Throughout his long life whatever of misfortune he had suffered, had come from fighting with the English, whatever of peace he had enjoyed had come from the good will of the English. Nor do I think that the Galekas as a body were anxious for a war with the English though they may have been ready enough to bully the Fingos. They too had much to lose and nothing to gain. Ambition probably sat lightly with them, and even hatred for the Fingos by that time must nearly have worn itself out among the people. But the Chief had sons, and there were other Princes of the blood royal. With such as they ambition and revenge linger longer than with the mass. Quicquid delirunt reges plectuntur Achivi. The Kafirs had to fight because royal blood boiled high. The old King in his declining years was too weak to restrain his own sons,—as have been other old Kings. Arms having been taken up against the Fingos were maintained against the protectors of the Fingos. It might be that after all the long prophesied day had now come for driving the white men out of South Africa. Instead of that the day has probably at last come for subjugating the hitherto unsubjugated Kafirs.
I have before me all the details of the “war” as it has been carried on, showing how in the first battle our one gun came to grief after having been fired seven times, and how the Fingos ran away because the gun had come to grief;—how in consequence of this five of our mounted policemen and one officer were killed by the Galekas; how in the next engagement the Fingos behaved much better,—so much better as to have been thanked for their gallantry; and how from that time to this we have driven poor old Kreli about, taking from him his cattle and his country,—determined if possible to catch him but not having caught him as yet. Colonial history will no doubt some day tell all this at length; but in a work so light as mine my readers perhaps would not thank me for more detailed circumstances.
On the 5th of October, when the affair was becoming serious, the Governor of the Gape, who is also High Commissioner for the management of the natives, issued a proclamation in which he sets forth Kreli’s weakness or fault. “Kreli,” he says, “either had not the will or the power to make his people keep the peace,” and again—“The Chief Kreli having distinctly expressed his inability to punish his people, or to prevent such outrages for the future, Commandant Griffith has been directed to advance into Kreli’s country, to put down by force, if necessary, all attempts to resist the authority of the British Government or to molest its subjects, and to exact full reparation for the injuries inflicted on British subjects by Kreli’s people.”
Read by the assistance of South African commentaries this means that Kreli’s country is to be annexed, and for such reading the later proclamation as to 300-acre farms adds an assured light. That it will be much better so, no one doubts. Let the reader look at the map and he cannot doubt. Can it be well that a corner, one little corner should be kept for independent Kafirs,—not that Kafirs unable to live with the British might run into it as do the American Indians into the Indian Territory or the Maories of New Zealand into the King-County there;—but that a single tribe may entertain dreams of independence and dreams of hostility? Whether we have done well or ill by occupying South Africa, I will not now stop to ask. But if ill, we can hardly salve our consciences by that little corner. And yet that little corner has always been the supposed focus of rebellion from which the scared colonist has feared that war would come upon him. Of what real service can it be to leave to the unchecked dominion of Kafir habits a tract of 1,600 square miles when we have absorbed from the Natives a territory larger than all British India. We have taken to ourselves in South Africa within this century an extent of land which in area is the largest of all Her Majesty’s dominions, and have been wont to tell ourselves that as regards the Natives it is all right because we have left them their own lands in Kafraria Proper. Let the Briton who consoles himself with this thought,—and who would still so console himself,—look at the strip on the map along the coast, an inch long perhaps and an inch deep; and then let him measure across the continent from the mouth of the Orange River to the mouth of the Tugela. It makes a Briton feel like the American who would not swear to the two hundredth duck.
We have not caught Kreli yet. When we have, if we should catch him, I do not in the least know what we shall do with him. There is a report which I do not believe that the Governor has threatened him with Robben Island. Robben Island is a forlorn isle lying off Capetown which has been utilized for malefactors and lunatics. Langalibalele has a comfortable farm house on the Gape Flats where he has a bottle of wine and a bottle of beer allowed him a day,—and where he lives like a second Napoleon at a second St. Helena. I trust that nothing of the kind will be done with Kreli. There is an absurdity about it which is irritating. It is as though we were playing at Indian princes among the African black races. The man himself has not risen in life beyond the taste for squatting in his hut with a dozen black wives around him and a red blanket over his shoulders. Then we put him into a house where he squats on a chair instead, and give him wine and beer and good clothes. When we take the children of such a one and do something in the way of educating them, then the expenditure of money is justified. Many Kafirs,—many thousand Kafirs have risen above squatting in huts and red blankets; but they are the men who have learned to work, as at the Kimberley mine, and not the Chiefs. The only excuse for such treatment as that which Langalibalele receives, which Kreli if caught would probably receive, is that no one knows what else to propose. I am almost inclined to think it better that Kreli should not be caught. Prisoners of that nature are troublesome. What a blessing it was to France when Marshal Bazaine escaped.
I was told before leaving the Cape that the trouble would probably not cost above £50,000. So cheap a disturbance certainly should not be called a war. The cattle taken would probably be worth the money;—and then the 300-acre farms, if they are ever allotted, will it is presumed be of some value. But now I fear that £50,000 will not pay half the bill. There is no luxury on earth more expensive than the British soldier.
It is well that we should annex Kreli’s country;—but there is something for the lovers of the picturesque to regret in that the Kafir should no longer have a spot on which he can live quite in accordance with his own habits, in which there shall be no one to bid him cover his nakedness. Though by degrees the really independent part of Kafraria Proper has dwindled down to so small dimensions, there has always been the feeling that the unharassed unharnessed Kafir had still his own native wilds in which to disport himself as he pleased, in which the Chief might rule over his subjects, and in which the subjects might venerate their Chiefs without the necessity of obeying any white man. On behalf of such lovers of the picturesque it should be explained that in making the Kafirs subject to Great Britain, Great Britain interferes but very little with their habits of life. There is hardly any interference unless as an introduction of wages among them may affect them. The Gaika who has been subjugated has been allowed to marry as many wives as he could get as freely as the hitherto unsubjugated Galeka. Unless he come into the European towns breeches have not been imposed upon him, and indeed not then with any rigorous hand. The subject Kafirs are indeed made to pay hut tax,—10s. a hut in the Cape Colony and 14s. in Natal; but this is collected with such ease as to justify me in saying that they are a people not impatient of taxation. The popular idea seems to be that the 10s. demanded has to be got as soon as possible from some European source,—by a week’s work, by the sale of a few fowls, or perhaps in some less authorized manner. A sheep or two taken out of the nearest white man’s flock will thoroughly indemnify the native for his tax.
But their habits of life remain the same, unless they be openly renounced and changed by the adoption of Christianity; or until work performed in the service of the white man gradually induces the workman to imitate his employer. I think that the latter cause is by far the more operative of the two. But even that must be slow, as a population to be counted by millions can not be taught to work all at once.