South Africa, vol. II.

by Anthony Trollope

But it must at the same time tell us that South Africa is a black country and not a white one;—that the important person in South Africa is the Kafir and the Zulu, the Bechuana and the Hottentot;—not the Dutchman or the Englishman. On the subject of population I have already shewn that the information at my command is a little confused. Such confusion cannot be avoided when only estimates are made. But if I take credit for 340,000 white people in South Africa, I certainly claim as many as the country holds;—and I am probably within the mark if I say that our direct influence extends over 3,000,000 of Natives. What is the number of British subjects cannot even be estimated, because we do not know our Transvaal limits. There are also whole tribes to the North-West, in Bechuanaland, Damaraland, and Namaqualand anxious to be annexed but not yet annexed. To all those we owe the duty of protection, and all of them before long will be British subjects. As in India or Ceylon, where the people are a coloured people, Asiatic and not European, it is our first duty to govern them so that they may prosper, to defend them from ill-usage, to teach them what we know ourselves, to make them free, so in South Africa it is our chief duty to do the same thing for the Natives there. The white man is the master, and the master can generally protect himself. He can avail himself of the laws, and will always have so many points in his favour that a paternal government need not be much harassed on his account. Compared with the Native he is numerically but one to ten. But in strength, influence, and capacity he has ten to one the best of it.

What is our duty to the Kafir or Zulu? There are so many views of our duty! One believes that we have done the important thing if we teach him to sing hymns. Another would give him back,—say a tenth of the land that has been taken away from him, and then leave him. A third, the most confident of them all, thinks that everything hangs on “a rod of iron,”—between which and slavery the distance is very narrow. The rod of iron generally means compelled work, the amount of wages to be settled by the judgment of the master. A fourth would give him a franchise and let him vote for a Member of Parliament,—which of course includes the privilege of becoming a Member of Parliament, and of becoming Prime Minister if he can get enough of his own class to back him.

I am afraid that I cannot agree altogether with any of these four. The hymns, which as I speak of them include all religious teaching, have as yet gone but a very little way. Something has been done,—that something having shewn itself rather in a little book-learning than in amelioration of conduct as the result of comprehended Christianity. But the work will progress. In its way it is good, though the good done is so little commensurate with the missionary labour given and the missionary money spent!

The land scheme,—the giving up of locations to the people,—is good also to some extent if it be unmixed with such missionary attempts as some which I have attempted to describe as existing in the western province of the Cape Colony. There is a certain justice in it, and it enables the people to fall gradually into the way of working for wages. It has on the other hand the counterbalancing tendency of teaching the people to think that they can live idle on their own land,—as used to be the case with the Irishmen who held a couple of acres of ground.

“The iron rod” is to me abominable. It means always some other treatment for the coloured man than that which is given to the white man. There can be no good done till the two stand before the law exactly on the same ground. The “iron-rodder” desires to get work out of the black man;—and so do I, and so does every friend of the black man. The question is how the work shall be got out of them. “Make him work,” says the iron-rodder. “There he is, idle, fat as a pig on stolen mutton, and doing nothing; with thews and sinews by which I could be made so comfortable, if only I could use them.” “But how are you entitled to his work?” is the answer readiest at hand. “Because he steals my cattle,” says the iron-rodder, generally with a very limited amount of truth and less of logic. Because his cattle have been stolen once or twice he would subject the whole race to slavery,—unconscious that the slave’s work, if he could get it, would in the long run be very much less profitable to him than the free labour by which, in spite of all his assertions to the contrary, he does till his land, and herd his cattle, and shear his sheep and garner his wealth.

Then comes the question of the franchise. He who would give the black man a vote is generally the black man’s most advanced friend, the direct enemy of the iron-rodder, and is to be found in London rather than in South Africa. To such a one I would say certainly let the black man have the franchise on the same terms as the white man. In broadening or curtailing the privilege of voting there should be no expressed reference to colour. The word should not appear in any Act of any Parliament by which the franchise is regulated. If it be so expressed there cannot be that equality before the law without which we cannot divest ourselves of the sin of selfish ascendancy. But the franchise may be so regulated that the black man cannot enjoy it till he has qualified himself,—as the white man at any rate ought to qualify himself. Exclusion of this nature was intended when the existing law of the Cape Colony was passed. A man cannot vote till he has become a fixed resident, and shall be earning 10s. a week wages and his diet. When this scale was fixed it was imagined that it would exclude all but a very small number of Kafirs. But a few years has so improved the condition of the Kafirs that many thousands are now earning the wages necessary for a qualification. “Then by all means let them vote,” will say the friend of the Negro in Exeter Hall or the House of Commons,—perhaps without giving quite time enough to calculating the result. Does this friend of the Negro in his heart think that the black man is fit to assume political ascendancy over the white;—or that the white man would remain in South Africa and endure it? The white man would not remain, and if the white man were gone, the black man would return to his savagery. Very much has been done;—quite as much probably as we have a right to expect from the time which has been employed. But the black man is not yet civilized in South Africa and, with a few exceptions, is not fit for political power. The safeguard against the possible evil of which I have spoken is the idea that the Kafir is not as yet awake to the meaning of political power and therefore will not exercise the privilege of voting when it is given to him. It may be so at present, but I do not relish the political security which is to come, not from the absence of danger but from the assumed ignorance of those who might be dangerous. An understanding of the nature of the privilege will come before fitness for its exercise;—and then there may be danger. Thus we are driven back to the great question whether a country is fit for parliamentary institutions in which the body of the population is unfit for the privilege of voting.

Our duty to the Kafir of course is to civilize him,—so to treat him that as years roll on he will manifestly be the better for our coming to his land. I do not think that missionaries will do this, or fractions of land,—little Kafrarias, as it may be, separated off for their uses. The present position of Kreli and his Galekas who were to have dwelt in peace on their own territory across the Kei, is proof of this. The iron rod certainly will not do it. Nor will the franchise. But equality of law, equality of treatment, will do it;—and, I am glad to say, has already gone far towards doing it. The Kafir can make his own contract for his own labour the same as a white man;—can leave his job of work or take it as independently as the white workman;—but not more so. Encouraged by this treatment he is travelling hither and thither in quest of work, and is quickly learning that order and those wants which together make the only sure road to civilization.

The stranger in South Africa will constantly be told that the coloured man will not work, and that this is the one insuperable cause by which the progress of the country is impeded. It will be the first word whispered into his ear when he arrives, and the last assurance hurled after him as he leaves the coast. And yet during his whole sojourn in the country he will see all the work of the world around him done by the hands of coloured people. It will be so in Capetown far away from the Kafirs. It will be so on the homesteads of the Dutch in the western province. It will be so in the thriving commercial towns of the eastern province. From one end of Natal to the other he will find that all the work is done by Zulus. It will be the same in the Transvaal and the same even in the Orange Free State. Even there whenever work is done for wages it is done by coloured hands. When he gets to the Diamond Fields, he will find the mines swarming with black labour. And yet he will be told that the “nigger” will not work!

The meaning of the assertion is this;—that the “nigger” cannot be made to work whether he will or no. He will work for a day or two, perhaps a week or two, at a rate of wages sufficient to supply his wants for double the time, and will then decline, with a smile, to work any longer just then,—let the employer’s need be what it may. Now the employer has old European ideas in his head, even though he may have been born in the Colony. The poor rural labourer in England must work. He cannot live for four days on the wages of two. If he were to decline there would be the poor house, the Guardians, and all the horrors of Bumbledom before him. He therefore must work. And that “must,” which is known to exist as to the labouring Englishman and labouring Frenchman, creates a feeling that a similar necessity should coerce the Kafir. Doubtless it will come to be so. It is one of the penalties of civilization,—a penalty, or, shall we say, a blessing. But, till it does come, it cannot be assumed,—without a retrogression to slavery. Men in South Africa, the employers of much labour and the would-be employers of more, talk of the English vagrancy laws,—alleging that these Kafirs are vagrants, and should be treated as vagrants would be treated in England;—as though the law in England compelled any man to work who had means of living without work. The law in England will not make the Duke of —— work; nor will it make Hodge work if Hodge has 2s. a day of his own to live on and behaves himself.

This cry as to labour and the want of labour, is in truth a question of wages. A farmer in England will too often feel that the little profit of his farm is being carried away by that extra 2s. a week which the state of the labour market compels him to pay to his workmen. The rise of wages among the coloured people in South Africa has been much quicker than it ever was in England. In parts of Natal a Zulu may still be hired for his diet of Indian corn and 7s. a month. In Kafraria, about King Williamstown, men were earning 2s. 6d. a day when I was there. I have seen coloured labourers earning 4s. 6d. a day for the simple duty of washing wool. All this has to equalize itself, and while it is doing so, of course there is difficulty. The white man thinks that the solution of the difficulty should be left to him. It is disparaging to his pride that the black man should be so far master of the situation as to be able to fix his own wages.