South Africa, vol. II.

by Anthony Trollope

In the meantime, however, the matter is fixed. The work is done by black men. They plough, they reap; they herd and shear the sheep; they drive the oxen; they load the waggons; they carry the bricks; they draw the water; they hew the wood; they brush the clothes; they clean the boots; they run the posts; they make the roads; they wait at table; they cook the food; they wash the wool; they press the grapes; they kill the beef and mutton; they dig the gardens; they plaster the walls; they feed the horses;—and they find the diamonds. A South African farmer and a South African wool grower and a South African shopkeeper will all boast that South Africa is a productive country. If it be so she is productive altogether by means of black labour.

Another allegation very common in the mouth of the “iron-rodders” is that the Kafir—steals. “A nasty beastly thief that will never leave your cattle alone.” The eastern province Cape Colony farmer seems to think that he of all men ought to be made exempt by some special law from the predatory iniquities of his neighbours. I fear the Kafir does occasionally steal sheep and cattle. Up in the Diamond Fields he steals diamonds,—the diamonds, that is, which he himself finds. The accusations which I have heard against Kafirs, as to stealing, begin and end here. It is certainly the case that a man used to the ways of the country will leave his money and his jewelry about among Kafirs, with a perfect sense of security, who will lock up everything with the greatest care when some loafing European is seen about. I remember well how I was warned to be careful about my bag at the little Inn in Natal, because a few British soldiers had quartered themselves for the night in front of the house. The Innkeeper was an Englishman, and probably knew what he was talking about.

The Kafirs ought not to steal cattle. So much may be admitted. And if everything was as it ought to be there would be no thieves in London. But perhaps of all dishonest raids the most natural is that made by a Savage on beasts which are running on the hills which used to belong to his fathers. Wealth to him is represented by cattle, and the wealth of his tribe all came from its land. To drive cattle has to his mind none of the meanness of stealing. How long is it since the same feeling prevailed among Englishmen and Scotchmen living on the borders? It is much the same in regard to diamonds. They are found in the ground, and why should not the treasures of the ground be as free to the Kafir as to his employer? I am using the Kafir’s argument;—not my own. I know, as does my reader, and as do the angry white men in South Africa, that the Kafir has contracted for wages to give up what he finds to his employer. I know that the employer has paid for a license to use the bit of land, and that the Kafir has not. I know that a proper understanding as to meum and tuum would prevent the Kafir from secreting the little stone between his toes. But there is much of this which the Kafir cannot yet have learned. Taking the honesty and the dishonesty of the Kafir together, we shall find that it is the former which is remarkable.

The great question of the day in England as to the countries which I have just visited is that of Confederation. The Permissive Bill which was passed last Session,—1877,—entitles me to say that it is the opinion of the Government at home that such Confederation should be consummated in South Africa within the next three or four years. Then there arise two questions,—whether it is practicable, and if practicable whether it is expedient. I myself with such weak voice as I possess have advocated Australian Confederation. I have greatly rejoiced at Canadian Confederation. My sympathies were in favour of West Indian Confederation. I left England hoping that I might advocate South African Confederation. But, alas, I have come to think it inexpedient,—and, if expedient, still impracticable. A Confederation of States implies some identity of interests. In any coming together of Colonies under one flag, one Colony must have an ascendancy. Population will give this, and wealth,—and the position of the chosen capital. It clearly was so in Canada. In South Africa that preponderance would certainly be with the Cape Colony. I cannot conceive any capital to be possible other than Capetown. Then arises the question whether the other provinces of South Africa can improve their condition by identifying themselves with the Cape Colony. They who know Natal will I think agree with me that Natal will never consent to send ten legislators to a Congress at Capetown where they would be wholly inefficient to prevent the carrying of measures agreeable to the Constitution of the Cape Colony but averse to its own theory of Government. I have described the franchise of the Cape Colony. I am well aware that Confederation would not compel one State to adopt the same franchise as another. But Natal will never willingly put herself into the same boat with a Colony in which the negro vote may in a few years become predominant over the white. In Natal there are 320,000 coloured people to 20,000 white. She might still exclude the coloured man from her own hustings as she does now; but she will hardly allow her own poor ten members of a common Congress to be annihilated by the votes of members who may not improbably be returned by coloured persons, and who may not impossibly be coloured persons themselves.

With the Transvaal the Government at home may do as it pleases. At the present moment it is altogether at the disposal of the Crown. If the Cape Colony would consent to take it the Transvaal can be annexed to-morrow without any ceremony of Confederation. The Cape Colony would in the first place probably desire to be secured from any repayment of the debts of the late Republic. This would not be Confederation, though in this way the Cape Colony, which will soon have swallowed up Griqualand West, would be enabled to walk round the Free State. But the Boers of the Transvaal would, if consulted, be as little inclined to submit themselves to the coloured political influence of the Cape as would the people of Natal. What should they do in a Parliament of which they do not understand the language? Therefore I think Confederation to be inexpedient.

But though the Cape Colony were to walk round the Free State so as to join the Transvaal,—though it were even to walk on and reach the Eastern Sea by including Natal,—still it would only have gone round the Free State and not have absorbed it. I understand that Confederation without the Free State would not be thought sufficiently complete to answer the purpose of the Colonial Office at home. And as I think that the Free State will not confederate, for reasons which I have given when writing about the Free State, I think that Confederation is impracticable.

It is again the great question of coloured races,—the question which must dominate all other questions in South Africa. Confederation of adjacent Colonies may be very good for white men who can rule themselves, and yet not suit the condition of territories in which coloured men have to be ruled under circumstances which may be essentially different in different States.

Looking back at our dominion over South Africa which has now lasted for nearly three quarters of a century I think that we have cause for national pride. We have on the whole been honest and humane, and the errors into which we have fallen have not been greater than the extreme difficulty of the situation has made, if not necessary, at any rate natural. When we examine the operations of different Governors as they have succeeded each other, and read the varying instructions with which those Governors have been primed from the Colonial Office, it is impossible not to see that the peculiar bias of one Secretary of State succeeding to that of another has produced vacillations. There has been a want of what I have once before ventured to call “official tradition.” The intention of Great Britain as to her Colonies as expressed by Parliament has not been made sufficiently plain for the guidance of the Colonial Office. This shewed itself perhaps more signally than elsewhere in Lord Glenelg’s condemnation of Sir Benjamin D’Urban at the close of the third Kafir war in 1835, when he enunciated a policy which was not compatible with the maintenance of British authority in South Africa,—which had to be speedily revoked,—but which could not be revoked till every Kafir had been taught that England, across the seas, was afraid of him. Again I think that by vacillating policy we foolishly forced upon the Dutch the necessity of creating Republics, first across the Vaal and then between the Vaal and the Orange, when, but a short time before, we had refused them permission to do the same thing in Natal. I myself think that there should have been no Republic;—that in the Transvaal, and in the Orange State, as in Natal, we should have recognized the necessity of providing Government for our migrating subjects.

But in all this there has been no lust of power, no dishonesty. There has been little, if anything, of mean parsimony. In that matter of the Diamond Fields as to which the accusations against the Colonial Office have been the heaviest, I feel assured not only of the justice but of the wisdom of what was done. Had we not assumed the duty of government at Kimberley, Kimberley would have been ungovernable.

But the question which is of all the one of moment is the condition of the coloured races. Just now there is still continued among a small fraction of them a disturbance which the opponents of the present Government in the Cape Colony delight to call a War. In spite of this, throughout the length and breadth of South Africa,—even in what is still called Kreli’s country,—the coloured man has been benefitted by our coming. He has a better hut, better food, better clothing, better education, more liberty, less to fear and more to get, than he had when we came among him, or that he would have enjoyed had we not come. If this be so, we ought to be contented with what our Government has done.