[[2]] Sketches and Studies in South Africa. By W. J. Knox Little, Canon Residentiary of Worcester. London, 1899.
Misinterpretation of the Old Testament
Similar quotations might be given from many sources and of the same repute and strength. But, leaving unfavorable generalizations on the one side to offset favorable ones on the other, it might be well to take the qualities of the people in detail and examine them from various points of view. Religion is perhaps the first and foremost influence. The creed of the Boer is based by universal admission upon the Old Testament. The love and light and liberty of the newer dispensation has no place in his belief or in his life. The Bible, as he reads it, permits slavery, tolerates concubinage, teaches the perpetual intervention of a personal Providence, and makes him as truly one of a chosen people as was ever Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob. He lives upon the broad veldt of South Africa a patriarchal life not unlike in some respects that of the Hebrew of old, and he has thoroughly convinced himself that the British are to him what the Philistines were to the Jew, while the natives are intended to be his footstool as fully as ever were some of the surrounding races of Palestine to the heroes of Scripture. His religion is essentially a gloomy and serious one. There is no lighter side of life to him, and a text from the Old Testament is made to apply to most of the events of the day. Built into his character by isolation and intensified, in the crudest and wildest application, by an environment of inherited and continued ignorance, this religion has produced some very curious consequences. It has not made the Boer an enthusiast; it has simply rendered him contemptuous of all other creeds and sects to a degree of arrogance which is hard to meet and worse to endure. It has not had any softening influence, but rather a hardening one—making every prejudice stronger, every hatred more bitter, every avenue of intellectual expression more narrow and less susceptible to the forces of modern progress and education. It has developed into a more or less formal expression of defiant racial pride through the almost profane belief that the God of the Hebrews has become, essentially and entirely, the Providence of the Boers. The continuous use of Old Testament words and phrases has become a part of his individual life, though it usually means as little as do the continuous oaths of the cheerful sailor in the performance of his work. Ignorance has, in fact, crystallized the faith of his fathers into an extraordinarily narrow creed of which Tant' Sannie, in Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm, presents one of many picturesque embodiments:
"My mother boiled soap with bushes and I will boil soap with bushes. If the wrath of God is to fall upon this land (said Tant' Sannie, with the serenity of conscious virtue), it shall not be through me. Let them make their steam-wagons and their fire-carriages; let them go on as if the dear Lord didn't know what he was about when he gave their horses and oxen legs—the destruction of the Lord will follow them. I don't know how such people read their Bibles. When do we hear of Moses or Noah riding in a railway?"
Prejudice Against Civilization
It would appear, therefore, as beyond doubt, and the conclusion may be stated in very few words, that his religion has intensified the racial peculiarities of the Boer; has increased an already strong natural bigotry and tendency to superstition; and has helped to evolve a most unique and unpleasant personal character. What it has not done for him may be still further summarized. It has not taught him that "cleanliness is next to Godliness;" that morality is more than a matter of the color line; that honesty in word and action is a part of righteousness; that hatred toward his territorial neighbors, and malice or contempt toward his racial inferiors, are characteristics of anything rather than Christianity. Incidentally, it may be said that the Boer hates the slightest tendency toward show or display in his religious worship, and that he will obtrude his views of religion upon others at any and every opportunity. The Dutch Reformed Church is the State Church of the Transvaal, and has two branches—the Gereformeede, which believes in the singing of hymns during service, and the opposing Hervormde Dopper branch, which has been led by Paul Kruger since the disagreement of 1883 upon this subject. The matter has become a political one, and the party opposed to singing hymns has now been in power for a decade. To the Boers of both Republics the Nachtmaal, or annual Communion, is the great event of the year. Pretoria is the centre of the annual pilgrimage and the Mecca of all Boers at this period. From the ranch and farm and village they trek to that point in wagons loaded with supplies and holding the entire family. It is really a national holiday, as well as a religious festival, and is the one occasion upon which the Boer throws aside his love for solitude and shows himself willing to mix with his kind. Such is the religion of the Boer in its general results.
Home Life and Morals
Of his home life and morals much might be written. The families live far apart from each other in a house which forms the centre of some wide-stretching ranch or farm, and the larger the farm, the more isolated the situation, the fewer and further the neighbors, the better pleased is the Boer. In a limited sense only is he hospitable. Visitors are very few, and when they come on horseback and properly attended they are received in a sort of rude way. Englishmen are not considered desirable guests—unless they happen to be great hunters with many stories of the sport which the Boer loves so well. Poor men, or those who have met with misfortune, are spurned. The women of the republics are very ignorant, and as mentally feeble as might be expected from their surroundings and history. Physically, stoutness is the end and aim of female ambition, and to weigh two, or even three, hundred pounds is the greatest pride of the Dutch women of the veldt. They are invariably treated as the inferior sex, and even eat apart from the men. The Boer woman thinks little of dress, and in the house wears chiefly a loose and scantily made gown, which does for night as well as day. Out of doors, upon the weekly visit to church, something slightly better is used, together with an immense bonnet and a veil so thick as to make the face invisible. Next to the desire for fatness is the wish for a good complexion, and these two vanities constitute the special distinction of the Boer woman. She does little work and takes less exercise; except in times of war, when she sleeps as easily on the veldt as in a feather bed, and handles her gun as skilfully as does her husband. The Kaffirs and Hottentots and miscellaneous colored servants do the labor of both the kitchen and the farm. They do not share in the long prayers of the family, or indeed in any religious exercise, as the Boer regards them as animals not requiring salvation. The common belief is that they are descended from apes and baboons.
The Homestead and Immorality
The homesteads are small and unpretentious, and nearly always dirty in the extreme, as are the clothes and persons of the people themselves. Washing is perfunctory and generally the merest pretense. Of course water is frequently scarce, and this fact affords some excuse for what has now become a general habit and condition. As to the morals of the Dutch farmer facts speak stronger than words. In his relations with his own race his code is as strict as can be desired, and im that respect the home life is entirely moral. But no law, spiritual or human, controls him in regard to the negro women with whom he has been surrounded for centuries. And the result is a brutalization of his whole nature, a loss of all refinement in manners and the absence of any real respect for the sex. The Griquas, who have numbered thousands and constituted large and distinct communities in South Africa, and are still being added to, are the offspring of Boer and Hottentot unions; while the Cape-Boys are the result of similarly unrecognized relations between Boers and the Kaffir women. This immorality extends to the Boers all through South Africa in their relation with colored dependents, and it is not difficult to comprehend its degrading effect upon men, women and children alike.