Imperialism in South Africa

by J. Ewing Ritchie

OUR KAFFIR WARS.

Writing last year, Captain Aylward, in his work on the Transvaal, indicated that South Africa would be a burning question for the British taxpayer in the summer of 1879. That period of time has not yet arrived, but already the question has come home to the aggrieved individual aforesaid in an unpleasantly novel and alarming manner. In spite of instructions from home, Sir Bartle Frere has initiated an aggressive war on the Zulu nation which already represents an expenditure of a million and a half, and which, before it is fought out to the bitter end, will occasion the expenditure of a much larger sum. In a time of unexampled commercial distress, when thousands of homes have been made desolate; when tender and delicate women who have been nursed in luxury and comfort have been deprived of their daily bread; when grey-haired old men have found themselves after the struggle of a life made paupers; when the most the majority of us can do is to meet the inevitable expenditure of the passing day—we are committed, in accordance with the Imperial instincts of officials in high quarters, to a warlike policy of which none can tell the result or calculate the cost. This, alas! is no new thing where our South African colonies are concerned. A war is begun by a blundering ruler, or in accordance with the wishes of interested parties, and the ignorant public at home has to pay the bill. Sir Arthur Cunynghame, in his last work, expresses the hope that for the Kaffir wars which were in existence when he was at the Cape the British taxpayer would not have to pay; nevertheless, in the Budget £344,000 are put down for the Transkei war. Mr. Trollope goes a step further, and plainly shows that the colonist, whether as farmer or labourer or trader, is much better off than men of the same class at home, and that it is unjust we should be taxed by an immense military expenditure for their benefit alone. Speaking of the Transvaal, he adds, “Great as is the parliamentary strength of the present Ministry, Parliament would hardly endure the idea of paying permanently for the stability and security of a Dutch population out of the British pocket.” And yet in Natal the Daily News correspondent estimates that our war with Cetewayo will cost twelve millions. It is to be questioned whether we as a people have been pecuniarly benefited by South African colonies. They offer no such advantages as a field of emigration as New Zealand or Canada or Australia. The emigrant is afraid of a Kaffir war, and he goes elsewhere. If the colonists had to pay for their own wars, we should have had fewer of them, and by this time they would have been in a much more flourishing condition. Nor should we have been trembling, as we have of late, lest any morning we might hear the Zulu army had marched into Natal and had not left a white man alive to tell the tale of the terrible tragedy that ensued. I maintain there would be no end to these Kaffir scares and Kaffir wars so long as the men and money of the mother country are so employed, and so long as the colonial governors are allowed to rush into war. If a man goes to live in South Africa he should do so with the feeling that he runs a certain risk, and that knowledge would make him live on good terms with the natives. High interest, as the late Duke of Wellington is reported to have said, means bad security. In a similar manner, we may say, cheap land means bad security; and the farmer who buys the freehold of his farm in Natal for less than the rent he has to pay for it at home cannot expect to be as secure in purse or person as a farmer in the Weald of Kent. In 1811 was our first Kaffir war. It was waged on our part in the most cruel manner—no quarter was given by the white man—no prisoners taken—all were slaughtered till the Kaffirs were driven backwards and eastwards across the Great Fish River. In 1819 we had another fight, as was to be expected. Wars lead to wars. What the sword wins the sword only can retain. Lord Charles Somerset, who had Imperial ideas of the most pronounced character, took it into his head to elect Gaika as the sole head of Kaffirland, when in reality the paramount chief was Hintza. In 1818, by seizing the wife of one of the latter’s chief councillors, and other aggressive acts, Gaika drew upon himself the enmity of his superior, and was defeated in a fierce battle with great slaughter. After the defeat Gaika appealed to the British Government to assist him, not in bringing about a reconciliation, but in making war on his enemies. Accordingly a powerful force of regular troops and armed colonists, to the number of 3,352 men, under Colonel Brereton, was despatched to fight on behalf of this wretched savage. The reward of their valour consisted in more than 30,000 head of cattle, of which 21,000 of the finest were given to the colonists and the rest to Gaika. As a natural consequence, the plundered tribes, rendered desperate by famine, crossed the Fish River in great numbers, drove in the small military posts, and compelled the border colonists to abandon their dwellings. Additional troops were sent to the frontier, and a plan was formed for the re-invasion of Kaffirland. But before that plan was carried out, the Kaffirs, to the number of 9,000, led by Makanna, attacked Grahamstown, and would have taken it had not the leader, in accordance with the custom of the heroes of his country, sent a message overnight to inform Colonel Willshire, the British commandant, that he would breakfast with him next morning. This gave the British time to prepare, and the result was 1,400 Kaffirs were left dead on the field. After this Colonel Willshire and Landdrost Stockenstrom advanced into the enemy’s country, carrying fire and slaughter everywhere. At length Makanna, to obtain better terms for his people, freely surrendered himself into the hands of the English; but this act had no effect on the latter, who proceeded to drive away the Kaffirs and to annex 3,000 square miles of fertile territory. The Kaffir, of course, became more incensed against us than ever. He saw his lands taken away, and an inferior chief placed, as it were, in power; but for a while, however, we had no regular fighting, only occasional brushes in consequence of cattle stealing, real or pretended. There is a foray recorded in the Cape Government Gazette of 1823 as a very meritorious affair. At daybreak on the 5th, Major Somerset, having collected his force, passed with celerity along a ridge, and at daylight had the satisfaction of pouring into the centre of Makanna’s kraal with a rapidity that at once astonished and completely overset the Kaffirs. A few assegais were thrown, but the attack was made with such vigour that little resistance could be made. As many Kaffirs having been destroyed as it was thought would evince our superiority and power, Major Somerset stopped the slaughter, and secured the cattle to the amount of about 7,000 head.

Strange to say, this mode of impressing the Kaffir with the fact of our superiority and power only made matters worse, and the commissioners of inquiry had to report, in July, 1825, that the annexation had entailed expenses upon the Government and sacrifices upon the people in no degree compensated with the acquirement of the territory which was the object of it. A similar remark may be made at the present time, for, as soon as a colony gets strong enough, its first effort is to fight the mother country with a hostile tariff. It seems then, as now, nothing was easier than to get up a casus belli. Mr. Thomas Baines, the great African traveller, illustrates in an amusing manner what is meant by justice to the natives by some of our colonists. “I was speaking to a friend,” he writes, “respecting the new discoveries, and we both agreed that it would be wrong to make war upon the natives and take the gold-fields away from them.” “But,” said my friend, “I would work with foresight. I would send cattle farmers to graze their herds near the borders, and the Kaffirs would be sure to steal them; but, if not, the owner could come away, and he could even withdraw his herdsmen and let them run night and day, then the Kaffirs could not resist the temptation. We could go in and claim the stolen cattle, and, if the Kaffirs resisted and made war, of course they would lose their country.”

Our next Kaffir war was, as all our Kaffir wars were, discreditable to ourselves. The war was not only, writes Mr. Trollope, bloody, but ruinous to thousands. The cattle were of course destroyed, so that no one was enriched. Of the ill blood then engendered the effects still remain. Three hundred thousand pounds were spent by the British. But at last the Kaffirs were supposed to have been conquered, and Sir Benjamin D’Urban triumphant. Lord Glenelg himself, however, declared that the Kaffirs had “ample justification.” It seems to an impartial observer that the war was entirely brought about by the English. After his expulsion from the Kat river, Macomo, the son of Gaika, retired to the banks of the Chumie, but so far from instigating his people to plunder the colony, he appears to have done his best to restrain them. On that head we have abundant testimony, but it suited the Colonial Governor to have him and his brother Tyalie removed, and removed they were under really aggravating circumstances. Our own soldiers did their work well, and we have graphic pictures of burning villages, ruined cultivations, and people driven away like wild beasts. The chief was sulky, writes Colonel Wade, and well he might be. Another cause of the war was the frontier system, which constantly led to collisions with the natives. As the Chief Tyalie declared, “Every year a commando comes, every week a patrol comes, every day farmers come and seize our cattle.” It was then the infuriated natives swept over the colony, to be in turn driven back. The murder of the great chief Hintza appears to have been an extraordinarily brutal one. It is stated to me, writes Lord Glenelg, “that Hintza repeatedly cried for mercy, that the Hottentots present granted the boon, and abstained from killing him; that this office was then undertaken by Mr. Southey, and that then the dead body of the fallen chief was basely and inhumanly mutilated.”

Under Sir Peregrine Maitland we had a fourth Kaffir war. Almost his first act was to commit an unpardonable sin in Kaffir eyes—the erection of a fort in their territory. As they said in their own expressive language, the new chief smelt of war, and war soon came. A Kaffir stole an axe; he was sent to Grahamstown to be tried at the circuit court. The chief Tola said that was contrary to the treaty that all such offences were to be tried at Fort Beaufort. The plea was in vain—the man was sent; an attempt was made to rescue him, and a Hottentot policeman was shot. At once the English took the field to avenge the insult in blood.

In 1850 the fifth Kaffir war arose, and the inhabitants of one advanced military village after another were murdered. This went on for nearly two years, but was at last suppressed by dint of hard fighting. It cost Great Britain, wrote Mr. Trollope, upwards of two millions of money, with the lives of about four hundred fighting men.

Our Natal territory cost us a little war initiated by Sir George Napier in 1841. At first the war went very much in favour of the Dutch. Then a larger force came, and the Dutch succumbed to numbers. It was not, however, till 1843 that the twenty-four still existing members of the Volksraad declared Her Majesty’s Government to be supreme. In the case of the Orange Free State we had a war which resulted in our beating the Dutch and winning the place, only to relinquish it again. Our rule in Natal led to our little war with King Langalibalele, who had come to live in Natal as king of the Hlubi tribe, who is now living, after a good many lives had been lost, near Capetown at an expense to the Government of £500 a year. In England it was felt that the chief had been unfairly used, the trial was adjudged to have been conducted with over-strained rigour, and the punishment to have been too severe. There would have been no war at all had it not been for the blunders of mischievous go-betweens. And now once more we are at war, and a cry has been raised for the extermination of the whole Zulu race; and when that is over, there will be fresh hordes of hostile natives to be fought, new lands to be annexed, a scientific frontier to be gained, and the colonists will make fortunes out of the millions thus spent. I ask in sorrow, How long is England to be strained and denuded of men and money for these costly wars? Surely it is a reproach alike to the Christianity and statesmanship of our time that we have not yet hit on a more excellent way.

A PLEA FOR THE KAFFIR.

At the present moment we are witnessing a sorry spectacle for a Christian nation—that of a whole people hemmed in in one corner of Eastern Africa, waiting to be swept off the face of the earth by the finest soldiers and the most scientific instruments of murder England has at her command. Their crime has been that in defending their native soil from the tread of the foe, they annihilated an English regiment, and for such an act there is no hope of pardon, in this world at least. From every corner of the land, from the pulpit and the Press, from the hut of the peasant and the palace of the prince, from the cad of the music-hall and the statesman of Downing Street, there has risen a cry for revenge; and that we shall take a full and fierce revenge there can be no doubt. Already in England and in Africa the blood-stained demon of war has sown her seed and reaps her harvest; already there have been bitter tears shed over hundreds of fallen heroes in desolated homes, and women wail and children vainly cry for loved ones whose bones now bleach the distant plain of Isandula. And there will be sadder and darker tragedies yet to come if the wild instincts of the people are to be gratified and the Zulu Kaffirs are to be exterminated. They are now represented as savage hordes, whose existence is incompatible with English rule. Let me plead that they are not such as they are represented, and that it is better that we make them friends. Cetewayo, by not crossing the Tugela and sweeping with fire and slaughter through Natal when that colony lay stricken and terrified at his feet, has set us an example of forbearance which it were wise to imitate. If we fail to do so, the blood feud between us and his people can know no end. They in their turn will nurse a spirit of revenge, and the Kaffir wars of the future will be fiercer and more cruel than any we have hitherto known.

There is much in the Kaffirs that should make them friendly with the English people if fairly treated. One well-known writer states that they are keen observers of character, and have great contempt for a man who gets drunk, or who does not keep his word. Kaffirs should be treated with kindness, fairness, and firmness. They have an accurate idea of justice, and appreciate the administration of just legislation, wrote Mr. Wilson, late a resident magistrate in Natal. In their wild state they are innocent, quiet, unoffending, and hospitable, and it is only when they live close to a European town that they acquire the bad habits of the white race, and with the cunning instincts natural to them become dangerous to the community. Said another colonist, at a conference recently held at the African section of the Society of Arts, mentally they were equal to white men. Dr. Mann, who has lived twenty-five years in Natal, and who has written a large work on that colony, declares that the Kaffirs had great ability, and, even without education, seemed a much higher race intellectually than the lower class of the agricultural population in England. In fact, he would rather go to a Kaffir for a response to an appeal to his reason than to an English labourer. Twenty years ago, said Mr. Richardes, they brought comparatively nothing, but now they were great customers to the British merchant. As a further proof of how a Zulu Kaffir could rise in the world, Dr. Mann mentions the case of one he knew who could not read, who borrowed on his own credit £500 to buy a sugar mill, and obtained a further loan from the Government to get it to work, and who, in three years, paid off the loan, and became a prosperous manufacturer. It seems a pity to kill off such people—a people by nature intended to be our customers and allies and friends. Much more than this may be said. “Kaffirs seem,” writes Lady Barker, “a very gay and cheerful people, to judge by the laughter and jests I hear from the groups returning to their kraals every day by the road just outside our fence.” A similar testimony was borne by Mr. Robert Richardson in a paper read by him a year or two since at a meeting of the Society of Arts. “The Zulu,” he said, “may not be dignified, but manliness and good temper are written on his cheerful countenance; and he is not only groom and cattle herd, but domestic servant, and performs with alacrity the least honourable service about a house. If Natal lambs don’t skip, as the Surveyor-General once said, at least the Natal servant does, for his errands are done at a trot cutting capers, while he sings with an appearance of great enjoyment in his own music. Brimful of humour, he is essentially a laughing animal, and having few wants or comforts, he rivals Mark Tapley in being jolly under creditable circumstances. All things considered, the Natal Zulu is a better servant than the (Cape) frontier Kaffir.”