A Century of Wrong

by Jan Christiaan Smuts

The Advisory Board recommended by the Industrial Commission would have proved inefficient because the laws with the administration of which that body would have had to concern itself can be carried out in a better and more efficient way by an official like the State Attorney, who has almost unlimited power and means of doing so. This is exactly what has happened. All complaints with regard to gold thefts have actually disappeared; one no longer hears of complaints as to the operation of the pass law; while latterly, as Her Majesty's Government must be well aware, the Chamber of Mines and other bodies of the Witwatersrand have repeatedly expressed their satisfaction with the stringent way in which the liquor law has been upheld. No local body, however well informed, would have been able to do what the State Attorney has done in this matter, and that is sufficient justification of the action of both Government and Volksraad in refusing to establish such an Advisory Board.

The Government now passes on to the discussion of the administration of justice, of which so much is made in the dispatch under reply.

With regard to these allegations, this Government perceives that much importance is attached in the dispatch to the so-called Lombard incident, the so-called Edgar case, and the so-called Amphitheatre occurrence.

A brief consideration of the facts referring to these three matters will show how unfounded are the accusations of Her Majesty's Government.

With reference to the Lombard incident, this Government wishes to point out that no complaint was lodged with any official in this Republic for a full month after the illtreatment of Cape coloured people was alleged to have taken place, and that neither the Government nor the public was aware that anything had taken place. The whole case was so insignificant that some of the people who were alleged to have been illtreated declared under oath at a later period before a court of investigation that they would never have made any complaint on their own initiative. What happened, however?

About a month after the occurrence the South African League came to hear of it; some of its officials sent round to collect evidence from the parties who were alleged to have been illtreated, and some sworn declarations were obtained by the help of Her Majesty's Vice-Consul at Johannesburg (between whom and this League a continual and conspicuous co-operation has existed). Even then no charge was lodged against the implicated officials with the judicial authorities of the country, but the case was put in the hands of the Acting British Agent at Pretoria.

When the allegations were brought under the notice of this Government, they at once appointed a commission of enquiry consisting of three members, namely, Landdrost Van der Berg, of Johannesburg, Mr Andries Stockenstrom, barrister-at-law of the Middle Temple, head of the Criminal Section of the State Attorney's Department, and Mr. Van der Merwe, mining commissioner, of Johannesburg; gentlemen against whose ability and impartiality the Uitlander population of the Republic have never harboured the slightest suspicion, and with whose appointment the Acting British Agent also expressed his entire satisfaction. The instructions given to these officials were to thoroughly investigate the whole case, and to report the result to the Government; and they fulfilled these instructions by sitting for days at a time, and carefully hearing and sifting the evidence of both sides. Every right-minded person readily acknowledges that far greater weight ought to be attached to the finding of this Commission than to the declarations of the complainants, who contradicted one another in nearly every particular, and who caused the whole enquiry to degenerate into a farce.

According to the report, nothing was proved as to the so-called illtreatment; the special instances of alleged illtreatment turned out to be purely imaginary; it was clearly proved and found that the complainants had acted contrary to Law, and the Commission only expressed disapproval of the fact that the arrests and the investigation had taken place at night, and without a proper warrant. It fills this Government with all the greater regret to observe that Her Majesty's Government bases its charges on ex parte, groundless, and in many respects false declarations of complainants who have been set in motion by political hatred, and that it silently ignores the report of the Commission.

The Amphitheatre occurrence is used by Her Majesty's Government to show how incapable the police of the Witwatersrand are to fulfil their duties and to preserve order. The League meeting was held at the so-called Amphitheatre at Johannesburg, with the knowledge of the State Secretary and State Attorney, and the accusation is that in spite of that fact, the uproar which arose at that meeting was not quelled by the police. The following are the true facts:—Mr. Wybergh and another, both in the service of the South African League, informed the State Secretary and the State Attorney that they intended to call this meeting in the Amphitheatre, and asked permission to do so; they were informed that no permission from the authorities was necessary, and that as long as the meeting did not give rise to irregularities or disturbances of the peace, they would be acting entirely within their rights. Their attention was then drawn to the fact that owing to the action and the propaganda of the South African League, this body had become extremely unpopular with a large section of the inhabitants of Johannesburg, and that in all probability a disturbance of the peace would take place if a sufficient body of the police were not present to preserve order. To this these gentlemen answered that the police were in very bad odour since the Edgar case, that the meeting would be a very quiet one, and that the presence of the police would contribute, or give rise to, disorder, and that they would on those grounds rather have no police at all. The State Secretary and State Attorney thereupon communicated with the head officials of the police at Johannesburg, with the result that the latter also thought that it would be better not to have any considerable number of police at the meeting. The Government accordingly, on the advice of these officials of the League as well as their own police officials, gave instructions that the police should remain away from the meeting; they did this in perfect good faith, and with the object of letting the League have its say without let or hindrance. The proposed meeting was however advertised far and wide. As the feeling amongst a section of the Witwatersrand population was exceedingly bitter against the League, a considerable number of the opponents of that body also attended the meeting. The few police who were present were powerless to quell the disorder, and when the police came on the scene in force some few minutes after the commencement of the uproar, the meeting was already broken up. Taken by itself, this occurrence would not be of much importance, as it is an isolated instance as far as the gold fields of this Republic are concerned, and even in the best organised and best ordered communities irregularities like the above occasionally take place.

The gravity of the matter, however, lies in the unjust accusation of Her Majesty's Government—that the meeting was broken up by officials of this Republic, and that the Government had curtly refused to institute an enquiry.