Dawn in darkest Africa

by John H. Harris

BRITISH JUSTICE

No one would deny that blunders are but human; few would deny that the finest Colonial Office in the world—that of Great Britain—has made mistakes which subsequent history condemns. The natives have enough common-sense to make every allowance for such mistakes, but what they do not understand—and in this they are by no means alone—is, why recognition of the mistake is not made promptly, and some reparation made for the error. The plain man asks why there should be some Medo-Persian law which forbids the admission of error and the consequent refusal of reparation. This attitude is accountable for much harm to the prestige of the European in West Africa.

In Government despatches, in speeches, in our schools and from our pulpits, we are never tired of preaching upon those articles of British political faith which know no party. We pride ourselves upon our love of justice and freedom, and yet we do things which we know to be utterly indefensible, which we know to be in entire contradiction to our belauded principles. We have made the blunder and we know it, but we invariably crown it with the further blunder of refusing to admit it.

We know perfectly well that it is indefensible to arrest a man and arbitrarily punish him without trial, but it is done, nevertheless. During our journeys in Central Africa, we visited a grey-haired old chieftain living in a hut on the Gold Coast. The old man was reclining in a cheap deck-chair, he was totally blind and unable to stand. What was his story?

Some thirteen years ago he heard rumours of a rebellion against the British Government in Sierra Leone, and immediately Bai Sherboro sent a message to the District Commissioner that the war boys were bent on attacking Bonthe. This timely information permitted of measures being taken to protect Bonthe. One day a messenger called upon Bai Sherboro and told him the Governor wished to see him. Trustingly the old man picked up his staff and went to the British authorities, when, without trial—and he asserts without being even informed of the charges made against him—he was forthwith exiled to a lonely spot on the shores of the distant British colony, the Gold Coast. In Sierra Leone the old man had a son, who, refusing to allow his father to go forth alone, sold all he had and joined him in solitary exile, and who to this day shares his loneliness and sorrow.

The British Government does not deny the facts, but, apparently acting upon the advice of the “man on the spot,” who has probably never seen any other person than the old chief’s interested accuser, takes up the position that the return of this blind and decrepit old man to his native home, would be dangerous, on the ground that he was believed to be implicated in a rebellion! The Government has all along refused to give the old man a trial, so that he might face his accusers and meet the charges, with the result that he must die in exile. There is something very un-English about such an incident. Strangely enough the old man still holds firmly, after all these years, to his admiration of British rule, and faith in British justice. Again and again he reiterated to us the words, “If only the King of England knew!” “If only the King of England knew!”

This is a passionate loyalty which surely we are unwise to trifle with, unwise to immolate upon the altar of theoretic administrative infallibility. It is folly to bury our heads in the sand so that we may not see these things, for if we fail to look these facts squarely in the face, others are regarding them—our friends with deep concern, our enemies with the keen relish of an insatiable hatred.

Will it be argued that this is only an incident? Possibly, but who knows? This case was unknown to the outside public until the old man’s hair had whitened and until he had lost the use of his limbs during ten years’ exile. Two years of persistent knocking at the door of the Colonial Office has even failed to secure permission for the old man to return to die in his own country.

THE PATERNAL DREAM

Many chiefs and native merchants in British West Africa have but one ideal for their offspring—to send them to England for an education either for the bar or for the medical service. They are pathetic stories which some of these men tell you of how they deny themselves and their families so that they may save enough to send “my eldest” to England. They themselves have only heard of the glories of England, they can never hope to see them, but their determination is that the boy shall. The latter comes and spends his four or five years here in England, possibly more, and during that period the old man is slaving away on his farm, or trading early and late in his store, has watched his savings trickle away until often he has but little left. At last the glad day of home-coming arrives. The lad steps ashore from the boat, a fully fledged “medico,” carrying “no end of big degrees.” How proud the father is! How amply repaid he feels for all his efforts and struggles, as his full-grown son explains to him the degrees he has obtained are higher than those of Dr. Smith, the white medical officer at the hospital.