Dawn in darkest Africa

by John H. Harris

FIXED LAND BOUNDARIES

The native boundaries are almost invisible to the European eye, but to the African student of nature those boundaries are fixed and immovable as the eternal hills. The limits of tribal lands, within the orbit of which the clans may move and hunt whenever they will, are the stream, the palm plantation, the hilly range and the bridges across streams and rivers. Upon the chief and his advisers devolves the sacred duty of maintaining intact these tribal lands, alienation being foreign to the native ideas. So jealously is this guarded that many paramount chiefs in native law have no power to grant even occupancy rights. For six months the cession of Lagos to the British Crown was held up because King Docemo had signed a treaty which appeared to violate this principle of native law. The population declared that the ownership of the land of Lagos was not vested in the paramount chief, but in the seven White Cap chiefs, who, fearing the terrible consequences of alienating the tribal lands, fled to the bush. It became necessary for the British representatives to give the most explicit assurances and sacred promises on the point, in order to secure the ratification of the treaty of cession.

It is perfectly true that titles have been granted to native tribes and to white men, but it is equally true that originally there was never the remotest idea that this involved the European conception of total alienation. In the Holt v. Rex case of Southern Nigeria, the Crown held that “under native law strangers cannot obtain freehold rights—only occupancy rights.” The tribal conception of occupancy rights also carries with it the communal idea; a native clan settling by permission within the territory of another tribe really constitutes the first step in progressive incorporation. In the first instance of white settlers, there are abundant stories of the native interpretation of this principle—some of them distinctly objectionable, although there were pure motives behind them; others are amusing, such as that of the chiefs “borrowing” saws, axes, string, rope, nails and what not. Again and again they have freely and openly helped themselves to palm nuts and other produce from the white man’s ground. No doubt much of what the European calls “pilfering” was really quite innocently founded upon the communal conception of the primitive races.

The impetuous scramble for African territory, which began thirty years ago, made, and continues to make, a considerable breach in this old primitive system. White men, acting through the doubtful medium of interpreters not infrequently corrupted in advance, have secured from chiefs titles to land of all dimensions. These chieftains, as a whole, never fully grasped the meaning of the titles obtained with honeyed words, and which they are now unable to repudiate. That this is so is partly proved by the fact that in some colonies areas have been conceded twice and even three times over. Swaziland is, of course, the most flagrant example, where it will be remembered a situation so complex was created that it ultimately became impossible for any Court to decide as to who were the real owners of specific areas.

In West Africa things are not, and never can be, quite so bad, although in some colonies, the Gold Coast for example, German Cameroons and French Congo, land difficulties are being piled up for the endless confusion of future administrators. In Belgian Congo there is no immediate probability of trouble, due partly to the fact that capital has little confidence in Belgium’s heritage, but more because the major part of the population has disappeared.

LAND AND LABOUR

There is a vital connection between land and labour in all tropical and sub-tropical colonies. The economic future of native races is immobilized in the proportion in which their lands are taken from them. The almost phenomenal success of the cocoa industry in the British colony of the Gold Coast is due entirely to the fact that the natives are the proprietors of the cocoa farms. Throughout the colonial world, there is no more striking contrast between a landed and a landless native community than the British Gold Coast colony and the neighbouring Portuguese colony of San Thomé. In both territories cocoa flourishes, both produce excellent cocoa, in both nature is very kind, but while the one will march on conquering the cocoa markets of the world, the other is doomed to ultimate disaster.

The San Thomé cocoa producer is only a labourer—in fact a slave—and he is perishing at such a rate that the depleted ranks must be filled from outside sources to the number of 3000 to 4000 labourers every year. This constant inflow of labour cannot continue indefinitely, even if European sentiment permitted—which it will not—the revolting concomitants by which this labour has been maintained. The economic future of these colonies from which the supplies are drawn will soon forbid the emigration which at present is necessary to the island of San Thomé The population of the Gold Coast, on the other hand, happy in the enjoyment, in the main, of its own lands, reproduces and to some extent even increases itself every year. The native occupies his rightful place as producer, while the white man finds his true sphere, first as the inspirer of native efforts to place on the market cocoa of increasingly good quality, secondly as the medium by which the cocoa produced is conveyed to the manufacturer, and thirdly that by which surplus European manufactures are brought to the door of the native in exchange for his products.

This relationship of land to labour is receiving increasing recognition by students of colonial policy. The Republican Government of Portugal, finding both labour and land problems in hopeless confusion in the African colonies, has recently introduced a comprehensive measure embracing both factors in the development of African colonies. The ordinance is probably too generous in proportions to be carried through effectively in any colony, and stands little chance of complete application in Portuguese colonies, which suffer already from an excess of legislation, coupled with a rooted contempt for “Lisbon dictation.” This new ordinance, however, is a valuable contribution to West African legal literature.

The Provisional Government first lays down the proposition that every native in the Portuguese colonies is under “a moral and legal obligation to work.” The proposition upon land is in the following terms: “In all the Provinces beyond the seas, wherever there are public lands vacant, uncultivated, and not used for any special purpose, natives may occupy and cultivate them subject to conditions laid down in the present ordinance.”