Dawn in darkest Africa

by John H. Harris

It is useless to expostulate with the hotel manager, who will reply with a veritable flood of apologies and threaten to break the head, and neck if necessary, of every black boy in the place, and yet the guest knows with mathematical certainty that he will again have to go through the same course of torture before getting a troubled sleep on that straw mattress in yonder whitewashed room. This is the whole trouble with the Portuguese, commercially and diplomatically; their eternal protestations of sincerity, integrity and courtesy on the one hand, and, on the other, a total incapability of observing the most sacred promises. It is an old story, the same which confronted Wellington in the early nineteenth century. The Portuguese is very like the African; you despair of curing him of his weaknesses—which are, after all, seldom intentionally vicious—and yet you love him, because his kindly nature compels you.

The chief interest for the British public in Portuguese colonies arises from two distinct causes—financial interests and treaty obligations. Our financial interests are not large; they involve certain railway schemes, the supply of labour for the Transvaal mines, and a few plantation and merchant enterprises. Our treaty obligations, binding us in definite alliance with Portugal, may at any moment involve Great Britain in a grave international situation. The value, or otherwise, of such an alliance is open to a difference of opinion. It is, however, imperative that our ally should observe all moral standards which the civilized Powers are pledged to maintain with all the forces at their disposal. Travellers, consuls, merchants, sea captains and government officials have repeatedly called attention to the prevailing slavery and slave-trade in Portuguese West Africa; both of which detestable practices are in gross violation of Anglo-Portuguese treaties, the Brussels and Berlin Acts. All, or any, of the civilized Powers can at any moment—and in point of responsibility should—intervene and demand the abolition of slavery in Angola, San Thomé and Principe, and if Portugal continued to beg the question by calling slavery by some other name, that Power, or those Powers, could, if they so desired, shake her out of her indifference by casting the anchor of a battleship in sight of the ports of San Thomé and St. Paul de Loanda. I am not advocating such a course for one moment, but it is vital that the British public should realize that in the event of any Power signatory to anti-slavery Conventions waking up for any reason, disinterested or otherwise, to treaty obligations, and making some effort to discharge those liabilities, such Power would be at once confronted by the possibility of Britain’s navy defending Portuguese colonies, although run by slave labour. A pretty spectacle indeed, Britain’s matchless fleet defending the slaver, only wanting old Jack Hawkins on the Bridge, to complete the picture!

COCOA CARRYING, BELGIAN CONGO.

ENTRANCE TO COCOA ROÇA, PRINCIPE ISLAND. (PORTUGUESE.)

MAINLAND SLAVERY

Portugal shares with every other West African Power the problem of shortage of labour and with it the short-sighted energy of the impatient employer, who, beyond the ken of the official eye, frequently resorts to illegal means for increasing his supply. Domestic slavery survives in Portuguese Angola as well as in Nigeria, and in Belgian and French Congo. One can only estimate very roughly the slave population of Africa, but probably not less than a million human beings are to-day ignorant of the blessings of personal liberty. Mr. Nevinson, in his admirable book on “Modern Slavery,” says of Angola alone, “including the very large number of natives who, by purchase or birth, are the family slaves of the village chiefs and other fairly prosperous natives, we might probably reckon at least half the population as living under some form of slavery.” We cannot acquit many Powers in Africa from the charge of profiting administratively from this form of human chattelage, but when Portugal sets up a tu quoque plea we are compelled to differ. The dividing line between the Powers is that whilst many of them profit by this practice occasionally and for restricted periods, the Portuguese descend to the lowest level, adopt the native practice themselves and thus become not the “hirers,” but the owners. In this way they endeavour to meet their interminable shortage in the labour supply. To what lengths they are prepared to carry this system may be gathered from the report of Professor A. Prister in the Hamburger Fremden-Blatt for 28th July, 1906:—“In Angola, even in San Paolo de Loanda, under the eyes of the Governor, the Bishop and the high officials,” he alleges, are to be found “regular ‘bridewells’ for the production of slaves.” One of these, he says, he visited on the estate of “one of the richest Portuguese,” sixteen miles from Loanda. There he saw a large number of women, with only a few men, at work. “Each woman has a little hut, in a courtyard enclosed by a wall, in which she lives with her young ones. The woman is always pregnant, and carries her last child on her back, during work, in Kaffir manner. The overseer of this plantation, who treated me in every respect with Portuguese friendliness, and took me for a great admirer of his breeding establishment, told me that about four hundred negroes were there, and added with a laugh that he had over a hundred young ones in the compound. This is just as if a cattle-breeder were boasting of the fine increase in his herds. When the young one is so far grown up that he can be put to some use, at from six to eight years of age, he enters into a so-called contract, or he steps quite simply into the place of a dead serviçal. For instance, Joseph is told that his name is no more Joseph but Charles, and immediately the dead Charles is replaced. He never fell ill; he never died; he only lives a second life.” It is to be hoped that such incidents are rare even in Angola, but it brings home forcibly to the British mind the sort of colonies the “matchless navy” of Great Britain may be called upon one day to defend.

CONTRACT LABOUR AND SLAVERY

Certain apologists of the Portuguese are very fond of comparing the British indentured labour system with labour conditions on the Angolan mainland and the islands. The labour system of the East and West Indies are by no means ideal, but there is a world of difference, not only in the daily management of this labour, but fundamentally.