The following is from the last Report of the Aborigines Protection Society (Jan., 1900). Its present secretary leans towards a favourable judgment of the recent improvements in the policy of the Transvaal, and condemns severely every act on the part of the English which does not accord with the principles of our Constitutional Law, and therefore this statement will not be regarded as the statement of a partisan: "It is laid down as a fundamental principle in the Transvaal Grondwet that there is no equality of rights between white men and blacks. In theory, if not in practice, the Boers regard the natives, all of whom they contemptuously call Kaffirs, whatever their tribal differences, pretty much as the ancient Jews regarded the Philistines and others whom they expelled from Palestine, or used as hewers of wood and drawers of water, but with added prejudice due to the difference of colour. So it was in the case of the early Dutch settlers, and so it is to-day, with a few exceptions, due mainly to the influence of the missionaries, whose work among the natives has from the first been objected to and hindered. It is only by social sufferance, and not by law, that the marriage of natives with Christian rites is recognised, and it carries with it none of the conditions as regards inheritance and the like, which are prescribed by the Dutch Roman code in force with white men. As a matter of fact, natives have no legal rights whatever. If they are in the service of humane masters, mindful of their own interests and moral obligations, they may be properly lodged and fed, not overworked, and fairly recompensed; but from the cruelties of a brutal master, perpetrated in cold blood or a drunken fit, the native practically has no redress."
The Rev. John H. Bovill, Rector of the Cathedral Church, Lorenço Marquez, and sometime Her Majesty's Acting Consul there, has worked for five years in a district from which numbers of natives were drawn for work in the Transvaal, has visited the Transvaal from time to time, and is well acquainted with Boers of all classes and occupations. He has given us some details of the working out—especially as regards the natives—of the principles of the Grondwet or Constitution of the Transvaal.
To us English, the most astonishing feature, to begin with, of this Constitution, is that it places the power of the Judiciary below that of the Raad or Legislative Body. The Judges of the Highest Court of Law are not free to give judgment according to evidence before them and the light given to them. A vote of the Raad, consisting of a mere handful of men in secret sitting, can at any time override and annul a sentence of the High Court.
This will perhaps be better understood if we picture to ourselves some great trial before Lord Russell and others of our eminent judges, in which any laws bearing on the case were carefully tested in connection with the principles of our Constitution; that this supreme Court had pronounced its verdict, and that the next day Parliament should discuss, with closed doors, the verdict of the judges, and by a vote or resolution, should declare it unjust and annul it.
Let us imagine, to follow the matter a little further on the lines of Transvaal justice, that our Sovereign had power to dismiss at will from office any judge or judges who might have exercised independence of judgment and pronounced a verdict displeasing to Parliament or to herself personally! Such is law and justice in the Transvaal; and that country is called a Republic! "This is Transvaal justice," says M. Naville; "a mockery, an ingenious legalizing of tyranny. There are no laws, there are only the caprices of the Raad. A vote in a secret sitting, that is what binds the Judges, and according to it they will administer justice. The law of to-day will perhaps not be the law to-morrow. The fifteen members of the majority, or rather President Kruger, who influences their votes, may change their opinion from one day to the next—it matters not; their opinion, formulated by a vote, will always be law. Woe to the judge who should dare to mention the Constitution or the Code, for there is one: he would at once be dismissed by the President who appointed him."
It was prescribed by the Grondwet that no new law should be passed by Parliament (the Volksraad) unless notice of it had been given three months in advance, and the people had had the opportunity to pronounce upon it. This did not suit the President; accordingly when desirous of legalizing some new project of his own, he adopted the plan of bringing in such project as an addition or amendment to some existing law, giving it out as no new law, but only a supplementary clause. Law No. 1 of 1897 was manipulated in this manner. By this law, the Judges of the High Court were formally deprived of the right to test the validity of any law in its relation to the Constitution, and they were also compelled to accept as law, without question or reservation of any kind, any resolution passed at any time and under any circumstances by the Volksraad. This Law No. 1 of 1897 was passed through all its stages in three days, without being subjected in the first instance to the people.
But I am especially concerned with what affects the natives.
Article 1 of this section says:—A native must not own fixed property.
(2) He must not marry by civil or ecclesiastical process.
(3) He must not be allowed access to Civil Courts in any action against a white man.