Life in South Africa

by Lady Barker

Of course, the babies came swarming round, and very fat and jolly they all looked in their nice cotton frocks or shirt-blouses. I did not see a single ragged or squalid or poverty-stricken person in the whole settlement, except one poor mad boy, who followed us about, darting behind some shelter whenever he fancied himself observed. Poor fellow! he was quite harmless—a lucky circumstance, for he was of enormous stature and strength. Over his pleasant countenance came a puzzled, vacant look every now and then, but nothing repulsive, though his shaggy locks hung about his face like a water-spaniel’s ears, and he was only wrapped in a coarse blanket. I was sorry to notice a good deal of ophthalmia among the children, and heard that it was often prevalent here.

In another house, not quite so gay, I was specially invited to look at the contents of the good wife’s wardrobe, hung out to air in the garden. She was hugely delighted at my declaring that I should like to borrow some of her smart gowns, especially when I assured her, with perfect truth, that I did not possess anything half so fine. Sundry silk dresses of hues like the rainbow waved from the pomegranate bushes, and there were mantles and jackets enough to have started a second-hand clothes’ shop on the spot. This young woman—who was quite pretty, by the way—was the second wife of a rich elderly man, and I wondered what her slight, petite figure would look like when buried in those large and heavy garments. It chanced to be Saturday, and there was quite as much cleaning and general furbishing up of everything going on inside and outside the little houses as in an English country village, and far less shrewishness over the process.

I wanted to have one more look at the principal school-room, whose scholars were just breaking up for a long play; so we returned, but only in time for the outburst of liberated children, whooping and singing and noisily joyful at the ending of the week’s lessons. The little girls dropped their pretty curtsies shyly, but the boys kept to the charming Kafir salutation of throwing up the right hand with its two fingers extended, and crying “Inkosi!” It is a good deal prettier and more graceful than the complicated wave and bow in one which our village children accomplish so awkwardly.

Oh, how I should like to “do up” that school-room, and hang gay prints and picture-lessons on its walls, for those bright little creatures to go wild with delight at! There has been so much needed in the settlement that no money has been or can be forthcoming just yet for anything beyond bare necessaries. But the school-room wanted “doing up” very much. It was perfectly sweet and clean, and there was no occasion for any inspector to measure out so many cubic feet of air to each child, for the breeze from the mountains was whistling in at every crevice and among the rafters, and the floor was well scrubbed daily; but it wanted new stands and desks and forms—everything, in short—most sadly. Then just think what a boon it would be if the most intelligent and promising among the girls could be drafted from this school when twelve years old into a training-school, where they could be taught sewing and cooking and other homely accomplishments! There is no place in the colony where one can turn for a good female servant, and yet here were all these nice sharp little girls only wanting the opportunity of learning to grow up into capital servants and good future wives, above merely picking mealies or hoeing the ground.

As I have said before, I am no political economist, and the very combination of words frightens me, but still I can’t help observing how we are wasting the good material which lies ready to our hands. When one first arrives one is told, as a frightful piece of news, that there are three hundred thousand Kafirs in Natal, and only seventeen thousand whites. The next remark is that immigration is the cure for all the evils of the country, and that we want more white people. Now, it seems to me that is just what we don’t want—at least, white people of what is called the lower classes. Of course, every colony is the better for the introduction of skilled labor and intelligence of every kind, no matter how impecunious it may be. But the first thing a white person of any class at all does here is to set up Kafirs under him, whom he knocks about as much as he dares, complaining all the time of their ignorance and stupidity. Every man turns at once into a master and an independent gentleman, with black servants under him; and the result is, that it is impossible to get the simplest thing properly done, for the white people are too fine to do it, and the black ones either too ignorant or too lazy. Then there is an outcry at the chronic state of muddle and discomfort we all live in. English servants directly expect two or three Kafirs under them to do their work; and really no one except ladies and gentlemen seem to do anything save by deputy. Now, if we were only to import a small number of teachers and trained artisans of the highest procurable degree of efficiency, we could establish training-schools in connection with the missions which are scattered all over the country, and which have been doing an immense amount of good silently all these years. In this way we might gradually use up the material we have all ready to our hand in these swarming black people; and it appears to me as if it would be more likely to succeed than bringing shiploads of ignorant, idle whites into the colony. There is no doubt about it: Natal will never be an attractive country to European immigrants; and if it is not to be fairly crowded out of the list of progressive English colonies by its population of blacks, we must devise some scheme for bringing them into the great brotherhood of civilization. They are undoubtedly an intelligent people, good-humored and easy to manage. Their laziness is their great drawback, but at such a settlement as Edendale I heard no complaints, and certainly there were no signs of it. No one learns more readily than a savage how good are clothes and shelter and the thousand comforts of civilized people. Unhappily, he learns the evil with the good, especially in the towns, but that is our own fault. In a climate with so many cold days as this the want of clothing is severely felt by the Kafirs, and it is one of the first inducements to work. Then they very soon learn to appreciate the comfort of a better dwelling than their dark huts, and a wish for more nourishing food follows next. It is easier to get at the children and form their habits and ideas than to change those of the grown-up men, for the women scarcely count for anything at present in a scheme of improvement: they are mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. So the end of it all is, that I want a little money from some of you rich people to encourage the Edendale settlers by helping them with their existing schools, and if possible setting up training-schools where boys could be taught carpentering and other trades, and the girls housewifery; and I want the same idea taken up and enlarged, and gradually carried out on a grand scale all over the country.

There are several Norwegian missions established on the borders of Zululand, presided over by Bishop Schreuder; and I have been so immensely interested in the bishop’s report of a visit he paid last year to Cetywayo (there is a click in the C), the Zulu king, that I have copied some of it out of a Blue Book for you. Do you know there is a very wrong impression abroad about blue books? They contain the most interesting reading possible, full of details of colonial difficulties and dangers which are not to be met with anywhere else, and I have never been better entertained than by turning over the leaves of one whenever it is my good fortune to come across it. I remember one in particular upon Japan, beautifully written, and as thrillingly sensational as any of Miss Braddon’s novels. However, you shall judge for yourself of the bishop’s narrative. I will only mention what he is too modest to cause to appear here—and which was told me by other people—that he is one of the most zealous and fearless of the great band of missionaries, beloved and respected by black and white. In fact, my informant managed to convey a very good impression of the bishop’s character to me when he summed up his panegyric in true colonial phraseology, though I quite admit that it does not sound sufficiently respectful when applied to a bishop: “He is a first-rate fellow, all round.”

This document, which I have shortened a little, was addressed as a letter to our minister for native affairs, and has thus become public property, read and re-read with deep interest by us here, and likely, I am sure, to please a wider circle:

Untunjambili, August 20, 1875.

Dear Sir: I beg to send you a short sketch of my last trip to and interview with the Zulu king, in order to present to him your report of your embassy, 1873, and leave it to your discretion to lay before His Excellency the whole or a part of this sketch, got up in a language foreign to me.

After an irksome traveling right across the Tugela from here to Undi, I arrived the fifth day (August 5) at the king’s head kraal sufficiently early to have a preliminary interview with the headmen then present—viz., Umnjamana, Usegetwayo, Uganze, Uzetzalusa, Untzingwayo, etc.—and, according to Zulu etiquette, lay before them the substance of my message in the main points, the same as I, the day after (6th August), told the king.