The Africanders

by Le Roy Hooker

LIGHTHOUSE, DURBAN.

A single incident, of no great proportions in itself, must be given a separate mention among [[72]]the causes of estrangement between the two civilized races in South Africa. It was not so much the cause of a new line of cleavage as it was the wedge driven to the head into one of the existing lines. In 1815 a Boer was accused of seriously injuring a native servant. When the authorities sent out a small force to arrest the accused his neighbors rallied to his defense, and a brief resistance was offered to the serving of the warrant. The uprising—a mere neighborhood affair—was easily suppressed. Several prisoners were taken, six of whom were condemned to death. Five of the condemned were hanged, and their women—who had fought beside them—were compelled to stand by and witness the execution. Some promise of reprieve had been made by the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. The crowd of Africanders stood about the gallows on the fatal day, hoping to the last moment that their friends would be spared, but no reprieve came. The tragedy was completed, and the story of it went into the Africander folklore, becoming, and remaining to this day, a part of the nursery education of every Africander child. They named the ridge on which the execution took place, “Schlachter’s Nek,” which, being interpreted, is “Butcher’s Ridge.” Canon [[73]]Knox Little, in his late work on South Africa, is authority for the statements that Lord Somerset actually reprieved the condemned men, that the reprieve reached the Field-Cornet appointed to carry out the execution in good time to save the victims, and that the Field-Cornet executed the death warrant having the governor’s reprieve in his pocket, being actuated to the murderous deed by private spite. The Canon adds that the Field-Cornet was so sure that he, himself, would be punished for his iniquity that he committed suicide. It is to be devoutly hoped that the learned Canon is well informed both as to the governor’s purpose of mercy and the Cornet’s motive for suicide. Whatever the interior facts may have been, they were unknown to the Africanders. The cruel act—justified by the doers as a piece of necessary firmness—caused bitter and widespread resentment at the time, and continues to foster anti-British feeling among all the Dutch of South Africa.

Another cause that made for disruption was an unwarrantable and most unwise interference of the British authorities with two cherished and guaranteed rights of the colonists—the old system of local government, and the use of the Dutch language in official documents and legal proceedings. [[74]]In the forms of government changes were made which greatly reduced the share formerly enjoyed by the people in the control of their local affairs. The substituting of English for Dutch in official and legal documents was a still more serious grievance to a people of whom not more than one-sixth understood English.

Still another cause of disaffection grew out of wars with the Kaffirs on the eastern border. Between 1779 and 1834 four struggles to the death occurred between the whites and the tribes living beyond Fish river. By dint of hard fighting the Kaffirs were finally subdued and driven forth into the Keiskama river region. But for some reason the home government assumed that the colonists had ill-treated the natives and provoked them to war. The dear bought victories of the whites were rendered sterile by strict orders from the British Colonial Office that the Kaffirs be allowed to return to their old haunts, where they once more became a source of constant apprehension to the border farmers. This action on the part of the home authorities was taken as an evidence of either weakness or hostility to the Africander population, and led them to think of the British Colonial Office as their enemy.

The final, probably the principal, cause, the one that fanned the slumbering resentment of [[75]]many things into active flame, arose out of the slave question. To the great detriment of their manhood and womanhood the early Dutch colonists resorted to slave labor. From 1658 onward slavery had been practiced throughout the colony, as, indeed, it had prevailed in most of the world. Trouble began to grow out of it as early as 1737. In that year the first European mission to the Hottentots was undertaken by the Moravian church. Their work was much obstructed by the colonists, who even compelled one pastor to return to Europe because he had administered Christian baptism to some native converts. In later years most of the missionaries came from England, where the anti-slavery sentiment was fast becoming dominant, and from 1810 the English missionaries were cordially disliked by the colonists because they openly espoused the cause of the slaves and reported every case of cruelty to them that came to their knowledge. Possibly they sometimes exaggerated, as it has been asserted of them, but this may be excused in the only friends the oppressed blacks had. Besides this conflict between the slave-owners and the missionaries, there was a steady increase of disaffection from a cognate cause—the temper and action of the government towards the servile classes. In 1828, to the great [[76]]disgust of the colonists, a civil ordinance placed all Hottentots and other free colored people of South Africa on the same footing with the whites as to private civil rights. This was followed by enactments restricting the authority of masters over their slaves, the purpose being to mitigate the sufferings of the enslaved. Then came the abolition of slavery in all British dominions, in 1834. To provide compensation to slave-owners parliament set apart the sum of £20,000,000, to be distributed to the several colonies where slavery had existed. The share of this amount appropriated to the Cape Colony slave-holders was a little over £3,000,000—a sum considerably below the equitable claim for the 39,000 slaves to be set free. Additional irritation was felt when it was found that the certificates for compensation were made payable in London only, so that most of the Cape slave-holders were forced to sell them to speculators at a heavy discount. Many farmers were impoverished by the change, and labor became so scarce and dear that it was impossible to carry on agriculture to profit.

Serious enough was the summing up of the causes that made for the disruption of the Dutch and the English classes in Cape Colony. Hitherto the Africanders had been able to indulge [[77]]their love of independence by living apart from the centers of organized government. But now they had come under the conquering hand of an alien and masterful people; they had been sold for money by their mother country; they had been treated with undue sharpness and cruelty—as witness the atrocity of Schlachter’s Nek; they had been spied upon and denounced by the missionaries; they had been forced to transact all their official and legal business in a foreign language which few of them understood; the savage native blacks had been put on a level with them; their victory over the Kaffirs at the cost of much blood had been rendered fruitless by the interference of the home government; and now their slave property, which they had acquired under law, had been taken away without adequate compensation, and the further practice of slavery had been interdicted.

Rebellion against the power of Great Britain was hopeless and not to be thought of. But they could go out into the wilderness and begin life anew where they could follow the independent pastoral pursuits they preferred, enjoy the isolation and solitude they loved, preserve all their ancient customs, and deal with whatever native people they might find there in their own way, untrammeled by the English who had undertaken [[78]]to govern them on principles which they could neither understand nor approve.

Then began the “Great Trek” of 1836—the Africander secession and exodus, leaving their former country to the possession of the English, and seeking towards the north for a country wherein they would be free according to their own ideals of liberty.

To the north and east of the utmost limit of European settlement in 1836 was a region now divided into the Orange Free State, The Transvaal or South African Republic, and the British colony of Natal. A few hunters had penetrated a little way into it, and some enterprising border farmers had occasionally driven their flocks and herds into the southern fringe of it in search of better pasture. It had been described by the few who had explored it as having districts that were well watered and fertile—a country of arable and pasture lands. Within it, and bordering close to it on the northwest, were the fierce Zulus; and it abounded with big game and enormous beasts of prey. But the Africanders knew what it was to battle for place and for life with wild beasts and savage men. They had less dread of these than of the experiences they foresaw for themselves under the new government set up in Cape Colony. They made choice of the [[79]]wilderness with all its hardships and perils, and set forth.

One may not be able to laud all their motives for taking this course, as we judge such matters now, after more than half a century during which there has been a constant brightening of the light of moral truth. It must be admitted that their action was taken, in part, because of attachment to slavery. But condemnation of that part of their complex motives should be modified by the thought that the best peoples of the world were just then coming to see with John Wesley that human slavery is “the sum of all villainies.” And it should be remembered that nearly thirty years later than the Africander secession and exodus partly in the interest of slavery, fully one-third of the free population of the United States seceded from the Union wholly in the interest of the same “peculiar institution,” claiming to hold their lands as well as their slave property, and that it cost the nation a million lives and a thousand million dollars to transmute into American practice the lofty sentiment embodied in the American Declaration of Independence that, being created equal, all men have sacred rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”