General Scholtz’s official report of this expedition contains the following remarkable statement regarding the looting of Doctor Livingstone’s house:
“On the 1st of September I dispatched Commandant P. Schutte with a patrol to Secheli’s [[121]]old town; but he found it evacuated, and the missionary residence broken open by the Kaffirs. The commandant found, however, two percussion rifles; and the Kaffir prisoners declared that Livingstone’s house, which was still locked, contained ammunition, and that shortly before he had exchanged thirteen guns with Secheli, which I had also learnt two weeks previously, the missionaries Inglis and Edwards having related it to the burghers, A. Bytel and J. Synman; and that Livingstone’s house had been broken open by Secheli to get powder and lead. I therefore resolved to open the house that was still locked, in which we found several half-finished guns and a gunmaker’s shop with abundance of tools. We here found more guns and tools than Bibles, so that the place had more the appearance of a gunmaker’s shop than a mission-station, and more of a smuggling-shop than a school place.”
Doctor Livingstone’s character is too well known in all the civilized world to need even a word of vindication. General Scholtz, being taken as sincere in his statements, fell into an egregious and well-nigh inexcusable error concerning the tools found in the doctor’s house and the guns in various stages of completeness. In those parts, so distant from carpenters, wagon-makers [[122]]and smiths, it was absolutely necessary for the explorer to have with him all tools required in making or repairing wagons, harness, guns, and whatever else belonged to his outfit. It is impossible to account for General Scholtz’s statements concerning the altogether blameless Doctor Livingstone in any other way than to ascribe them to prejudice. It is well known that there was in the Africander mind a deep-rooted hostility against the missionaries, of whom David Livingstone was chief, because they denounced the practice of slavery and reported the cruelties incident to it. Had General Scholtz been entirely free from the prejudice due to this cause he would have seen on Doctor Livingstone’s premises not an illicit gun factory, but an honest repair shop such as any pioneer in those parts must have. [[123]]
CHAPTER VIII.
THE INDEPENDENT AFRICANDER AND SLAVERY.
It will be remembered that the conventions of 1852 and 1854, by which the absolute independence of the Africanders living beyond the Vaal River and of those resident in the Orange River district was guaranteed, bound them to renounce the practice of slavery. They did not find it easy, however, to keep either the letter or the spirit of that covenant. For generations both the men and the women had been accustomed to immunity from the more severe and disagreeable work of life. Twice had they trekked, largely to get away from British power because it would no longer tolerate slavery on British soil. But now they had accepted independent national life, and were in honor bound to carry out the stipulation of the treaties which guaranteed their independence, by liberating such slaves as they possessed and by acquiring no more. It is next in order, therefore, to consider the manner in which these obligations were carried out. [[124]]
Whatever outward appearances there may have been of ceasing to enforce servitude from the blacks, there is indubitable evidence that little more than a change of name for it was effected—the thing went on. A new system of virtual slavery was invented and prevailed extensively under the plausible name of “apprenticeship,” and “registration” of prisoners taken in war with the natives; and it is to be feared that many predatory expeditions were undertaken chiefly to secure fresh victims for this new method of enforcing unpaid service—all of which was in flagrant violation of the treaties by which the republics were established and guaranteed independence.
The new system was defended by those who devised it and profited by it, as a benevolent institution, because it took the orphan children of the Kaffirs—for whom their own people made no provision—and apprenticed them to Africander masters for a limited period, to terminate in every case at twenty-one years of age. But when it is understood that in many cases the Kaffir bond-children had been made orphans by Africander bullets the benevolence of the institution becomes a vanishing quantity. And it is to be remembered, in judging of this matter, that these ignorant [[125]]Kaffir apprentices had no means of knowing their own age, nor was there any one to speak and act for them when the proper time for their release from bondage came. The new system was slavery under a less repulsive name, and was so regarded by its victims.
It is only fair to the Africanders to trace their conduct in this matter back to the convictions and principles honestly held by them, and by which they justified to themselves their practices toward the natives. Almost without exception they were men of intense religiousness and devout regard for the Bible. It was a great misfortune to themselves and to the natives of South Africa that they found their standard of ethics, not in any of the moral precepts of the New Testament or the Old, but in their own deductions from scraps of Old Testament history which were never intended to furnish ideals and standards of virtue and righteousness for later generations. Thus, they looked upon the dark races about them as the yet “accursed” sons of Canaan the son of Ham, doomed by heaven to perpetual servitude to any people who might care to enslave them, because of the sin of their forefather, Ham. They seem to have forgotten, too easily, that the divine entail of evil consequences to follow [[126]]certain sins was limited to “the third and fourth generation,” and insisted without warrant of any kind on bringing it over to and enforcing it upon the one hundred and thirtieth generation. Holding such views, they considered themselves as doing service to God when they inflicted the degradations, hardships and cruelties of slavery upon the offspring of Ham. It was their custom to meet for prayer before going on one of their forays, to implore the help and protection of the Almighty in what they were about to do; then they went forth heartened and emboldened by the conviction that the coming battle was the Lords, and to fall therein would be a sure passport to heaven. It would be untrue to say that all the Africanders were of this belief and practice, but undoubtedly the majority of them so believed and so acted.