The Africanders

by Le Roy Hooker

“But he is taxed.

“How is he taxed? There is probably no one in the Transvaal, rich or poor, whose personal taxes amount to more than £5 a year. If it is [[196]]complained that he is taxed through his interest in the gold industry it is easy to make an appeal to published figures. In 1895 the Crown Reef Gold Mining Company produced gold worth upward of £420,000, and distributed nearly £97,000 in profits. Its payment to the Government for rents, licenses, and all other privileges and rights amounted to £1,191 9s 10d. In the same year the Robinson Company, which had produced £651,000 in gold and distributed £346,000 in dividends, paid to the government £395 11s 8d. The New Chimes Company, producing £93,000 in gold and distributing £32,000 in profits, paid under the head of rates and licenses, together with insurance premiums, £664 16s 5d. The Transvaal Coal Trust produced 266,945 tons of coal, and paid the government £53 15s, while the Consolidated Land and Exploration Company, in which the Ecksteins are the largest shareholders, and which owns more than 250 farms of 6,000 acres each, paid to the government in the shape of taxes, including absentee tax, no more than £722 2s 6d.

“These figures are sufficiently eloquent by themselves. They become more eloquent when they are placed beside the 50 per cent impost [[197]]claimed by the Chartered Company on all gold-mining enterprise in Rhodesia.

“But what about indirect taxation? Here are the facts:

“All machinery for mining purposes is subject to only 1½ per cent impost dues, the term machinery being stretched by the government to its uttermost possibilities to meet the mining industry, and it is made to include sheet lead, cyanide, etc. All other articles not specially rated are subject to an ad valorem duty of 7½ per cent, the Cape Colonist paying an ad valorem duty of 12 per cent. Specially rated articles affecting the white miners, such as tea, coffee, butter, rice, soap, sugar, are in most cases subject to lower, and only in one instance to higher, duties than in Cape Colony.

“Here is a comparison:

	Cape Colony.	Transvaal.
Butter	3d per lb.	5s 0d per 100 lbs.
Cheese	3d per lb.	5s 0d per 100 lbs.
Coffee	12s 6d per 100 lbs.	2s 6d per 100 lbs.
Rice	3s 6d per 100 lbs.	1s 6d per 100 lbs.
Soap	4s 2d per 100 lbs.	5s 0d per 100 lbs.
Sugar	6s 3d per 100 lbs.	3s 6d per 100 lbs.
Tea	8d per lb.	2s 6d per 100 lbs.
Guns	£1 per barrel.	10s 0d per barrel.

“As regards monopolies and concessions, the dynamite monopoly is often quoted as an instance [[198]]of the manner in which monopolies are granted, to the detriment of the mining interest. It has been complained that the government retains a right to charge 90s a case for what can be produced for 30s a case. These figures, however, are exaggerated both ways. The government charge is 85s a case, and as the dynamite used by De Beers, at Kimberley, costs more than 60s a case laid down there, it can hardly be held that 85s is a high charge in Johannesburg, having regard to the much greater distance of Johannesburg from the sea. In this matter of the dynamite concession, moreover, it was a choice between a foreign monopoly and a local monopoly, while in the reports of mining companies in which explosives are separately accounted for it is shown that while total working expenses run up to over 30s per ton, the cost of explosives is less than 1s 3d per ton.

“As regards the railway concessions, the truth of the matter is that the Transvaal Railway Company—the Netherlands South African Railway Company, that is—by providing competing routes to Johannesburg from Natal and Delagoa Bay, keeps in check the monopoly which would certainly be taken great advantage of by [[199]]the Cape Colony if the only route to Johannesburg was from Cape ports.”

It may be allowed—it must be—that the old saw, “figures will not lie,” is unsound. In the hands of capable and unscrupulous persons they will lie like Ananias and Sapphira. But, like that of Ananias and Sapphira, the lie in figures brings swift detection and punishment. It ought to be easy, therefore, for those who have filled the ears of the world with charges of Africander oppression practiced upon the foreigners in the way of “excessive customs tariff,” “extortionate duties on machinery,” and the “dynamite monopoly that made the expense of all mining operations excessive,” to convince the world-jury to which they have appealed that they have a case. They ought at least to be able to show that in British Rhodesia the impost on the profits of gold mining was not 50 per cent, while in the Transvaal it was about 8 per cent thereof; that in British Cape Colony the ad valorem duty on articles not specially rated was not 12 per cent, while in the Transvaal it was 7½ per cent; that in British Cape Colony specially rated articles affecting the white miner as to expense of living were not taxed all the way from 100 to 500 per cent higher than in the Transvaal, with the single exception [[200]]of soap; that an import duty of 1½ per cent on mining machinery was extortionate as compared with the tariff of other nations, or that a higher duty than 1½ per cent was collected in the Transvaal; and that a profit of 25s a case on dynamite, less the cost of transportation from Kimberley to Johannesburg, and only causing the expense for explosives used in mining to be 1s 3d per ton of ore out of a total cost of 30s per ton, was an oppressive monopoly causing the cost of mining to be excessive.