Another similar case was that of a farmer whose habits were not too temperate. One evening he was considerably annoyed by the noise his farm hands were making in their huts, some little distance from the house. The men were having a small feast, and probably had been drinking a considerable quantity of Kaffir beer, their master had also been drinking—not Kaffir beer. He walked down to the hut and told them to be quiet. They obeyed only for a few moments. Then the singing and noise began worse than before. Taking his loaded gun with him, the farmer returned to the hut, called out one of the men and shot him dead on the spot. For this he was fined somewhere about £100 by the Free State Government. He was very wealthy. Both these men I have met, also their wives.
Yet one more case. Two servant girls, who for some offence were tied up to the wheels of the waggon by their master and flogged, were taken away, after his fury had exhausted itself upon them—mutilated corpses.
Of course there are, here and there, amongst the Dutch, men and women who are both kind and generous to their native servants, but they are the exception, not the rule.
The ordinary Boer looks upon a native as no better than a dog, without rights, without a soul, a creature to be made use of, or to turn adrift, or ill-use, according to the mood of his master.
I do not wish to give the idea that I consider the native races should be placed on a level with the white races. Far from it. They need to be treated much as one would treat an unruly child, with great firmness, and to be taught to regard the white man as their master, as a being infinitely their superior. But a master can be both kind and just, and only punish where punishment is needed. To go from one extreme to the other is most undesirable, and can be productive only of harm, and those who try to instil ideas of equality into the semi-savage brain are increasing the trouble which some future generation will almost inevitably have to face.
What is sadly needed is that Englishmen and women (men especially) should set the natives in every part of South Africa an example of uprightness, morality, and perseverance, should gain and retain the respect and devotion of the native tribes, and should judiciously train them to become useful members of our Empire.
The missionaries, undoubtedly, do an enormous amount of good, but many of them are as unwise in their treatment of the Basuto as the Boers, though they err on the side of kindness. They fail to realize that civilisation must come gradually to be effective; that to try to run and jump before you can walk is foolish, and may often be harmful, and by treating a raw native as an equal, they are very possibly laying the foundation stone for native disturbances in the future. Directly a native begins to look upon himself as an educated being, equal to the white man, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he at once loses all respect for the European, whom he treats in an off-hand, condescending manner, intensely offensive to any one who has realized the wide gulf which separates the two races.
So many people fail to understand that a South African native, even the best, can not be placed in the same category as an Indian. I firmly believe that kindness will repay us infinitely better than cruelty, but it must be kindness mixed with great firmness, and there should be no lowering of the master to the level of the native. If only a better, a higher standard of "morals and manners" could be instilled into the European races of South Africa, there would be no cause for anxiety as to the future development of the native races.