With regard to the quantity of food supplies levied upon W*, I did not obtain the total amount required of the entire community, but only that which the upper end of the town furnished. The day of my visit happened to be just that when the kwanga, due at the local wood-post, was being prepared for delivery on the morrow. I saw many of the people getting their shares ready. Each share of kwanga, for which a payment of 1 rod is made by the Government, consisted of five rolls of this food tied together. One of these bundles of five rolls I sought to buy, offering the man carrying it 10 rods—or ten times what he was about to receive for it from the local Government post. He refused my offer, saying that, although he would like the 10 rods, he dare not be a bundle of his ration short. One of these bundles was weighed and found to weigh over 15 lb. This may have been an extraordinarily large bundle, although I saw many others which appeared to be of the same size. I think it would be safe to assume that the average of each ration of kwanga required from this town was not less than 12 lb. weight of cooked and carefully prepared food—a not ungenerous offering for 1/2d. By this computation the portion of W* I visited sends in weekly 1,200 lb. weight of food at a remuneration of some 5 fr. Cooked bread-stuffs supplied at 9 or 10 fr. per ton represent, it must be admitted, a phenomenally cheap loaf. At the same time with this kwanga, being prepared for the Government use, I saw others being made up for general public consumption. I bought some of these, which were going to the local market, at their current market value, viz., 1 rod each. On weighing them I found they gave an average of 1 lb. each. The weight of food-stuffs required by the Government from this town would seem to have exceeded in weight twelve times that made up for public consumption.
Whilst I was in Y* a fresh fine of 20,000 rods (1,000 fr.) was in course of collection among the various households along the river bank. This fine had been quite recently imposed by direction of —— for a further failure on the part of the Y* towns in the supply of food-stuffs from that neighbourhood. I saw at several houses piles of brass rods being collected to meet it, and in front of one of these houses I counted 2,700 rods which had been brought together by the various dependents of that family; 6,000 rods of this further fine was, I was told, to be paid by W*, which had not then recovered from its previous much larger contribution. The W* men begged me to intervene, if I could at all help them to escape this further imposition. One of them—a strong, indeed a splendid-looking man—broke down and wept, saying that their lives were useless to them, and that they knew of no means of escape from the troubles which were gathering around them. I could only assure these people that their obvious course to obtain relief was by appeal to their own constituted authorities, and that if their circumstances were clearly understood by those responsible for these fines, I trusted and believed some satisfaction would be forthcoming.
These fines, it should be borne in mind, are illegally imposed: they are not “fines of Court”; are not pronounced after any judicial hearing, or for any proved offence against the law, but are quite arbitrarily levied according to the whim or ill-will of the executive officers of the district, and their collection, as well as their imposition, involves continuous breaches of the Congolese laws. They do not, moreover, figure in the account of public revenues in the Congo “Budgets;” they are not paid into the public purse of the country, but are spent on the needs of the station or military camp of the officer imposing them, just as seems good to this official.
I can nowhere learn upon what legal basis, if any, the punishments inflicted upon native communities or individuals for failure to comply with the various forms of “prestations” rest.
These punishments are well-nigh universal and take many shapes, from punitive expeditions carried out on a large scale to such simpler forms of fine and imprisonment as that lately inflicted on U*.
I cannot find in the Penal Code of the Congo Statute Book that a failure to meet or a non-compliance with any form of prestation or impôt is anywhere defined as a crime; and so far as I can see no legal sanction could be cited for any one of the punishments so often inflicted upon native communities for this failure.
By a Royal Decree of the 11th August, 1886, provision was made for the punishments to be inflicted for infractions of the law not punishable by special penalties.
Since no special penalty in law would seem to have been provided for cases of failure or refusal to comply with the demands of the tax-gatherer, it would seem to be in the terms of this Decree that the necessary legal sanctions could alone lie.
But this Decree provides for all otherwise unspecified offences far other punishments, and far other modes of inflicting them than so many of those which came to my notice during my brief journey.
Article 1 of this Decree provides that:—