Correspondence and Report from His Majesty's Consul at Boma Respecting the Administration of the Independent State of the Congo [and Further Correspondence]

by Roger Casement

The other refers to the station at Bolobo:—

“It is rare indeed for Bolobo, with its 30,000 or 40,000 people, divided into some dozen clans, to be at peace for any length of time together. The loss of life from these petty wars, the number of those killed for witchcraft, and of those who are buried alive with the dead, involve, even within our narrow limits here at Bolobo, an almost daily drain upon the vitality of the country, and an incalculable amount of sorrow and suffering.... The Government was not indifferent to these murderous ways.... In 1890, the District Commissioner called the people together, and warned them against the burying of slaves alive in the graves of free people, and the reckless killing of slaves which then obtained. The natives did not like the rising power of the State.... Our own settlement among them was not unattended with difficulty.... There was a feeling against white men generally, and especially so against the State. The people became insolent and haughty.... Just at this time ... as a force of soldiers steamed past the Moye towns, the steamers were fired upon. The soldiers landed and burnt and looted the towns. The natives ran away into the grass, and great numbers crossed to the French side of the river. They awoke to the fact that Bula Matadi, the State, was not the helpless thing they had so long thought. This happened early in 1891.”[88]

It will be seen that these examples do not attribute the emigration of the natives to any such causes as:—

“The methods employed to obtain labour from them by local officials and the exactions levied on them.”[89]

The Report dwells at length on the existence of native taxes. It shows how the natives are subject to forced labour of various kinds, in one district having to furnish the Government posts with “chikwangues,” or fresh provisions, in another being obliged to assist in works of public utility, such as the construction of a jetty at Bololo, or the up-keep of the telegraph line at F*; elsewhere being obliged to collect the produce of the domain lands. We maintain that such imposts on the natives are legitimate, in agreement on this point with His Majesty’s Government, who, in the Memorandum of the 11th February last, declare that the industry and development of the British Colonies and Protectorates in Africa show that His Majesty’s Government have always admitted the necessity of making the natives contribute to the public charges and of inducing them to work. We also agree with His Majesty’s Government that, if abuses occur in this connection—and undoubtedly some have occurred in all Colonies—such abuses call for reform, and that it is the duty of the authorities to put an end to them, and to reconcile as far as may be the requirements of the Government with the real interests of the natives.

But in this matter the Congo State intends to exercise freely its rights of sovereignty—as, for instance, His Majesty’s Government explain in their last Memorandum that they themselves did at Sierra Leone—without regard to external pressure or foreign interference, which would be an encroachment upon its essential rights.

The Consul, in his Report, obviously endeavours to create the impression that taxes in the Congo are collected in a violent, inhuman, and cruel manner, and we are anxious before all to rebut the accusation which has so often been brought against the State that such collection gives rise to odious acts of mutilation. On this point a superficial perusal of the Report is calculated to impress by its easy accumulation not of facts, simple, precise, and verified, but of the declarations and affirmations of natives.

There is a preliminary remark to be made in regard to the conditions in which the Consul made his journey.

Whether such was his intention or not, the British Consul appeared to the inhabitants as the redresser of the wrongs, real or imaginary, of the natives, and his presence at La Lulonga, coinciding with the campaign which was being directed against the Congo State, in a region where the influence of the Protestant missionaries has long been exercised, necessarily had for the natives a significance which did not escape them. The Consul made his investigations quite independently of the Government officials, quite independently of any action and of any co-operation on the part of the regular authorities; he was assisted in his proceedings by English Protestant missionaries; he made his inspection on a steamer belonging to a Protestant Mission; he was entertained for the most part in the Protestant Missions; and, in these circumstances, it was inevitable that he should be considered by the native as the antagonist of the established authorities.

Other proof is not required than the characteristic fact that while the Consul was at Bonginda, the natives crowded down to the bank, as some agents of the La Lulonga Company were going by in a canoe, and cried out: “Your violence is over, it is passing away; only the English remain; may you others die!” There is also this significant admission on the part of a Protestant missionary, who, in alluding to this incident, remarked:—