It will, of course, be said that Dr. Abdurahman is a picturesque extremist; that his position is an abnormal one; that he does not speak for the Coloured people and the Natives as a whole. Do not let us be too certain on the last point.
As to the first, there runs through the speech, holding it together and making it difficult to attack, a single plain statement in it — a steel strong thread of truth.
He throws quite a new light upon the Voortrekkers when he says: —
"The northward march of the Voortrekkers was a gigantic plundering raid. They swept like a desolating pestilence through the land, blasting everything in their path, and pitilessly laughing at the ravages from which the native races have not yet recovered." But from the point of view of the native races, the description is a true one.
To say of the Natives' Land Act, "That tyrannical mandate is scattering multitudes of Natives from their homes" is extravagant. Only a few so far have been disturbed, but many must be disturbed for the Natives' Land Act is tyrannical. In fact, though couched in the flowing language of an orator, the speech on the whole is not an unfair summing up of the grievances of the coloured people, and there is a very solemn warning in it. The European labour agitators may well envy Dr. Abdurahman: his logic, his doctrine and his power of invective. He has so much to complain of, he asks for so very little. Just equality of opportunity. He does not propose to set up any Trades' Hall government within a government; he does not talk about or attempt to incite to riot or revolution; he does not speak for a few skilled artisans who are living in comfort, and sometimes luxury, upon the sweat of the black man's brow; he speaks for the dark, submerged 5,000,000 South Africans upon whom light is very slowly breaking. ==
It should also be recorded that long before Dr. Abdurahman became President of the Coloured Organization, white men have been delivering speeches, some of them rather indignant, on the treatment of His Majesty's coloured and native subjects in South Africa. We will refer to just a few for example:
== "I will leave out of account altogether," said His Excellency, "the unwise and hard things said by reckless and unthinking white men about Natives; I will only ask white men to consider whether they have ever calculated the cumulative effect on the Natives of what I may call the policy of pin-pricks? In some places a Native, however personally clean, or however hard he may have striven to civilize himself, is not allowed to walk on the pavement of the public streets; in others he is not allowed to go into a public park or to pay for the privilege of watching a game of cricket; in others he is not allowed to ride on the top of a tram-car, even in specified seats set apart for him; in others he is not allowed to ride in a railway carriage except in a sort of dog-kennel; in others he is unfeelingly and ungraciously treated by white officials; in others he may not stir without a pass, and if, for instance, he comes, as thousands of Natives do, from the farm on which he resides to work in a labour district — (an act which is highly beneficial to the State and commendable in the eyes of all white men) — he does not meet with facilities, but with elaborate impediments. In the course of his absence from home he may have to take out at least eight different passes, for several of which he has the additional pleasure of paying, though he would be much happier without them; and it is possible that, in an extreme case, he may have to conform to no fewer than twenty different pass regulations. Now, let a white man put himself in the position of a black man, and see how he would like it, and let him ask whether such regulations and laws really make his task easier?" — Lord Selborne, before the Congregation of the University of the Cape of Good Hope, February 27, 1909. ==
The Hon. Dewdney W. Drew, M.A., who was member of the Legislative Council under the Crown Colony Government in the Orange River Colony, now misnamed the Orange "Free" State, is one of the leading South African journalists. In his pamphlet on the Native Question, about four years ago, Mr. Drew made the following remarks:
== Most Europeans adopt towards the Natives the privilege of the aristocrat — not always with the manners of an aristocrat. Many whites expect as a matter of course obeisance and service from all Natives, and think it perfectly natural to cuff and correct them when they make mistakes. Any resentment is apt to draw down severe punishment. In the law courts the Natives do not get the same justice as the whites. A Native convicted of an offence gets, in the first place, the punishment which a white man would get and something extra for the colour of his skin — often lashes. The bias of white juries in trying Natives charged with offences against whites is such as to have brought the jury system into disrepute, and become a chief argument among lawyers for its entire abolition. The Natives suffer various restrictions on their liberty; they may not use the side-walks, nor visit a friend's house after a certain hour at night, nor move abroad, or even exist anywhere in this "white man's country" without a pass. All the police, if not all Europeans, have the right to arrest and search them, and the exercise of this right is made sometimes a means of shamefully molesting their women. In one Colony the Natives are not allowed to own land, and in another they can only do so under virtually prohibitive conditions. If the tenant families residing upon a farm grow beyond a certain limited number — three or five — the surplus are liable to be driven off by the police. As a rule only the worse-paid forms of work are permitted to the Natives, and even these are grudged them. A legislator rises in one Colony to move that all native messengers and other native servants in the Government offices be immediately discharged and replaced by poor whites. In another Colony, the papers and the public chorus with joy to hear that the C.S.A.R. has been able to reduce its native staff, and hopes ultimately to get rid of them all. There are municipalities in which Natives, if they drive a cab, have to pay a higher licence than a white man, and in which they are not permitted to make bricks unless they do so for a white employer. In these municipalities they are not allowed to educate their children above the age of sixteen, nor may they keep their daughters at home under their own protection after that age, except the girls find positions in service, in which case they may sleep under the roof of their parents if the distance is not too great. And, of course, the Natives pay relatively a higher taxation than the whites. Articles which they use, but which are little bought by the whites, are marked for special customs duties. For instance, the white farmers' machinery is duty free, but in several Colonies the native hoes pay an ad valorem tax of 25 per cent. So of shawls; the Customs officer is content to take 12 1/2 per cent on the kind used by Europeans, but when he comes to the native shawl, the duty is again 25 per cent. In addition to these stiff indirect taxes, the Native pays direct taxes amounting to one-sixth part of their average annual wage. Not only they, but even the most respectable coloured people, are in some places not allowed to ride in trams or walk in the parks, or attend public sports, or evening concerts, or even follow a deceased white, though he should be their own father, to his last resting place in the European cemetery. As to the laws, they realize, in all the Colonies but one, Wellington's great ideal for the people, by having nothing to do with them except obey them. In addition to this treatment, varying from mere pin-pricks to oppression, they are mostly referred to in the Press, in public speeches, and private conversation, with words of opprobrium and contempt as "niggers" and "black brutes". The occasional outbreaks of a few, usually maddened with drink which Europeans have sold to them, are put to the discredit of the whole race. Those who, when they hear of a case of rape, talk about the black peril, forget apparently that it is largely the result of a bad environment. In their own country the Natives are by no means lacking in respect to white womanhood. A European lady travelling in Basutoland without escort would probably be safer there than in England under the like condition. The Hon. H. Burton, Attorney-General of the Cape Colony, reports, after visiting the Transkei, that in that great reserve, where ten thousand Europeans are surrounded by a million Natives, the molestation of white women is a thing unheard of. . . . Obviously the treatment which the Natives get is not on the whole such as he can be expected to like, and the drift of things appears to be towards greater harshness, especially towards severer pass laws and the stricter denial of property rights. In one of our Parliaments a Commission has just reported in favour of breaking up the reserves and bringing the Natives under a system resembling slavery. ==