Native Life in South Africa / Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion

by Sol. T. Plaatje

What is happening is that in many places the Natives are being driven off land where they have been from time immemorial, so to speak. They consider the Act as an attempt to drive them into slavery, and numbers of them are being placed in the position of having no place to which to go. ==

It must not be supposed, however, that all English colonial journalists regretted the operation of this atrocious law. The `Cape Times', for instance, vied with the Hertzog press in congratulating the minister on having successfully passed it, and in belittling the hardships of the victims of the Act. One English farmer wrote to the `Farmer's Weekly' that the evictions were effective, but at the same time he regretted that "as long as the Native kept to the public road he still had a resting place for the hollow of his foot." The Native had been successfully legislated off the land, and apparently this farmer wanted him to be legislated off the roads as well. Another English journalist wrote to the `Sunday Post' that the hardships are exaggerated, as he had himself seen only twelve families evicted in one day and on one farm. The question which this statement suggests is: How many families must be ejected from one farm in one day to constitute a hardship; and whether this journalist would view with the same coolness a law which forcibly turned twelve white families off a farm, against the wishes of themselves and the landowner?

Again, it cannot be said that South African politicians as a whole were indifferent to the suffering of the luckless victims of the Land Act, but they eased their consciences with the palliative thought that the sufferers were not so many. However this blissful though erroneous self-satisfaction was nailed to the counter by the Rev. A. Burnet of Transvaal, when he said: "I have yet to learn that a harsh law becomes less harsh, and an act of injustice less unjust, because only a few people are affected by it."

The section of the law debarring Natives from hiring land is particularly harsh. It has been explained that its major portion is intended to reduce the Natives to serfs; but it should also be noted that the portion of the Act that is against Natives acquiring any interest whatsoever in land aims directly at dispossessing the Natives of their live stock. Section 5 provides for a fine of 100 Pounds, or six months' imprisonment, to a farmer convicted of accommodating a Native on his farm. And if after the fine is paid, the Native leaves the stock on the farm, for a number of days, while he goes to search for another place, there will be a fine of 5 Pounds per diem for each day the cattle remain on the farm. The cattle should be consigned to the road immediately the order is given for the ejection, and they should remain without food till their owner sells them, or finds employment under a farmer as a wage-earner. Thus it would seem that the aim of Section 5 is not only to prohibit native occupation of land, but, in addition to it, makes it impossible for him to be a cattle owner.

When this harsh provision of the law was brought to the notice of Cape politicians, they shrugged their shoulders and remarked that they were happy that things in the Cape were not so bad. But this is no excuse at all, for in accordance with the wording of the Act, as substantiated by its results upon the Cape Natives, the condition of these Natives is worse in many instances than it is among the Natives of Natal, or of the Transvaal. In these two Provinces a European who has no intention of evicting his Natives may retain their services under certain restrictions (see Sub-sect. 6 (c)); but in the Cape and the Orange "Free" State, the Native, according to Section 1, may retain no interest whatever in land, including the "ploughing on shares".

Well-to-do Natives, from Grahamstown to the Transkeian boundaries, mainly derived their wealth from this form of occupation. It enabled them to lead respectable lives and to educate their children. The new prohibitions tended to drive these Natives back into overcrowded locations, with the logical result that sundry acute domestic problems, such as disordered sanitation caused by the smallness of the location, loss of numerous heads of cattle owing to the too limited pasturage in the locations, are likely to arise. These herds of cattle have been the Natives' only capital, or the Natives' "bank", as they truthfully call them, so that, deprived of this occupation, the down-grade of a people, under an unsympathetic quasi-Republican Government like the present Union Administration, must be very rapid.

The fact that the traditional liberal policy of Cape Colony has broken down through this law can no longer be disputed: indeed, the only comfort that had been held out to the Natives was that Mr. Sauer would make the Natives' Land Act a dead letter. This statesman having since died, we were anxious to see how the Cape Natives were faring under the Act, so we left Kimberley on November 1, 1913, on a tour of observation in the eastern districts of the Cape Province. Our programme included visits to two alleged defenders of the Act, in the persons of Rev. James Henderson of Lovedale, and Mr. Tengo Jabavu of King Williamstown, editor of the Xosa Ministerial newspaper. Our object in visiting these gentlemen was to acquaint ourselves with their point of view, and if possible to arrive at an agreement with them.

We reached Alice in the forenoon and walked through the town to the famous Native Institution. We made our first acquaintance with Lovedale, and we hardly remember having seen so many native boys housed in any one place before. But it pained us to think what must be the future lot of this great gathering of young fellows, who are now debarred by law from rights of ownership of the soil of South Africa, their own homeland.

During our three hours' stay at Lovedale we had an interview with Mr. Henderson, the Principal, about things in general, and the Native College Scheme in particular, and lastly, but not least, about the Native Land Act. Unfortunately we could learn nothing from the eminent educator, for we found that his conclusions were based on second-hand information. He had never met any member of the Government, or their representatives, in fact it was news to the Principal that in going to Lovedale, that morning, we had met men on their way from the Magistrate's office in Alice, not far away, who had been definitely warned by the Magistrate against re-ploughing their old lands on the farms. Of course Mr. Henderson was moved with sympathy for a people so ruthlessly treated by a Government they had loyally served. And it would seem that the Principal of Lovedale had since made independent inquiries, for we have read in the Lovedale paper other evidence of the operation of this drastic law that had not come under our own observation. Thus in supporting the case of the Native Deputation in the Imperial Parliament on July 28, 1914, Sir Albert Spicer effectively read passages from the `Christian Express', the organ of Lovedale.

One of the instructors at Lovedale very kindly lent us a horse, and Mr. Moikangoa accompanied us to an all-night meeting at Sheshegu, a famous political "rendezvous" which has acquired this distinction because it is the centre of numerous little locations, within easy reach of four surrounding Magistracies. At the all-night meeting at Sheshegu there were chiefs, headmen, and other Natives from the Peddie, Fort Beaufort and Alice districts. There were a number of school teachers also from these districts, and two or three native storekeepers. The disclosures made by the several speakers concerning the operation of the Land Act among the Natives made one's heart bleed. The chieftain Kapok Mgijima, who entertained many of the visitors to the meeting, had his own peculiar experience under the Act. Not only had he been debarred from re-ploughing his own lands, but he had also been ordered to move his oxen from a farm owned by a European, where for fourteen years he had grazed his oxen. Another Native, who had been ploughing in the direction of King Williamstown, was warned by the authorities not to resume his ploughing in 1913. He could only do so as a servant in the employ of a white landowner. He was further warned that if he connived with the white man to cheat the law, by representing themselves as master and servant, they would, when found out to be still carrying on their old relation of landlord and tenant, be dealt with very severely.