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

by Sol. T. Plaatje

We agree with them that evictions have always taken place, since the first human couple was sent out of the Garden of Eden, yet they must admit that until the Union Parliament passed the Natives' Land Act there never was a law saying to the native population of South Africa, "You must not settle anywhere, under a penalty of 100 Pounds, unless you are a servant." These unsympathetic Natives made no effort to defend the Act itself, but attempted to bluff the meeting with the supposed danger of "reprisals by spiteful Boers, who, they said, will be more vindictive if Natives dared to appeal to the King, over the heads of the Boer Government." But the meeting would not be bluffed. One speaker especially remarked that the Act embodied the very worst form of vindictiveness, and the sooner the whole world understood the Union Parliament's attitude towards the blacks the better it would be. The meeting agreed that no slavery could be worse than to be outlawed in your own homes, and the motion was carried against the said four dissentients.

We interviewed a number of the Natives passing through Queenstown, and the result showed that many and varied were the vicissitudes of the Natives in the eastern districts of the Cape Province.

From Queenstown we touched some of the north-eastern districts of the Cape Province. In one of these districts a fairly prosperous Native was farming as a tenant on a farm. By sheer industry he had earned and enjoyed the respect of all who knew him. His landlord, a white man, was particularly proud of him. This Native went into town one morning and as he passed the Magistrate's Court on his way to the stores, a messenger hailed him inside. Having entered the office, the Assistant Magistrate served him with a notice to leave his hired farm, on which he had been a tenant since his youth, and which was as much a home to him as to the proprietor. The landlord, on hearing of this, naturally resented this usurpation on the part of the authorities, who, he said, had unduly interfered with his private affairs. Next day the Baas drove into the town to interview the Magistrate, and to remonstrate with him on what he thought to be the unauthorized interference of the Assistant Magistrate.

He and the Magistrate read and re-read the Natives' Land Act, and both came to the conclusion that it was a law that was as complicated as it was unnecessary; but the Magistrate, being a representative of the law, decided that, rightly or wrongly, it must be obeyed.

This visit of the Baas to the Magistrate had made our native friend hopeful that it would result in averting the calamity that threatened him and his family, but, to his utter dismay, the landlord on returning soon undeceived him and gave his own opinion of "the most peculiar and wicked law" that he had ever heard of. Although Dutchmen had known and had heard of some strange laws, yet this Dutchman was so full of indignation at the strangeness of this law that his description of it was made up of largely untranslatable Dutch adjectives. These adjectives, however, could not relieve the suffering of his native tenant from the wound inflicted by the law in his sudden expulsion from his home. It seems clear that no South African Native, on leaving a Dutch farm, had ever received a more respectable send-off than our friend did on leaving his farm in compliance with the Natives' Land Act. The white landlord accompanied him right up to the boundary of the farm which for seventeen years had been his home, and which he was so cruelly forced to leave. For the first time in his life, as the Dutchman said, he shook hands with a Kafir. And, as he did so, he called down the direst curses upon the persons responsible for the impasse — curses, by the way, which seem to be liberally answered.

It would, perhaps, be interesting to add what has happened since. Our native friend took his family to the town, because the Act is not enforceable in municipal areas. Leaving his family there, he started roaming about the districts, looking for a place where he could graze his cattle. In the course of the wandering his stock thinned down, owing to death from starvation and other causes. At home his old master found he could not get on without him, so learning of the whereabouts of the Native and also of his sad plight, the master sent out to him and advised him to return home, graze his stock there, and "hang the legal consequences." May they never be found out.

It has now amounted to this that white men who wish to deal humanely with their native friends must resort to clandestine methods, to enable a Native and his stock to drink the fresh water and breathe the pure air in the wide tracts of South Africa, for by law Natives have now less rights than the snakes and scorpions abounding in that country. Can a law be justified which forces the people to live only by means of chicanery; and which, in order to progress, compels one to cheat the law officers of the Crown? This case is but one of many that came under our own observation, and there may be many more of which we know nothing.

The `Cape Times', the leading Bothaite daily newspaper of the Cape, has defended every action of the Union, including the dismissal of English Civil servants. It justifies this last act by alleging that the dismissed officials did not know Dutch. Consequently it could not be expected that this journal could have any qualms about a law enacted specifically to repress black men. It supported every harsh clause of the Natives' Land Bill, including Clause 1. However, when the native deputation to England gave proofs of the ravages of the "plague law" in Cape Colony, the `Cape Times', instead of defending its pet law, said: "The complaint to which they give precedence is particularly instructive," and so, quoting from the deputation's appeal which says: "In the Cape Colony, where we are repeatedly told that the Act is not in force, the Magistrates of East London, King Williamstown and Alice prohibited native tenants from reploughing their old hired lands last October, and also ordered them to remove their stock from grazing farms," this ministerial daily adds: "It is unnecessary to consider the justice or otherwise of this complaint for it is perfectly clear that if a Magistrate oversteps the bounds of the law, it is a matter to be dealt with by the Union Government."

It will be observed that this is an insinuation that the Magistrates who administer the Land Act at the Cape are exceeding their authority and should be "dealt with by the Union Government". Now, what are the facts? It is well known that all Magistrates, including those at the Cape, are paid to administer every legislative instrument, whether sensible or absurd, passed by the partly literate Parliament of the Union of South Africa. Hence, these Magistrates, in ordering Natives off their farms, and turning native cattle off the grazing areas, are only carrying out Section 1 of the Natives' Land Act. One Cape Magistrate who ruled that to plough on a farm was no breach of the law, WAS "dealt with by the Union Government", for a peremptory order came from Pretoria declaring such a decision to be illegal.

Therefore, so far from the Cape Magistrate "overstepping the bounds of the law" in expelling Natives from the farms and native cattle from their pastures, these Magistrates could legally have done worse, inasmuch as they could, under Section 5, have sent these Natives to prison for contravening Section 1. In justification, then, of its own and of its party's share in this legislative achievement, the `Cape Times' should have sought a more worthy excuse than thus attempting to make scapegoats of a band of fair-minded men who presumably, prior to the Union, never thought it would be part of their duty to administer from the Cape bench an Act which inflicted such gross cruelty.