(Sgd.)
July 20, 1913. Freestone Ridge.
==
"The wheels of administration moved slowly" (to borrow an official phrase) between the Native Affairs Department and the other departments of State. Thus, while the authorities were temporizing with this and similar representations, the Natives' Land Act was scattering the Natives about the country, creating alarm and panic in different places. The high officials of State, instead of relieving the distress thus caused, were interviewing Natives and urging them not to send a deputation to Europe. The Natives received this advice hopefully. They believed it was an indication that the Government was about to amend the law, in which case, of course, the deputation would be unnecessary; but, besides this advice, the officials in each instance promised no relief.
The Natal Native Commissioner held a similar meeting with a number of Zulus. The meeting asked for some relief for the evicted tenants who were roaming about the country, but the official significantly evaded the point. The disappointment of the meeting, created by his evasive replies, having overcome the proverbial native timidity when in the presence of authority, resulted in one petty chief saying to the Commissioner: "Local authorities levy a tax every year on each of our dogs. We don't know what they do with the money. You have never complained against that waste, so why should you complain if our money is spent in sending a deputation to the King?" The answer, if there was one, is not reported.
General Botha, until then, never met native tax-payers to discuss their grievances with them. But in the latter part of 1913, he actually met some Natives in the Eastern Transvaal, who desired to inform him of the ravages of the Act. But instead of holding out any hope that an asylum would be found for the wanderers, he proceeded to advise them against sending a deputation to England. The Natives having given specific instances of the plight of certain evicted tenants in the neighbourhood, asked for an abode for them, but on that point the Premier would not be drawn. The Government's indifference to native sufferings being thus revealed, the Natives of Vryheid became more eager to help to organize the proposed deputation.
General Botha's efforts against the deputation, without offering any homes to the evicted Natives, was probably the best stimulus towards the deputation fund. The Premier visited a northern tribe some time after and was said to have warned the chief and his people against the pretensions of the Native Congress. When Mr. Dube called there a few days later, they handed him 200 Pounds towards the deputation fund, which they had collected since General Botha's visit. Mr. Saul Msane similarly raised 360 Pounds for the fund in the Eastern Transvaal where the Premier first warned the Natives against the deputation without offering them any relief.
Those Natives who were not immediately affected by the Act were rather lukewarm regarding the proposed deputation. But when the officials warned them against wasting their money on a deputation and told them in the next breath that it was a breach of the law to find an abode for the evicted wanderers, these Natives, perceiving the hollowness of the Government's advice, determined that as a last resort a deputation should be sent to England.
Chapter XV The Kimberley Congress / The Kimberley Conference
Sorrow like this draws parted lives in one, and knits anew the rents
which time has made.
Lewis Morris.
When everything was ready another special Congress was called to meet at Johannesburg in February, to carry out the deputation's scheme and appoint the delegates to proceed to England. In view of the dissatisfaction of the Government after the July Congress, the author considered it his duty to inform the Government that a meeting was about to take place. This information called forth a peremptory intimation from the Government that because of the recent strike of white men (from which the Natives had publicly disassociated themselves) the Native Congress could not be held. But at the time that this telegraphic prohibition reached us General Smuts, Minister of Defence, was announcing in Parliament that the embargo on public meetings, in areas where, owing to the recent strike (of January, 1914), martial law was proclaimed, had been removed. Logically then General Botha's decision made the previous day in regard to the Congress meeting fell to the ground; and so we telegraphed to Senator Schreiner and Dr. Watkins, members of Parliament, to ascertain if this was so. Both these gentlemen answered that in spite of the removal of the prohibition of public meetings of whites, the Prime Minister directs that the one in regard to the "Native Congress" must stand. Thereupon the writer, after consulting a few native residents in Kimberley, intimated to the executive of the Congress that:
== Kimberley, my home, is not yet a Republic in its sentiments. There we have not reached the stage where some one's permission must be asked before a meeting can be held. So we invite the Congress to hospitable and British Kimberley, where public meetings close with singing the British National Anthem and not with singing the "Volkslied" or the "Red Flag", as is the case in meetings at some other South African centres. ==