"Take notice in terms of Section 4 of Law 41 of 1884 that you are required to remove with your Kraal and inmates from whichever of the said farms you may be residing on, six months from this date, the aforementioned farms having all been purchased by Government for closer settlement purposes." ==
The Magistrate who so ruthlessly ejected these and other native families acted under the orders of the Government, who settled white people on the farms at the expense of a Treasury maintained also by native taxpayers. And it seems difficult to conceive how a Government which proved so indifferent regarding the fate of its own native tenants or of tenants on farms freshly acquired at the public expense, could be solicitous about the welfare of Natives evicted by private landowners. The statement, on the face of it, is incongruous.
In his heroic efforts to defend South Africa's giant wrong, Mr. Harcourt gave away his case when he referred approvingly to what he calls "the Magna Charta of the Indians in South Africa". Now, what is this "Magna Charta"? In 1913, when the South African Parliament was at the noontide of its "mad career", it passed this iniquitous land law to repress the native race; and also a law imposing the most humiliating limitations on British Indians. Yet it must be added that the Indian law was the milder of the two, as it did not prohibit Indian residents in South Africa from living on the land. The Rt. Hon. A. Fischer, Union Minister of the Interior, who died two years ago, called these two laws of 1913, "the Kafir law and the Coolie law".
As already stated, the London Committee of the Wesleyan Methodist Church asked to see Mr. Harcourt and inform him how drastically the "Kafir law" was operating against their converts and other Natives in South Africa, but Mr. Harcourt discreetly refused to see the Committee.
As for the Indians, no one in South Africa paid any heed to their complaints against the "Coolie law"; but their cry reached India and Lord Hardinge demanded the redress of their grievances. His Lordship insisted so forcibly that (unlike the Wesleyan missionaries) he could not be ignored. The result was that the South African Parliament, "not from local desire, but from Imperial consideration", was obliged in the next session (1914) to amend the "Coolie law" with a "Magna Charta of the Indians in South Africa", and Mr. Harcourt's reference to this episode conveys the suggestion that what is sauce for the Indian goose, with Lord Hardinge at its back, can be by no means sauce for the native gander without the backing of a Viceroy.
We cannot believe that to boast in one and the same speech about a "Magna Charta of the Indians" and dismiss the native appeal against a vital wrong is true Imperialism. For if Imperialism stands for the protection of a few thousand Indians in South Africa because they are supported by a Viceroy, and the neglect of the groans of five million Natives because (unlike a Viceroy) the missionaries who plead for them cannot enforce their claim with a political or diplomatic blow, then there would appear to be the suggestion of more fear than justice in Imperialism.
Mr. Harcourt further credits the Milner Commission, presided over by Sir Godfrey Lagden, with the origin of the Natives' Land Act. We do not wish to defend the policy of these two former South African Statesmen, as we feel certain that they can take care of themselves. But we must say at once that we read the recommendations of the Lagden Commission ten years ago, as carefully as we have since read the controversy of the Natives' Land Act; and with the knowledge thus gained, we can safely tell the reader that that Commission never recommended that: —
1. "Except with the permission of the Governor-General", Europeans must be debarred from buying land from Natives (who have no land to sell), and Natives must be debarred from buying land or leasing land from Europeans, who alone deal in land. — (Sect. 1 of the Nat. Land Act).
2. When evicted Natives apply for the said "permission of the Governor-General" they should be told that that permission "will only be granted to a few exceptional applicants" and that it could under no circumstances be granted to Natives in the colony in which the applicants resided (The Government's reply to the "Free" State wanderers).
3. The Government should always take from three to six months to deliver this refusal, during which period applicants may have already become serfs or fled the country. (This has been the experience of all applicants within the writer's knowledge.)