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

by Sol. T. Plaatje

== "A circular was issued by our Department, at the instigation of the Native Affairs Department, asking that prosecutors under the Natives' Land Act, before commencing prosecutions, should refer to the Native Affairs Department as otherwise IT WAS FEARED THAT AN UPHEAVAL MIGHT RESULT. The Transvaal Attorney-General drew our attention to this circular and said that it was an infringement of his powers. . . . When Mr. Beyers went away on leave Mr. Greenlees was appointed Acting Attorney-General, and he first drew the attention of the Minister to it. The Minister took no action until Mr. Beyers returned when the matter was again raised and then this circular was withdrawn."*

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* S.C. 1-'14, pp. 136-137.
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Now, what, in the name of common sense, does a supposedly civilized Government want with a law that it knows will cause "an upheaval"?

This Act should be abolished in the interest of the morality of the State and for the sake of the reputation of the Union Jack, because of the harm it does to the Natives and because its promoters have rebelled against the Crown. The Act has benefited no one; it has driven the Natives from the country to the cities, and has also disappointed the White Labour Party, who supported it in the belief that by its clause forcing Natives to work for white farmers it would keep the Natives away from the industrial centres.

It should be abolished in the interests of the Boers, for it has aroused the bitterest enmity of the blacks against the Dutch section of his Majesty's subjects.

Further, the Act should be abolished because it has lowered the prestige of the Union Jack in the eyes of the coloured subjects of the King, who have suffered and are still suffering untold misery under it. Perhaps nothing illustrates more clearly this changed feeling of the Natives than the present state of things in South Africa. Thus, if German South-West Africa had been annexed to the Cape before the Union, every Native, south of the Zambesi, would have approved of the step, whereas to-day, as a result of the Natives' Land Act, there is a different feeling extant. For now the Natives know that annexation to the Union will mean the elimination of the Imperial factor, and that as Capetown, like Pretoria, has ceased to represent British ideas of fair play and justice, such a change would in the annexed territory establish "Free" State ideals under the aegis of the Union Jack. The Natives of the Union shudder at the possibility of the Damaras, who are now under the harsh rule of the Germans, being placed under a self-governing Dominion in which the German rule will be accentuated by the truculent "Free" State ideas of ruling Natives. And they think that in the existing state of circumstances, Portuguese or French rule would be infinitely better for the Damaras than a Government which, although protected by the Union Jack, yet is inspired from Pretoria and Bloemfontein. And it is to be feared that the pernicious principles which Tommy Atkins is now fighting on the Continent to suppress, are going to be rigorously applied in a South-West Africa under Burgher rule. The prosperity of no State can afford to alienate the sympathy of any considerable portion of its tax-payers. And so, as 5,000,000 blacks have been alienated in their sympathies to the Union by this oppressive law, and as the Union Government is unable or unwilling to amend it, in the interest of the Union Government, no less than the 5,000,000 blacks, outside intervention becomes a necessity.

During three separate white men's upheavals in the last two years — two bloody strikes and a civil war — white revolters made frantic efforts to embroil the Union in a native rising, but the Natives very sensibly sided with the Government. The native leaders, in order to counteract this mischief-making, had to incur the expense of journeys by rail besides financing their own mission to reach the scene of the would-be native disturbance.

The time will come when these leaders will tire of spending their own money in paying fares to the Government Railways, to render free services to a Government which taxes them to pay other people lavishly for similar work, while it does not even tender them so much as a word of thanks.

Instead of the smallest recognition for our voluntary services, the Union Government repays our loyalty by persecuting our widows and fatherless children with the cold-blooded provisions of the Natives' Land Act. These cruelties are euphemistically described as the first step towards the segregation of white and black, but they might more truthfully be styled the first steps towards the extermination of the blacks.

When the war broke out, the Government promptly suspended the inquiries of the Commission, whose report is naively alleged to be pregnant with the fruits of the millennium, but the cruel evictions under the same law of the rebel Grobler are pursuing their course while the war lasts and the Union Government remains unconcerned. It was only when a whole tribe was evicted during the war that the Government interceded on behalf of the victims, but then, the only extent of the intervention has been to secure exemption for the chief of the tribe alone, on the condition that HE FORCED THE REST OF HIS TRIBE TO RENDER EVERY YEAR THREE MONTHS' LABOUR TO THE LANDOWNER. Yet these people could live happily on some other farm did not the Government prohibit their happiness at the behest of a rebel who, at or about the time of this enthralling compromise, was conducting treasonable operations against the Government.