The Wankie Expedition
As elsewhere in South Africa, the chief difficulty in the way of the development of the country is the disinclination of the idle natives to work on the mines or elsewhere, all the more so now that so many have been spoilt by the excessive wages paid to them by the military authorities during the war. The native of Mashonaland, for example, living in a country blessed with a fruitful soil and splendid climate, protected by our rule from the raids that used to devastate his lands, reaping his crops in security, assisted by the Administration in hard times of rinderpest or locust scourge, is now more than ever loth to work. He can earn as much as £3 a month with food and lodging. But for the protection which he enjoys, and which enables him to wax rich, he only contributes to the expenses of Government his hut-tax of ten shillings. An increase in his hut-tax might induce him to work for a few weeks in the year. If nothing will overcome his deep-rooted indolence, other labour must be imported. Arabs from Aden are already working in some of the mines.
The pay of the skilled white miner is 30s. a day. Throughout Rhodesia the artisan earns good wages, the blacksmith and the bricklayer, for example, receiving respectively 30s. and 35s. a day in Salisbury. Detractors of Rhodesia are constantly asserting that the white population is outrageously taxed, each settler, they state, having to pay £40 per annum to the Chartered Company in the shape of taxes; and a well-known politician, beloved of Little Englanders, has publicly declared that this is the case. It appears that these ingenious people arrived at this conclusion by dividing the amount of the Company’s revenue, £440,000, by the number of Europeans in the country, namely, 12,000, which certainly does give a result of nearly £40 per head. It is thus assumed that all the Company’s revenue is derived from the taxation of the settlers. Now, in the first place, out of this £440,000 of revenue, £113,000 represents the amount of the native hut-tax, and is therefore not contributed by white people at all. Another £23,000 is derived from the sales and rent of land, the Company’s property; and another £58,000 from the telegraph and postal services, which up till now have been worked at a loss. No one can maintain that these items fall under the head of taxation. To go further, another £86,000 of the Company’s revenue is paid directly by the mining companies that have been floated—that is, by the shareholders in England, not by the people of Rhodesia. These figures added up amount to £280,000, which leaves a balance of £160,000—the taxation laid on the settlers, that is, about £13 per head. To go still further, of this £160,000, £73,000 is derived from the duties on wines, spirits, and tobacco. Therefore if one puts these luxuries out of the calculation the taxation amounts to only £7 a head per year, which is anything but high when one bears in mind that there are no paupers in Rhodesia, that women and children are few, and that the large bulk of the population are adult males in the prime of life earning high wages.
Rhodesian Mining. The Dobie Mill
The climate of the Rhodesian plateau is undoubtedly healthy and well suited to British colonists. It is a land where the white man can work in the fields. The British children reared here are as rosy of cheek and as sturdy of limb as those at home. There is, of course, malaria in the lowlands, but that will disappear before occupation and civilisation, even as it has done in once unhealthy districts of the Transvaal and the Cape Colony. It is the same with the diseases that affect domestic animals: thus horse-sickness once prevailed far to the south, and gradually has been driven north before advancing civilisation. The dreaded tsetse fly too, fatal to horses and cattle, can only exist where the larger wild beasts abound, and vanishes with the latter wherever the white man establishes himself. The rinderpest, in killing off the wild buffalo, did one good service: the tsetse disappeared with the buffalo, and now only frequents remote and unfrequented regions.
From every point of view the future of Rhodesia now looks hopeful. The young State suffered from every calamity that can befall a new country, but was too vigorous to succumb. The Company and the Rhodesian community have displayed pluck, energy, and patriotism in the hour of Britain’s danger, and every loyal Englishman must sincerely wish Rhodesia prosperity. As regards the prospects of the Chartered Company itself, I will conclude by calling attention to one point. Up till now the Company has been compelled to maintain a large and expensive military force, costing £276,000 a year. Now that the Boer war has been brought to a conclusion, the necessity for so large a force has ceased to exist, and Mr. W. H. Milton, the Senior Administrator of Southern Rhodesia, has recommended, as sufficient to meet the requirements of the country, the maintenance of a force of 400 Europeans and 400 natives, with a simple organisation on the lines of the Cape Police. The cost of this, he maintains, should not exceed £100,000 per annum. If his proposal is accepted, the revenue of the Chartered Company should balance its expenditure, and the corner will be turned.