Impressions of South Africa

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

Bulawayo means, in the Zulu tongue, the place of slaughter, and under the sway of Lo Bengula it deserved its name. Just sixty years ago Mosilikatze, chief of the Matabili, driven out of what is now the Transvaal Republic by the Dutch Boers who had emigrated from Cape Colony, fled four hundred miles to the north-west and fell like a sudden tempest upon the Makalakas and other feeble tribes who pastured their cattle in this remote region. His tribe was not large, but every man was a tried warrior. The Makalakas were slaughtered or chased away or reduced to slavery, and when Mosilikatze died in 1870, his son Lo Bengula succeeded to the most powerful kingdom in South Africa after that of Cetewayo, chief of the Zulus. Of the native town which grew up round the king's kraal there is now not a trace—all was destroyed in 1893. The kraal itself, which Lo Bengula fired when he fled away, has gone, and only one old tree marks the spot where the king used to sit administering justice to his subjects. A large part of this justice consisted in decreeing death to those among his indunas or other prominent men who had excited his suspicions or whose cattle he desired to appropriate. Sometimes he had them denounced—"smelt out," they called it—by the witch-doctors as guilty of practising magic against him. Sometimes he dispensed with a pretext, and sent a messenger to the hut of the doomed man to tell him the king wanted him. The victim, often ignorant of his fate, walked in front, while the executioner, following close behind, suddenly dealt him with the knob-kerry, or heavy-ended stick, one tremendous blow, which crushed his skull and left him dead upon the ground. Women, on the other hand, were strangled.[46] No one disputed the despot's will, for the Matabili, like other Zulus, show to their king the absolute submission of soldiers to their general, while the less martial tribes, such as the Bechuanas and Basutos, obey the chief only when he has the sentiment of the tribe behind him. One thing, however, the king could not do. He owned a large part of all the cattle of the tribe, and he assumed the power to grant concessions to dig for minerals. But the land belonged to the whole tribe by right of conquest, and he had no power to alienate it.

Moved by the associations of the ancient capital, Mr. Rhodes directed the residence of the Administrator, Government House, as it is called, to be built on the site of Lo Bengula's kraal. But the spot was not a convenient one for the creation of a European town, for it was a good way from any stream, and there was believed to be a valuable gold-reef immediately under it. Accordingly, a new site was chosen, on somewhat lower ground, about two miles to the south-west. Here new Bulawayo stands, having risen with a rapidity rivalling that of a mining-camp in Western America. The site has no natural beauty, for the landscape is dull, with nothing to relieve its monotonous lines except the hill of Tsaba Induna, about fifteen miles distant to the east. The ground on which the town stands, sloping gently to the south, is bare, dusty, and wind-swept, like the country all round. However, the gum-trees, planted in the beginning of 1894, when the streets were laid out, had already shot up to twelve or fifteen feet in height and began to give some little shade. Brick houses were rising here and there among the wooden shanties and the sheds of corrugated iron. An opera house was talked of, and already the cricket-ground and racecourse, without which Englishmen cannot be happy, had been laid out. Town lots, or "stands," as they are called in South Africa, had gone up to prices which nothing but a career of swift and brilliant prosperity could justify. However, that prosperity seemed to the inhabitants of Bulawayo to be assured. Settlers kept flocking in. Storekeepers and hotel-keepers were doing a roaring trade. Samples of ore were every day being brought in from newly explored gold-reefs, and all men's talk was of pennyweights, or even ounces, to the ton. Everybody was cheerful, because everybody was hopeful. It was not surprising. There is something intoxicating in the atmosphere of a perfectly new country, with its undeveloped and undefined possibilities: and the easy acquisition of this spacious and healthful land, the sudden rise of this English town, where two years before there had been nothing but the huts of squalid savages, had filled every one with a delightful sense of the power of civilized man to subjugate the earth and draw from it boundless wealth. Perhaps something may also be set down to the climate. Bulawayo is not beautiful. Far more attractive sites might have been found among the hills to the south. But it has a deliciously fresh, keen brilliant air, with a strong breeze tempering the sun-heat, and no risk of fever. Indeed, nearly all this side of Matabililand is healthful, partly because it has been more thickly peopled of late years than the eastern side of the country, which was largely depopulated by the Matabili raids.

Next to the prospects of the gold-reefs (a topic to which I shall presently return), the question in which a visitor in 1895 felt most interest was the condition of the natives. It seemed too much to expect that a proud and warlike race of savages should suddenly, within less than two years from the overthrow of their king, have abandoned all notion of resistance to the whites and settled down as peaceable subjects. The whites were a mere handful scattered over an immense area of country, and the white police force did not exceed four or five hundred men. Nevertheless, the authorities of the British South Africa Company were of opinion that peace had been finally secured, and that no danger remained from the natives. They observed that, while the true Matabili who remained in the country—for some had fled down to or across the Zambesi after the defeats of 1893—were comparatively few in number, the other natives, mostly Makalakas,[47] were timid and unwarlike. They held that when a native tribe has been once completely overcome in fight, it accepts the inevitable with submission. And they dwelt on the fact that Lo Bengula's tyranny had been a constant source of terror to his own subjects. After his flight some of his leading indunas came to Dr. Jameson and said, "Now we can sleep." This confidence was shared by all the Europeans in the country. English settlers dwelt alone without a shade of apprehension in farms, six, eight, or ten miles from another European. In the journey I am describing from Mafeking to Fort Salisbury, over eight hundred miles of lonely country, my wife and I were accompanied only by my driver, a worthy Cape Dutchman named Renske, and by a native "Cape boy." None of us was armed, and no one of the friends we consulted as to our trip even suggested that I should carry so much as a revolver, or that the slightest risk was involved in taking a lady through the country. How absolutely secure the Administrator at Bulawayo felt was shown by his sending the Matabililand mounted police (those who afterwards marched into the Transvaal) to Pitsani, in southern Bechuanaland, in November, leaving the country denuded of any force to keep order.

It is easy to be wise after the event. The confidence of the Europeans in the submissiveness of the natives is now seen to have been ill founded. Causes of discontent were rife among them, which, at first obscure, became subsequently clear. Two of these causes were already known at the time of my visit, though their seriousness was under-estimated. In Mashonaland the natives disliked the tax of ten shillings for each hut, which there, as in the Transvaal Republic,[48] they have been required to pay; and they complained that it was apt to fall heavily on the industrious Kafir, because the idle one escaped, having nothing that could be taken in payment of it. This tax was sometimes levied in kind, sometimes in labour, but by preference in money when the hut-owner had any money, for the Company desired to induce the natives to earn wages. If he had not, an ox was usually taken in pledge. In Matabililand many natives, I was told, felt aggrieved that the Company had claimed the ownership of and the right to take to itself all the cattle, as having been (in the Company's view) the property of Lo Bengula, although many of these had, in fact, been left in the hands of the indunas, and a large part were, in December, 1895, distributed among the natives as their own property. Subsequent inquiries have shown that this grievance was deeply and widely felt. As regards the land, there was evidently the material out of which a grievance might grow, but the grievance did not seem to have yet actually arisen. The land was being sold off in farms, and natives squatting on a piece of land so sold might be required by the purchaser to clear out. However, pains were taken, I was told, to avoid including native villages in any farm sold. Often it would not be for the purchaser's interest to eject the natives, because he might get labourers among them, and labour is what is most wanted. Two native reservations had been laid out, but the policy of the Company was to keep the natives scattered about among the whites rather than mass them in the reservations. Under Lo Bengula there had been no such thing as private ownership of land. The land was "nationalized," and no individual Kafir was deemed to have any permanent and exclusive right even to the piece of it which he might be at the time cultivating. While he actually did cultivate he was not disturbed, for the simple reason that there was far more land than the people could or would cultivate. The natives, although they till the soil, are still half-nomads. They often shift their villages, and even when the village remains they seldom cultivate the same patch for long together. Though Europeans had been freely buying the land, they bought largely to hold for a rise and sell again, and comparatively few of the farms bought had been actually stocked with cattle, while, of course, the parts under tillage were a mere trifle. Hence there did not seem to have been as yet any pressure upon the natives, who, though they vastly outnumber the Europeans, are very few in proportion to the size of the country. I doubt if in the whole territory of the Company south of the Zambesi River there are 1,000,000. To these possible sources of trouble there was added one now perceived to have been still graver. Native labour was needed not only for public works, but by private persons for mining operations. As the number of Kafirs who came willingly was insufficient, the indunas were required to furnish stout young men to work; and according to Mr. Selous,[49] who was then living in the country, force was often used to bring them in. Good wages were given; but the regulations were irksome, and the native police, who were often employed to bring in the labourers, seem to have abused their powers. To the genuine Matabili, who lived only for war and plunder, and had been accustomed to despise the other tribes, work, and especially mine work, was not only distasteful, but degrading. They had never been really subdued. In 1893 they hid away most of the firearms they possessed, hoping to use them again. Now, when their discontent had increased, two events hastened an outbreak. One was the removal of the white police to Pitsani. Only forty-four were left in Matabililand to keep order. The other was the appearance of a frightful murrain among the cattle, which made it necessary for the Company to order the slaughter even of healthy animals in order to stop the progress of the contagion. The plague had come slowly down through German and Portuguese East Africa, propagated, it is said, by the wild animals, especially buffaloes. Some kinds of wild game are as liable to it as domesticated oxen are, and on the Upper Zambesi in September, 1896, so large a part of the game had died that the lions, mad with hunger, were prowling round the native kraals and making it dangerous to pass from village to village. This new and unlooked for calamity created a ferment in the minds of the natives. The slaughter of their cattle seemed to them an act of injustice. Just when they were terrified at this calamity (which, it was reported, had been sent up among them by Lo Bengula, or his ghost, from the banks of the Zambesi) and incensed at this apparent injustice, coming on the top of their previous visitation, the news of the defeat and surrender of the Company's police force in the Transvaal spread among them. They saw the white government defenceless, and its head, Dr. Jameson, whose kindliness had impressed those who knew him personally, no longer among them. Then, under the incitements of a prophet, came the revolt.

This, however, is a digression. In October, 1895, we travelled, unarmed and unconcerned, by night as well as by day, through villages where five months later the Kafirs rose and murdered every European within reach. So entirely unsuspected was the already simmering disaffection.

The native question which occupied Bulawayo in September, 1895, was that native-labour question which, in one form or another, is always present to South African minds. All hard labour, all rough and unskilled labour, is, and, owing to the heat of the climate as well as the scarcity of white men, must be, done by blacks; and in a new country like Matabililand the blacks, though they can sometimes be induced to till the land, are most averse to working under ground. They are only beginning to use money, and they do not want the things which money buys. The wants of a native living with his tribe and cultivating mealies or Kafir corn are confined to a kaross (skin cloak) or some pieces of cotton cloth. The prospect of leaving his tribe to go and work in a mine, in order that he may earn wages wherewith he can buy things he has no use for, does not at once appeal to him. The white men, anxious to get to work on the gold-reefs, are annoyed at what they call the stupidity and laziness of the native, and usually clamour for legislation to compel the natives to come and work, adding, of course, that regular labour would be the best thing in the world for the natives. Some go so far as to wish to compel them to work at a fixed rate of wages, sufficient to leave a good profit for the employer. Others go even further, and as experience has shown that the native does not fear imprisonment as a penalty for leaving his work, desire the infliction of another punishment which he does fear—that is, the lash. Such monstrous demands seem fitter for the mouths of Spaniards in the sixteenth century than for Englishmen in the nineteenth. The difficulty of getting labour is incident to a new country, and must be borne with. In German East Africa it has been so much felt that the Administrator of that region has proposed to import Indian labour, as the sugar-planters of Natal, and as those of Trinidad and Demerara in the West Indies, have already done. But it is to some extent a transitory difficulty. The mines at Kimberley succeed in drawing plenty of native labour; so do the mines on the Witwatersrand; so in time the mine-owners in Matabililand may hope to do also. They must, however, be prepared, until a regular afflux of labourers has been set up, to offer, as the Kimberley people do, wages far in excess of anything the Kafirs could possibly gain among their own people, in order to overcome the distaste of the native—a very natural distaste, due to centuries of indolence in a hot climate—to any hard and continuous toil. This is no great compensation to make to those whose land they have taken and whose primitive way of life they have broken up and for ever destroyed. But once the habit of coming to work for wages has been established in these northern regions,—and it need not take many years to establish it,—the mining companies will have no great difficulty in getting as much labour as they want, and will not be obliged, as they now are, to try to arrange with a chief for the despatch of some of his "boys."

Bulawayo is the point from which one starts to visit the Victoria Falls on the Zambesi, the only very grand natural object which South Africa has to show. The expedition, however, is a much longer one than a glance at the map would suggest. Owing to the prevalence of the tsetse-fly in the valley of the great river, one cannot take oxen without the prospect of losing them, and must therefore travel on foot or with donkeys. The want of a waggon makes camping out much more troublesome and involves a large force of native porters. Thus elaborate preparations are needed, and though the distance, as the crow flies, from Bulawayo to the Falls is only some two hundred miles, at least six weeks are needed for the trip, a space of time we could not spare.

I have described in the last chapter the route from Cape Town to the capital of Matabililand which persons coming from England would naturally take. It is not, however, by any means the shortest route to the sea, and is therefore not the route along which the bulk of the European trade is likely in future to pass. From Cape Town to Bulawayo it is fourteen hundred miles; but from Bulawayo to the port of Beira, on the Indian Ocean, it is only six hundred and fifty miles via Fort Salisbury and Mtali, and will be only about five hundred if a more direct railway line should ever be laid out. I propose to take the reader back to the sea at Beira by this Fort Salisbury and Mtali route, and in following it he will learn something about Mashonaland and the mountains which divide British from Portuguese territory.

Bulawayo is distant from Fort Salisbury two hundred and eighty miles. The journey takes by coach four days and four nights, travelling night and day, with only short halts for meals. An ox-waggon accomplishes it in about three weeks. The track runs nearly all the way along high ground, open, breezy, and healthful, because dry, but seldom picturesque. It is a land of rolling downs, the tops of which are covered with thin grass, while better pastures, and sometimes woods also, are found in the valleys of the streams and on the lower slopes of the hills. The first part of the way, from Bulawayo to the little town of Gwelo, is rather dull. One crosses the Bimbezi River, where the Matabili were finally overthrown in the war of 1893, and the Shangani[50] River, where they suffered their first defeat. The Company's force was advancing along the high open ground to attack Bulawayo, and the native army met them on the road. Both battlefields are bare and open, and one wonders at the folly of the natives who advanced over such ground, exposed to the rifle-fire and the still more deadly Maxim guns of the invaders. Armed in large part only with assagais, they were mown down before they could even reach the front of the British line, and their splendid courage made their destruction all the more complete. Had they stuck to the rocky and woody regions they might have made the war a far longer and more troublesome business than it proved to be. No stone marks either battle-field.

From a spot between the two rivers we turned off to the south to visit the prehistoric remains at Dhlodhlo. It was an extremely lonely track, on which we did not meet a human being for some thirty miles. No house, not even a Kafir hut, was to be found, so we bivouacked in the veldt, to the lee of a clump of thorn-bushes. The earlier part of the nights is delightful at this season (October), but it is apt to get cold between 2 and 4 A.M., and as there is usually a south-east wind blowing, the shelter of a bush or a tall ant-hill is not unwelcome. Whoever enjoys travelling at all cannot but enjoy such a night alone under the stars. One gathers sticks to make the fire, and gets to know which wood burns best. One considers how the scanty supply of water which the waggon carries may be most thriftily used for making the soup, boiling the eggs and brewing the tea. One listens (we listened in vain) for the roar of a distant lion or the still less melodious voice of the hyena. The brilliance of the stars is such that only the fatigue of the long day—for one must always start by or before sunrise to spare the animals during the sultry noon—and the difficulty of sitting down in a great, bare, flat land, where there is not a large stone and seldom even a tree, can drive one into the vehicle to sleep. The meals, consisting of tinned meat and biscuits, with eggs and sometimes a small, lean, and desiccated chicken, are very scanty and very monotonous, but the air is so dry and fresh and bracing that one seems to find meat and drink in it.