Impressions of South Africa

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

Let us begin by recalling the physical features of the country. Most of it is high and dry; all of it is hot. The parts which are high and dry are also healthy, and fit for the races of Europe to dwell in. But are they equally fit to support a dense population?

South Africa has three great natural sources of wealth: agricultural land, pasture-land, and minerals. The forests are too scanty to be worth regarding: they are not, and probably never will be, sufficient to supply its own needs. Fisheries also are insignificant, and not likely ever to constitute an industry, so we may confine ourselves to the three first named.

Of these three agriculture is now, and has hitherto been, by far the least important. Out of an area of two hundred and twenty-one thousand square miles in Cape Colony alone, probably not more than one one-thousandth part is now under any kind of cultivation, whether by natives or by whites; and in the whole country, even if we exclude the German and Portuguese territories, the proportion must be even smaller. There are no figures available, so one can make only the roughest possible conjecture. As regards more than half of the country, this fact is explained by the dryness of the climate. Not only the Karroo region in the interior of Cape Colony, but also the vast region stretching north from the Karroo nearly as far as the west-coast territories of Portugal, is too arid for tillage. So are large parts of the Free State, of the Transvaal, and of Matabililand. Where there is a sufficient rainfall, as in many districts along the south and south-east coasts, much of the country is too hilly and rough for cultivation; so that it would be well within the mark to say that of the whole area mentioned above far less than one-tenth is suitable for raising any kind of crop without artificial aid. Much, no doubt, remains which might be tilled, and is not tilled, especially in the country between the south-eastern edge of the great plateau and the sea; and that this land lies untouched is due partly to the presence of the Kafir tribes, who occupy more land than they cultivate, partly to the want or the dearness of labour, partly to the tendency, confirmed by long habit, of the whites to prefer stock-farming to tillage. The chief agricultural products are at present cereals, i.e., wheat, oats, maize, and Kafir corn (a kind of millet), fruit and sugar. The wheat and maize raised are not sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants, so that these articles are largely imported, in spite of the duties levied on them. There is a considerable and an increasing export of fruit, which goes to Europe,—chiefly to the English market—in January, February, and March, the midsummer and autumn of the southern hemisphere. Sugar is grown on the hot lands of Natal lying along the sea, and might, no doubt, be grown all the way north along the sea from there to the Zambesi. Rice would do well on the wet coast lands, but is scarcely at all raised. Tea has lately been planted on the hills in Natal, and would probably thrive also on the high lands of Mashonaland. There is plenty of land fit for cotton. The tobacco of the Transvaal is so pleasant for smoking in a pipe that one cannot but expect it to be in time much more largely and carefully grown than it is now. Those who have grown accustomed to it prefer it to any other. With the exception of the olive, which apparently does not succeed, and of the vine, which succeeds only in the small district round Cape Town that enjoys a true summer and winter, nearly all the staples of the warmer parts of the temperate zone and of subtropical regions can be grown in some district or other of the country.

The introduction of irrigation would enormously enlarge the area of tillage, for some of the regions now hopelessly arid, such as the Karroo, have a soil of surprising fertility, which produces luxuriant crops when water is led on to it. Millions of acres might be made to wave with corn were great tanks, like those of India, constructed to hold the rains of the wet season, for it is not so much the inadequacy of the rainfall as the fact that it is confined to three or four months, that makes the country arid. Something might also be hoped from the digging of artesian wells dug like those which have lately been successfully bored in Algeria, and have proved so infinitely valuable to parts of Australia. Already about three hundred thousand acres are cultivated with the aid of irrigation in Cape Colony. At present, however, it has been deemed hardly worth while to execute large irrigation works or to bore wells.[88] The price of cereals has sunk so low over all the world that South Africans find it cheaper to import them than to spend capital on breaking up waste lands; and there is plenty of land already which might be cultivated without irrigation if there were settlers coming to cultivate it, or if Kafir labour was sufficiently effective to make it worth the while of enterprising men to undertake farming on a large scale. The same remarks apply generally to the other kinds of produce I have mentioned. As population grows, and the local demand for food increases, more land will be brought under the plough or the hoe. Some day, perhaps, when the great corn-exporting countries of to-day—North America, La Plata, central India, southern Russia—have become so populous as to have much less of their grain crops to spare for other countries, it will become profitable to irrigate the Karroo, on which the Kafir of the future will probably prove a more efficient labourer than he is now. But that day is distant, and until it arrives, agriculture will continue to play a very subordinate part in South African industry, and will employ a comparatively small white population.

Ever since the last years of the seventeenth century, when the settlers were beginning to spread out from the Cape Peninsula towards the then still unknown interior, the main occupation of the colonists, first of the Dutch and afterwards of both Dutch and English, has been the keeping of cattle and sheep. So it remains to-day. Nearly all the land that is not rough mountain or waterless desert, and much that to the inexperienced eye seems a waterless desert, is in the hands of stock-farmers, whose ranges are often of enormous size, from six thousand acres upward. In 1893 there were in Cape Colony about 2,000,000 cattle, in Natal 725,000, in the Orange Free State 900,000, and in Bechuanaland the Bamangwato (Khama's tribe) alone had 800,000. Of these last only some 5,000 are said to have survived the murrain, which worked havoc in the other three first-mentioned territories also. In 1896 there were in Cape Colony alone 14,400,000 sheep and 5,000,000 Angora and other goats. The number of sheep might be largely increased were more effective measures against the diseases that affect them carried out. All the country, even the Kalahari desert, which used to be thought hopelessly sterile, is now deemed fit to put some sort of live stock upon, though, of course, the more arid the soil, the greater the area required to feed one sheep. To the traveller who crosses its weary stretches in the train, the Karroo seems a barren waste; but it produces small succulent shrubs much relished by sheep, and every here and there a well or a stagnant pool may be found which supplies water enough to keep the creatures alive. Here six acres is the average allowed for one sheep. Tracts of rough ground, covered with patches of thick scrubby bushes, are turned to account as ostrich farms, whence large quantities of feathers are exported to Europe and America. In 1896 the number of ostriches in Cape Colony was returned as 225,000. The merino sheep, introduced about seventy years ago, thrives in Cape Colony, and its wool has become one of the most valuable products of the country. In the Free State both it and the Angora goat do well, and the pasture lands of that territory support also great numbers of cattle and some horses. The Free State and Bechuanaland are deemed to be among the very best ranching grounds in all South Africa.

Although, as I have said, nearly all the country is more or less fit for live stock, it must be remembered that this does not imply either great pecuniary returns or a large population. In most districts a comparatively wide area of ground is required to feed what would be deemed in western America a moderate herd or flock, because the pasture is thin, droughts are frequent, and locusts sometimes destroy a large part of the herbage. Thus the number of persons for whom the care of cattle or sheep in any given area provides occupation is a mere trifle compared to the number which would be needed to till the same area. Artesian wells might, no doubt, make certain regions better for pastoral purposes; but here, as in the case of agriculture, we find little prospect of any dense population, and, indeed, a probability that the white people will continue to be few relatively to the area of the country. On a large grazing farm the proportion of white men to black servants is usually about three to twenty-five; and though the proportion of whites is, of course, much larger in the small towns which supply the wants of the surrounding country, still any one can see with how few whites a ranching country may get along.

The third source of wealth lies in the minerals. It was the latest source to become known—indeed, till thirty-two years ago, nobody suspected it. Iron had been found in some places, copper in others; but neither had been largely worked, and the belief in the existence of the precious metals rested on nothing more than a Portuguese tradition. In 1867 the first diamond was picked up by a hunter out of a heap of shining pebbles near the banks of the Orange River, above its confluence with the Vaal. In 1869-70 the stones began to be largely found near where the town of Kimberley now stands. This point has been henceforth the centre of the industry, though there are a few other mines elsewhere of smaller productive power. The value of the present annual output exceeds £4,000,000, but it is not likely to increase, being, in fact, now kept down in order not to depress the market by over-supply. Altogether more than £100,000,000 worth of diamonds have been exported. The discovery of diamonds, as was observed in an earlier chapter, opened a new period in South African history, drawing crowds of immigrants, developing trade through the seaports as well as industry at the mining centres, and producing a group of enterprising men who, when the various diamond-mining companies had been amalgamated, sought and found new ways of employing their capital. Fifteen years after the great diamond finds came the still greater gold finds at the Witwatersrand. The working of these mines has now become the greatest industry in the country, and Johannesburg is the centre toward which the import trade converges.

I need not repeat the description given in a previous chapter ([Chapter XVIII]) of the Rand mining district. The reader will remember that it differs from all the other gold-fields of South Africa in one essential feature—that of the comparative certainty of its yield. Accordingly, in considering the future of South African gold, I will speak first of those other gold-fields and then separately of the Rand district.

Gold has been found in many places south of the Zambesi. It occurs here and there in small quantities in Cape Colony, in somewhat larger quantities in Natal, Zululand, and Swaziland, in the eastern and north-eastern districts of the Transvaal, at Tati in northern Bechuanaland, and in many spots through Matabililand and Mashonaland. In all (or nearly all) these places it occurs in quartz reefs resembling those of North America and Australia. Some reefs, especially those of the northern region between the Limpopo and Zambesi, are promising, and great quantities of gold have in times long past been taken out of this region. As already explained ([Chapter XVII]), it seems probable, though not certain, that in many districts a mining industry will be developed which will give employment to thousands, perhaps many thousands, of natives, and to hundreds, perhaps many hundreds, of white engineers and foremen. Should this happen, markets will be created in these districts, land will be cultivated, railways will be made, and the local trades which a thriving population requires will spring up. But the life of these gold reefs will not be a long one. As the gold is found in quartz rock, and only to a small extent in gravel or other alluvial deposits, the mining requires capital, and will be carried on by companies. It will be carried on quickly, and so quickly with the aid of the enormously improved scientific appliances we now possess, as to exhaust at no distant period the mineral which the rocks contain. I saw in Transylvania in 1866 a gold mine which was worked in the days of the Romans, and was being worked still. But mining now is as different from the mining of the ancients or of the middle ages as a locomotive engine is from an ox-waggon, such are the resources which chemical and mechanical science place at our disposal. Accordingly, the payable parts of the quartz reefs will have been drained of their gold in a few years, or, at any rate, in a few decades, just as many of the silver lodes of Nevada have already been worked out and abandoned. There will then be no further cause for the existence of the mine-workers at those points, and the population will decline just as that of Nevada has declined. These South African districts will, however, be in one point far better off than Nevada: they possess land fit everywhere for ranching, and in many places for tillage also. Ranching will, therefore, support a certain, though not large, permanent population; while tillage, though the profitable market close by will have been largely reduced by the departure of the miners, will probably continue, because the land will have been furnished with farmhouses and fences, perhaps in places with irrigation works, and because the railways that will have been constructed will enable agricultural products to reach more distant markets, which by that time may possibly be less glutted with the cereals of North and South America. Accordingly, assuming that a fair proportion of the quartz reef gold-fields turn out well, it may be predicted that population will increase in and round them during the next ten years, and that for some twenty years more this population will maintain itself, though of course not necessarily in the same spots, because, as the reefs first developed become exhausted, the miners will shift to new places. After these thirty or possibly forty years, that is to say, before the middle of next century, the country, having parted with whatever gold it contains, will have to fall back on its pasture and its arable land; but having become settled and developed, it may count on retaining a reasonable measure of prosperity.

This forecast may seem to be of a highly conjectural nature. Conjectural it must be, if only for this reason: that the value of most of the quartz reefs referred to is still quite uncertain. But one cannot visit a new country without attempting to make a forecast of some kind; and the experience of other countries goes to show that, while deposits of the precious metals are, under our present conditions, no more an abiding source of wealth than is a guano island, they may immensely accelerate the development of a country, giving it a start in the world, and providing it with advantages, such as railway communication, which could not otherwise be looked for. This they are now doing for Matabililand and Mashonaland, countries in which it would not at present be worth while to construct railroads but for the hopes attaching to the mines. This they may do for Zululand and Swaziland also, should the reefs in those districts prove profitable.