Impressions of South Africa

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

So much for the quartz reefs. As has been observed, the gold mines of the Witwatersrand differ in the much greater certainty of their yield and in the much greater quantity of auriferous rock which they have been ascertained to contain. It is probable that gold of the value of £700,000,000 remains to be extracted from them. Already a population of at least 150,000 white men has collected in what was in 1885 a barren wilderness; already about £15,000,000 of gold per annum is being extracted. It is practically certain that this production and population will go on increasing during the next few years, and that the mines will not be worked out before the middle of next century at earliest. For the next fifty years, therefore, the Rand district will be the economic and industrial centre of South Africa and the seat of the largest European community. What will it be after those fifty or perhaps sixty years, when the banket beds have been drained of their gold to a depth of 5,000 feet, the greatest at which mining seems to be practicable? It is possible that the other industries which are rising as ancillary to mining may for a while and to a reduced extent hold their ground. Probably, however, they will wither up and vanish. The land will remain, but the land of this highest part of the Transvaal, though fit for pasture, does not lend itself to tillage. The probabilities, therefore, are that the fate of Nevada will in time descend upon the Witwatersrand—that the houses that are now springing up will be suffered to fall to ruin, that the mouths of the shafts will in time be covered by thorny shrublets, and that soon after A.D. 2000 has been reached this busy hive of industry and noisy market-place of speculation will have again become the stony solitude which it was in 1880. For all practical purposes, however, an event a hundred years away is too distant to be worth regarding. The world will in A.D. 2000 be so different from what it is now that the exhaustion of the Rand gold-field may have a different bearing from any which we can now foresee. Johannesburgers themselves are not disquieted by thoughts of a future that is even half a century distant. The older sort will not live to see it, and the younger sort expect to have made their fortunes long before it arrives. Still it must be remembered that, so far as minerals go, South Africa is now living, not on her income, but on her capital, and that in twenty-five years half or more of the capital may be gone.

There are other metals in the country besides the precious ones. The presence of extensive coal-beds in the Transvaal and Natal has been a circumstance of the first importance for the profitable working of the Rand gold-beds, and may encourage the growth of some kinds of manufacture.[89] Iron is abundant both in the Transvaal and in Mashonaland, and has been found in many other districts, often in the neighbourhood of coal. It is not worked now, because all iron goods can be obtained more cheaply from Europe; but it may one day grow into an industry, as copper-mining already has in Little Namaqualand on the west coast.

The mention of coal and iron brings us to another branch of the subject—the possibility of establishing manufactures which may become a source of wealth and the support of an industrial population. At present the manufactures are insignificant. All the textile goods, for instance, nearly all the metal goods, and by far the larger part even of the beer and spirits (intended for the whites) and mineral waters consumed in the country come from Europe. The Boers in the two Republics and the Boer element at the Cape have neither taste nor talent for this kind of industry, and such capital as exists is naturally attracted to mining enterprises. Nevertheless, it may be thought that as capital accumulates things will change, and that the English part of the population in the two British Colonies will take to manufactures, as it has done in Australia. Let us see whether this is probable.

To enable South African manufacturers to compete on a large scale with the established manufacturing countries, such as those in north-western Europe or north-eastern America, three things are needed—a large market, cheap sources of mechanical power, cheap and efficient labour. Of these the first is at present wanting, and even should the growth of the Rand mining district raise the white population of the two Colonies and two Republics from something over 700,000 to 1,200,000, that number of consumers will still be too small to encourage the expenditure of any large capital in endeavouring to produce articles which the immense manufacturing establishments of Europe, working for populous markets, can turn out more cheaply. As to mechanical forces, there are no rivers to give water-power; and though Natal, Zululand, and the Transvaal provide coal, the quality of the mineral is inferior to that obtainable in South Wales or Belgium or Pennsylvania. But the most important conditions for success are those connected with labour. In South Africa skilled labour is dear because scarce, and unskilled labour is dear because bad. As was explained in a preceding chapter, all rough, hard work is done by natives; not that white men could not, in the more temperate regions, perfectly well do it, but because white men think it beneath them and only fit for blacks. Now black labour is seldom effective labour. The mixed race called "Cape boys" are good drivers, and quite fit for many kinds of railway work. They are employed in the building trades and in sawmills, and to some extent in such trades as bootmaking. The Kafirs of the eastern province and of Natal are more raw than the "Cape boys." They make good platelayers on railways, and having plenty of physical strength, will do any sort of rough work they are set to. But they have no aptitude for trades requiring skill, and it will take a generation or two to fit them for the finer kinds of carpentry or metal-work, or for the handling of delicate machinery. Besides, they are often changeable and unstable, apt to forsake their employment for some trifling cause. Their wages are certainly not high, ranging from ten to twenty shillings a month, besides food, for any kind of rough outdoor work. Miners are paid higher, and a Malay mason will get from thirty to forty shillings a week; but a white labourer at twice the price would, for most kinds of work, be cheaper. Nor is it easy to get the amount of native labour that may be needed, for the Kafir prefers to till his own patch of ground or turn out his cattle on the veldt. The scale for white workmen is, of course, far higher, ranging from £2 10s. to £8 a week, according to the nature of the work and the competence of the artisan. Such wages are nearly double those paid in England, treble those paid in some manufacturing districts of Germany or Belgium, higher even than those paid in the United States. It is therefore evident that, what with the badness of the cheaper labour and the dearness of the better, a manufacturer would, in South Africa, be severely handicapped in competing with either Europe or the United States. Protectionists may think that a high tariff on foreign manufactured goods would foster industrial undertakings in these Colonies. Such a tariff would, however, need to be fixed very high to give the local factory a chance—so high, indeed, that it would excite serious opposition from the consumer. And, in point of fact, there has been hitherto no cry for a tariff to protect home manufactures, because so few people are at present interested in having it. Such protection as exists is directed to food-stuffs, in order to please the agricultural classes, and induce a wider cultivation of the soil; and the tariff on other goods is almost solely for revenue.

The conditions I have described may, and probably will, change as the industrial training of the natives improves and their aversion to labour declines under the pressure of increasing numbers and a reduction of the quantity of land available for them. But a review of the present state of things points to the conclusion that no great development of manufactures, and of a white population occupied in manufactures, is to be expected, at least for some time to come.

Three other observations must at this stage be made. Till very recently, South Africans had what the Psalmist desired—neither poverty nor riches. There were hardly any white paupers, because the substratum of population was black; and as few black paupers, because a Kafir needs nothing but food. On the other hand, there were no rich whites. The farmers, both agriculturists and ranchmen, lived in a sort of rude plenty, with no luxuries and very little money. Everybody was tolerably well off, nobody was wealthy. There were large stock-farms, as in Australia, but the owners of these farms did not make the immense gains which many Australian squatters and some American cattle-men have made. Accordingly, when capital was needed for the development of the mines it was obtained from home. A few successful residents did, no doubt, make out of the diamond fields large sums, which they presently applied to the development of the gold-fields. But by far the greater part of the money spent in opening up mines, both on the Witwatersrand and elsewhere, has come from Europe, chiefly from England, but to a considerable extent also from France, Germany and Holland. Accordingly nineteen twentieths at least of the profits made by the miners are paid to shareholders in those countries, and not expended in South Africa. Even among those who have made fortunes out of diamonds or gold by their personal enterprise on the spot, the majority return to Europe and spend their incomes there. The country, therefore, does not get the full benefit, in the way either of payments for labour (except, of course, labour at the mines) or of increased consumption of articles, out of its mineral products, but is rather in the position of Mexico or Peru in the seventeenth century, when the bulk of the precious metals won from the mines went to Spain as a sort of tribute. There are at this moment probably not more than a dozen rich men, as Europe counts riches, resident in the country, and all of these are to be found either at Johannesburg or at Cape Town. Most of them will after a time betake themselves to Europe. Nor is there any sign that the number of local fortunes will increase; for the motives which draw men away from Johannesburg to Europe are likely to continue as strong in the future as they are at present.

Secondly, as the whites are not—except at Johannesburg, where the lavishness of a mining population is conspicuous—large consumers of luxuries, so the blacks are poor consumers of all save the barest necessaries of life. It is not merely that they have no money. It is that they have no wants, save of food and of a few common articles of clothing. The taste for the articles which civilized man requires is growing, as the traders in Bechuanaland have already begun to find, but it grows slowly, and is still in a rudimentary stage. The demand which South Africa is likely to offer either for home-made or for imported products must, therefore, be measured, not by the gross population, but by the white population, and, indeed, by the town-dwelling whites; for the Dutch farmer or ranchman, whether in the British Colonies or in the Dutch Republics, has very little cash in his pocket, and lives in a primitive way. It is only the development of the mines that makes South Africa a growing market for European goods.

Thirdly, there is not much European immigration, except of artizans; and these go chiefly to the gold mines of the Rand. Few agriculturists come out, because farms have seldom been offered by any of the Governments on the same easy terms as those which prevail in Canada or New Zealand, and because the climate and the existence of a black population deter the agricultural classes of northern Europe. Although the Government of Cape Colony has little or no land obviously fit for tillage to dispose of, because all the untilled area not absolutely barren has been appropriated for stock-farms, still there are districts on the south coasts of Cape Colony, as well as in Natal and in the healthy uplands of Mashonaland, which Englishmen or Germans might cultivate with the assistance (in the hotter parts) of a little native labour, and which Italians or Portuguese might cultivate by their own labour, without native help. The Germans who were brought out in 1856 throve in body and estate on the farms which they tilled with their own hands near Grahamstown. Nevertheless, few agricultural immigrants enter, partly, no doubt, because so much of the land is held by a comparatively small number of persons, and reserved by them (as just observed) for pastoral purposes only. Neither do men go from Europe to start ranching, for the pastoral lands are taken up, except in those wilder regions where no one could thrive without some previous experience of the country. The settling of the newer parts of the country, such as those between the Zambesi and the tropic of Capricorn, is chiefly carried on by the Boers of the Transvaal, and, to a less extent, of the British Colonies; for the Boers retain their passion for trekking out into the wilderness, while the English, with few exceptions, like to keep within reach of one another and of civilisation. Accordingly, the country receives comparatively few recruits from rural Europe, and its agricultural population grows only by natural increase. There are probably more natives of India to-day tilling the soil in Natal alone than the whole number of agriculturists who have come from Europe in the last thirty years. Legislation which should attract such agriculturists by the offer of tillage farms of moderate size would be a great benefit to the Colonies.

We may now endeavour to sum up the facts of the case, and state the conclusions to which they point.

South Africa is already, and will be to an increasing extent, a country of great mineral wealth. It is only in the diamond-fields, especially those of Kimberley, and in the gold-fields of the Witwatersrand, that this wealth has yet been proved to exist, so far as regards precious stones and precious metals, but it may exist also in many other districts. It is not confined to precious stones and metals, and when these have been exhausted, copper, iron, and coal may continue to furnish good returns to mine-owners and plenty of employment to work-people. The duration of the gold-fields generally is uncertain, but those of the Witwatersrand will last for at least half a century, and will maintain for all that period an industrial population and a market for commodities which, though small when measured by the standard of the northern hemisphere, will be quite unique in Africa south of the equator.