Chapter XXIII: Conclusion (2)

It cannot too often be called to mind that our Natives differ vastly from the Negroes in America through having social systems, creeds, traditions and ideals of their own, all many, many generations old. Why does not the State use these precious assets more than it does? Why are they wilfully allowed to die out, through disuse or being ridiculed and defamed, far more rapidly than they need? As they are congenital, for what reason did the Creator endow the people with these various propensities, if not for some eminently necessary purpose? May man with impunity run counter to and thwart such purpose? Surely no one will contend that Nature must be undone because the people are so plastic as to be capable apparently of assuming the European character in all its attractiveness and defectiveness, as if that were the greatest and final effort of social evolution. Our motive should be to act in accordance with the desires of the majority of the people, and not to impose this or that restriction or condition mainly because, in our limited vision, it appears to be right.

One cannot but see how strongly the case of Dinuzulu supports these views. It shows that the people were in favour of his being appointed, with the assistance of a council or other advisory body, to protect their interests. They knew they were acting wrongly in dealing with him in 1906, but, in the absence of any other national representative, _i.e._ one of their own flesh and blood, it seemed there was no other course left. Zulus look at the world's affairs in the concrete. To do so in the abstract, as so common amongst ourselves, is foreign to their nature. That is why want of organic connection between their race and that of the white man takes the form of a request for the appointment of a _person_ to act as intermediary, one to whom they can go with their troubles, and one who would lay these before the Government for favourable consideration.

What Dinuzulu himself said about this to the Governor has been briefly noticed. He also observed: "The Natives of India are governed and treated in a correct manner, and according to the law. The Boers, who have recently been at war with the British Government, have also been settled down ... but we who were subdued ... before the Boers and these people I refer to,[359] are not treated in the same manner as they have been treated. The laws are not the same. We cannot help feeling that we Zulu people have been discriminated against.... We are people who have no representatives in the affairs of the country, no one to speak for us,[360] and the laws of the country simply come over us by surprise.... We are all of us in the country like my fingers, each one has his own authority, and does what he thinks right in his own district.... We feel that, whilst we should own obedience and allegiance to the Government ... there should yet be somebody amongst us who represents the people."[361]

When the Native Affairs Commission met the local Chiefs and headmen at Vryheid in January, 1907, the first speaker said: "I would ask the Commission this: Of whom are they making the inquiry as to what the Zulu people as a whole feel; who is that spokesman? Where is he? Where is he who is the eyes and ears of the Zulu nation, the guardian of the people?" Another Chief said: "Why is it the Governor puts such questions, as the Commission has itself put, to mere blades of grass? Where is our guardian? Where is that guardian that should have been given to us by the Governor?... The Government does not rule us with its right, but with its left, hand.... When a State is conquered, there always remains, according to our ideas, some representative or another who carries on the government of the conquered people.... The King will continue to be at a loss as to exactly what we feel, because His Majesty has failed to appoint somebody in a way that we are accustomed to to represent our interests."

Others said: "The whole Zulu people are unanimous as to the need of some person to voice their feelings." "Formerly Cetshwayo used to conduct negotiations, etc., with Sir Theophilus Shepstone. Who was in his (Cetshwayo's) place now?... Dinuzulu was their great induna, and nothing had occurred between the Natives and him which should cause them to pass by him and affiliate themselves to the Government." "They were all in a state of dispersion; sheep without a shepherd."

Although, for years, many Chiefs were opposed to being "governed" by a Paramount Chief, such as Cetshwayo was (after his restoration), it is remarkable how widespread this desire latterly became, particularly in 1905 when the poll tax was imposed. That such aspiration assumed exaggerated proportions during a time of rebellion is not to be surprised at. The universal use by insurgents of the "Usutu" war-cry, of the Usutu badge (_tshokobezi_), and of Dinuzulu's name, only shows the need they felt for a head. As this need existed then, is it not possible that the Rebellion was brought about largely through the need not having been seen and satisfied in one way or another?

And this need still exists and will continue to do so until adequate steps have been taken to supply it. How often has it not happened in the world's affairs that large and liberal action towards a people, so far from making foes, has transformed them into loyal and permanent allies. Let us, therefore, not blind ourselves too much to the fact that our Native races, although they may have fought us in the past, stand in as great, if not greater, need of similar consideration, though on humbler, simpler lines, than any other corporate people.

Stress has been laid on the foregoing point because the Commission omitted to face and deal with it with the directness obviously desired by the Natives. And yet that a general and permanent protector of their interests should be appointed, because, no doubt, of Ministers for Native Affairs being movable officers, was the most important of their requests.[362] It may be said to have come, although often unassociated with Dinuzulu's name, from no less than 95 per cent. of the people. The great body of Native opinion was emphatically in favour of the existing tribal system being maintained, and steps being taken to remove as far as possible the numerous abuses that had crept into it.

* * * * *

The position of the Native races is worthy of attention from many points of view. The dying out of many of their habits and customs, interesting and picturesque to us, but the very life-blood of the people themselves, is inevitable. With such disappearance, the social system itself has begun to decay. Many persons, indeed, have for long observed these disintegrating tendencies and proposed various religious, political, social or economic makeshifts. That is to say, that these tribes, hastening on as they are doing to the collapse of their tribal organizations, have nothing else to stem the universal undermining that is going on, always with acceleration, than the creeds, moral code, habits, customs, social and political systems of Western Civilization, that is, the equipment of a people differing essentially,--physically, morally, and intellectually. It seems to occur to no one that a State policy which resolutely and deliberately aims at maintaining the _status quo ante_ in a sane and judicious manner, instead of assuming its downfall as inevitable, and forthwith setting about in a thousand ways to make it even more ruinously rapid and catastrophic than it would be without these reckless methods, is worthy of serious and sober consideration. Misreading the religious, political and other aspirations of a few half-educated Natives, many of the dominant European race fondly believe it is along the same road that the great inarticulate majority desire to travel. No one, of course, is infallible, ourselves among the number, but a personal experience of over forty years in the country, together with an intimate knowledge of the people, does tend to convince us that such is not the general desire,--not at present, whatever may be the case in the future,--and has only become that of the half-educated because, the various European administrations being what they have been and are, it seems to them so inevitable that nothing remains but to adopt European civilization in its entirety, and that as speedily as possible.

The doing of justice to the Natives, in the sense of eventually conferring practically every privilege which Europeans enjoy, is to blind oneself to the fact that the two races are congenitally separate. Ideal justice can be said to be possible only when meted out within the limits of a country in which the people are all of one race. Within such environment, privileges are and should be capable of extension to all. But when there are two or more separate races in a country, that is not justice which extends privileges peculiar to the dominant race to the radically-differing subject race or races. It is simply a _belief_, resting on no proper foundation, that justice is being done. The result of following it is gross injustice to the masses, and, later on, to the dominant race itself. The situation is manifestly governed by the idea of nationality and consanguinity. Thus, the highest justice becomes not the concession of rights and privileges of the dominant class, but a plain and constant recognition of the fact of nationality, and keeping the sense of justice well in hand, instead of allowing it to wander away to the clouds.

The spectacle of so many Natives in South Africa pressing on as they are doing to obtain higher rights and privileges than they already possess, and of forming a general Congress to give force to their demands and supposed necessities, is due to nothing else than the failure of the State to recognize the aborigines as a distinct nationality, and as, therefore, worthy of being specifically provided for in the Constitution to enable them to be managed on lines different from those of the other and widely-differing race. The misdirected energy of these 'enlightened' Natives, in the event of such provision being made, would exert itself within its proper sphere, not in agitating eternally against the Government for superior rights, but by promoting the positive welfare of the tribes or races to which they belong.

All this, we believe, was the underlying meaning of the Rebellion, and the situation will not be cured by granting the franchise, or initiating elaborate systems of land occupation as exist in the Cape Province. Fundamental experimenting of this kind may, for a season, appear to satisfy, but the day is coming when the Natives, in spite of all our education and evangelization, our concessions of the franchise and other so-called privileges, will remember that they, for the most part, are members of the Bantu family, in spite of the fact that some have already been persuaded to think, and speak, and act like Europeans,--at least, that is what is naïvely supposed by their teachers, as well as by themselves, to be the case.

As the clashing in 1906 arose apparently out of a general attempt to impose Western Civilization, we venture to say that, so far from the Rebellion having come to an end, its essential spirit is still abroad. This is not because Natal or the Union Government have not made numerous and special endeavours to remove the contributory causes of the unrest, but because the root-cause, or what a Zulu would call _unomtebe_, is still existing.[363] Bambata, as many Natives believe, in spite of every proof to the contrary, is still living. For them his spirit, _i.e._ dissatisfaction with European rule, or, to put the same thing positively, a desire to control their own affairs, not on European lines, but on those sanctioned by the collective wisdom of their own race, is certainly alive, though he may be dead. It lives, not in Natal alone, but throughout South Africa, and is fostered by the various Ethiopian or Separatist churches. Then, again, attempts are being made throughout the Union to impose Western Civilization on _all_ the other Native tribes, be they in the Cape, Transvaal, or Orange Free State, Provinces. And so, unless radical change be effected in our State policy, it seems we may expect to witness periodical recrudescences of rebellion and on a far greater scale than in 1906. The moral is that the aborigines resent the manifold restrictions they are perpetually and systematically subjected to; these and the rigid application to their affairs of the principles of Western Civilization, by means of legislation or otherwise, as well as the thousands of opportunities afforded unscrupulous Europeans and semi-educated Natives of exploiting the people, tend to fill up their cup of bitterness. They yearn for practical sympathy and that friendly recognition of their deeper needs which ends not in mere perception. "They are not the best that might have been framed," said Solon of his laws, "but they are the best the Athenians are capable of bearing"--there is the type of statesman they would adore. The Zulus are a noble race of savages, but none the less deserving of our consideration because they are savages. The headlong collapse of such a people is a tragedy of the first magnitude. That it should be taking place before our very eyes, without reasonably adequate steps being taken by the State to resist it by providing the most natural and effective machinery for controlling it, is a crime. If this mischief be permitted to go on, it requires no prophet to predict heavy retribution, and in the near future, on those responsible. Such will probably be, not only in the forms of rebellion and civil strife, which can be quelled, but in miscegenation (unthinkable though this be at the present), complete effacement of the two races, and general degradation of the whole.

If the principal conclusion come to in these pages be correct, the Rebellion stands revealed as nothing less than a _protest_, and about the plainest that could have been made, against the methods employed, not only by members of the British race, but by all pioneers of Western Civilization among barbarians. The methods followed in Natal and in the rest of South Africa are but characteristic of those adopted towards lower races in other parts of the globe. The British Government is naturally most affected by this indictment, but the Governments of France and Germany, the United States, Belgium, Portugal, etc., are implicated as well. Each of them will one day have to answer for the havoc they have created and are still creating, and this primarily because of their rush after material benefit. In Mr. Benjamin Kidd's well-known work, _Social Evolution_, occur the words: "The lower races disappear before the higher through the effects of mere contact." In this history an attempt has been made to furnish some of the reasons why a typical 'lower race' is tending to become disintegrated. These serve to explain why and how dissolution, the antecedent of 'disappearance,' in smaller areas than South Africa, occurs, and prove that the phenomenon results not from "mere contact," as Mr. Kidd supposed, but from the restrictions, conditions and opportunities above mentioned which have invariably accompanied the inauguration of so-called civilized government among the people of lower, and especially coloured, races. The reasons, as a matter of fact, are laws; and we venture to think they will be found operating wherever, in the past, Western Civilization has been imposed on lower races, and wherever this may take place in the future.

And so this minor Rebellion turns out to be a fact charged with the highest possible significance, inasmuch as it is a concrete, analysable illustration of that strange, destructive and inexorable contact between races hitherto insufficiently studied, and, therefore, insufficiently appreciated.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 345: J.A.H. Murray & others, _A New English Dictionary on historical principles_. Clarendon Press, Oxford.]

[Footnote 346: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 347: Those concerned were charged and convicted of public violence, murder and "being in arms against the Government and actively resisting constituted authority, and aiding and abetting rebels against the Government."]

[Footnote 348: They would, however, probably not have objected to being controlled by Dinuzulu as Paramount Chief, provided that he had been appointed by the Government, and became answerable to, and was effectively controlled by, such superior authority.]

[Footnote 349: Sangreid was murdered and Robbins wounded, in direct contravention of the orders issued by the Chief (Ndhlovu), who was in command of the _impi_. Ndhlovu was only a mile or two away when the incidents occurred.]

[Footnote 350: Cd. 3888, pp. 79, 80.]

[Footnote 351: Notwithstanding the above conclusion, we have not felt justified in altering the title of the book. Throughout South Africa and elsewhere, the rising is spoken of as a rebellion.]

[Footnote 352: That is, the Act of 1893, inaugurating Responsible Government.]

[Footnote 353: Blame for the introduction of such diseases is held by the Zulus to attach to Europeans. But for their being in the country, Natives, they say, would not have been so afflicted.]

[Footnote 354: This decay arose out of refusal on the part of many to conform to ancient tribal observances, habits and customs; of their detaching themselves from tribes to live under European landlords, etc.; of women refusing to render obedience to husbands, or breaking away to lead immoral lives; of the failure of boys to return to their homes, and so forth. The following has reference to European authority: detachment from European ecclesiastical control, even of long duration, to set up independent churches.]

[Footnote 355: For statement, showing casualties among European troops during the Rebellion, see Appendix I.]

[Footnote 356: One of these, a Chief, expressed the view that the youths who had rebelled would not fight again, "no, not till their grandchildren are born."]

[Footnote 357: In 1912, however, the Union Government abolished both the Council and three of the four Native Commissioners.]

[Footnote 358: At the Census of May, 1911, there were 1,276,242 Europeans, 4,019,006 Natives, and 678,146 other Coloured Races.]

[Footnote 359: He was evidently thinking India was conquered during the Indian Mutiny.]

[Footnote 360: This, of course, is largely incorrect, as the Minister for Native Affairs as well as every member of both Houses of Parliament have, for many years, voiced the interests of the Natives, inadequately though that may have been. Apart from this, the U.S.N.A., assisted by Magistrates all over the country, has continually brought to the notice of Government, wishes, suggestions and grievances of the Natives.]

[Footnote 361: Cd. 3888, pp. 79, 80.]

[Footnote 362: The Government afterwards appointed the late Mr. A.J. Shepstone, C.M.G., as Secretary for Native Affairs,--an appointment that gave great and general satisfaction.]

[Footnote 363: There is a saying among the Zulus, when a country, after being in disorder, is at peace once more, that _it has returned to Nomtebe_ (the queen of white ants), that is, _to its mother_. This may have been true of former conditions; it cannot be true of those which exist under European rule.]

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I