Chapter XI: Part 11

When travelling up the Zambesi, I gave Sharp's Somali boy a Van Houten's cocoa-tin to open, telling him to make cocoa. He disappeared for a time, and returned with a tin-opener with which he proceeded to tear off the bottom of the tin. Having successfully accomplished this, he thrust a spoon in and pushed the lid off, with the result that all the cocoa fell out on to the ground. Then he looked at me with an expression of supreme contempt, as though to say: "I always thought the white men fools, but not quite such fools as to make a thing like that." He must have opened hundreds of tins before, both hermetically sealed ones and ordinary ones. Yet to this day he thinks me an idiot.

The small boy who was responsible for arranging my tent had been carefully instructed always to place my belongings in a certain order. Occasionally, through his having put my bed on an uneven piece of ground, I would tell him to change it to the other side, which meant reversing my boxes and table to bring them into the correct relative position. In doing this he was never satisfied till he had also reversed the square mat, and when I laughed at him for doing so he left the mat and put the boxes wrong, nor could he put them right till he had reversed the mat. This was most curious, and I could never grasp to my satisfaction what his train of reasoning was.

One day, when hauling a canoe up a very shallow tributary of the Nile, one of my boys, finding that he could not pull to advantage from the bed of the river, climbed inside and made superhuman efforts to drag it along. He quite failed to see the cause of my laughter, sulked, and refused to pull any more.

The answers of some natives who had been taken to England after a trip across Africa were instructive as showing the trend of a negro's mind. Questioned as to what appeared most wonderful to them, one replied: "The white man, when he wants anything, goes to the wall; then he obtains what he requires, light, drink, servants--in fact, everything." Another replied: "The selling-houses with rows and rows of meat, countless sheep and lumps of meat." And the third replied: "The little houses that run about the roads with horses." Of all the marvellous sights of civilization, three impressions stuck--bells, butchers' shops, and omnibuses. These few instances are sufficient to indicate in what unexpected channels the native's thoughts flow. His character is made up of contending elements, and is best explained by saying that he has no character at all. It is a blend of the child and the beast of the field. He is swayed by every wind that blows, yet may seize upon an idea and stick to it with remarkable tenacity, in spite of the most cogent arguments to and obvious advantages involved in the contrary.

He is as imitative as a monkey, and consequently is very apt at picking up crafts, gestures, and styles that are new to him, but is so bound down by tradition and custom that he never applies the improved methods of the white man to anything that he is accustomed to do in his own way.

His mind is so inactive and blank that he can carry for miles loads that he cannot pick up from the ground, by merely sinking his entity. He becomes mentally torpid, with the result that the effort is solely physical. A white man, though physically stronger, would fret himself into a state of utter fatigue in a quarter of the time.

In trifles he is impatient, yet will argue a question for a week till it is threshed out to the bitter end, and will accomplish with unceasing thoroughness a piece of carving or basket-work that takes months to perfect.

In debate he is extremely subtle, and in politics differs materially from the white man in that he can hold his tongue. On principle he never tells the truth, and consequently never expects to hear it. He is extremely suspicious, and his maxim is, "Mistrust every one." Yet a judicious laugh will inspire him with complete confidence. "When in doubt laugh," I have found a safe maxim in dealing with natives, and a well-timed laugh saved many ugly situations during our sojourn in the land.

He hates to be hurried; with him there is no idea of time. "Do not the days succeed one another?---then why hurry?" is his idea. He cannot understand at all the hurrying man.

His stage of evolution, which is but slightly superior to the lower animals, is the explanation of many of the seemingly inexplicable traits in his character, traits which are conspicuous in the bees and ants, and in varying degrees remarkable in other animals that have attained to some more or less complete communism. For instance, a native will share as a matter of course the last bite with any one of the same clan (a relationship that is expressed by the word "ndugu"), yet he will watch starve with the most perfect equanimity another native who, even though of the same tribe, does not come within that mystic denomination. Should, however, even his "ndugu" become very sick or otherwise incapable of taking his part in the battle of life, he is left to take care of himself as best he can, and everything is devoted to the sustenance of those who are still capable. In this respect the native is inferior to the elephant, who will at considerable risk to themselves endeavour to assist a wounded comrade from the field of battle. The fundamental basis of native society is local communism and disregard for all outside that commune; though at times the various communes that constitute a tribe will combine for some object of equal benefit to all. The rarity, however, of this combination for a purpose is what constitutes the essential weakness of all African peoples. The old Zulu _regime_, and the till recently remarkable cohesion of the Ruanda people, are the conspicuous exceptions, and are proof of what possibilities lie to the hand of dusky Napoleons in Africa. The Arabs fully realized and availed themselves of this inherent lack of combination amongst the tribes. The success of their policy of disintegration should serve as a useful example for our African statesmen. Many of our failures are to be attributed to our not having grasped the dominant fact that every chief who is left in possession of his power is a source of strength to ourselves, to be used as a counterpoise to every other chief similarly placed. It stands to reason that several definite units--to wit, clans consolidated under the aegis of responsible men--can be more easily brought to focus than a heterogeneous mass, incomplete in itself, and which will be bound to gravitate to any adventurer who may acquire a temporary hearing. The great mass, strangled as it is by innate superstition, hidebound by tradition, and so situated as to be incapable of enlightenment other than the most microscopically gradual, can never be brought thoroughly under white rule. It must be ruled by its constituted and therefore accepted chiefs, who alone can be made responsible to the Administration. How to bring these chiefs under our influence without lessening their local prestige, and how to infuse the necessary element of competition _inter se_, are the problems the solution of which will materially facilitate the thorny path of African administration. A curious quality, and one in some degree referable to this low stage of evolution, is their inability to grasp the idea of a natural death. If a man's head is smashed, they can associate the obvious cause and effect, but any death less easily explained is attributed to some such factor as the "evil eye." This is invariable with the Soudanese tribes, and is a source of unending trouble to the officers in command of Soudanese troops. Again, the utter disregard for the future would argue a social stage inferior to the bees. No native can be induced to look to the morrow. Over and over again we served out rations to our men, for, say, a week, and informed them that by no possible means could they obtain food during that week; yet on every occasion they ate it all the first day or threw away what they could not eat, trusting, in their characteristic optimism, that something would turn up. Nor do they ever learn from experience. Every year that the rains fail or their crops are for some reason deficient, they are caught and philosophically starve, yet two days more of work would place them beyond all possibility of famine.

Another very essential factor has to be taken into consideration in an endeavour to grasp the native character. That is the lack of the two sentiments, gratitude and pity, which enter so largely into the workings of the European mind. As far as I am aware, in all the Bantu dialects there is no word that remotely suggested either of these virtues. In the Swahili tongue the word asanti (thank you) has been borrowed from another language for the benefit of the mixed Hindu-Persian and Arab elements who constitute Swahili society. A few anecdotes will exemplify this lack.

I was paddling across the Shire river to Chiromo, when a native asked me to give him a lift across. I did so, and no sooner had he landed, than he asked me for a present for having done so.

Another boy, who had been bitten by a deadly snake, came to me for treatment. With considerable difficulty, and the expenditure of my last bottle of whisky, I saved his life. Having completely recovered, he helped himself to such of my movables as he could conveniently annex, and absconded.

Their lack of the sense of pity is shown in their brutal treatment of animals, of the sick, and of those who are too old to work. Even the Portuguese or Spanish treatment of animals is Christian compared to a native's method. They are impervious to the sufferings of others, and rather regard them as a joke. On one occasion several boys were standing under a tree, when a snake dropped from a branch, and bit one of the boys on the cheek, causing the most intense pain which ended only in death. The other boys thought it great fun, and were distorted with laughter at the agonized convulsions of the unfortunate.

A further proof of the lack of these senses is their utter inability to understand them in others.

An amusing case that came to my notice is a proof in point. An official had engaged a cook at 10s. a month, who for three months gave complete satisfaction. At the end of that time he called the native before him, and explained that as he had done his work so well, his wages would be raised to 15s. a month. The cook appeared to be rather puzzled, and went away. The following morning he returned and demanded 15s., arguing that he was the same now as he had been before and that therefore he ought to have 5s. more for each of the three months which he had spent in his service. From that day he became useless, and eventually left, firm in the conviction that he had been swindled out of 15s.

Another man of my acquaintance saved a small child from a crocodile. The child's hand was badly torn, but after careful tending, with the help of a doctor brought at considerable expense from the nearest station, he was sent home completely cured. Thereupon the child's father and mother arrived on the scene, and demanded a large present because the child had been kept so long.

Gratitude or pity in others they attribute to fear, or the desire to get the better of them. They look upon kindness as a thing suspicious, a move to cloak some ulterior design. Nor can they understand leniency, but consider it weakness. They themselves are either abject grovellers or blustering bullies. The Arab understands this, and rules with a rod of iron; the natural result of which is that natives prefer Arab service to British, the philanthropy of which they do not understand, and either mistrust or despise. Strict justice they do understand; but it must be based on the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" school. The unreasoning philanthropy which is the latest phase of our "unctuous rectitude" is as pearls before swine, and, as with other nations, so with natives, merely renders us objects of pity.

I trust that these few points are sufficient to indicate the difficulties that lie before the student of native character. Yet in spite of this, there exists a certain section of the community at home who presume to dictate the methods to be adopted in dealing with natives. Strong in their magnificent ignorance of the local requirements, racial characteristics, and the factors that make society, men are found who will condemn such acts as the desecration of the Mahdi's tomb. These individuals, unless specialists, would never dream of discoursing on the treatment of horses, spectral analysis, or any other subject requiring special study, yet, with a confidence sublime in its assurance, they will launch forth into the still more abstruse subject of native administration. Nothing is more to be deprecated than this meddling on the part of the stay-at-homes, in the methods adopted by the men specially selected to undertake the difficult task of ruling these peoples. We select the men whom we think most capable of promoting the prosperity of the countries in question, and instead of allowing them to find out by experience the methods most productive of good, we cramp their efforts by well-intentioned but fatal limitations on points of which we are necessarily profoundly ignorant. If, as a section of the press would lead us to believe, we are compelled to assume that every man who leaves this country _ipso facto_ becomes an abandoned ruffian, the sooner we shut up our branch shops, and retain our servants under the watchful eye of the man in blue, the better for all concerned. But if, on the other hand, we are confident that we are promoting the welfare of the community at large by assuming these responsibilities, and believe that we can find reliable men to carry on the work, the least that we can do is to allow those men to profit by and regulate their methods on the experience that they must necessarily acquire, and which is necessarily denied to us. The fact that the method most productive of good in Africa is not the same as the method most productive of good at home is no evidence of the inadvisability of its adoption. A thousand and one factors known only to the man on the spot must be assumed. In the halcyon days that are no doubt coming, no one will be allowed to hold an important position in the Government who has not gone through the mill of travel. "What do they know of England who only England know?" What indeed! In an empire like ours, of which the British isles are already but the viscera, it is inconceivable that men who are largely responsible for the administration of that empire should display the gaping ignorance of the elements of which it is composed, which daily passes without comment. This external interference is of paramount importance. It is crushing all our African ventures, and with the rapidly-increasing facility of communication attendant on telegraphic construction, its effect is becoming daily more conspicuous. In the old days men were bound to act on their own initiative; now the tendency is to shirk responsibility by appealing to headquarters. This paralyzes decisive action, which alone is effective in dealing with natives. A general outline of policy should be adopted on the recommendation of the best available experts, but every possible detail should be left to the discretion of the local official. Many of the ridiculous restrictions that are made are nothing short of insults to the men affected by them. Imagine placing one man in charge of a district such as Toro--Toro is larger than Ireland, and consequently the position is one of enormous responsibility--and telling that man that he must not give more than twenty-five lashes to a native. It is grotesque. Twenty-five lashes would kill an average Toro native, but a hundred lashes barely make the dust fly off a Manyema porter. Surely details of this description should be left to the judgment of the man who can weigh the facts of the case.

But few people at home realize what an alarming and ever-growing difficulty has to be faced in the African native problem. It is a difficulty that is unique in the progress of the world. In Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand (in a minor degree), and America the aborigine has faded out of existence before the irresistible and to him insufferable advance of the white man. But not so the African, who in this sense differs entirely from other savages. Under the beneficent rule of the white man he thrives like weeds in a hot-house. Originally, the two great checks on population were smallpox and internecine strife. These have been minimized by the advent of white rule, and the resulting rate of increase is one to stagger the statistician. The stately Maori, the wild Australian, the chivalrous Tasmanian, and the grim Redskin have given up the struggle, and are fast going the way of the mammoth and the dodo, but in white-teethed content the negro smiles and breeds apace, mildly contemptuous of the mad Englishman who does so much for him and expects so little in return. What is to be done with this ever-increasing mass of inertia? We have undertaken his education and advancement. When we undertake the education of a child or beast we make them work, realizing that work is the sole road to advancement. But when we undertake the education of a negro, who, as I have endeavoured to show, is a blend of the two, we say, "Dear coloured man, thou elect of Exeter Hall, chosen of the negrophil, darling of the unthinking philanthropist, wilt thou deign to put thy hand to the plough, or dost prefer to smoke and tipple in undisturbed content? We, the white men, whom thy conscience wrongly judges to be thy superiors, will arrange thy affairs of state. Sleep on, thou ebony idol of a jaded civilization, maybe anon thou wilt sing 'Onward, Christian Soldiers!'"

A good sound system of compulsory labour would do more to raise the native in five years than all the millions that have been sunk in missionary efforts for the last fifty; but at the very sound of "compulsory labour," the whole of stay-at-home England stops its ears, and yells, "Slavery!" and not knowing what "slavery" is, yells "Slavery!" again, nor ever looks at home nor realizes that we are all slaves. Have we not compulsory education, taxes, poor-rates, compulsory this and compulsory that, with "jail" as the alternative? Nor are we paid by the State for being educated. Then let the native be compelled to work so many months in the year at a fixed and reasonable rate, and call it compulsory education. Under such a title, surely the most delicate British conscience may be at rest. Thereby the native will be morally and physically improved; he will acquire tastes and wants which will increase the trade of the country; he will learn to know the white man and his ways, and will, by providing a plentiful supply of labour, counterbalance the physical disadvantages under which the greater part of Africa labours, and thus ensure the future prosperity of the land, whereby, with the attendant security of tenure and of the rights of the individual, he will have that chance of progressive evolution which centuries of strife and bloodshed have denied him. Inducements might be offered to chiefs to make plantations of wheat, rice, coffee, and other suitable products, by exempting a number of their men, proportionate to the area cultivated, from the annual educational course.

This perpetual wail of "slavery," which is always raised to combat legitimate and reasonable discussion, is due to ignorance, to the inability to discriminate between the status of slavery and slave-raiding. Slave-raiding was a curse beyond belief, and is now, happily, to all intents a nightmare of the past, but the status of slavery is still widespread, and with many peoples is necessary and beneficent. The line between slavery and freedom is a very nice distinction. We can all be called upon to fight or to give up our goods for the common weal, or, as we phrase it, for the cause of progress. Then why should not other peoples be called upon to work for the cause of progress? There is a sound maxim in the progress of the world: "What cannot be utilized must be eliminated." And drivel as we will for a while, the time will come when the negro must bow to this as to the inevitable. Why, because he is black and is supposed to possess a soul, we should consider him, on account of that combination, exempt, is difficult to understand, when a little firmness would transform him from a useless and dangerous brute into a source of benefit to the country and of satisfaction to himself.

I invariably had trouble with my natives when they were not occupied. The native has no means of amusing himself, nor idea of making occupation, and consequently, like women similarly situated, has recourse to chatter and the hatching of mischief. Work, I am convinced, is the keynote to the betterment of the African; and he will not work for the asking. No amount of example will assist him. What are the results of several hundred years' communication with the Portuguese? A few natives wear hats, and the women's morals have deteriorated. Africa labours under many disadvantages--remoteness from markets, inaccessibility, dearth of waterways, and in parts a pestilential climate; but it has one great advantage in an inexhaustible supply of potential labour, which, if properly handled, should place it on terms of equality with countries more favourably endowed by Nature.

The first essential in opening up new country in Africa is for the Administration to fix a rate of pay, and to make that rate a low one. If it is left to competition the rate is bound to be forced up by contending trading companies. The first profits from new country are usually large, and the difficulty of obtaining labour very great before the native has gained confidence. Hence the rate dependent on competition is a fictitious one, and cannot be sustained under the conditions that will prevail subsequent to the harvesting of the first-fruits of the land. But it will be well-nigh impossible ever to lower the rate to meet diminishing profits. At first sight this seems severe on the native, but in reality it is not so. As he is, he has every necessary of life, and everything that we give him is a luxury. The taste for pay is a cultivated taste, and three shillings really gives him as much satisfaction as three pounds. The native on the Tanganyika plateau works more cheerfully for his three shillings a month than the Rhodesian native does for his two pounds, and yet beads and cloth are much more costly on the plateau than in Rhodesia. There is a short-sighted inclination amongst British officials to give the native more than he requires or even asks for, presumably simply because he is a native.

At one station I required a certain amount of labour, and as there was no precedent to go upon, we called up some of the local natives, and asked them for what sum they would be willing to do the work in question. They mentioned a figure which they evidently considered preposterous, but which, as a matter of fact, was very small. The official thereupon told them that they would get more. This naturally aroused their suspicions, and some of those who had at first been willing failed to turn up. It must always be remembered that the untutored native will work as readily for three shillings as he will for three pounds; and if he does not want to work, he will not do so for thirty pounds. The actual rate of pay carries no weight with him. It is merely a matter of whether he is in the mood. But, of course, if he has once received a certain figure he will never work for less, even if he is in the mood to do so. Were he to do so he would imagine that he had been swindled.

The Portuguese, for the simple reason that they themselves practically never pay their natives at all, failed to grasp the necessity of controlling the labour market in the Beira district, with the result that the wages of an ordinary carrier or labourer are one pound a month, and of an untrained house-boy from two pounds to three pounds a month. These sums were gladly paid in the original days of boom and prosperity, but in these days of comparative gloom they are feeling the pinch. Large supplies of labour are brought down from the Zambesi to minimize the difficulty, but with the sole result that this fictitious rate is spread to the regions that are being tapped when the labourers return to their homes. By this means the evil is gradually working up the Shire river to British Central Africa. Rhodesia has, to a considerable extent, blighted her prospects by not grappling with the subject, in spite of the hysteria of those whose knowledge of natives, their ways, and of the best methods of dealing with them appears to be derived from week-end studies of the becollared fraternity who affect Margate and Brighton sands.

The name of Englishman is held high throughout Africa, and the Union Jack is the surest passport in the land. Let this be the answer to those who casually assume that because a man goes to Africa he necessarily becomes a brute, no matter what his social status, education, or previous mental condition. It is obviously to the interest of men who live as an infinitesimal minority amongst hordes of savages, to find out what means are most conducive to the proper control of those hordes, and to inspire them with that respect and assurance of justice, without which they will be in continual revolt, as has been the case with the natives of the Upper Congo since the substitution of Belgian and polyglot officials for the original staff of British and Americans. However, the damage is done, and I think the proposed remedy of importing "the teeming millions" of Lake Tanganyika (who, by the way, do not exist) a false and dangerous one. The imported natives, finding that they obtain less pay than the natives of the country, although they have come far from their own homes, break out in discontent, and, maybe, open revolt (as did the Angoni police, recruited and sent to Salisbury by Major Harding, C.M.G.), and when they return home spread the feeling of dissatisfaction far and wide. The Yaos who were sent to Mauritius were even a greater failure, and cannot but have the most pernicious influence on their return. Uganda has been similarly doomed as an agricultural country by the chaotic incompetence that supervened after the Lugard _regime_. British Central Africa alone of the young African States has steered a straight course through the stormy seas of labour questions. But British Central Africa has profited by its hitherto comparative insignificance, and, under the able guidance of Sir Harry Johnston, has found the right channel unruffled by the whirlwinds of adverse criticism, which have played with such unceasing ferocity upon Rhodesia. It seems hardly reasonable that one district should be called upon to pay for the mistakes made in another.

The establishment of native locations on a large scale in the districts that require labour will tend to ameliorate the labour scarcity and maintain wages at a reasonable level. On farms and plantations there is comparatively little difficulty in obtaining labour. The native is useless without his women-folk, but is easily induced to settle down in any spot required, if allotted so much land and allowed to bring his family, while at the same time a fillip is given to production when he finds that his women can add to his income by cultivating the various requirements of the white man.

To summarize; the questions of paramount importance are:--

1. _To make the Administration the sole labour agents_.

By this means the supply of labour can be evenly distributed through the year, or according to the country's requirements. The rate of pay can be fixed and maintained at a rational level. Undesirable people can be prevented from obtaining labour, and thereby adversely influencing the native. The native is protected against the employer, and guaranteed proper treatment by knowing that he has a court of appeal where he can obtain information and air his grievances.

2. _To rule through the chiefs, and refrain from injuring their prestige_.

Centuries cannot give the white man the power over the individual native that the recognized chief holds without question. The substitution of one chief for another is of no use unless the original chief is killed and his rightful heir instated. These matters are religion with natives. "Once a chief always a chief, even when dead," is their belief. To get a grip on an important chief and yet leave him his power is a difficult matter; and as these preliminary questions will affect the whole future of the country, the first step in administration should be entrusted to really able men, and not, as is too often the case, to any trader, hunter, or out-of-a-job who happens to be in the neighbourhood and to know a little of the language. By leaving the chiefs their power, administration is greatly facilitated by the resulting concentration of responsibility. All the petty questions and difficulties (which are often such dangerous ground, until the local customs are fully understood) devolve on the chief, and if there is any serious trouble the responsibility can be instantly located.

The prestige of the chiefs should be maintained in every possible way, such as exempting them from the hut-tax, allowing them a small armed escort, etc.

I realized the immense importance of this ruling through the chiefs when in the Chambesi district of Northern Rhodesia. Two chiefs of considerable influence, namely, Makasa and Changala, really administer the country under the direction of the collector. A criminal was wanted, and Changala handed him over in thirty-six hours; had he not done so, all the police in the district might have hunted for a year without success.

3. _More attention must be paid to maintaining the prestige of the white man_.

This is of paramount importance. There is rather a tendency amongst the officials to lower the non-official in the eyes of the native. This is fatal. The prestige must be maintained at all costs, as it is the sole hold that we have over the native. The rabble that is inseparable from a mining community is a great difficulty. But still much harm is caused by the ignorance of the youthful officials who are in positions for which they are in no wise fitted.

4. _Officials should be forced to acquire a knowledge of the language_.

The Germans set us a good example in their East Coast Protectorate, where a man must go through a preliminary course at the coast before being admitted to any position in the interior. I have seen much harm done by the employment of interpreters, who are invariably bribed, and only say what they wish to be said. This destroys the confidence of the native. I have always remarked the eagerness with which the native appeals to the white man who can converse direct with him.

5. _The constant moving of officials from place to place should be avoided_.

The native requires a long time to learn to know a white man and to feel confidence in him. In many places a game of general post with the officials seems to be the chief occupation of the Administration.

6. _The official should be enabled and encouraged to travel round his district_.

This is the surest means of inspiring confidence. At present most of the officials whom I met were tied to their stations by such statesmanlike duties as weighing out beads, measuring cloth, and copying out orders; all of which might be cheaply and effectually done by an Indian clerk. Travelling round and learning the natives is usually severely repressed at headquarters.

[Transcriber's note: larger versions of these maps (img-380.jpg and img-382.jpg) have been provided, but they are not linked into this etext.]

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