Chapter II: Part 2

Our next Kaffir war was, as all our Kaffir wars were, discreditable to ourselves. The war was not only, writes Mr. Trollope, bloody, but ruinous to thousands. The cattle were of course destroyed, so that no one was enriched. Of the ill blood then engendered the effects still remain. Three hundred thousand pounds were spent by the British. But at last the Kaffirs were supposed to have been conquered, and Sir Benjamin D’Urban triumphant. Lord Glenelg himself, however, declared that the Kaffirs had “ample justification.” It seems to an impartial observer that the war was entirely brought about by the English. After his expulsion from the Kat river, Macomo, the son of Gaika, retired to the banks of the Chumie, but so far from instigating his people to plunder the colony, he appears to have done his best to restrain them. On that head we have abundant testimony, but it suited the Colonial Governor to have him and his brother Tyalie removed, and removed they were under really aggravating circumstances. Our own soldiers did their work well, and we have graphic pictures of burning villages, ruined cultivations, and people driven away like wild beasts. The chief was sulky, writes Colonel Wade, and well he might be. Another cause of the war was the frontier system, which constantly led to collisions with the natives. As the Chief Tyalie declared, “Every year a commando comes, every week a patrol comes, every day farmers come and seize our cattle.” It was then the infuriated natives swept over the colony, to be in turn driven back. The murder of the great chief Hintza appears to have been an extraordinarily brutal one. It is stated to me, writes Lord Glenelg, “that Hintza repeatedly cried for mercy, that the Hottentots present granted the boon, and abstained from killing him; that this office was then undertaken by Mr. Southey, and that then the dead body of the fallen chief was basely and inhumanly mutilated.”

Under Sir Peregrine Maitland we had a fourth Kaffir war. Almost his first act was to commit an unpardonable sin in Kaffir eyes—the erection of a fort in their territory. As they said in their own expressive language, the new chief smelt of war, and war soon came. A Kaffir stole an axe; he was sent to Grahamstown to be tried at the circuit court. The chief Tola said that was contrary to the treaty that all such offences were to be tried at Fort Beaufort. The plea was in vain—the man was sent; an attempt was made to rescue him, and a Hottentot policeman was shot. At once the English took the field to avenge the insult in blood.

In 1850 the fifth Kaffir war arose, and the inhabitants of one advanced military village after another were murdered. This went on for nearly two years, but was at last suppressed by dint of hard fighting. It cost Great Britain, wrote Mr. Trollope, upwards of two millions of money, with the lives of about four hundred fighting men.

Our Natal territory cost us a little war initiated by Sir George Napier in 1841. At first the war went very much in favour of the Dutch. Then a larger force came, and the Dutch succumbed to numbers. It was not, however, till 1843 that the twenty-four still existing members of the Volksraad declared Her Majesty’s Government to be supreme. In the case of the Orange Free State we had a war which resulted in our beating the Dutch and winning the place, only to relinquish it again. Our rule in Natal led to our little war with King Langalibalele, who had come to live in Natal as king of the Hlubi tribe, who is now living, after a good many lives had been lost, near Capetown at an expense to the Government of £500 a year. In England it was felt that the chief had been unfairly used, the trial was adjudged to have been conducted with over-strained rigour, and the punishment to have been too severe. There would have been no war at all had it not been for the blunders of mischievous go-betweens. And now once more we are at war, and a cry has been raised for the extermination of the whole Zulu race; and when that is over, there will be fresh hordes of hostile natives to be fought, new lands to be annexed, a scientific frontier to be gained, and the colonists will make fortunes out of the millions thus spent. I ask in sorrow, How long is England to be strained and denuded of men and money for these costly wars? Surely it is a reproach alike to the Christianity and statesmanship of our time that we have not yet hit on a more excellent way.

A PLEA FOR THE KAFFIR.

AT the present moment we are witnessing a sorry spectacle for a Christian nation—that of a whole people hemmed in in one corner of Eastern Africa, waiting to be swept off the face of the earth by the finest soldiers and the most scientific instruments of murder England has at her command. Their crime has been that in defending their native soil from the tread of the foe, they annihilated an English regiment, and for such an act there is no hope of pardon, in this world at least. From every corner of the land, from the pulpit and the Press, from the hut of the peasant and the palace of the prince, from the cad of the music-hall and the statesman of Downing Street, there has risen a cry for revenge; and that we shall take a full and fierce revenge there can be no doubt. Already in England and in Africa the blood-stained demon of war has sown her seed and reaps her harvest; already there have been bitter tears shed over hundreds of fallen heroes in desolated homes, and women wail and children vainly cry for loved ones whose bones now bleach the distant plain of Isandula. And there will be sadder and darker tragedies yet to come if the wild instincts of the people are to be gratified and the Zulu Kaffirs are to be exterminated. They are now represented as savage hordes, whose existence is incompatible with English rule. Let me plead that they are not such as they are represented, and that it is better that we make them friends. Cetewayo, by not crossing the Tugela and sweeping with fire and slaughter through Natal when that colony lay stricken and terrified at his feet, has set us an example of forbearance which it were wise to imitate. If we fail to do so, the blood feud between us and his people can know no end. They in their turn will nurse a spirit of revenge, and the Kaffir wars of the future will be fiercer and more cruel than any we have hitherto known.

There is much in the Kaffirs that should make them friendly with the English people if fairly treated. One well-known writer states that they are keen observers of character, and have great contempt for a man who gets drunk, or who does not keep his word. Kaffirs should be treated with kindness, fairness, and firmness. They have an accurate idea of justice, and appreciate the administration of just legislation, wrote Mr. Wilson, late a resident magistrate in Natal. In their wild state they are innocent, quiet, unoffending, and hospitable, and it is only when they live close to a European town that they acquire the bad habits of the white race, and with the cunning instincts natural to them become dangerous to the community. Said another colonist, at a conference recently held at the African section of the Society of Arts, mentally they were equal to white men. Dr. Mann, who has lived twenty-five years in Natal, and who has written a large work on that colony, declares that the Kaffirs had great ability, and, even without education, seemed a much higher race intellectually than the lower class of the agricultural population in England. In fact, he would rather go to a Kaffir for a response to an appeal to his reason than to an English labourer. Twenty years ago, said Mr. Richardes, they brought comparatively nothing, but now they were great customers to the British merchant. As a further proof of how a Zulu Kaffir could rise in the world, Dr. Mann mentions the case of one he knew who could not read, who borrowed on his own credit £500 to buy a sugar mill, and obtained a further loan from the Government to get it to work, and who, in three years, paid off the loan, and became a prosperous manufacturer. It seems a pity to kill off such people—a people by nature intended to be our customers and allies and friends. Much more than this may be said. “Kaffirs seem,” writes Lady Barker, “a very gay and cheerful people, to judge by the laughter and jests I hear from the groups returning to their kraals every day by the road just outside our fence.” A similar testimony was borne by Mr. Robert Richardson in a paper read by him a year or two since at a meeting of the Society of Arts. “The Zulu,” he said, “may not be dignified, but manliness and good temper are written on his cheerful countenance; and he is not only groom and cattle herd, but domestic servant, and performs with alacrity the least honourable service about a house. If Natal lambs don’t skip, as the Surveyor-General once said, at least the Natal servant does, for his errands are done at a trot cutting capers, while he sings with an appearance of great enjoyment in his own music. Brimful of humour, he is essentially a laughing animal, and having few wants or comforts, he rivals Mark Tapley in being jolly under creditable circumstances. All things considered, the Natal Zulu is a better servant than the (Cape) frontier Kaffir.”

There is much that is good in these Kaffirs. A correspondent of the _Cape Mercury_ wrote—“It is said the Kaffir language has no word for gratitude; but, nevertheless, the Kaffirs are not all void of it. A native man in good circumstances lent a brick waggon gratis to convey Mr. Conway and family to the house of his father-in-law, Mr. Conway being at the time very ill. Unfortunately, after his arrival, he died, leaving his wife and family not very well off. The other day the native arrived to take home his waggon which he had kindly lent, and found that if he took it he would leave Mrs. Conway without any means to make an independent living. To the astonishment of all present, he said, ‘I don’t forget good deeds done to me by Conway before poverty overhauled him, and to show that I am sincerely sorry for his family I here make you, his widow, a present of my waggon and gear now in your possession to enable you to provide for his children.’ The value of the waggon was £60.”

In contrast with this is the utter indifference displayed by too many colonists as to the welfare of the Kaffirs. “The other day,” says a writer in a Colonial paper called the _Independent_, “a wheelbarrow tumbled over the Kimberley (Diamond fields) reef on to the head of a Kaffir. His master, with some irritation, inquired of the employer of the careless servant, ‘Do you want to kill my Kaffirs?’ The reply was an indignant query, ‘What about my wheelbarrow? It’s smashed, and your Kaffir isn’t hurt.’”

But enough of this. According to all writers the Kaffir is deeply impressed with a sense of English superiority. Let us now show him our true superiority; that we war not with him, that we desire not his land, that we are as merciful as we are strong. Cetewayo’s young men have washed their spears in blood, and ours have fallen under circumstances which have created an abiding sense of their heroism in every Zulu breast. Have we no wise men among us who can stand between the living and the dead, and calm the natural passions of the hour, and stay the ravages of war? If there be not such, our task is an endless one to fight and conquer, merely to fight and conquer again. The soldier cannot solve the difficulty; he merely postpones it for a time.

Failing to do justice to the Kaffirs we are left to a very undesirable alternative. If we cease to rule by kindness, we must do so by brute force. Contemplating this delightful state of things, the _Natal Witness_ of the 8th of February says:—“Civilisation has become unmistakably aggressive. The result which it was hoped might be gained by the quiet influence of the plough-share and the railway, is now destined to be effected, under the guidance of Sir Bartle Frere, at the point of the bayonet. The great herald of peace, whose feet were to be so beautiful upon the mountains, has become the genius of war. Whether Sir Bartle Frere foresaw this, we are not aware, nor are we aware whether he likes his position. We will not even argue whether he is right or wrong in believing that civilisation must be aggressive. Judging by history, we incline to the opinion that he is right, and if he is right, then the hope of producing the social amalgamation we have referred to was a vain hope altogether. But whether it is a vain hope or not, let us not deceive ourselves about one thing—that it is now extinguished. The ship of State has been put about on the other tack, and is at the present moment, it must be owned, making very bad weather of it. Whatever is now done by way of civilising the native population in South Africa must be done by force. We do not necessarily mean such physical force as is employed in a pitched battle. We mean rather this—that the native population must henceforth be ruled by a show of military strength rather than by trust in British justice or regard for commercial advantages. This, we say, may be right; it may in the very nature of things have been unavoidable. But do not let us deceive ourselves about it. The fact is so, and we must make the best of it or the worst. If the Home Government will be content to keep a large military force in South Africa for thirty years to come, and if South Africa can afford to pay for it; or if, failing this, the British taxpayer will be kind enough to pay for the protection of the colonies which will not be worth protecting if he does not pay—if all this comes to pass, then for thirty years South Africa will be a place which, though utterly useless as a field for immigration, a place in which certain classes of people can live. But then will these things be done? Will England be content to keep such a body of troops in South Africa? Can South Africa pay for them? And, if South Africa cannot, will the British public pay? These are questions most seriously affecting our future, and which for the present we leave to be answered by our readers as best they may be able.” Such is a colonial aspect of what is emphatically a colonial question.

We hear in these days so much about the Zulu that we are apt to forget that in South Africa we have any one else to deal with. In fact the coloured people with whom our whites more or less come into contact, are estimated by Mr. Trollope, our best authority on the subject, at 3,000,000, and with the exception of the Korannas, and the Bushmen, who inhabit Namaqualand, a region where only copper is to be found, are a very superior race of men, well-built, with good capabilities, mental and physical. It is to be questioned whether the danger in the recent system of government at the Cape, which places power in the hands of the white colonists alone, is not calculated to create discontent among the numerous and high-spirited people around. It is much to be regretted also, that we have not yet been able to adopt a steady and consistent policy with the native tribes. The great civilising agency of our time is the British trader, and at the Kimberley mines he has set the native to work; but more than that is required if the native is to be elevated and to be taught to take his proper place as a labourer in the great harvests of the world.

If the reader looks at a map of South Africa he will find that it is divided, into many districts, some of them of immense extent—hundreds of miles apart, and inhabited by peoples under varying rulers, and with varying interests. The Cape, for instance, has little sympathy with Natal, and the great Namaqualand has little in common with the Transvaal. In the latter country, as is well known, we have a community hostile to English rule, while the Orange Free State, on each side hemmed in by English dominions, maintains a precarious independency of its own. A grand South African confederation is a beautiful idea, but there does not seem much chance of carrying it out just now. Meanwhile we go on annexing all the surrounding country, much to the discontent of the natives themselves.

At present the great difficulty is the native population. According to all accounts, they are in an unsettled and agitated state. Of the original Hottentot we do not hear much. Mr. Trollope believes that the bulk of the population of the Western Province of the Cape Colony is Hottentot, who has, however, long given up all idea of independence. The Dutchmen and the Englishmen also, who are to be met with in the East and West alike, are not likely to give much trouble; but as we get further from the Cape, and the white population is sparser, the difficulties increase. It is true there is no chance of a Kaffir scare in that part of Africa bordering on the Atlantic, nor in the Kalakari desert on the North is there any danger to be apprehended; but it is as we get nearer the Indian Ocean, and especially after we have crossed the Kei, and come into Kaffraria proper, that we find ourselves in the presence of a native population, always required to be watched with a careful eye. There dwell the Galekas, who, to the number of 66,000, under Kreli, have only recently been put down. They and the Tembus, and the Pondos, and the Bomvanas, and the Fingos, inhabit all the district till Natal is reached. Amongst some of them a British Resident resides; in all they do pretty much as they like. Of Natal and its 300,000 Kaffirs it is needless to say more here. In the same neighbourhood are the Griquas, but they are bastard races. The Balongas of Thaba ’Ncho, who dwell under the shelter of the Orange Free State, and the Basutos, are a branch of the Becuanas, who inhabit that part of the Kalakari desert bordering on Griqualand and the Transvaal. Of the black African races, the South-Eastern people whom we call Kaffirs and Zulus are, probably, the best. They are not constitutionally cruel; they learn to work readily, and they save property; but even at the Cape, where they will have power at the voting-booth, Mr. Bowker, the late commandant of the Frontier Mounted Police, says—“As a nation, they hate the white man, and look forward to the day when he will be expelled from the country.” Mr. Trollope remarks of the native that he is a good-humoured fellow, whether by nature a hostile Kaffir, or submissive Fingo, or friendly Basuto, but, if occasion should arise, he would probably be a rebel. The two names most familiar to the English readers are the Gaikas and Galekas, who have both given us a good deal of trouble. Sandilli with his Gaikas have long been subjected, though they have never been regarded as peaceable as the Fingos and the Basutos. The total population of the region beyond the Kei is stated to be 500,100, of whom, with the small exception of the Griquas, all are Kaffirs.

Our special friends among the natives are the Fingos, a tribe originally driven from Natal by the warrior Chaka, among the Galekas, by whom they were enslaved and regarded as Kaffir dogs. We English took pity on them, released them from slavery, and settled them somewhere near the coast between the great Fish River and the Keishamma, and their old masters, the Galekas. There they were a perpetual eyesore to their former masters. In the first place, they had for their 50,000 souls 2,000 square miles, while that left for the 66,000 Galekas was not more than 1,600 miles. Again, the Fingos have been a money-making people, possessing oxen and waggons, and gradually rising in the world. For a time, as was to be expected, mischief between the two tribes was brewing, and in 1877 a drunken row precipitated the two into war. We rushed into the war to defend the Fingos, and Kreli, who had no desire for a struggle with the English, was beaten, and his country annexed. The Basutos, who have given up fighting since the days of their great king Moshesh, number about 127,000. In the map they are now included in the Cape Province, but they border the Orange Free State—lying between it and Kaffraria. In 1868 they became, after a wearisome contest with the Dutch, so worried by the latter, that they implored the British to take them as subjects. The Basutos are not Kaffirs, but a branch of the Bechuanas, as are the Balongas, who live so peacefully under the shelter of the Dutch in the Orange Free State. As their land is the very best on the Continent for agricultural purposes, they have bought a great many ploughs, are great growers of corn and wool, and naturally, as is the case with such people, are friends of peace and great lovers of money. At one time they were cannibals. For a long time they were terrible fighters, and that they have become what they are may be quoted as a fine testimony to the civilising influences of the trader. At the same time, it will not be difficult to make enemies of them. One of their chiefs—Morosi—has, taking advantage of the Zulu war, attempted a little _emeute_ on his own hook. We are glad to find, as was to be expected, that he has got the worst of it. In a letter dated March 1, from Alrival North, the writer says:—“I wonder the Government are not more active in their movements, and send a proper force to crush him at once, as it is believed here that if Morosi gets the least advantage the whole of Basutoland will be in a blaze. Sprigg will find that the Disarming Act will cost the colony more than he expected, and the Basutos, who are supposed to be loyal, are not at all inclined to give up their arms, and I am sure will not do so without a struggle.” The Gaikas who inhabit the district around Frankfort and King William’s-town have been British subjects for five-and-twenty years; but it is said that our recent policy has also much alienated them. These are the men on whose future relationship depends the fate of South Africa. Under his own chief in the forest, says Mr. Froude, the Kaffir is at least a man trained and disciplined; under European authority he might become as fine a specimen of manhood as an Irish or English policeman. It is to our shame that we have left him almost entirely to himself, and that even our missionaries have done little more than teach him to sing hymns. Lovedale is, however, an important testimony to the worth of missionary enterprise when it takes an industrious turn. There carpentering, waggon-making, blacksmithing, printing, book-binding, cabinet-making, and farm work are all successfully carried on. At King William’s-town young native men, trained at Lovedale, may be found employed as writers in attorneys’ offices, steadily performing their work, and with satisfaction to their employers. At Edendale the Rev. James Allison commenced a still greater work. He bought a block of land near Maritsburgh, and divided it into sections suitable to humble purchasers. These purchasers were natives; his conditions were payment for these lands by instalments, and the complete surrender of polygamy. The people are described as industrious and prosperous, they subscribe to build their own chapels, and when their numbers increase beyond what the land will fairly support, they swarm out and purchase land elsewhere. 8,000 acres are thus planted, with 2,000 inhabitants. If we are to believe the Rev. Mr. Carlyle, formerly the Presbyterian chaplain at Natal, nowhere has the missionary been more successful than in South Africa.

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W. SPEAIGHT AND SONS, PRINTERS, FETTER LANE, LONDON.

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DR. BARNARDO’S
HOMES FOR DESTITUTE CHILDREN.

(_EAST-END JUVENILE MISSION_.)

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URGENT APPEAL.

In the East of London, situated in three parishes, and surrounded by a dense population, are the various Institutions comprehended under the name of the EAST-END JUVENILE MISSION. These include the Refuges for Destitute and Neglected Children usually called after their founder, “Dr. Barnardo’s Homes.”

The East-End Juvenile Mission was for many years under the sole direction of its founder, but during the past few months a Committee has undertaken, in conjunction with him, its financial control and general administration.

As very few who have heard of the Homes can have any adequate idea of the great variety of work comprehended by this Mission, or of its weighty claims upon the contributions of the benevolent, we may be permitted to briefly state its more important branches.

1. The old building known as the HOME FOR WORKING AND DESTITUTE LADS, in Stepney Causeway, contains at present about 260 boys; whilst a new building is being reared in the same locality, and when finished the whole will accommodate 400 otherwise homeless or orphan boys.

2. DESTITUTE ORPHAN OR NEGLECTED GIRLS are also cared for by this Mission, and are trained upon the _family system_, which is, in many respects, preferable to the old method of massing together large numbers of female children in one great Institution. In the VILLAGE HOME at Ilford there are now twenty-four little Cottages, each detached from its neighbours, and superintended by a Christian woman specially selected for the performance of her important duties. These Cottages are intended to contain respectively from fifteen to twenty little orphan or destitute girls, who are being trained therein for domestic service. When the VILLAGE is completed and fully occupied there will be thirty Cottages, calculated to contain about 600 such children.

3. An INFIRMARY FOR SICK CHILDREN, containing thirty beds, has also been opened in Stepney Causeway, and is worked in connection with the other Institutions.

4. A most important and practical Temperance work has also been established and carried on by this Mission. The first COFFEE PALACE in the Metropolis, the “Edinburgh Castle,” was founded by Dr. Barnardo in Limehouse, in February, 1873. The success which attended it and its fellow, the “Dublin Castle,” situated in Mile-end, has, in a large measure, led to the establishment of other Institutions of a similar character.

5. The FREE RAGGED SCHOOLS of the Mission contained every Sunday about 1,700 children, gathered from the poorest streets of Limehouse, whilst two LARGE MISSION HALLS, situated in the midst of the adult population, and seating 2,500 persons, are on Sunday crowded by the working classes, who throng to hear in them earnest evangelical addresses. These varied religious and temperance efforts, among _adults_, as well as the educational and refuge work among _destitute children_, need a considerable sum of money for their support.

During the past year the pressing needs of these Institutions, owing to extraordinary expenses in building, were only met by obtaining from the bankers an advance of £6,000. The Committee are now most anxious to repay that sum, and with this object appeal to the benevolently disposed for assistance to remove from these valuable Institutions the burden of debt under which they are labouring for the first time since their establishment in 1867.

Contributions in response to this appeal may be sent to the Bankers of the Institution, Messrs. Dimsdale, Fowler, and Co., 50, Cornhill; or the London and South-Western Bank, Bow Branch; and will be gratefully acknowledged by the Honorary Director, Dr. Barnardo, at the Office of the Institution, 18, Stepney Causeway, E.

CAIRNS, _President_.

KINNAIRD, _Vice-President_.

W. FOWLER, _Treasurer_.

SAML. GURNEY SHEPPARD, _Chairman of Committee_.

_HOME FOR WORKING & DESTITUTE LADS_,
18 & 20, STEPNEY CAUSEWAY, LONDON, E.