Chapter XXIV: Piet Grobler (2)

A contemplation of the circumstances attending these selfish recommendations leads one to wonder whether the Commissioners suffered from the lack of a sense of humour or an undue excess of it. In North and South America, for instance, we read that the slave-pens were erected and maintained by the farmers at their own cost. That "the interest of the master demanded that he should direct the general social and moral life of the slave, and should provide especially for his physical well-being;" but the pens proposed by the South African Land Commission, on the other hand, are to be maintained entirely by the slaves, at their own cost, the farmer's only trouble being to come to the gate and whistle for labourers.

It is lawful in certain parts of South Africa for Natives to dispose of or "sell" their daughters to men, the purchase price being sometimes fixed by the Government. It is thus that white magistrates have at times condemned unfortunate black girls to cohabit with men they hated, provided the latter have paid the price; and having regard to the object for which the proposed native pens are to be set aside, the reader can picture to himself the coming commercial traffic in black girls within the enclosures of the said "native areas".

Several of the witnesses have made the statement that Natives are not making economic use of the land. As far as we have read, not one of such witnesses supported his point with figures. But most of those who expressed the contrary view -- that native lands are shockingly overcrowded -- have backed their statements with figures. Prominent among them, there was Mr. Adamson, the Natal Magistrate. In answer to further questions by Commissioner Wessels -- questions which this Report does not disclose -- the same witness also said: "I say the Location is crowded because there are too many Natives for the ground, which is very poor and precipitous. It is only down towards the valley where they can do a little cultivation. The population is 12,368."

Other magistrates and farmers gave similar evidence regarding their districts. They included Mr. J. S. Smit, the Klerksdorp Magistrate, who incidentally exploded the stale old falsehood about Natives living on the labour of their wives. The Rev. J. L. Dube said inter alia: "It is a fact that none can deny that the white man has got the best land. In the Free State you can go for miles without seeing anything; but if it had been native land there would have been an outcry, `Look at this beautiful land, and the Kaffirs not cultivating it.' Going to Johannesburg by the mail from here any day one can see waste land belonging to white people."

Mr. E. T. Stubbs, Commissioner of Louis Trichardt, said: "The density of the native population on reserves is 106 to 177 per square mile; on white farms only 28, and on Crown land 3 to the square mile." Yet in the face of these and similar official figures, the Commission reiterates the unsupported allegation of prejudiced witnesses that "Natives are not making economic use of their land." But on turning to the Census figures one sees at once how unfounded is the repeated charge. Take only one of the Provinces -- Cape Colony -- in which it is said the Natives hold (and therefore "waste") the most land.

Province of the Cape of Good Hope

Cape Colony is about 83 3/4 million morgen in extent. It is usually referred to as: --

(a) THE COLONY PROPER: 78,800,000 MORGEN, feeding 560,000 WHITES
and 1,090,000 BLACKS, with their 1,603,625 cattle,
240,000 horses and 20 million sheep and goats; and

(b) THE TRANSKEIAN NATIVE TERRITORIES: 5,000,000 MORGEN,
feeding 20,000 WHITES and 900,000 BLACKS, with their
1,111,700 cattle, 90,000 horses, 3 1/2 million sheep and goats,
and more poultry and pigs than in the Colony Proper.

Surely, no further mathematical demonstration is needed to show on which side of the Kei there is a waste of land, if any. But it is a maxim in South Africa that, except as mechanical contrivances, Natives do not count, and cattle in their possession are not live-stock; thus the districts in which they eke out an existence are so much derelict land. The Commission, therefore, propose the following alterations: --

The 20,000 whites in the Transkei must not be disturbed. A million morgen in the Transkei is set aside for them, and it shall be unlawful for the blacks to live there except as servants. On the other hand the million odd Natives in the Colony Proper must betake themselves to the remainder of the Transkei, with their cattle and other belongings. A million morgen of Kalahari sand-dunes, worthless for farming purposes, and the small tribal communes near Queenstown and King Williamstown, are also set aside as native areas. And then the whole of Cape Colony (supposing the Commission's extraordinary recommendations be enforced) will balance itself as follows: --

(a) EUROPEAN AREAS: 76,392,503 MORGEN, feeding 560,000 WHITES,
their 1,030,000 CATTLE, 180,300 HORSES AND 15 MILLION
SHEEP AND GOATS.

(b) NATIVE AREAS: 7,356,590 MORGEN, feeding 1,500,000 BLACKS,
with their 1,580,000 HEAD OF CATTLE, 154,630 HORSES AND 8 MILLION
SHEEP AND GOATS.

At first sight it would appear that these awards allotted say 288 acres per white and 7 acres per black person; but, as the bulk of the English (a quarter of a million) live in towns and are not affected by this trouble, we may deduct the Urban districts and their white and black populations. Then the Commission's allotments really work out at about 589.31 acres per Boer (man, woman or child) and only 10.3 acres per Native. And even then, this would be by no means the limit of the disproportion. Appendix VIII (Annexure I) of the same Report recommends future inroads by whites upon these attenuated native reservations, but, to the blacks, there is to be no territorial compensation from the Colony, which an adoption of all these recommendations would practically depopulate.

As things are at present, the black population of these areas is as much as 70 to 90 persons to the square mile. In density of population, some of these "rural" native districts are second only to Capetown, Durban, and Johannesburg -- South Africa's most populous centres. Not one of the other South African "cities" can show a population of more than 20 to 30 persons to the square mile. So that every individual inhabitant of a city occupies a larger space than some of these native farmers can have for themselves, their livestock and agricultural pursuits. So says the Census Report (U.G. 32-'12), which is fully borne out by the writer's own observations in a travelling experience of more than ten years.

The average density of the rural population in white areas is about five to eight persons per square mile. In native areas the average is ten times that number, while the black belt along the Indian Ocean contains from 100 to 140 Natives per square mile (see Schedule F. and Tables XIII-XVI, of the Census Report). Yet the Commission would saddle these congested native areas with additional populations from the Colony Proper and raise the density to something over 200 souls per square mile.

The density of cattle to the square mile in Cape Colony is 6.39 in white areas, and 61.15 in native areas (see U.G. 32h. 1912. pp. 1227-1228). Adopt the Commission's Report and you will have in white areas 0.24 and in Native areas 163.26 cattle per square mile.

Is it fair or reasonable that the indigenes of an open country who pay taxation for the benefit of their rulers and not of themselves, should be forced to live the overcrowded lives of the Belgians without Belgium's sanitary arrangements, or the precautionary hygienic measures necessary in other thickly populated areas?

Is it natural that their cattle should be subjected to this starvation process, while the grassy tracts of their God-given territories are mainly untenanted and preserved as breeding grounds for venomous snakes and scorpions?

Has it come to this that the standard of our unfortunate country has sunk so low that dog-in-the-manger stories are now read in Parliamentary publications?

It is clear that under the proposed arrangement native cattle must starve and their owners with them. For it has come out in evidence that even now (while many Europeans hold large tracts of idle land) some of the blacks have not enough grazing for their stock. But that little difficulty the Commission solves by proposing that Natives should be taught to give up cattle breeding, which alone stands between them and the required serfdom!

An African home without its flock and herd is like an English home without its bread-winner.

== "Von Franzius considers Africa the home of the house cattle and the Negro the original tamer. . . . Among the great Bantu tribes extending from the Soudan toward the South, cattle are evidence of wealth; one tribe, for instance, having so many oxen that each village had ten or twelve thousand head. Lenz (1884), Bouet-Williaumez (1848), Hecquard (1854), Bosman (1805), and Baker (1868) all bear witness to this, and Schweinfurth (1878) tells us of great cattle parks with two to three thousand head, and of numerous agricultural and cattle-raising tribes . . . while Livingstone describes the busy cattle raising of the Bantu and Kaffirs."*

-- * `The Negro' (Du Bois), pp. 108-109. -- ==

But the Commission would force us to give up our agrarian occupation when we are debarred by Acts of Parliament from following other profitable industries in our own country. This is equivalent to saying that Englishmen must be taught to close down their shops, stop their shipping industry and give up their maritime trade.

The Orange "Free" State

The Provincial difficulties I have endeavoured to point out become more serious when we regard the conditions in the so-called "Free" States. There the native position is rendered exceptionally desperate by a number of rigorous class enactments. Formerly these discriminating laws were eased by the action of the State Presidents who were in the habit of issuing exemption certificates to Natives who wished to buy land, either from other Natives or from Europeans; but now, these harsh laws, besides being rigidly enforced against all Natives, were made more acute in 1913, while there is no one in the position once occupied by the President, who might be able or inclined to grant any relief.

Whenever by force of character or sheer doggedness one Native has tried to break through the South African shackles of colour prejudice, the Colour Bar, inserted in the South African Constitution in 1909, instantly hurled him back to the lowest wrung of the ladder and held him there. Let me mention only one such case.

About ten years ago Mr. J. M. Nyokong, of the farm Maseru, in the Thabanchu district, invested about 1,000 Pounds in agricultural machinery and got a white man to instruct his nephews in its use. I have seen his nephews go forth with a steam sheller, after garnering his crops every year, to reap and thresh the grain of the native peasants on the farms in his district. But giving evidence before the Lands Commission two years ago, this industrious black landowner stated that he had received orders from the Government not to use his machinery except under the supervision of a white engineer. This order, he says, completely stopped his work. The machinery is used only at harvesting time; no white man would come and work for him for two months only in the year, and as he cannot afford to pay one for doing nothing in the remaining ten months, his costly machinery is reduced to so much scrap iron. This is the kind of discouragement and attrition to which Natives who seek to better their position are subjected in their own country.

The Native Affairs Department

Perhaps the greatest puzzle in this ocean of native difficulties, to which one can but slightly refer in this chapter, is the attitude of some of the gentlemen in charge of the Native Affairs Department -- the only Branch of the South African administration run exclusively on native taxes. It is perhaps as well to cite one instance illustrative of their methods of administering native affairs. The Rev. J. L. Dube, President of the Native Congress, gave evidence before the Lands Commission and produced letters addressed to him by certain Natal firms, from which I extract the following passages: --

== If you are prepared to purchase this land my Company would be prepared to do business with you. . . . In view of the fact that you and Cele have already purchased portion of the Company's property adjoining the land now offered for sale, we think there would be no objection on the part of the Governor General in giving his consent to the transfer.*

-- * U.G. 22, p. 557. -- ==

Another extract runs: --

== "We have a piece of land at the edge of our estate cutting right into land owned by various Natives, and we are willing to dispose of this land to Cele for this reason. We understood that the Department of Native Affairs raised no objection, but we were astonished when everything was "cut and dried" to find them refusing the application."*

-- * U.G. 22, p. 557. -- ==

How then can the Native be expected to survive this organized opposition, on the part of the authorities, and also of these official beneficiaries and prospective pensioners of native taxes? Will it be believed that these gentlemen of the Native Affairs Department, whose salaries are actually paid by us, should have sent messengers at our expense to convene a meeting of their colleagues, at which letters were dictated prohibiting the sale of this land to Zulus -- the stationery, the typewriter and the typist's labour, to say nothing of the cigarettes smoked by those present, being paid for out of native money?

Is it surprising if we feel that their adverse interference in matters which so vitally affect us has long since become intolerable?

It may be asked what useful purpose is served by the Native Affairs Department as it now stands? This would be my answer: --

The Department is responsible for the gathering in of all native taxes throughout the Union. And after paying the salaries of the staff, it pays over annually a huge surplus to the Union Exchequer for the benefit of "a white South Africa". Further, the Transvaal Natives believe that they would get along much better with the white population, and with officials of other Departments of State, were not "the Native Affairs Department continually stirring them up against us." The justice of this complaint is well exemplified at Johannesburg, where the autocrats of this department are armed with, and liberally exercise, the peculiar and exceptional powers of locking up Natives without warrants, without any charge, and without a trial -- powers which even the Judges of the Supreme Court do not possess.

General Hertzog's Scheme

It may interest the reader to know that General Hertzog is the father of the segregation controversy. The writer and other Natives interviewed him before Christmas, 1912, at the Palace of Justice, Pretoria, when he was still in the ministry. We had a two hours' discussion, in the course of which the General gave us a forecast of what he then regarded as possible native areas, and drew rings on a large wall-map of the Union to indicate their locality. Included in these rings were several Magistracies which he said would solve a knotty problem. He told us that white people objected to black men in Government offices and magistrates in those areas would have no difficulty in employing them.

General Hertzog was dismissed shortly after, and it has been said that in order to placate his angry admirers the Ministry passed the Natives' Land Act of which this Report is the outcome. Judging by the vigour with which the Union administration has been weeding Natives out of the public service and replacing them with Boers without waiting for the Commission's Report, it is clear that they did not share General Hertzog's intention as regards these magistracies. I cannot recall all the magistracies which General Hertzog mentioned as likely to fall in native areas; but I distinctly remember that Pietersburg and Thaba Nchu were among them; while Alice and Peddie (and possibly a neighbouring district) were to be included in a southern reserve into which the Natives round East London and Grahamstown would have to move, the land vacated by them to be gradually occupied by the white settlers now scattered over the would-be native block. He went on to forecast a vast dependency of the Union in which the energies and aspirations of black professional men would find their outlet with no danger of competition with Europeans; where a new educational and representative system could be evolved for Natives to live their own lives, and work out their salvation in a separate sphere. But the lands Commission's Report places this plausible scheme beyond the region of possibility, for no native area, recommended by this Commission, includes any of the magistracies mentioned.

General Hertzog's plan at least offered a fair ground for discussion, but the Commission's Report is a travesty of his scheme. It intensifies every native difficulty and goes much further than the wild demands of the "Free" State extremists. Thus even if it be thrown out, as it deserves to be, future exploiters will always cite it as an excuse for measures subversive of native well-being. In fact, that such legislation should be mooted is nothing short of a national calamity.

How They "Doubled" a Native Area

Near the northern boundaries of Transvaal there lies a stretch of malarial country in which nothing can live unless born there. Men and beasts from other parts visit it only in winter and leave it again before the rains begin, when the atmosphere becomes almost too poisonous to inhale. Even the unfailing tax-gatherers of the Native Affairs Department go there only in the winter every year and hurry back again with the money bags before the malarial period sets in. A Boer general describes how when harassed by the Imperial forces during the South African war, he was once compelled to march through it; and how his men and horses -- many of them natives of the Transvaal -- contracted enough malaria during the march to cause the illness of many and the death of several Burghers and animals. Of the native inhabitants of this delectable area the Dutch General says: "Their diminutive, deformed stature was another proof of the miserable climate obtaining there."*

-- * `My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War' (General Ben Viljoen), p. 222. --

When the Land Commissioners contemplated this "salubrious" region, their hearts must have melted with generosity, for whereas in our own healthy part of South Africa they have indicated possible native areas by little dots or microscopical rings (as in Thaba Nchu for instance), here, in this malarial area, they marked off a reserve almost as wide as that described by General Hertzog himself at our Pretoria interview. It is possibly in this way, and in such impossible places, that the Commission is alleged to have "doubled" the native areas. In the rest of the country they ask Parliament to confiscate our birthright to the soil of our ancestry in favour of 600,000 Boers and aliens whose languages can show no synonym for HOME -- the English equivalent of our IKAYA and LEGAE!

The Britishers' vocabulary includes that sacred word: and that, perhaps, is the reason why their colonizing schemes have always allowed some tracts of country for native family life, with reasonable opportunities for their future existence and progress, in the vast South African expanses which God in His providence had created for His Children of the Sun. The Englishman, moreover, found us speaking the word `Legae', and taught us how to write it. In 1910, much against our will, the British Government surrendered its immediate sovereignty over our land to Colonials and cosmopolitan aliens who know little about a Home, because their dictionaries contain no such loving term; and the recommendations of this Commission would seem to express their limited conception of the word and its beautiful significance.

Natives Have no Information about the Coming Servitude

All too little (if anything at all) is known of the services rendered to the common weal by the native leaders in South Africa. In every crisis of the past four years -- and the one-sided policy of the Union has produced many of these -- the native leaders have taken upon themselves the thankless and expensive task of restraining the Natives from resorting to violence. The seeming lack of appreciation with which the Government has met their success in that direction has been the cause of some comment among Natives. On more than one occasion they have asked whether the authorities were disappointed because, by their successful avoidance of bloodshed, the native leaders had forestalled the machine guns. But, be the reason what it may, this apparent ingratitude has not cooled their ardour in the cause of peace.

To-day the Native Affairs Department has handed over 7,000 Pounds from native taxes to defray the cost of the Land Commission, consisting of five white Commissioners, their white clerks and secretaries -- the printing alone swallowed up nearly 1,000 Pounds with further payments to white translators for a Dutch edition of the Report. But not a penny could be spared for the enlightenment of the Natives at whose expense the inquiry has been carried through. They have been officially told and had every reason to believe that the Commission was going about to mark out reservations for them to occupy and live emancipated from the prejudicial conditions that would spring from contiguity with the white race. For any information as to the real character of the contents of the Dutch and English Report of this Commission, they would have to depend on what they could gather from the unsalaried efforts of the native leaders, who, owing to the vastness of the sub-continent, the lack of travelling facilities and their own limited resources, can only reach a few localities and groups.

It may be said with some reason that English leaders of thought in South Africa have had a task of like difficulty: that they worked just as hard to get the English colonists to co-operate loyally with a vanquished foe in whose hands the Union constitution has placed the destiny of South Africa. It could also be said with equal justice that the Boer leaders' task has been not less difficult, that it required their greatest tact to get the Boer majority -- now in power -- to deal justly with the English who had been responsible for the elimination of the two Boer flags from among the emblems of the family of nations. But the difficulties of their task is not comparable to that of the native leaders. English and Dutch Colonial leaders are members of Parliament, each in receipt of 400 Pounds a year, with a free first class ticket over all systems of the South African Railways. They enjoy, besides, the co-operation of an army of well-paid white civil servants, without whom they could scarcely have managed their own people. The native leader on the other hand, in addition to other impediments, has to contend with the difficulty of financing his own tours in a country whose settled policy is to see that Natives do not make any money. His position in his own country approximates to that of an Englishman, grappling single-handed with complicated problems, on foreign soil, without the aid of a British consul.

Bullyragging the Natives

For upwards of three years the Government of the Union of South Africa has harassed and maltreated the rural native taxpayers as no heathen monarch, since the time of the Zulu King Chaka, ever illused a tributary people. For the greater part of our period of suffering the Empire was engaged in a titanic struggle, which, for ghastliness is without precedent. I can think of no people in the Eastern Hemisphere who are absolutely unaffected by it; but the members of the Empire can find consolation in the fact that almost all creation is in sympathy with them. Constant disturbance has brought a realization to the entire universe that nature, like the times, is out of joint. The birds of the air and the fishes, like other denizens of the deep, are frequently drawn into the whirlpool of misery; and a mutual suffering has identified them as it were with some of the vicissitudes of an Empire at war. And they too have in their peculiar way felt impelled to offer their condolence to the dependants of those who have fallen in the combat on land, in the air, on sea, and under the sea. And while all creation stands aghast beside the gaping graves, by rivers of blood, mourning with us the loss of some of the greatest Englishmen that ever lived, South Africa, having constituted herself the only vandal State, possesses sufficient incompassion to celebrate the protection conferred on her by the British Fleet and devote her God-given security to an orgy of tyranny over those hapless coloured subjects of the King, whom the Union constitution has placed in the hollow of her hands.

Is there nobody left on earth who is just enough to call on South Africa to put an end to this cowardly abuse of power?

We appeal to the Colonists of Natal, who have declared themselves against the persecution of their Natives; and would draw their attention to the fact that in spite of their disapproval, expressed to the Lands Commission, the Union Government, at the behest of a prisoner, is still tyrannizing over the Zulus.

We appeal to the Churches. We would remind them that in the past the Christian voice has been our only shield against legislative excesses of the kind now in full swing in the Union. But in the new ascendency of self and pelf over justice and tolerance, that voice will be altogether ignored, unless strongly reinforced by the Christian world at large. We appeal for deliverance from the operation of a cunningly conceived and a most draconian law whose administration has been marked by the closing down of native Churches and Chapels in rural South Africa.

We appeal to the Jews, God's chosen people, who know what suffering means. We would remind them that if after 1913 there was no repetition of a Russian pogrom it was largely because the native leaders (including the author) have spared neither pains nor pence in visiting the scattered tribes and exhorting them to obey all the demands of the South African Government under the Grobler law pending a peaceful intercession from the outside world. But for this self-imposed duty on the part of the native leaders, I am satisfied that numbers of the native peasantry would have been mown down early in 1914, and humanity would have been told that they were justly punished for disobedience to constituted authority.

We appeal to the leaders of the Empire -- that Empire for which my own relatives have sacrificed life and property in order to aid its extension along the Cape to Cairo route, entirely out of love for her late Majesty Queen Victoria and with no expectation of material reward. We ask these leaders to honour the plighted word of their noble predecessors who collectively and severally assured us a future of peace and happiness as our membership privilege in the Empire for which we bled. They were among the noblest Englishmen that ever left their native shores to create a prestige for their nation abroad. They included heroes and empire-builders too many to mention, who all told us that they spoke in the name of Queen Victoria and on behalf of her heirs and successors. What has suddenly become of the Briton's word -- his bond -- that solemn obligations of such Imperialists should cease to count? And if it is decided that the Victorian Englishman and the Twentieth Century Englishman are creatures of different clay (and that with the latter honour is binding only when both parties to the undertaking are white), surely this could hardly be the moment to inaugurate a change the reaction of which cannot fail to desecrate the memories of your just and upright forebears.

We would draw the attention of the British people to the fact that the most painful part of the present ordeal to the loyal black millions, who are now doing all they can, or are allowed to do, to help the Empire to win the war, is that they suffer this consummate oppression at the bidding of a gentleman now serving his term for participating in a rebellion during this war. We feel that it must be a source of intense satisfaction to Mr. Piet Grobler in his cell, that the most loyal section of the King's South African subjects are suffering persecution under his law -- a fact which, looked at from whatever standpoint, is equal to an official justification of the ideals for which he rose in rebellion. And if there is to be a return to the contented South Africa of other days, both the Natives' Land Act -- his law -- and the Report of the Lands Commission -- its climax -- should be torn up.

Courting Retribution

For three years and more the South African Government have persecuted my kinsmen and kinswomen for no other crime than that they have meekly paid their taxes. I had come to the conclusion, after meeting Colonials from all quarters of the globe and weighing the information obtained from them, that in no Colony are the native inhabitants treated with greater injustice than in South Africa.* Yet in spite of all I had seen and heard, I must say that, until this Report reached me, I never would have believed my white fellow-countrymen capable of conceiving the all but diabolical schemes propounded between the covers of Volume I of the Report of the South African Lands Commission, 1916, and clothing them in such plausible form as to mislead even sincere and well-informed friends of the Natives. There are pages upon pages of columns of figures running into four, five or six noughts. They will dazzle the eye until the reader imagines himself witnessing the redistribution of the whole sub-continent and its transfer to the native tribes. But two things he will never find in that mass of figures; these are (a) the grand total of the land so "awarded" to Natives; and (b) how much is left for other people. To arrive at these he has to do his own additions and subtractions, and call in the aid of statistics such as the Census figures, the annual blue books, etc., before the truth begins to dawn on him. They talk of having "doubled" the native areas. They found us in occupation of 143,000,000 morgen and propose to squeeze us into 18 million. If this means doubling it, then our teachers must have taught us the wrong arithmetic. Is it any wonder that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to continue to love and respect the great white race as we truly loved it at the beginning of this century?

--
* Some white South Africans in recent years have migrated
to the Katanga region in the Belgian Congo. I have read
in the South African daily papers, correspondence from some of them
complaining of their inability to make money. They attributed
this difficulty to the fact that the Belgian officials will not permit them
to exploit the labour of the Congolese as freely as white men are accustomed
to make use of the Natives in British South Africa.
--

We would submit a few problems in this Report for the British People and their Parliamentary Representatives to solve: --

First: Who are to become the occupants of the lands from which the Commission recommends the removal of the native proletariat?

Secondly: In view of certain upheavals which we have seen not very long ago, and others which might take place in the future, it is pertinent to ask, concerning the "very small minority of the inhabitants" -- the Whites -- alluded to by Mr. Schreiner at the head of this chapter, (a) what proportion is in full sympathy with the ideals of the British Empire; (b) what proportion remains indifferent; and (c) what proportion may be termed hostile?

Thirdly: Does the autonomy granted to this "small minority" amount to complete independence, or does it not?

Fourthly: Would it not be advisable also to inquire: Of "the vast majority of the inhabitants" the King's Black subjects, doomed by this Report to forfeit their homes and all they value in their own country, (a) how many of these are loyal, and (b) how many are not?

Finally and solemnly we would put it to all concerned for the honour and perpetuity of British dominion in South Africa, can the Empire afford to tamper with and alienate their affections?

As stated already, this "very vast majority of the inhabitants" of South Africa has been strafed by the "very small minority" for over three years. And when the burden loaded on our bent backs becomes absolutely unbearable we are at times inclined to blame ourselves; for, when some of us fought hard -- and often against British diplomacy -- to extend the sphere of British influence, it never occurred to us that the spread of British dominion in South Africa would culminate in consigning us to our present intolerable position, namely, a helotage under a Boer oligarchy. But when an official Commission asks Parliament to herd us into concentration camps, with the additional recommendation that besides breeding slaves for our masters, we should be made to pay for the upkeep of the camps: in other words, that we should turn the Colonials into slave raiders and slave-drivers (but save them the expense of buying the slaves), the only thing that stands between us and despair is the thought that Heaven has never yet failed us. We remember how African women have at times shed tears under similar injustices; and how when they have been made to leave their fields with their hoes on their shoulders, their tears on evaporation have drawn fire and brimstone from the skies. But such blind retribution has a way of punishing the innocent alike with the guilty, and it is in the interests of both that we plead for some outside intervention to assist South Africa in recovering her lost senses.

The ready sympathy expressed by those British people among whom I have lived and laboured during the past two years inspires the confidence that a consensus of British opinion will, in the Union's interest, stay the hand of the South African Government, veto this iniquity and avert the Nemesis that would surely follow its perpetration.

Her mind must have been riveted on South Africa when, quite recently, Ida Luckie sang: --

Alas, My Country! Thou wilt have no need
Of enemy to bring thee to thy doom. . . .
For not alone by war a nation falls.
Though she be fair, serene as radiant morn,
Though girt by seas, secure in armament,
Let her but spurn the vision of the Cross;
Tread with contemptuous feet on its command
Of mercy, Love and Human Brotherhood,
And she, some fateful day, shall have no need
Of enemy to bring her to the dust.

Some day, though distant it may be -- with God
A thousand years are but as yesterday --
The germs of hate, injustice, violence,
Like an insidious canker in the blood,
Shall eat that nation's vitals. She shall see
Break forth the blood-red tide of anarchy,
Sweeping her plains, laying her cities low,
And bearing on its seething, crimson flood
The wreck of Government, of home, and all
The nation's pride, its splendour and its power.
On with relentless flow, into the seas
Of God's eternal vengeance wide and deep.
But, for God's grace! Oh may it hold thee fast,
My Country, until justice shall prevail
O'er wrong and o'er oppression's cruel power,
And all that makes humanity to mourn.

[End of original text.]

[Original Advertisements.]

Some Opinions of the Press on the First Edition

"It is difficult to believe that such barbarities are possible; but Mr. Plaatje gives chapter and verse for every one of his indictments; the Act itself is quoted in extenso; various debates in the Colonial Parliament are given, and arguments for and against the Act furnished by the different speakers. The whole book is really interesting, and will come as a great surprise to many English people who know little of the South African Native as an educated, thinking human being, and will certainly excite sympathy with his present precarious state under colonial laws, which seem to be little inspired by the principles of justice and liberty which British supremacy formerly guaranteed." -- `Yorkshire Observer'.

"Whatever may have been the intention of the home Government, in practice this Act has meant the restriction of Natives to their reservations, or to servitude among the white population. Mr. Plaatje states his case clearly and asserts that this movement is reactionary and a false step on the part of the Government to placate the extreme Dutch party in South Africa." -- `Glasgow Herald'.

"The author makes an excellent case for the consideration of the Imperial Government. He convincingly proves that the fortunes of the native races should not have been handed over to the Dutch Republicans without adequate safeguards. He gratefully acknowledges the enthusiastic support given to the Natives by the British settlers and appeals for an inquiry. The interest of the book for the Punjabis consists, not in the similarity of the grievances, for we here have no such grievance against the Government, but in showing the way for inviting attention to the injustice involved in excluding a large class of Hindus from agriculture." -- `The Tribune', Lahore.

"It is a serious case, well and ably put, and the evidence embodied in it is very disquieting. Here at any rate is a book which makes the native agitation intelligible and may conceivably have an influence on future events in South Africa -- and at home, for by no legal fiction can the Imperial power dissociate itself from responsibility for Native affairs." -- `Birmingham Post'.

"The supporters of the Act do not make the principles attractive in explaining them. Mr. J. G. Keyter, Member for Ficksburg, said "they should tell the Native as the Free State told him, that it was white man's country, that he was not going to be allowed to buy land there or hire land there, and that if he wanted to be there he must be in service." -- `New Statesman'.

"There is the spice if not the charm of novelty about this book. It is written by a South African native and he holds strong views on some recent public questions. He occasionally expresses himself well and forcibly, and it is all to the good that South African publicists should have the advantage of reading the opinions of a native observer when dealing with legislation affecting his race." -- `South Africa'.

"In this well arranged and lucidly written book the author shows from authentic sources how changeable and often unreasonable has been the treatment of the loyal Natives under the South African flag. Mr. Plaatje is no fire-brand; he writes with moderation, and his book should attract sympathetic attention." -- `Booksellers' Record'.

"Mr. Plaatje has marshalled his facts with considerable skill. He sets forth the case of his countrymen with energy and moderation. His conclusions seem to be warranted by the information at his disposal, and the facts he adduces seem to bear but one interpretation. And lastly, in the existing circumstances, he is fully justified in appealing to the court of public opinion." -- `United Empire'.

Books by the same author

730 Sechuana Proverbs With Literal Translations and their European Equivalents (Diane Tsa Secoana, Le Maele a Sekgooa, Aa Dumalanang Naco). By Solomon T. Plaatje.

An interesting and instructive comparison of African and European Proverbs

A Sechuana Reader (In International Phonetic Orthography, with English Translations) By Daniel Jones, M.A., and Sol. T. Plaatje.

The Texts include native fables and stories of adventure, and form a collection of reading matter suitable either for native Bechuanas or for foreign learners.

Both word-for-word translations and free translations are given throughout.

In the introduction will be found detailed information with regard to the pronunciation of the Sechuana language.

[End Original Advertisements.]

Notes to the text:

The Titles listed in the Table of Contents are not always identical to those in the text. Therefore, the longer versions have been used, or in those cases where they are significantly different, both titles have been given.

Cases of battered type, and even missing letters, where obvious, are too numerous to be commented on in detail. Less obvious cases are noted.