Chapter XXXIV: Testimony of Travellers and Thinkers

(_Continued_)

ALEXANDER DAVIS

THE following valuable testimony is extracted from an interesting volume written by this gentleman, entitled _The Native Problem in South Africa_:

The Congo atrocities campaign is fed upon just a sufficient
substratum of truth to make it plausible. But the public in their
administered sentimentality travel very wide of the true case.
After a full career of blood-curdling horrors unhesitatingly placed
at the door of the administration in highest authority irrespective
of conditions of environment or personal responsibility, a Sir
Harry Johnston, accepted authority, in plenitude of personal
knowledge and experience presents a rock of fact which checks the
wave of misrepresentation.

In the Congo Free State in addition to the superior council to
advise the King in Belgium, the Governor General has the assistance
of a similar nominated body at Boma. Local conditions here do
not admit at present of following the French system, but it is
guided largely in its deliberations by the reports and advice of
the district commissioners who with the co-operation of the local
chiefs and their own officials form really limited autonomous
administrations.

Turning to the Congo Free State the general division of the
territory, from an administrative point of view, is based on
the districts at the head of each of which is a district
commissioner representing the State. The commissioner is assisted
by sub-commissioners, but is alone responsible for the good order
of his district. Their principal instructions, on which the State
lays great stress, are to maintain friendly relations with the
natives and wherever possible to prevent or patch up intertribal
disputes; they are also charged with abolishing as far as possible
barbarous customs and especially human sacrifices and cannibalism,
still practised over a large extent of the territory.... In
close co-operation with the district commissioner is the native
chief or chiefs of the district. The institution and recognition
of these are encouraged by the State in order to improve the
relations between it and the natives, to consolidate authority over
individuals, to ameliorate their condition, and to facilitate their
regular contribution to the development of the country. The chiefs
have, as a rule, to be first recognised as such by native custom,
and are then officially recognised by the Government, and receive
a certificate to that effect. They are allowed to exercise their
usual authority according to native usage and custom, provided the
same be not contrary to public order and is in accordance with the
laws of the State. They are held personally responsible for their
tribe’s supply of public labour as notified to them annually. The
acknowledged native chiefs number 258.

The safeguards provided by the co-operation of the chiefs, and
the supervision of the central authority are now on the Congo
supplemented, as far as human action under such conditions can
go, by a very thorough organisation of the judicial side of the
Government. It has pleased many of the critical theorists who have
attacked the Congo Free State to say that this latter has been
established merely as a blind to the actions of the administration.
It may be merely remarked that no infant struggling State is
likely to go to the great expense of such an elaborate and widely
organised system of justice as has now been called into existence
on the Congo _pour rire_, and furthermore that jurists of the
character of those now serving on the Congo are not those capable
of lending themselves to such practices. A certain amount of
latitude must of course be made for the different conditions in
individual countries, especially when in a state of savagery, but
generally speaking the Congo tribunals do their duty as well as
similar ones in British colonies.

The Sovereign and Government of the Congo Free State have stated
over and over again that they desire justice to be rendered
impartially, and that as it is necessary that offences committed
by natives should not remain unpunished, so penal laws must also
be applied to the whites who are guilty of illegal doings. The
mere fact of having constituted a superior court of appeal with
judges of different nationalities and of appointing foreign lawyers
and magistrates as judges and officials of the lower courts in
the interior of the country is a proof, and a more than evident
guarantee, of the impartiality and seriousness of the judicial
administration aimed at. The writer holds no brief for the Congo
Free State; rather the contrary in fact, but in common fairness
after a very lengthy study of its judicial machinery, laws, and
decrees, and the instructions given to its officials, he finds it
difficult to conceive what more King Leopold could have done to
safeguard its internal affairs than has now been done—given the
peculiar conditions of the country. The abuses which have from time
to time arisen in the past have been due, as far as one acquainted
with similar conditions in West Africa can see, to three things,
viz.: (1) to the abuse of power by agents of the concessionaire
companies before the State had fully realised the necessity of
keeping a sharp control over these semi-independent individuals;
(2) to the want of experience of early officials; and (3) to the
lack of trained colonial servants whose known antecedents and
constitutions fitted them for isolated and arduous responsibility
in an unhealthy, tropical, and savage country. It is only right
to add, however, that though isolated misdeeds may still continue
to occur here as everywhere else, the measures now in force guard
as far as possible against a repetition of the former regrettable
occurrences, and where these occur the offenders are brought to
trial without delay.

The native idea represents that of primitive society everywhere
in the world, the European that of latter-day civilisation; and
if this were always borne in mind, less nonsense would be written
by those ill-informed sentimentalists who insist on treating the
former on the lines of the latter.

Nothing is more astounding in regard to the Congo campaign—to take
a very flagrant case in point—than the utter ignorance displayed
by those who, while violently denouncing every detail of Congo
administration, appear to be totally unaware either of the past
history of social evolution, of modern civilisation in Europe,
or of the conditions existing in other African countries at the
present day.

We have here (British Central Africa) admitted, as in Uganda where
we have shown that it has been actually carried out, the right of
the British Crown to assume ownership of “vacant lands,” and the
principle enunciated that the reserves allotted must be sufficient
to allow of the lying fallow of the ground for a period of three
years in addition to allowing a proportion for the natural increase
of the family. Had the same principles set forth above been applied
to the early days to British West Africa that country would be far
more prosperous and advanced than is the case to-day.

Bearing these facts in mind it is possible to understand more
fully the situation on the Congo where the general system has been
pursued of assuming possession of the vacant lands and allotting to
natives reserves throughout the country, though it may be remarked
that on the plea of conquest alone the State has a valid title to a
large part of the country apart from that set forth.

In the case of the Congo Free State, however, the opposite course
has been taken, _i. e._, the State has undertaken the direct
exploitation of its private domains, the profits realised being
allotted to public works and the expenses of administration; and
without stopping to examine the necessities of the case its critics
have eagerly seized on this as a point of attack.

When criticisms, however, are raised against the very complete
system of land tenure now in existence on the Congo as regards
the State, non-natives and natives, it is as well to remember that
the exploitation of the land by the State is an after and separate
act quite unconnected with the assumption of sovereign powers over
the land in the State, which latter is in accord with general
European and universal American custom, though after all whether a
State raises money for public revenues by selling, leasing, or by
personally exploiting the State lands seems to be a mere matter of
detail in which the principle of the action is exactly the same.
_En passant_ it may be remarked that the Royal Niger Company,
though an administration, raised its principal revenue and paid its
dividends by its trade—not by duties or taxes.

Further south, getting down to the Congo again, we find a State
which, sharing these views, has the courage of its convictions and
acts upon them to the great scandal of our own Exeter Hall set,
no doubt, but to the very marked improvement of the native races
affected as well as to the development and opening up of the State.

It will have been observed in what special terms Mr. Davis repudiates personal interest in championing the Congo Administration against its detractors. Should any reader be so sceptical as to question the accuracy of that repudiation, attention is invited to the following declarations by three English statesmen, two of them of high political attainment, and all three by social position and actual record of approved _bona-fides_.

VISCOUNT CURZON, VICEROY AND GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA

It is only fair to remember that the Congo State has done a
great work, and by its administration the cruel raids of Arab
slave-dealers have ceased to exist over many thousands of square
miles.

THE LATE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY, K.G., PREMIER OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT

Look at the Congo State. Everything has not gone there as well as
could be wished, but still a great domination is maintained. There
are two sets of opinions; but what is undoubtedly true is that
Belgium—a very much less powerful country than Great Britain—has
been able to maintain the dominion of her King over a territory
larger than the Sudan.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

Lord Cranborne, now Marquess of Salisbury, declared, during the
debate of 20th May, 1903, in the House of Commons, that “There was
no doubt that the administration of the Congo Government had been
marked by a very high degree of a certain kind of administrative
development. There were steamers upon the river, hospitals had been
established, and all the machinery of elaborate judicial and police
systems had been set up.”