Solomon Plaatje (1916). Native Life South Africa, pp 15-31 .pdf

# Native Life in South Africa ## Prologue We have often read books, written by well-known scholars, who disavow, on behalf of their works, any claim to literary perfection. How much more necessary, then, that a South African native workingman, who has never received any secondary training, should...

# Native Life in South Africa ## Prologue We have often read books, written by well-known scholars, who disavow, on behalf of their works, any claim to literary perfection. How much more necessary, then, that a South African native workingman, who has never received any secondary training, should in attempting authorship disclaim on behalf of his work, any title to literary merit. Mine is but a sincere narrative of a melancholy situation, in which, with all its shortcomings, I have endeavoured to describe the difficulties of the South African natives under a very strange law, so as most readily to be understood by the sympathetic reader. The information contained in the following chapters is the result of personal observations made by the author in certain districts of the Transvaal, Orange 'Free' State and the Province of the Cape of Good Hope. In pursuance of this private inquiry, I reached Ladybrand early in September 1913, when, my financial resources being exhausted, I decided to drop the inquiry and return home. But my friend Mr W.Z. Fenyang, of the farm Rietfontein, in the 'Free' State, offered to convey me to the south of Moroka District, where I saw much of the trouble, and further, he paid my railway fare from Thaba Ncho back to Kimberley. In the following November, it was felt that as Mr Saul Msane, the organizer for the South African Native National Congress, was touring the eastern districts of the Transvaal, and Mr Dube, the President, was touring the northern districts and Natal, and as the finances of the Congress did not permit an additional traveller, no information would be forthcoming in regard to the operation of the mischievous Act in the Cape Province. So Mr J.M. Nyokong, of the farm Maseru, offered to bear part of the expenses if I would undertake a visit to the Cape. I must add that beyond spending six weeks on the tour to the Cape, the visit did not cost me much, for Mr W.D. Soga, of King Williamstown, very generously supplemented Mr Nyokong's offer and accompanied me on a part of the journey. Besides the information received and the hospitality enjoyed from these and other friends, the author is indebted, for further information, to Mr Attorney Msimang, of Johannesburg. Mr Msimang toured some of the districts, compiled a list of some of the sufferers from the Natives' Land Act, and learnt the circumstances of their eviction. His list, however is not full, its compilation having been undertaken in May 1914, when the main exodus of the evicted tenants to the cities and protectorates had already taken place, and when eyewitnesses of the evils of the Act had already fled the country. But it is useful in showing that the persecution is still continuing, for, according to this list, a good many families were evicted a year after the Act was enforced, and many more were at that time under notice to quit. Mr Msimang modestly states in an explanatory note that his pamphlet contains 'comparatively few instances of actual cases of hardship under the Natives' Land Act, 1913, to vindicate the leaders of the South African Native National Congress from the gross imputation, by the Native Affairs Department, that they make general allegations of hardships without producing any specific cases that can bear examination.' Mr Msimang, who took a number of sworn statements from the sufferers, adds that 'in Natal, for example, all of these instances have been reported to the magistrates and the Chief Native Commissioner. Every time they are told to find themselves other places, or remain where they are under labour conditions. At Peters and Colworth, seventy-nine and a hundred families respectively are being ejected by the government itself without providing land for them. Some readers may perhaps think that I have taken the colonial parliament rather severely to task. But to any reader who holds with Bacon, that 'the pencil hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon, I would say: 'Do, if we dare make the request, and place yourself in our shoes.' If, after a proper declaration of war, you found your kinsmen driven from pillar to post in the manner that the South African natives have been harried and scurried by Act No. 27 of 1913, you would, though aware that it is part of the fortunes of war, find it difficult to suppress your hatred of the enemy. Similarly, if you see your countrymen and countrywomen driven from home, their homes broken up, with no hopes of redress, on the mandate of a government to which they had loyally paid taxation without representation driven from their homes, because they do not want to become servants; and when you know that half of these homeless ones have perforce submitted to the conditions and accepted service on terms that are unprofitable to themselves; if you remember that more would have submitted but for the fact that no master has any use for a servant with forty head of cattle, or a hundred or more sheep; and if you further bear in mind that many landowners are anxious to live at peace with, and to keep your people as tenants, but that they are debarred from doing so by your government which threatens them with a fine of £100 or six months' imprisonment, you would, I think, likewise find it very difficult to maintain a level head or wield a temperate pen. For instance, let us say, the London County Council decrees that no man shall rent a room, or hire a house, in the City of London unless he be a servant in the employ of the landlord, adding that there shall be a fine of one hundred pounds on anyone who attempts to sell a house to a non-householder; imagine such a thing and its effects, then you have some approach to an accurate picture of the operation of the South African Natives' Land Act of 1913. In conclusion, let me ask the reader's support in our campaign for the repeal of such a law and in making this request I pray that none of my readers may live to find themselves in a position so intolerable. When the narrative of this book up to chapter 18 was completed, it was felt that an account of life in South Africa without a reference to the war or the rebellion would be but story half-told, and so chapters 19 to 25 were added. It will be observed that chapters. 20 to 24, unlike the rest of the book, are not the result of the writer's own observations. The writer is indebted for much of the information in these five chapters to the native press and some Dutch newspapers which his devoted wife posted to him with every mail. These papers have been a source of useful information. Of the Dutch newspapers special thanks are due to Het Western of Potchefstroom, which has since March 1915 changed its name to Het Volksblad. Most of the Dutch journals, especially in the northern provinces, take up the view of English-speaking Dutch townsmen (solicitors and bank clerks) and publish them as the opinion of the South African Dutch. Her Western (not Het Volksblad), on the other hand, interprets the Dutch view, sound, bad or indifferent, exactly as we ourselves have heard it expressed by Dutchmen at their own farms. Translations of the Tipperary Chorus into some of the languages which are spoken by the white and black inhabitants of South Africa have been used here and there as mottoes; and as this book is a plea in the main for help against the 'South African war of extermination', it is hoped that admirers of Tommy Atkins will sympathize with the coloured sufferers, who also sing Tommy Atkins's war songs. This appeal is not on behalf of the naked hordes of cannibals who are represented in fantastic pictures displayed in the shop-windows in Europe, most of them imaginary; but it is on behalf of five million loyal British subjects who shoulder 'the black man's burden' every day, doing so without looking forward to any decoration or thanks. 'The black man's burden' includes the faithful performance of all the unskilled and least-paying labour in South Africa, the payment of direct taxation to the various municipalities, at the rate of 1s, to 5s. per mensum per capita (to develop and beautify the white quarters of the towns while the black quarters remain unattended) besides taxes to the provincial and central government, varying from 12s. to £3 12s. per annum, for the maintenance of government schools from • which native children are excluded. In addition to these native duties and taxes, it is also part of 'the black man's burden' to pay all duties levied by the favoured race. With the increasing difficulty of finding openings to earn the money for paying these multifarious taxes, the dumb pack-ox, being inarticulate in the Councils of State, has no means of making known to its 'keeper' that the burden is straining its back to breaking point. When Sir John French appealed to the British people for more shells during Easter week, the Governor-General of South Africa addressing a fashionable crowd at the City Hall, Johannesburg, most of whom had never seen the mouth of a mine, congratulated them on the fact that 'under the strain of war and rebellion the gold industry had been maintained at full pitch,' and he added that 'every ounce of gold was worth many shells to the Allies. But His Excellency had not a word of encouragement for the 200 000 subterranean heroes who by day and by night, for a mere pittance, lay down their limbs and their lives to the familiar 'fall of rock' and who, at deep levels ranging from 1 000 feet to 1 000 yards in the bowels of the earth, sacrifice their lungs to the rock dust which develops miners' phthisis and pneumonia poor reward, but a sacrifice that enables the world's richest gold mines, in the Johannesburg area alone, to maintain the credit of the Empire with a weekly output of £750.000 worth of raw gold. Surely the appeal of chattels who render service of such great value deserves the attention of the British people. Finally, I would say as Professor Du Bois says in his book The Souls of Black Folk, on the relations between the sons of master and man, 'I have not glossed over matters for policy's sake, for I fear we have already gone too far in that sort of thing. On the other hand I have sincerely sought to let no unfair exaggerations creep in. I do not doubt that in some communities conditions are better than those I have indicated; while I am no less certain that in other communities they are far worse.' ## Chapter 1: A Retrospect I am black, but comely, o ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept. The Song of Songs Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth. The 4 500 000 black South Africans are domiciled as follows: one and three-quarter million in locations and reserves, over half a million within municipalities or in urban areas, and nearly a million as squatters on farms owned by Europeans. The remainder are employed either on the public roads or railway lines, or as servants by European farmers, qualifying, that is, by hard work and saving to start farming on their own account. A squatter in South Africa is a native who owns some livestock and, having no land of his own, hires a farm or grazing and ploughing rights from a landowner, to raise grain for his own use and feed his stock. Hence, these squatters are hit very hard by an Act which passed both Houses of Parliament during the session of 1913, received the signature of the Governor-General on June 16, was gazetted on June 19, and forthwith came into operation. It may be here mentioned that on that day Lord Gladstone signed no fewer than sixteen new Acts of Parliament some of them being rather voluminous - while three days earlier, His Excellency signed another batch of eight, of which the bulk was beyond the capability of any mortal to read and digest in four days. But the great revolutionary change thus wrought by a single stroke of the pen, in the condition of the native, was not realized by him until about the end of June. As a rule many farm tenancies expire at the end of the half-year, so that in June 1913, not knowing that it was impracticable to make fresh contracts, some natives unwittingly went to search for new places of abode, which some farmers, ignorant of the law, quite as unwittingly accorded them. It was only when they went to register the new tenancies that the law officers of the Crown laid bare the cruel fact that to provide a landless native with accommodation was forbidden under a penalty of £100, or six months' imprisonment. Then only was the situation realized. Other natives who had taken up fresh places on European farms under verbal contracts, which needed no registration, actually founded new homes in spite of the law, neither the white farmer nor the native tenant being aware of the serious penalties they were exposed to by their verbal contracts. In justice to the government, it must be stated that no police officers scoured the country in search of lawbreakers, to prosecute them under this law. Had this been done, many £100 cheques would have passed into the government coffers during that black July, the first month after Lord Gladstone affixed his signature to the Natives' Land Act, No. 27 of 1913. The complication of this cruel law is made manifest by the fact that it was found necessary for a high officer of the government to tour the provinces soon after the Act came into force, with the object of 'teaching' magistrates how to administer it. A Congress of magistrates - a most unusual thing was also called in Pretoria to find a way for carrying out the King's writ in the face of the difficulties arising from this tangle of the Act. We may add that nearly all the white lawyers in South Africa, to whom we spoke about this measure, had either not seen the Act at all, or had not read it carefully, so that in both cases they could not tell exactly for whose benefit it had been passed. The study of this law required a much longer time than the lawyers, unless specially briefed, could devote to it, so that they hardly knew what all the trouble was about. It was the native in the four provinces who knew all about it, for he had not read it in books but had himself been through its mill, which like an automatic machine ground him relentlessly since the end of the month of June. Not the least but one of the cruellest and most ironical phases - and nearly every clause of this Act teems with irony - is the Schedule or appendix giving the so-called Scheduled Native Areas; and what are these 'Scheduled Native Areas'? They are the native locations which were reserved for the exclusive use of certain native clans. They are inalienable and cannot be bought or sold, yet the Act says that in these 'Scheduled Native Areas' natives only may buy land. The areas being inalienable, not even members of the clans, for whose benefit the locations are held in trust, can buy land therein. The areas could only be sold if the whole clan rebelled; in that case the location would be confiscated. But as long as the clans of the location remain loyal to the government, nobody can buy any land within these areas. Under the respective charters of these areas, not even a member of the clan can get a separate title as owner in an area - let alone a native outsider who had grown up among white people and done all his farming on white man's land. If we exclude the arid tracts of Bechuanaland, these locations appear to have been granted on such a small scale that each of them got so overcrowded that much of the population had to go out and settle on the farms of white farmers through lack of space in the locations. Yet a majority of the legislators, although well aware of all these limitations, and without remedying any of them, legislate, shall we say, 'with its tongue in its cheek' that only natives may buy land in native locations. Again, the locations form but one-eighteenth of the total area of the Union. Theoretically, then, the 4 500 000 natives may 'buy' land in only one eighteenth part of the Union, leaving the remaining seventeen parts for the one million whites. It is more over true that, numerically, the Act was passed by the consent of a majority of both Houses of Parliament, but it is equally true that it was steamrolled into the statute book against the bitterest opposition of the best brains of both Houses. A most curious aspect of this singular law is that even the minister, since deceased, who introduced it, subsequently declared himself against it, adding that he only forced it through in order to stave off something worse. Indeed, it is correct to say that Mr Sauer who introduced the Bill, spoke against it repeatedly in the House; he deleted the milder provisions, inserted more drastic amendments, spoke repeatedly against his own amendments, then in conclusion he would combat his own amendments, by calling the ministerial steamroller to support the government and vote for the drastic amendments. The only explanation of the puzzle constituted as such by these 'hot-and-cold' methods is that Mr Sauer was legislating for an electorate, at the expense of another section of the population which was without direct representation in parliament. None of the non-European races in the provinces of Natal, Transvaal and the 'Free' State can exercise the franchise. They have no say in the selection of members for the Union parliament. That right is only limited to white men, so that a large number of the members of parliament who voted for this measure have no responsibility towards the black races. Before reproducing this tyrannical enactment it would perhaps be well to recapitulate briefly the influences that led up to it. When the Union of the South African Colonies became an accomplished fact, a dread was expressed by ex-Republicans that the liberal native policy of the Cape would supersede the repressive policy of the old Republics, and they lost no time in taking definite steps to force down the throats of the Union legislature, as it were, laws which the Dutch presidents of pre-war days, with the British suzerainty over their heads, did not dare enforce against the native people then under them. With the formation of the Union, the imperial government, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained, unreservedly handed over the natives to the colonists, and these colonists, as a rule, are dominated by the Dutch Republican spirit. Thus the suzerainty of Great Britain, which under the reign of Her late Majesty Victoria, of blessed memory, was the natives' only bulwark, has now apparently been withdrawn or relaxed, and the Republicans, like a lot of bloodhounds long held in the leash, use the free hand given by the imperial government not only to guard against a possible supersession of Cape ideals of toleration, but to effectively extend throughout the Union the drastic native policy pursued by the province which is misnamed 'Free' State, and enforce it with the utmost rigour. During the first year of the Union, it would seem that General Botha made an honest attempt to live up to his London promises, that are mentioned by Mr Merriman in his speech (reproduced elsewhere) on the second reading of the Bill in parliament. It would seem that General Botha endeavoured to allay British apprehensions and concern for the welfare of the native population. In pursuance of this policy General Botha won the approbation of all natives by appointing Hon. H. Burton, a Cape minister, to the portfolio of Native Affairs. That the appointment was a happy one, from the native point of view, became manifest when Mr Burton signalized the ushering in of Union, by releasing Chief Dinizulu-ka-Cetywayo, who at that time was undergoing a sentence of imprisonment imposed by the Natal Supreme Court, and by the restoration to Dinizulu of his pension of £500 a year. Also, in deference to the wishes of the Native Congress, Mr Burton abrogated two particularly obnoxious Natal measures, one legalizing the 'Sibalo' system of forced labour, the other prohibiting public meetings by natives without the consent of the government. These abrogations placed the natives of Natal in almost the same position as the Cape natives though without giving them the franchise. So, too, when a drastic Squatters' Bill was gazetted early in 1912, and the recently formed Native National Congress sent a deputation to interview Mr Burton in Cape Town; after hearing the deputation, he graciously consented to withdraw the proposed measure, pending the allotment of new locations in which natives evicted by such a measure could find an asylum. In further deference to the representations of the Native Congress, in which they were supported by Senators the Hon. W.P. Schreiner, Colonel Stanford, and Mr Krogh, the Union government gazetted another Bill in January 1911, to amend an anomaly which, at that time, was peculiar to the 'Free' State: an anomaly under which a native can neither purchase nor lease land, and native landowners in the 'Free' State could only sell their land to the white people. The gazetted Bill proposed to legalize only in one district of the Orange 'Free' State the sale of landed property by a native to another native as well as to a white man, but it did not propose to enable natives to buy land from white men. The object of the Bill was to remove a hardship, mentioned elsewhere in this sketch, by which a 'Free' State native was by law debarred from inheriting landed property left to him under his uncle's will. But against such small attempts at reform, proposed or carried out by the Union government in the interest of the natives, granted in small instalments of a teaspoonful at a time - reforms dictated solely by feelings of justice and equity - ex-Republicans were furious. From platform, press, and pulpit it was suggested that General Botha's administration was too English and needed overhauling. The Dutch peasants along the countryside were inflamed by hearing that their gallant leader desired to anglicize the country. Nothing was more repellent to the ideas of the back-veld Dutch, and so at small meetings in the country districts resolutions were passed stating that the Botha administration had outlived its usefulness. These resolutions reaching the press from day to day had the effect of stirring up the Dutch voters against the ministry, and particularly against the head. At this time General Botha's sound policy began to weaken. He transferred Hon. H. Burton, first Minister of Natives, to the portfolio of Railways and Harbours, and appointed General Hertzog, of all people in the world, to the portfolio of Native Affairs. The good-humoured indulgence of some Dutch and English farmers towards their native squatters, and the affectionate loyalty of some of these native squatters in return, will cause a keen observer, arriving at a South African farm, to be lost in admiration for this mutual good feeling. He will wonder as to the meaning of the fabled bugbear anent the alleged struggle between white and black, which in reality appears to exist only in the fertile brain of the politician. Thus let the new arrival go to one of the farms in the Bethlehem or Harrismith districts for example, and see how willingly the native toils in the fields; see him gathering in his crops and handing over the white farmer's share of the crop to the owner of the land; watch the farmer receiving his tribute from the native tenants, and see him deliver the first prize to the native tenant who raised the largest crop during that season; let him also see both the natives and the landowning white farmers following to perfection the give-and-take policy of 'live and let live', and he will conclude that it would be gross sacrilege to attempt to disturb such harmonious relations between these people of different races and colours. But with a ruthless hand the Natives' Land Act has succeeded in remorselessly destroying those happy relations. First of all, General Hertzog, the new Minister of Native Affairs, travelled up and down the country lecturing farmers on their folly in letting ground to the natives; the racial extremists of his party hailed him as the right man for the post, for, as his conduct showed them, he would soon 'fix up' the natives. At one or two places he was actually welcomed as the future Prime Minister of the Union. On the other hand, General Botha, who at that time seemed to have become visibly timid, endeavoured to ingratiate himself with his discontented supporters by joining his lieutenant in travelling to and fro, denouncing the Dutch farmers for not expelling the natives from their farms and replacing them with poor whites. This became a regular ministerial campaign against the natives, so that it seemed clear that if any native could still find a place in the land, it was not due to the action of the government. In his campaign the Premier said other unhappy things which were diametrically opposed to his London speeches of two years before; and while the Dutch colonists railed at him for trying to anglicize the country, English speakers and writers justly accused him of speaking with two voices; cartoonists, too, caricatured him as having two heads - one, they said, for London, and the second one for South Africa. The uncertain tenure by which Englishmen in the public service held their posts became the subject of debates in the Union parliament, and the employment of government servants of colour was decidedly precarious. They were swept out of the railway and postal service with a strong racial broom, in order to make room for poor whites, mainly of Dutch descent. Concession after concession was wrung from the government by fanatically Dutch postulants for office, for government doles and other favours, who, like the daughters of the horse-leech in the Proverbs of Solomon, continually cried, 'Give, give.' By these events we had clearly turned the corner and were pacing backwards to pre-Union days, going back, back, and still further backward to the conditions which prevailed in the old Republics and (if a check is not applied) we shall steadily drift back to the days of the old Dutch East Indian administration. The Bill which proposed to ameliorate the 'Free' State cruelty to which reference has been made above, was dropped like a hot potato. Ministers made some wild and undignified speeches, of which the following spicy extract, from a speech by the Rt. Hon. Abraham Fischer to his constituents at Bethlehem, is a typical sample: "What is it you want?' he asked. 'We have passed all the coolie¹ laws and we have passed all the Kaffir laws. The "Free" State has been safeguarded and all her colour laws have been adopted by parliament. What more can the government do for you?' And so the Union ship in this reactionary sea sailed on and on and on, until she struck an iceberg - the sudden dismissal of General Hertzog. To the bitter sorrow of his admirers, General Hertzog, who is the fearless exponent of Dutch ideals, was relieved of his portfolios of Justice and Native Affairs - it was whispered as a result of a suggestion from London; and then the Dutch extremists, in consequence of their favourite's dismissal, gave vent to their anger in the most disagreeable manner. One could infer from their platform speeches that from their point of view, scarcely anyone else had any rights in South Africa, and least of all the man with a black skin. In the face of this, the government's timidity was almost unendurable. They played up to the desires of the racial extremists, with the result that a deadlock overtook the administration. Violent laws like the Immigration Law (against British Indians and alien Asiatics) and the Natives' Land Act were indecently hurried through parliament to allay the susceptibilities of 'Free' State Republicans. No minister found time to undertake such useful legislation as the Coloured People's Occupation Bill, the Native Disputes Bill, the Marriage Bill, the University Bill, etc., etc. An apology was demanded from the High Commissioner in London for delivering himself of sentiments which were felt to be too British for the palates of his Dutch employers in South Africa, and the Prime Minister had almost to apologize for having at times so far forgotten himself as to act more like a Crown Minister than a simple Africander. 'Free' State demands became so persistent that ministers seemed to have forgotten the assurances they gave His Majesty's Government in London regarding the safety of His Majesty's coloured subjects within the Union. They trampled underfoot their own election pledges, made during the first Union General Election, guaranteeing justice and fair treatment to the law-abiding natives. The campaign, to compass the elimination of the blacks from the farms, was not at all popular with landowners, who made huge profits out of the renting of their farms to natives. Platform speakers and newspaper writers coined an opprobrious phrase which designated this letting of farms to natives as 'Kaffir-farming, and attempted to prove that it was almost as immoral as 'baby-farming'. But landowners pocketed the annual rents, and showed no inclination to substitute the less industrious 'poor whites' for the more industrious natives. Old Baas M-, a typical Dutch landowner of the 'Free' State, having collected his share of the crop of 1912, addressing a few words of encouragement to his native tenants, on the subject of expelling the blacks from the farms, said in the Taal: 'How dare any number of men, wearing tall hats and frock coats, living in Cape Town hotels at the expense of other men, order me to evict my natives? This is my ground; it cost my money, not Parliament's, and I will see them banged (barst) before I do it.' It then became evident that the authority of parliament would have to be sought to compel the obstinate landowners to get rid of their natives. And the compliance of parliament with this demand was the greatest ministerial surrender to the Republican malcontents, resulting in the introduction and passage of the Natives' Land Act of 1913, inasmuch as the Act decreed, in the name of His Majesty the King, that pending the adoption of a report to be made by a commission, somewhere in the dim and unknown future, it shall be unlawful for natives to buy or lease land, except in scheduled native areas. And under severe pains and penalties they were to be deprived of the bare human rights of living on the land, except as servants in the employ of the whites-rights which were never seriously challenged under the Republican regime, no matter how politicians raved against the natives. **NOTES** 1. A contemptuous South African term for British Indians.