The African Colony: Studies in the Reconstruction

I

To the Boer the land was the beginning and end of all things: a town was only a necessary excrescence, an industry an uitlander whim. A land policy is therefore one of the first burdens which attend our heritage. Happily we are not seriously impeded by the wreckage of systems which have failed. The Boer Government had no land legislation, and the few laws, such as the Occupation Law of 1886, which touched on the question, were less statutory enactments than administrative resolutions. The Boer farmer, or his father, secured his land when the country was unoccupied, and he had merely to arrange the boundary question with friendly neighbours. He held it on freehold title, with no reservation of quit-rent to the Government. When the existing population had thus been settled, the balance of unoccupied country fell to the State; and this was further parcelled out by grants to poor burghers, doles for war service, establishment of native reserves, and in the wilder districts by the system of occupation tenure. But in spite of all grants a considerable portion remained State territory – over 44,000 square miles in the Transvaal, of which at least 19,000,000 acres are unsurveyed. In the Orange River Colony the State lands are smaller, not exceeding, with all recent purchases, 1,400,000 acres. The land question in the two colonies is therefore of the simplest: the best farms, including most of the rich pockets of alluvial land, are the freehold possession of a small number of Dutch farmers; the balance is the more or less encumbered perquisite of the State.

The condition of agriculture in the two colonies was primitive in the extreme, a truth quite independent of the question whether such elementary methods were not the only possible. The first comers were pastoralists and nothing more, coming as they did from the great pastoral regions in the north of Cape Colony. The average farm was laid out for stock, and was rarely less than 6000 acres. On the old estimate eight acres was required for each head of horned cattle and two for each sheep. The Boer was not an advanced stock-farmer in any sense of the word. He found certain diseases indigenous to the country which he did not seriously attempt to cope with. He rarely fenced his stock-routes and outspans or endeavoured to improve the carrying capacity of the land by paddocking. The high veld in winter is burned brown by sun and wind and nipped by frosts, so that it gives little sustenance to stock; but the rich vegetation in summer should have provided, by means of ensilage, ample feeding for the winter months. This simple device was never used, and when the grass failed the Boer trekked with his herds to his low-veld farm, whence he frequently brought back the seeds of disease in his animals. In the quality of his stock he was equally backward. In the Afrikander ox he had the makings of one of the hardiest and strongest draught animals in the world. In the Afrikander pony he had the basis of a wonderful breed of riding-horses, to whose merits the late war has sufficiently testified. He never seriously tried to improve one or the other. Stallions of wretched quality were allowed to run wild among his mares, and he had no system of culling to raise the quality of his herds. The market for his beef and mutton was small and uncritical, so that the amassing of animals became with him rather the sign visible of prosperity than a serious professional enterprise.

At first the Boer did little more than till a garden. On each farm there was a certain water-supply, and around the spruit or fountain a pocket of alluvial land. The ordinary soil, both in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, is, with some remarkable exceptions, poor and easily worked out; but those alluvial patches are so rich as to be practically inexhaustible. The Boer and the Kaffir shared one gift in common, an infallible eye for good country, though there was this difference between them that the Boer chose the heavy river-side lands, while the Kaffir, who was a shallow cultivator, preferred as a rule the lighter slopes where he could pick with ease. In 1885 the Boer farmer did little more than irrigate his garden; but the increase in the population of the towns, and the growth of a market for cereals, fruits, and vegetables, made him extend his irrigation farther, so that in a few years the whole of his alluvial pocket was under water. Formerly he had been a pure pastoralist; now he became also an agriculturist, and after his fashion a narrow-minded one, for irrigation, which was his first successful experiment, was at once exalted by him into an axiomatic law. The Kaffir, who in his way is a skilful farmer and an experimentalist on a far wider scale, believed in dry lands; but the Boer confined himself to his irrigation and his summer and winter crops. Two views have been promulgated on the Boer method. One is, that it is the true and only type possible in the country, discovered after long years of intelligent experience. The Boer, it is said, is unprogressive, because he knows the limitations under which he works, and all new-comers who have begun by trying new methods have sooner or later fallen into line with the old inhabitants. The supporters of this view point to the scarcity of English farmers in the land who have made a success of their farms on any other than the Boer methods. There seems to be no real justification for this opinion. The Boer has no settled principles of farming; he is an experimentalist in practice, whatever he may be in theory. We have seen that he began as a pastoralist, advanced to be also a gardener, and is now a cultivator of lands under irrigation. In some twenty years, had he been allowed to develop unchecked, he would doubtless have come round to the Kaffir view of the dry lands. Fifteen years ago the country store-keeper stocked only the old single-furrow wooden plough: to-day on Boer farms you may see double-furrow steel ploughs, disc ploughs, disc cultivators, not to speak of such elaborate farm machinery as aermotors, reapers and binders, steam chaff-cutters, and in some few cases steam-ploughs. The more progressive Boers have changed utterly their methods of orchard-management, and at the present moment they are reconsidering their methods of tobacco-growing. The point is important, because if the Boer has really found out long ago the limitations of the soil and the only principles of farming, then so far from deserving the name of unprogressive he has shown himself eminently wise. But the theory of Boer stability is a chimera. He changes every year in his attitude towards the soil, – changes unwillingly, it may be, but certainly; and though a few dogmas take a long time to alter, they alter in the end. It is equally incorrect to argue from the absence of successful immigrant farmers on progressive lines. They were few in number, because in a country where the rural population was mainly hostile, the new-comers who began by farming ended as a rule by drifting to the towns. But, to cite one case, mealies have been grown on dry lands on the American plan with great profit to the farmer; and the German tobacco-planters in the north have shown how profitable fruit and tobacco growing can become, if conducted on principles rather than on tradition.

But it is as great a mistake to regard the Boer farmer as utterly without capacity. He had no need to bestir himself. He lived simply and supplied his own modest needs. He saw his farm going up in price through the general appreciation of land values, and he sold a bit now and again and increased his herds; or he might receive a large sum for the option on the minerals under the soil. He was cheated by the country store-keeper, and he rarely attempted to reach distant markets. The old vicious system of allowing natives to farm on his land in return for a certain amount of compulsory labour – a system unchanged by that abortive piece of law-making, the Plakkerswet – made him unthrifty and improvident. He had no labour bill to cast up, no financial position which wanted investigation at each year’s end. Hence the difficulty of framing any accurate forecast of the prospects of farming in the new colonies: there are no statistics to follow, no scale of values for land or produce. But the Boer had an empirical science of his own. He knew exactly the capacity of his irrigated land, though he never thought of formulating his knowledge. He had many rough and effective precautions against blight and disease, and he had a kind of gipsy veterinary skill. He was not industrious, but I think he must be allowed the credit of having done his best for the land on his own principles. He was a great buyer of new farm machinery, partly perhaps out of curiosity, and on this point at least his conservatism was not consistent. Some of his methods were based on common rural superstitions – for example, he always sowed, if possible, at the full moon. His habit, too, of seeking a theological explanation of all misfortunes was destructive of energy. When the locusts or the galziekte came he lit his pipe and said it was the will of God, a visitation which it would be impious to resist. Hardly, perhaps, the proper attitude for success in this modern world, but under his peculiar conditions he never felt its folly. It is impossible to believe that the Boer has done justice to the country, but we may readily grant him skill and good sense in the narrow world in which he dwelt.

The land problem in the new colonies is partly political and partly economic, and on the solution of the latter branch of the question the former largely depends. There are urgent reasons why an English population should grow up on the land; but unless this population can make a profitable living it would be folly to encourage its immigration. On this economic question it is impossible to dogmatise. Data, as I have said, are lacking and have never existed. At the best we can frame some sort of tentative answer – a hope rather than a promise; and we are justified in this course because those who attack the policy have no better argument to offer.

Before the war the ordinary farmer sold his stock and his produce at fair prices in his country town. The bulk of it, together with the produce which the more enterprising farmers sent direct, went to Johannesburg, where on the whole high prices were maintained. So good were the prices that the farmers of the eastern and western provinces of Cape Colony found it profitable, notwithstanding customs and heavy railway freights, to make Johannesburg their chief market. But in spite of all local production, Johannesburg was not fully supplied. Food-stuffs in large quantities had to be imported from abroad. In 1898 agricultural produce, raw and manufactured, to the value of nearly £2,500,000 was imported into the Transvaal. Arguing on these facts, many have predicted a rosy future for all branches of South African farming. What has been imported, they say, can be grown; the mining industry will advance, and agriculture will follow with equal steps. But such rudimentary hopes can scarcely be held to exhaust a very complicated and delicate problem, to which some answer must be suggested before any needs of policy can be thought of. There are two questions to be met: How far is the land capable of intensive and sustained production? and, granting the capacity, what guarantee is there of profitable markets?

The soil of the new colonies, as I have said, is sharply divided into alluvial pockets and dry lands, – the former highly cultivated, the latter, except for Kaffir locations, mainly neglected. But since for one alluvial acre there are a hundred dry morgen, the progress of the country may be said to depend upon the dry lands. It follows that pasturage must remain the staple form of farming. The bulk of the dry lands are light and thin in soil, and the natural humours of the ground have been much exhausted by the unthrifty habit of veld-burning. But in spite of all drawbacks it is a country of abundant summer grass, both sweet veld and sour veld, which is capable of great improvement by any proper system of paddocking and depasturing. Large quantities of veld grass might be cut for winter fodder, and roots and forage crops could be grown in summer for the same purpose. Farms, which at present carry an ox to every eight acres and a sheep to every two, might be made capable of supporting a vastly greater stock. But there are certain drawbacks to stock-farming peculiar to the country, the chief being the number of diseases indigenous and imported. At the present moment to bring in valuable stock to most districts of the new colonies is a dangerous experiment. Horses die of horse-sickness, sheep of scab and anthrax, cattle of rinderpest, red-water, and the immense variety of ziektes from galziekte to gielziekte. Before the new colonies can advance to the rank of great pastoral lands which is their right, vigorous methods must be taken to stamp out diseases wherever they appear, and to take precautions against their recurrence. The country must be fenced, stock-routes and outspans must be established and guarded, and a stringent Brands Act must be passed to give security to the stock-owner in a country where stock is notoriously prone to vanish.[24 - A Fencing Act, a Stock-Route Act, and a Brands Act on the most progressive lines have been prepared for the Transvaal. An excellent Fencing Act, badly administered, has always existed in the Orange River Colony, and a Brands Act, inferior to the Transvaal measure, has been passed in that colony. But it is the effective administration of the Acts which is of importance.]

Given good laws, adequately administered, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony may well become countries of large and prosperous stock-farms. Here, it has been argued, the matter ends. Agriculture must confine itself in most cases to the growth of domestic supplies and winter forage. I cannot, after a careful examination of most parts of the country, bring myself to accept this view. Much may be done by irrigation to increase the area of land under water. Sir W. Willcocks’ Report[25 - Parliamentary Paper C.D. 1163.] proposes to give to South Africa 3,000,000 acres of perennially irrigated land at a cost of about £30,000,000; but as he argues for the undertaking on the basis of certain doubtful land valuations, this large estimate may have to be considerably modified. Unirrigated land, he says, varies from 2s. 6d. to £3 per acre: irrigation costs from £7, 10s. to £15 per acre; and the price of good irrigated land runs from £20 to £100. On this reasoning there is room for a handsome profit, but the argument is based rather on fictitious market values than on the intrinsic normal producing power of the soil. At the time when Sir W. Willcocks’ Report was written – the last year of the war – land values were inflated, and the prices of produce grown under water were extremely high. In the average year for which we must provide little irrigated land will be worth to the farmer more than from £5 to £10 per acre, and certain irrigation schemes which, on Sir W. Willcocks’ showing would return a profit, would in reality spell ruin to their promoters. Irrigation is necessary on a certain scale for a reason which we shall discuss later; and in many cases it could be effected at a moderate cost. But expensive irrigation works for agriculture alone are, I believe, of doubtful wisdom in almost every part of the country. What is of infinitely greater importance is the procuring of water in the dry tracts by tanks, wells, and, if possible, by artesian bores. Vast stock districts in Waterberg and Lichtenburg would have their value quadrupled if a permanent supply of water, even for stock purposes only, could be procured. The Australian method of tank-sinking has already been followed with success in the Springbok Flats, and it is at least possible that artesian water may be found. Everywhere the soil contains water at a low depth, which percolates through the porous rock, and is brought to a stand by dykes of harder stone. Hence has arisen the old African fiction of underground rivers, which is true to the extent that no man has far to dig before he finds water. It is rather with such tank- and well-sinking that a water expert should deal, and with the regulation of the present ridiculous apportionment of water rights. No serious work can be done in this department till the State assumes the right of distributing water, and has it in its power to prevent the riparian owner from following an obstructive course to the detriment of his neighbours. Irrigation in a few cases should be followed, and a greater portion of land brought under water in the interests of mixed farming; but it is in another direction that we must look for the sheet-anchor of South African agriculture.

The rainfall of the new colonies is generally well distributed. Copious rains fall from September to April, and then come the four dry and windy months of winter. On irrigated lands summer and winter crops are grown; on dry lands a summer crop only. But the Boer believed that the crops which he could grow on dry lands were very limited, and he habitually grew mealies, potatoes, lucerne, and tobacco under water. It is, of course, a great advantage to reap two crops a-year; but if a man can get two crops from 5 acres only and one crop from 500, this one crop, on ordinary principles of common-sense, should command his chief attention. Deducting the greater expense for labour, the one crop is still thirty or forty times as important as the other two. This is roughly the agricultural problem of the dry lands. They have never been really exploited. The Kaffir has picked at the edges; a few progressive farmers have made good profits by growing mealies and tobacco dry on the American plan. But it was much easier to potter about with a water-furrow than to attempt to plough the dry and unbroken flats. Dry-land farming is therefore pioneer farming, and pioneering with a good hope of success. Granted the markets, there is no reason why great tracts should not be ploughed from end to end, and a huge crop of cereals and roots raised yearly. Steam-ploughing and every labour-saving device will be necessary, for this is farming on the grand scale. The outlook is made brighter when we realise that those despised dry lands are some of the richest in the country. The famous Standerton black soil, the environs of Middelburg, part of the Bloemhof and Klerksdorp districts, and, above all, the Springbok Flats,[26 - My friend, Colonel Owen Thomas, had some samples of Transvaal soil analysed, and the report was very discouraging. To set against this, a sample of Springbok Flats soil was pronounced by a distinguished English expert, to whom it was sent, to be one of the richest specimens of virgin soil he had seen.] where there may be half a million acres of the richest black soil 12 feet deep, and another half million acres of excellent red soil – such are a few instances of lands which await an early development.

There is still another aspect of this problem which concerns a small group of semi-tropical products – fruits, tobacco, rubber, coffee, and, possibly, cocoa. There are tracts which have proved themselves to be as highly fitted for such crops as any in the world. They are crops, too, for which the acreage required is small, and whose value is so high in proportion to bulk that the freightage does not seriously detract from profits. Given, again, the market, and there is no reason why the present yield should not be centupled.

The market – that is the rock on which arguments divide. The rosy hopes of the market to be furnished by the Transvaal which some minds entertained during the war have given place with many to an equally fantastic pessimism. I do not propose to provide a tabulated statement of costs and prices. I have seen such statements arrive by the clearest reasoning at opposite conclusions. But it is worth while to consider soberly what are the market prospects in the future for the farmer of the new colonies. A comparison of imports gives little assistance. In the year 1902 the raw agricultural produce imported into the Transvaal, all of which might be locally produced, was worth over 2 millions sterling; and the imports of manufactured and partially manufactured produce, the bulk of which might be produced and manufactured locally, came close on another million. These figures may be taken as below normal, since supplies for the army of occupation are not included, and at the same time the number of inhabitants in the towns and natives in the mines were largely below the ordinary figures. On the other hand, little agriculture existed, and practically all supplies for the existing population, such as it was, had to be brought from the adjoining colonies or from over-seas. On this basis, therefore, there is a considerable and highly profitable market for the limited agriculture and pastoral enterprise of the country. But in framing any forecast two new factors must be taken into consideration. If the towns are to develop, the cost of living must be greatly reduced; which means in the first instance that all ordinary food-stuffs must be imported free of duty and at cheap railway rates. Again, when all the Boer farmers have been resettled on their lands and a multitude of new-comers occupy Crown farms, the local agricultural output will be very largely increased. The farmer, who at the moment can sell his garden stuff, his crops of potatoes, mealies, and forage, and his stock at a good profit, will find himself faced by over-sea produce, grown wholesale under the most favourable conditions, and sold at a price with which he cannot compete and live. This is, I think, a true forecast – for the small improvident farmer. The man who grows mealies on a large scale with labour-saving appliances, or who has a well-managed stock-ranch, will make a profit on wholesale dealings. In agriculture and pasturage, as in other activities, Providence is on the side of the bigger battalions, and the small man who grows on an expensive scale will be pushed out by the large man who grows economically. Prophecy is an intricate task, especially on land questions, but it seems clear that the only class who will not have to dread to some extent a change in present conditions, a cheapening of the means of life, and the influx of a large agricultural population, will be the wholesale farmers and pastoralists, who follow the methods of over-sea producers and enjoy the advantage of living at their customers’ doors.

But this does not exhaust the question. Is, then, the small holder of 100 or 200 acres, or the owner of a mixed farm of 1000 acres, to become extinct in the land? It depends entirely on themselves. In districts such as Waterberg, Zoutpansberg, and Barberton, the holder of 50 acres under water will be able to put vegetables and fruit on the Rand market a fortnight before any other grower in the world. His price is assured beyond doubt; and if he may find little profit for six months in the year, he is in no worse case than many prosperous market-gardeners in Kent and Surrey. It is here that the value of irrigation appears. Such a small holder, again, may be able to make a profit from dairying all the year round, provided local creameries are established, and he goes the proper way about it. So, too, with mixed farming, of which the essence is that one product can be set off against another. If a farmer finds cereals unproductive, he can put part of his land into pasture; it is unlikely that the price of meat will fall below a paying point, granted the expected industrial development. In addition there are certain crops, such as tobacco, where the profits, even allowing for a large decline in present prices, are great, the freightage small, and the market worldwide. The aim of mixed farming is to provide an elaborate system of alternate schemes, which between them will preserve a fairly permanent average of profit.

The basis of all farming prosperity is the growth of the mining industry and the creation of new industries. Any attempt to protect farming by tolls or imposts is foredoomed to a miserable failure. Sink, if necessary, farming considerations altogether for the moment; look only to mining development, if need be; abolish the old market prices and ruin the old local producer: it is all good policy, and in the long-run the true agricultural interest. When the present fictitious basis is got rid of, the true and lasting agricultural prosperity may begin. There seems no reason to doubt that in the future there will be a sound local market for the large producer, for the favourably situated small holder, and for the judicious farmer of mixed land. Nor is there any reason why in time a considerable export trade should not be established. As the great produce-exporting countries of the world grow more populous, South Africa may yet play its part in feeding Europe. With improved internal communications, and thousands of miles of fine pasture land, there is no reason why, a fortnight nearer Europe than Australia, she should not take her share of the frozen-meat traffic of the world. In tobacco, again, to take only one instance, a very considerable export trade may arise. The soil is well suited; the rough leaf, grown on the most unscientific method, is as good as anything produced by Virginia and Borneo. The large tobacco-growers, or the small holders attached to a tobacco-factory, may very well find a profitable outlet for their wares abroad, and the English manufacturers discover a new producing ground in a British colony with which to resist the attacks of transatlantic combines.

The farming prospects in the new colonies, even if stripped of all fanciful stuff, are sound and hopeful. There may come bad times for all. The ordinary market-gardener will for a certainty find himself poorly off five years hence; and all classes may have their periods of stress and despair. Such visitations are part of the primeval curse upon tillers of the soil. The New Zealand and Australian pastoralists had sunk very low before the discovery of cold storage saved the situation. The Ceylon planters, after the coffee blight, seemed on the brink of ruin, when the introduction of tea-growing more than restored their former prosperity. An immunity from farming risks can no more be guaranteed in the new colonies than in other countries. The real question is, Can they offer the settler no greater risks than he has to face elsewhere, and at least a fair chance of greater prosperity? On a reasonable survey of the case, I think it will be found that they can.

With this clearing of the ground we can turn with an open mind to the political question. The secular antithesis of town and country is as marked here as elsewhere, and the political problem varies accordingly. In the country we have to create in a large measure from the foundation; we have to meet and nullify the prevailing apathy, and undertake as a Government many tasks which would elsewhere be left to private enterprise. There the wounds of war gape more widely, and have to be healed by more cunning simples. People have spoken as if the towns were the sole factor in the case. Make the towns prosperous and wholly British, it has been said, and the land is ours. The towns are the loyal units; as they advance in prosperity the rural districts will sink out of account; and rightly, for their wealth is small, their population hostile, and their future barren. “Twenty years hence,” wrote in 1896 an observer as clear-sighted as he was hopeful, “the white population is likely to be composed in about equal proportions of urban and rural elements. The urban element will be mainly mining, gathered at one great centre on the Witwatersrand, and possibly at some smaller centres in other districts. The rural element, consisting of people who live in villages or solitary farmhouses, will remain comparatively backward, because little affected by the social forces which work swiftly and potently upon close-packed industrial communities, and it may find itself very different in tone, temper, and tendencies from its urban fellow-citizens.”[27 - Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, 3rd edition, p. 451.] So we find one class of mine-owners arguing that any attempt to settle the country districts is a work of supererogation, and urging the Government to concentrate all its efforts on the promotion of their own industry, declaring that from their prosperity every blessing will flow forth to the rural parts. It is impossible to contemplate with equanimity the result of merely letting things alone. No industrial development would ever compensate for it, for the unleavened Dutch rural districts would become centres to collect and focus and stereotype the old unfaltering dislike. A hard-and-fast division between town and country is always to be feared; but when the barrier is between white men, and is built up of race, wealth, and civilisation, it can only be a dire calamity. We cannot rear up for our children a race of helots, and by our very exclusiveness solidify for all time an irreconcilable race division. If we preserve such an enemy within our bounds, and just beyond our gates, the time may come when a few isolated townships will represent Britain in South Africa. To prevent this cleavage, urban and rural development should advance with equal steps. The two races will be joined not by any trivial sentimental devices, but by the partnership of Dutch and British farmers in the enlightened development of the land.

There is another and a profounder reason for this introduction of British blood. The day may come when the South African, splendid as has been his loyalty and many his sacrifices, may go the way of most colonists, and lose something of that close touch with the mother-country which is necessary in the interests of a federated empire. It is always the temptation of town-dwellers, with their busy life and their own engrossing interests, and the tremendous mixture of alien blood in the country may serve to hasten this result beyond the ordinary rate of colonial progress. But the country settler is a different person. He retains a longer and simpler affection for the country of his birth. An influx of such a class would consolidate South African sentiment, and, when self-government comes, protect imperial interests better than any constitutional guarantee. This is the class which has the true stake in the country, deriving its life from the nurture of the earth, striving with winds and weather, and slowly absorbing into the fibre of its being those influences which make for race and patriotism.

South African agriculture, as the shrewdest observers have long foreseen, could never be improved until there arose a political reason for its improvement. The reason for the experiment has arrived, and its basis is in existence. In the inheritance of Crown lands which remains from the mismanaged estate of the late Government, and in the long lists of ex-irregulars and others who sought land, there was the raw material of settlement. It is no case for flamboyant prophecies. The certain difficulties are as great as the probable advantages. But to shrink from those difficulties is to have towns where British ideas of government, can be realised and outside vast rural districts, suspicious, unfriendly, potentially dangerous; to neglect a golden opportunity of increasing the British element in South Africa; and to turn the back upon farming, which must always be the most permanent asset of any nation. The determinant fact in the case is that the alternative is so black that all risks must be faced rather than accept it. With such considerations in mind, the Government put forth a scheme of settlement, with the examination of which the remainder of this chapter is concerned. It is not my business to write the history of the Crown Colony administration, and therefore no time need be given to the many difficulties which faced the scheme, the mistakes made, and the hopeful results attained in certain cases. It is the problem itself which demands attention, and the adequacy or inadequacy of the policy which has been framed to meet it. Land settlement is from its very nature a slow business, with tardy fruits: twenty years hence we may be in a position to judge by results. But in the meantime it is possible, when the data are known, to ascertain whether a policy is on a priori grounds adapted to meet them.

II

The Crown lands of the Transvaal, as I have said, amount to upwards of 29 million acres, the Crown lands of the Orange River Colony to under 1½ million. So far as the latter colony is concerned, land settlement is rather in the nature of estate management. The lands are too small for any serious political purpose, nor would the most extended settlement make much impression upon the solid Dutch rural community. But in the Transvaal the Crown in several districts is by far the largest landowner, and in others it holds the key of the position. Take a Transvaal map coloured according to ownership, and red is easily the master colour. A solid block of it occupies the north-east corner; large islands of it appear in the western and eastern borders; and the centre is plentifully dotted. Save in the little known north-east those lands are generally pasture, and in too many cases dry and arid bush-veld. In the Standerton district, and in parts of Rustenburg, Potchefstroom, and Bloemhof, there are tracts of good irrigated or irrigable lands; while in Barberton, Lydenburg, Zoutpansberg, and Marico there are considerable districts well watered and well suited for tropical and sub-tropical products. Taken as a whole, however, only a small portion of the Crown holding is suitable for early settlement – say 2½ million acres within the next three years. But there is a wide hinterland for development, and in settlement, as in empire, a hinterland is a moral necessity. There must be an open country to which the sons of farmers, in whom the love of the life is born, can trek as pioneers, otherwise there is a futile division into smaller holdings, or a more futile exodus to the towns. Besides, there should be room for the townsman – the miner, the artisan, the trader – to feel that there is somewhere an open country where he can invest his savings if he has a mind for a simpler life. As railways spread out into new districts, land will become agricultural which is now pasture; and, as the pastoral industry develops and herds are formed and diseases are mastered, the ranchman will occupy large tracts of what is now the unused hunting-veld.

The Government scheme aims at making a beginning with this settlement – a beginning only, for no government has ever been able to reconstruct alone, and the bulk of the work must be done by private enterprise. If 2000 farmers from England and the colonies can be settled in the rural parts before the day of stress arrives, then the work has been fairly started. A nucleus will have been formed to which the years will add, an element which will both leaven the slow and suspicious rustic society and provide a make-weight against the parochialism of the great towns. A country party is wanted which can look beyond the dorp and the mine-head, and view South African interests broadly and soberly. Such a party must be common to both town and country, but it cannot be built up wholly from either. It must, in the first instance, be a British party; but if this British party is to become a South African party, it must stand for interests common to both races and to all classes. The formation of this leavening element cannot be left to time and chance, but must be aided by conscious effort. The land is largely unproved, and full of dangers to crops and stock. The new-comer must therefore be treated gently, and helped over the many stiles which confront him. He will usually be a man of small means, and his limited capital must be put to the best use, and eked out with judicious Government advances. He should have few payments to make during his early years, when payments will necessarily come out of capital. Above all, the acquirement of the full freehold in his land on reasonable terms, and within a reasonable time, should be kept constantly before him as an encouragement to thrift and industry, for the sense of freehold, as the voortrekkers used to say, “turns sand into gold.” Much of the Crown lands will never be suitable for any but the largest stockholders. These it is easy to deal with as a mere matter of estate-management; but the political purport of the scheme is concerned with intensive settlement, with the small holder and the mixed farmer of moderate means, who can provide a solid colony of mutually supporting and progressive Englishmen.

The Transvaal “Settlers’ Ordinance” of 1902 is based upon the mass of legislation which embodies the settlement schemes of the Australasian colonies. The usual method in such experiments has been to begin in desperate fear of the settler, tying him up with cast-iron rules, and ruining him in a very few years. Then the pendulum swings back, and settlement is made easy and profitable, the old safeguards are abolished, and the land becomes full of rich squatters and companies, who fatten on State munificence through the numerous dummy settlers in their pay. Finally, after long years a compromise is effected, and that shy creature, the bonâ-fide settler, is sought for far and near. By this time it is probable that the thing has got a bad name, and men whose fathers and grandfathers lost money under former schemes, are chary of trusting themselves again to the tender mercies of a land-owning State. This, or something like it, has been the experience of the Australasian colonies. Either land was given out indiscriminately and a valuable State asset cheaply parted with, or the conditions of tenure were such as to ruin the small holder and put everything in the hands of a few rich syndicates. The land laws of Australia and New Zealand form, therefore, a most valuable precedent. We have their experiments before our eyes, and can learn from their often disastrous experience.

Settlement in New South Wales, to take one instance, was begun partly as a Treasury expedient and partly as an election cry. Under the Act of 1867 a settler was allowed to peg off, as on a mining area, a claim not exceeding 320 acres, without any attempt at a previous valuation and survey. The result was a wild rush, where nobody benefited except the blackmailer, who seized the strategic points of the country, such as water-holes, and had to be bought out at a fancy price. It does not surprise one to learn that of settlers under this scheme not one in twenty remains to-day. By subsequent Acts the maximum acreage was increased; but in any case it was an arbitrary figure, and it was not till 1895 that it was left within the widest limits to the discretion of the Minister of Lands. Areas proved too small, since no provision could be made for the increase of stock and the necessary fall in prices which attended settlement. In valuation the extraordinary plan was adopted of giving a uniform capital value of £1 per acre to all land. The country being unproved, values were absolutely unknown, nor was any provision made for revaluation. The result was that the settler struggled along till he was ruined and his holding forfeited, when the holding lapsed to the State, which, being unable to find a new tenant, was compelled to let it remain vacant, having accomplished nothing but the needless ruin of the first man. The “Settlers’ Ordinance” has endeavoured to avoid laying down any rules which experience has not tried and tested. The determination of the size of any holding is left to the land officials, without defining any area limits. A holding which proves too small may be increased on appeal, and the boundaries are at all times made capable of adjustment. Holdings are first surveyed and valued, then gazetted for application, and finally publicly allotted, after full inquiry into the case of each applicant, by a Central Board. The division and valuation of farms, in the absence of reliable data, is a work of great nicety and difficulty. The country contains within its limits many districts which differ widely in soil, vegetation, and climate. It is therefore impossible, in deciding on the size of holdings, to follow any arbitrary rule; and to restrict survey to a maximum and minimum acreage would be fatal. The only method is to ascertain from local evidence the carrying and producing capacity of similar land, and so frame the boundaries of a farm as to provide on such figures a reasonably good living for the class of settler for whom it is intended. The danger of putting too high a price on land is not less great. If the current market price is taken it will in most instances be overvalued, and in any case it is a method without any justification in reason. The best solution is probably the plan at present in use. Schedules have been prepared for the different types of holding, in which the profits are calculated, using as a guide the present price of stock and imported produce at the coast to ensure against the inevitable fall in prices. Taking such estimated profits as a basis, the valuation is so fixed as to give the settler, after all living expenses, annual payments to Government, probable loss of stock, and depreciation of plant have been written off, a clear profit of 12 per cent on his original capital. From this figure some further deductions may fall to be made for such disadvantages as unhealthiness of climate and excessive distance from the conveniences of civilised life. In the absence of more scientific data this seems to form as fair a basis in valuation as any man can expect.

But if early Australasian legislation erred in rigour, it also erred in laxity. The settler was often the nominee of a syndicate or a large run-holder, and before the 1895 Act a class of professional selectors existed. This system of latifundia brought its own punishment. The run-holder ruined the small selector. To pay the instalments on his many selections he had recourse to the banks, which speedily ruined him and took over his holdings. The banks in their turn ruined themselves, chiefly through being obliged to pay instalments on land valued at £1 per acre, of which the actual value for stock was less than 5s. Again, the settler was compelled to improve the land at the rate of so many shillings per acre within a given time. This led to cheap fictitious improvements by which the letter of the law was satisfied and the spirit evaded. The “Settlers’ Ordinance” has certain stringent provisions to prevent such frustration of the true aims of settlement. Subletting or transfer of any sort, except with Government consent, is strictly forbidden till the tenant has acquired the freehold. Residence for at least eight months in the year, unless a special dispensation is granted, is required during the same period. The settler is compelled to build a satisfactory house and to fence his holding within a given time. He is compelled to occupy it solely for his own benefit, to cultivate according to the rules of good husbandry (whatever that may mean), and the decision of the local Land Commissioner is the test by which he is judged. He is encouraged to improve by the potent fact that the Government will advance pound for pound against his improvements. But there are certain elastic provisions to temper the rigour of such restrictions. The Commissioner of Lands is given a very wide dispensing power with regard to most conditions. Partnerships are allowed; settlers may reside together in a village community; and the residence conditions may be temporarily fulfilled by a wife or child, to allow a settler in hard times to make money by his labour elsewhere. Special relief is provided during periods of disease or drought by the cessation or diminution of the annual payments, and by advances in excess of the ordinary limits.

The Ordinance has been framed on experimental lines, leaving much to the discretion of local officials (subject to an appeal to the Central Board and thence to the High Court), and hesitating to dogmatise on details which are still unproved. But in spite of much which is empirical, one or two root principles are maintained. One is that a fair chance must be given to all to acquire the freehold, without which magic possibility the best men will not come forward. Another, and perhaps the most important of all, is that the payments to Government shall be so arranged as to be scarcely felt during the early years when they are paid out of capital, and to rise to any considerable sum only when the holding is producing a revenue. The two chief forms of tenure are leasehold and purchase by instalments over a period of thirty years. The common form of lease is for five years, with a possible extension for another two, and the rental may be at any rate (not exceeding 5 per cent) which the Commissioner of Lands thinks suitable. This method will enable back-country to be taken up, to start with, at a nominal rent; and it will also allow a settler on an unimproved stock-farm to devote the bulk of his capital to the necessary stocking and improvements. At the end of the lease, or without any preliminary lease, the settler can begin to purchase his holding on the instalments system. By a payment of £5, 15s. per cent per annum on the gazetted valuation, principal and interest (which is calculated at 4 per cent) will be wiped off in thirty years. But a settler is permitted any time after ten years from the date of his first occupation to pay up the balance and acquire the full freehold. In the case of preliminary leaseholders who take up a purchase licence, the licence, so far as the ten years’ period is concerned, is made retrospective so as to date from the first day of the lease.

Such is a rough outline of the Government proposals. They aim only at making a beginning, and it is to the large private owner and the land company that we must look for the completion of the work. South African agriculture can never be a Golconda like the Canadian wheat-lands of the West. But it is of inestimable value to the country in providing a background to the immense temporary mining development – a permanent asset, which will remain to South Africa’s credit when the gold-mines of the Rand are curiosities of history. In itself it is a sound investment, offering no glittering fortunes but a steady and reasonable livelihood. No people can afford to develop solely on industrial lines and remain a nation in the full sense of the word, for in every commonwealth there is need of the rural forces of persistence to counteract the urban forces of change. All settlement is necessarily a leap in the dark, but, so far as a proposal can be judged before it is put into practice, the present scheme offers good chances of success. There seems little doubt that it will receive full justice. The war spread the knowledge of the country to every cranny of the Empire. English and Scottish farmers’ sons, Australian bushmen, Indian planters, farmers from New Zealand and Ontario, having fought for three years on the veld, have fallen in love with it and are willing to make it their home. No more splendid chances for settlement have ever offered; for when the wastrels have been eliminated there remain many thousands of good men, from whom a sturdy country stock could be created. There can be no indiscriminate gifts of land as in some colonies. The land is too valuable, the political purpose too delicate and urgent, the need of nice discrimination in selection and careful fostering thereafter too imperative, to allow farms to be shaken up in a lucky-bag and distributed to the first comers. The best men must be attracted, and assisted with advice and loans to the measure of success which is possible. It is the soundest form of political speculation, if done with sober and clear-sighted purpose. The young men from home and the colonies, to whom South Africa is a memory that can never die, turn naturally towards it in search of a freer life and a larger prospect. On the model farms which are being established in each district the proverbial “younger sons of younger sons” will be given a chance of learning the requirements of the land, and so starting work on their own account with intelligence and economy. Some day – and may we all live to see it! – there will be little white homesteads among trees, and country villages and moorland farms; cattle and sheep on a thousand hills where now only the wild birds cry; wayside inns where the thirsty traveller can find refreshment; and country shows where John Smith and Johannes Smuts will compete amicably for the King’s premiums. And if any one thinks this an unfounded hope, let him turn to some such book as Ogilby’s ‘Itinerarium Angliæ,’ where he will find that in the closing years of the seventeenth century the arable and pastoral land in England scarcely amounted to half the area of the kingdom, and the most fruitful orchards of Gloucestershire and Warwick were mere heath and swamp, and, as it seemed to an acute observer, doomed to remain so.

Settlement, indeed, is but one, though the most important, of the land problems. An enlightened agricultural department, working in conjunction with local societies, can do much to unite the two races by conferring benefits which are common to both. The introduction of pedigree stock to grade up the existing herds is a necessity which any Boer farmer will admit. So, too, are stringent regulations for the prevention of disease, experiments in new crops, field trials of new machinery, and a provision for some form of agricultural training. Central creameries and tobacco-factories would work wonders in increasing the prosperity of certain districts. Something of that tireless vigilance and alert intelligence which has made the Agricultural Bureau of the United States famous, a spirit which brings into agriculture the procedure and the exact calculation of a great business house, is necessary to meet the not insuperable difficulties which now deter the timid, and to give farming a chance of development commensurate with its political importance. It is only another case in which a South African question stands on a razor-edge, a narrow line separating ample success from a melancholy failure.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SUBJECT RACES

No question is more fraught with difficulties for the home philosopher than this, but there is none on which practical men have made up their mind with such bitter completeness. The root of the trouble is that England and South Africa talk, and will continue to talk, in different languages on the matter. The Englishman, using the speech of conventional politics, seems to the colonist to talk academic nonsense; while the South African, speaking the rough and ready words of the practical man, appears as the champion of brutality and coercion. The difficulties are so real that one cannot but regret that they are complicated by verbal misunderstandings. There is no real divergence of views on the native question: the distinction is rather between a seriously held opinion and a slipshod prejudice. “Exeter Hall” is less the name of a party than of an attitude, as common among the robust colonists as ever it was among the mild pietists of Clapham. It consists in a disinclination to look simply on facts, to reason soberly, and to speak accurately, – a tendency to lap a question in turgid emotion. The man who consigns all native races to perdition in round terms, and declares that the only solution of the difficulty is to clear out the Kaffir, is as truly a votary of Exeter Hall as the gentle old lady to whom the aborigine is a model of primeval innocence, whose only joy is the singing of missionary hymns.

Out of the confusion of interests and issues two main problems emerge which may form useful guides in our inquiry. One is economic. What part are the native races to play in the labour-supply and the production of South Africa? what is to be their tenure of land? what is to be their economic destiny in face of the competition of modern life and the industrial development of the country? The second is the moral question, of which the political is one aspect. A coloured race living side by side with a white people furnishes one of the gravest of moral cruces. The existence of a subject race on whatever terms is apt to lead to the deterioration in moral and mental vigour of its masters. Perpetual tutelage tends to this result; full social and civic rights, on the other hand, lead to political anomalies and, too often, to the lowest forms of political chicanery. A doctrinaire idealism is fraught with dire social evils; but an obstinate maintenance of the “practical man’s” status quo is apt to bring about that very degeneration which justifies the doctrinaire. How to reconcile freedom of development for the native by means of spontaneous labour, education, and social rights with the degree of compulsion necessary to bring them into line with social and industrial needs, or, to put it shortly, how to keep the white man from deterioration without spoiling the Kaffir, – this is the kernel of the most insistent of South African problems.

The native races south of the Zambesi present a curious problem to the student of primitive societies. All, or nearly all, of kindred race, they are not autochthonous, and the date of their arrival in the country can in most cases be fixed within the last five centuries. Five centuries do not give a long title to a country, as savage titles go, but even this period must be cut down in most cases, since the wars of the great Zulu kings scattered the other races about as from a pepper-box, with the result that few tribes save the Zulus, some of the Cape Colony Kaffirs, the Swazis, and small peoples like the Barolongs, can claim an occupation title of more than a hundred years. This state of affairs, so rare in our dealings with savage peoples, has, politically, both merits and defects. The absence of the autochthonous hold of the soil and of long-settled immovable traditions of tribal life makes the native more malleable under the forces of civilisation. It is easier to break up the tribes and to acclimatise the Kaffir to new localities and new conditions. But this lack of a strong, settled, racial life makes it fatally easy for him to fall a victim to the vices of civilisation, and to come upon our hands as a derelict creature without faith or stamina, having lost his old taboos, and being as yet unable to understand the laws of the white man. This process of disintegration has been going on for a century, and the result is a clearly marked division. We have the tribal natives, who are still more or less strictly under the rule of a chief, and subject to tribal laws sanctioned and enforced by the Governments. The native population of the Transkeian territories in Cape Colony, such as the Pondos, the Amaxosas, and the Tembus; Bechuanaland, with the people of Khama, Bathoen, Sebele, and Linchwe; Basutoland; Zululand; the northern and eastern parts of the Transvaal under such chiefs as Magata, ’Mpefu, and Siwasa; Swaziland; and the Matabele and Mashona tribes of the vast districts of Northern and Southern Rhodesia are the main instances of this first class. The aim of the different Governments has always been to keep the tribal organisation intact, and, after eliminating certain tribal laws and customs which are inconsistent with the ideas of white men, to give their sanction to the remainder. Basutoland is a Crown colony; the Transkeian territories are a native reserve; Bechuanaland is a native protectorate; in Rhodesia a number of native chiefs control large tracts of land under the Chartered Company’s administration. Elsewhere the tribes live in Government reserves, or in certain cases in locations situated on private land. Between Pretoria and the Limpopo there are dozens of small chieftains and chieftainesses, with tribes varying in numbers from a hundred to several thousands. The second class, the detribalised natives, are to be found scattered over the whole country, notably in the western province of Cape Colony, and in the vicinity of all South African towns. They live as a rule in locations under municipal or Government supervision. In many cases such locations are far larger than those of a small chief; but their distinguishing feature is that they are governed solely by the law of the country or by municipal regulations framed for the purpose, and owe no allegiance to any chief or tribal system.

It is obvious that for purposes of policy this distinction cannot maintain its importance. The rule of the chief is being rapidly undermined by natural causes, and no taking thought can bolster it up for ever. Education, too, and the closer settlement of the country by white men, are rapidly breaking down tribal customs and beliefs, which, as a rule, have more vitality than the isolated sentiment of allegiance. For us the real distinction is between the natives who can be kept in large reserves or locations, whether tribal or otherwise, and the floating native population, which is every day growing in numbers. Sooner or later we must face the problem of the overcrowding of all reserves, and the consequent efflux of homeless and masterless men. The needs of progress, too, are daily tending to change the tribal native into the isolated native attached to some industry or other. Politically the question is, How far and on what lines the large reserves and locations can be best maintained, and what provision can be made for incorporating the overflow, which exists now and will soon exist in far greater numbers, on sane and rational lines in the body politic?

Such being the main requirements of the problem, it remains to consider the forms in which they present themselves to the ordinary man. For the working aspect of a question is generally very different from the form it takes in an academic analysis. The translation into the terms of everyday life is conditioned by many accidental causes, so that to one section of the community the labour problem is the sole one, to another the educational, to a third the social. It is important to realise that all are part of one question, and that no single one can be truly solved unless the whole is dealt with. This incompleteness of view, more than any other cause, has complicated the native question, and produced spurious antagonisms, and policies which are apparently rival, but in reality are complementary.

The first is the grave difficulty which must always attend the existence of a subject race. Slavery is the extreme form of the situation, and in it we see the evils and dangers on a colossal scale. A subject population, to whom legal rights are denied, tends in the long-run to degrade the value of human life, and to depreciate the moral currency, – a result so deadly for true progress that the consensus of civilised races has utterly condemned it. The denial of social and political rights is almost equally dangerous, since, apart from the risks of perpetual tutelage in a progressive community, there follows necessarily a depreciation of those political truths upon which all free societies are based. Many honest men have clearly perceived this; but after the fashion of headstrong honesty, they have confused the issues by an inaccurate use of words. Legal rights must be granted, and since the law is the child of the fundamental principles of human justice, legal equality should follow. Social and political rights also must be given; but why social and political equality? The most embittered employer of native labour does not deny that the black man should share certain social privileges, and be made to feel his place in the political organism, but he rightly denies that rights mean equality of rights; while his doctrinaire opponent, arguing from exactly the same premises, claims a foolish equality on a misunderstanding of words. The essence of social and political equality must be a standard of education and moral and intellectual equipment, which can be roughly attributed to all members of the community concerned. But in this case there can be no such common standard. Between the most ignorant white man and the black man there is fixed for the present an impassable gulf, not of colour but of mind. The native is often quick of understanding, industrious, curiously logical, but he lives and moves in a mental world incredibly distant from ours. The medium of his thought, so to speak, is so unique that the results are out of all relation to ourselves. Mentally he is as crude and naïve as a child, with a child’s curiosity and ingenuity, and a child’s practical inconsequence. Morally he has none of the traditions of self-discipline and order, which are implicit, though often in a degraded form, in white people. In a word, he cannot be depended upon as an individual save under fairly vigilant restraint; and in the mass he forms an unknown quantity, compared with which a Paris mob is a Quaker meeting. With all his merits, this instability of character and intellectual childishness make him politically far more impossible than even the lowest class of Europeans. High property or educational qualifications for the franchise, or any other of the expedients of Europe, are logically out of place, though they were raised to the possession of a fortune and a university degree; for the mind is still there, unaltered, though it may be superficially ornamented. Give the native the full franchise, argues one class of observer, and he will in time show himself worthy of it, for in itself it is an education. On a strictly logical view it would be as reasonable to put a child on a steam-engine as driver, trusting that the responsibility of his position would be in itself an education and would teach him the necessary art.

Social and political equality will seem to most men familiar with the subject a chimera, but social and political rights the native must have, and in most cases has already obtained. But unless such rights are carefully adjusted the absolute cleavage remains. We have two races, physically different, socially incapable of amalgamation: if we make the gulf final, there is no possibility of a united state; if we bridge it carelessly, the possibility is still more distant. We may scruple to grant rights, such as the political franchise, which are based in the last resort on a common moral and intellectual standard; but we can grant rights which are substantive and educative and capable of judicious extension. The Glen Grey Act, as we shall see, made a valuable experiment in securing to the native the social status which attends individual tenure of land. Some form of representation might be devised, by which a chief might have a voice on a district council, or a representative elected by an industrial location assist in local government. Such measures, joined with a rational system of education, will leave the door open for the extension of rights till such time as the native has finally shown whether he is worthy of equality or condemned by nature to rank for ever as a subject race. There are men, able men with the courage of their opinions, who see no hope in the matter, and who would segregate the natives in a separate territory under British protection. The chief objection to this policy is that it is impossible. The native is in our midst, and we must face the facts. We have a chance to solve a burning question which no other nation has had, since, as in the United States, the matter has either been complicated by initial slavery, or, as also in the States, a thoughtless plunge has been made into European doctrines of liberty, equality, and fraternity. If we patiently and skilfully bring to bear upon the black man the solvent and formative influences of civilisation, one of two things must happen. Either the native will prove himself worthy of an equal share in the body politic; or, the experiment having been honestly tried, he will sink back to his old place and gradually go the way of the Red Indian and the Hottentot. For it is inevitable that civilisation, if wisely applied, must either raise him or choke him, – raise him to the rank of equal citizenship, or, by its hostility to his ineradicable qualities, prove a burden too heavy to support.

The second is the ever-recurring problem of labour. In an earlier chapter the economic aspect of the question has been discussed; for the present we have to face that aspect which is connected with a native policy. The Kaffir is fundamentally an agriculturist, and when his lands are well situated he reaps enough for his simple existence with a minimum of labour. If he is rich enough to have several wives, they do the necessary picking and hoeing, and their lord and master sits in the shade of his hut and eats the bread of idleness. This was well enough in the old hunting and fighting days, when the male folk lived a strenuous life in the pursuit of game and the slaughter of their neighbours. But with civilisation close to their gates, the old system means a degraded somnolent life for the man, and the continuance of a real, though not necessarily unpleasant, form of slavery for the woman. And this in a country which is crying aloud for labour and development! To be sure, the foregoing is not a complete picture of all Kaffir life, but it is true of the larger reserves and the wealthier kraals. To most men it is an offence that the native, who is saved by British power from insecurity of life and limb, should be allowed to remain, by the happy accident of nature, an idler dependent only on the kindness of mother earth, multiplying his kind at an alarming rate, and untouched by the industrial struggle where his sinews are so sorely needed. The Kaffir owes his existence to the white man; in return he should be compelled to labour for hire and take his proper place in a world which has no room for his vegetating habits. He holds his land by our favour, he is protected from extinction by our arms, he enjoys the benefits of our laws; and he must pay for it all, not only in taxes but by a particular tax, a certain quantity of labour. This mode of argument sounds so serenely reasonable that one is apt to miss the very dangerous political doctrine which underlies it. Stated shortly, it runs thus. Compulsory labour without payment is to be reprobated like all forms of corvée, but if we pay what we regard as a fair price and make the compulsion indirect, then we get rid of such an objection. This doctrine involves two principles which seem to me to be subversive of all social order, and in particular of that civilisation which they profess to support. The Kaffir would be placed outside the play of economic forces. His wages would be arbitrarily established on an artificial basis, unalterable save at the will of his white masters. In the second place, compulsion by high taxation is not indirect compulsion, but one of the most direct forms of coercion known to history. To constrain a man indirectly is to use unseen forces and half-understood conditions which, being unrealised, do not impair his consciousness of liberty; but this is not the method which is proposed. A white man, it is argued, suffers want if he does not work. Well and good, – so does the Kaffir; but the work which he does, unless he is rich enough to have it vicariously performed, is different in kind from the work which others want him to do, and hence the trouble arises. To force a man, black or white, to enter on labour for which he is disinclined, is to rank him with beasts of burden, and prevent him, as an industrial creature, from ever attaining the conscious freedom which labour bestows. The old truth, so often misapplied, that a man who does not work shall not eat, is a statement of economic conditions to which those who quote it in this connection would seek to do violence.

But such truisms do not exhaust the question. It is not the Kaffir who chiefly matters, for in his present stage of development he might be as well off one way as another; it is the white man’s interests which must decide. If the whole of Kaffirdom were sunk in a state of feminine slavery and male indolence, violence might be done to political axioms with some show of reason; but the Kaffir is emerging from his savagery and has shown in more ways than one a capacity for industrial development. But, taking the Kaffir on the lowest plane, what is to be the effect on the white population of South Africa if forced labour is to stereotype for ever a lower race, to which the free selection of labour, the first requisite of progress, is denied? “The safety of the commonwealth,” wrote John Mackenzie, “absolutely demands that no hatches be battened down over the heads of any part of the community.” At the back of all the many excellent cases which have been made out for compulsory labour by high taxation, there lie the immediate needs of the great gold industry – needs which it is now clear can never be met in South Africa alone by any native legislation. An instant industrial demand is apt to blind many good men for the moment to those wider truths, which on other occasions they are ready enough to assent to. The case has been further prejudiced for most people by the bad arguments used on the native side, and the intolerable cant with which obvious truths have been sicklied over. We need not concern ourselves with the so-called degradation of Kaffir manhood implied in compulsory labour, for such self-conscious manhood does not exist; but we are very deeply concerned with the degradation of white manhood, which will inevitably follow any of the facile solutions which are cried in the market-place. If by violent methods economic laws are checked in their play, a subject race in a low state of civilisation is checked on the only side on which development can be reasonably looked for. The harder and lower forms of toil will fall into Kaffir hands for good; the white population will become an aristocracy based on a kind of slave labour; and with the abolition of an honest hierarchy of work, degeneration will set in with terrible swiftness. It is a pleasing dream this, of a community of cultivated white men above the needs of squalid or menial toil, but on such a dream no free nation was ever built. The old tribal system is crumbling, and in a hundred years or less we shall see the Kaffirs abroad in the land, closely knit to all industries and touching social and political life at countless points. If they are a portion, however small, of the civic organism, there is hope for the future; but if they are a thing apart, denied the commonest of all rights, and remaining in their present crude and stagnant condition, they will be a menace, political and moral, which no one can contemplate with equanimity. There are, indeed, only two entirely logical policies towards the native. Either remove him, bag and baggage, to some Central African reserve and leave him to fight his wars and live as he lived before the days of Tchaka, or bring him into close and organic relation with those forces of a high civilisation which must inevitably mend or end him.

There is a third chief aspect in which the native problem presents itself to the ordinary man. The Kaffir, south of the Zambesi, already outnumbers the white man by fully five to one, and he increases with at least twice the rapidity. Most native reserves and locations are overcrowded, the Kaffir is being driven on to private land as an unauthorised squatter, and the floating population in and around the towns is daily increasing. What is to be the end of this fecundity? Living on little, subject apparently to none of the natural or prudential checks on over-population, there seems a real danger of black ultimately swamping white by mere gross quantity. In any case there will soon be a grave economic crisis, for, unless prompt measures are adopted, a large loose vagabondage will grow up all over the land. It is to be noted that this danger is the converse of the two problems we have already discussed. They referred to the stereotyping of the Kaffir races as a settled agricultural people out of line with industrial progress; this concerns the inevitable break-up of the old agricultural condition by mere excess of population and the difficulty of dealing with the overflow. This complementary character which the problems assume is one of the most hopeful features of the case. Natural forces are bringing the Kaffir to our hands. The débâcle of his old life is turning him upon the world to be formed and constrained at our pleasure. The field is clear for experiment, and it behoves us to make up our minds clearly on the forms which the experiment must take.

To recapitulate the results of the preceding pages. The central problem is how to bring the native races under the play of civilising forces, so that they may either approve themselves as capable of incorporation in the body politic, or show themselves eternally incapable, in which case history would lead us to believe that they will gradually disappear. To effect this vital experiment, no rigid economic or social barrier should be placed between them and the white inhabitants. Since the old tribal organisation is breaking up, the ground is being rapidly prepared for the trial. It is our business, therefore, to consider how best the system of tribes and reserves can be maintained, so long as there is in it the stuff of life, and what new elements can be introduced which will make its fall more safe and gradual; and, in the second place, to devise ways and means for dealing with the rapidly increasing loose native population, for replacing the former tribal traditions with some rudiments of civilised law, and for leaving an open door for such development as may be within their capacity. It will be convenient to look at ways and means under three heads. There is, first, the general question of taxation, which is common to all. There is, secondly, the problem of the larger reserves, and the maintenance, so far as is desirable, of the old rural life, with the kindred questions of land tenure, of local government, of surplus population, and of labour. And, finally, there is the problem of the class which in the last resort is destined to be most numerous, the wholly non-tribal and unattached natives, whose mode of life must be created afresh and controlled by Government. This is the most difficult problem, since such natives are peculiarly exposed to the solvents of white civilisation, and everything depends upon the method in which the solvents are used.

The native is, for the most part, under special taxes. In certain parts of Cape Colony and Natal the fiscal system is in practice the same for black and white, but for the purposes of this inquiry the native who has adopted the white man’s life may be disregarded. In Cape Colony the hut tax is 10s. per annum, whether the hut is situated on private or Crown lands, and on locations within municipalities a similar municipal tax is paid. In Natal the hut tax is 14s., in Basutoland £1, in Rhodesia 10s., and in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony 10s. under the old régime. In Natal, the Orange River Colony, the Transvaal, and Rhodesia, there was also a native pass law, under which certain sums were charged on travelling passes, varying from 6d. in the Orange River Colony to 2s. per month in the mining areas of the Transvaal. It is unnecessary to go into the numerous details of native taxation, which within narrow limits are constantly varied, but it is worth while to look at two instances which may be taken as the extreme types of such taxation, the Transvaal under the former Government and the districts of Cape Colony subject to the Glen Grey Act. In the Transvaal the natives for the most part are tribal, and the system of taxation was based on tribal considerations; but the bulk of the revenue under the Pass Law came from the large fluctuating population of natives at work on the mines. Under the old Government the ordinary native paid 10s. as hut tax, £2 as capitation fee, with sundry other charges for passes, &c., which brought the whole amount which might be levied up to fully £4. The tax was loosely collected, but on the whole the taxation per head was reasonably high. One of the first acts of the new administration was to consolidate all native taxes in one general poll tax of £2, with a further charge of £2 per wife for natives who had more than one. The pass fee was also charged upon the employer in districts where it fell to be levied. The net result, therefore, is that for a native, who is the husband of not more than one wife, the sum payable yearly is about £3, made up of the poll tax and the registration fee. A native may have to pay more than the old Government exacted, but if he pleases he can pay less. In the districts under the Glen Grey Act individual ownership of land is encouraged, and the native who has attained to such tenure is practically in the position of a white citizen – that is, he pays no hut tax or poll tax, and his contributions to revenue consist in the payment of such rates as his district council or the Transkeian General Council may levy. For the native who holds no land either on quit-rent or freehold title, there is a labour tax of 10s. per annum, which he can avoid by showing that he has been at work outside the district for a period of three months during the previous year, and from which he can gain complete exemption by showing that at some time he has worked for a total period of three years. Such a tax is not a compulsory labour tax, but should rather be regarded as a modification of the hut tax, which can be remitted as a bonus on outside labour.

The contrast between the two forms of taxation is obvious, the one being a special and peculiar type, the other a modification of the general fiscal system of the colony. It is to the latter type that all systems of native taxation must tend to approximate. There are certain obvious objections to the hut tax, of which the chief is that it leads to overcrowding and bad sanitation, and prevents young men from building huts of their own; and perhaps it would be well if, following the new Transvaal precedent, all native taxes were consolidated into one comprehensive poll tax. But, speaking generally, natives are not heavily taxed[28 - It is proposed to assimilate native taxation in Southern Rhodesia to the system now in vogue in the Transvaal, and impose a poll tax of £2, with a tax of 10s. for each extra wife. In the Orange River Colony it is proposed to raise the hut tax to £1.] having regard to their wage-earning capacity, though hitherto the Customs have been unduly hard upon their simple commodities. In the Transvaal, for example, there is little doubt that the native population could bear for revenue purposes in most years a poll tax of £3 per head. This might be reduced in case of natives in industrial employment, in consideration of the fact that such natives contribute otherwise to revenue through the Pass Law. It is one of the ironies of this South African problem that increased and reasonable taxation for revenue purposes will continue to be identified in many minds with compulsory labour through high taxation. The two things are as wide apart as the poles. The native, in return for protection and good government, is required to pay a certain sum per annum calculated solely on fiscal needs and his earning capacity. That is the only basis of native taxation; but when the sum has been fixed, it may be expedient as a matter of policy to reduce the tax in the case of natives working under an employer, partly because such natives contribute to the Exchequer in another way, and partly as a bonus to encourage outside labour. But the general form of taxation might well be altered, slowly and cautiously, as the time ripened. The hut tax might be gradually transmuted into a form of rent which, as in the Glen Grey districts, could be lowered as a bonus on outside labour, and the extension of local government might provide for the rating of locations and reserves on some system common to all districts. Taxation may have an educative force, and to ask from the native a contribution for something of which the purpose is apparent and the justification obvious, is to bestow on him a kind of freedom. It is the first step to taxation with representation to provide that taxation should be accompanied by understanding.

The second question is that of existing reserves and the possibility and method of their maintenance. In the case of many the problem is still simple. Basutoland, the chief tribes of the Bechuanaland Protectorate and Southern Rhodesia, Swaziland, Zululand, the races of the north and north-eastern Transvaal, and a considerable part of the Transkeian territories, will find for many years protected tribal government suitable to their needs. Tribal customs and laws, in so far as they are not contra bonos mores, are recognised by the protecting Governments, and given effect to by any white courts which may have jurisdiction in the district. The old modes of land tenure, the succession to the chieftainship, the tribal religion, if any exists, should be given the sanction of the sovereign Power till such time as they crumble from their own baselessness. The disintegrating forces are many and potent. Taxation will compel the acquisition of wealth other than in kind, and will therefore strengthen existing trade, and, if gradually modified in character till it approach a rating system, will replace the tribe by the district as a local unit. The growth of population will compel a certain overflow, which must either be accommodated on new land under special conditions, or must go to swell the general industrial community. Education, the greatest of all disintegrators, is loosening slowly the old ties, and is increasing the wants of the native by enlarging his mental horizon. Outside labour, whether undertaken from love of novelty or from sheer economic pressure, leaves its indelible mark on the labourer. The Kaffir who has worked for two years in Kimberley or Johannesburg may seem to have returned completely to his old stagnant life, but there is a new element at work in him and his kindred, a new curiosity, a weakening of his regard for his traditional system. Agriculture itself, which has hitherto been the mainstay of his conservatism, is rapidly becoming a force of revolution. Formerly no self-respecting native would engage in cultivation, leaving such tasks to his women; but a native who would not touch pick or hoe is ready enough to work a plough, if he is so fortunate as to possess one. The growth of wealth and a spirit of enterprise among the tribes leads to improved tillage, and once the native is content to labour himself in the fields, his old scheme of society is already crumbling.

But, in addition to natural solvents, there is one which we might well apply in our own interest against the time when the tribal system shall have finally disappeared. Any form of political franchise, however safeguarded, is in my opinion illogical and dangerous. It is inequitable to create barriers which are themselves artificial, but it is both inequitable and impolitic to disregard natural barriers when the basis of our politics is a presumed natural equality. But it may be possible to admit the Kaffir to a share in self-government without giving any adherence to the doctrine involved in a grant of a national franchise. Local government is still in its infancy all over South Africa, but the common type is some form of urban or district council. The questions which such councils discuss do not involve high considerations of statescraft, but simple practical matters, such as roads and bridges, sanitary restrictions, precautions against stock diseases, and market rules. Supposing that in any district there exists a tribe or a location sufficiently progressive and orderly, I see no real difficulty in bringing the chief or induna sooner or later directly or indirectly into the local council. It is a matter on which it is idle to dogmatise, being one of the many questions on which South Africa must say the last word, and being further dependent on the status of the natives in each district; but on a nominated or elective council a native, or a white member with natives in his constituency, might do valuable work in assisting with matters in which natives were largely concerned. A native who cannot reasonably be asked to decide on questions such as fiscal reform or military organisation, may be very well fitted to advise, as a large stock-holder, on precautionary measures against rinderpest. If such a step is ever taken – and the present exclusive attitude of South Africa is rather a sign of the growing solidarity of the community than an index of a permanent conviction – an advance of enormous import will have been made in that branch of native education in which we are almost powerless to move directly, namely, his training as a responsible citizen.

As the tribal system breaks down from whatever cause, the tribesmen must do one of three things – either settle on the land on new conditions, or live permanently in the service of employers, or swell the loose population of town and country. The second course does not concern us, being a matter for the private law of master and servant. But in each of the other courses the State is profoundly interested. For the sake of the future it is necessary to have the existing reserves thoroughly examined, for, since the fluctuations of native populations are very great, many are too small for their present occupants and a few are too spacious. Majajie’s location in Zoutpansberg, and one or two of the reserves on the western border of the Transvaal, may be quoted as instances of tribes which have shrunk from the original number on which the grant of land was based. In such cases the land might reasonably be curtailed, since it is still Crown land held in trust for the natives’ use, and not private land purchased by the chiefs themselves. But it is more usual to find locations far too narrow, and the result in many parts is that a certain number of natives who have been compelled to leave their old reserves are farming private lands on precarious and burdensome terms, or are squatting on Crown lands with no legal tenure at all. A law of the late Transvaal Government (No. 21 of 1895) made it illegal to have more than five native households on one private farm; but this law, like many others which conflicted with the interests of the governing class, was quietly allowed to become a dead letter. There are men to-day who have a hundred and more native families on a farm, paying often exorbitant rents either in money or in forced labour, and liable to be turned adrift at a moment’s notice. The old Boer system was to allow natives to squat on land in return for six months’ labour; but this mode of payment is never satisfactory with a Kaffir, who soon forgets the tenure on which he holds his land, regards it as his own, and makes every attempt to evade his tenant’s service. The whole position is unsatisfactory, the master being cumbered with unwilling and often worthless labour, the tenant subject to a capricious rent and a permanent possibility of eviction. In the interests of both white and black it is desirable to end this anomaly. Some form of the Squatters’ Law might be re-enacted and enforced, a farmer being allowed a reasonable number of native families, who give work for wages and pay a fair rent for their land. The balance might well be accommodated as tenants on such portions of Crown land as are suitable for Kaffirs and incapable of successful white settlement. Such lands exist in the parts where the native population is densest, as in the northern and eastern districts of the Transvaal. The situation affords an opportunity for the Government policy towards outside labour. If the rent per holding were fixed at some figure like £10 (which is less than many natives pay to private owners) it might be reduced to £5, if a certain proportion of the males of a household went out to labour for a part of the year in the towns or in some rural employment other than farming. Such a policy would give immediate relief to the really serious congestion in many districts, would establish a better system of native tenure, and would pave the way for a closer connection between the industrial native and the country kraal.

The wholly detribalised native is a more important problem, because he represents the type of what the Kaffir will in some remote future become – a man who has forgotten his race traditions, and has become an unpopular attaché of the white community. Towards other natives our policy must be only to maintain an amended status quo, but for him we must make an effort at construction. It is no business of mine to frame policies, but only to sketch, roughly and imperfectly, the conditions of the problem which the constructive statesman (and South Africa will long have need of constructive statesmen) must face. Individual tenure of land – and by this is not necessarily meant freehold, even under the Glen Grey restrictions as to alienation, for a long lease may be more politic and equally attractive[29 - The question of native ownership of land in the new colonies is not very clear. In the Transvaal land was generally held in trust for natives by the Native Commissioners; but apparently half-castes could own land, and Asiatics under certain restrictions. In the Orange River Colony ownership by Asiatics is forbidden; but certain native tribes, such as the Barolongs in Maroka, and the Oppermans at Jacobsdaal, as well as half-castes and the people known as the Bastards, were allowed freehold titles, subject to certain restrictions on alienation.]– and the spread of education and commerce will work to the same effect in the rural districts as industrial employment in the towns. But for the present the towns furnish the gravest problem – how to make adequate provision for the increasing native population, which is neither living permanently in the households of white masters nor working in the mines under a time contract. It is desirable to have locations for natives, as it is fitting to provide bazaars for Asiatics, since the native should be concentrated both for administrative and educational purposes. Those municipal locations, which already exist in many towns, will have to be taken vigorously in hand. Something must replace the biscuit-tin shanties where the native, ignorant of sanitation, lives, under more wretched conditions, what is practically the life of a country kraal, and with the reform of their habitations a new attraction to industry will exist for the better class of Kaffir. It is a common mistake to class all natives together, a mistake which a little knowledge of South African ethnology and history would prevent. Many have highly developed instincts of cleanliness, and much race pride, and will not endure to be huddled in squalid locations with the refuse of inferior tribes. Given decent dwelling-places, education on rational lines, and after a time, perhaps, a share in municipal government, might lay the foundation of a civic life and an industrial usefulness far more lasting than can be expected from casual labourers brought from distant homes for a few months’ work, and carried back again.

South Africa has in her day possessed one man who desired to look at things as they are, a murky and distorted genius at times, but at his best inspired with something of a prophet’s insight. The fruit of Mr Rhodes’ native administration was the Glen Grey Act, which still remains the only attempt at a constructive native policy. It is hard enough to govern, but sometimes, looking to the iron necessities in the womb of time, it is wise to essay a harder task, and build. We must keep open our communications with the future, and begin by recognising the fundamental truths, which are apt to get a little dimmed by the dust of the political arena. The first is that the native is psychologically a child, and must be treated as such; that is, he is in need of a stricter discipline and a more paternal government than the white man. South Africa has already recognised this by the remarkable consensus of opinion which she has shown in the prohibition of the sale of intoxicants to coloured people. He is as incapable of complete liberty as he is undeserving of an unintelligent censure. The second is that he is with us, a permanent factor which must be reckoned with, in spite of the advocates of a crude Bismarckian policy; and because his fortunes are irrevocably linked to ours, it is only provident to take care that the partnership does not tend to our moral and political disadvantage. For there is always in the distance a grim alternative of over-population resulting in pauperism and anarchy, or a hard despotism producing the moral effects which the conscience of the world has long ago in slave systems diagnosed and condemned. There are three forces already at work which, if judiciously fostered, will achieve the experiment which South Africa is bound to make, and either raise the Kaffir to some form of decent citizenship, or prove to all time that he is incapable of true progress. Since we are destroying the old life, with its moral and social codes and its checks upon economic disaster, we are bound to provide an honest substitute. The forces referred to are those of a modified self-government, of labour, and of an enlightened education. The first is an experiment which must be undertaken very carefully, unless our case is to be prejudiced from the outset. I have given reasons for the view that a political franchise for the native is logically unjustifiable; but on district councils and within municipal areas the native, wherever he is living under conditions of tolerable decency and comfort, might well play a part in his own control. It may be doomed to failure or it may be the beginning of political education, but it is an experiment we can scarcely fail to make. In labour, short of a crude compulsion, every means must be used to bring the Kaffir within the industrial circle. We shall be assisted in our task by many secret forces, but it should be our business so to frame our future native legislation as to place a bonus on labour outside the kraal. The matter is so intimately bound up with the wellbeing of the whole population that there is less fear of neglect than of undue and capricious haste.

A word remains to be said on native education. In this province there is much need of effective Government control, since in the past the energies of educationalists have tended to flow in mistaken channels or be dissipated over too wide an area. The native is apt to learn in a kind of parrot fashion, and this aptitude has misled many who have devoted their lives to his interests. But in the present state of his culture what we are used to call the “humanities” have little educational importance. At the best the result is to turn out native pastors and schoolmasters in undue numbers, unfortunate men who have no proper professional field and no footing in the society to which their education might entitle them. It is a truth which the wiser sort of missionaries all over the world are now recognising in connection with the propagation of Christianity – that the ground must be slowly prepared before the materialist savage mind can be familiarised with the truths of a spiritual religion. Otherwise the result is a glib confession of faith which ends in scandal. The case is the same with what we call “secondary education.” The teaching of natives, if it is to produce any practical good, should, to begin with, be confined to the elements and to technical instruction. The native mind is very ready to learn anything which can be taught by concrete instances, and most forms of manual dexterity, even some of the more highly skilled, come as easily to him as to the white man. When the boys are taught everywhere carpentry and ironwork and the rudiments of trade, and the girls sewing and basket-making and domestic employments, a far more potent influence will have been introduced than the Latin grammar or the primer of history. The wisest missionary I have ever met had a station which was a kind of ideal city for order and industry, with carpenters’ and blacksmiths’ shops, a model farm, basket-making, orchards, and dairies. “By these means,” he said, “I am teaching my children the elements of religion, which are honesty, cleanliness, and discipline.” “And dogma?” I asked. “Ah,” he said, “as to dogma, I think we must be content for the present with a few stories and hymns.”

CHAPTER XV.

JOHANNESBURG