THE END OF THE MATABELE REVOLT.
IT looks as if the Matabele revolt had at last come to an end. Of course it is possible that the natives, inspired by the belief that they must expect no quarter, may again collect into a coherent force, and may make yet another stand. All the signs, however, are against any serious difficulty arising in the future. Up till now the strongholds in the Matoppo hills—rocky • summits honeycombed by a wonderful series of natural caves with internal communications—have been held with extraordinary courage and persistency, and all efforts on the part of the whites to clear the hills had till this week proved unavailing. When, however, Colonel Baden- Powell reconnoitred the hills on Sunday last, he was able to report that the impis had been completely broken up, and that the scattered bands were willing to surrender ; and on Tuesday the Colonial Office received an official telegram from General Goodenough stating that the Eastern district of the Matoppos had been now completely cleared of all organised rebels. This happy change in the situation was no doubt the result of Colonel Plumer's action last week, which, though it did not appear so conclusive at the time, had evidently a very depressing effect upon the rebels. It showed them that even when they outnumbered the whites by twenty to one they could not hope to win the day.
With the final act of the rebellion comes the question, —What ought now to be done to reorganise the country, and to prevent the Matabele from again breaking out in rebellion ? The problem is infinitely harder than that with which the United States have several times been confronted at the end of an Indian war, or than that with which we found ourselves face to face at the close of the New Zealand insurrection. The Indians and the Maoris did not provide the labour of the districts in which the war had taken place. As soon as they had been beaten, and so deprived of the power of killing and harrying the settlers, the incident was closed. It is not so in Matabeleland. There the natives are needed for labour in the mines and on the farms. Without their labour Rhodesia cannot be occupied and developed. If the blacks were to be driven out, the Colony would be practically useless, and might as well be abandoned. Nothing can be done with it unless there is a fairly plentiful supply of black labour. The problem, then, is not only how to beat the blacks, but how, after they are beaten, to treat them in such a way that they will regain confidence in the white man and seek employment at his hands. Clearly the only effective wiy of doing this is to make them feel, on the one hand, that they will be well treated, and on the other, that the force at the disposal of the whites is so strong that there is no possibility of any new rising being successful. This last impression can only be produced by an effective military organisation, which shall in no case be liable to removal from the country, and by the opening up of good means of communication. One of the causes of the recent troubles was the fact that the country was never properly conquered by the Chartered Company. They just did enough in the way of conquest to make it possible to stake out mining claims and no more. The rest was left to luck, and the natives were allowed to keep their old military organisations practically unimpaired. If, instead of turning at once to the congenial task of gold prospecting, the Chartered Company had busied itself with watching the movements of the natives, and preventing the reforma- tion of their impis, and, still more important, had pressed on the railway, the insurrection might have been nipped in the bud. It is, indeed, to the railway that we must look in the future for the pacification of Matabeleland. When once the railway is at Bulawayo, all fear of serious native trouble will be removed. Railway construction and the improvement of communications generally will be the best security for the peace of Matabeleland. The future treatment of the natives is a subject which cannot be satisfactorily dealt with at present. We are not yet suffi- ciently clear as to the facts. The only thing that is evident is that the treatment, whatever it is, must be different from that of the past. Two accounts are given of the way in which the white men treated the blacks prior to the revolt. According to one version they treated them with great brutality and unfairness, and inspired the Matabele with an intense hatred of their conquerors. According to the other version the whites treated the natives too well, and demoralised them by indulgence. It is not, of course, alleged by those who hold this view that the whites did this out of pure philanthropy. What is asserted is that the white prospectors were very anxious to obtain black labour, and to secure it the more easily, gave every kind of indulgence to their men, and maint mined no sort of discipline. Probably both stories are partly true. In all likelihood there were a good many cases not only of real cruelty and tyranny, but of petty cheating by individual employers,—instances, that is, of false promises and broken contracts. Again, there were probably not a few cases of great recklessness in the matter of dealing with the natives indulged in by employers, who thought only of getting together a band of labourers, and who cared nothing as to the general effect produced by their action on the native question. If this was the case, it points to the necessity for a careful and judicious regulation of the traffic in native labour. On the one hand, means must be taken to make the control now exercised by the native Commissioners more effective than before, and, on the other, public opinion must be looked to to put down the demoralisation of labour by reckless- ness and over-lavishness.
It is still too early to speak with confidence as to the immediate cause of the war. It is evident, however, that the revolt had long been planned, and that only an oppor- tunity was required. The insurrection might, and probably would, have come even if the rinderpest and the slaughtering of the cattle to prevent infection had not excited the natives, and if the defeat of the English at Krugersdorp, and the consequent denudation of the country of so many of its regular defenders, had not given them the feeling that victory was certain. The Raid was, however, the signal for revolt, and the Raid also made it impossible to cope with the revolt while it was in its infancy,—those are, we think, ascertained facts. At the same time, it is difficult to believe that the peace could in any case have been kept very long. As we. have said above, the country was never properly con- quered, and the Matabele were determined sooner or later to have it out with the whites. It is to be hoped that now at last the country will be properly conquered. We have no desire for reprisals, and should view anything of that kind as criminal and foolish in the highest degree. We do not, however, wish to see a truce patched up anyhow. The country must be properly re- duced, and all the armed bands broken up, before we can consider that we are out of the wood. As long as there is any smouldering resistance we must deal with it. No. doubt the local levies will, as usual, be most anxious to. get to their homes, but they must be patient. It would be the merest madness to repeat the blunder of 1892, and to pretend that the country had been subdued when in, truth it was still in insurrection.
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