TOPICS OF ..THE DAY.
THE BOERS AND THE NATIVES.
IN Mr. Lincoln's Second Inaugural—perhaps the most soul-slaking piece of oratory in the English language —occurs a memorable passage ' in regard to the continua- tion of the war. Mr: Lincoln speaks with passionate earnest- ness of his desire " that the .scourge of war may speedily pass away " ; but then, like some inspired prophet of the Hebrews, he dwells on the treatment of the negroes by the Southerners, and declares that it may be that it is God's will that the war shall continue "until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword." As one reads Mrs. Heckford's letter to the Times of Monday dealing with the treatment of -the Kaffirs by the Boers, it is impossible to prevent the words recurringto the mind. We all long for the war to cease ; we are all moved by the long agony of the Boer race ; we are all touched by the steadfastness and persistence with which the Boers maintain their cause, though they are now but hunted bands of desperate men with their homes broken up, able still, no doubt, to inflict great damage on their enemies, but incapable of ever recovering their cherished independence. But when we think of the forays of. the Boers on the Kaffirs, the hunt for children who were to be virtually enslaved, of babies thrown back into the burning kraals, and of all the countless cruelties practised by the men who ruled by the lash, and who deliberately used the sjambok to-strike terror into the hearts of the 'natives, we wonder with Mr. Lincoln whether the war must. not go on " until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword."
No doubt we shall at • once be told by the advocates of the Boers, who seem to hold that the Boers can do no wrong; or if they do that it can instantly be wiped out by quoting some misdeed of the British, that the record of the British in regard to the natives is also stained with blood, and that they too are responsible for great cruelties to the natives. We shall, that is, have the misdeeds of the British in South Africa—and- we do not deny that they are many and great—thrown in our face as a palliation for. the Boers, and as a ground. for not speaking out in regard to . the atrocities com- mitted in the Transvaal. Let us say at once that we abso- lutely refuse to admit that two wrongs can ever make aright, or that cruelties committed by men of British birth can alter our judgment of the Boers. Even if the British were as cialpable as the Boers, the Boer atrocities must be con- demned. How are . we ever to progress • in our treatment of the natives if one wrong is always to be excused. and. condoned by the quotation of another ? But; as a matter of , fact, British cruelties differ fundamentally from those practised by. the Boers. Under the Imperial British rule the efforts of the State have always been directed towards the protection of the blacks from cruelty and oppression. The only exception was the careless and disordered govern- ment of the Chartered Company at the beginning of its rule, but even then the Company officially did not lean towards cruelty, or intend to permit it being practised, and the ill- treatment when discovered was stopped by. the Imperial Government taking over the protection of the natives. The British Government in South Africa has not only never sanctioned cruelty, but has done its best to prevent it, and the publicopinion of the better part of the Britishinhabitants of South Africa has always been against the ill-treatment of the Kaffirs. In the case of the Boers, and especially of the Transvaal, the State has not only connived at, but has actually sanctioned by its laws and its administration the infliction of cruelty on the natives. It was the same with public opinion in the Transvaal. The better class of people in the Transvaal just like the better Southern planters in this respect — though they may not have actually. inflicted cruelties themselves on the natives, were solid.- with the rest of the community in the belief that it was needful to keep the natives in their place by the use of the sjambok. Public opinion in the Traatvaal, that is, was not against cruelty. In a word, while in British South Africa cruelty to the natives came from individual callousness or from Government care- lessness, in the Transvaal cruelty to the Kaffir was erected into a system. In the letter, written by Mrs. Heckford to the Times of Monday to "which we have just alluded, a number of examples of the attitude of the Boers towards the natives is given. We cannot, of course, take responsi. bility for the correctness of all' Mrs. Heckford's allegations, for we have no first-hand knowledge of the facts, be-, it will, we believe, be admitted by all South Africans that Mrs. Heckford bears the highest character, not only for ability, but for veracity, and we ourselves have no doubt as to the general truth of her letter. Here is Mrs. Heckford's account—she speaks as " an old resident in the country districts of the Transvaal "—of the Pass Laws and the way they were worked :—" Any white person meeting a Kaffir walking quietly through the country outside a Kaffir location had the right of stopping him and demand- ing his pass. If he had none, or if, having one, it was not in order, or if he had diverged somewhat from the usual path leading to the place specified' on the pass, or if he could not assure his detainer that he was on the estate of some white person in whose employ he was, or if he were not carrying with him a portion of the' gear for yoling and driving oxen, and could not name his employer, then that white person could flog him, and if he had a pass tear it up." Mrs. Heckford goes on to giro an account of the way in which the Boers conducted a war raid of which she was a witness. She then tells, not from her own knowledge, but on the authority of Mr. George Rex, some stories of Boer cruelty committed by a commando under the control of ex-President Kruger so atrocious that we hesitate to quote them. We shall con- tent ourselves by referring our readers to Mrs. Heckford's letter, where the stories are set forth. at length, including the .hideous allegation that Mr. Kruger ordered Kaffir babies to be thrown back into a burning kraal. Mrs. Heckford. ends her letter by an account of how she once tried to intervene to help a Kaffir whom she knew to have been ill, but who had been accused of breaking his agreement withhis master. The. Boer official the a assistant veld cornet—said to her :—" I should 'not hare punished him severely had you not had the bad taste to interfere on behalf of .a Kaffir ; but because you have shall punish him with the utmost rigour the law allows." Mrs. Heckford adds And as I mounted my horse the Kaffir was dragged to the pole of a waggon, stripped, bent over it, and as I rode away I heard the strokes of the lash and his screams. Two Boer women were sitting close to him sipping coffee."
As we have said, we do not doubt that there:- have been cases of cruelty and oppression by Englishmen; or that during the war there have •been instances of the flogging of natives by order of British officers. We do not desire to justify these floggings, but at any rate they have been done under the strict military discipline to which the drivers submit themselves for pay. They - have also taken place, not in peace, but in the atmosphere of war, and when the need to get on with a convoy on a march may have been so imperative as to justify harshness to insubordinate men in military service, who could be punished for serious breaches of discipline in no other way. Between flogging under military constraint and togging in peace there is a world of difference. But we do not wish to say more in anticipation of the to quoque on which the Pro-Boer so often relies. What we are concerned. with is the question of how the British element in South Africa, when the final defeat of the Boers has been, accomplished, is to be kept from falling into the Boer attitude in regard to the natives,—the attitude which made the Boers jealous even of the Christianising of the natives, which prevented them admitting till quite recently the possibility of natives contracting marriages, which kept education from them when possible, and which considered that the only way to control a Kaffir was to floo. him.. Unfortunately such an attitude of mind is very catching. We blow how easily Northerners who went South in the days before the war adopted the Southern feelina towards negroes, and no One who has studied the subject can fail to note the tendency of Englishmen who lived in the Transvaal before the war to declare that " at any rate, the Boers knew the proper way to deal with the blacks." Nothing is more contagious than the cruelty which a dominant race is apt to deal out to an inferior race. But if the British element were to yield to the contagion, of a bad. example South Africa is doomed. No race can, escape demoralisation which. adopts the Boer attitude towards the natives. As has been weft • d, "the' curse of the_sla,ve is on the Boer," and we may be sire that if we adopt the Boer attitude it will fill as heavily on us. The Boer virtually enslaved the native, and in the cruel process of that enslavement he lost his own moral qualities, and lowered himself to the slave's level. The cruelty, the cunning, the contempt for truth shown by the Boer, are all vices that he has acquired from his treatment of the native. If we are to have a free and healthy moral atmosphere in South Africa, and if South Africa, as part of the British Empire, is to be in the hands of worthy and efficient white men—if, in a word, British South Africa is to continue—South Africans must put away as something utterly • despicable and degrading the Boer attitude towards the native. We do not write as " ne,,,arophilists," for we have no illusions as to the equality of the negro, and we do not desire that the black man should be treated as a white man or receive political power. Save under very exceptional circum- stances, we would not give the man of colour a vote. We desire, that is, to keep political power wholly in the hands of the white men, and to keep the black and white races as far as possible apart. Social mixture and the cant of equality can do nothing but harm. But the white man's power must be wielded. as a trust, and not as a material privilege, and the white man must regard it as his duty to shelter and protect the black man from cruelty and oppression. The natives must be treated as the wards of the State. We do not insist upon this merely because we are anxious as to the fate of the black man, but chiefly because we are deeply concerned for the future of the white man. The white man in presence of the black can only save himself and his Lin from the most subtle moral deterioration if he keeps up the highest standard of humanity in his dealings with the inferior race. If he once gives way to the domination of cruelty, and rules as an arbitrary owner and not as a trustee, the ultimate fate of the white man is sealed. He must be no sentimentalist and no phrase-monger in dealing with the black,- but he must never give way to the fatal dram-drinking of arbitrariness and cruelty.
Previous page
