THE NATIVES OF SOUTH AFRICA.*
THE Aborigines' Protection Society has not always com- mended itself to opinion in the Colonies, and it is very possible that a book on the natives of South Africa compiled by what we take to be a sub-committee of the Society may be viewed with suspicion. We therefore hasten to say that the Committee's description of their work as "undertaken to support no particular set of opinions " is amply justified. They have endeavoured to collect 'expert evidence on the condition of the natives from all possible sources, and to state the facts fairly. The strongest testimony that we can give to this book is to say that it offers no cut-and-dried conclusions, but provides very full material for discussion. Of course, there are two obvious defects in any amateur enterprise of this kind: first, that such committees have no power to summon witnesses, and can enlist only those who are of a communicative turn ; secondly, that they can afford the reader no adequate means of weighing evidence. Even in these democratic days we cannot assume that when twenty men affirm a fact and ten deny it, the twenty must be right. The knowledge of a Transkei Magistrate is worth more than the honest beliefs of fifty average Colonists where native customs are in question.
At the same time, an examination of the native problem is very urgently needed. Several of the Cape Colony Blue- books are packed with valuable information, but they are not easily accessible. A casual visitor to South Africa can learn little of native life, and a resident in the country, if he writes books, will generally be found committed to particular views. Further, although the sub-continent south of the Zambesi may for various purposes be conveniently considered as one huge country, it includes very different tribes at various stages of development, and the missionary in Bechuanaland, for instance, is not likely to brow more about the Zulus than a Madras civilian does about Sikhs. Generalisations as to the ways of " natives " or " Kaffirs" must be treated cautiously. We should say that the chief defect of the present work is that in its attempt to systematise and summarise an un- wieldy mass of facts it may unwittingly mislead the reader into imagining that the Bantus are all very much alike. For it is not always easy to be sure of which tribe or region some par- ticular statement is made by the editors. Still, if such an. inquiry is to undertake a broad treatment it must look for points of resemblance. The natives of South Africa, outside German Damaraland and Portuguese Gazaland, will hence- forth be all under British rule, and while local peculiari- ties must be recognised, it should be possible to arrive at certain wide general principles. Hitherto not only have the Boer Republics acted upon one view of the natives' place in the world, and the British Colonies upon another, but in British South Africa itself we have employed diverse methods.
With the history of the Bantu race this book is not directly concerned, and the limitation, though it is no doubt necessary, restricts the interest of the work. We cannot.
• The Natives of South Africa: their Economic and Social Condition. Edited, by the South African Native Races Committee. London: John mnrray. [12s.-1, attempt an ethnological or historical inquiry here, but we wish that some one who really knows the subject would write a history of the Bantu. They are still an increasing race,
and until they met the European they were a great conquering
rase. They stretch to-day, though not uninterruptedly, from Victoria Nyanza to the Kei River, they have given rulers to more than, one foreign tribe, and they have at times met
European forces successfully. They are undoubtedly a mixed race everywhere, but where exactly their non-negro racial element came from has never been decided. Miss Kingsley believed firmly in the true negro, but most of the conquering races of Africa have been of mixed blood. The 'Kai:firs," as their name implies, have never taken kindly to Mahommedanism (which undoubtedly attracts the negro), and it remains to be seen whether Christianity will secure them. Here and there a chief like Khama has been con- verted and has driven his people into the fold, but for the most part the Bantu have shown little tendency to any idealistic creed. They have produced no art, but have in places proved very capable craftsmen. The despised Bush- man had developed a rude pictorial art, but the " Kafir" has never drawn a picture, though he has turned out creditably carved utensils. They have a natural turn of oratory, and a, very fair notion of music. They have displayed absolute devotion to great chiefs, and yet the ordinary tribal organisa- tion is really a constitutional government. The Bantu mind is inscrutable. Mr. Selous, who knows the Kaffir as few Englishmen have known him, confesses that the Matabele revolt took him completely by surprise.
There are no trustworthy statistics, but the various Bantu tribes south of the Zambesi are probably over three and a half millions in number. Other " coloured " elements, such as Hotten- tots, Griquas or " Bastards," and "Cape Boys," may amount to three or four hundred thousand. And controlling these four million Africans we have perhaps three-quarters of a million Europeans, English and Dutch. In Natal there are sixty thousand Indians, and were free immigration permitted that number would very soon be doubled. The native of India was brought to Natal because he was a better labourer than the Zulu; he is now unwelcome chiefly because he is a better petty trader than the European. In spite of the warning of Natal, Rhodesia is now trying to import Arab labour. The Asiatic in Africa is a curious problem ; the " Malays " brought in the eighteenth century from Java by the Dutch are still a jealously separate community in Cape Colony. They have lost their own language and learned Dutch, they have un- doubtedly absorbed much African blood, and yet they retain their Mahommedan religion and their social habits. And they have a practical monopoly of the fishing and market- garden industries of Cape Town. They are few in number, and of little political account ; but the Indian, if 'he were allowed to come freely, would introduce all manner of difficult questions into the already chaotic world of South African statesmanship.
Still, the Kaffir is the great problem. If we may generalise cautiously, we would say that his one ambition is to earn some money when young, buy cattle wherewith to purchase wives, and then sit at ease, watching his wives hoe the ground, increasing his herds, and gradually acquiring wealth by the judicious disposal of his daughters in marriage. To him agriculture is woman's work, but the care of cattle is a man's business. The European, however, wants a steady, not a spasmodic, supply of labour, and herein is the "native " diffi- culty. The Kaffir will work well by fits and starts, but he will not settle down to a life of labour. He has been very highly paid on the mines for brief spells of work, and he is the more reluctant to live as a poorly paid farm-hand. The Paz Britannica has put down tribal wars and suppressed witch-doctoring with its attendant massacres, therefore the Kaffir increases. In Basutoland the:population is already as large as the land, farmed by native methods, can support, and the Basutos are therefore willing to look for work else- where. But it will be a long time before Zululand and the Transkei are over-populated. Meanwhile the Kaffir is to a great extent master of the economic situation. He is necessary for manual labour, and he will only work as much as he feels inclined.
Sir Henry-Maine -oiace describid the course of civilisation as a passage from status to contract. The natives of South
Africa are at present in a transition stage. Where the tribal system continues, as in Basutoland, Zululand, the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and elsewhere, " status " still reigns. The individual is merely a member of the tribe. But the coming of the European has broken up the tribes through a great part of South Africa, and in the Cape and Orange River Colonies, for example, the " Kaffir " is an individual free to enter into contracts, own land, and, speak- ing generally, acquire most of the rights of a civilised man. (In fact, at the Cape the non-tribal Kaffirs possess the franchise.) He is rather puzzled by his new freedom. Under a strict tribal system the chief's main object was to obtain a first-rate fighting machine. Cetewayo, for instance, showed no mercy to drunkenness or to sexual immorality, because he was determined to keep his Zulus fit for war. Now we have abolished the old restraints : the sinner is no longer killed on the spot, the drunkard is very largely left to his own devices. Inevitably the authority of the chiefs is lessening, even where the tribe is unbroken. They may no longer lead their impie to battle, and there is a Resident-Magistrate to see that they do not kill or confiscate at caprice. The young men return from the mines with new notions of the world, and hitherto, if they have been on the Rand, with a taste for drink. (The much. disputed " compound " system at Kimberley—well described in this book—has kept the diamond miners sober.) The Kaffir is being pitched neck-and-crop into a world where contract reigns, where the individual has a legal right to wreck himself and become a general nuisance. Being a child in morals, he suffers. In introducing the new order we have for- gotten that an infant cannot make contracts.
Gradually, no doubt, education will do much. The excellent Free Church institution at Lovedale has shown that the Kaffir can become an intelligent artisan. But where he has acquired " higher education," his lot is at present not happy. A few native schoolmasters, interpreters, missioners, are required, but generally the " school Kaffir " is cut off from his own people and yet barred from European society. The native journalist has actually appeared already, and there is talk of an " Ethiopian Church " which shall adapt Christianity to the needs of the African. Here are the germs of future unrest. But the splendid military powers of the Bantu are rusting from disuse. There are a few native police, excellent under strict supervision, but there are no Kaffir regiments. It is to the eternal credit of England that the blacks have been kept quiet during the present war, and black regiments in South Africa itself will always be out of the question. Still, it is odd that we are raising Haussa and Yao (Central African) and Soudanese troops, and garrisoning oversea, Colonies with Indian regiments, while the Zulus are never recruited for service abroad.
It is so tempting to expatiate on the subject of the South African native that we fear we have done scanty justice to the book before us. We can only say that it gives a very careful, detailed, and accurate account of such matters as land-tenure and marriage institutions among the tribes, and deals carefully with the labour question and the drink ques- tion. No one interested in Africa should omit to study it, and we trust that the variety and interest of the topics which it covers will be seen from the fact that we have preferred to speak of the wider questions suggested by it rather than to examine,in necessarily imperfect detail, the actual description of social and industrial facts.
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