LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
NATIVE LABOUR AND POLYGAMY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
[TO THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—There has been a good deal written of late on this subject.' It may interest your readers to have a few facts at first band. In a letter just received from South Africa from
a gentleman who has had twenty-five years' experience as a Civil servant and an administrator in the native territories of the Cape Colony, and who is now recognised as one of the very first authorities on the native question, the following facts are vouched for :- In the Transkei—this is the largest reserve for natives in the Cape—polygamists are 3 per cent, of the native men. In a district with three thousand five hundred native married women, there have during the last six years been under twelve cases of wife-beating.
During an experience of twenty-five years in various districts, this Magistrate has had one case of native neglect of children.
The ordinary Kaffir wife has less hard work than the ordinary European housewife.
The custom of dowry, or paying cattle for a wife, is the greatest safeguard of morals and women's rights, and it is effective.
From the Transkei 75 per cent, of the able-bodied men go out to labour each year. Many of these men are already married, and very few have any idea of ever having more than one wife.
In these territories every native becomes a crofter when he marries ; he gets a ten-acre croft to cultivate,
and rights to build a hut or house, and to keep stock on the public lands. His social rank will depend on what stock he has. Ten cattle and one hundred sheep make him a gentleman of means. This is what raakes natives go out to work, and
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not the desire to buy wives. Added to this is the further fact that married men buy tea, coffee, sugar (grain in poor seasons), European blankets, cotton goods, and clothing of all kinds for themselves and their families.
These are facts, vouched for by one of the best authorities in the Cape. They go far to explain some of the findings of the Bloemfontein Conference on Labour held in March. "The influence of polygamy on labour supply is greatly exaggerated.
Polygamy is decreasing from natural causes, the advance of civilisation, the ameliorated condition of women ; the plough has relieved them largely from field labour." It is evident that there were a few men at that Conference who knew something about the natives. Such facts as the above, and many others one could give, go far to make it abundantly clear that if these people are well treated—this means little more than being left alone—and protected against men who regard them only as possible consumers of brandy, so bad that it cannot find a European market, and other men who regard them as more beasts of burden, to be kept as near the mere animal as it is possible to keep men,—if thus pro- tected, these tribes will make wonderful progress. The normal workings of advancing civilisation, Christianity, and educa- tion will soon make them one of the finest bodies of peasant- proprietors in the Empire. If, on the other hand, they are to be exploited in the interest of cheap labour for brandy, farms, and mines, it is absolutely certain that sooner or later we shall have on our hands a debased and debauched mass of savages that will constitute one of the most dangerous masses of lapsed humanity under the sun. One more fact, and a very significant one as showing the truth of this last state- ment. This I have seen again and again. Hundreds of natives to-day regard their sons' going to the labour centres as a lamentable necessity. These men are heathens chiefly ; nevertheless they go to great trouble to send their young men out under the care of some older man of well-tried character. He looks alter these youths, keeps their pay, and sees that they do not drink while away. The parents say : "Our sons leave us respectable and self-respecting men ; often they return mere rags, with no manhood in them." If a young man remains away much over a year, his parents begin to fear that he is lapsed and lost to his clan and to his family. They have bad to coin a word to express this.—I am, Sir, &c., BROWNLEE J. Ross.
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