THE MATABELE DEADLOCK.
IT is difficult to imagine anything more thoroughly unsatisfactory than the present condition of things in Mashonaland.. Just consider the number of people who have their fingers in the pie! To begin with, there is that adroit old savage Lobengula,, who, if certain of the reports are correct, has grown cross with age and fat, and is as dangerous and "nasty " as an old dog whose temper has been spoilt by over-feeding and pampering. Then there is Sir Henry Loch, acting as the High Commissioner for British South Africa, an officer of the Imperial Government, and responsible to them alone ; then Sir Henry Loch, acting as constitutional Governor of Cape Colony, bound by the advice of his Parliamentary advisers. Next, there is Mr. Cecil Rhodes acting as Premier of Cape Colony ; and then, again, Mr. Cecil Rhodes, acting as Managing Director of the British South Africa Company. Lastly, there is the Colonial Secretary, who nominally has the right to say the final word on all disputed questions. Out of this welter of conflicting authorities and interests, the puzzle is to find the person with whom really rests the decison of the question,—Shall Lobengula be driven across the Zambesi? If we read the corre- spondence between Sir Henry Loch and Lord Ripon, published on Monday, it looks at first sight as if the Secretary of State were master of the field. His lan- guage is firm and clear, and. appears to indicate that he knows what he wants, and means to have it. For example, Lord Ripon tells the High Commissioner to inform the British South Africa Company "that, unless they are attacked, no aggressive movement is to be made without your previous knowledge and permission." "If," he adds, your sanction is asked for an offensive move- ment, communicate with me before replying," Yet Lord Ripon, if he thinks of the matter quietly, and when not under the influence of the official style, must realise the utter futility of such orders. It is all very well for him (like the boy-actor described by the Elizabethan poet) to use "burly words." But, like the little actor, he must, when he thinks upon his "infant weakness," "droop his eye." The Colonial Secretary may be exceedingly firm and dictatorial on paper, and Sir Henry Loch may be the pink of official propriety, but it is Mr. Rhodes who holds in his hands the keys of peace and war. If Mr. Rhodes thinks that an opportune moment has arrived for making war on Lobengula, war there will be. A moment's reflection will show that the hand of the Colonial Secretary can be forced, the instant Mr. Rhodes likes to force it. He has only got to arrange that Loben- gula shall attack one of the Company's forts, and the thing is done. If attacked, the Company, it is admitted, have the right to retaliate. But the Company must be very ill-served if its officials cannot arrange that Loben- gula shall begin the fight. It is all very well to say that the Company would not like to run the risk of being left unsupported if it should appear that they had in reality provoked an unnecessary fight. They know perfectly well, 'however, that when once the fighting has begun, it will be necessary for the Government to do everything in its power to back them up. When once the lives of White men are involved, and it has become—or has appeared to have become—a question of saving them from massacre, all other considerations will go to the wall. That is not a result which we quarrel with. We hold as strongly as any one that if war once begins, the White race must win, and so must be protected ; but this feeling, on our part, only makes more obvious the enormously powerful lever which has been placed in the hands of Mr. Cecil Rhodes. If the Colonial Office had officials in Mashonaland which it paid and appointed, it might no doubt count on its orders being obeyed in the letter and. in the spirit. Since, how- ever, the men who are in touch with Lobengula's Itnpis ere paid and appointed by Mr. Cecil Rhodes as managing director of the Company, they will act in accordance with the wishes not of the Colonial Office, but of their real masters. As we have said, Mr. Cecil Rhodes has the matter entirely in his own hands. He can make peace or war just as he chooses, confident that all the support he needs must be given him.
A more unsatisfactory situation for the 13ritish tax- payer cannot well be imagined. At any moment they may be plunged into a war which may cost as much in men and money as the last Zulu War ; and when it is over, the benefit will accrue not to the nation as a whole, but to the clever financiers and promoters who constructed the Im- perial British South Africa Company. Our readers will doubtless remember that from the beginning we were unfavourable to the development of Africa by chartered companies ; but we hardly expe3ted that the difficulties and dangers inseparable from the system would be developed so soon and in so aggravated a form. Nothing could possibly show the disadvantages of the Company system more thoroughly than the existing situation. Under it, we have all the disagreeables of Empire, all the risks, all the responsibility and all the burden, and none of the advantages. We have not even the power of choosing whether we will stop still or go on. That is a matter for the Company to decide. All the British Government have to do is to keep quiet, and supply prompt and adequate support in case of need. In speaking thus, we must not for a moment be supposed to lean to those who consider that we have no business in Mashonaland, that we are behaving unfairly and wickedly to Lobengula, and that we ought never to have entered the country. That, in our opinion, is mere conventional talk. The desert places of the earth were meant for the White race, and we see no sort of reason for leaving them to human wolves like Lobengula and his Impis, who are as cruel and bloodthirsty a set of savages as it is possible to conceive. Granted that the game is worth the candle, the destruction of Lobengula's power would be pure good,— a substantial contribution to the peace and happiness of Africa. What we contend is, that we are carrying out the elimination of Lobengula and the settlement of Mashonaland in the worst, instead of in the best, way; and that we have deprived ourselves of any means of knowing whether the work of dealing with the natives is being badly done or well done.
Let it not be supposed, however, that we ,want more Parliamentary control over Africa. In our opinion, South Africa ought to have been developed from South Africa, and not from London. We should have followed the example set in North America. When we made the Dominion of Canada, we handed over to the Central Government all the back-territories, including the Hudson Bay Company's lands, and with those territories and lands the Indians on them. The result has been that the taking-up of new lands, and the holding the Indians in check, has devolved upon the 'men on the spot and the men who are most interested in the work being well done. No doubt the Native problem was much more difficult in South Africa; but for all that, it was not in- superable. Instead of founding the South Africa Company, we should have federated the different States of South Africa, and have handed over to them the whole of our sphere of influence south of the Zambesi. It would then have been the business of the Federation to deal with the Native question as a whole, and to have "taken up" the " back-blocks " as they were wanted. No doubt it will be objected to this, that Federation was impossible, and that the only alternative to setting up the Chartered Company was holding Mashonaland and Matabeleland as a Crown Colony. We very much doubt, however, the correctness of this view. The offer of such an inducement would, we cannot help thinking, have very soon brought Federa- tion within the bounds of practical polities. No doubt Cape Colony, Natal, and the Dutch States would not federate while they believed that England would do the work of developing for them. The moment, however, that they came to believe in the risk of losing the auriferous fields of Mashonaland, they would have come to an arrange- ment. The plan of pretending to settle things from London, and really settling nothing, is the wildest and most dangerous of absurdities. All that it does is to hamper the men on the frontier in a quantity of little things in which they had much better be given a free hand, When, however, a big question turns up, the London authorities are as powerless to get their own way as Lord Ripon is at this moment,—a more complete example of administrative impotence cannot be imagined. As to what ought to be done under the circumstances, we find it difficult to offer an opinion. Probably the beet thing would be to openly tell Mr. Rhodes to do what he liked, reminding him at the same time that the responsibility would be his. This would at any rate be better than making a pretence that he is acting under orders, while all the time he is free to do just what he pleases.
Previous page
