TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW POLICY IN RHODESIA.
WE do not like the letter, describing the new policy to be adopted in Rhodesia, which Earl Grey addressed to his Directors of the Chartered Company on November 16th, and which was published on Saturday in the Times. In tone the letter is perfect, the Adminis- trator writing to his employers with all the "cheery stoicism " of his caste, and displaying on one important point much concern for the native population. Earl Grey expects something like famine in the next few months from the interruption of agriculture, due to the war, and the extinction of the cattle used for transport, and is making liberal arrangements to secure food for three months for at least forty thousand of the destitute black population. That is generous, and wise too, for on the existence of that population in fair health must depend the progress of Rhodesia ; but there are other plans in the letter besides those for preventing famine, and to the policy they reveal we have strong objections to offer. The managers of the Company which rules Rhodesia intend to retrace their steps, and revive in a great degree the state of things which existed before the native dynasty was overthrown. The Company of course takes the place of Lobengula, but his Indunas or chiefs are to be restored to their " privileges " and their authority over their sub-tribes. They will be advised as to their internal administration by English Native Commissioners appointed by the Company, but they are to govern in their own way, excepting always that they must levy a hut-tax for the benefit of the Company, and they are to receive pensions of £60 a year each, which, in their poverty, will be, it is clearly assumed, exceedingly acceptable. This arrangement of course postpones, or rather prevents, the adoption of any code of laws, and renders the introduction of what Englishmen call civilisation next to impossible, for the interest of the indunas will be to keep up old customs, old prerogatives, including that of forbidding marriage to the disobedient and the poor, and to keep their subjects ignorant enough to be willing to submit to fiscal oppres- sion. They are, in short, to be like the old Highland chiefs, even if they do not retain the power of life and death, and of that we are not quite sure. This is a retrograde policy, and objectionable on that ground, but that is by no means all. The first object of the Chartered Company is to secure for the mining interests an ample supply of labour without paying high wages, and to this end they practically abolish the right of the common Matabele to make his own contract. His chief is to make it for him. Here are Earl Grey's own words :—" The indunas will be responsible to the Government for the conduct of their people, and the Native Commissioner will be the medium in each district between the indunas and the Government. It is premature at the present time to lay down any rules for collection of hut-tax or supply of labour, &c., but I think the adoption of this principle of supporting the authority of the indunas, and so making it to their interest to be loyal to the Government, is the best way both to secure a considerable revenue in the future, in the shape of but-tax, and to obtain a fair supply of labour for the mines. It will be the duty of the Native Commissioners to act as the medium, not only between the Government and the natives, but between the employers of labour and the indunas ; and they will have to see that the wages are punctually paid, and that the boys supplied by the indunas receive fair treatment from their employers," —" fair treatment," we fancy, being ample food, flogging in moderation for disobedience, and as little wages as can be paid without exciting mutiny. Clearly the arrange- ment is intended to work in this way. The manager of a mine in going condition wants, say, two hundred extra " hands." He writes to the Native Commissioner offering terms, the Native Commissioner explains those terms to the indunas, and the indunas order the two hundred hands to go, either taking their wages in gross or claiming from them a percentage. The indunas are to have their powers as under Lobengula, they are very greedy of wealth as they reckon wealth, and their people have a special objection, from superstitious reasons, to working underground. The compulsion will therefore doubtless be sharp, and though it will be exercised by the native authorities rather than the mine managers, thelabour will be unwilling. This is not slavery as modern men understand slavery, for there is no sale by auction or permanent separation of families ; but in what it differs from serfage we are unable to perceive. Stay, perhaps there is a better analogy, and one more familiar to our readers. The system will be exactly that of the old English press-gang, as once worked in the English ports, and applied to the entire labour of a great country. It is aggravated by the facts that the ship captains, the indunas, will not live among the men, that the officers, the mining managers, will not be of the same race as the men, and that the whole affair can be worked in conjunction with a truck system under which the actual labourers, after paying the indunas, and the fines, and for food, will get no wages in cash. Pressed by hunger on one side, by the " discipline " of the mine managers on the other, and by the " revived authority " of their chiefs in the distance, they will not be free men at all. There may, of course, be checks on the system of which we are unconscious ; but that is how it presents itself to us, in a region where the profit of mining depends on low wages, and where the white employer doubts in his heart whether his black labourer has a right to anything beyond good food, and as kindly treatment as a good horse gets from Englishmen. But we shall be told there must be compulsion, for if there is not the Matabele, who dislikes mining, and can in a very fertile country grow enough Indian corn to keep himself alive, will not engage himself to dig, and the mines must be shut down. If that is true, let them be shut down. We do not hold either Rhodesia or South Africa in order that speculators in mines may make profits out of oppression, but in order that British subjects, white and black, may live peaceably and content, and supply in their moderate prosperity new markets for British trade. We have always upheld colonies, but to hear some South, Africans talk one would think that God had created South Africa in order that English mining dividends should never be less than 30 per cent. We do not, however, believe one word of the pessimists' argument. The Bantus of South Africa are just rising to the position in which men want silver as well as food ; they perfectly understand that to get it a few years must be given to unpleasant labour, and if fairly paid they will come to work in suffi- cient numbers. We are by no means negrophiles. We do not object, for instance, to man-of-war discipline within the mines, if only it is as intelligent and regular as that of a man-of-war, holding such disdpline, especially with a shallow and capricious people, to be highly educative and beneficial. But the men who are to submit to that discipline ought to be free to choose between it and poverty, to be allowed to go or come at discretion after due notice,. and above all to receive in silver and not in goods every sixpence they agree to earn. Slavery humanised is almost as bad as slavery brutalised, and at all events the root principle of the British Empire is that we enfranchise those we govern, and so at least, to put it at its lowest, try honestly whether among the dark races of the world of whom so many are committed to our guidance, freedom and prosperity are incompatible.
We advise those who think this matter of no importance or one which will settle itself, to read a paper by Mr. W. F. Bailey in the National Review for December upon " The Native Problem in South Africa," and to revise their opinions. Are they aware that " there are not 400,000 whites all told in the Cape Colony ? There are not 300,000 of them in all the other States put together. There is a larger white population in the county of Essex than in Africa south of the Equator. On the other hand, there is a comparatively large native population. It numbers in the Cape Colony about 1,350,000 ; in the Transvaal about 750,000; in Natal, 500,000; and, taking all the States south of the Zambesi, it amounts to at least 6,000,000 people. There are therefore at least eight natives to every white man in South Africa, and the natives are increasing in numbers at a greater rate than the Europeans." This calculation is exclusive of the fact that the broad end of the South African triangle touches only black States, and that whenever our dark subjects prosper new multitudes swarm down from the North. And we may add that of the six millions of blacks four millions are Bantus—that is, they belong to the ablest of the African races, the men of which are scarcely inferior in fighting prowess to our own soldiers, and would probably overpower any regiment of ordinary sepoys. That matters little if we will rule justly, for the proportion against us is far heavier in India, even if we exclude the Bengalees and other not-fighting elements of the population ; but how are we to do justice when local opinion, English as well as Dutch, is much of it of this kind ?—" At a recent race meeting in Pretoria two well-to-do Hindoos, or Indians, paid for admission to the grand-stand enclosure. They were dressed as any prosperous European, from whom they in no way differed except in the matter of colour, but no sooner were they perceived by a young Dutch gentleman—a relative of the President—than they were ordered to leave, and, on their declining to do so, were promptly hustled out of the place by the policemen present. An English lady in the Transvaal complained bitterly to me of the policy of the Home Government in the neighbouring Colony of Natal, where she, during a recent visit, met a well-dressed and civilised Kaffir walking on the footpath, who fiercely glared at her because she forced him with the point of her parasol to take his proper place in the middle of the roadway, with the oxen, the mules, and other beasts of burden !" Of course there are thousands of white men in South Africa who are as just as white men at home, but they are liable to be pushed aside by the aggressive classes, who are eager to be rich, who are driven into tyranny by the " fecklessness " of their employes, and who are irritated into callousness by that strange jar between the negro and the European which no one has ever thoroughly explained. The cause is not colour, for the Portuguese clerk in India, and the " sea-cunny " of the Philippines, who is so eagerly em- ployed in the Oriental mercantile marine, is often blacker than a negro ; but the idea of personally ill-treating him or denying him his right to the pavement never even occurs to his European superior. We have, in fact, to change opinion in South Africa as well as the labour laws if the white and dark races are to be friends, and it is the harder change to effect of the two. We have granted so much power to white settlers that we can only do what we can and possess our souls in patience ; but for ourselves we shall always hold that for a, mixed population the most vivifying of all governments is the direct authority of the Crown, exercised through a trained Civil Service, and wholly independent alike of those who make money and of those who serve. The freest man on earth, as far as his disposal of himself is concerned, is a Bengalee, while we greatly fear that one of the least free is a Zulu sent by his induna to work in the mines of Rhodesia or the Transvaal for the benefit of London speculators in mines.
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