IT is not improbable that many Englishmen who have not been altogether inattentive to the course of public affairs as affecting Great Britain may be unaware that we once possessed in South Africa a separate colony called British Kafraria, with a governor of its own, and a form of government altogether distinct from that of its big brother the Cape Colony. Such however is the fact, though the territory did not, perhaps, attract much notice at the time of its annexation. Some years after the last Kafir war which may have the year 1850 given to it as its date, and after that wonderful Kafir famine which took place in 1857,—the famine which the natives created for themselves by destroying their own cattle and their own food,—British Kafraria was made a separate colony and was placed under the rule of Colonel Maclean. The sanction from England for the arrangement had been long given, but it was not carried out till 1860. It was not intended that the country should be taken away from the Kafirs;—but only the rule over the country, and the privilege of living in accordance with their own customs. Nor was this privilege abrogated all at once, or abruptly. Gradually and piecemeal they were to be introduced to what we call civilization. Gradually and piecemeal the work is still going on,—and so progressing that there can hardly be a doubt that as far as their material condition is concerned we have done well with the Kafirs. The Kafir Chiefs may feel,—certainly do feel,—that they have been aggrieved. They have been as it were knocked about, deprived of their power, humiliated and degraded, and, as far as British Kafraria is concerned, made almost ridiculous in the eyes of their own people. But the people themselves have been relieved from the force of a grinding tyranny. They increase and multiply because they are no longer driven to fight and be slaughtered in the wars which the Chiefs were continually waging for supremacy among each other. What property they acquire they can hold without fear of losing it by arbitrary force. They are no longer subject to the terrible superstitions which their Chiefs have used for keeping them in subjection. Their huts are better, and their food more constantly sufficient. Many of them work for wages. They are partially clothed,—sometimes with such grotesque partiality as quite to justify the comical stories which we have heard at home as to Kafir full dress. But the habit of wearing clothes is increasing among them. In the towns they are about as well clad as the ordinary Irish beggar,—and as the traveller recedes from the towns he perceives that this raiment gradually gives way to blankets and red clay. But to have got so far as the Irish beggar condition in twenty years is very much, and the custom is certainly spreading itself. The Kafir who has assiduously worn breeches for a year does feel, not a moral but a social shame, at going without them. As I have no doubt whatever that the condition of these people has been improved by our coming, and that British rule has been on the whole beneficent to them, I cannot but approve of the annexation of British Kafraria. But I doubt whether when it was done the justification was as complete as in those former days, twenty years before, when Lord Glenelg reprimanded Sir Benjamin D’Urban for the extension he made in the same territory, and drew back the borders of British sovereignty, and restored their lands and their prestige and their customs to the natives, and declared himself willing to be responsible for all results that might follow,—results which at last cost so much British blood and so much British money!
The difficult question meets one at every corner in South Africa. What is the duty of the white man in reference to the original inhabitant? The Kafir Chief will say that it is the white man’s duty to stay away and not to touch what does not belong to him. The Dutch Colonist will say that it is the white man’s duty to make the best he can of the good things God has provided for his use,—and that as the Kafir in his natural state is a bad thing he should either be got rid of, or made a slave. In either assertion there is an intelligible purpose capable of a logical argument. But the Briton has to go between the two, wavering much between the extremes of philanthropy and expansive energy. He knows that he has to get possession of the land and use it, and is determined that he will do so;—but he knows also that it is wrong to take what does not belong to him and wrong also to treat another human being with harshness. And therefore with one hand he waves his humanitarian principles over Exeter Hall while with the other he annexes Province after Province. As I am myself a Briton I am not a fair critic of the proceeding;—but it does seem to me that he is upon the whole beneficent, though occasionally very unjust.
After the wars, when this Kafraria had become British, a body of German emigrants were induced to come here who have thriven wonderfully upon the land,—as Germans generally do. The German colonist is a humble hard working parsimonious man, who is content as long as he can eat and drink in security and put by a modicum of money. He cares but little for the form of government to which he is subjected, but is very anxious as to a market for his produce. He is unwilling to pay any wages, but is always ready to work himself and to make his children work. He lives at first in some small hovel which he constructs for himself, and will content himself with maize instead of meat till he has put by money enough for the building of a neat cottage. And so he progresses till he becomes known in the neighbourhood as a man who has money at the bank. Nothing probably has done more to make Kafraria prosperous than this emigration of Germans.
But British Kafraria did not exist long as a separate possession of the Crown, having been annexed to the Cape Colony in 1864. From that time it has formed part of the Eastern Province. It has three thriving English towns, King-Williamstown, the capital, East London the port, and Queenstown, further up the country than King-Williamstown;—towns which are peculiarly English though the country around is either cultivated by German farmers or held by Kafir tenants. The district is still called British Kafraria. I myself have some very dim remembrance of British Kafraria as a Colony, but like other places in the British empire it has been absorbed by degrees without much notice at home.
Starting from Grahamstown on a hired Cape cart I entered British Kafraria somewhere between that town and Fort Beaufort. A “Cape cart” is essentially a South African vehicle, and is admirably adapted for the somewhat rough roads of the country. Its great merit is that it travels on only two wheels;—but then so does our English gig. But the English gig carries only two passengers while the Cape cart has room for four,—or even six. The Irish car no doubt has both these merits,—carries four and runs on two wheels; but the wheels are necessarily so low that they are ill adapted for passing serious obstructions. And the Cape cart can be used with two horses, or four as the need may be. A one-horse vehicle is a thing hardly spoken of in South Africa, and would meet with more scorn than it does even in the States. But the chief peculiarity of the Cape cart is the yoke of the horses, which is somewhat similar in its nature to that of the curricle which used to be very dangerous and very fashionable in the days of George IV. With us a pair of horses is now always connected with four wheels, and with the idea of security which four wheels give. Though the horse may tumble down the vehicle stands. It was not so with the curricle. When a horse fell, he would generally bring down his comrade horse with him, and then the vehicle would go,—to the almost certain destruction of the pole and the imminent danger of the passengers. But with the Cape cart the bar, instead of passing over the horse’s back—the bar on which the vehicle must rest when for a moment it loses its balance on the two wheels with a propulsion forwards—passes under the horses’ necks, with straps appended to the collars. I have never seen a horse fall with one of them;—but I can understand that when such an accident happens the falling horse should not bring the other animal down with him. The advantage of having two high wheels,—and only two,—need not be explained to any traveller.
On the way to Fort Beaufort I passed by Fort Brown,—a desolate barrack which was heretofore employed for the protection of the frontier when Grahamstown was the frontier city. I arrived there by a fine pass, excellently well engineered, through the mountains, called the Queen’s Road,—very picturesque from the shape of the hills, though desolate from the absence of trees. But at Fort Brown the beauty was gone and nothing but the desolation remained. The Fort stands just off the road, on a plain, and would hold perhaps 40 or 50 men. I walked up to it and found one lonely woman who told me that she was the wife of a policeman stationed at some distant place. It had become the fate of her life to live here in solitude, and a more lonely creature I never saw. She was clean and pleasant and talked well;—but she declared that unless she was soon liberated from Fort Brown she must go mad. She was eloquent in favour of hard work, declaring that there was nothing else which could give a real charm to life;—but perhaps she had been roused to that feeling by knowing that there was not a job to be done upon the earth to which in her present circumstances she could turn her hand. Optat arare caballus. She told me of a son who was employed in one of the distant provinces, and bade me find him if I could and tell him of his mother. “Tell him to think of me here all alone,” she said. I tried to execute my commission but failed to find the man.
I had intended sleeping at Fort Beaufort and on going from thence up the Catsberg Mountain. But I was prevented by the coming of a gentleman, a Wesleyan minister, who was very anxious that I should see the Kafir school at Healdtown over which he presided. From first to last through my tour I was subject to the privileges and inconveniences of being known as a man who was going to write a book. I never said as much to any one in South Africa,—or even admitted it when interrogated. I could not deny that I possibly might do so, but I always protested that my examiner had no right to assume the fact. All this, however, was quite vain as coming from one who had written so much about other Colonies, and was known to be so inveterate a scribbler as myself. Then the argument, though never expressed in plain words, would take, in suggested ideas, the following form. “Here you are in South Africa, and you are going to write about us. If so I,—or we, or my or our Institution, have an absolute claim to a certain portion of your attention. You have no right to pass our town by, and then to talk of the next town merely because such an arrangement will suit your individual comfort!” Then I would allege the shortness of my time. “Time indeed! Then take more time. Here am I,—or here are we, doing our very best; and we don’t intend to be passed by because you don’t allow yourself enough of time for your work.” When all this was said on behalf of some very big store, or perhaps in favour of a pretty view, or—as has been the case,—in pride at the possession of a little cabbage garden, I have been apt to wax wroth and to swear that I was my own master;—but a Kafir missionary school, to which some earnest Christian man, with probably an earnest Christian wife, devotes a life in the hope of making fresh water flow through the dry wilderness, has claims, however painful they may be at the moment. This gentleman had come into Fort Beaufort on purpose to catch me. And as he was very eloquent, and as I did feel a certain duty, I allowed myself to be led away by him. I fear that I went ungraciously, and I know that I went unwillingly. It was just four o’clock and, having had no luncheon, I wanted my dinner. I had already established myself in a very neat little sitting-room in the Inn, and had taken off my boots. I was tired and dusty, and was about to wash myself. I had been on the road all day, and the bedroom offered to me looked sweet and clean;—and there was a pretty young lady at the Inn who had given me a cup of tea to support me till dinner should be ready. I was anxious also about the Catsberg Mountain, which under the minister’s guidance I should lose, at any rate for the present. I spoke to the minister of my dinner;—but he assured me that an hour would take me out to his place at Healdtown. He clearly thought,—and clearly said,—that it was my duty to go, and I acceded. He promised to convey me to the establishment in an hour,—but it was two hours and a half before we were there. He allured me by speaking of the beauty of the road,—but it was pitch dark all the way. It was eight o’clock before my wants were supplied, and by that time I hated Kafir children thoroughly.
Of Healdtown and Lovedale,—a much larger Kafir school,—I will speak in the next chapter, which shall be exclusively educational. Near to Lovedale is the little town of Alice in which I stayed two days with the hospitable doctor. He took me out for a day’s hunting as it is called, which in that benighted country means shooting. I must own here to have made a little blunder. When I was asked some days previously whether I would like to have a day’s hunting got up for me in the neighbourhood of Alice, I answered with alacrity in the affirmative. Hunting, which is the easiest of all sports, has ever been an allurement to me. To hunt, as we hunt at home, it is only necessary that a man should stick on to the back of a horse,—or, failing that, that he should fall off. When hunting was offered to me I thought that I could at any rate go out and see. But on my arrival at Alice I found that hunting meant—shooting, an exercise of skill in which I had never even tried to prevail. “I haven’t fired off a gun,” I said, “for forty years.” But I had agreed to go out hunting, and word had passed about the country, and a hundred naked Kafirs were to be congregated to drive the game. I tried hard to escape. “Might I not be allowed to go and see the naked Kafirs, without a gun,—especially as it was so probable that I might shoot one of them if I were armed?” But this would not do. I was told that the Kafirs would despise me. So I took the gun and carried it ever so many miles, on horseback, to my very great annoyance.
At a certain spot on a hill side,—where the hill downwards was covered with bush and shrubs, we met the naked Kafirs. There were a hundred of them, I was told, more or less, and they were as naked as my heart could desire,—but each carrying some fragment of a blanket wound round on his arm, and many of them were decorated with bracelets and earrings. There were some preliminary ceremonies, such as the lying down of a young Kafir and the pretence of all the men around him,—and of all the dogs, of which there was a large muster,—that the prostrate figure was a dead buck over whom it was necessary to lick their lips and shake their weapons;—and after this the Kafirs went down into the bush. Then I was led away by my white friend, carrying my gun and leading my horse, and after a while was told that the very spot had been found. If I would remain there with my gun cocked and ready, a buck would surely come by almost at once so that I might shoot him. I did as I was bid, and sat alert for thirty minutes holding my gun as though something to be shot would surely come every second. But nothing came and I gradually went to sleep.
Then of a sudden I heard the Kafirs approaching. They had beaten the woods for a mile along the valley; and then a gun was fired and then another, and gradually my white friends reappeared among the Kafirs. One had shot a bird, and another a hare; and the most triumphant of the number had slaughtered a very fat monkey of a peculiarly blue colour about his hinder quarters. This was the great battue of the day. There were two or three other resting places at which I was instructed to stand and wait; and then we would be separated again, and again after a while would come the noise of the Kafirs. But no one shot anything further, and during the whole day nothing appeared before my eyes at which I was even able to aim my gun. But the native Kafirs with their red paint and their blankets wound round their arms, passing here and there through the bush and beating for game, were real enough and very interesting. I was told that to them it was a day of absolute delight, and that they were quite satisfied with having been allowed to be there.
I have spoken before of the Kafir scare of 1876 during which it was certainly the general opinion at Grahamstown that there was about to be a general rising among the natives, and that it would behove all Europeans in the Eastern Province to look well to their wives and children and homesteads. I have described the manner in which my friend at the ostrich farm fortified his place with turrets, and I had heard of some settlers further east who had left their homes in the conviction that they were no longer safe. Gentlemen at Grahamstown had assured me that the danger had been as though men were going about a powder magazine with lighted candles. Here, where was our hunting party, we were in the centre of the Kafirs. A farmer who was with us owned the land down to the Chumie river which was at our feet, and on the other side there was a wide district which had been left by Government to the Kafirs when we annexed the land,—a district in which the Kafirs live after their old fashion. This man had his wife and children within a mile or two of hordes of untamed savages. When I asked him about the scare of last year, he laughed at it. Some among his neighbours had fled;—and had sold their cattle for what they would fetch. But he, when he saw that Kafirs were buying the cattle thus sold, was very sure that they would not buy that which they could take without price if war should come. But the Kafirs around him, he said, had no idea of war; and, when they heard of all that the Europeans were doing, they had thought that some attack was to be made on them.[13] The Kafirs as a body no doubt hate their invaders; but they would be well content to be allowed to hold what they still possess without further struggles with the white man, if they were sure of being undisturbed in their holdings. But they will be disturbed. Gradually, for this and the other reason, from causes which the white man of the day will be sure to be able to justify at any rate to himself, more and more will be annexed, till there will not be a hill side which the Kafir can call his own dominion. As a tenant he will be admitted, and as a farmer, if he will farm the land, he will be welcomed. But the Kafir hill sides with the Kafir Kraals,—or homesteads,—and the Kafir flocks will all gradually be annexed and made subject to British taxation.
From Alice I went on to King Williamstown,—at first through a cold but grandly mountainous country, but coming, when half way, to a spot smiling with agriculture, called Debe Nek, where too there were forest trees and green slopes. At Debe Nek I met a young farmer who was full of the hardships to which he was subjected by the unjust courses taken by the Government. I could not understand his grievance, but he seemed to me to have a very pleasant spot of ground on which to sow his seed and reap his corn. His mother kept an hotel, and was racy with a fine Irish brogue which many years in the Colony had failed in the least to tarnish. She had come from Armagh and was delighted to talk of the beauty and bounty and great glory of the old primate, Beresford. She sighed for her native land and shook her head incredulously when I reminded her of the insufficiency of potatoes for the needs of man or woman. I never met an Irishman out of his own country, who, from some perversity of memory, did not think that he had always been accustomed to eat meat three times a day, and wear broad cloth when he was at home.
King Williamstown was the capital of British Kafraria, and is now the seat of a British Regiment. I am afraid that at this moment it is the Head Quarters of much more than one. This perhaps will be the best place in which to say a few words on the question of keeping British troops in the Cape Colony. It is held to be good colonial doctrine that a Colony which governs itself, which levies and uses its own taxes, and which does in pretty nearly all things as seems good to itself in its own sight, should pay its own bills;—and among other bills any bill that may be necessary for its own defence. Australia has no British soldiers,—not an English redcoat; nor has Canada, though Canada be for so many miles flanked by a country desirous of annexing it. My readers will remember too that even while the Maoris were still in arms the last regiment was withdrawn from New Zealand,—so greatly to the disgust of New Zealand politicians that the New Zealand Minister of the day flew out almost in mutiny against our Secretary of State at the time. But the principle was maintained, and the measure was carried, and the last regiment was withdrawn. But at that time ministerial responsibility and parliamentary government had not as yet been established in the Cape Colony, and there were excuses for British soldiers at the Cape which no longer existed in New Zealand.
Now parliamentary government and ministerial responsibility are as strong at Capetown as at Wellington, but the British troops still remain in the Cape Colony. There will be, I think, when this book is published more than three regiments in the Colony or employed in its defence. The parliamentary system began only in 1872, and it may be alleged that the withdrawal of troops should be gradual. It may be alleged also that the present moment is peculiar, and that the troops are all this time specially needed. It should, however, be remembered that when the troops were finally withdrawn from New Zealand, disturbance among the Maoris was still rampant there. I suppose there can hardly be a doubt that it is a subject on which a so called Conservative Secretary of State may differ slightly from a so called Liberal Minister. Had Lord Kimberley remained in office there might possibly be fewer soldiers in the Cape Colony. But the principle remains, and has I think so established itself that probably no Colonial Secretary of whatever party would now deny its intrinsic justice.
Then comes the question whether the Cape Colony should be made an exception, and if so why. I am inclined to think that no visitor travelling in the country with his eyes open, and with capacity for seeing the things around him, would venture to say that the soldiers should be withdrawn now, at this time. Looking back at the nature of the Kafir wars, looking round at the state of the Kafir people, knowing as he would know that they are armed not only with assegais but with guns, and remembering the possibilities of Kafir warfare, he would hesitate to leave a quarter of a million of white people to defend themselves against a million and a half of warlike hostile Natives. The very withdrawal of the troops might itself too probably cause a prolonged cessation of that peace to which the Kafir Chiefs have till lately felt themselves constrained by the presence of the red coats, and for the speedy re-establishment of which the continued presence of the red coats is thought to be necessary. The capable and clearsighted stranger of whom I am speaking would probably decline to take such responsibility upon himself, even though he were as strong in the theory of colonial self-defence as was Lord Granville when he took the soldiers away from New Zealand.
But it does not follow that on that account he should think that the Cape Colony should be an exception to a rule which as to other Colonies has been found to be sound. It may be wise to keep the soldiers in the Colony, but have been unwise to saddle the Colony with full parliamentary institutions before it was able to bear their weight. “If the soldiers be necessary, then the place was not ripe for parliamentary institutions.” That may be a very possible opinion as to the affairs of South Africa generally.
I am again driven to assert the difference between South Africa, and Canada, or Australia, or New Zealand. South Africa is a land peopled with coloured inhabitants. Those other places are lands peopled with white men. I will not again vex my reader with numbers,—not now at least. He will perhaps remember the numbers, and bethink himself of what has to be done before all those negroes can be assimilated and digested and made into efficient parliamentary voters, who shall have civilization, and the good of their country, and “God save the Queen” generally, at their hearts’ core. A mistake has perhaps been made;—but I do not think that because of that mistake the troops should be withdrawn from the Colony.
I cannot, however, understand why they should be kept at Capetown, to the safety of which they are no more necessary than they would be to that of Sydney or Melbourne. It is alleged that they can be moved more easily from Capetown, than they might be from any inland depot. But we know that if wanted at all they will be wanted on the frontier,—say within 50 miles of the Kei river which is the present boundary of the Colony. If the Kafirs east of the Kei can be kept quiet, there will be no rising of those to the west of the river. It was the knowledge that there were troops at King Williamstown, not that there were troops at Capetown, which operated so long on the minds of Kreli and other Transkeian Kafirs. And now that disturbance has come all the troops are sent to the frontier. If this be so, it would seem that British Kafraria is the place in which they should be located. But Capetown has been Head Quarters since the Colony was a Colony, and Head Quarters are never moved very easily. It is right that I should add that the Colony pays £10,000 a year to the mother country in aid of the cost of the troops. I need hardly say that that sum does not go far towards covering the total expense of two or more regiments on foreign service.
Another difficulty is apt to arise,—which I fear will now be found to be a difficulty in South Africa. If imperial troops be used in a Colony which enjoys parliamentary government, who is to be responsible for their employment? The Parliamentary Minister will expect that they shall be used as he may direct;—but so will not the authorities at home! In this way there can hardly fail to be difference of opinion between the Governor of the Colony and his responsible advisers.
King Williamstown is a thoroughly commercial little city with a pleasant club, with a railway to East London, and with smiling German cultivation all around it. But it has no trees. There is indeed a public garden in which the military band plays with great éclat, and in which horses can be ridden, and carriages with ladies be driven about,—so as to look almost like Hyde Park in June. I stayed three or four days at the place and was made very comfortable; but what struck me most was the excellence of the Kafir servant who waited upon me. A gentleman had kindly let me have the use of his house, and with his house the services of this treasure. The man was so gentle, so punctual, and so mindful of all things that I could not but think what an acquisition he would be to any fretful old gentleman in London.
When I was at King Williamstown I was invited to hold a conference with two or three Kafir Chiefs, especially with Sandilli, whose son I had seen at school, and who was the heir to Gaika, one of the great kings of the Kafirs, being the son of Gaika’s “great wife,” and brother to Makomo the Kafir who in the last war had done more than Kafir had ever done before to break the British power in South Africa. It was Makomo who had been Sir Harry Smith’s too powerful enemy,—and Sandilli, who is still living in the neighbourhood of King Williamstown, was Makomo’s younger but more royal brother. I expressed, of course, great satisfaction at the promised interview, but was warned that Sandilli might not improbably be too drunk to come.
On the morning appointed about twenty Kafirs came to me, clustering round the door of the house in which I was lodging,—but they declined to enter. I therefore held my levee out in the street. Sandilli was not there. The reason for his absence remained undivulged, but I was told that he had sent a troop of cousins in his place. The spokesman on the occasion was a chief named Siwani, who wore an old black coat, a flannel shirt, a pair of tweed trousers and a billycock hat,—comfortably and warmly dressed,—with a watch-key of ordinary appearance ingeniously inserted into his ear as an ornament. An interpreter was provided; and, out in the street, I carried on my colloquy with the dusky princes. Not one of them spoke but Siwani, and he expressed utter dissatisfaction with everything around him. The Kafirs, he said, would be much better off if the English would go away and leave them to their own customs. As for himself, though he had sent a great many of his clansmen to work on the railway,—where they got as he admitted good wages,—he had never himself received the allowance per head promised him. “Why not appeal to the magistrate?” I asked. He had done so frequently, he said, but the Magistrate always put him off, and then, personally, he was treated with very insufficient respect. This complaint was repeated again and again. I, of course, insisted on the comforts which the Europeans had brought to the Kafirs,—trousers for instance,—and I remarked that all the royal princes around me were excellently well clad. The raiment was no doubt of the Irish beggar kind but still admitted of being described as excellent when compared in the mind with red clay and a blanket. “Yes,—by compulsion,” he said. “We were told that we must come in and see you, and therefore we put on our trousers. Very uncomfortable they are, and we wish that you and the trousers and the magistrates, but above all the prisons, would go—away out of the country together.” He was very angry about the prisons, alleging that if the Kafirs did wrong the Kafir Chiefs would know how to punish them. None of his own children had ever gone to school,—nor did he approve of schools. In fact he was an unmitigated old savage, on whom my words of wisdom had no effect whatever, and who seemed to enjoy the opportunity of unburdening his resentment before a British traveller. It is probable that some one had given him to understand that I might possibly write a book when I returned home.
When, after some half hour of conversation, he declared that he did not want to answer any more questions, I was not sorry to shake hands with the prominent half dozen, so as to bring the meeting to a close. But suddenly there came a grin across Siwani’s face,—the first look of good humour which I had seen,—and the interpreter informed me that the Chief wanted a little tobacco. I went back into my friend’s house and emptied his tobacco pot, but this, though accepted, did not seem to give satisfaction. I whispered to the interpreter a question, and on being told that Siwani would not be too proud to buy his own tobacco, I gave the old beggar half a crown. Then he blessed me