South Africa; vol I. by Anthony Trollope - HTML preview

CHAPTER IV.
 POPULATION AND FEDERATION.

IN a former chapter I endeavoured to give a rough idea of the geographical districts into which has been divided that portion of South Africa which Europeans have as yet made their own. I will now attempt to explain how they are at present ruled and will indulge in some speculations as to their future condition.

How the Cape Colony became a Colony I have already described. The Dutch came and gradually spread themselves, and then the English becoming owners of the Dutch possessions spread themselves further. With the natives,—Hottentots as they came to be called,—there was some trouble but not very much. They were easily subjected,—very easily as compared with the Kafirs,—and then gradually dispersed. As a race they are no longer troublesome;—nor are they very profitable to the Cape Colony. The labour of the Colony is chiefly done by coloured people, but by people who have mainly been immigrants,—the descendants of those whom the Dutch brought, and bastard Hottentots as they are called, with a sprinkling of Kafirs and Fingos who have come from the East in quest of wages. The Colony is divided into a Western and Eastern Province, and these remarks refer to the whole of the former and to the western portion of the latter district. In this large portion of the Colony there is not now nor has there been for many years anything to be feared from pugnacious natives. It is in the eastern half of the Eastern Province that Kafirs have been and still are troublesome.

The division into Provinces is imaginary rather than real. There are indeed at this moment twenty-one members of the Legislative Council of which eleven are supposed to have been sent to Parliament by the Western District, and ten by the Eastern;—but even this has now been altered, and the members of the next Council will be elected for separate districts,—so that no such demarcation will remain. I think that I am justified in saying that the constitution knows no division. In men’s minds, however, the division is sharp enough, and the political feeling thus engendered is very keen. The Eastern Province desires to be separated and formed into a distinct Colony, as Victoria was separated from New South Wales, and afterwards Queensland. The reasons for separation which it puts forward are as follows. Capetown, the capital, is in a corner and out of the way. Members from the East have to make long and disagreeable journeys to Parliament, and, when there, are always in a minority. Capetown and the West with its mongrel population is perfectly safe, whereas a large portion of the Eastern Province is always subject to Kafir “scares” and possibly to Kafir wars. And yet the Ministry in power is, and has been, and must be a Western Ministry, spending the public money for Western objects and ruling the East according to its pleasure. It was by arguments such as these that the British Government was induced to sanction the happy separation of Queensland from New South Wales. Then why not separate the Eastern from the Western Province in the Cape Colony? But the western people, as a matter of course, do not wish to see a diminution of their own authority. Capetown would lose half its glory and more than half its importance if it were put simply on a par with Grahamstown, which is the capital of the East. And the western politicians have their arguments which have hitherto prevailed. As to the expenditure of public money they point to the fact that two railway enterprises have been initiated in the East,—one up the country from Port Elizabeth, and the other from East London,—whereas there is but the one in the West which starts from Capetown. Of course it must be understood that in the Colonies railways are always or very nearly always made by Government money. The western people also say that the feeling produced by Kafir aggression in the Eastern Province is still too bitter to admit of calm legislation. The prosperity of South Africa must depend on the manner in which the Kafir and cognate races, Fingos and Basutos, Pondos, Zulus and others are amalgamated and brought together as subjects of the British Crown; and if every unnecessary scare is to produce a mixture of fear and oppression then the doing of the work will be much protracted. If the Eastern Province were left alone to arrange its affairs with the natives the chances of continual Kafir wars would be very much increased.

Arguments and feelings such as these have hitherto availed to prevent a separation of the Provinces; but though a belief in this measure is still the eastern political creed, action in that direction is no longer taken. No eastern politician thinks that he will see simple separation by a division of the Colony into two Colonies. But another action has taken place in lieu of simple separation which, if successful, would imply something like separation, and which is called Federation. Here there has been ample ground for hope because it has been understood that Federation is popular with the authorities of the Colonial Office at home.

It will hardly be necessary for me to explain here what Federation means. We have various Groups of Colonies and the question has arisen whether it may not be well that each group should be bound together under one chief or Federal Government, as the different States of the American Union are bound. It has been tried, as we all believe successfully, with British North America. It has been recommended in regard to the Australian Colonies. It has been attempted, not as yet successfully, in the West Indies. It has been talked of and become the cause of very hot feeling in reference to Her Majesty’s possessions in South Africa.

I myself have been in favour of such Federation since I have known anything of our colonial possessions. The one fact that at present the produce of a Colony, going into an adjacent district as closely connected with it as Yorkshire is with Lancashire, should be subjected to Custom duties as though it came from a foreign land, is a strong reason for such union. And then the mind foresees that there will at some future time be a great Australia, and probably a great South Africa, in which a division into different governments will, if continued, be as would be a Heptarchy restored in England. But it is this very feeling,—the feeling which experience and foresight produce among us in England,—which renders the idea of Federation unpalatable in the Colonies generally. The binding together of a colonial group into one great whole is regarded as a preparation for separation from the mother country. It is as though we at home in England were saying to our children about the world;—“We have paid for your infantine bread and butter; we have educated you and given you good trades; now you must go and do for yourselves.” There is perhaps no such feeling in the bosom of the special Colonial Minister at home who may at this or the other time be advocating this measure; but there must be an idea that some preparation for such a possible future event is expedient. We do not want to see such another colonial crisis as the American war of last century between ourselves and an English-speaking people. But in the Colonies there is a sort of loyalty of which we at home know nothing. It may be exemplified to any man’s mind by thinking of the feeling as to home which is engendered by absence. The boy or girl who lives always on the paternal homestead does not care very much for the kitchen with its dressers, or for the farmyard with its ricks, or the parlour with its neat array. But let the boy or girl be banished for a year or two and every little detail becomes matter for a fond regret. Hence I think has sprung that colonial anger which has been entertained against Ministers at home who have seemed to prepare the way for final separation from the mother country.

Federation, though generally unpopular in the Colonies, has been welcomed in the Eastern Province of South Africa, because it would be a means of giving if not entire at any rate partial independence from Capetown domination. If Federation were once sanctioned and carried out, the Eastern Province thinks that it would enter the union as a separate state, and that it would have such dominion as to its own affairs as New York and Massachusetts have in the United States.

But there would be various other States in such a Federation besides the two into which the Cape Colony might be divided, and in order that my readers may have some idea of what would or might be the component parts of such a union, I will endeavour to describe the different territories which would be included, with some regard to their population.

At present that South African district of which the South African politician speaks when he discusses the question of South African Federation, contains by a rough but fairly accurate computation,[4] 2,276,000 souls, of whom 340,000 may be classed as white men and 1,936,000 as coloured men. There is not therefore one white to five coloured men. And these coloured people are a strong and increasing people,—by no means prone to die out and cease to be either useless or useful, as are the Maoris in New Zealand and the Indians in North America. Such as they are we have got to bring them into order, and to rule them and teach them to earn their bread,—a duty which has not fallen upon us in any other Colony. The population above stated may be divided as follows:—

ESTIMATED POPULATION OF EUROPEAN SOUTH AFRICA.

I must first remark in reference to this table that the district named first,—the one containing by far the smallest number of native inhabitants, called the Orange Free State—is not a British possession nor, as far as I am aware, is it subject to British influences. It is a Dutch Republic, well ruled as regards its white inhabitants, untroubled by the native question and content with its own position. It is manifest, however, that it has succeeded in making the natives understand that they can live better outside its borders, and it has continued by its practice to banish the black man and to rid itself of trouble on that score. My reader if he will refer to the map will see that now, since the annexation of the Transvaal by Great Britain, the Free State is surrounded by British territory,—for Basuto land, which lies to the west of the Free State between the Cape Colony and Natal, is a portion of the Cape Colony. This being so I cannot understand how the Orange Free State can be comprised in any political Confederation. The nature of such a Confederation seems to require one Head, one flag, and one common nationality. I cannot conceive that the Savoyards should confederate with the Swiss,—let their interests be ever so identical,—unless Savoy were to become a Swiss Canton. The Dutch Republic is no doubt free to do as she pleases, which Savoy is not; but the idea of Confederation presumes that she would give herself up to the English flag. There may no doubt be a Confederation without the Orange Free State, and that Confederation might offer advantages so great that the Dutchmen of the Free State should ultimately feel disposed to give themselves up to Great Britain; but the question for the present must be considered as subject to considerable disturbance from the existence of the Republic. The roads from the Cape Colony to the Transvaal and the Diamond Fields lie through the Free State, and there would necessarily arise questions of transit and of Custom duties which would make it expedient that the districts should be united under one flag; but I can foresee no pretext for compulsion.

In the annexation of the Transvaal there was at any rate an assignable cause,—of which we were not slow to take advantage. In regard to the Orange Free State nothing of the kind is to be expected. The population is chiefly Dutch. The political influence is altogether Dutch. A reference to the above table will show how the Dutchman succeeds,—whether for good or ill,—in ridding himself of the coloured man. The Free State is a large district; but it contains altogether only 45,000 inhabitants,—and there are on the soil no more than 15,000 natives.

I will next say a word as to the Transkeian districts, which also have been supposed to be outside the dominion of the British Crown and which therefore it would seem to be just to exclude were we to effect a Confederation of our British South African Colonies.[5] But all these districts would certainly be included in any Confederation, with great advantage to the British Colonies, and with greater advantages to the Kafirs themselves who live beyond the Kei. I must again refer my readers to the map. They will see on the South Eastern Coast of the continent a district called Kafraria,—as distinct from British Kafraria further west,—the independence of which is signified by its name. Here they will find the river Kei, which till lately was supposed to be the boundary of the British territories,—beyond which the Kafir was supposed to live according to his own customs, and in undisturbed possession of independent rule. But this, even before the late Kafir outbreak, was by no means the case. A good deal of British annexation goes on in different parts of the world of which but little mention is made in the British Parliament, and but little notice taken even by the British press. It will be seen that in this territory there live 501,000 natives, and it is here, no doubt, that Kafir habits are to be found in their fullest perfection. The red Kafir is here,—the man who dyes himself and his blanket and his wives with red clay, who eschews breeches and Christianity, and meditates on the coming happy day in which the pestilent interfering European may be driven at length into the sea. It is here that Kreli till lately reigned the acknowledged king of Kafirdom as being the chief of the Galekas. Kreli had foughten and been conquered and been punished by the loss of much of his territory;—but still was allowed to rule over a curtailed empire. His population is now not above 66,000. Among even these,—among the Pondos, who are much more numerous than the Galekas, our influence is maintained by European magistrates, and the Kafirs, though allowed to do much according to their pleasures, are not allowed to do everything. The Pondos number, I believe, as many as 200,000. In the remainder of Kafraria British rule is nearly as dominant to the east as to the west of the Kei. Adam Kok’s land,—or no man’s land, as it has been called,—running up north into Natal, we have already annexed to the Cape Colony, and no parliamentary critic at home is at all the wiser. The Fingos hold much of the remainder, and wherever there is a Fingo there is a British subject. There would now be no difficulty in sweeping Kafraria into a general South African Confederation.

I will now deal with those enumerated in the above table who are at present undoubtedly subjects of Her Majesty, and who are bound to comply with British laws. The Cape Colony contains nearly three-quarters of a million of people, and is the only portion of South Africa which has what may be called a large white population; but that population, though comparatively large,—something over a quarter of a million,—is less in number than the inhabitants of the single city of Melbourne. One colonial town in Australia, and that a town not more than a quarter of a century old, gives a home to more white people than the whole of the Cape Colony, which was colonized with white people two hundred years before Melbourne was founded. And on looking at the white population of the Cape Colony a further division must be made in order to give the English reader a true idea of the Colony in reference to England. A British colony to the British mind is a land away from home to which the swarming multitudes of Great Britain may go and earn a comfortable sustenance, denied to them in the land of their birth by the narrowness of its limits and the greatness of its population, and may do so with the use of their own language, and in subjection to their own laws. We have other senses of the word Colony,—for we call military garrisons Colonies,—such as Malta, and Gibraltar, and Bermuda. But the true Colony has, I think, above been truly described; and thus the United States of America have answered to us the purpose of a Colony as well as though they had remained under British rule. We should, therefore, endeavour to see how far the Cape Colony has answered the desired purpose.

The settlement was Dutch in its origin, and was peopled by Dutchmen,—with a salutary sprinkling of Protestant French who assimilated themselves after a time to the Dutch in language and religion. It is only by their religion that we can now divide the Dutch and the English; and on enquiry I find that about 150,000 souls belong to the Dutch Reformed and Lutheran Churches,—leaving 85,000 of English descent in the Colony. If to these we add the 20,000 white persons inhabiting Natal, and 15,000 at the Diamond Fields, we shall have the total English population of South Africa;—for the Europeans of the Transvaal, as of the Orange Free State, are a Dutch people. There are therefore about 120,000 persons of British descent in these South African districts,—the number being little more than that of the people of the small unobtrusive Colony which we call Tasmania.

I hope that nobody will suppose from this that I regard a Dutch subject of the British Crown as being less worthy of regard than an English subject. My remarks are not intended to point in that direction, but to show what is the nature of our duties in South Africa. Thus are there about 220,000[6] persons of Dutch descent, though the emigrants from Holland to that land during the present century have been but few;—so few that I have found no trace of any batch of such emigrants; and there are but 120,000 of English descent although the country has belonged to England for three-quarters of a century! The enquirer is thus driven to the conclusion that South Africa has hardly answered the purpose of a British Colony.

And I hope that nobody will suppose from this that I regard the coloured population of Africa as being unworthy of consideration. My remarks, on the other hand, are made with the object of showing that in dealing with South Africa the British Parliament and the British Ministers should think,—not indeed exclusively,—but chiefly of the coloured people. When we speak of Confederation among these Colonies and districts we should enquire whether such Confederation will be good for those races whom at home we lump under the name of Kafirs. As a Colony, in the proper sense of the word, the Cape Colony has not been successful. Englishmen have not flocked there in proportion to its area or to its capabilities for producing the things necessary for life. The working Englishman,—and it is he who populates the new lands,—prefers a country in which he shall not have to compete with a black man or a red man. He learns from some only partially correct source that in one country the natives will interfere with him and that in another they will not; and he prefers the country in which their presence will not annoy him.

But then neither have Englishmen flocked to India, which of all our possessions is the most important,—or to Ceylon, which as being called a Colony and governed from the Colonial Office at home may afford us the nearest parallel we can find to South Africa. No doubt they are in many things unlike. No English workman takes his family to Ceylon because the tropical sun is too hot for a European to work beneath it. South Africa is often hot, but it is not tropical, and an Englishman can work there. And again in Ceylon the coloured population have from the first British occupation of the island been recognised as “the people,”—an interesting and submissive but still foreign and coloured people, whom she should not dream of inviting to govern themselves. It is a matter of course that Ceylon should be governed as a Crown Colony,—with edicts and laws from Downing Street, administered by the hand of a Governor. A Cingalee Parliament would be an absurdity in our eyes. But in the Cape Colony we have, as I shall explain in another chapter, all the circumstances of parliamentary government. The real Governor is the Colonial Prime Minister for the time, with just such restraints as control our Prime Minister at home. Therefore Ceylon and the Cape Colony are very unlike in their circumstances.

But the likeness is much more potential than the unlikeness. In each country there is a vast coloured population subject to British rule,—and a population which is menaced by no danger of coming extermination. It must always be remembered that the Kafirs are not as the Maoris. They are increasing now more quickly than ever because, under our rule, they do not kill each other off in tribal wars. No doubt the white men are increasing too,—but very slowly; so that it is impossible not to accept the fact a few white men have to rule a great number of coloured men, and that that proportion must remain.

A coloured subject of the Queen in the Cape Colony has all the privileges possessed by a white subject,—all the political privileges. The elective franchise under which the constituencies elect their members of Parliament is given under a certain low property qualification. A labourer who for a year shall have earned £25 in wages and his diet may be registered as a voter, or if a man shall have held for a year a house, or land, or land and house conjointly, worth £50, he may be registered. It is certainly the case that even at present a very large number of Kafirs might be registered. It has already been threatened in more than one case that a crowd of Kafirs should be taken to the poll to carry an election in this or that direction. The Kafirs themselves understand but little about it,—as yet; but they will come to understand. The franchise is one which easily admits of a simulated qualification. It depends on the value of land,—and who is to value it? If one Kafir were now to swear that he paid another Kafir 10s. a week and fed him; no registrar would perhaps believe the oath. But it will not be long before such oath might probably be true, or at any rate impossible of rejection. The Registrar may himself be a Kafir,—as may also be the member of Parliament. We have only to look at the Southern States of the American Union to see how quickly the thing may run when once it shall have begun to move. With two million and a quarter of coloured people as against 340,000 white, all endowed with equal political privileges, why should we not have a Kafir Prime Minister at Capetown, and a Kafir Parliament refusing to pay salary to any but a Kafir Governor?

There may be those who think that a Kafir Parliament and a Kafir Governor would be very good for a Kafir country. I own that I am not one of them. I look to the civilization of these people, and think that I see it now being effected by the creation of those wants the desire for supplying which has since the creation of the world been the one undeviating path towards material and intellectual progress. I see them habituating their shoulders to the yoke of daily labour,—as we have all habituated ours in Europe, and I do not doubt the happiness of the result. Nor do I care at present to go into the question of a far distant future. I will not say but that in coming ages a Kafir may make as good a Prime Minister as Lord Beaconsfield. But he cannot do so now,—nor in this age,—nor for many ages to come. It will be sufficient for us if we can make up our minds that at least for the next hundred years we shall not choose to be ruled by him. But if so, seeing how greatly preponderating is his number, how are we to deal with him when he shall have come to understand the meaning of his electoral privileges, but shall not yet have reached that intellectual equality with the white man which the more ardent of his friends anticipate for him? Such are the perils and such the political quagmire among which the Southern States of the Union are now floundering. In arranging for the future government of South Africa, whether with, or without, a Confederation, we should I think be on the alert to guard against similar perils and a similar quagmire there.

I have now spoken of the Queen’s subjects in the Cape Colony. Then come on my list as given above the inhabitants of native districts which are subject to the Cape Colony, either by conquest or by annexation in accordance with their own wishes. These are so various and scattered that I can hardly hope to interest my reader in the tribes individually. The Basutos are probably the most prominent. They are governed by British magistrates, pay direct and indirect taxes,—are a quiet orderly people, not given to fighting since the days of their great King Moshesh, and are about 127,000 in number. Then there are the Damaras and Namaquas of the Western coast, people allied to the Hottentots, races of whom no great notice is taken because their land has not yet been good enough to tempt colonists. But a small proportion of these people as yet live within electoral districts and therefore at present they have no votes for members of Parliament. But were any scheme of Confederation carried out their position would have to be assimilated to that of the other natives.

The Diamond Fields are in a condition very little like that of South Africa generally. They are now, so to say, in the act of being made a portion of the Cape Colony, the bill for this purpose having been passed only during the last Session. They were annexed to the British Dominions in 1871, and have been governed since that time by a resident Sub-Governor under the Governor and High Commissioner of the Cape Colony. The district will now have a certain allotment of members of Parliament, but it has not any strong bearing on the question we are considering. The population of the district is of a shifting nature, the greater portion of even the coloured people having been drawn there by the wages offered by capitalists in search of diamonds. The English have got into the way of calling this territory the Diamond Fields, but its present proper geographical name is Griqualand West.

We then come to Natal with its little handful of white people,—20,000 Europeans among 320,000 Kafirs and Zulus. Natal at present is under a separate Governor of its own and a separate form of government. There is not a Parliament in our sense of the word, but a Legislative Council. The Executive Officers are responsible to the Governor and not to the Council. Natal is therefore a Crown Colony, and is not yet afflicted with any danger from voting natives. I can understand that it should be brought into a Confederation with other Colonies or Territories under the same flag without any alteration in its own Constitution,—but in doing so it must consent to take a very subordinate part. Where there is a Parliament, and the clamour and energy and strife of parliamentary life, there will be the power. If there be a Confederation with a central Congress,—and I presume that such an arrangement is always intended when Confederation is mentioned,—Natal would demand the right to elect members. It would choose its own franchise, and might perhaps continue to shut out the coloured man; but it would be subjected to and dominated by the Institutions of the Cape Colony, which, as I have endeavoured to show, are altogether different from its own. The smaller States are generally those most unwilling to confederate, fearing that they will be driven to the wall. The founders of the American Constitution had to give Rhode Island as many Senators as New York before she would consent to Federation.

There remains the Transvaal, which we have just annexed with its 40,000 Dutchmen and its quarter of a million of native population,—a number which can only be taken as a rough average and one which will certainly be greatly exceeded as our borders stretch themselves in their accustomed fashion. Here again we have for the moment a Crown Colony, and one which can hardly get itself into working order for Confederation within the period allowed by the Permissive Bill of last Session. The other day there was a Dutch Parliament,—or Volksraad,—in which the Dutchman had protected himself altogether from any voting interference on the part of the native. Downing Street can make the Transvaal confederate if she so please, but can hardly do so without causing Dutch members to be sent up to the general Parliament. Now these Dutchmen do not talk English, and