- not plough his land and reap it because the Zulu will not
come to him just when work is required. It seems hard to the farmer that, with 300,000 of a labouring class around, the 20,000 white capitalists,—capitalists in a small way,—should be short of labour. That is the way in which the Natal farmer looks at it, when he swears that the Zulu is trash, and that it would be well if he were swept from the face of the earth. It seems never to occur to a Natal farmer that if a Zulu has enough to live on without working he should be as free to enjoy himself in idleness as an English lord. The business of the Natal farmer is to teach the Zulu that he has not enough to live on, and that there are enjoyments to be obtained by working of which the idle man knows nothing.
But the Zulu does work, though not so regularly as might be desirable. I was astonished to find at how much cheaper a rate he works than does the Kafir in British Kafraria or in the Cape Colony generally. The wages paid by the Natal farmer run from 10s. down to 5s. a month, and about 3 lbs. of mealies or Indian corn a day for diet. I found that on road parties,—where the labour is I am sorry to say compulsory, the men working under constraint from their Chiefs,—the rate is 5s. a month, or 4d. a day for single days. The farmer who complains of course expects to get his work cheap, and thinks that he is injuring not only himself but the community at large if he offers more than the price which has been fixed in his mind as proper. But in truth there is much of Zulu agricultural work done at a low rate of wages, and the custom of such work is increasing.
