CHAPTER XIII.
Administrative Problems and the Land.
The preservation of the land of Africa for its peoples is thus, broadly speaking, the "acid" test of trusteeship. We have seen that the land question assumes varying aspects in connection with the government of Africans by white men, as the temperate or tropical regions of the Continent are involved. But the main principle holds good in either case. The welfare of the African peoples may be gravely impaired by European policy in a multiplicity of ways. But if they are dispossessed of the land, and prevented thereby from using it for their own account, the injury done to them, and the resulting mischief, are incalculable. From free men, they sink to virtual slaves: the shackles are lacking—that is all. Recognition of this truth should inspire the land legislation of white Governments in the temperate regions of the Continent, and should form the basis of white policy in the tropical regions. How far white policy has turned in the opposite direction in South Africa, in British East Africa, in Algeria, in Morocco, in German South-West Africa and elsewhere, is only too patent. In pursuing that course the white man is raising up for himself the most formidable of future difficulties. So far as South Africa is concerned, an opportunity presents itself for an examination of the whole problem in the demand on the part of the Union Government of South Africa for the incorporation within the Union of the native Protectorates—Basutoland, Swaziland and Bechuanaland—over which the Colonial Office still retains supervision and ultimate control; and also of the Rhodesias. That demand, which can hardly be refused, places the British Government under the moral obligation of securing definite guarantees for the native population in regard to their land rights. The occasion is an excellent one for a joint Commission of investigation into the whole land problem south of the Zambesi.
While a system of native "Reserves" in colonisable South Africa is intelligible, and fairly and justly applied, is perhaps best calculated to ensure the welfare of the native population, its application to the tropical regions of the Continent is thoroughly vicious. Since the white man cannot himself colonise the tropical regions, the only object which such a policy within them can have is that of creating a landless class of natives who can be driven by various measures of direct and indirect coercion into plantation work under white and black overseers—an example of political effort directed to facilitate the direct action of capital in a country where such conceptions constitute a political and economic error of the first magnitude. British East Africa is a black spot in the generally sound record of British administration in the African tropics. The native peoples have been dispossessed of their land on an extensive scale, and administrative activities are concentrated upon furthering what is fundamentally an ephemeral enterprise, the exploitation of the soil of tropical Africa by aliens through native labour. The labour problems which are incessantly occurring in East Africa are the direct and necessary result of a wrong conception of policy. From the situation thus produced, the native suffers probably greater hardships than he suffered under the Arab, because the pressure upon him is perpetual. It is "Empire building" of a kind, no doubt, but its foundations are laid in sand.
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Happily, the "Reserve" system has been kept out of British West Africa. So far, however, only one West African Government has given actual legislative endorsement to the right political conception, viz., the British Administration of Northern Nigeria, whose "Land and Native Rights Proclamation" declares that:
"The whole of the lands of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, whether occupied or unoccupied … are hereby declared to be native lands. …"
Among the various reasons given for this wise act of statesmanship in the preamble, is that of the "preservation of existing native customs with regard to the use and occupation of the land."
The importance of this provision is emphasised further on.
In June, 1912, the Colonial Office, under Lord Harcourt, appointed a Committee, of which the author of this volume was a member, to consider the whole question of land legislation in the other West African dependencies. The Committee sat for two years, took an immense amount of oral evidence, and evidence on commission—both European and African—and had nearly completed its draft report when war broke out. A sub-committee, consisting of Sir Walter Napier, Sir Frederick Hodgson and the present writer, which was then engaged upon revising the draft report, continued its labours and completed the work which in the ordinary course of events would have been completed by the full Committee. The Report recommended that the rules and practices of nature tenure should be upheld,[1] and, where necessary, strengthened by administrative action. It condemned the grant of land concessions, and of monopolistic rights over the produce of the soil to European syndicates and individuals.[2]
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It is essential that we should form a clear idea of the dominating characteristics of the African system of land tenure. The African cannot be governed with comprehension, and, therefore, justly and wisely; his sociology cannot be understood, unless the nature of his customary land laws upon which the corporate nature of African social life is based, are thoroughly grasped. The idea is very prevalent that because the majority of the negro and negroid peoples of Africa are in a condition which we call rather loosely "primitive," there is no such thing as a law of tenure, because it is unwritten, and that African governing institutions do not exist. This is an altogether erroneous view. In point of fact, not only is there a real system of African tenure, but it is an infinitely better, sounder and healthier system than that which the British people tolerate and suffer from in their own country. To most Englishmen this statement will appear absurd. It is, however, strictly accurate, and it is not too much to say that if the African system of land tenure existed in England, the English people would be a happier people and, in the truest sense of the term, a more prosperous people, i.e., the mass of the people would be more prosperous. "I conceive that land belongs to a vast family, of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are yet unborn." That picturesque phrase, which fell from the lips of a dignified African ruler, examined by the West African Lands Committee, symbolises the entire philosophy of African social )ife, political, economic and spiritual. The fundamental conception underlying native tenure all over Africa (with a few reputed exceptions) where the white man has not undermined or destroyed it, is that land, like air and water, is God-given; that every individual within the community has a right to share in its bounties provided he carries out his social and political obligations to the community of which he forms part; that in the community as a whole is vested the ownership of the land, and that consequently the individual member of the community cannot permanently alienate the land he occupies and uses. The word "community" may typify the "family," a term which has a much wider significance than it has with us, the standard being a traceable consanguinity; or the clan, sometimes called the "house" and sometimes the "village"; or the tribe, which is a collection of clans, "houses" or "villages"; or, again—the final development—the collection of tribes under a kingship—a kingship which approximates more nearly (with rare exceptions) to a democratic, or rather to a Socialistic republic. But whether the smaller or larger social organisation be regarded as the landowning unit, the same common principle permeates the social structure and lies at the root of all social philosophy.
There is no word in our language which is capable of describing with accuracy this African system under which land is held and used. The terms "communal ownership" and "individual ownership" as employed by us are far too rigid to define a system which partakes of the character of both. In our eyes private property in land signifies freehold in land, and freehold in land implies that the individual is the absolute owner, and can alienate his land for ever. But private property in land conveys no such right, and implies no such power under the African system. Security and perpetuity of tenure the individual possesses: he benefits from his improvements, subject always to the performance of his civic duties. But the land is not his to dispose of, and at his death it reverts to the community. The structural law of tenure for the individual is thus the right of user, not of owner in our sense of the term. Land not in actual cultivation by individuals is the common property of the community. When it is allotted, the individual allottee becomes the owner of it, in the African sense, i.e., no other individual can interfere with him, trespass upon his ground and expel him from it, or lay hands upon the crops that he has reared upon it.
Under this system no member of an African community is ever in want. If a member of an African family—using the word in its African signification—emigrates for a time, his heritage in the land is waiting for him when he returns. No man starves or can starve. There are no paupers in Africa, except where the white man has created them, either deliberately and for his own purposes, by expropriating the people from their ancestral lands; or, stopping short of that, has allowed European legal ideas and practices with their conception of freehold and mortgage to bring a pauper class into existence. In the latter respect the African system is not free from danger at the hands not only of Europeans, but of a certain class of natives educated in Western notions of law, and of scheming non-educated members within the indigenous community itself. The growth of an aboriginal landlord class is an insidious peril to be guarded against by a vigilant administration. Its extension means social disaster for the majority, and our Indian experiences have taught us how difficult it is to undo that sort of mischief once it has taken firm hold. There are other reasons beyond those already indicated why a European Administration which is inspired by a statesmanlike grasp of the African problem should seek to preserve rather than to shake the foundations of African tenure in land. One of those reasons is the indissoluble connection between the system of African tenure, and the problem of the government of African communities by white men.
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Native polity, i.e., native governing institutions—the entire social structure, indeed, of African life, is inseparably bound up with the preservation of the African land system. They stand or fall together. And if native policy falls, social chaos ensues. An African community is ruled by an executive head, sometimes hereditary, sometimes elective, sometimes partly the one and partly the other, assisted by councillors usually composed of the heads, the "fathers" in African symbolism, of the lesser communities composing the larger unit. Save where priestly theocracies have stepped in to the general detriment of native society, the governing mechanism is essentially democratic, and an African "chief," as we term the ruler of an African community, loses all authority if public confidence in him is shaken. The chief, who is deposable for misrule, and is, in fact, not infrequently deposed, is the link between the various units composing the community, and, assisted by his councillors, the judge in all community disputes—his court being the supreme court of appeal. He and his council become the guardians and trustees of all unoccupied lands between the boundaries of the units composing the community. That position invests him additionally with spiritual functions and authority as incarnating the original ancestor of the community. The chosen heads of the different units within the community are the arbiters in all land disputes between their members. They allocate the unoccupied lands according to the increasing needs of the unit. They enjoy the privileges pertaining to that position—personal service at stated intervals, contributions from crops or from the sale of forest produce, the proceeds of which are partly spent in various ceremonials and festivities, and hospitality of diverse kinds. Their subjects, or strangers who have been admitted within the community, possess and enjoy the land subject to the fulfilment of the obligations recognised by the community as binding upon its members. Their power, exercised with the sanction of the community, to expel an occupant guilty of serious misdemeanours is the community's ultimate safeguard against social crime. They are not entitled to interfere in the usage and enjoyment of the land thus allotted: but they are the general guardians of the community's interests. Upon the exercise of these several functions their influence and authority repose.
Now when the European intervenes in regions where the form of native government described above prevails, the European assumes in the eyes of the native population the position of paramount authority over and above all the native authorities of the country. He becomes de facto supreme overlord. He has one of two courses to pursue. He must either govern through the existing mechanism of native government, contenting himself with exercising supervisory control without actually interfering in the ordinary functions of native government—this policy is known as indirect rule—or he must subvert native customary laws, substituting for them European conceptions of law and justice, either using the heads of the community as puppets to do his bidding (which means that they will lose all authority over the members of the community except as the servants of the white overlord) or he must arbitrarily elevate to positions of power within the community men who have no right to such positions in native custom and who, therefore, possess no local sanction behind them. That policy is known as direct rule. The Germans and, in more recent years, the French have favoured the latter policy in their tropical African possessions, the former partly from lack of experience, partly from the regimentalising tendencies of the home bureaucracy; the French, because the admirable features which distinguished many aspects of their rule in Western Africa proper, between 1880 and 1900, are being gradually obscured by, and their general administrative policy subordinated to, the purpose of militarising their African dependencies—of which more anon. In British West Africa the policy of indirect rule has been mainly followed. In British East Africa, as already stated, policy IB so entirely subordinated to the labour exigencies of Europeans that native administration in the proper sense of the term can hardly be said to exist at all.
The school of direct rulers is always influential and is favoured by certain tendencies within the Colonial Office: resisted by others. It is a curious and felicitous circumstance that although Colonial officials are nearly always drawn from classes of the home population, whose training does not make for sympathy and comprehension of native races, Britain continually throws up men who become sincerely attached to the natives and keen students of their institutions. This has been particularly the case in West Africa. Nevertheless, direct rule is a constant temptation. It offers greater opportunities to employment and promotion in some branches of the service. It increases the scope of judicial, secretarial, police and military activities. It assists, too, the educated native barrister trained in English law, and the native educated clerk, which our political system continues to turn out in great numbers, in the exercise of their professions. It helps the European capitalist in a hurry to push on what he calls "development." The missionary is apt to regard an indigenous mechanism of government as a hindrance to Christian propaganda. Finally, there is the type of European who is racially biassed against the retention of any sort of authority by the African in his own country. And, as a matter of fact, as already stated, it is only in Northern Nigeria, which has been blessed with a series of the ablest and most far-seeing British administrators, that the policy of governing the African on African lines has become consecrated in actual legislation, and the pernicious habit of allowing the law of England to encroach upon native customary law in matters affecting the land has been ruled out. In Southern Nigeria, in the Gold Coast and in Sierra Leone, general policy has been directed to preserving the native mechanism of government, but the absence of definite land legislation is permitting encroachments which will work much evil if not soon checked. It was with the intention of exploring the evil and circumscribing it, that the West African Lands Committee, referred to above, was appointed.
There can be no doubt upon which side lies the welfare of the native population. The African system of government, reposing upon a system of land tenure, essentially just and suited to the requirements of the people, is the natural machinery for the administration of the community. It is capable of sustaining the strain of innovation and modification consequent upon the advent of European influences, provided it is supported by the European executive. If it enjoys that support it will gradually evolve in such a way as will enable it to cope with changes rendered inevitable by the fusion which is going on, by the growth of permanent cultivation and by the increasing prosperity of the individual. Deprived of that support it will collapse.
A Europe desiring to deal justly towards its African wards will have increasingly to bear in mind that there can be no common definition of progress, no common standard for all mankind; that the highest human attainments are not necessarily reached on parallel lines; that man's place and part in the universe around him must vary with dissimilarities in race and in environment; that what may spell advance for some races at a particular stage in their evolution, may involve retrogression if not destruction for other races in another stage; that humanity cannot be legislated for as though every section of it were modelled upon the same pattern; that to disregard profound divergences in culture and racial necessities is to court disaster, and that to encourage national growth to develop on natural lines and the unfolding of the mental processes by gradual steps is the only method by which the exercise of the imperial prerogative is morally justified.
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The foregoing remarks apply to regions of Africa where the white man cannot himself occupy and people the soil with his own race. An entirely different set of problems arises where, in the colonisable and semi-colonisable areas, the white man has destroyed, or partially destroyed, native authority and polity and introduced his own economic, political and educational systems. Egypt, Algeria, the Union of South Africa, present as many instances of the latter kind of problem. Widely removed as are its several manifestations in these parts of the Continent, two main issues are in each case involved. The political system introduced from outside must be fairly representative of the governed, and the economic system must provide for the protection and the security of the aboriginal wage-earner. In other words, the European systems implanted in Africa cannot henceforth divest themselves in Africa of the elements which are bound up with their prevalence in Europe. And this, because they must tend to reproduce in Africa broadly the same conditions which they have created in Europe. To imagine that European political and economic systems can be set up in Africa and applied to the government of Africans without giving rise, sooner or later, to the same demands as are made upon the government of Europeans in Europe is to imagine a vain thing. If, for instance, you substitute for indigenous forms of government an alien institution like the franchise, in South Africa, you must make it a reality and not a mockery; and to introduce an honest franchise as a political engine of government without an educational system directed to making the individual worthy of exercising it, is merely to court trouble.
The problem which confronts the British in Egypt is a problem, too, wholly of their own creation. Before the Great War, one would have said that it could only be solved by giving to the Egyptians increased powers to administer the governing machine which has been established in their midst, coupled with the determination to cease paying a hypocritical lip-service to the ideal of self-government, and honestly to define the standards which would justify us, in the light of our own repeated professions and of our international pledges, in surrendering our trusteeship into the hands of the Egyptians themselves. One would have said the same, broadly speaking, of India. But the Great War has created conditions which have infused the problem with greater urgency and invested it with a new character, both in Egypt and in India. India lies outside the scope of this volume. In Egypt, political bungling and military brutality have combined to achieve the seemingly miraculous, in uniting the entire population against us. The British occupation no longer stands as the bulwark between an exploited peasantry and an exploiting ruling-class. Its directors have themselves exploited the peasantry for military and imperialistic purposes, and to the fellahin we appear to-day as chastisers with scorpions compared with the whips yielded by their former masters. Matters have reached such a pass that it seems extremely doubtful if we can now maintain ourselves in Egypt with any pretence of moral justification, even by the grant of immediate and extensive powers of self-government; and the position is likely to become completely untenable if the settlement of Asiatic Turkey is such as to outrage the feelings of Mohammedans throughout the British Empire. Egypt is only one of many proofs that the war has been a solvent of Empire, just as a genuine League of Nations must be, where Empire embraces real or nascent civilisations. The French are trying to solve a somewhat similar problem in Algeria by methods for which we do not possess the requisite national faculties. For we are not what the French essentially are, a military people. The attempt to convert the land of the African Arab and of the Berber whether in Algeria, Morocco, or Tunis, into a military annexe of imperialist France can, of course, only have one ultimate ending—a general smash-up of the Frankish dominion in North Africa. But that particular Nemesis may take some time to work out, and if what is called "Bolshevism" invades France, if the French masses realise as some day no doubt they will, that national preservation involves the shedding of a nationalistic imperialism on the part of the governing bourgeoisie, the North African problem may settle itself without lighting a general Mohammedan conflagration from one end of North Africa to the other.
European policy in Mediterranean—i.e., Mohammedan—Africa is so closely concerned with Europe's rivalries that unless a League of Nations succeeds in entirely transforming the character of European inter-State intercourse, the notion of white "trusteeship" for the native races is not likely to make much headway in those parts of the Continent. But if one might precipitate oneself into the realms of imagination for the nonce, conjecture a Europe purged of its war system and governed by statesmen imbued with a lofty sense of responsibility towards these African peoples and devoid of sectarian prejudice, one could picture a great revival of letters and arts on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, carrying its message to every part of Mohammedan Africa. Such a policy would involve "support" of Mohammedanism! Horesco referens! But there are precedents. Does not the provincial government support by a grant-in-aid the Mohammedan College at Aligarth in the North-West provinces of India, founded by the late Sir Syad Ahmed Khan? It would be more accurate to say that such a policy would give to an African civilisation a chance of political and intellectual expression. True, it would be a civilisation, whose spiritual basis is the Koran. Is the civilisation of Western Europe, whose spiritual basis is alleged to be Christianity, so perfect that any but sectarians need find grounds of objection in such a policy? The great bulk of North-West Africa is Mohammedan, and Mohammedanism is steadily gaining ground over most of the tropical regions of the Continent. In the West it is firmly established. It loses much of its fanaticism on African soil. It has been well said by a great African scholar, that Islam by its social and eugenic laws, "saves Africa alive." It is, in Africa, a social influence before anything else, and an influence which admittedly raises the Pagan to a higher level. It is a cultural force. It is at present the African's strongest bulwark against the de-racialising processes, which come in the wake of European intervention. The African has it in him to become a real Christian which, perhaps, the European under the present social system has not. Meantime, Islam is in Africa a preservative of racial self-respect. To pursue in Mohammedan Africa a truly African policy, reviving ancient centres of learning, binding the African peoples to their land in intensified bonds of reverence, heralding the dawn of an African renascence, raising African universities instead of African levies—here, indeed, would be a work worthy of great international minds. Perhaps when the restless and selfish individualism of Europe has given place to more generous and nobler concepts of human sociology; when much of what has passed for statesmanship in Europe, is seen to have been naught but the petty and vain preoccupations of vulgar minds; when the European peoples, emancipated from the social tyrannies which throttle their freedom and impair their vision are capable of gazing out upon wider horizons then, perhaps, the conditions will be born, out of which a policy of this kind may arise and endure.
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Meantime, white rule is producing in the colonisable, and even in portions of the non-colonisable Continent a huge, landless, African proletariat under no restraint of tribal law; and with few political and fewer legal rights under the white man's law. So far as the colonisable area of the Continent is concerned, the phenomenon is assuming its greatest magnitude in South Africa. It is raising all kinds of currents and cross-currents of class feeling and race feeling, both of which must become intensified with the natural growth of the native population. In the South African Union the blacks outnumber the whites by over four to one now. The numerical preponderance of the black-man must, short of a general massacre, continue on an increasing scale. And with every year that passes the black population advances in intellect and in ambition, despite the efforts to keep down both, by starving education, restricting political and legal privileges, and punishing openly manifested discontent with a heavy hand. The African demands greater freedom, greater educational facilities, greater opportunities to improve his material well-being and mental development. The white man's rule has been thrust upon him, and with it the white man's political and economic systems. The black man's institutions have been largely broken up and the white man refuses him a share in moulding his own destiny under the new dispensation. Yet the white man cannot help the constructive sides of his civilisation becoming more and more diffused. He cannot arrest learning at its fount. He preaches to the black man a religion whose essence is the equality of all men before God. But his civic laws and political acts are in violent antagonism to the religion he simultaneously inculcates. Christ will not blend with racial domination of the South African type, at any rate. The white man offers the black man Christianity with one hand and helotry with the other. And he works thus contrariwise on the most plastic of human material. I said a while back that the African has it in him to become a real Christian. He has. The white man is teaching him to look upon himself as the latter-day type of the early Christian martyrs. You cannot impregnate the African race with the Christian religion on its own soil, where it outnumbers the white race by four to one even in the most favoured portion of the Continent, and enslave it politically and economically at the same time. You may try: but the two things are incompatible and won't work.
And there is another vital consideration to take into account. The ruling white man in South Africa has recently made use of the black man, and on a considerable scale, to help him in fighting other white men, outside the territory of the Union. Tens of thousands of South and East Africans have perished in the war or in consequence of the war. To the black man this is at once an admission and an incentive. It has intensified his determination not to be treated as a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water. To imagine that he can be for ever so treated, is to imagine a vain thing. Force cannot permanently solve the problem. The South African black has heard of passive resistance. There are Indians in South Africa. The educated African leaders in South Africa know of the ferment in India. Equally vain is it to suppose that this African proletariat, which the white man has made and is making, can forever be denied the rights of combination and defence against an exploiting capitalism which a proletariat must secure in Europe if it would not sink to the slave level: and if in Europe, how much more in South Africa.
And yet, judging from appearances, white rule in South Africa to-day seems to be directed as though it did really believe these things. And this applies not only to the ruling and exploiting classes, but to the white labouring class. Both appear equally intolerant of the black man's claim; the first, through fear of political and racial consequences; the latter, through fear of being undercut in the labour market, and through jealousy of the black man acquiring proficiency in the higher grades of technical skill. Politically speaking, the policy which is the outcome of these beliefs, assumes the form of an attempt to run a dominant white State in Africa upon the foundations of a servile African labour. Since the federation of the various South African States, liberalising tendencies have become steadily less. The influence of British political liberalism upon South African policy is a dwindling one: nay, it has almost disappeared with the decay of liberalism in British political life, and with the growth of the spirit of independence in South Africa. The political influence of British labour in these difficult and complicated questions of imperial race ascendancy in the self-governing dominions, is as yet a non-existent factor.
South African policy to-day is frankly based upon race discrimination. The Dutch tradition has maintained its ascendancy in the Transvaal and Orange Free State: Natal was always far less liberal than Cape Colony. The Dutch tradition is infinitely harsher than the British home tradition, although not, perhaps, on the whole much more so than the British colonial tradition. There can be little doubt that white policy in South Africa generally is growing steadily more reactionary, as the demands of the black man grow in volume and insistence, and as industrialism lays a greater grip upon the country. One may call attention to a few specific facts in support of this. In three out of the four provinces of the Union the native population has virtually no political rights. The tribal mechanism has disappeared so far as a very considerable proportion of the native population is concerned: and that population has no real channel through which its grievances can be expressed, It is deprived of the franchise. In three out of the four provinces of the Union the black man is not even entitled to sit on local councils. No black man may become a member of the Citizen Force—for he is not, in fact, a citizen. Every impediment is thrown in the way of a black man obtaining even minor Civil Service posts, although he may have passed the examinations: even in the special post offices for black men, no black man is employed. The average native labourer's wage is 1s. 6d. per diem: yet he must pay, in the Transvaal, £2 per annum in direct taxes, £1 in the Orange Free State, and 14s. in Natal. For this taxation he receives little or no equivalent in education. But it is in the matter of the Pass Laws, in the Transvaal and the Orange River States, that the servile State is so clearly shown. In the Orange Free State every man and woman; in the Transvaal, every man is compelled to carry a pass, without which he can leave neither his home nor the farm upon which he is engaged, for any purpose whatever. A native travelling in search of work must obtain a special travelling pass. When he arrives at his destination, he must, if he desires to stay there, and search for work, obtain a special pass. This special pass is good for a six-day sojourn at the place where it is issued. If he has not obtained employment at the expiration of that time, the holder of the pass is liable to a fortnight's imprisonment. A great deal more might be said about these Pass Laws, which recall the slavery days in America.
Be it observed that legislation of this kind is imposed upon a population which contributes a substantial portion of the State revenues, which furnished thousands of volunteers for the campaign against the Germans in South West Africa, 17,000 for the campaign in German East Africa, and about 20,000 for manual service in the French docks and behind the trenches in Flanders; which remained absolutely loyal during De Wet's rebellion; could have paralysed South African economics if it had not kept up a steady supply of labour for the gold mines during the war, and which has been repeatedly lauded and thanked for its services by the Governor-General and by the late Prime Minister of the Union and, in official orders, by Sir Douglas Haig.
No one can be desirous of minimising the tremendous complexities of the racial problem which faces South African statesmen, and which will be intensified when the Union takes over the great native protectorates still administered by the Crown. I once unexpectedly found myself sitting at dinner next to the famous Dr. Jameson, of Matabele and Transvaal raid fame. We talked of the future of South Africa, and I was surprised to hear him express the opinion that the only solution was race admixture. He averred that it had already gone much further than most people would believe or admit. Be that as it may, it is not easy to acquiesce in the view of South African statesmen that the repressive policy they are adopting can in the long run prove racially preservative in the political sense, which is their explanation for it.
Nor is it easy to forecast how the relationship of the Mother Country with the South African Union can preserve its present character if the Union persists in a native policy, which would seem bound sooner or later to involve the whole of the sub-Continent in racial strife. For many reasons the imperial problem in South Africa is the thorniest of the imperial connection. It i* not likely to be rendered less so by the incorporation within the Union of German South West Africa, which is bound to strengthen the Nationalist party and increase the "subversive" elements. On the one hand the Union of South Africa is henceforth recognised as a nation, a nation whose representatives signed the Treaty of Versailles on a parity with the representatives of the Mother State. The link of sentiment is not over strong as it is. There will be a natural reluctance on the part of any British Government which desires to retain the imperial connection, to subject that link to undue strain. On the other hand it would seem to be impossible that Labour influence in British internal and external politics, which is the event of to-morrow, could remain quiescent, even if it desired to do so, before the spectacle of a British dominion, in fact and in law a nation, denying the rights of citizenship to the vast bulk of the population composing it. The educated South African will appeal—is appealing—to British Labour to help him.
No doubt there are men in the Labour movement of Great Britain who are studying the problem, and who are presumably not neglecting yet another of its facets, to wit, that South African capitalism and South African white Labour may be found in the same camp in their opposition to the emancipation of the natives. That white Labour in South Africa is racially inspired as well as class inspired will hardly be denied. The future will show whether it is a racial movement first and a class movement afterwards; whether race will prove a stronger incentive than class.
The native question in South Africa takes precedence from whatever aspect the general problem is examined. It is impossible to believe in the permanence or, in these days, even in the prolonged existence, of a political structure reared upon an economic basis of servile labour.
General Smuts, who desires to retain the imperial connection, is recently reported to have stated that the British Empire had ceased to exist. It is true, in one sense, that the British Commonwealth has ceased to exist. The British Empire remains. General Smuts' rival for the leadership of white South Africa, General Hertzog, who desires to sever the imperial connection, has recently declared, in effect, that if he were returned to power on a Republican 'ticket,' King George could not constitutionally oppose the complete severance which General Hertzog's victory at the polls would, according to the General, indicate to be the desire of the majority in the South African Union. This is a polite way of saying that the British Government would have to bow to a white vote in the South African Union favouring a Republic and, therefore, a complete break with the Empire. General Hertzog may with equal politeness be reminded of the fact that his victory would prove nothing more than that a majority of the white population in the South African Union favoured a Republic and the cutting of the imperial painter. What of the vast bulk of the inhabitants of the country—the natives? They would not have been consulted. General Hertzog could not justly claim to be possessed of a mandate from them; and there are some very explicit British Government pledges on the duty and the right of the Crown to safeguard the rights of native peoples not represented in local Colonial legislatures. It is as certain as anything can be in this world that, badly as they have been treated by both Dutch and British in South Africa, the native peoples look, and will increasingly look, to the forces of Democracy in Britain for support and help in their struggle against the influences of race prejudice, expressed in repressive legislation and in the withholding of social and political rights. The British Democracy cannot with honour, or with safety, turn its back upon them.
- ↑ Except in certain restricted areas in the neighbourhood of the Coast towns, where European land laws have made inroads upon native custom, and where buying and selling of land has taken root.
- ↑ The Report has been printed but not presented to Parliament. The printed evidence is accessible in the library of the House of Commons.