CHAPTER V.
The Story of Southern Rhodesia.—(Continued).
For some time the Company's agents avoided direct contact with the Matabele people, confining their activities mainly to the region inhabited by the Mashonas who acknowledged Lobengula's overlordship. Here they proceeded to mine, to lay out settlements, and to build forts. But friction of a minor kind seems to have been constant.
Eighteen months passed. In May, 1891, the British Government, by Order in Council, assumed the powers of a Protectorate "within the parts of South Africa bounded by British Bechuanaland, the German Protectorate, the Rivers Chobe and Zambesi, the Portuguese possessions, and the South African Republic." Matabeleland and Mashonaland were comprised within this area. It might have been assumed that this action would have secured for the native inhabitants of the country the guidance and protection in their external relations to which, as protected subjects of the Crown, they were thenceforth entitled, and which the British Government was morally bound to extend to them.[1] But four months later we find the official representative of the British Government at Buluwayo (Mr. Moffat) an assenting party to a transaction by which the unfortunate Matabele ruler completed his undoing and that of his people. By this transaction, known as the Lippert Concession, Lobengula made over to a German banker of that name settled in the Transvaal, acting in association with an Englishman called Renny-Tailyour:
- the sole and exclusive right, power and privilege for the full term of 100 years to lay out, grant, or lease, for such period or periods as he may think fit, farms, townships, building plots, and grazing areas, to impose and levy rents, licenses and taxes thereon, and to get in, collect and receive the same for his own benefit, to give and grant certificates in my name for the occupation of any farms, townships, building plots and grazing areas.
These rights and privileges were to apply only to such territories as were at the time, or might subsequently become, within the sphere of operations of the Chartered Company. The agreement appears to have superseded a precedent agreement with Mr. Renny-Tailyour, the text of which is not available.
It is clear that Lobengula could not have realised and did not, in fact, realise the significance of such an agreement. A careful perusal of the document reveals what was in the mind of the misguided African potentate. His idea was to appoint a reliable European bailiff, who would take the troublesome business of his relations with the white men off his hands, and protect his interests in his dealings with the Chartered Company. The opening passage of the agreement is explicit on this point: "Seeing that large numbers of white people are coming into my territories, and it is desirable that I should, once and for all, appoint some person to act for me in these respects." The consideration to be paid, "in lieu of the rates, rents, and taxes," which Mr. Lippert was to appropriate, amounted to £500 per annum and to £1,000 cash down. The relative modesty of these sums is a further indication that Lobengula imagined himself to be merely employing an agent who would rid him of the harassing perplexities in which he was becoming increasingly involved, and who would remit a moiety of the revenues to which he was entitled. In point of fact, however, the wording of the agreement was such that the Chartered Company, after having acquired it from Lippert, claimed on the strength thereof ownership over the whole of the land of the Matabele. In due course, Lippert disposed of his privileges to the Mr. Rudd, whose name will be familiar to readers of this story, the said Mr. Rudd promptly disposing of them to the Chartered Company!
It was mainly on the strength of the acquired "Lippert Concession" that twenty-three years later, the Chartered Company was to put forward, officially, its monstrous claim to the whole unalienated land of the country, meaning by "unalienated" land, all land not given or sold to white immigrants, i.e., the whole land of the country. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have now declared the Lippert Concession to be valueless as "a title deed to the unalienated land."[2]
Meantime friction increased between Lobengula and the Chartered Company, whose manager in Africa was the famous Dr. Jameson, author of the armed raid into the Transvaal, and eventually Prime Minister of the Union. Lord Knutsford, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, called the attention of the High Commissioner at the Cape to a statement published in London to the effect that everything possible was being done to provoke Lobengula. The trouble was first confined to the Company's dealings with the Mashonas. We obtain some indication of the Company's methods from the fact that the High Commissioner found it necessary to remind the Company's manager that, "no death sentence can be carried out without warrant." The reminder did not appear to inconvenience the Company's officials. Shortly afterwards a Mashona chief and his people having been credited, rightly or wrongly, with stealing cattle belonging to some white settlers, the chief's village was attacked by the Company's armed forces, the chief himself and twenty of his followers killed, and 47 head of cattle "lifted." This affair drew further expostulations from the High Commissioner, and from the Secretary of State for the Colonies: "The punishment inflicted in this case," wrote Sir Henry Lock, "appears utterly disproportionate to the original offence." "There is nothing in the information now before his Lordship," wrote Lord Knutsford, "which affords any justification of Captain Lendy's proceedings… The full report by Captain Lendy subsequently received and forwarded, would, in Lord Knutsford's opinion, have justified much stronger terms of remonstrance than were used by the High Commissioner." But neither the High Commissioner nor the Secretary of State demanded this officer's retirement, and his services were retained by the Company.
Events were rapidly maturing for that direct collision with Lobengula which was obviously desired in certain quarters. Complaints of cattle stealing by the natives were rife. What justification there may have been for them we are never likely to know. But cattle lifting was apparently not wholly on one side. Early in 1893 the Company seized cattle from a petty Mashona chief, whom it accused of having abstracted some yards of telegraph wire. The cattle taken was the property of Lobengula, who, in accordance with the custom of the country, hired out his herds in which his subjects had a communal interest. The "King's cattle" was a kind of symbol of sovereignty, and any interference with them was an affront not to the King only, but to the tribe. The Company was advised by the High Commissioner's representative at Buluwayo, "to be more careful in their seizures." Two months later Lobengula, apparently at Dr. Jameson's request, sent a body of warriors to punish a Mashona community living in the neighbourhood of the Company's settlement at Fort Victoria, for alleged stealing of "royal" cattle. He notified the Company of his purpose in advance. Acting without orders, Lobengula's men pursued some of the Mashonas into the "communage" of the settlement, and there killed them. Accounts, subsequently ascertained to have been wildly exaggerated, were put into circulation as to the number of Mashonas who lost their lives in this affray. Dr. Jameson thereupon summoned Lobengula's men to retire. As they were retiring he sent a body of troopers after them under the same Captain Lendy. Firing ensued. Thirty Matabele were killed. No member of the Company's force received a scratch. This occurred in July, 1893. Dr. Jameson reported to the High Commissioner that the troopers fired in self-defence. Lobengula denied this. The High Commissioner ordered an investigation. The official charged with this task eventually reported that: "Dr. Jameson was misinformed when he reported officially that the Matabele fired the first shot at the whites … the sergeant of the advance guard fired the first shot … the Matabele offered practically no resistance."
But this report came long "after the fair." The collision had at last provided the Company with the pretext its representatives on the spot had been seeking, and for which they had provided. The right atmosphere now prevailed for the "smashing of Lobengula." In his history of the smashing process, Major Forbes, who was in chief command, reveals that on the morning of the day after the collision, Dr. Jameson produced an elaborate campaign for the military invasion of Matabeleland. A month later (August 14) Dr. Jameson sent his historic letter to Captain Allan Wilson, the "Officer commanding the Victoria Defence Force." The exact wording of this document was only revealed, in 1918, at the Privy Council Inquiry into the company's claim to proprietorship over the land of Southern Rhodesia, to which allusion has already been made. Its substance had been known in South Africa for some years [together with the creation of a "Loot-Committee" to give effect to its terms after the "smashing" had been duly administered.] Its full text has been published this year by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society.[3]
In this communication, which we are entitled to assume was made without the knowledge of the High Commissioner or of the Secretary of State, Dr. Jameson undertook, on behalf of the company, that every trooper engaged in the forthcoming expedition should receive 3,000 morgen (nearly nine square miles) of land. The company retained the right of purchase "at any time" at the rate of £3 per morgen. The potential value of the grant was, therefore, £9,000.[4] Every trooper would also be permitted to peg out twenty gold claims. The communication additionally provided that: "7. The 'loot' shall he divided, one-half to the B.S.A. Company, and the remainder to officers and men in equal shares."
As the only lootable property possessed by the Matabele (apart from their land and its minerals) was cattle, "loot" could have referred to nothing else, and large quantities of cattle, as we shall see, were eventually seized. To reckon the potential value of the twenty gold claims and his share of the "loot" together at £1,000 per trooper, would be ridiculously low. 'But on that basis it will be seen that the incentive to participate in the invasion of this African community, enjoying British protection, was £10,000—£9,000 in land, £1,000 in gold and cattle—per invader.[5] According to Messrs. W. A. Willis and Lieutenant Collingridge,[6] the force which had been gradually got together on the Matabele frontier numbered, at the date of this letter, 672 Europeans and 155 Colonial natives. Although the latter were entitled under this agreement to certain benefits, I will deal only with the Europeans. It will be seen, therefore, that the collective stake amounted to £6,720,000. The land of the Matabele thus confiscated in advance amounted to over 6,000 square miles, being six-sevenths the area of Wales. For a parallel to so comprehensive and cynically calculated a plan of anticipatory spoliation, we must hark back three hundred and sixty-seven years to the famous contract between Pizarro, Amalgro, de Luque and their followers, for the sack of Peru.
While Dr. Jameson was thus perfecting his arrangements for the filibustering enterprise which he was to repeat, with less success, later on against the Boers. Lobengula on the one hand, and the High Commissioner and the Colonial Office on the other, were doing their best to avert war. It cannot be said that the High Commissioner's efforts in this respect were characterised by much vigour. It is fair to bear in mind that he was doubtless hampered by his distance from the scene, and by the ingenious misrepresentation of facts at which the manager of the Chartered Company was an adept. The desires of the Colonial Office were unmistakably expressed by Lord Ripon, who had succeeded Lord Knutsford as Secretary of State:
It is important—he declared in a dispatch dated August 26—that the British South African Company should not, by menacing Lobengula, commit themselves to any course of action which I might afterwards have to, reverse. Their duty under existing circumstances must be limited to defending their occupied territory and Her Majesty's Government cannot support them in any aggressive action."
But vague threats of this kind were not likely to deter those responsible for the action on the spot of a corporation with the Court and social influence possessed by the British South Africa Company.
Lobengula's attitude seems to have been distinguished throughout by a courage, a dignity and a pathetic trust in the British Government's sense of justice which are remarkable, but by no means unparalleled in the authenticated record of "Barbarism's" clash with "Civilisation." Telegraphing to the Company after the massacre of his warriors by Captain Lendy's troops, he says: "I thought you came to dig for gold; but it seems that you have come not only to dig for gold, but to rob me of my people and country as well." He refused to accept the monthly payments falling due under the Rudd and Lippert Concessions, as it "is the price of my blood." He repeatedly appealed to the High Commissioner:
Your people have been telling you lies. … They speak like this to make an excuse for having killed ray people. How many white men were killed! … My cattle which were taken by your people have not been returned to me, neither have those taken by the Mashona, whom I sent to punish. Perhaps this is why they have killed my people.
He wrote to the Queen:
I have the honour respectfully to write and state that I am still keeping your advice laid before me some time ago, i.e., that if any trouble happens in my country between me and the white men I must let you know.
Proceeding to give his version of the events attending and preceding the Lendy episode which, as we have seen, was afterwards corroborated by the official inquiry, he asked:
Your Majesty, what I want to know from you is, why do your people kill me? Do you kill me for following my stolen cattle, which are seen in the possession of the Mashonas living in Mashonaland? I have called all white men at Buluwayo to hear my words, showing clearly that I am not hiding anything from them when writing to your Majesty.
Lobengula's anxiety to keep .the peace and so prevent the slaughter and ruin of his people which he knew must be otherwise inevitable, is vouched for in a number of public statements made at the time, or since, by European residents in Buluwayo: most of them are to be found in the Blue Books. The High Commissioner's dispatches to Dr. Jameson show that he himself was persuaded of the sincerity of the Matabele ruler.
The Company continued imperturbably its preparations for the invasion. On October 18, an incident occurred which must have finally convinced Lobengula of the fruitlessness of his efforts to avert the impending doom of his country. He had despatched three of his Indunas as envoys to the High Commissioner. They arrived at the British camp on a "safe-conduct" pledge. In that camp, on the day of their arrival, two out of the three were "accidentally killed."
The truth was, of course, that the issue of peace and war had never lain with Lobengula. Nor did the issue lie with the Imperial authorises, unless they had chosen to assume a really decided attitude, which they were apparently disinclined to do. It lay with the Chartered Company, whose chief representative in South Africa had already arranged for the "loot" of Matabeleland by the freebooters he had gathered together on the borders, who had sent a false account of the affray with Captain Lendy's troopers to the High Commissioner, and who had been engaged in "working" the London and South African Press, as assiduously as he afterwards did when maturing his plans for raiding the Transvaal.[7] War had, indeed, already begun, the final pretext being that one of the Company's patrols had been fired upon by Matabele scouts, fore-runners of a great invading army. The "invading army" turned out to be a phantom one, and the alleged firing upon the Company's patrol was never established.
In less than three months the war was over. Thousands of Matabele were killed—one regiment of 700 lost 500 of its number. Many fled towards the Zambesi, where they suffered terribly from fever and famine, as well as from wild animals. It is said that 18 of them were killed by lions in one night, in the dense forest that lies some fifty miles north of Gwelo. Lobengula, a hunted fugitive, had disappeared and was seen no more. One wonders whether in his untutored savage soul he ever puzzled over the message which had reached him, only four years before, from the advisers of that far-off mighty Woman-ruler, whom his missionary friends had taught him to revere, assuring him that the persons who had come to dig for gold in his country could be trusted not to molest him and his people. Buluwayo was a smoking ruin. The "loot" contract was being actively put into execution, the beneficiaries thereof, as a contemporary observer records, "being scattered all over the country, either for themselves or backed by capitalists, in search of the best country and the richest reefs, until, by the end of January, over 900 farm rights were issued, and half registered and pegged out, while nearly 10,000 gold claims were registered during the same period." The seizure of cattle, too, was in full operation and yielding excellent results, many herds being driven over the border into Bechuanaland by their capturers.
The Colonial Office was highly scandalised by these latter proceedings. Lord Ripon telegraphed to the High Commissioner:
According to newspaper telegrams Dr. Jameson is marking out townships in Matabeleland, one of which includes the Buluwayo Kraal; patrols are continuing to seize large numbers of cattle from the Matebele; the followers of Lobengula are dying of small pox and starvation; and the Matabele are being prevented from sowing until they surrender their arms. If these reports are in substance correct, it would appear that the final settlement of the question is being seriously prejudiced, contrary to the public declarations and intentions of the Government. You should, as soon as possible, communicate with Rhodes, representing to him the state of the case, and inviting him to give Jameson instructions to moderate his proceedings and to take steps to stop the looting of cattle, or to arrange for restoring it in future to its owners.
The effect of this protest was as nugatory as all similar official representations had been from the beginning. The Chartered Company never cared a snap of its fingers for the Colonial Office. It was too well and too influentially supported to be in the least discomposed by well-meaning but faint-hearted remonstrances which came to nothing.
The story of the Matabele's cattle is particularly instructive. The total, officially estimated at 200,000 head at the time of the invasion, was stated early in 1895 to be 79,500; by December of that year it had fallen still lower, to 72,930. This appears to have been the actual number left at that time. Of this total the Company retained a further 32,000 head, and handed the balance over to the surviving natives. Thus, assuming native property in cattle to have been correctly estimated at 200,000 at the time of the invasion, it had sunk to 40,930 in two years! It should be remembered that, for the Matabele, cattle were not merely a source of riches, but an essential food product. The beasts were very seldom killed, but their milk, mixed with mealies, was one of the staple food supplies of the country. And it is more than likely, although I have not observed any record of it, that the manure was used for agricultural purposes, as it is in Northern Nigeria, where the Fulani herdsmen contract with the Hausa agriculturalists for quartering their herds in the dry season upon the latter's fields.
Henceforth the "naked men with shields" became bondsmen to the Company and its shareholders, as the Mashonas, whom the Company claimed to have saved from Matabele oppression, had already become. The gold of Southern Rhodesia had to be won. It could only be won by native labour. But an African people of herdsmen and agriculturists does not take kindly to digging for gold. Moreover, the Matabele, unlike the Mashonas, had a peculiar aversion to working below ground. Such scruples and prejudices could not be expected to carry weight with the members of a superior race. So the Company soon added to the cultural advantages it had already bestowed upon the Matabele a process whereby these backward folk might become conversant with the dignity which comes from work, however uncongenial, performed for the benefit of others.
Forced labour, gradually assuming a more stringent and extensive character as the multifold requirements of the white men grew with the development of the "farms" and the mines, succeeded the conquest of the country. The Buluwayo Chronicle of February 22, 1896, recorded that: "The Native Commissioners have done good work in procuring native labour. During the months of October, November, and December they supplied to the mining and other industries in Matabeleland no less than 9,000 boys." On February 27 a letter from the Chief Native Commissioner Taylor to the Buluwayo Chamber of Mines reported that: "The number of natives supplied for labour to the mines and for other purposes from the different districts in Matabeleland totals 9,102." Some hundreds of native police were raised and armed, and, as happens everywhere in Africa where the supervision is not strict, committed many brutal acts. Their principal duty appears to have been "assisting" to procure the needed supply of labour, and hunting down deserters. Their tyranny was even more oppressive among the Mashonas than among the Matabele, owing to the milder character of the former. Writing of these police in 1898 Mr. H. C. Thomson says: "They are the scourge of the country, and, like the Zaptcihs in Turkey, do more than anyone else to make the lives of the people wretched and to foment rebellion." An official report by Sir Richard Martin, subsequently issued, records that:
(a) Compulsory labour did undoubtedly exist in Matabeleland if not in Mashonaland;
(b) That labour was procured by the various native commissioners for the various requirements of the Government, mining companies and private persons;
(c) That the native commissioners, in the first instance, endeavoured to obtain labour through the Indunas (chiefs) but failing in this, they procured it by force.
Compelled to work in the mines at a sum fixed by the Chartered Company, flogged and otherwise punished if they ran away, maltreated by the native police, the Matabele doubtless felt that these experiences, coming on the top of their previous ones (to which a cattle disease had added further perplexities), did not impart such attractiveness to life that the risk of losing it in an endeavour to throw off the yoke was not worth entertaining. In his evidence before Sir Richard Martin, Mr. Carnegie, a well-known missionary, thus interprets the Matabele view of matters by themselves:
Our country is gone, our cattle have gone, our people are scattered, we have nothing to live for, our women are deserting us; the white man does as he likes with them: we are the slaves of the white man, we are nobody and have no rights or laws of any kind.
So in March, 1896, profiting by Dr. Jameson's withdrawal of his white fighting forces from the country for the purpose of trying the Lobengula treatment upon the robuster constitution of President Kruger, the Matabele rose, and later on the Mashonas also. The risings were spasmodic and not universal. They were accompanied by the usual brutal murders of isolated settlers and their families, and by the usual panic-stricken and indiscriminate slaughter of human beings with black skins by parties of undisciplined volunteers. The Matabele Times had some plain words on the subject:
The theory of shooting a nigger on sight is too suggestive of the rule of Donnybrook Fair to be other than a diversion rather than a satisfactory principle. We have been doing it up to now, burning kraals because they were native kraals, and firing upon fleeing natives simply because they were black. … Should the policy of shoot at sight continue it will merely drive the natives more and more into the ranks of the insurgents.
The Matabele rising was represented as the inevitable sequel to the incomplete subjugation of a warlike people, but when the timid Mashonas followed suit it was obvious that no such excuse would suffice. Much light was thrown by missionaries and others upon the treatment meted out to the Mashonas and the Matabele precedent to the outbreak. Sir Richard Martin's report and the publications of the Aborigines Protection Society may be consulted with advantage in this respect. Apart from the general character of that treatment which has been already indicated, many of the details given were of a revolting character. The Rev. John White, Wesleyan minister at Salisbury, in a letter to the Methodist Times dated September 30, 1896, cites the case of one of the Company's officials compelling a native chief by threats of punishment to hand him over his daughter as a mistress:
I brought the matter to the notice of the Administrator and the accused was found guilty of the charge. He shortly after left the country; yet so trivial seemed the offence that within nine months he was back again and held an official position in the force raised to punish the rebels.
It is easy to over-estimate this "social" question, and no doubt exaggerated charges were brought at the time. Sexual relations between native women and white invaders will always be of a loose description; and the break-up of tribal and family authority which follows in the wake of conquest invariably leads to social demoralisation. But, even so, there are recognised decencies, and one incident such as Mr. White describes is in itself sufficient to fire a whole countryside. Nor was it isolated. Assaults upon women by the native police were frequent. Mr. White also relates a shocking story of the slaughter of three chiefs who were arrested when actually on the precincts of a Wesleyan mission station, on the charge of being implicated in the murder of a native policeman. Mr. Thomson says that he made inquiries into the cases referred to by Mr. White, and describes them as of a "peculiarly atrocious character." Wholesale robbing of Mashona cattle seems also to have been rife, Mr. White alleging that "in many districts where previously considerable heads of cattle were to be found, now hardly one exists."
The crushing of the rebellion by the Imperial authorities was attended by great loss of native life and by many terrible incidents, amongst others the dynamiting of the caves in which the Mashonas had taken refuge. For a long time after the back of the rebellion had been broken battues took place all over the country and executions were constant. "When I was in Rhodesia," wrote Mr. Thomson, "native Commissioners and police were out in every direction hunting down these unhappy wretches. Many had already been executed, both in Buluwayo and Salisbury, and the prosecutions were still going on."
•••••••
Since these events took place the Chartered Company, basing its claim to "unalienated" land, in part upon the Lippert concession, which, as already stated, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has now declared to be "valueless" for that purpose, and in part upon military conquest, has pursued the policy of treating the land of Southern Rhodesia as though it had passed entirely out of native ownership and had become the property of the Company's shareholders. It has divided the land into two main categories, "alienated" and "unalienated." Land in the occupancy and ownership of white men is called "alienated" land. Any native living on "alienated" land pays the white occupant and owner £1 per annum, and a further £1 per annum to the Company as head tax. "Unalienated" land is the land not in the occupancy and ownership of white men, and includes the native "Reserves." Natives living in the Reserves pay £1 per head per annum to the Company as tax. Natives living on "unalienated" land outside the Reserves pay £1 per head per annum to the Company as tax, and another £1 per head for the privilege of living where they do. Portions of this "unalienated" land outside the Reserves can, apparently, be taken over at any moment by individual white men, provided, of course, that they obtain the Company's sanction. The natives living on such acquired portions are then expected to pay £1 per head per annum to the white acquirer, plus the £1 per head they already pay to the Company. The logic of the amazing situation thus created would seem to be this: There would appear to be no obstacle to my, or to any of my readers, going to the Chartered Company's offices in London, and having secured the local services of an agent in South Africa, applying for such or such a specific area of "unalienated" land in Southern Rhodesia. If I am willing to pay the Company's price I can purchase this area, and by making the necessary local arrangements in Africa for the collection of my rent, I can constrain every male native living upon my distant property to hand over annually to my agent the sum of £1. In effect, I buy the human animal as well as the land upon which he dwells, and upon which his ancestors may have dwelt for generations before him.
The net position is this: The native population of Southern Rhodesia possesses to-day no rights in land or water. It is allowed to continue to live upon the land on sufferance and under certain conditions, according to the categories into which the land has been divided. The natives have no secure titles anywhere, not even in the Reserves, which are always liable to be cut up and shifted, and from which they can always be evicted upon "good cause" being shown; the "good cause" being the Company's good pleasure. A "Reserve Commission" was appointed in 1917. This is a supposedly impartial body. Its Chairman figured among the beneficiaries of the "Loot" agreement. Its activities, so far, appear to have resulted in enormously diminishing the Reserves. The attitude of the Company towards the native population living on the "unalienated" lands outside the Reserves, and the position of that population, are tersely summarised in the following extract from one of the Company's reports:
We see no objection to the present system of allowing natives to occupy the unalienated land of the company and pay rent. The occupation is merely a passing phase; the land is being rapidly acquired by settlers, with whom the natives must enter into fresh agreements or leave.
There appears to be no attempt on anyone's part to deny the bed-rock fact that these 700,000 natives have been turned from owners of land into precarious tenants. The defence, such as it is, is merely concerned with points of detail. It is claimed that the Rhodesian Order in Council contains safeguards ensuring a sufficiency of land for the native population, and providing that no evictions shall occur of natives to whom land has been "assigned" without "full inquiry." It is also claimed that the Reserves are adequate. Even if these safeguards were worth the paper they are written on, and even if the second statement were true, the fundamental issue would remain untouched. In point of fact there is only too much reason for doubting the efficacy of the one and the substantial truth of the other. It is true that the Reserves are very large. It is also true, even according to the findings of one of the Company's own commissions, that "in certain Reserves," not only is a "large portion of the soil "poor," but that "water is deficient"; and that certain localities are "wholly unsuitable for human occupation." The Reserves Commission of 1917 put on record the estimate of a responsible official that "85 per cent. of the total area" of Southern Rhodesia was "granite," and gave it as its opinion that the estimate was "not far from correct." The Chartered Company contends that the native prefers the granite soil; to which the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society reply that "the natives will pay almost anything rather than go into these territories," and that while the natives had every opportunity of settling upon these granite areas before the advent of the Chartered Company, they "deliberately refrained from doing so."
•••••••
This whole iniquitous policy of spoliation and expropriation does not appear to have been queried by the Colonial Office until 1914. The Government's indifference to the Company's proceedings is the more remarkable when it is borne in mind that the Charter conferred upon the Company, expressly stipulates that careful regard shall be had to native customs and laws, "especially with respect to the holding, possession, transfer, and disposition of lands. …"
In 1914 Lord Harcourt, then Colonial Secretary, who took a genuine and sympathetic interest in questions of native rights in Africa, contested the Company's claim to possession of the whole of the "unalienated" land of Southern Rhodesia, and brought it before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The case was argued before Lords Loreburn, Dunedin, Atkinson, Summer, and Scott Dickson in the spring of 1918. The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society briefed Mr. Leslie Scott K.C., to represent the rights of the native population. Under the judgment the Company lost its claim to ownership of the 73 million acres of "unalienated" land, which was declared to be vested in the British Crown as trustee for the native population, together with its "commercial" claim to the Reserves.
So far so good. But is that judgment to govern policy? And how does the British Crown propose to interpret its trusteeship? Nothing appears to have been changed in the actual position of the natives, which is typically portrayed in a petition recently presented to King George by the family of Lobengula, in the course of which the petitioners say:
The members of the late King (Lobengula's) family, your petitioners, and several members of the tribe are now scattered about on farms so parcelled out to white settlers, and are practically created a nomadic people living in this scattered condition, under a veiled form of slavery, they being not allowed individually to cross from one farm to another, or from place to place except under a system of permit or pass and are practically forced to do labour on these private farms as a condition of their occupying land in Matabeleland.
•••••••
No such abominable scandal as this story reveals has stained British Colonial records since Burke thundered against the misfeasance of the East India Company. Englishmen have reason to be proud of much that has been done in many parts of Africa by their countrymen in the last quarter of a century. In Nigeria and on the Gold Coast, especially, British Administration has earned, and deserved, great praise. But the perpetuation of the Rhodesian outrage is an intolerable national disgrace.
The very least that can be clone in extenuation of the wrongs inflicted upon the natives of Southern Rhodesia is to confer upon the native population living in the Reserves a secure title; to make the Reserves inalienable save for public works of indispensable utility, and then only on the same conditions as those which apply to lands in white occupation; to make the "unalienated" land outside the Reserves equally inalienable wherever native communities are in occupation—such occupation to embrace villages, cultivated fields, grazing lands and water; and to give to those native communities an equally secure title.
The Chartered Company should disappear, and before the British tax-payer is mulcted in heavy "compensation" sums for the benefit of the Company's shareholders (it seems that among the bills we are to be called upon to pay, there is one of £2,500,000, being the cost of the Company's wars upon the Mashonas and Matabele!), Parliament should insist upon a public and searching investigation into the Company's administrative and financial history.
- ↑ For some reason, probably because the Order in Council was hardly consistent with the Lobengula-Moffat Treaty, Matabeleland was not specifically mentioned. Nevertheless, Resident Commissioners and Magistrates were immediately appointed, both to Matabeleland and to Mashonaland.
- ↑ July, 1918.
- ↑ In a pamphlet, published after these chapters were written, in which many of the facts here stated can be verified. ["An Appeal to the Parliament and People of Great Britain, the Dominions and the Dependencies."]
- ↑ It is now known that much larger grants were made in some instances.
- ↑ It has just been recorded before Lord Cave's Commission of Enquiry into the claims of the Company that the looted cattle fetched 35s. per head See further on for the numbers looted, in various ways.
- ↑ "The Downfall of Lobengula."
- ↑ This system of deception was imitated when the Company's plans for raiding the Transvaal had matured. When, in December, 1905, the High Commissioner learned that the Company's police were being concentrated on the Transvaal border, he wired to Rhodes asking what the purpose was. Rhodes replied "For the purposes of economy and to protect the railway." Two days later the Company's forces crossed the border and attacked the Transvaal Republic