Native Life in South Africa | Page 7

Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
the Natives

occupy to-day in the body politic as the natural result of their lack of
education and civilization. He is devoted to his own people, and notes
with ever-increasing regret the lack of understanding and knowledge of
those people, which is so palpable in the vast majority of the letters and
leading articles written on the native question. As an educated Native
with liberal ideas he rather resents the power and authority of the
uneducated native chiefs who govern by virtue of their birth alone, and
he writes and speaks for an entirely new school of native thought. The
opinion of such a man ought to carry weight when native affairs are
being discussed. We have fallen into the habit of discussing and
legislating for the Native without ever stopping for one moment to
consider what the Native himself thinks. No one but a fool will deny
the importance of knowing what the Native thinks before we legislate
for him. It is in the hope of enlightening an otherwise barren
controversy that we shall publish from time to time Mr. Plaatje's letters,
commending them always to the more thoughtful and practical of our
readers. -- `Pretoria News', September, 1910. ==
(The writer of this appreciation, the Editor of the Pretoria evening
paper, was Reuter's war correspondent in the siege of Mafeking.)

(B) Prologue

We have often read books, written by well-known scholars, who
disavow, on behalf of their works, any claim to literary perfection. How
much more necessary, then, that a South African native workingman,
who has never received any secondary training, should in attempting
authorship disclaim, on behalf of his work, any title to literary merit.
Mine is but a sincere narrative of a melancholy situation, in which, with
all its shortcomings, I have endeavoured to describe the difficulties of
the South African Natives under a very strange law, so as most readily
to be understood by the sympathetic reader.
The information contained in the following chapters is the result of
personal observations made by the author in certain districts of the
Transvaal, Orange "Free" State and the Province of the Cape of Good
Hope. In pursuance of this private inquiry, I reached Lady Brand early
in September, 1913, when, my financial resources being exhausted, I
decided to drop the inquiry and return home. But my friend, Mr. W. Z.

Fenyang, of the farm Rietfontein, in the "Free" State, offered to convey
me to the South of Moroka district, where I saw much of the trouble,
and further, he paid my railway fare from Thaba Ncho back to
Kimberley.
In the following November, it was felt that as Mr. Saul Msane, the
organizer for the South African Native National Congress, was touring
the eastern districts of the Transvaal, and Mr. Dube, the President, was
touring the northern districts and Natal, and as the finances of the
Congress did not permit an additional traveller, no information would
be forthcoming in regard to the operation of the mischievous Act in the
Cape Province. So Mr. J. M. Nyokong, of the farm Maseru, offered to
bear part of the expenses if I would undertake a visit to the Cape. I
must add that beyond spending six weeks on the tour to the Cape, the
visit did not cost me much, for Mr. W. D. Soga, of King Williamstown,
very generously supplemented Mr. Nyokong's offer and accompanied
me on a part of the journey.
Besides the information received and the hospitality enjoyed from these
and other friends, the author is indebted, for further information, to Mr.
Attorney Msimang, of Johannesburg. Mr. Msimang toured some of the
Districts, compiled a list of some of the sufferers from the Natives'
Land Act, and learnt the circumstances of their eviction. His list,
however, is not full, its compilation having been undertaken in May,
1914, when the main exodus of the evicted tenants to the cities and
Protectorates had already taken place, and when eyewitnesses of the
evils of the Act had already fled the country. But it is useful in showing
that the persecution is still continuing, for, according to this list, a good
many families were evicted a year after the Act was enforced, and
many more were at that time under notice to quit. Mr. Msimang,
modestly states in an explanatory note, that his pamphlet contains
"comparatively few instances of actual cases of hardship under the
Natives' Land Act, 1913, to vindicate the leaders of the South African
Native National Congress from the gross imputation, by the Native
Affairs Department, that they make general allegations of hardships
without producing any specific cases that can bear examination." Mr.
Msimang, who took a number of sworn statements from the sufferers,
adds that "in Natal, for example, all of these instances have been
reported to the
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