Native Life in South Africa | Page 9

Africa, the payment of direct
taxation to the various Municipalities, at the rate of from 1s. to 5s. per
mensum per capita (to develop and beautify the white quarters of the
towns while the black quarters remain unattended) besides taxes to the
Provincial and Central Government, varying from 12s. to 3 Pounds 12s.

per annum, for the maintenance of Government Schools from which
native children are excluded. In addition to these native duties and
taxes, it is also part of "the black man's burden" to pay all duties levied
from the favoured race. With the increasing difficulty of finding
openings to earn the money for paying these multifarious taxes, the
dumb pack-ox, being inarticulate in the Councils of State, has no means
of making known to its "keeper" that the burden is straining its back to
breaking point.
When Sir John French appealed to the British people for more shells
during Easter week, the Governor-General of South Africa addressing a
fashionable crowd at the City Hall, Johannesburg, most of whom had
never seen the mouth of a mine, congratulated them on the fact that
"under the strain of war and rebellion the gold industry had been
maintained at full pitch," and he added that "every ounce of gold was
worth many shells to the Allies." But His Excellency had not a word of
encouragement for the 200,000 subterranean heroes who by day and by
night, for a mere pittance, lay down their limbs and their lives to the
familiar "fall of rock" and who, at deep levels ranging from 1,000 feet
to 1,000 yards in the bowels of the earth, sacrifice their lungs to the
rock dust which develops miners' phthisis and pneumonia -- poor
reward, but a sacrifice that enables the world's richest gold mines, in
the Johannesburg area alone, to maintain the credit of the Empire with a
weekly output of 750,000 Pounds worth of raw gold. Surely the appeal
of chattels who render service of such great value deserves the attention
of the British people.
Finally, I would say as Professor Du Bois says in his book `The Souls
of Black Folk', on the relations between the sons of master and man, "I
have not glossed over matters for policy's sake, for I fear we have
already gone too far in that sort of thing. On the other hand I have
sincerely sought to let no unfair exaggerations creep in. I do not doubt
that in some communities conditions are better than those I have
indicated; while I am no less certain that in other communities they are
far worse."

Chapter I
A Retrospect

I am Black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of
Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me because I am
black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were
angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine
own vineyard have I not kept. The Song of Songs.

Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native
found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.
The 4,500,000 black South Africans are domiciled as follows: One and
three-quarter millions in Locations and Reserves, over half a million
within municipalities or in urban areas, and nearly a million as
squatters on farms owned by Europeans. The remainder are employed
either on the public roads or railway lines, or as servants by European
farmers, qualifying, that is, by hard work and saving to start farming on
their own account.
A squatter in South Africa is a native who owns some livestock and,
having no land of his own, hires a farm or grazing and ploughing rights
from a landowner, to raise grain for his own use and feed his stock.
Hence, these squatters are hit very hard by an Act which passed both
Houses of Parliament during the session of 1913, received the signature
of the Governor-General on June 16, was gazetted on June 19, and
forthwith came into operation. It may be here mentioned that on that
day Lord Gladstone signed no fewer than sixteen new Acts of
Parliament -- some of them being rather voluminous -- while three days
earlier, His Excellency signed another batch of eight, of which the bulk
was beyond the capability of any mortal to read and digest in four days.
But the great revolutionary change thus wrought by a single stroke of
the pen, in the condition of the Native, was not realized by him until
about the end of June. As a rule many farm tenancies expire at the end
of the half-year, so that in June, 1913, not knowing that it was
impracticable to make fresh contracts, some Natives unwittingly went
to search for