Part 15 (1/2)

The old laws of the dark days are being enforced with relentless rigour.

The sanct.i.ty of homes is violated. Wives are compelled to carry pa.s.ses.

Mothers driven to abandon their offspring of tender years and seek employment.

Daughters are wrenched from parental care and control, and forced into the service of some white scoundrel. Husbands are not allowed to work at their trades for themselves without paying 5s. per month for the privilege. Such is the condition of things in the slave State.

And all this is done behind the power of the British flag which floats over that Province, and yet these acts were impossible while the Free State lacked the power to face British public opinion.

Moreover, in the Cape Colony the Free State laws are gradually being introduced. The Curfew Laws are enforced. A distinct colour line is being drawn in every phase of life, more distinctly since General s.m.u.ts declared that colour and colour only is to be the dividing line.

Such a long list of tyrannical acts of persecutions as I could make out -- persecutions of the Coloured people as a cla.s.s as well as individually -- can point to but one conclusion, and that is that the whites are determined at all hazards to repress all aspirations of the Coloured people for a higher life, to deny all opportunities of betterment, to keep them politically, civilly and industrially as slaves, and even to force those who have risen back into a state worse than slavery.

South Africa is fast becoming

A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves, Where wretches seek dishonourable graves.

Duty of Europeans

What is the duty of Europeans towards the Coloured races of the country?

Take the oft-repeated a.s.sertions of Europeans themselves.

Their leaders are fond of talking of their responsibilities to us. They have everlastingly had, or used to have until quite recently, on their lips these nice-sounding phrases about ”our duties and our responsibilities to our Coloured brothers”. But are such phrases not hollow and meaningless?

If Europeans have duties towards the Coloured people, what else is implied than the need for humane dealings, and endeavours to ameliorate their lot, and uplift them in the scale of civilization. If that is what their duties mean, let us ask how far they have fulfilled them.

Instead of kindly, humane treatment, we find barbarous cruelty and inhumanity.

Instead of ameliorating our lot they endeavour to accentuate its bitterness.

Instead of aiming at our upliftment they seek to degrade us.

Instead of lending a helping hand to those struggling to improve themselves they thrust them back remorselessly and rigorously.

Instead of making it possible for them to enjoy the blessings of an enlightened Christianity and a n.o.ble civilization, they refuse them the right to live, unless they are content to slave for farmers or descend into the bowels of the earth to delve the gold which enslaves the world, and before whose charms all freedom flies. In short, the object of the white man's rule to-day is not to develop the faculties of the Coloured races so that they may live a full life, but to keep them for ever in a servile position.

The spirit that underlies this view of governing Coloured races spread into this Colony with the Union, and is now universal throughout South Africa.

The Coloured people resent this, and one cannot be astonished at the feeling of violent hostility that has sprung up.

It is a natural result. And, in the words of Carlyle, it may be said that ”to whatever other griefs the Coloured people labour under, this bitterest grief -- injustice -- super-adds itself: the unendurable conviction that they are unfairly dealt with, that their lot in this world is not founded on right, nor even on necessity and might, is neither what it should be, nor what it shall be.” The Coloured peoples are sentient beings.

Their souls smart under the stigma of injustice. They are nursing a sullen revengeful humour of revolt against the white rule.

They have lost respect for the white man, and are refusing to give their best to the country.

The duty of Europeans is plain. Show the Coloured people that the Government is for the good of all, not for the privileged cla.s.s. Prove that the first aim is not to keep us as hewers of wood and drawers of water to men who have the power. Engage the Coloured races by their affection.

Grant them equal opportunities. If you do so, then the happy harmonization of the whole community will be achieved, and you may be sure of receiving the grateful return of the affection and respect of the Coloured races.

The treatment we might reasonably expect from the dominant race is just what they themselves would expect were they in our position.

We have as much right to the land of South Africa as they.

We have as much right as they to be governed on the same basis of humanity.

In the language of one of England's greatest statesmen, Europeans themselves would have been shut out from all the blessings they enjoy, of peace, of happiness, and of liberty if there had been any truth in these principles which some gentlemen have not hesitated to lay down as applicable to the case of Africa. ”Had those principles been true, we ourselves,” said William Pitt, ”had languished to this hour in that miserable state of ignorance, brutality, and degradation, in which history proves our ancestors to have been immersed.

Had other nations adopted those principles in their conduct towards us; had other nations applied to Great Britain the reasoning which some of the Senators of this very Island now apply to Africa, ages might have pa.s.sed without our emerging from barbarism; and we, who are enjoying the blessings of British civilization, of British laws, and British liberty, might at this hour have been little superior either in morals, in knowledge, or refinement, to the rude inhabitants of the coast of Guinea.”

Such were the words of Pitt in a speech he delivered in 1792 in the course of a debate on the Slave Trade. His opinions were vastly different from those of our South African Premier, who only refrains from using the sjambok, so he has told us, on no other ground than that it might also hurt himself, and who is determined to allow no native representative in the Union Parliament as long as the Almighty spares him to be overlord.

He does not look forward as Pitt did to the day when ”We (British) might behold the beams of science and philosophy breaking in upon Africa, which, at some happy period, may blaze with full l.u.s.tre.”

But this policy of repression cannot last much longer.

If a handful of Indians in a matter of conscience can so firmly resist what they consider injustice, what could the Coloured races not do if they were to adopt this practice of pa.s.sive resistance?