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Title: Native Races and the War

Author: Josephine Elizabeth Butler

Release Date: December 8, 2004 [EBook #14299]

Language: English

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NATIVE RACES AND THE WAR,

BY

JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER.

LONDON: GAY & BIRD.

NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE: MAWSON, SWAN, & MORGAN.

1900.

DEDICATED TO MY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN.

I.

APOLOGY FOR "YET ANOTHER BOOK" ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. FUTURE PEACE MUST BE BASED ON JUSTICE,—TO COLOURED AS WELL AS WHITE MEN. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEGALIZED SLAVERY AND THE SUBJECTION OF NATIVES BY INDIVIDUALS. THE TRANSVAAL IN 1877: ITS BANKRUPTCY: ITS ANNEXATION BY GREAT BRITAIN: ITS LIBERATION FROM GREAT BRITAIN IN 1881. CONVENTION OF 1881 SIGNED AT PRETORIA. BRITISH COMMISSIONERS' AUDIENCE WITH 300 NATIVE CHIEFS. SPEECHES AND SORROWFUL PROTESTS OF THE CHIEFS. ROYAL COMMISSION APPOINTED TO TAKE EVIDENCE. EVIDENCE OF NATIVES AND OTHERS CONCERNING SLAVERY IN THE TRANSVAAL. APPEAL OF THE CHRISTIAN KING KHAMA. LETTER OF M'PLAANK, NEPHEW OF CETEWAYO. PREVALENCE OF CONTEMPT FOR THE NATIVE RACES. SYMPATHY OF A NATIVE CHIEF WITH THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST.

In the midst of the manifold utterances and discussions on the burning question of to-day,—the War in South Africa,—there is one side of the subject which, it seems to me, has not as yet been considered with the seriousness which it deserves,—and that is the question of Slavery, and of the treatment of the native races of South Africa. Though this question has not yet in England or on the Continent been cited as one of the direct causes of the war, I am convinced,—as are many others,—that it lies very near to the heart of the present trouble.

The object of this paper is simply to bring witnesses together who will testify to the past and present condition of the native races under British, Dutch, and Transvaal rule. These witnesses shall not be all of one nation; they shall come from different countries, and among them there shall be representatives of the native peoples themselves. I shall add little of my own to the testimony of these witnesses. But I will say, in advance, that what I desire to make plain for some sincere persons who are perplexed, is this,—that where a Government has established by Law the principle of the complete and final abolition of Slavery, and made its practice illegal for all time,—as our British Government has done,—there is hope for the native races;—there is always hope that, by an appeal to the law and to British authority, any and every wrong done to the natives, which approaches to or threatens the reintroduction of slavery, shall be redressed. The Abolition of Slavery, enacted by our Government in 1834, was the proclamation of a great principle, strong and clear, a straight line by which every enactment dealing with the question, and every act of individuals, or groups of individuals, bearing on the liberty of the natives can be measured, and any deviation from that straight line of principle can be exactly estimated and judged.

When we speak of injustice done to the natives by the South African Republics, we are apt to be met with the reproach that the English have also been guilty of cruelty to native races. This is unhappily true, and shall not be disguised in the following pages;—but mark this,—that it is true of certain individuals bearing the English name, true of groups of individuals, of certain adventurers and speculators. But this fact does not touch the far more important and enduring fact that wherever British rule is established, slavery is abolished, and illegal.

This fact is the ground of the hope for the future of the Missionaries of our own country, and of other European countries, as well as of the poor natives themselves, so far as they have come to understand the matter; and in several instances they have shown that they do understand it, and appreciate it keenly.

Those English persons, or groups of persons, who have denied to the native labourers their hire (which is the essence of slavery), have acted on their own responsibility, and illegally. This should be made to be clearly understood in future conditions of peace, and rendered impossible henceforward.

That future peace which we all desire, on the cessation of the present grievous war, must be a peace founded on justice, for there is no other peace worthy of the name; and it must be not only justice as between white men, but as between white men and men of every shade of complexion.

A speaker at a public meeting lately expressed a sentiment which is more or less carelessly repeated by many. I quote it, as helping me to define the principle to which I have referred, which marks the difference between an offence or crime committed by an individual against the law, and an offence or crime sanctioned, permitted, or enacted by a State or Government itself, or by public authority in any way.

This speaker, after confessing, apparently with reluctance, that "the South African Republic had not been stainless in its relations towards the blacks," added, "but for these deeds—every one of them—we could find a parallel among our own people." I think a careful study of the history of the South African races would convince this speaker that he has exaggerated the case as against "our own people" in the matter of deliberate cruelty and violence towards the natives. However that may be, it does not alter the fact of the wide difference between the evil deeds of men acting on their own responsibility and the evil deeds of Governments, and of Communities in which the Governmental Authorities do not forbid, but sanction, such actions.

As an old Abolitionist, who has been engaged for thirty years in a war against slavery in another form, may I be allowed to cite a parallel? That Anti-slavery War was undertaken against a Law introduced into England, which endorsed, permitted, and in fact, legalized, a moral and social slavery already existing—a slavery to the vice of prostitution. The pioneers of the opposition to this law saw the tremendous import, and the necessary consequences of such a law. They had previously laboured to lessen the social evil by moral and spiritual means, but now they turned their whole attention to obtaining the abolition of the disastrous enactment which took that evil under its protection. They felt that the action of Government in passing that law brought the whole nation (which is responsible for its Government) under a sentence of guilt—a sentence of moral death. It lifted off from the shoulders of individuals, in a measure, the moral responsibility which God had laid upon them, and took that responsibility on its own shoulders, as representing the whole nation; it foreshadowed a national blight. My readers know that we destroyed that legislation after a struggle of eighteen years. In the course of that long struggle, we were constantly met by an assertion similar in