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AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?

AFRICA:
SLAVE OR FREE?

BY

JOHN H. HARRIS
Author of
Dawn in Darkest Africa (Smith, Elder & Co.,)
Portuguese Slavery: Britain's Dilemma (Methuen & Co., Ltd.)
Germany's Lost Colonial Empire (Simpkin, Mar
shall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd.)

WITH PREFACE BY

SIR SYDNEY OLIVIER
K.C.M.G., C.B. (Assistant Comptroller & Auditor,
Formerly Governor of Jamaica)

LONDON :
STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT
32 RUSSELL SQUARE, W.C.i
lQI9

Myiz.5"

PREFACE
By Sir SYDNEY OLIVIER, formerly Governor of
Jamaica

The war has augmented the sensible importance
of Africa and African peoples in the progress —
whether it is to be through conflict or through
co-operation — of the complex life of our world,
and especially that of the British Empire ; since
that Empire, according to the figures wliich Mr.
Harris gives on page 20 of this book, controls
about one-third of the total population of the
continent, and not far from half the total number
controlled by all European Powers taken together.
The African peoples — that blended tissue ©f
races, with all its varieties of locally adapted
civilizations — in speaking and writing of which
we are accustomed to bandy summary generaliza
tions about " The Negro," " The Black Man,"
or more vulgarly " natives " or " niggers " — have
both risen several degrees higher above the
horizon of our general insular consciousness during
the war, and have themselves, considering the'm
"and;their transplanted blood-relations in America
and the West Indies together, learnt a great deal

vi AFRICA : SLAVE OR FREE ?
more than they knew before about the white
man, the white man's civilization and his actual as
distinguished from his official religion and morals.
Speaking in very broad generalities about this
increased confrontation, we may note four
important characteristics in the development of
mutual relations and attitudes.
First there was, on the part of these African
and African-born peoples, a warm and spontaneous
manifestation of loyalty, goodwill and affection
towards the white States with which they were
associated. Naturally courageous and alert to the
excitement of fighting, their men eagerly volun
teered for enlistment in the Allied armies, and,
whether in fighting corps or labour battalions,
rendered admirable service and endured their full
share of hardships, disablement and loss of life.
And their people who stayed at home sent their
modest but not insignificant contributions of
work and money.
Though this enthusiasm has met with some
disappointments, the experience has, on the whole,
I believe, reinforced the goodwill, loyalty and
sense of solidarity out of which it sprang.
Secondly — the converse has happened. Many
intelligent and sympathetic white men and women
have had the opportunity better to realize the
qualities and capacities of the African, and there
has been much genuine increase of appreciation
and respect towards him. Further, an attitude
of enhanced goodwill and /responsibility towards
African races has been officially adopted and pro
claimed in the Peace Convention, an attitude

PREFACE vii
which will be to some extent at least embodied
in the mandates to the nations entrusted with new
sovereignties in Africa by authority of the Council
of the Allies.
So much to the good. Unfortunately there
have been correspondingly negative evolutions.
For, thirdly, because the war has thrown many
ignorant persons into positions of military or
official authority, or has brought narrow-minded
or stupid private citizens into contact or competi
tion in various relations with coloured men, and
because colour-prejudice is a very common
attribute of ignorance or stupidity and a con
venient stalking-horse for elementary instincts of
self-interest and jealousy, there have been both
unjust official discriminations to the prejudice of
"coloured" British subjects (some of them I am
glad to* say, redressed under pressure) and some
manifestations and preaching of colour prejudice
in industrial centres and in the Press. And in the
United States there have been, as was fully to be
expected, even more violent manifestations of this
noxious social distemper.
And, fourthly, conversely to this, the African
has learnt a good deal about the seamy side of the
white man. However uprightly and admirably he
-'may have been dealt with by European mission
aries, administrators and colonists, and whatever
confidence and affection these may have won
with him, it has never been possible for him to
appraise the value and efficacy of the Christian
religion, as the religion of the white man, quite so
highly as the missionary and the administrator

viii AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE ?
would have had liim do. And now he has seen
the British Government publicly promise self-
determination to African peoples in the Peace
Settlement and, so far, ignore that promise, having
indeed, even before it was made, assigned some of
his territories by secret conventions as counters
in a deal with its Allies, directly in the face of
the inhabitants' imploring petitions. While South
Africans were giving their services, and their women
at home their poof little contributions towards
the task of the war, they have been experiencing
the scandalous persecutions on the part of the
dominant race in South Africa which Mr. Scully
has set out with such indisputable authority in
the Edinburgh Review for July, 1919, whilst others
have experienced the injustice and cruelty with
which coloured men have been dealt with in
connection with riots at Liverpool and elsewhere.
And with regard to that excess of animalism that
so often is sniggeringly imputed to them as a
danger to white communities, they have encoun
tered in our camps, our streets, our parks, and our
Law Courts, abundant material for at least a
defensible judgment that white men and white
women are fully as erotic as their own people and
much more unrestrainedly and openly licentious.
Whilst, therefore, the white and the coloured
peoples of our Commonwealth have been brought
nearer together for co-operation by the increase
of mutual recognition and appreciation, and the
black man's appreciation of the military efficiency
of the white has probably been enhanced,
they have also been brought nearer together by

PREFACE ix
the enlightening education and discipline which
numbers of Africans have received, and by a
certain amount of disillusionment of the latter as
to the boasted superiorities of the white man. I
do not wish to over-emphasize this factor, but it
exists, and it will be a mistake to ignore it. There
has been a certain advance towards equality and
to a more outspoken belief in and claim to equality.
If the negro stock, including that most ancient
artistic race of the Western World, the Bushmen,
whose residue finally was destroyed by South
African white men, was driven, in primitive ages,
by the more terrible and determined races, out
of the Mediterranean lands and away into the
jungles and swamps and deserts of Africa, because
they were not so fierce or so clever, or because
(believing with Mr. W. B. Yeats, that idleness is
the divinely appointed reward of toil) they were
lazier, and preferred to find their food where
nature produced it abundantly to winning it by
hunting or cultivation— they are not incapable of
learning ; and in an age in which education can
aid their quick reasoning""faculty and they have
not to depend in competition merely on unscrupu
lous force, they are beginning to shape their own
course for progress and to refuse to be taken
solely at the white man's valuation of them as
fighters or labourers.
There has grown up during the war, and there
is progressively shaping itself, a greater common
consciousness and determination among Africans
as to the future and the rights of African races.
Some white men fear this, and would seek to hold

x AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
it in check. The tradition of British statesman
ship is to welcome and encourage it ; and this
policy of welcome and encouragement is implicit
in the professions made on behalf of Great Britain
and America in the preliminaries of the Peace
Settlement. But such statesmanship and its ideals have to
plough their way against heavy obstruction from
prejudice and material interests, or rather from
the short-sighted self-interest of those who would
deal with Africa and the African as mere land and
labour force to be employed for their own enrich
ment or sustenance. Thus we see in South Africa
the deliberate adoption or advocacy of a policy
aimed at excluding the native from all skilled
occupations and binding him on the land from
which he has been dispossessed as a wage labourer
and tenant at will. Thus we have British settlers
in East Africa advocating the reduction of native
reserves in order, admittedly, to force natives to
labour on their plantations. It is encouraging to
hear, on the other hand, that the American
Federation of Labour has recently met the in
creasing influx of coloured workers into the in
dustrial cities of more northerly states, by admit
ting them to the ranks of skilled workers on
condition of their joining trade unions and not
permftting--themselves to be used to undersell
white labour. E pur si muove. ,
At such a time such a book as this of Mr. Harris
is of peculiar value and interest. Not only be
cause problems of African administration, land
tenure and labour are bound to come far closer

PREFACE xi
into the preoccupations of many of us than ever
before, as a result of the events of the war, and
during the period of reconstruction and reshaping
that the coming generation has to deaf with, but
because it is of essential importance and value to
humanity on the highest grounds that the domin
ant European races should come to apprehend
more than they do of the true humanity of such
peoples, hitherto unrealized and largely passive,
as the African and the Russian.
" What," as Mr. Harris asks in his Foreword,
" is the seductive element in this continent and
people which lures men and women on and ever
on until at last they gladly lay themselves down in
final sacrifice on the beloved altar of the African
continent ? "
Why do the white men who devote their lives
to the welfare of African people do so ? It is not
because they are fascinated, against critical
reason, by black skins, thick lips, and woolly
hair, or other characteristics in which nature and
evolution appear to European aesthetics to have
played bad jokes with some African forms of
humanity — the reason is simple and positive — it
is that those who have to do, disinterestedly, with
the negroid races come to love them — find them
above the average rich and responsive and sym
pathetic in some of the most characteristic and
delicate qualities of essential human nature. The
negro is, of course, very far behind many other
peoples in wide fields of human florescence, but
in some of the qualities that are best to live with
he is on the average far ahead of the average

xii AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
industrialized European. He is singularly patient
and forgiving, very delicately sensitive in all
matters of courtesy, acutely logical, warmly
sociable, humorous and kindiy; and in any
physical difficulty or danger ' a most devoted,
brave and unwearied comrade.
Moreover, he is deeply and fundamentally
religious, and his religious and affect ional tempera
ment responds exceptionally to the Christian
formula. Mr. Harris briefly surveys the con
troversy whether Islam or Christianity is the better
faith for the negro world. Islam is a fine synthesis ;
it is educational and usefully disciplinary ; but it
was not for nothing that Christian Europe threw
itself into the Crusades. Armenian massacres
are congenial to Islam : the negro has capacity
enough for mad cruelty in his animal nature ; but
he knows quite well that his humane nature is
better; and Christianity answers to this. As
between Islam a*nd Christianity, therefore, for the
negroid African, I do not think that any intelli
gent man, who is himseif religious and knows what
religion is, can doubt for a moment which is the
more suitable for proselytizing or encouragement.
Many years ago, when I first joined the Colonial
Office, my friend Sidney Webb, with whom, as a
Resident Clerk, I shared the decoding of African
telegrams, used to quote a text that has always
stuck in my mind, and often recurs when I inves
tigate things that are going on in Africa : — " The
dark places of the earth are full of cruelty."
No matter how high an opinion we may enter
tain of our fellow-subjects who colonize and

PREFACE xiii
govern these dark places, they are — they are at
this moment — " full of cruelty ! " It is always
cropping up ; only light, such as this of Mr.
Harris' book, can keep it in check. Wherever, in
a mixed community, you have a privileged class
in command of the government of people whom
they employ as workers, you will have exploitation
and oppressive laws to enforce it.
Democracy is our remedy in Europe. Political
Democracy of our form is not yet practicable
for these African communities ; though some are
developing towards it. In the meantime the
British Government alone can enforce just treat
ment of the subordinate races. And the British
Government is sometimes a good deal embarrassed
by the constitutional rights of responsible Govern
ments or by the resistance of interests which have
grown up under their sanction, and cannot always
take a quite satisfactory line in such matters.
One most unfortunate result of such impotence
or nonchalance is that Bantu peoples, who are
commonly reputed in England to be the finest of
the negroid African races, and whose endowment
of energy and ability are unquestionable, are being,
under the authority of British power, steadily
pressed into and bound down in a position less
favourable for any development than that of
negro or negroid races in West African Crown
Colonies, in Nigeria, or in the French Possessions
— and far less favourable than that of British or
French West Indians of African race or descent.
It is rapidly being made impossible for South
African natives outside of the Cape Colony either

xiv AFRICA: SLAVE, OR FREE?
to attain to any substantial position as stock-
farmers or planters, to rise out of the ranks of
common labourers intg. any skilled trade, or even
as common labourers to maintain their wives and
children in homes of their own.
Mr. Harris calls attention particularly to the
question of land policy in this aspect. I need not
here do more than invite careful attention to the
conditions which he points out as at present in
operation and springing up. Important as land
questions are in European and American communi
ties, they are by far the most crucial matter in the
future of African civilization. Labour, political
and social problems loom dark in Africa, but at the
base of the right solution lies secure native pro
perty in the land. It matters little whether the
possession of the land be individual, communal, or
collective — everything depends upon security.
I understand that one of the objects Mr. Harris
has had in writing this book is that of laying before
Missionary and other students the elementary
conditions of Administration, Commerce, and
Education in Africa, and I venture *to repeat with
confidence what Lord Cromer said in 191 2 : "It
cannot but be an advantage, more especially now
that attention is being more and more drawn to
African affairs, that the Government, Parliament,
and the general public should learn what one so
eminently qualified as Mr. Harris to instruct them
in the facts of the case has to say on this subject."*
SYDNEY OLIVIER.
• Dawn in Darkest Africa. By the same Author. Smith Elder.

CONTENTS PART I
CHAP. PAGE
I. Africa and her People - 3
II. Political Distribution - - 14
III. The Products of Africa — Vegetable 25
IV. The Products of Africa — Minerals - 42
PART II
I. Indigenous African Labour 59
II. Modern Slavery - 72
III. Modern Slavery (Portuguese) - 87
IV. Indian Immigration - 94
PART III
I. The African and his Land - - 107
II. Tropical and Semi-Tropical Lands - - 121
PART IV
I. Racial Contact — The Sale of Alcohol - 145
II. Social Contact — Polygamy and the Re
lationship of the Sexes 154
PART V
I. African Education 171
II. Industrial Missions - - 188
III. Religious Movements in Africa 202
IV. Critics of Christian Miss/ions - 215
PART VI
Africa of To-morrow — The League of Nations 229

FOREWORD
Why does Mary Kingsley say " Africa kills all her
lovers " ? What is the seductive element in this
continent and in its people which lures men and
women on and ever on until at last they gladly lay
themselves down in final sacrifice upon the be
loved altar of the African Continent ?
Back they go, these men and women who have
once been bitten by Africa, back in thought and
action from every walk in life— the administrator,
the traveller, the missionary, and the merchant ;
sunburnt men, pale-faced women, some with
indifferent nerves, others straight from the sur
geon's operating room, young, middle-aged, and
grey-haired, back they go — to what ? To face
again the agonies of fever, malodorous swamps,
indifferent food, the perils of storm and flood,
torments by day and night from myriads ot insects,
burning heat, chilly mist, and the monotony of a
never-varying loneliness. Ask them why they go
and they will tell you that neither storm, nor peril,
nor sickness, nor death itself, shall separate them
from the land and people they love. This
burning passion may be incomprehensible, but its
real and abiding strength strikes the questioner
dumb.

xviii AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Sir Douglas . . . has left his mark as the
Governor of U  land ; bitten by Africa, he
rose to his high position partly through ability,
but more because of his intense attachment to his
African work ; his pay was a mere pittance, his
physique cried out not for Africa's hot plains and
swampy deltas, but for the health-restoring and
quiet influence of Davos. A visit to England led
to the offer of a lucrative directorship and the
comparative rest and comfort which the proffered^
position would provide. Sir Douglas . . . scorned
the thought, back to Africa he went, back to a
modest pay, and to the fever which soon took
another life for Africa.
Mary Kingsley, traveller and scientist, ordered
a period of rest and change, soon fell victim to the
lure of Africa, and seeking advice was told :
" When you have made up your mind to go
to West Africa, the very best thing you can do
is to get it unmade again and go to Scotland
instead ; . but if your intelligence is not strong
enough to do so, abstain from exposing your
self to the direct rays of the sun, take 4 grains of
quinine every day for a fortnight before you
reach the Rivers, and get some introductions to
the Wesleyans ; they are the only people on the
coast who have got a hearse with feathers."*
Mary Kingsley went, she saw and was com
pletely conquered ; never again a free agent, she
became the bondslave of Africa and paid, in her
* Travels in West Africa. Macmillan.

FOREWORD xix
38th year, the final penalty, receiving as one per
manent reward the honour of a Society founded in
her name — The African Society.
David Livingstone, Africa's greatest missionary,
lured into the heart of the continent, criticized
and denounced for hL folly in surrendering mind
and body to the seductive task of exploring the
secrets of Africa, refused to abandon his quest.
Though his physical system had broken down,
though .his body had become little more than a
physical focus for African disease, he refused even
the exalted appeal of his beloved Queen to rest, if
but for a few months in the homeland. David
Livingstone went on until the very natives could
only carry the sun-dried remains of his body to
the coast, leaving his heart buried in and his soul
still hovering over Central Africa.
Thus does Africa capture and enthral her
lovers — Administrator, Missionary and Traveller.

PART I
I. Africa and her People.
II. ^Political Distribution.
III. The Products of Africa — Vegetable.
IV. The Products of Africa — Gold and
Precious Stones.

CHAPTER I
AFRICA AND HER PEOPLE
The great pear-shaped continent, hanging like a
colossal pendant from the northern and eastern
sister continents of Europe and Asia, measures
over 11,900,000 square miles, and is occupied by
nearly 120,000,000 of people. The bald state
ment that Africa covers 11,900,000 square miles
of the earth's surface conveys little to most of us,
but when it is remembered that this represents
an area seven times the size of India'and nearly
one hundred times the size of the United King
dom or sixty times the size of Germany before the
war, the mind is impressed with the vastness of the
country. Africa's greatest need is population, for
the general density is less than 12 persons per
square mile as compared with 360 per square mile
of the British Isles and 300 per square mile of
Germany. The African coastal features are minus the
Archipelagoes which characterize every other con
tinent, but the interior is probably more capable
of varied, lucrative and self-contained industry
than either of the other undeveloped continents,
South America, Asia or Australia. It is true that
Africa embraces the Sahara and Kalahari deserts,

4 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?-
but she possesses within conceivable engineering
reach the never failing and super-abundant waters
of the Nile, the Niger, the Zambesi and the Congo,
only waiting the coming day when man will har
ness waste waters to waste land and thereby
increase the productivity of both land and water.
Africa also has her inland seas — the great lakes,
inside which, from point of size, could be placed
the British Isles. She has, too, her lofty mountain
ranges of the Atlas stretching from the Atlantic
to the Mediterranean, the Drakensberg of Basu-
toland, the towering peaks of Kenia, Kilimanjaro,
Ruwenzori in East Africa, and the snow-capped
Cameroon mountain in the west.
The vast Equatorial regions are forest -clad with
countless millions of every species of woods, soft
and hard, scented and malodorous, intertwined
with undergrowth which in one part binds tree
trunk to tree trunk, and thereby effectively denies
passage to all but the most intrepid and deter
mined, whilst in other parts the spreading vinery
binds the trees top to top in a sort of canopy
excluding light and sun from man and beast.
North and South of the forests and marshes of the
tropics roll vast plains over which man and beast
still roam in the solitude and safety of past cen
turies. ^
But the people, the 100,000,000 to 120,000,000
of Africans, what of these ? The Bantu tribes of
the tropics and the South,the Bushmen and Hotten
tots of the far South- West, the Fulani and Haussa of
West Africa, the Negroid races, the Hamitic and
Semitic peoples of the North and the Somalis of

TBE JOLLY AFRICAN 5
the North-East ? These millions are " Pagan,"
Mohammedan, and Christian in religion, and in
language are divided by Keane* into the six main
groups of :
1. The Semitic family, along the north coast
and in Abyssinia.
2. The Hamitic family, mainly in the Sahara,
Egypt, Galla, and Somali Land.
3. The Fulah and Nuba groups, in western,
central, and eastern Sudan.
4. The Negro systems, in western and central
Sudan, Upper Guinea, and the Upper Nile
regions.
5. The Bantu family, everywhere south of
about 6° N. lat., except in the Hottentot
domain.
6. The Hottentot group, in the extreme south
western corner, from the tropic of Capri
corn to the Cape.
There is also a further group :
7. The Malayo-Polynesian family, in Mada
gascar.
To the .thoughtless European, these millions
are but " Lazy Niggers," too often the variant
"Damned Nigger "; but to those who are prepared
to apply the seeing eye to the native eye, the
hearing ear to the native ear, sympathetic mind
to African mind, a new world is revealed. All
the characteristics of a child race are there ; the
jolly laugh, the incisive quip, and the never-
failing repartee, coupled with prodigal hospitality
~" * Ajricn. Keith Johnston (Stanford).

6 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
whose denomination is literally "All that I have is
thine." Deceit and low cunning of the vicious
type -are absent, but if you lend the African a
hammer or a saw he will " teef " your screws
and nails, a tendency arising more from the
communal instinct of brotherhood than from
deliberate wrong-doing. The African giving a
bunch of bananas to his guest would expect to
supply the pot for cooking, and he not unnaturally
looks to the white to treat him upon a similar
principle. It was Mr. Consul Hopkins who, in -a letter to
Stanley in 1873, wrote :
" I ought to hate Sambo — -I know him well.
He has sold me, in the person of my own ser
vants, over and over again ; he has dropped my
best tumblers, and smashed my best . looking-
glass, dropped grease on my best pants, and
used my hair-brushes, drank my liqueur, and
stolen my money, and I am eternally threaten
ing to have his life, but don't — because, some
how or other, I like him, and he likes me, and
we get along amazingly well."
But although the buoyancy of youth is every
where characteristic of the African, none can be
more dignified and sagacious than the Chiefs and
Elders. Watch them surrounded by Council and
tribes, eyes a-twinkle perhaps, but never a word,
a gesture, or a movement that would weaken
authority or lower the dignity of these primitive
but stately chieftain rulers of Africa. But, it may
be asked, " do they never unbend ? " They do,

THAT "LAZY NIGGER" y
but that very unbending is with surpassing dig
nity. The trial of great cases in national " pala
vers " frequently leads to speeches — more correctly
veritable orations delivered with poetic native
diction ; the Chief will rise slowly to his feet and
commence his speech first in a low cadence and
then a rising and falling inflection, soon he warms
to his subject and proceeds to illustrate it by his
toric fact, striking figure, or captivating anec^
dote ; onward he will sweep with flowing language,
period upon period, gesture following gesture,
until both Chief and audience rock and sway under
the magnetic influence of passionate yet dignified
eloquence. What matters time ! — half-hour, an
hour, an hour and a half, two hours, and the tribal
orator, body now running streams of perspiration,
but eye undimmed, gesture unflagging, language
rich in idiom and rhythmic to the ear, the perora
tion is delivered to an audience now intoxicated
with delight and breaking into acclamations loud
and long as the chieftain orator with dignity gives
place to his opponent.
The " lazy nigger " theory, the stock argument
of the exploiter, has long been an exploded myth
to those who prefer facts to prejudice ; it is true,
of course, that African labourers are as capable of
malingering as any other section of the world's
labour forces, but to argue from a superficial
appearance that the African is any more indolent
than the ordinary run of humanity is happily a
vanishing absurdity.
One of the most exhaustive Commissions ever
held in Africa was the Lagden Commission of

8 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Inquiry into native conditions in South Africa —
an inquiry which occupied three years. What
was the finding of the Lagden Commission upon
this point ?
" The theory that the South African natives
are hopelessly indolent may be dismissed as
being not in accordance with the facts. Even
the simple wants of the Native population can
not be supplied without some degree of exer
tion. The population of 4,652,662 has to
derive its sustenance from a soil which is not
everywhere fertile, and the Native agriculturist
has to contend with the same drawbacks of
drought and pestilence that beset the European
farmer. The labour of tilling the soil, weeding
and reaping is shared, but is by no means ex
clusively performed by the Native women ; and
the representation of the Native living at his
own village a lazy and luxurious life, supported
by his wife or wives, is misleading."*
Nearer the Equatorial fine a similar inquiry,
made in Rhodesia in 191 1, produced the following
conclusion :
" It is frequently urged that native males
lead an idle life at their kraals. This is not
borne out by the evidence which we have
received. On" the contrary, they appear to do
the bulk of the heavy work, and the woman is
•Report of the South African Native Affairs Commission, 1903T5.
Par. 573.

AFRICAN ENERGY 9
not the slave which she is so frequently alleged
to be."*
It is tEe same story throughout Africa ; for
example, along the West Coast, German white
effort, and in British territory, native effort have
been for years competing for the premier position
in cocoa production. The natives of the British
Gold Coast have, economically speaking, smitten
the German white planters hip and thigh, for
during the eight years from 1904-12 German
industry only increased its output three-and-half
times, whilst British West Africans increased their
output eight times !
To see the African at the native industries
handed down to him by his father is to convince
the sympathetic onlooker of his latent energy.
That long line of carriers, each man with f-cwt.
box or bale upon his head, has tramped steadily
four hours a day for a fortnight — up hill, down
dale, across fragile swaying bridges, through
turbid streams ; that sinuous line of 500 men has
transported 250 cwts. of merchandise without
ever dropping a single case. Africa without the
carrier is even to-day unthinkable-: — civilization
has laid down plantations, built span bridges,
constructed hundreds o£ miles of railway, metalled
thousands of miles of roadway, but it is literally
true that this stupendous transformation was
accomplished primarily upon the woolly pate of
the sons of Africa. During the Anglo-Belgian-
* Southern Rhodesia Report of the Native Affairs Committee of
Inquiry, 1910-11.

10 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
French conquest of the Cameroons, a single body
of troops required an auxiliary carrier force of
6,000 men !
One of the delights of African travel is canoeing.
Despite the mosquitos in the evening and the
" midges " by the million during the day, in
sidious but venomous attacks at all hours by the
tsetse fly, and miasma all the time, the joy of
whirling hour after hour through the rushing
waters to the continuous " dip, dip " of forty
paddlers, and the rhythmic song of the " coach "
and the even beat of the " tom-tom," is an ex
perience only possible in primitive Africa. This
delight to the white man spells for the African
an unbroken strain of eight hours' paddling for
days on end, which dwarfs to pigmy proportions
the relatively comfortable exercise of the Oxford
and Cambridge boat race.
The assumption of " laziness " in the African is
generally due to a lofty superiority not unrelated to
ignorance. The African, travelling along a forest
path, followed by his wife (or wives), children, and
other dependents, gives the impression of callous
indifference ; the critic sees him striding forward
without any share of the family burden, for he
seldom carries more than a light spear, bow and
arrow, or club, while behind him the women folk
are probably heavily weighted with baskets of
food on their backs and not infrequently a child
in their arms, whilst even tiny tots have to carry
household goods. They travel thus for miles — the
grown men and sturdy youths never for one mo
ment offering to share the loads !

NATIVE WISDOM ii
For a year or two the writer had watched this
custom with growing indignation, until one day
he decided to teach " my lord and master " a
lesson in honest work if not courtesy ! Whilst
tramping the forest of Central Africa on a hot
day there appeared a heavily burdened file of
women wending their way along. The whole file
was ordered to stop, the burdens were lifted from
the tired women and girls and placed upon the
backs of the sturdy, unencumbered men, but lo !
the women, like a pack of furies, turned gesticu
lating and loud of voice upon the writer : " Who
now will protect us from our enemies — man,
beast and snake — that lurk in every tuft of grass.
every forest bush and every tree ? Our men
carrying loads will be surprised, overcome, and
destroyed, and then will come the turn of the
children. Oh ! what fools are white men ! " In
a flash the wisdom of this native custom was
revealed; abashed and ashamed, the author
renewed a forgotten vow never to condemn a
native custom without first making exhaustive
inquiry. In song and dance, as a carrier or paddler, or
even in mortal combat, the African is the embodi
ment of towering energy. In the dance every
rhythmic movement is punctuated by the loud
" Ha ! Ha ! " and a stamping of feet that makes
the very earth resound ; forest axes ring loud as
they fall upon the mighty tree trunk to unending
and primitive song, whilst through the primeval
forest echo calls to echo ; the canoe is driven
forward by vigorous dipping of the blades in

12 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
unison with the rise and fall of the singing
" coach"; the whole line of carriers, each heavily
laden, moves with swinging stride and perfect har
mony in step to the tune of the file-leader, who
occasionally joins in the chorus of song. Thus
does Africa give the lie to the lazy nigger theory.
But in sickness, loss of liberty, and in death the
African goes all to pieces. It is because loss of
personal liberty and sickness walk hand in hand
with the dread spectre of death that the African
suffers collapse upon the very approach of either.
Death is not a release to the African, it is an ever-
present terror ; the creaking of a beam, the night-
cry of the owl in the forest, the ripple of a stream,
the rustle of leaves upon the trees, are but too
often the solemn warning of departed spirits
summoning the listener to the land without hope,
the land in which there are many evil but few
angel spirits.
Watch the African in sickness, in vain are ap
peals and words of encouragement, for he believes
himself stricken unto death, and being without
hope for this world or the next exhibits" a capacity
for dying which is the despair of science. Watch
the African, too, in the presence of approaching
death — relatives and friends crowd around, un
washed, dishevelled, fasting, eyes staring, lips
compressed, all awaiting death's unfailing signal-—
that last tear drop. Watch them closely, for upon
that dread signal the air is instantly pierced, with
one terrible shriek ; then listen to the cry as it
spreads from hut to hut until the whole village is
filled with that awesome death wail. Watch

FAITH AND HOPE 13
them again in the Kasai basin, where, at that
terrible cry; men rush forward and instantly
snatch the body from the bed and carry it forth
from the dwelling of man lest death shall smite
another. Faith and Hope in a new and better world, both
here and hereafter, means in very truth Life
Eternal to the African race.

CHAPTER II
POLITICAL DISTRIBUTION
The administration of Africa falls roughly into
three main groups — Self-Governing Territories,
Crown Colonies, Protectorates and Spheres of
Influence ; and within this threefold category
can be placed every territory in the continent.
The three self-governing territories at the
present time are the Union of South Africa,
Liberia, and Abyssinia.
The Union Government of South Africa was
set up in 1909 by virtue of the South Africa Act,*
whereby the four Provinces — Cape Colony, Trans
vaal, Orange River Colony and Natal — were
placed under the Executive Government of a free
Parliament and a Governor-General representing
the British Crown. Parliament is composed of a
Senate and a House of Assembly, under which
constitution a Senator must be a British subject
of European descent, whilst no actual voter in
Cape Colony can be disqualified by reason of
colour. Thus while the native and coloured
people of the Cape of Good Hope possess restricted
franchise under this constitution, those of the
other provinces possess to-day no effective voice
* Cd. 7508. August, 1914.

LIBERIA 15
in controlling their own destinies. There is some
probability that this question will arise in an acute
form this year,* when Section 10 of the Act of
Union seems to imply the intention, and certainly
gives the right, of raising the question of amending
the constitution. These four provinces of South
Africa are under the Union Government of which
General Botha is the first Premier and Lord
Buxton the Imperial Representative, governing a
white or tan-coloured population of 1,276,000 and
a coloured population, which, including a large
number of British-Indian subjects, totals nearly
6,000,000 !
Liberia can only at the best be described as an
" experiment," and not a very happy experiment
either, in a Free Negro Republic. Just a century
ago good men in Europe and America conceived
the idea of founding in Africa herself a Republic
where, unmolested, the freed slave should be
given an opportunity to work out his own salva
tion in the land of his origin. In 1822 the first
settlement was established, close to the present
capital, Monrovia ; but it was not. until 1847 that
the constitution was formally approved as the
" Free and Independent Republic of Liberia."
During the intervening century the immigrant
negro population has grown to about 10,000, and
a Government has been evolved under a President,
a Vice-President, and a Council of six members,
responsible to Parliament composed of a Senate
and House of Representatives.
Financially the country has never prospered,
* ^l9-

16 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
and to-day Liberia has, figuratively speaking, " got
the brokers in." The United States, in 1910,
assumed financial and other liabilities, and in 1912
an international loan of £500,000 was raised and
secured by Customs under an American con
troller, whilst the patronage of appointing certain
military and civil officials rests with the President
of the United States of America.
Liberia, as large as Ireland and Wales together
and inhabited by 2,000,000 of natives, possesses
internal resources of enormous potential value,
for the virgin forests abound in mahogany and
scented woods, gums, wild rubber and vegetable
oils ; nevertheless, Liberia to-day is economically
the Liberia of twenty-five years ago. Eastward,
westward, and southward neighbouring territories
have shown healthy economic expansion, whilst
Liberia has drifted ever nearer to bankruptcy and
chaos, with the inevitable consequence of a trun
cated civil service, with salaries either overdue or
not paid at all. Other tribes in neighbouring
lands have enjoyed educational facilities denied
to the Liberians, whilst the perpetual conflict
between the 10,000 American negroes and the
2,000,000 indigenous people has gravely shaken
the faith of the best friends of the Liberian
Republic and involved the unhappy people of the
hinterland in a nightmare of oppression and suffer
ing. The great needs of Liberia are — a strong and
efficient Government, financial stability resting
upon peaceful administration, the open door for
commercial activity unfettered by direct or in
direct " considerations," and, finally, an educa-

ABYSSINIA 17
tional system which would embrace not merely
Liberians but the native races of the territory.
Abyssinia, the ancient Empire of Ethiopia, more
than twice the size of Germany, is occupied by,
it is estimated, 6,000,000 of people devoted mainly
to the pastoral occupations of their forefathers.
Industrial effort is expressed in terms of oxen,
' sheep, goats, horses and donkeys, with a small
export of ivory and coffee. If Abyssinia could
overcome difficulties of transport the population
would contribute to the supply of raw material
by landing in Europe large quantities of raw
cotton something under is. per lb., and even
larger supplies of the purest white fibre in the
world at £16 per ton.
The Government of Abyssinia includes the
Kingdoms of Tigre, Amharra, Shoa, Haria, and
portions both of Galla and Somali, which terri
tories were ruled until 191 3 by the picturesque
and autocratic Menelik, assisted by a Council
composed nominally of the principal Rases.
Menelik, during the twenty-four years of his rule
as Negus Negust (King of Kings), introduced
many reforms upon the model of civilized govern
ments, including ministers of justice, finance,
commerce, war and foreign affairs, supported
by a regular army of 150,000 mounted troops
with a small artillery force. This Empirej ruled
by the " King of Kings," adheres to the Christian
.faith accepted by the people over 1,500 years ago.
The spiritual welfare of the Abyssinians is entrusted
to about 100,000 ecclesiastics under the supreme
head — the Abuna, who must always be of Coptic

1 8 AFRICA ;, SLAVE OR FREE?
persuasion, appointed and consecrated by the
Patriarch of Alexandria. The Emperor Menelik
endeavoured, in 1907, to secure the education of
his people and issued a decree enjoining compul
sory education for all males over the age of 12,
but with other matters in Abyssinia education
awaits the inspiring energy of the " Reformer."
Whilst Abyssinia is wholly free and independ
ent, Great Britain, France and Italy are collec
tively pledged to preserve the integrity of the
Empire, and thus may be regarded as coming so
near to a " Sphere of Influence " that, in political
affairs, the encroachment of any fourth Power
would in all probability be construed as " an
unfriendly act " !
Next in order to these Self-Governing terri
tories come the Crown Colonies and Protectorates,
of which there are :

French. British.
Algeria. Bechuanaland.
Sahara. Basutoland.
Tunis East Africa and Uganda.
Senegal and Niger. Egypt and Sudan.
Guinea Coast. Gambia.
Ivory Coast. Gold Coast and Ashanti.
Dahomey. Nigeria.
Mauritania. Nyasaland.
Congo. Rhodesia.
Somaliland. Sierra Leone.
. Somaliland.
Zanzibar.

FRENCH RESPONSIBILITY 19
Ex-German. Belgian.
Cameroons. Congo.
German South West. Italian.
East Africa. Eritrea.
Togoland. Somaliland.
Tripoli.
Portuguese. Spanish.
- Angola. Guinea Coast — Muni.
East Africa. Islands —
Guinea. Fernando Po.
Cape Verde Islands. Annabon.
St. Thome and Prin- Corisco.
cipe (Islands). Great Elobi.
Little Elobi.
Easily first in territorial responsibility comes
France, for the Republic has assumed responsi
bility for over 4,000,000 square miles of African-
territory, apart from the recently acquired control
over Morocco. Next to France comes Great
Britain, with 2,800,000 square miles of territory
under direct Crown control, which, with 473,900
square miles in South Africa, makes a total of over
3,000,000 square miles under the influence of the
British flag. Prior to the outbreak of war,
Germany, next to France and Great Britain, held
sway over the largest area in Africa, namely,
1,130,000 square miles. Belgium followed Ger
many, with over 900,000 square miles of Congo
territory. Portugal came next, with 793^000
square miles, whilst Italy, as a result of her break
with Turkey in 191 1, increased her control over

20 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?

Africa from 200,000 to 600,000 square miles.
Spain has the smallest measure of territorial
responsibility, for apart from her Moroccan
interest her total possessions are less than 90,000
square miles.
The approximate populations of these terri
tories in regions under effective administration,
known for the most part and estimated in others,
is as follows : Under British control, 35,000,000 ;
French, 25,000,000 ; ex-German, 12,000,600 ;
Belgian, 10,000,000 ; Portuguese, 8,000,000 ;
Italian, 1,000,000 ; Spanish, 200,000.
Under British Crown Government 29,000,000
„ Union of South Africa 6,000,000

French Government

... 25,000,000

German Government

(prior

to the outbreak of war) ... 12,000,000

Belgian Government

... 10,000,000

Portuguese „

... 8,000,000

Liberian „

... . 2,000,000

Italian „

... 1,000,000

Spanish „

200,000

Abyssinian „

. . . 6,000,000

It is only under British rule that any part of
Africa has attained to self-government, namely,
South Africa, whilst it is equally true that in every
territory where white executive government ob
tains, a larger measure of native co-operation is
granted in British than in that under the terri
torial control of any other European Power.
There is, however, one quite peculiar feature in.
French government which is a marked advance

CROWN COLONY GOVERNMENT 21
upon anything which even Great Britain has
attained, namely, direct representation from the
Colonies and Dependencies in the Senate and
Chamber of Deputies. Senegal and Guinea each
have a deputy, whilst almost every other political
division has a representative or representatives on
the " Conseil Superior des Colonies." The
representative for Senegal is a full-blooded
Jollof. It is universally admitted that the British
system of colonial administration is, on the whole,
the most highly organized, and yet the most
elastic in the African continent, and to a very con
siderable extent other nations have modelled their
forms of administration upon it. The popular
theory is that all territory and all peoples under
the British flag are British subjects ! But in Africa
quite the larger part of such territory is not
British, neither are the majority of the inhabitants
'British subjects.
The broad distinction in Britain's Colonial
Commonwealth is that of (1) Dominions, (2)
Dependencies. In the Dominions are included
all those territories which have been formally
annexed by the British Crown and possess elective
legislatures controlled by the Crown in the person
of a Governor or Governor-General. In Africa
the only Dominion is, of course, that of the Union
territories,' created a Self-Governing Colony by
the King in Council in 1909.
Next in order come the Crown Colonies whose
administration is under the complete and effective
control of the Crown. The Governor has large

22 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
powers vested in him, and he is supported in his
task by a Legislative Council composed of official
and nominated members. In every Crown Colony
the official element outnumbers the " nominated "
members, and thus the Governor can always rely
upon a majority for any measure he may place
before the Legislative Council. Nigeria is a good
illustration of this system of government. The
Governor of Nigeria is assisted by an Executive
and an advisory and deliberative Council. The
Council is composed of (i) the official Executive ;
(2) a member of the local Chamber of Commerce ;
(3) a member of the Chamber of Mines ; (4) four
nominated Europeans ; (5) six nominated native
members. This Council is only advisory, and
possesses no legislative or executive authority.
Probably the best definition of the Dependencies
is that provided by Lord Halsbury :
" The expression ' dependencies ' is used to
signify places which have not been formally
annexed to the British dominions, and are,
therefore, strictly speaking, foreign territories,
but which are practically governed^ by Great
Britain, and by her represented in any relations
that may arise towards the other foreign
countries. Most of them are ' protectorates,'
that is, territories placed under the protection
of the British sovereign generally by treaty with
the native rulers or Chiefs."*
The Protectorates are not British territory, nor
are the inhabitants British subjects ; but any
* The Laws of England. The Earl of Halsbury. Vol. x, page 503.

PROTECTORATE RULE 23
interference by another Power with the internal
affairs of the Protectorates would not be tolerated
by Great Britain. Most of the Protectorates are
adjacent to a British colony and are, in effect,
controlled by the administrative authority of the
Crown Colony : Sierra Leone, the Gambia, and
the Gold Coast are illustrations of this relation
ship. The Colony of the Gambia measures only
70 square miles, whilst the Protectorate mea
sures 4,500 square miles. The Gold Coast Colony
covers "24,000 square miles, whilst the Colony,
the Protectorate of Ashanti and the Northern
Territories cover together nearly 80,000 square
miles. The Colony of Sierra Leone measures
4,000 square miles, and the Protectorate 27,000
square miles.
The Government of the Protectorates varies
considerably according to local conditions. In
Uganda the supreme administrative authority ..is
the Commissioner, whilst the five administrative
provinces are ruled by the Paramounts. Bechu
analand is controlled by a Resident under the
High Commissioner of South Africa. Southern
Rhodesia is governed by a Legislative Council
partly nominated and partly elected.
East Africa is another Protectorate governed
by a Legislative Council with power to legislate
by Ordinance. Basutoland and Swaziland are
controlled by Resident Commissioners, although
large powers of native, government are retained
by the native chiefs and Council.
The period of reconstruction through which the
British1 Commonwealth is now passing must* in-

24 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
elude closer union with these territories. The
millions of inhabitants in the Protectorates will
demand with increasing force and undeniable
justice either a fuller share in the government of
their own countries or alternately definite incor
poration in the British Commonwealth as British
subjects with potentially all the rights of British
citizenship. Public opinion in Europe and
America will watch very closely the lead of
Britain at this period of her evolution, because
controlling as she does the largest part of the
population in the continent and being admittedly
ih advance of all other Governments, the experi
ence of the territories and practice of statesmen
will be used as a foundation upon which to erect
administrative and political reforms in the French,
German, Portuguese, Belgian, and Italian De
pendencies of the African Continent.

CHAPTER III
THE PRODUCTS OF AFRICA— VEGETABLE
The products of Africa fall into the two main
categories of vegetable and mineral wealth — (a)
vegetable oils, fibres and gums ; (b) gold and
precious stones. From the days of Kings David,
Solomon and Pharoah Necho the yellow oils and
golden ores of Africa have enriched the Egyptian,
Asiatic and European peoples ; but the winning
of the gold and the extracting of oils and gums
have spelt for the African servitude, oppression,
torture and bloodshed. Future historians may be
able to decide whether the crime or the folly of
such destruction of human life was the greater sin.
However great the crime of slavery, cruelty and
torture, whereby millions of Africans have
perished, no bounds can be set to the monumental
folly of the white races which has wiped out of
existence millions of natives whose hands alone
can blast the rock for gold, climb the trees for oil,
or garner the harvests of fibre for the comfort of
the human race. But of this later.
First amongst the trees of Africa is the oil palm,
first in beauty, first in utility, and first in fertility.
Queen of forest and plain, the Elaeis guineensis
fascinates the traveller she so loves to befriend —
25

26 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
her graceful fronds like some fluttering banner
greet him from the hill-top, she stands friendly
sentinel on the outskirts of the native village, her
graceful beauty is equalled by her overflowing
bounty. Is the traveller athirst and weary ? — her
luxurious foliage gives him shelter, whilst from
her tree trunk pours forth a draught of foaming
wine. Is the traveller without meat ? — then her
nut oil and palm cabbage provide a meal fit for
a sylvan prince. What will you — merchant,
traveller, native ? — a loin cloth, a tool, a mat, a
roof, a wall, a hpuse, a fortune, or a sylvan
picture ? — these and more are to be found in the
oil palm of West Africa.
Second only to the oil palm in fertility, if not
in charm, is the cocoanut palm, growing east and
west of Africa within the influence of., sea air.
These two trees — the oil palm and the cocoanut
palm — have much in common ; they both provide
food, drink and shelter for the native inhabitants
and nut butter for the white races, and to a
large extent they are both self-supportirig. The
screeching grey parrot ravenously pecking'at the
oil palm fruit tears the nut from the matrix and,
carrying it to the recesses of the forest or the
seclusion of the plain, consumes the oily fibre and
leaves the kernel to germinate and add yet another
palm to the countless millions in West Africa.
The cocoanut palm, thriving only within the
influence of sea air, casts her ripe nuts upon the
bosom of tidal waters and ever-flowing currents,
which bear the seed to .every point of the local
compass, there to strike root and spring up in

, THE OIL PALM 27
abundant harvest in every creek, along every sea
shore, 'and upon every island in the tropics — thus
does a bountiful nature provide subsistence for
man. The oil palm of West Africa rears herself in
straight cylindrical form, her porous trunk scarred
by fallen leaf bases, to a maximum height of about
70 feet. At the base is the enormous root,
resembling a huge cocoanut mat, whilst by tracing
out individual roots they are found to reach 35
feet and more from the base. The lofty stem,
from 30 to 50 inches in diameter, is crowned by
twenty to thirty leaves 10 to 14 feet long, each
leaf carrying scores of leaflets arranged on both
sides of its flexible midrib. At the base of these
leaves, firmly embedded in the crown, is to be
found the source of West African wealth, the
bunch of oil nuts. The nuts, about the size of a
walnut, cluster in hundreds, sometimes as many
as (2,000, round the central cone, and together
form a single head of fruit as large as a straw
beehive and weighing well over half a cwt.
The kernel of the nut, the size and shape of
an almond, gives a white oil, which forms the basis
' of much of the " pure Spanish olive oil " of com
merce. The kernel is enclosed in a hard shell, not
unlike, but much harder than a peach stone,
which is in turn clothed with a mass of oleaginous
fibre, the whole encased in a strong red and black
skin. It is from the latter fibre that the railway
constructor of the Victorian period obtained his
lubricating oil, lhat the soap merchant of twenty
years ago obtained his raw material, that the

28 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
chemist of ten years ago produced margarine, and
from which — in 191 6-18 — Sir Douglas Haig ob
tained his high explosives for the battles of
Vimy, Passendeale, Cambrai, and the " Drocourt
Switch." The foaming wine drawn from this oil palm is
an article of indigenous Consumption, and finds
no place in the African exports of to-day, although
the Pharoahs of Egypt drew large supplies at great
cost for the purpose of embalming their holy dead.
The head or crown of the palm is one of the delica
cies of West Africa, and this solid mass of white"
succulent vegetable has all the properties of the
freshest of seakale, but if anything more delicate
in flavour, whilst a single head would amply
supply the needs of a Lord Mayor's banquet.
The cocoanut palm gives the more familiar nut
weighing several pounds, whose outer husk pro
vides a marketable fibre for door-mats, sacking
and rope, whilst with the advance of science and
the decline in horse breeding the best qualities
are now dyed black, brown and grey, then crimped
and curled, and hey presto — real horse hair ! But
modern civilization is more interested in the
copra which, with other products, gives us " nut
butter," or margarine. Copra is simply the sun-
dried or kiln-dried white flesh of the cocoanut/
yielding up to and sometimes exceeding 60 per
cent, of fat. Upon the conservative figure of
fifty nuts per tree per annum — the annual yield
of nuts from 1,000 acres of cocoanut palms is over
2,000,000 — and as 1,000 nuts will give at least
500 piculs of copra, the total yield for 1,000 acres

THE COCOANUT 29
is over 500 tons of copra, which at only £zo per
ton is-.£io,ooo, or £10 per acre as a minimum from
copra alone.
Neither the oil palm of West Africa nor the
cocoanut palm of any tropical area can be har
vested by the white man ; the black man of
Africa and the brown man of Asia are alone
capable of harvesting and preparing this product.
Machinery , will yet triumph over many of the
labour difficulties of to-day, but without the
native these expanding industries would wither up.
In the early, stages the smaller bunches of both oil
nuts and cocoanuts can be reached almost from
the ground, but in the prime bearing periods that
60 to 70 feet of cylindrical stem must be climbed,
or more correctly " walked," up by the liarvester.
A British merchant in Nigeria has recently made
the calculation that the 77,000 tons of oil ex
ported from Nigeria represented a total climbing
activity of 34,496,000 trees, or 522,638 miles —
thus, with the total West Africa export of oil
alone, in the neighbourhood of 150,000 tons, the
natives of West Africa climb, for the benefit of
the white man's bathroom and breakfast table,
about 70 million trees, which by simple calcula^-
tion means one million miles every year !
Whilst copra is dried, the oil nut is either fer
mented or boiled — sometimes both. The nuts
are then either thrown into a cemented well or
left in a heap until they drop easily from the stem
and, what is of equal importance to the worker,
from the huge thorns which protect them. When
the pulp has been rendered soft, either by fer-

30 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
mentation or boiling, the nuts are pounded with
huge wooden pestles which cause the pericarp to
leave the stone. The mass of yellow fibre is then, v
with the aid of hot water, squeezed through native
presses from which flows a thick stream of golden
oil. The kernel of the nut is obtained by cracking
the shell, either by machinery or by hand between
two stones. The difficulty attendant upon crack
ing machinery is that it so often breaks the kernel,
which in turn means a loss of oil. The old grey-
haired ladies of West Africa, , sitting outside their
huts with upper and nether, millstones in their
hands, have for years cracked 300,000 tons of
kernels each vear for the white man. These old
ladies remain to-day the most picturesque and
certainly the safest cracking machines in Africa.
The progress of the industry is indicated by the
fact that in 1800 Great Britain imported from
Africa less than 300 tons of palm products, whilst
to-day Africa produces over 500,000 tons, with a
total value of nearly £10,000,000 sterling.
The extraordinary advance in chemical science
has made palm and copra oils the principal ingredi
ents in modern vegetable butter, which is being
consumed in ever increasing quantities. Prior to
the war Great Britain imported and consumed
over £4,000,000 worth of margarine.
Africa provides two other products, the ground
nut and the cotton seed, which are combined with
the oil nut and the cocoanut in the manufacture
of margarine. The ground nut is the familiar ."
" monkey nut " of the British markets. Its cul
tivation is extremely easy — one nut planted an

THE ROMANCE OF COCOA 31
inch below the surface soon springs up into a
leafy clump, with which is a mass of closely packed
nuts, which by harvest time covers a square foot
of ground. France is easily the largest colonial
producer of this nut, for the French colonies of
West Africa exported, prior to the war, nearly
200,000 tons of these little nuts, worth upon the
European market over if millions sterling. The
probable reason for the French interest in this
article is its suitability for the manufacture of
" pure olive " and salad oils.
Cotton seed produces a relatively low but
valuable percentage of oil which is now used in
combination with other oils in the production of
margarine and also, in times of peace, in making
the lighter forms of French pastries. The seed is
the smallest of the oil-producing kernels and is,
of course, obtained from the centre of the fluffy
little puffs of raw staple so familiar to the traveller
in the Southern States of America, Egypt and
Northern Nigeria.
Cocoa is quite a modern product of Africa, for
fifty years ago it was unknown in any part of the
continent. To the popular mind cocoa is a pleasing beverage^
but as it possesses over 50 per cent, of fat probably
its rightful category is that of vegetable butter.
Within the last thirty years cocoa has taken firm
root on African soil, and Africa is now superseding
South America and the West Indies as the great
cocoa-producing area of the world. Montezuma,
that tragic figure in Mexican history, fared sump
tuously every day upon cocoa. We are told that

32 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the Aztec monarch had fifty jars of cocoa prepared
every day for his personal consumption, whilst
2,000 jars were allotted to the royal household.
Although gold and precious stones were fairly
abundant in Mexico, it was cocoa which formed
the currency. Montezuma's treasure house, cap
tured by the Spaniards, contained 40,000 loads
of currency cocoa in wicker baskets.
The first public sale of cocoa in England appears
to have been on June 16th, 1657, when a French
caterer in Queen's Head Alley, Bishopsgate,
offered for sale a West Indian drink, called
chocolate, made or unmade. At a later period
the famous London Club—" White's " — where
assembled their Graces the Dukes, Noble Lords,
Prize Pugilists, Cock-fighters, and, it is said,
notorious robbers and highwaymen, became the
fashionable centre of chocolate and cocoa con
sumers ; indeed, in those early days the Club
was known as " White's Chocolate House." But
for nearly 300 years the British people failed to
appreciate the pleasing flavour and nutritious
value of the " Food of the Gods," for even so late
as 1820 our consumption was less than 300,000 lbs.,
whereas to-day it is over 50,000,000 lbs.' The
composition of cocoa is first of all vegetable
butter, of which the bean contains over 50 per
cent. ; indeed, with some manufacturers the fat
is now the chief product and the cocoa for bever
age but a by-product, hence the reason of widely
advertised cocoa essences at low rates, which
usually means that the best part of the cocoa bean
has been used to adorn the features of a fair lady,

AFRICAN RUBBER 33
leaving for the consumption of mere man the
offal of the bean !
Cocoa cultivation is possible in most tropical
and sub-tropical lands, and the bearing period
commences soon after the sixth year ; but the
prime cropping period is between the twelfth
and twentieth years, when a tree will often pro
duce 60 to 180 pods a year, or upon a good
average 4,000 beans weighing, when dried, about
9 lbs. In appearance the tree is similar to the ordinary
standard plum of a British orchard, and the cases
or pods containing the beans not unlike an elon
gated cocoanut. After the pods are gathered and
the beans extracted they aresubjected to fermenta*
tion, and those who may have witnessed this five-
day process will do as I did, in my haste and folly,
vow that " never again would I touch cocoa or
chocolate." It is perfectly inconceivable that
such a sour, filthy, malodorous mass could ever
become a fragrant beverage or sweetmeats of
seductive beauty and taste. Fermentation com
pleted, the beans are then exposed to the sun's
rays for two. or three days, and when dry they are
ready for shipment to Europe.
In the family of gums, rubber is easily the chief.
Rubber production is divided into two distinct
periods, that of wild rubber and the more recent
period of cultivated rubber.
In all probability Columbus was the first white
man to see India-rubber, although certain writers
insist that it was his first Lieutenant, Commander

34 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Pin con, who actually first saw the American
Indians playing with a ball made of a species of
gum drawn from under the bark of an indigenous
tree in the Amazonian forests. It seems clear,
however, that whether Columbus, Pin con, or
Cortes discovered rubber, it was first brought to
the notice of civilization about the year 1500.
For nearly 400 years European use for rubber
was restricted to the class-rooms and writing-desks
of our boys' and girls' schools, whilst even so
recently as 1830 Great Britain imported less than
25 tons as compared with a pre-war import of
45,000 tons. Charles Mackintosh, by the dis
covery of his water-proofing process, gave an
enormous impetus to rubber, but it was not until
nearly thirty years ago that the rubber boom
commenced on the London, Antwerp, and
Hamburg markets.
Condamine, exploring the valleys of the AndesA
discovered the tree called by the Indians Cauche,
and from this the French have coined the word
caoutchouc, by which term continental rubber
is known.
About the same time King Leopold's agents
discovered the Llandolphia: vines in the Congo
forests, whilst in 1888 Sir George Denton, with
the aid of a Fantee chief from the Gold Coast,
found rubber in British Nigeria.
For many reasons cultivated rubber has never
been able to make the rapid strides in Africa
which has so characterized the industry in Cey
lon and the Straits Settlements. The cost of
white supervision and the shortage of labour is

FIBRES 35
one of the principal reasons, and a good illustra
tion of this difficulty is to be found in Gerrnan
East Africa. In 191 2 Germany had over 112,000
acres planted with rubber, containing over
20,000,000 rubber trees, of which, before the
outbreak of war, nearly 10,000,000 were ready
for tapping. But these plantations, like all in
dustry in tropical and sub-tropical areas, involve
such heavy working expenditure that the rubber
cannot be shipped from the ports at less than 2s.
per pound ; and whilst it remains at this figure it
can never hope to compete with British rubber
from Ceylon and the Federated Malay States.
The British Consul, in his 1914 report, says :
" The small planters, many of whom employ
cheap local labour, can produce at less expense^
and it is possible they will weather the storm ;
but the outlook is not reassuring for the large
plantations."* In the world of fibres the two principal pro
ducts are cotton and sizal. Germany has devoted
a good deal of energy and money to the develop
ment of sizal plantations ; in 191 3 the area under
cultivation had increased to over 60,000 acres.
Sizal is easily cultivated, although labour does not
like the extremely unpleasant task of harvesting it,
on account of the vicious spikes, which have a
habit of inflicting both nasty and very painful
wounds — no matter how careful the reaper may
be. If the civil upheaval in Mexico should lead
to the reform of the Yucatan, with the abolition
of slavery, then the sizal industry of East Africa
* Cd. 7620.

36 AFRICA : SLAVE OR FREE ?
should have even brighter prospects than it
possesses to-day*
Cotton is one of the oldest-established products
in the African continent, but the production of
exportable cotton is of quite recent growth.
Sixty years ago West Africa exported less than
£1,000 worth of raw staple, compared with about
£30,000 prior to the outbreak of war. The in
creasing shortage of the available American supply
has focussed attention upon suitable areas in
Africa, with the result that ever-increasing quan
tities are being produced. The Sudan now ex
ports over £150,000 worth, Egypt £20,000,000
Nyasaland £16,000, Uganda £12,000, and West
Africa nearly £30,000. Both Portugal and Ger
many have attempted cotton growing in their
Dependencies, the former with no great success,
but the latter with very appreciable results, for
the total crop in 1912 was worth over £100,000.
To these major vegetable products must be
added the spices of East Africa, Zanzibar and
Pemba, South African fruit, West African kola
nuts and fruits, feathers from Nigeria, chilli
peppers from the Spanish territories, and a volume
of sundry products which collectively go towards
the comfort of the white races of Europe and
America. What does not the white man owe to those
horny black hands of Africa !
The white man, rising to go forth to his labours
refreshed by a luxurious bath, seldom meditates
upon the relationship of his comfort to those
millions of simple natives who garner the raw

THE AFRICAN PRODUCER 37
product for his scented soap. Away there in
Africa millions of these sons of the dark continent
are daily scouring forest and plain, climbing trees
80 feet high one after another. Hatchet in hand,
they climb and cut away the bunches of oil nuts,
running appreciable risks of falling and breaking
their backs in the attempt, whilst their black hands
too often run red with blood from sharp thorns
which must be separated from the matrix. At the
foot of the tree wife and children await the falling
bunches of nuts, then gather them up and make
for home, heavily laden with the yellow fruit.
Forth they go again, each time returning like the
honey-bee heavily burdened with nature's bounty
fastened to the body. But the gathering of the
harvest leaves no time for rest, the nuts must be
laid out so that fermentation may do its work,
after which the fermented nuts must be boiled
or pounded, perhaps both, in order to extract the
golden oil, both for the native meal and for the
benefit of white men overseas. Father, mother,
boy and girl — the energies of all are bent upon
this never-ceasing task. A place, too, must be
found for the dear old granny, now grey and
crippled, and the little tots too small to wield the
heavy pestle ; the oily fibre beaten off, the nut is-
then thrown in countless thousands to granny and
child who, by the aid of two hard stones, Crack
crack, crack in never-ending monotony and ex
tract the white kernel for the oil which, ultimately,
finds its way to the tables of the white man's
restaurants and clubs as pure olive oil ; and the
white man, if he thinks about it at all, thanks God

38 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
for the olive plantations of Portugal, Spain and
Palestine, little dreaming that it is not to the
Spaniard and the Turk, but to the African that
he owes his grateful thanks.
The housewife, sitting at her breakfast-table,
fragrant with the aroma of cocoa and coffee, takes
it in much the same way. How little thought is
bestowed upon the black producer of her family
comfort, the daily task in the far distant planta
tion is an unknown or unrecognized factor, yet
what a new world would be opened up by short
meditation — how those sons of Africa toil for
that fragrant bean ! Axes in hundreds and
thousands ring out through the forest in mighty
battle against forest giants and the impenetrable
network of creeping vine ; but those fallen giants,
those mountain hills of dead and dying creeper,
must be utterly destroyed before planting can
commence — saw, axe, and flaming fire are called
into play, and at last, but only after months of
toil in burning heat of sun and stifling heat of the
daily furnace, is there room for the young cocoa
plant. Seven years they have " weeded " and waited
for the cocoa harvest, and from tree to tree they
now go, hatchet in hand, cutting away the ripe
caskets of beans. Back to the village they go,
these African farmers, each laden with his baskets
of cocoa pods ; then come fermentation and
drying processes. After seven years' labour their
precious product is ready for the white man.
If in huge hogsheads, they are trundled along
African path and road for twenty to thirty miles ;

THE WHITE CONSUMER 39
if in sacks, the young men of the family will place
the burden of 60 to 100 lbs. upon their heads, and
staff in hand set out to trudge that long hot road
to buying station, or even to the sea-coast ! Thus
is civilization indebted to millions of Africans for
fragrant cocoa and delicate chocolate and sweet
meat J
The white man, refreshed, cheered and com
forted by his twentieth-century breakfast, dons
his coat, hat and gloves and forth he goes to his
daily task, stepping into his Panhard, Wolseley,
Ford, or even the humble motor-bus, profoundly
thankful for the ease of travel that rubber tyres
permit, but little dreaming of the perils and
labour entailed in gathering the raw product.
Away in Africa are thousands of natives seeking
out the rubber vine in the depths of forest lands,
exposing themselves day and night to ever-present
disease or violent death from lurking beast. If not
in forest land they may be labouring on planta
tions, tapping and collecting the slowly trickling
latex as it falls, drop by drop, into the bark trench
of the tree. Collecting the fluid a spoonful at a
time is wearisome and tedious, but in the end these
" littles " go to swell the volume of white gum
destined for Europe and America. The task is not
easy, the reward too often shameful, but the
African plods on with his labour for the comfort of
the thoughtless white race ; too often even those
most intimately benefiting from coloured labour
are as thoughtless as the mass : for five years I
have watched one such— and pitied her !
TKe Hon. Mrs. X, high in the social scale and

40 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
an extreme . Radical- Socialist, has three main
interests — housing reform, educational reform,
and the care of children. She is prominent in
her religious circle, eloquent in denunciation of
housing scandals, " overcrowding," and the treat
ment of children ; social workers, labour leaders,
clergy and ministers delight to consult her and
listen to her overflowing righteous indignation at
the deplorable conditions in the British Isles. It
so happens that the author has not merely read
the lady's speeches- upon social reform but cir
cumstances have led him to watch and study the
plantations from which she and her family draw
a good deal of their wealth. In those planta
tions, away in a distant corner of the world,
the labourers toil on at a wage of less than ios. a
week, a death-rate never lower than 40 per 1,000,
living in huts infinitely less commodious and
sanitary than this lady's stables at •  . Little
children on those plantations toil at rubber
collecting without any chance of education, whilst
it is officially reported that there is " no legislative
limit to the hours " these children " can be made
to work." The plantations which are in almost
the exclusive ownership of this lady's family, have
never paid, within recent years, a dividend lower
than 50 per cent., whilst in some years the dividend
has exceeded 100 per cent. ! In all her speeches
this lady has never uttered a word in favour of
reforms in oversea industries, whilst there is no
tangible evidence that the family interest in those
black and brown labourers goes' beyond the hand
some yearly dividends. This lady does not stand

OUR DUTY 41
alone ; she is just one of the thoughtless hundreds,
content to draw dividends and make no inquiries
so long as the injustices are beyond their im
mediate ken.
This stagnant complacency must be shattered,
and it is the duty of every Christian man and
woman to take a hand in the work of linking con
science to industrial conditions of Africa, to
summon those who benefit by the labours of
black and brown men, women and children, to a
realization of their responsibility before God for
the well-being of those who minister to their
comfort. For the Christian the supreme objective
must be the extension of the Kingdom of God;
that extension will be hastened or hindered accord
ing to the measure of our knowledge of the con
ditions and our concern for the Christian welfare
and simple justice towards these millions of our
fellow labourers.

CHAPTER IV
THE PRODUCTS OF AFRICA  GOLD AND PRECIOUS
STONES
In point of time Jagersfontein and Kimberley
were first with diamonds upon any considerable
scale. In 1903 their combined output was under.
£1,000,000, and three years later had increased to
over £2,000,000. In 1908 the value of diamonds
exported from Cape Town was nearly £3,000,000.
In the same year precious stones were discovered
in German South- West Africa, through the influx
of white men for the purpose of putting down a
Hottentot rising and of constructing a railway.
Only three years later, in 191 1, Kimberley was
working diamonds at a depth of 3,500 feet, and
its mines alone were producing £1,500,000 of
precious stones per annum. Prior to the outbreak
of war, the diamond areas of Africa were yielding ^
annually over £1 3,000,000 of precious stones. Mr.
A. E. Calvert provides the following interesting
table for three years' working :*
* German African Empire.
4»

PRODUCTS OF AFRICA 43
Quantities

1911
Country Carats
Union of South
Africa ... 4,891,998
German South
W.Africa .... 816,296

1912
Carats
5,071,882 902,157

i9J3
Carats
5,163,546 1,284,727

Total '... 5,708,294

5,974^39

6,448,273

Values

1911
Country £

1912 £

i9J3 £

Union of South
Africa ... 8,746,724 10,061,489 11,389,807
German South
W.Africa ... 1,019,444 1,303,092 2,153,230

Total ... 9,766,168 11,364,581 13,543,037
The working of diamonds in British South Africa
since the earliest known discovery in 1870 had
resulted in a total output at the close of 1916 of
£175,000,000. Gold. Gold, the " scarlet woman " of the modern
financial world, has ruined more men, whilst at
the same time it has made more fortunes than any
other African commodity. The love of gold has
been the root of almost every evil thing in Africa ;
seeking the lands wherein gold was secreted has
caused the shedding of rivers of blood, whilst the

44 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
gaunt spectres in the Phthisis Hospitals of
" Jo'burg " tell to-day their own horrible story
of the price those must pay who pit, blast and
mine a mile below the earth's surface for the
precious yellow pre.
In the popular mind gold production dates, in
some dim way from " the South African War."
It is true that in the same hazy way the romance
of King Solomon's Mines implies early gold
seekers, but the wild and thrilling setting of Rider
Haggard's story has closed thought and mind to
the more solid and even more fascinating evidence
that it was indeed from the African continent
that Kings David, Hiram and Solomon drew their
supplies of gold. What amount of gold did David
and Solomon accumulate for the service of the
Temple ? The Temple itself, built one thousand
years before the Christian era, was in length 90
feet, breadth 30 feet, and height 45 feet. The
whole of the floors, walls, ceiling and roof of the
Temple were covered with pure beaten gold ;
ornaments, chains and fittings were likewise made
of pure gold. The " Most Holy House " alone
required 600 talents of pure gold, and the weight
of the golden nails was 50 shekels. The candle
sticks and the 100 basins were of gold, together
with apparently numberless gold implements —
snuffers, spoons, candlesticks, flowers and lamps.
Altogether such a lavish expenditure of gold that
it defies anything like accurate computation.*
Moreover, Solomon used immense quantities of
gold for other purposes, for he made 200 targets
* 2 Chron. iii.

KING SOLOMON'S GOLD 45
of beaten gold,each requiring 600 shekels of gold.*
The gold for the Temple took the lifetime of
King David to collect, and Solomon was seven
and a half years in building the Temple itself,
which stood for thirty-four years. There are,
happily, some most instructive details upon the
collection of these vast supplies of gold. In the
first place it is quite clear that the source of supply
was a port across the seas for which ships and
servants with a knowledge of the open sea were
essentiaLf Nor is this all, for we know that this sea journey
took three years, and when returning the boats
brought back with them gums, apes, ivory and
peacocks. The hoard of gold was, we know^colossal, for
David, when giving the command to Solomon to
build the Temple, stated that his national collec
tion for the building amounted to 100,000 talents
of gold, with an additional personal gift of 3,000
talents. To this was added 5,000 talents from the
Princes and Chiefs of Israel, making together a
total of 108,000 talents which Solomon inherited
from King David for the purpose. But King
Solomon also added to this very considerably
during his reign. King Hiram gave him 120 and
450 talents, making together 570 talents which
probably "did not include the 666 talents which
" came to Solomon in one year." It would seem
that the over-seas ^expedition of Kings Hiram and
Solomon brought to each of them about 400 to
500 talents every third year. It is probable,
* 2 Chron. ix. t 2 Chron. viii. 18.

46 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
therefore, that at the time Solomon commenced
building the Temple he had for the purpose not
less than 120,000 talents of gold. If a talent of
gold is taken at £5,500, the total value of the gold
would be about £700,000,000. This sum seems
so vast as to be incredible, yet the amount of
beaten gold required to cover completely so
huge a building as the Temple was alone colossal.
It is, however, possible that either the Babylonian
or the Syrian scale of tabulation was used, which
would reduce the amount to £350,000,000 Ba
bylonian, or the more manageable figure of
£140,000,000 Syrian.
Whence came this gold ? If Rhodesia was not
the fount of gold to these Eastern Potentates,
whence then did they obtain it ? and, moreover,
what explanation is there of these mighty works in
Rhodesia whose ruins to-day present to the exca
vator one of the world's greatest riddles — up to
the present day defying authoritative solution f
The existing evidence leaves the origin or object
of these vast works obscure.
The traveller through Rhodesia looks on in
wonder at kopjes whose boulders are linked to
gether and then rendered impregnable to assault
by hewn granite walls in most cases several feet
thick. In any single ruin there must be hundreds
of thousands and in some cases millions of granite
blocks shaped by some prodigious human agency
and then built into the walls and structures cover
ing extensive areas of the territory in the Zambesi
valley. But these works had not merely a pro
tective value to the ancient gold workers, for

KING SOLOMON'S MINES 47
Zimbabwe affords evidence of religious worship —
its symbols and construction can have no other
significance ; the traveller gazes in wonder upon
the symmetry of its walls and passages and the
amazing efforts of those early builders, who in
order to rear the Acropolis had to carry up the
steep kopje of 200 feet thousands upon thousands
of tons of neatly-shaped granite bricks. Whilst
the traveller reflects upon the immensity of that
single task, his thoughts dwell in logical' sequence
upon the still greater labour of hewing and shaping
those blocks with primitive instruments, and his
meditations leave him amazed and perplexed.
It is clear — at least to most people — that these
extensive structures were not the work of the
indigenous African, but that of some immigrant
race — an immigrant race bent not upon coloniza
tion, but the exploitation of the resources of the
valley. There is abundant evidence in support of
this theory, which leads to the further question,
namely, what was the commodity to secure which
this race of people were prepared to spend such
energy ? The answer to this is equally clear, for
their implements remain to this day — not single
instruments in a given spot, but hundreds of them,
scattered over the entire territory — the imple
ments of the gold-seeker, picks, crucibles, gold
wiring presses and metal engravers. Nor is this
all, for many of the old workings remain to-day
just as they were hurriedly forsaken on one tragic
day many centuries ago, while scattered around
in the debris are tiny fragments of pure gold,
beads, wire and- countless little nails all of solid

48 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
gold. It will never be known, not within some
millions of pounds, how much precious metal was
won in these distant centuries from what is now
Rhodesia, but the most conservative expert esti
mate is that it was not less than seventy-five
million pounds sterling.
It is not merely the character of the ruins, their
symmetry and extent which point to the skill of
these ancient gold-seekers, for evidence of skill in
gold worldng is found in the remarkable ornaments
and tools discovered in the few areas which have
been subject to excavation. In the museum at
Bulawayo can be seen to-day a cast of the " golden
sun " image, flint axes, ancient quartz crushing
hammer, soapstone tablet, copper bar, a phallus
and a soapstone image. In the Cape Town
museum there are five soapstone birds which were
discovered at Zimbabwe.
A moment's reflection will emphasize the amaz
ing activity of the industrial population of that day,
for any single work would have occupied gangs of
labourers for years, possibly generations. Whilst
building was in progress others would be engaged
in gold mining and crushing operations. These
two main streams of activity would in turn imply
a large servile agricultural population producing
the necessary crops of food in all probability by
force. To these would be added again gangs of
carriers constantly moving to and from both the
interior and the coast. How can it be supposed
that this prodigious and unceasing activity was
maintained by a handful of immigrant warriors ?
Taken even upon the basis of any modern sub-

RIVAL THEORIES 49
tropical industry where effective control of labour
ers is essential, and postulating a labouring element
of only 50,000, the oversight and management
would mean 1,000 "supermen," with an inevit
able death rate of at least some hundreds every
year. The world of science is divided into two camps
upon the antiquity of these ruins. Dr. Randall
Maciver blunty dismisses the theories of Bent,
Swan and Hall, but his criticisms seem superficial,
whilst the arbitrary tone he adopts repels rather
than attracts one to his views. Professor A. H.
Kearie states the other side under seven heads :
that Ophir was the distributing port and not the
source of the gold ; Ophir has now been identified
with Moscha of Arabia, or Portus Nobilis of the
Greek and Roman geographers ; Havilah was the
auriferous land now known as Rhodesia ; the
ancient gold workings of Rhodesia were first
opened by the Arabian Himyarites ; Tarshish
stood probably on the site of the present Sofala ;
the Himyaritic and Phoenician treasure seekers
reached Havilah through Madagascar ; the
Queen of Sheba journeyed overland, and the
treasure she possessed came from the same source.
Thus does Professor Keane sum up the scientific
evidence in favour of Rhodesia being the source
of King Solomon's gold.
When eminent doctors of science disagree, the
man of one or two talents — the man in the street
— feels free not only to hold but to express an
opinion. The outstanding feature of these works
which appeals so strongly to the simple student of

50 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
African history is the impossibility of the works
being African in origin. There is in no part of
Africa any negro or negroid enterprises which can
at all compare with these works of Rhodesia. If
any African tribe had at any time undertaken
granite works of this gigantic nature, it is certain
that neighbouring tribes would have emulated
them, at least to an extent which would have left
some trace to-day. The second and even more
convincing factor is that those negro races who
show in many respects great possibilities of
development have never shown evidence of under
taking works involving years of unremitting toil,
least of all with the object of winning gold. If,
therefore, the African did not, as he certainly did
not, design and build these extensive works and
win the enormous quantities of gold from Zam
besia, it is obvious that some immigrant race did
so. Who, then, built the ruins of Rhodesia, and
for whom were won these millions of gold ?
Again, if these millions of gold which demon
strably were contained in the Zambesi Valley,
either just upon or just below the surface, were
not gathered for Kings David, Solomon, Hiram,
and the Queen of Sheba, and used for the Temple,
whence were their vast hoards of gold obtained ? /
To-day the three principal gold mining areas''
of Africa are {a) the Gold Coast, with an annual
output of about one and a half millions ; (b)
Southern Rhodesia, with an output of approxi
mately £2,500,000 per annum ; and (c) the
main source of supply, namely, that twenty-eight
miles of Reef known as the Randt. The Wit-

MINERS' PHTHISIS 51
watersrand, or " head of the white waters," is
" banket " or a conglomerate of pebbles and
quartz matrix and a small percentage of pyrites.
The ancient gold miners of the Zambesi seldom
went deeper than 80 feet, whilst present-day
miners on the Randt are winning gold at a vertical
¦ depth of nearly 5,000 feet. The rock temperature
increases appreciably according to depth, and there
by produces an increase of humidity. The amount
of moisture in these deep level mines is strikingly
demonstrated by the fact that the ventilating fan
in the " Village Deep " mine actually removes in
the process of ventilation 40,000 gallons of water
per day !
The modern system of rock-drilling, whereby
the very atmosphere becomes impregnated with
fine dust, has led to chronic lung disease with an
excessively high rate of mortality from miners'
phthisis. What this means in vital statistics is set
forth in the report upon Miners' Phthisis :*
" The diagram (in the report) shows . . . the
percentage of Machine Drillers at each year of
underground life who have Miners' Phthisis. It
will be seen that 50 per cent, of the men who have
worked 4.5 years are affected, and at ten years of
underground life approximately 80 per cent, are
attacked. . . . The conclusions strongly sug
gested by the above results are that the use of
rock drills over a prolonged period greatly
increases and accelerates the incidence of chest
diseases amongst miners, and that the working
•U.G. 19. 1912. South African Government.

52 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
efficiency of any rock drill miner, working
under present conditions, will on the average be
impaired or even exhausted after 7 to 9 years'
work."
The Commiosion thus concludes its report upon
death-rates :
" Further, We find that the average age at
death from respiratory diseases for the three
years is 41, while the average age of those dying
from Miners' Phthisis, Phthisis, Silicosis, and
Tuberculosis is approximately 38."
This, then, is the truly terrible price which to
day seekers after gold must pay — 80 to 90 per cent.
of white men engaged in the task are within 10
years stricken with this fatal malady and the aver
age age at which they lay down to die is in the very
prime of life — 38 and 41 years of age.
The spheres of labour between the white and
coloured forces are roughly divided by, skilled
labour for the whites and unskilled labour for the
coloured people and the natives'. There is some
reason to think that the incidence of phthisis falls
less heavily upon the native than upon the white
men. If this is so, it is probably due to the fact
that the native now works upon a relatively short
contract which gives him a few months' work
beneath the surface and alternately a few months
at home in the Kraal which he generally arranges
for the health-giving harvest period. It is,
however, impossible to control this " general
impression " until definite statistics, are forth-

COST OF "WINNING" GOLD 53
coming as to the fate of the tuberculotic cases
wliich return to the Kraals.
The native labourers are paid from £2 10s. to
£3 10s. per month with board and lodging
found, while the white men demand, and in the
majority of cases receive, a minimum of £1 per
day. Taking the average number of natives
continuously employed at 200,000 and of the white
men at 20,000, they would have received in wages
during the typical year of 191 2 :
Whites ... ... £400 per head.
Natives (in cash alone) £28 ,, ,,
The leaders of white organized labour argue
that two white men do as much work as three
natives, a contention for which there appears to
be at present no solid foundation. Still less could
this claim be made if the natives were given edu
cational advantages approximating to those avail
able for the white races. Upon this feature Sir
Drummond Chaplin has asserted that to replace
natives with white labour, even upon the basis of
two white men in place of three natives, would
mean that the white men could only be paid
5s. 4d. per day, as against their minimum demand
of £1 per day.
The mines cannot go much deeper than 5,000
feet, whilst many of them are so nearly worked
out that they must soon cease to be a paying pro
position. Competent observers declare, and in
many cases actually hope, that ten years will see
the Randt completely worked out, and that within
twenty years Johannesburg will fulfil prophecy

54 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
and be in ruins and buried beneath sand dumps
and prairie grass ; this doleful prophecy should
not be taken too literally for other industries
may quite conceivably spring up in this magnifi
cent if wicked city at the head of the white waters.
Johannesburg has been a generous giver of gold,
for since she started in 1884 with a gold output
of only £10,000, civilization has received from
beneath her surface nearly £600,000,000 sterling.
In the first decade, 1884-94, the output rose
from £10,000 to £7,667,000 ; from 1894 to 1904,
£7,667,000 to £16,028,000 ; from 1904 to 1914,
£16,028,000 to £35,656,000 per annum. For
the last five years the figures have shown only a
slight increase, the total output varying from
thirty-six millions to thirty-nine millions sterhng
per annum.
The most strikingi change in the labour situation
on the mines in recent years is in the attitude of
capital towards the native labourers. The capita
list to-day is seeking by every means to encourage
the native to aim at a higher standard of industry ;
no doubt this change of attitude is partly due to
the ever-increasing difficulties with organized
white labour, but the fact remains that the mine
owners are on the side of the native in seeking to
fill higher positions. In striking contrast to this
is the attitude assumed by white organized labour ;
every effort is made to restrict the native and
coloured labourers to the unskilled trades, and any
proposal to give the natives liberty to rise in the
industrial scale is met by the threat of a strike.
The position adopted by the white labour forces

APPLE OF DISCORD 55
towards the coloured or half-caste labour is to-day
one of the gravest racial scandals in South Africa.
In the year 191 7 a strike occurred because owing
to the shortage of labour it was proposed to engage
a number of half-caste or coloured Africans upon
semi-skilled tasks. Could anything be more
abominably indefensible ? These half-castes had
been brought into the world because the white
race had outraged and debauched African women,
and not content with this degrading of woman
hood, their own offspring were and are actually
denied the right to share the tasks of their parents.
Neither by word nor deed can the Christian
Church give countenance to these intolerable
racial disabilities, and it is the duty of the Church
to insist upon the full right of the African to rise
to the highest plane of industrial .efficiency in his
own country. In the mines of South Africa the
day of conflict between white capital and coloured
labour has almost passed away — a darker day is
before us, a terrible racial struggle between
organized white labour and unorganized native
labour. The 250,000 natives only ask for justice
in this industrial struggle, justice for their race
in their own country — and the forces of Christian
ity must hasten to their aid if the Kingdom of God
is ever to be established along the Randt.

PART II
AFRICAN LABOUR
I. Indigenous African Labour.
II. Modern Slavery.
III. Modern Slavery — Portuguese.
IV. Indian Immigration.

CHAPTER I
INDIGENOUS AFRICAN LABOUR
The most precious asset in Africa is labour, yet in
criminal folly the white races have done to death
millions upon millions of these, the most rela
tively harmless but intensely interesting members
of the human race. The clarion call now goes
forth to commerce, science and religion to face
facts boldly, if shamefacedly, and to examine
responsibility for the crime ; to study, moreover,
the folly of past and existing systems of labour
with a view to the introduction of a new order
whereby white capital and coloured labour linked
together may share alike in the productive energies
of the African continent and so lead on to a new
era founded upon an alliance mutually advanta
geous to the African producer and the white con
sumer. It is probable that the population of the African
continent to-day is only half what it was a century
ago. The entire absence of statistics forces the
investigator to depend upon native tradition
which throughout Africa is, however, consistent
in its evidence that before contact with the white
races Africa was comparatively well populated,
although never so densely as the continent of
59

60 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Asia. The fact that Africa suffers to-day from a
chronic shortage of population and therefore of
labour is unhappily too apparent. The reason
for this reduction of population arises largely
although not exclusively from contact with the
white races. In all probability it has been due to
the following causes in their respective order of
incidence : Easily first in destructive force come
the crimes attendant upon slave-trading, slave-
owning and modern labour systems ; secondly,
to the breakdown of native customary law involv
ing amongst other things sexual diseases ; thirdly,
punitive expeditions, loss of lands, internecine
warfare; and finally, the consumption of ardent
spirits ; these latter have taken roughly an equal
share in the destructive work.
Shortage of labour is the lament of almost every
political area in the continent. The Lagden
Commission during 1903-5 spent much time upon
the question of supply and demand for South
Africa. The report, however, was made upon
the basis of a native population which totalled
4,652,000, whereas the latest census gives a popu
lation of 6,300,000. Within recent years the
supply has approached much nearer to the demand.
This is due partly to an increase of the population,
but still more to the improvement made in labour
conditions, but even so the shortage is a perpetual
handicap upon industry. The Chairman of the
Annual Meeting of the Native Recruiting Cor
poration in South Africa declared as recently as
1916 that although the supply had increased, it
still showed* that requirements for the mines fell

SHORTAGE 61
short from by 23 to 27 per cent, which means that
the mines still require another 50,000 to 100,000
labourers. In German South West Africa every
consular report has for years been full of laments
upon this, feature. In the last report issued by
Mr. Consul Muller prior to the outbreak of war,
he stated that " the lack of native labourers con
tinues to retard progress," and that the Govern
ment, unable to arrange a supply from any part of
the world, " fell back as usual upon the Cape boy,"
and finally, " many farmers complain that they can
make no headway owing to the scarcity and unre
liability of native labour."
Twelve hundred miles north, on the relatively
well populated areas of Northern Nigeria, white
industry makes the same complaint — " the amount
of labour is no greater ; small parties are returning,
but these are quickly absorbed by the new proper
ties which are starting up in every direction."
Away two thousand miles eastward, Mr. Robert
Williams declares that in the Tanganyika district
industry waits on a labour supply — " We have a
very serious problem in the native labour supply
of the future " — " The natives are physically poor
and the supply quite inadequate." To the north
again the same cry is heard in British East Africa.
How is this shortage of labour to be met ? The
African continent has no area with a surplus. It
is true that labour is recruited from Liberia for
the Portuguese plantations, and from Portuguese
East Africa for the gold mines of the Randt, al
though this is not due to a surplus of labour, but to
the fact that the territories from which the labour

62 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
is recruited are for the moment undeveloped.
There are two ways, and two only, by which this
increasingly serious condition, of affairs can be
amended— (a) by seeking out and removing
existing causes of depopulation and the destruction
of human life, and (b) by introducing into Africa
other races akin to the African in social and indus
trial status.
The former raises at once the whole question of
the treatment meted out to the African by the
Christian nations, because depopulation, disease
and death have been indissolubly linked together
by the white races in their thoughtless exploita
tion of these simple African tribes. Capital is of
course the worst sinner, but neither the adminis
trator nor even the missionary can point the
finger at capital without being told with much
force that so-called statecraft and even Christi
anity itself are not without sin in their relationship
to the African.
In the African continent there are four main
systems of labour, each of which has been pro
ductive of great loss of life and still greater loss of
liberty and happiness :
(a) Domestic Slavery.
(b) Compulsory Labour for administrative
purposes.
(c) Forced Labour for private profit (modern
slavery).
(d) Fraudulent Contract Labour (modern
slavery).
Domestic slavery and certain forms of forced

DOMESTIC SLAVERY 63
labour are indigenous, and however deplorable
the systems of labour introduced by the white
races, these two forms did not owe their origin
to the white man — he simply " improved " upon
them. Domestic slavery is somewhat analogous to
serfdom, but it includes control or more correctly
the " possession " of concubines and their off
spring, the control, and again the " possession,"
of men servants and dependents. Domestic
slavery has had three outstanding periods. Be
tween these there have been, of course, transition
stages. The first period was that of the Patriarchal
age. The object of slavery in the Abrahamic
period was primarily domestic and agricultural,
but in process of time it gathered to itself accre
tions of a revolting nature, such as the possession
of eunuchs, due again to polygamy, and in the
more barbarous regions, as in Central Africa, it
became the basis of human sacrifices and even
cannibalism. Then followed the period when the Latin and
Teutonic races introduced, maintained and ex
tended a trade in human beings for the estab
lishment and extension of industries in their
newly-conquered tropical and sub-tropical colonial
territories. To domestic slavery, therefore, were
then added all the horrors of the slave trade,
which rendered this period incomparably the
worst. The third period is" the present, in which Euro
pean Powers tolerate in many of the colonies,
forms of servitude amongst indigenous people.

64 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
These systems, within primitive and normal
Emits, have much to be said for them ; but
toleration by European Governments becomes
authority, which in turn spells active co-operation
in " forcing " labour supplies.
Some years ago a ludicrous attempt was made
in Nigeria to " regulate " domestic slavery, but
this led to such an " impasse " that after some
years of agitation the Ordinance was withdrawn,
although it will probably take generations to
eradicate the indigenous system. In this Ordi
nance, which only operated in the Eastern and
Central Provinces of Nigeria, the domestic slaves
were called a " House," and the following passages
demonstrate how closely this came to a legaliza
tion of slavery :
I. " House " means a group of persons sub
ject by Native law and custom to the control,
authority j and rule of a Chief, known as a Head
of a House.
" Member of a House " means and includes
any person who, by birth or in any other man
ner, is or becomes subject to the control,
authority, and rule of a Head of a House.
3. Every member of a House who refuses or
neglects to submit himself to the control,
authority, and rule of the Head of his House
in accordance with Native law and custom, shall
be liable on conviction to "a fine not exceeding
fifty pounds, or to imprisonment with or with
out hard labour for any term not exceeding one
year, or to both.

FORCED LABOUR 65
6. Every person who resists or obstructs the
lawful apprehension of himself for any offence
under this Ordinance, or escapes or attempts to
escape from any custody in which he is lawfully
detained, shall be liable to a fine not exceeding
fifty pounds, or to imprisonment with or with
out hard labour for any term not exceeding one
year, or to both.
7. Any European or Native who, knowing a
Native to be a member of a House, employs
such Native without the express or implied
consent of the.Head of the House, shall be liable
to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds, or to im
prisonment with or without hard labour for
any term not exceeding one year, or to both.
Those who defended this Ordinance did so upon
the ground that domestic slavery is inseparable
from African social life. The vital point was over
looked, namely, that it is one thing to tolerate a
deplorable native custom and seek to abolish it by
moral suasion and education, but quite a different
matter to establish and uphold such customs by
British law.
Under this Ordinance domestic slavery became
a very vicious thing in Nigeria and led to so much
domestic unhappiness and to such a menace to
morality that the Conference of Bishops and
Clergy held in Lagos, in 1906, passed a resolution
protesting against the Ordinance and urging its
withdrawal. But this was not all. In 19 10 a
native " slave " ran away and sought refuge upon
a ship flying the British flag ; he was then recap-

66 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
tured by British police, and only given his liberty
after being flogged and then fined 15s. per month
for life ! Another interesting incident which
became inevitable under the operation of this
Ordinance was the issue of a warrant for the
capture of a runaway slave. The following is a
good specimen copy : No. 1881 74
Warrant to arrest Accused.
Form 2.
In the Native Council of Warri, Southern
Nigeria.
To  Officer of Court.
Whereas Joe of Lagos is accused of the offence
of (1) running away from the Head of his House
two years ago ; (2) Larceny of cloth value 16s.,
two handkerchiefs, and a canoe. You are hereby
commanded to arrest the said Joe of Lagos and
to bring him before this Court to answer the said
charge. Issued at Warri. the 28th day of November,
1910. Signed Percy Gordon,
Senior Member of Court.
The alleged crime of larceny was, in fact, the
loin cloth covering the poor fellow's nakedness,
and the canoe the means by which he made his
escape to the " free " zone of the Lagos island.
The reason white men so often support the
native system of domestic slavery is that it pro
vides an easy method of solving temporarily and

FORCED LABOUR 67
very simply the problem of labour shortage. The
chiefs are told they must bring in a given number
of native labourers upon a specified date, and
nowhere was this practice more prevalent than in
the late German colonies. During a Labour
Commission of Inquiry, in 191 3, in East Africa,
evidence was given upon the practice in German
Colonies. Dr. Lessi, of Nakuru, said :
" The chiefs were notified as to the amount
of labour that was to be supplied " ;
.while another witness, Masai Mchaga, of the
Kilimanjaro District, in German East Africa,
said : " If the Government or other people required
labour, the chief was told to supply it, and if a
man refused to go the Government punished
. him."How widespread is this system and its terrible
and revolting incidence upon the people will be
gathered from the fact that in German East Africa
alone there are to-day over 180,000 domestic
slaves. Domestic slavery still exists over wide
areas of the continent of Africa, where it leads to
the break-up of families, the separation of husband
from wife, and child from mother, for no system
of slave-holding is thinkable, or indeed possible,
without its even more horrible concomitant df
slave-trading. This fact, obvious upon the face
of it, and supported by experience, finds still
• further and new support in the admission that,
so late as 191 2, slaves were actually smuggled

68 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
across the borders of Uganda and Belgian Congo
into German East Africa.
This system, with its hideous lineaments hidden
under the less offensive name of " Serfdom,"
" Household," " Menage " or " House," must be
rooted out- wherever it is discovered, for in the
end it can only lead to immoraEty, injustice and
crime. Lord Cromer, referring to the slave traffic
in the Sudan, thus characterizes the iniquitous
system of domestic slavery :
" If the utility of the Soudan, considered on
its own productive and economic merits, is not
already proved to the satisfaction of the world —
if it is not aheady clear that the reoccupation
of the country has inflicted, more perhaps than
any other event of modern times, a deadly blow
to the abominable traffic in slaves, and to the
institution of domestic slavery, which is only
one degree less hateful than that traffic — it may
confidently be asserted that we are on the
threshold of convincing proof."
The second indigenous labour system is that of
Forced Labour. The communal life of primitive
Africa demands of necessity that every individual
shall assume an equal share of the obligations of
tribal life. Amongst the tribes of Africa there is,
of course, no paid municipal labour force, no paid
hunters, and no paid armies. Roads through
towns and from village to village are obligations
of the community, whilst the division of responsi
bility between village and village is settled by
native Council, and so clearly and definitely>is this

FORCED LABOUR 69
divided that, upon occasion the construction of a
simple wooden bridge across a single stream is
allotted in equal " spans " to each village. The
forest chase, the river expedition, boat-building
and military expeditions, each requiring large
numbers of men, make heavy-Tiemands upon the
manual labour of the tribes. • For all these pur
poses the Chiefs and their Councils have power
to demand labour, and very short work would be
made of any individual who refused to give his
quota for any of these works of national benefit.
But though large powers are conferred upon the
Chiefs and their Councils they are careful to make
demands only within certain limits. Apart from
military expeditions, labour can only be demanded
for works connected with the local community.
Another condition of equal importance is that
labour can only be demanded subject to the tribal
requirements of " seed time and harvest," and to
the domestic requirements of the home. This
form of national service was a familiar feature in
France prior to the Revolution, and was, indeed,
revived afterwards for the maintenance of roads.
In England, too, it existed until 1835, and in
Scotland until 1883.
In almost every African territory forced labour
for public works is practised with, unfortunately,
varying degrees of abuse. It is one thing for an
African Chief and Council with full knowledge
of local requirements to demand " compulsory
labour," and quite another for the white man to
do so. The construction of a bridge is a good
illustration. The simple native bridge constructed

70 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
with a few score or even hundreds of young forest
saplings, laced together with stout vines, occupies
but a few days in construction. Compare this
with the more stable European bridge — deep
foundations must be dug, huge blocks of stone
shaped and then transported many miles, iron
work, cement, tools, provisions, totalling together.
many tons, and the erection occupying as many
months as a native bridge occupies days. The
German railway and bridge contractor, working
to scheduled time and at "cut" price, . cannot
allow his white supervisors to sit down, smoke
cigarettes and quaff laager whilst the native labour
force goes home to reap the han est. Continuous
labour until the contract is finished is the only
principle known to the German, British, and
French constructors. Thus forced labour for
administrative purposes being quite a simple ex
pedient in the hands of a sympathetic Chief,
becomes in the hands of an energetic white ad
ministration an instrument of oppression which,
unless carefully applied, can only lead to disloca
tion, unrest, and possibly violence.
In 1908 a Return was issued to the British
Parliament which showed that compulsory labour
for administrative purposes was, at that time,
demanded in the Gambia, Gold Coast, Uganda
and Natal, whilst it is notorious that " irregular "
demands are still made in other territories. It
seems impossible at the present stage of African
progress to abolish entirely every form of com
pulsory labour for works of purely national
importance ; but it is the first duty of every

FORCED LABOUR 71
administrator to reduce his demand to an ever-
decreasing minimum. It is, moreover, imperative
that due regard should always be paid to the
domestic requirements of the tribe, and that,
wherever possible, a monetary commutation
should be accepted by the administration.
Compulsory labour for administrative purposes
can only be tolerated as a temporary expedient.
But there is another form of forced labour,
totally alien 10 indigenous conception and prac
tice, violently opposed alike to ethics and econo
mics, namely, forced labour for private profit.
Against this forced labour system, which has
always led and must always lead to cruelty,
slavery, bloodshed and murder, the forces of
Christianity must stand with all the holy strength
which a righteous cause inspires. History, com
mon sense, and political economy will stand
solidly with the forces of Christianity in opposing,
in season and out of season, this dire peril to the
native races of Africa, and because Right is Right
and God is God the progressive forces of our Holy
Faith will win this economic, moral and spiritual
victory for Africa and the African.
What are the Eneaments of this dark peril ?

CHAPTER II
MODERN slavery
Forced Labour for Private Profit.
Forced labour for private profit is slavery ; to
demand compulsory labour in the financial
interests of an individual or corporation is to
establish the iniquitous principle of a property
right in a fellow man. In the African continent
this form of labour has been practised for nearly
half a century, and it is widely practised to-day.
The consequences have been invariably those
which, throughout history, have accompanied
acknowledged slave-owning and slave-trading.
The two methods to secure this labour in Africa
are : («). Direct demands made upon the Chiefs,
either. with or without the aid of the
Administration.
(jb) By dispossessing the native of land and
virgin produce, thereby leaving them
with nothing but their labour.
Germany, France, Belgium, Portugal and Great
Britain have, within the last fifty years, knowingly
or unknowingly, permitted this form of modern
slavery. In every Colony where it has been
7a

MODERN SLAVERY' 73
practised it has led to economic disaster and
atrocious ill-treatment of the natives, followed by
widespread suffering, disease, and rapid depopula
tion. Great Britain permitted its introduction into
the Zambesi Valley in/ 1890-6. For a long time
it was denied by the administration, and only by
persistent effort was the truth ultimately estab
lished and the system abolished. Sir Richard
Martin, who was instructed to investigate the
allegations made against the Chartered Company,
summed up the situation in the following terms :
.._  " The principal conclusions I have arrived at
from the various reports, are —
1. That compulsory labour did undoubtedly
exist in Matabeleland if not in Mashona-
land.
2. That labour was procured by the various
Native Commissioners for the various
requirements of the Government, mining
companies, and private persons.
3. That the Native Commissioners, in the
first instance, endeavoured to obtain
labour through the Indunas, but, failing
in this, they procured it by force."
The lessons of capital importance arising from
this particular system are that the exercise of
force as a labour recruiter for private interests is
a most dangerous weapon, and that even though
it may be hedged about by all kinds of limitations,
its incidence becomes increasingly fatal until it
gathers to itself so terrible a momentum that it

74 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
has always led, and must always lead, to wide
spread rebellion with ghastly results both to the
white and native races.
The German administration in the Cameroons
and German East Africa pursued this revolting
policy right up to the outbreak of war, and, what
is the more significant, it was done without any
compunction whatsoever. In the Kamerun Post
of May 2nd, 1914, the following passage occurred :
" What would become of this colony if the
natives are not compeUed to do any work ?
How shall export values be created, and how is
it possible to increase the value of imports ?
For what purpose have we got the colonies ?
What service is the native to us if he does not
want to work ? "
In 19 1 2, the Editor of Der Tropenpfianger*
said : " What is required in the Cameroons is a
more liberal policy on the part of the German
Government towards the plantations, both as
regards the terms for acquiring land, and on the
part of the district officials to obtain better
facilities for getting labour, in order to warrant
and make possible a large and profitable ex
tension of the cocoa-planting area."
Precisely the same practices were pursued in
German East Africa. A native from German
* No. 1. 1912.

GERMAN FORCED LABOUR 75
East Africa stated before the Labour Commission
of 1913 :*
" The chiefs of his tribe were given direct
orders by the German Government officials to
supply certain quantities of labour for different
plantations, Government works, etc. In the
event of a native refusing the order of his chief
to turn out, he was handed over to the Govern
ment for punishment."
That knowledge of the pernicious results of this
system found its way to Berlin is evidenced by the
speech of a courageous Deputy of the Centre
Party, who, in February, 19 14, said he
" would vote no more money for the colonies
if energetic steps were not taken to protect the
natives from ill-treatment and forced labour.
There had been more loss of life on the planta
tions than in the slave-hunts of former years."
This form of labour is only slavery by another
name. Starting upon the assumption of property
rights in ' our fellow men, it then proceeds to
demand, at its own price, such labour as a right,
and the inevitable consequence of such a demand
must be backed by force, force which, in Africa,
spells the burning of villages, the rape of women
prisoners, and not infrequently reprisals upon the
whites, with the resulting punitive expeditions
and their bloody consequences.
But just as organized slavery was ultimately
broken up and driven from Africa, so after years of
* African World, February 15th, 1913.

76 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
agitation the crudest forms of compulsory labour
for private profit were driven from most African
territories. Within recent years the second form
of -compulsory labour has fastened itself upon large
areas of Africa ; the system which deprives the
native inhabitants of every right to their lands
and their produce, thus consigning the tribes to
slavery. Nineteenth century slavery took the
African from the land and thereby enslaved him ;
twentieth century slavery took the land from the
African and then enslaved him on his own soil.
Just at this point it is essential that a stupid
prejudice which obscures vital issues should be
"faced, and, if possible, removed. This prejudice
arises in connection with events in the lives Of
two men who, in their respective ways, were
prominently concerned with the exposure and
removal of the Congo abomination, events which
occurred subsequent to the acknowledged, and
remedied, evils of which the Congo was for twenty
years the scene.
Roger Casement's actions upon the outbreak of
War have passed into history. Comment upon
them here would be out of place. But Roger
Casement's report, issued by His Majesty's Gov
ernment eleven years before the War, when the
writer of it was British Consul in the Congo,
remains to,rday what it then was — viz., the first
of many official documents issued by the British
Government on Congo conditions. Roger Case
ment's subsequent actions are entirely irrelevant
to the Congo problem.
The attempt to invalidate the "indictment

CONGO SYSTEM 77
against the Congo system and its effects, because
the views expressed by Mr. E. D. Morel on the
origin of the War do not harmonize with the views
held by a great majority of British subjects, is even
more grotesque. Mr. Morel's opinions on the
origin of the War, whether wrong or right, have
nothing whatever to do with the part he played
in disseminating and marshalling facts and pre
senting arguments relating to the Congo problem
over a long course of years antecedent to the War.
To suggest that the evidence of a crowd of
independent witnesses belonging to a dozen
different nationalities, a long series of Consular
* Reports, to say nothing of the official admissions
of the Commission of Investigation sent out by
King Leopold himself, lose any of their force
because of the Casement tragedy, and because
Mr. Morel has differed from most people in the
War, is to push prejudice to really ludicrous
lengths. Reactionary forces in Africa will win if the
leaders of pubEc opinion and the Christian
Church can be side-tracked upon irrelevant issues,
and one of the primary objects of this book is that
of saving the forces of Christianity from being
hoodwinked, which would in aU probabiEty lead
to a new martyrdom, of the African races.
There are certain fixed points which stand out
as well-defined and estabEshed as the everlasting
hills. The first of these is the system itself.
Thomas Edison knows. that by the combination
X.Y.Z. he can produce the high explosive T.N.T.
If it were suggested that the same combination

78 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
of elements, made by Sir Oliver Lodge, would
produce, say, milk and bread, both scientists
would consign to a lunatic asylum anyone insane
enough to put forth such a suggestion.
In the sphere of administration the same law
operates. Trained administrators, like the late
Lord Cromer, Lord Selborne, Sir Hugh CEfford,
Sir Sydney OEvier and Sir Harry Johnston, know
that^ given certain elemental conditions, very
definite results must follow. Thus it came about
that once the Congo system became known, no
experienced administrator needed to be told that
atrocities occurred — it could not be otherwise.
The Belgian nation was in no sense responsible
for the introduction of this system. It was
merely the coincidence of a commercially-minded
ruler acting in a dual capacity^ which appeared to
involve the nation in a measure of responsibility.
Nor was King Leopold alone responsible ; true,
he was the active head of a group of financiers —
Belgian, French, American, and even one or two
British, who battened upon the miseries of the
Congo people. The only material advantage
which Belgium reaped was that very large sums
were spent by King Leopold upon beautifying
Louvain and supplying that city with invaluable
art treasures and heavy subsidies to certain
religious institutions and providing palatial resi
dences for ladies whose characters would not bear
examination. The fact that the Belgian Govern
ment and people have destroyed the system, root
and branch, renders civilization the debtor of the
Belgian nation, and more especially of the present

CONGO SYSTEM 79
King, whose insistence in visiting the Congo was
due in no small measure to his determination that
the Belgian Government should root out the
system which King Leopold had planted. It
muat be recognized first that —
(a) The indigenous African, in his economic
capacity, possesses three things — (1) his
labour, (2) his land, (c) the virgin wealth
of the land.
(b) The indigenous African alone can gather
the virgin wealth of that land.
(c) Take, from the African the whole of the
) land with its virgin wealth and nothing
is left but the labour which alone can
gather the wealth.
This latter was the Congo system as introduced
by King Leopold. There was no question here of
" allegation," it was not denied, it was admitted,
but the system could not stop at that point —
heading for disaster it had to go there. The
Congo State having assumed ownership of the
lands and virgin' produce, obEterated commerce,
thereby the native had nothing to sell to the
merchant ! But of what use was all this land and
produce to the -State and its aUied companies f
White men from Europe could not gather it ;
millions of Chinese, it is true, could have been
imported, but at a. colossal expense to the
employer and certain death to the labourer.
There was only left the obvious alternative
of forcing the natives to gather for the State
and its chartered companies the property of

80 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
which they had been robbed. But, again, how
was this to be done ? For generations the native
had gathered and sold his produce at the market
value ; that produce was his no longer ; all he
now had to sell was his labour, and this he was
naturaUy unwilEng to do for the purpose of
gathering what had now become the property of
the whites and which but yesterday was his own !
The next procedure was inevitable, namely, the
further proposition that taxation being equitable,
and the native having now no means of paying
taxes, should graciously be given the right of
defraying his obligation in labour which could be
used at the discretion of the white man to gather
the natural produce — rubber and ivory— -which by
administrative enactment had passed frbm native
ownership to the hands of the white man !
That the native of Africa or any other human
being would acquiesce in this outrageous swindle
was, of course, inconceivable ; force was neces
sary—and force of the most appalling kind. Thisy
then, was the basis of a system which no inteUigent
man needed to be told would lead to atrocities.
The foregoing description of the system would
not, cannot be, denied ; but the closer it is exam
ined the more hideous are its features. There is
no need to go outside official records to prove the
monstrous nature of this gigantic evil which
afflicted, and in some parts stiU afflicts, Africa,
and,' what is even more alarming, shows signs of
revival, even in British territories.
King Leopold, driven by the force of pubEc
opinion, appointed his own Commission of

CONGO SYSTEM 81
Inquiry, the members of which were paid by him,
reported to him, and whose report he disposed of
as he would. In quoting textually from that
report no charge of " exaggerated aUegation " can
be made. What did the Commissioners themselves
say upon the most fundamental element in this
system ?
" Apart from the rough plantations, which
barely suffice to feed the natives themselves and
to supply the stations, aU the fruits of the soil
are considered as the property of the State or of
the Concessionaire Societies."
" AU the fruits of the soil," every article of mar
ketable value, was thus alienated from the, native.
Was there ever such a colossal theft in the
world's history ? Millions of natives robbed of
every commodity- of vegetable value upon over
500,000,000 acres of their land — and this an
official admission of King Leopold's Government.
The ownership of land, then, had gone ; the
ownership of virgin produce had gone ; where,
then, is the evidence" that conquest of labour
foUowed ? The same Commission reported :
" It is only by making of work an obhgation
that the native wiU be made to furnish regular
labour, and that the necessary work wiU be ob
tained to exploit the natural riches of the
country, and profit by its resources.
" The labour tax is, moreover, the only
impost possible on the Congo, because the
native as a general rule possesses nothing beyond

82 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
his hut, his weapons, and a few plantations
strictly necessary for his subsistence. A tax
having riches as its basis would not be possible.
If, therefore, one recognizes to the Congo State,
as to any other State, the right of demanding
from the people the resources necessary for the
existence and development of that State, one
must obviously recognize that it possesses the
right to claim from them the one thing they
are in a position to give, that is to say, a certain
summum of labour."
Thus was the native of the Congo despoiled in
turn of the threefold elements of his economic
capacity ; robbed of these he necessarily became
a slave, and the only remaining problem was that
of machinery which always has and always must
include the whip, the prison-house, torture and
murder. Before calling upon evidence of the machinery,
let it be remembered that the actual evidence
tendered upon oath to King Leopold's Commis
sion of Inquiry was of so frightful a nature that to
this/day it has never been published ! It may be
the Germans discovered this during their occu
pation of Brussels, but more probable is the
opinion that King Leopold caused the Records
to be destroyed before his death. This procedure
is without precedent in historic inquiries, for
usually the Report is the first document, each
paragraph of which reposes upon the appended
evidence. But in spite of this significant omission
of the evidence, the general conclusions in the

A VICIOUS SYSTEM 83
Report, and the machinery used to apply the sys
tem, were of a most damning nature.
The claim to forced labour was covered by the
legal fiction that the native was bound to give forty
hours of labour per month in lieu of taxation —
on the face of it a perfectly equitable demand,
but in practice it was, as it always must be, utterly
pernicious. The labour was aUotted to commercial
interests whose prime function was profit for
shareholders, and therefore the tax-masters who
received proportionate commission had every
interest in extending by one means or another
the demand far beyond forty hours per month.
To this initial abuse was added the impossibiEty
of fixing forty hours' work in the distant forests,
which led to the substitution of a quantity of
prepared rubber in Eeu of those " forty hours."
The quantity of rubber was in turn fixed solely
by the man who received a commission upon every
kilogramme- of rubber he forced the native to
coUect. Could a more vicious system of slavery
be devised ? The evidence in the Report to
King Leopold admitted this :
" Numbers of agents only thought of one
thing : to obtain as much as possible in the
shortest possible time, and their demands were
often excessive."
This stage brings the reader to the threshold
of an African charnel-house. How could the men
of Africa be forced to gather the rubber ? If
they were imprisoned they obviously could not
gather rubber ; flogging was tried, but was ineffec-

84 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
tive, for the horrors of the dismal forests, the de
creasing sources of supply, conflicts with hostile
tribes driven to seek rubber for agents on other
rivers, and a variety of local difficulties prevented
the collection of rubber in quantities sufficient
to satisfy the white agents on the spot or the
shareholders in Europe.
In the "authoritative language of the Com
mission is thus defined this terrible ordeal of
rubber coUection :
The native " is deprived of his wife, exposed
to the inclemencies of the weather and the
attacks of wild beasts. When once he has
collected the rubber he must bring it to the
State station or to that of the Company, and
only then can he return to his viUage, where he -
can sojourn for barely more than two or three
days, because the next demand is upon him."
There was in the end no escape from the catas
trophe of an avalanche of horror and bloodshed.
The men being required in the forests, im
prisonment was futile, and flogging only partially
effective, therefore the idea was evolved of hitting
the native where he would feel it mo§t — outrage
his women, chain them, imprison them, flog them;
go yet further, strike at the children also, chain and
imprison them if old enqugh, if not, club them to
death or cut their throats. This it was correctly
thought would drive the men either to increased
production or death — and it did, for countless
thousands of men, refusing to forsake their wives
and children, were brutaUy slaughtered. King

HITTING THE DEFENCELESS 85
Leopold aUowed the report of the Commission
to Eft but the corner of the veil, but even the
restricted glimpse the public gets is horrible
enough :
" It was barely denied that . . . the im
prisonment of women hostages, the subjection
of the chiefs to servile labour, the humiliations
meted out to them, the flogging of rubber
coUectors, the brutality of the black employes
set over the prisoners, were the rule commonly
followed."
The brutal conduct of the native taskmasters is
then described. The missionaries of aU denomi
nations, the Commission said —
" brought before the Commission a multitude
of native witnesses, who revealed a large number
of crimes and excesses alleged to have been
committed by the sentinels. According to
the witnesses these auxiliaries, especially those
stationed in the villages, abuse the authority
conferred upon them, convert themselves into
despots, claiming the women and the food, not
only for themselves but for the body of para
sites and creatures without any calEng which a
love of rapine causes to become associated with
them, and with whom they surround themselves
as with a veritable bodyguard ; they kill with
out pity all those who attempt to resist their
I exigencies and whims."* * Italics mine.

86 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
And finaUy —
" Of how many abuses have these native
sentinels been guilty it would be impossible to
say, even approximately. Several chiefs of
Baringa, brought us, according to the native
custom, bundles of sticks, each of which was
meant to show one of their subjects kiUed by
the Capitas. One of them showed 120 murders
in his viUage committed during the last few
years. " The Agents interrogated by the Commis
sion, or who were present at the audiences,
did not even attempt to deny the charges
brought against the sentinels."
This, then, is the official confirmation of the
enslavement, the torture, the flogging and the
murder inflicted upon milEons of men, women
and children of the Congo under a system which
arose and must always arise from depriving
natives in tropical and semi-tropical regions of
their lands and natural produce. It was applied
in French Congo with precisely the same results,
and it behoves every student of history to grasp
the cardinal fact that the imposition of such
atrocious systems in any degree wiU produce in
that same degree slave owning, slave trading,
disease, torture and murder, and not infrequently
massacre.

CHAPTER III
MODERN SLAVERY  PORTUGUESE
" Contract Labour."
" In the name of Almighty God " aU the
European and American Powers solemnly re
affirmed in 1885 and in 1890 their detestation and
abhorrence of slave owning and slave trading.
Having summoned the Omnipotent Father of
men to witness this solemn declaration against
man-stealing and man-owning, they proceeded
to draft a whole series of articles and decrees for
united effort in theaboEtion of slavery. Whilst
the European delegates were sitting and in solemn
conclave expressing this abhorrence of man-
stealing and man-owning, the Portuguese terri
tories of Angola in West Africa were being tra
versed by thousands of men/women and children,
shackled, chained and driven to the plantations of
the Atlantic seaboard ; — other thousands were
being shipped and sent across the ocean to the
cocoa plantations of the two tiny but remarkably
fertile islands of San Thome and Principe.
The purpose of this slavery was sugar and rum
manufacture in Angola, and the more valuable
production of cocoa upon the islands of San Thome
and Principe. These two islands situated in the
87

88 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Bights of West Africa have a combined area only
sEghtly larger than the Isle of Man and yet their
fertiEty is such that they produce annually about
£1,000,000 worth of cocoa beans.
For years allegations had been made that this
cocoa was produced by slave labour, but mission
aries, traveUers and consuls visiting the islands
saw little actual evidence of slave owning. When
enquiries were made the Portuguese, whose hos
pitality is proverbial, readily entertained their
visitors with Eberal fare and still more liberal
descriptions of the excellent laws passed for the
protection of " contract labourers." These laws
decreed that the " contract " should be for five
years, that care should be exercised in the pro
vision of food and medical attendance, that wages
should be paid regularly, and that deductions
should only be made and invested for the purpose
of giving a " bonus " to the labourers on the
expiration of their contracts. Next that a
regular census should be taken and submitted to
the Protector of the contracted labourer. Could
anything be fairer or more considerate ? It was
only after long and patient labour that it was aU
found to be mere camouflage; the laws were on
paper only, there was no census kept at all, ip
most cases there were no " contracts," conse
quently the term of labour never expired, the
deductions were made from the " wages " regu
larly enough, but instead of being invested, large
sums went into the pockets of the planters, where
it still remains, whilst the death-rate amongst the
slaves was and is to-day appaUing !

SHACKLES 89
From 1905 onwards, real exposure became more
pronounced. Messrs. H. W. Nevinson, Swan,
Joseph Burtt, and especially certain British cocoa
firms, spent time and money and ran great risks
aU for the single purpose of finding out the truth,
and when at last the truth was known, a large part
of the civilized world was shocked at the revela
tion. It was first discovered that for many years at
least 4,000 men, women and children had been
shipped to the islands, and next that the route
over which these people came from the heart of
Africa was strewn with that tell-tale evidence of
slave trade — shackles and bleaching bones of
countless dead. Colonel CoEn Harding, travel
ling from Rhodesia westwards in 1902, found, as
he says :
" The wayside trees are simply hung with
disused shackles, some to hold one,, some two,
three, and even six slaves ; skulls and bones
bleached by the sun lie where the victims fell,
and gape with helpless grin on those who pass,
a damning evidence of a horrible traffic."*
Mr. Joseph Burtt, the investigator for the cocoa
firms, when travelling eastwards from Catum-
bella, soon came right upon this evidence of the
slave traffic :
" It was not long before we found skeletons
and shackles. These shackles are blocks of
wood, in which an oblong hole is hewn to admit
* In Remotest Barotseland. Hurst & Blackett.

90 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the hands or feet. A stout peg is then driven
through the side, dividing the ankles or wrists,
and making withdrawal impossible. They vary
in size and shape. I saw some intended for
women's hands, with a fork for the neck. A
long heavy pole is sometimes used, and must be
a terrible instrument attached to the neck.
In the gully of a dry stream-bed, where we
stayed to rest, a few yards from where we sat,
and under the side of an overhanging rock, we
saw the decomposing corpse of a man. Hard
r* by lay a small basket, a large wooden spoon, a
native mat, and a few filthy clothes. The dead
man lay on his back, with his limbs spread out,
probably as he had died, left hopelessly weak
by a gang going down to the coast. Another
skeleton lay within a few yards, making five
we had seen in a few hours' march."
This universal distribution of shackles has
impressed every traveUer in Angola, and is, more
over, a piece of evidence so conclusive and damn
ing that it shatters every single one of the specious
arguments advanced hy the defenders of the
Portuguese planters. Consuls, missionaries and
traveUers all emphasized the prevalence of dis
carded shackles. The presence of shackles on
board ship has always been accepted as conclusive
evidence of slave traffic, and less than this cannot
be conceded to the same evidence upon land.
Not less tangible, and surely more eloquently
horrible, was the manner in which the highways
and byways in Central Africa were strewn with

SLAVE VALUES 91
the bleaching bones of countless thousands of
dead. There were dozens of these highways of
bleached bones leading inland from Benguella in
the South to San Antonio in the North. H. W.
Nevinson says of the journey he took :
" The path is strewn with dead men's bones.
You see the white thigh-bones lying in front
of your feet, and at one side, among the under
growth, you find the skull. These are the
skeletons of slaves who have been unable to
keep up with the march, and so were murdered
or left to die."
The average price at which the slave was sold
at the Angola ports was from £30 to £40. Consul
Nightingale in 191 1 reported the price to be £50
a pair. Mr. Burtt quoted £25^40 as the value,
Mr. Nevinson £30. During the Ebel action in
Birmingham, Messrs. Cadbury produced a docu
ment showing that they had been offered a planta
tion on San Thome for a given sum, and included
in the assets were " 200 black labourers £3,555,"
or about £18 a head, young and old taken together.
If we reckon 70,000 at £18 a head as the total
imported into San Thome and the sister island of
Principe since that memorable day in 1885 when
the Portuguese Plenipotentiary, surely with his
tongue in his cheek, solemnly denounced slave-
owning before Almighty God, it gives an import
of slaves worth from £2,250,000 to £2,500,000.
But this is not the whole story of the Portuguese
crime, for large numbers of slaves were obtained
for the sugar plantations of Angola, and moreover

<pT AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the 70,000 shipped involved a terrible human
wastage whilst traveUing along that 1,000 to
2,000 mile road to the coast. If we reckon the
number taken by the mainland plantation equal
to that for the islands involving a combined total
of 150,000 it is probable that the whole traffic
exceeded 500,000. Mr. Burtt tells us that :
" A dealer once admitted that if he got six
out of every ten natives to Bihe he was lucky,
but sometimes only three survived the journey.
This was due not only to the physical strain of
tramping nearly seven hundred miles under
miserable conditions, but to the fact that the
captives were often so hopeless that they
refused to eat. Many who were seen to be of
no value received a mortal wound, or were
left to die of hunger. Cases of incredible
cruelty were constantly witnessed."
Not until the year 1908 had a single one of these
thousands of men, women or children been allowed
to return across the sea to the mainland ; in that
year, owing to the commencement of reaUy serious
agitation in England and America, ten slaves were
repatriated. From the year 1908 until to-day
constant pressure has been exerted pubEcly and
privately through the British Foreign Office upon
the Portuguese Government and with some
success. There is good reason to hope that the old
system of slave-trading on the mainland has
disappeared and that the present contract system,
whilst open to criticism, is a system of free

BRITAIN DEFENDS SLAVERY 93
agreement — at least in the initial stages. At the
commencement of the agitation in 1908 there were
probably about 40,000 slaves, when the Eberations
and repatriations began by the emancipation dur
ing that year of the ten slaves already mentioned.
The liberations have increased until there have been
set free and restored to Africa about 10,000, leaving
on the islands to-day from 20,000 to 30,000 slaves.
The British nation, by reason of her Alliance
with Portugal as the guarantor and potential
defender of her colonies, has a special responsibility
in this matter. This AUiance, which the British
Government recently stated was in full force,
pledges Great Britain " to defend and protect aU
Conquests or Colonies belonging to the Crown of
Portugal against aU its enemies as weU in future
as present." Thus if any one or more Powers
signatory either to the BerEn or Brussels Act
should awake to their clear rights and solemn
responsibiEties and proceed by any show of force
to insist upon the aboEtion of slavery and slave-
trade in Portuguese colonies, the maritime and
land forces of Great Britain could under this
AUiance be forthwith summoned to protect these
Portuguese colonies againat the " Aggressors."
Mr. St. Loe Strachey, the Editor of the
Spectator, rightly says :
" Either the Portuguese must put an end to
slave owning, slave trading and slave raiding in
the Colonial possessions which we now guarantee
to them, or else our guarantee must at once and
for ever cease."

CHAPTER IV
INDIAN IMMIGRATION
Of aU the economic, poUtical and reEgious
problems of Africa that of Asiatic immigration
looms right in the forefront. India and the
Indians wiU assuredly play as large a part in the
development of Africa as the white races of Europe
and America. But the European is to-day de
manding the exclusion of the Indian and the
Chinese colonists, except as a temporary labour
expedient. This attitude is as unjust and un
christian as it is impolitic.
The white races of South and East Africa have
about as much right to deny the people of India
ingress into Africa as they have to forbid the
waves rolling up the sea-shore. The people of
India colonized the Eastern Ettoral and hinterland
of Africa generations before the British .and
German, and thus have established their right of
equaEty to, if not precedence in, colonization.
Indian|and Arabian emigration^certainly took
place as early as the dawn of the sixteenth
century.*^ The immigrants from^this date up
to 1850 or thereabouts were traders and^colonists
in the fuUest sense of the word.-— From 1895
* Cd. 5192. 1910.
94

THE SERVITUDE OF INDIA 95
onwards there has been an influx of indentured
labourers and so useful has the Indian labourer
become that in 1910 Sir John Kirk declared with
regard to East Africa : " Drive away the Indians
and you may shut up the Protectorate, I think."
For weU nigh half a century there has been
conflict between the India Office and Government
on the one hand, and on the other the white
settlers of the Dominions and Dependencies.
The India Office has consistently maintained that
the Indian should enter the colonial territories
as a potential citizen; the white settlers have
always insisted that the Indian should serve them
as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, and when
they have no further use for him he should
" clear out," bag and baggage, and go back to
India. British responsibility in India, elemen
tary justice and Christian duty demand that this
situation should not be prolonged, and that
British Indians should, regardless of race, nation
ality or colour, emigrate to the colonies on pre
cisely the same conditions as any other British
subject. To the late Marquis of SaEsbury is due the
first formal declaration of India's right in the
colonies. In his memorable despatch of March
24th, 1875, he said :
" Above all things we must confidently
expect, as an indispensable condition of the
proposed arrangements, that the Colonial law«
and their administration wiU be such that
Indian settlers who have completed the terms

96 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
of service to which they agreed, as the return
for the expense of bringing them to the
Colonies, will be in all respects free men, with
privileges no whit inferior to those of any other
class of Her Majesty's subjects resident in the
Colonies"*
This sound expression of statecraft is unhappily
in contrast with the perfectly outrageous demands
of the white settlers. Sir Thomas -Hyslop,
speaking in 19 1 3 to a resolution moved at the
African Agricultural Union in Natal upon the
question of the £3 licence, is reported to have said :
" The effect of the licence is to prevent
Indians from settling in the country. It is
extended to Colonial-born Indians now, and
if the licence were abolished Indians would
have the choice of remaining in the country as
free men. We want Indians as indentured
labourers, but not as free men."f
Could anything be more brutally frank ?
In 1903 Lord Milner informed Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain that the " question of labour is
beginning to assume a reaUy alarming aspect,"
and suggested that steps should be taken to secure
" 10,000 cooEes from India," but
" the only thing we cannot do, in view of
public feeling in this country, is to bring
cooEes here without promise that they shaU
be sent back when their term is over."J
* Cd. 5 1 92. 1 910. Italics mine.
fThe Times, November 19th, 1913. \ Cd. 1683.

THE SERVITUDE OF INDIA 97
Thus the demand of the whites in South and
East Africa is consistently that of a supply of
Indian labour and with it a rigid denial of the
elementary rights of British citizenship. But
this same attitude is adopted in the British East
African Protectorate. In 191 3 the Nairobi
Government issued the report of a Labour
Commission, the recommendation of the majority
being as follows :
" A majority of the Commission therefore
recommends that though indentured labour
is generaUy objected to for the reasons given,
if the necessity of it for large works or planta
tions on the coast is proved, Asiatics be imported
on indenture, but only on two conditions :
(1) that repatriation is insisted upon, and
(2) that legislation is introduced for each
separate project."
But the problem of Indian immigration does
not stop with the industrious and law-abid
ing coolie, there is the constant influx into
East and South Africa of the thrifty Indian
merchant. There is also the influx of children
and polygamous " wives " of Indians. To the
desire of the white planter for coolie labour,
and coolie labour only, is added the difficulty of
competing with the time-expired cooEe and
the Indian trader. The coolie, industrious and
thrifty, can make two blades of grass grow
where the white man only obtains one. From
his 5s. a week he will somehow surround himself
with Eve-stock, which thrives upon the offal of

98 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the estate ; he wiU plant a patch of rice in waste
corners of land the white man despises, and thus,
when his indenture expires, he has at hand a " nest
egg " of capital with which he can launch out in
competition with the white man. The white
colonist endeavouring to compete with the free
Indian soon finds himself beaten, with the result
that in Natal, as in other parts of the Empire, the
demand is for the Indian labourer without Lord
Salisbury's " indispensable condition." The
India Office knows full well that the prosperity
of the Crown Colonies in the East and West"
Indies is due mainly to the Indian cobhe ; that
the dominating influence of the Orient in the ,
world's rubber market is also due to the same
Indian coolie ; that British tropical supplies,
which are pouring into this country in ever-
increasing volume, are only to be maintained by
supplying sparsely populated territories with
surplus Indian labour, but the India Office also
reaEzes that this supply must be under conditions
acceptable alike to Indian and British pubEc
opinion. To this economic difficulty is added the
repugnance of South Africa to a spread of polygamy
to which uncontrolled Indian immigration would
undoubtedly lead. It was this situation which
led South Africa to impose the £3 licence upon
Indian sejtlers and which in 191 3 led to such
grave disorders.
, The Botha Government had found that the
Indian population tended to attract to itself :
children to join parents, wives to husbands
already married, artisans, domestics and indeed

BRIBERY 99
every class good and bad from the Indian Empire.
Confronted with this situation, which offended
the susceptibiUties of the white Britishers in
Natal, and far more those of the Dutch in the
Cape, Transvaal and Orange River Colony,
General Botha himself sanctioned and then
secured Imperial approval of the discriminating
poU tax of £3 per annum. At the same time
every other means, open and covert, were adopted
to prevent immigration. This racial conflict
led in the first place to an " illicit " movement
accompanied by every form of bribery : Lord
Selborne gave details of a case where one Indian
paid £400 a month to a police inspector and £200
a month to a poEce sergeant, or £7,200 a year to
the two officers with a view to securing their
assistance in "smuggling" Indians into Natal.'
This racial and political conflict developed during
the years 1906-1914 when it was brought to a
head by the passive resistance movement. The
strike of Europeans in the Transvaal gave Mr.
Gandhi an opportunity of demonstrating the
reasonableness of the Indian community' — an
opportunity he wisely and promptly seized by
giving an undertaking not to press the Indian case
during this period of administrative embarrass
ment. Meanwhile a deputation had left South
Africa to join Mr. Gokhale in England, where
efforts were being made to bring home to the
Imperial Government and the British public the
growing gravity of thesituation.
The peaceful efforts of the law-abiding Indian
community, the wise conduct of the Indian

ioo AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
leaders and the diplomatic attitude of the Imperial
Government failed to conciliate the Union Govern
ment or to modify materially their adminis
trative action, with the result that the struggle
was renewed more bitterly and much more widely.
Mass meetings were held in Durban, Johannesburg
and throughout the Union. From India there
poured forth a continuous stream of indignant
resolutions and ample funds for financing the
just protests of the Indians in South Africa.
Lord Hardinge by his courageous speech in
Madras saved the situation for the British
Commonweath, and thereby established himself
for aU time in the affection of the people of India.
Lord AmpthiU, in England, by his energetic
challenge to Britain's sense of justice, coupled
with the action of Lord Hardinge in India,
convinced both the Imperial and South African
Governments that something both immediate
and adequate must be done. A Commission
was appointed and its report adopted almost
completely, with the result that, to quote an
Indian writer :
" The movement commenced with a demand
for the repeal of the Transvaal Act 2 of 1907.
The Act was repealed and its threatened
extension to other parts of South Africa was
completely prevented. At the beginning, ra
cial legislation against Indians was threatened,
so as to drive them from the Colony. The
settlement has removed the possibility of racial
legislation against Indians throughout . the

RACIAL ANTIPATHY 101
Empire. The system of indentured immigra
tion from India, that had been regarded almost
as a permanent feature of South African
economics, has been ended. The hated £3
tax has been repealed and its attendant misery
and insult destroyed. Vested rights, that
were tending everywhere to disappear, are to
be maintained and protected. The bulk of
Indian marriages, that had never previously
received the sanction of South African law, are
henceforth to be fully recognized in law. But
above and beyond all this is the new spirit of
conciliation that has resulted from the hard
ships, the sufferings, the sacrifices of the
Passive Resisters. The flag of legal racial
equality has been kept flying, and it is now
recognized that Indians have rights and aspira
tions and ideals that cannot be ignored."
But this struggle dealt only with superficial
grievances, all the seeds of future trouble remain —
discriminating racial legislation by the Union
against Indians and Indian immigrants has been
abolished, but the root of the mischief is stiU to
be found in racial antipathy which still expresses
itself in racial disabilities. To-day in South
Africa this racial antagonism finds expression in
quite material disabilities. In the first place
the 100,000 Indians in the Union territories, no
matter how highly educated, no matter how
large their material interests, are denied any voice
in the government of the countries for the main
tenance of which they provide a substantial part

102 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
of revenue. This constitutes a breach of faith
of capital importance, for no matter what may be
said to the contrary South and East Africa
accepted the original coolies upon the " no whit
inferior " condition imposed by Lord Salisbury
in 1875.
There is to-day one outstanding grievance in
the Union territories of South Africa. In the
Transvaal and Orange River provinces the Indian
is denied by an old RepubEcan law the right to
own fixed property in his own name. The Indian
communities can only purchase and register such
fixed properties in Natal and the Cape.
This policy is not merely grossly inequitable,
but utterly stupid, for as always a way has been
found to circumvent this boycott which in turn has
led to administrative chaos. An "underground"
practice has grown up whereby Europeans,
sympathetic towards and trusted by Indians,
are receiving from them the savings of Indian
labour and commerce and are purchasing land
and property for them. These Europeans declare
themselves owners and are so registered, whilst
bonds covering the transaction are passed between
the Indians and their trusted European friends.
There can be no denial of the fact that these
transactions are widespread and it has been
asserted that a weU-known South African business
house has carried through transactions of this
nature totaUing over one milEon sterling ! There
has grown up quite recently a new practice
whereby Indians — frequently only the Indian and
his wife — have formed themselves into smaU

INDIAN DISABILITIES 103
companies for the purchase and registration of
fixed properties. This practice is quite legal and
at the same time does give the Indians a way
through the racial disqualification which South
Africa has imposed upon them.
But the whites are angrily demanding that
steps be taken to prevent the Indian community
from finding these outlets for the investment of
their surplus capital, oblivious of the fact that
natural laws must always prove the stronger. To
this demand for further oppressive and dis
criminating legislation is added every form of
petty irritation — the refusal of trading Ecences
upon the slightest pretext, the denial of entry to
public conveniences built by the aid of Indian
revenue, the bar against travel on municipal
means of -transport, in fact by every form of
opposition and even intrigue to reduce British
Indians to a condition of social and economic
helotry, the result of which can only be to foster
disaffection or squeeze out of South Africa the
ablest and best elements of the Indian com
munity. The duty of the Christian Church is quite
clear — the foUowers of Christ can never silently
permit the imposition of disabiEties upon the sole
basis of differing race or colour. The restriction
of civil rights can be defended possibly from the
standpoint of education or of vested interests in
a particular country — it can never be defended
exclusively upon a colour or racial basis. In the
bitter struggle which wiU soon reopen it must be
insisted that any member of the Indian Empire

104 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
is entitled as a British subject to enter any
British territory with full potential rights of
citizenship, subject always to the general condition
that the immigrant is prepared to accept and
abide by the laws and customs prevailing in the
territory which he adopts as his future home.
Any other attitude is impossible in an Empire —
and a Christian Empire too — which is composed
of weU over 400,000,000 of people representing
all races and creeds.

PART III
I. The African and his Land
II. Tropical and Semi-Tropical Lands

CHAPTER I
THE AFRICAN AND HIS LAND
The supreme issue of Efe to the African is his
land ; franchise, cattle, industry, labour and
polygamy each involve their respective diffi
culties, but relatively land overtops each and all
of them. Take from the African his poEtical or
personal freedom, take his cattle, or even his wife
and children, and he wiU tolerate the injustice,
but touch his land and he wiU stake all in battle,
no matter what the forces arrayed against him.
Take the land, back the robbery with rifles,
machine guns and " heavies," and the African
wiU stiU face the " bloody music " with primitive
spear, bow and arrow — the terrible odds make
the struggle hopeless, but as the African has said
so many times in history, " Take my land and you
take my life," therefore, he argues, as weU lose
life by bullet or cannon-sheU as by being robbed
of land.
The European conception of the commercial
ownership of land is totally alien to primitive
native thought ; a century ago almost any of the
tribes in Africa would have looked upon the sale
of tribal lands as an act of the most revolting
kind. Land to the primitive African is one of
three component parts of African social and
107

108 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
economic Efe — sun, water, land, represent to the
native mind not three elements, but a single ele
ment, the supreme object of which is the provision
of human sustenance. This machinery is so inter
dependent that the primitive African would be
as horrified at the alienation and sale of land as of
water or sun. It thus follows that the ownership
of land is nowhere vested in the inajvlchial but in
the whole race inhabiting a particular area, whilst
every member of the tribe possesses as much
right to the usage of adequate land as he does to
the usage of an adequate share of the warmth of
the sun or a draught of water from the local
spring. It may be assumed that such tribal ownership
precludes immigrant settlers — it does nothing
of the kind ! it precludes monopoly, it shuts out
self-interest it is true, but there are adequate
means by which any man, no matter of what
race, creed or colour, may obtain secure title to
occupancy right of adequate land. The immigrant
entering tribal areas would be confronted not
with a question as to what land he requires and
at what price, but with the initial question of
whether or not he is a fit and proper person to
become part of the tribal order. If it is decided
that the immigrant is a suitable person to enter
the community, the aUotment of land foUows as
naturaUy as the gift of a wife, for the African
believes it to be the first duty of man to multiply
and replenish the earth.
Over the greater part of Africa this primitive
conception has been shattered by the influx of the

GENERAL BOTHA'S SCHEME 109
white races — exploitation and the concessionaire
have done their fell work of goading the native to
rebelhon and then confiscating his land rights ; in
some parts a hybrid system, partly European and
partly African, has taken the place of the old one,
but in a few areas efforts have been made by Great
Britain to preserve all or nearly aU of the best
features of the original native land laws. In a
very few territories primitive land laws still
obtain untouched by inroads of European ex
ploitation. Within the Efe-time of the present generation
there have been three constructive land policies
in the African continent : (1) General Botha's
separation policy, (2) Sir Harry Johnston's land
settlement of the Uganda Protectorate, (3) Sir
Frederick Lugard's policy in Northern Nigeria.
Each of these possesses quite peculiar features,
but the most far-reaching is that of General
Botha in South Africa.
Europe and America know General Botha as a
great military leader, South Africa knows him, or
will know him, as a great statesman. When
General Botha first came to power as the Prime
Minister of South Africa, he found land tenure
in the four provinces in weU-nigh hopeless con
fusion — whites living on native land, natives
Eving on the land of white men upon every
conceivable tenure — just and unjust ; natives
owning land and occupying land upon bad tenure
and no tenure at all ; native ownership and native
occupancy almost everywhere undefined and
irregular.

no AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
General Botha decided that this condition of
affairs could only be prolonged at the peril of
widespread disaffection if not rebeUion and blood
shed; he therefore decided to faU back upon the
principal recommendations of the Lagden Com
mission of 1903-1905 and divide the 300,000,000
acres of land in South Africa between the white
and coloured population.
The recommendations of Sir Godfrey Lagden's
Commission upon land were the foUowing :
(1) That in the interests of both Europeans
and natives, purchase of land by natives
should be Emited to certain areas to be
defined by legislative enactment.
(2) That whatever principles govern the
question of purchase of land by natives
shguld apply equally to the leasing of
land by natives.
(3) That unrestrained squatting of natives
on private farms, whether as tenants
or otherwise, is an evil, and that the
principles of the Cape Act of 1899
should be adopted for dealing with it.
(4) That purchase of land which may lead
to tribal or communal or coUective
possession of land by natives, as opposed
to individual ownership, should not be
permitted.
The three main effects of the appEcation of
these recommendations would be to limit white
and native holding to defined areas, to abolish
irregular squatting and to encourage individual

GENERAL BOTHA'S SCHEME in
ownership. Whatever the advantage or dis
advantage of these recommendations, they cer
tainly carried the native land question very
much further from primitive conception.
When General Botha's Government decided
upon foUowing this course, legislation was intro
duced and hurriedly passed which provided for
an ultimate division of land between the races,
and pending such aUotment inter-racial land
transactions were forbidden ; finaUy a Commis
sion was set up to advise :
(a) What areas within the Union of South
Africa should be set apart as areas
within which Natives shall not be per
mitted to acquire or hire land or
interests in land ;
(b) What areas within the Union of South
Africa should be set apart as areas
within which persons other than Natives
shaU not be permitted to acquire or
hire land or interests in land ;
and further to inquire into and report upon any
matters incidental to the setting apart of such
areas which may be placed before them by the
Minister of Native Affairs.
This legislation and the speed with which it
was rushed through the South African Parliament
caused a storm throughout South Africa in the
early part. of 1914.
The natives were greatly alarmed at the restric
tive features of the proposals, whilst the farmers,
equaUy alarmed at, and misunderstanding the

112 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
temporary condition with regard to squatting,
commenced ejecting the squatter families. This
alarm and the unnecessary trek of squatters led
to the infliction of hardships and suffering. The
missionaries, divided upon the wisdom of the
measure according to their individual compre
hension of its provisions and justly indignant at
the suffering caused by even this modified appE-
cation of the policy, did their best to dissipate
prevailing ignorance and to mitigate the hard
ships by direct personal and collective appeals to
the Government. In the meantime Imperial
sanction had been accorded to the principle
of the 1913 legislation.
It is of capital importance to bear in mind
that General Botha's poEcy is not segregation of
peoples, but a separation of land ownership ; in
the words of the terms of reference to the land
Commission, to advise the Government upon
what lands should be placed at the disposal of
the whites and what to the natives. There was
nothing in the legislation which precluded an
inter-mixing of the races for social, religious or
industrial purposes.
Although the natives were profoundly disturbed
at these proposals, it is also important to bear in
mind that they did not oppose the bed-rock
principle of this legislation, for in their official
communication to the South African Govern
ment the President of the South African Native
National Congress said, in an appeal for post
ponement of the measure and for further safe
guards for native rights :

SEPARATION AND SEGREGATION 113
" We make no protest against the principle
of separation so rfar as it can be fairly and
practicaUy carried out."*
General Botha, in reply, gave to the Congress
the foUowing assurances :
(1) That legislation would be introduced
for gradual expropriation of land held
by any white man or native.
(2) Legislation would provide secure title
both for coUective and individual owner
ship.
(3) That Native Councils would be created
for dealing with purely native affairs.
This was the position when an " area " Com
mission was set up under the Chairmanship of
Sir WiUiam Beaumont to define areas for White
and Coloured occupation. The natives pointed
out with very considerable force that no native
had been appointed on this Commission, but
their appeal for direct representation was without
avail; General Botha refused to appoint a native,
and the Commission started on its labours, which
by legislation were Emited to a period of two
years, ultimately extended to three years upon
the outbreak of war.
When the Beaumont Commission issued its
report it had been preceded by two definite
stages — (a) the Lagden Commission of 1903-5,
(b) General Botha's 191 3 legislation providing
for a separation of land interests. The Beaumont
* Cd. 7508.

1 14 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
report was pubEshed in March, 1916, or two
years and nine months from the date of its
appointment. The outstanding feature of the Beaumont
report was its recommendation that the land
placed at the disposal of the natives should be
nearly doubled, or an increase of nearly 20,000,000
acres. At the same time this only gave to the
4,000,000 natives a maximum of 40,000,000
acres, whilst placing at the disposal of the
1,100,000 whites over 260,000,000. Whatever
may be said for or against this distribution, it
cannot be regarded as generous to the natives.
The foUowing table shows the native situation
at a glance as it stood at the time of the Beaumont
recommendations :
Native Population and Land Occupancy
{Approximate.) PRESENT. FUTURE.
Per Per
Total Native Scheduled Native
Population. Occupancy. Capita. Areas. Capita.
{a) Cape
Colony 1,900,000 13,000,000 7 16,200,000 8 J
(b) Transvaal 1,200,000 2,400,000 2 13,500,000 11J
(<r) Natal 1,000,000 6,100,000 6 10,200,000 10
{d) Orange
Free State 350,000 163,000 £ 489,000 i\
The injustice is not merely in the division of
the land but in the quality of it — large areas of
land set aside are declared to be without water
and therefore unfit for grazing, other areas are
malarial and unfit for human habitation.

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM 115
The next stage in the development of General
Botha's assumed task of " reshuffling " the popula
tions in South Africa was taken by the introduc
tion of a new BiU in 19 17 under the title of Native
Affairs Administration Act.
This Act automaticaUy repealed the 191 3
Land Act, although maintaining the principles
of the measure. At the same time it provided for
an elasticity of the boundaries in the native areas.
This was a great [improvement upon previous
legislation because it provided for the increase
of population.
But the most important feature of this legisla
tion was the creation of a permanent Commission
for Native Affairs in a manner without paraUel
in Britain's dominions. The constitution is
quite unique in several respects. The Minister
for Native Affairs is Chairman of the Commission,
and is to be assisted by not less than three and not
-more than five persons nominated by the Governor-
General. Each member of the Commission wiU
hold office for five years,, but he cannot be a
member of either the House of Assembly or the
Senate. %$
The duty of this Commission is to advise the
Minister upon all matters relating to the general
administration of and the legislation for the
native areas. But quite the most interesting
feature is the power which the members of this
Commission can exercise over the Minister. If,
for example, he refuses to accept the advice of the
Commission or acts contrary to its decisions, the
records of his action and an explanation of the

116 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
attitude adopted by the. Commission may at the
request of either party be submitted to the arbitra
ment of the Governor-General. This astonishing
and somewhat democratic principle goes even
further,, for both Governor-General and Minister
for Native Affairs may be " reported " to Parlia
ment, and the final clause in the Bill provides that
if the recommendations of the Commission have
not been accepted either by the Minister or by
the Governor-General then the Minister " shall,
upon the request of the Commission, lay the
records before both houses of ParEament."
The probability is that legislation wiU yet
take some years to complete and the process
of redistribution generations to accompEsh.
What, then, should be done to secure a just
evolution of General Botha's poEcy in order to
bring it within the conditions rightly laid down
by the Native National Congress — that the
principles of the 1913 Act must be "fairly and
practically carried out." These conditions are
covered generally by the three words — Sufficiency
— Suitability — Security ; given these conditions
the natives would undoubtedly be wiUing to accept
for the whole Union territories the land settle
ment by General Botha.
Of these three conditions General Botha's
policy supplies to-day but one — security. The
legislation already passed and that which has been
promised proceeds upon the hypothesis that land
now aUotted to the natives will be inalienable.
From that summer day in i486 when Bartholomew
Diaz rounded the Cape and landed at Algoa Bay

THE BASIS OF PEACE 117
until the rise of the Botha Government, namely
for over four centuries, the native tribes of Africa
south of the Limpopo river have never been cer
tain that the lands they occupied would be re
garded as their inalienable possession ; every
reason, every excuse, every species of chicanery
and fraud have been practised in order to dis
possess these people of the lands they had every
right to regard as their own. It will thus be seen
that the gift of security of tenure is a measure of
priceless value to the South African native.
Sufficiency and Suitability are of course inter
dependent ; it is quite obvious that 50 acres of
waterless and rockstrewn land is of less value to
the native farmer than 5 acres of fertile land with
an adequate water supply. It is notorious that
quaEty for quality the land held by the white
farmers is far more fertile and much better fitted
for human habitation than the land occupied by
the native farmers. The ratio as proposed under
the Botha scheme is,26o,ooo,ooo acres for 1,100,000
whites and 40,000,000 for 4,000,000 natives.
When suitability is taken into consideration the
ratio would probably mean not 260 to 40 but
something like 260 to 20, or in its relation to
population approximately 250 acres per white
man as against 5 acres per native.
This disproportion is so scandalously unjust
that its perpetuation can only lead to grave racial
trouble throughout South Africa. At the same
time General Botha has been inundated with
protests against so large an aUotment of land to
the natives !

118 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Confronted with this agitation within the four
provinces of South Africa, General Botha ulti
mately decided to postpone the passing of the
Administrative BiU which foUowed in the wake
of the Land Act and which was, in fact, a definite
part of the 191 3 legislation. But at the same time
General Botha appointed five smaU Committees
to examine locaUy the aUegations that the land
aUotted to the natives was either insufficient or
unsuitable. The reports of these Committees are aU in the
possession of the Government, but at the time of
going to press with this book, only one is available
in this country — that of the Eastern Transvaal
Committee. This report, unhappily, appears to
have confirmed the worst fears of the natives.
It had been hoped that the recommendations of
this Committee would have been more generous
than the Beaumont Commission ; unfortunately,
its recommendations are accompanied by much
verbose defence of, and long arguments upon,
the difficulties which attend any retention of the
best lands for natives.
It is much too late in the day to argue that
malarious lands which are impossible for the
white occupation may be suitable for natives.
This attitude belongs to a past age. The natives
now on the high veldt of the Eastern Transvaal
are for the most part educated, Christian and
progressive, and if they are evicted and sent into
the low-lying lands of the Transvaal owing to
the " necessity " of the whites, there wiU be
trouble in South Africa itself, and it is to be hoped

ADEQUACY AND SECURITY 119
a storm of protest from sympathetic Christian
communities overseas. What are to-day the
essentials in the South African land situation ?
If a separation of land ownership is to be the
settled policy of South Africa, that separation
must be fair to all races, giving adequate and
secure tenure to every individual, regardless of
colour. The land aUotted to the natives must
not merely be adequate, it must be of suitable
quality, it must be healthy, and finaUy it must
include a fair share of drinking water for cattle
and springs of water for human consumption.
Less than this would constitute a grave injustice
to the native inhabitants.
The question at once emerges — what is a fair
share of land ? This depends upon quahty and
upon that stiU more difficult problem, native
requirements. The native of South Africa has
an insatiable desire to amass, not gold, but cattle,
the object being not to breed cattle for ,the
market, but just the love of possessing vast herds
of stock. This custom means that large areas of
land are wastefuUy occupied by redundant cattle
herds which by " in-breeding " reduce the stan
dard, and multiply with such rapidity that the
dreaded "Rinderpest" actuaUy comes as a reEef
to an intolerable situation to aU but the owners
of the cattle.
It is surely the duty of the administration to
come definitely to -grips with this problem of
surplus cattle and demonstrate to the native the
importance of improving his herd in "order to
produce cattle fit for the market. Once the native

120 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
grasps the advantages of such constructive policy
there wiU be no longer any need to fear redundancy
of stock.
Until this cattle problem is solved, it will be
impossible for anyone to define what in practice
is meant by adequate lands for natives. All that
can be said in the meantime is that 40 miUion
acres of land for nearly 5 miUion natives, and 260
miUion acres for about 1 million immigrant whites,
is grotesquely inequitable and a perpetual source
of justifiable unrest throughout the Union of
South Africa.

CHAPTER II
TROPICAL AND SEMI-TROPICAL LANDS
The native systems and the principles of native
land law are almost identical in the Central and
Southern territories of the Continent, but in
South Africa these have been subject to three
centuries of dislocation under the pressure of
the varying European systems of Dutch and
British tenure, so that little remains but the hope
less confusion which to-day confronts the Union
Government of South Africa.
There are but two native states outside the
Union where the land situation can be regarded
as at all satisfactory — Swaziland and Basutoland.
Swaziland is a Protectorate under the British
Government and will for all time be regarded as
one of the most amazing illustrations of the con
cessionaire evil. When Lord Selborne endeavoured
to bring some order out of the chaos he dis
covered, in the first place, that every acre of
land had been aEenated to white men, and thus
the native had nowhere to live. Next in con
fusion he found that concessions overlapped each
other territorially; furthermore, one white man
had got the land, another had got the trees upon
the land, while yet another had got everything

122 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
under the land. In point of fact, these conces
sions went much further ; to one white man
certain taxes were conceded, to another telegraphs,
to another road-making, and to yet another a
trade monopoly. As Lord Selborne humorously
remarked : " The number of concessions given
were only limited by the available number of
boxes of champagne ! "
But the situation did not even end there, for
one white man who arrived in Swaziland with the
purpose of securing a concession discovered this
situation and obtained from the Swazis a conces
sion which granted to him anything and every
thing that had not been granted to anybody
else. But chaos did not even end there. Con
fusion was worse confounded owing to South
African rivalries, through which both Great
Britain and President Kruger for the Transvaal
Government had agreed to recognize the validity
of all these concessions !
The difficult task of unravelling the threads of
this confusion was entrusted by the British
Government to Mr. George Grey, brother of
Viscount Grey, who it wiU be remembered met
with so tragic a fate whilst hunting lions. The
recommendations of Mr. George Grey were issued
in 1906, and under these most of the Swaziland
concessions were canceUed.
Basutoland may roughly be described as a
native reserve, or a territory within the confines
of which white ownership of land is precluded.
Basutoland is, however, confronted with a two
fold land menace. First, the very fact of a white

EVICTING THE NATIVE 123
exclusion constitutes the country a veritable
Naboth's Vineyard, and secondly, the remarkable
increase of both population and live stock renders
the question of legitimate expansion a very
serious problem for both the Basutos and their
neighbour, the Union Government of South
Africa. Sir Herbert Sloley, the ex-administrator of
Basutoland, says :
" I believe the density is about forty-five to
the square mile, and when aUowance is made
for the fact that population is increasing and
a considerable proportion of these reserves
consists of mountain and forest, it becomes
evident that some improved system of intensive
culture is necessary if these people are to con
tinue to get their living from the land."
^ It wiU probably be found that the British
Imperial policy of restricting the ownership of
land to natives wiU be maintained, but some pro
vision must be made for the surplus population.
The suggestion of organizing periodic migrations
to the late German territories, attractive though
the proposal may be to white men in South
Africa, is hardly Ekely to appeal to those most
concerned — the natives of Basutoland.
The South African land problems are rendered
immensely difficult wherever white colonization
is possible, and this is of course the chief reason
why, north of the Zambesi, the only other
territory where similar conditions prevail to any
appreciable extent is East Africa, where every

124 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
excuse is put forward for removing the native from
the land he has occupied from time immemorial.
In 1912-13 the East African Native Labour Com
mission published its report. Throughout the
300 pages of its evidence are scattered hundreds
of suggestions by white witnesses for obtaining
labour by means of cutting down native land —
the right to do so is never so much as questioned !
One witness, appending what he calls " a few of
my grievances and suggestions," says :
" The Native Reserves of this country are
unnecessarily large, making it impossible to
properly control them and collect the Hut Tax.
Before any effective law can be passed with
regard to labour the Reserves must be con
siderably reduced, enabling Commissioners and
Police to trace each native if in the Reserve and
to immediately arrest him if out of the Reserve
without proper authority."
The mental attitude of this gentleman is to say
the least curious. It is apparently a personal
" grievance " to this immigrant white settler that
the indigenous owner of the land is allowed more
than in this gentleman's opinion is good for him.
Apparently, also, it is a personal " grievance "
that natives from this reserve are aUowed to
travel outside it without being arrested for the
criminal act of walking about the country God
has given them !
But this attitude is unfortunately very wide
spread throughout British East Africa ; the whole
evidence tendered to the Commission covers

EVICTING THE NATIVE 125
proposals of every sort and kind for " forcing "
fne natives to work for the white plantation
owners. One suggests making the native wear
European clothes, in order to buy which he wiU
be compeUed to seek work from the whites.
Several witnesses urged upon the Commission
the plan of making the native inhabitants labour
for nothing upon works of public utiUty, apparently
obliviou's of the fact that the native had already
discharged his administrative obligations by pay
ing taxation. But the proposal most favoured
was that of cutting down the native occupancy
of land. Mr. Fletcher, of Kyambu, said :
" If the Reserves were cut down sufficiently,
it would undoubtedly have the effect of turning
off a large number of natives, who would be
made to work for their living."
It has been the pride and glory of the best
British statecraft that it has sought to upEft the
people and to educate them to a higher standard
of industrial life. During the sittings of the
East African Commission, one witness, Mr.
Howitt, of Kyambu, actuaUy advanced the pro
position that the native should be left uneducated
in agriculture solely in order that the white
settler might profit by his ignorance ! Here is
the precious passage :
" He did not favour the idea of natives being
taught better methods of agriculture in the
Reserves, on the grounds that, if they were
taught to work in the Reserves, the tendency
K.

126 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
would be for them not to come out at aU. In
the event of the size of the Reserves being re
duced, then the effect might be different. He
did not think it would tend to increase their
requirements."
But this deplorable attitude of many settlers in
British East Africa found expression in a quarter
where one would hardly expect it. Lord Dela
mere said :
" He considered the soundest policy would
be to curtail the Reserves, and, though it
might take a few years before the effect on the
labour supply was apparent, the results would
be permanent."
And again :
" If the policy was to be continued that
every native was to be a land holder of a
sufficient area on which to estabEsh himself,
then the question of obtaining a satisfactory
labour supply would never be settled."
To the student of British colonial policy, it is
almost inconceivable that propositions such as
the foregoing should be advanced by Englishmen
in the twentieth century. The crude and vicious
assumption of property rights in our fellow men,
and after all that is at the root of the assumption,
died, we had hoped, with the rise of Abraham
Lincoln, John Brown, FoweU Buxton and Wilber-
force. This spirit must be opposed and denounced
jn season, and, if need be, out of season, until

THE UGANDA SETTLEMENT 127
equal rights are secured for every subject of the
British Crown. Happily there are men in the
Protectorate fuUy ahve to the danger of such
vicious principles, and most men will, upon
reflection, agree with Mr. John Ainsworth, the
Provincial Commissioner of the Nyanza province,
who, in reply to the question as to whether
cutting down the Reserves would bring about a
larger labour supply, indignantly brushed aside
the question and then went straight to the heart
of the matter by bluntly remarking that " He
considered such a£ proposition a highly immoral
one." It is quite clear that future years wiU witness a
long and bitter struggle for the just rights of the
natives of British East Africa ; influences are at
work with the object of taking from the native
the land he occupies to-day in order that labour
may be provided. The struggle on behalf of the
natives may he short, but more probably it will
be long, costly and almost certainly bitter.
During that struggle earnest men in the British
Isles, co-operating with good men from the
Protectorate, will need, and should have, the
help of every Christian man to whom the words
righteousness and justice mean anything at aU.
In Uganda the land settlement by Sir Harry
Johnston represented a remarkable advance upon
that of any other territory in South or East
Africa. In 1899 it became evident that the
peaceful settlement of the Protectorate could
only be assured upon a satisfactory solution of
the land problem. The Baganda had been

-128 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
showing great uneasiness because the impression
had gained currency that the British Government
intended taking the ownership of the land.
Major Woodward in his report to the War Office
said : " The idea that they would lose their lands
and become the tenants of European landlords
caused the natives (of Uganda) to look forward
with dread to the advent of European control.
This feeling has, however, been to a great
extent dispelled owing to the general arrange
ment regarding the land settlement effected
during 1900-1."
The 1 900- 1 land settlement was the work of
the Commission presided over by Sir Harry
Johnston. The first principle of the agreement
is that the ownership of all lands beneficiaUy
occupied is vested in the native. The term
" beneficiaUy occupied " includes not merely
native towns, viUages, and gardens, but hunting
grounds and areas within the perimeter of which
rotation of crops, hunting and tribal movements
have been practised. There was thus secured to
the native inhabitants security of adequate tenure
for every conceivable native requirement.
The second main principle was that aU genuinely
waste and unoccupied land became the property
of the local administration. Thus land stiU
remained the possession of the people of Uganda
while the control of these waste lands passed to
the administration for lease and disposal either
to indigenous people or immigrant colonists.

THE UGANDA SETTLEMENT 129
It is important to bear in mind that the adminis
trative authority assumed control of the waste
lands in its capacity of Trustee for the Pro
tectorate. But even this limited surrender of control over
waste land was not made without compensation,
for the foUowing terms were arranged :
" In return for the cession to Her Majesty's
Government of the right of control over 10,550
square miles of waste, cultivated, uncultivated
or forest lands there shall be paid by Her
Majesty's Government in trust for the Kabaka
(upon his attaining his majority) a sum of £500
and to the other Regents collectively £600,
namely to the Katikiro £300 and the other two
Regents £150 each."
Also a pension to Mbogo, a Mohammedan chief,
of £250 per annum. This is of course in addition
to the guaranteed allowance of £1,500 per annum
to the Kabaka as Paramount.
The reason the Baganda accepted this agreement
so promptly was due primarily to the fact that it
recognized native tribal ownership over land in
beneficial occupation, and secondly, state owner
ship only over all " waste " lands. It wiU be
observed that all the Imperial Government asked
and all the Baganda surrendered was the " right
of control " (not the ownership) over about
10,000 square miles. A further clause in the
agreement -stipulated that aU revenues derived
from the waste lands either by lease or sale would
be devoted to administrative purposes.

1 30 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Great Britain prides herself most upon the
land system of Northern Nigeria. In this huge
territory Britain's colonial authorities beUeve
they have evolved a system which, as a piece of
constructive work, sets an inspiring example to
every other administrator in the African continent,
if not to every government in the tropical and
semi-tropical regions of the world. As against
this theory there are many native criticisms, but
whether or not these are well-founded depends
almost entirely upon the good faith of the
British Government in its promise to educate
the native inhabitants in the art of modern
self-government. The foundation principle upon which the
system is erected is thus set forth :
" The whole of the lands of the Protectorate
of Northern Nigeria, whether occupied or un
occupied on the date of the commencement of
this Proclamation, are hereby declared to be
native lands."*
The foregoing principle only consecrates what
is after aU the basis of native land tenure through
out negro Africa, the communal conception that
land is the property of the entire human race, and
that none can hold a monopoly, not even the
Paramount Chief. African history teems with
stories of autocratic and barbarous rulers with
herds of cattle and slaves by the hundred, and the
fairest of women either as wives or concubines,
but where in these histories are the Chieftains
* Laws of Northern Nigeria, Vol. Ixv, 1910.

THE NIGERIAN SYSTEM 131
powerful enough to earmark for private revenue
the land of the people ? I venture to assert such
cannot be named.
The second main principle sets forth the doc
trine of Trusteeship :
" All native lands, and aU rights over the
same, are hereby declared to be. under the con
trol and subject to the disposition of the
Governor, and shaU be held and administered
for the use and common benefit of the natives
of Northern Nigeria ; and no title to the
occupation and use of any such lands shaU be
vaEd without the consent of the Governor."*
This section consecrates one of the most prevalent
and most rigorously restricted native customs,
whereby the Paramount Chief, the Head of the
State, controls the lands, of the country, not as
owner, but as trustee for the nation. " For the
use and common benefit of the natives " seems at
first sight to go somewhat further than native
custom, but in practice this is not so, because any
aEen may, subject to tribal sanction, become an
integral part of the tribe which carries with it the
right to occupy land sufficient to provide sus
tenance. The third principle is set forth in section 4 :
" The Governor, in the exercise of the
powers conferred upon him by this Proclama
tion with respect to any land, shaU have regard
to the native laws and customs existing in the
district in which such land is situated."!
* Lazes of Northern Nigeria, Vol. Ixv, 1910. t Ibid.

132 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
This principle, Eke the two preceding ones,
involves a minimum of disturbance and recog
nizes native law and custom as the governing
factor. These three cardinal principles safeguarding
native rights have been laid down by the Britioh
Government in spite of the fact that large areas
of Northern Nigeria had been conquered by the
British Imperial forces.
The first principle consecrates native national
ownership, the second that tlie Governor is in
this matter the native national Trustee for
national lands, and the third that in any lease or
disposal of lands the Governor as Paramount
Chief and National Trustee is restricted in his
action by native law and custom. Thus the
Nigerian system precludes the European concep
tion of both commercial ownership and individual
ownership tenure.
It is futile, however, to close our eyes to the
fact that many natives have adopted a hostile
attitude towards this system, a few because the
Northern Nigerian principles prevent the aliena
tion of freehold title by natives to those Europeans
who, regardless of native welfare, are ever on the
look-out for " concessions " of land which too
toften lead to native unrest whenever the con
cessionaire attempts to assert his rights.
The principal objection is on more solid ground,
namely, that it places the control of aU land opera
tions in the hands of the Governor. There is
undoubtedly good cause for this criticism, but
the answer is a strong one, namely, that this

THE RHODESIAN SCANDAL 133
" control " is only vested in the Governor as
Paramount until a local government has been
evolved capable ~-©f administering the several
departments of State.
This answer, strong though it is, is only a
temporary one, and implies the obligation that no
time should be lost in setting up a land department
controlled in part at least by native chiefs ; once
this standard has been reached native apprehen
sions would be allayed and the criticisms of to-day
Would lose much of their force.
But more important than all these is the
historic Rhodesian Land Case, the legal con
sideration of which by the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council occupied over four years, 1914-
191 8, and the ramifications of the decision of
this, the highest tribunal in the British Empire,
have not yet reached their final limits.
The case was of special importance to natives,
because, for the first time in British history, they
appeared before the Judicial Committee in the
person of Mr. Leslie Scott. The case arose from
a most extraordinary claim of the British South
Africa Company.
The Chartered Company, to give it the name
by which it is popularly known, claimed the entire
lands of Southern Rhodesia as its commercial
property ; the land already alienated to white men
by the Company was excluded. The area claimed
as the private property of the shareholders in
cluded, besides aU waste lands, every square foot
of land occupied by the natives ; thuo, if the
Company had won its case, the entire native-

134 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
inhabitants would have been rendered Jandless
in their own country.
In Sir Godfrey Lagden's report of 1905 the
evidence is produced of Mr. John Kerr, who said
of Rhodesia and the attitude of the Chartered
Company :
" I think that Natives are bound, in a country
Eke this, to be provided with land. I think that
is only fair and just to the Natives, seeing that
the Chartered Company have really practicaUy
confiscated the whole of the lands, and that they
are only Eving on sufferance, and therefore I say
it is the bounden duty of the Chartered Com
pany to see that if the Native does not like to
go out to the mines, he has somewhere he may
caU his home."
How completely the Company had confiscated
native indigenous title is shown by a passage- in
the Rhodesian Report on Native Affairs issued in
191 1. The Committee, referring to the so-called
" unalienated land " occupied by the natives, said :
" We see no objection to the present system
of allowing natives to occupy the unaEenated
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."
These lands caUed " unaEenated " claimed as
the commercial property of the Company were in

TESTING THE ISSUES 135
fact occupied, and had been occupied from time
immemorial by the native inhabitants, and yet a
Commission of Company's officials actuaUy ex
presses the opinion that there is no objection to
a system which subjects these native inhabitants
either to eviction, or tribute to aEen white men !
The claim of the Chartered Company, which
covered 73,000,000 acres of land and included
the entire native reserves, reposed upon the three
fold title of {a) Concession, (b) Forcible Occupa
tion' — Conquest, (c) Possession and Development.
The British CroWn, the white settlers of
Rhodesia and the natives opposed the claim, and
the cases of the respective parties were at different
periods in the hands of the foUowing Counsel
who, with their Juniors, were responsible for the
legal documents and speeches in this four years'
case : Lords Buckmaster, Birkenhead, Findlay,
Robert Cecil, Sir John Simon, Sir Erie Richards,
Sir Hamar Greenwood, Sir George Cave, The
Lord Advocate, Sir Gordon Hewart and Mr.
LesEe Scott. The briUiant array of legal
"opinion is in itself an indication of the supreme
importance of this constitutional case.
The natives advanced as their main pleas the
contention that :
(a) Their lands had never been aEenated
by Lobengula nor by their Chiefs.
(b) The British Crown, whose subjects they
were not, but to whom they were bound
by a treaty of Amity, had never dis
possessed them of their lands.

136 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
(c) The Company's Administration had never
by any formal or legal instrument
alienated their lands from them.
The Judgment in the case was issued by their
Lordships of the Judicial Committee on July 29th,
191 8. It is a document of 15,000 words and by
its general terms the claim of the Company to the
lands was set aside.
Upon the - key question of Concession, the
Judgment of the Committee was clear. This
capital feature of the case circled round the
concession granted by King Lobengula to a
German financier named Amandus Lippert, and
of this document their Lordships said :
" As a title deed to the unaEenated lands it
is valueless."
The Judgment holds up to healthy scorn and
ridicule the arguments which, following African
precedents, the Chartered Company has reposed
upon this famous Lippert concession :
" The consequences of the construction
wliich the Company puts on the document
would indeed be. extreme. It would follow
that Herr Lippert was, or could become at
pleasure, owner of the entire kingdom — for
nothing is reserved in favour of the inhabitants
— from the kraals of the King's wives to his
father's grave or the scene of assembly of his
indunas and his pitso. Thenceforward the
entire tribe were sojourners on sufferance
where they had ranged in arms, dependent

CHARTERED COMPANY'S DEFEAT 137
on the good nature of this stranger from,
Johannesburg even for gardens in which to
grow their mealies, and pastures on which to
graze their cattle. The Lippert concession
may have some value as helping to explain how
and why the Crown came to confer the adminis
tration of Southern Rhodesiaupon the Company,
but as a title deed to the unalienated lands it
is valueless."
The attempt by the Company to establish
title by any argument of forcible possession or
conquest met with an equally ignominious fate.
During the whole eleven days' hearing of the
case, probably the most fascinating morning was
the one during which the Lord Advocate endea
voured to establish contributory title on the
ground of " Conquest." He knew perfectly weU
the extreme danger of advancing this argument,
but with extraordinary skill he threw out the
atmosphere and the glamour of " conquest "
without even once using the actual word. Again
and again, first one and then another of their
Lordships attempted to draw out that fatal word,
but with reaUy superb ability Mr. Clyde avoided
the pitfaU. The Judgment, however, once more
reaffirmed that bulwark of the British Consti
tution :
" If there was a conquest by the Company's
arms, then by weU settled constitutional
practice, that conquest was on behalf of the
Crown. It rested with Her Majesty's advisers
to say what should be done with it. . . ."

138 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Thus ended the long struggle against the pre
posterous claim of the Chartered Company,
namely, that every foot of land in Southern
Rhodesia not in the possession of white men
belonged not to the Crown, nor to the inhabitants,
but to the shareholders of the Chartered Company.
Of the three opponents of the Company, the
Crown won most, in that legal title became
vested in the British Crown as Trustee for the
inhabitants. The real position is best summed
up in the foUowing passages :
" Their Lordships think it sufficient to say
that, except in so far, if at aU, as the rights of
the Crown are subject to those of the Natives
and the Company, nothing has been shown to
have happened or to have been done that would
prevent the Crown, if and when the Company's
tenure of the administration of Southern
Rhodesia determines, from disposing of the
lands then remaining unalienated by any
lawful means and in favour of any persons or
purposes, as it may duly be advised. . . ."
The natives came an easy second to the
Crown in what they secured. The white settlers
received but scant attention in the Judgment.
In the first place the natives gained the enormous
advantage of finding the lands they occupy no
longer under the control of the Chartered
Company's shareholders, but under the direct
control of the Crown, and, as will be observed
from the above passage, Crown rights are to some
extent at least subject to indigenous rights.

NABOTH'S VINEYARD 139
Next to this the natives, it is hoped, have
removed from' them the menace of a perpetual
temptation to cut down their reserves. Prior
to the Judgment, the Company's claim to the
commercial ownership of the reserves meant
that it was always in the interest of the Company
to make out a case for cutting off the best portions
of the reserves, and the natives were thus con
stantly exposed to the threat of eviction; indeed
whilst the case was proceeding it had been de
cided to evict the natives from 6,000,000 acres
of reserves and place them elsewhere on 5,000,000
acres. But the position to-day is that none of the
lands have been returned to the natives of which
they had been dispossessed upon the untenable
assumption that good title was inherent in both
Concession and Conquest — both titles are now
declared invaEd. Furthermore the natives possess
no secure title to the reserves. Coincident with
the preparation of the native case a Reserves
Commission was appointed of which the foUowing
facts are of capital importance :
1. The Commission was composed princi-
paUy of Chartered Company's officials or
ex-officials, and under its then claim
the Company stood to gain financiaUy
by any cutting down of the Reserves.
2. Not only was there no missionary upon
the Commission, but not even a Native
Commissioner, although the subject
dealt primarily with Native affairs.

140 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Lord Harcourt suggested that a repre
sentative of the Native Affairs Depart
ment be nominated, but the Company
ignored this, and a situation was actu
ally created whereby the Company's
Surveyor-General, who for years had
advocated the cutting down of the
Reserves, was appointed.
The Rey. A. Shear ley Cripps, the courageous
missionary of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel, comments as follows upon the results
of this Commission :
" Its (the Commission's) findings assuredly
achieve a not very masterly handling of
apparently conflicting interests as between
black and white feUow-subjects in one province
of our Empire. If we believe in the cry that
is being raised at this very time on behaff of
subject races and weaker nations, that they
should be aUowed to develop on their own
lines, why not be consistent and try to practice
in Africa, what we EngEsh preach in Europe ? "
Bare justice demands that the foUowing rea
sonable land conditions should be secured for
the Mashona and Matabele tribes of Southern
Rhodesia :
r. Secure title to their reserves.
2. The cessation of evictions from reserve
areas.

FUNDAMENTALS 141
3. Permission accorded to all tribes to con
tinue to live upon their ancestral lands
without the obligation to pay other
than administrative taxation.
Until these modest reforms have been .secured,
the Matabele and Mashona people have a well-
founded grievance against the British adminis
tration of Southern Rhodesia.
The land problem of Africa is fundamental,
because upon land tenure rests the superstructure
of the whole social life of the people. It divides
itself broadly into the two categories — land where
white colonization is possible, and tropical lands
where the white man can never be other than a
temporary resident. In the South of the con
tinent, the Zambesi is the dividing line, and in
the Northern part of the continent the Sahara
and the Sudan.
In tropical areas the ownership of all lands
should be vested in the local States, with a system
of leaseholds for white merchants and white
industry. To the native ' inhabitants must be
left intact aU rights of native lands and all virgin
produce. In both tropical and colonizable regions the
State should retain ownership, and in territories
where white colonization is possible, native tribes
should be given secure title to aU lands beneficiaUy
occupied by them. The system of Reserves
wherever adopted should provide both security,
adequacy and fertiEty, and reserve areas only
aEenable for indispensable public works, and only

142 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
then upon the same conditions as those attaching
to white men when they are caUed upon to sur
render land for pubEc purposes. The difficulties
which attach to the ownership of minerals are
easily overcome by the simple expedient of
declaring all minerals the property of the State.
This programme would give to the native con
tentment, to the white man prosperity, and to the
Government peace, progress and the loyalty of
its subjects.

PART IV
I. Racial Contact — The Sale of Alcohol
II. Social Contact — Polygamy and the Re
lationship of the Sexes

CHAPTER I
RACIAL CONTACT — THE SALE OF ALCOHOL
In the social world racial contact between the
white and coloured races of Africa involves a
whole series of intricate and most difficult prob
lems. The forces of Christianity find themselves
confronted by such thorny indigenous problems
as polygamy, irregular sexual relationships amongst
the natives, and on the other hand the menace of
white conduct as* expressed in the unrestricted
sale and consumption of alcohol, widespread sexual
abuses and consequent disease. All these are to a
very considerable extent dovetailed one within the
other and together constitute the^nost formidable
obstacle to the progress of the Christian faith.
It is impossible for anyone to defend the
unrestricted sale of alcohol to the natives of
Africa, at the same time so much heat is often
engendered in any discussion of this subject
that the essential factors are too often submerged
beneath floods of almost passionate declamation.
The chief difficulty is the tendency which exists
to measure African conditions from the insular
standpoint of the British islands.
The outstanding fact in the opposition to the
sale of ardent spirits is that the forces of Christ-
145

146 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
ianity have always led the way. It can never be
their duty, as some seem to think, to point out
the difficulties of Governments in this matter.
"One thing they know, and one thing only, alcohol
is a danger to the natives of Africa and of tropical
regions in particular, and must be resolutely
opposed. The leaders of the Christian Church
have been charged with exaggerating the evil
and their motives have been impugned, but
happily these charges have come into their right
perspective and everyone agrees now that the
sale of alcohol introduced into these countries
by European and American civiUzation is an
unmitigated evil.
In British West Africa, more particularly in
the Gold Coast, the evil is very marked. Sir
Hugh Clifford states that during the last 25
years there has been an apparent increase of 35
per cent, importation, although in view of the
increasing rate of population this may not
necessarily mean increased consumption by the
natives. In French West Africa the sale of alcohol
was, up to 191 2, quite the most pernicious evil
in the equatorial regions. In South Africa,
where the sale is everywhere illegal, there are
always white men prepared to run almost any risk
in order to smuggle alcohol into the compounds.
Mr. Schumacher, the well-known mine owner
of the Randt, recently stated: "The illicit
liquor traffic should be impossible on the Wit-
watersrand, but during last year (19 15) or so
it had greatly increased and was now assuming
terrifying proportions."

ALCOHOL , 147
The three main Enes~bf attack upon the traffic
to-day are (1) heavy duties, (2) the supply of
alternative drink and (3) prohibition.
In British East and South Africa there are large
prohibited areas, and sale is iUegal to natives
throughout the Union territories and contiguous
Protectorates. Prohibition also obtains through
out the Belgian Congo. In certain West African
regions the duties imposed by the British Govern
ment are the highest in the whole continent,
reaching in some cases 6s. 3d. a gallon. One of
the strongest arguments against restricting con
sumption by heavy duties is that it has become
the most fruitful and reliable source of revenue.
This is a two-edged weapon, for it exposes
the local administration to the charge that " the
Government lives on the drink traffic." The
abolition of the duty would in the first place lead
to the imposition of direct taxation upon the
natives, involving without question a good deal of
political disturbance. The abolition of the duty
and the prohibition of the sale in British terri
tories would morebver give an enormous impetus
to smuggling from over the boundaries of neigh
bouring states where the import and sale might
be less rigidly safeguarded. These are the two
paramount administrative difficulties from the
Government standpoint.
But even in the consumption of drink the native
assuredly has rights. Africa is a dry and thirsty
land where little good water is supplied and where
a man may often drink only at his peril. Is it
not therefore the boundeiL, duty of civilization,

148 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
whilst restricting the sale of ardent spirits, to
encourage the native to manufacture suitable
and relatively harmless native drinks ? There
is no comparison between European distiUed
spirits and the native drinks of Africa. Irish and
Scotch whiskies and gin contain from 45 to 60
per cent, of alcohol; put a i match to them and
they burn with scorching flame ! The foaming
wines of the Raphia, Borassus and Oil palms
possess, according to Sir Harry Johnston, only
2 to 3 per cent, of alcohol, whilst miUet and maize
beers seldom exceed 2 per cent. As Sir Harry
Johnston so _ characteristicaUy remarks : " The
native fermented drinks might make people
quarrelsome, but they do not make them mad."
If the African has the right to drink something,
and it is wrong for him to drink European alcohol,
then in the name of common sense and justice
he has a right to drink his relatively harmless
native liquors. If he is denied this right, it is the
bounden duty of those who deny the right to
provide some substitute other than disease in
fected water. It was the irresistible logic of this
position which some years ago impeUed certain
men interested in native affairs in South- Africa
to start a brewery for the manufacture of native
drink. But crude prohibition of the sale of alcohol
raises one pertinent question which diplomacy
requires should never be mentioned — Is it right,
is it politically sound to deny alcohol to the native
of Africa and permit consumption to the white
and coloured immigrant into Africa ? This is

THE EUROPEAN AND ALCOHOL 149
a feature which most men discreetly forget or-
conveniently ignore. The Christian Church can
never tolerate a colour-bar for the consumption
of alcohol. It is absurd to argue that if the
African drinks European alcohol he goes to perdi
tion, and if the white man drinks the same stuff
he goes to Heaven ! This argument might have
been imposed upon the African a century ago,
but it won't do to-day, for if there is to be ho
colour-line in the practice of evil or in the pursuit
of good — it foUows that what is wrong for the
African must be declared wrong for the white
man. The monstrous absurdity of this situation not
infrequently produces ludicrous and embarrassing
illustrationsv In one territory the natives had
heard ad nauseam of the evils attendant upon
drinking European alcohol, when, lo ! one fine
Sunday morning, as the natives gathered together
for Divine worship, the local Administrator
raided the congregation for carriers, and made the
coloured preacher carry hL case of " whiskies and
sodas." That an apology was afterwards ten
dered to the local bishop mitigated somewhat the
offence, but it did not alter the fact of the
occurrence, still less could it obliterate the in
cident from a retentive native memory. Again,
the congregation of a church listening to the
earnest sermon of another preacher was disturbed,
and the service temporarily suspended, through
a white man rolling into the church in such an in
ebriate condition that four native church-officers
had to carry him out and home. Again, the absur-

150 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
dity is obvious in official visits to native chiefs . The
practice at these receptions is for the Chief or
Ruler to provide European spirits for the white
officials, and yet the evils of purchasing and drink
ing the spirit are ceaselessly dinned into the ears
of both Chiefs and people !
The vital question for the Christian Church is
whether it is going to allow, or even acquiesce
in, a colour line in wrong doing. There can be
no question that the consumption of European
alcohol in the tropics has a demoralizing effect
upon the natives — upon that everyone is agreed.
There is equally, amongst impartial observers,
general agreement that the consumption of alcohol
by whites is largely responsible for their physical
and mental deterioration. Sir Harry Johnston
says : " I can only say that in my own personal
experience any form of distiUed alcohol is a
poison, especially to a system enfeebled by much
malarial fever. I know that, physicaUy, most
other Europeans in Africa are, as I am, unable
to drink distiUed spirits, even diluted with
water, without suffering more or less directly.
I am also aware that the consumption of brandy,
rum, gin, etc., has been disastrous to European
enterprises in Tropical and in South Africa.
It has lost us battles, it has provoked many
needless quarrels with native races, it has led
naturally honest men into dishonest courses,
and has blighted and ruined many a promising
career. I formed these opinions after my first

THE COLOUR LINE 151
visit to Tropical Africa between 1882 and 1883,
and from that visit came back a convinced
abolitionist and teetotaller, so far as ardent
spirits were concerned."
There is but one clear and logical attitude for
the Christian man, either to leave the subject
severely alone or advocate total prohibition
regardless of a colour line in tropical and semi-
tropical regions. In self-governing territories the
people can decide this matter for themselves,
but in the dependencies the "civilized" na
tions of Europe and America have no right to
prejudice future administrative development by
estabhshing a traffic which can only lead to
ultimate disaster. This does not mean that under
no circumstances could a man obtain limited
supplies of whisky, gin or brandy, but such con
sumption should be under medical control, and at
the same time the privilege granted by that
medical certificate must, if extended at all, be
extended regardless of the colour degree of the
patient. But what should be the attitude of the Church
in the self-governing territories of Africa ? The
only self-governing areas affected at present are
the four Provinces of the Union of South Africa —
Cape Colony, the Transvaal, Natal, and the
Orange River Colony. The only sound basic
principle is equality either of rights or restriction.
To-day there is a colour line in the sale of alcohol.
The white man may, and in fact does in aU too
many cases, stagger helplessly down the streets of

152 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
Johannesburg and Kimberley, a pitiable spectacle
for the natives. The Chinaman, and the British
Indian, if so minded, may foUow his example, but
the African native is forbidden to touch the
unclean thing. It is no use arguing to-day that
because the white man is more capable of seff-
control than the native he should be aUowed to
purchase alcohol, for however much this argument
may appeal to the politician, the Christian Church
can have no part or lot in it. In the first place it
exposes the Christian Church to an initial danger
of s'erious magnitude — if self-control is the quaE-
fying passport to consumption of alcohol, and
self-control is, as we know it to be, one of the
virtues of the Christian, then the man, no matter
what colour his skin, who becomes a Christian
obtains upon conversion the certificate to drink !
There is a further danger — is the premise
sound that the white man is capable of the
necessary self-control ? Of course it is not, the
argument is both absurd and dishonest. Stripped
of cant and humbug is not this the position F
The white man knows quite weU that the con
sumption of ardent spirits is bad for the human
organism, that its continuous consumption pro
gressively destroys' the self-control of every
human species and that the white man to-day in
Africa is either disinclined or too much of a moral
jelly-fish to give it up himself, but even knowing
it to be so bad, he is prepared to deny it to any
other section of the human race but himself !
Another danger is that the African knows aU
this perfectly weU; he knows that this plea of

TOTAL PROHIBITION 153
»
racial self-control is at best but a matter of degree ;
he has moreover daily and nightly ocular evidence
that alcohol makes the " white boss " as siUy and
sometimesjis mad as it does the black man, and
that in short this racial blather is just so much
hypocrisy. ~ The Christian Church can only take
up one attitude towards the consumption of
spirits, namely that it is bad and therefore should,
like other potent drugs, be kept under the lock and
key of the physician who alone knows its real
potency. If the Christian Church admits the value and
desirabihty of the consumption of spirits for the
white man, it must logicaUy admit consumption
to the African; — any other position is untenable.

CHAPTER II
SOCIAL CONTACT — POLYGAMY AND THE
RELATIONSHIP OF THE SEXES
Civilized governments and the Christian Church
find themselves confronted throughout the African
continent with polygamy. The custom of poly
gamy is not merely a continuous menace to
Church organization, but the factor which ever
and anon threatens first in one area then in
another the stability of the Christian Church.
The forces of Christianity are unhappily
gravely to blame in this matter, and some way
out of the present impasse, some means of re
moving the confusion created, some way of
redress must be found for the wrongs unthinking
missionaries have committed, if the Christian
Church is to establish herself permanently as the
consistent guide in the evolution of a higher
African civilization.
The initial difficulty arises from the fact that
upon the question of polygamy Christian mission
aries are not merely divided, but sub-divided
into several camps confounding themselves and
confusing the native by varying interpretations.
There is in fact hardly a feature of polygamy upon
which there is general agreement.
The first dividing line is the scriptural warrant
154

SCRIPTURAL WARRANT? 155
for monogamy. The natives themselves are
quick to give Biblical authority for polygamy ;
they remind missionaries of the cardinal fact that
the Old Testament saints were polygamists, and
that although David had many wives, yet the
testimony of the Lord was : " David who kept
my commandments, and who foUowed me with
aU his heart to do that only which was right in
mine eyes."* To this is added the difficulty
that there is no New Testament authority for
insisting upon monogamy as a condition of
Church membership ; indeed, the passage in
St. Paul's letter that " A bishop then must be
blameless, the husband of one wife," clearly
implies that monogamy was not a condition of
general membership in the early Church. The
nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel
appears to give much more soEd ground for a New
Testament warrant for monogamy, but it does not
appear to exclude from spiritual membership the
man with more than one wife.
This fundamental uncertainty finds .echo in
the ranks of Christian missionaries themselves,
but far more so amongst native Christians,
particularly in West Africa and in certain parts of
Natal. One' body wiU admit polygamists to
membership, but not to the Ordinances, another
wiU deny membership altogether, yet another
insists upon the total abandonment of aU wives
but one, regardless of consequences to the wives.
Within the compass of this confusion there are
cross-currents upon subsidiary points which feave
" 1 Kings, xiv. 8.

156 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the native perplexed in mind and doubtful in
faith. This confusion gives to critics, friendly and
unfriendly, abundant opportunity to " score "
against missionary work. Three quite typical
critics of missionary work are Mary Kingsley,
Mr. Morel, and Dr. Blyden, each of whom looked
at the question from quite different angles and
consequently adopt quite distinct attitudes. To
aU three the progress of Christianity in Africa
is primarily a mere " problem " and in no sense
a sacred obligation imposed by Divine command,
and a vital element in the evolution of Africa, and
thus they appear to devote more energy to
criticism. Mary Kingsley, though a warm admirer of the
devotion of the Christian missionary and the most
tender of critics, teUs a good story in her own
inimitable way of the embarrassment of a Chief
torn between a desire to Eve up to the prevaiEng
standard of Christian demands and that of
abandoning his superfluous wives :
" An old chief, who had three wives, pro
foundly and vividly beUeved that exclusion from
the Holy Communion meant an eternal damna
tion. The missionary had instructed him in
the details of this damnation thoroughly, and
the chief did not like the prospect at aU ; but
on the other hand he did not like to turn off
the three wives he had lived with for years.
He found the matter was not even to be com
promised, by turning off two and going to

THE NATIVE DILEMMA 157
church to be married with accompanying hymns
and orange-blossoms with number three, for
the ladies held together ; not one of them
would marry him and let the other two go, so
the poor old chief worried himself to a shammock
and anybody else he could get to listen to him.
His white trader friejids told him not to be
such an infernal ass. Some of his black feUow
chiefs said the missionary was quite right, and
the best thing for him to do would be to hand
over to them the three old wives, and go and
marry a young girl from the mission school.
Personally they were not yet afflicted with
scruples on the subject of polygamy, and of
course (being ' missionary man ' now) he would
not think of taking anything for his wives, so
they would do their best, as friends, to help
him out of the difficulty. Others of his black
feUow chiefs, less advanced in culture, just
said : 'What sort of fool palaver you make;'
and spat profusely. The poor old man smelt
heU fire, and cried ' Yo, yo, yo,' and beat his
hands upon the ground. It was a moral mess
of the first water aU round. StiU do not
imagine the mission-field is full of yo-yoing
old chiefs ; for although the African is un
decided, he is also very ingenious, particularly
in dodging inconvenient moral principles."*
Mr. Morel is a more detached observer, less
humorous, but an equally serious student of
Africa, and in discussing the relative position
* Travels in West Africa, p. 212.
M

158 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
of Christianity and Islam, says with regard to
polygamy :
" Everything is against Christianity as pre
sented to the Nigerian (I venture to emphasize
this), and everything is in favour of Islam,
although Christianity, in itself, contains more
that should appeal to the Negro character than
does Mohammedanism."*
And again :
" Family bonds are equaUy threatened by
Christianity, as propounded to the Nigerian, for
it trains the child, whether deUberately or
otherwise, to look upon his parents as living a
Ufe of sin, thus introducing^ subversive element
into the household."t
The problem of polygamy in Africa faUs roughly
into a threefold category — (a) what are the
declared advantages ; {b) how far are these weU-
founded ; (c) what should be the attitude of the
Christian Church.
Dr. Blyden and Mr. Morel place in the fore
front the argument that polygamy leads to
increased population over monogamous territories.
Other writers assert that polygamy is productive
of a healthier race owing to the fact that under
polygamous conditions it is possible for the
expectant mother to enjoy a " perfect rest "
during the period of gestation. The third advan
tage is stated by Dr. Blyden to be that it prevents
spinsterhood and prostitution.
* Nigeria, p. 214. t Ibid., p. 215.

DR. BLYDEN ON POLYGAMY 159
" Under the African marriage system," he
says, " there are no ' women of the under
world,' no ' slaves of the abyss.' Every woman
is above ground, protected and sheltered.
" Again : we are told by English periodicals
"that there are a little over five miUions of
unmarried women in Great Britain and the
number is increasing. It is stated also that in
the City of London alone there are 80,000
professional outcasts.
" We are quite sure that there are not so
many unmarried women in the whole of Africa
between the Atlantic and the Red Sea and from
the Cape to the Mediterranean.
" Now, if polygamy has done nothing else
it has saved and is saving Africa from aU these
evils. Is this nothing to be thankful for f
We are not confronted by those frightful evils,
which in Europe and America are the despair
of the guardians of public order and the re
formers of public morals."*
And (Mr. Morel) :
" Islam, on the other hand, despite its short
comings, does not, from the Nigerian point of-
view, demand race suicide of the Nigerian as an
accompaniment of conversion." t
This latter quotation is of course very " strong
meat." It goes much further than probably any
other writer has gone, whilst there wiU be
complete unanimity amongst Christian men in
* African Life and Customs. C M. Phillips.
t Nigeria. Smith Elder.

160 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
repeUing the reaUy serious accusation that the
forces of Christianity are pursuing a policy which
leads to race suicide. Whilst it is imperative that
such opinions and criticisms should be carefuUy
considered, it is probable that the exaggerated
form in which they are expressed is their most
effective contradiction.
The late Dr. Blyden was one of the most
notable products of West Africa, a sincere
Mohammedan and a close student of religion and
sociology both of Africa and Europe. The con
tributions of Dr. Blyden were always characterized
by deep earnestness, no trace of bitterness is to be
found in them; his writings thus form a unique
source of information upon African questions.
Upon the relative question of European and
African marriage laws Dr. Blyden says :
" Africa solved the marriage question for
herself thousands of years ago. It has needed
no revision and no amendment, because founded
upon the law of Nature and not upon the
dictum of any ecclesiastical hierarchy. Europe
is still grappling with the problem, and finds
that not only is her solution unsatisfactory,
but out of it have grown other difficult ques
tions. ' There is not one social question,'
said Gambetta, ' there are social questions'
" This question is one which is so serious
in its consequences in aU tropical countries,
that it cannot be too earnestly enquired into
by those who have the wehare of the race at
heart. The marriage laws of Europe have

DR. BLYDEN ON POLYGAMY 161
proved disastrous in the equatorial regions of
the globe ; and sooner or later the question
must command much greater attention from
the imperial races than it has hitherto re
ceived."* How far are these assumptions weU founded ?
There is at least a germ of truth in a few of them,
whilst there is another side to aU of them.
It is extremely doubtful whether polygamy does
in fact anywhere lead to an increased birth-rate.
So far as the negro and negroid African is con
cerned, the most populous areas are mono-
gamistic. East and West Africa are far less
densely populated than South Africa, whilst all
statistics show a greater increase in South Africa
and amongst the monogamistic negroes of the
Southern States of America than is to be found
in territories where polygamy is supposed to be
more prevalent.
It is frequently argued that the South African
races are polygamous. This is, of course, true,
but is in fact only half true. In theory the whole
of the tribes south of the Zambesi are polygamous,
but it is in theory only. The simple fact is too
readily overlooked that the rate of increase
amongst any population is determined by the
woman and not by the man. Dr. Theal, whose
literature on South Africa is second to none,
performed invaluable service by producing
striking facts on this feature of the question.
In the evidence gathered by Dr. Theal was a
• African Life and Customs. C. M. Phillips.

1 62 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
report from Mr. Donald Strachan, one of the
oldest residents of Griqualand ; Mr. Strachan
made one return embracing 984 women, the
wives both of monogamists and polygamists :
Out of 984 women, there were 591 the wives of
polygamists with 3,298 children, or 5.58 children
to each mother.
The remaining 393 women, the wives of
monogamists, had together 2,223 children, or an
average of 5.65 children to each mother, actually
a higher birth-rate than the polygamists !
Mr. Maurice Evans tells us* that in Natal, as
in other parts of South Africa, monogamy and
not polygamy is the rule ; for out of 5,981
marriages in Natal in 1909, 3,465 were mono
gamous, that in the 1,525 cases over 1,061 were
marrying a second woman, whilst only 21 were
being married to more than the sixth wife.
In 1902 the returns given of 607,762 married
men showed that of these over 516,600 were
monogamous ; 69,846 men had two wives, less
than 15,000 had three wives, whilst the highest
number of wives possessed by any man was 46.
The question of polygamy in Africa is one of
real urgency for the forces of Christianity. Agree
ment is probably impossible upon every detail,
but there should be general support for main prin
ciples. Any violent breaking down of polygamy
which involves injustice to and the degradation of
certain wives cannot be tolerated. The denial of
Church membership to the polygamist at the
time of conversion cannot be defended upon
* Black and White in South-East Africa.

RELATIONSHIP OF THE SEXES 163
scriptural grounds, and should therefore be
abandoned. Monogamy, being the ideal state
for social and spiritual peace and enjoyment,
should be the condition of holding office in any
Christian Community. Given the acceptance
of these three broad principles, much of the irri
tating detail of to-day would vanish from the
troubled vision of the African.
In social contact there is one deplorable fea
ture which cannot be overlooked, namely sexual
relationships. The record of the white men and
some white women of aU nations in this respect
has hardly a redeeming feature. The percentage
of unmarried white men outside missionary
circles who cohabit with African womanhood is
deplorably high — probably more than 90 per cent.
The races differ but little so far^as the practice
is concerned, but continental nationalities live
this life openly with the one redeeming feature
that, generaUy speaking, the coloured offspring is
cared for and educated. The Britisher lives the
life, brings forth, and then, wherever practicable,
abandons the children, the only redeeming
feature in his case being that the Britisher is,
generaUy speaking, so thoroughly ashamed of him
self that everything is done to cover up his shame.
It is useless to ignore the fact of the kindred but
far graver question of the relationship of black men
towards white women, allegations of which have
led to the frightful lynchings in the Southern
States of America whereby, within the last thirty
years, nearly 3,000 negroes have been lynched
under conditions which lacked nothing in horror.

1 64 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
The African has an extraordinarily logical mind,
and is now questioning why his women folk should
be debauched by white men whereas such grave
penalties are attached to sexual relationship
between the African and white women. The
facilities for visiting Europe, where there are no
such penalties, but where actual inducements
exist, are becoming well known over large areas
of the continent. No amount of argument," no
passage of legal enactments wiU touch this serious
situation, the menace of which is rapidly growing.
One thing alone wiU save at once both the immi
grant white and coloured — the acceptance and
practice of the Christian faith.
But the forces of Christianity wiU only save the
situation by facing the facts, unpleasant though
they be. The policy of the ostrich always speUs
disaster. It is essential to understand first that
there are as many grades in African social life as
one finds in Europe or America ; there is the
degraded servile class, there are inteUectuals and
the aristocrats, and between these three strata
there are. dozens of intermediate grades.
In the first place, as Dudley Kidd says :
" The man who poses as an authority on the
Kafirs, and repeats the statement that the
Natives are moral and right enough if only
missionaries would leave them alone, is either
a knave or a fool."*
The only authoritative report upon the
" assaults on women " in Africa is that of the 191 3
* The Essential Kafir.

INDIGENOUS RESTRAINTS 165
Commission in South Africa. In this report the
Commissioners point to the danger of employing
low class natives as house-boys and say :
" As regards sexual matters, however, the code
of moraUty is low in the extreme, viewed from a
European standpoint. It is stated by witnesses
that the raw native is born and brought up in ah
atmosphere of immorality and lust, his thoughts
and speech are lewd ; the topic of his ordinary
conversation from an early age are sexual matters;
even in the presence of the other sex his talk in
this respect is unrestrained ; his jokes with his
female friends and acquaintances have reference
to these matters. Persons who do not under
stand the native language, it is said, can hardly
reaUze how low, according to European stan
dards, the state of moraUty is amongst them."
At the same time the Chiefs and Elders of the
tribes, until the advent of the white men, imposed
strong if barbarous restraint on both language
and conduct. The Commissioners above quoted
also say :
" Yet in their barbarism they have always
had a social system and institutions which, with
all their defects, have also a side which exercises
a considerable influence for good. Loyalty to
the Chief and to the Tribe has always been the
mainspring of native morality. The responsi
bility of the tribe and thef amily for the offences
of its members was a recognized factor, which
imposed upon every member of it a personal

166 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
obligation in the prevention of crime, and
caused him to be directly interested in the
observance of the law."
It is not difficult to picture that indignant
Chief before the Natal Commissioner, who, in
vehement and passionate language, suiting gesture
to words with dramatic effect, asked
"What are these white things, which their
girls were bringing home on their backs in such
numbers ? What did the Government mean
by allowing their girls to bear so many white
children ? Did they want to breed mule-
drivers ? (in allusion to the fact that men of
mixed race invariably drive Government con
veyances.) "
What should be the attitude of the Christian
Church towards this problem ; what action
should it take towards helping forward a pure
home Efe which is one of the foundations of a
strong Christian Church ?
First in order must be, in season and out of
season, a complete denunciation of both pro
miscuous and irregular relationships. Misce
genation between the races will find few advocates,
but miscegenation under defined marriage laws
is the only defensible alternative to irregular
cohabitation. The second main effort should be towards
encouraging white family life wherever possible.
Missionaries are rightly advised to secure and

THE DUTY OF WOMEN 167
take with them at the Mission expense suitable
partners — the same policy must be urged upon the
administrative and mercantile community.
The third and final main objective should be
towards the training of African girl domestics,
both as personal servants and with a view to
becoming an elevating influence in the homes of
the African race. The practice which is sq
widely prevalent of employing African boys in
white households is conducive of much evil. It
was this feature which the South African Com
mission found to be so fruitful of the aUeged
sexual abuses, and for these they laid the blame
primarily and heavily upon the white mistresses.
The Commissioners say in one passage :
" It has, for instance, according to evidence,
been a common custoni to aUow the house-bdy
to bring early coffee into the bedroom of the
mistress of the house, and that of her daughters,
where he has opportunities of seeing them in a
state of undress in which they would not dream
of showing themselves to a white man. That
this is not an imaginary danger may be shown
by a case judicially recorded in which a house-
boy, aged 22, was charged with a sexual offence
on a young woman. The accused stated that
he had seen her half naked when he took in her
coffee ; so on a subsequent occasion he placed
in the coffee some medicine which he had
obtained from another native, and which he
had been told would induce her to submit to
his advances ; but when he entered the bed-

168 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
room at night, according to the other native's
instructions, she had raised an alarm."*
The Commissioners were pressed to advise
making illegal the practice of employing " house-
boys," or at least to propose a substantial and
presumably prohibitive tax, but unfortunately,
for reasons which are by no means convincing,
they only recommended the foUowing :
" To minimise the danger of employing the
house-boy, two fundamental precautions are
essential. In the first place, care should be
taken in engaging him, that he is of good
character, and security should be provided by
some system by which the householder can
satisfy himself on this point. In the second
place, every endeavour should be made that no
opportunities or temptations are offered to the
house-boy to commit an offence of a sexual
nature."*
To the forces of Christianity belongs the
obhgation of going further than this Commission,
by preparing the girls — the future women of
Africa — to do women's work and to take a woman's
stand, and thus help to prevent one of the
greatest and most rapidly-growing evils of Africa.

• U.G. 39-13.

PART V
I. African Education
II. Industrial Missions
III. Religious Movements in Africa
IV. Critics of Christian Missions

CHAPTER I

AFRICAN EDUCATION

If the first interest of the African is land and
its attendant advantages, education most certainly
comes a close second amongst the younger men
and women. It is no small consideration that
the African individuaUy and coUectively will make
greater efforts and personal sacrifices than the
children of the white races in order to rise in the
scale of education. The avidity of the African
for education is the testimony of every African
Commission of Inquiry, every missionary and every
administrator. The Lagden Commission says :
" It is evident that there is among the people
themselves a growing desire for education,
which cannot and need not be suppressed.
Native witnessess have been strong on this
point, and the Native Churches which have
seceded from European control have estabUshed
schools for which they have attempted, in most
cases unsuccessfuUy, to secure Government
recognition and financial aid."
The Rhodesian Commission refers to the
" keen desire of aU sections of the more advanced
natives for education." 171

172 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
And " there is evidence that their ambition is
largely to be able to read and write, and thereby
to carry on correspondence with their own
people. Trivial and unimportant as this may
seem to be, the Committee nevertheless recognize
in it many influences for good. In its crudest
form it provides a means of gaining or con
veying news of home and work, which may well
induce a longer and more contented period of
employment. In a higher form it is a definite
important stage on the road of civilization and
progress." In both West and East Africa the same earnest
spirit is everywhere in evidence. Archdeacon
Walker says of Uganda that foUowing upon the
distribution of the Scriptures and the advance
ment of commerce there
" arose the need for being able to write and to
keep accounts. Schools were started, at first
only in the chief towns, but as time went on
every chief demanded a school, and now in
every village schools are found where reading,
writing and simple arithmetic are taught."*
It is well known that individual natives, parents
and sons, often make extraordinary sacrifices for
education. In the European and American
educational centres are to be found to-day many
lads whose parents have denied themselves for long
years in order to save, to them, thec stupendous
* African Society's. Journal, July, 191 7.

AFRICAN ASPIRATIONS

173

Cape Colony
Natal
Transvaal

13 10 per capita,
IS 10 » »
18 11 „ „

Orange Free State
Basutoland

7^„ „
19 8 „ „JN

sums necessary for passage and outfit for the
overseas journey, education fees, board and lodging
expenses in Europe or America.
The percentage of expenditure per capita in
South Africa illustrates in a striking manner the
willingness of the natives to tax themselves for
educational purposes. In Mr. Loram's book*
the foUowing figures are given :
s. d. Der car>ita. ', White
\ Government imposes
taxation.
Native Governmt.
imposes taxation.
Thus Basutoland, where responsibility for
expenditure rests largely with the natives them
selves, a wiUingness is shown to pay 19s. 8d., the
highest proportion in South Africa, as against
7s. 8d. in the neighbouring colony of the Orange
Free State. Thus is shown, upon the unanimous
testimony of white authorities, and to a com
plete demonstration by practical native tests, the
earnest striving after knowledge by the natives
themselves. What is the attitude of the white races towards
these legitimate native aspirations ? There is
first the very large, but happily decreasing,
minority who would deny to the native every
thing except the most elementary standards of
education, and these in South Africa Mr. Loram
caUs " the Repressionists." He quotes with
* Education of the South African Native, Longmans,

174 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
much force the foUowing passage from the Cape
Education Commission :
" We are of the opinion that State-aided
education for natives should be of a purely
elementary character. . . ."
The same atmosphere is found in British East-
Africa. In the report of the 1912-13 Labour
Commission the repressionist recommendation
was that " opportunities for Uterary education of
a primary nature should be afforded."
The fact that the Government of the Orange
Free State is only able to provide an expenditure
of 7s. 8d. per capita, as compared with 13s. iod.
in Cape Colony, is further eloquent testimony
to the notoriously anti-native attitude so widely
prevalent to-day in the territory of the Free
State. This section of the Boer community
is at heart against any measure of native education
other than that which wiU be in the interest of
the white employers, but the majority of white
men, no matter to what section they belong —
missionary, administrative or commercial — beUeve
in native education for the sake of the native,
they only differ upon the most suitable curriculum.
Most missionary bodies, for a variety of reasons,
Umit their efforts to a purely literary curriculum,
which fits the natives for clerical, legal, educa
tional or theological careers. This curriculum
for the African is criticized more or less vigorously
upon the ground that it gives the native "a
swoUen headpiece." Let it be quite frankly
admitted that an educated native very often does

"REAL EDUCATION" 175
suffer from an inflated opinion of himseU (although
it must in fairness be recognized that in this the
African is not alone), let it also be admitted that
this attitude leads on to impertinence, disrespect
for chiefs — both white and native — and to a whole
train of greater or lesser evils, yet everything
admitted points but to the importance of a
readjustment and not to the abolition of the
educational curriculum.
Mr. Loram sums up in six sentences the reasons
why the African should receive " real education " :
1. We cannot help educating him, if not
intentionaUy then unintentionaUy.
2. The dictates of humanity and Christianity
demand that we educate him.
3. He means to be educated, and we have no
right to refuse him this boon.
4. It is the educated native who wiU help
most to solve the " Native Problem."
5. It is to the moral, social, and economic
interest of the Europeans to educate
him, and we dare not face the conse
quences of failing to do so.
6. Wherever we have given him anything in
the way of real education the results
have been satisfactory.
The one question is what do we understand by the
" real education " which will give such satisfactory
results ? It will be agreed generaUy that at pre
sent only the minority of natives — one here and one
there — have successful careers which repose solely
on a literary education. In Africa one can men-

176 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
tion men like Blyden, Johnson, Sarbah, Crowther,
Carr, WiUiams, Obasa and Randle, but the fact
that so few have risen to this scale is sadly eloquent
of the limited services which the white man has
rendered to the miUions of Africa.
The education of the African must be the
education of the whole man — mental, physical
and spiritual ; its basis must be the whole body,
soul and spirit of the man, and its goal freedom
to develop talent to its utmost limit in State,
Church or Industry. Primary education should
lead on to industrial training under the kindly eye
of the sympathetic tutor, ever watchful for that
distinctive talent which would open out respec
tively to the farm, the botanical garden, the count
ing-house, the civil service or the pulpit ; square
pegs in round holes are bad enough in Europe —
they are fatal in Africa.
Africa has in most places quite enough African
lawyers ; her great needs to-day are scientific
agriculturists, doctors, sanitary officials and ac
countants. Africa needs the scientific agricul
turists in thousands to teach the people to grow
two cocoa pods where one grows to-day, to
educate miUions of people in the value of artificial
manures and insecticides. Africa needs doctors
and a sanitary service sufficiently adequate to wage
a victorious war on the mosquito and tsetse fly, to
break through — as only native doctors can — the
dense fog of indigenous prejudice, so that Africa
is no longer the breeding ground of disease and
plague. Africa also needs thousands of trained
accountants to teach the native the principles of

MOHAMMEDAN EDUCATION 177
finance, and the individual African how to take
care of his own money, and, what is of equal if not
greater importance, that belonging to other people.
Missionary bodies and educational departments
need not fear that by concentrating somewhat
heavily upon the foregoing professions the Bar
and the Pulpit wiU be starved. The oratorical
powers of the African and his love of Utigation
are so natural and so strong that no matter what
degree of education is available there will be
always a proportionate number of aspirants for
both professions, reinforced in many /cases by a
deeply religious concern for the spiritual welfare
of the race.
What are the educational agencies in Africa
to-day ? They faU into two main categories with
a measure of combination and some inevitable
overlapping : (a) Missionary, (b) Administrative.
Missionary education is carried on widely by
the Protestant and Catholic sections of the
Christian Church, and to a much smaller extent
by Mohammedan teachers. In the education of
the African race Mohammedanism has done
infinitely less than the forces of the Christian
faith, and this despite the fact that from every
point of view Mohammedanism has held all the
strategic advantages for over one thousand years.
This is the more surprising because, as Lord
Milner so truly says :
" In the theory of Mohammedanism, piety
and learning go hand in hand."*
* England in Egypt, by Alfred Milner.

178 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
In Egypt and the Sudan one finds the fuUest
development of Mohammedan educational ac
tivity. Lord Milner points out, however, the
lethargy which has overtaken the Mohammedan
educational system :
" The famous Mosque of El-Azhar at Cairo
was a University and a centre of Eastern culture
for some hundred years before the oldest
European Universities were founded. And to
the present day it stiU enjoys incomparably the
greatest prestige of any seat of learning in the
Moslem world. But so far as real knowledge
and education goes, El-Azhar is, if not a dead,
at least a dormant institution. The old Arab
erudition, related alike in substance and in
method to that of Europe during the Middle
Ages, has met with the fate which would have
befallen European culture, had it not been
breathed upon and revived in the Renaissance
by the spirit of Ancient Greece."*
Throughout Africa, North, East, West and
South, almost to the equatorial line, are to be
found the Mohammedan Ulema, to whom educa
tion is little more than the necessity of teaching
a little reading, less writing, but the supreme
necessity of memorizing unintelligible and indi
gestible portions of the Koran. It is neither
education nor a foundation upon which a system
of education, rightly understood, may be erected.
To the eternal credit of Christianity its mission
aries of all denominations zealously and at great
* England in Egypt, by Alfred Milner.

PROTESTANT iff ROMAN CATHOLIC 179
expense undertook the education of the African.
It was perfectly legitimate to argue that education
was purely an administrative charge and that in
return for taxation the Government should give
education to the African race, but the missionary
forces took a different attitude. The missionaries
saw a big regenerative work waiting to be done,
and without hesitation they took it in hand and
are doing to-day in a manner which, with aU its
faults, makes missionary education the first re
generative factor in the continent.
The educational work of the Christian Missions
is divided about equaUy between the Protectant
and Roman Catholic communities. In some
territories, such as Belgian Congo, Portuguese and
Spanish territories, Roman CathoUc effort is
greater than that of the Protestant societies,
but in other territories the Protestants pre
dominate. It is of course unfair to measure the
extent of the work done by the number of the
personnel, but figures are after all a rough guide.
In the South African Union and the Enclave
Protectorates, Protestant personnel is 1,990 and
Roman Catholic 2,460. In Nigeria, as a typical
West African Colony, Roman Catholics are
represented by 36 and Protestants 50 white men.
How inadequate an index as a basis of effort is the
white man is shown by the fact that with a Pro
testant representation of 1,990, there are enroUed
in the South African schools 168,000, whereas
the Roman Catholics with 2,460 white men have
apparently an enrolment of less than 18,000 !
It is extremely difficult, however, to make any

180 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
reliable comparison between the results of the two
great Christian forces at work in the African
continent, owing to the unnecessarily secretive
attitude of the Roman Cathohc organization.
Reviewing the work of the Roman Catholic
Church in Africa since its commencement in 1234
at Tunis, Bishop Hartzell concludes :
" In 1915, there were two archbishops, one
at Tunis and one at Algiers ; a foreign staff of
6,262 priests, lay brothers and sisters, the last
two about equally divided in numbers. There
was a native staff of 7,674, of whom 6,767 were
not ordained. This means that the Cathohc
foreign and native workers in mission work in
Africa numbered nearly 14,000. It is notable
that the number of ordained foreign missionaries
was only about 1,000. There were 3,380
churches, with 1,053,467 communicants and
baptized non-communicants including children.
In schools of all grades there were 218,256.
In medical and philanthropic work there were
395 dispensaries and 193 hospitals. The
children in orphanages numbered 11,905. No
report is given of the amount contributed for
the support of the Church. The white member
ship on the continent is less than 100,000."*
The total Protestant force of the various
denominations throughout the continent is
nearly 5,500, with an enrolled attendance in aU
schools of nearly 730,000 scholars.
* The Christian Occupation of Africa. Proceedings of the African
Conference held in New York, November, 1917.

GOVERNMENT GRANTS 181
Administrative educational work in Africa is
of recent growth, and although in several political
areas the standard is quite good, only in a few
places does it reach the level of missionary effort.
It was not, for example, until the year 1900 that
the Government of Nigeria began to provide its
own schools, and not until 1903 that a Department
of Education was created. Most governments
in the continent, finding missionary education
better suited to the people, cheaper from the
administrative standpoint and possessing more
virility, prefer making substantial grants in aid.
Government grants are made either in lump sums
or per capita for standard attained. The varia
tion in these Government grants is considerable,
but, generaUy speaking, they are, to use the words
of Sir Hugh CUfford, " pitifully. smaU."
The educational work done by the white races
in Africa is best iUustrated in the two differing
political areas of the South African Union and of
the Gold Coast. The former a colonizable
territory possessing self-government, and the latter
tropical and therefore uncolonizable and with
out seU-government. The basis of educational
work in the Union territory and in the Enclave
Protectorate of Basutoland rests upon Christian
missionary endeavour. The Government then
came to the aid of the missionaries with financial
grants, certificates for teachers, and of course
Government inspection follows in the train of
Government assistance. It is clear, however,
that factors are increasing which tend to restrict
more and more Government assistance and at

1 82 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the same time to expand administrative liabiEty
for purely secular education.
Educational expenditure in the respective
Provinces, according to population, is as foUows :

Native
Population.

Expenditure on
Native Schools.

Cape Colony . .

1,982,588

£83,320

Natal

9535389

14,170

Transvaal

1,219,845

i3>961

Orange Free

State

325,824

4,000

Basutoland

404,507

16,771*

These figures show the appalUng lack of interest
in the education of the natives in the Union of
South Africa. Little Basutoland out of a revenue
of £161,000 can spare nearly £17,000 for educa
tion as against the affluent " Free State " which
only provided the paltry sum of £4,000 out of a
total revenue of nearly £500,000. Compare this
again with the American administration of the
Philippines, where from a revenue of £5,000,000
the sum of over £365,000 is drawn for educational
work. The three Provinces of the Transvaal,
Orange Free State and Natal, out of a total
revenue of over £2,200,000, spent less than the
miserable sum of £33,000 on native education,
a single fact eloquent of the attitude of the whites
towards the native population.
The most urgent demand of to-day is the early
establishment in Africa of a native coUege under
Government control and supported financiaUy
* The Education of the South African Native. Loram. (Longmans.)

AN AFRICAN COLLEGE 183
by the Governments of Africa. The qualifying
curriculum need not, probably should not, be
that of the European and American universities,
but it should be broad enough and high enough
to secure recognition by the professional authori
ties in Europe and America. There are about
2,000 schools in South Africa, whose teaching
staffs are provided by some 27 training institutions
which have to-day 2,312 students enrolled, and
again the striking fact emerges that throughout
the Orange Free State there is not a single
institution for the training of teachers.
South Africa and indeed other political areas are
therefore confronted to-day with the reaUy grave
problem of higher education, namely that the
colour-bar of South Africa and the lack of facilities
in other areas are together driving the better-class
natives to Europe and America in order to seek
those standards of education which will fit them
for professional careers. The result is frankly
deplorable, for it permits of the absorption of the
white man's vices and at the same time destroys
in the native some of the most attractive features
of the African race before the youthful African
has even approached years of discretion. A by
product in South Africa is the spread of Ethiop-
ianism which in the African is as destructive of
real progress and racial amity as the colour-bar
so firmly held and so vigorously applied by the
white races.
Of aU the territories under the direct rule of an
oversea sovereignty that of the Gold Coast has
been the most happy and prosperous. It has

184 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
been blessed with a trinity of conditions of
cardinal importance :
i. Security of land occupancy title.
2. Native agricultural industry.
3. A long line of Governors devoted to the
interests of the people.
The late Governor, Sir Hugh CUfford, was a
worthy successor to George Maclean, who ruled
without any army but with the help of the
chiefs from 1830 to 1844, also to Sir John Rodger,
to whom more than any other man the Gold
Coast owes the foundation of its economic
stability. Sir Hugh Clifford assumed responsi
bility for the Government of the Gold Coast at
the close of 191 2 and with Lady Clifford has de
voted the last six years to the welfare of the
people. The character of the man and the secret
of his success is indicated by a single fact — Sir
Hugh CUfford determined that, consistent with
his general duties, he would at an early date get
into personal touch with every native ruler
throughout the territory. Those who know what
this meant will realize the immensity of the task —
the journeys through swamps and forest, the
delays and apparent waste of time, the disappoint
ments, the fevers, the expenditure of vital energy;
but it was accomplished, and now every Native
Chief throughout the land knows that in the
Governor he has a personal friend familiar with the
difficulties of his tribe. It is true that Sir Hugh
CEfford makes Eght of this accomphshment and
says, " The extent to which in practice a Governor

A GOVERNOR'S PROGRAMME 185
can influence is necessarily very limited," others
may be allowed to form a different opinion, and
when those others happen incidentally to include
virtually the whole population of the Colony and
Protectorate as some of us know they do, successful
administration is assured.
In the first place Sir Hugh Clifford tells us
that he spends £37,500 a year in education, and
says this " is a pitifully small sum for the Colony
of the standing of the Gold Coast," and one can
only guess at the causes which are crabbing the
education of the people. But the amount of
education done with this " pitifully small sum "
and with the help of missions is quite appreciable.
The schools number nearly 200, of which 16 are
Government schools and the remainder receive
Government assistance according to the stan
dard reached by the pupils. The enrolment of
scholars is 25,000 and the attendance 20,000.
Sir Hugh Clifford is far from satisfied with the
expenditure on education and the existing
facilities. He says :
" The importance of any knowledge that is
obtained being of a solid and thorough descrip
tion is not, perhaps, so generaUy appreciated;
but there can be no doubt that there exists
among the rising generation throughout the
Gold Coast what I can only describe as a
genuine hunger for education. If this demand
is to be adequately met, the expenditure of pub
lic money upon a very considerable scale wiU
have to be incurred, and I cannot reasonably

1 86 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
expect that the Government will find itself
possessed of the necessary funds during the re
maining period of my administration. I may,
however, be permitted to record my personal
views concerning the action which should be
taken when the opportunity to act once more
presents itseU."*
For boldness and clarity of vision the programme
which Sir Hugh Clifford then sets forth leaves
little to be desired, and might weU be adopted
as an educational poUcy for every Dependency in
the African continent :
I. To make "primary education accessible
to all children of school-going age."
2. A Training CoUege for each of the
Provinces — Central, Western, Ashanti.
3. Considerable increase in the emoluments
of the teaching staffs.
4. FinaUy " a Royal College analogous to
that which is provided, for instance, by
the Colony of Trinidad."
It is not surprising that so bold and chaUenging
a programme should encounter opposition ; Sir
Hugh CUfford frankly meets this with the foUow
ing remark :
" The spread of education in the Gold Coast
wiU inevitably be regulated by the Colony's
financial position, and it is probable that for
some years to come the task of making primary
education accessible to all will prove a sufficient
• Message to the Legislative Council, 1919.

A GOVERNOR'S PROGRAMME 187
tax upon its resources. That the educated
classes in the Gold Coast are sufficiently ad
vanced to make the establishment of secondary
schools highly desirable cannot, I think, be
questioned ; but I base my opinion that
primary education should claim priority upon
the fact that, in this part of West Africa, there
is no indigenous philosophy or Uterature to be
rendered accessible by a study of the vernacu
lars, as is usually the case in the East, and that
the only available path to inteUectual enUghten-
ment is therefore offered by an EngEsh educa
tion." It should then be the duty of the Christian
Church to press forward the foUowing educa
tional programme and to assist so far as possible
its application, including : Primary education
accessible to all children of school-going age,
Training Colleges for teachers, Agricultural
Colleges with experimental farms for the training
of instructors and inspectors, an African CoUege
whose educational standard should be broad
enough and high enough to secure recognition
by the professional authorities in Europe and
America.

CHAPTER II
INDUSTRIAL MISSIONS
"Industrial Missions " in Africa are made to
cover every form of industrial effort, from the
mission boy who makes deck chairs for the
mission house to the very efficient and highly-
organized agricultural and artisan systems of the
Roman Catholic Church. In the new social
order which must be evolved in the African
continent, industrial training must play a large
part. The missionary societies must realize that
their task includes not merely the conversion of
" the heathen " from the errors of " pagan " faith,
but that of assisting the African to become a new
creature in Christ. It is not enough to teach the
African to lay down the sword and spear, to aban
don witchcraft, and then leave him to take in
seven devils more diabolical than those which the
missionary has succeeded in turning out. Into the
converted African must be instiUed a new faith,
a new vision, and a new life.
Missionary societies in Africa take a differing
view of industrial missions ; quite a large pro
portion of the missionaries take the view that
their duty is solely that of preaching the Gospel,
but even these men find it necessary to train boys
1 88

THE THREE GROUPS 189
to carpentry and building upon a scale sufficiently
adequate to meet the ordinary needs of the
mission station. This is as far as they care to go,
but it is a misnomer to call this industrial mission
ary work.
The second class of industrial work is much more
ambitious, namely, that of producing artisans
capable of supplying the need of white commer
cial companies both with artisan workers and the
implements required by such companies for their
industrial undertakings. In this way brick
layers, carpenters, engine-drivers, mechanics, etc.,
are trained for employment by the immigrant
white races in the continent.
The third class, and not a very large one, is that
of plantations run by white missionaries in the in
terests of white overseas consumers. Coffee, cocoa
and rubber plantations are laid out, and the natives
are employed in producing commodities the profits
of which, if any, go towards maintaining the mission
staff and assisting them in " preaching the Gospel."
In each of these systems there are serious
weaknesses, but far and away the most serious is
that neither of them secures that essential and
paramount objective of fitting the African to
become in the fullest sense a citizen capable of
discharging all functions of a man in Church,
State and Commerce. At the same time certain
features expose, and rightly expose, the Christian
Church to criticism.
It is the practice of certain missions to subsidize
plantation work by donations from missionary
supporters, and upon the face of it there can be

190 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
no objection to this course ; if, however, this
system is closely investigated, it wiU be found
that it rests upon an unsound basis and one which
does a distinct injury to neighbouring plantations,
if not to the employers themselves. Mr. Smith,
the planter, developing his coffee or rubber estate
upon a commercial basis, pays those wages which
the profits on the industry permit ; he cannot
pay more, otherwise in due course he becomes
insolvent. The Rev. Thomas Jones, running the
adjoining plantation, pays higher wages, but he
does so by drawing upon the donations of his
subscribers, and thus subsidizes the industry which
is in fact economicaUy unsound ; he may not pay
more in actual wages; generally, I believe, the
plan is to import goods, as does his lay neighbour
Mr. Smith, but whilst the commercial planter
must put on a profit of 25 per cent, to cover costs,
the missionary planter uses his subscribed funds in
order to seU his imported goods at " reduced
prices " to his employees.
It wiU be obvious that a system of this nature
must attract labour to the missionary planter
unless the commercial planter can offer induce
ments more seductive to his employees, but the
ordinary planter cannot offer more money because
he is operating on a commercial basis, but he can
and often does offer other temptations from which
the missionary planter is quite obviously and
rightly precluded. The ordinary result is a very
unsavoury state of affairs and perpetual friction
between the " good " and the " wicked " indus
tries. Merchants complain, and not without

COMPETITION 191
cause, that industrial missions of this type often
lead to economic demoralization of the native,
and that in every case the subsidization of com
merce by employing funds sent for religious
objects exposes them to unfair competition.
In continental and in most American Protestant
missionary societies, as in aU Roman Catholic
missions, there is no hesitation whatever in under
taking industrial work, but there has been in the
past certainly, and there probably stiU exists in
British missionary circles, the feeling that the
duty of the missionary should be strictly limited
to " preaching the Gospel." Practical minded
people, Uke the Society of Friends, state that local
circumstances in India " have compelled Friends
in common with most societies working in India
to develop the industrial side of the work." The
late Sir Victor Buxton, a leading member of the
Church Missionary Society, in one of his articles,
says : " My aim is to show how it is that those
interested in missions are driven* to the con
sideration of industrial questions."
The time has come to offer to this sentiment a
friendly chaUenge to show that no apology of any
sort or kind is needed, providing always that the
work is based upon a sound principle and in the
hands of the right type of men and women.
After aU, the founder of the Christian Faith
worked as a Carpenter, whilst the greatest of
apostolic missionaries appears not only to have
made preaching possible, but enhanced his message
by the practical use of his needle in tent making.
* Italics mine. J. H. H.

192 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
The whole objective of the Christian Church
should be to train backward peoples to work out
their own spiritual salvation hand in hand with
assisting them to work out on Christian lines their
own economic salvation.
The basis of economic prosperity in Africa is
the land, and the capacity of that prosperity is
limited only by the productivity of that land.
FoUowing upon land development, not coincident
and certainly not prior, as some suppose, come the
artisan, the merchant and the clerical staff. The
first essential, therefore, is to develop native
agriculture ; happily this is a sphere aheady
familiar to the native ; there is no need to teach
him how to grow bananas and cassava, but there is
great need to emphasize the value of thoroughly
breaking up the soil, the importance of catch
crops, and of the use of manure.
Without the danger of irrelevancy it is necessary
to postulate that a stable Christian community
rests upon an adequate and secure tenure of land
for indigenous people. This is no mere theory,
for the most cursory examination of missionary
statistics shows that the most flourishing churches
are situated in territories where the natives
possess the largest scope for developing under
secure title the land they have occupied for
generations. It follows that industrial missions
can only be reaUy successful where the native does
possess such tenure. The African, Uke every
other human, rests his economics upon confidence ;
given a confidence that his title to land is secure
he will at once set about developing it. The

AFRICAN PROSPERITY 193
European landowner would never dream of
planting standard apple trees upon a land tenancy
of three years ; just so the African wiU plant the
yearly cropping cassava upon any patch, but
being no fool he refuses to lay down a seven-year
cocoanut plantation upon land he occupies to-day,
but from which he may be evicted to-morrow.
The foundation of African prosperity is, then,
first, adequacy of land ; secondly, security of
tenure, and, finally, confidence in a potential
market. A real industrial mission would grip
these three essentials and find its own niche in
providing a safe market for fair prices.
The native is the real factor in the actual
development of the land, whilst under present-
day conditions the white man is the vital element
in a market which wiU encourage the native
producer. The secret of industrial success in most African
territories lies in the development of the African.
This proposition has only to be considered a
single moment for it to become apparent. The
advantages attaching to native owned and man
aged estates as compared with those owned and
managed by white men are considerable. A
plantation employing say 1,000 labourers under
white management and organized as a white man's
industry required in the Portuguese and in the
late German colonies a total white estabhsh-
ment of 25 to 30 white men, including director,
managers, doctor, overseers, clerical and storage
staff. Each white man required European
quarters ; some were, and all should be, married,

194 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
for aU of whom European dwelUng houses are
required. The whole staff also needs very large
supplies of European provisions and general
commodities. The establishment charges upon
white-managed plantations are thus a heavy handi
cap upon industry. The average emoluments for
white men in such regions exceed considerably £600
per annum, the cost of each European house over
£1,000, or a total annual charge for these items
on a single plantation well over £10,000. To this
figure must be added sea voyages every year for
seniors and every two years for juniors, also the
wastage attaching to unsuitability or ill-health of
employees, carriage and dues on imported pro
visions, widows and orphans, and pensions.
It is therefore obvious that the secret of
intensive development in tropical and sub-tropical
Africa is with the son of the soil, who when
suitably trained can lay down and manage planta
tions without the incubus of the foregoing white
establishment charges. Sir Hugh Clifford, the
popular Ex-Governor of the Gold Coast, has on
more than one occasion emphasized the value of
this system in the Gold Coast Colony. In his
speech before a recent meeting of the Legislative
Council he said :
" When it is remembered that cocoa culti
vation is, in the Gold Coast and in Ashanti, a
purely native industry ; that there is hardly
an acre of European-owned cocoa-garden in the
territories under the administration of this
Government — this remarkable achievement of

NATIVE PRODUCERS 195
a unique position as a producer of one of the
world's great staples assumes, in my opinion, a
special value and significance."
Native land tenure and native industry being
the highway to economicprogress, the industrial
Christian mission has thus presented to it the
fascinating opportunity of erecting upon this
solid foundation a truly national life, solidified by
a healthy Christian faith. The State can do
much, Commerce can do much more, but only
the moral and spiritual forces which spring from
the Christian faith can single-handed compass the
whole moral, spiritual and economic "stature"
of the African.
Belief in the African, confidence in his ability
to develop his own soil, is the first practical
essential for applied industrial effort. The
African is never seen at his best when working as
a wage labourer, therefore to a belief in the African
as a producer must be added the vision which can
look beyond the wage-earning " nigger " to the
industrious smaU-holder tiUing his own soil and
reaping his own harvest for the benefit of himself
and his family. This belief and this vision must
in turn be reinforced by knowledge and study
whilst success and the causes of failure in other
fields must be the daily mental food of those who
wish to estabUsh industrial effort.
The practical apphcation of industrial missions
faUs into a threefold category : (a) Estates, (b)
Commerce, (c) Subsidiary Industries.
For reasons already explained, the laying down

196* AFRICA i SLAVE OR FREE?
of estates under white management must be
avoided. Such methods can only be permanently
a paying proposition, and even then a poor one,
provided the native is to be permanently relegated
to the position of " a hewer of wood and drawer
of water," a position which is against every
missionary interest and aim, no less than against
aU economic factors. At the same time smaU
experimental plantations when undertaken by
the Administration should be attached to every
industrial centre. The object of these should be
educational and not commercial, and for this
purpose must be run with a degree of efficiency
always ahead of the best commercial estates.
These educational estates should be living exam
ples of the latest science upon spacing, shading and
cleanliness. The pupils should be the potential
Inspectors of plantations and Instructors of the
native farmers throughout the Colony ; the white
personnel should be able to give practical lectures
both upon botany and the even more vital science
of entomology. Chemistry should play its part
by giving instructions in the theory and practice
of culture. Demonstrations, lectures and pamph
lets upon such vital subjects as soils, insecticides,
and the preparation of products for the market
should also be included in the work of the chemist.
These experimental plantations, in a word,
should be the hub of knowledge for the native
farmers, the centre to which they could go in any
difficulty. Their maintenance would, of course,
be a fairly heavy charge upon an industrial
mission, but the credit side of the account would

IMPORTANCE OF FAIR MARKETS 197
be considerable, ajid thus the mission, if strong
enough, could also undertake responsibility for
experimental, farms. Insecticides, the best type of
tools, nursery plants, literature, service fees and
numbers of small supplies carrying a good profit
would be supplied by such estates. Another
lucrative source of revenue is that of the hiring of
mechanism. African agriculture is laborious by
reason of the ubiquitous tree stumps, which in
volve much labour more usefully expended
elsewhere ; a stump " Jack " is, too. expensive for a
native to purchase outright, but he would gladly
pay a, daily fee for the hire of the instrument. The
same applies to breaking up the soil; how gladly
would the native pay for the hire of a motor
tractor to follow in the wake of the stump " Jack."
Thus the hire of such implements would mean a
good revenue producer for the educational
estate of any industrial mission.
The second main feature of industrial effort
should be that of providing a good market for
native produce. It should always be the aim of
such industrial missions to ensure to the native
not merely good prices for raw materials but the
best prices for the best produce ; in a word, to do
everything possible to encourage the native to
increase both the volume, and the quality of pro
duction. Confidence in the market is the greatest in
centive to European and American production,
and this is no less true of the African producer.
The industrial mission agency should be thrown
widely open to purchase at a fair price every

198 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
saleable commodity the African can produce.
The commercial sphere of an industrial mission
must be sound, it must demonstrate that fair
trading is sound business, that efficiency and hon
esty are in practice the best policy, that educated
Christian native employers are not merely good
and polite business men, but that every time they
can beat the shady trader, every time they can
produce a balance sheet in which every figure will
be eloquent of sound and honest commerce. For
an industrial trading mission to show financial
results dependent on charity is indicative not
merely of financial disaster, but of failure aU along
the line — the forces of Christianity are out for
success and not a persistent apology for failure.
But whilst industrial missions should in the
commercial sphere aim at financial success, their
leaders must avoid large surplus profits which lay
them open to the charge of exploitation. It is
just here that a dozen problems can be solved at a
stroke. The Basel Mission in Switzerland organ
ized its operations in India and Africa upon the
basis of a limited dividend of 5 per cent, and
devoted the surplus to the extension of other
branches of its operations. It is probable that
its profits were something like a net of 40 per cent.
on its capital, and thus very large sums were avail
able for other purposes.
It is difficult now to fix what is a reasonable
profit upon industrial mission transactions, but if
aU surplus profits, after making provision for
reserve and limited dividends, are devoted to the
welfare of the inhabitants in territories in which

ALLOCATION OF PROFITS 199
the money is made, then no charge of profiteering
can be sustained. This, of course, raises the
question of a legitimate return on invested
capital, and here again it is difficult to fix a per
manent standard, but if 1 to 2 per cent, beyond
the prevailing Bank rate is fixed, then very little
criticism can be leveUed against the enterprise ;
true, it is more than the ordinary " Trust Funds,"
but equally is it true that the " gilt " on the
" edge " is very thin.
Taking the Basel Mission as a standard, with its
probable 40 per cent., or perhaps the safer figure
of a certain 25 per cent, on commercial transactions,
the first deduction would be say 7 per cent, for
dividends on invested capital and 8 per cent, for
reserves and extensions. The industrial mission
would then have 10 per cent, available for the
weUare of the people. This surplus profit should
be placed in the hands of Trustees whose duty it
should be to assist education in its widest sense :
Experimental Estates, Lectureships, Educational
Scholarships, Travel Scholarships might all of
them look to such trust funds for grants. The
main object of such fund should be to elevate the
people and their industrial prosperity to a plane
from which the whole State would benefit.
The foundation of industrial missions being
secure indigenous title to land, the superstructure
being first education in more intensive culture,
and secondly the provision of a "good market,"
the third and final sphere of an auxiliary but
subsidiary training is then reached.
The measure of indigenous agricultural pros-

200 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
perity is the factor which determines the demand
for the artisan, the clerk, the doctor, and that
which the African loves most of aU — the eloquent
lawyer ! Without such indigenous prosperity
there is little room for any of these, but they are
all essential occupations in the mosaic of African
progress. The training for the lawyer and the doctor
begins with the mission school, and is thus out
side the scope of an industrial mission, unless a
measure of industrial training would lead to the
charge of more reasonable legal fees, but until
the white legal and medical fraternity set the
example there is Ettle hope that the African wiU
bring his fees more into harmony with the capa
city of his chents !
Experimental estates and commerce provide
the best training centres for the artisan and the
clerk. To each experimental estate should be
attached workshops for the supply of construction
materials, transport and furniture, according to
the needs of the district. To this institution
might be sent promising young Africans upon
terms of apprenticeship which would again be a
legitimate field for assistance for the surplus profits
in the hands of the Trustees.
The commercial centres provide the best
training ground for clerical work, and here again
the principle of assisted apprenticeships should
be adopted, particularly with a view to training
men who would become what Africa needs almost
more than anything else — safe custodians of
pubUc and private monies.

TRAINING THE MEN 201
There is, however, one great danger to watch,
namely, that the supply of the artisan and clerical
staffs do not greatly exceed the demand and
thereby cause distress and disaffection. Already
there are signs that this is taking place in several
African areas. The demand wiU always depend
upon the general agricultural progress of the
community, hence the supreme importance of
developing commerce with the utmost energy,
whilst proceeding slowly in what is technically
called industrial education.
As in every branch of missionary work, every
thing depends upon the men, and for industrial
mission work men must be born and not made.
The foundation of their training must be com
mercial and industrial ; to put men in charge of
industrial work in Africa who have had no
commercial training whatever is to court disaster.
Given this foundation, there must be vision and
character. The ideal man is he whose early
years have been spent in commerce and industry,
at a later date catching the vision of service to
humanity. In this man wiU usuaUy be found an
enthusiasm for great causes, so nicely balanced
by sound judgment that into whatever he puts
his soul, mind and body — he cannot but succeed.

CHAPTER III
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA
To the Christian Church the issue of capital
importance is the work to be done rather than the
work accomplished. It is probable that a total of
less than 3,000,000 Africans belong to-day to one
or other of the sections of the Christian Church
in Africa, whilst it is equaUy probable that
100,000,000 out of the total population of
120,000,000 have not the remotest knowledge of
the message of the Christian Faith. Startling
facts for contemplation by the Christian nations !
The reUgious beliefs of Africa are in the
following order : (1) Indigenous, (2) Moham
medan, (3) Christian, (4) Jewish. It wiU be
noted that the word " pagan " is seldom used,
for the reason that the author regards the African
as a deeply reUgious man, and that in certain
respects African worship appears to go deeper
and is not less pure than the general religious
atmosphere of so-called civiUzed races. It is
therefore essential to consider the beliefs of the
African as a basis upon which it is possible to
erect a stable faith. ^'.
Indigenous African f [beliefs revolve round a
system of secret societies, witchcraft, " Jujus

»

SECRET SOCIETIES 203
ancestor worship, and a certain amount of Biblical
tradition, distorted of course, but stiU with
unmistakable resemblance to the foundation of
the Monotheistic beliefs of the Christian Church.
Mons. Curran defines African Secret Societies
as " aristocratic castes which are founded upon
religion and whose object is government."*
This definition is not at aU bad, but it is faulty in
that it does not convey any impression of the gross
evils which too often attend the operations of the
cult. It is true that the Secret Societies are
founded upon an inward reUgious beUef, it is
equaUy true that the objects are directed towards
government, it is also true that membership often
confers substantial advantages in trade and travel,
also that it gives protection in domestic and
national affairs, but membership frequently in
volves the obhgation to commit the most violent
excesses, probably the most complete example of
this being that of the Human Leopard with its
sister branch, the Human AUigator Society.
How far these two societies extend their opera
tions none can say, but their malevolent influence
is most potent in Sierra Leone and Sherboro,
whilst their headquarters are beUeved to have been
in the Imperi country. The Human Leopard
Society inspires the greatest terror wherever a
" Lodge " is estabUshed ; its organization is
stated to have been of recent growth, but there
is evidence that its initiation goes back to time
immemorial. The deity of the Society is " Borfimah " and
* Savage Man in Central Africa. T. Fisher Unwin.

204 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the material fetish is thus described by Dr.
Burrows of Sierra Leone :
" Borfimah is usually a Calabash or Gourd,
usuaUy an elongated one, but sometimes a
leather bag, and it is stuffed with a composition
as complex as it is disgusting, and recaUs the
worst concoctions of the witches of our early
literature with added horrors."*
Into this receptacle is placed a composition made
from wax, mud, blood and — this is the indispen
sable constituent — a small portion of human fat ;
it is this latter constituent which creates such
widespread terror, for it involves murder and
leads to a measure of cannibalism.
The members of the Society bear a cicatrized
mark on the hip, and when delivering their
dreadful messages inflicting extortion or death,
they quietly draw aside their loin cloth in order
to disclose the authority and real import of their
message. Initiation into the rights and privileges
of the Society is said to be by the delivery of a
human body.
Upon the night chosen for carrying out the
" mandate," the " Leopard-men " are selected,
then arrayed in leopard skins, shod with wooden
imitations of leopards' feet ; in their hands the
men carry a terrible instrument representing the
paw and claws of a leopard, the claws being a
three-pronged fork. Dr. Burrows thus graphi
cally describes the actual attack :
* Journal of the African Society, January, 1914.

HUMAN LEOPARDS 205
" At the appointed hour, when it is quite
dark, a strange flute-like whistling, like that of
the Pipes of Pan, and produced by blowing over
short lengths of bamboo, is heard in the bush
which comes right up to the outermost houses
of the town or viUage. Long custom and tradi
tion have inculcated their lesson, and at the
dread sound there is a scurrying into the houses,
and doors are closed securely. The hapless
victim is sent on some fictitious errand, and is
pounced on by the leopard-men, who first
lacerate the throat with the sharp claw-knives,
sometimes severing all the vital structures, and
they then return into the bush growling and
roaring like leopards the while, and this noise
is continued until the victim is carried safely
into the sacred bush. The villagers are afraid
to venture out— some, the uninitiated, imagining
there are real leopards about, and others are too
sensible to run the risk of undue curiosity.
After a while a hue and cry is raised, and the
victim's blood points to the tragedy ; but are
these not marks of the leopard's feet ? And
were there not growls and roars heard ? Surely
a leopard has taken away somebody ! then
there is weeping and wailing ! "
The victim, half dead from his or her terrible
wounds, is then dragged into the bush and
finally despatched, the internal organs removed
and carefully examined and finally the priceless
fat of the kidney is removed for the propitiation
of Borfimah. Tiny portions of flesh, wrapped

206 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
in banana leaves, are despatched with extraordi
nary rapidity to every member of the "Lodge,"
who, hastily swaUowing it, has the confidence that
Borfimah has thereby been strengthened to exe
cute his wiU and protect his adherents.
Dr. Burrows says that the power of Borfimah
is so great that professing Christians who have
perjured themselves on oath with the Bible, upon
being resworn on Borfimah have been so terrified
that they have immediately confessed perjury and
" told the plain unvarnished truth " !
In 1913? Sir Edward Merewether, whilst
expressing the hope that the activities of the
Society had suffered a check, says :
" The bhnd belief of the natives in the
efficacy of the ' medicines ' concocted by the
Society (especially that known as ' Borfimah ') ;
the power and authority enjoyed by the pos
sessors of these medicines ; the fact that
periodical human sacrifices are considered to
be necessary in order to renew the efficacy of
the medicines ; and a tendency on the part of
some natives to cannibahsm pure and simple —
aU these causes wiU contribute to the survival
of this baneful organization. It has held sway
for many years — possibly for centuries — and
the task of stamping it out wiU undoubtedly
be one of great difficulty."
It wiU probably be found that the only way of
administrative salvation wiU lie, as in the " twin
murder " customs of Calabar, in leading the
reUgious aspirations of the natives into an accept-

BENEFICENT SPIRITS 207
ance of the Christian faith which in the " Oil
Rivers " has brought with it the virtual aboUtion
of twin murder. This lengthy description of the
Leopard Society is only justified as being typical
of the worst Secret Societies, and is so fully quoted
because its operations have been more completely
and more scientificaUy examined than that of
almost any other of the numberless Secret
Societies of the African continent.
It seems fitting at this point to throw into sharp
contrast the characteristic features of good in the
Secret Societies. As Mr. Amaury Talbot says :
" For most of us, the very term ' juju ' has
grown to be almost synonymous with dark and
dreadful shrines, hideous rites, and the long-
drawn-out agony of victims. Of the other
side of the picture — of juju as a sanctuary for
the oppressed, and forbidder of bloodshed,
avenger of crime, and preacher of peace and
goodwiU — too Uttle is known. Yet there is
such a side."*
The example he quotes is that of the " Peace of
the Earth Goddess," whose aU pervading spirit is
a thing of beauty :
" pale of skin .... there would therefore
seem to be certain indications pointing to the
probability that the so-called juju was reaUy a
shipwrecked woman, "f
* Journal of the African Society, July, 191 6. t Ibid.

208 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
It is an interesting fact that a goddess, named
Goodness, and certain beneficent spirits enter into
the folk lore and societies of several African
tribes. Witchcraft and wizardry play a large
part in African beliefs, and much of this again
circles round the restraint of evil. In every part
of the continent the moon and the winds play a
predominant part in witchcraft. R. E. Dennett,
who has probably made a closer study of African
beliefs than any other living man, thus accounts
for the moon being the " mother of witchcraft " :
" The moon both in the Congo and Yoruba
land is said to have had three star children, and
the story says that, although the moon was
chaste and beautiful, her attraction was such
that it filled one of her sons with lust. He
chased and overtook her, and against her wiU
despoiled her. In time she gave birth to
wicked spirits who thought and acted in opposi
tion to those Bakici baci, who as beneficent
powers are the owners of the sacred groves. In
this way the moon is said to be the mother of
witchcraft."Mrs. Abdy, discussing witchcraft amongst the
Wahadimu, a people in East Africa thought to
have come originally from Zanzibar, points out
that the wizardry of these people, whilst exhibit
ing many evil traits, possesses nevertheless wide
influence as a deterrent, and in this connection
tells a story of a wizard which has more than one
obvious moral.

INDIGENOUS . BELIEFS 209
The name of a corpse was Mzengwa Msa and
the name of the wizard Achani Msa, the third
name in the story was that of a brother Ngwa
Msa: " Mzengwa Msa, being ill, said, before his
death, ' If a man digs me up, my body will
stick to his, till we are buried both together.'
Ngwa Msa, his brother, came to dig bim up,
and said to him, ' You, although you say, when
you are dead if a man digs you up you wiU
stick to him — well, I will dig you up to-day,
and if you stick (you may) stick ! ' — and he took
him on his back.
" He danced with him all night, and put him
down (and took him up again), and danced,
and put him down (and took him up), and
danced ; but at dawn, when he wanted to put
him down, the corpse stuck to him. Ngwa
Msa said, ' Do not put me to shame — the words
which you said in this world do go with them
as far as the next. Get down, my brother, it
is dawn, the birds are caUing, because it is getting
light. Get down my brother, if you do not
leave me, people will laugh at you."*
In vain were the appeals of the wretched Ngwa
Msa, in shame and sorrow he crept behind his
house and hid himself ; here his wife found him
with the putrefying corpse adhering to his body.
Three days and nights Ngwa Msa uttered a
* Journal of the African Society, April, 191 7.

210 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
piteous plea for rehef, wife and friends joined in
the supplications, but the adherent corpse imparted
its putrefaction, and on the third day Ngwa Msa
paid with his life the penalty of his foUy — the two
corpses were buried together.
Whilst it is true that the African indigenous
beliefs repose largely upon a reaUy terrible fear
of the spirit world, the elements in those beliefs
which render the African races fertile soil for the
seeds of the Christian faith are very substantial.
The African belief accepts a Creator, not only
omniscient and omnipresent, but a Benevolent
Being, seeking the good of his created children,
and finaUy that the social order of the world has
been thrown into chaos by evil powers of spirits
and the wickedness of man.
There is the further asset in the belief of the
resurrection and ultimate heavenly bliss. In his
Notes on the Folk Lore of the Fjorts, Mr. Dennett
shows that to the Fjorts death was merely a
passing away and not death in the material sense,
that the voice of the departed was supposed to be
retained in the shape of dust encased in the horns
of an antelope caUed Sexi. The practice rests
upon the belief that the family may communicate
through this charm with their ancestors who are
in Heaven.
It is impossible in a single chapter to quote at
length from the remarkable studies of Dennett
upon the reUgious beUefs of the Africans. The
following striking paragraphs indicate the value
of his work upon the foundation of the reUgious
beUefs of the African.

INDIGENOUS BELIEFS 211
" Rain he soon associated with motherhood ;
sohds with seed and with sonship. The sun he
looked upon as the husband of the moon, and
these two with marriage and the seasons. He
caUed his offspring after birds, fishes and animals.
The order here is the order in which the human
family has been developed, and the physical
family in this order agrees with the order of the
symbols of creation in the sacred groves and the
order in Genesis. Another often recurring
cycle which must have impressed the father
or worshipper was and is that of procreation.
Hidden in some dark region of the father's
body lies the seed of future life, which, trans
mitted through the mother, appears in the son.
Marriage, conception, pregnancy, and travail
foUow one another, and so comes a new life."
" Again, imagine to yourself a native in some
primitive dwelling. The night is very dark.
The whisthng winds shake the trees around his
fragile hut. Everything is in a state of motion.
Cruel but magnificent flashes of lightning
almost blind him. Loud claps of thunder
deafen and stupefy him. Rain then falls in
torrents. At last, just before dawn, silence
gives him rest. He gets up, and first of aU sees
nothing but a thick white mist around him.
Then the mist Ufts, and he sees the land and
trees about him. And now the sun, like a
silvery gold disc, appears in the sky. The birds
fly singing from their nests, and the fish leap
and dive in the rivers. Then animals, men and
women leave their resting places, and go about

212 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
their various occupations. The Order is every
where."
Numerically Mohammedanism is the first
amongst the organized religious movements of
Africa. As a political force Mohammedanism
ceased to be effective with the progressive defeats
of the Kalifa of Khartoum, the Sultans of Sokoto,
the Senussi and Mohammedan chiefs of the French
and ItaEan Protectorates. But Mohammedanism
as a religious force is extraordinarily powerful,
whilst it is pushing its propaganda ever nearer the
equatorial line, and has in fact crossed it at several
points in the East Central and Eastern areas of
the continent, whilst vigorous communities are
settled in Cape Town, Durban and other coastal
ports. Mohammedanism, although poEticaUy power
less, has aUies of no mean order. It cannot be
denied that for various reasons, most of them
obscure, local governments and government
officials give the benefit of any doubt to the
Mohammedan community and often go out of
their way to show respect for Mohammedanism.
Another powerful ally is to be found in the fight
ing forces. The discipline of the Mohammedan
faith, coupled with its martial sentiments, produce
under European military instructors, men who
quickly become efficient soldiers.
Mohammedan military forces logically speU
Mohammedan Chaplains or MaUams in the pay
of the Government. The pagan elements incor
porated in the forces quickly come under this

MOHAMMEDAN PROGRESS 213
dominant influence, with the result that Govern
ment machinery is largely used in the propagation
of the Mohammedan faith.
Merchandise plays no inconsiderable part. It
is not merely that every Mohammedan trader is a
missionary, it is that the Mohammedan merchant
has a community of interest in every town and
village of the vast hinterland which is denied to
the "pagan" and Christian trader because the
hinterland peoples have no religious affinity, which
in practice means violent hostihty. It is difficult
to find a more complete and impressive summing
up of the Mohammedan situation in Africa than
in the eloquent words of Bishop J. C. Hartzell :
" To-day there are more than 50,000,000
Mohammedans in Africa. Most of them are
North of the Equator, and form ninety-five
per cent, of the population. North Africa is
the inteUectual and aggressive centre of Moham
medanism for the conquest of Africa, and from
there powerful influences affect the whole
Moslem world. The great Cairo university and
other educational centres ; the fanatical and
powerful Cenusian movement, a veritable
Moslem Jesuitism ; and the methods of propa
ganda by trade and political influence, together
with the war cry, 'Africa for Mohammed,'
form the strategy of a victorious continental
movement unless checked by a united, powerful,
and systematic continental policy by the mission
forces of the Christian faith."*
• Proceedings of the African Conference, New York. November
20th to 22nd, 1 917.

214 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
The Jewish and Hindoo faiths possess small
communities numbering together less than
1,000,000 scattered through coastal regions of
North, East and South Africa.
In reviewing the whole religious situation in
Africa, the dominating thought which oppresses
one is the grave inadequacy of the Christian forces
and the apparent inabihty of Christian civiUzation
to grasp the enormous importance of the problem.
Africa's 120 miUions of people are virtuaUy
untouched by the Christian faith, 3,000,000 being
the most optimistic figure one can give. The
white messengers of the Christian Faith, Pro
testant and Catholic, cannot exceed 10,000,
which means that to each man and woman is
aUotted on the average the care of 300 Christian
souls and the responsibility of endeavouring to
reach 13,000 people who have never been brought
into living touch with the elementary truths of
Christianity. The foUowing summary is taken from the
tables submitted to the New York Conference of
1917, and presents the situation at a glance :
Total missionary forces, includ
ing men and women, Protes
tant and Catholic, estimated 10,000
Total number of Christians ... 3,000,000
Total number including chil
dren under Christian in
fluence  10,600,000

CHAPTER IV
CRITICS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Hostile critics of missionary work in Africa
abound on every hand, and in so far as these
criticisms are just the Christian Church should not
resent, but examine them closely and if possible
remove the cause. But where criticism is based
upon prejudice it can be ignored, for sooner or
later the critic wiU assuredly come to grief.
The Christian missionary societies would prob
ably be the first to admit their failures in certain
areas, and would doubtless admit readily that
several boys trained in the mission schools at
Freetown or Nairobi have been convicted of
theft, whilst their language is as foul as that of
the lowest type of white man. The exclamation
one often hears is : " There's your mission boy ! "
— what one does not hear, and what the missionary
has every right to point out is that theft was not
learned from the school authorities, whilst the foul
language was taught the African, not by the
missionary, but by that most hostile critic of
missionary work — the low-class white !
In Africa there are inefficient mission stations,
there are missionaries who should never have
been sent out, there are on the spot to-day a few
215

216 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
who might with advantage be recaUed, there are
African products of Christian teaching who would
disgrace the most pagan faith, there are some
mission policies which are indefensible, there are,
in short, imperfections and shortcomings in every
mission field, but with absolute confidence one
can say that every single one of these criticisms
can be leveUed with much greater justice against
almost every administration and equally against
almost every commercial undertaking in the
continent. But to these hostile criticisms there is a volume
of rebutting testimony which provides the most
effective answer. Henry W. Nevinson, that
excellent writer, well known for his deep sym
pathy with the natives and his service in combat
ing slavery among them, is certainly no orthodox
Christian, but his attitude towards mission work
in Africa is weU depicted in the following passage :
" I have heard one of the most experienced
and influential of aU the missionaries discussing
with his highest class of native teachers whether
all Persons of the Trinity were present at Eve's
temptation ; and when one of them asked what
would have happened if Adam had refused to
eat the apple, the class was driven to suppose
that in that case men would have remained
perfect, while women became as wicked as we
see them now. It was a doctrine very accept
able to the native mind, but to hear those
rather beautiful old stories stiU taught as the
actual history of the world makes one's brain

THE IMPARTIAL WITNESS 217
whirl. One feels helpless and confused and
adrift from reason, as when another missionary,
whose name is justly famous, told me that there
were references to Moscow in Ezekiel, and
Daniel had exactly foretold the course of the
Russia-Japanese war. The native has enough
to puzzle his brain as it is. On one side he has
the Christian ideal of peace and good-will, pf
temperance and poverty and honour and self-
sacrifice, and of a God who is love. And on
the other side he has somehow to understand
the Christian's contumely, the Christian's
incalculable injustice, his cruelty and deceit.
his insatiable greed for money, his traffic in
human beings whom the Christian calls God's
children. When the native's mind is ham
pered and entangled in questions like these, no
one has a right to increase his difficulties by
telling him to believe primitive stories which, as
historical facts, are no truer than the native's
own myths."*
It would not be surprising if Nevinson more
than most men would subject the missionary and
his work to vigorous criticism, yet this is what he
says : "As to the scandals and sneers of traders,
officials, and gold-prospectors against the
missions, let us pass them by. They are only
the weary old language of ' the world.' They
are Eke the sneers of butchers and publicans
* A Modern Slavery.

218 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
at astronomy. They are the tribute of the
enemy, the assurance that all is not in vain.
... I have nothing but good to . say of the
missionaries and their work."*
This then is the wholehearted and sincere
testimony of one of the most experienced of the
world's writers and travellers.
Another traveUer, quite outside missionary
circles, but in intimate touch as a counsellor with
the scientific and administrative world is Miss
Violet Markham. In her interesting book The
South African Scene, Miss Markham says of
missionary work in Basutoland :
" Detractors of missionary work must find
Basutoland somewhat a stumbhng-block in the
path of their theories, missionary influence
having been the dominant one in the land to the
benefit of all concerned."
Sir Charles Eliot, Britain's High Commissioner
in East Africa, writing with that official reserve of
language so characteristic of aU his reports, says of
missionary work in Uganda :
" In the East Africa Protectorate I can give
the missionaries nothing but praise and thanks.
This encomium cannot, perhaps, be extended
unreservedly to Uganda, where politics mingled
with religion, and the Roman Catholics became
the French party opposed to the Protestant and
English party. But this difference is now a
* A Modern Slavery.

THE IMPARTIAL WITNESS 219
thing of the past, and one can only say that,
if formerly religious zeal in Uganda overstepped
the bounds of law* and order, the harvest of this
somewhat violent sowing has been rich and
abundant beyond comparison ; for there is
probably hardly any other instance where a
heathen country has adopted Christianity and
education with such enthusiasm. Also, if the
beginnings of Christianity in Uganda were some
what mixed up with politics, it must be admitted
that the result is politically important and
satisfactory."*Mr. Maurice Evans has the advantage of writing
after long years of close personal study of native
problems in Africa and America and writes with
the additional advantage of being completely
independent of administrative, commercial or
missionary influence. In a section of his work
upon Black and White in South East Africa, Mr.
Evans declares that there are to-day three potent
influences in the evolution of the Bantu people :
"The third force is that exercised by the
missionaries. In the early days the teaching
and influence of the missionaries were probably
the strongest factors in the breaking down of the
old order, but with the increase of European
population, and especially since the opening up
of the Witwatersrand and other gold-fields,
their influence in this disintegrating operation
is comparatively small. What is affecting the
* East Africa Protectorate.

220 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
most profound change in the native is his contact
with the white man at all points, and this change
is proceeding with ever-accelerated speed.
The fundamental differences between these
changes and those wrought by the missionaries,
are that, in the former there is little building up
of any salutary influence to take the place of the
old wholesome restraints, whilst in the latter
reUgion and morality are inculcated and replace
the checks weakened or destroyed."
Lord Bryce, than whom none is held in higher
esteem as an impartial observer and judge, thus
writes of missionary work in South Africa :
" So much may certainly be said : that the
Gospel and the mission schools are at present
the most truly civilizing influences which work
upon the natives, and that upon these influences,
more than on any other agency, does the pro
gress of the coloured race depend."
The foregoing are five appreciations from no
mean authorities, aU of whom are outside mission
ary circles, but each necessarily looks at missionary
work from a different angle. There is, however,
one recorded testimony of coUective and official
character which should for ever silence criticisms
of missionary work, namely the Report of Sir
Godfrey Lagden's Commission. The established
value of mission work is summarized under
sections :

CONCLUSIVE TESTIMONY 221
(a) Moral Improvement.
" There is no influence equal to that of
religious belief."
(b) Legal Restraint. — The restraints of law
furnish only an inadequate check to demoraE-
zation, thus the Commission expressed the
opinion that :
" hope for the elevation of the native races
must depend mainly on their acceptance of
Christian faith and morals."
(c) Christian Example.
" By admission to Christian households,
and by the example of the uprightness and
ourity of many of those around them, a
iarge number of Natives have doubtless been
brought under improving influences, but to
the Churches engaged in Mission work must
be given the greater measure of credit for
placing systematicaUy before the Natives
these higher standards of belief and con
duct."
The general conclusion of Sir Godfrey Lagden's
historic Commission upon the whole question of
missionary work throughout South Africa is set
forth in a single comprehensive and' authoritative
sentence :
" The Commission is satisfied that one great
element for the civiUzation of the Natives is to
be found in Christianity."

222 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
There is one other criticism sometimes leveUed
against missionaries, namely, that they are so
intent upon preaching that they leave to others
the unpleasant and too often dangerous tasks of
defending the African against his oppressors. If
it is true that many a missionary has held his
peace and is to-day holding his peace when voice
and pen should have uttered indignant protest,
it is equaUy true that in aU missionary fields in
Africa there have never been lacking missionaries
who have risked everything, including Ufe itseU,
in order to defend their native charges.
I. Who thundered against the operations of
the British South Africa Company ?
The missionaries of the London
Missionary Society.
2. Who defended the Basutos ?
The Paris missionaries.
3. Whom did the forces of oppression most
fear in East Africa ?
Bishop Tucker.
4. To whom did the oppressed Zulus look in
the day of extremity ?
The Colensos.
5. Who is never silent to-day when injustice
occurs in West Africa ?
Bishop Tugwell.
6. Who laid bare the existence of Portuguese
slavery ?
Messrs. Shindler, Swan, BowskiU,
and their feUow missionaries.

CONCLUSIVE TESTIMONY 223
7. Whose voices reached out from the
depths of the Congo forests to the whole
civilized world ?
The missionaries'.
What does Maurice Evans say upon this feature
in South Africa ? Let those who give ear to
criticism ponder the eloquent words of one whose
authority none can chaUenge ; let those who care
for the good name of the white race pause and
consider the true import of this masterly state
ment :
" One of the highest services rendered to the
State by the missionaries must now be men
tioned, and the more so because I have not heard
it claimed by them, and it is certainly not
recognized by the public. Underlying the
evidence given by the natives before the Natal
Native Commission was a feeling, not often
directly expressed, but unquestionably ever
present, of a shaken confidence in the desire
of Europeans in general, and the Government
in particular, for their weU-being. The old
faith in the good intentions of the Government,
and their behef that it was animated by a desire
to protect and help them, was seldom expressed
with any real conviction. The rock in a thirsty
land no longer gave shade to them."
Who then appeared in the desert, becoming at
once as a rock for shelter and rest, and as a spring
of crystal water, as new Ufe and hope ?

224 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
" In a time when doubt as to our good inten
tions was rife, when confidence in our goodwiU
was shaken, the unselfishness and altruism of the
missionary stood fast, as a pledge to the native
that the white man still desired his good, still
stood as a father to him, and that cash, or its
value in material things, Was not the only bond
between black and white. A bulwark to a
shattered and fast-disappearing faith were and
are these men, and it is a service to the State
and to their race which can hardly be too highly
estimated." In the heart of Central Africa the missionaries
had for nearly twenty years cried out for succour
not for themselves but for the Africans in their
charge. At last, driven by pubUc pressure, King
Leopold sent his own Commission to enquire, to
him alone they reported, to him alone they told
everything. Of the fuU story told to King
Leopold by Mons. Jansenns, president of the Com
mission, only snatches have ever reached the
public, but this was told to the King, these were
the words written as with a finger of fire and
written by his own appointed judge :
" The native, instead of going to the magis
trate, ^his natural protector, adopts the habit,
when he thinks he has a grievance against an
agent or an Executive officer, to confide in the
missionary. The latter listens to him, helps
him according to his means, and makes himself
the echo of all the complaints of a region.

CONCLUSIVE TESTIMONY 225
Hence the astounding influence which the
missionaries possess in some parts of the terri
tory. It exercises itself not only among the
natives within the purview of their reUgious
propaganda, but over all the viUages whose
troubles they have listened to. The mis
sionary becomes, for the native of the region,
the only representative of equity and justice."
Yes, in very truth, the Congo missionary from the
bloody years of 1889-1910 was the only represen
tative of equity and justice. In every land in
Africa many a Christian missionary " has stead
fastly set his face to go to Jerusalem " knowing
fuU weU that Calvary awaited him, but knowing
also by the light within that beyond the cross of
Calvary there lay an Easter morning for the
African race.

PART VI
Africa of To-morrow — The League of
Nations

PART VI
AFRICA OF TO-MORROW — THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
The Great War has shaken to its foundations the
whole world, and Africa more, perhaps, than at
any other period in the history of the continent.
What of to-morrow for Africa and the African ?
WiU the immediate effect be that of shattering at
last the chains which have bound the African
race, giving to the African the opportunity to
develop to the full stature of manhood ? The
answer wiU come, whence alone it can come, from
the Christian nations of the world.
The cardinal fact is that the Eternal Father of
men " hath made of one blood aU nations of men
to dweU on all the face of the earth." The Efe-
stream of the whole human race is one, flowing
from one source, flowing towards one goal, ani
mated by one and the same desire for freedom and
progress, impelled by one certain hope that justice
wiU ultimately overcome aU barriers erected by
avarice, envy, prejudice and hatred. The African
of one blood with the European and Asiatic claims,
and rightly claims, his place as a free man — free to
sell the labour of his hands to the highest bidder,
free to till his own soil, free to multiply and
replenish the earth, free to voice his opinions in
229

230 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the reEgious, social and civic upbuilding of his
own country.
The momentous event in the history of Africa
is the League of Nations — momentous because it
heralds a break in hoary poEtical institutions and
breathes into the continent the breath of a new
life. True, the League of Nations Covenant is
subject to geographical Emitations, but the
living principles which it enunciates wiU either
shatter, or overflow, aU arbitrary boundaries until
their beneficent and heaEng influences reach the
uttermost recesses of darkest Africa.
The League of Nations Covenant operates over
the whole of the late German colonies in Africa,
that is about 1,200,000 square miles, and affects
some 12,000,000 African people. The main
principles resemble so closely those of the Berlin
Act that before many years have passed other vast
tropical areas of Africa should be brought into
harmony with the Covenant. But civiEzation
cannot stop at that point, it must aim at bringing
aU areas not colonizable by the white races under
the Covenant, that is, aU those tropical and sub
tropical lands where industry and domestic Efe
are only possible for the African race, and where
white men and women can neither labour nor
bring up their famihes. The foregoing represent
to-day both the actual and the potential geo
graphical boundaries of the League of Nations.
The principles laid down by the League of
Nations are Eving principles capable of growth.
The duty of maintaining and applying them
belongs to the Mandatory Powers, but upon

TRUSTEESHIP 231
civiEzation faUs the task of watching the appUca-
tion and of fostering the growth of the institution.
The first principle of the Covenant now accepted
by aU the Powers is that of Trusteeship : The
Covenant declares that " the weU-being and
development of the people concerned form a
sacred trust of civilization," and for this purpose
securities are being taken.
This comes under Article 22 and deals with
relationship ; it shatters the old idea of colonial
" possessions "; it represents the antithesis of the
old Spanish and Portuguese and the Chartered
Company doctrines of colonial exploitation in the
interest of the MetropoUtan or Home Govern
ment. Trusteeship also speUs a definite commit
ment to certain cardinal features of administra
tive evolution. Trusteeship means that the
Government is to be in the interests of the
governed ; it means that when the ward has
attained to manhood the trusteeship wiU be
surrendered ; it means that it is the prime duty
of the trustee to so foster the growth of the ward
that upon reaching the state of manhood the
capacity to manage his own affairs wiU not be
denied or questioned.
The formal declaration of trusteeship as the
relationship between the European Mandatory
and the subjects of the mandated area, introduces
into Africa a new but perfectly clear constitutional
doctrine, namely, that sovereignty is not_ vested
in the Mandatory but reposes in the local inhabi
tants. In the course of time the prerogatives of
sovereignty wiU be defined and presumably

232 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
invested formaUy in the local legislature ; but the
principle of trusteeship, as laid down by the Peace
Conference and the League of Nations Covenant,
has terminated the pre-war conception that the
prerogative of sovereignty reposed not in the
inhabitants and people but in the Crown of the
Protectorate Power. This doctrine may be con
tested in certain quarters, but the logic of it will
prevail irresistibly.
It is vital to the African that none of the bene
fits are lost which should flow from this funda
mental conception, and at the risk of repetition
it is emphasized that to the people of Christen
dom the African race will look, rather than to
governments, for maintaining, broadening and
faithfully applying the principles to which the
Powers at Versailles set their signatures.
The real problem of repairing the wastes of
Africa and of winning backward areas for progress
is that of grafting on to the African stock Euro
pean and American life without destroying all
that is best in the social, reUgious and industrial
life of the African. How can modern govern
ments remodel the land and judicial systems with
out destroying those of the indigenous African ?
how can the missionary deal with age-long moral
abuses without destroying customs which are
veritable bulwarks to African hygiene and social
order ? how can commerce pursue its healthy
reciprocal process of taking from and putting into
Africa wealth and prosperity without doing
injustice to the African ? In short how can
civiEzation give of its best to Africa and yet leave

"OF ONE BLOOD" 233
the African in possession of his distinctive but
purified nationality ?— that is the real problem.
The first Article in the Administrative Faith of
the League of Nations must be the antithesis of
the Transvaal Grondwet. In every administra
tive Ordinance and action there must breathe the
spirit that equality in Church, State, or Industry
knows no bar reposing solely upon degrees of
colour. This does not mean that no barriers are
to be erected against the immediate flooding of
public services by Africans regardless of their
stage of social advancement. It does mean, and
should mean, flinging widely open the doors of
opportunity. It does mean, and should mean,
the total abolition in the mandated areas of colour
as of itself a bar to moral, economic and spiritual
progress. It means, further, that in the mandated
territories this, the last rampart of slavery, wiU be
thrown down, never again to raise its hateful
lineaments. " Of one blood " hath He made " all nations of
men to dwell on all the face; of the earth." This
full brotherhood of man does not mean miscegen
ation which too frequently leads to domestic
tragedy, but it does and should mean that if
intimate companionship with African woman
hood is good enough for the darkness of the night
that same womanhood should be good enough for
the hymeneal altar — Civilization cannot, Christ
ianity must not, tolerate the untenable position
that what is permissible in the shadows only be
comes a wrong in the light. Womanhood regardless
of colour, has the right to claim the seal and pro-

234 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
tection of public union as an integral part of sexual
companionship. If trusteeship is the basis of national relation
ship, and no colour bar the fundamental article
of administrative faith, the first stone in the
African social and economic structure is a right
solution of the land question. The mandated
areas being for the major part unsuited to Euro
pean and American colonization, the economic sta
bility is thus inherent in native industry which, in
turn, reposes upon security and adequacy of land
tenure. It is not only in the mandated territories
that these principles apply, but throughout the
African continent in a varying intensity of degree
— absolutely throughout the tropical and semi-
tropical regions and in relative proportions
according to distance from the equatorial Ene.
The indigenous African system of secure tribal
ownership is quite the best ; but the inroads of
the concessionaire, the influx of white men and
the over hasty introduction of European land laws
have made the retention of the native system
almost, although not quite, impossible. Without
delay the Mandatory trustees should set an example
by declaring that land not already alienated is
inalienable, next that aU native inhabitants in
beneficial occupation of land should be given
secure tribal title to the lands they occupy,
including kraals, gardens, forests and hunting
grounds. White immigrant cultivators of the soil are not
needed, for their only object is that of getting
land they cannot till, and then they demand for

A LAND SOLUTION 235
their own purposes the native labour forces which
could be more economically employed in native
production. But to conform to those exceptional
cases to a general rule, leases, subject to periodical
review, might be granted to approved white
immigrants. The question now emerges as to those areas
where white laws and immigrations have des
troyed the native systems beyond redemption.
In these areas native reserves of demonstrable
suitabiUty and of adequate acreage should be
officiaUy aUotted to the tribes in a title absolutely
secure from abrogation. Once such reserves have
been officiaUy deUmited they should never be
reduced except for indispensable works of pubhc
utiEty, and then only upon the same conditions
as those applying to the alienation of lands
occupied by immigrants or settlers.
This solution of the land problem wiU bear any
test to which it is subjected. The ethical test is
satisfied by the fact that, so far as possible, civiliza
tion would recognize legitimate native land rights.
The economic test is met. by tabulated statistics
in several African territories, which demonstrate
that adequate and secure native tenure of land
speUs an ever-increasing volume of commerce and
constantly improving vital statistics, whereas in
those territories where limited and insecure tenure
exists the volume of commerce is neghgible and
the vitality and density of the population is
relatively low. The administrative test finds its
answer in that to which most governments
ardently aspire — peace and contentment amongst

236 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
the governed and an ever-increasing and easy
supply of revenue.
There is but one solution for the African labour
problem, that is, by civil contract between em
ployer and employed. The League of Nations
must secure in the mandated areas an early
aboEtion of slave-owning, slave-trading, forced
labour and aU those forms of contract labour
which violate the principle of civil agreement.
The establishment of great areas in Africa where
forced labour is prohibited, and where civil
contract alone is permitted, will immediately lead
to a free current of labour towards aU such areas
and away from the centres of fraud and oppression.
In areas outside the mandated territories there
exists to-day slave-owning and slave-trading
affecting 250,000 certainly, but probably more
than 400,000 men and women ; there exist to-day
fraudulent and oppressive systems affecting another
250,000 at least ; there exist to-day disqualifica
tions reposing solely upon colour affecting
miUions — probably 10,000,000. Civilization as
a whole, but more particularly the forces of the
Christian Church, cannot rest until freedom and
equality of opportunity have been established for
the African race in African industry.
To reduce the foregoing principles to practical
application the following are essential, apart alto
gether from the general prohibitions of fraudulent
practices and other exercise of force. The pawn
ing of persons must be abolished. The assign
ment of powers held by chiefs for calling out
labour must be made iUegal. AU voluntary

LIMITED CONTRACTS 237
labour must be paid in cash direct to the labourer,
taxation discriminating between the natives
engaged in native industry and those employed
by white men, must be forbidden. No single
labour contract exceeding a period of six months
should be made, and at the termination of such the
labourer should be free to offer his services to any
other employer. All labour contracts made with
iUiterate employees should be submitted to a
magistrate or other duly-appointed administra
tive official. No cash advances should be made to
labourers involving them in registered debt, either
upon recruitment or during the period of the
contract. In no sphere is the principle of trusteeship, as
laid down by the League of Nations Covenant,
more potent for good than in that of commerce
and industry. Africa of the League of Nations,
Africa of to-morrow, must be free in commerce.
One of the elemental functions of a trustee is
that of seeking the best and most economic market
for his ward, the expenditure of the ward's assets
upon purchases and the disposal of the ward's
goods to the best advantage. Trusteeship
precludes transactions in the beneficial interest
of the trustee ; in the building of a railway, for
example, the decisive factor in accepting any
tender should be the standard of efficiency and
economy, and never the financial interest of the
Mandatory Power — to make the decisive factor a
perquisite of the Mandatory is to convert the
Mandatory authority into the practice of a fraudu
lent trusteeship.

238 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
In the purely commercial sphere the same
principles hold .good : the trustee cannot, with
out violating the principles of trusteeship, impose
tariffs upon the ward, either in imports or ex
ports, in the interest of the Mandatory's own
subjects or industries. The African ward is
entitled to expect that the entrance door and exit
of his territory will be open to aU nations upon
equal terms. If Switzerland should, at a later
date, accept a mandate, it would be perfectly
indefensible for the Geneva Government to im
pose an export tax on cocoa beans with a rebate on
exports shipped to Switzerland because that pro
cess would restrict the market for the African
ward's produce and thereby depress prices. In
commerce and industry the arena must be kept
free from discriminating import dues and chiefest
of aU from beneficial favours in the interests of
the Mandatory trustee. These principles must
apply now to the mandated areas, and to-morrow
they must be made to apply to every " Protec
torate " in the African continent — any other
course comes perilously near to national exploita
tion of the African.
The edifice of a new Africa, whose foundations
are truly laid upon the corner-stones of freedom
and brotherhood.will only be complete if cemented
together by civic Uberty and crowned by the glory
of true education and byjthe glory of a sincere
reUgious faith. The first element in the super
structure is franchise. The presence of the Euro
pean in Africa to-day is, we are told, due to
hundreds of poEtical instruments drafted, amended,

FRANCHISE 239
and formally accepted by African rulers and
councils. For the purpose of signing these docu
ments European statesmen have invariably de
clared that Africans were in every case competent
to arrive at decisions of far-reaching political
importance. It is surely untenable for these same
European statesmen now to deny the competence
of Africans to consider, amend and agree to
poEtical and administrative instruments of rela
tively unimportant administrative value !
Let it be admitted that the institution of
European governmental systems preclude the
useful attendance of iUiterate chiefs, but as the
advertised raison d'etre for the presence of Euro
peans and Americans in Africa is that of uplifting
the inhabitants, the only question is the period
at which this elevating process reaches the stage
of enfranchisement. It is held very widely that
this stage has aheady been reached in several parts
of Africa. To-day the franchise is accorded upon
condition, only in the Cape and certain limited
areas in French Senegambia. Upon the principle
of the single Fatherhood of God and the brother
hood of man franchise can never become a ques
tion of colour degrees, but only of social and
educational advancement. In Cape Colony a
property and educational test is applied. Africa
of to-morrow might weU adopt the policy of
Cecil Rhodes, " equal rights for all civiUzed men."
The difficulty is, of course, that of defining the
word " civihzed." It may be doubted whether
the possession of property is evidence of being
" civilized," for it might as easily be the haU-mark

240 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
of Cain or of Charles Peace ! An educational
standard is certainly evidence of a measure of
civilization, minimum income from industry is
also evidence of service to the community,
freedom from criminal convictions is presumptive
evidence of moral tone. If an African can pass
these tests he is not merely capable of expressing
an opinion upon legislation, but evinces a higher
level of civilization than thousands of white men
who control to-day the destinies of the African.
More than these three tests ought not to be
demanded of the African. When these three
tests can be met European administrations only
delay enfranchisement at the peril of upholding
flagrant injustice.
The African race is entitled to look to the
League of Nations and the Protecting Powers for
full educational opportunities. There are three
elemental features in a just educational policy :
first, that educational grants should everywhere
bear a reasonable proportion to total revenue —
to-day the educational grants are almost every
where negligible, the African administrations of
to-morrow must change all this or surrender their
trusteeship to more faithful stewards ; the
second is, that every African is entitled to free
elementary education ; and the third elemental
is, that no branch of educational science should be
denied to the sons and daughters of Africa.
The final glory reserved for the African race of
to-morrow should be the extension of the utmost
freedom and the warmest encouragement to
accept the Christian faith. Freedom from

ADMINISTRATIVE FAITH 241
penalties and disabiUties ; encouragement not to
lip-adherence, but to the purified life of a new
creation. To this end administrations should
encourage missionary forces to enter fields un
touched by the Gospel and look with approving
eye upon those, officials who glory in setting forth
at all times the example of lofty Christian prin
ciples. By this means the three miUion African
Christians of to-day wiU become the hundred
miUions of to-morrow, and take their place
amongst the foremost nations of Christendom.
Thus the main features of the new Africa
should be, whether within or without the man
dated areas :

Relationship to
European or
American Powers ¦
Fundamental arti
cle of Administra
tive poUcy
Sovereignty
Land PoEcy
Labour Policy
Commercial PoEcy

Franchise PoEcy
Education PoEcy

Trusteeship.

No colour bar.
Vested in the inhabitants.
Secure and adequate tenure
for every native tribe.
Complete freedom of con
tract.
No discriminating barriers
reposing upon race or
colour.
" Equal rights for aU civil
ized men."
Elemental for aU and open
door for the highest.

242 AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?
ReUgious PoUcy - Freedom for missionaries ;
by example and precept
encouragement to Chris
tian faith.
This poUcy of nine points applied to Africa
would sweep away the miasma of injustice which
is everywhere afflicting relationships and retarding
progress, and would give to the " Dark Con
tinent " the very breath of a new Efe, and by con
ferring such blessings upon Africa the whole
world would itself be blessed.

INDEX.

PAGE
Abyssinia, Conditions in  17
Albert King, Visit to the Congo . . 79
Alcohol, Problems stated. .145-53
, , Sir Hugh Cliff ord on . . 146
,, Mr. Schumacher on.. 146
„ Sir Harry Johnston on 148
,, and the Colour line.. 151
Area, Africa in miles  3
Atrocities, Congo  86
„ French Congo  86
Basel Mission, The  198
Borfimah fetish  204
Bryce, Lord, on Christian Mis
sions  220
Burrows, Dr., on Secret Societies2o6
Burtt, Joseph, on Portuguese
Slavery  89
Bushmen  4-5
Calvert, A. E., on Diamond out
put  42
Carriers  10
Casement's Report  76
Chaplain, Sir Drummond  53
Christianity in Africa  202-25
Do., Critics answered  215
Do., Statistics  202-13-14
Cocoa, History of  31
„ Cultivation  32, 36, 38
,, Production  9
Colour Bar, Abolition of  233
Columbus, the Discoverer of
Rubber  34
Congo, System of exploitation 79-86
„ Rubber and Ivory  80
„ Crime admitted  86
„ Flogging  86
Contract, Labour  87-104
„ Limitations  237
Copra, Production  28
Cotton seed  30
Conquest and the British Con
stitution  137
Cortes  34
Cripps, Rev. Shearly, on Rho-
desian expropriation  140
David, King  25
Dependencies, Lord Halsbury's
definition of  22
Dennett, R. E., on Secret
Societies 1  209-10
Denton, Sir Geo., and Nigerian
rubber  34
Domestic Slavery  63

PAGE
Education  1  171-87
,, value of  17
„ South Africa  173
,, Mohammedan ..177-78
,, Grants  182-5
„ Sir Hugh Clifford's
proposals  184
Eliot, Sir Charles, on Christian
Missions  218
Evans, Maurice, on Christian
Missions  219
Flogging on the Congo  86
Franchise, Qualification for  239
Fulani, The  4-5
Gold, African sources of  50
Gold Mines, depth of  53
Gold output ,  50-4
Gold winning  51
Haig, Sir Douglas, and Palm
products  28
Half-castes, " Prejudice against "55
Harding, Col. Colin; on Portu
guese Slavery  89
Hausa, The  4-5
Havilah identified  49
Hopkins,Consul  6
Hottentots  4-5
Indolence  8
Indian Immigration  94-104
India Office and Immigration . . 95
Industrial Missions  188-201
Do. Merchants' criticism  190
Do. Basel  198
Jagersfontein Diamonds  42
Johannesburg Gold output .... 54
Kamerun Post on Forced Labour 74
Keane, Prof., quoted  5
Do. on Rhodesian ruins .... 49
Kenia, Mt  4
Kilmanjaro Mt  4
Kimberley Diamonds  42
King Solomon's Gold  45
Kirk, Sir John, on Indian Im
migration  95
Labour systems  62
Labour wages, Natives  53
„ ,, Whites  53
Labour, Shortage of  60
Do. Forced  69
Do. in British territories. . . .71
Do. por private profit  7*

243

244

INDEX

PAGE
Labour in Rhodesia 
Lagden Commission, on the In
dolence  8
Land problems  107
„ „ Hybrid tenures .. 109
Do. Sir Harry Johnston's
solution  109-27
Do. General Botha's solu
tion  109-n
Do. Sir Godfrey Lagden.. ..no
Do. South Africa  112
Do. Sir W. Beaumont's Re
port  113
Do. Swaziland Concessions 120
Do. Basutoland  122
Do. SirH. Sloley  123
Do. African  107-42
Do. East African Expro
priation  124-8
Do. Northern Nigerian .... 130
Do. Rhodesian Expropria
tion  133-42
League of Nations, Obligations
in Africa  230
Leopard Society  204-6
Leopold, King, and Congo Rub
ber  34
Do. His Commission of In
quiry  80-6
Liberia, Conditions in  15
Lippert Land Concession, Ju
dicial Committee's " Judg
ment "  136-7
Margarine, sources of  30
Markham, Violet, on Christian
Missions  218
Martin, Sir Richard, Rhodesian
Inquiry  73
Maciver, Dr. Randall, Rhodesian
ruins  49
Milner, Lord, on Indian Immi
gration  97
Menelik, The late Emperor  17
Merewether, Sir E., on Secret
Societies  206
Monkey Nut, The  30
Montesuma's Cocoa supply  32
Morel, E. D., on Congo question 77
Mohammedanism, Strength of 212-4
Nevinson, H. W., on Portuguese
Slavery  89
Do. on Christian Missions 216-7
Nigerian Land system  130
Ophir identified  49

PAGE
Palms, Cocoanut and Oil  25
Pharoah, Necho  25
Phthisis, Miners'  51
Polygamy : the Problem stated 154-68
Do. Scriptural warrant .... 155
Do. Mary Kinsley on  157
Do. Morel, E. D., on  157
Do. Dr. Blyden on  159
Do. Evans, Maurice, on .... 162
Population of Africa  3
Do. Decrease  59
Do. Causes of decrease  60
Portuguese Slavery  87-101
Do. Hospitality  88
Do. British Alliance  93
Protectorate, Definition of .... 23
Rhodesian Land expropriation 133
„ Reserves Commission 39
Rubber Cultivation  33-4
Ruwenzori , Mt  4
Salisbury's, Lord, Declaration
on Indian immigration  95
Secret Societies  204-6
Sexual Abuses  164-8
Shackles, Portuguese  90
Sheba, Queen of, African Journey 49
Skeletons, Slave  91
Slaves, Death Rates  92
Slavery in Yucatan  35
,, Domestic  63-8
,, House  64
,, in Congo  76
Slaves, East African  67
,, Prices of  9
Soapstone Birds  48
Solomon's Gold, King  46
Somali, The  4
South African Constitution  4
Strachey, St. Loe, on Portuguese
Slavery  93
Strikes, Racial  55
St. Thome Slavery  87
Talbot Amaury on Secret Socie
ties  207
Temple, The Holy, Construction
°f  44
Trusteeship, Principle of  231
Uganda Land Settlement. . . .128-9
Wages, White and Native, com
pared  53
Wine, Palm  28
Yucatan Slavery  35
Zimbabwe Ruins  47

GARDEN CITY PRESS, LETCHWORTH. HERTS.

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