SOUTH AFRICA
471
Next to the Hottentots the white settlers encountered the
Bushmen (q.v.). When first known to the early colonists they
were inveterate stock thieves, and were treated as wild animals,
to be shot whenever an opportunity occurred[1] Such opposition
as Hottentots and Bushmen were able to offer to European
colonization was not difficult to overcome (see Cape Colony:
History). The expansion of the colony was little retarded by
native opposition until the Dutch encountered the Bantu negro
tribes. As already stated, the Bantus, like the Europeans, were
invaders of South Africa, and the meeting of these rival invaders
was the cause of many bloody conflicts. At first the Cape
government endeavoured to come to an amicable arrangement
with the new power threatening its eastern border, and in 1780
it was agreed that the Great Fish River should be the permanent
boundary between the colonial and Bantu territories. The
Bantus or Kaffirs (q.v.), as they were universally called, then held
all the coast-lands between Delagoa Bay and the Great Fish
River, and for many years they were strong enough to bar the
further progress eastward of the white races. But the agreement
of 1780 was impossible of fulfilment. The peace was broken
in 1789 by an invasion of the colonial territory by the Kaffirs,
and this conflict proved to be but the first of a series of Kaffir
wars which lasted for a century. In 1811 it was deemed necessary
to expel the Kaffirs from the Zuurveld, and the British
headquarters in that campaign became the site of Graham’s Town.
In 1817–1819 the Kaffirs returned and laid waste a large area.
They were driven back and the country up to the Keiskama
River annexed to the colony; but the disaster which nearly
overwhelmed the eastern province convinced Lord Charles
Somerset, then governor of the colony, of the necessity for a line
British Settlers
of 1820.of frontier forts and a more numerous settlement of
colonists. Representations on the matter in England,
coupled with assurances from Somerset as to the
fertility of the district, induced the British government to vote
£50,000 for the purpose of sending out a number of emigrants,
Applications were called for, and no fewer than 90,000 were
received. Of these, only 4000 were selected and shipped to
South Africa. They were landed in 1820, in Algoa Bay, Where
they founded Port Elizabeth and the Albany settlement. Among
these settlers were a number of married men with families.
They were recruited from England, Ireland and Scotland, and
came from all grades of society. Among them were cadets of
old families, retired officers, professional men, farmers, tradesmen,
mechanics and labourers. They encountered many difficulties
and some suffering in their early days, but on the whole
they throve and prospered. Their descendants, the Atherstones,
Bowkers, Barbers, Woods, Whites, Turveys, and a number of
other well-known frontier families, are to-day the backbone of
the eastern district of the Cape, and furnish the largest portion
of the progressive element in that province. Among them was
a gifted Scotsman named Thomas Pringle (1789–1834). His
poems, including “Afar in the desert I love to ride,” depict the
scenes of those early days in glowing lines. The vast spaces of
the veld, the silence of the solitudes, the marvellous, varied and
abundant animal life, the savage, half-weird character of the
natives and the wild adventure of the early colonists have been
caught with a true spirit of genius. Since his day no one, unless
it be Olive Schreiner in The Story of on African Farm, has so
vividly painted the life and the atmosphere of that vast continent
lying to the south of the Zambezi.
Various Protestant missions had sent agents among the natives
during the closing years of the 18th century, and after the
definite acquisition of the Cape by Great Britain the number of
missionaries in the country greatly increased. Many became
pioneers, settling in regions beyond the limits of British jurisdiction.
Others remained within Cape Colony, while several
were stationed among the Kaffirs along the colonial border.
The missionaries from the first often found themselves at variance
with the Dutch and also the British settlers, whose methods of
dealing with the natives often deserved condemnation. At this
period Dr John Philip (q.v.), of the London Missionary Society,
was the most prominent of the missionaries in the colony, and
his influence was powerful with the home government. The
publication in 1828 of his book Researches in South Africa had
an important effect on the future of the country. The British
government adopted his negrophil attitude and made its agents
at the Cape conform to it. The equality of all free Hottentots
and other free persons of colour with the white colonists was
decreed in that year (1820). Philip’s action lacked discrimination,
and his faith in the natives was excessive. His charges
greatly embittered the Boers, who were further aggrieved by the
emancipation of the slaves. The Slave Emancipation Act,
Emancipation
of Slaves.freeing all slaves throughout the British Empire,
came into force in December 1834.[2] The slaves in
Cape Colony, who consisted of negroes from Mozambique,
natives of Madagascar, and of Hottentots and Malays were
estimated at the time at 36,000. The Cape governments—both
Dutch and British—had been consistently averse from the
importation of slaves in large numbers, and the great majority
of the slaves were therefore Hottentots. The sum voted by the
British government to slave-owners in Cape Colony, out of a
total compensation paid of £20,000,000, was £1,250,000 (the
official estimate of their value being £3,000,000). This money
was only made payable in London, and the farmers were compelled
to sell their claims for compensation to agents, who
frequently paid a merely nominal price for them. In many
instances farmers were unable to obtain native labour for a
considerable time after the emancipation, and in several cases
ruin was the result. A very bitter feeling was thus created
among the Dutch colonists.
The championship of the natives by the missionaries led to attacks, in part justified, upon the policy of the missions not only by the Dutch, but by the British colonists. The zeal of the missionaries frequently outran their discretion. This was especially the case in early days. They not only endeavoured to protect and guide the natives beyond the colonial border, but among the Hottentots within the colony they instilled notions of antipathy to the white farmers, and withdrew large numbers of them from agricultural pursuits. Their general attitude may be explained as a reaction against the abuses which they saw going on around them, and to a misconception of the character of the Hottentot and Bantu races. A longer experience of all the African negroid races has led to a considerable modification in Work of the Missionaries.the views originally held in regard to them. The black man is not simply a morally and intellectually undeveloped European, and education, except in rare instances, does not put him on an equality with the European. But, admitting all that may be justly urged against the extreme attitude of some of the missionaries, no unprejudiced man will deny that their work on the whole has been a good one. The fair fame of Great Britain has more than once been upheld in South Africa at the instigation and by the conduct of these intrepid pioneers. Robert Moffat and David Livingstone among the Bechuanas, E. Cassalis among the Basutos, François Coillard among the Barotse, James Stewart in Cape Colony, to name but a few of the great missionaries, have all had an excellent influence upon the natives. They have (besides their purely spiritual work) opposed the sale of alcohol, denounced inhumanity from the farmers, encouraged the natives to labour and taught them mechanical arts. Technical education, begun about 1840, now occupies a position little, if at all, inferior to that of doctrinal teaching, and the effect is an excellent one. Strong testimony to the beneficial result of their labours was borne by a thoroughly impartial commission, presided over by Sir Godfrey Lagden, which in 1903–1905 investigated the status and condition of the natives of South Africa.
To return to the period of Dr Philip’s activity.[3] Largely upon
- ↑ It appears that the first persons to treat the Bushmen other than as animals to be destroyed were two missionaries, Messrs J. J. Kicherer and Edwards, who in the early years of the 19th century devoted themselves to ameliorating the lot of these aborigines.
- ↑ The slaves, after passing four years in a species of apprenticeship, were finally freed on the 1st of December 1838.
- ↑ At this time (c. 1815–1840) numbers of persons brought discredit on the missionary cause by their illiteracy, narrow-minded prejudices and in some cases lax sexual morality. These persons “assumed to themselves the important office of teachers in the missionary schools within the colony.” See H. Cloete’s The Great Boer Trek, lecture II.
