History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0235/02351.txt

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$Title{Impressions Of South Africa
Chapter XXIV - Politics In The Two British Colonies}
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$Author{Bryce, James}
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$Subject{cape
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english
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british
colonies
questions
south
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natal}
$Date{1897}
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Title:       Impressions Of South Africa
Book:        Part IV - Some South African Questions
Author:      Bryce, James
Date:        1897

Chapter XXIV - Politics In The Two British Colonies

     The circumstances of the two South African colonies are so dissimilar
from those of the British colonies in North America and in Australasia as to
have impressed upon their politics a very different character.  I do not
propose to describe the present political situation, for it may have changed
before these pages are published.  It is only of the permanent causes which
give their color to the public life and political issues of the country that I
shall speak, and that concisely.

     The frame of government is, in Cape Colony as well as in Natal,
essentially the same as in the other self-governing British colonies. There is
a governor, appointed by the home government, and responsible to it only, who
plays the part which belongs to the Crown in Great Britain. He is the nominal
head of the executive, summoning and proroguing the legislature, appointing
and dismissing ministers, and exercising, upon the advice of his ministers,
the prerogative of pardon.  There is a cabinet consisting of the heads of the
chief administrative departments, who are the practical executive of the
Colony, and are responsible to the legislature, in which they sit, and at
whose pleasure they hold their offices.  There is a legislature consisting of
two houses - an Assembly and a Legislative Council.  In Cape Colony (for of
the arrangements in Natal I have spoken in a previous chapter) both houses are
elected on the same franchise, - a low one, - and every citizen is eligible
for membership in either; but the districts for the election of members of the
Council are much larger, and therefore fewer, than those for the Assembly, so
the former body is a small and the latter a comparatively numerous one. The
rights and powers of both houses are theoretically the same, save that money
bills originate in the Assembly; but the Assembly is far more powerful, for
the ministry holds office only so long as it has the support of a majority in
that body, whereas it need not regard a hostile vote in the Council.
Ministers have the right of speaking in both houses, but can, of course, vote
only in the one of which they are members by popular election.  If there
happens not to be a minister who has a seat in the Council (as is the case at
present), it is usual for the cabinet to allot one to be present in and look
after that chamber for the day.

     This cabinet system, as it is called, works pretty smoothly, on lines
similar to that English original whence it is copied.  The most interesting
peculiarity is the Cape method of forming the smaller house. In England the
Upper House is composed of hereditary members; in the Canadian Confederation,
of members nominated for life - both of them systems which are quite
indefensible in theory.  Here, however, we find the same plan as that which
prevails in the States of the North American Union, all of which have senates
elected on the same franchise, and for the same term, as the larger house, but
in more extensive districts, so as to make the number of members of the second
chamber smaller.  Regarding the merits of the Cape scheme I heard different
views expressed.  Nobody seemed opposed in principle to the division of the
legislature into two houses, but many condemned the existing Council as being
usually composed of second-rate men, and apt to be obstructive in its
tendencies.  Others thought that the Council was a useful part of the scheme
of government, because it interposed some delay in legislation and gave time
for reflection and further debate.  One point came out pretty clearly.  No
difficulty seems to arise from having two popularly elected houses equally
entitled to control the administration, for custom has settled that the
Assembly or larger house is that whose vote determines the life of a ministry.
But it follows from this circumstance that all the most able and ambitious men
desire a seat in the more powerful chamber, leaving the smaller house to those
of less mark.  This is the exact reverse of what has happened in the United
States, where a seat in the Senate is more desired than one in the House; but
it is a natural result of the diverse arrangements of the two countries, for
in the federal government the Senate has some powers which the House of
Representatives does not enjoy, while in the several States of the Union,
although the powers of the two houses are almost the same, the smaller number
of each Senate secures for each Senator somewhat greater importance than a
member of the larger body enjoys.  The Cape Colony plan of letting a minister
speak in both houses works very well, and may deserve to be imitated in
England, where the fact that the head of a department can explain his policy
only to his own House has sometimes caused inconvenience.

     So much for the machinery.  Now let us note the chief points in which the
circumstances of Cape Colony and of Natal (for in these respects both colonies
are alike) differ from those of the other self-governing colonies of Britain.

     The population is not homogeneous as regards race, but consists of two
stocks, English and Dutch.  These stocks are not, as in Canada, locally
separate, but dwell intermixed, though the Dutch element predominates in the
western province and in the interior generally, the English in the eastern
province and at the Kimberley diamond-fields.

     The population is homogeneous as regards religion, for nearly all are
Protestants, and Protestants of much the same type.  Race difference has
fortunately not been complicated, as in Canada, by ecclesiastical antagonisms.

     The population is homogeneous as respects material interests, for it is
wholly agricultural and pastoral, except a few merchants and artisans in the
seaports, and a few miners at Kimberley and in Namaqualand.  Four fifths of it
are practically rural, for the interests of the small towns are identical with
those of the surrounding country.

     The population is not only rural, but scattered more thinly over a vast
area than in any other British colony, except northwestern Canada and parts of
Australasia.  In Natal there are only about two white men to the square mile,
and in Cape Colony less than two.  Nor is this sparseness incidental, as in
North America, to the early days of settlement.  It is due to a physical
condition, - the thinness of the pasture, - which is likely to continue.

     Below the white citizens, who are the ruling race, there lies a thick
stratum of colored population, numerically larger, and likely to remain so,
because it performs all the unskilled labor of the country.  Here is a
condition which, though present in some of the Southern States of America, is
fortunately absent from all the self-governing colonies of Britain, and indeed
caused Jamaica to be, some time ago, withdrawn from that category.

     The conjunction of these circumstances marks off South Africa as a very
peculiar country, where we may expect to find a correspondingly peculiar
political situation.  Comparing it to other states, we may say that the Cape
and Natal resemble Canada in the fact that there are two European races
present, and resemble the Southern States of America in having a large mass of
colored people beneath the whites.  But South Africa is in other respects
unlike both, and although situated in the southern hemisphere, it does not
resemble Australia.

     Now let us see how these circumstances have determined the political
issues that have arisen in Cape Colony.

     Certain issues are absent which exist not only in Europe and the United
States, but also in Australia and in Canada.  There is no antagonism of rich
and poor, because there are very few poor and still fewer rich.  There is no
workingman's or labor party, because so few white men are employed in
handicrafts.  There is no socialist movement, nor is any likely to arise,
because the mass of workers, to whom elsewhere socialism addresses itself, is
mainly composed of black people, and no white would dream of collectivism for
the benefit of blacks.  Thus the whole group of labor questions, which bulks
so largely in modern industrial states, is practically absent, and replaced by
a different set of class questions, to be presently mentioned.

     There is no regularly organized Protectionist party, nor is the
protection of native industry a living issue of the first magnitude.  The
farmers and ranchmen of Cape Colony no doubt desire to have a tariff on
food-stuffs that will help them to keep up prices, and they have got one. But
it is not a very high tariff, and as direct taxation is difficult to raise in
a new country with a scattered population, the existing tariff, which averages
twelve and a half per cent. ad valorem, may be defended as needed, at least to
a large extent, for the purposes of revenue.  Natal has a lower tariff, and is
more favorable in principle to free-trade doctrine.  Manufactures have been so
sparingly developed in both colonies that neither employers nor workmen have
begun to call for high duties against foreign goods.  Here, therefore, is
another field of policy, important in North America and in Australia, which
has given rise to little controversy in South Africa.

     As there is no established church, and nearly all the people are
Protestants, there are no ecclesiastical questions, nor is the progress of
education let and hindered by the claims of sects to have their respective
creeds taught at the expense of the state.

     Neither are there any land questions, such as those which have arisen in
Australia, for there has been land enough for those who want to have it, while
few agricultural immigrants arrive to increase the demand. Moreover, though
the landed estates are large, their owners are not rich, and excite no envy by
their possession of a profitable monopoly.  If any controversy regarding
natural resources arises, it will probably turn on the taxation of minerals.
Some have suggested that the state should appropriate to itself a substantial
share of the profits made out of the diamond and other mines, and the fact
that most of those profits are sent home to shareholders in Europe might be
expected to make the suggestion popular.  Nevertheless, the suggestion has
not, so far, "caught on," to use a familiar expression, partly, perhaps,
because Cape Colony, drawing sufficient income from its tariff and its
railways, has not found it necessary to hunt for other sources of revenue.

     Lastly, there are no constitutional questions.  The suffrage is so wide
as to admit nearly all the whites, and there is, of course, no desire to go
lower and admit more blacks.  The machinery of government is deemed
satisfactory; at any rate, one hears of no proposals to change it, and, as
will be seen presently, there is not in either colony a wish to alter the
relations now subsisting between it and the mother country.

     The reader may suppose that since all these grounds of controversy,
familiar to Europe, and some of them now unhappily familiar to the new
democracies also, are absent, South Africa enjoys the political tranquillity
of a country where there are no factions, and the only question is how to find
the men most able to promote that economic development which all unite in
desiring.  This is by no means the case. In South Africa the part filled
elsewhere by constitutional questions, and industrial questions, and
ecclesiastical questions, and currency questions, is filled by race questions
and color questions.  Color questions have been discussed in a previous
chapter.  They turn not, as in the Southern States of America, upon the
political rights of the black man (for on this subject the ruling whites are
in both colonies unanimous), but upon land rights and the regulation of native
labor.  They are not at this moment actual and pungent issues, but they are in
the background of every one's mind, and the attitude of each man to them goes
far to determine his political sympathies.  One cannot say that there exist
pro-native or anti-native parties, but the Dutch are by tradition more
disposed than the English to treat the native severely and, as they express
it, keep him in his place.  It is always by Englishmen that the advocacy of
the native case is undertaken, yet many Englishmen share the Dutch feeling.
In Natal both races are equally anti-Indian.

     The race question among the whites, that is to say, the rivalry of Dutch
and English, would raise no practical issue were Cape Colony an island in the
ocean, for there is complete political and social equality between the two
stocks, and the material interests of the Dutch farmer are the same as those
of his English neighbor.  It is the existence of a contiguous foreign state,
the South African Republic, that sharpens Dutch feeling.  The Boers who
remained in Cape Colony and in Natal have always retained their sentiment of
kinship with those who went out in the Great Trek of 1836, or who moved
northward from Natal into the Transvaal after the annexation of Natal in 1842.
Many of them are connected by family ties with the inhabitants of the two
republics, and are proud of the achievements of their kinsfolk against Dingaan
and Mosilikatze, and of the courage displayed at Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill
against the British. They resent keenly any attempt to trench upon the
independence of the Transvaal, while most of the English do not conceal their
wish to bring that state into a South African Confederation, if possible under
the British flag.  The ministries and legislatures of the two British
colonies, it need hardly be said, have no official relations with the two
Dutch republics, because, according to the constitution of the British empire,
such relations, like all other foreign relations, belong to the Crown, and the
Crown is advised by the British cabinet at home.  In South Africa the Crown is
represented for the purpose of these relations by the High Commissioner, who
is not responsible in any way to the colonial legislatures, and is not even
required to consult the colonial cabinet, for his functions as High
Commissioner for South Africa are deemed to be distinct from those which he
has as Governor of Cape Colony.  Matters touching the two republics and their
relation to the two colonies are, accordingly, entirely outside the sphere of
action of the colonial legislatures, which have, in strict theory, no right to
pass resolutions regarding them.  In point of fact, however, the Cape Assembly
frequently does debate and pass resolutions on these matters; nor is this
practice disapproved, for, as the sentiments of the Colony are an important
factor in determining the action of the home government, it is well that the
British cabinet and the High Commissioner should possess such a means of
gaging those sentiments.  The same thing happens with regard to any other
question between Britain and a foreign power which affects the two colonies.
Questions with Germany or Portugal, questions as to the acquisition of
territory in South Central Africa, would also be discussed in the colonial
legislatures, just as those of Australia some years ago complained warmly of
the action of France in the New Hebrides.  And thus it comes to pass that
though the governments and legislatures of the colonies have in strictness
nothing to do with foreign policy, foreign policy has had much to do with the
formation of parties at the Cape.

     Now as to the parties themselves.  Hitherto I have spoken of Natal and
the Cape together, because their conditions are generally similar, though the
Dutch element is far stronger in the latter than in the former. In what
follows I speak of the Cape only, for political parties have not had time to
grow up in Natal, where responsible government dates from 1893.  In the
earlier days of the Cape legislature parties were not strongly marked, though
they tended to coincide with the race distinction between Dutch and English,
because the western province was chiefly Dutch, and the eastern chiefly
English, and there was a certain rivalry or antagonism between these two main
divisions of the country.  The Dutch element was, moreover, wholly
agricultural and pastoral, the English partly mercantile; so, when any issue
arose between these two interests, it generally corresponded with the division
of races.  Political organization was chiefly in English hands, because the
colonial Dutch had not possessed representative government, whereas the
English brought their home habits with them.  However, down till 1880 parties
remained in an amorphous or fluid condition, being largely affected by the
influence of individual leaders; and the Dutch section of the electorate was
hardly conscious of its strength.  In the end of that year, the rising in the
Transvaal, and the war of independence which followed, powerfully stimulated
Dutch feeling, and led to the formation of the Africander Bond, a league or
association appealing nominally to African, but practically to Boer,
patriotism.  It was not anti-English in the sense of hostility to the British
connection, any more than was the French party in Lower Canada at the same
time, but it was based not only on the solidarity of the Boer race over all
South Africa, but also on the doctrine that Africanders must think of Africa
first, and see that the country was governed in accordance with local
sentiment rather than on British lines or with a view to British interests.
Being Dutch, the Bond became naturally the rural or agricultural and pastoral
party, and therewith inclined to a protective tariff and to stringent
legislation in native matters.  Such anti-English tint as this association
originally wore tended to fade when the Transvaal troubles receded into the
distance, and when it was perceived that the British government became more
and more disposed to leave the Colony to manage its own affairs.  And this was
still more the case after the rise to power of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who, while
receiving the support of the Bond and the Dutch party generally, was known to
be also a strong imperialist, eager to extend the range of British power over
the continent.  At the same time the attachment of the colonial Dutch to the
Transvaal cooled down under the unfriendly policy of President Kruger, whose
government imposed heavy import duties on their food-stuffs, and denied to
their youth the opportunities of obtaining posts in the service of the South
African Republic, preferring to fetch Dutch-speaking men from Holland, when it
could have had plenty of capable people from the Cape who spoke the tongue and
knew the ways of the country.  Thus the embers of Dutch and English and
antagonism seemed to be growing cold when they were suddenly fanned again into
a flame by the fresh Transvaal troubles of December, 1895, which caused the
resignation of Mr. Rhodes, and the severance from him of his Dutch supporters.
Too little time has elapsed since those events to make it possible to predict
how parties may reshape themselves, nor is it any part of my plan to deal with
current politics.  Feeling still runs high, but it has not gone so far as to
interrupt the previously friendly social relations of the races, and there are
good grounds for hoping that within a few months or years mutual confidence
will be restored.

     So far as I could ascertain, both local government and central government
are in the two colonies pure and honest.  The judiciary is above all
suspicion.  The civil service is managed on English principles, there being no
elective offices, and nothing resembling what is called the "caucus system"
seems to have grown up.  There are in the Cape legislature some few members
supposed to be "low-toned" and open to influence by the prospect of material
gain, but, though I heard of occasional jobbing, I heard of nothing amounting
to corruption.  Elections are said to be free from bribery, but as they have
seldom excited any keen interest, this point of superiority to most countries
need not be ascribed to moral causes.

     Reviewing the course of Cape politics during the thirty years of
responsible government, that course appears smooth when compared with the
parallel current of events in the Australian colonies.  There have been few
constitutional crises, and no exciting struggles over purely domestic issues.
This is due not merely to the absence of certain causes of strife, but also to
the temper of the people, and their thin dispersion over a vast territory.  In
large town populations, excitement grows by the sympathy of numbers; out in
South Africa it is hard, except in five or six places, to gather a public
meeting of even three hundred citizens.  The Dutch are tardy, cautious, and
reserved.  The doggedness of their ancestors who resisted Philip II of Spain
lives in them still.  They have a slow, tenacious intensity, like that of a
forest fire, which smolders long among the prostrate trunks before it bursts
into flame.  But they are, except when deeply stirred, conservative and slow
to move.  They dislike change so much as to be unwilling to change their
representatives or their ministers.  A Cape statesman told me that the Dutch
members of the Assembly would often say to him: "We think you wrong in this
instance, and we are going to vote against you, but we don't want to turn you
out; stay on in office as before." So President Kruger observed to me, in
commenting on the frequent changes of government in England: "When we have
found an ox who makes a good leader of the team, we keep him there, instead of
shifting the cattle about in the hope of finding a better one"; and in saying
this he expressed the feelings and habits of his race.  To an Englishman they
seem to want that interest in politics for its own sake which marks not only
the English (and still more the Irish) at home, but also the English stock in
North America and Australia.  But this very fact makes them all the more
fierce and stubborn when some issue arises which stirs their inmost mind, and
it is a fact to be remembered by those who have to govern them.  The things
they care most about are their religion, their race ascendancy over the
blacks, and their Dutch-African nationality as represented by their kinsfolk
in the two republics.  The first of these has never been tampered with; the
two latter have been at the bottom of all the serious difficulties that have
arisen between them and the English.  That which at this moment excites them
and forms the crucial issue in Cape politics is the strained condition of
things which exists in the Transvaal.  I propose in the following chapter to
explain how that condition came about, and to sketch its salient features.