(Extract.)
On the Nile, near Kiro, January 21, 1903
I have just visited the Belgian stations of Kiro and Lado, as also the
station of Gondokoro in the Uganda Protectorate.
Your Lordship may like to receive some remarks on the impressions I
derived as regards the Belgian positions on the Upper Nile.
I should, in the first instance, observe that Commandant Hanolet, who is
in charge of the district, was absent in the interior of the country;
but Sir Reginald Wingate and myself were most courteously received by
the officers in command at Kiro and Lado.
From the point of view of appearance, the two Belgian stations contrast
favourably with any of the Soudanese stations on the Nile, and still
more favourably with Gondokoro in the Uganda Protectorate. The principal
dwelling-houses are of brick. They seem to be well built. The stations
are kept scrupulously clean. The troops are well housed. Flourishing
gardens have been created. I counted the graves of nine Europeans at
Kiro, all of whom died of fever, but I am informed that the health of
the place is now greatly improved.
I had heard so many and such contradictory accounts of the Belgian
Administration that I was very desirous of ascertaining some concise and
definite evidence on this subject. During a hurried visit, and with
opportunities of observation confined to the banks of the river, I
scarcely anticipated that I should be able to arrive at any independent
opinion on the point at issue. I saw and heard, however, quite enough to
gain an insight into the spirit which pervades the Administration.
It must be remembered that the 1,100 miles of country which I traversed
between Khartoum and Gondokoro has, until recently, been the prey of
slave-dealers, Egyptian Pashas, and dervishes. Under the circumstances,
it might well have been expected that much time would be required to
inspire confidence in the intentions of the new Government. It is,
however, certain that, with the exception of a portion of the Nuer
tribe, who live in a very remote region on the upper waters of the
Sobat, confidence has been completely established in those districts
which are under British rule. Except in the uninhabitable “Sudd” region,
numerous villages are dotted along the banks of the river. The people,
far from flying at the approach of white men as was formerly the case,
run along the banks, making signs for the steamer to stop. It is clear
that the Baris, Shilluks, and Dinkas place the utmost trust and
confidence in the British officers with whom they are brought in
contact. In spite of the difficulties of communicating with them through
an interpreter—himself but slightly educated—it was impossible to
mistake their manifest signs and expressions of security and content.
They flock into the Settlements without fear; and if, as often happens,
they will not work, it is merely because they are lazy and have few
wants, not because they entertain doubt that they will be paid for
working. These remarks apply equally to Gondokoro, although I was only
able to see a few of the natives there. I had not time to visit the
principal Bari village, which lies at some little distance from the
river.
The contrast when once Congolese territory is entered is remarkable.
From the frontier to Gondokoro is about 80 miles. The proper left, or
western, bank of the river is Belgian. The opposite bank is either under
the Soudanese or the Uganda Government. There are numerous islands, and
as all these are under British rule—for the thalweg, which, under
Treaty, is the Belgian frontier, skirts the western bank of the
river—I cannot say that I had an opportunity of seeing a full 80 miles
of Belgian territory. At the same time, I saw a good deal, and I noticed
that, whereas there were numerous villages and huts on the eastern bank
and on the islands, on the Belgian side not a sign of a village existed.
Indeed, I do not think that any one of our party saw a single human
being in Belgian territory, except the Belgian officers and men and the
wives and children of the latter. Moreover, not a single native was to
be seen either at Kiro or Lado. I asked the Swedish officer at Kiro
whether he saw much of the natives. He replied in the negative, adding
that the nearest Bari village was situated at some distance in the
interior. The Italian officer at Lado, in reply to the same question,
stated that the nearest native village was seven hours distant.
The reason of all this is obvious enough. The Belgians are disliked. The
people fly from them, and it is no wonder they should do so, for I am
informed that the soldiers are allowed full liberty to plunder, and that
payments are rarely made for supplies. The British officers wander,
practically alone, over most parts of the country, either on tours of
inspection or on shooting expeditions. I understand that no Belgian
officer can move outside the settlements without a strong guard.
It appears to me that the facts which I have stated above afford amply
sufficient evidence of the spirit which animates the Belgian
Administration, if, indeed, Administration it can be called. The
Government, so far as I could judge, is conducted almost exclusively on
commercial principles, and, even judged by that standard, it would
appear that those principles are somewhat short-sighted.
My Lord,
Brussels, September 19, 1903.
I have the honour to transmit herewith copy of a note, together with its
inclosures, which has been addressed by the Congo Government to the
Representatives at Brussels of the Powers parties to the Act of Berlin
to which your Lordship’s Circular despatch of the 8th August respecting
the affairs of the Independent State of the Congo had been
communicated.[1]
M. de Cuvelier, in handing me these documents, stated that he had been
instructed to follow the same procedure as that adopted by His Majesty’s
Government.
I have, &c.
(Signed) CONSTANTINE PHIPPS.
Le Gouvernement de l’État Indépendant du Congo, ayant eu connaissance de
la dépêche du Foreign Office, datée du 8 Août dernier, remise aux
Puissances Signataires de l’Acte de Berlin, constate qu’il est d’accord
avec le Gouvernement de Sa Majesté sur deux points fondamentaux, à
savoir, que les indigènes doivent être traités avec humanité et menés
graduellement dans les voies de la civilisation, et que la liberté de
commerce, dans le bassin conventionnel du Congo, doit être entière et
complète.
Mais il nie que la manière dont est administré l’État entraînerait un
régime systématique “de cruauté ou d’oppression” et que le principe de
la liberté commerciale apporterait des modifications au droit de
propriété tel qu’il est universellement compris, alors qu’il n’est pas
un mot à cet effet dans l’Acte de Berlin. L’État du Congo note qu’il ne
se trouve dans cet Acte aucune disposition qui consacrerait des
restrictions quelconques à l’exercice du droit de propriété ou qui
reconnaîtrait aux Puissances Signataires un droit d’intervention dans
les affaires d’administration intérieure les unes des autres. Il tient à
se montrer fidèle observateur de l’Acte de Berlin, de ce grand Acte
International qui lie toutes les Puissances Signataires ou adhérentes,
en ce que dit le sens grammatical si clair de son texte, que nul n’a
pouvoir de diminuer ou d’amplifier.
La note Anglaise remarque que c’est en ces dernières années qu’a pris
consistance la campagne menée en Angleterre contre l’État du Congo, sous
le double prétexte de mauvais traitements des natifs et de l’existence
de monopoles commerciaux.
Il est à remarquer, en effet, que cette campagne date du jour où la
prospérité de l’État s’affirma. L’État se trouvait fondé depuis des
années et administré comme il l’est aujourd’hui, ses principes sur la
domanialité des terres vacantes, l’organisation et le recrutement de sa
force armée étaient connus et publics, sans que ces philanthropes et ces
commerçants, de l’opinion desquels fait état le début de la note, s’en
montrassent préoccupés. C’était l’époque où le Budget de l’État ne
pouvait s’équilibrer que grâce aux subsides du Roi-Souverain et aux
avances de la Belgique, et où le mouvement commercial du Congo
n’attirait pas l’attention. On ne trouve le terme “the Congo atrocities”
utilisé alors qu’à propos de “the alleged ill-treatment of African
natives by English and other adventurers in the Congo Free State.”[2] A
partir de 1895, le commerce de l’État du Congo prend un essor marqué, et
le chiffre des exportations monte progressivement de 10 millions en 1895
à 50 millions en 1902. C’est aussi à partir d’alors que le mouvement
contre l’État du Congo se dessine. Au fur et à mesure que l’État
affirmera davantage sa vitalité et ses progrès, la campagne ira
s’accentuant, s’appuyant sur quelques cas particuliers et isolés pour
invoquer des prétextes d’humanité et dissimuler le véritable objectif
des convoitises qui, dans leur impatience, se sont cependant trahies
sous la plume des pamphlétaires et par la voix de membres de la Chambre
des Communes, mettant nettement en avant la disparition et le partage de
l’État du Congo.
Il fallait, dans ce but, dresser contre l’État toute une liste de chefs
d’accusation. Dans l’ordre humanitaire, on a repris, pour les rééditer à
l’infini, les cas allégués de violences contre les indigènes. Car, dans
cette multitude de “meetings,” d’écrits, de discours, dirigés ces
derniers temps contre l’État, ce sont toujours les mêmes faits affirmés
et les mêmes témoignages produits. Dans l’ordre économique, on a accusé
l’État de violation de l’Acte de Berlin, nonobstant les considérations
juridiques des hommes de loi les plus autorisés qui justifient, à toute
évidence de droit, son régime commercial et son système foncier. Dans
l’ordre politique, on a imaginé cette hérésie en droit international
d’un État, dont l’indépendance et la souveraineté sont entières, qui
relèverait d’ingérences étrangères.
En ce qui concerne les actes de mauvais traitement à l’égard des natifs,
nous attachons surtout de l’importance à ceux qui, d’après la note, ont
été consignés dans les dépêches des Agents Consulaires de Sa Majesté. A
la séance de la Chambre des Communes du 11 Mars, 1903, Lord Cranborne
s’était déjà référé à ces documents officiels, et nous avons demandé à
son Excellence Sir C. Phipps que le Gouvernement Britannique voulût bien
nous donner connaissance des faits dont il s’agissait. Nous réitérons
cette demande.
Le Gouvernement de l’État n’a jamais d’ailleurs nié que des crimes et
délits se commissent au Congo, comme en tout autre pays ou toute autre
Colonie. La note reconnaît elle-même que ces faits délictueux ont été
déférés aux Tribunaux et que leurs auteurs ont été punis. La conclusion
à en tirer est que l’État remplit sa mission; la conclusion que l’on en
déduit est que “many individual instances of cruelty have taken place in
the Congo State” et que “the number of convictions falls considerably
short of the number of actual offences committed.” Cette déduction ne
paraît pas nécessairement indiquée. Il semble plus logique de dire que
les condamnations sévères prononcées seront d’un salutaire exemple et
qu’on peut en espérer une diminution de la criminalité. Que si
effectivement des actes délictueux, sur les territoires étendus de
l’État, ont échappé à la vigilance de l’autorité judiciaire, cette
circonstance ne serait pas spéciale à l’État du Congo.
La note Anglaise procède surtout par hypothèses et par suppositions: “It
was alleged.... It is reported.... It is also reported....” et elle en
arrive à dire que “His Majesty’s Government do not know precisely to
what extent these accusations may be true.” C’est la constatation que,
aux yeux du Gouvernement Britannique lui-même, les accusations dont il
s’agit ne sont ni établies ni prouvées. Et, en effet, la violence, la
passion et l’invraisemblance de nombre de ces accusations les rendent
suspectes aux esprits impartiaux. Pour n’en donner qu’un exemple, on a
fait grand état de cette allégation que, sur un train descendant de
Léopoldville à Matadi, trois wagons étaient remplis d’esclaves, dont une
douzaine étaient enchaînés, sous la garde de soldats. Des renseignements
ont été demandés au Gouverneur-Général. Il répond: “Les individus
représentés comme composant un convoi d’esclaves étaient, pour la plus
grande majorité (125), des miliciens dirigés du district de
Lualaba-Kassaï, du Lac Léopold II et des Bangalas, sur le camp du
Bas-Congo. Vous trouverez annexés les états relatifs à ces individus.
Quant aux hommes enchaînés, ils constituaient un groupe d’individus
condamnés par le Tribunal territorial de Basoko et qui venaient purger
leur peine à la maison centrale de Boma. Ce sont les numéros 3642 à 3649
du registre d’écrou de la prison de Boma.”
C’est ainsi encore qu’une “interview” toute récente, reproduisant les
accusations coutumières de cruauté, est due à un ancien agent de l’Etat
“déclaré impropre au service,” et qui n’a pas vu accepter par l’État sa
proposition d’écrire dans la presse des articles favorables à
l’Administration.
La note ignore les réponses, démentis, ou rectifications qu’ont amenés,
dans les différents temps où elles se sont produites, les attaques
contre les Agents de l’État. Elle ignore les déclarations officielles
qu’en Juin dernier, le Gouvernement de l’État fit publiquement à la
suite des débats du 20 Mai à la Chambre des Communes, débats annexés à
la note. Nous annexons ici le texte de ces déclarations, qui ont, par
avance, rencontré les considérations de la dépêche du 8 Août.
Le seul grief nouveau qu’elle énonce—en vue sans doute d’expliquer ce
fait non sans importance, que le Consul Anglais qui a résidé au Congo
depuis 1901 ne paraît pas appuyer de son autorité personnelle les
dénonciations de particuliers—c’est que cet Agent aurait été
“principally occupied in the investigation of complaints preferred by
British subjects.” L’impression en résulterait que de telles plaintes
auraient été exceptionnellement nombreuses. Sans aucun doute, le Consul,
en diverses occasions, s’est mis en rapport avec l’Administration de
Boma dans l’intérêt de ses ressortissants, mais il ne paraît pas que ces
affaires, si l’on en juge par celles d’entre elles dont a eu à s’occuper
la Légation d’Angleterre auprès du Gouvernement Central à Bruxelles,
soient autres, par leur nombre ou leur importance, que celles de la vie
administrative courante: des cas ont notamment visé le règlement de
successions délaissées au Congo par des ressortissants Anglais;
quelques-uns ont eu pour objet la réparation d’erreurs de procédure
judiciaire comme il s’en produit ailleurs, et il n’est pas avancé que
ces réclamations n’ont pas reçu la suite qu’elles comportaient. Le même
Consul, dont la nomination remonte à 1898, écrivait le 2 Juillet, 1901,
au Gouverneur-Général:—
“I pray believe me when I express now, not only for myself, but for my
fellow-countrymen in this part of Africa, our very sincere appreciation
of your efforts on behalf of the general community—efforts to promote
goodwill among all and to bring together the various elements of our
local life.”
Les prédécesseurs de Mr. R. Casement—car des Consuls Anglais avec
juridiction sur le Congo ont été appointés par le Gouvernement de Sa
Majesté depuis 1888—ne paraissent pas davantage avoir été absorbés par
l’examen de plaintes multiples; tout au moins une telle appréciation ne
se trouve pas consignée dans le Rapport, le seul publié, de M. le Consul
Pickersgill, qui, par le fait qu’il rend compte de son voyage à
l’intérieur du Congo, jusqu’aux Stanley Falls, dément cette sorte
d’impossibilité, pour les Agents Consulaires Anglais, d’apprécier de
visu toute partie quelconque de leur juridiction.
Comme allégations contre le système d’administration de l’État, la note
vise les impôts, la force publique et ce qu’on appelle le travail forcé.
Au fond, c’est la contribution de l’indigène du Congo aux charges
publiques que l’on critique, comme s’il existait un seul pays ou une
seule Colonie où l’habitant, sous une forme ou sous une autre, ne
participe pas à ces charges. On ne conçoit pas un État sans ressources.
Sur quel fondement légitime pourrait-on baser l’exemption de tout impôt
pour les indigènes, alors qu’ils sont les premiers à bénéficier des
avantages d’ordre matériel et moral introduits en Afrique? A défaut de
numéraire, il leur est demandé une contribution en travail. D’autres ont
dit la nécessité, pour sauver l’Afrique de sa barbarie, d’amener le noir
à la compréhension du travail, précisément par l’obligation de
l’impôt:—
“It is a question (of native labour) which has engaged my most careful
attention in connection with West Africa and other Colonies. To listen
to the right honourable gentleman, you would almost think that it would
be a good thing for the native to be idle. I think it is a good thing
for him to be industrious; and by every means in our power, we must
teach him to work.... No people ever have lived in the world’s history
who would not work. In the interests of the natives all over Africa, we
have to teach them to work.”
Ainsi s’exprimait Mr. Chamberlain à la Chambre des Communes, le 6 Août,
1901. Et récemment, il disait:—
“We are all of us taxed, and taxed heavily. Is that a system of forced
labour?... To say that because we put a tax on the native therefore he
is reduced to a condition of servitude and of forced labour is, to my
mind, absolutely ridiculous.... It is perfectly fair to my mind that the
native should contribute something towards the cost of administering
the country.” (House of Commons, the 9th March, 1903.)
“If that really is the last word of civilization, if we are to proceed
on the assumption that the nearer the native or any human being comes to
a pig the more desirable is his condition, of course I have nothing to
say.... I must continue to believe that, at all events, the progress of
the native in civilization will not be secured until he has been
convinced of the necessity and the dignity of labour. Therefore, I think
that anything we reasonably can do to induce the native to labour is a
desirable thing.”
Et il défendait le principe d’une taxe sur le natif parce que “the
existence of the tax is an inducement to him to work.” (House of
Commons, the 24th March, 1903.)
Aussi l’exemple de taxes sur les indigènes se retrouve-t-il presque
partout en Afrique. Au Transvaal, chaque natif paie une taxe de
capitation de 2l.; dans l’Orange River Colony, le natif est soumis à
une “poll tax;” dans la Southern Rhodesia, le Bechuanaland, le
Basutoland, dans l’Uganda, au Natal, il est perçu une “hut tax;” au Cap,
on trouve cette “hut tax” et une “labour tax;” dans l’Afrique Orientale
Allemande, il est également perçu un impôt sur les huttes, payable en
argent, en produits, ou en travail. Cette sorte d’impôt a été appliquée
encore dans le Protectorat de Sierra-Leone, où elle a pu être payée “in
kind by rice or palm-nuts,” et la suggestion a été faite “that work on
roads and useful works should be accepted in lieu of payment in money or
produce.”
On voit donc que le mode de paiement de l’impôt, en argent ou en nature,
n’en altère pas la légitimité, lorsque son taux n’est pas excessif. Tel
est le cas au Congo, où les prestations fournies par l’indigène ne
représentent pas plus de quarante heures de travail par mois. Encore
est-il que ce travail est rétribué et que l’impôt payé en nature fait,
en quelque sorte, l’objet d’une ristourne à l’indigène.
Partout le paiement de l’impôt est obligatoire; son non-paiement
entraîne des voies de contrainte. Les textes qui établissent les taxes
sur les huttes frappent l’indigène récalcitrant de peines, telles que
l’emprisonnement et le travail forcé. Au Congo non plus, l’impôt n’est
pas facultatif. On a vu, ailleurs, les actes d’autorité qu’a parfois
rendus nécessaires le refus des indigènes de se soumettre à la loi:
telles les difficultés à Sierra-Leone, à propos desquelles un publiciste
Anglais, parlant des agents de la force publique, affirme:—
“Between July 1894 and February 1896, no fewer than sixty-two
convictions—admittedly representing a small proportion of offences
actually committed—were recorded against them for flogging, plundering,
and generally maltreating the natives.”
D’autres exemples pourraient être rappelés de l’opposition que rencontre
chez les populations indigènes l’établissement des règles
gouvernementales. Il est fatal que la civilisation se heurte à leurs
instincts de sauvagerie, à leurs coutumes et pratiques barbares; et il
se conçoit qu’elles ne se plient pas sans impatience à un état social
qui leur apparaît comme restrictif de leurs licences et de leurs excès
et qu’elles cherchent même à s’y soustraire. C’est une chose commune en
Afrique que l’exode d’indigènes, passant d’un territoire à l’autre, dans
l’espoir de trouver de l’autre côté des frontières une autorité moins
établie ou moins forte, et de s’exonérer de toute dépendance et de toute
obligation. Il se pourrait, à coup sûr, que des indigènes de l’État se
soient, sous l’empire de telles considérations, déplacés vers les
territoires voisins, encore qu’une sorte d’émigration sur une large
échelle, comme la présente la note Anglaise, n’ait jamais été signalée
par les Commandants des provinces frontières. Il est, au contraire,
constaté, dans la région du Haut-Nil, que des natifs qui s’étaient
installés en territoire Britannique sont revenus sur la rive gauche à la
suite de l’établissement d’impositions nouvellement édictées par
l’autorité Anglaise. Si c’est, d’ailleurs, ces régions qui sont visées,
les informations de la note semblent être en contradiction avec d’autres
renseignements donnés, par exemple, par Sir Harry Johnston:—
“This much I can speak of with certainty and emphasis: that from the
British frontier near Fort George to the limit of my journeys into the
Mbuba country of the Congo Free State, up and down the Semliki, the
natives appear to be prosperous and happy.... The extent to which they
were building their villages and cultivating their plantations within
the precincts of Fort Mbeni showed that they had no fear of the
Belgians.”
Le Major H. H. Gibbons, qui s’est trouvé plusieurs mois sur le Haut-Nil,
écrit:—
“Ayant eu l’occasion de connaître plusieurs officiers et de visiter
leurs stations de l’État du Congo, je suis convaincu que la conduite de
ces messieurs a été bien mal interprétée par la presse. J’ai cité comme
preuve mon expérience personnelle, qui est en opposition avec une
version récemment publiée par la presse Anglaise, qui les accuse de
grandes cruautés.”
La déclaration de Juin dernier, ci-jointe, a fait justice des critiques
contre la force publique de l’État en signalant que son recrutement est
réglé par la loi et qu’il n’atteint qu’un homme sur 10,000. Dire que
“the method of obtaining men for military service is often but little
different from that formerly employed to obtain slaves,” c’est
méconnaître les prescriptions minutieuses édictées pour, au contraire,
éviter les abus. Les levées s’opèrent dans chaque district; les
Commissaires de District règlent, de commun accord avec les Chefs
indigènes, le mode de conscription. Les engagements volontaires et les
multiples réengagements complètent aisément les effectifs qui atteignent
à peine le chiffre modique de 15,000 hommes.
Ceux qui allèguent, comme le dit la note, que “the men composing the
armed force of the State were in many cases recruited from the most
warlike and savage tribes,” ignorent que la force publique est recrutée
dans toutes les provinces et parmi toute la population du territoire.
Les intérêts de l’État protestent contre cette notion d’une armée que
l’autorité elle-même formerait d’éléments indisciplinés et sauvages et
des exemples—tels que les excès qui ont été mis à charge des
auxiliaires irréguliers utilisés dans l’Uganda, ainsi que les révoltes
qui se sont produites jadis au Congo, imposent, au contraire, une
circonspection spéciale pour la composition de la force armée. Les
cadres Européens, qui se composent d’officiers Belges, Italiens,
Suédois, Norwégiens, et Danois, y maintiennent une sévère discipline, et
l’on chercherait en vain à quelles réelles circonstances fait allusion
l’assertion que les soldats “not infrequently terrorized over their own
officers.” Elle n’est pas plus fondée que cette autre assertion, “that
compulsion is often exercised by irresponsible native soldiers
uncontrolled by an European officer.” Depuis longtemps, l’autorité était
consciente des dangers que présentait l’existence de postes de soldats
noirs, dont le Rapport de Sir D. Chalmers, sur l’insurrection à
Sierra-Leone, a constaté les inévitables abus de pouvoirs. Au Congo, ils
ont été graduellement supprimés.
Il apparaîtra, à ceux qui ne nient pas l’évidence, que des reproches
articulés contre l’État, le plus injuste est d’avancer “that no attempt
at any administration of the natives is made, and that the officers of
the Government do not apparently concern themselves with such work.”
On peut s’étonner de trouver semblable affirmation dans une dépêche d’un
Gouvernement dont l’un des membres, Lord Cranborne, Sous-Secrétaire
d’État pour les Affaires Étrangères, disait le 20 Mai dernier:—
“There was no doubt that the administration of the Congo Government had
been marked by a very high degree of a certain kind of administrative
development. There were railways, there were steamers upon the river,
hospitals had been established, and all the machinery of elaborate
judicial and police systems had been set up.”
Un autre Membre de la Chambre des Communes reconnaissait—
“That the Congo State had done good work in excluding alcoholic liquors
from the greater part of their domain, that they had established a
certain number of hospitals, had diminished small-pox by means of
vaccination, and had suppressed the Arab Slave Trade.”
Si atténuées que soient ces appréciations, encore démentent-elles cette
affirmation d’aujourd’hui que “the natives are left entirely to
themselves, so far as any assistance in their government or in their
affairs is concerned.”
Telles ne semblent pas être les conclusions auxquelles, déjà en 1898,
arrivait le Consul Anglais Pickersgill.
“Has the welfare of the African,” se demande-t-il, “been duly cared for
in the Congo State?” Il répond: “The State has restricted the liquor
trade ... it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the service which is
being rendered by the Congo Government to its subjects in this
matter.... Intertribal wars have been suppressed over a wide area, and,
the imposition of European authority being steadily pursued, the
boundaries of peace are constantly extending.... The State must be
congratulated upon the security it has created for all who live within
the shelter of its flag and abide by its laws and regulations.... Credit
is also due to the Congo Government in respect of the diminution of
cannibalism.... The yoke of the notorious Arab Slave Traders has been
broken, and traffic in human beings amongst the natives themselves has
been diminished to a considerable degree.”
Ce Rapport constatait aussi que les travaux des natifs étaient rémunérés
et rendait hommage aux efforts de l’État pour instruire les jeunes
indigènes et ouvrir des écoles.
Depuis 1898 l’amélioration de la condition générale de l’indigène a
encore progressé. Le portage à dos d’homme, dont précisément Mr.
Pickersgill signalait le côté pénible pour les indigènes, a disparu là
où il était le plus actif, en raison de la mise en exploitation des
voies ferrées. Ailleurs, l’automobile est utilisée comme moyen de
transport. La “sentry”—le poste de soldats nègres qu’il critiquait non
sans raison—n’existe plus. Le bétail est introduit dans tous les
districts. Des Commissions d’Hygiène sont instituées. Les écoles et les
ateliers se sont multipliés.
“L’indigène,” dit le document ci-joint, “est mieux logé, vêtu, nourri;
il remplace ses huttes par des habitations plus résistantes et mieux
appropriées aux exigences de l’hygiène; grâce aux facilités de
transport, il s’approvisionne des produits nécessaires à ses besoins
nouveaux; des ateliers lui sont ouverts, où il apprend des métiers
manuels—tels que, ceux de forgeron, charpentier, mécanicien, maçon; il
étend ses plantations, et, à l’exemple des blancs, s’inspire des modes
de culture rationnels; les soins médicaux lui sont assurés; il envoie
ses enfants dans les colonies scolaires de l’État et aux écoles des
missionnaires.”
Il est juste de reconnaître, a-t-on dit à la Chambre des Communes, que
la régénération matérielle et morale de l’Afrique Centrale ne peut être
l’œuvre d’un jour. Les résultats obtenus jusqu’à présent sont
considérables; nous chercherons à les consolider et à les accentuer,
malgré les entraves que l’on s’efforce de mettre à l’action de l’État,
action que l’intérêt bien entendu de la civilisation serait, au
contraire, de favoriser.
La note Anglaise ne démontre pas que le système économique de l’État est
opposé à l’Acte de Berlin. Elle ne rencontre pas les éléments de droit
et de fait par lesquels l’État a justifié la conformité de ses lois
foncières et de ses concessions avec les dispositions de cet Acte. Elle
n’explique pas pourquoi ni en quoi la liberté de commerce, termes dont
la Conférence de Berlin s’est servie dans leur sens usuel, grammatical
et économique, ne serait plus entière au Congo parce qu’il s’y trouve
des propriétaires.
La note confond l’exploitation de son bien par le propriétaire avec le
commerce. L’indigène, qui récolte pour compte du propriétaire, ne
devient pas propriétaire des produits récoltés et ne peut naturellement
les céder à autrui, pas plus que l’ouvrier qui extrait les produits
d’une mine ne peut en frustrer le propriétaire en en disposant lui-même.
Ces règles sont de droit et sont mises en lumière dans de multiples
documents: consultations juridiques et décisions judiciaires dont
quelques-unes sont annexées. Le Gouvernement de Sa Majesté ne conteste
pas que l’État a le droit de répartir les terres domaniales entre les
occupants bonâ fide et que l’indigène ne peut plus prétendre aux
produits du sol, mais seulement lorsque “land is reduced into individual
occupation.” La distinction est sans base juridique. Si l’État peut
céder les terres, c’est que l’indigène n’en a pas la propriété, et à
quel titre alors conserverait-il un droit aux produits d’un fonds dont
la propriété est légitimement acquise par d’autres? Pourrait-on
soutenir, par exemple, que la Compagnie du Chemin de Fer du Bas-Congo ou
la Société du Sud-Cameroun ou l’Italien Colonial Trading Company sont
tenues de tolérer le pillage par les indigènes des terres qu’elles ont
reçues, parce qu’elles ne les occuperaient pas actuellement? En fait,
d’ailleurs, au Congo, l’appropriation des terres exploitées en régie ou
par les Compagnies Concessionnaires est chose réalisée. L’État et les
Sociétés ont consacré à leur mise en valeur, notamment des forêts, des
sommes considérables se chiffrant par millions de francs. Il n’y a donc
pas de doute que dans tous les territoires du Congo, l’État exploite
réellement et complètement ses propriétés, tout comme les Sociétés
exploitent réellement et complètement leurs Concessions.
Cet état de choses existant et consolidé dans l’État Indépendant
permettrait, en ce qui le concerne, de ne point insister plus longuement
sur la théorie formulée par la note et qui envisage tour à tour les
droits de l’État, ceux des occupants bonâ fide, ceux des indigènes.
Cependant, elle s’impose à l’attention des Puissances par les graves
difficultés qu’elle ferait surgir si elle était implicitement acceptée.
La nota contient les trois propositions suivantes:—
“The State has the right to partition the State lands among bonâ fide
occupants.”
“The natives will, as the land is so divided out amongst bonâ fide
occupiers, lose their right of roaming over it and collecting the
natural fruits which it produces.”
“Until unoccupied land is reduced into individual occupation and so long
as the produce can only be collected by the native, the native should
be free to dispose of that produce as he pleases.”
Il n’est pas une de ces propositions qui ne semble exclure les deux
autres, et à vrai dire ces contradictions aboutissent à la négation du
droit de Concession.
S’il a existé des occupants bonâ fide, ils sont devenus propriétaires:
l’occupation, lorsqu’elle trouve à s’exercer, est dans toutes les
législations un des modes d’acquisition de la propriété, et, au Congo,
les titres en dérivant ont été légalement enregistrés. Si la terre n’a
été valablement occupée par personne, elle est sans maître ou, plus
exactement, elle a l’État pour maître: il peut en disposer au profit
d’un tiers, et celui-ci trouve dans cet acte de disposition un titre
complet et absolu. Dans l’un comme dans l’autre cas, il ne se conçoit
pas que les fruits du sol puissent être réservés à d’autres qu’au
propriétaire sous le prétexte qu’il n’est pas apte, en fait, à récolter
les produits de son fonds.
Par une singulière contradiction, le système de la note dit qu’à la
suite de l’attribution des terres par l’État, les indigènes “lose their
right of collecting the natural fruits,” et, d’autre part, qu’ils
conservent le droit de disposer de ces produits “until unoccupied land
is reduced into individual occupation.” On ne comprend pas la notion
d’un droit appartenant aux natifs qui existerait ou non de par le fait
de tiers. Ou bien, par suite de l’attribution des terres, ils ont perdu
leurs droits, et alors ils les ont perdus totalement et complètement; ou
bien, ils les ont conservés, et ils doivent les conserver, quoique “the
land is reduced into individual occupation.”
Que faut-il d’ailleurs entendre dans le système de la note par occupants
“bonâ fide” et par “individual occupation?” Qui sera juge du point de
savoir si l’occupant a mis ses terres en état d’occupation individuelle,
s’il était apte à en recueillir les produits ou si c’était encore
l’indigène? Ce serait, en tous cas, des points relevant essentiellement
du droit interne.
La note, au surplus, est incomplète sur un autre point. Elle dit que là
où l’exploitation ne se ferait pas encore par les ayants droit, la
faculté d’exploiter devrait appartenir aux indigènes. Elle voudrait donc
donner un droit aux indigènes au préjudice des Gouvernements ou des
concessionnaires blancs, mais n’explique pas comment ni par qui le tort
ainsi causé serait compensé ou indemnisé. Quoique le système ainsi
préconisé ne puisse avoir d’application dans l’État du Congo, puisqu’il
ne s’y trouve plus de terres inappropriées, cette remarque s’impose dans
l’intérêt des blancs établis dans le bassin conventionnel. S’il est
équitable de bien traiter les noirs, il est juste de ne pas spolier les
blancs, qui, dans l’intérêt de tous, doivent rester la race dirigeante.
Économiquement parlant, il serait déplorable qu’en dépit des droits
régulièrement acquis par les blancs, les terres domaniales se
trouvassent livrées aux indigènes, fût-ce temporairement. Ce serait le
retour à leur état d’abandon de jadis, alors que les natifs les
laissaient inproductives, car les récoltes de caoutchouc, les
plantations de café, de cacao, de tabac, &c., datent du jour où l’État
en a pris lui-même l’initiative: le mouvement des exportations était
insignifiant avant l’essor que lui ont donné les entreprises
gouvernementales. Ce serait aussi l’inobservance certaine des mesures
d’exploitation rationnelle, de plantation et de replantation auxquelles
s’astreignent l’État et les Sociétés Concessionnaires pour assurer la
conservation des richesses naturelles du pays.
Jamais au Congo, que nous sachions, les demandes d’achat des produits
naturels n’ont été adressées aux légitimes propriétaires. Jusqu’ici l’on
n’a cherché à y acheter que des produits provenant de recels, et l’État,
comme c’était son devoir, a fait poursuivre ces tentatives délictueuses.
La politique de l’État n’a pas, comme on l’a dit, tué le commerce: elle
l’a, au contraire, créé, et elle perpétue la matière commerciale; c’est
grâce à elle que, sur le marché commercial d’Anvers et bientôt au Congo
même—on examine la possibilité d’y établir des dépôts de vente—peuvent
être offertes annuellement à tous indistinctement, sans privilège ni
monopole, 5,000 tonnes de caoutchouc récolté au Congo, alors
qu’antérieurement, par exemple en 1887, l’exportation du caoutchouc se
chiffrait à peine par 30 tonnes. C’est l’État qui, après avoir à ses
frais créé la matière commerciale, en maintient soigneusement la source
au moyen des plantations et replantations.
Il n’est pas à oublier que l’État du Congo a dû compter sur ses propres
ressources. Ce fut une nécessité pour lui d’utiliser son domaine dans
l’intérêt général. Toutes les recettes du domaine sont versées au
Trésor, ainsi que le revenu des actions dont l’État est détenteur en
raison de Concessions accordées. Ce n’est même qu’en tirant tout le
parti utile de ses domaines et en engageant la plus grande partie de
leurs revenus qu’il a pu contracter des emprunts et provoquer à des
entreprises de chemins de fer par des garanties d’intérêt, réalisant
ainsi l’un des moyens les plus désirés par la Conférence de Bruxelles
pour faire pénétrer la civilisation au centre de l’Afrique. Aussi
n’a-t-il pas hésité à gager ses domaines dans ce but.
L’Acte de Berlin ne s’y oppose pas, car il n’a édicté aucune
proscription des droits de propriété, comme on veut, après coup, le lui
faire dire, tendant ainsi, consciemment ou non, à la ruine de tout le
bassin conventionnel du Congo.
Il n’échappera pas non plus aux Puissances que les conclusions de la
note Anglaise, en suggérant une référence à la Cour de La Haye, tendent
à faire considérer comme cas d’arbitrage des questions de souveraineté
et d’administration intérieure que la doctrine courante a toujours
exclues des décisions d’arbitres. Pour ce qui concerne le cas actuel, il
est à supposer que la suggestion d’une référence à la Cour de La Haye a
une portée générale, s’il est vrai que, de l’avis des Chambres de
Commerce Anglaises, “the principles and practice introduced into the
administration of the affairs of the French Congo, the Congo Free State,
and other areas in the conventional basin of the Congo being in direct
opposition to the Articles of the Act of Berlin 1885.” Le Gouvernement
de l’État n’a cessé, pour sa part, de préconiser l’arbitrage pour les
dissentiments d’ordre international qui en comportaient l’application:
ainsi, il voudrait voir déférées à l’arbitrage les divergences de vues
qui se sont produites au sujet du bail des territoires du
Bahr-el-Ghazal.
Après un examen attentif de la note Anglaise, le Gouvernement de l’État
du Congo reste convaincu qu’en raison du vague et du manque complet de
preuves, ce dont elle fait implicitement l’aveu, il n’est pas une
juridiction au monde, en en supposant une qui ait compétence pour être
saisie, qui puisse, bien loin de prononcer une sorte de condamnation,
prendre une autre décision que celle de ne pas donner suite à de simples
suppositions.
Si l’État du Congo se voit attaqué, l’Angleterre peut se dire que, plus
que nulle autre nation, elle s’est trouvée, elle aussi, en butte aux
attaques et aux accusations de toute espèce, et longue serait la liste
des campagnes poursuivies en divers temps et jusque dans récentes
occasions contre son administration coloniale. Elle n’a certes pas
échappé aux critiques que lui ont valu ses guerres multiples et
sanglantes contre les populations indigènes ni aux reproches de
violenter les natifs et de porter atteinte à leur liberté. Ne lui a-t-on
pas fait grief de ces longues insurrections à Sierra-Leone—de cet état
d’hostilité dans la Nigérie, où tout dernièrement, d’après les journaux
Anglais, la répression militaire a, en une seule circonstance, coûté la
vie à 700 indigènes, à la plupart de leurs Chefs et au Sultan—de cette
lutte qui se poursuit au Somaliland au prix du sacrifice de nombreuses
vies humaines, sans que cependant il ne soit exprimé à la Chambre des
Communes d’autre regret que celui du chiffre élevé des dépenses?
Alors que ces attaques adressées à l’Angleterre l’ont laissée
indifférente, il y a lieu d’être surpris de la voir aujourd’hui attacher
une toute autre importance à celles dirigées contre l’État du Congo.
On peut croire, cependant, que les préférences des indigènes de l’État
du Congo demeurent acquises au Gouvernement d’une petite nation
pacifique, dont les visées restent pacifiques comme a été pacifique sa
création basée sur les Traités conclus avec les indigènes.
(Signé) CHR. DE CUVELIER.
Bruxelles, le 17 Septembre, 1903.
(Translation.)
The Government of the Independent State of the Congo have examined the
despatch from the Foreign Office, dated the 8th August last, which was
communicated to the Signatory Powers of the Berlin Act, and declare
themselves in agreement with His Majesty’s Government on two fundamental
points, viz., that natives ought to be treated with humanity and
gradually led into the paths of civilization, and that freedom of
commerce in the Conventional Basin of the Congo ought to be entire and
complete.
They deny, however, that the manner in which the State is administered
involves a systematic régime “of cruelty or oppression,” and that the
principle of commercial freedom would introduce modifications in the
rights of property as universally understood, seeing that there is not a
word to this effect in the Berlin Act. The Congo State observes that
there is in that Act no provision which would sanction restrictions of
any kind on the exercise of the rights of property, or give to one
Signatory Power the right of intervention in the interior administration
of another. It desires faithfully to observe the Berlin Act, that great
International Act which binds all Signatory or adhering Powers,
according to the clear grammatical sense of the text, which none has
power either to take from or add to.
The English note observes that it is within the last few years that a
definite shape has been assumed by the campaign conducted in England
against the Congo State, on the twofold pretext of the ill-treatment of
natives and the existence of commercial monopolies.
It is indeed worthy of remark that this campaign dates from the time
when the prosperity of the State became assured. The State had been
founded for years, and administered in the same way as it is now, its
principles in regard to the State-ownership of vacant lands, and the
manner in which its armed forces were organized and recruited, were
known to the public, without any interest in the matter being shown by
the philanthropists and traders to whose opinion the note begins by
referring. This was the period during which the State Budget could only
be balanced by means of the King-Sovereign’s subsidies and Belgian
loans, and when the commerce of the Congo did not attract attention. The
term “Congo atrocities” was at that time only used in connexion with
“the alleged ill-treatment of African natives by English and other
adventurers in the Congo Free State.”[3] After 1895 the trade of the
Congo State developed remarkably, and the amount of its exports shows a
progressive increase from 10 millions in 1895 to 50 millions in 1902. It
is also about this time that the anti-Congo movement took shape. As the
State gave increased proof of vitality and progress, the campaign became
more active, reliance being placed on a few individual and isolated
cases with a view to using the interests of humanity as a pretext and
concealing the real object of a covetousness which, in its impatience,
has betrayed itself in the writings of pamphleteers and in the speeches
of Members of the House of Commons, in which the abolition and partition
of the Congo State has been clearly put forward.
Such being the object in view, it became necessary to bring a whole
series of charges against the State. So far as the humanitarian side of
the question is concerned, the alleged cases of violence offered to
natives have once more been brought forward and re-edited ad
infinitum. For in all the meetings, writings, and speeches which have
latterly been directed against the State, it is always the same facts
which are brought up, and the same evidence which is produced. With
regard to the economic side of the question, the State has been accused
of having violated the Act of Berlin, notwithstanding the legal opinions
of such lawyers as are most qualified to speak to the point, which
afford ample legal justification both for its commercial and for its
land system. With regard to the political side, a heresy in
international law has been imagined, viz., that a State, the
independence and sovereignty of which are absolute, should, at the same
time, owe its position to the intervention of foreign Powers.
With regard to the cases of ill-treatment of natives, we attach special
importance to those which, according to the note, have been reported in
the despatches of His Majesty’s Consular Agents. At the sitting of the
House of Commons on the 11th March, 1903, Lord Cranborne referred to
these official documents, and we have requested through his Excellency
Sir C. Phipps that the British Government will make known to us the
facts alluded to. We repeat the request.
The Government of the State have, however, never denied that crimes and
offences are committed in the Congo, as in every other country or
Colony. The note itself recognizes that these offences have been brought
before the Tribunals, and that the criminals have been punished. The
conclusion to be drawn from this is that the State fulfils its mission;
the conclusion actually drawn is that “many individual instances of
cruelty have taken place in the Congo State,” and that “the number of
convictions falls considerably short of the number of offences actually
committed.” This deduction does not appear necessarily to follow. It
would seem more logical to say that the severe sentences inflicted will
serve as a wholesome example, and that a decrease of crime may on that
account be looked for. If some offences have indeed, in the extensive
territories of the State, escaped the vigilance of the judicial
authorities, this is a circumstance which is not peculiar to the Congo
State.
The English note proceeds chiefly on hypotheses and suppositions: “It
was alleged.... It is reported.... It is also reported....” and it even
says that “His Majesty’s Government do not know precisely to what extent
these accusations may be true.” This is an acknowledgment that, in the
eyes of the British Government themselves, the accusations in question
are neither established nor proved. And, indeed, the violence, the
passion, and the improbability of many of these accusations must raise
doubt in an impartial mind as to their genuineness. To give but one
example:—a great deal has been made of the statement that, in a train
coming down from Leopoldville to Matadi, three carriages were full of
slaves, a dozen of whom were in chains and guarded by soldiers. The
Governor-General was asked for a report on the case. He replied: “The
individuals represented as composing a convoy of slaves were, the great
majority of them (125), levies proceeding from the district of
Lualaba-Kasai, Lake Leopold II, and the Bangalas to the camp in the
Lower Congo. Annexed you will find lists of these persons. As regards
the men in chains, they were certain individuals on whom sentence had
been passed by the territorial Tribunal at Basoko, and who were on their
way to undergo their sentence at the central prison at Boma. They are
Nos. 3642 to 3649 on the prison register at Boma.”
In the same way, quite a recent “interview,” in which the usual
accusations of cruelty were reproduced, is due to a person formerly in
the employ of the State, who was “declared unfit for service,” and who
has failed to persuade the State to accept his proposal to write for the
press articles favourable to the Administration.
The note ignores the replies, contradictions, and corrections which the
attacks on the Agents of the State have occasioned at the various times
when they have taken place. It ignores the official declarations
publicly made by the Government of the State in June last, after the
debate in the House of Commons on the 20th May, the report of which is
annexed to the note. We also annex the text of these declarations which
dealt, by anticipation, with the considerations set forth in the
despatch of the 8th August.
The only fresh cause of complaint which the note brings
forward—doubtless with the object of explaining the not unimportant
fact that the English Consul, who has resided in the Congo since 1901,
does not appear to support, by his personal authority, the accusations
of private individuals—is that this Agent has been “principally
occupied in the investigation of complaints preferred by British
subjects.” The impression which one would derive from this is that such
complaints have been exceptionally numerous. No doubt the Consul has, on
different occasions, communicated with the Administration at Boma in the
interests of his countrymen, but the subjects of his representations, if
one may judge by such of their number as the English Legation has had to
bring to the notice of the Central Government at Brussels, do not
appear, either in number or importance, to have been more than matters
of every day administrative routine: some cases in particular concerned
the regulation of the succession to property in the Congo left by
deceased English subjects; the object in others was to repair errors of
judicial procedure, such as occur elsewhere, and it is not even alleged
that the proper action has not been taken upon these representations.
The same Consul, who was appointed in 1898, wrote to the
Governor-General on the 2nd July, 1901, as follows:—
“I pray believe me when I express now, not only for myself, but for my
fellow-countrymen in this part of Africa, our very sincere appreciation
of your efforts on behalf of the general community—efforts to promote
goodwill among all and to bring together the various elements of our
local life.”
Nor do the predecessors of Mr. R. Casement—for English Consuls with
jurisdiction in the Congo were appointed by His Majesty’s Government as
long ago as 1888—appear to have been absorbed in the examination of
innumerable complaints; at all events, that is not the view taken in the
Report (the only one published) by Consul Pickersgill, who, by the mere
fact of giving an account of his journey into the interior of the Congo
as far as Stanley Falls, disproves the alleged impossibility for the
English Consular Agents to form an opinion de visu in regard to every
part of their district.
With regard to the charges against the administrative system of the
State, the note deals with taxes, public armed forces, and what is
termed forced labour.
It is, at bottom, the contributions made by the Congo natives to the
public charges which are criticized, as if there existed a single
country or Colony in which the inhabitants do not, under one form or
another, bear a part in such charges. A State without resources is
inconceivable. On what legitimate grounds could the exemption of natives
from all taxes be based, seeing that they are the first to benefit by
the material and moral advantages introduced into Africa? As they have
no money, a contribution in the shape of labour is required from them.
It has been said that, if Africa is ever to be redeemed from barbarism,
it must be by getting the negro to understand the meaning of work by the
obligation of paying taxes:—
“It is a question (of native labour) which has engaged my most careful
attention in connection with West Africa and other Colonies. To listen
to the right honourable gentleman, you would almost think that it would
be a good thing for the native to be idle. I think it is a good thing
for him to be industrious; and by every means in our power we must teach
him to work.... No people ever have lived in the world’s history who
would not work. In the interests of the natives all over Africa, we have
to teach them to work.”
Such was the language used by Mr. Chamberlain in the House of Commons on
the 6th August, 1901; and still more recently he expressed himself as
follows:—
“We are all of us taxed, and taxed heavily. Is that a system of forced
labour?... To say that because we put a tax on the native therefore he
is reduced to a condition of servitude and of forced labour is, to my
mind, absolutely ridiculous.... It is perfectly fair to my mind that the
native should contribute something towards the cost of administering the
country.” (House of Commons, the 9th March, 1903.)
“If that really is the last word of civilization, if we are to proceed
on the assumption that the nearer the native or any human being comes to
a pig the more desirable is his condition, of course I have nothing to
say.... I must continue to believe that, at all events, the progress of
the native in civilization will not be secured until he has been
convinced of the necessity and the dignity of labour. Therefore, I think
that anything we reasonably can do to induce the native to labour is a
desirable thing.”
And he defended the principle of taxing the native on the ground that
“the existence of the tax is an inducement to him to work.” (House of
Commons, the 24th March, 1903.)
Moreover, it is to be observed that in nearly every part of Africa the
natives are taxed. In the Transvaal every native pays a “head tax” of
2l.; in the Orange River Colony he is subject to a “poll tax;” in
Southern Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, Basutoland, Uganda, and Natal a “hut
tax” is levied; in Cape Colony we find a “hut tax” and a “labour tax;”
in German East Africa also a tax is levied on huts, payable either in
money, in kind, or in labour. This species of tax has also been applied
in the Sierra Leone Protectorate, where payment could be made “in kind
by rice or palm nuts,” and it has been suggested that work on roads and
useful works should be accepted in lieu of payment in money or produce.
The legality of a tax is, therefore, not affected by the mode of its
payment, whether in money or in kind, so long as the amount is not
excessive. It is certainly not so in the Congo, where the work done by
the native does not represent more than forty hours’ work a-month. Such
work, moreover, is paid for, and the tax in kind thus gives the native
as it were some return for his labour.
Payment of taxes is obligatory everywhere; and non-payment involves
measures of compulsion. The regulations under which the hut-tax is
levied impose on the native, for non-payment, such penalties as
imprisonment and forced labour. Nor in the Congo is payment of taxes
optional. Repressive measures have occasionally been rendered necessary
elsewhere by the refusal of natives to conform to the law, e.g., the
disturbances at Sierra Leone, in connexion with which an English
publicist, speaking of the police force, states:—
“Between July 1894 and February 1896 no fewer than sixty-two
convictions, admittedly representing a small proportion of offences
actually committed, were recorded against them for flogging, plundering,
and generally maltreating the natives.”
Further instances might be recalled of the opposition encountered among
native populations to the institution of governmental regulations.
Civilization necessarily comes into collision with their savage
instincts and barbarous customs and habits; and it can be understood
that they submit but impatiently to, and even try to escape from, a
state of society which seems to them to be restrictive of their licence
and excesses. It frequently happens in Africa that an exodus of natives
takes place from one territory to another, in the hope of finding beyond
the frontier a Government less well established or less strong, and of
thus freeing themselves from all obligations and restraints. Natives of
the State may quite well, under the influence of considerations of this
kind, have crossed into neighbouring territories, although no kind of
emigration on a large scale, such as is referred to in the English note,
has ever been reported by the Commandants of the frontier provinces. On
the contrary, it is a fact that natives in the Upper Nile region who had
settled in British territory have returned to the left bank in
consequence of the imposition of new taxes by the English authorities.
Besides, if it is these territories which are alluded to, the
information contained in the note would seem to be in contradiction with
other particulars furnished, for instance, by Sir Harry Johnston.
“This much I can speak of with certainty and emphasis, that from the
British frontier near Fort George to the limit of my journeys into the
Mbuba country of the Congo Free State, up and down the Semliki, the
natives appear to be prosperous and happy.... The extent to which they
were building their villages and cultivating their plantations within
the precincts of Fort Mbeni showed that they had no fear of the
Belgians.”
Major H. H. Gibbons, who was for several months on the Upper Nile,
writes:—
“Having had occasion to know many officers, and to visit their stations
in the Congo State, I am convinced that their behaviour has been much
misunderstood by the press. I have quoted as a proof my experience,
which is at variance with an article recently published in the English
press, in which they are accused of great cruelties.”
The declaration of last June, of which a copy is inclosed, has disposed
of the criticisms directed against the public forces of the State, by
pointing out that recruitment for them is regulated by law, and that it
is only one man in every 10,000 who is affected. To say that “the method
of obtaining men for military service is often but little different from
that formerly employed to obtain slaves” is to misunderstand the
carefully drawn regulations which have, on the contrary, been issued to
check abuses. Levies take place in each district; the district
Commissioners settle the mode of conscription in agreement with the
native Chiefs. Voluntary enlistment, and numerous re-enlistments, easily
fill up the ranks, which only reach, all told, the moderate total of
15,000 men.
Those who allege, as the note says, that “the men composing the armed
force of the State were in many cases recruited from the most warlike
and savage tribes” must be unaware that the public forces are recruited
from every province, and from the whole population. It is inconceivable
that the authorities of a State, with due regard to its interests,
should form an army out of undisciplined and savage elements, and
instances are to be found—such as the excesses said to have been
perpetrated by irregular levies in Uganda, and the revolts which
formerly occurred in the Congo—which, on the contrary, render it
necessary that special care should be exercised in raising armed forces.
The European establishment, consisting of Belgian, Italian, Swedish,
Norwegian, and Danish officers, maintains strict discipline, and it
would be vain to seek the actual facts alluded to in the assertion that
the soldiers “not infrequently terrorized over their own officers.” Such
an assertion is as unfounded as the one “that compulsion is often
exercised by irresponsible native soldiers, uncontrolled by an European
officer.” For a long time past the authorities have been alive to the
danger arising from the existence of stations of negro soldiers, who
inevitably abuse their authority, as recognized in the Report of Sir D.
Chalmers on the insurrection in Sierra Leone. In the Congo such stations
have been gradually abolished.
Those who do not refuse to accept patent facts will recognize that of
the reproaches levied at the State, the most unjust is the statement
“that no attempt at any administration of the natives is made, and that
the officers of the Government do not apparently concern themselves with
such work.”
It is astonishing to come across such an assertion in a despatch from a
Government, one of whose members, Lord Cranborne, Under-Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, stated on the 20th May last:—
“There was no doubt that the administration of the Congo Government had
been marked by a very high degree of a certain kind of administrative
development. There were railways, there were steamers upon the river,
hospitals had been established, and all the machinery of elaborate
judicial and police systems had been set up.”
Another member of the House of Commons acknowledged—
“That the Congo State had done good work in excluding alcoholic liquor
from the greater part of their domain; that they had established a
certain number of hospitals, had diminished small-pox by means of
vaccination, and had suppressed the Arab Slave Trade.”
However limited these admissions, still they contradict the assertion
now made that “the natives are left entirely to themselves, so far as
any assistance in their government or in their affairs is concerned.”
Such does not seem to have been the conclusion at which Mr. Pickersgill,
the English Consul, had arrived as long ago as 1898.
“Has the welfare of the African,” he asks, “been duly cared for in the
Congo State?” He answers: “The State has restricted the liquor trade ...
it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the service which is being
rendered by the Congo Government to its subjects in this matter....
Intertribal wars have been suppressed over a wide area, and, the
imposition of European authority being steadily pursued, the boundaries
of peace are constantly extending.... The State must be congratulated
upon the security it has created for all who live within the shelter of
its flag and abide by its laws and regulations.... Credit is also due to
the Congo Government in respect of the diminution of cannibalism.... The
yoke of the notorious Arab slave-traders has been broken, and traffic in
human beings amongst the natives themselves has been diminished to a
considerable degree.”
This Report also showed that the labour of the native was remunerated,
and gave due credit to the State for its efforts to instruct the young
natives, and to open schools.
Since 1898 the general condition of the native has been still further
improved. The system of carriers (“le portage à dos d’homme”), the
hardships of which, so far as the native was concerned, were specially
pointed out by Mr. Pickersgill, has disappeared from those parts of the
country where it was most practised, in consequence of the opening of
railways. Elsewhere motor cars are used as means of transport. The
“sentry,” the station of negro soldiers which the Consul criticized, not
without reason, no longer exists. Cattle have been introduced into every
district. Sanitary Commissions have been instituted. Schools and
workshops have multiplied.
“The native,” says the inclosed document,[4] “is better housed, better
clad, and better fed; he is replacing his huts by better built and
healthier dwelling-places; thanks to existing transport facilities, he
is able to obtain the produce necessary to satisfy his new wants;
workshops have been opened for him, where he learns handicrafts, such as
those of the blacksmith, carpenter, mechanic, and mason; he extends his
plantations and, taking example by the white man, learns rational modes
of agriculture; he is always able to obtain medical assistance; he sends
his children to the State school-colonies and to the missionary
schools.”
As stated in the House of Commons, it is only right to recognize that
the material and moral regeneration of Central Africa cannot be the work
of a day. The results so far obtained have been considerable, and these
we shall try to consolidate and develop, in spite of the way in which an
effort is being made to hamper the action of the State, which in the
real interests of civilization should rather be promoted.
The English note does not show that the economic system of the State is
in opposition to the Berlin Act. It does not meet the points of law and
fact by means of which the State has demonstrated the conformity of its
system of land tenure and concessions with the provisions of that Act.
It does not explain either how or why freedom of trade—a term used at
the Conference of Berlin in its usual, grammatical, and economic
sense—is incomplete in the Congo State because there are landowners
there.
The note confuses the utilization of his property by the owner with
trade. The native who collects on behalf of the owner does not become
the owner of what is so collected, and naturally cannot dispose of it to
a third party, any more than a miner can rob the proprietor of the
produce of the mine and dispose of it himself. These rules are in
accordance with the principles of justice and are explained in numerous
documents, such as legal opinions and judicial decisions, some of which
are annexed. His Majesty’s Government do not deny that the State is
justified in allotting domain lands to bonâ fide occupants, or that
the native has no longer any right to the produce of the soil as soon as
the “land is reduced into individual occupation.” The distinction is
without legal foundation. If the State can part with land, it is because
the native is not the owner; by what title could he then retain a right
to the produce of property which has been lawfully acquired by others?
Could it be contended, for instance, that the Lower Congo Railway
Company, or the South Cameroons Company, or the Italian Colonial Trading
Company are, on the ground that they are not at present in occupation,
bound to allow the native to plunder the territories allotted to them?
As a matter of fact, moreover, in the Congo State the appropriation of
lands worked on Government account or by the Concessionary Companies is
an accomplished fact. The State and the Companies have devoted large
sums, amounting to many millions of francs, to the development of the
lands in question, and more especially to that of the forests. There
can, therefore, be no doubt that throughout the territories of the Congo
the State really and completely works its property, just as the
Companies really and completely work their Concessions.
The state of affairs then which actually exists, and is established in
the Independent State, is such that there is really no need, as far as
the State itself is concerned, to dwell longer on the theory set forth
in the note which deals in turn with the rights of the State, with those
of bonâ fide occupiers, and those of the natives.
Still this theory calls for the attention of the Powers in view of the
serious difficulties which would arise were it to be implicitly
accepted.
The note lays down the three following propositions:—
“The State has the right to partition the State lands among bonâ fide
occupants.”
“The natives will, as the land is so divided out amongst bonâ fide
occupiers, lose their right of roaming over it and collecting the
natural fruits which it produces.”
“Until unoccupied land is reduced into individual occupation, and so
long as the produce can only be collected by the native, the native
should be free to dispose of that produce as he pleases.”
There is no single one of these propositions but apparently excludes the
other two, and, as a matter of fact, such contradictions amount to a
denial of the right to grant Concessions.
If bonâ fide occupiers ever existed they have become proprietors;
occupation, where it can be exercised, is under all legislative codes,
one of the methods by which property can be acquired, and in the Congo
State titles of ownership deriving from it have been legally registered.
If the land has never been legally occupied, it is without an owner, or,
rather the State is the owner: the State can allot it to a third party,
for whom such allotment is a complete and absolute title. In either case
it is hard to see how the fruits of the soil can be reserved for any but
the owner on the pretext that the latter is not able to collect the
produce of his property.
By a curious contradiction it is observed in the note that, as a
consequence of the allotment of lands by the State, the natives “lose
their right of collecting the natural fruits,” and, on the other hand,
that they retain the right of disposing of these fruits “until
unoccupied land is reduced into individual occupation.” It is difficult
to understand what is meant by a right which belongs to the natives or
not according to the action of a third party. Either they lost their
rights on the lands being allotted, and in that case they have lost them
entirely and completely, or else they have retained them, and are
entitled to retain them, although “the land is reduced into individual
occupation.”
Again, what are we to understand by the expressions “bonâ fide”
occupiers and “individual occupation?” Who is to determine whether the
occupier has brought his lands into a state of individual occupation,
whether he is able to collect their produce, or whether it is still for
the native to do so? In any case, such a question is essentially one to
be settled by municipal law.
The note is, moreover, incomplete in another respect. It states that
where the land has not yet been worked by those who have a right to it,
the option of working should belong to the native. Rights would thus be
given to the natives to the prejudice of the Government or of white
concessionnaires, but the note does not explain how nor by whom the
wrong thus caused would be repaired or made good. Though the system thus
advocated cannot be applied in the Congo State, as there are no longer
any unappropriated lands there, attention should be called to the
statement in the interest of white men established in the conventional
basin. If it is right to treat the negro well, it is none the less just
not to despoil the white man, who, in the interest of all, must remain
the dominant race.
From an economic point of view, it would be very regrettable if, in
spite of the rights regularly acquired by white men, the domain lands
were, even temporarily, handed over to the natives. Such a course would
involve a return to their former condition of abandonment, when the
natives left them unproductive, for the collection of rubber, the
plantation of coffee, cocoa, tobacco, &c., date from the day when the
State itself took the initiative: the export trade was insignificant
before the impetus it received from Government enterprise. Such a course
would furthermore certainly involve the neglect of rational methods of
work, of planting and of replanting—measures which the State and the
Concessionary Companies have assumed as an obligation with a view to
securing the preservation of the natural riches of the country.
Never in the Congo, so far as we know, have requests to buy natural
produce been addressed to the rightful owners. Up to now the only
attempts made have been to buy the produce which has been stolen, and
the State, as was its duty, has had those guilty of these unlawful
attempts prosecuted.
It is not true, as has been asserted, that the policy of the State has
killed trade; it has, on the contrary, created the materials which trade
deals in and keeps up the supply; it is thanks to the State that, on the
Antwerp market—and soon even in the Congo where the possibility of
establishing trade depôts is being considered—5,000 tons of rubber
collected in the Congo can be annually put on sale to all and sundry
without privilege or monopoly, while formerly, in 1887, for instance,
the rubber export amounted to hardly 30 tons. It is the State which,
after having created, at its own expense, the material of trade,
carefully preserves the source of it by means of planting and
replanting.
It must not be forgotten either that the Congo State has been obliged to
rely on its own resources. It was forced to utilize its domain in the
public interest. All the receipts of the domain go into the Treasury, as
also the dividends of the shares which the State holds in exchange for
Concessions granted. It has only been by fully utilizing its domain
lands, and pledging the greater part of their revenues, that it has been
able to raise loans, and encourage the construction of railways by
guarantees of interest, thus realizing one of the means most advocated
by the Brussels Conference for promoting civilization in Central
Africa. Nor has it hesitated to mortgage its domain lands with this
object.
The Berlin Act is not opposed to such a course, for it never proscribed
the rights of property as there is now an ex post facto attempt to
make out, an attempt tending, consciously or not, to the ruin of the
whole conventional basin of the Congo.
It will not escape the notice of the Powers that the English note, by
suggesting a reference to the Court at The Hague, tends to bring into
consideration as cases for arbitration questions of sovereignty and
internal administration as questions for arbitration which, according to
prevailing doctrines, are excluded from arbitral decisions. As far as
the present case is concerned, it must be assumed that the suggestion of
referring the matter to the Court at The Hague has a general meaning, if
it is true that, in the opinion of the English Chambers of Commerce,
“the principles and practice introduced into the administration of the
affairs of the French Congo, the Congo Free State, and other areas in
the conventional basin of the Congo being [sic] in direct opposition
to the Articles of the Act of Berlin, 1885.” The Government of the Congo
State have never ceased advocating arbitration as a mode of settling
questions which are of an international nature, and can thus be suitably
treated, as, for instance, the divergencies of opinion which have arisen
in connexion with the lease of the territories of the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
The Government of the Congo State, after careful examination of the
English note, remain convinced that, in view of its vagueness, and the
complete lack of evidence, which is implicitly admitted, there is no
tribunal in the world, supposing there were one possessing competent
jurisdiction, which could, far from pronouncing a condemnation, take any
decision other than to refuse action on mere supposition.
If the Congo State is attacked, England may admit that she, more than
any other nation, has been the object of attacks and accusations of
every kind, and the list would be long of the campaigns which have at
various times, and even quite recently, been directed against her
colonial administration. She has certainly not escaped criticism in
regard to her numerous and bloody wars against native populations, nor
the reproach of oppressing natives and invading their liberty. Has she
not been blamed in regard to the long insurrections in Sierra Leone; to
the disturbed state of Nigeria, where quite recently, according to the
English newspapers, military measures of repression cost, on one single
occasion, the lives of 700 natives, of most of their Chiefs, and of the
Sultan; and to the conflict in Somaliland, which is being carried on at
the cost of many lives, without, however, exciting expressions of regret
in the House of Commons, except on the score of the heavy expense?
Seeing that these attacks have left England indifferent, it is somewhat
surprising to find her now attaching such importance to those made on
the Congo State.
There is, however, reason to think that the natives of the Congo State
prefer the Government of a small and pacific nation, whose aims remain
as peaceful as its creation which was founded on Treaties concluded with
the natives.
(Signed) CHR. DE CUVELIER.
Brussels, September 17, 1903.
Annexes.[5]
I. “Bulletin Officiel de l’État Indépendant du Congo,” Juin 1903.
II. Judgments delivered by the Tribunals of French Congo.
III. Opinions of Messrs. Van Maldeghem and de Paepe, Van Berchem,
Barboux, and Nys.
Translations of Extracts from Annex I.
Page 142.
In conformity with Articles II and XIII of the Berlin Act, it (the Congo
State) has assured to all flags, without distinction of nationality,
free access to all its interior waters and full and entire freedom of
navigation. The railway, which has been constructed to obviate the
innavigability of the lower river, is open to the traffic of all nations
in conformity with Article XVI.
In conformity with Article III, there is no differential treatment
either of ships or goods, and no tax is levied on foreigners which is
not equally borne by nationals.
In conformity with Article IV, no transit due has been imposed.
In conformity with Article VI, freedom of conscience and the free
exercise of worship are guaranteed to natives, to foreigners, and to the
missions of all creeds.
In conformity with Article VII, the State has adhered to the Convention
of the Universal Postal Union.
Availing itself of the power conferred by Article X, the Congo State has
declared itself perpetually neutral, and in no circumstance has failed
in the duties imposed by neutrality.
In conformity with Article XII, it has endeavoured, in case of any
international difference, to have recourse to mediation and arbitration,
and has never declined to accept such procedure.
In conformity with the Declaration of the 2nd July, 1890, the import and
export duties levied do not exceed the limits fixed by the Agreements of
the 8th April, 1892, and the 10th March, 1902, between the State, France
and Portugal.
Article I of the Act of Berlin lays down that “the trade of all nations
shall enjoy complete freedom in the Conventional basin of the Congo,”
and, by Article V, “no monopoly or favour of any kind in matters of
trade” shall be granted there. These provisions, like the rest, have
been respected by the Congo State in the letter and in the spirit.
Page 144.
Freedom of trade is complete in the Congo, and is restricted neither by
monopoly nor privilege. Every one is free to sell or buy every sort of
produce in which it is lawful to trade. The law protects this freedom by
forbidding any interference with the freedom of business transactions;
it punishes “any one who has employed violence or threats with a view to
compel the natives, whether on the roads in the interior, or in the
markets, to part with their goods to particular persons or at particular
prices;”[6] it punishes “those who, by violence, abuse, or threats,
shall have interfered with the freedom of trade, with a view either to
stop trade caravans on the public roads or to obstruct the freedom of
traffic whether by land or water.”[7]
It is asserted that the principle of the freedom of trade is infringed
by the appropriation by the State of vacant and ownerless lands within
its boundaries. When by the Decree of the 1st July, 1885, the State
declared that “no one has the right to occupy vacant lands without a
title; vacant lands are to be considered as belonging to the State,”[8]
it did so in reliance on a legal principle which is universally
admitted, its action in this matter was not, as has been said, the first
step in a deliberate policy of exclusiveness. That principle was
inscribed in the Codes of all civilized countries; it has been
sanctioned by all Colonial legislative systems.
Page 152.
If it were true that, by declaring all ownerless lands to be Government
property, the Congo State had expropriated the natives, all these
various legislative systems could be attacked on the same ground. It is
generally admitted that the native has no real title to the ownership of
the vast stretches of country which from time immemorial he has allowed
to lie fallow, or to the forests which he has never turned to profit.
But the law of the Congo State is careful to maintain the natives in the
enjoyment of the lands they occupy and, as a matter of fact, not only
are they not disturbed in this enjoyment, but they are actually
extending the lands they cultivate and their plantations as their needs
grow. The State has been at much pains to prevent the natives from being
robbed.
“No one has the right to dispossess natives of the lands which they
occupy (Ordinance of the 1st July, 1885, Article 2).
“The lands occupied by the native population under the authority of
their Chiefs, shall continue to be governed by the local customs and
usages (Decree of the 14th September, 1886, Article 2).
“All Acts or Agreements which would tend to drive the natives from the
territories they occupy, or to deprive them directly or indirectly of
their liberty or means of livelihood, are prohibited (Decree of the 14th
September, 1886, Article 2).
“In cases where the lands which form the subject of application are
occupied in part by natives, the Governor-General, or his Delegate,
shall intervene in order, if possible, to effect an arrangement with
them, securing to the applicant the lands so occupied, either by cession
or by lease, but the State is not to be put to any expense in the matter
(Decree of the 9th April, 1893, Article 5).
“When native villages are inclosed in lands which have either been
disposed of or leased, the natives may, so long as the land has not been
officially measured, take into cultivation, without the consent of
either the owner or the lessor, the vacant lands surrounding their
villages (Decree of the 9th April, 1893, Article 6).
“The members of the Land Commission shall examine with special care the
question whether the lands applied for ought not to be reserved either
for the public use or with a view to allow of the extension of
cultivation by the natives (Decree of the 2nd February, 1898, Article
2).”
Page 156.
If it is inexact to say that the natives have been robbed of immemorial
rights, it is equally so to assert that the policy of the State has
aimed at the exclusion of private trading in order to assure greater
advantages for its own commercial enterprises.
Such a statement can only be the result of a misapprehension of the
various phases through which the Congo trade has passed since 1885. At
that time private enterprise was centred in the Lower Congo only. The
Government, far from wishing to close the Upper Congo, declared its
access free to all. The Decree of the 30th April, 1887, led, on the
contrary, to various commercial firms establishing themselves above
Stanley Pool, owing to the facilities it afforded for settling on the
domain lands.
Article 6 of that Decree provided:—
“Non-natives who desire to found commercial or agricultural
establishments in the districts above Stanley Pool, or in others to be
eventually designated by the Governor-General of the Congo, shall be at
liberty to take possession with this view of an area, the maximum size
of which shall be fixed by the Governor-General; provided that they
fulfil such conditions as he shall lay down, they shall enjoy a
preferential right to the eventual acquisition of property in such lands
at a price which shall be fixed by him beforehand.”
And Article 7 added:—
“The non-natives who, in the same regions, shall desire to occupy lands,
of which the area shall exceed the maximum referred to in the preceding
Article, may occupy them provisionally on such conditions as the
Governor-General shall determine. He shall further decide whether the
preferential right alluded to in the preceding Article shall be given to
them in regard to this larger extent of land.”[9]
“With a view to assist commercial enterprise in the regions of the
interior, the Government even exempted from export duty—the only
customs duties which they could at that time levy—all native produce
coming from the territories above Stanley Pool.
“From the 1st January, 1888,” so ran Article 1 of the Ordinance of the
19th October, 1887, “and till further orders, native produce coming from
the State territories on the left bank of Stanley Pool and above that
lake shall be exempted from export duty.”[10]
Later, by the Decree of the 17th October, 1889,[11] the Government
announced that applications might be presented for concessions to work
rubber and other vegetable produce in the State forests of the Upper
Congo where such produce was not already worked by the native
population.
By the Decree of the 9th July, 1890, the collection of ivory within the
State domains was entirely given up to private persons throughout such
parts of the Congo as were at that time visited by the steamers.
These Regulations were applicable to all foreign enterprise, without
distinction of nationality; they show that there was no such policy of
ostracism in regard to private enterprise such as is now attributed to
the State.
It has not been the fault of the Government that nationals of all
countries have not profited by this liberal system. They continued,
however, to confine themselves, with few exceptions, to the Lower Congo.
The Companies which decided to extend their operations in the central
districts of the Congo found every facility for the establishment of
agencies, and acquired the favourable position which they now enjoy.
The State can hardly be blamed because, in face of the almost universal
inaction on the part of private individuals, it endeavoured to turn its
territories to account by working its domain lands, either on its own
account or through others. It was, however, the only way to secure the
funds necessary for the Budget, the charges in which steadily increased
with the extension of the public service, and to give the country the
benefit of an economic system by imposing upon the concessionary
Companies the obligation to undertake works of public utility.
The Government, further, were careful not to abandon a policy of
moderation in the matter. When by the Decree of the 30th October, 1892,
they defined regions reserved for working by the domain (those, that is
to say, in which it had been ascertained, after inquiry, that the
natives had never engaged in the collection of rubber), they still left
vast zones at the disposal of the public, and allowed to private persons
the exclusive right to work the rubber on the Government properties
there. As a matter of fact, the zones in question comprised more than a
quarter of the vacant State lands, apart from the whole country below
Stanley Pool. Nevertheless, the Companies persisted for some years more
in not moving towards these regions; it has only been since 1897 that
there have been any signs of general activity. It was then that the
numerous factories which are still to be found there were started in the
Kassai, Ikelemba, and Lulonga districts, and on the banks of the Congo.
But it is to be noted that with one exception none but Belgian Companies
decided to put their capital into those enterprises, and to take the
consequent risks. Foreigners have held aloof, in spite of the fact that
they were at perfect liberty to establish themselves in these regions;
even the firms which had been long established in the Lower Congo, and
especially the English houses, did not consider the moment favourable
for establishing branches in the Upper Congo. The above remark is
generally applicable, in so far that, also in the territories for which
Concessions have been given, not one of the concessionary Companies has
found any foreign interests previously existing; indeed, certain
foreigners who were interested in one of the most important of them, the
Anglo-Belgian India-Rubber and Exploration Company, which was founded by
an English group, have parted with their interests.
The commercial field open to private persons in the Congo never has been
and is not limited; trade is free, so far as it is legitimate,
throughout the country, and in certain regions the State, far from
organizing any excessive working of its domain lands, has even renounced
the exercise of its rights of property. To give one instance only the
Dutch Company, the value of whose exports was 730,000 fr. in 1887,
exported in 1901 goods to the value of more than 3,000,000 fr.
Page 162.
The work of organization has since been going on over the whole country
by the more and more effective occupation of the territory; posts and
stations have been multiplied, and now number 215; the work of the
administrative, judicial, and sanitary authorities has expanded;
transport facilities have been introduced; two lines of railways have
been laid in the Lower Congo, and there are others either being
constructed or proposed in the Upper Congo; seventy-nine steamers and
boats have been put on the river and its affluents; 1,500 kilom. of
telegraph and telephone lines have been laid; carriage roads have been
built, on which the use of automobiles will put an end to the system of
carriers (“portage à dos d’homme”); vaccine institutes have been
established with a view to putting a stop, through the increased use of
lymph, to the ravages of small-pox; water-works have been built in
important centres, such as Boma and Matadi; hospitals for blacks and
whites have been founded at different posts, as also Red Cross stations
and a bacteriological institute; importation of spirituous liquors and
trade in them has been prohibited almost everywhere, while the
importation of alcoholic drinks made with absinthe, as also trade in
them, have been forbidden everywhere; the trade in improved fire-arms
and ammunition for them has been absolutely forbidden; cattle have been
introduced at all the stations, and model farms have been established;
Sanitary Commissions have been instituted whose duty it is to watch over
the requirements of the elements of public health.
This general development is necessarily accompanied by an improvement of
the conditions in which the native lives, wherever he comes into contact
with the European element. Materially, he is better housed, better clad,
and better fed; he is replacing his huts by better built and healthier
dwelling-places; thanks to existing transport facilities, he is able to
obtain the produce necessary to satisfy his new wants; workshops have
been opened for him, where he learns handicrafts, such as those of the
blacksmith, carpenter, mechanic, and mason; he extends his plantations,
and, taking example by the white man, learns rational modes of
agriculture; he is always able to obtain medical assistance; he sends
his children to the State school-colonies and to the missionary schools.
Steps have been taken to safeguard the individual liberty of the blacks,
and especially to prevent labour contracts between blacks and
non-natives degenerating into disguised slavery. It is on this point
that the Decree of the 8th November, 1888, enters into the most minute
details concerning the length of the engagement, the form of the
contract, and the payment of wages. Recent legislation in French Congo,
which has very properly been praised by the English organs, has been
dictated by the like solicitude for the natives.
The native is free to seek by work the remuneration which contributes to
the increase of his well-being. One of the objects, indeed, of the
general policy of the State is to aim at the regeneration of the race by
impressing them with the high idea of the necessity of work. It is
intelligible that Governments, conscious of their moral responsibility,
should not advocate the right of the inferior races to be idle, which
would entail the continuance of a social system opposed to civilization.
The Congo State aims at carrying out its educational mission by
requiring the native to contribute, by means of a tax in kind, for
which, however, payment is made to him, to the development of the State
forests; the amount of such payments was, in the Budget for 1903, nearly
3,000,000 fr. The legality of such a system of developing the State
property rests not only on the universal principle which attributes to
the State the possession of ownerless lands, but also on the cession
which the local Chiefs have made to the State, by peaceful methods and
Treaties, of such political and land rights as they may have possessed;
and on the fact that it is the State itself which has revealed to the
natives the existence of those natural riches of which they were
ignorant by showing them how to work; it is the State, too, which has
bound itself, equally with private persons, to plant and replant, and
thus to insure the preservation and perpetuity of those natural riches
which the carelessness of some and the lust of gain of others could not
have failed to destroy.
Page 165.
The system which the State has followed, while forwarding the economical
development of the country, has at the same time caused a considerable
commercial movement, inasmuch as the exports now amount to a value of
50,000,000, and 5,000 tons of rubber from the Congo forests are sold
every year at Antwerp to the highest bidder.
Whatever may have been said this prosperity has not been attained to the
detriment of the native. It has been asserted that the native
populations must of necessity be badly treated because they are
subjected on the one hand to military service, and on the other to the
payment of certain taxes.
Military service is no more slavery in the Congo than anywhere else
where the system of conscription is in force. The manner in which the
public forces are recruited and organized has formed the subject of the
most minute legislative provisions, with a view to the avoidance of
abuses. As a matter of fact military service is not a heavy burden to
the population, from whom it only takes one man in 10,000. To show the
errors which have been believed in regard to the public forces it is
necessary once more to point out that they are composed entirely of
regular troops, and there are no “irregular levies” composed of
undisciplined and barbarous elements. Care has been taken gradually to
get rid of posts of black soldiers, and at the present moment every
military post is commanded by a white officer. The increase in the
number of officials has allowed of giving European officers to all
detachments of these forces.
In regard to contributions in kind which are levied on the native by the
authorities, such taxes are as legitimate as any other. They do not
impose on the native burdens of a different or heavier kind than the
forms of impost enforced in the neighbouring Colonies, such as the hut
tax. The native thus bears his share of the public burden as a return
for the protection afforded him by the State, and this share is a light
one since on an average it means for the native no more than forty hours
of work a-month.
It is unfortunately true that acts of violence have been committed
against the natives in the Congo, as everywhere else in Africa: the
Congo State has never sought either to deny or to conceal them. The
detractors of the State show themselves to be prejudiced when they quote
these acts as the necessary consequence of a bad system of
administration, or when they assert that they are tolerated by the
higher authorities. Whenever any European official has been guilty of
such acts he has been punished by the Courts, and a certain number of
Europeans are at this moment in the prisons of the State expiating their
offences against the penal laws which protect the life and person of the
native. If the enormous extent of the Congo State is taken into account,
such cases are the exception, as is obvious from the fact that recent
publications attacking the Congo State have been obliged, in support of
their indictment, to take up incidents nearly ten years old, and even to
have recourse, amongst others, to the testimony of a commercial agent
actually condemned for his excesses against the blacks. It is worthy of
remark that the Catholic missionaries have never called attention to
this general system of cruelty which is imputed to the State, and if
judicial statistics demonstrate the stern measures that have been taken
by the Criminal Courts, it does not follow that there is more crime in
the Congo than in other Central African Colonies.
My Lord,
London, December 11, 1903.
I HAVE the honour to submit my Report on my recent journey on the Upper
Congo.
I left Matadi on the 5th June, and arriving at Léopoldville on the 6th,
remained in the neighbourhood of Stanley Pool until the 2nd July, when I
set out for the Upper Congo. My return to Léopoldville was on the 15th
September, so that the period spent in the Upper River was one of only
two and a-half months, during which time I visited several points on the
Congo River itself, up to the junction of the Lulongo River, ascended
that river and its principal feeder, the Lopori, as far as Bongandanga,
and went round Lake Mantumba.
Although my visit was of such brief duration, and the points touched at
nowhere lay far off the beaten tracks of communication, the region
visited was one of the most central in the Congo State, and the district
in which most of my time was spent, that of the Equator, is probably one
of the most productive. Moreover, I was enabled, by visiting this
district, to contrast its present day state with the condition in which
I had known it some sixteen years ago. Then (in 1887) I had visited most
of the places I now revisited, and I was thus able to institute a
comparison between a state of affairs I had myself seen when the natives
lived their own savage lives in anarchic and disorderly communities,
uncontrolled by Europeans, and that created by more than a decade of
very energetic European intervention. That very much of this
intervention has been called for no one who formerly knew the Upper
Congo could doubt, and there are to-day widespread proofs of the great
energy displayed by Belgian officials in introducing their methods of
rule over one of the most savage regions of Africa.
Admirably built and admirably kept stations greet the traveller at many
points; a fleet of river steamers, numbering, I believe, forty-eight,
the property of the Congo Government, navigate the main river and its
principal affluents at fixed intervals. Regular means of communication
are thus afforded to some of the most inaccessible parts of Central
Africa.
A railway, excellently constructed in view of the difficulties to be
encountered, now connects the ocean ports with Stanley Pool, over a
tract of difficult country, which formerly offered to the weary
traveller on foot many obstacles to be overcome and many days of great
bodily fatigue. To-day the railway works most efficiently, and I noticed
many improvements, both in the permanent way and in the general
management, since the date of my last visit to Stanley Pool in January
1901. The cataract region, through which the railway passes, is a
generally unproductive and even sterile tract of some 220 miles in
breadth. This region is, I believe, the home, or birthplace, of the
sleeping sickness—a terrible disease, which is, all too rapidly, eating
its way into the heart of Africa, and has even traversed the entire
continent to well-nigh the shores of the Indian Ocean. The population of
the Lower Congo has been gradually reduced by the unchecked ravages of
this, as yet, undiagnosed and incurable disease, and as one cause of the
seemingly wholesale diminution of human life which I everywhere observed
in the regions revisited, a prominent place must be assigned to this
malady. The natives certainly attribute their alarming death-rate to
this as one of the inducing causes, although they attribute, and I think
principally, their rapid decrease in numbers to other causes as well.
Perhaps the most striking change observed during my journey into the
interior was the great reduction observable everywhere in native life.
Communities I had formerly known as large and flourishing centres of
population are to-day entirely gone, or now exist in such diminished
numbers as to be no longer recognizable. The southern shores of Stanley
Pool had formerly a population of fully 5,000 Batekes, distributed
through the three towns of Ngaliema’s (Léopoldville), Kinchasa, and
Ndolo, lying within a few miles of each other. These people, some twelve
years ago, decided to abandon their homes, and in one night the great
majority of them crossed over into the French territory on the north
shores of Stanley Pool. Where formerly had stretched these populous
native African villages, I saw to-day only a few scattered European
houses, belonging either to Government officials or local traders. In
Léopoldville to-day there are not, I should estimate, 100 of the
original natives or their descendants now residing. At Kinchasa a few
more may be found dwelling around one of the European trading depôts,
while at Ndolo none remain, and there is nothing there but a station of
the Congo Railway Company and a Government post. These Bateke people
were not, perhaps, particularly desirable subjects for an energetic
Administration, which desired, above all things, progress and speedy
results. They were themselves interlopers from the northern shores of
the Congo River, and derived a very profitable existence as trading
middlemen, exploiting the less sophisticated population among whom they
had established themselves. Their loss to the southern shores of Stanley
Pool is none the less to be deplored, I think, for they formed, at any
rate, a connecting link between an incoming European commercial element
and the background of would-be native suppliers.
Léopoldville is sometimes spoken of as a Congo town, but it cannot
rightly be so termed. Apart from the Government station, which, in most
respects, is very well planned, there is nothing at all resembling a
town—barrack would be the correct term. The Government station of
Léopoldville numbers, I was informed by its Chief, some 130 Europeans,
and probably 3,000 native Government workmen, who all dwell in well
ordered lines of either very well-built European houses, or, for the
native staff, mud-built huts. Broad paths, which may be termed streets,
connect the various parts of this Government Settlement, and an
elementary effort at lighting by electricity has already evolved three
lights in front of the house of the Commissaire-Général. Outside the
Government staff, the general community, or public of Léopoldville,
numbers less than one dozen Europeans, and possibly not more than 200
native dependents of their households or trading stores. This general
public consists of two missionary establishments, numbering in all 4
Europeans; a railway station with, I think, 1 European; 4 trading
establishments—1 Portuguese, 1 Belgian, 1 English, and 1
German—numbering 7 Europeans, with, perhaps, 80 or 100 native
dependents; 2 British West African petty traders, and a couple of Loango
tailor boys, who make clothes for the general community. This, I think,
comprises almost all those not immediately dependent upon the
Government.
These shops and traders do scarcely any business in native produce, of
which there may be said to be none in the district, but rely upon a cash
trade in Congolese currency, carried on with the large staff of
Government employés, both European and native. Were this cash dealing to
cease, the four European shops would be forced to put up their shutters.
During the period of my stay at Léopoldville it did actually cease, and,
for reasons which were not known publicly, the large native staff of
Congo Government workmen, instead of receiving a part of their monthly
wages in cash to spend locally—as also those being paid off on the
expiry of their contracts—were remunerated by the Government in barter
goods, which were issued from a Government store. This method of payment
did not satisfy either the native Government employés or the local
traders, and I heard many complaints on this score. The traders
complained, some of them to myself, that as they had no other form of
trading open to them, save this with the Government staff against cash,
for the Government to itself now pay these men in goods was to end, at a
blow, all trade dealings in the district. The native workmen complained,
too, that they were paid in cloth which often they did not want in their
own homes, and in order to have the wherewithal to purchase what they
wanted, a practice at once arose amongst these men to sell for cash, at
a loss to themselves, the cloth they had been forced to receive in
payment from the Government store. The workmen lost on this transaction,
and so did the traders. Pieces of cloth which were charged by the
Government at 10 fr. each in paying off the workmen, these men would
readily part with for 7 fr., and even for 6 fr. in cash. I myself, one
day in June, bought for 7 fr. a-piece, from two just-discharged
Government workmen, two pieces of cloth which had been charged against
them at 10 fr. each. These men wished to buy salt at one of the local
stores, and to obtain the means of doing so, they readily sacrificed 3
fr. in each 10 fr. of their pay. The traders, too, complained that by
this extensive sale of cotton goods at reduced rates by the Government
employés, their own sales of cloth at current prices were rendered
well-nigh impossible throughout the district.
The 3,000 Government workpeople at Léopoldville are drawn from nearly
every part of the Congo State. Some, those from the cataract district
especially, go voluntarily seeking employment, but many—and I believe a
vast majority—are men, or lads, brought from districts of the Upper
Congo, and who serve the authorities not primarily at their own seeking.
On the 16th June last, five Government workpeople brought me their
contracts of engagement with a request that I might tell them how long a
period they still had to serve. They were all Upper Congo men, and had
already nearly completed the full term of their engagement. The
contracts, in each case, appeared as having been signed and drawn up at
Boma on behalf of the Governor-General of the Congo State, and were, in
each case, for a term of seven years. The men informed me that they had
never been to Boma, and that the whole of their period of service had
been spent either at Léopoldville or on the Upper Congo. In three of
these cases I observed that an alteration had been made in the period of
service, in the following terms:—
“Je réduis de sept à cinq ans le terme de service du....”
This entry was signed by the acting State Inspector of the district. It
seemingly had not been observed, for it was struck out by his successor,
and, as a matter of fact, the full period of seven years was, in each
case, within a few months of completion.
On the whole the Government workmen at Léopoldville struck me as being
well cared for, and they were certainly none of them idle. The chief
difficulty in dealing with so large a staff arises from the want of a
sufficiency of food supply in the surrounding country. The staple food
of the entire Upper Congo is a preparation of the root of the cassava
plant, steeped and boiled, and made up into loaves or puddings of
varying weight. The natives of the districts around Léopoldville are
forced to provide a fixed quantity each week of this form of food, which
is levied by requisitions on all the surrounding villages. The European
Government staff is also mainly dependent upon food supplies obtained
from the natives of the neighbourhood in a similar manner. This, however
necessary, is not a welcome task to the native suppliers who complain
that their numbers are yearly decreasing, while the demands made upon
them remain fixed, or tend even to increase.
The Government station at Léopoldville and its extensive staff, exist
almost solely in connection with the running of Government steamers upon
the Upper Congo.
A hospital for Europeans and an establishment designed as a native
hospital are in charge of a European doctor. Another doctor also resides
in the Government station whose bacteriological studies are unremitting
and worthy of much praise. The native hospital—not, I am given to
understand, through the fault of the local medical staff—is, however,
an unseemly place. When I visited the three mud huts which serve this
purpose, all of them dilapidated, and two with the thatched roofs almost
gone, I found seventeen sleeping sickness patients, male and female,
lying about in the utmost dirt. Most of them were lying on the bare
ground—several out on the pathway in front of the houses, and one, a
woman, had fallen into the fire just prior to my arrival (while in the
final, insensible stage of the disease), and had burned herself very
badly. She had since been well bandaged, but was still lying out on the
ground with her head almost in the fire, and while I sought to speak to
her, in turning, she upset a pot of scalding water over her shoulder.
All of the seventeen persons I saw were near their end, and on my second
visit, two days later, the 19th June, I found one of them lying dead out
in the open.
In somewhat striking contrast to the neglected state of these people, I
found, within a couple of hundred yards of them, the Government workshop
for repairing and fitting the steamers. Here all was brightness, care,
order, and activity, and it was impossible not to admire and commend the
industry which had created and maintained in constant working order this
useful establishment. In conjunction with a local missionary, some
effort was made during my stay at Léopoldville, to obtain an
amelioration of the condition of the sleeping-sickness people in the
native hospital, but it was stated, in answer to my friend’s
representations, that nothing could be done in the way of building a
proper hospital until plans now under consideration had been matured
elsewhere. The structures I had visited, which the local medical staff
greatly deplored, had endured for several years as the only form of
hospital accommodation provided for the numerous native staff of the
district.
The Government stores at Léopoldville are large and well built, and
contain not only the goods the Government itself sends up river in its
fleet of steamers, but also the goods of the various Concession
Companies. As a rule, the produce brought down river by the Government
steamers is transhipped direct into the railway trucks which run
alongside the wharf, and is carried thence by train to Matadi for
shipment to Europe. The various Companies carrying on operations on the
Upper Congo, and who hold Concessions from the Congo Government, are
bound, I was told, by Conventions to abstain from carrying, save within
the limits of their Concessions, either goods or passengers. This
interdiction extends to their own merchandise and to their own agents.
Should they carry, by reason of imperative need, outside these limits
any of their own goods or their own people, they are bound to pay to the
Congo Government either the freight or passage money according to the
Government tariff, just as though the goods or passengers had been
conveyed on one of the Government vessels. The tariff upon goods and
passengers carried along the interior waterways is a fairly high one,
not perhaps excessive under the circumstances, but still one that, by
reason of this virtual monopoly, can produce a yearly revenue which must
go far towards maintaining the Government flotilla. By the estimates for
1902, published in the “Bulletin Officiel” of January this year, the
transport service is credited with a production of 3,100,000 fr. of
public revenue for 1902, while the expenditure for the same year is put
at 2,023,376 fr. That this restriction of public conveyance to
Government vessels alone is not altogether a public gain my own
experience demonstrated. I had wished to leave Stanley Pool for the
Upper Congo at an early date after my arrival in Léopoldville, but as
the Government vessels were mostly crowded, I could not proceed with any
comfort by one of these. The steam-ship “Flandre,” one of the largest of
these vessels, which left Léopoldville for Stanley Falls on the 22nd
June, and by which I had, at first, intended to proceed, quitted port
with more than twenty European passengers over her complement, all of
whom, I was informed, would have to sleep on deck. I accordingly was
forced to seek other means of travelling, and through the kindness of
the Director of one of the large commercial Companies (the “Société
Anonyme Belge du Haut-Congo”) I found excellent accommodation, as a
guest, on one of his steamers. Although thus an invited guest and not
paying any passage money, special permission had to be sought from the
Congo Government before this act of courtesy could be shown me, and I
saw the telegram from the local authority, authorizing my conveyance to
Chumbiri.
This commercial Company has three other steamers, but the interdiction
referred to applies to the entire flotilla of trading vessels of
Congolese nationality on the Upper River. Despite the fact that these
vessels are not allowed to earn freight or passage, they are all, for
their tonnage, heavily taxed, while the Government vessels, which earn
considerable sums on transport of general goods and passengers, pay no
taxes. The four vessels of the Société Anonyme Belge du Haut-Congo
referred to, of which the largest is only, I believe, one of 30 tons,
pay annually, I was informed, the following taxes:—
Fr.
For permission to cut firewood 17,870
Licence for each steamer, according to her tonnage 400 to 600
The master of each vessel must be licensed, for which
a tax of 20 fr. per annum is levied.
Himself and each European member of the crew must then pay 30 fr. per
annum as “imposition personnelle,” whilst each native member of the crew
costs his employers 3 fr. per head for engagement licence annually, and
10 fr. per head per annum as “imposition personnelle.”
The “President Urban,” the largest steamer of the Company referred to,
under these various heads pays, I was informed, a sum of not less than
11,000 fr. in taxes per annum. Should she carry any of the agents of the
Company owning her, or any of its goods, save within the restricted area
of its Concession, her owners must pay to the Congo Government both
passage money and freight on these, just as though they had been sent by
one of the Government vessels.
No firewood may be cut by the public within half-an-hour’s steaming
distance of any of the Government wooding posts, which are naturally
chosen at the best wooding sites available along the various waterways,
so that the 10,000 fr. wood-cutting licence which the “President Urban”
pays entitles her only to cut up for fuel such suitable timber as her
crew may be able to find in the less accessible spots.
At F* I spent four days. I had visited this place in August 1887 when
the line of villages comprising the settlement contained from 4,000 to
5,000 people. Most of these villages to-day are entirely deserted, the
forest having grown over the abandoned sites, and the entire community
at the present date cannot number more than 500 souls. There is no
Government station at F*, but the Government telegraph line which
connects Léopoldville with Coquilhatville, the headquarters of the
Equator district, runs through the once townlands of the F* villages
close to the river bank. The people of the riverside towns, and from 20
miles inland, have to keep the line clear of undergrowth, and in many
places the telegraph road serves as a useful public path between
neighbouring villages. Some of the natives of the neighbourhood
complained that for this compulsory utilitarian service they had
received no remuneration of any kind; and those at a distance that they
found it hard to feed themselves when far from their homes they were
engaged on this task. Inquiry in the neighbourhood established that no
payment for this work had seemingly been made for fully a year.
Men are also required to work at the neighbouring wood-cutting post for
the Government steamers, which is in charge of a native Headman or
Kapita, who is under the surveillance of a European “Chef de Poste” at
Bolobo, the nearest Government station, which lies about 40 miles
up-stream. These wood-cutters, although required compulsorily to serve
and sometimes irregularly detained, are adequately paid for their
services.
The F* villages have to supply kwanga (the prepared cassava root already
referred to) for the neighbouring wood-cutting post, and the quantity
required of them is, they asserted, in excess of their means of supply
and out of proportion to the value received in exchange. The supply
required of them was fixed, I found, at 380 kwanga (or boiled cassava
puddings) every six days, each pudding weighing from 4-1/2 lb. to 6 lb.,
or a total of from 1,700 lb. to 1 ton weight of carefully prepared
food-stuffs per week. For this a payment of one brass rod per kwanga is
made, giving a sum of 19 fr. in all for the several villages whose task
it is to keep the wood post victualled. These villages by careful
computation I reckoned contained 240 persons all told—men, women, and
children. In addition to preparing and carrying this food a considerable
distance to the Government post, these people have to take their share
in keeping the telegraph line clear and in supplying Government workmen.
One elderly man was arrested at the period of my visit to serve as a
soldier and was taken to Bolobo, 40 miles away, but was subsequently
released upon representations made by a missionary who knew him. The
number of wood-cutters at the local post is about thirty I was informed,
so that the amount of food levied is beyond their requirements, and the
excess is said to be sold by them at a profit to the crews of passing
steamers. At one of the smallest of these F* villages, where there are
not more than ten persons all told, and only three of these women able
to prepare and cook the food, 40 kwanga (180 lb. to 270 lb. weight of
food) had to be supplied every week at a payment of 40 rods (2 fr.).
These people said: “How can we possibly plant and weed our gardens, seek
and prepare and boil the cassava, make it into portable shape, and then
carry it nearly a day’s journey to the post? Moreover, if the kwanga we
make are a little small or not well-cooked, or if we complain that the
rods given us in settlement are too short, as they sometimes are, then
we are beaten by the wood-cutters, and sometimes we are detained several
days to cut firewood as a punishment.”
Statements of this kind might be tediously multiplied.
The local mission station at F* requires much smaller kwanga than the
Government size, getting from 1-1/2 lb. to 2 lb. weight of food at the
same price—viz., 1 rod. The kwanga made up for general consumption, as
sold in local markets, weigh only about 1 lb. each. The Government
requires, delivered free, even at considerable distances, from four and
a-half to six times the weight of prepared food to that sold publicly
for 1/2d.
In most parts of the Upper Congo the recognized currency consists of
lengths of brass wire; these lengths varying according to the district.
At one period the recognized length of a brass rod was 18 inches, but
to-day the average length of a rod cannot be more than 8 or 9 inches.
The nominal value of one of these rods is 1/2d., twenty of them being
reckoned to the franc; but the intrinsic value, or actual cost of a rod
to any importer of the brass wire direct from Europe, would come to less
than a 1/4d., I should say. Such as it is, clumsy and dirty, this is
the principal form of currency known on the Upper Congo where, saving
some parts of the French Congo I visited, European money is still quite
unknown.
The reasons for the decrease of population at F* given me, both by the
natives and by others, point to sleeping sickness as probably one of the
principal factors. There has also been emigration to the opposite side
of the river, to the French shore, but this course has never, I gather,
been popular. The people have not easily accommodated themselves to the
altered condition of life brought about by European Government in their
midst. Where formerly they were accustomed to take long voyages down to
Stanley Pool to sell slaves, ivory, dried fish, or other local products
against such European merchandise as the Bateke middlemen around the
Pool had to offer in exchange, they find themselves to-day debarred from
all such form of activity.
The open selling of slaves and the canoe convoys, which once navigated
the Upper Congo, have everywhere disappeared. No act of the Congo State
Government has perhaps produced more laudable results than the vigorous
suppression of this widespread evil. In the 160 miles’ journey from
Léopoldville to F* I did not see one large native canoe in mid-stream,
and only a few small canoes creeping along the shore near to native
villages. While the suppression of an open form of slave dealing has
been an undoubted gain, much that was not reprehensible in native life
has disappeared along with it. The trade in ivory has to-day entirely
passed from the hands of the natives of the Upper Congo, and neither
fish nor any other outcome of local industry now changes hands on an
extensive scale or at any distance from home.
So far as I could observe in the limited time at my disposal, the people
of F* now rarely leave their homes save when required by the local
Government official at Bolobo to serve as soldiers, or woodcutters at
one of the Government posts, or to convey the weekly supplies of food
required of them to the nearest Government station. These demands for
food-stuffs comprise fowls and goats for consumption by the European
members of the Government staff at Léopoldville, or for passengers on
the Government steamers. They emanate from the Chief of the post at
Bolobo who, I understand, is required in so far as he can, to keep up
this supply. In order to obtain this provision he is forced to exercise
continuous pressure on the local population, and within recent times
that pressure has not always taken the form of mere requisition. Armed
expeditions have been necessary and a more forcible method of levying
supplies adopted than the law either contemplated or justifies. Very
specific statements as to the harm one of these recent expeditions
worked in the country around F* were made to me during my stay there.
The officer in command of the G* district, at the head of a band of
soldiers passed through a portion of the district wherein the natives,
unaccustomed to the duties expected of them, had been backward in
sending in both goats and fowls.
The result of this expedition, which took place towards the end of 1900,
was that in fourteen small villages traversed seventeen persons
disappeared. Sixteen of these whose names were given to me were killed
by the soldiers, and their bodies recovered by their friends, and one
was reported as missing. Of those killed eleven were men, three women,
and one a boy child of 5 years. Ten persons were tied up and taken away
as prisoners, but were released on payment of sixteen goats by their
friends, except one, a child, who died at Bolobo. In addition 48 goats
were taken away and 225 fowls; several houses were burned, and a
quantity of their owners’ property either pillaged or destroyed.
Representations on behalf of the injured villages were made to the
Inspecteur d’État at Léopoldville, who greatly deplored the excesses of
his subordinate, and sent to hold an inquiry and to pay compensation to
the relatives of those killed and for the live-stock or goods destroyed
or taken away. The local estimate of the damage done amounted to 71,730
brass rods (3,586 fr.), which included 20,500 brass rods (1,025 fr.),
assessed as compensation for the seventeen people. Three of these were
Chiefs, and the amount asked for would have worked out at about 1,000
brass rods (50 fr.) per head, not probably an extravagant estimate for
human life, seeing that the goats were valued at 400 rods each (20 fr.).
A total sum, I was told, of 18,000 brass rods (950 fr.) was actually
paid to the injured villages by the Government Commissioner, who came
from Stanley Pool; and this sum, it was said, was levied as a fine for
his misconduct on the official responsible for the raid. I could not
learn what other form of punishment, if any, was inflicted on this
officer. He remained as the Government Representative for some time
afterwards, was then transferred to another post in the immediate
neighbourhood, and finally went home at the expiration of his period of
service.
At Bolobo, where I spent ten days waiting for a steamer to continue my
journey, a somewhat similar state of affairs prevails to that existing
at F*. Bolobo used to be one of the most important native Settlements
along the south bank of the Upper Congo, and the population in the early
days of civilized rule numbered fully 40,000 people, chiefly of the
Bobangi tribe. To-day the population is believed to be not more than
7,000 or 8,000 souls. The Bolobo men were famous in former days for
their voyages to Stanley Pool and their keen trading ability. All of
their large canoes have to-day disappeared, and while some of them still
hunt hippopotami—which are still numerous in the adjacent waters—I did
not observe anything like industry among them.
Indeed, it would be hard to say how the people now live or how they
occupy their own time. They did not complain so much of the weekly
enforced food supplies required of them, which would, indeed, seem to be
an unavoidable necessity of the situation, as to the unexpected calls
frequently made upon them. Neither rubber nor ivory is obtained in this
neighbourhood. The food supply and a certain amount of local labour is
all that is enforced. As woodcutters, station hands in the Government
post, canoe paddlers, workers on the telegraph route or in some other
public capacity, they are liable to frequent requisition.
The labour required did not seem to be excessive, but it would seem to
be irregularly called for, unequally distributed, and only poorly
remunerated, or sometimes not remunerated at all.
Complaints as to the manner of exacting service are much more frequent
than complaints as to the fact of service being required. If the local
official has to go on a sudden journey men are summoned on the instant
to paddle his canoe, and a refusal entails imprisonment or a beating. If
the Government plantation or the kitchen garden require weeding, a
soldier will be sent to call in the women from some of the neighbouring
towns. To the official this is a necessary public duty which he cannot
but impose, but to the women suddenly forced to leave their household
tasks and to tramp off, hoe in hand, baby on back, with possibly a
hungry and angry husband at home, the task is not a welcome one.
One of the weightier tasks imposed upon the neighbourhood during my stay
at Bolobo was the construction of a wooden pier at the Government beach
whereat Government vessels might come alongside.
I visited this incompleted structure several times, and estimated that
from 1,500 to 2,000 trees and saplings had already been used in its
partial construction. All of these were cut down and carried in by the
men of some of the neighbouring towns, and for this compulsory service
no remuneration had, up to that date, I was on all sides informed, been
made to any one of them. They were ordered, they said, to do it as a
public duty. The timber needed had to be sought at a considerable
distance, most of the trees had been carried some miles, and the task
was not altogether an agreeable one. The chief complaint I heard
directed against this work, however, was that the pier was being so
badly put up that when finished it would be quite useless, and all their
work would thus be thrown away. My own opinion of the structure was that
this criticism was well founded, and that the first annual rise of the
river would sweep most of the ill-laid timbers away.
The Bolobo people do not object so much to the regular food tax, just
because this is regular, and they can prepare and regularly meet it, as
to the sudden and unexpected labour tasks, such as canoe journeys, or
this more onerous pier building. They could, I perceived, trace no
connection between this hastily-conceived exaction on their time and
labour and a system of general contribution in the public interest,
which, to be readily admitted, should be clearly defined. Were a regular
annual tax levied in money, or some medium of barter exchange serving as
a legal currency, the people would in time be brought to see that a
payment of this kind evenly distributed and enforced was, indeed, a
public duty they were bound to acquit themselves of, and one their
Government was justified in strictly enforcing; but they do not assign
any such value to the unsystematic calls upon them which prevail to-day.
To be hastily summoned from their usual home avocations, or even from
their possibly habitual idleness, to perform one or other of the tasks
indicated above, and to get neither food nor pay for their exertions, as
is often the case, seems to these unprogressive people not a public
service they are called upon to perform in the public interest, but a
purely personal burden laid upon their bodies and their time by the
local agent of an organization which, to them, would seem to exist
chiefly for its own profit.
The weight of the kwanga required at Bolobo seemed to be less than that
enforced at F*, and I found that this variance existed throughout the
Upper Congo. At Bolobo the kwanga loaves supplied to the Government
post weighed each a little over 3 lb. That made for ordinary sale in the
public market just over 1 lb.: one of each that I weighed myself gave 3
lb. 2 oz. to the Government loaf, and 13 oz. to that made for general
consumption. The price paid in each case was the same—viz., one brass
rod.
At the village of H*, some 4 or 5 miles from the Government post, which
I visited, I found the village to number some forty adult males with
their families. This village has to supply weekly to the Government post
400 of these loaves (say 1,250 lb. weight of food) for which a payment
of 20 fr. (400 rods) is made. The people of H* told me that when short
of cassava from their own fields for the preparation of this supply,
they bought the root in the local market and had to pay for it in the
raw state just twice what they received for the prepared and cooked
product they delivered at the post. I had no means of verifying this
statement, but I was assured by many persons that it was strictly true.
In addition to supplying this food weekly, H* is liable to the usual
calls for canoe paddlers, day labourers at the Government station (male
and female), timber gatherers for the pier, and woodcutters at the local
wood-post of the Government steamers.
There was a good deal of sickness in this town, and in that beyond it at
the date of my visit. Sleeping sickness and, still more, small-pox. Both
diseases have done much to reduce the population. Emigration to the
French shore, once active, would seem now to have ceased. Efforts are
made locally, to improve the physical and sanitary condition of the
people, and improvements due to these efforts are becoming apparent, but
I was given to understand that progress is very slow.
The insufficiency of food generally observable in this part of the Congo
would seem to account for much sickness, and probably for the mental
depression of the natives I so often observed, itself a frequent cause
of disease. The Chief of the Government post at G* during a part of my
stay there told me that he thought the district was quite exhausted, and
that it must be ever increasingly difficult to obtain food from it for
the public requirements of the local administration.
Some 40 miles above Bolobo a large “camp d’instruction,” with from 600
to 800 native recruits and a staff of several European officers is
established at a place called Yumbi. I had, to my regret, no opportunity
of visiting this camp, although I met one of its officers who very
kindly invited me there, promising a hearty welcome. He informed me that
native food supplies were fairly plentiful in the neighbourhood of this
camp, and that the principal rations of the soldiers consisted of
hippopotamus meat, the Congo in that neighbourhood affording a seemingly
inexhaustible supply of these creatures.
In front of the house of one of the natives in a village, I saw some
seventy hippopotamus skulls. The animals, I was told, had all been
killed by one man. Many are speared, and some are shot by the native
hunters with cap-guns. A somewhat considerable trade in these weapons
appears to have been done until recently by the Government Agents in the
district, and I found several of the Bolobo young men with guns of this
description which they had bought at different times from the local
official, generally paying for them with ivory tusks. The sale of these
arms by Representatives of the Congo Government would seem to have
ceased somewhat more than a year ago, since which date the holders of
the guns have been exposed to some trouble in order to obtain licences.
Dealing in or holding guns of this description would seem to be
regulated by clearly drawn up Regulations, which, however, do not seem
to have been observed until last year. A tax of 20 fr. is now levied on
the issue of a licence to bear arms, which the law renders obligatory on
every gun holder, but this tax is also collected in an irregular manner.
I learned while at Bolobo that a large influx from the I* district
(which comprises the “Domaine de la Couronne”) had lately taken place
into the country behind G*. The nearest Settlement of these emigrants
was said to be about 20 to 25 miles from G*, and I determined to visit
this place. I spent three days on this journey, visited two large
villages in the interior belonging to the K* tribe, wherein I found that
fully half the population now consisted of refugees belonging to the L*
tribe who had formerly dwelt near I*. I saw and questioned several
groups of these people, whom I found to be industrious blacksmiths and
brass-workers. These people consisted of old and young men, women, and
children. They had fled from their country and sought an asylum with
their friends the K* during the last four years. The distance they had
travelled in their flight they put at about six or seven days’
march—which I should estimate at from 120 to 150 miles of walking.
They went on to declare, when asked why they had fled, that they had
endured such ill-treatment at the hands of the Government officials and
the Government soldiers in their own country that life had become
intolerable, that nothing had remained for them at home but to be killed
for failure to bring in a certain amount of rubber or to die from
starvation or exposure in their attempts to satisfy the demands made
upon them. The statements made to me by these people were of such a
nature that I could not believe them to be true. The fact remained,
however, that they had certainly abandoned their homes and all that they
possessed, had travelled a long distance, and now preferred a species of
mild servitude among the K* to remaining in their own country. I took
careful note of the statements made to me by these people, which will be
found in the transcript attached (Inclosure 1).[12] I subsequently found
when at M* some days later, other L*, who confirmed the truth of the
statements made to me at N*.
On reaching Bolobo in September I obtained information amply confirming
the statements made to me. My own further inquiries at M* are embodied
in the accompanying document (Inclosure 1).[13]
Leaving Bolobo on the 23rd July, I passed on up river in a small
steam-launch I had been fortunate enough to secure for my private use.
We touched at several points on the French shore, and on the 25th July
reached Lukolela, where I spent two days. This district had, when I
visited it in 1887, numbered fully 5,000 people; to-day the population
is given, after a careful enumeration, at less than 600. The reasons
given me for their decline in numbers were similar to those furnished
elsewhere, viz., sleeping-sickness, general ill-health, insufficiency of
food, and the methods employed to obtain labour from them by local
officials and the exactions levied on them. The Lukolela district
furnishes a small supply of rubber, which is required by the Local
Government posts to be brought in at fixed periods as a general
contribution. Food—“kwanga” and fish—are also required of the
riverside dwellers. The towns I visited were very ill-kept and
tumble-down, and bore no comparison, either in the class of
dwelling-houses now adopted or in the extent of cultivated ground around
them, to the condition in which these people formerly dwelt.
Several reasons for the increase of sickness and the great falling-off
in the population of the district were stated by the local missionary,
who has resided for many years at Lukolela, in two letters which he
recently addressed to the Governor-General of the Congo State. A copy of
these letters was handed to me by the writer—the Rev. John
Whitehead—on my calling in at Lukolela on my way down river on the 12th
September. I had no opportunity of verifying, by personal observation,
the statements made by Mr. Whitehead in his letter, for my stay at
Lukolela was only one of a few hours. I have, however, no right to doubt
Mr. Whitehead’s veracity, and he declared himself prepared to accept
full responsibility for the statements his letter contained. A copy of
these letters is appended (Inclosure 2).[14]
The Government post at Lukolela I did not visit, but viewed from the
river it presents a charming aspect; well-built houses, surrounded by
plantations of coffee-trees, extend for some distance along the shore.
From Lukolela I proceeded to O*, which I purposed visiting. O*, with its
two adjoining villages, when I had last seen them in the autumn of 1887,
had presented a scene of the greatest animation. The population of the
three towns then numbered some 4,000 to 5,000 people—O* alone, it was
estimated, containing at least 3,000. Scores of men had put off in
canoes to greet us with invitations that we should spend the night in
their village. On steaming into O*, I found that this village had
entirely disappeared, and that its place was occupied by a large “camp
d’instruction,” where some 800 native recruits, brought from various
parts of the Congo State, are drilled into soldierhood by a Commandant
and a staff of seven or eight European officers and non-commissioned
officers.
There is also a large plantation of coffee-trees, a telegraph office,
and a trading store, but I could see no indications of native life
beyond those dependent on these establishments. The once villages and
their fields had been converted into a very well-laid-out and
admirably-maintained military station. From the Commandant and his
officers a cordial welcome was received. The camp as a military centre
is excellently chosen, the situation of Irebu commanding not only the
Lake Mantumba waterway, but one of the chief navigable channels of the
Congo; and it is, moreover, situated opposite the estuary of the great
Ubangi River, which is probably the most important Congo affluent. The
Commandant informed me that a very large supply of native food, amply
sufficient for the soldiers under his command, was supplied weekly by
the natives of the surrounding district.
It is difficult to exactly estimate the number of soldiers enrolled and
maintained by the Congo Government. There are, I think, four separate
“camps d’instruction” upon the Upper Congo, each of which should have an
effective of 700 men. The effective strengths of the companies of
Manyuema, Lake Léopold II, Lualaba-Kasai, Aruwimi, and Ruzizi-Kivu were
fixed respectively by Circular of the Governor-General, dated the 25th
June, 1902, at 750, 475, 850, 450, and 875 men. There are many other
companies of the “Force Publique” in the Congo State, and I think it
might safely be estimated that the number of men with the colours does
not amount to less than 18,000. By a Circular addressed to the local
authorities, dated the 26th May last, the Governor-General stated that
it was necessary to add 200 men to each of the camps in the Upper Congo.
In the same Circular a proposed increase of the general strength of the
army was indicated in the following terms:—
“Notre programme militaire est très vaste et sa réalisation exige
une attention soutenue et de grands efforts, mais sans son
exécution intégrale notre situation demeurera précaire.
“S’il le fallait, mais je ne pense pas même que ce soit nécessaire,
le Gouvernement se montrerait disposé à augmenter dans une certaine
mesure le contingent pour 1903.”
The same Circular added that:—
“Certains districts en effet ne remplacent pas les miliciens
décédés, désertés en cours de route et ceux réformés à leur arrivée
au camp.
“De plus, pendant la période d’instruction dans les camps un grand
nombre de déchets se produisent aussi parmi ces recrues, les
transports de miliciens laissant encore a désirer.”
The Commandant informed me that some of the natives who had fled into
the French territory opposite ten years ago, when the Irebu tribes had
deserted their homes, were now gradually returning to Congo State
territory. I found, subsequently, that this was the case, the people
alleging that since the rubber tax had been dropped in the Mantumba
district they preferred returning to their home lands to remaining on
the strange sites in French territory, to which they had fled when that
tax was at work.
From Irebu I proceeded some 25 miles to Ikoko, once a large village on
the north shore of Lake Mantumba. I remained in Lake Mantumba seventeen
days visiting, during that time, the Government post at Bikoro on the
east shore of the lake, and many native towns scattered around the lake
side. I also ascended by boat one of the rivers falling into the lake,
and visited three native villages in the forest situated along this
waterway. Lake Mantumba is a fine sheet of water about 25 or 30 miles
long and some 12 or 15 miles broad at the broadest part, surrounded by a
dense forest. The inhabitants of the district are of the Ntomba tribe,
and are still rude savages, using very fine bows and arrows and ill-made
spears as their weapons. There are also in the forest country many
families or clans of a dwarf race called Batwas, who are of a much more
savage and untameable disposition than the Ntombas, who form the bulk of
the population. Both Batwas and Ntombas are still cannibals, and
cannibalism, although repressed and not so openly indulged in as
formerly, is still prevalent in the district. The Mantumba people were,
in the days before the establishment of Congo State rule, among the most
active fishermen and traders of the Upper Congo. In fleets of canoes
they used to issue out upon the main waters of the Congo and travel very
great distances, fighting their way if necessary, in search of
purchasers of their fish or slaves, or to procure these latter. All this
has ceased and, save for small canoes used in catching fish, I saw
neither on the lake itself nor at the many villages I touched along its
shores, any canoes comparable to those so frequently seen in the past. A
man I visited told me that a fine canoe he bought for 2,000 brass rods
(100 fr.), in which to send the weekly imposition of fish to the local
State post, had been kept by the official there, had been used to
transport Government soldiers in, and was now attached to a Government
wood-cutting post, which he named, out on the main river. He had
received nothing for the loss of this canoe, and when I urged him to lay
the matter before the local official responsible, who had doubtless
retained the canoe in ignorance, he pulled up his loin cloth and,
pointing to where he had been flogged with a chicotte, said: “If I
complained I should only get more of these.” Although afraid to complain
locally, he declared he would be perfectly willing to accompany me if I
would take him before one of the Congo Judges or, above all, down to
Boma. I assured him that a statement such as that he had made to me
would meet with attention at Boma, and that if he could prove its truth
he would get satisfaction for the loss of the canoe.
Statements of a similar character, often supported by many witnesses,
were made to me more than once during my journey around the lake, some
of them pointing to far greater derelictions of duty. The same man told
me, on the same occasion, that one of the Government officials of the
district (the same man, indeed, who had retained the canoe) had recently
given him three wives. The official, he declared, had been “making war”
on a town in the forest I was then in, for failing to bring in its fixed
food supply, and as a result of the punitive measures undertaken the
town had been destroyed and many prisoners taken. As a result, several
women so taken were homeless, and were distributed. “Wives were being
given away that day,” said my informant, “he gave me three, but another
man got four.” The man went on to say that one of these “wives” had
since escaped, aided, as he complained, by one of his own townsmen, who
was a slave from her own native town.
The population of the lake-side towns would seem to have diminished
within the last ten years by 60 or 70 per cent. It was in 1893 that the
effort to levy an india-rubber imposition in this district was begun,
and for some four or five years this imposition could only be collected
at the cost of continual fighting. Finding the task of collecting
india-rubber a well nigh impossible one, the authorities abandoned it in
this district, and the remaining inhabitants now deliver a weekly supply
of food-stuffs for the up-keep of the military camp at Irebu, or the big
coffee plantation at Bikoro. Several villages I visited supply also to
the latter station a fortnightly tax of gum-copal, which the surrounding
forests yield abundantly. Gum-copal is also exposed and washed up on the
shores of the lake. The quantity of this commodity supplied by each
village on which it is assessed is put at 10 bags per fortnight. Each
bag is officially said to contain 25 kilog., so that the imposition
would amount to a quarter of a ton weight per fortnight. I found, when
trying to lift some of these bags I saw being packed at a native village
I was in, that they must weigh considerably more than 25 kilog., so that
I concluded that each sack represents that quantity net of gum-copal.
There is a considerable loss in cleaning, chipping, and washing crude
gum as collected. The quantity brought by each village would thus work
out at 6-1/2 tons per annum. When I visited the Government station at
P*, the chief of that post showed me ten sacks of gum which he said had
been just brought in by a very small village in the neighbourhood. For
this quarter of a ton of gum-copal he said he had paid the village one
piece of blue drill—a rough cotton cloth which is valued locally, after
adding the cost of transport, at 11-1/2 fr. a-piece. By the Congo
Government “Bulletin Officiel” of this year (No. 4, April 1903) I found
that 339-1/2 tons of gum-copal were exported in 1902, all from the Upper
Congo, and that this was valued at 475,490 fr. The value per ton would,
therefore, work out at about 56l. The fortnightly yield of each
village would therefore seem to be worth a maximum of 14l. (probably
less), for which a maximum payment of 11-1/2 fr. is made. At one village
I visited I found the majority of the inhabitants getting ready the
gum-copal and the supply of fish which they had to take to P* on the
morrow. They were putting it into canoes to paddle across the lake—some
20 miles—and they left with their loads in the night from alongside my
steamer. These people told me that they frequently received, instead of
cloth, 150 brass rods (7-1/2 fr.) for the quarter of a ton of gum-copal
they took fortnightly.
The value of the annual payment in gum-copal made by each town would
seem to be about 360l., while at an average of 9 fr. as the
remuneration each receives fortnightly, they would appear to receive
some 10l. in annual return.
In the village of Montaka, at the south end of the lake, where I spent
two days, the people seemed, during my stay, to be chiefly engrossed in
the task of chipping and preparing the gum-copal for shipment to Bikoro,
and in getting ready their weekly yield of fish for the same post. I saw
the filling with gum of the ten basket-sacks taking place under the eyes
of the Chief—who himself contributed—and a State sentry who was posted
there. Each household in the town was represented at this final task,
and every adult householder of Montaka shared in the general
contribution. Assuming the population of Montaka at from 600 to 800—and
it cannot now be more although a town of 4,000 souls ten years
ago—fully 150 householders are thus directly affected by the collection
and delivery, each fortnight, of this “impôt en nature,” and are
affected for the great majority of the days throughout the year.
Since for the 6-1/2 tons of gum-copal which the 150 householders of
Montaka contribute annually, they are seen to receive not more than a
total payment of 10l. in the year—viz., 26 fortnightly payments of,
on an average, say 9 fr. 50 c., giving 247 fr. annually—it follows that
the remuneration each adult householder of Montaka receives for his
entire year’s work is the one hundred and fiftieth part of that
total—or just 1s. 4d. This is just the value of an adult fowl in
Montaka. I bought ten fowls, or chickens rather, the morning of my going
away, and for the only reasonably sized one among them I gave 30 rods (1
fr. 50 c.), the others, small fledglings, ranging from 15 to 20 rods
each (75 cents. to 1 fr.).
The 6-1/2 tons of gum-copal supplied annually by these 150 householders
being valued at about 364l., it follows that each householder had
contributed something like 2l. 8s. per annum in kind.
The labour involved may or may not be unduly excessive—but it is
continuous throughout the year—each man must stay in his town and be
prepared each week and fortnight to have his contribution ready under
fear of summary punishment.
The natives engaged as workmen on my steamer were paid each a sum of 20
rods (1 fr.) per week for food rations only, and 100 rods (5 fr.) per
month wages. One of these native workmen thus earned more in one week of
my service—which was that of any other private establishment employing
ordinary labour—than the Montaka householder got in an entire year for
his compulsory public service rendered to the Government.
At other villages which I visited, I found the tax to consist of
baskets, which the inhabitants had to make and deliver weekly as well
as, always, a certain amount of food-stuffs—either kwanga or fish.
These baskets are used at Bikoro in packing up the gum-copal for
conveyance down the river and to Europe—the river transport being
effected by Government steamers. The basket-makers and other workers
complained that they were sometimes remunerated for their labour with
reels of sewing cotton and shirt buttons (of which they had no use) when
supplies of cloth or brass wire ran short at Bikoro. As these natives go
almost entirely naked, I could believe that neither thread or shirt
buttons were of much service to them. They also averred that they were
frequently flogged for delay or inability to complete the tale of these
baskets, or the weekly supply of food. Several men, including a Chief of
one town, showed broad weals across their buttocks, which were evidently
recent. One, a lad of 15 or so, removing his cloth, showed several scars
across his thighs, which he and others around him said had formed part
of a weekly payment for a recent shortage in their supply of food. That
these statements were not all untrue was confirmed by my visit to P*,
when the “domaine privé” store was shown to me. It had very little in
it, and I learned that the barter stock of goods had not been
replenished for some time. There appeared to be from 200 to 300 pieces
of coarse cotton cloth, and nothing else, and as the cloth was visibly
old, I estimated the value of the entire stock at possibly 15l. It
certainly would not have fetched more if put up to auction in any part
of the Upper Congo.
The instructions regulating the remuneration of the native contributors
and the mode of exploitation of the “forêts domaniales” were issued in
the “Bulletin Officiel” of 1896, under authority of Decrees dated the
30th October and the 5th December, 1892.
These general instructions require that:—
“L’exploitation se fait par les agents de l’Intendance, sous la
direction du Commissaire de District.
“Tout ce qui se rapporte à l’exploitation du domaine privé doit
être séparé nettement des autres services gouvernementaux.
“Les agents préposés à l’exploitation du domaine privé consacrent
tous leurs soins au développement de la récolte du caoutchouc et
des autres produits de la forêt.
“Quel que soit le mode d’exploitation adopté à cet effet, ils sont
tenus d’accorder aux indigènes une rémunération qui ne sera en
aucun cas inférieure au montant du prix de la main-d’œuvre
nécessaire à la récolte du produit; cette rémunération est fixée
par le Commissaire de District, qui soumet son tarif à
l’approbation du Gouverneur-Général.
“L’Inspecteur d’État en mission vérifie si ce tarif est en rapport
avec le prix de la main-d’œuvre; il veille à sa stricte
application, et il examine si les conditions générales
d’exploitation ne donnent lieu à aucune plainte justifiée.
“Il fait comprendre aux agents chargés du service que, par le fait
de rétribuer équitablement l’indigène, ils emploient le seul moyen
efficace d’assurer la bonne administration du domaine et de faire
naître chez lui le goût et l’habitude du travail.”
Both from the condition of the Domaine Privé Store I inspected at P*,
and the obvious poverty and universal discontent of the native
contributors, whose towns I visited during the seventeen days spent in
Lake Mantumba, it was clear that these instructions had long since
ceased to be operative. The responsibility for the non-application of
such necessary regulations could not be attributed to the local
officials, who, obviously, if left without the means of adequate
remuneration could not themselves make good the oversights or omissions
of their superiors. That these omissions form part of a systematic
breach of instructions conceived in the interest of the native I do not
assert, but it was most apparent that neither in Lake Mantumba nor the
other portions of the Domaine Privé which I visited was any adequate
provision made for inculcating the natives with any just appreciation of
the value of work.
The station at Bikoro has been established as a Government plantation
for about ten years. It stands on the actual site of the former native
town of Bikoro, an important Settlement in 1893, now reduced to a
handful of ill-kept, untidy huts, inhabited by only a remnant of its
former expropriated population.
Another small village, Bomenga, stands on the other side of the
Government houses; the plantation enveloping both villages, and
occupying their old cassava fields and gardens, which are now planted
with coffee trees. Further inland these give place to cocoa and
india-rubber trees (fantumia elastica), and also to the indigenous
Landolphia creeper, which is being extensively cultivated. The entire
plantation covers 800 hectares. There are 70 kilom. of well-cleared
pathway through it, one of these roads measuring 11 kilom. in almost a
straight line; 400 workmen are employed, consisting in small part of
local natives, but chiefly of men brought from a distance. One numerous
group I saw I was informed were “prisoners” from the Ruki district.
There are 140,000 coffee trees and 170,000 cocoa trees actually in the
ground, the latter a later planting than the coffee. Last year the yield
was: coffee 112 tons, and cocoa 7 tons, all of which, after cleaning and
preparing at the Government depôt at Kinchasa, was shipped to Europe on
the Government account. India-rubber planting was not begun until
November 1901. There are now 248 hectares already under cultivation,
having 700,000 young Landolphia creepers, and elsewhere on the
plantation, on portions mainly given up to coffee growing, there are
50,000 fantumia elastica and 50,000 manihot glaziovii trees. The
station buildings are composed entirely of native materials, and are
erected entirely by local native labour. The Chief of the Post has very
ably directed the work of this plantation, which engrosses all his time,
and until quite recently he had no assistant. A subordinate official is
now placed under his orders. When he took over the district he told me
there were sixty-eight native soldiers attached to the post, which
number he has now been able to reduce to nineteen. In the days when the
india-rubber tax prevailed in Lake Mantumba there were several hundreds
of soldiers required in that region. No rubber is now worked in the
neighbourhood I am informed.
Despite the 70 kilom. of roadway through the plantation, much of which
has to be frequently—indeed daily—traversed, the two Europeans have no
means of locomotion provided them, and must make their daily inspection
to various points of this large plantation on foot.
In addition to the control of this flourishing establishment, the Chief
of the Post is the Executive Chief of the entire district, but it is
evident that but little time or energy could be left to the most
energetic official for duties outside the immediate scope of his work as
a coffee and india-rubber grower, in addition to those “engrossing
cares” the general instructions cited above impose upon the agents who
exploit the State domain.
I have dwelt upon the condition of P* and the towns I visited around
Lake Mantumba in my notes taken at the time, and these are appended
hereto (Inclosure 3).[15] A careful investigation of the conditions of
native life around the lake confirmed the truth of the statements made
to me—that the great decrease in population, the dirty and ill-kept
towns, and the complete absence of goats, sheep, or fowls—once very
plentiful in this country—were to be attributed above all else to the
continued effort made during many years to compel the natives to work
india-rubber. Large bodies of native troops had formerly been quartered
in the district, and the punitive measures undertaken to this end had
endured for a considerable period. During the course of these
operations there had been much loss of life, accompanied, I fear, by a
somewhat general mutilation of the dead, as proof that the soldiers had
done their duty. Each village I visited around the lake, save that of Q*
and one other, had been abandoned by its inhabitants. To some of these
villages the people have only just returned; to others they are only now
returning. In one I found the bare and burnt poles of what had been
dwellings left standing, and at another—that of R*—the people had fled
at the approach of my steamer, and despite the loud cries of my native
guides on board, nothing could induce them to return, and it was
impossible to hold any intercourse with them. At the three succeeding
villages I visited beyond R*, in traversing the lake towards the south,
the inhabitants all fled at the approach of the steamer, and it was only
when they found whose the vessel was that they could be induced to
return.
At one of these villages, S*, after confidence had been restored and the
fugitives had been induced to come in from the surrounding forest, where
they had hidden themselves, I saw women coming back carrying their
babies, their household utensils, and even the food they had hastily
snatched up, up to a late hour of the evening. Meeting some of these
returning women in one of the fields I asked them why they had run away
at my approach, and they said, smiling, “We thought you were Bula
Matadi” (i.e., “men of the Government”). Fear of this kind was
formerly unknown on the Upper Congo; and in much more out-of-the-way
places visited many years ago the people flocked from all sides to greet
a white stranger. But to-day the apparition of a white man’s steamer
evidently gave the signal for instant flight.
The chief of the P* post told me that a similar alarm reigned almost
everywhere in the country behind his station, and that when he went on
the most peaceful missions only a few miles from his house the villages
were generally emptied of all human beings when he entered them, and it
was impossible in the majority of cases to get into touch with the
people in their own homes. It was not so in all cases, he said, and he
instanced certain villages where he could go certain of a friendly
reception, but with the majority, he said, he had found it quite
impossible to ever find them “at home.” He gave, as an explanation, when
I asked for the reason of this fear of the white man, that as these
people were great savages, and knew themselves how many crimes they had
committed, they doubtless feared that the white man of the Government
was coming to punish their misconduct. He added that they had
undoubtedly had an “awful past” at the hands of some of the officials
who had preceded him in the local administration, and that it would take
time for confidence to be restored. Men, he said, still came to him
whose hands had been cut off by the Government soldiers during those
evil days, and he said there were still many victims of this species of
mutilation in the surrounding country. Two cases of the kind came to my
actual notice while I was in the lake. One, a young man, both of whose
hands had been beaten off with the butt ends of rifles against a tree,
the other a young lad of 11 or 12 years of age, whose right hand was cut
off at the wrist. This boy described the circumstances of his
mutilation, and, in answer to my inquiry, said that although wounded at
the time he was perfectly sensible of the severing of his wrist, but lay
still fearing that if he moved he would be killed. In both these cases
the Government soldiers had been accompanied by white officers whose
names were given to me. Of six natives (one a girl, three little boys,
one youth, and one old woman) who had been mutilated in this way during
the rubber régime, all except one were dead at the date of my visit. The
old woman had died at the beginning of this year, and her niece
described to me how the act of mutilation in her case had been
accomplished. The day I left Lake Mantumba five men whose hands had been
cut off came to the village of T* across the lake to see me, but hearing
that I had already gone away they returned to their homes. A messenger
came in to tell me, and I sent to T* to find them, but they had then
dispersed. Three of them subsequently returned, but too late for me to
see them. These were some of those, I presume, to whom the official had
referred, for they came from the country in the vicinity of P* station.
Statements of this character, made both by the two mutilated persons I
saw and by others who had witnessed this form of mutilation in the past,
are appended (Inclosure 4).[16]
The taxes levied on the people of the district being returnable each
week or fortnight, it follows that they cannot leave their homes. At
some of the villages I visited near the end of Lake Mantumba the fish
supplies have to be delivered weekly to the military camp at Irebu, or
when the water is high in the lake and fish harder to catch, every ten
days. The distance from Irebu of one of these towns could not have been
less than 45 miles. To go and come between their homes and the camp
involved to the people of this town 90 miles of canoe paddling, and with
the lake stormy and its waters rough—as is often the case—the double
journey would take at least four days. This consumption of time must be
added to that spent in the catching of the fish, and as the punishment
for any falling off in quantity or delay in delivery is not a light one,
the Chief responsible for the tax stoutly opposes any one quitting the
town. Some proof of this incidentally arose during my stay, and
threatened to delay my journey. Being short-handed I sought, when at
Ikoko, to engage six or seven young men of the town as woodcutters to
travel on board the steamer. I proposed to engage them for two or three
months, and offered good wages, much more than by any local service they
could hope to earn. More men offered than I needed, and I selected six.
The State Chief of the village hearing of this at once came to me to
protest against any of his people leaving the town, and said that he
would have all the youths I had engaged tied up and sent over to the
Government official at Bikoro. There were at the time three soldiers
armed with Albini rifles quartered at Ikoko, and the Chief sent for them
to arrest my would-be crew. The Chief’s argument, too, was perfectly
logical. He said, “I am responsible each week for 600 rations of fish
which must be delivered at Bikoro. If it fails I am held responsible and
will be punished. I have been flogged more than once for a failure in
the fish supply, and will not run any risks. If these men go I shall be
short-handed, therefore they must stay to help in getting the weekly
tax.” I was forced to admit the justice of this argument, and we finally
arrived at a compromise. I promised the Chief that, in addition to
paying wages to the men I took, a sum representing the value to him of
their labour should be left at Ikoko, so that he might hire extra hands
to get the full quantity of fish required of him. S I admitted that he
had been forced to flog men from villages which failed in their weekly
supplies, but that he had for some months discontinued this course. He
said that now he put defaulters into prison instead. If a village which
was held to supply, say, 200 rations of fish each week brought only 180
rations, he accepted no excuse, but put two men in “block.” If thirty
rations were wanting he detained three of the men, and so on—a man for
each ten rations. These people would remain prisoners, and would have to
work at Bikoro, or possibly would be sent to Coquilhatville, the
administrative head-quarters of the Equator district, until the full
imposition came in.
I subsequently found when in the neighbourhood of Coquilhatville that
summary arrest and imprisonment of this kind for failure to complete the
tale of local imposition is of constant occurrence. The men thus
arrested are kept often in the “chain gang” along with other prisoners,
and are put to the usual class of penitential work. They are not brought
before or tried by any Court or sentenced to any fixed term of
imprisonment, but are merely detained until some sort of satisfaction is
obtained, and while under detention are kept at hard work.
Indeed, I could not find that a failure to meet the weekly tax is
punishable by law and no law was cited to me as a warrant for this
summary imprisonment, but if such a law exists it is to be presumed that
it does not treat the weekly taxpayers’ failure as a grave criminal
offence. The men taken are frequently not those in fault; the
requisitioning authority cannot discriminate. He is forced to insure
compliance with the demands imposed on each village, and the first men
to hand from the offending community of necessity have to pay in the
chain-gang the general failure and possibly the individual fault of
others. Men taken in this way are sometimes not seen again in their own
homes. They are either taken to distant Government stations as workmen,
or are drafted as soldiers into the Force Publique. The names of many
men thus taken from the Mantumba district were given to me, and in some
cases their relatives had heard of their death in distant parts of the
country. This practice was, I believe, more general in the past, but
that it still exists to-day, and on an extensive scale, I had several
instances of observing in widely separated districts. The officials
effecting these arrests do not seem to have any other course open to
them, unless it be a resort to military punitive measures or to
individual corporal punishment; while the natives assert that, as the
taxes are unequally distributed, and their own numbers constantly
decreasing, the strain upon them each week often becomes unbearable, and
some of their number will shirk the constantly recurring unwelcome task.
Should this shirking become general instead of being confined to
individuals, punitive measures are undertaken against the refractory
community. Where these do not end in fighting, loss of life and
destruction of native property, they entail very heavy fines which are
levied on the defaulting village. An expedition of the minor kind
occurred some five months before my presence in Lake Mantumba. The
village in fault was that of R*, the one where when I sought to visit it
no people would remain to face me. This village was said to have been
some three weeks in arrears with the fish it was required to supply to
the camp at Irebu. An armed force occupied it, commanded by an officer,
and captured ten men and eight canoes. These canoes and the prisoners
were conveyed by water to Irebu, the main force marching back by land.
My informant, who dwelt in a village near R*, which I was then visiting,
said he saw the prisoners being taken back to Irebu under guard of six
black soldiers, tied up with native rope so tightly that they were
calling aloud with pain. The force halted the night in his town. These
people were detained at Irebu for ten days until the people of R* had
brought in a supply of fish and had paid a fine. Upon their release two
of these men died, one close to Irebu and the other within sight of the
village I was in, and two more, my informant added, died soon after
their return to R*. A man, who saw them, said the prisoners were ill and
bore the marks on wrists and legs of the thongs used in tying them. Of
the canoes captured only the old ones were returned to R*, the better
ones being confiscated.
The native relating this incident added that he thought it stupid of the
white men to take both men and canoes away from a small place like R* as
a punishment for a shortage in its fish supply. “The men were wanted to
catch fish and so were the canoes,” he said, “and to take both away only
made it harder for the people of R* to perform their task.” I went to R*
in the hope of being able to verify the truth of this and other
statements made to me as to the hardships recently inflicted on its
people by reason of their disobedience, but owing to their timidity, to
whatever cause this might have been due, it was impossible for me to get
into touch with any of them. That a very close watch is kept on the
people of the district and their movements is undoubted. In the past
they escaped in large numbers to the French territory, but many were
prevented by force from doing this, and numbers were shot in the
attempt.
To-day the Congolese authorities discourage intercourse of this kind,
not by the same severe measures as formerly, but probably none the less
effectively. By a letter dated the 2nd July, 1902, the present
Commandant of the camp of Irebu wrote as follows to the Rev. E. V.
Sjoblom, a Swedish Missionary (since dead), who was then in charge of
the Mission at Ikoko:
“Je vous serais bien obligé de ne pas permettre à vos jeunes gens
de se rendre sur la rive Française et vendre aux indigènes Français
qui ont fui notre rive, des vivres, produits du travail de nos
indigènes, que eux-mêmes n’ont pas fui et ne se sont pas soustraits
au travail que nous leur avons imposé.”
From Lake Mantumba I proceeded to the immediate neighbourhood of
Coquilhatville, where five days were spent, chiefly at native
communities which stretch for some distance along the east bank of the
Congo. These villages formerly extended for 15 miles, and were then
filled with a numerous population. To-day they are broken up into
isolated settlements, each much reduced in numbers, and with (in most
cases) the houses badly constructed. There were no goats or sheep to be
seen, whereas formerly these were very plentiful, and food for the crew
was only obtained with difficulty. In the village of V*, which I twice
visited, the usual tax of food-stuff, with firing for the steamers, had
to be supplied to Coquilhatville, which is distant only some 6 miles. A
Government sentry was quartered here, who, along with one of the Chiefs
of the town, spoke fully of the condition of the people. The sentry
himself came from the Upper Bussira River, some hundreds of miles
distant. This was, he said, his third period of service with the Force
Publique. As his reason for remaining so long in this service he
asserted that, as his own village and country were subjected to much
trouble in connection with the rubber tax, he could not live in his own
home, and preferred, he said, laughing, “to be with the hunters rather
than with the hunted.” Both a Chief V* and this sentry represented the
food taxes levied on this village as difficult for the people to
collect, and only inadequately remunerated. There would appear in all
these statements a contradiction in terms. The contributions required of
the natives are continually spoken of as a “tax,” and are as continually
referred to as being “paid for” or “remunerated.” It is obvious that
taxes are neither bought nor sold, but the contradiction is only one of
terms. The fact is that the weekly or fortnightly contributions
everywhere required of the native communities I visited are levied as
taxes, or “prestations annuelles,” by authority of a Royal Decree of the
Sovereign of the Congo State. The Decrees authorizing the levy of these
taxes are dated the 6th October, 1891 (Article 4), that of the 5th
December, 1892, and (for the district of Manyeuma) that of the 28th
November, 1893. There is a further Decree, dated the 30th April, 1897,
requiring the establishment and up-keep by native Chiefs of coffee and
cocoa plantations. I nowhere saw or heard of such plantations existing
as institutions maintained by the natives themselves. There are
plantations of both existing, but these are the property of either the
Government itself or of some European agency acting with its sanction
and partly in its interests, on lands declared as public lands. With
regard to the two first Decrees establishing a system of taxation,
provision was made for the investiture of a native Chief recognized by
the local Government authority, who should give to this Chief a copy of
the procès-verbal, as registered in the public archives, and a medal
or other symbol of office. With this investiture a list was ordered to
be drawn up, indicating the name of the village, its exact situation,
the names of the Headmen, the number of its houses, and the actual
number of the population—men, women, and children. The Decree then goes
on to provide for the manner in which the “prestations annuelles”
imposed on each village were to be assessed. A list of the products to
be furnished by each village—such as maize, sorghum, palm oil,
ground-nuts, &c., corvées of workmen or soldiers—was to be drawn up by
the Commissaire of the district. It was provided that this list should
also indicate the lands which were to be cleared and cultivated under
the direction of the Chiefs, the nature of such cultivation put in hand,
and “all other works of public utility which might be prescribed in the
interest of public health, the exploitation or improvement of the soil,
or otherwise.” These lists had first of all to be submitted for his
approval to the Governor-General. I could not find that, save in respect
of the strict enforcement of the contributions, this law was generally
or rigorously observed. In many villages where I asked for it no copy of
any procès-verbal could be produced, and in several cases no act of
investiture of the local Chief seemed to have ever taken place.
Plantations, such as those outlined in the Decree which made provision
for them, nowhere exist in any part of the country I traversed. The
enumeration of the houses and people had in some instances been made, I
was informed, but it was many years ago; and as the population had since
greatly declined, this enumeration could not to-day always serve as an
accurate basis on which to reckon the extent of the existing
contribution.
At the village of A*, which I visited twice during my stay in the
neighbourhood, A furnished me with particulars as to his own public
obligations. His portion of A* had formerly been extensive, and at the
date when an enumeration was made contained many people. To-day it has
only six adult householders, including himself, inhabiting now eleven
huts in all, with their wives and children—a total population of
twenty-seven persons. My attention was first drawn to him and his
village by my meeting with a young boy—a lad of 7 years old, I should
judge—whom I found in the village of U* as the recently acquired
property of B. B told me he had bought the boy, C, from A for 1,000 rods
(50 fr.). A, he said, having to meet a fine imposed by the
Commissaire-Général for shortage in some of the weeks’ supplies, and
being 1,000 rods short of the amount required, had pawned his nephew C
to him for that sum. This had taken place on the ,
and my interview with B and the boy took place on the [blank space in
text]. The next day I walked to A*, which lies within a few miles of
Coquilhatville, and saw A and his town and people. There were then
exactly eight men in the town, including himself; but as two have since
been detained as prisoners at Coquilhatville for deficiencies in the
weekly supplies, there were, when I last saw A* in September, only six
adult males there. The weekly imposition levied on A’s part of A* was—
Kwanga 150 rations (about 700 lbs. weight of food).
Fish 95 rations.
Palm thatching mats 900
Firewood, for steamer fuel 2 canoe loads.
Also each week one large fresh fish or, in lieu thereof, two fowls for
the European table at Coquilhatville. In addition, the men had to help
in hunting game in the woods for the European station staff.
The payments made each week for these supplies (when they were
completely delivered) were:—
Fr. c.
Kwanga, 150 rods 7 50
Fish, 95 rods 4 75
Palm mats, 180 rods 9 0
2 canoe loads firewood, 1 rod 0 5
———
21 30
Payments for firewood were made by a paper receipt to be redeemed
annually, but A told me he had refused to accept the annual payment of
50 rods (2 fr. 50 c.) for 104 canoe loads of wood delivered during the
twelve months. To obtain these supplies A had frequently to purchase
both fish and palm mats. The fish, as a rule, cost from 10 to 20 rods
per ration, and the market price of thatching mats is 1 rod each; while
the kwanga, which the Government paid 1 rod for, fetched just 5 rods
each in the open market. The value of A’s weekly contribution was,
according to current prices, as follows:—
————————————————————+————-+————————-
| Rods. | Value.
+————-+—————
| | Fr. c.
150 rations, kwanga, each 5 rods | 750 | 37 50
95 “ fish, each 10 rods | 950 | 47 50
900 palm mats, each 1 rod | 900 | 45 0
2 canoe loads firewood, each 20 rods | 40 | 2 0
+————-+—————
Total | | 132 0
————————————————————+————-+————————-
Thus, taking no account of the fresh fish or fowls, A’s small township
of eight households lost 110 fr. 70 c. per week. At the year’s end,
while they had contributed 6,864 fr. worth of food and material to the
local Government station, they had received as recompense 1,107 fr. 60
c. A, personally, had a larger share of the tax to meet than any of the
others, and I found that the value of his personal contribution reached
80l. 3s. 4d. per annum by local prices, while he received in
settlement 9l. 15s. in Government payments. He therefore contributed
on his household of two wives, his mother, and dependents, inhabiting
three grass and cane huts, an amount equal to 70l. 8s. 4d. per
annum net.
These figures, I found on inquiry, were confirmed as correct by those
who were acquainted with the local conditions. A stated that his elder
brother, D, was in reality Chief of the township, but that some eight
months previously D had been arrested for a deficiency in the fish and
kwanga supplies. The Commissaire had then imposed a fine of 5,000 rods
(250 fr.) on the town, which A, with the assistance of a neighbouring
Chief named C, had paid. D was not thereupon at once released, and soon
afterwards escaped from the prison at Coquilhatville, and remained in
hiding in the forest. Soldiers came from the Government station and tied
up eight women in the town. A and all the men ran away upon their
coming, but he himself returned in the morning. The Commissaire-Général
visited A*, and told A that as D had run away he (A) was now the
recognized Chief of the town. He was then ordered to find his fugitive
brother, whose whereabouts he did not know, and a town in the
neighbourhood name E, suspected of harbouring him, was fined 5,000 rods.
Since that date, although D had returned to A* to reside, A had been
held, against his will, as responsible Chief of the town. He was a young
man of about 23 or 24 years of age I should say. He had repeatedly, he
stated, begged to be relieved of the honour thrust upon him, but in
vain. His brother, D, had recently been put again in prison at
Coquilhatville in connection with the loss of two cap-guns furnished him
when Chief in order to procure game for the local white men’s table. The
present impositions laid on A* were, A asserted, much more than it was
possible for him to meet. He had repeatedly appealed to the
Commissaire-Général and other officers at Coquilhatville, including the
law officer, begging them to visit his town and see for themselves—as I
might see—that he was speaking the truth. But, so far, no one would
listen to him, and he had been always rebuffed. On the last occasion of
his making this appeal, only three days before I saw him, he had been
threatened with prompt imprisonment if he failed in his supplies, and he
said he now saw no course before him but flight or imprisonment. He
could not run away, he said, and leave his mother and dependents;
besides, he would be surely found, and, in any case, whatever town
harboured him would be fined as E had been.
On a certain Sunday, when he had gone in with the usual weekly supplies,
which are returnable on Sundays, he had been short of eight rations of
fish and ten rations of kwanga and 330 palm mats, representing a value
of 84 rods (4 fr. 20 c.), as estimated on the scale of Government
payments. On the same date the other and larger portion of A* town was
also short of its tale of supplies, and a fine of 5,000 brass rods (250
fr.) was imposed upon the collective village. A’s share of this fine
was fixed by the natives among themselves at 2,000 rods, of which 1,000
rods were to be his own personal contribution. Having himself now no
money and no other means of obtaining it, he had pledged—with the
consent of the father—his little nephew, D’s son, whom I had seen with
B. In making inquiry, A’s story received much confirmation. He was, at
any rate, known as a man of very good character, and everything pointed
to his statement being true. On my return down river, I again saw A, who
came after nightfall to see me, in the hope that I might perhaps be able
to help him. He said that, since I had left a month previously, two of
the boys of his town had been detained at Coquilhatville as prisoners
when taking the rations on two successive weeks, owing to a deficiency
on each occasion of 18 rods in value (90 cents.), and that these two
boys—whose names he gave me—were still in prison. He had been that
very day, he said, to beg that they might be released, but had failed,
and there were now only five adult males in his village, including
himself.
While in Coquilhatville on this mission, he declared that he had seen
eleven men brought in from villages in the neighbourhood, who were put
in prison before him—all of them on account of a shortage in the
officially fixed scale of supplies required from their districts. I
offered to take him away with me in order to lay his case before the
judicial authorities elsewhere, but he refused to leave his mother. That
A’s statements were not so untrustworthy as on the face they might seem
to be, was proved a few days later by a comparison of his case with that
of another village I visited. This was a town named W*, lying some three
miles inland in a swampy forest situated near the mouth of the X* River.
On quitting Coquilhatville, I proceeded to the mouth of this river,
which enters the Congo some forty-five miles above that station, and I
remained two days in that neighbourhood. Learning that the people of the
immediate neighbourhood had recently been heavily fined for failure in
their food supplies, which have to be delivered weekly at that station,
and that these fines had fallen with especial severity on W*, I decided
to visit that town.
It was on the 21st August that I visited W*, where I found that the
statements made to me were borne out by my personal observation. The
town consisted of a long single street of native huts lying in the midst
of a clearing in the forest. In traversing it from end to end I
estimated the number of its people at about 600 all told.
At the upper end of the town a number of men and women assembled, and
some came forward, when they made a lengthy statement to the following
effect. From this upper end of the town wherein I was 100 rations of
kwanga had to be supplied weekly, and thirty fowls at a longer interval.
These latter were for the use of Coquilhatville, while the kwanga was
very largely for the use of the wood-cutters at the nearest Government
wood-cutting post on the main river. The usual prices for these
articles, viz., for the kwanga, 1 rod each, and for the fowls 20 rods
were paid. The people also had to take each week 10 fathoms of firewood
to the local wood-post, for which they often got no payment, and their
women were required twice a week to work at the Government coffee
plantation which extends around the wood-post.
I saw some bundles of firewood being got ready for carriage to this
place. They were large and very heavy, weighing, I should say, from 70
to 80 lb. each. Some months earlier, at the beginning of the year,
owing, as they said, to their failure to send in the fowls to
Coquilhatville, an armed expedition of some thirty soldiers, commanded
by a European officer, had come thence and occupied their town. At first
they had fled into the forest, but were persuaded to come in. On
returning, many of them—the principal men—- were at once tied up to
trees. The officer informed them that as they had failed in their duty
they must be punished. He required first that twenty-five men should be
furnished as workmen for Government service. These men were taken away
to serve the Government as labourers, and those addressing me did not
know where these men now were. They gave eighteen names of men so taken,
and said that the remaining seven came from the lower end of the town
through which I had passed on entering, where the relatives themselves
could give me particulars if I wished. The twenty-five men had not since
been seen in W*, nor had any one there cognizance of their whereabouts.
The officer had then imposed as further punishment a fine of 55,000
brass rods (2,750 fr.)—110l. This sum they had been forced to pay,
and as they had no other means of raising so large a sum they had, many
of them, been compelled to sell their children and their wives. I saw no
live-stock of any kind in W* save a very few fowls—possibly under a
dozen—and it seemed, indeed, not unlikely that, as these people
asserted, they had great difficulty in always getting their supplies
ready. A father and mother stepped out and said that they had been
forced to sell their son, a little boy called F, for 1,000 rods to meet
their share of the fine. A widow came and declared that she had been
forced, in order to meet her share of the fine, to sell her daughter G,
a little girl whom I judged from her description to be about 10 years of
age. She had been sold to a man in Y*, who was named, for 1,000 rods,
which had then gone to make up the fine.
A man named H stated that while the town was occupied by the soldiers, a
woman who belonged to his household, named I, had been shot dead by one
of the soldiers. Her husband, a man named K, stepped forward and
confirmed the statement. They both declared that the woman had quitted
her husband’s house to obey a call of Nature, and that one of the
soldiers, thinking she was going to run away, had shot her through the
head. The soldier was put under arrest by the officer, and they said
they saw him taken away a prisoner when the force was withdrawn from
their town, but they knew nothing more than this. They did not know if
he had been tried or punished. No one of them had ever been summoned to
appear, no question had been addressed to them, and neither had the
husband nor the head of I’s household received any compensation for her
death. Another woman named L, the wife of a man named M, had been taken
away by the native sergeant who was with the soldiers. He had admired
her, and so took her back with him to Coquilhatville. Her husband heard
she had died there of small-pox, but he did not know anything certain of
her circumstances after she had been taken away from W*. A man named N
said he had sold his wife O to a man in Y* for 900 rods to meet his
share of the fine.
It was impossible for me to verify these statements, or to do much
beyond noting down, as carefully as possible, the various declarations
made. I found, however, on returning to Y*, that the statements made
with regard to the little boy F and the girl G were true. These children
were both in the neighbourhood, and owing to my intervention F was
restored to his parents. The girl G, I was told, had again changed
hands, and was promised in sale to a town on the north bank of the
Congo, named Iberi, whose people are said to be still open cannibals.
Through the hands of the local missionary this transfer was prevented,
and I paid the 1,000 rods to her original purchaser, and left G to be
restored to her mother from the Mission. I saw her there on the 9th
September, after she had been recovered through this missionary’s
efforts, while about to be sent to her parent.
With regard to the quantity of food supplies levied upon W*, I did not
obtain the total amount required of the entire community, but only that
which the upper end of the town furnished. The day of my visit happened
to be just that when the kwanga, due at the local wood-post, was being
prepared for delivery on the morrow. I saw many of the people getting
their shares ready. Each share of kwanga, for which a payment of 1 rod
is made by the Government, consisted of five rolls of this food tied
together. One of these bundles of five rolls I sought to buy, offering
the man carrying it 10 rods—or ten times what he was about to receive
for it from the local Government post. He refused my offer, saying that,
although he would like the 10 rods, he dare not be a bundle of his
ration short. One of these bundles was weighed and found to weigh over
15 lb. This may have been an extraordinarily large bundle, although I
saw many others which appeared to be of the same size. I think it would
be safe to assume that the average of each ration of kwanga required
from this town was not less than 12 lb. weight of cooked and carefully
prepared food—a not ungenerous offering for 1/2d. By this computation
the portion of W* I visited sends in weekly 1,200 lb. weight of food at
a remuneration of some 5 fr. Cooked bread-stuffs supplied at 9 or 10 fr.
per ton represent, it must be admitted, a phenomenally cheap loaf. At
the same time with this kwanga, being prepared for the Government use, I
saw others being made up for general public consumption. I bought some
of these, which were going to the local market, at their current market
value, viz., 1 rod each. On weighing them I found they gave an average
of 1 lb. each. The weight of food-stuffs required by the Government from
this town would seem to have exceeded in weight twelve times that made
up for public consumption.
Whilst I was in Y* a fresh fine of 20,000 rods (1,000 fr.) was in course
of collection among the various households along the river bank. This
fine had been quite recently imposed by direction of —— for a further
failure on the part of the Y* towns in the supply of food-stuffs from
that neighbourhood. I saw at several houses piles of brass rods being
collected to meet it, and in front of one of these houses I counted
2,700 rods which had been brought together by the various dependents of
that family; 6,000 rods of this further fine was, I was told, to be
paid by W*, which had not then recovered from its previous much larger
contribution. The W* men begged me to intervene, if I could at all help
them to escape this further imposition. One of them—a strong, indeed a
splendid-looking man—broke down and wept, saying that their lives were
useless to them, and that they knew of no means of escape from the
troubles which were gathering around them. I could only assure these
people that their obvious course to obtain relief was by appeal to their
own constituted authorities, and that if their circumstances were
clearly understood by those responsible for these fines, I trusted and
believed some satisfaction would be forthcoming.
These fines, it should be borne in mind, are illegally imposed: they are
not “fines of Court”; are not pronounced after any judicial hearing, or
for any proved offence against the law, but are quite arbitrarily levied
according to the whim or ill-will of the executive officers of the
district, and their collection, as well as their imposition, involves
continuous breaches of the Congolese laws. They do not, moreover, figure
in the account of public revenues in the Congo “Budgets;” they are not
paid into the public purse of the country, but are spent on the needs of
the station or military camp of the officer imposing them, just as seems
good to this official.
I can nowhere learn upon what legal basis, if any, the punishments
inflicted upon native communities or individuals for failure to comply
with the various forms of “prestations” rest.
These punishments are well-nigh universal and take many shapes, from
punitive expeditions carried out on a large scale to such simpler forms
of fine and imprisonment as that lately inflicted on U*.
I cannot find in the Penal Code of the Congo Statute Book that a failure
to meet or a non-compliance with any form of prestation or impôt is
anywhere defined as a crime; and so far as I can see no legal sanction
could be cited for any one of the punishments so often inflicted upon
native communities for this failure.
By a Royal Decree of the 11th August, 1886, provision was made for the
punishments to be inflicted for infractions of the law not punishable by
special penalties.
Since no special penalty in law would seem to have been provided for
cases of failure or refusal to comply with the demands of the
tax-gatherer, it would seem to be in the terms of this Decree that the
necessary legal sanctions could alone lie.
But this Decree provides for all otherwise unspecified offences far
other punishments, and far other modes of inflicting them than so many
of those which came to my notice during my brief journey.
Article 1 of this Decree provides that:—
“Les contraventions aux décrets, ordonnances, arrêtes, règlements
d’administration intérieure et de police, à l’égard desquelles la
loi ne détermine pas de peines particulières, seront punies d’un à
sept jours de servitude pénale et d’une amende n’excédant pas 200
fr., ou d’une de ces peines seulement.”
Article 2 requires that:—
“Ces peines seront appliquées par les Tribunaux de l’État
conformément aux lois en vigueur.”
It would be manifestly impossible to say that either in form or mode of
procedure this law had been applied to the failure of the community at
W* to meet the demands made upon them.
Neither the summary arrest and taking away from their homes of the men
whose names were given to me nor the imposition of the very heavy fine
of brass rods find any warrant in this page of the Congo Statute Book.
If a legal warrant exists for the action of the authorities in this
case—as in the numerous other cases brought to my notice—that action
would still call for much adverse comment.
The amount of the fine levied on W* was not only out of all proportion
to the gravity of the offence committed, but was of so crushing a
character as to preclude the possibility of its being acquitted by any
reasonable or legitimate means that community disposed of.
Among the earliest enactments of civilized administrations, recognition
has invariably been given to the pronouncement that no fine or
imposition, or exaction, shall exceed the powers of the person on whom
it is imposed to meet it.
But if, as I venture to presume, no Congolese law or judicial
pronouncement exists, or could exist, for the levying, in this manner,
of these fines, very explicit Regulations for the treatment of the
natives on general lines and their right to judicial protection do
exist.
In the “texte coordonné des diverses instructions relatives aux rapports
des Agents de l’État avec les indigènes,” which are to be found in the
“Bulletin Officiel” of 1896 (p. 255), these Regulations are published at
length and would seem, textually, to leave little room for criticism.
Were their application enforced it is abundantly clear that a situation
such as that I found in existence at W* could not arise, and much of the
general unhappiness and distress of the natives I witnessed on all sides
would disappear along with the fines and much also of the “prestations,”
within the first month of the translation into action of these
Regulations.
One paragraph only need here be cited to emphasize the bearing and
import of these remarks:—
“Les agents doivent se souvenir que les peines disciplinaires
prévues par le règlement de discipline militaire ne sont
applicables qu’aux recrutés militaires, uniquement pour des
infractions contre la discipline, et dans les conditions
spécialement prévues par le dit règlement.
“Elles ne sont applicables, sous aucune prétexte, aux serviteurs de
l’État non militaire ni aux indigènes, que ceux-ci soient ou non en
rébellion vis-à-vis de l’Etat.
“Ceux d’entre eux qui sont prévenus de délits ou crimes doivent
être déférés aux Tribunaux compétents et jugés conformément aux
lois.”
At neither W* nor Y* is any rubber worked. With my arrival in the
Lulongo River, I was entering one of the most productive rubber
districts of the Congo State, where the industry is said to be in a very
flourishing condition. The Lulongo is formed by two great feeders—the
Lopori and Maringa Rivers—which, after each a course of some 350 miles
through a rich, forested country, well peopled by a tribe named Mongos,
unite at Bassankusu, some 120 miles above where the Lulongo enters the
Congo. The basins of these two rivers form the Concession known as the
A.B.I.R., which has numerous stations, and a staff of fifty-eight
Europeans engaged in exploiting the india-rubber industry, with
head-quarters at Bassankusu. Two steamers belonging to the A.B.I.R.
Company navigate the waterways of the Concession, taking up European
goods and bringing down to Bassankusu the india-rubber, which is there
transhipped on board a Government steamer which plies for this purpose
between Coquilhatville and Bassankusu, a distance of probably 160 miles.
The transport of all goods and agents of the A. B. I. R. Company,
immediately these quit the Concession, is carried on exclusively by the
steamers of the Congo Government, the freight and passage-money obtained
being reckoned as part of the public revenue. I have no actual figures
giving the annual output of india-rubber from the A.B.I.R. Concession,
but it is unquestionably large, and may, in the case of a prosperous
year, reach from 600 to 800 tons. The quality of the A.B.I.R. rubber is
excellent, and it commands generally a high price on the European
market, so that the value of its annual yield may probably be estimated
at not less than 150,000l. The merchandise used by the Company
consists of the usual class of Central African barter goods—cotton
cloths of different quality, Sheffield cutlery, matchets, beads, and
salt. The latter is keenly sought by the natives of all the interior of
Africa. There is also a considerable import by the A.B.I.R. Company, I
believe, of cap-guns, which are chiefly used in arming the
sentinels—termed “forest guards”—who, in considerable numbers, are
quartered on the native villages throughout the Concession to see that
the picked men of each town bring in, with regularity, the fixed
quantity of pure rubber required of them every fortnight. I have no
means of ascertaining the number of this class of armed men employed by
the A.B.I.R. Company, but I saw many of them when up the Lopori River,
and the gun of one of these sentries—himself an Ngombe savage—had
branded on the stock “Depôt 2210.” In addition to its numerous forest
guards, armed with cap-guns, which, at close quarters, can be a very
effective weapon, the A. B. I. R. Company has a fairly strong armament
of rifles. These are limited to twenty-five rifles for the use of each
factory. The two steamers, I believe, have also a similar armament.
The Secteur of Bongandanga, which was the only district of the A.B.I.R.
Concession I visited, has three “factories,” so that the number of
rifles permitted in that one district would be seventy-five. I do not
know if any limits or what limits are imposed on the number of
cartridges which are permitted for the defence of these factories. One
of the largest Congo Concession Companies had, when I was on the Upper
River, addressed a request to its Directors in Europe for a further
supply of ball-cartridge. The Directors had met this demand by asking
what had become of the 72,000 cartridges shipped some three years ago,
to which a reply was sent to the effect that these had all been used in
the production of india-rubber. I did not see this correspondence, and
cannot vouch for the truth of the statement; but the officer who
informed me that it had passed before his own eyes was one of the
highest standing in the interior.
When at Stanley Pool in June I had seen in one of the Government stores
at Léopoldville a number of cases of rifles marked A. B. I. R. awaiting
transport up river in one of the Government vessels; and upon my return
to that neighbourhood, I was told by a local functionary that 200 rifles
had, in July, been so shipped for the needs of the Lomami Company.
The right of the various Concession Companies operating within the Congo
State to employ armed men—whether these bear rifles or cap-guns—is
regulated by Government enactments, which confer on these commercial
Societies what are termed officially “rights of police” (“droits de
police”). A Circular of the Governor-General dealing with this question,
dated the 20th October, 1900, points out the limits within which this
right may be exercised. Prior to the issue of this Circular (copy of
which is attached—Inclosure 5),[17] the various Concession Companies
would appear to have engaged in military operations on a somewhat
extensive scale, and to have made war upon the natives on their own
account. The Regulations this Circular provides, to insure the licensing
of all arms, rifles, and cap-guns, do not seem to be strictly observed,
for in several cases the sentries or forest guards I encountered on my
journey up the Lulongo had no licence (Modèle C) of the kind required by
the Circular; and in two cases I found them provided with arms of
precision. That the extensive use of armed men in the pay of the
so-called Trading Societies, or in the service of the Government, as a
means to enforce the compliance with demands for india-rubber, had been
very general up to a recent date, is not denied by any one I met on the
Upper Congo.
In a conversation with a gentleman of experience on this question, our
remarks turned upon the condition of the natives. He produced a disused
diary, and in it, I found and copied the following entry:—
M. P. called on us to get out of the rain, and in conversation with
M. Q. in presence of myself and R., said: ‘The only way to get
rubber is to fight for it. The natives are paid 35 centimes per
kilog., it is claimed, but that includes a large profit on the
cloth; the amount of rubber is controlled by the number of guns,
and not the number of bales of cloth. The S. A. B. on the Bussira,
with 150 guns, get only 10 tons (rubber) a-month; we, the State, at
Momboyo, with 130 guns, get 13 tons per month.’ ‘So you count by
guns?’ I asked him. ‘Partout,’ M. P. said, ‘Each time the corporal
goes out to get rubber cartridges are given to him. He must bring
back all not used; and for every one used, he must bring back a
right hand.’ M. P. told me that sometimes they shot a cartridge at
an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a living man.
As to the extent to which this is carried on, he informed me that
in six months they, the State, on the Momboyo River, had used 6,000
cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated.
It means more than 6,000, for the people have told me repeatedly
that the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.
In conversation upon this entry, I was told that the M. P. referred to
was an officer in the Government service, who, at the date in question,
had come down from the Momboyo River (a tributary of the great Ruki
River, and forming a part, I believe, of the “Domaine de la Couronne”)
invalided, on his way home. He had come down in very bad health. He
stated then that he was going home, not to return to the Congo, but he
died, only a little way further down the river, very soon afterwards.
The same gentleman stated that he had reported this conversation orally
at Boma, as instancing the methods of exaction then in force. It is
probable that the issue of the circular quoted was not unconnected with
these remarks.
The region drained by the Lulongo being of great fertility has, in the
past, maintained a large population. In the days prior to the
establishment of civilized rule in the interior of Africa, this river
offered a constant source of supply to the slave markets of the Upper
Congo. The towns around the lower Lulongo River raided the interior
tribes, whose prolific humanity provided not only servitors, but human
meat for those stronger than themselves. Cannibalism had gone hand in
hand with slave raiding, and it was no uncommon spectacle to see gangs
of human beings being conveyed for exposure and sale in the local
markets. I had in the past, when travelling on the Lulongo River, more
than once viewed such a scene. On one occasion a woman was killed in the
village I was passing through, and her head and other portions of her
were brought and offered for sale to some of the crew of the steamer I
was on. Sights of this description are to-day impossible in any part of
the country I traversed, and the full credit for their suppression must
be given to the authorities of the Congo Government. It is, perhaps, to
be regretted that in its efforts to suppress such barbarous practices
the Congo Government should have had to rely upon, often, very savage
agencies wherewith to combat savagery. The troops employed in punitive
measures were—and often are—themselves savages, only removed by
outward garb from those they are sent to punish. Moreover, the measures
employed to obtain recruits for the public service were themselves often
but little removed from the malpractices that service was designed to
suppress. The following copy of an order for Government workmen drawn up
by a former Commissaire of the Equator District, and having reference to
the Maringa affluent of the Lulongo River indicates that the Congo
Government itself did not hesitate some years ago to purchase slaves
(required as soldiers or workmen), who could only be obtained for sale
by the most deplorable means:—
“Le Chef Ngulu de Wangata est envoyé dans la Maringa, pour m’y
acheter des esclaves. Prière à M.M. les agents de l’A.B.I.R. de
bien vouloir me signaler les méfaits que celui-ci pourrait
commettre en route.
“Le Capitaine-Commandant,
(Signé) “Sarrazzyn.”
“Colquilhatville, le 1er Mai, 1896.”
This document was shown to me during the course of my journey. The
officer who issued this direction was, I was informed, for a
considerable period chief executive authority of the district; and I
heard him frequently spoken of by the natives who referred to him by the
sobriquet he had earned in the district, “Widjima,” or “Darkness.”
The course of the Lulongo River below Bassakanusu to its junction with
the Congo lies outside the limits of the A.B.I.R. Concession, and the
region is, I believe, regarded as one of the free-trading districts
wherein no exclusive right to the products of the soil is recognized.
The only trading-house in this district is one termed the La Lulanga,
which has three depôts, or factories, along the river bank, the
principal of which is at Mampoko. This Company has a small steamer in
which its native produce is collected, but the general transport of all
its goods, as in the case of the Concession Societies, is performed by
Government craft. The La Lulanga does not, I understand, enjoy the
rights of police as defined by the Governor-General’s Circular of the
20th October, 1900, but it employs a considerable number of armed men
equally termed “forest guards.” These men are quartered throughout the
lower course of the Lulongo River, and I found that, as with the
A.B.I.R., the sole duty they performed was to compel by force the
collection of india-rubber or the supplies which each factory needed. As
the district in which the La Lulanga Society carries on these operations
is one that had already been subjected to still more comprehensive
handling by two of the large Concession Companies, who only abandoned it
when, as one of their agents informed me, it was nearly exhausted, the
stock of rubber vines in it to-day is drawing to an end, and it is only
with great difficulty that the natives are able to produce the quantity
sufficient to satisfy their local masters. In the course of my dealings
with the natives I found that several of the sentries of this Company
had quite recently committed gross offences which, until my arrival,
appeared to have gone undetected—certainly unpunished. Murder and
mutilation were charged against several of them by name by the natives
of certain townships close to the head-quarters of this Company, who
sought me in the hope that I might help them. These people in several
cases said that they had not complained elsewhere because they had felt
that it was useless. As long as the rubber tax imposed upon them endured
in its present compulsory form with the sanction of the authorities,
they said it was idle to draw attention to acts which were but
incidental to its collection. The La Lulanga Company, not any more than
the A.B.I.R., would seem to have a legal right to levy taxes, but the
fact remains that from the natives who supply these two trading
Companies with all that they export as well as with their local supplies
of food and material, the Congo Government itself requires no
contribution to the public revenue. These people, therefore, must be
either legally exempted from supporting the Government of their country,
or else a portion of the contributions they make to the A.B.I.R. and
Lulanga Companies must be claimed by that Government in lieu of the
taxes it is justified in imposing on these districts.
In the case of the A.B.I.R. Society, it is said that a portion of the
profits are paid into the public revenues of the Congo Government (who
hold certain shares in the undertaking), and that these figure annually
in the Budget as “produit de porte-feuille.” In making this explanation
to me, an agent of one of the Upper Congo trading Companies said the
term should more correctly be “produit de porte-fusil,” and to judge
from the large numbers of armed men I saw employed, the correction was
not inapposite.
The Concession Companies, I believe, account for the armed men in their
service on the ground that their factories and agents must be protected
against the possible violence of the rude forest dwellers with whom they
deal; but this legitimate need for safeguarding European establishments
does not suffice to account for the presence, far from those
establishments, of large numbers of armed men quartered throughout the
native villages, and who exercise upon their surroundings an influence
far from protective. The explanation offered me of this state of things
was that, as the “impositions” laid upon the natives were regulated by
law, and were calculated on the scale of public labour the Government
had a right to require of the people, the collection of these
“impositions” had to be strictly enforced. When I pointed out that the
profit of this system was not reaped by the Government, but by a
commercial Company, and figured in the public returns of that Company’s
affairs, as well as in the official Government statistics, as the
outcome of commercial dealings with the natives, I was informed that the
“impositions” were in reality trade, “for, as you observe, we pay the
natives for the produce they bring in.” “But,” I observed, “you told me
just now that these products did not belong to the natives, but to you,
the Concessionnaire, who owned the soil; how, then, do you buy from them
what is already yours?” “We do not buy the india-rubber. What we pay to
the native is a remuneration for his labour in collecting our produce on
our land, and bringing it to us.”
Since it was thus to the labour of the native alone that the profits of
the Company were attributed, I inquired whether he was not protected by
contract with his employer; but I was here referred back to the
statement that the native performed these services as a public duty
required of him by his Government. He was not a contracted labourer at
all, but a free man, dwelling in his own home, and was simply acquitting
himself of an “imposition” laid upon him by the Government, “of which we
are but the collectors by right of our Concession.” “Your Concession,
then, implies,” I said, “that you have been conceded not only a certain
area of land, but also the people dwelling on that land?” This, however,
was not accepted either, and I was assured that the people were
absolutely free, and owed no service to any one but to the Government of
the country. But there was no explanation offered to me that was not at
once contradicted by the next. One said it was a tax, an obligatory
burden laid upon the people, such as all Governments have the undoubted
right of imposing; but this failed to explain how, if a tax, it came to
be collected by the agents of a trading firm, and figured as the outcome
of their trade dealings with the people, still less, how, if it were a
tax, it could be justly imposed every week or fortnight in the year,
instead of once, or at most, twice a year.
Another asserted that it was clearly legitimate commerce with the
natives because these were well paid and very happy. He could not then
explain the presence of so many armed men in their midst, or the reason
for tying up men, women, and children, and of maintaining in each
trading establishment a local prison, termed a “maison des otages,”
wherein recalcitrant native traders endured long periods of confinement.
A third admitted that there was no law on the Congo Statute Book
constituting his trading establishment a Government taxing station, and
that since the product of his dealings with the natives figured in his
Company’s balance-sheets as trade, and paid customs duty to the
Government on export, and a dividend to the shareholders, and as he
himself drew a commission of 2 per cent. on his turnover, it must be
trade; but this exponent could not explain how, if these operations were
purely commercial, they rested on a privilege denied to others, for
since, as he asserted, the products of his district could neither be
worked nor bought by any one but himself, it was clear they were not
merchandise, which, to be merchandise, must be marketable. The summing
up of the situation by the majority of those with whom I sought to
discuss it was that, in fact, it was forced labour conceived in the true
interest of the native, who, if not controlled in this way, would spend
his days in idleness, unprofitable to himself and the general community.
The collection of the products of the soil by the more benevolent
methods adopted by the Trading Companies was, in any case, preferable to
those the Congo Government would itself employ to compel obedience to
this law, and therefore if I saw women and children seized as hostages
and kept in detention until rubber or other things were brought in, it
was better that this should be done by the cap-gun of the “forest guard”
than by the Albini armed soldiers of the Government who, if once
impelled into a district, would overturn the entire country side.
No more satisfactory explanation than this outline was anywhere offered
me of what I saw in the A.B.I.R. and Lulanga districts. It is true
alternatives of excuse with differing interpretations of what I saw were
offered me in several quarters, but these were so obviously untrue, that
they could not be admitted as having any real relation to the things
which came before me.
At a village I touched at up the Lulonga River, a small collection of
dwellings named Z*, the people complained that there was no rubber left
in their district, and yet that the La Lulanga Company required of them
each fortnight a fixed quantity they could not supply. Three forest
guards of that Company were quartered, it was said, in this village, one
of whom I found on duty, the two others, he informed me, having gone to
Mampoko to convoy the fortnight’s rubber. No live-stock of any kind
could be seen or purchased in this town, which had only a few years ago
been a large and populous community, filled with people and well stocked
with sheep, goats, ducks, and fowls. Although I walked through most of
it, I could only count ten men with their families. There were said to
be others in the part of the town I did not visit, but the entire
community I saw were living in wretched houses and in most visible
distress. Three months previously (in May, I believe), they said a
Government force, commanded by a white man, had occupied their town
owing to their failure to send in to the Mampoko head-quarters of the La
Lulanga Company a regular supply of india-rubber, and two men, whose
names were given, had been killed by the soldiers at that time.
As Z* lies upon the main stream of the Lulongo River, and is often
touched at by passing steamers, I chose for the next inspection a town
lying somewhat off this beaten track, where my coming would be quite
unexpected. Steaming up a small tributary of the Lulongo, I arrived,
unpreceded by any rumour of my coming, at the village of A**. In an open
shed I found two sentries of the La Lulanga Company guarding fifteen
native women, five of whom had infants at the breast, and three of whom
were about to become mothers. The chief of these sentries, a man called
S—who was bearing a double-barrelled shot-gun, for which he had a belt
of cartridges—at once volunteered an explanation of the reason for
these women’s detention. Four of them, he said, were hostages who were
being held to insure the peaceful settlement of a dispute between two
neighbouring towns, which had already cost the life of a man. His
employer, the agent of the La Lulanga Company at B** near by, he said,
had ordered these women to be seized and kept until the Chief of the
offending town to which they belonged should come in to talk over the
palaver. The sentry pointed out that this was evidently a much better
way to settle such troubles between native towns than to leave them to
be fought out among the people themselves.
The remaining eleven women, whom he indicated, he said he had caught and
was detaining as prisoners to compel their husbands to bring in the
right amount of india-rubber required of them on next market day. When I
asked if it was a woman’s work to collect india-rubber, he said, “No;
that, of course, it was man’s work.” “Then why do you catch the women
and not the men?” I asked. “Don’t you see,” was the answer, “if I caught
and kept the men, who would work the rubber? But if I catch their wives,
the husbands are anxious to have them home again, and so the rubber is
brought in quickly and quite up to the mark.” When I asked what would
become of these women if their husbands failed to bring in the right
quantity of rubber on the next market day, he said at once that then
they would be kept there until their husbands had redeemed them. Their
food, he explained, he made the Chief of A** provide, and he himself saw
it given to them daily. They came from more than one village of the
neighbourhood, he said, mostly from the Ngombi or inland country, where
he often had to catch women to insure the rubber being brought in in
sufficient quantity. It was an institution, he explained, that served
well and saved much trouble. When his master came each fortnight to A**
to take away the rubber so collected, if it was found to be sufficient,
the women were released and allowed to return with their husbands, but
if not sufficient they would undergo continued detention. The sentry’s
statements were clear and explicit, as were equally those of several of
the villagers with whom I spoke. The sentry further explained, in answer
to my inquiry, that he caught women in this way by direction of his
employers. That it was a custom generally adopted and found to work
well; that the people were very lazy, and that this was much the
simplest way of making them do what was required of them. When asked if
he had any use for his shot-gun, he answered that it had been given him
by the white man “to frighten people and make them bring in rubber,” but
that he had never otherwise used it. I found that the two sentries at
A** were complete masters of the town. Everything I needed in the way of
food or firewood they at once ordered the men of the town to bring me.
One of them, gun over shoulder, marched a procession of men—the Chief
of the village at their head—down to the water side, each carrying a
bundle of firewood for my steamer. A few chickens which were brought
were only purchased through their intermediary, the native owner in each
case handing the fowl over to the sentry, who then brought it on board,
bargained for it, and took the price agreed upon. When, in the evening,
the Chief of the village was invited to come and talk to me, he came in
evident fear of the sentries seeing him or overhearing his remarks, and
the leader, S, finding him talking to me, peremptorily broke into the
conversation and himself answered each question put to the Chief. When I
asked this latter if he and his townsmen did not catch fish in the C**
River, in which we learned there was much, the sentry, intervening, said
it was not the business of these people to catch fish—“they have no
time for that, they have got to get the rubber I tell them to.”
At nightfall the fifteen women in the shed were tied together, either
neck to neck or ankle to ankle, to secure them for the night, and in
this posture I saw them twice during the evening. They were then trying
to huddle around a fire. In the morning the leading sentry, before
leaving the village, ordered his companion in my hearing to “keep close
guard on the prisoners.” I subsequently discovered that this sentry,
learning that I was not, as he had at first thought, a missionary, had
gone or sent to inform his employer at C** that a strange white man was
in the town.
An explanation of what I had witnessed at A** was later preferred by the
representative of this Company for my information, but was in such
direct conflict with what I had myself observed that it could not be
accepted either as explaining the detention of the women I had seen tied
neck to neck, or as a refutation of the statements of the sentry, made
to me at a time when he had no thought that his avowals had any bearing
on his employer’s interests.
From A** I proceeded to Bongandanga, a station of the A.B.I.R. Company
which lies some 120 or 130 miles up the Lopori, a tributary of the
Lulongo, and only halted for very brief periods en route. I arrived at
Bongandanga on the 29th August when what was locally termed the rubber
market was in full swing. The natives of the surrounding country are, on
these market days, which are held at intervals of a fortnight, marched
in under a number of armed guards, each native carrying his fortnight’s
supply of india-rubber for delivery to the agent of the Company. During
my stay at Bongandanga I had frequent occasion to meet the two agents of
this Society, who received me with every kindness and hospitality.
The A.B.I.R. station was well built and well cared for, and gave
evidence of unremitting industry on the part of those in charge of it.
There were two good houses for the European staff and a number of large
well-built bamboo stores for the storing and drying of india-rubber. All
the houses were constructed of native materials, indeed, with the
exception of a small stock of barter goods in one of the stores and the
European provisions required for the white men, everything I saw came
from the surrounding district, provided in one form or another by its
native inhabitants. This applies to practically every European
establishment in the interior of the country, the only differences being
as to the manner in which the help of the natives may be sought and
recompensed. Building material of all kinds from very heavy timber to
roofing mats and native string to tie these on with are provided by the
natives; but their services in supplying these indispensable adjuncts to
civilized existence do not appear to be everywhere equally remunerated.
At Bongandanga I saw thirty-three large tree trunks, each of which could
not have weighed less than 1/2 a ton, some of them nearer 1 ton, which,
I was told, had been felled and carried in by the natives for his use
in building a new house. He explained that as the natives came in from
different districts fortnightly, and then had only to carry very small
baskets of india-rubber, this additional burden was imposed upon them,
but that this was one reserved for unwilling workers of india-rubber. It
was, in fact, one of the punishments for backward “récolteurs.”
At Bongandanga the men of the district named E**, distant about 20
miles, had been brought in with the rubber from that district. They
marched in in a long file, guarded by sentries of the A.B.I.R. Company,
and when I visited the factory grounds to observe the progress of the
“market,” I was informed by the local agent that there were 242 men
actually present. As each man was required, I was told, to bring in 3
kilog. nett of rubber, the quantity actually brought in on that occasion
should have yielded about three-quarters of a ton of pure rubber. The
rubber brought by each man, after being weighed and found correct, was
taken off to be cut up in a large store, and then placed out on drying
shelves in other stores. As considerable loss of weight arises in the
drying to obtain 3 kilog. nett a dead weight of crude rubber
considerably in excess of that quantity must be brought in. There were
everywhere sentries in the A.B.I.R. grounds, guarding and controlling
the natives, many of whom carried their knives and spears. The sentries
were often armed with rifles, some of them with several cartridges
slipped between the fingers of the hands ready for instant use; others
had cap-guns, with a species of paper cartridge locally manufactured for
charging this form of muzzle-loader. The native vendors of the rubber
were guarded in detachments or herds, many of them behind a barricade
which stretched in front of a house I was told was the factory prison,
termed locally, I found, the “maison des otages.” The rubber as brought
up by each man under guard, was weighed by one of the two agents of the
A.B.I.R. present, who sat upon the verandah of his house. If the rubber
were found to be of the right weight its vendor would be led off with it
to the cutting up store or to one of the drying stores. In the former
were fully 80 or 100 natives who had already passed muster, squatting on
raised cane platforms, busily cutting up into the required sizes the
rubber which had been passed and accepted. At the corners of these
platforms stood, or equally squatted, sentries of the A.B.I.R. with
their rifles ready.
In another store where rubber was being dried seven natives came in
while I was inspecting it carrying baskets which were filled with the
cut-up rubber, which they then at once began sorting and spreading on
high platforms. These seven men were guarded by four sentries armed with
rifles.
Somewhat differing explanations were offered me of the reasons for the
constant guarding of the natives I observed during the course of the
“market.” This was first said to be a necessary precaution to insure
tranquillity and order within the trading factory during the presence
there of so many raw and sturdy savages. But when I drew attention to
the close guard kept upon the natives in the drying and cutting sheds, I
was told that these were “prisoners.” If the rubber brought by its
native vendor were found on the weighing machine to be seriously under
the required weight, the defaulting individual was detained to be dealt
with in the “maison des otages.” One such case occurred while I was on
the ground. The defaulter was directed to be taken away, and was dragged
off by some of the sentries, who forced him on to the ground to remain
until the market was over. While being held by these men he struggled to
escape, and one of them struck him in the mouth whence blood issued, and
he then remained passive. I did not learn how this individual
subsequently purged his offence, but when on a later occasion I visited
the inclosure in front of the prison I counted fifteen men and youths
who were being guarded while they worked at mat-making for the use of
the station buildings. These men, I was then told, were some of the
defaulters of the previous market day, who were being kept as compulsory
workmen to make good the deficiency in their rubber.
Payments made to the rubber-bringers, depending on the quantity brought,
consisted of knives, matchets, strings of beads, and sometimes a little
salt. I saw many men who got a wooden handled knife of Sheffield
cutlery, good and strong—others got a matchet. The largest of these
knives with a 9-inch blade, and the smaller with a 5-inch, cost in
Europe, I find, 2s. 10d., and 1s. 5d. per dozen respectively,
less 2-1/2 per cent. cash discount. The men who got the knife of the
larger kind, or a matchet, had brought in, I understood, a full basket
of pure rubber, which may have represented a European valuation of some
27 fr. To the original cost of one of these knives, say 2-3/4d.,
should be added fully 100 per cent. to cover transport charges, so that
their local cost would be about 6d. Among the natives themselves these
knives pass at 25 rods (1·25 fr.) and 15 rods (75 centimes) each. From
two of these rubber workers I later purchased two of these knives,
giving twenty-five teaspoonfuls of salt for the larger, and six
teaspoonfuls with an empty bottle for the smaller. From a third member
of their party, whose payment had consisted of a string of thirty-nine
blue and white glass beads (locally valued at 5 rods), I bought his
fortnight’s salary for five teaspoonfuls of salt. This youth, indeed,
confessed that his basket of rubber had not been so well filled as those
of the others.
I went to the homes of these men some miles away and found out their
circumstances. To get the rubber they had first to go fully a two days’
journey from their homes, leaving their wives, and being absent for from
five to six days. They were seen to the forest limits under guard, and
if not back by the sixth day trouble was likely to ensue. To get the
rubber in the forests—which generally speaking are very
swampy—involves much fatigue and often fruitless searching for a
well-flowing vine. As the area of supply diminishes, moreover, the
demand for rubber constantly increases. Some little time back I learned
the Bongandanga district supplied 7 tons of rubber a-month, a quantity
which it was hoped would shortly be increased to 10 tons. The quantity
of rubber brought by the three men in question would have represented,
probably, for the three of them certainly not less than 7 kilog. of pure
rubber. That would be a very safe estimate, and at an average of 7 fr.
per kilog. they might be said to have brought in 2l. worth of rubber.
In return for this labour, or imposition, they had received goods which
cost certainly under 1s., and whose local valuation came to 45 rods
(1s. 10d.). As this process repeats itself twenty-six times a-year,
it will be seen that they would have yielded 52l. in kind at the end
of the year to the local factory, and would have received in return some
24s. or 25s. worth of goods, which had a market value on the spot of
2l. 7s. 8d. In addition to these formal payments they were liable
at times to be dealt with in another manner, for should their work,
which might have been just as hard, have proved less profitable in its
yield of rubber, the local prison would have seen them. The people
everywhere assured me that they were not happy under this system, and it
was apparent to a callous eye that in this they spoke the strict truth.
In September I visited a native village called D**, situated some miles
from the A.B.I.R. factory at Bongandanga. I went there to see one of the
natives, who, with his wife and little children, had come to visit me.
My going to his town was solely a friendly visit to this man’s
household, since I was told that he was an excellent character, and one
who set a good example to his countrymen. On the way, at some 4 or 5
miles only from the A.B.I.R. factory, I passed through a part of D**
(which is a very long town) where were several sentries of the A.B.I.R.
Society. One of these had a 6-chamber revolver loaded with six 4·50 Ely
cartridges—doubtless given, like the shot-gun at A**, for intimidation
rather than for actual use. Another sentry present had only his cap-gun.
He said there were in this one village six sentries of the A.B.I.R., but
that the other four had just gone into Bongandanga guarding some
prisoners. These were, it was explained to me, some of the natives of
the country side who had not brought in what was thought to be a
sufficiency of india-rubber. A little further on I met two more sentries
of the A.B.I.R. in this town. Coming home from D** by another road I
found two other sentries apparently acting as judges and settling a
“palaver” among the natives, this being one of the commonest uses to
which these men put their authority in their own interest, levying
blackmail and interfering in the domestic concerns of the natives by
compelling payment for their “judicial” decisions.
The following day my host at D** came in to say that the sentries were
making trouble with him on account of my visit of the previous day,
declaring that they would inform the agent of the A.B.I.R. that he and
others had told me lies about their treatment by that Company, and that
they would all be put in the prison gang and sent away out of their
country. That evening C E spoke to me of my visit to D** of the previous
day, assuring me that the natives were all liars and rogues. The fact
that I had personally gone to see a native community, theoretically as
free as I was myself, and that I had spoken at first hand to some of
these natives themselves, caused, I could not but perceive, considerable
annoyance.
That the fears of my native host were not entirely groundless I
subsequently learned by letter from Bongandanga, wherein I was informed
that two of his wives and one of the children I had seen had fled in the
middle of the night for refuge to the Mission evangelist—the sentries
quartered at D** having arrested my friend at midnight, and that he had
been brought in a prisoner to the A.B.I.R. factory.
As to the condition of the men who paid by detention in the “maison des
otages” their shortcomings in respect of rubber, I was assured by the
local agent that they were not badly treated and that “they got their
food.” On the other hand, I was assured in many quarters that flogging
with the chicotte—or hippopotamus-hide whip—was one of the measures
used in dealing with refractory natives in that institution. I was told
that men have frequently been seen coming away from the factory, after
the rubber markets, who had been flogged, and that on two occasions this
year, the last of them in March, two natives had been so severely
flogged that they were being carried away by their friends.
The A.B.I.R. Society effectually controls the movements of the natives
both by water as well as by land. Since almost every village in the
Concession is under control, its male inhabitants are entered in books,
and according to age and strength have to furnish rubber or, in the
villages close to the factory, food-stuffs, such as antelope meat or
wild pig (which the elders are required to hunt), as also the customary
kwanga bread, or bananas, and fowls and ducks. An agent showed me some
of these village lists, during the purchasing of the rubber, of the 242
E** men, explaining that the impositions against the individuals named
are fixed by the Government, and are calculated on the bodily service
each man owes it, but from which he is exempted in the Concession in
order to work rubber and assist the progressive development of the
A.B.I.R. Company’s territory. He added that it was not the few guns he
disposed of at F** which compelled obedience to this law, but the power
of the Congo State “Force Publique,” which, if a village absolutely
refuses obedience, would be sent to punish the district to compel
respect to these civilized rights. He added that, as the punishment
inflicted in these cases was terribly severe, it was better that the
milder measures and the other expedients he was forced to resort to
should not be interfered with. These measures, he said, involved
frequent imprisonment of individuals in his local “house of hostages.” A
truly recalcitrant man, he said, who proved enduringly obstinate in his
failure to bring in his allotted share of rubber, would in the end be
brought to reason by these means. He would find, I was assured, as a
result of his perversity that the whole of his time must be spent either
in the prison or else in being marched under guard between it and his
native town. Terms of fifteen days, from “market” day to “market” day,
were the usual period of detention, and generally proved
sufficient—during which time the prisoners worked around the
factory—but longer periods were not at all unknown. My informant added
that an excellent project for dealing with obstinate opponents to the
rubber industry had recently been mooted, but had not been carried into
practice. This was to transport to the Upper Lopori, or the Upper
Maringa, far from their homes and tribes, such men as could not be
reclaimed by milder methods. In these distant regions they would have no
chance of running away, but would be kept under constant guard and at
constant work. This proposal had, however, been disapproved of by the
local authorities. In one town I visited, the Chief and some thirty
people gave me the names of several men of the town who had, about
eighteen months previously, been transported in this manner to G**, an
A.B.I.R. post, some 340 miles by water from Bongandanga. Three, whose
names were stated, had already died, only two had returned, the others
being still detained.
Deaths even in the local prison are not, however, unknown. I heard of
several. The late Chief of H**, a town I visited with the agent of the
A.B.I.R. station had died some months before as the result, it was said,
of imprisonment. He had been arrested because another man of the town
had not brought in antelope meat when required. After one and a-half
months’ imprisonment the Chief was released. He was then so weak that he
could not walk the 2 miles home to H**, but collapsed on the way and
died early the following morning. This was on the 14th June last.
On the September a man named T came to see me. He
had been very badly wounded in the thigh, and walked with difficulty. He
stated that a sentry of the A.B.I.R., a man named U, had shot him, as I
saw; and at the same time had killed V, a friend. The sentries had come
to arrest the Chief of H** on account of meat, which was short for the
white man—not the present white man, but another—and his people had
gathered around the Chief to protect him. An inquiry I gathered had been
held by a Law Officer into this and other outrages committed the
previous year, and as a result the sentry U had been removed from the
district. T went on to say to me that this sentry was now back in the
country at large, and a free man. When I asked him if he himself had not
been compensated for the injuries entailing partial disablement he had
received, he said: “Four months ago I was arrested for not having got
meat, and was kept one and a-half months in prison on that account. U,
who killed V, and shot me here in the thigh, is a free man, as all men
know; but I, who am wounded, have to hunt meat.”
This statement I found on fuller inquiry in other quarters was
confirmed; and it became apparent that while the murderer was at large,
one of those he had seriously injured, and almost incapacitated, was
still required to hunt game, and paid for his failure by imprisonment.
On further inquiry, I gathered that this occasion was the only one
locally known when a qualified Law Officer had ever visited the Lopori,
although charges from that region involving very grave accusations had,
on several occasions, been preferred. There being no Magistrate resident
in the whole of the A.B.I.R. Concession, inquiries, unless conducted by
the agents of the A.B.I.R. themselves, have to be investigated at
Coquilhatville—distant fully 270 miles from Bongandanga, and over 400
miles from some parts of the Concession.
It is true an officer of the Congo Executive is deputed to exercise a
qualified surveillance within this Concession; but he is not a qualified
Magistrate or legally empowered to act as such.
The occupant of this post is a military officer of inferior rank, who is
quartered, with a force of soldiers, near to Bassankusu, the chief
station of the A.B.I.R. Company.
This officer, when he enters the A.B.I.R. territory, is accompanied by
soldiers, and his actions would appear to be generally confined to
measures of a punitive kind, the necessity for such measures being that
which almost everywhere applies—namely, a refusal of or falling off in
the supplies of india-rubber.
At the date of my visit to the Lopori he was engaged in a journey, not
unconnected with fighting, to the Maringa River. His independence is not
complete, nor is his disassociation from the A.B.I.R. Company’s agencies
as marked as, in view of the circumstances attending the collection of
rubber, it should be.
His journeys up the two great rivers, the Maringa and Lopori, which
drain the A.B.I.R. territory, are made on the steamers of that Company,
and he is, to all intents, a guest of the Company’s agents.
The supervision of this officer extends also over the course of the
Lulongo river, outside the A.B.I.R. Concession, and he it was who had
occupied the town of Z* on an occasion some months before my visit, when
two native men had been killed.
The Commissaire-Général of the Equator District has also, at recent
periods, visited the A.B.I.R. Concession, but this officer, although the
Chief of the Executive and the President of the Territorial Court of the
entire district, came as a visitor to the A.B.I.R. stations and as guest
on the steamer of that Company.
No steamer belonging to the Congo Government regularly ascends either
the Lopori or Maringa rivers, and the conveyance of mails from the
A.B.I.R. territory depends, for steamer transport, on the two vessels of
that Company.
On the 15th June last, the Director of this Company by letter informed
the Missions of Bongandanga and Baringa that he had given orders to the
steamers of the Company to refuse the carriage of any letters or
correspondence coming from or intended for either of those Mission
stations, which are the only European establishments, not belonging to
the A.B.I.R. Company, existing within the limits of the Concession.
Resulting from this order the missionaries at these two isolated posts
are now compelled, save when, some three times a year, the Mission
steamer visits them, to dispatch all their correspondence by canoes to
their agent at Tkau, lying just outside the Concession.
This involves the engagement of paddlers and a canoe journey of 120 to
130 miles from each of these Missions down to Tkau.
But as the A.B.I.R. Company claims a right to interrogate all canoes
passing up or down stream, this mode of transport leaves some elements
of insecurity, apart from the delay and inconvenience otherwise
entailed.
At the date of my visit to the Concession, the Mission at Baringa,
situated 120 miles up the Maringa river, had despatched a canoe manned
by native dependents with mails intended for the outer world—the
nearest post office being at Coquilhatville, some 260 miles distant.
When seeking to pass the A.B.I.R. station at Waka, situated half-way
down the Maringa river, this canoe was required by the European agent
there to land and to deliver to him its correspondence.
The native canoe men reported that this agent had opened the packet and
questioned them, and that the letters intrusted to them for delivery to
the Mission representative at Tkau were not restored to them without
delay and much inconvenience.
It might not be too much to expect that, in return for the very
extensive privileges it enjoys of exploitation of public lands and a
large native population, the A.B.I.R. Company should be required, in the
entire absence of the public flotilla, to discharge the not onerous task
of conveying the public mails by its steamers which so frequently
navigate the waterways of the Concession in the collection of
india-rubber.
Were a qualified Magistrate appointed to reside within the limits of
this Concession—as within the other Upper Congo Concessions, some of
them territories as large as a European State, and still containing a
numerous native population—the public service could not but be the
gainer.
As it is to-day, no Court is open to the appeals of these people that
lies at all within their reach, and no European agency, save isolated
Mission stations, has any direct influence upon them except that
immediately interested in their profitable exploitation.
It is only right to say that the present agent of the A.B.I.R. Society I
met at Bongandanga seemed to me to try, in very difficult and
embarrassing circumstances, to minimize as far as possible, and within
the limits of his duties, the evils of the system I there observed at
work.
The requisitions of food-stuffs laid on the villages adjoining the
factories were said to be less onerous than those affecting the rubber
towns. They rested, I was informed, on the same legal basis as that
authorizing rubber working, and a failure to meet them involved the same
desultory modes of arrest and imprisonment. During my stay at
Bongandanga several instances of arrest in failures of this kind came to
my notice.
On a Sunday in August, I saw six of the local sentries going back with
cap-guns and ammunition pouches to E**, after the previous day’s market,
and later in the day, when in the factory grounds, two armed sentries
came up to the agent as we walked, guarding sixteen natives, five men
tied neck by neck, with five untied women and six young children. This
somewhat embarrassing situation, it was explained to me, was due to the
persistent failure of the people of the village these persons came from
to supply its proper quota of food. These people, I was told, had just
been captured “on the river” by one of the sentries placed there to
watch the waterway. They had been proceeding in their canoes to some
native fishing grounds, and were espied and brought in. I asked if the
children also were held responsible for food supplies, and they, along
with an elderly woman, were released, and told to run over to the
Mission, and go to school there. This they did not do, but doubtless
returned to their homes in the recalcitrant village. The remaining five
men and four women were led off to the “maison des otages” under guard
of the sentry.
An agent explained that he was forced to catch women in preference to
the men as then supplies were brought in quicker; but he did not explain
how the children deprived of their parents obtained their own food
supplies.
He deplored this hard necessity, but he said the vital needs of his own
station, as well as of the local missionaries, who, being guests of the
A.B.I.R. Society, had to be provided for, sternly imposed it upon him if
the peopled failed to keep up their proper supplies.
While we thus talked an armed sentry came along guarding four
natives—men—who were carrying bunches of bananas, a part of another
food imposition. This sentry explained to his master that the village he
had just visited had failed to give antelope meat, alleging the very
heavy rain of the previous night as an excuse for not hunting.
The agent apologized to me for his inability to give me meat during my
stay, pointing out the obvious necessity he now was under of catching
some persons without delay. He should certainly, he said, have to send
out and catch women that very night.
On leaving the A.B.I.R. grounds, still accompanied by this gentleman,
another batch of men carrying food supplies were marched in by three
armed guards, and were conducted towards the “maison des otages,” which
two other sentries apparently guarded.
At 8 P.M. that evening, just after the Sunday service, a number of women
were taken through the Mission grounds past the church by the A.B.I.R.
sentries, and in the morning I was told that three such seizures had
been effected during the night. On the 2nd September I met, when
walking in the A.B.I.R. grounds with the subordinate agent of the
factory, a file of fifteen women, under the guard of three unarmed
sentries, who were being brought in from the adjoining villages, and
were led past me. These women, who were evidently wives and mothers, it
was explained in answer to my inquiry, had been seized in order to
compel their husbands to bring in antelope or other meat which was
overdue, and some of which it was very kindly promised should be sent on
board my steamer when leaving. As a matter of fact, half an antelope was
so sent on board by the good offices of this gentleman.
As I was leaving Bongandanga, on the 3rd September, several elderly
Headmen of the neighbouring villages were putting off in their canoes to
the opposite forest, to get meat wherewith to redeem their wives, whom I
had seen arrested the previous day. I learned later that the husband of
one of these women brought in, two days afterwards, to the
Mission-station, his infant daughter, who, being deprived of her mother,
had fallen seriously ill, and whom he could not feed. At the request of
the missionary this woman was released on the 5th September. I took
occasion to say to the agent of the A.B.I.R. Company, before leaving,
that the practice of imprisoning women for impositions said to be due by
their husbands was to my mind unquestionably illegal, and that I should
not fail to draw the attention of the Governor-General of the Congo
State to what I had seen. The excuse offered, both on this occasion as
on others when I had ventured to allude to the condition of the natives
around Bongandanga, was that the station compared most favourably with
all others within the A.B.I.R. Concession, which were run, I was
assured, on much sterner lines than those which caused me pain at
Bongandanga. I later made official communication to the local Government
at Boma on these points, in so far as the system I had seen at work
affected the English missionaries within the A.B.I.R. Concession, and in
that letter I sought to show that neither the local agent nor his
subordinate were responsible for a state of affairs which greatly
wounded the feelings of my countrymen at Bongandanga, and which had
filled me with a pained surprise. My attention, it was true, had been
drawn to the systematic imprisonment of women in parts of the Upper
Congo some two years previously, in a case wherein a British coloured
subject—a native of Lagos—along with three Europeans, all of them in
the service of the Compagnie Anversoise du Commerce au Congo—a
Concession Company—had been charged with various acts of cruelty and
oppression which had caused much loss of life to the natives in the
Mongala region. These men had been arrested by the authorities in the
summer of 1900, and had been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment,
against which they had made appeal. The facts charged against the
British coloured subject (who sought my help) were, among others, that
he had illegally arrested women and kept them in illegal detention at
his trading station, and it was alleged that many of these women had
died of starvation while thus confined. This man himself, when I had
visited him in Boma gaol in March 1901, said that more than 100 women
and children had died of starvation at his hands, but that the
responsibility for both their arrest and his own lack of food to give
them was due to his superiors’ orders and neglect. The Court of Appeal
at Boma gave final Judgment in the case on the 13th February, 1901; and
in connection with the Lagos man’s degree of guilt, a copy of this
Judgment, in so far as it affected him, at my request had been
communicated to me by the Governor-General. From this Judgment I learned
that the case against the accused had been clearly proved. Among other
extenuating circumstances, which secured, however, a marked reduction of
the first sentence imposed on the coloured man, the Court of Appeal
cited the following:—
“That it is just to take into account that, by the correspondence
produced in the case, the chiefs of the Concession Company have, if not
by formal orders, at least by their example and their tolerance, induced
their agents to take no account whatever of the rights, property, and
lives of the natives; to use the arms and the soldiers which should have
served for their defence and the maintenance of order to force the
natives to furnish them with produce and to work for the Company, as
also to pursue as rebels and outlaws those who sought to escape from the
requisitions imposed upon them.... That, above all, the fact that the
arrest of women and their detention, to compel the villages to furnish
both produce and workmen, was tolerated and admitted even by certain of
the administrative authorities of the region.”
I had gathered at the time of this finding of the Boma High Court that
steps had then been taken to make it everywhere effective and to insure
obedience to the law in this respect, and that a recurrence of the
illegalities brought to light in the Mongala region had been rendered
impossible in any part of the Congo State. From what I saw during the
few days spent in the A.B.I.R. Concession, and again outside its limits
in the Lower Lulongo, it seemed to be clear that the action taken by
the authorities nearly three years ago could not have produced the
results undoubtedly then desired.
On my leaving Bongandanga on the 3rd September I returned down the
Lopori and Lulongo Rivers, arriving at J**. The following day, about 9
at night, some natives of the neighbourhood came to see me, bringing
with them a lad of about 16 years of age whose right hand was missing.
His name was X and his relatives said they came from K**, a village on
the opposite side of the river some few miles away. As it was late at
night there was some difficulty in obtaining a translation of their
statements, but I gathered that X’s hand had been cut off in K** by a
sentry of the La Lulanga Company, who was, or had been, quartered there.
They said that this sentry, at the time that he had mutilated X, had
also shot dead one of the chief men of the town. X, in addition to this
mutilation, had been shot in the shoulder blade, and, as a consequence,
was deformed. On being shot it was said he had fallen down insensible,
and the sentry had then cut off his hand, alleging that he would take it
to the Director of the Company at Mampoko. When I asked if this had been
done the natives replied that they believed that the hand had only been
carried part of the way to Mampoko and then thrown away. They did not
think the white man had seen it. They went on to say that they had not
hitherto made any complaint of this. They declared they had seen no good
object in complaining of a case of this kind since they did not hope any
good would result to them. They then went on to say that a younger boy
than X, at the beginning of this year (as near as they could fix the
date at either the end of January or the beginning of February), had
been mutilated in a similar way by a sentry of the same trading Company,
who was still quartered in their town, and that when they had wished to
bring this latter victim with them the sentry had threatened to kill him
and that the boy was now in hiding. They begged that I would myself go
back with them to their village and ascertain that they were speaking
the truth. I thought it my duty to listen to this appeal, and decided to
return with them on the morrow to their town. In the morning, when about
to start for K**, many people from the surrounding country came in to
see me. They brought with them three individuals who had been shockingly
wounded by gun fire, two men and a very small boy, not more than 6 years
of age, and a fourth—a boy child of 6 or 7—whose right hand was cut
off at the wrist. One of the men, who had been shot through the arm,
declared that he was Y of L**, a village situated some miles away. He
declared that he had been shot as I saw under the following
circumstances: the soldiers had entered his town, he alleged, to enforce
the due fulfilment of the rubber tax due by the community. These men had
tied him up and said that unless he paid 1,000 brass rods to them they
would shoot him. Having no rods to give them they had shot him through
the arm and had left him. The soldiers implicated he said were four
whose names were given me. They were, he believed, all employés of the
La Lulanga Company and had come from Mampoko. At the time when he, Y,
was shot through the arm the Chief of his town came up and begged the
soldiers not to hurt him, but one of them, a man called Z, shot the
Chief dead. No white man was with these sentries, or soldiers, at the
time. Two of them, Y said, he believed had been sent or taken to
Coquilhatville. Two of them—whom he named—he said were still at
Mampoko. The people of L** had sent to tell the white man at Mampoko of
what his soldiers had done. He did not know what punishment, if any, the
soldiers had received, for no inquiry had since been made in L**, nor
had any persons in that town been required to testify against their
aggressors. This man was accompanied by four other men of his town.
These four men all corroborated Y’s statement.
These people were at once followed by two men of M**, situated, they
said, close to K**, and only a few miles distant. They brought with them
a full-grown man named A A, whose arm was shattered and greatly swollen
through the discharge of a gun, and a small boy named B B, whose left
arm was broken in two places from two separate gun shots—the wrist
being shattered and the hand wobbling about loose and quite useless. The
two men made the following statement: That their town, like all the
others in the neighbourhood, was required to furnish a certain quantity
of india-rubber fortnightly to the head-quarters of the La Lulanga
Company at Mampoko; that at the time these outrages were committed,
which they put at less than a year previously, a man named C C was a
sentry of that Company quartered in their village; that they two now
before me had taken the usual fortnight’s rubber to Mampoko. On
returning to M** they found that C C, the sentry, had shot dead two men
of the town named D D and E E, and had tied up this man A A and the boy
B B, now before me, to two trees. The sentry said that this was to
punish the two men for having taken the rubber to Mampoko without having
first shown it to him and paid him a commission on it. The two men
asserted that they had at once returned to Mampoko, and had begged the
Director of the Company to return with them to M** and see what his
servants had done. But, they alleged, he had refused to comply with
their request. On getting back to their town they then found that the
man A A and the child B B were still tied to the trees, and had been
shot in the arms as I now saw. On pleading with the sentry to release
these two wounded individuals, he had required a payment of 2,000 brass
rods (100 fr.). One of the two men stayed to collect this money, and
another returned to Mampoko to again inform the Director of what had
been done. The two men declared that nothing was done to the sentry C C,
but that the white man said that if the people behaved badly again he
was to punish them. The sentry C C, they declared, remained some time
longer in M**, and they do not now know where he is.
These people were immediately followed by a number of natives who came
before me bringing a small boy of not more than 7 years of age, whose
right hand was gone at the wrist. This child, whose name was F F, they
had brought from the village of N**. They stated that some years ago
(they could not even approximately fix the date save by indicating that
F F was only just able to run) N** had been attacked by several sentries
of the La Lulanga Company. This was owing to their failure in supplying
a sufficiency of india-rubber. They did not know whether these sentries
had been sent by any European, but they knew all their names, and the
Chief of them was one called G G. G G had shot dead the Chief of their
town, and the people had run into the forest. The sentries pursued them,
and G G had knocked down the child F F with the butt of his gun and had
then cut off his hand. They declared that the hand of the dead man and
of this boy F F had then been carried away by the sentries. The sentries
who did this belonged to the La Lulanga Company’s factory at O**. The
man who appeared with F F went on to say that they had never complained
about it, save to the white man who had then been that Company’s agent
at O**. They had not thought of complaining to the Commissaire of the
district. Not only was he far away, but they were afraid they would not
be believed, and they thought the white men only wished for rubber, and
that no good could come of pleading with them.
At the same time a number of men followed, with the request that I would
listen to them. W declared that their town P**, which had formerly been
on the north bank of the X** River (where I had myself seen it), had now
been transferred by force to the south bank, close to the factory at
Q**. He said that this act of compulsory transference was the direct act
of the Commissaire-Général of the ... district. The Commissaire had
visited P** on his steamer, and had ordered the people of that town to
work daily at Q** for the La Lulanga factory. W had replied that it was
too far for the women of P** to go daily to Q** as was required; but the
Commissaire, in reply, had taken fifty women and carried them away with
him. The women were taken to Q**. Two men were taken at the same time.
To get these women back, W went on to say, he and his people had to pay
a fine of 10,000 brass rods (500 fr.). They had paid this money to the
Commissaire-Général himself. They had then been ordered by the
Commissaire to abandon their town, since it lay too far from the
factory, and build a fresh town close to Q**, so that they might be at
hand for the white man’s needs. This they had been forced to do—many of
them were taken across by force. It was about two years ago W thought
that this deportation had been effected, and they now came to beg that I
would use my influence with the local authorities to permit their return
to their abandoned home. Where they were now situated close to Q** they
were most unhappy, and they only desired to be allowed to return to the
former site of P**. They have to take daily to Q** the following:—
10 baskets gum-copal.
1,000 long canes (termed “ngodji”), which grow in the swamps, and are
used in thatching and roofing.
500 bamboos for building.
Each week they are required to deliver at the factory—
200 rations of kwanga.
120 rations of fish.
In addition, fifty women are required each morning to go to the factory
and work there all day. They complained that the remuneration given for
these services was most inadequate, and that they were continually
beaten. When I asked the Chief W why he had not gone to D F to complain
if the sentries beat him or his people, opening his mouth he pointed to
one of the teeth which was just dropping out, and said: “That is what I
got from the D F four days ago when I went to tell him what I now say to
you.” He added that he was frequently beaten, along with others of his
people, by the white man.
One of the men with him, who gave his name as H H, said that two weeks
ago the white man at Q** had ordered him to serve as one of the porters
of his hammock on a journey he proposed taking inland. H H was then just
completing the building of a new house, and excused himself on this
ground, but offered to fetch a friend as a substitute. The Director of
the Company had, in answer to this excuse, burnt down his house,
alleging that he was insolent. He had had a box of cloth and some ducks
in the house—in fact, all his goods, and they were destroyed in the
fire. The white man then caused him to be tied up, and took him with him
inland, and loosed him when he had to carry the hammock.
Other people were waiting, desirous of speaking with me, but so much
time was taken in noting the statements already made that I had to
leave, if I hoped to reach K** at a reasonable hour. I proceeded in a
canoe across the Lulongo and up a tributary to a landing-place which
seemed to be about ... miles from I**. Here, leaving the canoes, we
walked for a couple of miles through a flooded forest to reach the
village. I found here a sentry of the La Lulanga Company and a
considerable number of natives. After some little delay a boy of about
15 years of age appeared, whose left arm was wrapped up in a dirty rag.
Removing this, I found the left hand had been hacked off by the wrist,
and that a shot hole appeared in the fleshy part of the forearm. The
boy, who gave his name as I I, in answer to my inquiry, said that a
sentry of the La Lulanga Company now in the town had cut off his hand. I
proceeded to look for this man, who at first could not be found, the
natives to a considerable number gathering behind me as I walked through
the town. After some delay the sentry appeared, carrying a cap-gun. The
boy, whom I placed before him, then accused him to his face of having
mutilated him. The men of the town, who were questioned in succession,
corroborated the boy’s statement. The sentry, who gave his name as K K,
could make no answer to the charge. He met it by vaguely saying some
other sentry of the Company had mutilated I I; his predecessor, he said,
had cut off several hands, and probably this was one of the victims. The
natives around said that there were two other sentries at present in the
town, who were not so bad as K K, but that he was a villain. As the
evidence against him was perfectly clear, man after man standing out and
declaring he had seen the act committed, I informed him and the people
present that I should appeal to the local authorities for his immediate
arrest and trial. In the course of my interrogatory several other
charges transpired against him. These were of a minor nature, consisting
of the usual characteristic acts of blackmailing, only too commonly
reported on all sides. One man said that K K had tied up his wife and
only released her on payment of 1,000 rods. Another man said that K K
had robbed him of two ducks and a dog. These minor offences K K equally
demurred to, and again said that I I had been mutilated by some other
sentry, naming several. I took the boy back with me and later brought
him to Coquilhatville, where he formally charged K K with the crime,
alleging to the Commandant, who took his statement, through a special
Government interpreter, in my presence, that it had been done “on
account of rubber.” I have since been informed that, acting on my
request, the authorities at Coquilhatville had arrested K K, who
presumably will be tried in due course. A copy of my notes taken in K**,
where I I charged K K before me, is appended (Inclosure 6).[18]
It was obviously impossible that I should visit all the villages of the
natives who came to beg me to do so at J** or elsewhere during my
journey, or to verify on the spot, as in the case of the boy, the
statements they made. In that one case the truth of the charges
preferred was amply demonstrated, and their significance was not
diminished by the fact that, whereas this act of mutilation had been
committed within a few miles of Q**, the head-quarters of a European
civilizing agency, and the guilty man was still in their midst, armed
with the gun with which he had first shot his victim (for which he could
produce no licence when I asked for it, saying it was his employers’),
no one of the natives of the terrorized town had attempted to report
the occurrence. They had in the interval visited Mampoko each fortnight
with the india-rubber from their district. There was also in their midst
another mutilated boy X, whose hand had been cut off either by this or
another sentry. The main waterway of the Lulongo River lay at their
doors, and on it well nigh every fortnight a Government steamer had
passed up and down stream on its way to bring the india-rubber of the
A.B.I.R. Company to Coquilhatville. They possessed, too, some canoes;
and, if all other agencies of relief were closed, the territorial
tribunal at Coquilhatville lay open to them, and the journey to it down
stream from their village could have been accomplished in some twelve
hours. It was no greater journey, indeed, than many of the towns I had
elsewhere visited were forced to undertake each week or fortnight to
deliver supplies to their local tax collectors. The fact that no effort
had been made by these people to secure relief from their unhappy
situation impelled me to believe that a very real fear of reporting such
occurrences actually existed among them. That everything asserted by
such a people, under such circumstances, is strictly true I should in no
wise assert. That discrepancies must be found in much alleged by such
rude savages, to one whose sympathies they sought to awaken, must
equally be admitted. But the broad fact remained that their previous
silence said more than their present speech. In spite of contradictions,
and even seeming misstatements, it was clear that these men were stating
either what they had actually seen with their eyes or firmly believed in
their hearts. No one viewing their unhappy surroundings or hearing their
appeals, no one at all cognizant of African native life or character,
could doubt that they were speaking, in the main, truly; and the unhappy
conviction was forced upon me that in the many forest towns behind the
screen of trees, which I could not visit, these people were entitled to
expect that a civilized administration should be represented among them
by other agents than the savages euphemistically termed “forest guards.”
The number of these “forest guards” employed in the service of the
various Concession Companies on the Congo must be very considerable; but
it is not only the Concession Companies which employ “forest guards,”
for I found many of these men in the service of the La Lulanga Company,
which is neither a Concession Company nor endowed with any “rights of
police,” so far as I am aware. In the A.B.I.R. Concession there must be
at least twenty stations directed by one or more European agents.
Each one of these “factories” has, with the permission of the
Government, an armament of twenty-five rifles. According to this
estimate of the A.B.I.R. factories, and adding the armament of the two
steamers that Company possesses, it will be found that this one
Concession Company employs 550 rifles, with a supply of cartridges not,
I believe, as yet legally fixed. These rifles are supposed by law not to
be taken from the limits of the factories, whereas the “sentries” or
“forest guards” are quartered in well-nigh every rubber-producing
village of the entire Concession.
These men are each armed with a cap-gun, and the amount of ammunition
they may individually expend would seem to have no legal limits. These
cap-guns can be very effective weapons. On the Lower Lulongo I bought
the skin of a fine leopard from a native hunter who had shot the animal
the previous day. He produced a cap-gun and his ammunition for my
inspection, and I learned from all the men around him that he alone had
killed the beast with his own gun. This gun, he informed me, he had
purchased some years ago from a former Commissaire of the Government at
Coquilhatville, whose name he gave me.
It would be, I think, a moderate computation to put the number of
cap-guns issued by the A.B.I.R. Company to its “sentries” as being in
the proportion of six to one to the number of rifles allowed to each
factory. These figures could be easily verified, but whatever the
proportion may be of cap-guns to rifles, it is clear that the A.B.I.R.
Society alone controls a force of some 500 rifles and a very large stock
of cap-guns.
The other Concession Companies on the Congo have similar privileges, so
that it might not be an excessive estimate to say that these Companies
and the subsidiary ones (not enjoying rights of police) between them,
direct an armed force of not less than 10,000 men.
Their “rights of police,” by the Circular of Governor-General Wahis of
October 1900, were seemingly limited to the right to “requisition” the
Government forces in their neighbourhood to maintain order within the
limits of the Concession. That Circular, while it touched upon the
arming of “Kapitas” with cap-guns, did not clearly define the
jurisdiction of these men as a police force or their use of that weapon,
but it is evident that the Government has been cognizant of, and is
responsible for, the employment of these armed men. By a Royal Decree,
dated the 10th March, 1892, very clear enactments were promulgated
dealing with the use of all fire-arms other than flint-locks. By the
terms of this Decree all fire-arms and their munitions, other than
flint-lock guns, were required, immediately upon importation, to be
deposited in a depôt or private store placed under the control of the
Government. Each weapon imported had to be registered upon its entry
into the depôt and marked under the supervision of the Administration,
and could not be withdrawn thence save on the presentation of a permit
to carry arms. These permits to carry arms were liable each to a tax of
20 fr., and could be withdrawn in case of abuse. By an Ordinance of the
Governor-General of the Congo State, dated the 16th June, 1892, various
Regulations making locally effective the foregoing Decree were
published. It is clear that the responsibility for the extensive
employment of men armed with cap-guns by the various commercial
Companies on the Upper Congo rests with the governing authority, which
either by law permitted it or did not make effective its own laws.
The six natives brought before me at I** had all of them been wounded by
gun-fire, and the guns in question could only have come into the hands
of their assailants through the permission or the neglect of the
authorities. Two of these injured individuals were children—one of them
certainly not more than 7 years of age—and the other a child (a boy of
about the same age), whose arm was shattered by gun-fire at close
quarters. Whatever truth there might be in the direct assertions of
these people and their relatives, who attested that the attacks upon
them had been made by sentries of the La Lulanga Company, it was clear
that they had all been attacked by men using guns, which a law already
eleven years old had clearly prohibited from being issued, save in
special cases, and “to persons who could offer sufficient guarantee that
the arms and the munitions which should be delivered to them would not
be given, ceded, or sold to third parties”—and, moreover, under a
licence which could at any time be withdrawn.
Three of these injured individuals, subsequent to the initial attack
upon them, had had their hands cut off—in each case, as it was alleged
to me, by a sentry of the La Lulanga Company. In the one case I could
alone personally investigate—that of the boy I I—I found this
accusation proved on the spot, without seemingly a shadow of doubt
existing as to the guilt of the accused sentry. These six wounded and
mutilated individuals came from villages in the immediate vicinity of
I**, and both from their lips and from those of others who came to me
from a greater distance it was clear that these were not the only cases
in that neighbourhood. One man, coming from a village 20 miles away,
begged me to return with him to his home, where, he asserted, eight of
his fellow-villagers had recently been killed by sentries placed there
in connection with the fortnightly yield of india-rubber. But my stay at
I** was necessarily a brief one. I had not time to do more than visit
the one village of R** and in that village I had only time to
investigate the charge brought by I I. The country is, moreover, largely
swampy forest, and the difficulties of getting through it are very
great. A regularly equipped expedition would have been needed, and the
means of anything like an exhaustive inquiry were not at my disposal.
But it seemed painfully clear to me that the facts brought to my
knowledge in a three days’ stay at I** would amply justify the most
exhaustive inquiry being made into the employment of armed men in that
region, and the use to which they put the weapons intrusted to
them—ostensibly as the authorized dependants of commercial
undertakings. From what I had observed in the A.B.I.R. Concession it is
equally clear to me that no inquiry could be held to have been
exhaustive which did not embrace the territories of that Company also.
The system of quartering Government soldiers in the villages, once
universal, has to-day been widely abandoned; but the abuses once
prevalent under this head spring to life in this system of “forest
guards,” who, over a wide area, represent the only form of local
gendarmerie known. But that the practice of employing Government native
soldiers in isolated posts has not disappeared is admitted by the
highest authorities.
A Circular on this subject, animadverting on the disregard of the
reiterated instructions issued, which had forbidden the employment of
black troops unaccompanied by a European officer, was dispatched by the
Governor-General as recently as the 7th September, 1903, during the
period I was actually on the Upper Congo. In this Circular the
Commandants and officers of the Force Publique are required to
rigorously observe the oft-repeated instructions on this head, and it is
pointed out that, in spite of the most imperative orders forbidding the
employment of black soldiers by themselves on the public service—“on
continue en maints endroits à pratiquer ce déplorable usage.” Copy of
this Circular is appended (Inclosure 7).[19]
From my observation of the districts I travelled on in the Upper Congo,
it would seem well-nigh impossible for European officers to be always
with the soldiers who may be sent on minor expeditions. The number of
officers is limited; they have much to do in drilling their troops, and
in camp and station life, while the territory to be exploited is vast.
The ramifications of the system of taxation, outlined in the foregoing
sketch of it, show it to be of a wide-spread character, and since a more
or less constant pressure has to be exercised to keep the taxpayers up
to the mark, and over a very wide field, a certain amount of dependance
upon the uncontrolled actions of native soldiers (who are the only
regular police in the country) must be permitted those responsible for
the collection of the tax. The most important article of native taxation
in the Upper Congo is unquestionably rubber, and to illustrate the
importance attaching by their superiors to the collection and
augmentation of this tax, the Circular of Governor-General Wahis,
addressed to the Commissionaires de District and Chefs de Zône on the
29th March, 1901, was issued. A copy of that Circular is attached
(Inclosure 8).[20]
The instructions this Circular conveys would be excellent if coming from
the head of a trading house to his subordinates, but addressed, as they
are, by a Governor-General to the principal officers of his
administration, they reveal a somewhat limited conception of public
duty. Instead of their energies being directed to the government of
their districts, the officers therein addressed could not but feel
themselves bound to consider the profitable exploitation of india-rubber
as one of the principal functions of Government. Taken into account the
interpretation these officials must put upon the positive injunctions of
their chief, there can be little doubt that they would look upon the
profitable production of india-rubber as among the most important of
their duties. The praiseworthy official would be he whose district
yielded the best and biggest supply of that commodity; and, succeeding
in this, the means whereby he brought about the enhanced value of that
yield would not, it may be believed, be too closely scrutinized.
When it is remembered that the reprimanded officials are the embodiment
of all power in their districts, and that the agents they are authorized
to employ are an admittedly savage soldiery, the source whence spring
the unhappiness and unrest of the native communities I passed through on
the Upper Congo need not be sought far beyond the policy dictating this
Circular.
I decided, owing to pressure of other duties, to return from
Coquilhatville to Stanley Pool. The last incident of my stay in the
Upper Congo occurred on the night prior to my departure. Late that night
a man came with some natives of the S** district, represented as his
friends, who were fleeing from their homes, and whom he begged me to
carry with me to the French territory at Lukolela. These were L L of T**
and seven others. L L stated that, owing to his inability to meet the
impositions of the Commissaire of the S** district, he had, with his
family, abandoned his home, and was seeking to reach Lukolela. He had
already come 80 miles down stream by canoe, but was now hiding with
friends in one of the towns near Coquilhatville. Part of the imposition
laid upon his town consisted of two goats, which had to be supplied each
month for the white man’s table at S**. As all the goats in his
neighbourhood had long since disappeared in meeting these demands, he
could now only satisfy this imposition by buying in inland districts
such goats as were for sale. For these he had to pay 3,000 rods each
(150 fr.), and as the Government remuneration amounted to only 100 rods
(5 fr.) per goat, he had no further means of maintaining the supply.
Having appealed in vain for the remission of this burden, no other
course was left him but to fly. I told this man I regretted I could not
help him, that his proper course was to appeal for relief to the
authorities of the district; and this failing, to seek the higher
authorities at Boma. This, he said, was clearly impossible for him to
do. On the last occasion when he had sought the officials at S**, he had
been told that if his next tax were not forthcoming he should go into
the “chain gang.” He added that a neighbouring Chief who had failed in
this respect had just died in the prison gang, and that such would be
his fate if he were caught. He added that, if I disbelieved him, there
were those who could vouch for his character and the truth of his
statement; and I told him and his friend that I should inquire in that
quarter, but that it was impossible for me to assist a fugitive. I
added, however, that there was no law on the Congo Statute Book which
forbade him or any other man from travelling freely to any part of the
country, and his right to navigate in his canoe the Upper Congo was as
good as mine in my steamer or any one else’s. He and his people left me
at midnight, saying that unless they could get away with me they did not
think it possible they could succeed in gaining Lukolela. A person at
T**, to whom I referred this statement, informed me that L L’s statement
was true. He said: What L L told you, re price of goats, was perfectly
true. At U** they are 3,000, and here they are 2,500 to 3,000 rods.
Ducks are from 200 to 300 rods. Fowls are from 60 to 100 rods. Re
“dying in the chains,” he had every reason to fear this, for recently
two Chiefs died in the chain, viz., the Chief of a little town above
U**; his crime: because he did not move his houses a few hundred yards
to join them to ... as quickly as the Commissaire thought he should do.
Second, the Chief of T**; crime: because he did not go up every
fortnight with the tax. These two men were chained together and made to
carry heavy loads of bricks and water, and were frequently beaten by the
soldiers in charge of them. There are witnesses to prove this.
Leaving the township of Coquilhatville on the 11th September, I reached
Stanley Pool on the 15th September.
I have, &c.
(Signed) R. CASEMENT.
(See p. 29.)
Notes on Refugee Tribes encountered in July 1903.
Hearing of the L* refugees from I*, I decided to visit the nearest
Settlement of these fugitives, some 20 miles away, to see them for
myself.
At N* found large town of K*, and scattered through it many small
settlements of L* refugees. The town of N* consists approximately of
seventy-one K* houses, and seventy-three occupied by L*. These latter
seemed industrious, simple folk, many weaving palm fibre into mats or
native cloth; others had smithies, working brass wire into bracelets,
chains, and anklets; some iron-workers making knives. Sitting down in
one of these blacksmith’s sheds, the five men at work ceased and came
over to talk to us. I counted ten women, six grown-up men, and eight
lads and women in this one shed of L*. I then asked them to tell me why
they had left their homes. Three of the men sat down in front of me, and
told a tale which I cannot think can be true, but it seemed to come
straight from their hearts. I repeatedly asked certain parts to be gone
over again while I wrote in my note-book. The fact of my writing down
and asking for names, &c., seemed to impress them, and they spoke with
what certainly impressed me as being great sincerity.
I asked, first, why they had left their homes, and had come to live in a
strange far-off country among the K*, where they owned nothing, and were
little better than servitors. All, when this question was put, women as
well, shouted out, “On account of the rubber tax levied by the
Government posts.”
I asked particularly the names of the places whence they had come. They
answered they were from V**. Other L* refugees here at N* were W**,
others again were X**, but all had fled from their homes for the same
reason—it was the “rubber tax.”
I asked then how this tax was imposed. One of them, who had been
hammering out an iron neck collar on my arrival, spoke first. He said:—
“I am N N. These other two beside me are O O and P P, all of us Y**.
From our country each village had to take twenty loads of rubber. These
loads were big: they were as big as this....” (Producing an empty basket
which came nearly up to the handle of my walking-stick.) “That was the
first size. We had to fill that up, but as rubber got scarcer the white
man reduced the amount. We had to take these loads in four times
a-month.”
Q. “How much pay did you get for this?”
A. (Entire audience.) “We got no pay! We got nothing!”
And then N N, whom I asked, again said:—
“Our village got cloth and a little salt, but not the people who did the
work. Our Chiefs eat up the cloth; the workers got nothing. The pay was
a fathom of cloth and a little salt for every big basket full, but it
was given to the Chief, never to the men. It used to take ten days to
get the twenty baskets of rubber—we were always in the forest and then
when we were late we were killed. We had to go further and further into
the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food, and our women
had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then we starved. Wild
beasts—the leopards—killed some of us when we were working away in the
forest, and others got lost or died from exposure and starvation, and we
begged the white man to leave us alone, saying we could get no more
rubber, but the white men and their soldiers said: ‘Go! You are only
beasts yourselves, you are nyama (meat).’ We tried, always going further
into the forest, and when we failed and our rubber was short, the
soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot, some had their
ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes around their necks and
bodies and taken away. The white men sometimes at the posts did not
know of the bad things the soldiers did to us, but it was the white men
who sent the soldiers to punish us for not bringing in enough rubber.”
Here P P took up the tale from N N:—
“We said to the white men, ‘We are not enough people now to do what you
want us. Our country has not many people in it and we are dying fast. We
are killed by the work you make us do, by the stoppage of our
plantations, and the breaking up of our homes.’ The white man looked at
us and said: ‘There are lots of people in Mputu’ ” (Europe, the white
man’s country). “ ‘If there are lots of people in the white man’s country
there must be many people in the black man’s country.’ The white man who
said this was the chief white man at F F*, his name was A B, he was a
very bad man. Other white men of Bula Matadi who had been bad and wicked
were B C, C D, and D E.” “These had killed us often, and killed us by
their own hands as well as by their soldiers. Some white men were good.
These were E F, F G, G H, H I, I K, K L.”
These ones told them to stay in their homes and did not hunt and chase
them as the others had done, but after what they had suffered they did
not trust more any one’s word, and they had fled from their country and
were now going to stay here, far from their homes, in this country where
there was no rubber.
Q. “How long is it since you left your homes, since the big trouble
you speak of?”
A. “It lasted for three full seasons, and it is now four seasons since
we fled and came into the K* country.”
Q. “How many days is it from N* to your own country?”
A. “Six days of quick marching. We fled because we could not endure
the things done to us. Our Chiefs were hanged, and we were killed and
starved and worked beyond endurance to get rubber.”
Q. “How do you know it was the white men themselves who ordered these
cruel things to be done to you? These things must have been done without
the white man’s knowledge by the black soldiers.”
A. (P P): “The white men told their soldiers: ‘You kill only women;
you cannot kill men. You must prove that you kill men.’ So then the
soldiers when they killed us” (here he stopped and hesitated, and then
pointing to the private parts of my bulldog—it was lying asleep at my
feet), he said: “then they cut off those things and took them to the
white men, who said: ‘It is true, you have killed men.’ ”
Q. “You mean to tell me that any white man ordered your bodies to be
mutilated like that, and those parts of you carried to him?”
P P, O O, and all (shouting): “Yes! many white men. D E did it.”
Q. “You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being
shot?”
All (shouting out): “Nkoto! Nkoto!” (Very many! Very many!)
There was no doubt that these people were not inventing. Their
vehemence, their flashing eyes, their excitement, was not simulated.
Doubtless they exaggerated the numbers, but they were clearly telling
what they knew and loathed. I was told that they often became so furious
at the recollection of what had been done to them that they lost control
over themselves. One of the men before me was getting into this state
now.
I asked whether L* tribes were still running from their country, or
whether they now stayed at home and worked voluntarily.
N N answered: “They cannot run away now—not easily; there are sentries
in the country there between the Lake and this; besides, there are few
people left.”
P P said: “We heard that letters came to the white men to say that the
people were to be well treated. We heard that these letters had been
sent by the big white men in ‘Mputu’ (Europe); but our white men tore up
these letters, laughing, saying: ‘We are the “basango” and “banyanga”
(fathers and mothers, i.e., elders). Those who write to us are only
“bana” (children).’ Since we left our homes the white men have asked us
to go home again. We have heard that they want us to go back, but we
will not go. We are not warriors, and do not want to fight. We only want
to live in peace with our wives and children, and so we stay here among
the K*, who are kind to us, and will not return to our homes.”
Q. “Would you not like to go back to your homes? Would you not, in
your hearts, all wish to return?”
A. (By many.) “We loved our country, but we will not trust ourselves
to go back.”
P P: “Go, you white men, with the steamer to I*, and see what we have
told you is true. Perhaps if other white men, who do not hate us, go
there, Bula Matadi may stop from hating us, and we may be able to go
home again.”
I asked to be pointed out any refugees from other tribes, if there were
such, and they brought forward a lad who was a X**, and a man of the
Z**. These two, answering me, said there were many with them from their
tribes who had fled from their country.
Went on about fifteen minutes to another L* group of houses in the midst
of the K* town. Found here mostly W**, an old Chief sitting in the open
village Council-house with a Z** man and two lads. An old woman soon
came and joined, and another man. The woman began talking with much
earnestness. She said the Government had worked them so hard they had
had no time to tend their fields and gardens, and they had starved to
death. Her children had died; her sons had been killed. The two men, as
she spoke, muttered murmurs of assent.
The old Chief said: “We used to hunt elephants long ago, there were
plenty in our forests, and we got much meat; but Bula Matadi killed the
elephant hunters because they could not get rubber, and so we starved.
We were sent out to get rubber, and when we came back with little rubber
we were shot.”
Q. “Who shot you?”
A. “The white men ... sent their soldiers out to kill us.”
Q. “How do you know it was the white man who sent the soldiers? It
might be only these savage soldiers themselves.”
A. “No, no. Sometimes we brought rubber into the white man’s stations.
We took rubber to D E’s station, E E*, and to F F* and to ...’s station.
When it was not enough rubber the white man would put some of us in
lines, one behind the other, and would shoot through all our bodies.
Sometimes he would shoot us like that with his own hand; sometimes his
soldiers would do it.”
Q. “You mean to say you were killed in the Government posts themselves
by the Government white men themselves, or under their eyes?”
A. (Emphatically.) “We were killed in the stations of the white men
themselves. We were killed by the white man himself. We were shot before
his eyes.”
The names D E, B C, and L M, were names I heard repeatedly uttered.
The Z** man said he, too, had fled; now he lived at peace with the K*.
The abnormal refugee population in this one K* town must equal the
actual K* population itself. On every hand one finds these refugees.
They seem, too, to pass busier lives than their K* hosts, for during all
the hot hours of the afternoon, wherever I walked through the town—and
I went all through N* until the sun set—I found L* weavers, or iron and
brass workers, at work.
Slept at M M’s house. Many people coming to talk to us after dark.
Left N* about 8 to return to the Congo bank. On the way back left the
main path and struck into one of the side towns, a village called A A*.
This lies only some 4 or 5 miles from the river. Found here thirty-two
L* houses with forty-three K*, so that the influx of fugitives here is
almost equal to the original population. Saw many L*. All were
frightened, and they and the K* were evidently so ill at ease that I did
not care to pause. Spoke to one or two men only as we walked through the
town. The L* drew away from us, but on looking back saw many heads
popped out of doors of the houses we had passed.
Got back to steamer about noon.
Heard that L* came sometimes to M* from I*. I am now 100 miles (about)
up-river from N*. Went into one of the M* country farm towns called B
B*. Found on entering plantation two huts with five men and one woman,
who I at once recognized by their head-dress as L*, like those at N*.
The chief speaker, a young man named ... who lives at B B*. He seems
about 22 or 23, and speaks with an air of frankness. He says: “The L*
here and others who come to M*, come from a place C C*. It is connected
with the lake by a stream. His own town in the district of C C* is D D*.
C C* is a big district and had many people. They now bring the
Government india-rubber, kwanga, and fowls, and work on broad paths
connecting each village. His own village has to take 300 baskets of
india-rubber. They get one piece of cotton cloth, called locally sanza,
and no more.” (Note.—This cannot be true. He is doubtless
exaggerating.) Four other men with him were wearing the rough palm-fibre
cloth of the country looms, and they pointed to this as proof that they
got no cloth for their labours. K K continuing said: “We were then
killed for not bringing in enough rubber.”
Q. “You say you were killed for not bringing in rubber. Were you ever
mutilated as proof that the soldiers had killed you?”
A. “When we were killed the white man was there himself. No proof was
needed. Men and women were put in a line with a palm tree and were
shot.”
Here he took three of the four men sitting down and put them one in line
behind the other, and said: “The white men used to put us like that and
shoot all with one cartridge. That was often done, and worse things.”
Q. “But how, if you now have to work so hard, are you yourselves able
to come here to M* to see your friends?”
A. “We came away without the sentries or soldiers knowing, but when we
get home we may have trouble.”
Q. “Do you know the L* who are now at N*?” (Here I gave the names of N
N, O O, and P P.)
A. “Yes; many L* fled to that country. N N we know ran away on account
of the things done to them by the Government white men. The K* and L*
have always been friends. That is why the L* fled to them for refuge.”
Q. “Are there sentries or soldiers in your villages now?”
A. “In the chief villages there are always four soldiers with rifles.
When natives go out into the forest to collect rubber they would leave
one of their number behind to stay and protect the women. Sometimes the
soldiers finding him thus refused to believe what he said, and killed
him for shirking his work. This often happens.”
Asked how far it was from M* to their country they say three days’
journey, and then about two days more on to I* by water, or three if by
land. They begged us to go to their country, they said: “We will show
you the road, we will take you there, and you will see how things are,
and that our country has been spoiled, and we are speaking the truth.”
Left them here and returned to the river bank.
The foregoing entries made at the time in my note-book seemed to me, if
not false, greatly exaggerated, although the statements were made with
every air of conviction and sincerity. I did not again meet with any
more L* refugees, for on my return to G* I stayed only a few hours. A
few days afterwards, while I was at Stanley Pool, I received further
evidence in a letter of which the following is an extract:—
“I was sorry not to see you as you passed down, and so missed the
opportunity of conveying to you personally a lot of evidence as to the
terrible maladministration practised in the past in the district. I saw
the official at the post of E E*. He is the successor of the infamous
wretch D E, of whom you heard so much yourself from the refugees at N*.
This D E was in this district in ..., ..., and ..., and he it was that
depopulated the country. His successor, M N, is very vehement in his
denunciations of him, and declares that he will leave nothing undone
that he can do to bring him to justice. He is now stationed at G G*,
near our station at H H*. Of M N I have nothing to say but praise. In a
very difficult position he has done wonderfully. The people are
beginning to show themselves and gathering about the many posts under
his charge. M N told me that when he took over the station at E E* from
D E he visited the prison, and almost fainted, so horrible was the
condition of the place and the poor wretches in it. He told me of many
things he had heard of from the soldiers. Of D E shooting with his own
hand man after man who had come with an insufficient quantity of rubber.
Of his putting several one behind the other and shooting them all with
one cartridge. Those who accompanied me, also heard from the soldiers
many frightful stories and abundant confirmation of what was told us at
N* about the taking to D E of the organs of the men slain by the
sentries of the various posts. I saw a letter from the present officer
at F F* to M N, in which he upbraids him for not using more vigorous
means, telling him to talk less and shoot more, and reprimanding him for
not killing more than one in a district under his care where there was a
little trouble. M N is due in Belgium in about three months, and says he
will land one day and begin denouncing his predecessor the next. I
received many favours from him, and should be sorry to injure him in any
way.... He has already accepted a position in one of the Companies,
being unable to continue longer in the service of the State. I have
never seen in all the different parts of the State which I have visited
a neater station, or a district more under control than that over which
this M N presides. He is the M N the people of N* told us of, who they
said was kind.
“If I can give you any more information, or if there are any questions
you would like to put to me, I shall be glad to serve you, and through
you these persecuted people.”
From a separate communication, I extract the following paragraphs:—
“...I heard of some half-dozen L* who were anxious to visit their old
home, and would be willing to go with me; so, after procuring some
necessary articles in the shape of provisions and barter, I started from
our post at N*. It was the end of the dry season, and many of the
water-courses were quite dry, and during some days we even found the
lack of water somewhat trying. The first two days’ travelling was
through alternating forest and grass plain, our guides, as far as
possible, avoiding the villages.... Getting fresh guides from a little
village, we got into a region almost entirely forested, and later
descended into a gloomy valley still dripping from the rain. According
to our guides we should soon be through this, but it was not until the
afternoon of the second day after entering that we once more emerged
from the gloom. Several times we lost the track, and I had little
inclination to blame the guides, for several times the undergrowth and a
species of thorn palm were trodden down in all directions by the
elephants. It would seem to be a favourite hunting ground of theirs, and
once we got very close to a large herd who went off at a furious pace,
smashing down the small trees, trumpeting, and making altogether a most
terrifying noise. The second night in this forest we came across, when
looking for the track, a little village of runaways from the rubber
district. When assured of our friendliness they took us in and gave us
what shelter they could. During the night another tornado swept the
country and blew down a rotten tree, some branches of which fell in
amongst my tent and the little huts in which some of the boys were
sleeping. It was another most narrow escape.
“Early the next day we were conducted by one of the men of this village
to the right road, and very soon found ourselves travelling along a
track which had evidently been, at only a recent date, opened up by a
number of natives. ‘What was it?’ ‘Oh! it is the road along which we
used to carry rubber to the white men.’ ‘But why used to?’ ‘Oh, all the
people have either run away, or have been killed or died of starvation,
and so there is no one to get rubber any longer.’
“That day we made a very long march, being nearly nine and a-half hours
walking, and passing through several other large depopulated districts.
On all sides were signs of a very recent large population, but all was
as quiet as death, and buffaloes roamed at will amongst the still
growing manioc and bananas. It was a sad day, and when, as the sun was
setting, we came upon a large State post we were plunged into still
greater grief. True, there was a comfortable house at our service, and
houses for all the party; but we had not been long there before we found
that we had reached the centre of what was once a very thickly populated
region, known as C C*, from which many refugees in the neighbourhood of
G* had come. It was here a white man, known by the name of D E,
lived.... He came to the district, and, after seven months of diabolical
work, left it a waste. Some of the stories current about him are not fit
to record here, but the native evidence is so consistent and so
universal that it is difficult to disbelieve that murder and rapine on a
large scale were carried on here. His successor, a man of a different
nature, and much liked by the people, after more than two and a-half
years has succeeded in winning back to the side of the State post a few
natives, and there I saw them in their wretched little huts, hardly able
to call their lives their own in the presence of the new white man
(myself), whose coming among them had set them all a-wondering. From
this there was no fear of losing the track. For many miles it was a
broad road, from 6 to 10 feet in width, and wherever there was a
possibility of water settling logs were laid down. Some of these
viaducts were miles in length, and must have entailed immense labour;
whilst rejoicing in the great facility with which we could continue our
journey, we could not help picturing the many cruel scenes which, in all
probability, were a constant accompaniment to the laying of these huge
logs. I wish to emphasize as much as possible the desolation and
emptiness of the country we passed through. That it was only very
recently a well-populated country, and, as things go out here, rather
more densely than usual, was very evident. After a few hours we came to
a State rubber post. In nearly every instance these posts are most
imposing, some of them giving rise to the supposition that several white
men were residing in them. But in only one did we find a white man—the
successor of D E. At one place I saw lying about in the grass
surrounding the post, which is built on the site of several very large
towns, human bones, skulls, and, in some places, complete skeletons. On
inquiring the reason for this unusual sight: ‘Oh!’ said my informant,
‘When the bambote (soldiers) were sent to make us cut rubber there were
so many killed we got tired of burying, and sometimes when we wanted to
bury we were not allowed to.’
“ ‘But why did they kill you so?’
“ ‘Oh! sometimes we were ordered to go, and the sentry would find us
preparing food to eat while in the forest, and he would shoot two or
three to hurry us along. Sometimes we would try and do a little work on
our plantations, so that when the harvest time came we should have
something to eat, and the sentry would shoot some of us to teach us that
our business was not to plant but to get rubber. Sometimes we were
driven off to live for a fortnight in the forest without any food and
without anything to make a fire with, and many died of cold and hunger.
Sometimes the quantity brought was not sufficient, and then several
would be killed to frighten us to bring more. Some tried to run away,
and died of hunger and privation in the forest in trying to avoid the
State posts.’
“ ‘But,’ said I, ‘if the sentries killed you like that, what was the use?
You could not bring more rubber when there were fewer people.’
“ ‘Oh! as to that, we do not understand it. These are the facts.’
“And looking around on the scene of desolation, on the untended farms
and neglected palms, one could not but believe that in the main the
story was true. From State sentries came confirmation and particulars
even more horrifying, and the evidence of a white man as to the state of
the country—the unspeakable condition of the prisons at the State
posts—all combined to convince me over and over again that, during the
last seven years, this ‘domaine privé’ of King Leopold has been a
veritable ‘hell on earth.’
“The present régime seems to be more tolerable. A small payment is made
for the rubber now brought in. A little salt—say a pennyworth—for 2
kilogrammes of rubber, worth in Europe from 6 to 8 fr. The collection is
still compulsory, but, compared with what has gone before, the natives
consider themselves fairly treated. There is a coming together of
families and communities and the re-establishment of villages; but oh!
in what sadly diminished numbers, and with what terrible gaps in the
families.... Near a large State post we saw the only large and
apparently normal village we came across in all the three weeks we spent
in the district. One was able to form here some estimate of what the
population was before the advent of the white man and the search for
rubber....”
It will be observed that the devastated region whence had come the
refugees I saw at N*, comprises a part of the “Domaine de la Couronne.”
(See p. 29.)
(A.)
The Rev. J. Whitehead to Governor-General of Congo State.
Dear Sir,
Baptist Missionary Society, Lukolela, July 28, 1903.
I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of the Circular and the
List of Questions respecting the sleep sickness sent through the Rev. J.
L. Forfeitt.
I hasten to do my best in reply, for the matter is of paramount
importance, and I trust that if I may seem to trespass beyond my limits
in stating my opinions in reference to this awful sickness and matters
kindred thereto, my zeal may be interpreted as arising from excessive
sorrow and sympathy for a disappearing people. I believe I shall be
discharging my duty to the State and His Majesty King Leopold II, whose
desire for the facts in the interests of humanity have long been
published, if I endeavour to express myself as clearly as I can
regarding the necessities of the natives of Lukolela.
The population of the villages of Lukolela in January 1891 must have
been not less than 6,000 people, but when I counted the whole population
in Lukolela at the end of December 1896 I found it to be only 719, and I
estimated from the decrease, as far as we could count up the number of
known deaths during the year, that at the same rate of decrease in ten
years the people would be reduced to about 400, but judge of my
heartache when on counting them all again on Friday and Saturday last to
find only a population of 352 people, and the death-rate rapidly
increasing. I note also a decrease very appallingly apparent in the
inland districts during the same number of years; three districts are
well-nigh swept out (these are near to the river), and others are
clearly diminished; so that if something is not soon done to give the
people heart and remove their fear and trembling (conditions which
generate fruitfully morbid conditions and proneness to attacks of
disease), doubtless the whole place will be very soon denuded of its
population. The pressure under which they live at present is crushing
them; the food which they sadly need themselves very often must, under
penalty, be carried to the State post, also grass, cane string, baskets
for the “caoutchouc” (the last three items do not appear to be paid
for); the “caoutchouc” must be brought in from the inland districts;
their Chiefs are being weakened in their prestige and physique through
imprisonment, which is often cruel, and thus weakened in their authority
over their own people, they are put into chains for the shortage of
manioc bread and “caoutchouc.”
In the riverine part of Lukolela we have done our very best as
non-official members of the State to cope with disease in every way
possible to us; but so far the officials of the State have never
attempted even the feeblest effort to assist the natives of Lukolela to
recover themselves or guard themselves in any way from disease. In times
of small-pox, when no time can be lost in the interests of the
community, I have, perhaps, gone sometimes beyond my rights as a private
citizen in dealing with it. But there has always been the greatest
difficulty in getting food for them (the patients) and nurses for them,
even when the people were not compelled to take their food supply to the
State post, but when food supplies and labour are compressed into one
channel all voluntary philanthropy is paralyzed. It is quite in vain for
us to teach these poor people the need of plenty of good food, for we
appear to them as those who mock; they point to the food which must be
taken to the post. A weekly tax of 900 brass rods’ worth of manioc bread
from 160 women, half of whom are not capable of much hard and continuous
work, does not leave much margin for them to listen to teaching
concerning personal attention in matters of food. At present they are
compelled to supply a number of workmen, and some of these are retained
after their terms are completed against their will; the villages need
the presence of their men, there are at present but eighty-two in the
villages of Lukolela, and I can see the shadow of death over nearly
twenty of them.[21]
The inland people and their Chiefs tremble when they must go down to the
river, so much has been done latterly to shake their confidence, and
this fear is not strengthening them physically, but undermining their
constitutions, such as they are. They hate the compulsory “caoutchouc”
business, and they naturally do their best to get away from it. If
something is not quickly done to give these timid and disheartened
people contentment and their home life assured to them, sickness will
speedily remove many, and those who remain will look upon the white man,
of whatever nation or position, as their natural enemy (it is not far
from that now). Some have already sworn to die, be killed, or anything
else rather than be forced to bring in “caoutchouc,” which spells
imprisonment and subsequent death to them; what they hear as having been
done they quite understand can be done to them, so they conclude they
may as well die first as last. The State has fought with them twice
already, if not more; but it is useless, they will not submit. A cave of
Adullam is a thing not always easily reckoned with.
May I be permitted to seize the present opportunity of respectfully
pleading on behalf of this people that their rights be respected, and
that the attention as of a father to his children be sympathetically
shown them? May I also be permitted to place before you a few
suggestions which have been impelled into my mind face to face with this
dying people of what is their need while medical inquiry goes forward,
please God, to master this terrible scourge? I suggest the following as
immediately needful for the riverine people:—
1. That the present small population of Lukolela be requested to vacate
the present site of their dwellings, and form a community on the
somewhat higher ground at present used for gardens, the soil of which
has been impoverished by years of manioc growing. This is known by the
name Ntomba; and that they be requested to clear the undergrowth on the
beach, the sites of their present dwellings, and plant bananas, &c.
2. That no one known to have sleep-sickness be permitted to dwell on the
new site; but all be removed to a site lower down the river; and that it
shall be the duty of the people to supply their sick with the necessary
food and caretakers. The islands are unsuitable, being uninhabitable for
a large part of the year.
3. That they be compelled to bury their dead at a considerable distance
from the dwellings, and to bury them in graves at least a fathom deep,
and not as at present in shallow graves in close proximity to the
houses.
4. That they be encouraged to build higher houses with more apertures
for the ingress of sunshine and air in the daytime, and with floors
considerably raised above the outside ground.
5. That a strong endeavour be made to get them to provide better latrine
arrangements.
6. That they be encouraged to give up eating and drinking together from
the same dish or vessel in common.
7. That the men be encouraged to follow their old practices of hunting,
fishing, blacksmithing, &c., and with the women care for their gardens
and homes, and that they be given every protection in these duties and
in the holding of their property against the State soldiers and workmen
and everybody else that wants to interfere with their rights.
8. All the foregoing they will not be able to do unless the present
compulsory method of acquiring their labour and their food by the State
is exchanged for a voluntary one.
9. That the Chiefs or present chief representatives of the deceased
Chiefs among whom the land was divided before the State came into
existence (I believe about three will be found at Lukolela itself) be
recognized as the executive of these matters, and that they be requested
to devote their levies (restored as of old) made on the produce, &c., of
their lands to the betterment of their towns and district, by making
roads through their lands, &c.
10. To appoint sentries to carry out either the above or any other
beneficent rules in any of the villages would be to endeavour to mend
the present deplorable condition with an evil a hundred-fold worse.
All the above suggestions adjusted to suit the locality are equally
applicable to the inland districts.
In answering the list of questions I would say:—
1. Sleep-sickness is sadly only too well known at Lukolela. It is
prevalent in the whole of the riverine and inland districts. In the
inland districts I am not yet able to say whether it is more prevalent
than in the riverine one; that can only be ascertained by a more
prolonged residence there than as yet I have had opportunity to make. In
the riverine district I estimate that quite half of the deaths are from
sleep-sickness. The cases do not occur in batches like cases of
small-pox and measles do; there are too many in a given place unaffected
at one time. It will, however, gradually sweep away whole families. The
common notion among the natives is that the sickness came from
down-river; and it was prevalent, though not to such an extent as now,
as far back as the oldest people I have met can remember. Before our
Mission was founded here a suspected case would be thrown into the
river; but inland I do not think there is any evidence to show that they
did otherwise than to-day—nurse their sick perfectly, heedless of the
contagion in respect of them (the nurses) or their friends, and, as they
do on the beach, bury their dead close to their houses, and in some
cases live on the top of the graves.
2. From my own observation (since January 1891) the sickness is endemic;
in the riverine villages the death-rate slowly increased until 1894,
when the people quite lost heart and felt their homes were no longer
secure to them, and then hunger, improper food, fear, and homelessness
appeared to increase the death-rate from sleep-sickness and other causes
most appallingly, and the rate has still further increased, especially
during the last two years. The fewer the population becomes the
proportionate rate of death increases most fearfully.
3. The district of Lukolela may be described as follows: The beach line
is wooded, broken by one or two creeks, one of which winds for a
considerable distance inland to a district which can be reached overland
by a journey of at least three days at the shortest. There is more or
less of low-lying land connected with the creeks. The 6 miles below the
Mission station is lower than the 8 miles above. The highest point of
our land is about 19 metres above high-water level, and possibly there
is a further rise of 3 metres or so further up stream. The ground which
I suggest the people be removed to may be on an average about 12 to 15
metres above high-water level. This ridge of river bank shelves down
into low-wooded land and grass plains which are flooded at high water,
though for the most part dry at the lowest ebb; then behind these rise
small plateaus separated by low valleys of wooded and grassy land. From
the pools and streams of this low ground the people get most of their
fish; even when the river is at medium height a journey between the
various plateaus where the villages and farms are found requires about
half the time to be spent in wading, sometimes breast deep.
4. A large proportion of the population is comprised of slaves, mostly
from the tributaries of the Equator district, some from the Mobsi,
Likuba, and Likwala peoples on the north bank, some from Ngombe below
Irebu, some from as far as the district of Lake Léopold II and other
places. All the tribes represented seem equally affected, and neither
slave nor freeman seems to have preferential treatment.
5. To an ordinary observer the men, women, and children appear to be
affected alike. It is not easy to always differentiate the sickness from
other maladies, for often it may be that the malady gives rise to
various complications; these complications are extremely intractable if
sleep-sickness be present. When a man in the prime of life has his
prestige and spirit broken through fear and punishment he loses interest
in his home, refuses to take food and drink; a sleep-sickness patient
will do the same. With the women in all cases we have known there is
also present amenorrhœa; sometimes treatment for this has restored
the patient in this respect for a time, but there has in all cases we
have known of this sort been a relapse; so whether the patient died of
one or the other would be difficult to say.
6. The well-fed do not seem to fall before the scourge so rapidly as the
ill-fed. The progress of the disease seems to us considerably slower as
a rule with those who take care of their food and habits, but it attacks
even the most scrupulously attentive to these matters.
There is a very bad practice amongst them: they will go sometimes days
without eating, although they may have manioc and plantain, and other
foods from the soil at hand, simply because they have no fish or flesh
to eat with them; sometimes they pinch themselves in food to retain
their brass rods for the purchase of some coveted article. The natives
to-day are not so careful in the preparation of food, and it is more
hastily performed; the manioc is eaten as nearly the raw state as they
dare use it. The bitter manioc is mostly grown, as the yield from it is
greater than from any other kind. Plantains are largely eaten roasted,
and boiled, and beaten into a pudding. Palm-nuts, too, they are very
fond of, and the oil forms a good part of the cooked foods. They use,
especially in the absence of fish or flesh, the leaves of the manioc,
which are bruised and boiled; in nearly every case, however, head-and
stomach-ache follow, which pass off in a few days if bowels be active.
Well-peppered food they enjoy, and rotten fish and flesh they do not, as
a rule, despise. Their dried fish, of which a large quantity is eaten,
is not by any means always free from maggots. Elephant meat seems to
give them diarrhœa; dog-headed bats similarly; hippo meat generally
produces slight constipation. I am afraid a good deal of disease is
passed from person to person in the preparation of food. There is a
great deal of eating together and drinking together from one and the
same vessel; they dip their hands in the mess prepared as they sit round
the pot, and I cannot say that they are too careful of the condition of
their hands at the time. Clothing is usually scant except for
decoration; hence the colder the weather the less the clothing, the
brighter and warmer the more they carry. Washing is not a very frequent
exercise among the natives. They like, as a rule, teeth kept clean,
washing them every day and after every meal. They like to smear their
bodies with oil and camwood. The hair is left undressed or dressed as
the case may be for weeks at a time without further cleansing. Sleeping
is mostly done on raised constructions of sticks, varying from half
a-foot from the ground to about 3 feet or so. I am afraid that not much
in the way of covering is used while sleeping, a blanket being mostly
worn during the day as an article of fine clothing. Many, especially
those in temporary residence, sleep on the ground floor with only a mat
intervening. Jiggers, bugs, mosquitos, and vermin abound in their houses
on the beach, but jiggers are not so plentiful, and mosquitos very rare
inland. The inland people take great care of their water sources, but on
the beach the river water is largely used, and this is of a dark brown
colour; some is taken from the creeks, but it is very impure, abounding
with decayed vegetation and clay, and some from springs, such as they
are, and these are only surface drainings over the clayey subsoil. The
sweepings of their huts and refuse from their food is not thrown far
away, sometimes even being quite close up against one of the walls of
the hut. In the daytime they relieve themselves in the nearest sheltered
spot without further discrimination, and these places, in the present
uncleared character of their surroundings, are very close at hand; in
the night time they are not so particular, but will even relieve
themselves in the open, and on the paths trod by every one. The common
belief is that the disease is communicated by means of the secretions,
and yet, strange to say, the natives take scarcely any precautions.
7. All the cases we have known have been fatal. We have thought
sometimes we have done good with iodide of potassium and cod-liver oil,
but if it did any good at all it was only very temporary. We judge from
our observations that from the first symptoms which appear to be mental
ones, the best cared for cases last for from one to three years. Others
in which food is soon refused and neglect is suffered may speedily
terminate in a few months, or even weeks, from the first certain
indications. The first symptoms seem to be mental, the balance of
thought fails at intervals, then come the physical signs of pain in the
lower part of the back; often thought here to be piles, and they seek
the usual remedies for this; later the pain extends to the whole back
and then to the head, especially at the back of the neck, and drowsiness
steals over the patient at inconvenient times, often the eyes become
staring, the face assumes a haggard appearance, and anæmia casts its
pallor over the whole body; intelligence rapidly diminishes, and often
the patient dies foaming at the mouth; if burial does not take place
quickly maggots soon make their appearance in the body. When the natives
begin to stuff their remedies up their patient’s nostrils to take away
the “confusion of eyes” (a phrase which they use to describe a person
going out of his senses) the patient will very likely become violently
deranged, and then he has to be forcibly restrained in stocks or
otherwise.
Isolation is undoubtedly the first thing to do, but when to begin the
isolation is a difficulty, and when that is settled to maintain the
isolation is still a greater one. The patients could not be left to die,
they would need food, attending to (for they become so helpless
latterly) and burying, and almost all who undertook that work would be
sure eventually to succumb. To get a person here, however, to look after
somebody else’s relative is a well nigh impossibility by moral suasion.
I should have noted above that the experiment of better houses, such as
the youths and workmen have built in the little village adjoining the
Mission station (wattle and daub, with good high roofs), have given no
benefit whatever. Very few of them will be able to remain for more than
one or two years; the occupants are showing signs that are ominous; we
shall need to burn them down at the decease of the occupants.
Apologizing for trespassing on your attention at so great a length, I
beg you to accept, &c.
(Signed) JOHN WHITEHEAD
The Rev. J. Whitehead to Governor-General of Congo State.
Baptist Missionary Society, Lukolela, Haut Congo,
September 7, 1903.
Dear Sir,
I have recently paid a visit, along with my wife, to the inland district
of Lukolela, and I have had related to me such accounts, and have myself
seen such evidence of what seems to me both illegal and cruel
occurrences, that my blood had been made to boil with indignation and
abhorrence. I take upon myself the humanitarian duty, which is truly the
call of God, to supplement my letter to you on the subject of
sleep-sickness and the general decline of these peoples, and confirm
some of my statements by the presentation of facts of which I have the
knowledge. It may be that in some of my statements I may be trusting to
bruised reeds, but, as far as possible, I am persuaded of the truth of
what I present to your consideration.
On the 16th August, 1902, I called the attention of the
Commissaire-Général at Léopoldville to a murder which had been committed
by a soldier by shooting two men while still in the chain. They had
been sent, in addition, to a youth who was walking unchained to draw
water from a pool some 2 kilom. distant from the lower post of Lukolela
by a telegraph clerk named M. Gadot (M. de Becker being the Chef de
Poste resident at the upper station). The unchained youth was flogged by
the soldier by a chicotte taken from a house on the way, and the youth
fled, and the soldier shot the two men left. My letter was taken down
river by a steamer which passed here in course of a week. Nothing was
done by the men in charge of the posts here until, by letter of the 15th
September, 1902, I was requested by the Chef de Poste to send up my
witnesses. Those witnesses could have been had the same day of the deed
if the officers had done their duty. I went up with such witnesses as I
was able to get together, and their evidence was taken. Nothing more was
heard of the matter until the 24th April of this year, when I received a
note from the State Agent here asking for certain people attached to our
station, whose names he gave. He did not mention the reason of their
being required at Léopoldville, but I guessed the reason. I was only
able to send one of them, one other having returned to his home, and
another being near to death. The man resident in the village, who was
one of the witnesses I took up previously, was sent for to the State
post and detained, and not allowed to return to make any provision of
his journey to the pool. My apprentice and this man went down to the
pool to bear witness concerning that murder; on the way the captain of
the steamer ordered them off to carry and cut firewood; they demurred,
naturally, but for peace sake did a little. In a storm of rain the
shelter of the large steamer was denied them, and they spent the night
sitting on the beach—the two of them beneath one frail umbrella. When
they arrived at the pool, no one seemed to know why they had come; they
were sent from pillar to post, then there seems to have been discovered
some reason or other to interrogate them. The soldier concerned was with
his fellows just the same as though there was no trial, and had, indeed,
been no wrong done. But for the friendly offices of a sister Mission
these two witnesses would have fared very badly during the six weeks
they were detained at Léopoldville; they were practically shelterless
and unfed; even as it was, they were hungry enough. At length they
returned by our Mission steamer. It seems that the only sufferers in the
matter were myself, in the loss of my apprentice for six weeks, and his
loss of six weeks’ wages, together with his considerable discomfort and
the loss of the man from the village—not much, perhaps, in the eyes of
the officials of the State, but much to them; then all their suffering
is easily traceable to myself, for if I had not drawn the Commissaire’s
attention to the murder no witnesses would have been necessary, for who
would have mentioned it? Considering the way in which this matter was
dealt with, and the witnesses I produced were treated, I hesitate to
bring other matters to light. The treatment these witnesses received
only strengthens the distrust of the State, which, in this place,
everywhere abounds. I therefore appeal for just treatment of witnesses
and those who bring wrong-doing to light.
On the 6th March, 1903, I reported to the State Agent here (M. Lecomte)
that I had seen at Mibenga a Chief, named Mopali, of Ngelo, who had been
carried from the Lukolela post, where he had been imprisoned, so as to
induce his village to bring more rubber. His head was wounded as with an
iron instrument of some kind, his lips were swollen as if from a severe
blow, and his legs were damaged as with blows from sticks. He and his
bearer asserted that these wounds were given him while he was chained
and made to carry firewood. M. Lecomte replied that the man had been
seen by him before he left, and he was then all right and asked for my
witnesses. I replied that the man himself and bearer were my informants.
He said he wished to trace the doers of the deed. Nothing more was heard
of the matter, so later I acquainted the Directeur-Général at
Léopoldville by letter, dated the 10th July, of the facts. Meanwhile, up
to the present, I have heard of nothing being done in the matter, only a
repetition of a similar case.
I was at the village of Mopali on the 18th August, and I inquired for
the poor fellow; some said he was dead, but most said that he had been
carried by his wife, at his own request, away out of the way, so that he
should not be found. He was afraid of the State chaining him again. From
them I heard he had been even worse maltreated than at first I knew;
they told me that his feet had been cut so that he despaired of walking
again, and those who had seen him last said he got along by dragging
himself along on his buttocks. I asked them pointedly whether they heard
from Mopali where he got his wounds; was it not after he left the white
man’s presence? With one voice the little crowd I asked replied, “No; he
received those wounds while in the chain.” I gathered also that at first
they were forced to take five baskets of rubber, and to make them take
ten they had chained up Mopali, and that two more baskets had been
recently added.
I learnt also that the youth who had run away from the soldier on the
occasion of the murder of the two chained prisoners was dead. I asked
how it was he was imprisoned at the post; they explained that he was
taken to free his master from the chain, which had been put round his
neck, to get more rubber from his village, and both youth and master
were since dead. They recounted these things to me, and asked me if they
were just. A case-hardened Jesuit would find it difficult to say yes. I
could only blush with shame and say they were unjust.
On the 17th August, at Mibenga, the Chief, Lisanginya, made a statement
to me in the presence of others, to the following effect: They had taken
the usual tax of eight baskets of rubber, and he was sent for (I think
it was the 8th June when he passed on his way through our station), and
the white man (M. Lecomte, M. Gadot also being present) said the baskets
were too few, and that they must bring other three; meanwhile, they put
the chain round his neck, the soldiers beat him with sticks, he had to
cut firewood, to carry heavy junks, and to haul logs in common with
others. Three mornings he was compelled to carry the receptacle from the
white man’s latrine and empty it in the river. On the third day
(sickening to relate) he was made to drink therefrom by a soldier named
Lisasi. A youth named Masuka was in the chain at the same place and
time, and saw the thing done. When the three extra baskets were produced
he was set at liberty. He was ill for several days after his return. I
referred to this in my letter of the 28th July, but it was too horrible
a thing to write the additional item until I had heard the thing from
the man’s own lips. I blush again and again as I hear the fame of the
State wherever I go, that when they chain a man now at the post they may
make the chained unfortunate drink the white man’s defecations.
In the evening of the 21st August, on returning to Mibenga, from a more
inland town Bokoko, Mrs. Whitehead and myself saw Mpombo of Bobanga,
village of Mbongi, some distance inland. He was in a horrible state. He
stated that he had taken ten baskets of rubber to the post, and they
wanted one more, so they chained him up to get it. He stated that he had
been roughly treated by Mazamba, who had charge of him. In his utter
weakness, he had stayed at Libonga (which was a village on the way), to
get stronger, for about thirteen days. What must have been his condition
when he arrived there I cannot imagine; he was so bad when I saw him at
Mibenga. His left wrist appeared to be broken (broken by a log of wood,
too heavy for him, slipping from his shoulder), one finger of the right
hand was severely bruised, and had developed a large sore (this had been
done he said with a stick with which he had been beaten), his back was
badly bruised, the left shoulder was much bruised, and had been
evidently slit with a knife, the left knee was bruised and feet swollen
from being badly beaten, and altogether he was in a very disordered
condition.
Later, I met Mabungikindo, a Chief from Bokoko, a large town inland, who
was also returning from the chain in which he had been detained to get
three more baskets of rubber. Their tax of rubber I understand had been
doubled this year, and this was to get three more on the top of that.
Poor fellow! How thin his thick-set frame had become! He was wearing his
State Chief’s medal. He took it in his hand and asked me to look at it.
I cringed with shame. He asked me if we did that sort of thing in our
country. I replied we did not. And this he said is how the State treats
us: gives us this, and chains up the wearer and beats him. Is that good?
Do you wonder, Sir, that the natives hate the State, and that its fame
is almost impossible of cleansing in this part? Again and again I had
the painful fortune to meet men coming back from imprisonment on account
of rubber. The State through its Agents at Lukolela is driving these
undisciplined people to desperation and rebellion. There is a rumour set
abroad from the State post that the soldiers are coming from Yumbi to
fight the inland people because of some words which have been brought
back from Bolebe and Bonginda. If we are going to have another war, it
will be one which has been engendered by this sort of treatment.
Allow me to trespass on your patience with another story of injustice
which can scarcely be equalled by any of these barbarians. At Mibenga
the Chiefs on the 14th August had great difficulty in getting their
young men to carry down the tax of 500 mitakos’ worth of manioc bread.
This was owing to the fact that a youth named Litambala had run away
from the post. The carriers usually returned the following day, but it
was not till the morning of Sunday, the 16th, that they arrived, and it
was found that one of them, named Mpia, had been chained up for
Litambala. To deal thus with what is called a market is in the native
eyes (and not unjustly so) pure treachery. Why had been Litambala
detained? I will explain. Sometime ago a youth named Yamboisele was
living on the river side, although a native of Mibenga; he fell ill of
small-pox, and I nursed him through it—it was very bad. And it was only
with diligent and careful nursing that he was saved from imminent death.
After his recovery he did odd jobs about the station and, unfortunately,
began to be dishonest. When he was found out he was dismissed. I
presumed he would return to his own home, but he engaged himself at the
State. After some time he ran away, and although he had engaged himself
without his people’s knowledge his Chief, Lisanginya, was sent for, and
they chained him up as a hostage for a replace for Yamboisele; after a
brief space, the same day, on a promise of sending someone, he was
released, and he sent a youth named Bondumbu. Presently Yamboisele
turned up at Mibenga, and they took him to the post and asked for the
release of Bondumbu. They refused to release Bondumbu, and retained also
Yamboisele. Presently Yamboisele (report says) was sent with 2,000
mitakos and 10 demijohns for water to the lower post, some distance down
river, and he made off with the lot to the French side. When the
carriers came down from Mibenga on the Saturday (this was the 16th May)
they chained up Moboma, and he was beaten by the soldiers; I myself saw
the weals from the strokes. The rest of the youths pleaded that he
should not be tied up, as he did not belong to the same Chief, so they
released him and chained up Manzinda. Next week they released him and
chained up Mola, who had come down also as a carrier.
After two weeks the white man (the natives say it was M. Gado) sent
Mango (a native of the village of Lukolela, not then in the employ of
the State) to tie up a man to come and work in place of Mola.
Lisanginya, the Chief, was away at time, but the man tied up Litambala
and took him to the State, and Mola was set at liberty. Litambala
continued a little time, till at length he was given some work to do,
which he thought he was not strong enough for, and so ran away. Then in
the week following the chaining of Mpia, so much trouble seemed likely
to ensue in getting carriers for the manioc bread, and much
recrimination of one another in the village, that Mombai, an able-bodied
and diligent man, went to the post and gave himself up to free Mpia. But
Yamboisele has not been heard of.
I have had several cases brought to my knowledge lately of the mode of
slavery adopted at the post. Briefly, it is as follows: a man for some
reason (sometimes his own and sometimes not) commences work at the post;
he completes his term, and he is told he cannot have his pay unless he
engages himself another term or brings another in his place. I know
those who have left the earnings in the hands of the Chef de Poste
rather than begin again. Such compulsion is contrary to civilized law,
and is rightly termed slavery, and is utterly illegal. I quote one case
in point—a recent one. On the 26th August I noticed a lad, Ngodele, at
Mibenga; I noticed he was a lad from the State post, and I inquired why
he was not at his work. The information was given that his term was
finished, and the white man had sent him to say that when they sent
another in his place he would give him his pay. I learnt that Ngodele
had been compelled to go by his Chief, because the Chef de Poste had
demanded some one to fill the place of another named Mokwala, who had
died at the post.
I appeal to you, Sir, that these things may cease from being perpetrated
on your subjects, and this defaming of the name of the State.
Accept, &c.
(Signed) JOHN WHITEHEAD.
(See p. 33.)
Statement in regard to the Condition of the Natives in Lake Mantumba
region during the period of the Rubber Wars which began in 1893.
The disturbance consequent on the attempt to levy a rubber tax in this
district, a tax which has since been discontinued, appears to have
endured up to 1900.
The population during the continuance of these wars diminished, I
estimate, by some 60 per cent., and the remnant of the inhabitants are
only now, in many cases, returning to their destroyed or abandoned
villages.
During the period 1893-1901 the Congo State commenced the system of
compelling the natives to collect rubber, and insisted that the
inhabitants of the district should not go out of it to sell their
produce to traders.
The population of the country then was not large, but there were
numerous villages with an active people—very many children, healthy
looking and playful. They had good huts, large plantations of plaintains
and manioc, and they were evidently rich, for their women were nearly
all ornamented with brass anklets, bracelets, and neck rings, and other
ornaments.
The following is a list of towns or villages—giving their approximate
population in the year 1893 and at the present time. These figures are
very carefully estimated:—
—————+———-+———-+—————————————————-
| 1893. | 1903. | Remarks.
+———-+———-+————————————————
Botunu | 500 | 80 |
Bosende | 600 | —- |
Ngombe | 500 | 40 | These are not in the old village,
| | | but near it.
Irebo | 3,000 | 60 | Now a State camp with hundreds
| | | of soldiers and women.
Bokaka | 500 | 30 |
Lobwaka | 200 | 30 |
Boboko | 300 | 35 |
Mwenge | 150 | 30 |
Boongo | 250 | 50 |
Ituta | 300 | 60 |
Ikenze | 320 | 20 |
Ngero | 2,500 | 300 | In several small clusters of huts.
Mwebe | 700 | 75 |
Ikoko | 2,500 | 800 | Including fishing camps.
—————+———-+———-+—————————————————-
This list can be extended to double this number of villages, and in
every case there has been a great decrease in the population. This has
been, to a very great extent, caused by the extreme measures resorted to
by officers of the State, and the freedom enjoyed by the soldiers to do
just as they pleased. There are more people in the district near the
villages mentioned, but they are hidden away in the bush like hunted
animals, with only a few branches thrown together for shelter, for they
have no trust that the present quiet state of things will continue, and
they have no heart to build houses or make good gardens. In all the
villages mentioned there are very few good huts, and when the natives
are urged to make better houses for the sake of their health, the reply
is, that there is no advantage to them in building good houses or making
extensive gardens, as these would only give the State a greater hold
upon them and lead to more exorbitant demands. The decrease has several
causes:—
1. O* was deserted because of demands made for rubber by M. N O and
several others were similar cases. The natives went to the French
territory.
2. “War,” in which children and women were killed as well as men. Women
and children were killed not in all cases by stray bullets, but were
taken as prisoners and killed. Sad to say, these horrible cases were not
always the acts of some black soldier. Proof was laid against one
officer who shot one woman and one man, while they were before him as
prisoners with their hands tied, and no attempt was made by the accused
to deny the truth of the statement. To those killed in the so-called
“war” must be added large numbers of those who died while kept as
prisoners of war. Others were carried to far distant camps and have
never returned. Many of the young were sent to Missions, and the
death-rate was enormous. Here is one example: Ten children were sent
from a State steamer to a Mission, and in spite of comfortable
surroundings there were only three alive at the end of a month. The
others had died of dysentery and bowel troubles contracted during the
voyage. Two more struggled on for about fifteen months, but never
recovered strength, and at last died. In less than two years only one of
the ten was alive.
3. Another cause of the decrease is that the natives are weakened in
body through insufficient and irregular food supply. They cannot resist
disease as of old. In spite of assurances that the old state of things
will not come again, the native refuses to build good houses, make large
gardens, and make the best of the new surroundings—he is without
ambition because without hope, and when sickness comes he does not seem
to care.
4. Again a lower percentage of births lessen the population. Weakened
bodies is one cause of this. Another reason is that women refuse to bear
children, and take means to save themselves from motherhood. They give
as the reason that if “war” should come a woman “big with child,” or
with a baby to carry, cannot well run away and hide from the soldiers.
Confidence will no doubt, be restored, but it grows but slowly.
There are two points in connection with the “war” (so-called):—
(1.) The cause.
(2.) The manner in which it was conducted.
(1.) The natives never had obeyed any other man than their own Chiefs.
When Leopold II became their King they were not aware of the fact, nor
had they any hand in the making of the new arrangement. Demands were
made on them, and they did not understand why they should obey the
stranger. Some of the demands were not excessive, but others were simply
impossible. From the G H* people and the O* group of towns large demands
of rubber were made. There was not much within their reach, and it was a
dangerous thing to be a stranger in a strange part of the forests. The
O* people offered to pay a monthly tribute of goats, fowls, &c., but M.
N O would have rubber, so they left. The G H* had to bear the scourge of
war frequently and many were killed. Now they supply what they probably
would have supplied without the loss of one person, kwanga and fresh
meats, and roofing materials and mats. Rubber was demanded from some
others and war resulted. These are now providing the State with fish and
fowls.
Another fertile source of war lay in the actions of the native soldiers.
Generally speaking their statements against other natives were received
as truth that needed no support. Take the following as an example: One
morning it was reported that State soldiers had shot several people near
the channel leading from H K* to the Congo. Several canoes full of
manioc had been also seized, and the friends of the dead and owners of
two of the canoes asked that they might have the canoes and food, and
that they might take the bodies and bury them. But this was refused. It
was alleged the people were shot in the act of deserting from the State
into French territory. The Chief who was shot was actually returning
from having gone with a message from M. O P to a village, and was killed
east of the camp and of his home, while “France” lay to the west. The
soldiers said that the people had been challenged to stop and that they
refused, and that they had been shot as they paddled away. But really
they had landed when called by the soldiers; they had been tied hand and
foot, and then shot. One woman had struggled when shot, and had broken
the vines with which her feet were tied, and she, though wounded, tried
to escape. A second bullet made her fall, but yet she rose and ran a few
steps, when a third bullet laid her low. Their hands had all been taken
off—i.e., the right hand of each—for evidence of the faithfulness of
the soldiers. M. O P shot two of the soldiers, but the leader of the
party was not shot, though the whole matter was carried through by him,
and he it was that gave M. O P the false report.
A Chief complained that certain soldiers had taken his wives and had
stolen all of his belongings that they cared to have. He made no
complaint against the “tax” that the soldiers had gone there to secure,
but told of the cruelty and oppression of the soldiers carried on for
their own gain. The white officer kicked him off the verandah and said
that he told many lies. The Chief turned round with fury written on his
face, stood silently looking at the white man, and then stalked off; two
days later there was a report that all the soldiers with their wives and
followers had been killed in that Chief’s town. A little later the white
officer who refused to set matters right, along with another Belgian
officer, were killed with a number of their soldiers in an expedition
for the purpose of punishing the Chief and his people for killing the
first lot of soldiers.
After the rubber demand was withdrawn, in some places labour was
demanded. A very large proportion of the women from this village had to
go to P* every week and work there two days. They returned here on the
third day. Nearly every week there were complaints made that someone’s
wife had been kept by a soldier, and when it was suggested that the
husband should himself go and report the matter to the white man, they
would reply: “We dare not.” Their fear was not so much of the white man
but of the black soldiers.
(2.) The manner in which this war was conducted was very objectionable
to any one with European ideas. The natives attacked P* and O*, but that
was only after numerous expeditions had been made against them, and the
whole population roused against the “white man.” In 99 per cent. of the
“wars” in this district the cause was simply failure on the part of the
people to supply produce, labour, or men, as demanded by the State.
There was the long struggle with L L L in his long resistance to State
authority; but he at first was known as a quiet man who tried to please
the State, and he only started on his career as a fighting man after he
had been out to help M. N O. After the departure of M. N O to
Coquilhatville, he went back and made demands and fought the people as
he had done with M. N O as his Chief.
When this matter was reported to M. N O, he was angry, and called the
Chief a “brigand,” and said that he would be punished. For numerous
offences he was put “on the chain,” and some time after his release the
fight occurred (in which fight the two white men were killed) and he
joined with others in an ineffectual attempt to drive out the white man.
In most of the fights then the natives were merely trying to defend
themselves and their homes from attacks made on them by black soldiers
sent to “punish them for some failure to do their duty to the State;”
and if the cause for war was weak, the way in which it was carried on
was often revolting. It was stated that these soldiers were often sent
out to make war on a village without a white officer accompanying them,
so that there was nothing to keep them from awful excesses.
It is averred that canoes have been seen returning from distant
expeditions with no white man in charge, and with human hands dangling
from a stick in the bow of the canoe—or in small baskets—being carried
to the white man as proofs of their courage and devotion to duty. If one
in fifty of native reports are true, there has been great lack on the
part of some white men. They, too, are accused of forgetting the
subjects and conditions of war.
Statements made to me by certain natives are appended.
Many similar statements were made to me during the time I spent at Lake
Mantumba, some of those made by native men being unfit for repetition.
I was born at K K*. After my father died my mother and I went to L L*.
When we returned to K K* soon after that P Q came to fight with us
because of rubber. K K* did not want to take rubber to the white man. We
and our mothers ran away very far into the bush. The Bula Matadi
soldiers were very strong and they fought hard, one soldier was killed,
and they killed one K K* man. Then the white man said let us go home,
and they went home, and then we, too, came out of the bush. This was the
first fight. After that another fighting took place. I, my mother,
grandmother, and my sister, we ran away into the bush. The soldiers came
and fought us, and left the town and followed us into the bush. When the
soldiers came into the bush near us they were calling my mother by name,
and I was going to answer, but my mother put her hand to my mouth to
stop me. Then they went to another side, and then we left that place and
went to another. When they called my mother, if she had not stopped me
from answering, we would all have been killed then. A great number of
our people were killed by the soldiers. The friends who were left buried
the dead bodies, and there was very much weeping. After that there was
not any fighting for some time. Then the soldiers came again to fight
with us, and we ran into the bush, but they really came to fight with M
M*. They killed a lot of M M* people, and then one soldier came out to K
K*, and the K K* people killed him with a spear. And when the other
soldiers heard that their friend was killed they came in a large number
and followed us into the bush. Then the soldiers fired a gun, and some
people were killed. After that they saw a little bit of my mother’s
head, and the soldiers ran quickly towards the place where we were and
caught my grandmother, my mother, my sister, and another little one,
younger than us. Several of the soldiers argued about my mother, because
each wanted her for a wife, so they finally decided to kill her. They
killed her with a gun—they shot her through the stomach—and she fell,
and when I saw that I cried very much, because they killed my mother and
grandmother, and I was left alone. My mother was near to the time of her
confinement at that time. And they killed my grandmother too, and I saw
it all done. They took hold of my sister and asked where her older
sister was, and she said: “She has just run away.” They said, “Call
her.” She called me, but I was too frightened and would not answer, and
I ran and went away and came out at another place, and I could not speak
much because my throat was very sore. I saw a little bit kwanga lying on
the ground and I picked it up to eat. At that place there used to be a
lot of people, but when I got there there were none. My sister was taken
to P*, and I was at this place alone. One day I saw a man coming from
the back country. He was going to kill me, but afterwards he took me to
a place where there were people, and there I saw my step-father.... He
asked to buy me from this man, but the man would not let him. He said,
“She is my slave now; I found her.” One day the men went out fishing,
and when I looked I saw the soldiers coming, so I ran away, but a string
caught my foot and I fell, and a soldier named N N N caught me. He
handed me over to another soldier, and as we went we saw some Q* people
fishing, and the soldiers took a lot of fish from them and a Q* woman,
and we went to P*, and they took me to the white man.
(Signed) Q Q.
Signed by Q Q before me,
(Signed) Roger Casement,
His Britannic Majesty’s Consul.
I, R R, came from N N*. N N* and R* fought, and they killed several R*
people, and one R* man O O O took a man and sent him to L L L to go and
tell the white man to come and fight with Nkoho. The white man who
fought with N N* first was named Q R.* He fought with us in the morning;
then I ran away with my mother. Then the men came to call us back to our
town. When we were returning to our town, as we were nearing, we asked
how many people were killed, and they told us three were killed. Q R had
burned down all the houses, so we were scattered to other places again;
only some of the men were left to build again. After a while we returned
to our town and began to plant our gardens. I have finished the first
part of the story.
We stayed a long time at our town, then the white man who fought with N
N* first went and told R S that the N N* people were very strong, so R S
made up his mind to come and fight us. When he came to O* we heard the
news; it was high-water season. We got into our canoes to run away, but
the men stayed behind to wait for the soldiers. When the white man came
he did not try to fight them during the day, but went to the back and
waited for night to come. When the soldiers came at night the people ran
away, so they did not kill anybody, only a sick man whom they found in a
house, whom they (the soldiers) killed and disfigured his body very
much. They hunted out all the native money they could get, and in the
morning they went away. After they went away we came back to the town,
but we found it was all destroyed. We remained in our town a long time;
the white man did not come back to fight with us. After a while we heard
that R S was coming to fight us. R S sent some Q* men to tell the N N*
people to send people to go and work for him, and also to send goats.
The N N* people would not do it, so he went to fight our town. When we
were told by the men that the soldiers were coming, we began to run
away. My mother told me to wait for her until she got some things ready
to take with us, but I told her we must go now, as the soldiers were
coming. I ran away and left my mother, and went with two old people who
were running away, but we were caught, and the old people were killed,
and the soldiers made me carry the baskets with the things these dead
people had and the hands they cut off. I went on with the soldiers. Then
we came to another town, and they asked me the way and the name of the
place, and I said “I do not know;” but they said, “If you do not tell us
we will kill you,” so I told them the name of the town. Then we went
into the bush to look for people, and we heard children crying, and a
soldier went quickly over to the place and killed a mother and four
children, and then we left off looking for the people in the bush, and
they asked me again to show them the way out, and if I did not they
would kill me, so I showed them the way. They took me to R S, and he
told me to go and stay with the soldier who caught me. They tied up six
people, but I cannot tell how many people were killed, because there
were too many for me to count. They got my little sister and killed her,
and threw her into a house and set fire to the house. When finished with
that we went to OO*, and stayed there four days, and then we went to P
P*, and because the people there ran away, they killed the P P* Chief.
We stayed there several days; then we came to P*, and from there we came
on to Q Q*, and there they put the prisoners in chains, but they did not
put me in chains, and then he (R S) went to fight with L L*, and killed
a lot of people and six people tied up. When he came back from L L* we
started and came on to Q*.
My father was killed in the same fight as I was captured. My mother was
killed by a sentry stationed at N N* after I left.
(Signed) R R.
Signed by R R, before me,
(Signed) Roger Casement,
His Britannic Majesty’s Consul.
S S came from the far back R R*. One day the soldiers went to her town
to fight; she did not know that the soldiers had come to fight them
until she saw the people from the other side of the town running towards
their end, then they, too, began to run away. Her father, mother, three
brothers, and sister were with her. About four men were killed at this
scare. It was at this fight that one of the station girls P P P was
taken prisoner. After several days, during which time they were staying
at other villages, they went back to their own town. They were only a
few days in their own town when they heard that the soldiers who had
been at the other towns were coming their way too, so the men gathered
up all their bows and arrows and went out to the next town to wait for
the soldiers to fight them. Some of the men stayed behind with all the
women and children. After that S S and her mother went out to their
garden to work; while there S S told her mother that she had dreamed
that Bula Matadi was coming to fight with them, but her mother told her
she was trying to tell stories. After that S S went back to the house,
and left her mother in the garden. After she had been a little while in
the house with her little brother and sister she heard the firing of
guns. When she heard that she took up her little sister and a big basket
with a lot of native money[22] in it, but she could not manage both, so
she left the basket behind and ran away with the youngest child; the
little boy ran away by himself. The oldest boys had gone away to wait
for the soldiers at the other town. As she went past she heard her
mother calling to her, but she told her to run away in another
direction, and she would go on with the little sister. She found her
little sister rather heavy for her, so she could not run very fast, and
a great number of people went past her, and she was left alone with the
little one. Then she left the main road and went to hide in the bush.
When night came on she tried to find the road again and follow the
people who had passed her, but she could not find them, so she had to
sleep in the bush alone. She wandered about in the bush for six days,
then she came upon a town named S S*[22]. At this town she found that
the soldiers were fighting there too. Before entering the town she dug
up some sweet manioc to eat, because she was very, very hungry. She went
about looking for a fire to roast her sweet manioc, but she could not
find any. Then she heard a noise as of people talking, so she hid her
little sister in a deserted house, and went to see those people she had
heard talking, thinking they might be those from her own town, but when
she got to the house where the noise was coming from she saw one of the
soldier’s boys sitting at the door of the house, and then also she could
not quite understand their language, so she knew that they were not her
people, so she took fright and ran away in another direction from where
she had put her sister. After she had reached the outside of the town
she stood still, and remembered that she would be scolded by her father
and mother for leaving her sister, so she went back at night. She came
upon a house where the white man was sleeping; she saw the sentry on a
deck chair outside in front of the house, apparently asleep, because he
did not see her slip past him. Then she came to the house where her
sister was, and took her, and she started to run away again. They slept
in a deserted house at the very end of the town. Early in the morning
the white man sent out the soldiers to go and look for people all over
the town and in the houses. S S was standing outside in front of the
house, trying to make her sister walk some, as she was very tired, but
the little sister could not run away through weakness. While they were
both standing outside the soldiers came upon them and took them both.
One of the soldiers said: “We might keep them both, the little one is
not bad-looking;” but the others said “No, we are not going to carry her
all the way; we must kill the youngest girl.” So they put a knife
through the child’s stomach, and left the body lying there where they
had killed it. They took S S to the next town, where the white man had
told them to go and fight. They did not go back to the house where the
white man was, but went straight on to the next town. The white man’s
name was C D.[23] The soldiers gave S S something to eat on the way.
When they came to this next town they found that all the people had run
away.
In the morning the soldiers wanted S S to go and look for manioc for
them, but she was afraid to go out as they looked to her as if they
wanted to kill her. The soldiers thrashed her very much, and began to
drag her outside, but the corporal (N N N) came and took her by the hand
and said, “We must not kill her; we must take her to the white man.”
Then they went back to the town where C D was, and they showed him S S.
C D handed her over to the care of a soldier. At this town she found
that they had caught three people, and among them was a very old woman,
and the cannibal soldiers asked C D to give them the old woman to eat,
and C D told them to take her. Those soldiers took the woman and cut her
throat, and then divided her and ate her. S S saw all this done. In the
morning the soldier who was looking after her was sent on some duty by C
D, and before the soldier went out he had told S S to get some manioc
leaves not far from the house and to cook them. After he left she went
to do as he had told her, and those cannibal soldiers went to C D and
said that S S was trying to run away, so they wanted to kill her; but he
told them to tie her, so the soldiers tied her to a tree, and she had to
stand in the sun nearly all day. When the soldier who had charge of her
came back he found her tied up. C D called to him to ask about S S, so
he explained to C D what he had told S S to do, so he was allowed to
untie her. They stayed several days at this place, then B D asked S S if
she knew all the towns round about, and she said yes, then he told her
to show them the way, so that they could go and catch people. They came
to a town and found only one woman, who was dying of sickness, and the
soldiers killed her with a knife. At several towns they found no people,
but at last they came to a town where several people had run to as they
did not know where else to go, because the soldiers were fighting
everywhere. At this town they killed a lot of people—men, women, and
children—and took some as prisoners. They cut the hands off those they
had killed, and brought them to C D; they spread out the hands in a row
for C D to see. After that they left to return to Bikoro. They took a
lot of prisoners with them. The hands which they had cut off they just
left lying, because the white man had seen them, so they did not need to
take them to P*. Some of the soldiers were sent to P* with the
prisoners, but C D himself and the other soldiers went to T T* where
there was another white man. The prisoners were sent to S T. S S was
about two weeks at P*, and then she ran away into the bush at P* for
three days, and when she was found she was brought back to S T, and he
asked her why she had run away. She said because the soldiers had
thrashed her.
S S’s mother was killed by soldiers, and her father died of starvation,
or rather, he refused to eat because he was bereaved of his wife and all
his children.
(Signed) S S.
Signed by S S before me,
(Signed)
Roger Casement,
His Britannic Majesty’s Consul.
States she belonged to the village of R*, where she lived with her
grandmother. R* was attacked by the State soldiers long ago. It was in S
T’s time. She does not know if he was with the soldiers, but she heard
the bugle blow when they were going away. It was in the afternoon when
they came, they began catching and tying the people, and killed lots of
them. A lot of people—she thinks perhaps fifty—ran away, and she was
in the crowd with them, but the soldiers came after them and killed them
all but herself. She was small, and she slid into the bush. The people
killed were many, and women—there were not many children. The children
had scattered when the soldiers came, but she stayed with the big
people, thinking she might be safe.
When they were all killed she waited in the grass for two nights. She
was very frightened, and her throat was sore with thirst, and she looked
about and at last she found some water in a pot. She stayed on in the
grass a third night, and buffaloes came near her and she was very
frightened—and they went away. When the morning came she thought she
would be better to move, and went away and got up a tree. She was three
days without food, and was very hungry. In the tree she was near her
grandmother’s house, and she looked around and, seeing no soldiers, she
crept to her grandmother’s house and got some food and got up the tree
again. The soldiers had gone away hunting for buffaloes, and it was then
she was able to get down from the tree. The soldiers came back, and they
came towards the trees and bushes calling out: “Now we see you; come
down, come down!” This they used to do, so that people, thinking they
were really discovered, should give themselves up; but she thought she
would stay on, and so she stayed up the tree. Soon afterwards the
soldiers went, but she was still afraid to come down. Presently she
heard her grandmother calling out to know if she was alive, and when she
heard her grandmother’s voice she knew the soldiers were gone, and she
answered, but her voice was very small—and she came down and her
grandmother took her home.
That was the first time. Soon afterwards she and her grandmother went
away to another town called U U*, near V V*, and they were there some
days together, when one night the soldiers came. The white man sent the
soldiers there because the U U* people had not taken to the State what
they were told to take. Neither her own people nor the U U* people knew
there was any trouble with the Government, so they were surprised. She
was asleep. Her grandmother—her mother’s mother—tried to awaken her,
but she did not know. She felt the shaking, but she did not mind because
she was sleepy.
The soldiers came quickly into the house—her grandmother rushed out
just before. When she heard the noise of the soldiers around the house,
and looked and saw her grandmother not there, she ran out and called for
her grandmother; and as she ran her brass anklets made a noise, and some
one ran after and caught her by the leg, and she fell and the soldiers
took her.
There were not many soldiers, only some boys with one soldier
(Note.—She means a corporal and some untrained men.—R. C.), and they
had caught only one woman and herself. In the morning they began robbing
the houses, and took everything they could find and take.
They were taken to a canoe, and went to V V*. The soldier who caught her
was the sentry at V V*. At V V* she was kept about a week with the
sentry, and when the V V* people took their weekly rations over to P*
she was sent over. The other woman who was taken to V V* was ransomed by
her friends. They came after them to V V*, and the sentry let her go for
750 rods. She saw the money paid. Her friends came to ransom her too,
but the sentry refused, saying the white man wanted her because she was
young—the other was an old woman and could not work.
(Signed) T T.
Signed by T T before me.
(Signed)
Roger Casement,
His Britannic Majesty’s Consul.
When we began to run away from the fight, we ran away many times. They
did not catch me because I was with mother and father. Afterwards mother
died; four days passed, father died also. I and an older sister were
left with two younger children, and then the fighting came where I had
run to. Then my elder sister called me: “U U, come here.” I went. She
said: “Let us run away, because we have not any one to take care of us.”
When we were running away we saw a lot of W W* people coming towards us.
We told them to run away, war was coming. They said: “Is it true?” We
said: “It is true; they are coming.” The W W* people said: “We will not
run away; we did not see the soldiers.” Only a little while they saw the
soldiers, and they were killed. We stayed in a town named X X*. A male
relative called me: “U U, let us go;” but I did not want to. The
soldiers came there; I ran away by myself; when I ran away I hid in the
bush. While I was running I met with an old man who was running from a
soldier. He (the soldier) fired a gun. I was not hit, but the old man
died. Afterwards they caught me and two men. The soldiers asked: “Have
you a father and mother?” I answered, “No.” They said to me, “If you do
not tell us we will kill you.” I said: “Father and mother are dead.”
After that my oldest sister was caught, too, in the bush, and they left
my little brother and sister alone in the bush to die, because heavy
rain came on, and they had not had anything to eat for days and days. At
night they tied my hands and feet for fear that I should run away. In
the morning they caught three people—two had children; they killed the
children. Afterwards I was standing outside, and a soldier asked me,
“Where are you going?” I said, “I am going home.” He said, “Come on.” He
took his gun; he put me in the house; he wanted to kill me. Then another
soldier came and took me. We heard a big noise; they told us that the
fighting was over, but it was not so. When we were going on the way they
killed ten children because they were very, very small; they killed them
in the water. Then they killed a lot of people, and they cut off their
hands and put them into baskets and took them to the white man. He
counted out the hands—200 in all; they left the hands lying. The white
man’s name was “C D.” After that C D sent us prisoners with soldiers to
P* to S T. S T told me to weed grass. When I was working outside a
soldier came and said: “Come here;” and when I went he wanted to cut my
hand off, and so I went to the white man to tell him, and he thrashed
the soldier.
On our way, when we were coming to P*, the soldiers saw a little child,
and when they went to kill it the child laughed so the soldier took the
butt of the gun and struck the child with it, and then cut off its head.
One day they killed my half-sister and cut off her head, hands, and feet
because she had on rings. Her name was Q Q Q. Then they caught another
sister, and they sold her to the W W* people, and now she is a slave
there. When we came to P* the white man said to send word to the friends
of the prisoners to come with goats to buy off some of their relatives.
A lot were bought off, but I had no one to come and buy me off because
father was dead. The white man said to me, “You shall go to....” The
white man (S T) gave me a small boy to care for, but I thought he would
be killed, so I helped to get him away. S T asked me to bring the boy to
him, but I said: “He has run away.” He said he would kill me, but....
(Signed) U U.
Signed by U U before me.
(Signed)
Roger Casement,
His Britannic Majesty’s Consul.
(See p. 34.)
Notes in the Case of V V, a Native of L L* in the Mantumba
District, both of whose hands have been hacked or beaten off, and
with reference to other similar cases of Mutilation in that
District.
I found this man in the ... station at Q* on , and
learned that he had been kept by the missionaries for some years, since
the day when a party of native teachers had found him in his own town,
situated in the forest some miles away from Q*. In answer to my inquiry
as to how he came to lose his hands, V V’s statement was as follows:—
“State soldiers came from P*, and attacked the R R* towns, which they
burned, killing people. They then attacked a town called A B* and burned
it, killing people there also. From that they went on to L L*. The L L*
people fled into the forest, leaving some few of their number behind
with food to offer to the soldiers—among whom was V V. The soldiers
came to L L*, under the command of a European officer, whose native name
was T U. The soldiers took prisoner all the men left in the town, and
tied them up. Their hands were tied very tight with native rope, and
they were tied up outside in the open; and as it was raining very hard,
and they were in the rain all the time and all the night, their hands
swelled, because the thongs contracted. His (V V’s) hands had swollen
terribly in the morning, and the thongs had cut into the bone. The
soldiers, when they came to L L*, had only one native a prisoner with
them; he was killed during the night. At L L* itself eight people,
including himself (V V) were taken prisoners; all were men; two were
killed during the night. Six only were taken down in the morning to Y
Y*. The white man ordered four of the prisoners to be released; the
fifth was a Chief, named R R R. This Chief had come back to L L* in the
night to try secretly to get some fire to take back into the forest,
where the fugitives were hiding. His wife had become sick during the
heavy rain in the forest, and the Chief wanted the fire for her; but the
soldiers caught him, and he was taken along with the rest. This Chief
was taken to P*, but he believes that on the way, at Z Z*, he tried to
escape, and was killed. V V’s hands were so swollen that they were quite
useless. The soldiers seeing this, and that the thongs had cut into the
bone, beat his hands against a tree with their rifles, and he was
released. He does not know why they beat his hands. The white man, T U,
was not far off, and could see what they were doing. T U was drinking
palm-wine while the soldiers beat his hands with their rifle-butts
against the tree. His hands subsequently fell off (or sloughed away).
When the soldiers left him by the waterside, he got back to L L*, and
when his own people returned from the forest they found him there.
Afterwards some boys—one of whom was a relation—came to L L*, and they
found him without his hands.”
There was some doubt in the translation of V V’s statement whether his
hands had been cut with a knife; but later inquiry established that
they fell off through the tightness of the native rope and the beating
of them by the soldiers with their rifle-butts.
On the 14th August, I again visited the State camp at Irebu, where, in
the course of conversation with the officer in command, I made passing
but intentional reference to the fact that I had seen V V, and had heard
his story from himself. I added that from the boy’s statement it would
seem that the loss of his hands was directly attributable to an officer
who was apparently close at hand and in command of the soldiers at the
time. I added that I had heard of other cases in the neighbourhood. The
Commandant at once informed me that such things were impossible, but
that in this specific case of V V he should cause inquiry to be
instantly made.
On my return from the Lulongo River I found that this remark in passing
conversation had borne instant fruit, although previous appeals on
behalf of the boy had proved unsuccessful. The Commissaire-Général of
the Equator District had, learning of it, at once proceeded to Lake
Mantumba, and a judicial investigation as to how V V lost his hands had
been immediately instituted. The boy was taken to Bikoro, and I have
since been informed that provision has been made for him and a weekly
allowance.
When at the village of B C*, I had found there a boy of not more than 12
years of age with the right hand gone. This child, in answer to my
inquiries, said that the hand had been cut off by the Government
soldiers some years before. He could not say how long before, but
judging from the height he indicated he could not then have been more
than 7 years of age if now 12. His statement was fully confirmed by S S
S and his relatives, who stood around him while I questioned him. The
soldiers had come to B C* from Coquilhatville by land through the
forest. They were led by an officer whose name was given as “U V.” His
father and mother were killed beside him. He saw them killed, and a
bullet hit him and he fell. He here showed me a deep cicatrized scar at
the back of the head, just at the nape of the neck, and said it was
there the bullet had struck him. He fell down, presumably insensible,
but came to his senses while his hand was being hacked off at the wrist.
I asked him how it was he could possibly lie silent and give no sign. He
answered that he felt the cutting, but was afraid to move, knowing that
he would be killed if he showed any sign of life.
I made some provision for this boy.
The names of six other persons mutilated in a similar way were given to
me. The last of these, an old woman, had died only a few months
previously, and her niece stated that her aunt had often told her how
she came to lose her hand. The town had been attacked by Government
troops and all had fled, pursued into the forest. This old woman (whose
name was V W) had fled with her son, when he fell shot dead, and she
herself fell down beside him—she supposed she fainted. She then felt
her hand being cut off, but had made no sign. When all was quiet and the
soldiers had gone, she found her son’s dead body beside her with one
hand cut off and her own also taken away.
Of acts of persistent mutilation by Government soldiers of this nature I
had many statements made to me, some of them specifically, others in a
general way. Of the fact of this mutilation and the causes inducing it
there can be no shadow of doubt. It was not a native custom prior to the
coming of the white man; it was not the outcome of the primitive
instincts of savages in their fights between village and village; it was
the deliberate act of the soldiers of a European Administration, and
these men themselves never made any concealment that in committing these
acts they were but obeying the positive orders of their superiors. I
obtained several specific instances of this practice of mutilation
having been carried out in the town of Q* itself, when the Government
soldiers had come across from P* to raid it or compel its inhabitants to
work.
(See p. 43.)
Circular dated October 20, 1900.
Le Gouvernement a délégué à des Sociétés Commerciales opérant dans
certaines parties du territoire non soumise à l’action immédiate de son
autorité une partie de ses pouvoirs en matière de police générale.
Ces Sociétés sont dites avoir “le droit de police.” Des interprétations
erronées ont été données à cette appellation.
On a voulu y voir l’attribution aux Directeurs de ces Sociétés et même à
des agents subalternes, du droit de diriger des opérations militaires
offensives, “de faire la guerre” aux populations indigènes; d’autres,
sans même s’inquiéter d’examiner quelles pouvaient être les limites de
ce droit de police, se sont servis de moyens que cette délégation avait
mis entre leurs mains, pour commettre les abus les plus graves.
C’est-à-dire que “le droit de police” qui leur donnait le moyen de se
protéger eux-mêmes et l’obligation de protéger les individus contre
l’abus de la force, allait complètement à l’encontre de l’un de ces buts
principaux.
En présence de cette situation, j’ai décidé que “le droit de police,”
terme dont je conserve provisoirement l’emploi, ne laisserait que le
pouvoir de réquisitionner, à l’effet de maintenir ou de rétablir
l’ordre, la force armée qui se trouvera soit dans la Concession, soit en
dehors, mais même dans ce cas il doit être bien entendu que les
officiers de l’État conserveront, au cours des événements le Commandant
[? commandement] des soldats et seront seuls juges, sous leur
responsabilité, des opérations militaires qu’il importerait
d’entreprendre.
Les armes perfectionnées que les Sociétés posséderaient dans leurs
diverses factoreries ou établissements et qui doivent faire l’objet
comme les armes d’autres Sociétés n’ayant pas le droit de police, d’un
permis modèle B, ne peuvent en aucun cas sortir des établissements pour
lesquels elles ont été délivrées.
Quant aux fusils à piston ils ne peuvent être mis en dehors des
factoreries qu’entre les mains des Capitas et à condition que ceux-ci
aient un permis suivant modèle C.
Les fusils à piston ne sortiront ainsi des factoreries qu’isolément. Ne
pouvant être remis en dehors des établissements commerciaux dans les
mains de groupes plus ou moins importants ils ne constitueront ainsi
jamais une force offensive.
Je donne à nouveau les ordres les plus formels pour que tous les
fonctionnaires de l’État concourent à faire réprimer les infractions à
ces strictes défenses.
Le Gouverneur-Général,
(Signé) WAHIS.
Boma, le 20 Octobre, 1900.
The Government have delegated to commercial Companies operating in
certain parts of the territory not subject to the immediate exercise of
Government authority a part of their powers in matters of general
police.
These Companies are described as having “the right of police.” Erroneous
interpretations have been given to this expression.
It has been held by some as giving to the Directors of these Companies,
and even to inferior officers, the right to undertake offensive military
operations, to “make war” on the native population; others, without even
troubling to ascertain what the limits of this right of police might be,
have used the means afforded by this delegation of power to commit the
gravest abuses.
That is to say, “the right of police,” which gave them the means of
protecting themselves, and imposed upon them the obligation of
protecting individuals against abuse of force, was used in a manner
absolutely opposed to one of these principal objects.
In view of these circumstances, I have decided that “the right of
police,” an expression the use of which I retain provisionally, shall
imply no more than the power of requisitioning, with a view to
maintaining or restoring order, the armed force existing either within
or without the Concession; but even in this case it must be well
understood that the officers of the State will retain command of the
soldiers during the proceedings, and will be the sole judges, on their
own responsibility, of the military operations which it may be desirable
to undertake.
Improved weapons which the Companies possess in their various factories
or establishments and for which, as for the arms of other Companies not
having the right of police, a permit, form (B), must be taken out, may
not in any case be removed from the establishments for which they were
issued.
With regard to cap-guns, they may not be removed from the factories
except into the hands of the Capitas, and on the condition that the
latter are in possession of a permit, form (C).
Cap-guns will thus only be removed from the factories one by one. As
they cannot be issued from the commercial establishments into the hands
of more or less numerous groups, they will thus never constitute a means
of offence.
I again give the most formal orders that all the State officials
co-operate to repress violations of these strict prohibitions.
The Governor-General,
(Signed) WAHIS.
Boma, October 20, 1900.
(See p. 56.)
Note of Information taken in the Charge of Cutting off the boy I I’s
hand, preferred to Mr. Casement by the People of E*.
At village of E* in the C D* country, on left bank of E D*, tributary of
the X* River.
Y Y, with many of the townsmen and a few women and children, also
present.
A lad, about 14 or 15 years of age, I I by name, whose left hand had
been cut off, the stump wrapped up in a rag, the wound being yet
scarcely healed, appears, and, in answer to Consul’s question, charges a
sentry named K K (placed in the town by the local agent of the La
Lulanga Society to see that the people work rubber) with having done it.
This sentry is called, and after some delay appears with a cap-gun.
The following inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the loss of I
I’s hand then takes place:—
The Consul, through W W, speaking in E F*, and X X repeating his
utterances both in F G* to the sentry and in the local dialect to the
others, asks I I, in the presence of the accused:
“Who cut off your hand?”
I I: “The sentry there.”
The sentry denies the charge (interrupting), and stating that his name
is T T T and not K K. Consul requests him to keep silence—that he can
speak later.
Y Y is called and questioned by Consul through the interpreters. After
being exhorted to speak the truth without fear or favour, he states:
“The sentry before us cut off I I’s hand.”
Consul: “Did you yourself witness the act?”
Answer: “Yes.”
Several of the Headmen of the town called upon by the Consul to testify.
To the first of these, who gave his name as Z Z, Consul asked, pointing
to I I’s mutilated wrist-bone: “Who cut off this boy’s hand?”
Z Z (pointing to the sentry): “That man did it.”
The second, who gave his name as A A A, asked by Consul: “Who cut off
this boy’s hand?”
Answers: “K K.”
The third, giving his name as B B B, asked by Consul: “Who cut off this
boy’s hand?”
Answers: “This man here, the sentry.”
Z Z (re-questioned): “Did you yourself see this sentry cut off this
boy’s hand?”
Answer: “Yes, I saw it.”
A A A (re-questioned): “Did you yourself see this sentry cut off this
boy’s hand?”
Answers: “I should think so. Did I not get this wound here” (pointing to
a cut by the tendon Achilles on the left heel) “the same day, when
running away in fright? My own knife wounded me. I let it fall when I
ran away.”
Consul questions I I: “How long ago was it your hand was cut off?”
Answer: “He is not sure.”
Two fellow-villagers—young men, named C C C and D D D—step out and
state that they remember. The act occurred when the clay was being dug
over at C D, when the slip-place for the steamers was begun.
E E E, of E*, another section of the village of R**, questioned by
Consul: “Did you see this lad’s hand cut off?”
Answer: “Yes. I did not actually see it being cut off. I came up and saw
the severed hand and the blood lying on the ground. The people had run
away in all directions.”
Consul asked interpreters to ask if there were others who had seen the
crime and charged K K with it.
Nearly all those present, about forty persons, nearly all men, shouted
out with one voice that it was K K who did it.
Consul: “They are all sure it was K K here?”
Universal response: “Yes; he did it.”
Consul asked the accused K K: “Did you cut off this boy’s hand?”
This question was put in the plainest language, and repeated six times,
with the request that a plain answer—“yes” or “no”—should be given.
The accused failed to answer the question, beginning to talk of other
things not relevant to the question, such as that his name was T T and
not K K and that the people of R** had done bad things to him.
He was told to confine himself to the question put to him, that he could
talk of other things later, but that now it was his place to answer the
questions put, just as simply and plainly as the others had answered. He
had heard those answers and the charge they levied against him, and he
should answer the Consul’s questions in just the same way.
The accused continued to speak of irrelevant subjects, and refused or
failed to give any answer to the question put to him.
After repeated attempts to obtain answer to the question: “Did you or
did you not cut off this boy I I’s hand?”
Consul states: “You are charged with this crime. You refuse to answer
the questions I put to you plainly and straightforwardly as your
accusers have done. You have heard their accusation. Your refusal to
reply as you should reply—viz., yes or no—to a direct and simple
question leaves me convinced that you cannot deny the charge. You have
heard what has been charged against you by all these people. Since you
decline to answer as they did, you may tell your story your own way. I
shall listen to it.”
Accused began to speak, but before his remarks could be translated to me
through X X first, to whom he spoke direct, and then through W W, a
young man stepped out of the crowd and interrupted.
There was noise and then the man spoke:—
He stated he was F F F of R**. He had shot two antelopes, and he had
brought two of their legs to this sentry as a gift. The sentry refused
to accept them, and tied his wife up. The sentry said they were not a
sufficient present for him, and he kept F F F’s wife tied up until he, F
F F, paid him 1,000 brass rods for her release.
Here a young man giving his name as G G G stepped into the ring and
accused the sentry of having robbed him openly of two ducks and a dog.
They were taken from him for no reason save that the sentry wanted them
and took them by force.
Consul again turned to the sentry and invited him to tell his story, and
to give his answer to the charge against him in his own way. Consul
enjoined silence on all, and not to interrupt the sentry.
K K stated that he did not take G G G’s ducks. The father of G G G gave
him a duck. (All laughed.) It is true that F F F killed two antelopes
and gave him the two legs as a gift but he did not tie up his wife or
require money for her release.
Consul: “That is all right. That finishes the ducks and the antelopes’
legs; but now I want to hear about I I’s hand. Tell me what you know
about I I’s hand being cut off.”
K K again evaded the question.
Consul: “Tell him this. He is put here by his master in this town, is he
not? This is his town. Now, does he say he does not know what goes on
here where he lives?”
The sentry states: “It is true that this is his town, but he knows
nothing about I I’s hand being cut off. Perhaps it was the first sentry
here before he came, who was a very bad man and cut people’s hands off.
That sentry has gone away—it was he who cut hands off, not himself. He
does not know anything of it.”
Consul: “What was the name then of this bad sentry, your predecessor,
who cut people’s hands off? You know it?”
The sentry gives no direct answer, and the question is repeated. He then
gives a statement about several sentries, naming three, as predecessors
of himself here at R**.
Here a man named H H H jumped up, interrupting, and asserted that those
three sentries did not reside at R**, but had been stationed in his own
town—his, H H H’s, town.
Consul (to the sentry): “How long have you been in this town?”
Answer: “Five months.”
Consul: “You are quite sure?”
Answer: “Five months.”
Consul: “Do you, then, know this boy I I? Have you seen him before?”
Answer: “I do not know him at all.”
Here the entire auditory roared with laughter, and expressions of
admiration at the sentry’s lying powers were given vent to.
The sentry, continuing, stated that possibly I I comes from H H H’s
town. Anyhow, he (the sentry) does not know I I; he does not know him at
all.
Here F F F stepped out and said he was full brother of I I; they had
lived here always. Their father was U U U, now dead; their mother is
also dead.
Consul (to the sentry): “Then it is finished. You know nothing of this
matter.”
The sentry: “It is finished. I have told you all. I know nothing of it.”
Here a man giving his name as I I I, of K K*, the neighbouring section
of R**, came forward with his wife.
He stated that the other sentries in their town were not so bad, but
that this man was a villain.
The sentry had tied up his wife—the woman he brought forward—and had
made him pay 500 rods before she was released. He had paid the money.
Here Consul asked I I how his hand had been cut off. He and C C C and D
D D stated that he had first been shot in the arm, and then when he fell
down the sentry had cut his hand off.
Consul: “Did you feel it being cut off?”
Answer: “Yes, I felt it.”
This terminated the inquiry. The Consul informed Y Y and the people
present that he should report what he had seen and heard to the Congo
Government, and that he should beg them to investigate the charge
against the sentry, who deserved severe punishment for his illegal and
cruel acts. The things that the sentry was charged with doing were quite
illegal, and if the Government of his country knew of such things being
done, the perpetrators of such crimes would, in all cases, be punished.
(Signed) ROGER CASEMENT,
His Britannic Majesty’s Consul.
(See p. 59.)
Circular of September 7, 1903, forbidding Soldiers armed with Rifles
from going out on Service without Europeans over them.
État Indépendant du Congo.
Boma, le 7 Septembre, 1903.
La lecture de rapports sur des opérations et reconnaissances militaires
démontre que les prescriptions formelles—et si souvent répétées—du
Gouvernement concernant l’instruction d’envoyer des soldats armés sous
la conduite de gradés noirs ne sont pas observées rigoureusement.
Je constate même avec regret de la part de certains fonctionnaires et
agents cette mauvaise volonté à se conformer à ces instructions, qui
sont pourtant dictées par le souci des intérêts supérieurs de l’État.
Les opérations militaires doivent être conduites d’après les règlements
sur le service en campagne que nos officiers et sous-officiers doivent
appliquer fréquemment au cours des exercices journaliers et d’après les
nombreuses prescriptions sur la matière. Et à cet effet le personnel
supérieur, avant de se prononcer sur les opérations à conduire aura, au
préalable, à examiner si les moyens dont disposent leurs sous-ordres
sont suffisants.
J’ai l’honneur d’inviter les Chefs territoriaux à rappeler à leur
personnel les instructions qui précèdent et à l’informer de ce que toute
contravention à la défense d’envoyer des soldats armés sous la conduite
de gradés noirs sera sévèrement réprimée et de nature même à provoquer
la révocation de l’agent en faute.
Les soldats doivent être l’objet d’une surveillance constante afin qu’il
leur soit impossible de se livrer à des cruautés auxquelles pourraient
les pousser leurs instincts primitifs.
Les instructions défendent aussi d’employer les soldats au service des
courriers et des transports.
Malgré cela on continue en maints endroits à pratiquer ce déplorable
usage.
Il importe que les soldats ne soient plus constamment distraits de leur
garnison et de leur métier militaire et qu’ils restent, en tout temps,
sous le contrôle de leurs chefs; l’instruction et l’éducation militaires
des hommes de la force publique ne peuvent qu’y gagner.
Je prie, en conséquence, le personnel intéressé de faire cesser
immédiatement l’état de choses signalé ci-dessus: le service des
courriers doit être assuré par des travailleurs ou des hommes
spécialement désignés à cet effet.
Si l’autorité juge nécessaire, dans certains cas, de faire escorter soit
un courrier soit un convoi de marchandises, il faut que la patrouille
soit organisée réglementairement et commandée par un Européen.
Ce n’est qu’à titre tout à fait exceptionnel et si c’est absolument
nécessaire que cette patrouille pourra être commandée à défaut
d’Européen par un gradé de choix et de confiance.
Mais dans ce cas, que l’autorité aura à justifier, les hommes commandés
par un gradé noir devront être munis du fusil à piston d’armement qui
constitue une bonne arme défensive.
Le Vice-Gouverneur-Général,
(Signé) F. FUCHS.
Independent State of the Congo.
Boma, September 7, 1903.
The perusal of reports on military operations and reconnaissances shows
that the formal orders of the Government, so frequently repeated,
respecting the instruction to send armed soldiers under the command of
black non-commissioned officers, are not rigorously observed.
I even note with regret this disinclination, on the part of certain
officials and agents, to conform to these instructions, which are,
however, dictated by care for the higher interests of the State.
Military operations must be conducted in accordance with the regulations
respecting service in the field, of which our officers and
non-commissioned officers must make frequent application at daily drill,
and in accordance with the numerous instructions in the matter. And to
this end the superior staff, before deciding on the operations to be
undertaken, must ascertain beforehand whether the means at the disposal
of those below them are sufficient.
I have the honour to invite the territorial Chiefs to remind their staff
of the preceding instructions, and to inform them that any breach of the
rule forbidding the dispatch of armed soldiers under the command of
black non-commissioned officers will be severely put down, and may lead
to the dismissal of the agent in fault.
The soldiers must be the object of constant supervision, so that it may
be impossible for them to commit cruelties to which their primitive
instincts might prompt them.
The instructions also forbid the employment of the soldiers on post or
transport work.
Nevertheless, this deplorable custom continues to obtain in many places.
It is important that the soldiers should not in future be constantly
withdrawn from their garrison and from their military duties, and that
they should remain at all times under the control of their Chiefs. This
cannot fail to improve the instruction and military education of the men
of the public force. I therefore request the staff whom it concerns to
put an end at once to the above-mentioned condition of affairs; the
postal service must be assured by workmen or by men specially chosen for
that purpose.
If the authorities deem it necessary in certain cases to have the post
or a convoy of merchandise escorted, the patrol must be organized
according to the regulations, and must be commanded by a European.
It is only in most exceptional cases, and if it is absolutely necessary,
that this patrol can, failing European, be commanded by a
specially-selected and trustworthy non-commissioned officer.
But in such cases, which will have to be justified by the authorities,
the men commanded by a black non-commissioned officer must be provided
with a regulation cap-gun, which constitutes a good defensive weapon.
The Vice-Governor-General,
(Signed) F. FUCHS.
(See p. 59.)
Circular of Governor-General Wahis, addressed to the Commissioners of
District and Chiefs of Zones.
La qualité du caoutchouc exporté du Congo est sensiblement inférieure à
ce qu’elle était il y a quelque temps. Cette différence a plusieurs
causes, mais la principale résulte de l’adjonction au latex qui devrait
être récolté, d’autres latex de valeur très inférieure ou même des
matières poussiéreuses quelconques.
Cette cause de perte peut et doit disparaître. Les Commissaires de
District et Chefs de Zone qui ont tous de l’expérience, connaissent les
moyens de fraude que les indigènes cherchent souvent à employer.
Ils ont à prendre des mesures pour empêcher d’une façon complète ces
tromperies. Il n’est pas douteux que là ou la population se soumet à
l’impôt il ne sera pas impossible de l’amener à fournir un produit pur,
mais il faut pour atteindre ce but une surveillance constante; dès que
l’indigène constatera qu’elle se relâche, il essaiera de diminuer son
travail en prenant du latex de mauvaise qualité, quand il obtient
celui-ci facilement, ou en ajoutant au produit des matières étrangères.
Chaque fois que ces fraudes sont constatées elles doivent être
réprimées. Les Commissaires de District et Chefs de Zone ont à examiner
fréquemment les produits, afin de faire à temps des observations à leurs
Chefs de Poste, et à ne plus laisser perdurer des situations qui causent
le plus grand préjudice.
A cette cause de la diminution de la valeur du caoutchouc, il faut
ajouter celle provenant de l’emballage défectueux du produit, qui par
suite voyage souvent pendant plusieurs mois dans les plus mauvaises
conditions. L’on peut dire qu’à cause de cette négligence une notable
partie des efforts qui ont été faits pour obtenir une production en
rapport avec la richesse du pays, doivent être considérés comme perdus,
puisque la valeur du caoutchouc peut diminuer de moitié par suite de ce
manque de soin.
J’ajouterai que la valeur du caoutchouc, même pur de tout mélange, a
diminué depuis quelque temps sur tous les marchés; il faut donc que les
Chefs Territoriaux fassent non seulement disparaître les deux causes de
pertes qu’ils peuvent éliminer, mais encore qu’ils compensent la
troisième en faisant des efforts continus pour augmenter la production
dans la mesure prescrite par les instructions.
Mon attention sera d’une façon constante, fixée sur les prescriptions
que je donne ici.
Le Gouverneur-Général,
(Signé) WAHIS.
Boma, le 29 Mars, 1901.
The quality of the rubber exported from the Congo is sensibly inferior
to what it was some time ago. This difference arises from several
causes, but principally from the addition, to the latex which is fit to
be gathered, of other kinds of latex of very inferior value, or even of
any dust-like matter.
This cause of loss can and must be removed. The Commissioners of
districts and Chiefs of zones, who all have experience, know the
fraudulent means which the natives often try to employ.
They must take measures completely to prevent these frauds. It cannot be
doubted that in those parts where the population submits to the tax it
will not be impossible to lead the natives to furnish pure produce; but
in order to effect this, constant supervision is necessary, for as soon
as the native notices that the supervision is becoming lax he will try
to lessen his work by taking latex of a bad quality, if he obtains it
easily, or by adding foreign matter.
Whenever these frauds are discovered they must be put down. The
Commissioners of districts and Chiefs of zones must examine the produce
at frequent intervals, in order to report in time to their Heads of
stations, and not to permit a condition of affairs which is most
prejudicial.
To this cause of the decline in the value of rubber must be added that
arising from defective packing of the produce, which thus often travels
during several months under the worst conditions. Much of the effort
which has been taken to obtain produce in keeping with the richness of
the country may be said to be lost through this neglect, for the value
of the rubber may be diminished by half through this want of care.
I may add that the value of rubber, even when free from all admixture,
has gone down in every market for some time past; territorial Chiefs
must, therefore, not only remove the two causes of loss which they can
eliminate, but they must also try to neutralize the third by making
unceasing efforts to increase production to the extent laid down in the
instructions.
The orders which I have here given will have my constant attention.
The Governor-General,
(Signed) WAHIS.
Boma, March 29, 1901.
Sir,
Foreign Office, February 11, 1904.
With reference to Sir C. Phipps’ despatch of the 19th September, 1903, I
transmit to you herewith a Memorandum which has been prepared in reply
to the note respecting the condition of affairs in the Congo addressed
by the Government of the Independent State on the 17th September last,
to the Powers parties to the Act of Berlin.
I request you to communicate this Memorandum to M. de Cuvelier, and in
doing so to call special attention to the inclosed Report by Mr.
Casement, His Majesty’s Consul at Boma, upon his recent visit to certain
districts of the Upper Congo.
I am, &c.
(Signed) LANSDOWNE.
Memorandum.
His Majesty’s Government have not until now offered any observations
upon the note from M. de Cuvelier of the 17th September last, because
they desired, before doing so, to learn the result of the inquiries
instituted by Mr. Casement, His Majesty’s Consul at Boma, during the
visit which he has recently paid to certain districts of the Upper
Congo.
Mr. Casement returned to this country at the beginning of last month,
and has since furnished the report of which a copy is annexed to this
Memorandum for communication to the Congo Government. The report will
also be communicated to the Powers parties to the Berlin Act, to whom
the despatch of the 8th August last was addressed, and it will be laid
before Parliament.
The descriptions given in the report of the manner in which the
administration is carried on and the methods by which the revenue is
collected in the districts visited by Mr. Casement constitute a grave
indictment, and need no comment beyond the statement that, in the
opinion of His Majesty’s Government, they show that the allegations to
which reference is made in the despatch were not without foundation, and
that there is ample ground for the belief that there are, at any rate,
extensive regions in which the pledges given under the Berlin Act have
not been fulfilled.
M. de Cuvelier’s note dwells at considerable length upon the necessity
of the natives contributing by some form of taxation to the requirements
of the State, and upon the advantage of their being induced to work. The
history of the development of the British Colonies and Protectorates in
Africa shows that His Majesty’s Government have always admitted this
necessity. Defects of administration of the character referred to in M.
de Cuvelier’s note are, no doubt, always liable to occur in dealing with
uncivilized races inhabiting vast areas and differing in manners, in
customs and in all the attributes which are necessary for the
construction of a social system. But whenever difficulties have arisen,
most notably in the case of the Sierra Leone insurrection of which M. de
Cuvelier makes special mention,[24] prompt and searching inquiry has
been publicly made, redress of grievances has been granted where due,
and every endeavour has been made to establish such considerate
treatment of the natives as is compatible with the just requirements of
the State.
The reference to the disturbed state of Nigeria appears to relate to the
campaign undertaken early last year against Kano and Sokoto. The
campaign was not a measure of “military repression” in the sense of
being the suppression of a native rising. It was necessitated by the
hostile action of powerful Mahommedan Chiefs within the Protectorate,
over whom authority had not been previously asserted, who refused to
maintain friendly relations with the Administration, hospitably
entertained the murderer of a British officer and declared that the only
relations between themselves and the Government were those of war. By
the mention of the loss of 700 lives reference is no doubt made to the
action at Burmi on the 27th July last, when about that number of the
enemy were killed, including the ex-Sultan of Sokoto and most of the
Chiefs who had joined him, while on the British side Major Marsh, the
Commanding Officer, and ten men were killed, and three officers and
sixty-nine men were wounded. This decisive and successful action
completely broke up the party of the irreconcilables as well as a
remnant of the Mahdi’s following.
The military operations which are now in progress in Somaliland have
been forced upon His Majesty’s Government, as is generally known, by the
assumption of power on the part of a fanatical Mullah, and by the
cruelties which he practised upon tribes within the British
Protectorate.
In both these cases, measures of military repression have been necessary
to save the territories in question from falling once more under the
complete control of uncivilized or fanatical Rulers, and of thus
relapsing into barbarism. The Congo Government and other Powers
possessing Colonies in Africa have had to meet similar contingencies,
and no blame is attached to them, nor, so far as His Majesty’s
Government are aware, has ever been attached to them, for adopting
measures to protect the cause of civilization.
After dealing with the treatment of natives, M. de Cuvelier’s note
proceeds to explain the views of the Congo Government with regard to the
system of trade now existing in the State. The opinion of His Majesty’s
Government has been set forth; they hold that the matter is one which
could properly be the subject of a reference to the Tribunal at The
Hague, but they are still awaiting an answer on this point from the
Powers to whom the despatch of the 8th August was addressed.
Memoranda will be forwarded separately giving examples of injuries
suffered by British subjects which have been the cause of complaint.
These Memoranda have been prepared in order to confirm the statement,
upon which M. de Cuvelier throws doubt, that the time of His Majesty’s
Consul had been principally occupied in the investigation of such cases.
Foreign Office, February 11, 1904.
The Marquess of Lansdowne to His Majesty’s Representatives at
Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburgh, Rome, Madrid,
Constantinople, Brussels, The Hague, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and
Lisbon.
Sir,
Foreign Office, February 12, 1904.
I transmit to you, for communication to the Government to which you are
accredited, a collection of papers, as marked in the margin,[25] which
relate to the present condition of affairs in the Independent State of
the Congo.
In handing these documents to the Minister for Foreign Affairs I request
that you will call special attention to the Report by Mr. Casement, His
Majesty’s Consul at Boma, upon his recent visit to certain districts of
the Upper Congo, and that you will at the same time inquire when an
answer may be expected to my despatch of the 8th August last.
I am, &c.
(Signed) LANSDOWNE.
