THE BASUTOS AND THE CONSTITUTION

OF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

PUBLIC attention is at present so exclusively devoted to Ireland that there is less chance than usual of much thought being given by our statesmen and public writers to other parts of the British dominions. South Africa is, meanwhile, passing through a crisis as momentous to the fortunes of our colonies as that which occasions so much anxiety in Ireland, and there is considerable danger of changes, which may be very serious and very disastrous in their consequences, being effected in our relations with our South African possessions, before many on this side the ocean are at all aware of what is being done.

Since the late Governor was recalled, the extreme members of the party in England who had so persistently demanded his recall as the one thing needed to restore peace and prosperity to South Africa have changed their cry. They now demand the forcible intervention of the Home Government to suspend the Constitution granted eight years ago to the Cape Colony, to take the administration of native affairs in South Africa under the direct control of the Secretary of State, and to revert to the worst features of that form of government which kept the Cape Colony for so many years in continual hot water, occasioned a constant succession of Kaffir wars, and a steady annexa tion of Kaffir territory. This retrograde and cruel policy is urged on her Majesty's Government by extreme sections of the Liberal and humanitarian parties-by men who, if they knew the real facts of the case and the real tendency of the measures they propose, would be the last to countenance a course which must prove alike fatal to the liberties and development of the European colonies, and to the chances of any steady improvement of the native races in civilisation or the arts of peace.

The deputation which lately waited on Lord Kimberley to advocate the course I have described, received from the Secretary of State little in the way of encouragement to their designs on the liberties of

their fellow-subjects at the Cape; but the persistent misapprehension and misrepresentation of facts which has already been the cause of so much mischief still continues, and the advocates of a change in the Cape Constitution may now refer for support to two articles in the Nineteenth Century of April 1879 and December 1880, as affording them the countenance of the most experienced philosophical statesmanship and of the highest political morality.

Believing that these articles could not have been written had the real facts of the case been known, I propose to state those facts as they will, I am sure, be found by any one who has the means and the will to investigate them. I propose to confine my remarks for the present to the Basuto rebellion. I believe that an equally strong case could be made out with regard to the Kaffir wars of 1877 and 1878, and the later Zulu war; but the Basuto question is less complicated by side issues; it is a more complete test of the power of the Colonial Government and of the way in which that Government is likely to use its powers; and, above all, it is used, as the last and most conclusive argument, by those who would withdraw or contract and control the powers of self-government which the Cape Colony now possesses.

It seems generally supposed, by English writers and speakers on the subject, that the Basutos are an ancient race of mountaineers long settled in their present country, and for many generations past in the enjoyment of freedom, and conspicuous for their loyalty and attachment to the British Crown. This, however, is far from being the case. Under their present name, and in their present position, the Basutoland Basutos have no history beyond the memory of many men still living. They, in fact, owe their existence as a separate community, their name, and their position, entirely to their old and able chief Moshesh, who, less than twelve years ago, handed himself and his people over to the British Government, to save them from utter destruction and dispersion. The Basutos have, in fact, only come to what we now call Basutoland within the last generation. Within living memory, before Chaka created the military organisation of the Zulus, most of the clans of Bechuanas now settled in Basutoland lived in the open country, north of the Orange River, between the twenty-second and twenty-eighth degrees of south latitude and the twenty-second to twenty-ninth degrees of east longitude. The Bechuanas were more civilised and peaceful than the Zulus and other Kaffir tribes between the Drakensburg and the sea, and Basutoland had then few human tenants save Bushmen.

Early in the century the growing Zulu power disturbed tribes far inland from the present Zulus. Among the more civilised and peaceful Bechuana tribes then inhabiting the Transvaal, was a small clan ruled by the widow of a chief, who had for her counsellor Moshesh, a natural statesman and general. Moshesh first of all shared,

and eventually superseded, the authority of his chieftainess, made himself independent, and attracted to his rule many of the broken clans who had been ruined by intestine wars, or who were flying before the advancing hordes of Moselakatze, the emigrant Zulu chief. : On the other side of the Bechuanas, advancing from the south-west, were the forerunners of the great Boer emigration from the Cape Colony. Retiring before these adverse forces, Moshesh sought refuge in Basutoland, which was then inhabited by few but the aboriginal Bushmen of the country. Here, in comparative peace, he consolidated his power, his people settled down in the deep valleys and multiplied, drawing to them many fugitives from all quarters, and over these Moshesh ruled with much wisdom and sagacity.

But his people, who had grown in lawlessness, did not give up the predatory habits they had acquired during their wanderings. They stole cattle, got into trouble with their neighbours on every side, and when Sir George Cathcart, just before the Crimean war, was settling the country which now forms the frontier districts of the Cape Colony and Orange Free State, he found it necessary to organise an expedition to bring Moshesh and his cattle-stealing people to account. Moshesh sent messengers and sued for peace. When a friendly chief remonstrated with Moshesh he replied, with characteristic sagacity, that he could have driven the redcoats then before him into the sea; but he knew that ten times their number would come out of the sea, and eventually destroy him; hence he was convinced that the best use he could make of the strong position he held was to secure peace and the goodwill of his powerful English neighbours.'

The peace which Sir George Cathcart accorded to him was in every way most advantageous, and might have secured the content, prosperity, and independence of his country; but the predatory habits of the Basutos were not so easily checked, and, after a while, brought about hostilities with the Orange Free State; which, meantime, had grown up between the Basutos and the Vaal River. In this contest the Basutos were effectually worsted; and the persistent courage of the Free State Boers under their able President Brand reduced Moshesh to the last extremity. The Boers were besieging his stronghold, and must have starved him out, when Moshesh, advised by the French Protestant missionaries who had settled in his country, appealed to the English Government to save him. He opened negotiations both with Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor of the Cape Colony, and with the Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, who was, at the time, in an almost independent position. With much natural diplomatic skill Moshesh tried to gain the best terms he could by playing off the one English Government against the other, and both against the Orange Free State. Finally, he decided to ask to be annexed to the Cape, mainly because he thought he could,

under the Cape Government, retain the few firearms his people had acquired; whereas he knew that, if he submitted to Natal, they would have to be surrendered in accordance with the laws of that colony.

The people of the Orange Free State were naturally indignant at being prevented from completing operations which would have given them the sovereignty over their troublesome neighbours and added largely to the territorial resources of the State; but their remonstrances were unheeded. The Secretary of State had at first regarded the acceptance of the Basutos as British subjects with anything but favour; he, however, yielded to the arguments of Sir Philip Wodehouse, and the Basutos were eventually accepted as British subjects in 1868, and two years afterwards were formally annexed by legislative enactment to the old Cape Colony, whose fortunes they have since shared.

When responsible government was granted to the Cape Colony eight years ago, the Basutos, like all other inhabitants of the colony, whether of European or native origin, came under the authority of the colonial Ministers, responsible to the Cape Parliament.

Moshesh appears to have accepted his position as a British subject with as much equanimity as could be expected from a man who had all his life been more or less of an autocrat. In public, he was always profuse in his expressions of conviction that nothing could stand against the English power; and constantly exhorted his children and subordinate chiefs, whatever they did, never to quarrel with or attempt to resist the English Government. He died a few years ago, leaving his country divided into four portions. Three were assigned to his sons. Letsea, the eldest, was an indolent, unenterprising man, and appears generally to have acquiesced in the wisdom of his father's advice to keep on good terms with the English.

Not so, however, his half-brother Masupha. He had always aspired to lead the reactionary party-men who preferred Basuto ways to English ways-who longed for their old independence and license to sweep off their neighbours' cattle, and who lent a ready ear to all proposals for expelling the white man, and reverting to the old days of unfettered native rule. He found ready followers in many of the young men as they grew up, including some of Letsea's sons and other grandsons of Moshesh.

Molappo, the third sharer in the inheritance which Moshesh bequeathed to his sons, appears to have taken the same view as his father did, and submitted to British rule as an inevitable necessity, without much liking for European ways in the abstract.

The fourth share in the country which Moshesh surrendered to English rule was in the possession of a chief named Morosi, who was not of near kin to the other Basuto tribes, and who paid little more than a nominal allegiance to Moshesh. Morosi's people were the most backward and uncivilised of all the Basuto clans.

1 From their earliest intercourse with European traders, the Basutos had had more or less opportunity of possessing themselves of European firearms. It might be supposed that when they had killed off all the game which formerly abounded in the unpopulated country they occupied, and when they were secured against aggressions from the Orange Free State, the Basutos, who had a natural turn for industrial arts and civilisation, would have given up their habit of acquiring firearms whenever they could purchase them; but no such result followed. When the discovery of the Diamond Fields presented a new and accessible field for private labour, the Basutos flocked thither, earning large wages, of which a portion was invariably invested in a gun of some kind. It has since been ascertained that this habit of acquiring firearms was less often due to personal taste on the part of the labourer, than to the injunction, which he always received from his chief when he got leave to go to the Diamond Fields, that he should not return to Basutoland without a gun and as much ammunition as he could purchase. The object of the injunction was not, at the time, apparent. The Basutos, when asked, gave a variety of frivolous reasons. 'A gun was a mark of manhood and a piece of personal ornament especially becoming a nation of mountain warriors.' In vain the authorities of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republics remonstrated upon the subject with the English authorities of the Diamond Fields and the old colony. The gun, as a part of the labourer's wages, attracted labourers when nothing else would, and a variety of ingenious arguments were invented to prove that nothing was to be apprehended from the general acquisition of arms by all native tribes. The natives,' it was said, 'would not know how to use their guns-they would speedily rust and become useless, and a native with a gun was much less formidable than the native with only an assegai." The experience of the last three years has sternly refuted all these arguments, and has shown that the acquisition of firearms is as great an addition to the fighting-power of the Kaffir, as it was in earlier days to the archers and pikemen of Europe.

Moshesh had been dead two or three years when the war with Kreli broke out in the Cape Colony. There is clear proof that in earlier days Moshesh kept up an active intercourse with Kreli and the chiefs of Kaffraria, with Cetewayo and his Zulus, and Secucuni and his Basutos, but no symptoms of active sympathy had been observed among the Basutos before the war with Kreli came to an end.

When the Zulu war broke out, many men who were acquainted with the Basutos in former days, were prophesying that disturbances on the Basuto border were imminent; others, equally experienced, affirmed that the Basutos were loyal to the British Government, and had incurred the lasting enmity of the Zulus by surrendering Langalibaleli. However, nothing occurred to test their loyalty till Morosi, whose son had been imprisoned for the third or fourth case