China -- Emigration and immigration; Chinese -- South Africa
A similar outrage occurred in the middle of November. A lonely
farmhouse near Germiston, occupied by an Englishman and his wife,
was attacked by a band of Chinese, who were armed with crowbars and
stones. The farmer opened fire, seriously wounding one of the Chinamen
in the jaw, and the rest decamped without entering. The injured man
was captured, but the whereabouts and identity of the others were not
discovered.
In Johannesburg the talk is of nothing but murders and assaults by
gangs of ten or fourteen escaped labourers. House after house away on
the veld has been broken into and looted, and the inhabitants murdered
if they showed any signs of resistance; they have indeed in some cases
been murdered without showing any sign of resistance at all.
Quite recently the Legislative Council of the Transvaal has re-amended
for about the tenth time the Ordinance. It has proposed to offer £1 a
head for the recapture of these yellow hooligans, an amendment which
would have placed the very much-bepatched Ordinance on a level with
the laws that prevailed in the Southern States of America before
the abolition of slavery. It is charged, however, with that strange
spirit of hypocrisy which has characterized all the proceedings of the
Rand lords into a reimbursement to the capturer of his out-of-pocket
expenses. This of course is only another way of offering £1 for
every recaptured Chinaman, for it may be taken for granted that the
capturer's expenses will always include the wear and tear of horseflesh
and moral damages and other matters which can only be estimated in the
abstract. According to the schedule of fees payable in respect of the
capture of Chinese deserters, which was published early in October,
they ranged from 1s. per mile for one or two arrests to 3s. for eight
or more.
Here is a letter from another member of the South African Constabulary
to his people at home which emphasizes the state of affairs which exist
at present on the Rand.
"The Chinese have been causing a lot of trouble. There was a whole
family murdered about a month ago. Several places have been broken
into. Last Sunday there was a storekeeper murdered about ten miles from
where I am staying. We have orders on no account to go out on patrol
without a revolver. The people are seeking police protection, and
are frightened out of their wits. I believe it is as much as a South
African Constabulary man's life is worth to be seen at some places on
the Rand in uniform. I am determined that if I meet any Chinamen, and
they show fight, I will shoot the first one dead."
This is the spirit abroad--a spirit which every right-minded man
must regard as the inevitable result of the criminal action of the
Government in sanctioning the Chinese Labour Ordinance.
Here is another case which has never been reported in the press:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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