South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
In regard to the question of work, I found that in the Free State as in
all the other provinces and districts of the country so much of the work
as is done for wages is invariably done by coloured people. On a farm I
have seen four young men working together,--as far as I could see on
equal terms,--and two have been white and two black; but the white lads
were the Boer’s sons, while the others were his paid servants. Looking
out of a window in a quiet dreary little town in the Free State I saw
opposite to me two men engaged on the plastering of a wall. One was a
Kafir and the other probably was a west coast Negro. Two or three passed
by with loads on their shoulders. They were Bechuanas or Bastard
Hottentots. I strolled out of the village to a country house where a
Fingo was gardener and a Bushman was working under him. Out in the
street the two men who had driven the coach were loafing round it. They
were Cape Boys as they are called,--a coloured people who came from St.
Helena and have white blood in their veins. I had dined lately and had
been waited upon by a Coolie. Away in the square I could see bales of
wool being handled by three Basutos. A couple of Korannas were
pretending to drive oxen through the street but were apparently going
where the oxen led them. Then came another Hottentot with a yoke and
pair of buckets on his shoulder. I had little else to do and watched the
while that I was there;--but I did not see a single white man at work. I
heard their voices,--some Dutch, though chiefly English; but the voices
were the voices of masters and not of men. Then I walked round the place
with the object of seeing, and nowhere could I find a white man working
as a labourer. And yet the Orange Free State is supposed to be the one
South African territory from which the black man has been expelled. The
independent black man who owned the land has been expelled,--but the
working black man has taken his place, allured by wages and diet.
The Dutch Boer does not love to pay wages,--does not love to spend money
in any way,--not believing in a return which is to come, or possibly may
come, from an outlay of capital in that direction. He prefers to keep
what he has and to do what can be done by family labour. He will,
however, generally have a couple of black men about his place, whose
services he secures at the lowest possible rate. Every shilling so paid
is grudged. He has in his heart an idea that a nigger ought to be made
to work without wages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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