Native Life in South Africa [49]
to no less than an entrenchment of the evils embraced in polygamy; and in carrying out this decree civilization will have to join hands with barbarism to perpetuate the bondage, and accentuate the degradation, of Basuto women.
It is a fact that no respectable Mosuto woman wants to leave her husband or guardian; but the economic conditions of to-day press very heavily on polygamous wives. Their lord and master finding himself no longer able to provide for half a dozen houses at a time, bestows on them the burden and anxieties of wifehood without its joys, namely, a husband's undivided care and the comforts due to wives in monogamous marriages.
Some of these polygamous wives have from time to time sought relief in emigrating to European centres where they could earn their own living and send food and raiment to their little ones. A woman cannot always be blamed for having entered into a polygamous marriage. More often than not, she did so in obedience to the wishes of her aged parents. The old people, in many instances, have judged present day economics from the standard of their own happy days when there was plenty of land and rainfalls were more regular; when the several wives and children of a rich cattle-owner could always have enough grain, eat meat, drink milk and live happily. But times are altered and even a monogamist finds the requirements of one wife quite a stupendous handful. The country is so congested that the little arable land left them yields hardly any produce. I have seen it suggested in official documents that sheep-breeding should be limited in Basutoland as there is not enough grazing for the flocks. And under this economic stress these surplus wives are sometimes driven to accept the overtures of unscrupulous men who gradually induce them to wallow in sin; hence too, they give birth to an inferior type of Basuto.
That such a law should be adopted during the reign of Chief Griffith, their first Christian Chief and the first monogamist who ever ruled the Basuto, is disappointing. And while we resent the policy of the British authorities in the Union, who promote the interests of the whites by repressing the blacks, we shall likewise object to an attempt on the part of the same authorities in the native territories to protect the comfort of black men by degrading black women. God knows that the lot of the black woman in South Africa is bad as it is. One has but to read the report of the Commission recently appointed by the Union Government to inquire into cases of assault on women to find that their condition is getting worse. Presumably the evidence was too bad for publication, but the report would seem to show that in South Africa, a country where prostitution was formerly unknown, coloured women are gradually perverted and demoralized into a cesspool for the impurities of the family lives of all the nationalities in the sub-continent.
In her primitive state, the native girl was protected against seduction and moral ruin by drastic penalties against the seducer, which safeguards have since the introduction of civilized rule been done away with. With tribes just groping their way from barbarism towards civilization natural hygienic and moral laws have been trampled upon, and for this state of affairs the white man's rule is not wholly free from blame. It should be a crime to defile a potential mother and a woman should continue to be regarded as the cradle of the race and her person remain sacred and inviolate under the law, as was the case in former times.
The only charge that could be brought up against primitive native socialism was that by tolerating polygamy it had incidentally legalized concubinage; but taking all circumstances into consideration, it is doubtful if the systematic prostitution of to-day is a happy substitution for the polygamy of the past.
There were no mothers of unwanted babies; no orphanages, because there were no stray children; the absence of extreme wealth and dire poverty prevented destitution, and the Natives had little or no insanity; they had
It is a fact that no respectable Mosuto woman wants to leave her husband or guardian; but the economic conditions of to-day press very heavily on polygamous wives. Their lord and master finding himself no longer able to provide for half a dozen houses at a time, bestows on them the burden and anxieties of wifehood without its joys, namely, a husband's undivided care and the comforts due to wives in monogamous marriages.
Some of these polygamous wives have from time to time sought relief in emigrating to European centres where they could earn their own living and send food and raiment to their little ones. A woman cannot always be blamed for having entered into a polygamous marriage. More often than not, she did so in obedience to the wishes of her aged parents. The old people, in many instances, have judged present day economics from the standard of their own happy days when there was plenty of land and rainfalls were more regular; when the several wives and children of a rich cattle-owner could always have enough grain, eat meat, drink milk and live happily. But times are altered and even a monogamist finds the requirements of one wife quite a stupendous handful. The country is so congested that the little arable land left them yields hardly any produce. I have seen it suggested in official documents that sheep-breeding should be limited in Basutoland as there is not enough grazing for the flocks. And under this economic stress these surplus wives are sometimes driven to accept the overtures of unscrupulous men who gradually induce them to wallow in sin; hence too, they give birth to an inferior type of Basuto.
That such a law should be adopted during the reign of Chief Griffith, their first Christian Chief and the first monogamist who ever ruled the Basuto, is disappointing. And while we resent the policy of the British authorities in the Union, who promote the interests of the whites by repressing the blacks, we shall likewise object to an attempt on the part of the same authorities in the native territories to protect the comfort of black men by degrading black women. God knows that the lot of the black woman in South Africa is bad as it is. One has but to read the report of the Commission recently appointed by the Union Government to inquire into cases of assault on women to find that their condition is getting worse. Presumably the evidence was too bad for publication, but the report would seem to show that in South Africa, a country where prostitution was formerly unknown, coloured women are gradually perverted and demoralized into a cesspool for the impurities of the family lives of all the nationalities in the sub-continent.
In her primitive state, the native girl was protected against seduction and moral ruin by drastic penalties against the seducer, which safeguards have since the introduction of civilized rule been done away with. With tribes just groping their way from barbarism towards civilization natural hygienic and moral laws have been trampled upon, and for this state of affairs the white man's rule is not wholly free from blame. It should be a crime to defile a potential mother and a woman should continue to be regarded as the cradle of the race and her person remain sacred and inviolate under the law, as was the case in former times.
The only charge that could be brought up against primitive native socialism was that by tolerating polygamy it had incidentally legalized concubinage; but taking all circumstances into consideration, it is doubtful if the systematic prostitution of to-day is a happy substitution for the polygamy of the past.
There were no mothers of unwanted babies; no orphanages, because there were no stray children; the absence of extreme wealth and dire poverty prevented destitution, and the Natives had little or no insanity; they had