CHAPTER XIV

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The Political Control of Africa

The control of land and its raw material and the purchase and sale of labor in Africa pose a problem of political domination; and this political control of Africa compels Europe to examine again the relation which this control has to the theory of democratic government. The political control of Africa, therefore, is directly connected with the fate of democracy in the world.

The political control in Africa in modern times has been almost entirely subservient to economic penetration. It has, therefore, followed no clear pattern, laid down no rules and been inspired by no clear ideals. Sometimes it has seemed as though the dominating power had in mind only the white settlers and was regarding the great mass of Negroes merely as capital goods. For instance, in the British South Africa Act of 1909, by which the British government granted autonomy to the white people of South Africa, the overwhelming native majority was scarcely mentioned.

In other cases the plight of the natives was put forward as the chief reason for political interference and then afterwards quite forgotten in the demands of the white settlers. For instance, the blue book of the British government on German colonies during the World War bewailed forced labor and asked Englishmen to fight in Kenya and release Africa from “the Hun.” Yet soon after the war, a handful of white landowners were demanding the virtual control of the best land and the labor of three million natives. In still other cases, plans for the government, education and control of the natives were laid down, but difficulties of cost, extent of territory and other matters hindered any definite following up of this program over long periods. This was true in French Equatorial Africa and in Portuguese Africa.

On the other hand, with materials and labor in increasing demand, regular and profitable trade and industry could only be established when peace and order among the natives were assured. Complete control, however, was difficult. If the natives were armed with modern weapons, as was true for a long time in Abyssinia and to some extent in West Africa, the cost of subjugation more than balanced any possible profit. If, however, it became a matter of self-protection against threat of aggression, as was true often in South Africa, the subjugation of the native became a main object regardless of cost; and in this way the natives within the Union of South Africa were gradually reduced to submission. Where the development of the country was a matter of investment, what was sought was a balance of peace and labor control which would enable the dominating power to rule the natives at least expense. Usually this meant that no attempt was made completely to subjugate the Negroes or, if the attempt was made, it was eventually given up and by treaty, custom and understanding a definite relationship between the dominant power and native autonomy established.

This was the case in West Africa, both British and French, and we may begin our study of political control in Africa here. British West Africa was not conquered. Such attempts as were made to this end were long drawn out and costly. With better weapons and trained soldiery, the British repeatedly inflicted severe defeats upon the natives, but to hold them afterwards in subjection called for diplomacy rather than force. Moreover, the West African investor and trader had to face in England a difficult public opinion, with large powers of democratic control.

English public opinion after the triumph of the anti-slavery crusade would not consent to open and violent conquest; but on the other hand it could be cajoled into armed action against slave traders and aroused by native customs repugnant to modern ideas. Side by side, therefore, with a distinct plan among English philanthropists of free black nations in West Africa with self-determination and democratic government, arose a system of commercial pressure by means of trade, military intervention, “punitive” expeditions, etc., which gradually brought West Africa under political control. Thus anti-slavery was linked with increasing effort to extend English trade in Africa, with wider investment in African labor and material, and with growing conviction that control of land and labor was necessary not only for large income but for the spread of civilization.

Instead, therefore, of complete conquest and direct control of West Africa there arose a system which has been called “indirect rule,” but which is in reality not so much a deliberate method of controlling African colonies as a line of least resistance. Indirect rule was stooping to conquer and yielding to local and tribal autonomy in sufficient degree to insure peace, profitable trade and investment.

Local and tribal autonomy in British West Africa has come to be a method of guiding native tribes in practically any direction that the colonial power wishes. In practice everything depends on the kind of administrator who is in control, and on the pressure both from home and among the white traders in the colony which can be brought to bear upon him.

If, for instance, the administrator is the mouthpiece or tool of the investors at home or of the representatives of organized commerce and industry in the colony, then the object of his policy is the maximum of profit. If this can be attained by encouraging among the Negroes stagnation and reaction through old and conservative chiefs, and the encouragement of harmless ancient customs and ceremonies, the administration may be regarded as successful from the point of view of business. It may be the role of such administration to repress the young and educated critics of the tribe; to limit education and modern enlightenment, and to repress urges to wider self-rule. A period of such rule may leave the tribe after a generation less able to cope with modern conditions than before the experiment, and can render it putty in the hands of the industrial exploiter.

On the other hand, a far-sighted administrator, fairly independent of the influence of merchants and investors, could make tribal autonomy a method of slowly guiding the footsteps of a people to economic and social independence and of gradually training modern men capable of self-rule. In either case the prevailing institutions and the vernacular tongue would be used, but for widely different reasons; for in the latter case, the European tongue would be made from the earliest beginnings of education, a vehicle of communication with the civilized world and modern thought. And tribal institutions would be changed and modernized by scientific study and expert social control. Local autonomy, therefore, or as it is often called “indirect rule,” may be a line of least resistance for the peaceful and profitable control of African colonies, or it may be a method of social education for backward races.

On the African West Coast, and especially in Nigeria, local tribal autonomy was encouraged by Lord Lugard, governor of Nigeria, with the avowed object of encouraging “the economic development of the colony through the native working in his own time and in his own way and for his own profit.” It did not involve native democratic control or political independence, but it was a challenge to uncurbed commercial exploitation and it was easier to attempt this on the West Coast than elsewhere.

The cost of efforts at conquests and complete domination here had already been enormous. It had taken many wars partially to subdue these people and certain colonies like Lagos proudly claim to this day that they have never been conquered and exist as independent states in treaty relations with Great Britain.

Secondly, by good chance the natives of Nigeria and the Gold Coast appeased industry by proving their ability to develop, under black peasant proprietors, agricultural enterprise to such an extent that the plantation system has not been able to displace them. In this and other ways, the profit of industry has come to depend in West Africa not upon land monopoly and forced labor, so much as upon the buying and selling of produce and its transport to market. We have seen how the English by trade, war and treaty gained substantial domination on the Gold Coast and in Southern Nigeria. After the Berlin Conference of 1884, England hastened to consolidate this territory and annex the hinterland. The Beni resisted, but a large force of English was landed in 1897 and the city occupied after hard fighting. The king was deported. A second expedition was necessary in 1899. Finally, the country was included in Southern Nigeria with a British resident as adviser, but with considerable local autonomy. The ancient line of kings still rules.

In Northern Nigeria lay Hausaland. The rulers were the Fulani, who had invaded the country in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The country was ruled by emirs, of which the principal ones had their capitals at Sokoto, Kano, Katsina and Zaria. In 1886 the Royal Niger Company obtained a charter. This company, already mentioned, was one of the early British chartered enterprises which became a sub-government. It annexed territory, made laws, maintained an army, laid and collected taxes and signed treaties. By 1894, because of the continued resistance of the organized native states in the interior and the fear of French rivalry, the British negotiated a treaty with the king of Borgu and in 1899 took over the Royal Niger Company.

By 1903 the British held control by treaty and force over the whole of Nigeria, and Lugard became high commissioner and began to plan his policy of peaceful penetration and indirect rule. In 1906, Lagos and Southern Nigeria were united into the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, and in 1914 all of Nigeria was united into the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, with Lagos as the seat of government. The protectorate is now divided into two groups of provinces, the northern and southern, and the mandate of the Cameroons is attached for administrative purposes. Lugard, who had consolidated the territory, served as commissioner from 1900 to 1906, then retired, but became governor-general from 1912 to 1919.

The method of English control in Nigeria centers on the use and development of the tribal chieftainship or of the corresponding Mohammedan emirate. Such chiefs have been recognized and make an integral part of the machinery of government. There are two hundred and fifty such native authorities representing roughly the tribal units as they existed in 1900. Native law is recognized in native courts, but a parallel system of British courts ranging from the supreme court of the whole protectorate down to the court which the British resident holds. The bulk of native litigation is handled by native judges under native law. Certain cases can be transferred from the native to British courts but this does not often take place. In the Mohammedan section native judges are well-trained and under the paramount chief or a subordinate chief, sitting with persons representing the community.

The native chiefs and rulers have regular salaries and much power both financial and judicial. The king of Benin for instance rules with a council of nine and receives a salary of $7,500 a year. The Alake who rules the Egbas has complete financial control. Three of the emirs receive thirty thousand dollars a year. The power of these rulers is limited and directed by British administrators who give advice and are enabled to enforce this advice through the power of the courts, through partial financial control, through their large power of deposing chiefs and influencing the choice of successors, and through some actual military force.

There are many evidences of progress and prosperity. The city of Kano, for instance, has public works, a system of schools and sanitation. It is building a library and putting in a system of town planning. It has an annual revenue of $630,000 a year. The government of the Egbas operates water works and electric lights. Education is carried on to an increasing extent in all these territories.

Taxes are assessed by Europeans and collected by natives. One-half to seventy per cent of the taxes goes to the native treasury and the rest to the British. The native treasury funds are used to pay salaries, keep wells in order, run the schools and public works. The native administrators in these matters are advised by European officials. There are sixty-three native treasuries in Northern Nigeria and one hundred fourteen in Southern Nigeria. There are charges, probably true, that without careful inspection the native treasuries would be subject to graft and corruption; and on the other hand native money collected from poor peasants is used to pay high salaries to British advisers or to furnish them with fine houses and automobiles.

Many examples could be pointed out to show a large degree of success in local autonomy; and yet there are certain manifest difficulties: the white administrators by careful manipulation are not always instructing the natives and leading them toward efficient home rule; and particularly they are, for instance, steadily opposing the political recognition of younger educated men and the extension of autonomy from local tribes and local chiefs to wider and wider units of general autonomy and to modern democratic methods. There are, however, some fine exceptions, and some English administrators who have had the courage and unselfishness really to lead black Africa.

In Lagos there is a considerable number of educated Negroes working as clerks and professional men and a town council with a majority of officials, but with three elected African members. The white town clerk has most of the real power. The people of Lagos have had a great deal of agitation and even riots concerning the status of the Eleko or king of Lagos. He was de-stooled but recently restored. He appoints chiefs and headmen with the approval of the British.

Before the World War, legislation in Southern Nigeria was through proclamation by the governor. On the other hand, local democratic government had long been established in the city of Lagos, although later curtailed; and pressure from the educated natives began to be applied to initiate democratic control over the whole of the southern provinces, if not further. The effective leadership of the protectorate, however, has been put largely in the hands of white men, by wealth, social prestige and law, thus emphasizing the idea that, even in Africa, progress is a matter of race and color rather than of training.

Gambia was settled by trading companies and controlled originally from Sierra Leone, but became a Crown colony in 1843. Sierra Leone is the pioneer British West African colony and at various periods all the other colonies have been placed under its jurisdiction for longer or shorter periods. The British by implication, if not by categorical promise, proposed eventual independence to the colony first established in Freetown; but as the new commercial policy for West Africa grew, the little democracy at Freetown was limited and held in leash, while the territory to the north was established as the protectorate of Sierra Leone and governed by proclamation.

The Freetown municipality, organized in 1893, had at that time more power than any other African community. It was ruled by two thousand black voters, who elected a council and had power of taxation. After the war, there was a deficit and a great deal of propaganda to convince the people of Freetown that British officials could give them better government than Negroes. This was true, for the British official was a better-educated, better-paid man with wider experience, while the political power of the Negroes in taxation and administration was fatally limited. Finally the mayor and other officials were convicted of conspiracy and misappropriation of funds, but the conviction was secured only by the overruling of the court assessors by the white presiding judge. The real question of actual guilt has never been settled, but a town council with a majority of official appointees replaced the former municipal government.

There is no doubt that the development of democratic government in small sections like Lagos and Freetown, with citizens of limited education and experience, presents difficulties. Nevertheless if Africa is to be developed as a Negro country, it is an experiment necessary and quite worth while. Instead of this, the attempt has been made to develop the mass of Negroes still living in tribal relations, without the intervention of educated leaders of their own race. A breach was thus developed between the white British administrator and the black educated leader, which has made the growth of self-rule difficult and was undoubtedly designed for this very purpose.

In some cases, especially in the Gold Coast, the Negroes have met this policy by stressing their tribal affinities and seeking to get in close touch with the chiefs. Some curious results have come from this. When, for instance, the Eleko of Lagos sent an educated African to England to represent his interests, the colonial whites accused both the representative and the Eleko of misrepresentation and displaced the ruler. Controversy over this episode still persists and there seems no doubt but that the real facts were deliberately misrepresented by the whites. One can easily sense here a growing struggle between the British administrative adviser, standing behind the power of the chiefs, and the rising democracy of educated black folk.

The Gold Coast is the colony which has led the forward movement toward increased autonomy and greater control through the educated black classes. The Ashanti and Fanti peoples, who are the chief tribes of the Gold Coast, are highly intelligent and belonged formerly to one tribe or state, moving down to the coast either because of pressure from the growing states of the interior, or because of the profit of the coast trade.

The colony of the Gold Coast is a little smaller than the state of Oregon. It was here that the Portuguese in 1482 built Elmina Castle and started the regular African slave trade. The English appeared in 1653, followed by the Dutch as soon as they gained their independence from Catholic Spain. The Swedes and the Danes followed. London merchants entered the slave trade in 1662 and in 1672 the Royal African Company was incorporated. Finally the English gained the monopoly of the slave trade from 1713 until long after its legal abolition in 1807.

The Gold Coast is made up of three areas: the coast region or colony proper; Ashanti north of the Pra River; and the region north of Ashanti called the northern territories. The colony is administered by the governor aided by a legislative council, while the protectorate is under resident commissioners. There is native administration, but the chiefs and councils are responsible to European political officers who administer the states through them. Each chief has a certain amount of autonomy in local affairs according to native law. Native law is recognized and in the regular courts conducted by the British, juries consisting largely of Africans serve—an unusual situation in Africa. Appeals from native courts to the white district commissioners may be taken in civil cases and this happens more often than in Nigeria. There is a British West African Court of Appeal.

The Gold Coast government declared its policy in 1921 to employ qualified Africans in any department of the government except in the political service and as judges. From 1919 to 1927, thirty-eight Africans have been appointed to positions formerly occupied by Europeans, including two police magistrates, a Crown councilor, an assistant Secretary of Native Affairs, four medical officials, etc. During the next twenty years the European staff will be decreased by one hundred and sixty-two and the African staff increased by two hundred and two. Lately, however, in appointments of junior officials no Negroes have been included, which has raised much criticism. Thus in the Gold Coast it has been impossible completely to drive the wedge between the educated and the primitive African and to make the white man the invariable political arbiter and leader; and indeed out of the Gold Coast with its educated leadership has come perhaps the most significant recent democratic movement in black Africa.

This movement was in three phases: first, the Fanti Confederation of 1867; then the Gold Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society formed in 1898; and finally the National Congress of British West Africa in 1920. The Mfantsi Amanbuhu Fekuw or Fanti Confederation was agitated in 1865, organized in 1867 and adopted its constitution in 1871. When the scheme was presented to the British governor he arrested the leaders and imprisoned them on a charge of high treason; yet they were simply asserting their ancient rights, including the judicial authority of the chiefs and their financial and administrative powers. They planned schools and other institutions. Their movement finally resulted in the introduction of Crown colony government in 1874.

Meantime the trade of the Gold Coast increased and in 1895 a Crown Lands Ordinance was introduced designed to place the land of the colony in the hands of the government. The natives were aroused and the Gold Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society was organized on the lines of the Aborigines Protection Society in England. A deputation was sent to England and engaged the services of Herbert Asquith. Nearly all the principal chiefs of the country were back of the organization and it was recognized by the government in 1898. The governor met the Society in session and commended the founding of it. Subsequent governors up until 1905 recognized the Society and discussed important matters with its executive committee. The organization still exists.

After the World War, the educated Negroes of the four West African British colonies planned for union and eventual dominion status. The movement was instigated by the reactionary demands of the English Empire Development Society and the determination of certain English commercial interests to recoup the losses of war by more systematic effort to monopolize land and control West African labor. In 1920, a conference representing the four West African colonies was held at Accra, called the National Congress of British West Africa. It demanded the right to vote and control the revenue; it opposed the impudent program of the Empire Development Society; it defended democratic government as an ancient Negro right: “. . . In the demand for the franchise by the people of British West Africa, it is not to be supposed that they are asking to be allowed to copy a foreign institution. On the contrary, it is important to notice that the principle of electing representatives to local councils and bodies is inherent in all the systems of British West Africa.”1

The governors of both the Gold Coast and Nigeria, liberal men and defenders of local tribal autonomy, vehemently opposed these demands and tried to drive a wedge between the members of this conference and the chiefs, alleging that the Congress did not represent the native community. The Congress denied this, and to present their attitude sent a delegation direct to England. Finally the Colonial Office was forced to act, although action was taken slowly and with apparent effort, made to avoid any appearance that the government was yielding to organized pressure from black folk. Reforms came between 1922 and 1925 in Gambia, Sierra Leone, in Nigeria and at last in the Gold Coast.

In all cases, a native elective element was introduced into the legislative council, although the official majority was retained to out-vote it; as usual in Africa, white business and commerce have long had open and direct voice in the council. For instance, in Nigeria, there is an official majority of thirty members on the legislative council; then there are four elected African members; and four nominated members to represent Chambers of Commerce. These latter are always the white agents of trading companies. Also there is one member to represent the Chamber of Mines; one, banking; and one, shipping. Thus foreign capital has a larger membership on the Council than the Africans themselves. The Governor may also select seven members in those parts of the colonies and southern provinces which do not return elected representatives. In this category the missionaries come, making, at least in many cases, “triple alliance between the State Bureaucracy, finance-capital and the Church.”2 This council legislates for the colony and the southern provinces; the laws for the northern provinces are still promulgated by the governor.

On the Gold Coast in 1925, a legislative council of fifteen official and fourteen unofficial members was authorized by the Colonial Office. Of the latter, five represented shipping, banking and commerce; one is selected by the Chamber of Commerce, and one by the Chamber of Mines. Of the nine remaining members, six are chiefs and three are elected by the towns. This gave undue representation to the chiefs and to the English advisers of the chiefs. The educated Africans are protesting still against it, claiming that the chiefs are hand-picked and invariably vote with the government.

The towns in the Gold Coast since 1894 have had town councils, one-half elected and one-half nominated by the governor, who has the casting vote. In 1924, a Municipal Corporation Ordinance authorized councils with majorities of elected members. Ashanti is administered apart from the colony by a commissioner responsible to the governor. Native authority under the Asantehene was restored in 1935.

The colony and protectorate of Sierra Leone have a legislative council with eleven official and ten unofficial members. Of the unofficial members three are elected and seven are appointed by the governors. Among the seven are three paramount chiefs, two representatives of commercial interests, and two Africans from the colony. Voters must be males and there is a literary test, which is true in none of the other colonies. Elected members hold their seats for five years.

Thus black West Africa, through united action, gained some beginnings of representative government. The English, however, have worked to stem further progress in that direction. Decorations and awards have been judiciously distributed and the conservative native power encouraged by the knighting of several paramount chiefs. Formerly educated black colonials like Sir Conrad Reeves in Barbadoes and Sir Samuel Lewis in Sierra Leone were thus honored. The latter type of educated African naturally demands and receives more recognition and is able to make the problems of Africans more widely known.

Further than that, the depression has acted to discourage political agitation. The Congress of West Africa has held no meetings for the last five or six years and political representation given to commercial interests is not only a frank recognition of the power of capital, not made so openly in any other legislatures of the world, but also it tends to draw away Negro capitalists to common ground between them and the whites. This leaves the black peasants and workers without leadership. Nevertheless the determined drift toward nationhood in British West Africa is only halted and not killed; spurred by the example of India and the rise of Japan, it is bound from time to time to reassert itself.

There are still some curious discrepancies and inequalities in West African British colonies. For instance, while natives inhabiting the colonies are considered as British subjects, those living in the protectorate are only “British protected persons.” In the British courts of some of the protectorates neither lawyers nor juries are allowed and appeals depend upon the decision of the judge.

There are many laws against sedition. In the Gold Coast, against the protest of all the natives among the unofficial councilors, a dangerous sedition law was enacted in 1934; and in general the right of assembly and free speech in West Africa is seriously curtailed. On the other hand, there are certain unofficial advantages given to the whites, especially in the matter of living quarters which really involve a vital lessening of their health hazards. By unwritten law in Bathurst, Accra and Lagos the whites occupy the most sanitary parts of the town along the sea front with modern bungalows built out of public funds; in Freetown they live in the highlands on the hills. These beautiful living quarters are in high and segregated localities with well-planned houses, golf and tennis facilities and schools. The white officials who occupy them are given large salaries even by English standards, with liberal leaves of absence, and have an abundance of cheap menial service. In this way a high and efficient type of Englishman can be attracted to colonial service; the contrast between such persons and the poor uneducated native tends to emphasize color caste.

In French West Africa there was a development which grew out of the four French settlements on the coast dating back to the seventeenth century. French penetration took place among the remains of former African imperialism in the Sudan, overthrown by invasion, rivalry and conquest. From the coast colonies all around Senegal, the French during the early nineteenth century began to press toward the Niger River and Timbuktu. Gradually they overcame the resistance of a number of independent states by treaty and proffered protection. French Africa even more than British Africa made the conquest of the blacks a matter of treaty and negotiation combined with force, which left the Negroes with their own local autonomy.

In addition to this, the French never became slave traders on the scale that the Dutch and British did, and were soon supplanted by the British, losing their vested interests. The lag, therefore, between the decline of the French slave trade and the rise of commercial imperialism in Africa was longer; the profit due to caste, less; and stimulated by the extraordinary history of Haiti, this gave a chance for the growth of an African colonial idea in France in which the Africans were considered as prospective French citizens and the African colonies as destined to be more or less integrated with France.

In theory the French guiding principle in Africa came thus to be the unity of France and her colonies. All subjects were to be children of France and have the same duties. The first duty was defense of the mother country. The second, economic organization for self-support; and the third, furnishing raw materials for French industry and a market for French productions.

French colonial effort split African imperialism into two streams. On the one hand the English, Belgians and Germans clung to the idea of colonies primarily for investment, and carried over the mercantile theory which caused the American Revolution. They could do this the more easily, because racial caste born of slavery and the slave trade hindered those countries from regarding African colonies as integral parts of the home country. The investment value of colonies stopped efforts for political independence and became the hidden cause of further race hate.

The French through ownership of the sugar crop in Haiti had tended in the same direction until the French Revolution. They then vacillated, and under Napoleon tried to restore the colonial idea, but were frustrated by Toussaint L’Ouverture. The ensuing French republic took a strong stand for the essential equality of the inhabitants of the colonies with the people of France, carrying the matter far in Algiers, and making distinct beginnings in Africa and Asia, until all colonies had some representation in the French Parliament. French administrators in Africa were not set up and encouraged as a segregated caste, and while they were more in number they received less pay than administrators in British West Africa, and had fewer special privileges.

On the other hand, the refusal of France to draw the color line in her colonies, the admission of blacks to her civil service and willingness to share with them in part political control, does not mean the complete subordination of the profit idea in colonial France to the idea of mass welfare. It merely means that admission to the ranks of the exploiting bourgeoisie is not confined by color caste to the whites as is so largely true in British Africa. Nevertheless the educated, enfranchised black West African may become as eager and successful a bourgeois exploiter as any white man. There still remains the task of securing among such potential leaders of black Africa, conversion to the idea of the paramount importance of the prosperity of the mass of natives rather than the enrichment of the few black or white at their expense.

French Africa is divided into two parts: French West Africa with one and one-half million square miles and fifteen million inhabitants, among whom are twenty-four thousand whites; and French Equatorial Africa with nearly three million square miles but only one million inhabitants. French West Africa is ruled by a governor-general and is divided into seven colonies, each colony presided over by a governor. There is an advisory body of forty-four members, of which ten are natives; and machinery for consultation between administrators and the natives has been extended throughout West Africa. The chief colony is Senegal, which has a colonial council and is divided into four communes which have municipal self-government and municipal councils under strict control from the general government.

Government in French Africa began in the four communes of Senegal, where any black man born there was early recognized as a French citizen. This led to a crowding in of uneducated natives to claim citizenship, and a good deal of difficulty with an electorate of little education and less experience. Attempts have been made to change the law, but the courts have upheld the citizenship of the blacks. Finally a citizenship law which fixes the status was passed in 1916.

Senegal is represented by a black deputy in the French Parliament and these deputies have held under-secretaryships in the cabinet at various times; one, Blaise Diagne, during the World War was made High Commissioner to West Africa, being given equal rank with governor-general. In 1920 a colonial council was established for the colony of Senegal with twenty members elected by the citizens and twenty native chiefs selected by the chiefs. In 1925 the citizens were increased to twenty-four and the chiefs reduced to sixteen. Among the citizens there are eight whites and thirty-two blacks. The council gives advice, has limited power over legislation, and approves the budget. The chiefs are hand picked and usually vote with the government. The council has more power than any other consultative assembly in Africa. It is controlled by the local population, while the executive is controlled from Paris.

The other colonies have advisory councils of native members elected by native electoral colleges. Outside Senegal there are city councils in three classes: the lowest with nominated members; the next with members elected under a restricted suffrage, and the highest with members elected by universal suffrage. Nineteen communes are in the lowest class and three in the second. None have yet been placed in the third.

There were in 1936 nearly eighty-one thousand black citizens in French West Africa. Of these, 78,376 were in Senegal. Outside of Senegal, few black men have been naturalized. The requirements are ability to read and write French, means of existence and good character, together with devotion to French interests. Only a thousand natives were naturalized between 1914 and 1936. A citizen is not subject to native taxes or liable for three years military service. He serves but eighteen months, and only in Senegal. He is not liable to forced labor and is tried before French courts. He can secure land titles and hold office.

The governor-general of West Africa declared in 1921 that “apprenticeship in public life and in the duties which it imposes, seems to me to constitute the most rational and sensible political machinery for our African population, which it is our duty to associate in an ever increasing measure in the management of all our affairs.”

The comparatively slow growth of effective democracy in French West Africa is being modified and accelerated in two respects: first, the use of advisory councils and consultation among the natives by the administrators; and secondly, by the extraordinary growth of the plan of education which is spoken of elsewhere.

In their effort at social reconstruction in Africa, the French at first tried the characteristic and most logical short cut of ignoring native customs, languages and hereditary rule. Most of the native chiefs were displaced, the French language was made the main basis of education, and scant attention was paid to native custom. On the other hand, and simultaneously with this, the attempt was made to substitute changes which would not leave the cultural organization aimless and helpless. The hereditary chiefs, for instance, were replaced by black appointed chiefs and stress put upon the intelligence of such appointees and their knowledge of French and familiarity with French administration. They are paid by the colony.

French Equatorial Africa has had a long history. Its northern section formed a part of the Hausa states and of the kingdoms of Bornu and Kanem. Toward the south it includes the kingdom of the Bagirmi, which lasted up to the nineteenth century. Then came the Wadai and the Bateke.

War and the slave trade, invasion and conquest, have broken up tribes and cultures here for many centuries, and, last but not least, has been the spread of the desert into former fertile regions and the devastation of malaria and other tropical diseases in the jungles. The result is that this vast territory of over 900,000 square miles, or four and a third times the size of France, has less than three inhabitants to the square mile.

Its conquest and occupation have been very slow. The occupation began in the Congo region and extended slowly north by treaty and a policy of great caution in interfering with tribal and national autonomy. As late as 1908 only about a quarter of the territory was really under French administration. The result was that in the interstices between tribal autonomy and French administration, industrial exploitation, especially in times of stress, entered, patterned after the Belgian Congo regime.

The French theory that all children of France are to be equal, was modified in 1890 to include efforts to conserve native institutions. In 1937 the French Popular Front government showed some reaction toward the older policy and toward representative institutions for colonies. There is a separate colonial ministry in Paris for African colonies assisted by an expert advisory body including delegates from the colonies. Also the French have a colonial inspectorate and each colony is visited by inspectors every two or three years.

The scandals eventually became so marked that French administration was increased and the number of troops. Just before the World War a part of Equatorial Africa was ceded to Germany, but this was returned after the war. Also, after the war, the number of administrative officials was reduced. The French government between 1918 and 1924 paid about forty million francs to balance the budget of this territory. Between 1924 and 1926 the financial situation was improved and contributions from France ceased. In order to balance the budget, taxation on the natives has been considerably increased and welfare expenditures decreased. In 1910 the colony was federated, but in 1934 it became one colony with four regions. The local authority is empowered to establish communes and determine their composition and competence. Four such communes have been created. They have an official chairman and four nominated members, one a native, and have power to levy taxes.

South from French Equatorial Africa lies the vast bulk of the Belgian Congo, nearly equal in size. In 1936 it had a native population of nearly ten million and a white population of eighteen thousand. Stanley promised peace and tribal autonomy. “I am charged,” he said, “to open and keep open, if possible, all such districts and countries as I may explore for the benefit of the commercial world. The mission is supported by a philanthropic society, which numbers noble-minded men of several nations. It is not a religious society, but my instructions are entirely of that spirit. No violence must be used, and wherever rejected, the mission must withdraw to seek another field.”3

The Bula-Matadi, or Stone-Breaker, as the natives called Stanley, threw himself energetically into the work and had by 1881 built a road past the falls of the Congo to the plateau, where thousands of miles of river navigation were thus opened. Stations were established, and by 1884 Stanley returned armed with four hundred and fifty “treaties” with the native chiefs, and the new “state” appealed to the world for recognition.

The United States was first to recognize the “Congo Free State,” which was at last made a sovereign power under international guarantees by the Congress of Berlin, in the year 1885; and Leopold II was recognized as king.

One of the first tasks before the new state was to check the Arab slave traders. The Arabs had hitherto acted as traders and middlemen along the upper Congo, and when the English and Congo state overthrew Mzidi, the reigning king in the Katanga country, a general revolt of the Arabs and mulattoes took place. For a time, 1892–93, the whites were driven back, but in a year or two the Arabs and their allies were subdued.

We have seen how Leopold carried out his promises to the world. Christian commerce proved far worse than the Mohammedan slave trade. The political autonomy of the land and even the marvelous indigenous culture came near destruction here under the Leopoldian regime. By encouraging and increasing tribal animosities, a police force of black soldiers led by white officers destroyed tribal organizations and murdered and maimed large numbers of people.

The Belgian state, which succeeded to control, was impeded in its plans by no large amount of tribal and local autonomy. The resident agents of the Belgian government and the representatives of European industry ruled the country, but because of its vast extent, the smaller administrative force and the large number of natives, they have been compelled in some degree to recognize and even reconstitute tribal government. In 1906 native chiefs were given some recognition. In 1910 the native people were to be grouped under traditional authorities. Over 2,500 such authorities are now recognized. These are of two types: one has the customary native powers and the other administrative duties put upon him by the government. The chiefs receive small salaries and a few native treasuries are allowed. Recent attempts have been made to create new centers out of native industrial cities, dividing them according to tribes and employment. Such a center may raise taxes, keep law and order, and transmit native wishes to the white governors of the province.

In the Katanga mining district, native and European quarters are separated by a “neutral zone” occupied either by parks or by hospitals, schools and prisons; elsewhere it is usual to find the native location at a short distance from the town, and non-natives are not allowed in the “native city” without permission. Trading by natives is allowed. As yet the Congo native, while increasing in industrial efficiency and paying increasing dividends to European investors, has practically no voice in his general government and only restricted tribal autonomy.

It must be remembered that the contrast between the objects of Leopold and the objects of the state in the Belgian Congo was one of method and not of basic principle. Leopold sought immediate profit for himself on short term investment and by almost any means. Belgium seeks eventual and continuous profit for white folk on long term investment, for which a proper labor force must be provided. Into this latter plan some social betterment plans for the Negro himself must necessarily enter, but this would be incidental to the main object of profit for white Belgium.

The role of Belgium in the Congo is not mainly the uplift and civilization of Negroes—it is private profit on large and growing investment. Nothing must interfere with this. Belgians look upon the Congo as their chief source of wealth and prosperity. The great profit from Congo enterprises is necessary for the present Belgian standard of living and international position. They are proud to be masters of a colony eighty-five times the surface of the Mother Country. Nor does the Belgian working-class conceive of the black Congolese as fellow workers, whose status should in sheer self-defense be safeguarded and raised by political action in Belgium; rather they are means of raising Belgian wages and lowering taxes.

While Leopold, working swiftly, was ruthless in his treatment of the natives and invited revolt, the consequences of which were only avoided by playing up inter-tribal jealousies, Belgium, on the other hand, realizes that peace and a fair degree of contentment in the Congo must be maintained by a country of eight million people in an area of twelve thousand square miles, who are exploiting ten million people occupying 900,000 square miles. Nothing but the united forces of Europe could save Belgium from any determined revolt of the Black Congo, with even a minimum supply of modern arms.

We turn now to the East Coast. The British seizure of East Africa began with the desire to guard the Suez Canal; the domination of Egypt made this possible and the seizure of the Sudan maintained the water supply of Egypt. Egypt is today partially independent, but England is still her predominant partner in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The Sudan has nearly a million square miles and a population of nearly six million, including seventy thousand non-natives. It is divided into nine provinces under governors and the administration is carried out through British district commissioners. Under these are native Sudanese officials. There is a nominated advisory council but little democratic control. The civil service, however, is being filled increasingly with black native officials.

The excuse which English merchants and imperialists could best use for their interference with Zanzibar and East Africa was the suppression of the slave trade, which had a strong emotional hold upon the English middle class and the descendants of the abolitionists. The slave trade here was large, until it was finally suppressed about 1870. However, the aim of the English went beyond the slave trade and Zanzibar, and was extended to the mainland of East Africa, which was dominated by the sultans of Zanzibar.

In order to frustrate the expansion of Germany in East Africa, British commercial interests seized Zanzibar and Pemba and they are still under British control, but have maintained partially their local autonomy. A sultan reigns in Zanzibar with an Englishman as permanent prime minister. The legislative council has eight official and six unofficial members, the latter representing the various races. These races are a few hundred Europeans, fourteen hundred Indians, thirty-three thousand Arabs and the rest Negroes. The sultan receives sixteen thousand pounds sterling annually as his share of the revenue.

Thus commercial English and German joint stock companies seized what is now Kenya and Tanganyika, the division between the two taking place by treaty in 1890. This division, however, did not preclude the Germans from working north toward the headwaters of the Nile and to circumvent this, the British pressed through Kenya to Uganda.

Uganda was then the most prosperous and advanced of the African states. The history of the rulers of Buganda, one of the provinces, goes back by tradition thousands of years, covering a line of six hundred Kabakas. They developed an “extraordinary social and political and even legal system.” From 1890 on Uganda passed through extraordinary experiences. The British East Africa Company received a charter in 1888 and paved the way for the annexation of Uganda and Kenya. Uganda came completely under British protection in 1900 through agreements signed with the rulers of the native kingdoms of Buganda, Toro and Ankole. According to the terms of these agreements, the native rulers retained jurisdiction over their kingdoms in internal affairs affecting native administration. The king of Buganda, the most developed state of the protectorate, is called the Kabaka, and by treaty rights with the British Government is officially accorded the title of “His Highness” and flies his own flag.

The British are represented by the governor and legislative and executive councils. The native rulers are responsible to the governor and their administration must conform to his policy under the Uganda agreement. Buganda has an oligarchic parliament called the Lukiko of eighty-nine members and a cabinet. For a long time the late Sir Apolo Kagwa, a very able man, was prime minister, serving under three kings. He died in 1927. The present king is paid one thousand five hundred pounds sterling a year beside revenues from his private estates. The kings of the other kingdoms also get salaries. The whole of Uganda is about the size of Sweden and has about three and one-half million people. Taxation and court processes under native law are in the hands of the natives but with little democratic control and with supervision on the part of the British.

The demand for “self-government” on the part of the white settlers in Kenya is in effect a demand on the part of twenty thousand white settlers to have virtual control over three million natives and partial control over fifty thousand Asiatics. This demand has been so insistent that it became a test of English democracy especially during the two administrations of the Labor Party. The right of Great Britain to have some voice could not be denied, after the large appropriations amounting to at least sixty million dollars which British taxpayers gave for the development of the colony, and the military protection afforded it.

Immigrant speculators and agents of corporations began to come to Kenya in 1902. In 1911 there were three thousand whites; in 1921 ten thousand five hundred; in 1926 twelve thousand five hundred, and in 1936 twenty thousand. Some local autonomy was left the tribes from the beginning, since the whites were segregating themselves on the fertile highlands and the natives were partly nomad herdsmen. In 1902 the custom of appointing headmen began, charged with the duty of keeping order and maintaining roads. Native tribunals were recognized in 1907, but the chief was displaced by a white district official, although there was from 1913 substantial recognition of native law.

On the other hand, the handful of white settlers early began to take general control of the government. Beginning with 1910 there were regular meetings of associations representing the white settlers, which made proposals to the government, and censored English officials. They began to function as an unofficial parliament. Financial control of the colony passed largely into their hands, and even bodies and committees established to safeguard native rights invariably had white settlers as members. All local commissions on native affairs have a majority of white settlers. The white settlers resorted many times to terroristic methods. In 1905 they compelled a governor to leave the colony by staging a violent demonstration. They have used insulting language against both officials and natives.

Kenya became a crown colony in 1920 with the coast lands still held as a protectorate. The legislative council at that time had an official majority, and in addition to that the Europeans elected eleven members, while two members were nominated to represent the Indians. Because of complaint and unrest, there began in 1921 a succession of English parliamentary commissions, who investigated conditions in Kenya either by actual visit or by report, and made a series of recommendations.

The Wood-Winterton Commission of 1921 recommended that educated Indians and natives be admitted to the franchise, but at the same time it confirmed the whites in their monopoly control of the best land. This proposal raised an extraordinary storm in Kenya. Actual rebellion was threatened and a delegation was sent to South Africa to ask aid. Kenya proclaimed itself the “Thermopylae of Africa,” the gateway that was to push back Asia and establish white supremacy with black serfs!

The English government replied with the Duke of Devonshire White Paper of 1923 which declared that the “interests of the African native must be paramount.” And that “if and when these interests and the interests of the immigrant races should conflict, the former should prevail.” It sought to appease the settlers, however, by establishing separate electoral roles for Indians and Arabs, and it confirmed the whites in their land monopoly. The whites in 1923 organized a vigilance committee and threatened to take over the government and arrest the governor, Sir Robert Coryndon. Finally they sulkily refrained from pushing their extreme demands, but with fierce denunciation of this attempt to “West-Africanize” Kenya.

Before the English general election of 1924, which put the Labor Party first in power, the party conference declared that a labor government would “transfer to the inhabitants of the countries [the colonies] without distinction of race or color, such measure of political responsibility as they were capable of exercising; while imperial responsibility will be maintained during the period preceding the establishment of democratic institutions.” They declared that they would by education or otherwise prepare the whole body of inhabitants for self-government.

The Indians for a time refused to pay poll tax or elect members to the council, but decided to co-operate in 1924 through the influence of the Governor, Sir Robert Coryndon. Under him medical, educational and other services were begun for the natives, and stock breeding and agriculture encouraged in the reserves. An ordinance of 1924 provided for the creation of district native councils, and during the next twelve years twenty such councils were established. The district commissioner is ex-officio president with executive functions. The native members are appointed by the government, although members may be suggested by the natives. These councils receive no share of the general revenue, but get certain rents and licenses in the reserve and share in a small native trust fund. They may levy special additional taxes. The councils have done a good deal in forestry, fly clearance, and establishing schools.

The Labor Government appointed a parliamentary commission under the chairmanship of Ormsby-Gore in 1924. This commission, one of the best ever appointed, was for some unknown reason dismissed in 1925. That same year the liberal Governor Coryndon died and was succeeded by the reactionary Sir Edward Grigg, who came under the complete domination of Lord Delamere.

Delamere owned 200,000 acres in Kenya and was one of the worst types of white African imperialist. Grigg set up committees composed of whites, in connection with each of the departments of government dealing with education, roads, etc. They gave advice and their advice was usually decisive. Local affairs were entrusted to similar bodies and they dictated the expenditures of public funds. He encouraged indirect subsidies for the whites, like the building of branch railway lines to serve the European areas, which could only be operated at a loss of a million dollars a year or more. The railways carried corn at two cents, which cost them five cents to transport.

In 1926 the white population of Kenya declared through Lord Cranworth that the interests of the white settlers must never be swamped by native interests. They called an unofficial conference of the white settlers in Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland and planned a Dominion of East Africa where the whites would rule blacks without imperial interference. This question of an East African Dominion continued to be agitated until 1932. In 1929, the Hilton Young parliamentary commission partially approved it, by commending a union of Kenya and Uganda for the purpose of a uniform native policy. This was nothing less than an attack upon black landownership and native government in Uganda. The Commission, however, further recommended a policy which would make land available for every native, sufficient to support him and his family and provide money for taxes; and they said that the available labor supply “must not be estimated solely with a view to the requirements of non-native enterprise.”

The official statement of the British Labor Party to the Labor Congress held in Brussels in 1929, said that the object should be to prepare as rapidly as possible the African people for self-government. This should be done by preventing the political power from falling into the hands of immigrant minorities who would use it for their own political and economic interests; and that general and political education should aim at making them as rapidly as possible capable of dealing with the political, economic and social conditions of the modern world.

At the beginning of the second Labor Government in 1929, the British sent Sir Samuel Wilson, permanent Under-Secretary of State, to gather further information. In June, 1930, the labor government published the Passfield White Paper on native policy in East Africa. It said that the Africans were to be allowed to grow coffee; that they might own land on individual tenure; that taxation should be graded according to wealth; and that every race and religion should have a right to equal treatment. This was followed by loud and emphatic protest, in which the settlers of Northern Rhodesia joined.

Sir Joseph Byrnes went to Kenya as Governor in 1931 while the Labor Party was still in power. The settlers of Kenya wanted the imperial government to abolish the official majority in the Kenya legislature which gave the governor power to override the settlers, and they again demanded a federation of all the colonies in British West Africa so as to extend the Kenya policy.

Another joint committee of parliament was appointed in 1931. Lord Passfield, better known as Sidney Webb, presided over the hearings in England and received the white official delegates with such great courtesy and sympathy that they departed believing that their demands were going to be granted. On the other hand, the natives of Kenya at great cost and sacrifice chose delegates and sent them to London. The Select Committee refused to hear them.

The Commission reported in 1931 and decided that the time was not ripe for taking any steps toward a formal union of the three East African territories. The British government followed this Commission’s opinion and decided in September, 1932, to abandon the idea of this political union; but it ordered the governors of the three territories to meet regularly in conference and to discuss co-operation, especially in customs duties and communications. Finally, in June, 1933, the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations decided that mandated territory like Tanganyika could not take part in such union as long as the mandate was in force.

Lord Moyne was appointed commissioner to Kenya in 1932 to look into the financial position. He recommended that a proportion of that taxation paid by natives be put into a native permanent fund for native interests and that the administration of this should not be reviewed by the Select Committee on Estimates dominated by white settlers. The settlers protested against this in meetings. No action has been taken yet.

Kenya colony and protectorate according to the law of 1934 was governed by an executive council of twelve members and a legislative council which had eleven ex-officio members and nine nominated official members; and, in addition to this, eleven elected European members, five elected Indian members, one elected Arab member and two nominated unofficial members to represent the Africans, and one nominated unofficial member to represent the Arabs. There are separate electoral rolls for Europeans, Indians, and Arabs. Legislation is made by ordinance with the advice and consent of the legislative council.

The natives of Kenya have several times rebelled against the assumptions of settlers and the seizing of their land. They have tried bringing action in local and English courts. The young educated natives are critical of English methods and insist in many cases on native customs. The Kikuyu native councils have made good their right to control schools maintained by their own funds, and the tribes of the Kavirondo are demanding territorial union for their separate parts. Today local whites still largely dictate the policy of Kenya, but they have been halted in their more ambitious policies, and there is growing recognition of increased autonomy for the natives and some steps toward a better economic policy.

Nyasaland is inhabited mainly by two Mohammedan tribes. The Scotch Presbyterians set up a mission in 1872. Together with English capitalists they formed the African Lakes Company. They came to open conflict with the Mohammedans and were threatened by the Portuguese. The British government intervened and Nyasaland became a British possession.

Nyasaland is about the size of Indiana, with one and one-half million natives, two thousand Europeans and one thousand five hundred Asiatics. Despite the activities of land-grabbing commercial companies moving north from South Africa, native autonomy has been retained to a considerable extent. The village headmen have recognized executive duties under the white district commissioners representing the government, and receive a small proportion of certain taxes which they collect, and fines and fees which go toward their salaries and toward a central equalization fund.

Nyasaland in a curious way represents the contradiction of earlier colonial methods. With the land grabbing and commercial exploitation in which the missionaries shared widely there was an unusual number of mission schools in which the natives received excellent training. Nyasaland, therefore, today has a considerably larger number of natives educated in the three R’s and their presence brings characteristic difficulties under a colonial regime which often seeks to keep the natives as illiterate as possible.

If they are recognized in the appointment of native officials, the experience and ability of black men to rule along modern lines will increase. If they are not recognized and are made subordinate to the ignorant native chiefs, their natural criticism and dissatisfaction will make the manipulation of these chiefs by white men more possible. The government professes to find it difficult to find any place for the educated black man in local government. White settlers held a conference in June, 1935, demanding of the Colonial Office a freer hand in exploiting the natives. They organized a committee to negotiate with Northern and Southern Rhodesia for a new dominion, independent of the Colonial Office in England.

The Letters Patent of 1923 which gave responsible government to Southern Rhodesia retained the provision of the Order in Council of 1898 with regard to native affairs. The governor of Southern Rhodesia is obliged to give the High Commissioner for Native Affairs of South Africa any information he may demand, and the high commissioner must approve the establishment and regulation of native councils and any collective fines. Racial discrimination is forbidden and thus in theory the right to vote is open to natives. In 1933 there were fifty-eight qualified native voters.

Chiefs and headmen to the number of about four hundred are employees of the government, with power to settle minor disputes under native law, to see that taxes are paid and that laborers are furnished. Such officials operate only on the reserves and not in the locations. On the other hand, the government of Southern Rhodesia has for a long time assumed that tribal society is crumbling and has given the organization little encouragement or support. Lately this policy shows signs of change. The Native Affairs Act of 1927 gave the native chiefs some police power and in 1930 a system of native local boards with elected members was started.

Much depends upon the future development of Southern Rhodesia. If agriculture or mining so develop that there is an increasing demand for alienation of native land or a shortage of labor, the economic and political power which the state now has over its labor force will lead to the same sort of trouble that one finds in Kenya and South Africa and the same demand to control the native. Indeed the difference today between Southern Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa in the treatment of natives is only a difference of degree.

In Northern Rhodesia the tendency is to control and govern the native in the towns and settlements near the mines and to leave him considerable autonomy in the villages and country districts. There were in Northern Rhodesia in 1934, 1,300,000 natives and ten thousand whites living on 290,000 square miles of land, including a native reserve, Barotseland, with sixty thousand square miles of poor land and 350,000 natives. The whole economy of Northern Rhodesia is subservient to the mining industry and the natives are regarded as a labor reserve, little interfered with when living in the reserves and at the same time receiving little help; but subject to strict control in the mining areas.

A native authority has been set up which deals with liquors, fire arms, gambling, water and trees, disease, crime, labor on public works, migration, food for travelers, roads between villages, prostitution and collecting taxes. Native courts deal with marriage and inheritance. Appeals may be taken from the native courts to the white district commissioner at his decision.

Among most tribes, there are regular meetings of the chiefs under supervision of Europeans. In appointing chiefs the government tries to appoint the rightful heir and the elders are consulted. The chiefs usually appoint their own headmen for the village. They are, however, greatly curtailed in power for lack of funds. They are paid from five dollars to three hundred dollars a year by the government, the average being about fifty dollars. The authority of the chiefs has been strengthened by this procedure, but the present generation of chiefs is old and conservative and shows little initiative or originality.

Usually the government or the white city conducts a large beer hall in each one of the locations, which is open three or four hours a day. They make a monthly profit of between four hundred dollars and one thousand dollars, which is supposed to go for native clinics, recreation, churches and the rebuilding of huts. Health and recreation are given some limited attention by the mine owners, but the death rate is still high. There is compensation for accident but no insurance for unemployment, and desertion of work is a penal offense.

Thus in all these Central and South African colonies, notwithstanding attempts at absolute rule, suppression and segregation, many things have made some recognition of native autonomy imperative. First of all came the question of native law. It was impossible to subject native tribes immediately to a foreign code. If the alleged aggression involved Europeans, European law might be applied, despite the fact that this was often grossly unfair. But if the question was between natives, native law must be applied to give any satisfaction. Throughout the African colonies the Europeans have thus been compelled to give some recognition to native law.

The chieftainship is a strong African institution which foreign control has seldom been able to obliterate; even where the chiefs have been overthrown, it has been necessary in many cases to revert at least to a semblance of his former power. Primarily the African chief is father of a family; from this he may rise to be head of a clan or paramount chief over a tribe or king of a nation. He is almost invariably assisted by a council and comes to no important decision without the consent of his council. New chiefs are appointed by the council and as the chief rises in power, his authority as a rule is decentralized through subordinate chiefs and headmen.

The history of political domination in South Africa is in complete contrast to both French and British West Africa, and a logical culmination of the tendency which we have followed in Uganda, the Belgian Congo, Kenya and the Rhodesias. The Union of South Africa is twice the size of France, Belgium and Holland together, and has a population of two million whites, six and one-half million Bantu, 800,000 colored people and 200,000 Asiatics.

The Union is governed by a governor-general, a senate of forty members and a house of assembly with one hundred and fifty members. Of the members of the Senate, thirty-two are elected and eight are nominated by the governor; four of the nominated members are selected for their “Acquaintance with the reasonable wants and wishes of the non-European races.” Some additional representation of the natives by white persons whom they select has been provided by the law of 1936. The members of both the House and Senate must be British subjects of European descent; they are elected by white voters, men and women, twenty-one years of age and over; and at present, from Cape Colony, three white men are chosen by male natives and colored people with property and literary tests.

In the constitution of South Africa of 1906 and 1907, there was an express provision against any legislation which discriminated against British subjects on account of color; but in the act of Union of 1909, this provision was omitted. A native delegation went all the way to England to protest, but it met not philanthropic England but investing England, with South Africa as a source of its long-threatened, but increasing income. The protest was, therefore, in vain. The only reference to the natives in the new constitution was the above provision in regard to four senators. The Union has in the government a Minister and Department of Native Affairs.

Parliament was finally allowed to prescribe voting qualifications, but could not disfranchise voters in the Cape Province for race and color, unless the bill was passed by a two-thirds majority at a joint session of parliament. Outside the Cape, the new Union made little effort to recognize the native in any way except as an exploitable laborer. Smuts in 1920 set up a permanent Native Affairs Commission to advise the prime minister and to extend the Cape Transkei system of local government and taxation and to summon conferences of the chiefs.

The upheaval of World War brought, however, bitter exacerbation of race hate and a determination to crystallize customary and legal discrimination into a definite body of law. After the war an alliance was made between the Dutch Nationalist Party and the Labor Party. The Nationalist Party, composed largely of Dutch farmers, had been working for the independence of South Africa; but their program was rendered superfluous in 1926 by the Statute of Westminster, which established the British Commonwealth of Nations and made the Union of South Africa politically independent, although economically and socially it is still a colony of England. The Labor Party was working for preferential treatment from capital against colored laborers. Thus a farmer-labor coalition came into control of South Africa.

The Hertzog government in 1926 introduced a bill to take away native franchise in the Cape. A second bill provided for electing a small number of white members to the Union Assembly by natives throughout the Union. A third bill proposed a Union native council with thirty-five elected members and fifteen appointed members, presided over by the white Secretary of Native Affairs.

Another bill on the program was a Color Bar law, which, after having been twice rejected by the Senate, was finally passed by a joint session of Parliament. This law not only excluded Negroes from practically all skilled occupations, but from many positions in the public service which they had formerly filled. It was strongly opposed and bitterly defended. Hertzog promised that, if it was passed, he would advocate further land reserves for the natives and make a beginning of native political institutions. The Color Bar Bill passed, but the native representation failed until 1936.

To understand this legislation we must glance at the constituent parts of the Union of South Africa. There are four provinces: the Cape Province, larger than Texas, has 800,000 whites, 700,000 colored people, ten thousand Asiatics and two million natives. Next in size comes the Transvaal, the size of Nevada, with 800,000 whites and two and one-half million natives and colored folk. The Orange Free State is the size of Louisiana, with two hundred thousand whites and six hundred thousand natives and colored. Natal, the size of Indiana, has two hundred thousand whites and one and three-quarter million native and colored folk.

Cape Colony is the most advanced community. Here there is an educated colored group, and after the emancipation of slaves was finally accomplished in 1838, public opinion ranged itself behind the dictum, later enunciated by Cecil Rhodes, “Equal rights for all civilized men south of the Zambezi.” Votes were given colored people and natives, with educational and property restrictions. In 1935 some twenty-three thousand colored people and natives were registered voters, being able to read and write, or having property valued at $375, or an income of $250 a year. The increase among these voters in thirty years has been about fifteen thousand, and in half of the constituencies of the Cape the colored vote represented a proportion large enough to defeat anti-Negro candidates; thus they might influence the balance of power in the Union Legislature.

This political power of the natives of the Cape was part of Cecil Rhodes’ policy and was followed by the Glen Grey Act of 1884 which encouraged the natives to take up land upon individual tenure instead of communal tribal tenure. The act was first applied in the Ciskei district and later widely extended in the Transkei.

The Transkei is a sort of black belt between the Kei River and Natal and covers sixteen thousand square miles. The natives are fairly Europeanized. No whites except officials are allowed to live in the Transkei. There are nearly two thousand paid chiefs and headmen throughout the various native districts and reserves of South Africa, who are paid from ten to thirty pounds a year. In the Transkei there are about twenty-six local and district councils. They make reports to white officials and receive instruction from them. Each council is composed of an European official who presides and six native members: two nominated by the government and the others by the chiefs. These councils are responsible for collecting taxes, making roads, and maintaining law and order. From among the councils, two are chosen from each district to serve on the general council which meets once a year.

The largest Negro general conference in South Africa is the Bunga of the Transkei. It is composed of fifty-seven elected and nominated native members, representing the district councils of the Transkei and Tembuland and Pemba. There are also nineteen whites on the council. The annual meeting is held in the capital of the Transkei and lasts about three weeks. They review the work of the district councils; receive reports and budgets from the local councils. All decisions of the general council must be approved by the white members and they are responsible to the Native Affairs department, the head of which is the Minister of Native Affairs, a member of the Union cabinet.

In 1925 there were district councils in nearly all of the Transkeian districts and by 1927, two general councils had been established, which were federated in 1931 as the United Transkeian Territories’ General Council. This Council or Bunga offers advice to the chief magistrate and appoints a standing committee of four magistrates and four natives to appoint and dismiss the staff, establish agricultural institutions, control public work and institute legal proceedings. If, however, the white chairman of the Committee disagrees with any of its acts he has a suspensory veto by which the matter may be referred to the High Commissioner. The General Council since 1903 has expended nearly four million pounds. It has established three agricultural schools, four experiment farms; it employs ninety-seven agricultural demonstrators and maintains 4,500 miles of roads. There is also a Ciskeian General Council federated of eight councils.

The question of the native vote in the Cape province was, from the beginning, a matter of disagreement among the provinces and nearly prevented the efforts at union in 1909. Later anti-Negro prejudice in the other provinces was partially appeased in the Cape by making the native franchise requirements more difficult. The income of $250 a year, for instance, after 1930, was not recognized, unless the person had worked the whole previous year at that rate. Lands given the natives by legislative enactment were not to be counted in the appraisal of their property ownership. Some six thousand natives and colored persons were thus removed from the Cape register.

In the Transvaal, after the passing of the Natives Affairs Act in 1920, five native councils were set up with restricted powers. In the Orange Free State the native chiefs were denied all judicial powers under native law; but two or three now have been given jurisdiction and four native councils have been set up. These two provinces are noted for their reactionary attitude toward Negroes on the part of the predominately Dutch farming population. Natal is more liberal than the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, but less advanced in race matters than the Cape colony. It was the former seat of Bishop Colenso, who refused to obey the decision of the South African bishops in native matters and was sustained by the Church of England. Registration difficulties prevent natives from voting.

The long-continued efforts of the Zulus in Natal to strengthen their power and resist the encroachment of the whites led to several serious rebellions and to efforts to establish a more liberal native policy. This was complicated by the question of the Indians and their rights to trade and participate in government. There is one native council, and eighty chiefs have civil and criminal jurisdiction.

In 1934 the political aspect of South Africa changed again. Hertzog and Smuts united in a coalition government which represented the union of land monopoly and mining capital—of landlords and industry. They were opposed by the small farmers and the poor whites, and between these parties there was some revival of racial feeling between the British and Dutch. As a diverting issue, race feeling against Bantus and Jews was encouraged and fascist organizations formed. The military budget was increased. Oswald Pirow, the Minister of Defense in the Coalition Government, in a speech before the South Africa Defense League, said that “the white people of South Africa had the great task of determining for the next few centuries, or perhaps as long as our white civilization lasts, whether Africa, or the greatest part of Africa, shall be governed by Whites or Blacks. It was a life-and-death struggle, between Black and White, with South Africa as its rallying point.”4 Sir Abe Bailey, South African millionaire, added to this a warning against the “yellow menace!”

In 1934 the property and educational qualifications in the Cape province were abolished by the Union, so far as white voters were concerned, and the franchise extended to white women; but in the case of blacks and colored people, women were denied the right to vote and the former property and educational qualifications retained. The following year, the native representation bill was introduced into the Union Parliament in new form, and was passed in 1936. It provided that the approximately twenty-three thousand natives and colored people who were legal voters in Cape Colony were to be transferred to a special electoral roll called the Cape Native Voters Roll. On this roll will also be placed the names of Cape natives who may subsequently obtain the same qualifications. These Cape natives will elect three whites to represent them in the House of Assembly and two to represent them in the Provincial Council. Members representing these native constituencies hold their seats for five years irrespective of the dissolution of Parliament. They have the same rights and privileges as the ordinary members of Parliament elected by the whites; but their number is fixed no matter how the number of native Cape voters increases.

In the other three provinces of the Union, all natives and colored folk were to continue to be disfranchised both in the Union legislature and in the provincial councils. But in the Union as a whole, natives were to share in the government through four white senators elected by natives through electoral colleges; and through representation in the Natives Representative Council.

This Council will consist of six official members, four native members appointed by the governor-general and twelve elected native members, three to each province. The Council is to consider and report on proposed legislation which affects the native population and any matters referred to it by the minister and any matter affecting the natives in general. It has, however, only advisory power. In this way the danger of the colored voters in the Cape exercising the balance of power has been averted. On the other hand, the representation of the natives in the senate by white senators is not as important as similar representation would be in the assembly, since the senate has curtailed financial and other powers.

Nor is there much hope that the Natives Representative Council will have real influence. There was a provision in a former Native Affairs Act for summoning representative natives to consult with the government on legislation affecting them, but such representatives were summoned only once in eight years, 1926–34, and then they were expressly warned not to mention native grievances. The Natives Representative Council met for the first time in December, 1937. It included five chiefs, a high school principal, three editors, two farmers, a builder and a lawyer’s clerk. The white Native Commissioner presided.

Turning to the protectorates: Bechuanaland is divided into eleven districts. Each district is presided over by a white magistrate responsible to a resident commissioner who represents the High Commissioner for South Africa.5 The High Commissioner is under the Secretary of State for the Dominions in London. The country is also divided into a number of native areas or reserves, which are all within the jurisdiction of the administrative districts. The chiefs rule and administer justice according to native law except in cases involving the death penalty or when one of the parties is an European.

Basutoland has been since 1931 under the British High Commissioner, who is represented by a resident commissioner. This commissioner has legislative and executive powers and is helped by white assistant commissioners and magistrates. The native districts are divided into fifty wards, each ward governed by a hereditary chief who swears allegiance to a paramount chief. The paramount chief is a descendant of Moshesh. There is a national assembly called the Pitso. It has ninety-five members nominated by the chiefs and five appointed by the government. The resident commissioner presides over the assembly. He must approve all matters before presentation.

Some native opposition has been crystallizing in Basutoland. The Young Basuto Association demands elected representatives instead of nominated ones and opposes the conservatism and reaction of chiefs.

Swaziland was unified under Sobhuza, who died in 1839. Europeans entered first in 1878. In 1888 they demanded that the government intervene and take over the administration of Swaziland. Although the independence of Swaziland was guaranteed by British and Boers in the Pretoria Convention of 1881 and the London Convention of 1884, the British occupied the territory in 1889 and set up a government composed of fifteen British and Boers and five Swazis. The five Swazis were soon excluded by the British. The Boers demurred, but were appeased by the right to collect duty on exports and imports and levy taxes, which left the territory in partial independence. The British set up courts and paid the paramount chief one thousand pounds annually. He was made drunk and signed away most of the property of the tribe. After the Boer War the government of the country was put first under the Transvaal and then under the British High Commissioner. The Swazi have a general assembly which has no constitutional position and there are district meetings of the chiefs. Educated natives and colored persons form committees and meet twice a year.

Barotseland with 350,000 people is a protectorate (or as local whites prefer to say, a Native Reserve) in Northern Rhodesia. It came under British control by treaty with Portugal in 1891 and was declared a protectorate in 1924. It is now controlled by a paramount chief, who administers native law under a British Commissioner. There is a parliament called the Kgotla, which has legislative, judicial and executive powers subject to the approval of the white commissioners. There is a national fund paid by the natives, but controlled by white officials and missionaries. Part of this fund goes for education.

These protectorates are the remains of the unconquered or partially conquered native areas, left with something of their own local and tribal autonomy, but circumscribed not only by white political rulers but also choked by the surrounding economy of South Africa. If or when their complete government will be transferred to the Union of South Africa is a grave political question. The transfer has been categorically promised by England; but England has so often broken her word given to the natives, it would be a fine variation for her to break a promise to the whites.

Portuguese Africa is difficult to study and understand, because of the wide discrepancies between the letter of the law and actual administration. Portugal has a body of colonial legislation which in many respects is the best in Africa. Every native in a Portuguese colony is legally a citizen of Portugal with all citizenship rights. Moreover, the large amount of race mixture in Portuguese colonies makes the line between whites and natives difficult to draw. Native autonomous rule has never been legally abolished in Portuguese Africa. On the contrary, in the earlier days it was encouraged to a large extent, and the Portuguese set up an African empire recognizing a paramount chief and sending natives to Portugal for education. Legal recognition is given to native political institutions; the chiefs should be chosen by native custom and paid by the government; a fixed amount of revenue must be paid for native welfare. The Portuguese constitution of 1933 provides for the eventual transfer of the power of commercial companies to the state. Thus in 1926, 1929 and 1933 Portugal tried to establish in her colonies freedom of labor and contract, education, and a fixed expenditure on native interests. But all this legal autonomy has had but limited recognition in practice.

One momentous factor in the political relations of Europe and Africa came with the mandate legislation of the League of Nations. The annexation of German colonies and the mandate system was in theory a tremendous step. It was a proposal for the united civilized world to take charge of certain areas of Africa formerly belonging to the Germans and administer them primarily for the benefit of the natives, allowing, and strictly limiting, the profit motive. It was thought by the promoters of the mandate system that gradually Europe would be influenced by the methods of the mandates and that much if not all colonial Africa might eventually be handed over to the League of Nations for direction and control. The Mandates Commission at Geneva bade fair to become the great agent for the development of the African native.

It is hardly necessary to say that very little of this program has been realized. Indeed the selfishness of the Allies with regard to the African colonies was the first and fatal mistake that foreshadowed the present disintegration and impotence of the League. The stone which the builders rejected—justice to black folk—has been precisely the one whose absence has brought disaster to Europe in the Ethiopian conquest and the German menace. The mandates almost without exception have been practically incorporated with the colonies of Great Britain, France, Belgium, Union of South Africa, and Japan, and dealt with as their own colonies. “So strong indeed was the demand of the Dominions that they should acquire complete possession of the conquered territories contiguous to their own in Southwest Africa and the Pacific, that, in the event, it was with difficulty that a form of Mandate was devised, which General Smuts described as ‘annexation in all but the name!’—and American and Japanese writers have used the same terms.”

In the original fourteen points which were to form the basis of peace after the World War, President Wilson had said January 8, 1918: “The only possible program is: A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle, that in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.”

In a memorandum by Colonel House October 29, 1918, it was said: “What are the ‘interests of the populations’? That they should not be militarized, that exploitation should be conducted on the principle of the open door; and under the strictest regulation as to labor conditions, profits and taxes; that a sanitary regime be maintained; that permanent improvements in the way of roads, etc., be made; that native organization and custom be respected; that the protecting authority be stable and experienced enough to thwart intrigue and corruption; that the protecting power have adequate resources in money and competent administrators to act successfully.”

This did not propose the high philanthropic ground of development of colonies for the best interests of their peoples; it very frankly admitted the profit of industrial enterprise of Europeans as the leading motive; but it sought at least to curb it by labor laws, sanitation, public work and tribal autonomy. The principle involved was that a colonial power act not as owner of its mandate, but “as trustee for the natives and for the interests of the society of nations; that the terms on which the colonial administration is conducted are a matter of international concern and may legitimately be the subject of international inquiry, and that the peace conference may, therefore, write a code of colonial conduct binding upon all colonial powers.”

The colonies were divided into three classes: the A class, including colonies in Arabia and Palestine, with six million inhabitants and 200,000 square miles, were looked upon as nearly ready for nationhood. In the B Mandates were all of the African colonies, except Southwest Africa. A permanent Mandates Commission under the League of Nations, with eleven members selected by the council, are in control of these mandated territories. The majority of the members of the Commission are from non-mandatory states; but the Commission has very limited power. It may not deal with petitions directly from inhabitants of the mandated territories, but only with such petitions as are presented through the mandatory power. The Commission cannot visit the areas or grant oral audiences to petitioners, but must depend upon publicity and discussion in the assembly of the League, with such information as the League Secretariat provides.

The extent of the power of the League over the mandated country has not been defined. The commission and the council have declared that the mandatory power is not sovereign in the mandated territory, but on the other hand it is not clear just where the sovereignty resides. The importance of the mandate system lies in the fact that it purports to provide methods for adjusting the relations between industrialized countries and backward communities; but its success in this line has not been notable.

The Germans claim infringement upon the mandate principle: “The United Kingdom ... has combined the Tanganyika Territory with Kenya and Uganda in a Postal Union. In respect of this measure also, the Mandates Commission expressed its misgivings; but it would not decide to place itself in open opposition. We find similar aspirations in German Southwest Africa, where those striving for a Greater South Africa, have for years demanded the incorporation of the mandated territory as a fifth province.

“The so-called ‘administrative reforms,’ with which France, in order to ‘round off’ her great colonial empire, is endeavoring to unite Togoland with the neighboring colony of Dahomey, and the Cameroons with French Equatorial Africa, may also be mentioned in this connection. According to these examples, Belgium is also trying to amalgamate her mandated territories of Ruanda and Urundi with the Congo Colony.”

On the other hand, lately the British have suggested an extension of the mandate system as a cure for colonial rivalry; but it is interesting that the argument repeatedly turned solely upon economic advantage to the colonial powers while the interests of the natives received little or no mention.

The data as to conditions in the mandated territories are meager. Southwest Africa was chiefly occupied by the Dutch in the eighteenth century. In 1882 Bremen sent Germans under Lüderlitz. In 1884 Bismarck proclaimed a protectorate. War with the natives ensued between 1904 and 1908: eighty thousand Hereros, five thousand Hottentots and twelve thousand Bergdamas were slaughtered or starved to death. The war lasted four years, the Germans lost two thousand officers and men and spent thirty thousand pounds sterling. Native lands were confiscated and tribal life largely disrupted. However, Ovamboland under German rule was left to its own tribal organization. It is an area in Southwest Africa which can still be used by the mandate as an organ of government.

Botha captured the colony in 1915. Southwest Africa is now a mandate of the Union of South Africa. During the World War the sixteen thousand German inhabitants were reduced to eight thousand, and some ten thousand South Africans emigrated to the new mandate. A civil administrator replaced the military authority in 1921 with a council of advisers consisting of Germans and South Africans. The area of the country is 317,000 square miles; there are twenty-one thousand whites (1924) and 328,000 natives.

In May, 1922, the Bondelswartz, an Hottentot tribe, who had served the Union of South Africa during the war, rebelled on account of heavy taxes, especially a tax of two pounds sterling a head on their herding dogs. The administrators sent a force into their reserve and with the help of airplanes killed over a hundred men, women and children. The Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, aroused by a Haitian delegate, called for a full report and condemned the administrators’ methods. The Ovambos rebelled in 1932; but the air force of South Africa came over and threatened to bomb them.

Tanganyika is larger than France and Italy, with five million natives, thirty thousand Asiatics and nine thousand Europeans. Under German rule, local administration was organized through Arab officials who represented German authority. When the British took the mandate they restored native autonomy so that, until Sir Donald Cameron came from Nigeria to be governor in 1925, about half of the territory was under tribal rule. With the arrival of Sir Donald Cameron, five native authorities were set up and a wide and thoroughgoing recognition of local rule was inaugurated. There were difficulties in certain mixed groups on the coast, but these were overcome in various ways.

Sir Donald Cameron interpreted his duty to the mandate as the training of the people to stand by themselves as part of the whole community so that “when the time comes, a full place in the political structure shall be found for the native population.” He distinctly refused to envisage a political organization in which there was no place for the natives until the whites were ready to yield it. He foresaw a future constitution with a central native and central non-native council and with delegates sitting jointly for most of the legislative business. To this end he proposed to entrust native authority with increased responsibility.

In five years Cameron built up a system of local native government; he restored the original democratic constitution, which made tribal opinion rather than the power of chiefs supreme. Tribal councils were set up to collect the poll tax; have charge of roads and bridges; build and manage schools and dispensaries. Between one-tenth and one-third of the poll tax was returned to the tribes to be spent by the tribal treasuries. The accounts of these treasuries are audited by British officials. Out of 3,500,000 pounds sterling which these tribal authorities have collected, less than 1,500 pounds have been lost by defalcation. There were 148 of these tribal authorities in Tanganyika about 1925, but the number is growing less through union into larger units.

Gradually larger and larger native administrative units were built up under paramount chiefs or with chiefs presiding in rotation. Annual conferences were held in certain districts among the chiefs to discuss the marketing of produce, taxation and tribal law. These native authorities are showing initiative and intelligence. There are certain voluntary groups like the Killimanjaro Native Planters Association for co-operative marketing and buying. Native courts have been recognized and are of two grades, while tribal councils can be constituted as appeal courts. Many cases are settled by family councils and village elders.

Naturally the success of this experiment depends almost entirely upon the governor and his district commissioners. Cameron represented the most liberal aspects of the English Labor Government. He was unfortunately replaced, when the last Labor Government fell, by a new governor whose plans and objects are not yet clear. The depression has brought a good many retrenchments. Whether these mean many fundamental changes in policy is not certain.

One subject calls for special consideration and that is taxation as it is used in Africa as a power of government. Logically the taxation of a people is laid for the public benefit. But, of course, in Europe taxation has been made a method by which the money of the taxpayer has been used for the benefit of privileged classes. In the same way but much more obviously in Africa, taxation has first of all been laid, not because of the needs of the native taxpayer, but primarily as a method of compulsion to make them work for landholders and industrial monopolists. This might have been justified if the proceeds from the taxes had been spent for the uplift of black communities; but in most cases singularly enough this has not been true. The extraordinary situation has arisen in colonies like Kenya, the Rhodesias and South Africa, where the black community, poor as it is, has actually been taxed for the benefit of educating white children and paying the expenses of a government carried on primarily for the benefit of the whites.

In the Union of South Africa, natives are taxed through licenses and passes, together with a poll tax of five dollars and a hut tax of two dollars and fifty cents. Often the total tax is ten dollars a year. The native pays over $15,000,000 in taxes and receives $5,000,000 in direct government services.

The direct taxation in Kenya falls on the poorest and the indirect taxes are not simply on luxuries but on necessities like flour and cloth. Until lately the whites have refused to pay any tax on incomes, paying only a $7.50 poll tax and a special tax for the education of European children. Natives pay twenty-five per cent of the direct taxes and probably a larger proportion of the indirect.

The natives pay three direct taxes: hut tax which is nominally three dollars but averages six dollars and a half per family. This tax in 1931 brought in over $3,000,000. The second direct tax is the tax levied by the tribal council for roads and education. It amounted to $200,000 in 1930. The third tax is forced labor on public projects which amounts to six days or more every three months. Beside these, fines and forfeitures average $150,000 a year. The indirect taxes paid by the natives amount to one dollar and a half a head and make an annual total of $1,815,000. In 1929 natives paid $2,500,000 in hut and poll tax and, in 1930, nearly $3,000,000. The total native taxation yields $4,000,000. The direct expenditure on natives is $1,500,000.

The government of Northern Rhodesia taxes the natives for its support more heavily in proportion than the Europeans. There is an income tax for Europeans; a poll tax for natives; a large revenue from customs, and a personal tax for nonnatives. The native poll tax is from one dollar and eighty cents to three dollars a year, according to the earning capacity of different regions. It is imposed on male natives over nineteen. Generally speaking “a month’s work enables the taxpayer to discharge his obligations.” No part of this tax is earmarked for native development. The tax, of course, is a method of inducing the native to work as the only way in which he can get ready money.

Of the total revenue of Northern Rhodesia, amounting to $4,280,000 a year, it is estimated that the natives pay $900,000 directly and indirectly; and, on the other hand, only about $310,000 is spent on native education and agricultural and other uplift services.

In the principal provinces of Uganda, natives pay four dollars and seventy-five cents poll tax, while in the small districts the tax is from one dollar and twenty-five cents to two dollars and fifty cents. Beside this there are a number of local taxes which go into the Uganda treasuries. In Buganda, natives pay a land tax of five dollars and must work thirty days without pay on the roads under the native rulers. Chiefs and headmen in Nyasaland, who are responsible for collecting the head tax, have at times arrested the wives and female relatives of defaulters and detained them until the tax was paid. The salaries of chiefs depend upon the tax collected. The hut tax is now the largest item in the revenue of the colony. The general revenue of the protectorate amounted to $2,500,000 in 1932 and of this the natives pay thirty-eight per cent.

In the Protectorates, salaries eat up a large part of the income. The revenue of Bechuanaland in 1936–37 was $1,235,000 and the expenditure $1,270,000. Very little was done in medicine, education or agriculture. Bechuanaland pays five dollars hut and poll tax to the British government, and from seventy-five cents to one dollar and twenty-five cents to the native administration. The hut and poll tax amounted to $165,000 in 1932 while the Europeans paid $13,500 income tax. The rest of the revenue was derived from custom duties on articles used by the natives, such as blankets, which pay twenty-five per cent.

In Basutoland the native pays an average of six dollars poll tax, collected by white officials aided by the chiefs. The total revenue in 1936–37 was $1,750,000, of which $610,000 was in direct taxes. There was a special educational fund of $70,000. An export tax is imposed by the government on all products exported. The Swazi pay about $200,000 in poll taxes out of the total revenue of $420,000. The rest comes from customs, sale of Crown lands and dog taxes, dogs being kept to guard the native cattle.

There have been widespread tax disputes in West Africa, with the result that direct taxation on natives is spent today largely for their welfare. With indirect taxation it is different. Loans for public works, for instance, have been widely used. Nigeria has received five loans, varying from $15,000,000 to $30,000,000, and has spent them for building bridges and railways, homes for the Europeans, electric and waterworks and sewer construction. The colonial governments float loans in England, and interest and principal are repaid by taxing natives. In earlier days, grants without interest were made directly by the British Treasury, some $35,000,000 of such grants being made in West Africa. But since the war, banks and financiers furnish capital and charge interest. Payment on such debts makes money for education and welfare work difficult to obtain.

Kenya borrowed from England, 1922 to 1930, $85,000,000 at from four and a half to six per cent from London financiers. Tanganyika borrowed $15,000,000 at six and a half per cent in London from 1920 to 1926 and further loans amounting from twenty-five to thirty million dollars between 1926 and 1932. The railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria was constructed out of a loan of $25,000,000 guaranteed by the imperial government. The South African Protectorates have similarly received loans of $750,000 to $1,000,000 from England to be repaid in taxation. In French West Africa the natives pay twenty-nine per cent of the colonial income and in the Belgian Congo twenty-five per cent. In the Congo expenditure, forty-three per cent of the budget goes for interest on debt, i.e., on European invested capital.

In general it may be said that Africa retains a modicum of self-government and some recognition of native law. The object of the European governments in general is to maintain peace and order for the purpose of profitable commercial enterprise. The welfare of the native occupies a considerable but a subordinate place. The expenses of European over-lordship are borne almost exclusively by taxation upon the natives, which in many cases becomes a severe burden amounting often to ten per cent or more of the natives’ annual income. Moreover, in the majority of colonies, this taxation is for the purpose of forcing the natives to work, while its proceeds are spent primarily on matters which are for the interest of the Europeans. The tendencies toward autonomy and self-rule are vigorously opposed by the European demand for dividends and profits.

To this end Europe taxes native Africa today a total of over $30,000,000 a year in direct taxes taken from the lowest paid workers on earth; and perhaps ten millions more in indirect taxes.

It may be easily shown that this contribution of the natives is less than their share of the expense of the colonies calculated on a numerical basis. But the natives do not share in colonial objectives on a numerical basis. The colony is conducted for the defense and aggrandizement of home countries and for the profit of owners and investors, and to mulct the victims of this process for the cost of their oppression is indefensible in morals and short-sighted in politics.