‘Pray that your flight be not in winter,’ said Jesus Christ; but it was only during the winter of 1913 that the full significance of this New Testament passage was revealed to us. We left Kimberley by the early morning train during the first week in July, on a tour of observation regarding the operation of the Natives’ Land Act; and we arrived at Bloemhof, in the Transvaal, at about noon. On the river diggings there were no actual cases representing the effects of the Act but traces of these effects were everywhere manifest. Some fugitives of the Natives’ Land Act had crossed the river in full flight. The fact that they reached the diggings a fortnight before our visit would seem to show that while the debates were proceeding in Parliament some farmers already viewed with eager eyes the impending opportunity for at once making slaves of their tenants and appropriating their stock; for, acting on the powers conferred on them by an Act signed by Lord Gladstone, so lately as June 16, They had during that very week (probably a couple of days after, and in some cases, it would seem, a couple of days before the actual signing of the Bill) approached their tenants with stories about a new Act which makes it criminal for anyone to have black tenants and lawful to have black servants. Few of these natives, of course, would object to be servants, especially if the white man is worth working for but this is where the shoe pinches: one of the conditions is that the black man’s (that is, the servant’s) cattle shall henceforth work for the landlord free of charge. Then the natives would decide to leave the farm rather than make the landlord a present of all their life’s savings, and some of them had passed through the diggings in search of a place in the Transvaal. But the higher up they went the more gloomy was their prospect as the news about the new law was now penetrating every part of the country.

One farmer met a wandering native family in the town of Bloemhof a week before our visit. He was willing to employ the native and many more homeless families as follows: A monthly wage of £2 10s. for each such family, the husband working in the fields, the wife in the house, with an additional 10s. a month for each son, and 5s. for each daughter, but on condition that the native’s cattle were also handed over to work for him. It must be clearly understood, we are told that the Dutchman added, that occasionally the native would have to leave his family at work to earn money whenever and wherever he was told to go, in order that the master may be enabled to pay the stipulated wage. The natives were at first inclined to laugh at the idea of working for a master with their families and goods and chattels, and then to have the additional pleasure of paying their own small wages, besides bringing money to pay the ‘Baas’ for employing them. But the Dutchman’s serious demeanour told them that his suggestion was ‘no joke’. He himself had for some time been in need of a native cattle-owner, to assist him as transport rider between Bloemhof, Mooifontein, London, and other diggings, in return for the occupation and cultivation of some of his waste lands in the district, but that was now illegal. He could only ‘employ’ them; but, as he had no money to pay wages, their cattle would have to go out and earn it for him. ‘Had they not heard of the law before?’ he inquired. Of course they had; in fact that is why they left the other place, but as they thought that it was but a ‘Free’ State law, they took the anomalous situation for one of the multifarious aspects of the freedom of the ‘Free’ State whence they came; they had scarcely thought that the Transvaal was similarly afflicted.

Needless to say the natives did not see their way to agree with such a one-sided bargain. They moved up-country, but only to find the next farmer offering the same terms, however, with a good many more disturbing details – and the next farmer and the next – so that after this native farmer had wandered from farm to farm, occasionally getting into trouble for travelling with unknown stock, ‘across my ground without my permission’, and at times escaping arrest for he knew not what, and further, being abused for the crimes of having a black skin and no master, he sold some of his stock along the way, beside losing many which died of cold and starvation; and after thus having lost much of his sustinance, he eventually worked his way back to Bloemhof with the remainder, sold them for anything they could fetch, and went to work for a digger.

The experience of another native sufferer was similar to the above, except that instead of working for a digger he sold his stock for a mere bagatelle, and left with his family by the Johannesburg night train for an unknown destination. More native families crossed the river and went inland during the previous week, and as nothing had since been heard of them, it would seem that they were still wandering somewhere, and incidentally becoming well versed in the law that was responsible for their compulsory unsettlement.

Well, we knew that this law was as harsh as its instigators were callous, and we knew that it would, if passed, render many poor people homeless, but it must be confessed that we were scarcely prepared for such a rapid and widespread crash as it caused in the lives of the natives in this neighbourhood. We left our luggage the next morning with the local mission school teacher, and crossed the river to find out some more about this wonderful law of extermination. It was about 10a.m. when we landed on the south bank of the Vaal River – the picturesque Vaal River, upon whose banks a hundred miles farther west we spent the best and happiest days of our boyhood. It was interesting to walk on one portion of the banks of that beautiful river – a portion which we had never traversed except as an infant in mother’s arms more than thirty years before. How the subsequent happy days at Barkly West, so long past, came crowding upon our memory! – days when there were no railways, no bridges, and no system of irrigation. In rainy seasons, which at that time were far more regular and certain, the river used to overflow its high banks and flood the surrounding valleys to such an extent, that no punt could carry the wagons across. Thereby the transport service used to be hung up, and numbers of wagons would congregate for weeks on both sides of the river until the floods subsided. At such times the price of fresh milk used to mount up to 1s. per pint. There being next to no competition, we boys had a monopoly over the milk trade. We recalled the number of haversacks full of bottles of milk we youngsters often carried to those wagons, how we returned with empty bottles and with just that number of shillings. Mother and our elder brothers had leather bags full of gold and did not care for the ‘boy’s money’; and unlike the boys of the neighbouring village, having no sisters of our own, we gave away some of our money to fair cousins, and jingled the rest in our pockets. We had been told from boyhood that sweets were injurious to the teeth, and so spurning these delights we had hardly any use for money, for all we wanted to eat, drink and wear was at hand in plenty. We could then get six or eight shillings every morning from the pastime of washing that number of bottles, filling them with fresh milk and carrying them down to the wagons; there was always such an abundance of the liquid that our shepherd’s hunting dog could not possibly miss what we took, for while the flocks were feeding on the luscious buds of the haak-doorns and the blossoms of the rich mimosa and other wild vegetation that abounded on the banks of the Vaal River, the cows, similarly engaged, were gathering more and more milk.

The gods are cruel, and one of their cruellest acts of omission was that of giving us no hint that in very much less than a quarter of a century all those hundreds of heads of cattle, and sheep and horses belonging to the family would vanish like a morning mist, and that we ourselves would live to pay 30s. per month for a daily supply of this same precious fluid, and in very limited quantities. They might have warned us that Englishmen would agree with Dutchmen to make it unlawful for black men to keep milk cows for their own on the banks of that river, and gradually have prepared us for the shock.

Crossing the river from the Transvaal side brings one into the province of the Orange ‘Free’ State, in which, in the adjoining division of Boshof, we were born thirty-six years back. We remember the name of the farm, but not having been in the neighbourhood since infancy, we could not tell its whereabouts, nor could we say whether the present owner was a Dutchman, his lawyer, or a Hebrew merchant; one thing we do known, however: it is that even if we had the money and the owner was willing to sell the spot upon which we first saw the light of day and breathed the pure air of heaven, the sale would be followed with a fine of one hundred pounds. The law of the country forbids the sale of land to a native. Russia is one of the most abused countries in the world, but it is extremely doubtful if the statute book of that empire contains a law debarring the peasant from purchasing the land whereon he was born, or from building a home wherein he might end his days.

At this time we felt something rising from our heels along our back, gripping us in a spasm, as we were cycling along; a needlike pang, too, pierced our heart with a sharp thrill. What was it? We remembered feeling something nearly like it when our father died eighteen years ago; but at that time our physical organs were fresh and grief was easily thrown off in tears, but then we lived in a happy South Africa that was full of pleasant anticipations, and now – what changes for the worse have we undergone! For to crown all our calamities, South Africa has by law ceased to be the home of any of her native children whose skins are dyed with a pigment that does not conform with the regulation hue.

We are told to forgive our enemies and not to let the sun go down upon our wrath, so we breathe the prayer that peace may be to the white races, and that they, including our present persecutors of the Union Parliament, may never live to find themselves deprived of all occupation and property rights in their native country as is now the case with the native. History does not tell us of any other continent where the Bantu lived despite Africa, and if this systematic ill treatment of the natives by the colonists is to be the guiding principle of Europe’s scramble for Africa, slavery is our only alternative; for now it is only as serfs that the natives are legally entitled to live here. Is it to be thought that God is using the South African Parliament to hound us out of our ancestral homes in order to quicken our pace heavenward? But go from where to heaven? In the beginning, we are told, God created heaven and earth, and people the earth, for people do not shoot up to heaven from nowhere. They must have had an earthly home. Enoch, Melchizedek, Elijah, and other saints, came to heaven from earth. God did not say to the Israelites in their bondage: ‘Cheer up, boys; bear it all in good part for I have bright mansions on high awaiting you all.’ But he said: ‘I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of the taskmasters; for I know their sorrows, and I am come down to bring them out of their hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large land, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.’ And He used Moses to carry out the promise He made to their ancestor Abraham in Canaan, that ‘unto thy seed will I give this land.’ It is to be hoped that in the Boer churches, entrance to which is barred against coloured people during divine service, they also read the Pentateuch.

It is doubtful if we ever thought so much on a single bicycle ride as we did on this journey; however, the sight of a policeman ahead of us disturbed this meditation, and gave place to thoughts of quite another kind, for – we had no pass. Dutchmen, Englishmen, Jews, Germans and other foreigners may roam the ‘Free’ State without permission – but not natives. To us it would mean a fine and imprisonment to be without a pass. The ‘pass’ law was first instituted to check the movement of livestock over sparsely populated areas. In a sense it was a wise provision, in that it served to identify the livestock which one happened to be driving along the high road, to prove the bona fides of the driver and his title to the stock. Although white men still steal large droves of horses in Basutoland and sell them in Natal or in East Griqualand, they, of course, are not required to carry any passes. These white horse-thieves, to escape the clutches of the police, employ natives to go and sell the stolen stock and write the passes for these natives, forging the names of magistrates and justices of the peace. Such native thieves in some instances ceasing to be hirelings in the criminal business, trade on their own, but it is not clear what purpose it is intended to serve by subjecting native pedestrians to the degrading requirement of carrying passes when they are not in charge of any stock.

In a few moments the policeman was before us and we alighted in presence of the representative of the law, with our feet on the accursed soil of the district in which we were born. The policeman stopped. By his looks and his familiar ‘Dag jong’ we noticed that the policeman was Dutch, and the embodiment of affability. He spoke and we were glad to notice that he had no intention of dragging an innocent man to prison. We were many miles from the nearest police station, and in such a case one is generally able to gather the real views of the man on patrol, as distinct from the written code of his office, but our friend was becoming very companionable. naturally we asked him about the operation of the plague law. He was a Transvaaler, he said, and he knew that Kaffirs were inferior beings, but they had rights, and were always left in undisturbed possession of their property when Paul Kruger was alive. ‘The poor devils must be sorry now’, he said, ‘that they ever said "God save the Queen" when the British troops came into the Transvaal, for I have seen, in the course of my duties that a Kaffir’s life nowadays was not worth a -, and I believed that no man regretted the change of flags now more than the Kaffirs of Transvaal.’ This information was superfluous, for personal contact with the natives of Transvaal had convinced us of the fact. They say it is only the criminal who has any reason to rejoice over the presence of the Union Jack, because in his case the cat-o’-nine-tails, except for very serious crimes, has been abolished.

‘Some of the poor creatures,’ continued the policeman, ‘I knew to be fairly comfortable, if not rich, and they enjoyed the possession of their stock, living in many instances just like Dutchmen. Many of these are now being forced to leave their homes. Cycling along this road you will meet several of them in search of new homes, and if ever there was a fool’s errand, it is that of a Kaffir trying to find a new home for his stock and family just now.’

‘And what do you think, Baas Officer, must eventually be the fate of a people under such unfortunate circumstances?’ we asked.

‘I think,’ said the policeman, ‘that it must serve them right. They had no business to hanker after British rule, to cheat and plot with the enemies of their Republic for the overthrow of the Government. Why did they not assist the forces of their Republic during the war instead of supplying the English with Scouts and intelligence? Oom Paul would not have died of a broken heart and he would still be there to protect them. Serve them right, I say.’

So saying he spurred his horse, which showed a clean pair of hoofs. He left us rather abruptly, for we were about to ask why we, too, of Natal and the Cape were suffering, for we, being originally British subjects, never ‘cheated and plotted with the enemies of our Colonies,’ but he was gone and left us still cogitating by the roadside.