The Casement Report 10

The Casement Report 10

These Bateke people

were not, perhaps, particularly desirable subjects for an energetic

Administration, which desired, above all things, progress and speedy

results. They were themselves interlopers from the northern shores of

the Congo River, and derived a very profitable existence as trading

middlemen, exploiting the less sophisticated population among whom they

had established themselves. Their loss to the southern shores of Stanley

Pool is none the less to be deplored, I think, for they formed, at any

rate, a connecting link between an incoming European commercial element

and the background of would-be native suppliers.

 

Léopoldville is sometimes spoken of as a Congo town, but it cannot

rightly be so termed. Apart from the Government station, which, in most

respects, is very well planned, there is nothing at all resembling a

town--barrack would be the correct term. The Government station of

Léopoldville numbers, I was informed by its Chief, some 130 Europeans,

and probably 3,000 native Government workmen, who all dwell in well

ordered lines of either very well-built European houses, or, for the

native staff, mud-built huts. Broad paths, which may be termed streets,

connect the various parts of this Government Settlement, and an

elementary effort at lighting by electricity has already evolved three

lights in front of the house of the Commissaire-Général. Outside the

Government staff, the general community, or public of Léopoldville,

numbers less than one dozen Europeans, and possibly not more than 200

native dependents of their households or trading stores. This general

public consists of two missionary establishments, numbering in all 4

Europeans; a railway station with, I think, 1 European; 4 trading

establishments--1 Portuguese, 1 Belgian, 1 English, and 1

German--numbering 7 Europeans, with, perhaps, 80 or 100 native

dependents; 2 British West African petty traders, and a couple of Loango

tailor boys, who make clothes for the general community. This, I think,

comprises almost all those not immediately dependent upon the

Government.

 

These shops and traders do scarcely any business in native produce, of

which there may be said to be none in the district, but rely upon a cash

trade in Congolese currency, carried on with the large staff of

Government employés, both European and native. Were this cash dealing to

cease, the four European shops would be forced to put up their shutters.

During the period of my stay at Léopoldville it did actually cease, and,

for reasons which were not known publicly, the large native staff of

Congo Government workmen, instead of receiving a part of their monthly

wages in cash to spend locally--as also those being paid off on the

expiry of their contracts--were remunerated by the Government in barter

goods, which were issued from a Government store. This method of payment

did not satisfy either the native Government employés or the local

traders, and I heard many complaints on this score. The traders

complained, some of them to myself, that as they had no other form of

trading open to them, save this with the Government staff against cash,

for the Government to itself now pay these men in goods was to end, at a

blow, all trade dealings in the district. The native workmen complained,

too, that they were paid in cloth which often they did not want in their

own homes, and in order to have the wherewithal to purchase what they

wanted, a practice at once arose amongst these men to sell for cash, at

a loss to themselves, the cloth they had been forced to receive in

payment from the Government store. The workmen lost on this transaction,

and so did the traders. Pieces of cloth which were charged by the

Government at 10 fr. each in paying off the workmen, these men would

readily part with for 7 fr., and even for 6 fr. in cash. I myself, one

day in June, bought for 7 fr. a-piece, from two just-discharged

Government workmen, two pieces of cloth which had been charged against

them at 10 fr. each. These men wished to buy salt at one of the local

stores, and to obtain the means of doing so, they readily sacrificed 3

fr. in each 10 fr. of their pay. The traders, too, complained that by

this extensive sale of cotton goods at reduced rates by the Government

employés, their own sales of cloth at current prices were rendered

well-nigh impossible throughout the district.

 

The 3,000 Government workpeople at Léopoldville are drawn from nearly

every part of the Congo State. Some, those from the cataract district

especially, go voluntarily seeking employment, but many--and I believe a

vast majority--are men, or lads, brought from districts of the Upper

Congo, and who serve the authorities not primarily at their own seeking.

On the 16th June last, five Government workpeople brought me their

contracts of engagement with a request that I might tell them how long a

period they still had to serve. They were all Upper Congo men, and had

already nearly completed the full term of their engagement. The

contracts, in each case, appeared as having been signed and drawn up at

Boma on behalf of the Governor-General of the Congo State, and were, in

each case, for a term of seven years. The men informed me that they had

never been to Boma, and that the whole of their period of service had

been spent either at Léopoldville or on the Upper Congo. In three of

these cases I observed that an alteration had been made in the period of

service, in the following terms:--

 

“Je réduis de sept à cinq ans le terme de service du....”

 

This entry was signed by the acting State Inspector of the district. It

seemingly had not been observed, for it was struck out by his successor,

and, as a matter of fact, the full period of seven years was, in each

case, within a few months of completion.

 

On the whole the Government workmen at Léopoldville struck me as being

well cared for, and they were certainly none of them idle. The chief

difficulty in dealing with so large a staff arises from the want of a

sufficiency of food supply in the surrounding country. The staple food

of the entire Upper Congo is a preparation of the root of the cassava

plant, steeped and boiled, and made up into loaves or puddings of

varying weight. The natives of the districts around Léopoldville are

forced to provide a fixed quantity each week of this form of food, which

is levied by requisitions on all the surrounding villages. The European

Government staff is also mainly dependent upon food supplies obtained

from the natives of the neighbourhood in a similar manner. This, however

necessary, is not a welcome task to the native suppliers who complain

that their numbers are yearly decreasing, while the demands made upon

them remain fixed, or tend even to increase.

 

The Government station at Léopoldville and its extensive staff, exist

almost solely in connection with the running of Government steamers upon

the Upper Congo.

 

A hospital for Europeans and an establishment designed as a native

hospital are in charge of a European doctor. Another doctor also resides

in the Government station whose bacteriological studies are unremitting

and worthy of much praise. The native hospital--not, I am given to

understand, through the fault of the local medical staff--is, however,

an unseemly place. When I visited the three mud huts which serve this

purpose, all of them dilapidated, and two with the thatched roofs almost

gone, I found seventeen sleeping sickness patients, male and female,

lying about in the utmost dirt. Most of them were lying on the bare

ground--several out on the pathway in front of the houses, and one, a

woman, had fallen into the fire just prior to my arrival (while in the

final, insensible stage of the disease), and had burned herself very

badly. She had since been well bandaged, but was still lying out on the

ground with her head almost in the fire, and while I sought to speak to

her, in turning, she upset a pot of scalding water over her shoulder.

All of the seventeen persons I saw were near their end, and on my second

visit, two days later, the 19th June, I found one of them lying dead out

in the open.

 

In somewhat striking contrast to the neglected state of these people, I

found, within a couple of hundred yards of them, the Government workshop

for repairing and fitting the steamers. Here all was brightness, care,

order, and activity, and it was impossible not to admire and commend the

industry which had created and maintained in constant working order this

useful establishment. In conjunction with a local missionary, some

effort was made during my stay at Léopoldville, to obtain an

amelioration of the condition of the sleeping-sickness people in the

native hospital, but it was stated, in answer to my friend’s

representations, that nothing could be done in the way of building a

proper hospital until plans now under consideration had been matured

elsewhere. The structures I had visited, which the local medical staff

greatly deplored, had endured for several years as the only form of

hospital accommodation provided for the numerous native staff of the

district.

 

The Government stores at Léopoldville are large and well built, and

contain not only the goods the Government itself sends up river in its

fleet of steamers, but also the goods of the various Concession

Companies. As a rule, the produce brought down river by the Government

steamers is transhipped direct into the railway trucks which run

alongside the wharf, and is carried thence by train to Matadi for

shipment to Europe. The various Companies carrying on operations on the

Upper Congo, and who hold Concessions from the Congo Government, are

bound, I was told, by Conventions to abstain from carrying, save within

the limits of their Concessions, either goods or passengers. This

interdiction extends to their own merchandise and to their own agents.

Should they carry, by reason of imperative need, outside these limits

any of their own goods or their own people, they are bound to pay to the

Congo Government either the freight or passage money according to the

Government tariff, just as though the goods or passengers had been

conveyed on one of the Government vessels. The tariff upon goods and

passengers carried along the interior waterways is a fairly high one,

not perhaps excessive under the circumstances, but still one that, by

reason of this virtual monopoly, can produce a yearly revenue which must

go far towards maintaining the Government flotilla. By the estimates for

1902, published in the “Bulletin Officiel” of January this year, the

transport service is credited with a production of 3,100,000 fr. of

public revenue for 1902, while the expenditure for the same year is put

at 2,023,376 fr. That this restriction of public conveyance to

Government vessels alone is not altogether a public gain my own

experience demonstrated. I had wished to leave Stanley Pool for the

Upper Congo at an early date after my arrival in Léopoldville, but as

the Government vessels were mostly crowded, I could not proceed with any

comfort by one of these. The steam-ship “Flandre,” one of the largest of

these vessels, which left Léopoldville for Stanley Falls on the 22nd

June, and by which I had, at first, intended to proceed, quitted port

with more than twenty European passengers over her complement, all of

whom, I was informed, would have to sleep on deck. I accordingly was

forced to seek other means of travelling, and through the kindness of

the Director of one of the large commercial Companies (the “Société

Anonyme Belge du Haut-Congo”) I found excellent accommodation, as a

guest, on one of his steamers. Although thus an invited guest and not

paying any passage money, special permission had to be sought from the

Congo Government before this act of courtesy could be shown me, and I

saw the telegram from the local authority, authorizing my conveyance to

Chumbiri.

 

This commercial Company has three other steamers, but the interdiction

referred to applies to the entire flotilla of trading vessels of

Congolese nationality on the Upper River. Despite the fact that these

vessels are not allowed to earn freight or passage, they are all, for

their tonnage, heavily taxed, while the Government vessels, which earn

considerable sums on transport of general goods and passengers, pay no taxes. The four vessels of the Société Anonyme Belge du Haut-Congo referred to, of which the largest is only, I believe, one of 30 tons, pay annually, I was informed, the following taxes: