The Casement Report 11

The Casement Report 11

For permission to cut firewood 17,870

Licence for each steamer, according to her tonnage 400 to 600

The master of each vessel must be licensed, for which

a tax of 20 fr. per annum is levied.

 

Himself and each European member of the crew must then pay 30 fr. per

annum as “imposition personnelle,” whilst each native member of the crew

costs his employers 3 fr. per head for engagement licence annually, and

10 fr. per head per annum as “imposition personnelle.”

 

The “President Urban,” the largest steamer of the Company referred to,

under these various heads pays, I was informed, a sum of not less than

11,000 fr. in taxes per annum. Should she carry any of the agents of the

Company owning her, or any of its goods, save within the restricted area

of its Concession, her owners must pay to the Congo Government both

passage money and freight on these, just as though they had been sent by

one of the Government vessels.

 

No firewood may be cut by the public within half-an-hour’s steaming

distance of any of the Government wooding posts, which are naturally

chosen at the best wooding sites available along the various waterways,

so that the 10,000 fr. wood-cutting licence which the “President Urban”

pays entitles her only to cut up for fuel such suitable timber as her

crew may be able to find in the less accessible spots.

 

At F* I spent four days. I had visited this place in August 1887 when

the line of villages comprising the settlement contained from 4,000 to

5,000 people. Most of these villages to-day are entirely deserted, the

forest having grown over the abandoned sites, and the entire community

at the present date cannot number more than 500 souls. There is no

Government station at F*, but the Government telegraph line which

connects Léopoldville with Coquilhatville, the headquarters of the

Equator district, runs through the once townlands of the F* villages

close to the river bank. The people of the riverside towns, and from 20

miles inland, have to keep the line clear of undergrowth, and in many

places the telegraph road serves as a useful public path between

neighbouring villages. Some of the natives of the neighbourhood

complained that for this compulsory utilitarian service they had

received no remuneration of any kind; and those at a distance that they

found it hard to feed themselves when far from their homes they were

engaged on this task. Inquiry in the neighbourhood established that no

payment for this work had seemingly been made for fully a year.

 

Men are also required to work at the neighbouring wood-cutting post for

the Government steamers, which is in charge of a native Headman or

Kapita, who is under the surveillance of a European “Chef de Poste” at

Bolobo, the nearest Government station, which lies about 40 miles

up-stream. These wood-cutters, although required compulsorily to serve

and sometimes irregularly detained, are adequately paid for their

services.

 

The F* villages have to supply kwanga (the prepared cassava root already

referred to) for the neighbouring wood-cutting post, and the quantity

required of them is, they asserted, in excess of their means of supply

and out of proportion to the value received in exchange. The supply

required of them was fixed, I found, at 380 kwanga (or boiled cassava

puddings) every six days, each pudding weighing from 4-1/2 lb. to 6 lb.,

or a total of from 1,700 lb. to 1 ton weight of carefully prepared

food-stuffs per week. For this a payment of one brass rod per kwanga is

made, giving a sum of 19 fr. in all for the several villages whose task

it is to keep the wood post victualled. These villages by careful

computation I reckoned contained 240 persons all told--men, women, and

children. In addition to preparing and carrying this food a considerable

distance to the Government post, these people have to take their share

in keeping the telegraph line clear and in supplying Government workmen.

One elderly man was arrested at the period of my visit to serve as a

soldier and was taken to Bolobo, 40 miles away, but was subsequently

released upon representations made by a missionary who knew him. The

number of wood-cutters at the local post is about thirty I was informed,

so that the amount of food levied is beyond their requirements, and the

excess is said to be sold by them at a profit to the crews of passing

steamers. At one of the smallest of these F* villages, where there are

not more than ten persons all told, and only three of these women able

to prepare and cook the food, 40 kwanga (180 lb. to 270 lb. weight of

food) had to be supplied every week at a payment of 40 rods (2 fr.).

These people said: “How can we possibly plant and weed our gardens, seek

and prepare and boil the cassava, make it into portable shape, and then

carry it nearly a day’s journey to the post? Moreover, if the kwanga we

make are a little small or not well-cooked, or if we complain that the

rods given us in settlement are too short, as they sometimes are, then

we are beaten by the wood-cutters, and sometimes we are detained several

days to cut firewood as a punishment.”

 

Statements of this kind might be tediously multiplied.

 

The local mission station at F* requires much smaller kwanga than the

Government size, getting from 1-1/2 lb. to 2 lb. weight of food at the

same price--viz., 1 rod. The kwanga made up for general consumption, as

sold in local markets, weigh only about 1 lb. each. The Government

requires, delivered free, even at considerable distances, from four and

a-half to six times the weight of prepared food to that sold publicly

for 1/2_d._

 

In most parts of the Upper Congo the recognized currency consists of

lengths of brass wire; these lengths varying according to the district.

At one period the recognized length of a brass rod was 18 inches, but

to-day the average length of a rod cannot be more than 8 or 9 inches.

The nominal value of one of these rods is 1/2_d._, twenty of them being

reckoned to the franc; but the intrinsic value, or actual cost of a rod

to any importer of the brass wire direct from Europe, would come to less

than a 1/4_d._, I should say. Such as it is, clumsy and dirty, this is

the principal form of currency known on the Upper Congo where, saving

some parts of the French Congo I visited, European money is still quite

unknown.

 

The reasons for the decrease of population at F* given me, both by the

natives and by others, point to sleeping sickness as probably one of the

principal factors. There has also been emigration to the opposite side

of the river, to the French shore, but this course has never, I gather,

been popular. The people have not easily accommodated themselves to the

altered condition of life brought about by European Government in their

midst. Where formerly they were accustomed to take long voyages down to

Stanley Pool to sell slaves, ivory, dried fish, or other local products

against such European merchandise as the Bateke middlemen around the

Pool had to offer in exchange, they find themselves to-day debarred from

all such form of activity.

 

The open selling of slaves and the canoe convoys, which once navigated

the Upper Congo, have everywhere disappeared. No act of the Congo State

Government has perhaps produced more laudable results than the vigorous

suppression of this widespread evil. In the 160 miles’ journey from

Léopoldville to F* I did not see one large native canoe in mid-stream,

and only a few small canoes creeping along the shore near to native

villages. While the suppression of an open form of slave dealing has

been an undoubted gain, much that was not reprehensible in native life

has disappeared along with it. The trade in ivory has to-day entirely

passed from the hands of the natives of the Upper Congo, and neither

fish nor any other outcome of local industry now changes hands on an

extensive scale or at any distance from home.

 

So far as I could observe in the limited time at my disposal, the people

of F* now rarely leave their homes save when required by the local

Government official at Bolobo to serve as soldiers, or woodcutters at

one of the Government posts, or to convey the weekly supplies of food

required of them to the nearest Government station. These demands for

food-stuffs comprise fowls and goats for consumption by the European

members of the Government staff at Léopoldville, or for passengers on

the Government steamers. They emanate from the Chief of the post at

Bolobo who, I understand, is required in so far as he can, to keep up

this supply. In order to obtain this provision he is forced to exercise

continuous pressure on the local population, and within recent times

that pressure has not always taken the form of mere requisition. Armed

expeditions have been necessary and a more forcible method of levying

supplies adopted than the law either contemplated or justifies. Very

specific statements as to the harm one of these recent expeditions

worked in the country around F* were made to me during my stay there.

The officer in command of the G* district, at the head of a band of

soldiers passed through a portion of the district wherein the natives,

unaccustomed to the duties expected of them, had been backward in

sending in both goats and fowls.

 

The result of this expedition, which took place towards the end of 1900,

was that in fourteen small villages traversed seventeen persons

disappeared. Sixteen of these whose names were given to me were killed

by the soldiers, and their bodies recovered by their friends, and one

was reported as missing. Of those killed eleven were men, three women,

and one a boy child of 5 years. Ten persons were tied up and taken away

as prisoners, but were released on payment of sixteen goats by their

friends, except one, a child, who died at Bolobo. In addition 48 goats

were taken away and 225 fowls; several houses were burned, and a

quantity of their owners’ property either pillaged or destroyed.

Representations on behalf of the injured villages were made to the

Inspecteur d’État at Léopoldville, who greatly deplored the excesses of

his subordinate, and sent to hold an inquiry and to pay compensation to

the relatives of those killed and for the live-stock or goods destroyed

or taken away. The local estimate of the damage done amounted to 71,730

brass rods (3,586 fr.), which included 20,500 brass rods (1,025 fr.),

assessed as compensation for the seventeen people. Three of these were

Chiefs, and the amount asked for would have worked out at about 1,000

brass rods (50 fr.) per head, not probably an extravagant estimate for

human life, seeing that the goats were valued at 400 rods each (20 fr.).

A total sum, I was told, of 18,000 brass rods (950 fr.) was actually

paid to the injured villages by the Government Commissioner, who came

from Stanley Pool; and this sum, it was said, was levied as a fine for

his misconduct on the official responsible for the raid. I could not

learn what other form of punishment, if any, was inflicted on this

officer. He remained as the Government Representative for some time

afterwards, was then transferred to another post in the immediate

neighbourhood, and finally went home at the expiration of his period of

service.

 

At Bolobo, where I spent ten days waiting for a steamer to continue my

journey, a somewhat similar state of affairs prevails to that existing

at F*. Bolobo used to be one of the most important native Settlements

along the south bank of the Upper Congo, and the population in the early

days of civilized rule numbered fully 40,000 people, chiefly of the

Bobangi tribe. To-day the population is believed to be not more than

7,000 or 8,000 souls. The Bolobo men were famous in former days for

their voyages to Stanley Pool and their keen trading ability. All of

their large canoes have to-day disappeared, and while some of them still

hunt hippopotami--which are still numerous in the adjacent waters--I did not observe anything like industry among them.