The Casement Report 14

The Casement Report 14

The labour involved may or may not be unduly excessive--but it is

continuous throughout the year--each man must stay in his town and be

prepared each week and fortnight to have his contribution ready under

fear of summary punishment.

 

The natives engaged as workmen on my steamer were paid each a sum of 20

rods (1 fr.) per week for food rations only, and 100 rods (5 fr.) per

month wages. One of these native workmen thus earned more in one week of

my service--which was that of any other private establishment employing

ordinary labour--than the Montaka householder got in an entire year for

his compulsory public service rendered to the Government.

 

At other villages which I visited, I found the tax to consist of

baskets, which the inhabitants had to make and deliver weekly as well

as, always, a certain amount of food-stuffs--either kwanga or fish.

These baskets are used at Bikoro in packing up the gum-copal for

conveyance down the river and to Europe--the river transport being

effected by Government steamers. The basket-makers and other workers

complained that they were sometimes remunerated for their labour with

reels of sewing cotton and shirt buttons (of which they had no use) when

supplies of cloth or brass wire ran short at Bikoro. As these natives go

almost entirely naked, I could believe that neither thread or shirt

buttons were of much service to them. They also averred that they were

frequently flogged for delay or inability to complete the tale of these

baskets, or the weekly supply of food. Several men, including a Chief of

one town, showed broad weals across their buttocks, which were evidently

recent. One, a lad of 15 or so, removing his cloth, showed several scars

across his thighs, which he and others around him said had formed part

of a weekly payment for a recent shortage in their supply of food. That

these statements were not all untrue was confirmed by my visit to P*,

when the “domaine privé” store was shown to me. It had very little in

it, and I learned that the barter stock of goods had not been

replenished for some time. There appeared to be from 200 to 300 pieces

of coarse cotton cloth, and nothing else, and as the cloth was visibly

old, I estimated the value of the entire stock at possibly 15_l._ It

certainly would not have fetched more if put up to auction in any part

of the Upper Congo.

 

The instructions regulating the remuneration of the native contributors

and the mode of exploitation of the “forêts domaniales” were issued in

the “Bulletin Officiel” of 1896, under authority of Decrees dated the

30th October and the 5th December, 1892.

 

These general instructions require that:--

 

“L’exploitation se fait par les agents de l’Intendance, sous la

direction du Commissaire de District.

 

“Tout ce qui se rapporte à l’exploitation du domaine privé doit

être séparé nettement des autres services gouvernementaux.

 

“Les agents préposés à l’exploitation du domaine privé consacrent

tous leurs soins au développement de la récolte du caoutchouc et

des autres produits de la forêt.

 

“Quel que soit le mode d’exploitation adopté à cet effet, ils sont

tenus d’accorder aux indigènes une rémunération qui ne sera en

aucun cas inférieure au montant du prix de la main-d’œuvre

nécessaire à la récolte du produit; cette rémunération est fixée

par le Commissaire de District, qui soumet son tarif à

l’approbation du Gouverneur-Général.

 

“L’Inspecteur d’État en mission vérifie si ce tarif est en rapport

avec le prix de la main-d’œuvre; il veille à sa stricte

application, et il examine si les conditions générales

d’exploitation ne donnent lieu à aucune plainte justifiée.

 

“Il fait comprendre aux agents chargés du service que, par le fait

de rétribuer équitablement l’indigène, ils emploient le seul moyen

efficace d’assurer la bonne administration du domaine et de faire

naître chez lui le goût et l’habitude du travail.”

 

Both from the condition of the Domaine Privé Store I inspected at P*,

and the obvious poverty and universal discontent of the native

contributors, whose towns I visited during the seventeen days spent in

Lake Mantumba, it was clear that these instructions had long since

ceased to be operative. The responsibility for the non-application of

such necessary regulations could not be attributed to the local

officials, who, obviously, if left without the means of adequate

remuneration could not themselves make good the oversights or omissions

of their superiors. That these omissions form part of a systematic

breach of instructions conceived in the interest of the native I do not

assert, but it was most apparent that neither in Lake Mantumba nor the

other portions of the Domaine Privé which I visited was any adequate

provision made for inculcating the natives with any just appreciation of

the value of work.

 

The station at Bikoro has been established as a Government plantation

for about ten years. It stands on the actual site of the former native

town of Bikoro, an important Settlement in 1893, now reduced to a

handful of ill-kept, untidy huts, inhabited by only a remnant of its

former expropriated population.

 

Another small village, Bomenga, stands on the other side of the

Government houses; the plantation enveloping both villages, and

occupying their old cassava fields and gardens, which are now planted

with coffee trees. Further inland these give place to cocoa and

india-rubber trees (_fantumia elastica_), and also to the indigenous

Landolphia creeper, which is being extensively cultivated. The entire

plantation covers 800 hectares. There are 70 kilom. of well-cleared

pathway through it, one of these roads measuring 11 kilom. in almost a

straight line; 400 workmen are employed, consisting in small part of

local natives, but chiefly of men brought from a distance. One numerous

group I saw I was informed were “prisoners” from the Ruki district.

There are 140,000 coffee trees and 170,000 cocoa trees actually in the

ground, the latter a later planting than the coffee. Last year the yield

was: coffee 112 tons, and cocoa 7 tons, all of which, after cleaning and

preparing at the Government depôt at Kinchasa, was shipped to Europe on

the Government account. India-rubber planting was not begun until

November 1901. There are now 248 hectares already under cultivation,

having 700,000 young Landolphia creepers, and elsewhere on the

plantation, on portions mainly given up to coffee growing, there are

50,000 _fantumia elastica_ and 50,000 _manihot glaziovii_ trees. The

station buildings are composed entirely of native materials, and are

erected entirely by local native labour. The Chief of the Post has very

ably directed the work of this plantation, which engrosses all his time,

and until quite recently he had no assistant. A subordinate official is

now placed under his orders. When he took over the district he told me

there were sixty-eight native soldiers attached to the post, which

number he has now been able to reduce to nineteen. In the days when the

india-rubber tax prevailed in Lake Mantumba there were several hundreds

of soldiers required in that region. No rubber is now worked in the

neighbourhood I am informed.

 

Despite the 70 kilom. of roadway through the plantation, much of which

has to be frequently--indeed daily--traversed, the two Europeans have no

means of locomotion provided them, and must make their daily inspection

to various points of this large plantation on foot.

 

In addition to the control of this flourishing establishment, the Chief

of the Post is the Executive Chief of the entire district, but it is

evident that but little time or energy could be left to the most

energetic official for duties outside the immediate scope of his work as

a coffee and india-rubber grower, in addition to those “engrossing

cares” the general instructions cited above impose upon the agents who

exploit the State domain.

 

I have dwelt upon the condition of P* and the towns I visited around

Lake Mantumba in my notes taken at the time, and these are appended

hereto (Inclosure 3).[15] A careful investigation of the conditions of

native life around the lake confirmed the truth of the statements made

to me--that the great decrease in population, the dirty and ill-kept

towns, and the complete absence of goats, sheep, or fowls--once very

plentiful in this country--were to be attributed above all else to the

continued effort made during many years to compel the natives to work

india-rubber. Large bodies of native troops had formerly been quartered

in the district, and the punitive measures undertaken to this end had

endured for a considerable period. During the course of these

operations there had been much loss of life, accompanied, I fear, by a

somewhat general mutilation of the dead, as proof that the soldiers had

done their duty. Each village I visited around the lake, save that of Q*

and one other, had been abandoned by its inhabitants. To some of these

villages the people have only just returned; to others they are only now

returning. In one I found the bare and burnt poles of what had been

dwellings left standing, and at another--that of R*--the people had fled

at the approach of my steamer, and despite the loud cries of my native

guides on board, nothing could induce them to return, and it was

impossible to hold any intercourse with them. At the three succeeding

villages I visited beyond R*, in traversing the lake towards the south,

the inhabitants all fled at the approach of the steamer, and it was only

when they found whose the vessel was that they could be induced to

return.

 

At one of these villages, S*, after confidence had been restored and the

fugitives had been induced to come in from the surrounding forest, where

they had hidden themselves, I saw women coming back carrying their

babies, their household utensils, and even the food they had hastily

snatched up, up to a late hour of the evening. Meeting some of these

returning women in one of the fields I asked them why they had run away

at my approach, and they said, smiling, “We thought you were Bula

Matadi” (_i.e._, “men of the Government”). Fear of this kind was

formerly unknown on the Upper Congo; and in much more out-of-the-way

places visited many years ago the people flocked from all sides to greet

a white stranger. But to-day the apparition of a white man’s steamer

evidently gave the signal for instant flight.

 

The chief of the P* post told me that a similar alarm reigned almost

everywhere in the country behind his station, and that when he went on

the most peaceful missions only a few miles from his house the villages

were generally emptied of all human beings when he entered them, and it

was impossible in the majority of cases to get into touch with the

people in their own homes. It was not so in all cases, he said, and he

instanced certain villages where he could go certain of a friendly

reception, but with the majority, he said, he had found it quite

impossible to ever find them “at home.” He gave, as an explanation, when

I asked for the reason of this fear of the white man, that as these

people were great savages, and knew themselves how many crimes they had

committed, they doubtless feared that the white man of the Government

was coming to punish their misconduct. He added that they had

undoubtedly had an “awful past” at the hands of some of the officials

who had preceded him in the local administration, and that it would take

time for confidence to be restored. Men, he said, still came to him

whose hands had been cut off by the Government soldiers during those

evil days, and he said there were still many victims of this species of

mutilation in the surrounding country. Two cases of the kind came to my

actual notice while I was in the lake. One, a young man, both of whose

hands had been beaten off with the butt ends of rifles against a tree,

the other a young lad of 11 or 12 years of age, whose right hand was cut

off at the wrist. This boy described the circumstances of his

mutilation, and, in answer to my inquiry, said that although wounded at

the time he was perfectly sensible of the severing of his wrist, but lay

still fearing that if he moved he would be killed. In both these cases

the Government soldiers had been accompanied by white officers whose

names were given to me. Of six natives (one a girl, three little boys,

one youth, and one old woman) who had been mutilated in this way during

the rubber régime, all except one were dead at the date of my visit. The

old woman had died at the beginning of this year, and her niece

described to me how the act of mutilation in her case had been

accomplished. The day I left Lake Mantumba five men whose hands had been

cut off came to the village of T* across the lake to see me, but hearing

that I had already gone away they returned to their homes. A messenger

came in to tell me, and I sent to T* to find them, but they had then

dispersed. Three of them subsequently returned, but too late for me to

see them. These were some of those, I presume, to whom the official had

referred, for they came from the country in the vicinity of P* station.

Statements of this character, made both by the two mutilated persons I

saw and by others who had witnessed this form of mutilation in the past,

are appended (Inclosure 4).[16]

 

The taxes levied on the people of the district being returnable each

week or fortnight, it follows that they cannot leave their homes. At

some of the villages I visited near the end of Lake Mantumba the fish

supplies have to be delivered weekly to the military camp at Irebu, or

when the water is high in the lake and fish harder to catch, every ten

days. The distance from Irebu of one of these towns could not have been

less than 45 miles. To go and come between their homes and the camp

involved to the people of this town 90 miles of canoe paddling, and with

the lake stormy and its waters rough--as is often the case--the double

journey would take at least four days. This consumption of time must be

added to that spent in the catching of the fish, and as the punishment

for any falling off in quantity or delay in delivery is not a light one,

the Chief responsible for the tax stoutly opposes any one quitting the

town. Some proof of this incidentally arose during my stay, and threatened to delay my journey.