The Casement Report 19

The Casement Report 19

The Concession Companies, I believe, account for the armed men in their

service on the ground that their factories and agents must be protected

against the possible violence of the rude forest dwellers with whom they

deal; but this legitimate need for safeguarding European establishments

does not suffice to account for the presence, far from those

establishments, of large numbers of armed men quartered throughout the

native villages, and who exercise upon their surroundings an influence

far from protective. The explanation offered me of this state of things

was that, as the “impositions” laid upon the natives were regulated by

law, and were calculated on the scale of public labour the Government

had a right to require of the people, the collection of these

“impositions” had to be strictly enforced. When I pointed out that the

profit of this system was not reaped by the Government, but by a

commercial Company, and figured in the public returns of that Company’s

affairs, as well as in the official Government statistics, as the

outcome of commercial dealings with the natives, I was informed that the

“impositions” were in reality trade, “for, as you observe, we pay the

natives for the produce they bring in.” “But,” I observed, “you told me

just now that these products did not belong to the natives, but to you,

the Concessionnaire, who owned the soil; how, then, do you buy from them

what is already yours?” “We do not buy the india-rubber. What we pay to

the native is a remuneration for his labour in collecting our produce on

our land, and bringing it to us.”

 

Since it was thus to the labour of the native alone that the profits of

the Company were attributed, I inquired whether he was not protected by

contract with his employer; but I was here referred back to the

statement that the native performed these services as a public duty

required of him by his Government. He was not a contracted labourer at

all, but a free man, dwelling in his own home, and was simply acquitting

himself of an “imposition” laid upon him by the Government, “of which we

are but the collectors by right of our Concession.” “Your Concession,

then, implies,” I said, “that you have been conceded not only a certain

area of land, but also the people dwelling on that land?” This, however,

was not accepted either, and I was assured that the people were

absolutely free, and owed no service to any one but to the Government of

the country. But there was no explanation offered to me that was not at

once contradicted by the next. One said it was a tax, an obligatory

burden laid upon the people, such as all Governments have the undoubted

right of imposing; but this failed to explain how, if a tax, it came to

be collected by the agents of a trading firm, and figured as the outcome

of their trade dealings with the people, still less, how, if it were a

tax, it could be justly imposed every week or fortnight in the year,

instead of once, or at most, twice a year.

 

Another asserted that it was clearly legitimate commerce with the

natives because these were well paid and very happy. He could not then

explain the presence of so many armed men in their midst, or the reason

for tying up men, women, and children, and of maintaining in each

trading establishment a local prison, termed a “maison des otages,”

wherein recalcitrant native traders endured long periods of confinement.

 

A third admitted that there was no law on the Congo Statute Book

constituting his trading establishment a Government taxing station, and

that since the product of his dealings with the natives figured in his

Company’s balance-sheets as trade, and paid customs duty to the

Government on export, and a dividend to the shareholders, and as he

himself drew a commission of 2 per cent. on his turnover, it must be

trade; but this exponent could not explain how, if these operations were

purely commercial, they rested on a privilege denied to others, for

since, as he asserted, the products of his district could neither be

worked nor bought by any one but himself, it was clear they were not

merchandise, which, to be merchandise, must be marketable. The summing

up of the situation by the majority of those with whom I sought to

discuss it was that, in fact, it was forced labour conceived in the true

interest of the native, who, if not controlled in this way, would spend

his days in idleness, unprofitable to himself and the general community.

The collection of the products of the soil by the more benevolent

methods adopted by the Trading Companies was, in any case, preferable to

those the Congo Government would itself employ to compel obedience to

this law, and therefore if I saw women and children seized as hostages

and kept in detention until rubber or other things were brought in, it

was better that this should be done by the cap-gun of the “forest guard”

than by the Albini armed soldiers of the Government who, if once

impelled into a district, would overturn the entire country side.

 

No more satisfactory explanation than this outline was anywhere offered

me of what I saw in the A.B.I.R. and Lulanga districts. It is true

alternatives of excuse with differing interpretations of what I saw were

offered me in several quarters, but these were so obviously untrue, that

they could not be admitted as having any real relation to the things

which came before me.

 

At a village I touched at up the Lulonga River, a small collection of

dwellings named Z*, the people complained that there was no rubber left

in their district, and yet that the La Lulanga Company required of them

each fortnight a fixed quantity they could not supply. Three forest

guards of that Company were quartered, it was said, in this village, one

of whom I found on duty, the two others, he informed me, having gone to

Mampoko to convoy the fortnight’s rubber. No live-stock of any kind

could be seen or purchased in this town, which had only a few years ago

been a large and populous community, filled with people and well stocked

with sheep, goats, ducks, and fowls. Although I walked through most of

it, I could only count ten men with their families. There were said to

be others in the part of the town I did not visit, but the entire

community I saw were living in wretched houses and in most visible

distress. Three months previously (in May, I believe), they said a

Government force, commanded by a white man, had occupied their town

owing to their failure to send in to the Mampoko head-quarters of the La

Lulanga Company a regular supply of india-rubber, and two men, whose

names were given, had been killed by the soldiers at that time.

 

As Z* lies upon the main stream of the Lulongo River, and is often

touched at by passing steamers, I chose for the next inspection a town

lying somewhat off this beaten track, where my coming would be quite

unexpected. Steaming up a small tributary of the Lulongo, I arrived,

unpreceded by any rumour of my coming, at the village of A**. In an open

shed I found two sentries of the La Lulanga Company guarding fifteen

native women, five of whom had infants at the breast, and three of whom

were about to become mothers. The chief of these sentries, a man called

S--who was bearing a double-barrelled shot-gun, for which he had a belt

of cartridges--at once volunteered an explanation of the reason for

these women’s detention. Four of them, he said, were hostages who were

being held to insure the peaceful settlement of a dispute between two

neighbouring towns, which had already cost the life of a man. His

employer, the agent of the La Lulanga Company at B** near by, he said,

had ordered these women to be seized and kept until the Chief of the

offending town to which they belonged should come in to talk over the

palaver. The sentry pointed out that this was evidently a much better

way to settle such troubles between native towns than to leave them to

be fought out among the people themselves.

 

The remaining eleven women, whom he indicated, he said he had caught and

was detaining as prisoners to compel their husbands to bring in the

right amount of india-rubber required of them on next market day. When I

asked if it was a woman’s work to collect india-rubber, he said, “No;

that, of course, it was man’s work.” “Then why do you catch the women

and not the men?” I asked. “Don’t you see,” was the answer, “if I caught

and kept the men, who would work the rubber? But if I catch their wives,

the husbands are anxious to have them home again, and so the rubber is

brought in quickly and quite up to the mark.” When I asked what would

become of these women if their husbands failed to bring in the right

quantity of rubber on the next market day, he said at once that then

they would be kept there until their husbands had redeemed them. Their

food, he explained, he made the Chief of A** provide, and he himself saw

it given to them daily. They came from more than one village of the

neighbourhood, he said, mostly from the Ngombi or inland country, where

he often had to catch women to insure the rubber being brought in in

sufficient quantity. It was an institution, he explained, that served

well and saved much trouble. When his master came each fortnight to A**

to take away the rubber so collected, if it was found to be sufficient,

the women were released and allowed to return with their husbands, but

if not sufficient they would undergo continued detention. The sentry’s

statements were clear and explicit, as were equally those of several of

the villagers with whom I spoke. The sentry further explained, in answer

to my inquiry, that he caught women in this way by direction of his

employers. That it was a custom generally adopted and found to work

well; that the people were very lazy, and that this was much the

simplest way of making them do what was required of them. When asked if

he had any use for his shot-gun, he answered that it had been given him

by the white man “to frighten people and make them bring in rubber,” but

that he had never otherwise used it. I found that the two sentries at

A** were complete masters of the town. Everything I needed in the way of

food or firewood they at once ordered the men of the town to bring me.

One of them, gun over shoulder, marched a procession of men--the Chief

of the village at their head--down to the water side, each carrying a

bundle of firewood for my steamer. A few chickens which were brought

were only purchased through their intermediary, the native owner in each

case handing the fowl over to the sentry, who then brought it on board,

bargained for it, and took the price agreed upon. When, in the evening,

the Chief of the village was invited to come and talk to me, he came in

evident fear of the sentries seeing him or overhearing his remarks, and

the leader, S, finding him talking to me, peremptorily broke into the

conversation and himself answered each question put to the Chief. When I

asked this latter if he and his townsmen did not catch fish in the C**

River, in which we learned there was much, the sentry, intervening, said

it was not the business of these people to catch fish--“they have no

time for that, they have got to get the rubber I tell them to.”

 

At nightfall the fifteen women in the shed were tied together, either

neck to neck or ankle to ankle, to secure them for the night, and in

this posture I saw them twice during the evening. They were then trying

to huddle around a fire. In the morning the leading sentry, before

leaving the village, ordered his companion in my hearing to “keep close

guard on the prisoners.” I subsequently discovered that this sentry,

learning that I was not, as he had at first thought, a missionary, had

gone or sent to inform his employer at C** that a strange white man was

in the town.

 

An explanation of what I had witnessed at A** was later preferred by the

representative of this Company for my information, but was in such

direct conflict with what I had myself observed that it could not be

accepted either as explaining the detention of the women I had seen tied

neck to neck, or as a refutation of the statements of the sentry, made

to me at a time when he had no thought that his avowals had any bearing

on his employer’s interests.

 

From A** I proceeded to Bongandanga, a station of the A.B.I.R. Company

which lies some 120 or 130 miles up the Lopori, a tributary of the

Lulongo, and only halted for very brief periods _en route_. I arrived at

Bongandanga on the 29th August when what was locally termed the rubber

market was in full swing. The natives of the surrounding country are, on

these market days, which are held at intervals of a fortnight, marched

in under a number of armed guards, each native carrying his fortnight’s

supply of india-rubber for delivery to the agent of the Company. During

my stay at Bongandanga I had frequent occasion to meet the two agents of

this Society, who received me with every kindness and hospitality.

 

The A.B.I.R. station was well built and well cared for, and gave

evidence of unremitting industry on the part of those in charge of it.

There were two good houses for the European staff and a number of large

well-built bamboo stores for the storing and drying of india-rubber. All

the houses were constructed of native materials, indeed, with the

exception of a small stock of barter goods in one of the stores and the

European provisions required for the white men, everything I saw came

from the surrounding district, provided in one form or another by its

native inhabitants. This applies to practically every European

establishment in the interior of the country, the only differences being

as to the manner in which the help of the natives may be sought and

recompensed. Building material of all kinds from very heavy timber to

roofing mats and native string to tie these on with are provided by the

natives; but their services in supplying these indispensable adjuncts to

civilized existence do not appear to be everywhere equally remunerated.

At Bongandanga I saw thirty-three large tree trunks, each of which could

not have weighed less than 1/2 a ton, some of them nearer 1 ton, which,

I was told, had been felled and carried in by the natives for his use

in building a new house. He explained that as the natives came in from

different districts fortnightly, and then had only to carry very small

baskets of india-rubber, this additional burden was imposed upon them,

but that this was one reserved for unwilling workers of india-rubber. It

was, in fact, one of the punishments for backward “récolteurs.”