The Casement Report 23

The Casement Report 23

At the same time a number of men followed, with the request that I would

listen to them. W declared that their town P**, which had formerly been

on the north bank of the X** River (where I had myself seen it), had now

been transferred by force to the south bank, close to the factory at

Q**. He said that this act of compulsory transference was the direct act

of the Commissaire-Général of the ... district. The Commissaire had

visited P** on his steamer, and had ordered the people of that town to

work daily at Q** for the La Lulanga factory. W had replied that it was

too far for the women of P** to go daily to Q** as was required; but the

Commissaire, in reply, had taken fifty women and carried them away with

him. The women were taken to Q**. Two men were taken at the same time.

To get these women back, W went on to say, he and his people had to pay

a fine of 10,000 brass rods (500 fr.). They had paid this money to the

Commissaire-Général himself. They had then been ordered by the

Commissaire to abandon their town, since it lay too far from the

factory, and build a fresh town close to Q**, so that they might be at

hand for the white man’s needs. This they had been forced to do--many of

them were taken across by force. It was about two years ago W thought

that this deportation had been effected, and they now came to beg that I

would use my influence with the local authorities to permit their return

to their abandoned home. Where they were now situated close to Q** they

were most unhappy, and they only desired to be allowed to return to the

former site of P**. They have to take daily to Q** the following:--

 

10 baskets gum-copal.

1,000 long canes (termed “ngodji”), which grow in the swamps, and are

used in thatching and roofing.

500 bamboos for building.

 

Each week they are required to deliver at the factory--

 

200 rations of kwanga.

120 rations of fish.

 

In addition, fifty women are required each morning to go to the factory

and work there all day. They complained that the remuneration given for

these services was most inadequate, and that they were continually

beaten. When I asked the Chief W why he had not gone to D F to complain

if the sentries beat him or his people, opening his mouth he pointed to

one of the teeth which was just dropping out, and said: “That is what I

got from the D F four days ago when I went to tell him what I now say to

you.” He added that he was frequently beaten, along with others of his

people, by the white man.

 

One of the men with him, who gave his name as H H, said that two weeks

ago the white man at Q** had ordered him to serve as one of the porters

of his hammock on a journey he proposed taking inland. H H was then just

completing the building of a new house, and excused himself on this

ground, but offered to fetch a friend as a substitute. The Director of

the Company had, in answer to this excuse, burnt down his house,

alleging that he was insolent. He had had a box of cloth and some ducks

in the house--in fact, all his goods, and they were destroyed in the

fire. The white man then caused him to be tied up, and took him with him

inland, and loosed him when he had to carry the hammock.

 

Other people were waiting, desirous of speaking with me, but so much

time was taken in noting the statements already made that I had to

leave, if I hoped to reach K** at a reasonable hour. I proceeded in a

canoe across the Lulongo and up a tributary to a landing-place which

seemed to be about ... miles from I**. Here, leaving the canoes, we

walked for a couple of miles through a flooded forest to reach the

village. I found here a sentry of the La Lulanga Company and a

considerable number of natives. After some little delay a boy of about

15 years of age appeared, whose left arm was wrapped up in a dirty rag.

Removing this, I found the left hand had been hacked off by the wrist,

and that a shot hole appeared in the fleshy part of the forearm. The

boy, who gave his name as I I, in answer to my inquiry, said that a

sentry of the La Lulanga Company now in the town had cut off his hand. I

proceeded to look for this man, who at first could not be found, the

natives to a considerable number gathering behind me as I walked through

the town. After some delay the sentry appeared, carrying a cap-gun. The

boy, whom I placed before him, then accused him to his face of having

mutilated him. The men of the town, who were questioned in succession,

corroborated the boy’s statement. The sentry, who gave his name as K K,

could make no answer to the charge. He met it by vaguely saying some

other sentry of the Company had mutilated I I; his predecessor, he said,

had cut off several hands, and probably this was one of the victims. The

natives around said that there were two other sentries at present in the

town, who were not so bad as K K, but that he was a villain. As the

evidence against him was perfectly clear, man after man standing out and

declaring he had seen the act committed, I informed him and the people

present that I should appeal to the local authorities for his immediate

arrest and trial. In the course of my interrogatory several other

charges transpired against him. These were of a minor nature, consisting

of the usual characteristic acts of blackmailing, only too commonly

reported on all sides. One man said that K K had tied up his wife and

only released her on payment of 1,000 rods. Another man said that K K

had robbed him of two ducks and a dog. These minor offences K K equally

demurred to, and again said that I I had been mutilated by some other

sentry, naming several. I took the boy back with me and later brought

him to Coquilhatville, where he formally charged K K with the crime,

alleging to the Commandant, who took his statement, through a special

Government interpreter, in my presence, that it had been done “on

account of rubber.” I have since been informed that, acting on my

request, the authorities at Coquilhatville had arrested K K, who

presumably will be tried in due course. A copy of my notes taken in K**,

where I I charged K K before me, is appended (Inclosure 6).[18]

 

It was obviously impossible that I should visit all the villages of the

natives who came to beg me to do so at J** or elsewhere during my

journey, or to verify on the spot, as in the case of the boy, the

statements they made. In that one case the truth of the charges

preferred was amply demonstrated, and their significance was not

diminished by the fact that, whereas this act of mutilation had been

committed within a few miles of Q**, the head-quarters of a European

civilizing agency, and the guilty man was still in their midst, armed

with the gun with which he had first shot his victim (for which he could

produce no licence when I asked for it, saying it was his employers’),

no one of the natives of the terrorized town had attempted to report

the occurrence. They had in the interval visited Mampoko each fortnight

with the india-rubber from their district. There was also in their midst

another mutilated boy X, whose hand had been cut off either by this or

another sentry. The main waterway of the Lulongo River lay at their

doors, and on it well nigh every fortnight a Government steamer had

passed up and down stream on its way to bring the india-rubber of the

A.B.I.R. Company to Coquilhatville. They possessed, too, some canoes;

and, if all other agencies of relief were closed, the territorial

tribunal at Coquilhatville lay open to them, and the journey to it down

stream from their village could have been accomplished in some twelve

hours. It was no greater journey, indeed, than many of the towns I had

elsewhere visited were forced to undertake each week or fortnight to

deliver supplies to their local tax collectors. The fact that no effort

had been made by these people to secure relief from their unhappy

situation impelled me to believe that a very real fear of reporting such

occurrences actually existed among them. That everything asserted by

such a people, under such circumstances, is strictly true I should in no

wise assert. That discrepancies must be found in much alleged by such

rude savages, to one whose sympathies they sought to awaken, must

equally be admitted. But the broad fact remained that their previous

silence said more than their present speech. In spite of contradictions,

and even seeming misstatements, it was clear that these men were stating

either what they had actually seen with their eyes or firmly believed in

their hearts. No one viewing their unhappy surroundings or hearing their

appeals, no one at all cognizant of African native life or character,

could doubt that they were speaking, in the main, truly; and the unhappy

conviction was forced upon me that in the many forest towns behind the

screen of trees, which I could not visit, these people were entitled to

expect that a civilized administration should be represented among them

by other agents than the savages euphemistically termed “forest guards.”

 

The number of these “forest guards” employed in the service of the

various Concession Companies on the Congo must be very considerable; but

it is not only the Concession Companies which employ “forest guards,”

for I found many of these men in the service of the La Lulanga Company,

which is neither a Concession Company nor endowed with any “rights of

police,” so far as I am aware. In the A.B.I.R. Concession there must be

at least twenty stations directed by one or more European agents.

 

Each one of these “factories” has, with the permission of the

Government, an armament of twenty-five rifles. According to this

estimate of the A.B.I.R. factories, and adding the armament of the two

steamers that Company possesses, it will be found that this one

Concession Company employs 550 rifles, with a supply of cartridges not,

I believe, as yet legally fixed. These rifles are supposed by law not to

be taken from the limits of the factories, whereas the “sentries” or

“forest guards” are quartered in well-nigh every rubber-producing

village of the entire Concession.

 

These men are each armed with a cap-gun, and the amount of ammunition

they may individually expend would seem to have no legal limits. These

cap-guns can be very effective weapons. On the Lower Lulongo I bought

the skin of a fine leopard from a native hunter who had shot the animal

the previous day. He produced a cap-gun and his ammunition for my

inspection, and I learned from all the men around him that he alone had

killed the beast with his own gun. This gun, he informed me, he had

purchased some years ago from a former Commissaire of the Government at

Coquilhatville, whose name he gave me.

 

It would be, I think, a moderate computation to put the number of

cap-guns issued by the A.B.I.R. Company to its “sentries” as being in

the proportion of six to one to the number of rifles allowed to each

factory. These figures could be easily verified, but whatever the

proportion may be of cap-guns to rifles, it is clear that the A.B.I.R.

Society alone controls a force of some 500 rifles and a very large stock

of cap-guns.

 

The other Concession Companies on the Congo have similar privileges, so

that it might not be an excessive estimate to say that these Companies

and the subsidiary ones (not enjoying rights of police) between them,

direct an armed force of not less than 10,000 men.

 

Their “rights of police,” by the Circular of Governor-General Wahis of

October 1900, were seemingly limited to the right to “requisition” the

Government forces in their neighbourhood to maintain order within the

limits of the Concession. That Circular, while it touched upon the

arming of “Kapitas” with cap-guns, did not clearly define the

jurisdiction of these men as a police force or their use of that weapon,

but it is evident that the Government has been cognizant of, and is

responsible for, the employment of these armed men. By a Royal Decree,

dated the 10th March, 1892, very clear enactments were promulgated

dealing with the use of all fire-arms other than flint-locks. By the

terms of this Decree all fire-arms and their munitions, other than

flint-lock guns, were required, immediately upon importation, to be

deposited in a depôt or private store placed under the control of the

Government. Each weapon imported had to be registered upon its entry

into the depôt and marked under the supervision of the Administration,

and could not be withdrawn thence save on the presentation of a permit

to carry arms. These permits to carry arms were liable each to a tax of

20 fr., and could be withdrawn in case of abuse. By an Ordinance of the

Governor-General of the Congo State, dated the 16th June, 1892, various

Regulations making locally effective the foregoing Decree were

published. It is clear that the responsibility for the extensive

employment of men armed with cap-guns by the various commercial

Companies on the Upper Congo rests with the governing authority, which either by law permitted it or did not make effective its own laws.