CHAPTER X.
THE BOUNDARY COMMISSION.
Sir Henry Bulwer’s message proposing arbitration was sent to Cetshwayo on December 8th, 1877 (2000, p. 67).
In this message he makes it plain to the king that “the Governments of Natal and the Transvaal are now brothers, and what touches one touches the other.” “Therefore,” he continues, “the Lieut.-Governor of Natal sends these words to Cetshwayo that he may know what is in his mind, and that Cetshwayo may do nothing that will interrupt the peaceful and friendly relations that have existed for so many years between the English and the Zulus.” He then proposes that he should write to “the Ministers of the great Queen in England, and also to the Queen’s High Commissioner who resides at Capetown, in order that they may send fit and proper persons, who will come to the country with fresh minds, and who will hear all that the Zulus have to say on the question, and all that the Transvaal Government has to say, and examine and consider all the rights of the question, and then give their decision in such manner that all concerned may receive and abide by that decision, and the question be finally set at rest.
“Meanwhile,” he says, “no action should be taken to interfere with the existing state of things or to disturb the peace. But the disputed territory should be considered and treated as _neutral_ between the two countries for the time being.”
Before this communication reached him, Cetshwayo had already sent messengers to the Bishop of Natal, asking advice how to act in his present difficulties. And they had carried back “a word,” which would reach the king about November 19th, to the effect that he must on no account think of fighting the Transvaal Government, and that he had better send down some great indunas to propose arbitration to Sir Henry Bulwer, in whose hands he might leave himself with perfect confidence, that the right and just thing would be done by him. The Bishop knew nothing of Sir Henry’s intentions when he sent this reply; and, in point of fact, the two had separately come to the same conclusion as to what would be the wisest course to follow.
Cetshwayo therefore was prepared to receive Sir Henry’s proposition, which he did, not only with respect, but with delight and relief (2000, p. 138). His answer to the message contained the following passages: “Cetshwayo hears what the Governor of Natal says ... and thanks him for these words, for they are all good words that have been sent to Cetshwayo by the Governor of Natal; they show that the Natal Government still wishes Cetshwayo to drink water and live.” He suggests, however, that before sending for people from across the sea to settle the boundary, he should be glad if the Governor would send his own representatives to hear both sides of the dispute, and if they cannot come to a decision, “a letter can be sent beyond the sea” for others to come. The message continues: “Cetshwayo thanks the Governor for the words which say the ground in dispute should not be occupied while the matter is talked over.”
“Cetshwayo says he hears it said that he intends to make war upon the Transvaal. He wishes the Natal Government to watch well and see when he will do such a thing. For, if he attended to the wish of the English Government in Natal when it said he must not make war on the Transvaal _Boers_, why should he wish to do so upon those who are now of the same Great House as Natal, to whose voice he has listened?”
“Cetshwayo is informed that he is to be attacked by the Transvaal people. If so, and if he is not taken by surprise, he will, as soon as he hears of the approach of such a force, send men who will report it to the Natal Government before he takes any action.”
“Cetshwayo says he cannot trust the Transvaal Boers any longer; they have killed his people, they have robbed them of their cattle on the slightest grounds. He had hoped Somtseu would have settled all these matters. But he has not done so; he wishes to cast Cetshwayo off; he is no more a father, but a firebrand. If he is tired of carrying Cetshwayo now, as he did while he was with the Natal Government, then why does he not put him down, and allow the Natal Government to look after him, as it has always done?”
Sir Henry Bulwer expressed his satisfaction at this reply, speaking of it as a far more satisfactory one than they had been led to expect (2000, p. 138), and he writes of it to Sir T. Shepstone thus: “You will see by the king’s reply that he has met my representations in a very proper spirit.... I have no reason to think that what the king says is said otherwise than in good faith; and, if this be so, there seems to me to be no reason why this dispute should not be settled in a peaceable manner” (2097, p. 26), and he says to Cetshwayo himself, “The Lieutenant-Governor has heard the words of Cetshwayo. He is glad that the words which he lately sent to Cetshwayo were welcome. They were words sent in a friendly spirit, and Cetshwayo received them in a friendly spirit. This is as it should be,” and he agrees to the king’s proposal concerning commissioners from Natal, provided that the Transvaal Government agree also.
The following is the account given by the Government messengers, who carried Sir H. Bulwer’s message to Cetshwayo of the manner in which it was received by the king and his indunas (2079, p. 25):
“While we spoke to Cetshwayo, we saw that what we were saying lifted a great weight from his heart, that they were words which he was glad to hear; and what he said to us as we finished showed us we were right in this belief....
“We could see, when we arrived at the great kraal, that the indunas, and even the king, were not easy in their hearts, and from all we could see and gather, the chief men under the king did not wish for war. After the message was delivered, all of them appeared like men who had been carrying a very heavy burden, and who had only then been told that they could put it down and rest.”
It is best known to himself how, in the face of these words, and with nothing to support his statement, Sir Bartle Frere could venture to assert in his fourth letter to the Bishop, “The offers to arbitrate originated with the Natal Government, and were by no means willingly accepted by Cetshwayo;” Cetshwayo having, in point of fact, earnestly asked for arbitration again and again, as we have already shown, and rejoicing greatly when at last it was offered him. Mr. J. Shepstone’s observation also (2144, p. 184), that “To this suggestion Cetshwayo replied ‘that he had no objection,’” hardly gives a fair view of the state of the case.
But, before this satisfactory agreement had been arrived at, Sir T. Shepstone had managed still further to exasperate the feelings of the Zulus against the new Government of the Transvaal, while the fact that Natal and the Transvaal were one, and that to touch one was to touch the other, and to touch England also, had not been brought home to the king’s mind until he received Sir H. Bulwer’s message.
Before the receipt of that message, Cetshwayo had every reason to believe that the negotiations concerning the disputed territory were broken off. Sir T. Shepstone’s tone on the subject had altered; he had parted with the king’s indunas at the Blood River in anger, and the messenger whom he had promised to send to the king himself had never appeared. Meanwhile, the Boers had gone into laager, by direction, they say, of Sir T. Shepstone himself, and with the full expectation that he was about to make war upon the Zulus. No offer of arbitration had yet been made. Cetshwayo had been played with and baffled by the English Government for sixteen years, and to all appearance nothing whatever was done, or would be done, to settle in a friendly manner this troubled question, unless he took steps himself to _assert_ his rights, and he seems to have taken the mildest possible way of so doing under the circumstances. According to the official reports at the time, he sent a large force of armed men to build a military kraal near Luneburg, north of the Pongolo, in land which was also disputed with the Transvaal Government, but formed no part of the (so called) disputed territory to the south of that river, or as Lord Carnarvon said to a deputation of South African merchants (_Guardian_, January 9th, 1878): “He (the Zulu king) had proceeded to construct, in opposition to Sir T. Shepstone’s warnings, a fortified kraal in a disputed territory abutting upon English soil.”
But this was a very exaggerated way of describing a comparative trifling circumstance. The erection of a kraal—not, as so frequently asserted, a military one, but merely an ordinary Zulu kraal for the residence of a headman, to keep order among the 15,000 Zulus who lived in that district—had long been contemplated, and had once, during Umpanda’s lifetime, been attempted, though the Boers had driven away the Zulu officer sent for the purpose, and destroyed the work he had commenced.
Cetshwayo himself explains his reason for sending so large a force for the purpose, on the grounds that he wished the kraal to be built in one day, and his men not to be obliged to remain over a night, while, as Colonel Durnford, R.E., says (2144, p. 237), “the fact that the men at work are armed is of no significance, because every Zulu is an armed man, and never moves without his weapon.”
Sir T. Shepstone, however, was greatly alarmed when he first heard of the building of this kraal, and writes concerning it—November 16th, 1877 (1961, p. 224): “I feel, therefore (because of the irritating effect of it upon the Transvaal), that the building of this kraal must be prevented at all hazards.” The “hazards” do not appear to have proved very serious, as a simple representation on the part of Captain Clarke, R.A., and Mr. Rudolph, sent to the spot by Sir T. Shepstone, resulted in the Zulu force retiring, _having made only a small cattle kraal and chopped and collected some poles_, which they left on the ground, to be used for the building of the huts hereafter, but which were very soon carried off and used as firewood by the Luneburg farmers.
But this did not satisfy Sir T. Shepstone, who sent messengers to Cetshwayo, complaining of what had been done, and of “finding,” as he says, “a Zulu force in the rear of where he was staying;”[78] and saying that, in consequence, and in order to restore confidence amongst those Boers living on the Blood River border, he (Sir T. Shepstone) had decided to send a military force down to the waggon-drift on the Blood River, to encamp there on our side of the river. Cetshwayo replies that he did not send to have the kraal built that trouble might arise, but because his people were already living on the ground in dispute. He admits that of course the administrator could do as he pleased about sending an armed force to encamp on his own borders; but he urges him to think better of it, saying that the Zulus would be frightened and run away, and, if he in his turn should send an armed force to encamp just opposite Sir T. Shepstone’s encampment, to put confidence into _his_ people’s hearts, he asks, somewhat quaintly, “would it be possible for the two forces to be looking at one another for two days without a row?”
Many expressions are scattered through the Blue-books at this period concerning “Zulu aggressions;” and Sir T. Shepstone makes frequent, though vague and unproven, accusations concerning Cetshwayo’s “mischievous humour,” and the terror of the Boer frontier farmers.
But, so far as these remarks allude to the border squabbles inseparable from the state of affairs, the score is so heavily against the Boers that the counter-charges are hardly worth considering. The only acts chargeable upon the king himself are, first, the building of this kraal, which really amounted to no more than a practical assertion of the Zulu claim to land north of the Pongolo; and, secondly, the execution of a (supposed) Zulu criminal there, which was an exercise of Cetshwayo’s authority over his own people living in the district.
For the acts of violence committed by the robber chief Umbilini, the Zulu king could not justly be considered responsible; but of this matter, and of the raid committed by the sons of Sihayo, we will treat in a later chapter.
Sir T. Shepstone himself allows that Cetshwayo’s frame of mind was a better one after the reception of Sir Henry Bulwer’s message offering arbitration (2079, pp. 51-54); and says that his (Sir T. Shepstone’s) messengers “describe Cetshwayo as being in a very different temper to that which he had on former occasions exhibited;” to use their own expression, “it was Cetshwayo, but it was Cetshwayo born again.”... “They gleaned from the Zulus ... that a message from the Governor of Natal had been delivered, and they concluded that the change which they had noticed as so marked in the king’s tone must have been produced by that message.”
The fact that Cetshwayo joyfully and thankfully accepted Sir Henry Bulwer’s promise—not to give him the land he claimed, but to have the matter investigated and justice done—is sufficiently established; but from the Boers the proposal met with a very different reception.
Sir T. Shepstone acknowledged the receipt of Sir H. Bulwer’s despatch of December 11th, “transmitting copy of a message” which he “had thought fit to send to the Zulu king,” and then summoned a few leading men in the district, and laid the proposition before them. He reports that after some pretty speeches about the “Christian, humane, and admirable proposal,” which they should have “no excuse for hesitating to accept, if Cetshwayo were a civilised king and the Zulu Government a civilised government,” etc. etc., they proceeded to state their objections. They had, they said, no misgiving regarding the justice of the claim of the State; and they believed that the more it was investigated, the more impartial the minds of the investigators, the clearer and more rightful would that claim prove itself to be. Nevertheless, they professed to fear the delay that must necessarily be caused by such an investigation[79] (the dispute having already lasted fifteen years!) and to doubt Cetshwayo’s abiding by any promise he might make to observe a temporary boundary line.
To place the two parties to the dispute on equal terms, they said, the land in question should be evacuated by both, or occupied by both under the control of Sir Henry Bulwer, who, they proposed, as an indispensable condition of the proposed arbitration, should take possession of the land in dispute or of some part of it. And Sir T. Shepstone remarks:
“My view is that the considerations above set forth are both weighty and serious.
“I do not anticipate that, under the circumstances, Cetshwayo would venture to make or to authorise any overt attack. I do fear, however, the consequences of the lawless condition into which the population all along the border is rapidly falling. Cetshwayo, I fear, rather encourages than attempts to repress this tendency; and, although he will not go to war, he may allow that to go on which he knows will produce war.”
The condition of the border seems, as we have already shown, to have been “lawless” for many years, though the fault lay rather, with the Boers—whose many acts of violence are recorded in the Blue-books—than with the Zulus, and Sir T. Shepstone has apparently overlooked the fact that he himself had just summarily put a stop to an attempt, on Cetshwayo’s part to “repress” any lawless “tendency” amongst his own people (of which the Administrator complains) by placing a headman, or responsible person, amongst them to keep order.
Under the above-mentioned conditions Sir T. Shepstone accepts Sir Henry Bulwer’s proposal, and informs him that, under the circumstances, he shall not carry out his expressed intention of placing a military post in the neighbourhood of the Blood River.
And again he writes—January 17th, 1878 (2079, p. 58):
“It was, however, necessary to point out to Sir H. Bulwer the difficulties and dangers, as well as the loss of property, which the white people (Boers?) feel that they will be subjected to by the acceptance of His Excellency’s proposal, unless he can devise some means by which their safety and interests can be protected during the pending of the investigation, _which under existing circumstances it is Cetshwayo’s interest to prolong indefinitely_.”
The words which I have italicised show that Sir T. Shepstone took for granted beforehand that the decision of the Commissioners would be unfavourable to the Zulus.
Sir Henry Bulwer, however, did not see his way to falling in with the conditions of the Boers, and replies as follows (2079, p. 128):
“I do not see that I am in a position, or that, as the Lieutenant-Governor of this colony, I should have the power to take actual possession of the country in dispute. And if to take over the country, and hold possession of it, is considered by your Government an indispensable condition for the acceptance of the mediating course I have proposed, I feel that my proposal falls short of the requirements of the case.”
On January 29th, Sir T. Shepstone writes to Sir Henry again, saying that “It was felt that, in consequence of the step which you have thought it right to take in your communication to the Zulu king of the 8th December last, the Government of the Transvaal is placed at a disadvantage, and that the longer action on your part is delayed, the greater that disadvantage grows. It follows, therefore, that any action in the direction of your proposition is better than no action at all; and I was urged to beg your Excellency to take some step in the matter without delay.”
Accordingly Sir Henry at once sends a message to Cetshwayo, suggesting the observance of a “neutral belt,” pending the settlement of the boundary question (2079, p. 132), and mentioning the two lines, from point to point, which he proposed for the purpose.
The same suggestion was made, of course, to Sir T. Shepstone, who replies as follows: “You have rightly assumed the concurrence of this Government, and I trust that Cetshwayo will see in your message the necessity that is laid upon him to prove that he was sincere in asking you to undertake the inquiry.”
This ready acquiescence is fully accounted for by the fact, shortly apparent, that _both_ the lines mentioned by Sir Henry, between which neutrality should be observed, were within what was claimed by the Zulus as their own country, and Sir T. Shepstone says: “At present the belt of country indicated is occupied solely by Zulus. The whole of it has been apportioned in farms to Transvaal subjects, but has not been occupied by them.”
Small wonder that the Zulu king, in reply to this proposal, “informs the Governor of Natal that the two roads mentioned in His Excellency’s message are both in Zululand, and therefore the king cannot see how the ground between the roads can belong to both parties.”
Nevertheless Sir Henry Bulwer hardly seems to fall in with Sir T. Shepstone’s suggestion, that Cetshwayo’s consent on this point should be looked upon as a test of his sincerity: “Either,” he says (2100, p. 73), “he has misunderstood the real nature of the proposal, or he is disinclined to accept anything which may in his opinion be taken to signify a withdrawal of one iota of his claim.” And, in point of fact, though no “neutral ground” was marked off, the Commission went on just as well without it; all the apprehensions of disturbance and disorder having been falsified by the event.
Sir T. Shepstone repeatedly speaks of the border Boers having been forced by Zulu acts and threats of aggression to abandon their farms and go into laager, etc. etc.; but, on investigation, it is apparent that this abandonment of farms, and trekking into laager, took place in consequence of an intimation from the Landrost of Utrecht, under instructions from Sir T. Shepstone himself; as appears from the following passages of an address from seventy-nine Boers, protesting against arbitration as “an absurdity and an impossibility,” which was presented to Sir T. Shepstone on February 2nd, 1878 (2079, p. 140):
“The undersigned burghers, etc. ... take the liberty to bring to your Excellency’s notice that they, in consequence of intimation from the Landrost of Utrecht, dated 14th December last, on your Excellency’s instructions, partly trekked into laager, and partly deserted their farms, in the firm expectation that now a beginning of a war would soon be made.... That they have heard with anxiety and understand that arbitration is spoken of, which would have to determine our property and possessions; which we fear will decide in favour of a crowned robber, murderer, and breaker of his word, who knows as well as we that he is claiming a thing which does not belong to him ... for which reason we are sure that such arbitration is an absurdity and an impossibility. We therefore hereby protest against all proposed or to be undertaken arbitration; and we will, with all legal means at our disposal, etc., resist a decision, etc., over our property which we know would be unlawful and unjust.”
They give as a reason for presenting the address from which these phrases are taken, “_because it is impossible for us to remain any longer in laager without any object_,” which hardly looks as though they thought themselves in daily danger from the Zulus, unless the “beginning of a war” should “soon be made” by Sir T. Shepstone. They request His Excellency “to commence without any further delay defending” their “rights and property and lives;” and should His Excellency “not be inclined or be without power” to do so, they further signify their intention of requesting him to assist them with ammunition, and not to hinder them seeking assistance, of fellow-countrymen and friends, to maintain their “rights,” and to check their “rapacious enemies and to punish them.”
And they conclude: “We, the undersigned, bind ourselves on peril of our honour to assist in subduing the Zulu nation, and making it harmless.”
Sir T. Shepstone encloses this in a sympathising despatch, but Sir Henry Bulwer remarks upon it and upon a subsequent memorial[80] of the same description—February 23rd (2100, p. 67):
“Of course, if the object of the memorialists is war, if what they desire is a war with the Zulu nation, it is not to be wondered at that they should find fault with any steps that have been taken to prevent the necessity for war. Nor, if they desire war, is it to be expected that they should be favourable to arbitration, though I find it difficult to reconcile the expression of the apprehensions of the memorialists that arbitration would decide against them, with the unanimous expression of opinion, previously given to your Excellency by some of the leading men of the district, that the proposal made by me was a Christian, humane, and admirable one; that they had no misgivings regarding the justice of the claim of the State, and that they believed the more it was investigated ... the clearer and more rightful would that claim prove itself to be. Your Excellency observes that the deep feeling of distrust shown by the memorialists is scarcely to be wondered at, when it is remembered that they are compelled to occupy with their families fortified camps, while their farms in the neighbourhood are being occupied by Zulus, their crops reaped, and their cultivated lands tilled by Zulus, and the timber of their houses used as Zulu firewood.
“I do not quite understand what farms and cultivated lands are referred to; because in a previous despatch—your despatch, No. 7, of February 5th—your Excellency, in referring to the disputed territory, states, so I understand, that it ‘_is at present occupied solely by Zulus_,’ and that, although the whole of it has been apportioned in farms to Transvaal subjects, _it has not been occupied by them_.’”
The matter was referred to the High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, and the appointment of a commission was approved by him. He plainly took it for granted that, as Sir T. Shepstone had said, the Transvaal claim was based on “evidence the most incontrovertible, overwhelming, and clear,” and looked to the commission for the double advantage of enabling Sir T. Shepstone “to clear up or put on record, in a form calculated to satisfy Her Majesty’s Government, an answer to all doubts as to the facts and equity of the question,” and of gaining time for preparing a military force to silence and subjugate the Zulus should they object (as he expected) to such an award. That nothing short of military coercion of the Zulus would settle the matter, was evidently Sir Bartle Frere’s fixed idea; in fact that was the foregone conclusion with him from beginning to end.
On February 12th, Sir Henry Bulwer sent a message to Cetshwayo (2079, p. 140), to this effect:
“The Lieut.-Governor now sends to let Cetshwayo know that he has selected, for the purpose of holding this inquiry, the Queen’s Attorney-General in Natal (Hon. M. H. Gallway, Esq.), the Secretary for Native Affairs (Hon. J. W. Shepstone, Esq.), and Colonel Durnford, an officer in the Queen’s army.
“These gentlemen will proceed by-and-by to the place known as Rorke’s Drift, which is on the Buffalo River, and in Natal territory, and they will there open the inquiry on Thursday, March 7th.
“The Lieut.-Governor proposes, as the most convenient course to be taken, that the Zulu king should appoint two or three indunas to represent the Zulu king and the Zulu case at the inquiry, and that these should be at Rorke’s Drift on March 7th, and meet the Natal Commissioners there. The same thing also the Governor proposes shall be done by the Transvaal Government.” And the king’s reply to the messengers was expressive: “I am very glad to hear what you say—I shall now be able to sleep.”
On March 7th the Commission met at Rorke’s Drift, and sat for about five weeks, taking evidence day by day in presence of the representatives deputed, three by the Transvaal Government, and three by the Zulus.
Of the three gentlemen who formed the Commission, one was Sir T. Shepstone’s brother, already mentioned in this history, whose natural bias would therefore certainly not be upon the Zulu side of the question; another was a Government official and an acute lawyer; and the third, Colonel Durnford, to the writer’s personal knowledge, entered upon the subject with an entirely unbiassed mind, and with but one intention or desire, that of discovering the actual truth, whatever it might be. The only thing by which his expectations—rather than his opinions—were in the least influenced beforehand, was the natural supposition, shared by all, that Sir T. Shepstone, who had the reputation of being in his public capacity one of the most cautious of men, must have some strong grounds for his very positive statement of the Transvaal claim.
There was, plainly, some slight confusion in the minds of the three Transvaal delegates, as to their position relative to the Commissioners, with whom they apparently expected to be on equal terms, and in a different position altogether from the Zulu delegates on the other side. This, however, was a manifest mistake. It was particularly desirable that the Zulus should be made to feel that it was no case of white against black; but a matter in which impartial judges treated either side with equal fairness, and without respect of persons. One of the Commissioners was the brother of their chief opponent, one of the Transvaal delegates his son; it would naturally have seemed to the Zulus that the six white men (five out of whom were either Englishmen, or claimed to be such) were combining together to outwit them, had they seen them, evidently on terms of friendship, seated together at the inquiry or talking amongst themselves in their own language.
The Commissioners, however, were careful to avoid this mistake. Finding, on their arrival at Rorke’s Drift, that the spot intended for their encampment was already occupied by the Transvaal delegates, who had arrived before them, they caused their own tents to be pitched at some little distance, in order to keep the two apart. The same system was carried out during the sitting of the Court, at which the Commissioners occupied a central position at a table by themselves, the Transvaal delegates being placed at a smaller table on one hand, mats being spread for the Zulu delegates, in a like position, on the other.[81]
Care was also necessary to prevent any possible altercations arising between the Boer and Zulu attendants of either party of delegates, who, in fact, formed the one real element of danger in the affair. On one occasion, during the sitting of the Commission, Colonel Durnford observed a Boer poking at a Zulu with his stick, in a manner calculated to bring to the surface some of the feelings of intense irritation common to both sides, and only kept under control by the presence of the Commissioners. The Colonel at once put a stop to this, and placing a sentry between the two parties, with orders to insist on either keeping to its own side of the ground, no further disturbance took place. Popular rumour, of course, greatly exaggerated the danger of the situation, catching as usual at the opportunity for fresh accusations against the Zulu king, who, it was once reported from Durban, had sent an impi to Rorke’s Drift, and had massacred the Commissioners and all upon the spot. Fortunately the same day that brought this report to Pietermaritzburg, brought also letters direct from the Commissioners themselves, of a later date than the supposed massacre, and in which the Zulus were spoken of as “perfectly quiet.”
That the impartial conduct of the Commissioners had the desired effect is manifest from Cetshwayo’s words, spoken after the conclusion of the inquiry, but before its result had been made known to him. His messengers, after thanking Sir Henry Bulwer in the name of their king and people for appointing the commission, said that “Cetshwayo and the Zulu people are perfectly satisfied with the way in which the inquiry was conducted throughout, the way in which everything went on from day to day in proper order, and without the least misunderstanding; but that each party understood the subject that was being talked about.
“Cetshwayo says,” they continued, “he now sees that he is a child of this Government, that the desire of this Government is to do him justice....
“Cetshwayo and the Zulu people are awaiting with beating hearts what the Lieut.-Governor will decide about the land that the Boers have given the Zulus so much trouble about; for the Zulus wish very much now to reoccupy the land they never parted with, as it is now the proper season (of the year) for doing so.”
Such was Cetshwayo’s frame of mind (even before he knew that the decision was in his favour) at a time when he was popularly represented as being in an aggressive, turbulent condition, preparing to try his strength against us, and only waiting his opportunity to let loose upon Natal the “war-cloud” which he was supposed to keep “hovering on our borders.”
The boundary question resolved itself into this:
1. To whom did the land in dispute belong in the first instance?
2. Was it ever ceded or sold by the original possessors?
1. In answer to the first question, the Commissioners took the treaty made in 1843, between the English and the Zulus, as a standpoint fixing a period when the territory in dispute belonged entirely to one or other. There was then no question but that the Zulu country extended over the whole of it.
2. The Zulus deny ever having relinquished any part of their country to the Boers, who on the other hand assert that formal cessions had been made to them of considerable districts. With the latter rested the obligation of proving their assertions, which were simply denied by the Zulus, who accordingly, as they said themselves, “had no witnesses to call,” having received no authority from the king to do more than point out the boundary claimed[82] (2242, p. 80).
The Boer delegates brought various documents, from which they professed to prove the truth of their assertions, but which were decided by the Commissioners to be wholly worthless, from the glaring discrepancies and palpable falsehoods which they contained. One of these documents, dated March 16th, 1861, “purporting to give an account of a meeting between Sir T. Shepstone, Panda, and Cetshwayo,” they decided to be plainly a fabrication, as Sir T. Shepstone did not arrive at Nodwengu,[83] from Natal, to meet Panda and Cetshwayo, until May 9th, 1861.
Other records of cessions of land professed to be signed by the king, but were witnessed by neither Boer nor Zulu, or else by Boers alone. A definition of boundaries was in one case ratified by one Zulu only, a man of no rank or importance; and in other documents alterations were made, and dates inserted, clearly at another time.
Meanwhile it was apparent, from authentic Boer official papers, that the Zulus were threatened by the Boer Government that, if they dared to complain again to the British Government, the South African Republic “would deal severely with them, and that they would also endanger their lives;” while such expressions used by the Volksraad of the South African Republic as the following, when they resolve “to direct the Government to continue in the course it had adopted with reference to the policy on the eastern frontier, with such caution as the Volksraad expects from the Government with confidence; and in this matter to give it the right to take such steps as will more fully benefit the interests of the population than _the strict words of the law of the country lay down_” (2220, p. 337), convicts them of dishonesty out of their own mouths.
Finally the Commissioners report that in their judgment, east of the Buffalo, “there has been no cession of land at all by the Zulu kings, past or present, or by the nation.”
They consider, however, that—as the Utrecht district has long been inhabited by Boers, who have laid out the site for a town, and built upon it, and as the Zulu nation had virtually acquiesced in the Boer authority over it by treating with them for the rendition of fugitives who had taken refuge there—the Transvaal should be allowed to retain that portion of the land in dispute, compensation being given to the Zulus inhabiting that district if they surrendered the lands occupied by them and returned to Zululand, or permission being given them to become British subjects and to continue to occupy the land.
Sir Bartle Frere’s version of this is as follows:
“The Commissioners propose to divide the area in dispute between the Blood River and the Pongolo, giving to neither party the whole of its claim.” He then quotes the recommendation of the Commissioners, that compensation should be given to Zulus leaving the Utrecht district, and wants to know what is to be done for the farmers who “in good faith, and relying on the right and power of the Transvaal Government to protect them, had settled for many years past on the tract which the Commission proposes to assign to the Zulus.” He wishes to know how they are to be placed on an equality with the Zulus from the Utrecht district. To this Sir Henry Bulwer ably replies by pointing out that compensation to the said farmers lies with their own Government, by whose sanction or permission they had occupied land over which that Government had no power by right. In fact, far from “dividing the area in dispute,” and giving half to either party on equal terms, the reservation of the Utrecht district was rather an unavoidable concession to the Boers who had long had actual possession of it—which, with due compensation, the Zulus would have been ready enough to make, while receiving back so much of their own land—than an acknowledgment that they could make good their original claim to it. The Commissioners indeed say distinctly “_there has been no cession of land at all by the Zulu king, past or present, or by the nation_.”
But indeed, after the decision in favour of the Zulus was given, Sir Bartle Frere entirely changed the complacent tone in which he had spoken of the Commission beforehand. To all appearance his careful schemes for subjugating the Zulu nation were thrown away—the war and the South African Empire were on the point of eluding his grasp. He had sent to England for reinforcements—in direct opposition to the home policy, which for some years had been gradually teaching the colonies to depend upon themselves for protection, and therefore to refrain from rushing headlong into needless and dangerous wars, which might be avoided by a little exercise of tact and forbearance. He and his friend General Thesiger had laid out their campaign and had sent men-of-war to investigate the landing capabilities of the Zulu coast, and he had recommended Sir Henry Bulwer to inform the Zulu king—when the latter expressed his disquietude on the subject of these men-of-war—that the ships he saw were “for the most part English merchant vessels, but that the war-vessels of the English Government are quite sufficient to protect his (Cetshwayo’s) coast from any descent by any other power” (October 6th, 1878, 2220, p. 307).
Sir Henry Bulwer was too honest to carry out this recommendation, even had he not had the sense to know that Cetshwayo was accustomed to the passing of merchantmen, and was not to be thus taken in (supposing him to be likely to fear attacks from “foreign foes”). But the fact remains that, an English official of Sir Bartle Frere’s rank has put on record, in an official despatch under his own hand, a deliberate proposal that the Zulu king should be tranquillised, and his well-founded suspicions allayed by—a “figure of speech,” shall we say?
Every possible objection was made by Sir Bartle Frere to the decision of the Commissioners, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he was at last persuaded to ratify it, after a considerable period employed in preparing for a campaign, the idea of which he appears never for a minute to have relinquished. Sir T. Shepstone protested against the decision, which, however, Sir Henry Bulwer upheld; while Sir Bartle Frere finally decides that “Sir H. Bulwer and I, approaching the question by somewhat different roads, agree in the conclusion that we must accept the Commissioners’ verdict.” Their report was made on June 20th, 1878, but it was not until November 16th that Sir H. Bulwer sent to Cetshwayo to say that “the Lieut.-Governor is now in a position to inform Cetshwayo that His Excellency the High Commissioner has pronounced his award, etc.,” and to fix twenty days from the date of the departure of the messengers carrying this message from Pietermaritzburg, as a convenient time for a meeting on the borders of the two countries at the Lower Tugela Drift, at which the decision should be delivered to the king’s indunas by officers of the Government appointed for the purpose.
But before this conclusion was arrived at another attempt had been made to bring accusations against Cetshwayo, who said himself at the time (June 27th, 1878): “The name of Cetshwayo is always used amongst the Boers as being the first to wish to quarrel.” Alarming accounts reached the Natal Government of a fresh military kraal having been built by the king, and notices to quit being served by him upon Boers within the disputed territory, in spite of his engagement to await the decision of the Commissioners. The farmers complained of being obliged to fly, “leaving homes, homesteads, and improvements to be destroyed by a savage, unbridled, revengeful nation.”[84] Sir T. Shepstone re-echoed their complaint (2220, p. 27), and Sir Bartle Frere comments severely upon the alleged Zulu aggressions.
The matter, however, when sifted, sinks into insignificance. Some squabbles had taken place between individual Boers and Zulus, such as were only natural in the unsettled state of things; and Cetshwayo’s explanation of the so-called “notices to quit” placed them in a very different light.
Sir Henry Bulwer writes to Sir Bartle Frere as follows on this point (July 16th): “The Zulu king says that all the message he sent was a request that the Boers should be warned not to return to the disputed country, as he was informed they were doing since the meeting of the Commission. We know that some of the Boers did return to the disputed territory after the Commission broke up;[85] and this, no doubt, was looked upon by the Zulus as an attempt on the part of the Boers to anticipate the result of the inquiry, and led to the giving those notices.... The fault has been, no doubt, on both sides.”
The military kraal, also, turned out to be no more of the nature ascribed to it than was its predecessor: “An ordinary private Zulu kraal”—see report of Mr. Kudolph (2144, p. 186)—“built simply to have a kraal in that locality, where many of Cetshwayo’s people are residing without a head or kraal representing the king ... the king having given instructions that neither the white nor the native subjects of the Transvaal were in any way to be molested or disturbed by the Zulus;” and having sent a small force to do the work, because the large one he had sent on a previous occasion had frightened the white people.
Colonel Pearson, commanding the troops in Natal and the Transvaal, writes, June 8th, 1878 (2144, p. 236):
“The Landrost of Utrecht I know to be somewhat of an alarmist, and the border farmers have all along been in a great fright, and much given to false reports. I allude more particularly to the Boers. I enclose Lieut.-Colonel Durnford’s views of the kraal question. He is an officer who knows South Africa intimately, and his opinion I consider always sound and intelligent.”
And the following is the statement of Lieut.-Colonel Durnford, R.E., June 8th, 1878 (2144, p. 237):
“I know the district referred to, in which are many Zulu kraals, and believe that, if such a military kraal is in course of erection on the farm of one Kohrs, believed to be a field-cornet in the Wakkerstroom district, residing about fifteen miles from the mission station of the Rev. Mr. Meyer, it is being constructed that order may be kept amongst the Zulus here residing—who owe allegiance to the Zulu king alone—and in the interests of peace.... I further believe that, if the German or other residents at or near Luneburg have been ordered to leave, it is not by orders of the King of Zululand, who is far too wise a man to make a false move at present, when the boundary between himself and the Transvaal is under consideration.”
The excitement concerning the “notices to quit,” and the second “military kraal,” appears to have been as unnecessary as any other imaginary Zulu scare; and there are no proofs to be extracted from the official papers at this period of the slightest signs of aggressive temper on the part of the Zulu king.
On the contrary; if we turn to the “Message from Cetywayo, King of the Zulus, to His Excellency the Lieut.-Governor of Natal,” dated November 10th, 1878, we find the concluding paragraph runs: “Cetywayo hereby swears, in presence of Oham, Mnyamana, Tshingwayo, and all his other chiefs, that he has no intention or wish to quarrel with the English.”—(P. P. [C. 2308] p. 16).