-426 THE NATIVE AND AGRICULTURE. 



to Gaika and Fingo, to Mopeni and Mollapin. When there have 

 been differences of treatment they have been made (as in the case 

 of the franchise) to suit the varying conditions of the white man 

 rather than the black. 



This would not have happened if the tribal system had been 

 recognised and maintained — if the native had been ruled through 

 his hereditary chief, and if we had realised the sacred character 

 of lineal descent from the semi-divine tribe founder in the mind 

 of the native, and the religious authority conferred by it upon 

 the ruling chief and imposed on his subjects. It is much to be 

 regretted, therefore, that the British Government did not (as it 

 •did in India after the days of the Marquis of Dalhousie) from 

 the very first regard the Kaffir or Bechuana chief as responsible 

 for the enforcement of a righteous, enlightened and effective rule 

 under pain of deposition from office and substitution of a better 

 qualified scion of the hereditary line. 1 There was excellent material 

 available — men like Tao, Makaabe, Setyeli, Tulare, Motlume, 

 Sekwati, Molitsane, Moroko, Rarabe, Sarili, and preeminently 

 Khama and the house of Moshesh. 2 To such could have been 

 entrusted, as is now done in the Protectorates, the task of distri- 

 buting the pastures and sowing lands among the tribesmen; carry- 

 ing out measures against animal diseases and insect pests, settling 

 the date of seed-time and harvest as the Hurutse chiefs were wont 

 to do for all the Bechuana tribes, adjudicating on questions of 

 native marriage inheritance, and generally administering law and 

 order as their fathers did in their day and in the old time before 

 them. But of course we except the ceremonies of witch finding 

 and rain making which are happily now obsolete or obsolescent. 

 Nowadays the witch doctor and rain doctor may be replaced by 

 scientific experts on agricultural matters who convey advice, 

 instruction, and injunction through the British resident. 



Unfortunately the ruling idea in the past was not to improve 

 the native but to convert him — -not to help him as a black man 

 but to change him into a white one — to make him like ourselves — 

 as near as possible. The Ethiopian had to change his skin. By 

 "breaking down the power of the chiefs," however, a very salutary 

 control was lost, adapted to the customs and prejudices of the 

 tribe, which were often, as we have seen, originally the dictates 

 of observation and experiment based on the inductive method. 

 Had this course been pursued the prospect visioned by Mr. B. K. 

 Long of "two harmonious and contented races in territorially 

 separate area" might have been realised.' 1 



1 The fatal policy of destroying the power of the native chiefs 

 instituted by Lord Charles Somerset, and for so many decades so 

 greatly in vogue, was not long approved by Sir B. Durban. "I very 

 much altered this opinion afterwards," he notes in a letter to Sir H. 

 Smith. I., 1835. 



2 To say nothing of Sebituane, Moseiekatse, Dinigiswayo and Cety- 

 wayo. Tshaka and Dingaan were merely butchers — Gaika, "cruel and 

 treacherous"; Hintsa. the same; Saril (Kreli) "a gentleman." teste 

 the late Archdeacon Woodrutt'e — a good judge. 



3 B. K. Long, Hansard, 1913, col. 2403. "It was a great mistake 

 when they broke down the tribal system," J. Searle, Hansard, 1913, 

 col. 2490.' 



