Part 9
On a certain Sunday, when he had gone in with the usual weekly supplies, which are returnable on Sundays, he had been short of eight rations of fish and ten rations of kwanga and 330 palm mats, representing a value of 84 rods (4 fr. 20 c.), as estimated on the scale of Government payments. On the same date the other and larger portion of A* town was also short of its tale of supplies, and a fine of 5,000 brass rods (250 fr.) was imposed upon the collective village. A’s share of this fine was fixed by the natives among themselves at 2,000 rods, of which 1,000 rods were to be his own personal contribution. Having himself now no money and no other means of obtaining it, he had pledged--with the consent of the father--his little nephew, D’s son, whom I had seen with B. In making inquiry, A’s story received much confirmation. He was, at any rate, known as a man of very good character, and everything pointed to his statement being true. On my return down river, I again saw A, who came after nightfall to see me, in the hope that I might perhaps be able to help him. He said that, since I had left a month previously, two of the boys of his town had been detained at Coquilhatville as prisoners when taking the rations on two successive weeks, owing to a deficiency on each occasion of 18 rods in value (90 cents.), and that these two boys--whose names he gave me--were still in prison. He had been that very day, he said, to beg that they might be released, but had failed, and there were now only five adult males in his village, including himself.
While in Coquilhatville on this mission, he declared that he had seen eleven men brought in from villages in the neighbourhood, who were put in prison before him--all of them on account of a shortage in the officially fixed scale of supplies required from their districts. I offered to take him away with me in order to lay his case before the judicial authorities elsewhere, but he refused to leave his mother. That A’s statements were not so untrustworthy as on the face they might seem to be, was proved a few days later by a comparison of his case with that of another village I visited. This was a town named W*, lying some three miles inland in a swampy forest situated near the mouth of the X* River. On quitting Coquilhatville, I proceeded to the mouth of this river, which enters the Congo some forty-five miles above that station, and I remained two days in that neighbourhood. Learning that the people of the immediate neighbourhood had recently been heavily fined for failure in their food supplies, which have to be delivered weekly at that station, and that these fines had fallen with especial severity on W*, I decided to visit that town.
It was on the 21st August that I visited W*, where I found that the statements made to me were borne out by my personal observation. The town consisted of a long single street of native huts lying in the midst of a clearing in the forest. In traversing it from end to end I estimated the number of its people at about 600 all told.
At the upper end of the town a number of men and women assembled, and some came forward, when they made a lengthy statement to the following effect. From this upper end of the town wherein I was 100 rations of kwanga had to be supplied weekly, and thirty fowls at a longer interval. These latter were for the use of Coquilhatville, while the kwanga was very largely for the use of the wood-cutters at the nearest Government wood-cutting post on the main river. The usual prices for these articles, viz., for the kwanga, 1 rod each, and for the fowls 20 rods were paid. The people also had to take each week 10 fathoms of firewood to the local wood-post, for which they often got no payment, and their women were required twice a week to work at the Government coffee plantation which extends around the wood-post.
I saw some bundles of firewood being got ready for carriage to this place. They were large and very heavy, weighing, I should say, from 70 to 80 lb. each. Some months earlier, at the beginning of the year, owing, as they said, to their failure to send in the fowls to Coquilhatville, an armed expedition of some thirty soldiers, commanded by a European officer, had come thence and occupied their town. At first they had fled into the forest, but were persuaded to come in. On returning, many of them--the principal men--- were at once tied up to trees. The officer informed them that as they had failed in their duty they must be punished. He required first that twenty-five men should be furnished as workmen for Government service. These men were taken away to serve the Government as labourers, and those addressing me did not know where these men now were. They gave eighteen names of men so taken, and said that the remaining seven came from the lower end of the town through which I had passed on entering, where the relatives themselves could give me particulars if I wished. The twenty-five men had not since been seen in W*, nor had any one there cognizance of their whereabouts. The officer had then imposed as further punishment a fine of 55,000 brass rods (2,750 fr.)--110_l._ This sum they had been forced to pay, and as they had no other means of raising so large a sum they had, many of them, been compelled to sell their children and their wives. I saw no live-stock of any kind in W* save a very few fowls--possibly under a dozen--and it seemed, indeed, not unlikely that, as these people asserted, they had great difficulty in always getting their supplies ready. A father and mother stepped out and said that they had been forced to sell their son, a little boy called F, for 1,000 rods to meet their share of the fine. A widow came and declared that she had been forced, in order to meet her share of the fine, to sell her daughter G, a little girl whom I judged from her description to be about 10 years of age. She had been sold to a man in Y*, who was named, for 1,000 rods, which had then gone to make up the fine.
A man named H stated that while the town was occupied by the soldiers, a woman who belonged to his household, named I, had been shot dead by one of the soldiers. Her husband, a man named K, stepped forward and confirmed the statement. They both declared that the woman had quitted her husband’s house to obey a call of Nature, and that one of the soldiers, thinking she was going to run away, had shot her through the head. The soldier was put under arrest by the officer, and they said they saw him taken away a prisoner when the force was withdrawn from their town, but they knew nothing more than this. They did not know if he had been tried or punished. No one of them had ever been summoned to appear, no question had been addressed to them, and neither had the husband nor the head of I’s household received any compensation for her death. Another woman named L, the wife of a man named M, had been taken away by the native sergeant who was with the soldiers. He had admired her, and so took her back with him to Coquilhatville. Her husband heard she had died there of small-pox, but he did not know anything certain of her circumstances after she had been taken away from W*. A man named N said he had sold his wife O to a man in Y* for 900 rods to meet his share of the fine.
It was impossible for me to verify these statements, or to do much beyond noting down, as carefully as possible, the various declarations made. I found, however, on returning to Y*, that the statements made with regard to the little boy F and the girl G were true. These children were both in the neighbourhood, and owing to my intervention F was restored to his parents. The girl G, I was told, had again changed hands, and was promised in sale to a town on the north bank of the Congo, named Iberi, whose people are said to be still open cannibals. Through the hands of the local missionary this transfer was prevented, and I paid the 1,000 rods to her original purchaser, and left G to be restored to her mother from the Mission. I saw her there on the 9th September, after she had been recovered through this missionary’s efforts, while about to be sent to her parent.
With regard to the quantity of food supplies levied upon W*, I did not obtain the total amount required of the entire community, but only that which the upper end of the town furnished. The day of my visit happened to be just that when the kwanga, due at the local wood-post, was being prepared for delivery on the morrow. I saw many of the people getting their shares ready. Each share of kwanga, for which a payment of 1 rod is made by the Government, consisted of five rolls of this food tied together. One of these bundles of five rolls I sought to buy, offering the man carrying it 10 rods--or ten times what he was about to receive for it from the local Government post. He refused my offer, saying that, although he would like the 10 rods, he dare not be a bundle of his ration short. One of these bundles was weighed and found to weigh over 15 lb. This may have been an extraordinarily large bundle, although I saw many others which appeared to be of the same size. I think it would be safe to assume that the average of each ration of kwanga required from this town was not less than 12 lb. weight of cooked and carefully prepared food--a not ungenerous offering for 1/2_d._ By this computation the portion of W* I visited sends in weekly 1,200 lb. weight of food at a remuneration of some 5 fr. Cooked bread-stuffs supplied at 9 or 10 fr. per ton represent, it must be admitted, a phenomenally cheap loaf. At the same time with this kwanga, being prepared for the Government use, I saw others being made up for general public consumption. I bought some of these, which were going to the local market, at their current market value, viz., 1 rod each. On weighing them I found they gave an average of 1 lb. each. The weight of food-stuffs required by the Government from this town would seem to have exceeded in weight twelve times that made up for public consumption.
Whilst I was in Y* a fresh fine of 20,000 rods (1,000 fr.) was in course of collection among the various households along the river bank. This fine had been quite recently imposed by direction of ---- for a further failure on the part of the Y* towns in the supply of food-stuffs from that neighbourhood. I saw at several houses piles of brass rods being collected to meet it, and in front of one of these houses I counted 2,700 rods which had been brought together by the various dependents of that family; 6,000 rods of this further fine was, I was told, to be paid by W*, which had not then recovered from its previous much larger contribution. The W* men begged me to intervene, if I could at all help them to escape this further imposition. One of them--a strong, indeed a splendid-looking man--broke down and wept, saying that their lives were useless to them, and that they knew of no means of escape from the troubles which were gathering around them. I could only assure these people that their obvious course to obtain relief was by appeal to their own constituted authorities, and that if their circumstances were clearly understood by those responsible for these fines, I trusted and believed some satisfaction would be forthcoming.
These fines, it should be borne in mind, are illegally imposed: they are not “fines of Court”; are not pronounced after any judicial hearing, or for any proved offence against the law, but are quite arbitrarily levied according to the whim or ill-will of the executive officers of the district, and their collection, as well as their imposition, involves continuous breaches of the Congolese laws. They do not, moreover, figure in the account of public revenues in the Congo “Budgets;” they are not paid into the public purse of the country, but are spent on the needs of the station or military camp of the officer imposing them, just as seems good to this official.
I can nowhere learn upon what legal basis, if any, the punishments inflicted upon native communities or individuals for failure to comply with the various forms of “prestations” rest.
These punishments are well-nigh universal and take many shapes, from punitive expeditions carried out on a large scale to such simpler forms of fine and imprisonment as that lately inflicted on U*.
I cannot find in the Penal Code of the Congo Statute Book that a failure to meet or a non-compliance with any form of prestation or _impôt_ is anywhere defined as a crime; and so far as I can see no legal sanction could be cited for any one of the punishments so often inflicted upon native communities for this failure.
By a Royal Decree of the 11th August, 1886, provision was made for the punishments to be inflicted for infractions of the law not punishable by special penalties.
Since no special penalty in law would seem to have been provided for cases of failure or refusal to comply with the demands of the tax-gatherer, it would seem to be in the terms of this Decree that the necessary legal sanctions could alone lie.
But this Decree provides for all otherwise unspecified offences far other punishments, and far other modes of inflicting them than so many of those which came to my notice during my brief journey.
Article 1 of this Decree provides that:--
“Les contraventions aux décrets, ordonnances, arrêtes, règlements d’administration intérieure et de police, à l’égard desquelles la loi ne détermine pas de peines particulières, seront punies d’un à sept jours de servitude pénale et d’une amende n’excédant pas 200 fr., ou d’une de ces peines seulement.”
Article 2 requires that:--
“Ces peines seront appliquées par les Tribunaux de l’État conformément aux lois en vigueur.”
It would be manifestly impossible to say that either in form or mode of procedure this law had been applied to the failure of the community at W* to meet the demands made upon them.
Neither the summary arrest and taking away from their homes of the men whose names were given to me nor the imposition of the very heavy fine of brass rods find any warrant in this page of the Congo Statute Book.
If a legal warrant exists for the action of the authorities in this case--as in the numerous other cases brought to my notice--that action would still call for much adverse comment.
The amount of the fine levied on W* was not only out of all proportion to the gravity of the offence committed, but was of so crushing a character as to preclude the possibility of its being acquitted by any reasonable or legitimate means that community disposed of.
Among the earliest enactments of civilized administrations, recognition has invariably been given to the pronouncement that no fine or imposition, or exaction, shall exceed the powers of the person on whom it is imposed to meet it.
But if, as I venture to presume, no Congolese law or judicial pronouncement exists, or could exist, for the levying, in this manner, of these fines, very explicit Regulations for the treatment of the natives on general lines and their right to judicial protection do exist.
In the “texte coordonné des diverses instructions relatives aux rapports des Agents de l’État avec les indigènes,” which are to be found in the “Bulletin Officiel” of 1896 (p. 255), these Regulations are published at length and would seem, textually, to leave little room for criticism.
Were their application enforced it is abundantly clear that a situation such as that I found in existence at W* could not arise, and much of the general unhappiness and distress of the natives I witnessed on all sides would disappear along with the fines and much also of the “prestations,” within the first month of the translation into action of these Regulations.
One paragraph only need here be cited to emphasize the bearing and import of these remarks:--
“Les agents doivent se souvenir que les peines disciplinaires prévues par le règlement de discipline militaire ne sont applicables qu’aux recrutés militaires, uniquement pour des infractions contre la discipline, et dans les conditions spécialement prévues par le dit règlement.
“Elles ne sont applicables, sous aucune prétexte, aux serviteurs de l’État non militaire ni aux indigènes, que ceux-ci soient ou non en rébellion vis-à-vis de l’Etat.
“Ceux d’entre eux qui sont prévenus de délits ou crimes doivent être déférés aux Tribunaux compétents et jugés conformément aux lois.”
At neither W* nor Y* is any rubber worked. With my arrival in the Lulongo River, I was entering one of the most productive rubber districts of the Congo State, where the industry is said to be in a very flourishing condition. The Lulongo is formed by two great feeders--the Lopori and Maringa Rivers--which, after each a course of some 350 miles through a rich, forested country, well peopled by a tribe named Mongos, unite at Bassankusu, some 120 miles above where the Lulongo enters the Congo. The basins of these two rivers form the Concession known as the A.B.I.R., which has numerous stations, and a staff of fifty-eight Europeans engaged in exploiting the india-rubber industry, with head-quarters at Bassankusu. Two steamers belonging to the A.B.I.R. Company navigate the waterways of the Concession, taking up European goods and bringing down to Bassankusu the india-rubber, which is there transhipped on board a Government steamer which plies for this purpose between Coquilhatville and Bassankusu, a distance of probably 160 miles. The transport of all goods and agents of the A. B. I. R. Company, immediately these quit the Concession, is carried on exclusively by the steamers of the Congo Government, the freight and passage-money obtained being reckoned as part of the public revenue. I have no actual figures giving the annual output of india-rubber from the A.B.I.R. Concession, but it is unquestionably large, and may, in the case of a prosperous year, reach from 600 to 800 tons. The quality of the A.B.I.R. rubber is excellent, and it commands generally a high price on the European market, so that the value of its annual yield may probably be estimated at not less than 150,000_l._ The merchandise used by the Company consists of the usual class of Central African barter goods--cotton cloths of different quality, Sheffield cutlery, matchets, beads, and salt. The latter is keenly sought by the natives of all the interior of Africa. There is also a considerable import by the A.B.I.R. Company, I believe, of cap-guns, which are chiefly used in arming the sentinels--termed “forest guards”--who, in considerable numbers, are quartered on the native villages throughout the Concession to see that the picked men of each town bring in, with regularity, the fixed quantity of pure rubber required of them every fortnight. I have no means of ascertaining the number of this class of armed men employed by the A.B.I.R. Company, but I saw many of them when up the Lopori River, and the gun of one of these sentries--himself an Ngombe savage--had branded on the stock “Depôt 2210.” In addition to its numerous forest guards, armed with cap-guns, which, at close quarters, can be a very effective weapon, the A. B. I. R. Company has a fairly strong armament of rifles. These are limited to twenty-five rifles for the use of each factory. The two steamers, I believe, have also a similar armament.
The Secteur of Bongandanga, which was the only district of the A.B.I.R. Concession I visited, has three “factories,” so that the number of rifles permitted in that one district would be seventy-five. I do not know if any limits or what limits are imposed on the number of cartridges which are permitted for the defence of these factories. One of the largest Congo Concession Companies had, when I was on the Upper River, addressed a request to its Directors in Europe for a further supply of ball-cartridge. The Directors had met this demand by asking what had become of the 72,000 cartridges shipped some three years ago, to which a reply was sent to the effect that these had all been used in the production of india-rubber. I did not see this correspondence, and cannot vouch for the truth of the statement; but the officer who informed me that it had passed before his own eyes was one of the highest standing in the interior.
When at Stanley Pool in June I had seen in one of the Government stores at Léopoldville a number of cases of rifles marked A. B. I. R. awaiting transport up river in one of the Government vessels; and upon my return to that neighbourhood, I was told by a local functionary that 200 rifles had, in July, been so shipped for the needs of the Lomami Company.
The right of the various Concession Companies operating within the Congo State to employ armed men--whether these bear rifles or cap-guns--is regulated by Government enactments, which confer on these commercial Societies what are termed officially “rights of police” (“droits de police”). A Circular of the Governor-General dealing with this question, dated the 20th October, 1900, points out the limits within which this right may be exercised. Prior to the issue of this Circular (copy of which is attached--Inclosure 5),[17] the various Concession Companies would appear to have engaged in military operations on a somewhat extensive scale, and to have made war upon the natives on their own account. The Regulations this Circular provides, to insure the licensing of all arms, rifles, and cap-guns, do not seem to be strictly observed, for in several cases the sentries or forest guards I encountered on my journey up the Lulongo had no licence (Modèle C) of the kind required by the Circular; and in two cases I found them provided with arms of precision. That the extensive use of armed men in the pay of the so-called Trading Societies, or in the service of the Government, as a means to enforce the compliance with demands for india-rubber, had been very general up to a recent date, is not denied by any one I met on the Upper Congo.
In a conversation with a gentleman of experience on this question, our remarks turned upon the condition of the natives. He produced a disused diary, and in it, I found and copied the following entry:--
M. P. called on us to get out of the rain, and in conversation with M. Q. in presence of myself and R., said: ‘The only way to get rubber is to fight for it. The natives are paid 35 centimes per kilog., it is claimed, but that includes a large profit on the cloth; the amount of rubber is controlled by the number of guns, and not the number of bales of cloth. The S. A. B. on the Bussira, with 150 guns, get only 10 tons (rubber) a-month; we, the State, at Momboyo, with 130 guns, get 13 tons per month.’ ‘So you count by guns?’ I asked him. ‘Partout,’ M. P. said, ‘Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used; and for every one used, he must bring back a right hand.’ M. P. told me that sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a living man. As to the extent to which this is carried on, he informed me that in six months they, the State, on the Momboyo River, had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the people have told me repeatedly that the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.