Consul General Handley to the Secretary of State.
Boma, November 24, 1908.
Sir: I have the honor to report that Mr. W. Thesiger, British consul at Boma, returned from his trip of investigation of conditions in the Kasai district, particularly that of the Kasai Co., on September 9, after spending four months in the interior. The latter part of the month he sent to his Government an exhaustive report on the conditions as he found them in that district. I have been able to secure from him considerable information relative to the present state of affairs in that part of the Kongo, and herewith submit, for the information of the department, a summary of the information obtained:
The Kasai Co. came into existence in December, 1901, by a convention or agreement between the directors of the company and the Independent State of the Kongo, its object being to gather rubber, gum copal, and all other vegetable products in the enormous district known as “the Kasai.” This privilege was granted for a term of 30 years, and it is, I believe, the largest and most important of the concessionary companies now doing business in the Kongo Free State.
Mr. Thesiger found that in the company’s dealings with the native population they habitually disregard the State regulations for the prevention of willful waste of the rubber resources of the country and cast aside every restriction imposed upon them for the purpose of safeguarding the native rights. That this systematic violation of the Kongo Free State laws can not be carried on without the knowledge of the directors of the company and that it would be impossible but for the willful blindness, if not actual connivance, of the State officials themselves.
He declares that in all the country through which he passed, where this company has established posts, their agents have issued orders that the vines are to be cut and not tapped, as in the past, the quantity of rubber procurable from the latter method not being sufficiently large to satisfy the greed of the company.
There are stringent laws against this cutting of the rubber vines and State forest inspectors who are supposed to report to the authorities all cases which come under their notice.
Referring to the wholesale destruction of the vines now going on unchecked he says: “In the 31 villages which I visited in the Bakuba district they sent in monthly 173,000 balls of rubber, weighing on an average from 22 to 28 pounds per 1,000, and that experience shows that it takes from 20 to 40 feet of vine to make 10 balls.”
Although the Kasai Co. claims that all their rubber is made by voluntary labor; that it is in no way a tax, and that their agents have neither the right nor the power to force the native to bring it in, the consul claims that “each village is taxed at so many balls a month and that any shortage is punished by imprisonment, fines, or chicotte,1 while the amount fixed is so high that the natives, especially the Bakuba, have no time to cultivate their fields, repair their houses, hunt, or fish.”
[Page 590]While the company also deny the employment of armed sentries, he declares “they have in every village or group of villages one or more capitas,1 who are, with few exceptions, all armed with cap guns. It may be mentioned that the villagers have to supply gratis to these capitas food, palm wine, a house, and a woman.”
The Free State law prohibits the carrying of cap guns by the capitas or native agents of companies who have to deal with the natives in commercial matters.
No trader or commercial agent has any right to punish a native by imprisonment or by flogging. In this regard the consul says “that the Kasai Co. agents not only punish the natives in these and other ways for any shortage in the month’s supply of rubber but allow their native capitas to usurp the same powers in the fullest measure in the villages under their charge. I heard of three cases in which these capitas imprisoned women in order to bring pressure upon the men.”
Referring to the military raids to enforce the collection of rubber, Mr. Thesiger states that “the company forces Lukengu, a powerful king of the Bakubas, to carry out these raids for them with his native soldiers, who, to the number of some 300 or more, are all armed with cap guns; these soldiers can be met with all over the Bakuba territory, scouring the country for the purpose of enforcing the rubber tax, making prisoners and collecting fines for the benefit of the Kasai Co.” He mentions two incidents of these raids. Summarizing the foregoing it will thus be seen that in five different ways—(1) by cutting the vines, (2) by imposing taxes for the benefit of the company, (3) by employing armed sentries, (4) by punishing natives without legal authority, (5) by causing military raids to be made to force the natives to make rubber—the Kasai Co. is, for the sake of profit, deliberately breaking the laws of the State; the laws of humanity are still less regarded.
In the Bakuba country he found everywhere, except in the villages exempt for some special reason, that the rubber tax was so heavy that the villagers had no time to attend to the necessities of life, and many of the capitas told him that they had orders not to allow the natives to clear the ground for cultivation, to hunt, or to fish, as it took up time which should be spent in making rubber. Even so, in some cases, the natives can only comply with the demands made on them by utilizing the labor of the women and children. In consequence their huts are falling to ruin, their fields are uncultivated and are fast being overgrown by brush, and the people are short of food.
This district was formerly so rich in corn and millet and other foodstuffs that the mission of Luebo used in the old days to send there and buy maize for their workmen; now, as regards cultivation, he says, “It is almost a desert and my carriers often had difficulty in procuring sufficient food. The rainy season was approaching and everywhere the complaint was made that the men were not allowed to utilize the few remaining weeks in clearing new ground for the sowing of next year’s crop. This means that in the coming year there will be an increased shortage of food.”
[Page 591]With regard to the position of the Government in reference to these abuses, he states: “They must either confess their utter incompetency to enforce their own laws, so far as these companies are concerned, or confess their complicity in these practices.”
The consul met several of the younger officials who, he thinks, would willingly use what power they have to put an end to this state of things, but they are to a large extent powerless in the face of the central authority, which does not overlook the fact that it holds 50 per cent of the snares in the Kasai Co., which is, under its present methods, making a profit of some 8,000,000 francs yearly.
Much credit is taken by the State and company for the abolition of the tax in “croisettes,”1 “but this tax,” the consul affirms, “has been supplanted by still more unjustifiable methods of extortion, and I have no hesitation in affirming that the Kasai Co., even if judged by Kongo Free State law, has justly forfeited every right to the privileges granted them by the Government in December, 1901, and that no methods of reform or change of administration will be of any real benefit to the people of this district unless it includes the entire abolition of this company, which has so long been held up as a model of what a concessionary company should be.”
It is impossible in this short summary to deal at any length with the question of domestic slavery, which is generally known to prevail throughout the Kasai district. Suffice it to say that the State is taking no real measures to insure its extinction within a reasonable time. Under the pretext that slavery being abolished by decree there can be no slaves in the Kongo, they will not take any measures to insure to the slave the power of redeeming himself and refuse to acknowledge any written certificate of redemption to have any legal value. Slaves who have purchased their redemption are therefore always liable to recapture, and this recapture is made easy for the owner by the chefferie law, under which State agents and State soldiers are employed, as in a recent case in Luebo, to assist native chiefs in capturing any man whom they may declare to belong to them.
Domestic slavery is distinctly profitable to the State and to employers of labor, as, so long as a tribe is well provided with slaves, their chiefs will always be ready to respond to any demand made to them with the authority of the local official for carriers or workmen. It is also profitable to the owner, who receives a large percentage of the wages earned by the slaves thus hired out.
One way to insure the gradual extinction of this evil would be to recognize openly its existence and to provide every facility to the native to redeem himself at a fixed moderate price and to give him an official certificate that he has purchased his freedom.
Many of the violations of law and abuses that the consul has referred to in the foregoing report have been the subject of correspondence between this consulate general and the American missionaries who are stationed at Luebo. Other consular officers here have reported to their governments the prevailing conditions existing in the Kasai district, and some of the missionaries have vigorously protested to the vice governor general at Boma, yet the prevailing [Page 592] opinion is that no special consideration, arriving at a thorough and unbiased investigation of these conditions, has been manifested by the authorities. I have the honor to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
American Consul General.
[The British report is printed in Africa, No. 1 (1909), Cd. 4466.]