“We must treat the native, not as a machine to work when required under any conditions, but as a raw son of nature, very often without any moral force to control him and to raise him much above the lower animal world in his passions, except that which native custom has given him.”

The writer suggests that “native reserves or locations should be established on the separate mines, or groups of mines, where the natives can have their huts built, and live more or less under the same conditions as they do in their native kraals.  If a native found that he could live under similar conditions to those he has been accustomed to, he will soon be anxious to save enough money to bring his wife and children there, and remain in the labour district for a much longer period than at present is the case.

“It would be a distinct gain to the mining industry as well as to the native.”

Mr. Bovill goes into much detail on the subject of the “Pass Laws.”  I should much desire to reproduce his chapter on that subject, if it were not too long.  That system must be wholly abolished, he says:  “it is at present worse than any conditions under which slavery exists.  It is a criminal-making law.  Brand a slave, and you have put him to a certain amount of physical pain for once, but penalties under the Pass Law system mean lashes innumerable at the direction of any Boer Field Cornet or Landdrost.  It is a most barbarous system, as brutal as it is criminal-making, alone worthy of a Boer with an exaggerated fear of and cowardly brutality towards a race he has been taught to despise.”

Treating of the prohibition imposed on the Natives as to the possession in any way or by any means of a piece of land, he writes:  “Many natives are now earning and saving large sums of money, year by year, at the various labour centres.  They return home with every intention of following a peaceful life; why should they not be encouraged to put their money into land, and follow their ‘peaceful pursuits’ as well as any Boer farmer?  They are capable of doing it.  Besides, if they held fixed property in the State, it would be to their advantage to maintain law and order, when they had everything they possessed at stake.  With no interest in the land, the tendency must always be to a nomadic life.  They are as thoroughly well capable of becoming true, peaceful, and loyal citizens of the State as are any other race of people.  Their instincts and training are all towards law and order.  Their lives have been disciplined under native rule, and now that the white man is breaking up that rule, what is he going to give as a substitute?  Anarchy and lawlessness, or good government which tends to peace and prosperity?

“We can only hope for better times, and a more humane Government for the natives, to wipe out the wrong that has been done to both black and white under a bastard civilization which has prevailed in Pretoria for the past fifteen years.  The Government which holds down such a large number of its subjects by treating them as cut-throats and outlaws, will one day repent bitterly of its sin of misrule."[35]