Page:EB1911 - Volume 23.djvu/280

 legislative council consisting of the administrator, who presides, seven nominees of the company approved by the secretary of state, and seven members elected by registered voters (the number of registered voters in 1908 was 5291). In 1907 it was agreed to reduce the company’s nominees by one, so that the elected members should form the majority of the council. The secretary of state appoints a resident commissioner, who sits on both executive and legislative councils without vote. The duty of the resident commissioner is to report to the high commissioner upon all matters of importance. Ordinances passed by the legislative council are submitted to the high commissioner for consent or otherwise, but may be disallowed by the secretary of state.

For the administration of justice there is a High Court with two judges having civil and criminal jurisdiction. There are seven magistrates’ courts throughout the territory. For the administration of native affairs there are appointed a secretary for native affairs, two chief native commissioners, twenty-eight native commissioners and six assistant native commissioners. Natives suffer no disabilities or restrictions which do not equally apply to Europeans except in respect of the supply of arms, ammunition and liquor. Native commissioners may exercise jurisdiction in native affairs not exceeding that exercisable by magistrates. The company has to provide land, usually termed Native Reserves, sufficient and suitable for occupation by natives and for their agricultural and industrial requirements.

Revenue.—The administrative revenue of Southern Rhodesia was at first much less than the cost of administration. The figures for 1899–1900 were: revenue, £325,000; expenditure, £702,000. Since that date revenue has increased and expenditure decreased, and from 1905–6 (in which year the revenue exceeded £500,000) the cost of administration has been met out of revenue. For 1909–10 the revenue was approximately £600,000, the two main items being customs duty, £190,000, an native tax, £200,000. The native tax is £1 per head for every adult male and 10s. for every wife after the first.

Education.—Besides a few private schools, there were in 1909 34 schools for Europeans, 26 of which were wholly financed by government, the remainder being aided. The aided schools are as a rule connected with some religious body, and aid is given to the extent of half the salaries of the teachers and half the cost of school requisites. Loans are also given to assist in school building. A system of boarding grants has been instituted to enable children in the outlying districts to attend school. Education is not free except for poor children, but the fees in government schools do not exceed £6 a year. In 1910 several schools had reached the stage of preparing pupils for matriculation at the Cape University and similar examinations. The number of pupils in 1909 in European schools was 1212, being more than double what it had been four years previously. The education of natives is in the hands of various religious bodies, but financial aid is given by government to native schools which comply with certain easy conditions. In 1909, 80 native schools with an enrolment of 7622 pupils earned grants.

Military Forces.—The military force in Southern Rhodesia is styled the British South African Police, and numbers about 40 officers, 400 non-commissioned officers and men, and 550 native police. The force is under a commandant-general, who, with the subordinate officers, is appointed by the secretary of state, and is under the direct control and authority of the high commissioner. The commandant-general is paid by the British parliament. The offices of commandant-general and resident commissioner were combined in 1905.

The Southern Rhodesia Volunteers, in two divisions, eastern and western, under command of colonels, number altogether 86 officers and 1700 non-commissioned officers and men.

Medical.—There are, including cottage hospitals, ten hospitals in towns and townships, and thirteen district surgeries have been established.

Archaeology.—Between the Zambezi and the Limpopo, and extending from the coast to at least 27° E., may be found the traces of a large population which inhabited Southern Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa in bygone times. Apart from numerous mines, some of which are being successfully reworked at the present day, ruins of stone buildings have been found in several hundred distinct places. Few of these have been explored systematically, but investigations in 1905, though confined to a small number of sites, determined at least the main questions of date and origin. The fanciful theories of popular writers, who had ascribed these buildings to a remote antiquity, and had even been so audacious as to identify their founders with the subjects of King Solomon or of his contemporary the queen of Sheba, are now seen to be untenable. J. T. Bent’s Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) is now interesting only for its illustrations, and his theories are obsolete. Positive archaeological evidence demonstrates that the “Great Zimbabwe” itself, the most famous and the most imposing of the misnamed “Ruined Cities,” was not built before medieval times, and that the earliest date which can be assigned to any of the sites explored is subsequent to the 11th century A.D. Moreover, the complete identity of custom, revealed no less by the details of the dwellings than by the type of the articles found within them, proves that the tribe that built these structures was one closely akin to if not actually identical with the present Bantu inhabitants of the country.

These ruins, even when stripped of their false romance, are of extreme interest; but their nature and appearance have been much misunderstood, and the skill and intelligence required for their erection have been grossly overestimated. It should be clearly stated, therefore, that the methods of the old Rhodesians evince their complete ignorance of all the devices employed in the architecture of civilized peoples. They have not attempted to solve the problems of supporting weight and pressure by the use of pillar, arch or beam; the ingenuity of the builders goes no further than the dexterous heaping up of stones. Indeed, their most finished and elaborate work must be compared with nothing more ambitious than the dry-built walls which serve to enclose the fields in certain parts of England. The material is the local granite or diorite obtainable in the immediate neighbourhood. Stone-hewing has not been practised; and was unnecessary, since the natural flaking of the boulders provides an abundance of ready-made slabs which need only be detached from the parent rock and broken to the required size. At most the blocks thus obtained have been very roughly trimmed with one or two blows, and any apparent regularity in the fitting has been obtained merely by judicious selection. Mortar has seldom been used; the courses are never laid with any approach to exactness; walls merely abut on one another without being bonded, and the same line often varies greatly in thickness at different parts.

The main principle of the ground plan is invariably circular or elliptical, though it is carried out with a conspicuous lack of symmetry or exactness. Straight lines are unknown, and even accidental approximations to an angle are rare. This is eminently characteristic of the Bantu, whose huts are commonly built in circular form. Indeed, it is the round Bantu hut which has been the original model for even the finest of these stone constructions. The connexion between the two, however, goes beyond mere resemblance. The stone walls are always accompanied by huts; they are mere partitions or ring-fences enclosing and structurally inseparable from platforms of clay or cement on which stand the remains of precisely the same dwellings that the Makalanga make at the present day. Buildings such as those at Dhlo Dhlo, Nanatali and Khami in Matabeleland, or at Zimbabwe in southern Mashonaland, are merely fortified kraals; remarkable indeed as the work of an African people, but essentially native African in every detail, not excepting the ornamentation.

The best-known and the most attractive of the Rhodesian ruins are those situated in the more central and southern region. In the north-east, however, the remains are even more numerous, though the single units are less remarkable. Over the whole of Inyanga and the Mazoe region are distributed hill-forts, pit-dwellings and entrenchments which are more primitive in character though of the same generic type as those found farther south. The inhabitants of these northern districts were occupied more in agriculture than in gold-mining, and one of the most striking features of their settlements is the