Dingaan, and a glad welcome was given these Boers by the Bechuana
tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway of that cruel chieftain. They
came with the prestige of white men and deliverers; but the Bechuanas
soon found, as they expressed it, 'that Mosilikátze was cruel to his
enemies, and kind to those he conquered; but that the Boers destroyed
their enemies, and made slaves of their friends." The tribes who still
retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the
labour of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping,
building, making dams and canals, and at the same time to support
themselves. I have myself been an eye-witness of Boers coming to a
village, and according to their usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty
women to weed their gardens, and have seen these women proceed to the
scene of unrequited toil, carrying their own food on their heads, their
children on their backs, and instruments of labour on their shoulders.
Nor have the Boers any wish to conceal the meanness of thus employing
unpaid labour; on the contrary, every one of them, from Mr. Potgeiter
and Mr. Gert Kruger, the commandants, downwards, lauded his own humanity
and justice in making such an equitable regulation. 'We make the people
work for us, in consideration of allowing them to live in our country.'

"I can appeal to the Commandant Kruger if the foregoing is not a fair
and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. I am
sensible of no mental bias towards or against these Boers; and during
the several journeys I made to the poor enslaved tribes, I never avoided
the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick,
without money and without price. It is due to them to state that I was
invariably treated with respect; but it is most unfortunate that they
should have been left by their own Church for so many years to
deteriorate and become as degraded as the blacks, whom the stupid
prejudice against colour leads them to detest.