A BOER OUTRAGE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 452, 9 December 1881, Page 13

A BOER OUTRAGE.

Mb. Chesson, Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society, writes to the Times : — By the last mail from South Africa I received the statement of a native named lodabazimbi, which appears to me to have a direct bearing upon the question now at issue between, the British Government and the Transvaal Volksraad. Indahaximbi states that about a year ago he livid on a farm in the Utrecht district belonging to one Isaac Meyer, and that, according to custom, he sent his son to work for that individual. When the war broke out the Meyer family moved farther into the Transvaal, taking the Kuffir boy witb them as a herd. lodabazimbi himself accompanied them as driver during a portion of the journey, and then returned home, When the war was over, the Meyers sent for him that they might again have his services as driver ; but the poor fellow on joining them found that his son bad disappeared, and his place had been taken by another boy. He wished to go in search of the missing lad, or at lea«t to take steps to offer a reward for his recovery ; but neither then nor on bis r turn to the farm was he able to obtain the necessary permission. Determined, if possible, to accomplish his object, he left for the interior on bis own responsibility ; but was constrained to abandon his quest when he was told that the Boers would be certain to shoot him for having no pa«B. On his return he learnt from one of his wives that several of the M- j yer family had daily come to look for him, "telliug them that it was now no longer ' sjamboking ' (flogging with hide whips) but for shooting themv" When Indabazimbi heard this he took alarm, and collecting all his goods, sought refuge on the Natal side of the Buffalo river. The incensed farmers pursued and attacked him, and carried off every aTticle he pos-essed, including the waggon and oxen which he had borrowed from two relatives, and a large sum of money which, being apparently a thrifty and industrious man, he had saved. This outrage took place early in August, and a week later Indabazimbi made a statement of the facts at Hilldrop, N< wcastle, Natal, in the presence of Messrs. H. Rider Haggard (of the Wyndhara Club, St. James's Square), A. H. Cochrane, and J. H. Gay Roberts. Mr, Haegard, in sending me a copy of this statement, of which the above is an outline, informs me that another ccpy had been sent to Sir Evelyn Wood, Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, and that his Excellency ■ has forwarded it to the British Resident at Pretoria. I hope that there will be a searching inquiry into this matter, and that if Indabazimbi's statement is established, his assailants will be compelled to restore him his property, and at the same time be made to under* stand that such acts, when committed in Natal, rendered the perpetrators of them amenable to British law.