SOUTH AFRICA AND THE
TRANSVAAL WAR

A STOCK FARM.
After a Photo in the Natal Government Collection, by permission.

South Africa
and the
Transvaal War

BY

LOUIS CRESWICKE

AUTHOR OF “ROXANE,” ETC.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

VOL. VIII

SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS FUTURE

EDITED BY

LOUIS CRESWICKE

MANCHESTER: KENNETH MACLENNAN

75 PICCADILLY

PREFACE—Vol. VIII.

Everyone who has followed the story of the War in South Africa from start to finish will assuredly have acquired a keen and lasting interest in the land which has been won by the expenditure of so much blood and treasure. Earnestly will he discuss in his mind all questions connected with the development of the New Dominions of the King, and vigilantly will he watch every action of the Government in regard to them.

In order rightly to estimate the difficulties to be overcome and the issues to be hoped for, and to follow these questions with complete apprehension, it is necessary to be familiar with their aspect in every possible light. To this end, the Editor has invited the co-operation of various well-known Authorities, each of whom has kindly contributed his opinion on matters coming within his special experience.

The Publishers claim, therefore, that in this Volume is collected the cream of modern thought, furnished at first-hand by those whose mastery of their subject, and whose interest in the Empire, render them competent to instruct in the intricacies of the South African problems, with which for some time to come we must stand face-to-face. That these writers do not on all points entirely agree is a matter for congratulation, as readers are thus enabled to view the political panorama from every reasonable standpoint, and weigh the pros and cons of their arguments with perspicuity and without prejudice.

At the present juncture, when Mr. Chamberlain, the greatest of Colonial Secretaries, is visiting South Africa, the Publishers are convinced that this Volume is the most valuable book on the new Colonies that has yet been offered to the Public.

CONTENTS—Vol. VIII.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS—Vol. VIII.

COMMERCIAL MAP OF SOUTH AFRICA

Transcribers' Note: Click image for a larger version of this map

SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS FUTURE

EMIGRATION

By HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, P.C., K.T.

Author of “Imperial Federation,” “The Life and Times of Queen Victoria,” &c.

Emigration of white men and women to South Africa—how can we best secure this? The abiding difficulty at the Cape and throughout the states that will form the future South African Confederation is the colour question. The “colour” is not that of the gold to be found so often in many places, but the question of the white and the black races dwelling in the same country.

Dutchman and Englishman will in time form one race. There is nothing to part them. They are European cousins. They both come from North Europe. The blood of the Dutchman runs in the veins of the Englishman. The parent stock of the Dutch gave off many a swarm wherewith to people the East Anglian shores. England has been fed and fought by the Dutch since those old days. We have received many of their sturdy countrymen into London. Any one who does not know the number and influence of the Dutch in comparatively recent times in our metropolis should pay a visit to the Austen Friars, the place where the monks of St. Augustine had their headquarters in the city, and see the fine old church the Dutch built, and in which they still worship. We remember well the stiff battles of Charles II.’s time. We know the names of Van Tromp and De Witt as well as any Dutchman. We have learned to respect our Dutch cousins, both on sea and land.

And their religion? There is nothing there to separate us. Has the Presbyterian form of religion kept Scotland separate? No, save in the pride of her ancient history. No Scotsman has any objection to marry an English lass, especially if she has herself more than will give both of them something better than oatcake. And the Dutch Reformed Church is much like the Presbyterian. There is nothing that can in its tenets form any bar to the mixing of the British and Dutch people in South Africa. To be sure, a “nacht-maal” is not precisely a Church of England convocation or congress. It approaches much nearer to a Scottish communion service in out-of-the-way Highland parishes. There is nothing aggressive or exclusive in the staid and sober faith of our Dutch friends. And this being so, Scotsmen especially have intermarried often with the Boers.

As trustee of a Highland estate, some time ago my consent was asked to the granting of a leasehold to a Scottish gentleman, who had returned from the Transvaal. The only objection the lawyer who asked the question mentioned as existing against this man was that he was said to have married a native. Some canny objectors had written a letter saying that this ought to form a bar to any grant of land to the man, though he had originally come from the district. Who was the lady? was the next inquiry. Was she a Hottentot Venus? Did she “bang her hair” in too negroid a fashion? Would she introduce among the dim lights of the North the terrible practices of her people? Would the quiet village be scandalised by strange feasts and weird howlings? No, by no means. What was she, then? Why, nothing but a nice flaxen-haired, rather squab-featured, but withal comely Boer girl! So she entered into her Highland possession, had a door “stoop,” or something like a bit of raised verandah flooring put outside the entrance, but found, poor soul, that it was rather a dripping place of observation in her adopted climate. Nevertheless, the last news of her is that she is a happy, “sonsie” mother, and has some children, who don’t speak Dutch as their common language, but only a few low Dutch words, with very Highland accent.

But this is said to be only the case where a Scotsman marries a Boer. There is apparently something in the Scot that makes him look after his family more carefully than does the average Englishman or Irishman. It is therefore only the Scot, as it is said, both in Africa and in Canada, whose children, if he marry one of another race, do not desert the accents of their forefathers on the paternal side. As a rule the children become much what the mother is. I have seen the children of a naval man who had married an Indian woman on the Pacific Coast become almost like the small fish-eating savages around them. They were willing to do a little work for a spurt, and then relapsed into dirt and laziness. So in the north-west of Canada it is only an Orkney or Aberdeen east-coast Scot who can keep his family to civilised life, if he marry a Cree or member of any other Indian tribe. The Frenchman’s children, by an Indian mother, take to hunting only. Even with the Scots in Old Canada the same rule holds good, at least wherever a Celt has married a French Canadian. There are numbers of families below Quebec, on the north side of the river St. Lawrence, whose names are Highland. They are the descendants chiefly of Fraser’s Highlanders, one of the regiments employed during the war against the French in 1748-49. When the soldiers obtained grants of land on the conclusion of the war they married French-Canadian women. Their descendants now can seldom speak one word of English or of Gaelic. They speak nothing but Canadian French patois. It is the mother’s influence, with rare exceptions, that tells. So it is in South Africa. In some districts it is as with Fraser’s Highlanders, in Province Quebec. You may visit farm after farm, especially those whose owners have Irish names, and you will not find any person in the house, or on the land belonging to the farm, who can speak a word of either English or Irish! It may be doubted if there would have been much loyalty taught to any government by the use of the Erse tongue. The “Taal” may inculcate a certain amount more of respect for paternal and government authority. Yet if theory distinguishes between Briton and Boer, or Englishman and Africander, Nature does not, and you find that the mingling of the races is a practical principle acted on regularly wherever the races are brought together. We may congratulate ourselves that this is so. The mixed race will be a magnificent one, with the size, courage, and tenacity of the Dutch, and the gentleness, bravery, and power of government and of cohesion of the Britisher. There are no handsomer women anywhere than there are among the Dutch ladies of Cape Colony. Many of their sons are sent to English public schools and universities, and though there are, alas, only too many who live under British institutions and who do not become British, there is no reason why, in course of time, they should not become as good citizens of a British Commonwealth as have the Vanderbilts and Van Horns and Roosevelts, and many others of Dutch name and lineage in New York State, for New York was New Amsterdam, and a very flourishing Dutch colony. On the banks of the Hudson you may still see thoroughly Dutch houses, built in the old days. What New Yorker would now change his nationality, though of Dutch descent? The freedom they have in the United States their cousins will also have in South Africa. They will mix with the English, whose language most of them speak already. They will do so all the more readily as time passes, in that they can never feel themselves to be anything but the equals of the British in all save in numbers.

It was for the benefit of the union between England and Scotland that the Scots won Bannockburn and many another hard fight besides. They could point to their victories as the English could to theirs. And so with those of Dutch race at the Cape. They can point to famous names of good soldiers, who have inflicted defeat on the best British troops. And for this they will be all the greater friends hereafter. Unless each partner in business or in marriage can bring something into the common pot, there is not so happy a sense of helpfulness and mutual aid given, as there is when this union is a more equal one. There is another and a most weighty consideration which will tend to the union of the European races. This is the common necessity each has to strengthen the other against any possible predominance of the blacks. The danger in this matter will arise more in the warmer regions of the north of the future confederation than in the more temperate south. Time has proved that the white races can do well in the Cape. They increase rapidly. The climate is most favourable. The physical character of the races does not in any way deteriorate. On the contrary, it improves. They gain, as the Americans say, in “avoirdupois.” An “avoirdupois” Dutchman at the Cape, whose ancestors have been “avoirdupoising” there for two centuries, is a better all-round, and very round man, than is his compatriot in race at home among the canals and tulip gardens of Holland. But the black holds his own in weight and in numbers even in the temperate climate of the Cape Colony. Farther north, where the temperature is hotter, it is certain that he will be a better man than the white. The only exception to this can be in the mountain districts, where at high elevations in the plateaus there is probably a possibility that the white man’s children may thrive. In general, however, in all the low ground north of the Transvaal, and in many districts there, the “Kaffir” will be more favoured by the climate than will be the white invader. The Europeans will partially subject them, and partially they will remain, deteriorated in morals, but by no means likely to remain only the obedient servants that they are expected to be. There are many who now say that the next big trouble in South Africa will be with the blacks. This apprehension, if there be any reason in it, is another incentive for the whites to combine to make settlements secure and numerous, where they can defy any movement among the blacks. It is an additional incentive to us in the old land to see what we may do to make this union of the whites as British in feeling, as liberty loving, as British institutions can make it. The Boers in fighting have not lost their freedom. They have only lost one form of collective and separate independence. Individually their independence is far better guaranteed under British than under Dutch Africander forms of government.

But a great help to their seeing and understanding of this will be the predominance, not the domination, of the English language. In the schools English history and its modern expansion in the colonies should be taught. Half of the dislike of England shown in the Republic and among the people in the United States arises from the teaching of the school-books, which indoctrinates the young American with the idea that as all tyranny known to his American fathers was centralised and expressed in Lord North’s Stamp Act and the Tea Duties, so the modern Britisher must still be imbued with the ideas of Lord North, and taxation without representation must go hand in hand with British rule. The young Africander must be taught that we of the old country have learned our lesson. He must know that each of the British self-governing colonies is a separate nation in alliance of its own free will with the mother-land. He must know that even in the wildest dreams of Africanderism the most separatist of the separatists desired the naval stations of the Cape to remain one of the chief resorts of the British fleet. Now that Germany and France have their foot on South African soil, “marching” with the states of the new confederation to be, the youth of the states must be taught to know our forms of government and the history of them, so that they may judge if they would rather be under the German or French flag. To be under any separate new flag would of course be to court danger from the powerful countries, who could cut off their trade from the harbours, were it not for the protection afforded by the British fleets. Union and education are therefore the passwords to success.

How can we better help these forces than by well-devised emigration? Our Dutch friends have given us a good example. They imported in the eighteenth century 5000 children from Amsterdam. They knew what they were about. That was at a time when horses were sent round in a ring to tread corn, that the labour of threshing it might be saved. It was a time when, near the outlying settlements to which the children were sent, there were lions and elephants to be met with—real live animals—recognisable by the Noah’s ark toys of the children, whose delight at the sight of the creatures was not always shared by their parents! How different is all now! For thousands of miles, up and down the country, life is as safe as in most parishes in England. The only thing to fear is probably an enraged ostrich, and these can easily, even on an ostrich farm where the huge birds are reared for their feathers, be kept out of the children’s way. The little ones had a long time of it on board ship, three months in some cases; and glad they must have been to see the coast-line rising as they neared the Bay, and the long flat top of the precipitous Table Mountain, with a white wreath of mist looking like snow against the delicate blue of the sky, on its rocky summit level. They were not all kept in the white town at the base of the beautiful mountain whose ever-changing hues were a delight to them. The children were wisely distributed, that they might take a liking to the place where they were trained, and should have a feeling of home love for the part of the country they would know while yet young. And so it should be done by us in these later times when we have more need of the spread of our own tongue and traditions in this great land. Careful location is indeed necessary, but there are so many good locations, especially along the south coast, that we need not be too timid or too dilatory. Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, two good bays to the northward to which railways must ultimately come—more settlements again along the coast in temperate regions to the east, are wanted, where latitude 34 shows that no great heat can be feared—these are the “plums” for position. And when you turn the corner of that long stretch of coast lying along latitude 34, you must look out for higher sites than those on the sea-beach for the young people. And of these higher sites there are plenty. If Durban be too relaxing there is Pietermaritzburg inland, and so of most of the ports and bays. Leaving the coast and going inland by the railways into the “Orange” and Transvaal, we at once meet the main difficulty of “location” in the want of water. The Transvaal seems like a gigantic turtle-back, and whereas in Australia you may meet with water if you dig 1500 feet or more, where there is no appearance of it on the surface, we must wait for such revelations in the Transvaal. The territories are fed by few good rivers, and these are apt to be either raging torrents or dry gravel beds. But there are “fonteins” in many places, and there is no reason why a fair sprinkling of girls’ and boys’ institutions should not be comfortably located both in Transvaal and “Orange,” where along the river of that name there is a more certain supply of water. The Vaal is of course the largest stream for irrigation in the north. Very little has been done to husband the water of any of the African rivers; and the chief work to be done in matters of material improvement is the adequate damming and storing of the waters of all the principal streams. The winter floods, copious and overwhelming, have been allowed to run to waste. Water and wives must for a long time be the chief wants of South Africa.

Lucas gives briefly the main features of the country now under our flag. From the south coast to the Zambesi in the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls is 1200 miles. The land rises steadily from the sea as you get into the Hinterlands, and the mountain ranges run parallel to the sea. Behind these ranges there is everywhere an elevated plateau, and the highest plains are in the east. There also the rainfall is the greatest. “It is from the south or east that men come into Southern Africa, not from the west, where stretch the dreary deserts of Damara and Namaqua Land.” North of the Karoo Desert the principal places are well situated for altitude. To the west Kimberley is 4000 feet above the sea. Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange State, is higher by 500 feet than is Kimberley. Mafeking has 4200 feet. Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, is the same as Bloemfontein. Johannesburg, though so near Pretoria, stands at 5600 feet. In the north, Matebele Land has an average of 2500 feet. It is possible that deep borings may find water in the new states where there is none at present. These heights are sufficient to explain how it is that even far to the north of Cape Colony European settlement may thrive, and children grow up strong and healthy. But “location” is everything.

Now, what has been done to foster immigration and settlement up to the present? Hardly anything has been done by Government. Sir Harry Smith, who commanded in the fiercest of the Kaffir wars, and after whose wife Ladysmith received its name, strongly urged the policy of settling soldiers in the Colony. Between the Fish and the Keiskamma rivers “military villages” were encouraged, the settlers “being army pensioners liable to be called on for the defence of the frontier.” Then again in the Queenstown district Governor-General Cathcart proposed to settle two Swiss Regiments, but his plan was not supported. Then Sir George Grey, his successor, persuaded the home Government to send out 2300 of the Foreign Legion, as it was called, recruited for the Crimean War. They were to be called on for military service, if wanted, during a period of seven years, and they were to have pay for three years. Each man received his land free of rent, to become his own at the end of the seven years, if he had loyally fulfilled his engagements. The Government of the Cape helped by a grant of money. “At the beginning of 1857,” says Lucas in his Geography of the British Colonies, “the German soldiers arrived and were settled, some at existing towns or stations, such as East London and King William’s Town, some on selected sites, whose villages were yet to be built. Distributed through the eastern districts of the Colony, and through British Kaffraria, they held the lines of communication, as garrisons attached to, and having an interest in the soil. The divisional district of Stutterheim still bears the name of the officer in whose charge the soldiers came, and under whose immediate guidance they were settled on the land. The chief drawback to the scheme was that only a few of the emigrants brought wives with them. This defect Sir George Grey sought to remedy by proposing to import a number of German families to be located with and to supplement the military settlers. Some were brought over, but the total expenditure which was contemplated was too large to win the assent of the Imperial Government, and to subsidise an exclusively German immigration, seemed to the Secretaries of State less politic than to provide the existing German settlers with English or Irish wives. The Governor therefore sent on a thousand of the unmarried soldiers to India, and those who remained behind developed into Cape Colonists, and fell into line with the civil population.”

This experiment has succeeded so well that it is a wonder that it was not repeated. Considering the enormous disproportion in the old country between the number of men and the number of women, it would seem a comparatively simple matter to assist female emigration, especially when a Colony is young and able to absorb any number sent. Nor need any Colonial Government Department be alarmed that the worthless will be sent. There are plenty of useful and excellent women who would be glad to go. As yet the only woman contingents that have been sent out are the few dozen teachers who have proceeded to the concentration camps. A party of these hailing from Toronto and Ottawa were lately in England on their journey to the Cape. Every one who met these ladies was struck with the earnestness they showed and the ability they displayed in conversing on the subject of their hopes and expectations. They seemed a lot drafted from the best women instructresses in some New England State. But Ontario can well afford now to be compared with the best of the New England States in regard to her public instruction. Her schools of all kinds are excellent. A “send off” meeting was held in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey for a party of fifty. They were addressed by Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Peel. Now that peace has come and the camps will have been broken up, these women will doubtless find equally useful employment under the Education Department in the New Colonies. The Government here have a large “reservoir” to draw upon in the women who are employed in the telegraph and postal service in Great Britain. Any of these persons would immediately find a sphere of activity in the new lands. The population of these countries is certain to increase rapidly with the opening of the old mines and the successful exploitation of new. There are large centres of industry where there is no want of water, where there is a certainty of good mining success, and where communities will grow up anxious for good schools, and well able to pay for instructors and instructresses.

Photo: Wilson, Aberdeen.

It is a curious thing that while at the Cape and elsewhere you find in the hotels plenty of Swiss and German and some French waitresses and housemaids, you find few English. Why? It must be only from want of organisation. At Grahamstown, not far from the bay called Algoa by the Portuguese (whose thoughts went to Goa in India, and named Algoa and Delagoa as calling places for Goa ships) there has been an institution for instruction lately founded. Let me cite here the work of the South African Expansion Committee in their own words.

This Association is established to promote Protected Emigration, due regard being had to the interests both of the Emigrants and of the countries to which they go.

The Association pledges itself:—

(a) To Emigrate only such Women and Girls as are of good character and capacity.

(b) To select only such Men and Families as are suitable to the requirements of each Colony.

(c) To secure for them proper Protection on the voyage, and adequate Reception on arrival.

(d) If possible, not to lose sight of them for a year or two after their Emigration.

(e) To raise a Loan Fund for necessitous cases, repayment being secured on detained wages.

It is recognised by prominent statesmen of all parties that the future of our South African possessions depends on their colonisation—not only by the large bodies of active and energetic men, who at the close of the war will find permanent employment there—but also by trained and capable women. Many situations and professions are already awaiting them, and as the country becomes more settled, fresh openings of all sorts will arise.

Women of proved suitability are prepared to go, when the right time comes, but a great barrier to all extensive development of this essential movement is lack of funds.

Financial support is needed for the following purposes:—

(1) The establishment, on sound business principles, of Hostels at Cape Town[1] and at the chief centres, such as Durban, Pretoria, Kimberley, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Bulawayo, Salisbury, &c., where women and girls can be received for a few days on arrival, and where, if they have daily engagements, they may reside permanently. Each of these Hostels would be also an employment Bureau for every kind of women’s work, and would require a capable salaried Lady Superintendent to manage the Home and the Employment Bureau, and to act as correspondent between Employer and Employed.

(2) Provision for the proper care and guidance of women throughout the journey from the British Isles to their final destination in South Africa.

(3) Grants in aid of passages from the British Isles to South Africa when the traveller cannot afford the whole cost, or loans to be repaid within a given period.

(4) Preparation of women at the Leaton Colonial Training Home, Wellington, Salop.

(5) Secretarial Expenses.

British men and women must alike desire for our new territories, and for South Africa generally, the same ordered, wholesome, law-abiding traditions as are to be found in the Old Country; and these can only be built up on a lasting basis, by rendering life possible there as here for suitable women, whether as teachers, nurses, secretaries, typists, telegraph or telephone clerks, sempstresses, or household assistants.

We would appeal for funds not only to help those who go to earn their daily bread, but also to enable the wives, the daughters, and sisters of settlers to join their belongings in the new country. Many a man could make a home for his wife or sister but for the initial cost of her passage and the difficulties of the journey for inexperienced women. Openings in the new territories are declined by men at the front, because they cannot bring out those dependent upon them at home. They need that the ocean be bridged for them by kindly forethought, by experienced and economical organisation, by suitable protection, and by carefully adjusted financial assistance.

It is surely not much to ask that those to whom domestic comfort is a matter of course, should contribute in these ways to make a home life possible for those upon whom the future of South Africa depends.

The Lady Knightley, of Fawsley, in regard to the preparation for women going to South Africa, says:—

“In laying before the public the scheme for assisting the emigration of women of all classes to South Africa, the Council are specially anxious to enlist the active co-operation of ladies in all parts of the country, and with a view to securing this assistance, they desire to draw the attention, of those who may be disposed to help, to various methods of forwarding the scheme, in the hope that some one or other of them may prove feasible.

“Ladies could insure that those desiring to emigrate should have the opportunity of fitting themselves for their new life by helping to provide instruction for them in various departments of practical life.

“1. Cooking, Dairying, Poultry-keeping.

“2. Breadmaking, Laundry-work.

“3. Needlework, Cutting out.

“4. Gardening, Fruit-packing, Bee-keeping.

“5. Ambulance, Nursing, Health teaching.

“In some parts of the country this will be best accomplished by arranging for attendance at County Council Classes for Technical Instruction, or by putting people in the way of gaining the Scholarships which some County Councils provide for dairying, others for nursing, &c. In other districts, where such Classes or Scholarships are not provided by the County Council, or where the Classes are inconvenient of access, it might be arranged for such instruction to be given in a country house. Good, old-fashioned, upper servants, of whom there are some left, might in some cases be glad to help in this way.

“An even better plan would be to arrange for girls and young women (especially those from towns) to pass a month or two in a farmhouse, where, under a capable farmer’s wife, much of the required teaching would come naturally in the routine of the household. In this way a foundation might be laid which would render the traveller of far greater use on her first arrival in South Africa than would otherwise be the case, and also more able to acquire further knowledge should she obtain a situation on a poultry or other farm.

“The improved methods of poultry-keeping inaugurated by the National Poultry Organisation, 12 Hanover Square, should, if possible, be studied. Ladies might supply intending travellers with copies of its valuable leaflets.

“Some knowledge of gardening should be acquired, preferably through the medium of the Swanley Ladies’ Horticultural College. But should this prove too long and expensive a training, a good deal might be learnt from a head gardener if ladies would make it easy for such instruction to be given. The best methods of packing fruit should also be acquired, and in towns, ladies who are large customers of fruit salesmen might make interest with them for giving instruction.

“Ladies who are Members of County Bee-keeping Associations might be able to obtain for intending Emigrants some instruction from the Expert usually attached to such Associations. Mr. Theodore Bent has pointed out that in a country where wild bees do so well as they do in South Africa, tame bees ought to succeed, and as butter at present is somewhat scarce, honey might become a valuable article of food. The same remark applies to jam, and jam-making should be included in the subjects to be taught.

“If possible, intending travellers should attend some ambulance, health, and nursing lectures, which would prove a valuable possession in their future lives. Of course, such instruction would be a good deal better than nothing, but regular Ambulance Lectures, with an Examination to follow, would be far better, and in many instances ladies could use their influence in the country in getting such lectures arranged, not of course specially for Emigrants, but to give them the opportunity of attending. They might also, in some cases, pay the necessary fees. There are many ladies, especially among the younger ones, who have acquired a considerable knowledge of nursing, and who might do invaluable service by imparting to intending emigrants some acquaintance with, at all events, such rudiments of nursing as are comprised in changing sheets, improvised cradles, bed rests, and the hundred and one little dodges—if they may be so termed—which make the whole difference in illness, and which so many people are utterly ignorant of.

“It is hoped that it may be found possible for nurses to go out on the same ships with parties of emigrants, with a view to their giving nursing and ambulance lectures on the voyage.

“Ladies may also help by contributing to the libraries for use on board ship and at the Hostels, which it is intended to establish for the reception of emigrants on their arrival at Cape Town, and also in other South African Centres.

“Another form of assistance would be to undertake to pay for the instruction of emigrants in South African languages. Miss Alice Werner (20 Dry Hill, Park Road, Tonbridge) is holding classes for the study of the Zulu language, and also for Taal or Cape Dutch, at King’s College, Strand. Besides these, she is prepared to give lessons in some of the languages spoken in British Central Africa.

“Clothes are not unfrequently needed for intending emigrants. Working parties could be organised to provide new underclothing, which could also be purchased from institutions and bazaars. These working parties would also furnish a valuable opportunity for making known the scheme among the daughters of the farmers and tradesmen, who are just the class most likely to prove desirable denizens of the new Colonies.

“Useful but fashionable slightly-used clothes for middle-class women might also be collected.

“Ladies with friends in South Africa may also give valuable assistance by writing to tell them of the scheme, being careful to enclose a prospectus issued by the Association, so that there may be no mistake as to terms, conditions, &c. Ladies in Cape Town should be asked to confer with Mrs. Bairnsfather, Grange Avenue, Rondebosch, Cape Town, and with the Committee which has recently been formed.

“It should be known to all who are kindly willing to interest themselves in this undertaking that a Colonial Training Home has been established at Leaton, Wrockwardine, Wellington, Salop, the object of which is to give practical training in domestic work to ladies and girls wishing to proceed to the Colonies, to join their families or as Mothers’ Helps. The training given is of the most thorough description, and no servants being kept, the pupils do all the work of the house. The course lasts for three or six months, and the terms are 15s. weekly for a single bedroom, 10s. for sharing a double one. But as only twelve pupils can be received at a time, it will be impossible by this means only, to train the many girls who, it is hoped, will be willing and anxious to avail themselves of the advantages offered by this scheme; and therefore it is that the Council confidently appeal for help on the simple but practicable lines indicated in the foregoing pages.”

In application to the British Women’s Emigration Association (South African Expansion), replies to the following questions have to be forwarded to the Hon. Secretary, South African Expansion, Imperial Institute, London, S. W.:—

1. Christian and Surname in full; Postal Address in full.

2. Date and Place of Birth; Religious Denomination.

3. (a) Parents or near relative living; (b) Home Address; (c) Father’s Profession.

4. To which Colony do you wish to go?

5. Have you friends or relatives there with whom you are in correspondence? if so, give name and address.

6. What line of life do you propose to pursue in that Colony?

7. Have you hitherto had any experience in practical work?

8. Do you propose—(a) to invest capital? (b) to seek employment in (1) Poultry, Fruit, Vegetable Farming or Dairy? (2) Business, Boarding-house, Tea-shop, Dressmaking, Photography, &c.

9. If from a Colonial or other Training Home, give address.

10. Is your health good? (a Medical Certificate will be required); when were you last vaccinated?

11. Can you meet your travelling expenses, or are you likely to require a small loan?

12. Three references are required. Give name and address if possible of—(a) Minister of Religion or Justice of the Peace; (b) two ladies or other responsible persons.

13. Space to be left blank for Referee’s signature.

14. Length of time Referee has known Applicant.

The ordinary ocean fares are as follow:—

Union-Castle Line, from Southampton.

Aberdeen (Rennie) Line, direct from London.

Intermediate Steamers carrying First Class only.

Natal, £25, 4s. Beira, £34.

Shaw Savill Line to Cape Town only, from London—

Third Class, £9, 9s. to £11, 11s. No Second Class.

Also White Star Line to Cape Town occasionally, from Liverpool.

Luggage allowed free; 20 cubic feet second class; 10 cubic feet third class, extra at 1s. 6d. per foot. By Aberdeen Line, 40 feet first class; 30 feet intermediate.

At the present time there are no assisted passages to Cape Colony. When these are granted, they enable an employer to obtain an employee by paying to the Immigration Office at Cape Town a portion of the passage money, the Government of Cape Colony paying the remainder. Women availing themselves of the advantage of a practically free passage are obliged to sign a contract, which is legally binding, to remain one year or longer, according to the agreement made with the employer.

Natal.—Persons resident in Natal can obtain third class assisted passages from their female relatives and domestic servants through the Immigration Department in the Colony. Adults, £5; children, half-price.

Persons travelling under the auspices of the Association are grouped in reserved cabins under an escort. When larger parties are collected they will have the comfort of travelling with an experienced matron, whose authority they will be expected to uphold.

Hostels and Employment Bureaux are established for receiving travellers and for Registry Work at Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Salisbury. Reception and forwarding arranged at all seaports.

Employment for Elementary and High School Teachers, Trained Nurses, Typists, Dressmakers and Milliners, Useful Helps, Matrons, Business Hands, and Laundresses, can be obtained through the Correspondents of the Association.

In Cape Colony and the larger towns of South Africa, the openings will be chiefly for all-round Domestics, and women in Professions and Business; up the country in the New Territories, for women who as Working Housekeepers can utilise native labour. Teachers will be wanted in all the Provinces.

Employees will be sent out as soon as employers apply for them and Government Authorities consent. Women who intend to settle up-country should meanwhile perfect themselves in cooking and all household matters, adding a knowledge of dairy work, poultry, and bee-keeping.

Travellers going through the Association who have to sleep in London, can be received at 3s. 6d. per day. Three days’ notice must be given.

Only women of good character, health, and capability, are accepted by the South African Expansion Committee, in whose hands the selection of women to South Africa has been placed. Protection is secured to them till they enter the situations found for them in the Colonies.

Photo: Elliott & Fry, London.

But fully as important as the emigration of adults will be the placing of children in well-selected places in South Africa. The object to be attained is to let children grow up in the country so that they may regard it as their own, and that their early home affection may be largely connected with their adopted land. The difficulty of the selection of children is as nothing compared with the difficulty of the selection of adults. Nor are the objections often raised in a new community against the importation of the last, heard against the first. A wide experience has shown that children are eagerly sought by farmers, and are “placed out” with ease. The remarkable success Dr. Barnardo has had in Canada, to which country he has sent between twelve and thirteen thousand children, has proved this. The number of failures has been only about 1 per cent. Nor is this a haphazard statement. Watch and ward have been kept over the fortunes of the youngsters. They have been carefully placed after due negotiation and correspondence, and each has been reported upon after settlement. The success obtained is best gauged by the ever-increasing number of applications for just such boys and girls as have been previously “located.” Every year of late years there have been three great parties sent across the Atlantic, and the cry is ever for more to come. In spring, in midsummer, and in “the fall,” the children have been taken out. Entrained on arriving in Canada, the farmers have come down to meet them at the various stations, and they have been at once taken to their new homes, where they have almost uniformly given satisfaction to their employers. They are growing up hearty, happy Canadians, and many hundred letters arrive from them at Stepney where they were trained, telling how they are “getting on.” Every penny spent on their teaching in England has had a double return in making room when they go for another boy or girl to be similarly brought up, and in providing Canada and Britain with a small citizen “cut out of whole cloth,” as the Americans say, ready to fight for the Empire whether in Canada, in Europe, or in Africa.

Now though the East End philanthropist has the greatest number from which to draw his recruits, he does not stand alone. There is Mr. Quarrier, near Alloa in Scotland, who is doing similar work. In London no child who knocks at the door of the many institutions is refused. Each is admitted, and the change in a year is marvellous. The child has already become a good little mechanic or workman of some kind or other. He is cleanly, disciplined, and has many an example ahead of him and around him, to make him follow in the good road on which he has been set. In London £5000 is now asked for by Dr. Barnardo for the African scheme. The greatest care is to be taken to watch over the children sent out. They are to be carefully placed where climate and water is good, and there, after a course of instruction in all that is most useful in South Africa, they will be placed out as in Canada with farmers, with miners, with mechanics, and with any who want them, if the employers can only show that a good home is provided. But until a good home is provided by the Colonists, they are to have a good home out there of their own. There are opportunities of education in the local farming pursuits that “make the mouth water,” to have children thus placed. The pastoral work of dairying, as well as the healthy occupations of gardening and produce-raising will all be studied and taught on the spot. What a happy change from the crowded thoroughfares of the east of London! And if these children succeed, as they assuredly will, why should not the Government do a little useful work of the same kind as that undertaken by Dr. Barnardo and by Mr. Quarrier on its own account? Why not utilise for Africa some of the industrial school children? They, if settled together, and sent to English-speaking farmers, will not forget that they are English. They will not make their farms when they get them, after their useful school career, resound only with the expressive but illiterate “Taal” tongue. Good Saxon (even if shorn of a few h’s) will be heard in their homesteads in the future. They will add a good reinforcement to those who know that freedom is not to be got by racial separation, and the condemnation of everything British. They will permeate the districts where they grow up to manhood and womanhood with the British idea and practice of common obedience to law and justice as the best security for freedom.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The generosity of Mr. Rhodes and of the De Beers Company has made it possible to the influential South African Immigration Committee which has been formed at Cape Town to open a Hostel there already.

SOUTH AFRICAN FEDERATION

VIEWS OF COLONIAL PREMIERS

By E. B. OSBORN

Author of “Greater Canada”

I

Unification has always been an ideal of South African statesmen, and twice, at least, it has been within measurable distance of realisation. In 1858 Sir George Grey, who had federated the New Zealand settlements despite the intensity of their local jealousies, promulgated the first practical scheme of South African Federation. So well had he ruled the Kaffir tribes on the eastern border of Cape Colony, that the Free State, weary of warfare with the Basutos, made overtures for a federal alliance, and the proposition of the Volksraad was actually laid before the Cape Parliament by Sir George Grey, before the opinion of the British Ministry in regard to his scheme of federation on New Zealand lines and their sanction for the course actually pursued had been received. Sir George Grey was recalled; though on his arrival off the British coast he found that he had been reinstated by a new Secretary of State, the delay led to the loss of an excellent opportunity for carrying through a measure comparable in importance with the Act which brought about the legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada.

Photo: Elliott & Fry, London.

For many years after the failure of Sir George Grey’s attempt, unification was a little-regarded counsel of perfection. It is true that the Duke of Buckingham, Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Disraeli Ministry of 1868, admitted that it would be politic to consider seriously any further overtures for a federal alliance from the Boers, but the Free State was no longer in the mood to make them, our annexation of Basutoland being resented, and the discovery of diamonds on its western border in 1867 having created fresh causes of irritation. When the second Disraeli Ministry came into power, and Lord Carnarvon, who had collaborated with the Canadian Fathers of Federation (he himself may be described as the Godfather of the Dominion), undertook the charge of colonial affairs, the plan proposed by Sir Henry Barkly for a confederation of South Africa, which should be the logical consequence of the grant of autonomy to Cape Colony, was cordially received. Unfortunately the Free State held aloof, the Cape Ministry remembered only too well the object lessons in anti-Imperialism received from Lord Carnarvon’s predecessors, and a grain de sable—the tactlessness of Mr. Froude—caused a vast amount of friction. Even then, but for the revival at home of the belief that political quietism and a policy of non-interference with Colonial affairs would enable Great Britain to retain the commercial hegemony of the world, Lord Carnarvon’s hopes might have been realised; for he had grasped the all-important fact that South Africa was, and must always remain, a single-minded community, whenever the native question was discussed, and that this unity of opinion was a stronger motive for unification than any or all of those political or commercial considerations which had already led to the making of the Dominion, and seemed certain, sooner or later, to bring about the federation of the Australian Colonies.

In more recent years three men of commanding influence have, each in his own way, attempted to realise the ideal of unity. Mr. Kruger’s attempt to lay the foundation of a Dutch confederacy, the future greatness of which would have been based (can we doubt it?) on some form of slavery, may be dismissed as an instance of the adage, corruptio optimi pessima. Mr. Cecil Rhodes worked for a federation on the model of the United States; since the Cape was half Dutch, the Transvaal was to be made half British, and the settlement of Rhodesia was to insure the preponderance of Imperial ideas in the Union of the future. He saw that the Boers must be persuaded to co-operate, and for that reason he allied himself to Mr. Hofmeyr, the unofficial leader of the Boer party in Cape Colony, who also had his federal scheme. Had the two Boer leaders agreed to work loyally together in their disloyalty, it is conceivable that they might have brought about an act of federation in the Boer interest, and have constitutionally demanded from Great Britain the removal of her garrisons from South Africa, a naval station at Simon’s Bay being conceded in order to retain the essential measure of Imperial protection. Such, at any rate, seems to have been Mr. Hofmeyr’s dream. But, instead of being content to widen and deepen the influence of the Afrikander Bond until such time as the term “suzerainty” should have been interpreted by the heirs to Mr. Gladstone’s South African policy, Mr. Kruger decided to make use of his hoarded armaments, and the future of his great raid involved the failure of Mr. Hofmeyr’s long-meditated plan of—shall we call it?—constitutional disloyalty. Nevertheless the twofold ideal of unity, which inspired the acts both of those who deserved and those who did not deserve to succeed, has survived all these vicissitudes, and was never more strong than at the present moment. Indeed it is obvious that not only the British and Dutch inhabitants of South Africa, but also all responsible politicians and competent publicists in Canada and Australia, are now of opinion that complete solutions of the three South African problems of primary importance—the settlement of the native question, agricultural development, and railway administration—can only be obtained through a Federal Parliament, a body which would combine a detailed knowledge of local conditions with the power of seeing each problem as a whole, and devising a general solution.

II

The foregoing contains the gist of many conversations with those who have a special knowledge of South Africa and South African affairs. The opinions of Sir Albert Hime, the Prime Minister of Natal, who may certainly claim to speak in this matter on behalf of the South African loyalists, were expressed as follows in an interview with the writer:—

“I am convinced that the majority of South Africans are anxious to see a ‘United South Africa,’ and I believe they will see it before long. I cannot, of course, speak for the Dutch; but I am sure that every ‘Britisher’ in Natal and in Rhodesia, and nine out of every ten ‘Britishers’ in the rest of South Africa, are in favour of federation. The great problems of South African development can only be completely solved by a central authority. The native problem, for example, which is the most serious of all, is a case in point. The difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of native labour—a difficulty only to be overcome by increasing the wants of the natives—is only one phase of this problem, but it will supply an illustration of the necessity of considering the interests of the whole country in dealing with such matters. As things are arranged at present, the planters and farmers of Natal have a reasonable cause of complaint in the fact that all their available supply of native labour is drawn away to the Rand mines. I may add that the solidarity of South African opinion in regard to the treatment of the natives—all white men in South Africa are agreed, for example, that they must never have the franchise, and that no attempt should be made to create a navvy class in South Africa to compete with the natives in the unskilled labour market—is a great unifying influence. The matter of agricultural settlement is another problem which should be considered with reference to the general interests of the whole country. There is an impression current in certain quarters that immigration should be diverted into the new Colonies. But once the conception of a United South Africa is grasped, it is obvious that a new British settler in Natal will do as much for the maintenance of British supremacy as a new British settler in the Transvaal. If South Africa is not to become a country of two or three large cities in a huge, sparsely settled territory, the problem of agricultural development should be dealt with on the broadest lines, and in the interest of the whole country. Natal has no intention whatever of pursuing a selfish policy in regard to the work of procuring settlers or of obtaining a share of the Transvaal traffic.”

Asked to express his opinion as to when the “United South Africa” of his hopes would come into being, Sir Albert Hime naturally enough refused to suggest a date. “But I am strongly of opinion that federation should take place before the new Colonies receive self-government, or, at any rate, concurrently with that event. That would be the safest course; for it is quite possible that the new Colonies, after they had received autonomy, would refuse to join. Once they have attained the privileges of self-government as part and parcel of a ‘United South Africa,’ I do not think there would be any special friction; if there was, it would gradually disappear as local jealousies grew less.”

“Though I do not regard the question of South African Federation as a matter of merely academic interest,” continued Sir Albert Hime, “yet I think it would serve no useful purpose to discuss the details of a federal scheme at the present moment. But, for my own part, I do not regard the arguments of Mr. Cecil Rhodes in favour of making Cape Town the federal capital as conclusive. In a speech at Bulawayo, Mr. Cecil Rhodes summed up those arguments in a forcible manner, and his bequest of Groote Schuur as a residence for the Premier of the United South Africa that is to be, is an additional argument of considerable weight. But I am inclined to think that the fact that the Cape Peninsula is, as Mr. Rhodes said, the seaside sanatorium of South Africa, would not compensate for the remoteness of Cape Town from the centre of the new federation. And, again, if Cape Town were chosen there would be a tendency to make too much of Cape politics, and the spirit of Cape politicians might tend to dominate the Federal Parliament. Johannesburg would be a bad choice. Living will always be costly there, and the influence of cosmopolitan capitalists might be exerted with bad results. Of course we should be glad to have the capital in Natal, but I do not expect we shall have that honour. All things considered, Bloemfontein would perhaps be the best choice. Or we might follow the example of the United States, Canada, and Australia, and settle the claims of the existing capitals by creating a new city for our federal capital.”

III

Sir Edward Barton was at first unwilling to express an opinion on a subject “in which many with better knowledge have a deep interest.” “But I am confident,” he continued, “that before many years have passed away we shall see a Federated South Africa, and that no South African will wish to return to the old order of things once that federation has come into being. I still believe that the form chosen for the constitution of the Australian Commonwealth was the best available, and I think that it would be better suited to South Africa than the Canadian form. But whichever form is chosen, the whole community will benefit by federation.

“We in Australia have had great difficulties to overcome, and a certain amount of friction has necessarily arisen between the States and the federal authority, but the history of the United States and of the Dominion shows that such difficulties and friction cannot be avoided, but can always be surmounted. With the exception of a few discontented persons, I think nobody in Australia would be in favour of a return to the old order of things, and it is already clear that the local jealousies which hampered Australian progress are vanishing. When I was in British Columbia nine years ago, I tried hard to find a man who believed that the act of confederation should be undone; but I could not discover such a person. There may be a few ‘Blue Noses’ in Nova Scotia who would like to see confederation abolished, but I never met one. In either case, the fact that Annexationists are few—too few to be counted—in Canada, explains my failure. And once South African Federation is an accomplished fact—and though the racial antithesis, as was the case in Canada, renders the accomplishment more difficult than in Australia, where a difference in opinion as to fiscal policy was the chief obstacle—I am very sure that the vast majority of South Africans, whether British or Dutch, will refuse to contemplate a change to the old state of local jealousies. The sooner South African Federation comes, the better for South Africa.”

CHURCH STREET, PRETORIA THE APPROACH TO THE TOWN.
Drawn by Donald E. M’Cracken.

Asked to answer the question: Should federation come before the new Colonies receive self-government, or concurrently with that event? Sir Edward Barton replied that in his opinion either course would create difficulties for the future.

“Australian Federation,” he continued, “came out of the will of the people. The result of a referendum proved that a majority of the people was in favour of federation, and all the States consented to the terms thereof. Now if the Transvaal and the Orange River Colonies, communities that have enjoyed a form of self-government in the past, had not free choice of assent or refusal, and joined the South African Federation under compulsion (no matter how slight a measure of compulsion), constitutional difficulties might spring up in the hereafter. Disputes might arise between the federal authority and these two States, and they would say, ‘We were not asked for our consent, we had not complete freedom of choice.’ In any case, representation must be given to them, and it would be awkward if two out of the five Federal States or Provinces were trying to overthrow the federation. I do not say this would happen, but the possibility of such an emergency should be seriously considered. It would be safe, I think, to work and wait for a majority in favour of federation; more especially as there has existed and still exists, as I am informed, a strong feeling that the interests of both peoples in South Africa would be furthered by such a measure.”

IV

Neither Mr. Seddon nor Sir Wilfrid Laurier granted the writer’s request for an expression of opinion in regard to the possibility or probability of South African Federation. Mr. Seddon, though he is always ready to advise the various Provinces of the Empire in commercial matters, is averse to interfering in other people’s politics. Moreover the word “federation” has a discomfortable sound in the ears of his New Zealand constituents; to a few it suggests Rossetti’s “might-have-been,” to most its echo is a more or less decided “certainly not.”

Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who has suffered much from the too imaginative interviewer, both in the United States and in France, makes it a principle not to be interviewed. But a day or two after he had courteously declined to grant the writer’s request, he was good enough to allude to the subject of South African Federation in a speech at Edinburgh, from which the following excerpt is taken: “In my humble opinion,” said the Canadian Premier, with reference to the attempt of Mr. Rhodes to secure the unification of South Africa, “Mr. Rhodes made one mistake. He made the mistake of being too impatient. Had he allowed time for development, had he allowed the Dutch population to get reconciled to the idea of British citizenship, they would have had much sooner than will be the case the federation of South Africa, which is the only future of that great country.”

To judge from the spirit of his utterances in Canada on the subject of South Africa, it would appear that Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s opinions as to the best means of working towards the end of South African Federation do not materially differ from those of Sir Edmund Barton. He believes that the free consent of the new Colonies should be obtained, and that the policy pursued with regard to Manitoba by the “Fathers of Confederation”—a policy of which he disapproved at the time, a policy which led to a long series of disputes between Manitoba and the Dominion Government—should not be pursued in the case of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies. It will be remembered that the “Red River Settlement” received Provincial status on condition of becoming a member of confederation, and that the terms of membership were accepted under compulsion, and in the hope that they could be bettered.

LAW AND LANGUAGE

By Mr. M. J. FARRELLY, LL.D.

Barrister-at-Law; Advocate of the Supreme Court of Cape Colony

I.—THE ROMAN DUTCH LAW AND THE LAW OF ENGLAND

The Roman Dutch Law—the body of legal principles and enactments codified under the later Roman Empire by the Emperor Justinian, as modified by legislation of the States-General and decisions of the tribunals of Holland up to the end of the eighteenth century—the date of the British occupation of Cape Colony—constitutes the Common Law of all British South Africa from the Zambesi to the sea. Indeed its sway stretches farther north, if we include the province of Northern Rhodesia.

The recent annexation to the Empire of the territories of the two Boer Republics must necessarily have many effects not alone in the sphere of politics, but also in that of law. But no unsettling of the general principles of private law, regulating the rights and duties of the citizens in private relations, can be the result. The invariable practice of the Imperial Government—the only possible one to prevent inextricable confusion of personal status and property rights—has always been to enforce, as the unaltered law of the land, any system of European Law already in operation in territories annexed or ceded to the Empire, being already a portion of the dominion of any State of the European Family of Nations. In this respect the Imperial Government but follows the general practice of other European States: a practice so uniform that it may almost be regarded as a portion of the Law of Nations, of that custom of the European race which for a century we are accustomed to speak of as International Law. The committee of the Privy Council, which, as regards the Empire outside of Europe, may be viewed as the Imperial Court of Appeal, has therefore to adjudicate on systems of law more numerous than these that come before any other tribunal in the world. Not alone questions to be determined under the Common Law of England, but suits to be decided under that law, as modified by the legislation of the self-governing Colonies, come under the cognisance of that unique tribunal. From the Channel Islands, whose people boast that they were never conquered by England, are heard appeals, based on the Grand Coutumier de Normandie, unknown in France since the French Revolution. The French Law of Lower Canada, still administered under British authority, is lifeless and unknown in the Paris which gave it birth. Similarly the Roman Dutch Law of the United Provinces, now enforced in the former over-sea possessions of Holland, has long ago been swept away in Low Countries, surviving as the law of the land only in the British possessions, in South America, in Ceylon, and in South Africa. With one result, arresting the attention of the historical student, that in our own day British tribunals accept, as of the highest authority—in many matters most vitally affecting the status and property of British citizens from the Lion’s Head to the Line, the recorded opinions of a Pretorian prefect of the Roman Empire in York—the brightest of the five stars of the Loi des Citations.

The tribunals of the Empire constitute a museum of former systems of law, flourishing far from their parent springs. But every change is not necessarily progress. The marked liking of British colonists, born in the United Kingdom, for the Roman Law under whose sway they have passed is a very instructive phenomenon. Wisdom, they seem to think, did not die with the fashioners of that “codeless myriad of precedents, that wilderness of single instances” which, evolved according to imperturbable theory from the bosom of the English judiciary, is known as the Law of England.

This preference is the more impressive, seeing that on many vital matters, not mere abstractions of jurisprudence, the Roman Dutch Law differs from the English systemless system.

The personal status of all residents in the new British Colonies falls under rules quite different from the English rules as to capacity to enter into and to perform contracts, as to property rights, and as to family relations. Results of some importance may chiefly be expected from the fact that, since the annexation and the transformation of the Republics into British Colonies, the presumption in law that British immigrants intend to adopt a new domicile, and subject themselves and their property to a new legal system, must necessarily be stronger than when residence was being taken up in the territory, then foreign, of two Boer Republics. In the future, not alone, as hitherto, contracts of service and contracts as regards property, but the relationship, personal and as affecting property, of marriage and succession, will fall under the jurisdiction of a High Court administering primarily the Law of Rome. The Court will apply the Law of England to those latter conditions only in cases in which they consider that, in accordance with the principles of Private International Law, the English system is applicable—the presumption now being that, as a general rule, it is not applicable.

Photo: Russell, London.

As regards the capacity of adults to enter into and be bound by contract, the most striking difference between the English and Roman Dutch systems is the survival, under the latter, of a modified form of the Roman Interdiction of the Prodigal. Under certain circumstances, on application of friends or relatives, such an order can issue. Again, contracts of service made out of South Africa are not binding unless entered into again before a public official in South Africa.

In respect to the tenure of property, more especially of property in land, the differences which exist are all in favour of Roman Dutch Law. An admirable system of registering titles to land, whether of ownership or mortgage, exists in South Africa, as on the Continent of Europe, where that most valuable legacy from the Roman Empire has remained unchanged in principle to our day. No tedious scrutiny of documents attesting title to land is necessary, as it is in England. The official register is sufficient proof of ownership. Transfer is rapid and inexpensive. Again, unavoidable calamity, amounting to a condition of impossibility of beneficial occupation, excuses from the necessity of payment of rent of land. Such excuse is not known to the Law of England.

Unlike the Law of England, but like the Law of Scotland, desertion by either party to a marriage furnishes ground for absolute divorce, with right of re-marriage. The system, flowing directly from the Roman Law, both in Scotland and South Africa, is understood to work satisfactorily, comparatively few divorces being sought for.

II.—THE MODERN LAW OF SOUTH AFRICA

Leaving the general principles of the law affecting personal status, family relations, and property rights, the difference between the Law of England and that of South Africa practically disappears as regards Europeans in social relations. In the whole field of Commercial Law, and in that of the Law of Crimes and Punishments, the Law of England has practically been adopted in all the States and Colonies. The origin of this state of the law is, of course, to be found in the fact that the Roman Law conceptions were out of harmony with modern commercial conditions and the competition of the World Market; and also that their code of Crimes and Punishments has become inappropriate to the later forms of European civilisation.

Several features of South African legislation require more special notice. The Transvaal Law may be taken as typical of that of the other States, and political and economical conditions make the law of the late Republics of most importance and interest to the British public. The most salient topics are those dealt with by the Law of Mines, the law as to the natives, and the Law of Universal Military Service.

The law as to minerals, including not alone gold and silver, but all precious metals and precious stones, is based on State ownership. It is expressly declared: “The right of mining for and disposal of all precious stones and precious metals belongs to the State.”

The State, however, does not undertake the work of mining, but grants, under certain conditions, that privilege to various classes in the community. The Government is authorised by law to proclaim a specified area to be public “diggings.” Thereupon, certain rights are reserved to the owner of the farm wherein the area is situated. These rights are in effect to select certain portions of the proclaimed area as mining “claims” belonging to the owner, and to mark off these portions. The remainder of the area is then open to appropriation by the public, the first comer having the first right. Shortly before the war of 1899, in consequence of scenes of disorder attending the marking off of these “claims” by the general public, steps were taken to introduce a system of assigning the mining areas by lot among the residents in each district.

The taxation of the mineral grounds was, and is, based on a dual system. The one is taxation, by means of levying a monthly due, called a “claim licence,” in the mere possession of a mining area, called a “claim,” whether or not the area is being developed. The other principle, superadded to the first, was that of taxing the profits of each mine. Before the war this latter tax amounted to five per cent.

In relation to gold mining, in one very important respect the Law of the Transvaal, like that of Cape Colony, is in striking opposition to the rules of civilised law all over the world. The famous I. D. B. (Illicit Diamond Buying) enactments passed to protect diamond mining in Kimberley have a parallel in the I. G. B. (Illicit Gold Buying) provisions of the Transvaal Law. It is incumbent on the possessor of rough diamonds to prove his innocence. Similarly, under the Gold Law of the Transvaal, “Any one who is found in possession of amalgam or unwrought gold, or uncut precious stones, and can give no proof that he obtained possession of the same in a lawful manner,” is punishable with fine and imprisonment. For a third offence, the amount of fine and imprisonment with hard labour is at the discretion of the Court, and forfeiture of the unwrought gold, or uncut precious stones, follows conviction.

It is true that in England, for instance, a similar exception is in force with reference to the possession of explosives, a measure intended to prevent Anarchist outrages. But the difference is very great between the two classes of cases. The manufacture and sale of explosives is not the staple industry of England, as the production of gold and diamonds is in South Africa. The chief occupation of the industrial population of England is not affected; the provision remains only one of some inconsiderable exceptions to the general rule, that every one is presumed innocent until he is proved guilty.

The law relating to natives, under which head are included all the coloured races, is equally strange to those familiar only with the Law of England. The so-called Pass Law provides that every native in districts or towns inhabited by Europeans—everywhere, in fact, except in the native villages—must be in possession of an official passport, showing he is registered in an official State registry. Other regulations limit the action of the native—the Curfew regulations, compelling Kaffirs in town districts to remain indoors after sunset. Municipal rules, prohibiting Kaffirs from walking on the footpath of the street, and special rules of the Criminal Law affect them. The lash is presented as the penalty for various offences. The death penalty is inflicted for Kaffir outrages on women of the European race. By the imposition of a Hut Tax, payable annually, the Kaffir is induced to labour; an occupation which, if left to himself, he prefers to leave to women.

The Law of Universal Military Service, applying to all Europeans who are burghers—a law of all the States of South Africa—furnishes another point of divergence from the Law of England. In the Transvaal all burghers over the age of sixteen and up to the age of sixty are under the military command of the elected Field Cornet of the district. In time of war the age begins at fourteen and has no fixed limit for ending. This, be it noted, is not a case of conscription; it is a levy en masse, taken as a normal condition of life. Burghers on commando are exempt from civil process, and are exempt from the obligation of paying claim licenses for the period they are on commando.

III.—RECENT BRITISH MODIFICATIONS

It is, of course, in the present stage of our information impossible to state fully the various modifications which have been introduced in the new Colonies since the British annexation two years ago.

Some changes worth noticing have, however, been published.

In Private Law, the chief change of which we have information appears to have been the abolition of the Orphan Chamber of Roman Dutch Law—a State department concerned with the administration of infants’ estates. The change, however, seems only to have been one of administration and title, the duties of the abolished Chamber being transferred to the Attorney-General’s Department.

As regards the Gold Law, an enactment by the late Republic of a war-tax on the gold output of from forty to fifty per cent. has been abolished. The British tax on the mines has been fixed by proclamation at ten per cent. on the profits of each mine. The system of claim licenses—taxation on the possession of mining areas—is continued.

Minor modifications of the details of the Native Pass Law have also been announced, including the restriction of the number of cases, and of the power of magistrates to sentence Kaffirs to the punishment of the lash.

The Law of Military Service appears to remain up to the present unmodified. Indeed, a recent decision in the newly established British High Court of the Transvaal has very rigidly construed a provision of the Gold Law, protecting burghers on commando from liability to pay license dues. The Court refuses to allow to Uitlanders the same privilege as that allowed to burghers in arms. The Uitlander, according to that decision, is liable to pay these arrears accruing during the war to the present British administration.

IV.—PRINCIPLES OF IMPERIAL POLICY—OBSTACLES IN THE WAY OF THEIR BEING CARRIED OUT

Before considering specific suggestions as to actual legislation required in the new Colonies, it is necessary to set clearly before us what are the objects to be aimed at by Imperial statesmen. Most of the errors of the past century of Imperial rule in South Africa are traceable to the fact that no steady and consistent policy has been adopted for any definite period. With every change of government in the United Kingdom the British policy in South Africa altered. As I have written elsewhere, it swung with bewildering inconsistency, according to whether an Imperialist or a Little Englander Government was in power, from an expansionist to a “retrenchment” policy. Alternately negrophilist and anti-Kaffir, alternately conciliatory to the Dutch and aggressively British. “Nothing more fixed than the certainty of Imperial change, unless, indeed, it were the cruelty of Imperial ingratitude.”

I shall take it, then, that consistency is the least we may expect as the result of the late war. The maintenance of the integrity of the world-wide Empire, plainly bound up with the retention of South Africa, involving the possession of the only secure sea-route to Australia and India; the upholding of the banner of European justice and humanity in Africa, the British portion of the mission of the European race the world over—to this end, the fusion of all strains of the European people in a new nationality to form a constituent part of the Empire—these I take to be the objects of Imperial statesmen in the United Kingdom and the Colonies, and of all loyal citizens of the Empire.

Now, these principles being fixed, we have next to consider what are the dangers threatening the successful carrying out of a policy based on these principles.

The first, and most formidable, danger is that arising from the existence in all the Colonies of South Africa of a Separatist party among the Boer section of the population, usually described as the Young Afrikander party. Its origin is due to many historic causes; among which not the least has been the unwise and vacillating policy of the Imperial Government. That party is by no means extinct as a result of the late war. No matter what professions are made in the Land of Diplomatists, it has to be reckoned with for our time and generation. It relies for the ultimate success of its policy of substituting a Boer-ruled independent State for British citizenship of the Empire on many causes. In the first place, the stubborn tenacity of the Boer people, and their slowness to abandon any long-held purpose. Again, on their military skill, their religious fanaticism, their conviction that they are the Lord’s elect, and that His sword will smite not in vain. Yet again, and most of all, on the enormous birth-rate among the Boers—families of twelve sons being not uncommon. Boer ignorance of the power and purpose of the Empire—of the real character of that federation of freemen—figures also in their calculations; and as well the barrier against fusion of the European strains kept up by the use of that patois of the Hollander tongue, the South African Taal. Lastly, their main reliance is on future inefficiency of the Imperial administration—marred by negrophilist British missionaries and English society nepotism and favouritism—on the see-saw of British party politics, and on the prospects of the Empire becoming involved in war with some great European Power.

The next danger is that arising from the presence on the goldfields of the Transvaal of vast agglomerations of cosmopolitan finance owning most of the mineral wealth of the State. On many points, the interest of these groups is not the same as those of the Imperial Government and those of the rank and file of the British settlers. Taxation of the mines for Imperial purposes, such as those of State-aided British immigration and State-constructed irrigation works, cannot be in the interest of the mining groups. The lowering of the wages of the white miners is clearly in their interest; while opposed to the prospects of welfare of British miners and British merchants in the towns, to those of the professional classes, and, above all, to the interests of British agricultural settlers, whose occupation cannot be profitable for many years to come unless their market is at their door. Mining profits remitted to Berlin and Paris, instead of going to the pockets of resident British miners, cannot benefit the British agricultural settler. Again, the truck system, by which employers supply goods to their workers (a system illegal in England), while it may increase the profits of the mining groups, would be destruction of the trade of the British dwellers in the towns. This aspect of the question is rendered more serious by the fact that practically all the press of South Africa is owned or controlled by the financiers of the mining groups.

Lastly, a danger which has existed for generations is that arising from the existence of a body of sentiment in the United Kingdom which, for want of a better word, is called negrophilism. This sentiment is usually voiced by British missionaries, and advocates an impossible black man and brother theory. Its effect on British legislation and administration in South Africa caused the first dissension of moment between Boers and British at the time of the abolition of negro slavery in 1836. The whole theory is felt by all Europeans of South African experience to be based on a flat contradiction of the facts of life and the teaching of the 250 years of European contact with the South African native—Bushman, Hottentot, or Kaffir. Allied with this is the colour-blindness of some Anglo-Indians, who favour the disastrous measure of flooding South Africa with Asiatics from India.

V.—LINES OF LEGISLATION TO CARRY OUT THE IMPERIAL POLICY

Having defined the Imperial policy in South Africa to be the maintenance of the integrity of that federation of freemen which is the British Empire, the upholding of the banner of European justice and humanity in the Dark Continent, and for the promotion of these ends the fusion of all strains of the European race in one community, let us now consider the general lines of State action requisite to carry out that policy.

All parties loyal to the Empire are agreed that the first requisite from the standpoint of the Imperial welfare is the promotion of the immigration of British agriculturists to South Africa. The enormous birth-rate of the Boer people will prevent any prospect of fusion between British and Boers—anything, in fact, but the swamping of the British element—unless this immigration be organised by the State. The life of the gold and diamond mines cannot last longer—so those qualified to speak are agreed—than a few generations. With the exhaustion of the mines, the British population, if confined to the towns, would inevitably disappear. Again, the Boers being essentially country folk, could never have that close association with the British necessary for the coalition of a united people, unless the British are settled as agriculturists. A most encouraging precedent of the success of State-organised immigration of British settlers on the land is to be found in the State-aided immigration of 1820 into the Eastern Province of Cape Colony.

Exactly as in Egypt and in India, agriculture, to be prosperous and to extend over large areas, is impossible in South Africa unless with the aid of State-constructed irrigation works. The water supply, both from rainfall and underground natural reservoirs, is ample; but engineering skill is required to enable these sources to be utilised all the year round. The recently published report of Mr. W. Willcocks shows what favourable prospects exist for the carrying out of a general system of State irrigation works.

One word of warning is necessary. The general impression, so sedulously created for many years past, of the unsuitability of South Africa as a sphere for British immigration, is, as Mr. Rudyard Kipling has pointed out, only a part of a political propaganda, intended to exclude British influence. It may be entirely ignored.

The next requisite of State action is the promotion, by legislation and administration, of the development of the present and future goldfields, and other mineral fields, in such manner as may tend to further the general ends of the Imperial policy as already described. The taxation of the mines should be so adjusted as to favour British immigration and the creation of a prosperous and loyal British community. The development of new fields should be encouraged; adequate sums should be raised for public objects; the minerals, expressly declared to be property of the State, should be primarily regarded as a fund for State purposes, not one for the creation of millionaires or the undue enriching of shareholders in Hamburg or Paris or Vienna. The welfare of the mass of British residents in the towns engaged in trade should be considered in legislation affecting the gold mines.

In view of the presence of an overwhelming majority of the subject Kaffir race, all Europeans should be trained to arms, on the model of the laws already in existence in the two new Colonies. From an Imperial, as distinguished from a European standpoint, this measure is equally necessary. The Boers are born soldiers: a nation in arms. No reliance on a professional army or professional police can afford any assurance of stability for the Imperial rule. The Boers would regard such a régime as merely one of transitory military domination.

An efficient system of education, from primary school to university, should be organised and carried out. In the new Colonies great progress has already been made in this direction, and a recently published address by Mr. W. Sargent, the Director of Education, shows that the principles to be kept in mind are clearly apprehended.

A sane and consistent policy with regard to the status of the Kaffir and other non-European people should be adopted and adhered to. The Boer position, that the Kaffir is not in justice entitled to equality, social or political, with Europeans, should be upheld, as that plainly sanctioned by European experience of two centuries and a half.

Efficiency should be insisted on as the test for appointment in the public service. Salaries on an adequate scale should be given, bearing in mind the standard of payment usually obtaining in gold-bearing districts. The obstacles in the way of making efficiency the test of appointment should be clearly understood, and as far as possible guarded against; the persistence of Young Afrikander Separatist ideals, and the readiness of the propagandists to accept office under the Imperial Government; the danger of undue weight being given to the influence of the great capitalists; the equal danger of the intrigue, favouritism, and nepotism of London society—of which so much was heard at the late Committee of Inquiry into the training of army officers—being brought to bear on appointments to office in the new Colonies.

The language question—that of the degree of recognition necessary or expedient of the Dutch language in the courts and public offices—is so important that it is better to consider it separately.

Photo: Russell, London.

VI.—THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

The question of the degree of recognition of the Dutch language in the new Colonies to be accorded by the new administration is one of the most difficult, and at the same time one of the most urgent and altogether inevitable, presented by the altered situation, the result of the late war. It is one of the cases where not to decide is to decide. Let us endeavour to understand the conditions of the problem, bearing steadily in mind the objects to be aimed at by the Imperial policy.

No responsible statesman in the United Kingdom or in the Colonies can desire to take any step other than conciliatory to Boer sentiment, provided the main object of creating a united and prosperous European community is obtained. Anything like a persecution of the Boer tongue or traditions would not only be unjust, but most unwise. At the same time, Imperial statesmen must remember that British-descended citizens of the Empire in South Africa hold that their sentiment and their opinion is not to be taken as a matter to be ignored. Now, Imperialist sentiment in South Africa is united as to the desirability of having only one official language, and of doing away with the dual language system introduced in Cape Colony twenty years ago.

Limiting any action of the Imperial Government, must necessarily be the conditions as to the recognition of Dutch agreed upon with the Boer generals as one of the terms of peace. These conditions were that the Dutch language is to be taught in the schools, in cases where the parents of the children desire it; and in the courts of law in cases where, in the opinion of the court, the ends of justice will be furthered by its use. The wish of the parents and the discretion of the law-courts are, therefore, to be arbiters. The peace terms, in this matter, seem wholly reasonable; but the main question of a dual language remains unaffected.

Let us first deal with the cause of much misapprehension in the United Kingdom in this matter. Here I will quote from an article of mine published some time before the peace agreement:—

“There is no question here of the suppression of the language of a people. The language of the Boer people of South Africa is a patois called the Taal, based on the seventeenth-century Hollander Dutch, with a mixture of many strange words, Kaffir and English, and with the omission of most grammatical inflexions. In that happy tongue you are permitted to say: ‘I is.’ It is needless to say there is no literature in this patois, as there is in the Hollander Dutch of this century. Now, it is only to Hollander Dutch that it is proposed to accord equal audience as an official language. The official recognition of Hollander Dutch dates from 1882 in the Cape Colony, and is a result of the political propaganda of the Afrikander Bond. It was openly announced and hailed as the ‘thin end of the wedge’ to prevent the fusion of the Boer and British strains of the European people, and to drive the British into the sea. It is almost as grotesque a misrepresentation to call this claim for the official recognition of Hollander Dutch a popular demand, as if, in regard to modern Italy, we were told that the peasants of Umbria or the Marches were hungering and thirsting for the recognition of Augustan Latin as entitled to equal audience with Italian in the courts and public offices of Italy.

“The veld Boer does not understand Hollander Dutch. He only hears the Hollander tongue, or, rather, the seventeenth-century predecessor of it, in the text from the seventeenth-century Dutch Bible read out in the churches on Sundays by the predikant, or in the hymns, once chanted by his forefathers of the Lowlands, who worsted Alva, persecutor of the Saints of the Lord.

“It will clear the air greatly if people at home will realise what is the force behind this Hollander Dutch language movement. It is the Young Afrikander party.

“For sixty years English was the sole official language in South Africa. The experiment of two official languages is one of only twenty years’ duration, and has not been crowned with any conspicuous success, unless racial cleavage, political and social, be counted as such.

“No other course can so speedily promote the fusion of all Europeans. Judging by the trend of events, the future among the European people belongs to one or two of the great languages. It is significant that, at the present moment of time, with a knowledge of English and French, one can travel the world. The fusion of European strains, so happily accomplished in the United States of America, is admittedly due to the determined enforcement of a single language as the sole official language of the Republic. Immigrants of all European nationalities learn to speak and write English—their children of the next generation become Americans. As a London Consul-General of the United States pointed out to me, the reunion of the European race, as a political measure on a vast scale, has been first accomplished in the American Commonwealth. Never since the pre-historic time of the root-origins of our language, never since the corporate unity of the Roman Empire, has there been so vast a breaking down of barriers between Europeans.

“The matter is one of political expediency, not of æsthetics. The unity of the European people is a greater historic fact and present reality than any of those brief heritages of common life for a few short centuries of one or other sections of the race, giving rise to the national tongues. Personally, one may sympathise with the scholar’s preference for a survival of Latin as the language of Europe, as it was during the Roman Empire, as it was during the Middle Ages, and as it would have remained but for the outburst of Nationalist particularism during the sixteenth century. One may lament, with a loyal European like Talleyrand, what that outburst has cost Europe; led by the ambition of the House of Capet in France, of the Tudor in England, and the princes of North Germany, plunderers of the Teutonic knights. No doubt it is true that thousands of millions of pounds and millions of lives have been wasted by that particularism—strange step-child of the unifying Renaissance. From the æsthetic side, it is vain to argue whether Keltic be a purer tongue, more passionately expressive, Spanish more majestic, or Italian liquid music. The sieve of the gods seems hitherto to let through, for the world of the European race, only two of the great tongues—French and English.”

In a word, for all æsthetic purposes, let the various harmonies of all the tongues of the European race continue to enrich the choir, enshrining memories of the past. But for the political field of action the trumpet of command and order should sound a note clear from its being single.

Any incidental inconvenience, such as must arise to the first generation of immigrants to the American Commonwealth, must only be treated as transitory, and, as far as possible, provided against. Very few Europeans who do not know English have business in the law-courts or public offices. In the years preceding the late war, only five out of every hundred cases in the Transvaal law-courts were between people not conversant with English. For this small minority, in all the public offices and the courts, competent interpreters can be provided.

VII.—LEGISLATIVE MEASURES

It may be well that I should add some suggestions as to the measures which I at present hold should be taken to put into force the general lines of legislation, already sketched out as suitable for the carrying out of the Imperial policy as already defined. But it should be understood that these suggestions are only intended as furnishing material for discussion. In the absence of fuller information as to future needs and emergencies, it would be unwise to finally advocate concrete measures. What is, in my mind, of importance is not any specific measure, but the principles of Imperial policy on which I have insisted. If it can be shown to me, in the future discussions on these matters, in which I hope to take part on my return to South Africa, that other measures are better suited to carry out the consistent policy I have defined, I shall be prepared to advocate such other measures.

In the first place, I think that in view of the wide divergence of opinion and interest, among the British residents quite as much as among the Boers, a consultative body, nominated by the High Commissioner, should be appointed to advise on any projected legislation. For some time, while the form of Crown Colony Government is continued, advice from such a body will be specially needful. Apart from the maintenance of law and order, the interests of the great mining groups, representation of shareholders resident in Europe is by no means necessarily the same as those of the rest of the British residents, or indeed those of the Imperial Government. Among such matters of divergence of interest may be enumerated the scale and method of taxation on the mines, no matter for what Imperial purpose—British immigration, State irrigation works, or university and general education. The maintenance of the present very high rate of wages of the European miners is another subject. British residents in the towns, shopkeepers, importers, professional men and their employees, are concerned in the maintenance of a high rate of wages for the miners, as the money is spent in the country, not in Paris or Berlin. Again, the introduction of the truck system, the supply of goods by the miners to their employees, European or Kaffir, while it would increase the profits of mining shareholders in Europe, would destroy the means of existence of the bulk of the British residents in the towns.

Amongst the Boers, there is almost as great divergence of interest between the wealthy farmers, desirous of keeping together their vast cattle ranches of 6000 acres, and the class of Bijwoners (tenants at will on an over-lord’s land), whose interest would be favoured by the dividing up of cattle ranches, and the encouragement of small farmers who would be agriculturists.

For this reason, a consultation body should be thoroughly representative of all classes.

Direct legislation favouring British immigration of agriculturists is plainly necessary, and as well the creation of State irrigation works. Such steps, it is reassuring to know, have already been taken. Personally, I am in favour of village ownership of agricultural lands being instituted, a system with which the Boers are already familiar, in connection with the cultivation of the lands owned by the towns.

To promote the prosperity of British residents in the towns, and as well to secure a market for agricultural produce, the truck system should be prohibited by law; and the compound system, under which the Kaffir workmen in mines are not only supplied with goods but confined to barracks called “compounds,” should also be prohibited. Neither system has hitherto been in force in the new Colonies.

As regards the Gold Law, the new British administration has established a tax of ten per cent. on the net profits of each mine, and has retained the previous system as well, of taxing the possession of mining areas. It will require some time to see how the present method of levy affects the growth of the British population. Personally, I have not been convinced by the arguments in favour of the “claim license” system: it is held by its opponents that it tends to throw all the mining areas into the possession of the great mining groups, the areas being forfeited to the State in times of depression by poorer men who are unable to continue to pay. Suggestions deserving consideration have been made as to the advisability of the State developing gold areas already in the possession of the State.

As regards the arrears of claim licenses accruing during the war against the expelled British inhabitants, I have strongly advocated in the London press their entire remission. The Boer burgher on commando is held to be exempted; it is difficult to see why the expelled British should not also be exempted.

Another measure which I have supported is that of the arming of all British civilians, for reasons already enumerated. An essential to the measure being successful, being loyally supported, is that, on the Boer model, the officers of the corps should be elected by their men. British colonists, with their traditions of liberty and independence, will never submit to being compulsorily placed on military service and subjected to the orders of officers whom they have not chosen.

No measure of greater political moment can be taken than the thorough organising of a system of education, from the university to the school. I am one of those who support the making of the Gold Reef city a great university centre.

As regards the Native Law, I advocate as little as possible alteration in the laws already in force. The Boer theory of the position of the Kaffir—as not an equal, but entitled to justice, under tutelage to a government directed by European ideals—is the sound one.[2]

Asiatic immigration in any form, whether of British Indians from India, or Chinese from Hong-Kong or elsewhere, would be a measure fraught with disaster to the future of European civilisation. With the exception of some employers of labour in Rhodesia and Natal, South African opinion—British, Boer, even Kaffir—is opposed to Asiatic immigration. Even the employers referred to only desire to encourage the importation of Asiatics as manual labourers, not as owners of the land or traders in the towns.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] In the Fortnightly Review, August 1902. Ideal with this subject: “Negrophilism in South Africa.”

THE AFRICANDER PARTY

ITS ORIGIN, ITS GROWTH, ITS AIMS

By the HON. A. WILMOT

Member of the Legislative Council, Cape Colony; Author of “History of Our Own Times in South Africa,” &c., &c.

One of the greatest statesmen whose experience and ability have assisted the Imperial Government declares that it was only after two years’ residence that he understood the political problems affecting South Africa. Hundreds rush in where Milners fear to tread, and the little knowledge which induces superficial views and rash judgment on a merely primâ facie case are now at present, as they have been in the past, among the causes which impede the progress of a vast country which we hope will yet become a great federated dominion under the British crown.

It is because of the vital importance of going to the root of the political questions affecting South Africa that this paper is written.

The origin of the Africander party is traceable principally to discontent with British rule. The Cape Colony, as our readers know, was obtained by conquest in 1806, and by purchase from the Netherlands for six million pounds sterling in the year 1814. Mr. Paul M. Botha, Member of the Orange Free State Volksraad for Kroonstadt, states the case from the Dutchman’s point of view, and tells us that as England said that South Africa was her country she ought to have governed it, instead of which she shirked responsibilities and was guilty of the most glaring inconsistencies. One day England blew hot and the next cold. “One moment she insisted on swallowing us, and the next moment she insisted on disgorging us.” For example, the Orange Free State was declared British territory because a governor said, “You can never escape British jurisdiction.” Then we were abandoned because the next governor said, “The country was a howling wilderness.” The Transvaal was annexed, and Sir Garnet Wolseley declared: “The rivers will sooner run back in their courses than that England will give back the Transvaal.” Shortly after that the Transvaal was retroceded, after Majuba, because the British Ministry said, “We have been unjust in annexing this country.”[3]

The slavery question, Mr. Botha tells us, was handled with astounding negligence and ignorance of the circumstances of the people. Although England was perfectly right in emancipating the slaves, yet the way it was done irritated, annoyed, and disgusted the people, and sowed seeds of distrust which have never been eradicated. England failed to carry out effectively her promises of compensation.

On the minor grievances, such as Slagter’s Nek and other so-called injustices of England, Mr. Botha lays no stress. “It was a rough period, and rough measures were used by all Governments.” He significantly adds that what he has heard of the cruelty of the Dutch East India Company’s officials makes him think that anyhow British rule was heaven to that of the Dutch. Whatever a well-educated man like Mr. Botha may say, we know that the rank and file of the Dutch throughout South Africa are taught to “Remember Slagter’s Nek.” Nothing can be more unjust than to blame the British power for executing rebels, caught red-handed and sentenced to death in perfect accord with both evidence and law by a competent Court, whose members were themselves of Dutch extraction. Nevertheless this is one of the heavy popular grievances.

Mr. Botha says that England’s weak and spasmodic policy in South Africa has made the Boer what he is to-day—distrustful and contemptuous of British statesmen. By further receding into the interior, and having to fight wild beasts and hordes of Kaffirs, the Boer became blown out with vanity at his own prowess, and more and more ignorant. Through this ignorance it is easier to mislead than to lead him. A man who plays upon his vanity and prejudices against England quickly obtains influence. A loud talker and blusterer gets a better hearing than a quiet reasoner. “I ascribe this to want of education and complete isolation on the veldt.”

As a marked illustration in support of Mr. Botha’s view which has come under the present writer’s observation, let us tell what occurred shortly before the war to a nephew of the Speaker of the House of Assembly who had to travel through the Transvaal to look after some landed property. This gentleman, who spoke the Taal perfectly, met at one place about two dozen Dutchmen who were, like the Laird of Cockpen, “greatly ta’en up with the ’fairs of the State.” The first question, “Can we beat the British?” was answered by a unanimous “Yes, we have done so before, and can, of course, easily do so again.” Second. “Tell me, Carls, could we beat England and France united?” “Certainly,” said every one, “there can be no doubt about it.” But now interposed a new speaker. “How if we had to fight England, France, and Germany?” The reply was unanimous. “We can beat them all three.” No wonder that the people of the Lord, as they believed themselves to be, took the bit between their teeth at the time of the ultimatum. Not even Paul Kruger could then have stopped the war, for they felt perfectly assured of victory.

With a religion which has not unfitly been described as a superstition based upon the Old Testament, there is profound ignorance accompanied by prejudice of the most deep-rooted character. Mr. Botha tells us that unfortunately the ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, “greedy for the fat lamb, the fowl, and the purse,” foster this ignorance. One Predikant had actually the audacity to tell his congregation that God must help His chosen people, otherwise He would lose His influence.

Mr. Botha defends his own people against charges of treachery, and gives it as his fixed opinion that a just and firm Government with uniformity of treatment will not only control and satisfy the Boers, but eradicate in time that feeling of distrust and fear which was engendered in their minds by the halting and unequal policy of England. He admits at the same time that it is to Britain that they owe peace, and that it was Britain that protected them from foreign invasion and saved them from continual civil strife. Then comes most important evidence. President Brand of the Free State recognised in the misgoverned Transvaal a subtle enemy. Indeed, it is scarcely remembered that in 1857 the burghers of the South African Republic invaded the Orange Free State territory and declared that it belonged to them. Paul Kruger was subsequently raised up, in the opinion of his followers, to be a Moses, whose mission was to deliver “De Africander Natie” from British bondage. Mr. Botha asks us to let him tear this veil of false romance away. “We know him,” he tells us, “as an avaricious, unscrupulous, and hypocritical man, who sacrificed a whole people to his cupidity.” Krugerism spread over South Africa, using the Bond, the press, and the pulpit to further its schemes.

AT THE HEAD OF UMGENI FALLS, HOWICK, NATAL.

Let it be fully understood—the Bond was the fons and origo of the South African war—Krugerism powerfully co-operating. The idea of the Africander Bond took root at the Paarl in the Cape Colony in the years 1879 and 1880. Of course, as we have seen, there was abundant preparation, but events in the Transvaal hastened proceedings. Enthusiastic, educated men, such as Reitz, Te Water, and the students of the Theological Seminary at Stellenbosch felt patriotic desires wildly coursing in their veins, but the honour of formulating a definite plan of organisation belongs to the Rev. S. J. du Toit, who then edited De Patriot newspaper at the Paarl. De Transvaalse Oorlag was published by Messrs. D. T. du Toit & Co. of the Paarl in the year 1881. It was the retrocession of the Transvaal under the direction of Mr. Gladstone in the last-mentioned year that enabled the Bond to assume a very definite shape, and to obtain immense and widespread power.

Carl Borckenhagen, editor of the Bloemfontein Express, and F. W. Reitz, who succeeded Sir J. Brand as President of the Orange Free State, and was subsequently State Secretary of the Transvaal, earnestly joined the Bond. The former was a German, whose honest and intense hatred of England was apparent in all his leading articles, while the life-dream of the latter was to see the establishment of the Dutch Republican United States of South Africa.

Branches of the Bond were formed in the Cape Colony, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State, and in 1882 the first Congress of the Bond was held at Graaff Reinet. A very astute and profoundly able plotter was already at work in the person of Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr, who had started “The Farmers’ Protection Society” with the expressed purpose of watching over Dutch farmers, and stirring them up to take an interest in politics. Hitherto the Dutch bucolic mind had lain fallow. It was now to be cultivated in order that it might produce fruit at parliamentary elections, and, as a more powerful means to that end, “The Farmers’ Protection Society” was amalgamated with the Bond in the year 1883. Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr then assumed the reins of management, and, as a Member in the House of Assembly for Stellenbosch, began to wield a power which at last developed into that of a colonial Earl of Warwick, or king-maker. Ministries were formed at his bidding, and cabinets accepted his control.

Certainly Mr. Hofmeyr very wisely and astutely modified the ostensible objects of the Bond, and he was helped to do so by the fact that the Hollander party in the Government at Pretoria became stronger than the Africanders. Indeed, the Rev. S. J. Du Toit, the founder of the Bond, was worsted in the Transvaal by the men from the old country. But to make up for this, their march in the Cape Colony was so triumphant that the President of the Bond at the Paarl Congress in June 1900 was able to glory in the fact that since 1884 the Cape Colony had been ruled under responsible government almost exclusively by the aid of the Africander Bond. In 1885 there were twenty-five Bond Members of Parliament who held the balance of power, and there can be no doubt that Sir Thomas Upington, Sir Gordon Sprigg, and Mr. Rhodes sought and accepted their support.

When Mr. Rhodes became Prime Minister in 1890 he was in harmony with the Bond, but certainly did not sympathise with its real object. Each party masked its idea, and each party thought that it was successfully using the other for its own objects. Objects diametrically opposite: Mr. Rhodes desired the supremacy of the British Imperial Power, and the Africander party really aimed at the formation of a Republican South Africa.

The Bond, says Mr. Theo. Schreiner (“The Africander Bond,” &c., p. 29) was for many years the only organised political body in the Cape Colony, and it exercised a political tyranny which crushed all true political life and thought under its iron heel. While it deliberately refused to take the reins of Government, it constantly aimed at increasing the number of its Members in Parliament, and at making it impossible for any Ministry to exist without its support. Arguing apparently from facts, Sir Hercules Robinson, in his farewell speech at Cape Town in April 1889, went so far as to say that there was no longer any permanent place in South Africa for direct Imperial rule.

A Bond Congress was held at Kimberley in 1891, when Mr. Rhodes made a very bold but unsuccessful attempt to get the Dutch to join with the English of the Cape Colony against the iniquitous rule and anti-British policy of the South African Republic. Another Congress was held at Port Elizabeth, when there was an attempt made to capture the Bond by means of British friendship. Indeed the changed attitude of this Association deceived many people, as under the extremely able leadership of Mr. Hofmeyr it assumed the position of a great benevolent society, which desired all Colonists, both English and Dutch, to join it, in order to help forward the progress of South Africa. Nevertheless, it is very significant that the Rev. S. J. du Toit lost the high position he had previously held in consequence of his supposed anti-Transvaal sympathies, and at the same time the influence of the South African Republic greatly increased. “Blood is thicker than water.” The close alliance of sympathy more and more knit together the Dutchmen of the States and of the Colonies.

But the Jameson Raid of 1895 removed every estrangement. Just before this event President Kruger showed his hand by venturing on a dangerous step, which really meant an open breach of the Convention. He closed the drifts, or fords, by which goods carried on the Cape and Natal railways entered the Transvaal, intending by this act to force traffic over his own Delagoa Bay line. He was informed by a joint ultimatum from the Imperial Government and the Cape Colony that his action could not be permitted, and he rescinded his declaration.

It is not necessary to give a history of the Jameson Raid. No event since Majuba had so much played into the hands of the party in favour of an “Africander Natie.” Cromwell’s words when General Leslie’s army left its strong position, “The Lord has delivered them into our hands,” clearly expressed the sentiment which on this occasion animated the minds of Bond members. The Transvaal enormously increased its armaments, preparations for war virtually commenced, and the entire sympathy of the Africander party in the Cape Colony went out to their brethren of the South African Republic.

Mr. Hofmeyr was a leader who thoroughly deserved the title of “the mole,” as he metaphorically burrowed under the political platform, and concealed his methods and aims with great subtlety. He saw the danger of pursuing openly the programme expressed in the motto of his party, and clothed the ideas of Africanderism in a constitutional garb. However, when considering the real aim of the Bond, we shall prove that this association never abandoned its original programme.

It must be admitted that, in some respects, there is an analogy between Daniel O’Connell, as leader of the Irish National party, and J. H. Hofmeyr, the “Ons Jan” of Africanderism. Both ostensibly were in favour of working only on constitutional lines, and both were defeated by extremists, who saw no other way of obtaining success than by recourse to arms. In the case of the Young Ireland party, with such leaders as John Michell, Smith O’Brien, and Gavan Duffy, a very futile insurrection was quickly crushed; while, so far as J. H. Hofmeyr was concerned, a much greater conflagration resulted. The great fire was really lit by him—at least he constantly added fuel to it—and when too late made futile efforts to extinguish the flames. O’Connell was much more honest, as he openly opposed the Young Irelanders, and retired broken-hearted from the arena.

Hofmeyr undoubtedly did not raise a finger to stop the furious onward march of his party. Ons Land indeed encouraged this movement, and the editor, Mr. Malun, was completely under the great leader’s influence. Certainly at the end, as will be seen if the correspondence ever comes to light, Hofmeyr tried to stop the mad career of the Republics. No one saw more clearly than he did that it was absolute folly to fight the British nation, but his interference came too late.

O’Connell fought more straightforwardly. Never for a moment did he admit that the policy of force was justifiable; while, on the contrary, Hofmeyr had not the moral courage to step publicly into the arena and denounce it. He was always occult in his mode of fighting. Unfortunately, in posing as a friend, he became the most dangerous enemy of his own people.

The policy of the Africander Bond in the Cape Colony pandered to mean interests and base prejudices. The corn farmers and brandy producers were banded together in an unholy compact. Heavy duties of five shillings per hundred pounds on flour and half-a-crown on wheat were levied, while excise was abolished on spirits made from the grape, in order that members of the Bond who grew cereals and made very bad brandy might be benefited. The shameful result was that bread became dear and bad alcohol cheap. As a Nemesis the producers got into the hands of middlemen, and their condition was rather injured than improved. In the case of both wines and spirits, careless, unscientific methods were generally adopted, quantity was preferred to quality, and in many cases acetous fermentation resulted. Although spirit produced from the grape paid not a farthing of excise, and was carried at a non-paying rate on the railways, it was so miserably full of fusel oil and dangerous in character as to be discarded generally by the white population, and sent broadcast among the aboriginal natives for their degradation, demoralisation, and destruction. In a shameful manner Mr. Hofmeyr and the Bond politicians persistently resisted every proposed law for the restriction of the sale of bad alcohol among aboriginal natives, and indeed by insidious methods did all in their power to remove every barrier between the native and the deadly poison made carelessly in thousands of “pot stills” in the Dutch districts of the Western Province.

At the same time the true Phariseeism of this people was demonstrated by their fanatical observance of the Lord’s Day, which they styled the Sabbath, and their absurd opposition to any Sunday trains, even when absolutely necessary in general public interests. Mr. Merriman, in one of his saner moments, reprobated this hypocrisy.

Photo: Maull & Fox, London.

In South Africa the Native Laws Commission, which comprised such men as Sir Thomas Upington, Sir Thomas Scanlen, and Sir Jacob Barry, took evidence in a very complete form in the early eighties, and as a result reported unanimously in favour of prohibiting the sale of intoxicants to the aboriginal natives. Accordingly by Act of Parliament this recommendation was given full effect to in the Transkeian Territories. Subsequently the Drink Commission reported in favour of this prohibition being extended to natives throughout the Colony. In Bechuanaland and Basutoland, as well as in Natal, the law was adopted long ago, and invariably worked well; nevertheless, to the shame of the Bond organisation, it persistently preferred Mammon to God, and in the strongest manner opposed any legislation whose result would be to save the black man from destruction. Eventually an Act introduced by Sir James Rose Innes was maimed before it was allowed to pass, so that licensing Boards were only empowered to pass restrictive regulations on the sale of alcohol to the coloured races “short of total prohibition.”

During the entire term of Bond rule in the Cape Colony not a sixpence could be obtained for the encouragement of emigration from the United Kingdom to the Cape Colony—nor would any land be ever granted for the purpose. “Africa for the Africanders” has a very real and exact meaning, and this was shown to demonstration when even the petty vote for granting assisted passages to domestic servants and artisans was objected to and refused. These people might in many cases come from England, and therefore must be shut out.

The subtlety and diplomacy of the Bond were evinced in voting a grant for the British Navy, and Mr. Hofmeyr took many opportunities of posing as a loyal subject, but, as we shall prove in the context, the one great underlying principle of the organisation was to obtain the mastery in South Africa. All nationalities were invited to join. Africa must be made great by a union of all its people, but those who read between the lines and ascertained the real opinions of those who were guiding the movement knew perfectly well that although the Imperial power might be allowed at first to be a faineant king, the Mayor of the Palace with real authority was to be the people of Dutch extraction—the Africanders—throughout Southern Africa.

We now come to the last days before the war, when Lord Milner could have been easily checkmated if Mr. Hofmeyr had been able to influence the Republican Governments. As every one knew, Mr. Kruger had positively promised equal franchise rights to British subjects at the retrocession of the Transvaal, and this promise was shamefully broken. In a constitutional manner the Uitlanders vainly endeavoured to obtain redress, and now appealed to the Imperial Government. The High Commissioner merely did his evident duty, when at the Bloemfontein Conference he insisted that at least a portion of the franchise rights promised should be given. No doubt Mr. Hofmeyr would have seen his opportunity here, and have consented in such a manner, and with such a purpose, as to really render British interference nugatory, but the Dutch Republicans had now the bit between their teeth. They were the Lord’s people, they had made all their preparations, and were perfectly sure of victory. Mr. Kruger himself could not now stop the war, and the astounding ultimatum came forth from the little Republic to the great Empire: “Recall your troops and send no more, or we will punish you.” If this gage had not been taken up the United Kingdom would have been forced to take a back seat as a third-class power among the nations of the world.

Having referred to the origin and growth of the Africander party, we must now consider its aims. It must be admitted that its originators were perfectly candid. We find them declaring in De Patriot in 1882, when referring to Confederation, that “There is just one hindrance, and that is the British flag. Let them take that away, and within a year the confederation under the free Africander flag will be established. The British must just have Simon’s Bay as a naval and military station on the road to India, and give over all the rest of Africa to the Africanders.... It is we on top or they on top. They must be under or we under.... Two things are wanted, artillery for the Transvaal ... to make their own ammunition and to be well supplied with cannon. Now that the war against the English Government is over (at Majuba Hill), the war against the English language must begin. By Anglifying the girls they infect the whole family life with the English speech.”

We must now put into the box witnesses of a very important character whose testimony, so far as the aims of the Bond are concerned, is perfectly unexceptionable. These witnesses are Mr. Burgers, President of the South African Republic, Sir John Brand, President of the Orange Free State, Mr. Reitz, State Secretary of the South African Republic and previously President of the Orange Free State, and Mr. Steyn, Attorney-General and subsequently President of the Orange Free State. In 1875 President Burgers stated at a meeting held in Holland to consider the Delagoa Bay railway scheme, that he hoped to see a New Holland eight millions strong in South Africa, whence England shall have been expelled. It was President Brand who said, “Bartle Frere dreams of United South Africa under the British flag; and so do I, but not under the same flag.” And when conducting a controversy with Kruger on the subject of a Customs Union, Sir John Brand, disgusted with treachery, cried aloud, “The Bond seeks to raise a Republican flag in a country with which we are at peace.”[4]

Mr. Theo. Schreiner, whose honesty and truthfulness no man in South Africa will deny, furnishes us with a circumstantial account of an interview between himself and Mr. Reitz in the early eighties.[5] Then Mr. Reitz was a judge at Bloemfontein, and was one of that band of Africander patriots whose aspiration and conduct remind us naturally of the aims, objects, and aspirations of the Young Ireland party under Smith O’Brien. After in vain trying to enlist Mr. Schreiner as a recruit, Mr. Reitz asked him to state the reason of his refusal. The reply was, “Because the ultimate object aimed at was the overthrow of British power and the expulsion of the British flag from South Africa.” “Well, what if it is so?” was the rejoinder, to which Mr. Schreiner replied, “You don’t suppose, do you, that the flag is going to disappear without a tremendous struggle and fight?” “Well,” said Mr. Reitz, “I suppose not, but what of that?”

Mr. Steyn, of the Orange Free State, made the following statement to the Rev. W. Tees, Presbyterian Minister in Durban:—

“Great Britain has been completely taken by surprise.”

“Sir, this has been preparing since the year 1884.”[6]

“In both States?” asked the clergyman.

“Yes,” was the reply, “in both, and in the Colony also. The Transvaal has been the arsenal, but those in the know in the Free State and in the Colony have worked in unison with Kruger. The object was to oust the British from South Africa, but it was not intended to do it all at once. The first step was the consolidation of the two Republics as a Sovereign International State, and later on an Africander rising at the right moment.”

Mr. Tees then asked a very pertinent question. “Then do you mean to say that when President Kruger attended the Bloemfontein Conference he knew perfectly well that the proceedings were a farce, and that he really meant to fight?”

Mr. Steyn’s reply was “Yes.”

At a conference between the Governments of the South African Republic and Orange Free States held in 1887[7] relative to railways, we find Mr. Kruger declaring: “If you hook on to the Colony you cut our throat.... Let us speak frankly; we are not going to be dependent on England.” Mr. Wolmarans, following, declared: “We have had much experience of her Majesty’s Government, and we will and must shake ourselves free. We are still insufficiently prepared. We wish to get to the sea, especially with an eye to future complications—you know our secret policy.” Subsequently the blunt soldier, General Joubert, said on the occasion of an Uitlander complaining to him of the constant breach of Article 14 of the 1884 Convention providing equality of treatment for the Uitlanders: “Equality! We don’t want equality! We want to see who is to be boss in South Africa.”

Apropos to this subject it is not uninteresting to note from the debates in the Volksraad of the South African Republic (see the Johannesburg Star of August 17, 1895) that the laws of the Transvaal were intended to make the acquisition of the franchise by Uitlanders morally impossible, and that at the end of one debate Mr. Otto merely became the mouthpiece of the Burghers when he said, without any rebuke from the chairman, “Come on and fight. I say, come on and have it out; and the sooner the better.”

We must now put in documentary evidence to prove the real aims and objects of the Africander Bond. The declaration of the Rev. S. J. Du Toit, Judge Reitz, and Carl Borckenhagen is perfectly explicit. They declare that “The object of the Africander Bond is the establishment of a South African Nationality through the cultivation of a true love of this our fatherland. This object must be attained by the promotion and defence of the national language, and by Africanders, both politically and socially, making their power to be felt as a nation.”

After the retrocession of the Transvaal the “Africander Natie” took a very definite shape, as we find the Patriot newspaper declaring that “God’s hand has been visible in a more marked manner than ever before seen since the days of the children of Israel. Proud England is compelled to give the Boers back their land after they had been defeated by a mere handful.” The little respect which Africanders entertained for British troops had entirely departed.

One of the articles of the Bond programme of principles contained the following words: “In itself acknowledging no single form of Government as the only suitable form, and whilst acknowledging the form of Government existing at present, it (the Bond) means that the aim of our national development must be a United South Africa under its own flag.” With the subtlety which always distinguished the party, a change was made in this some years afterwards.

The language of the Bond organ, De Patriot, is perfectly explicit, and shows very clearly the spirit and intentions of the party. The English must be boycotted. There must be no English shops, signboards, advertisements, or bookkeepers. Manufacture of munitions of war must be started in the two Republics. “At Heidelberg there are already 4000 cartridges made daily, and a few skilful Africanders have begun to make shells too. That is right; so we must become a nation.” It must be considered a disgrace to speak English, and war must be waged in the Church against that language. “It is the Dutch Reformed Church. What has England to do with it?” In family life no quarter was to be given.

THE LOW VELDT FROM BOTHA’S HILL
Photo by Wilson, Aberdeen

As we have already said, the junction of the Farmers’ Protection Society with the Bond exercised a moderating influence, but the spirit, intentions, and object of the party remained the same, although Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr attempted, in a manner as astute as it was dangerous, to unite the Dutch and English people in South Africa in a common antagonism to Great Britain’s power, influence, and presence. Even Mr. Merriman saw through this trick, as he declared in a speech delivered at Grahamstown in 1885. “It is now the cue of the Bond to pretend to be loyal, and if it were not painful it would be ridiculous to hear the editor of De Zuid Afrikaan cheering the Queen, and to hear Du Toit praying for her while resolutions are passed round to the branches in direct opposition to the honour of England.... Each one of you will have to make up his mind whether he is prepared to see the colony remain a part of the British Empire, which carries with it obligations as well as privileges, or whether he is prepared to obey the dictates of the Bond. From the very first time, some years ago, when first the poison began to be distilled in this country, I felt that it must come to this: Was England or the Transvaal to be the paramount force in South Africa?... What could they think of the objects of the Bond when they found Judge Reitz advocating a Republic of South Africa under one flag?... No one who wishes well to the British Government could have read the leading articles of the Zuid Afrikaan and Express and De Patriot, in expounding the Bond principles, without seeing that the maintenance of law and order under the British Crown and the object they have in view are absolutely different things.... My quarrel with the Bond is that it stirs up race difference. Its main object is to make the South African Republic the paramount power in South Africa.”

To do justice to the Bond, we must quote Mr. Theron, their secretary, who is reported by the South African News of May 5, 1900, to have said:—

“One other question may be asked, ‘What is the object of the Bond?’ My reply is, its object, its only object, is expressed in sec. 2 of the General Constitution, which is worded as follows: ‘The nearest object of the Bond is the formation of a South African Nationality by means of union and co-operation, as a preparation for the ultimate object, a united South Africa. The Bond tries to attain this object by constitutional means, giving to respective governments and legislatures all the support they are entitled to, and respecting everybody’s rights.’” This was perfectly understood. It was a Dutch Nationality and a Dutch Republican South Africa that was aimed at, and the context fully proved this assertion when the vast majority of the Bond party fought against England, either as belligerents in the Republics or as rebels—active and passive—within the Cape Colony. Nine out of every ten ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church were rebels, according to the testimony of one of their own number—the Rev. Mr. Vlok of Piquetberg. In such circumstances it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that the departure from the original, straightforward declaration of the aims of the Bond was nothing but a diplomatic effort to throw dust in the eyes of the enemy.

Certainly such a man as Mr. Cronwright Schreiner was in no way deceived by this attitude, as we find him saying in 1893[8] that the Africander Bond is anti-English in its aims; its officers and its language are Dutch, and it is striving to gain such power as absolutely to control the Cape Parliament. It had “paralysed our political life.” “In fact,” he goes on to say, “the Bond has sacrificed the welfare of the country for years to the selfish attainment of one object, namely, the supremacy of the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the Cape Colony, regardless of the rights of others; the imagined good of an ignorant clique of the Dutch has been preferred to the good of the country. These men must not have power; they are wholly unfit to have it. The Bond is a body striving solely for its own benighted ends, and founded and conducted on race lines.” This was a correct judgment passed from the English Cape Colony farmer’s point of view; men who, quite unlike the pro-Boers in England, perfectly understood their subject by means of adequate evidence obtained on the spot, as well as by bitter personal experience.

Can anything be more significant than the following facts. The Hon. Mr. Bellingan, a Dutch member of the Legislative Council, in the session immediately previous to the war is reported by the Cape Times to have said: “If the policy of annexation were adhered to, they (the Africanders) would take advantage of England’s calamity;” while the Bond paper, Ons Land, reports the honourable member as saying that when the Queen came to die and storms burst over the empire the Africanders would not side with England if the Republics were annexed. Then the member himself, in a letter to the Cape Times, declared that what he said was: “He saw difficulty for the British Empire after the death of our beloved Queen. By giving the Republicans their independence England could reckon upon them as friends, but if the Republics were annexed she could not do so.”

The Bond undoubtedly during many years prepared the materials for a conflagration. The great never-dying, ever-present aspiration was fully expressed in its motto, “Africa for the Africanders.” It was nothing if not diplomatic, and professed very loudly a loyalty which showed itself in its true colours when the Bond party was in power just prior to the war. Then we find its aims exhibited by the Bond party in Parliament, backed up by the Bond Congress, fighting most strenuously against the absurdly lenient provisions of the Treason Bill.

As Mr. Theo. Schreiner aptly says, “Rebellion in fact is no rebellion in the eyes of the Bond so long as it be in accord with the Africander national ideal.” The ministers of their political party allowed ammunition and guns to be carried to the Republics over the railways of the Colony in immense quantities, and the W. P. Schreiner ministry was split up rather than consent to the very mild punishment of deprivation of the franchise being inflicted on rebels. Then came the war, when a large majority of the Bond party were either active or passive rebels.

But no one more clearly points out the real objects of the Bond than Mr. Reitz, one of its original founders, and to the end one of its principal leaders. He does not hesitate to say in his brochure entitled “A Century of Wrong,” largely circulated in more than one language over the continent of Europe:—

“May the hope which glowed in our hearts during 1880, and which buoyed us up during that struggle, burn on steadily. May it prove a beacon of light in our path, invincibly moving onwards through blood and through tears until it leads us to a real union of South Africa.... Whether the result be victory or death, liberty will assuredly rise in South Africa ... just as freedom dawned over the United States of America a little more than a century ago. Then from Zambesi to Simonstown it will be ‘Africa for the Africander.’”

A Bond object-lesson was really to be seen in a practical manner in the South African Republic under the rule of Dutch Africanders. There indeed the Transvaal portion of Africa was clearly ruled for one section of the population—the Africander—to the utter exclusion of the rights of the English population largely in a majority within Johannesburg. There was an election system leading to the corrupt and unjust rule of Boer Raads and a Boer oligarchy. Protection, Concessions, the Master and Servants Acts were all managed in accordance with Africander ideas. Bond views of native policy were carried out in such a way that no coloured person however civilised could vote, nor hold title to fixed property nor trade freely, nor even marry as white people might. All this found encouragement in the Cape Colony, and eventually the absurd fiction of Boers fighting for liberty in the Transvaal was proclaimed as a fact over all Europe, although literally they commenced a war in which they felt sure of success for the purpose of subverting liberty and obtaining complete freedom to carry on government by a section of the people purely for the interests of a section—the Africanders—ignoring altogether equal rights for all other men.

When we consider clearly and definitely all the facts, remember that history repeats itself and that the Africanders are profoundly tenacious of their political opinions and have proved themselves to be a people who are able to wait, can we not see at once how desirable it is to suspend temporarily the constitution of the Cape Colony? The body politic requires a physician. No one better understands the subject or is more competent to prescribe than Lord Milner. Why do we not take his advice? Nothing is more significant than the fact that in the Cape Colony two years ago heated parliamentary debates and a violent political agitation, following immediately upon the suppression of the first rebellion, were in their turn succeeded by a second rebellion more ruinous than the former one.

In asking for suspension there is no idea of defection from the principle of responsible government. The Imperial system requires local independence, and in due course this will be extended to all parts of South Africa. A necessary interregnum is required for purposes of true liberty and sound rule, in order that breakdown may be prevented and true constitutionalism take the place of the tyranny of any section of the population. The Imperial Government is no step-mother, and the federation of Southern Africa will doubtless be on similar lines to those of the Canadian Dominion. Certainly no system will be forced upon the people contrary to their wishes, but the resurrection of Bond power in the Cape Colony would absolutely prevent any well-considered and statesmanlike plan, in which all men would receive fair play utterly regardless of race extraction. In fact the British and the Africander Bond theories are diametrically opposed. The first makes every civilised man equal from the Zambesi to Cape Town, the other specially and always means “Africa for the Africanders.”

Heated discussions in Parliament, and the intense excitement connected with contested elections, cannot but accentuate race hatred in the Cape Colony. Surely South Africa should have a rest. As in the Transvaal and in the Orange Colony, so at the Cape, the great healer, time, ought to be allowed to do its work.

But perhaps the strongest, because the most practical, argument in favour of “suspension” is based upon the fact that a re-distribution Act is absolutely necessary if fair play is to be bestowed on all nationalities, and the reign of the Bond be not allowed to again become supreme. The suspensionists are really fighting for liberty against the rule of a section. Their motto is that of the Union Jack—“Equal rights for all”—whereas, as we know, the Africanders will in the future, as in the past, demand “Africa for the Africanders.” No delusion is greater than to imagine that they will change their purpose. Their plan is to adhere to their principles, consolidate their party, and wait for an opportunity. After spending more than two hundred millions of money, and much more than this—40,000 noble lives—for the sake of upholding British supremacy in Southern Africa, nothing should be done even to risk a recurrence of the trouble. This certainly was the opinion of Lord Milner, and of the great majority of the British people in the Cape Colony. The advice now referred to was not taken, and history must record the result.

The real aims and objects of the Bond are as decipherable to-day as they were three years or ten years ago. The people who belong to it are thoroughly tenacious of these opinions, and to do them justice, make no pretence of having changed them. At the Paarl the popular General Botha has just declared that they are not vanquished, retain their traditions, and will yet conquer. They look with unutterable scorn on the men who joined the National Scouts, and entertain feelings of coldness and dislike for those who did not join the enemy either actively or passively. In the great Dutch Church of Cape Town, the Republican Generals received an unanimous ovation, and were carried shoulder high, in triumph, from the edifice. The truth is that the Bond exists, remains extremely powerful, and is only waiting and watching for an opportunity.

British rule is now comparatively easy both in the Transvaal and Orange Colonies. Effective progress is being made under the rule of wise and firm Governments; but it is in the Cape Colony, where a treacherous and powerful enemy is allowed to plot with impunity, that the real danger to British Imperial interests lies.

How history repeats itself! When the fatuous policy of abandoning 35,000 square miles of excellent territory styled the Orange River Sovereignty was pursued in 1853, there was only one man in the House of Commons who opposed it,[9] and subsequent circumstances amply justified his judgment. In 1902, Mr. Chamberlain would have found it absolutely impossible to obtain a majority in the House of Commons favourable to suspension of the Cape Colony Constitution. What is now to be done? Our answer is, “Accept with loyalty the decision of the Government, and show by wise moderation that we are most desirous to be friends with our fellow-subjects of Dutch extraction. No recriminations nor abuse should proceed from our side. Nothing will please us better than to find the Bond abandoned and all men cordially uniting as one free people under the British flag. If this be not done—and masses of the people have already declared that it will not—we will have to fight the Bond again at elections, on public platforms, and in the press, as well as in Parliament. It would have been well for both nationalities if this could have been avoided, but this is now impossible.”

LET GOD DEFEND THE RIGHT.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] See “From Boer to Boer and Englishman,” by Paul M. Botha. London: Hugh Rees, 1901.

[4] See Macmillan’s Magazine, May 1900.

[5] This is published in full in the Weekly Times of December 1, 1899, and is fully referred to in Wilmot’s “History of Our Own Times in South Africa.” See also “The Truth about the Transvaal” and various other publications.

[6] See Daily News of May 10, 1900.

[7] Reported in the Times of May 24, 1900.

[8] Paper read at the Cradock Farmers’ Association in October 1893.

[9] This was Mr. Norton. See the dramatic manner in which this is referred to in the second volume of “The Life of Sir Harry Smith.”

RHODESIA

SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

By E. F. KNIGHT

Author of “Where Three Empires Meet”; “The Cruise of the ‘Falcon,’” &c.

In all the long romantic story of the making of the British Empire, no episode more strongly appeals to the imagination than the foundation of Rhodesia. Well is it named Rhodesia; for the history of Great Britain’s acquisitions on either side of the Zambesi, the 750,000 square miles of magnificent territories which lie under the sway of the British South Africa Company, is the history of the Englishman, Cecil John Rhodes: had it not been for whose foresight, statesmanship, untiring vigilance, determined but patient endeavour for years towards the accomplishment of his mighty schemes, the South African Plateau, with its gold-bearing reefs, its vast tracts of rich arable and pastoral lands, would have fallen into the hands of one or other of the foreign Powers which keenly contested with him its possession.

It is a trite saying that when the time is ripe for great doings on the part of a nation the necessary man invariably appears. It is a saying hardly warranted by fact, for many a golden opportunity have nations, Great Britain as often as others, lost because the right man was not forthcoming. Happily it has not been so in South Africa. It is almost certain that, had it not been for the accident of Mr. Rhodes seeking the South African shores for his health when a lad, the Germans and the Boers would have cut off the Cape Colony from all possibility of expansion to the north. Those Powers had even found their right men. The Transvaal had her stubborn Kruger; Germany had her shrewd and energetic agents and explorers preparing the way to annexation in different portions of the Dark Continent; while even Portugal had her D’Andrade, a man who displayed much of the spirit and enterprise of the Portuguese discoverers and conquerors of olden days. Cecil Rhodes took his place in South African affairs but just in time. The Transvaal War had been followed by a period of extraordinary apathy both in England and in the Cape Colony. No one seemed to care in the least what became of the territory lying beyond our then limits. At home men were sick of the very name of South Africa. Many would have gladly abandoned all our possessions about the Cape of Storms, and abdicated an Empire which seemed to bring us nothing but futile wars, disaster, and disgrace. It was at this critical period that Mr. Rhodes came to the front to save our supremacy in South Africa—too late, indeed, to save for us much that should have been ours; too late, for example, to secure our sovereignty over Namaqualand and Damaraland, territories which had been long recognised as being within Britain’s sphere of influence, which formerly had been annexed to the Cape, but which latterly had been totally neglected both by the Imperial and Cape Governments, so that the watchful Germans were left at liberty, first to establish their trading missions, and finally to assert their sovereignty over those extensive regions.

Five-Mile Spruit on Melsetter Road, Rhodesia

The richness and beauty of the highlands, extending over an immense area both north and south of the Zambesi, had for many years been known to both English and Boer travellers. Mr. Rhodes, in his early days at Kimberley, met many an adventurous wanderer who had come from that wonderful region, and their glowing tales perhaps first inspired in him that ambitious dream of the creation of a great new British colony that should include all the finest country in South and Central Africa. As far back as 1882, having commenced to take an active part in Cape politics, Mr. Rhodes took the initial steps towards the attainment of the one absorbing purpose of his life.

A HUNTER’S WAGGON, RHODESIA
Photo by Wilson, Aberdeen

Of fascinating interest is the story—a story for the most part yet untold to the world—of Cecil Rhodes’ long struggle with the Boers and Portuguese who attempted to keep the Empire-builder out of the Promised Land, and of his frequent forestallings of further German expansion at our expense. The first, the most critical and anxious period of all, was occupied with the contest for the very gate of the country, the right-of-way to the north, which we were so nearly losing, and without which our advance would have been hopelessly barred. The only outlet to the north from the Cape Colony lay through Bechuanaland, a vast region that was divided into several independent native kingdoms, and hemmed in between the Germans, then advancing from the west, and the Transvaal Boers on the east. This gateway to the north has been likened to the neck of a bottle; the narrow neck which, once passed, opens out into the broad and precious Zambesia. Kruger, clever and obstinate, commenced his career of attempted expansion by seizing this neck with the intention of thus cutting us off completely from the north. It was his ambition to extend the Boer rule westward to the German line, eastward to Delagoa Bay and the Indian Ocean, and northwards over the steppes of Zambesia. Pretorius had declared that the Transvaal had no boundary on the west, unless it were the Atlantic Ocean. The first struggle therefore between Rhodes and Kruger was for this vital point of vantage, the neck. Had Kruger grasped it the British flag would never have floated on the northern plateau, the Boers and Germans would have joined hands—there had been a talk of a German Protectorate over the Transvaal—and theirs, not ours, would have been the splendid prize. And what is more, seeing what a vast conspiracy had been organised against us, we should probably have lost the Cape Colony itself: the foundations of our Empire would have been shaken. Immense was the threatening peril to which we shut our eyes. The Transvaal War had left the Cape Colonists in a distinctly anti-British frame of mind. Disgusted at the follies of the Imperial Government, even those of British blood sympathised with the Transvaal Boers, and had no objection to the north falling into the hands of the Dutch Republicans. Indeed, the general feeling at the Cape at that time appears to have been republican. Cecil Rhodes had not only to out-manœuvre Germany, the Transvaal, and Portugal, but had also to overcome the opposition of colonial prejudice, and the complete indifference of the English to all affairs South African. He stood almost alone, and had to create a party for himself. Not only man of action, but diplomatist and opportunist in the best sense of the word, he played his game with wondrous skill, and succeeded at last in winning over the reluctant colonists to his views. The very Africander Bond became his ally for a time.

Cape to Cairo Railway. Laying the Rails

That struggle for the neck of Bechuanaland is an interesting story that cannot be told here. First Kruger attempted to establish himself in Mankoroane’s territory. Mankoroane, to protect himself, offered to cede his country to the Cape Colony, which point-blank refused it. Rhodes, in 1882, went himself to the chieftain, and so arranged matters that the Imperial Government found itself compelled to take over the district. Thwarted at this point, Kruger attempted to cut us off further to the north, and sent his agents to establish the freebooting republics of Goshen and Stellaland. Again Rhodes checked him. Going himself to Stellaland, he persuaded the Boers in possession to accept the British flag on the condition that our Government ratified their titles to the land they had occupied. The Warren expedition, despatched at last in consequence of the strong representations of Rhodes and his far-seeing ally, Sir Hercules Robinson, the then High Commissioner, resulted in the expulsion of the Boer freebooters from Montsioa’s country, where Mafeking now stands, and the extension of our protectorate over the whole of Bechuanaland. Then Rhodes arranged for the taking over of Khama’s land, and the gateway to the north was won. Foiled again, and thus hemmed in on the west, the stubborn Kruger sent his very able agent Grobler to Lobengula to obtain from him a Matabele concession to the Transvaal. Rhodes found that it was hopeless to attempt to bring the Imperial Government to a sense of the danger of the position, so now, before it was too late, he had to act promptly for himself. He sent Maguire Thomson and Rudd to Lobengula to obtain a concession from him before Grobler had carried out his mission. They were successful; the Governor ratified the concession. Dr. Jameson and Dr. Harris went to Matabeleland to deliver to the king the stipulated arms and ammunition; and despite the bitter opposition of the Cape statesman and consistently anti-British Englishman, Mr. Merriman, the deed of concession was sealed, and its validity was recognised by the Government. And thus in 1888, after years of patient endeavour, Cecil Rhodes at last had made the way clear for the realisation of his mighty scheme.

The sinews of war had now to be found; and Rhodes, in anticipation, before the granting of the concession, had made his provisions. First he had brought about the amalgamation of the diamond-mining companies, and then, as head of the great De Beers Corporation with its rent-roll of four millions sterling a year, he, in 1887, effected the alteration of the De Beers Trust Deed by a liquidation of the Company, so as to give the De Beers directors power to apply the Company’s funds to outside objects, that is, to the development of the North. Messrs. Barnato and Beit agreed to this on the condition of being made life governors, and ever since loyally co-operated with Rhodes in the execution of his scheme.

The next step was the granting of the charter by the British Government in 1889, and the creation of the British South Africa Company. Then Rhodes sent out the famous Pioneer Expedition to Mashonaland, and the white men established themselves in Rhodesia. It must be borne in mind that at that time and for years afterwards Rhodes had to be ever closely watching and cunningly circumventing the German Boers and Portuguese, who spared no effort to keep us from the north. Bismarck’s agent, Count Pffeil, was sent on a secret mission to South Africa and all but succeeded in anticipating Rhodes, and in winning for Germany a broad strip of territory that would have connected her eastern and western possessions, so forming a bar across Africa from ocean to ocean that would have effectually shut us out. Then there was the Boer trek into Mashonaland in 1891, when the Rhodesians guarded the drifts against the invaders—a scheme of Kruger’s that was frustrated without the shedding of blood. Even when the Pioneer Expedition was on its way, the energetic Portuguese D’Andrade was distributing the flags of his country among the chiefs, and attempting to get concessions that would cut Mashonaland off from Matabeleland. To defeat his plans Rhodes entered into a treaty with Umtassa, and obtained the Gazaland concession from Gungunyana, a concession which would have extended the Chartered Company’s possessions to the shores of the Indian Ocean had not Lord Salisbury refused to ratify it and acknowledged the claims of Portugal. Then again in 1889 Rhodes, whose Intelligence Department always supplied him in good time with information as to the doings of his rivals, hearing that Germany intended to cut us off at the head of Lake Nyassa, secretly sent Mr. H. H. Johnson to hoist British flags at Port Abercorn on Lake Tanganyika and other places, as proof of our occupation. The Portuguese also hoped to erect a wall against our expansion by connecting her eastern and western territories, and for this purpose an expedition set out from Angola to seize the Barotse country, but here Rhodes again forestalled them; his mission was the first to arrive in the country, and Barotseland was placed under our protection. The way these things were done by Rhodes’ agents, the hardships endured, the perils incurred by these adventurous men who—unlike the Portuguese agents who were always accompanied by large bands of armed men—plunged alone into these savage regions to carry out their hazardous missions, makes a wonderful story indeed of British pluck and enterprise.

The Pioneer Expedition set out in June 1890. The Pioneer Column, which had been enrolled by Major Frank Johnson, consisted of 187 men who had decided to try their fortunes in the new country, and it was accompanied by 650 mounted police, under the command of Lieut.-Colonel Pennefather. The famous hunter, Selous, acted as guide. The ox-waggons carried provisions and other stores sufficient to supply the whole force for six months. For four hundred miles the Pioneers marched into Mashonaland, constructing a road as they went, and making drifts at the many rivers to enable the waggons to cross. Forts were built at intervals, and small garrisons were left in them. At last they came to their objective point, Mount Hampden; and hard by it they built Fort Salisbury, now the capital of all Rhodesia. The Pioneer Force was now disbanded, each man receiving, in addition to his pay, the right to peg out fifteen gold claims and 3000 acres of land. The men scattered over the country, prospecting for gold and pegging out their claims and farms. The first rainy season was a terrible one for them; it was an exceptionally bad year; all transport was interrupted, supplies fell short; the men had to live on native foodstuffs; great privations were endured; many died; and, as in every other part of our Empire, the ways of Rhodesia are strewn with the bones of the men who won the land for their country.

But the men who go out as the pioneers of the Empire are not easily discouraged. The settlement and development of the country was at once undertaken with energy. Arrangements were made for the administration of the new State; a legal system was created; roads were constructed; mining plant was brought up; mining operations commenced; land was brought under cultivation; stores were opened; townships were surveyed, and rose rapidly from the wilderness, handsome brick buildings taking the place of the huts in which the pioneers roughed it at first. But the development of the country was much retarded by the difficulty of communication and the enormous cost of transport. Little could be done until Rhodesia was afforded railway communication with the coast; so Mr. Rhodes made arrangements for the extension of the Cape railway from its then terminus at Kimberley, and for the construction of a line to Beira on the east coast.

The Chartered Company had not long effected its active occupation of Mashonaland before the Matabele impis resumed their murderous raids on the Mashonas, and in 1893 the Matabele war broke out, leading to the overthrow of Lobengula and the absorption of Matabeleland by the Chartered Company. Nearly every able-bodied white man in Mashonaland volunteered his services. Three columns, numbering nine hundred men in all, marched through the country, defeating the Matabele impis on the Shangani and Zambesi; Bulawayo was occupied, and with the gallant stand of Wilson and his little force, the war was brought to a conclusion.