Francis William Reitz

“ The hour has struck which will decide whether South Africa, in jealously guarding its liberty, will enter upon a new phase of its history, or whether our existence as a people will come to an end, whether we shall be exterminated in the deadly struggle for that liberty which we have prized above all earthly treasures, and whether South Africa will be dominated by capitalists without conscience, acting in the name and under the protection of an unjust and hated Government 7,000 miles away from here. ”

“ In the beautiful valleys lying between the blue mountains of the Cape of Good Hope they planted the seed-germ of liberty, which sprang up and has since developed with such startling rapidity into the giant tree of to-day – a tree which not only covers a considerable area in this part of the world, but will yet, in God's good time, we feel convinced, stretch out its leafy branches over the whole of South Africa. ”

“ The flaccid and cowardly Imperialism, that had already begun to dilute and weaken our national blood, gradually turned aside before the new current which permeated our people. Many who, tired of the slow development of the national idea, had resigned themselves to Imperialism now paused and asked themselves what Imperialism had produced in South Africa? Bitterness and race hatred it is true! Since the days of Sir Harry Smith and Theophilus Shepstone and Bartle Frere to the days of Leander Jameson and Cecil Rhodes, Imperialism in South Africa has gone hand in hand with bloodshed and fraud. ”

“ In this awful turning point in the history of South Africa, on the eve of the conflict which threatens to exterminate our people, it behoves us to speak the truth in what may be, perchance, our last message to the world. Even if we are exterminated the truth will triumph through us over our conquerors, and will sterilise and paralyse all their efforts until they too disappear in the night of oblivion.
Up to the present our people have remained silent; we have been spat upon by the enemy, slandered, harried, and treated with every possible mark of disdain and contempt. ”

“ The impression is everywhere that British protection is invoked not for British interests, nor for the interests of Britons working on the fields here, but for the sake of two gentlemen who hold the reins with far more power than ought to be given to anyone who is entrusted with the administration of this country.
Who has ever heard of a Government which binds itself to give the surveyorship of a new country to one man only? ”

“ Here, indeed, were the elements of an enduring alliance – an alliance between Capitalism, with its great material influence, but barren of any one single exalted idea or principle on the one hand, and Jingoism, sterile, empty, soulless, but with a rich stock-in-trade of bombastic ideas and principles, prompted by the most selfish aspirations, on the other hand.
The one was eminently calculated to form the complement of the other, thus creating a natural alliance which is rapidly becoming a menace, all the world over, to the best and most enduring interests of humanity. ”

“ The English did not scruple to make use of Kaffir aid against the Boers, as at Boomplaats, and it was brought home in every possible way to the British Nation that a great wrong had been committed here; but even the High Commissioner, though he heard the words issue from our bleeding hearts, wished that he had brought some artillery in order to disperse us, and misrepresented us beyond measure.
Full of hope we said to ourselves if only the Queen of England and the English people knew that in the Transvaal a people were being oppressed, they would never suffer it. ”

“ As the wounded antelope awaits the coming of the lion, the jackal, and the vulture, so do our poor people all over South Africa contemplate the approach of the foe, encircled as they are by the forces of hatred and revenge, and by the stratagems and covetousness of their enemies. Every sea in the world is being furrowed by the ships which are conveying British troops from every corner of the globe in order to smash this little handful of people. ”

“ Is there or is there not in the affairs of men a Providence which the ancients pictured as the slow-footed Nemesis, but which we moderns have somewhat learned to disregard? 'If right and wrong, in this God's world of ours, are linked with higher Powers,' is the great question which the devout soul, whether warrior or saint, has ever answered in one way. ”

“ Once more in the annals of our bloodstained history has the day dawned when we are forced to grasp our weapons in order to resume the struggle for liberty and existence, entrusting our national cause to that Providence which has guided our people throughout South Africa in such a miraculous way. ”

“ And it is wonderful; but as we look at it the thought always arises within us of something more wonderful yet – the marvellous manner in which a little nation of simple folk, living in peace in the land they loved, far from the rush of cities and the concourse of men, have risen to the difficulties of their condition; how they, without instruction in statecraft or traditionary rules of policy, have risen to face their great difficulties, and have sincerely endeavoured to meet them in a large spirit, and have largely succeeded. ”

“ This Government has always felt it a solemn duty for the Republic to adhere strictly to the Convention of 1884 in its entirety; at the same time, it has been consistent in protesting in the most forcible manner against any interference or intermeddling with the internal affairs of the Republic, and against the discussion or treatment of these affairs with or by any other than the Republic itself, and it can discover no reasons now which would either justify such interference or exempt it from the accusation of being a violation of the Convention of London. ”

“ To forbid the Tsar to put an ironclad on the sea which washes his southern coast was a far more drastic limitation of the inalienable rights of an Independent International Sovereign State than the provision that treaties affecting the interests of another Power should be subject to the veto of that Power, but no one has protested that Russia has lost her international status on account of the limitation imposed by the Treaty of Paris. ”

“ We know that there is a God, who is the Ruler of heaven and earth, and who has power, and is willing to protect the injured, though weaker, against oppressors. In Him we put our trust, and in the justice of our cause; and should it be His will that total destruction be brought upon us, our wives and children, and everything we possess, we will with due submission acknowledge to have deserved from Him, but not from men. We are aware of the power of Great Britain, and it is not our object to defy that power ”

“ Under the cloak of religion British administration continued to display its hate against our people and nationality, and to conceal its self-seeking aims under cover of the most exalted principles. The aid of religion was invoked to reinforce the policy of oppression in order to deal a deeper and more fatal blow to our self-respect. Emissaries of the London Missionary Society slandered the Boers, and accused them of the most inhuman cruelties to the natives. ”

“ The right of the British Government to exercise control over all our foreign relations, and to conduct all our diplomatic negotiations through its own Agent, was thus replaced by the far more slender right of approving or disapproving of our treaties and conventions after they were completed, and then only when it affected the interests of Great Britain or Her Majesty's possessions in South Africa. ”

“ Nowhere else in the world has the liberty of the Press so degenerated into license. No newspaper in any country in the world would for one moment dare to speak of the Government, the Legislature, and authorities of the country as the ‘‘Star’‘, the ‘‘Transvaal Leader’‘, and similar newspapers do every day in this Republic. ”

“ Neither Alva nor Richelieu were able to compass the triumph of tyranny over the innate sentiment of Freedom and Independence in our forefathers. Nor will a Chamberlain be more fortunate in effecting the triumph of Capitalism, with its lust for power, over us. ”

“ But with such a record it is obvious that I was almost the last man in the Empire who could be regarded as an authorised exponent of the case of the Boers.
That in these last months I have been forced to protest against the attempt to stifle their independence is due to a very simple cause. To seek to reform the Transvaal, even by the rough and ready means of a legitimate revolution, is one thing. To conspire to stifle the Republic in order to add its territory to the Empire is a very different thing. ”

“ We do not say that the Transvaal Republic has among its guides and rulers a Solon or a Lycurgus, but it has to-day, among the men guiding its destiny, men of brave and earnest spirit, who are seeking manfully and profoundly to deal with the great problems before them in a wide spirit of humanity and justice. ”

“ But they emerged from the ordeal triumphantly, and the records of the criminal courts of the Cape Colony bear indisputable witness to the fact that there were no people amongst the slave-owning classes of the world more humane than the Africander Boers. Their treatment of the natives was based on the theory that natives ought not to be considered as mature and fully developed people, but that they were in reality children who had to be won over to civilisation by just and rigid discipline ”

“ Their deeds of heroism in adventures with Bantu and Briton shine forth like guiding stars through the history of the past, in order to point out the way for posterity to reach that goal for which our sorely tried people have made such great sacrifices, and for which they have undergone so many vicissitudes. ”

“ That as long as the South African Republic refused to humiliate itself before British authority, but on the contrary kept its youthful head on high with national pride, other parts of South Africa would be inclined to follow its example, and there would thus be no certainty for British supremacy in this quarter of the globe. The South African Republic would have to be humiliated and to be crushed into the dust ”

“ If the reading public believe a hundredth part of the enormities which have been laid at the door of our people and Government, they must be irresistibly forced to the conclusion that this Republic is a den of thieves and a sink of iniquity, a people, in fact, the very existence of which is a blot upon humanity, and a nuisance to mankind. ”

“ The question is solely whether any jury in any country in the world would have found a man guilty of any crime under the circumstances set forth, and whether, if they did not find him guilty, the fact of their doing so would have been stamped and branded as a flagrant and remarkable instance of the maladministration of justice. ”

“ In a place like Johannesburg, where drink is consumed in great quantities, and where the high altitude and the stress of business all tend to keep people's spirits in a constant state of excitability, it was easy enough, with the aid of money, to bring about a state of political ferment in a very short time, especially as just that measure of grievances existed to give a colour of truth to the imaginary ones. ”

“ In dealing with native races all white men have the pride of their colour and the arrogance of power. The Boers, no doubt, have many sins lying at their door, but it does not do for the pot to call the kettle black, and so far as South Africa is concerned, the difference between the Dutch and British attitudes toward the native races is more due to the influence of Exeter Hall and the sentiment which it represents than to any practical difference between English and Dutch Colonists as to the status of the coloured man. ”

“ History will show convincingly that the pleas of humanity, civilisation, and equal rights, upon which the British Government bases its actions, are nothing else but the recrudescence of that spirit of annexation and plunder which has at all times characterised its dealings with our people. ”

“ What crimes have been committed here against humanity or the law of nations? Do not the recorded grievances and abuses find a parallel in occurrences which are taking place every day in the most civilised countries? One can with perfect justice apply to the present circumstances the language which the Russian Government used in stigmatising the illegal intervention of the British Government in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Naples:– [16]
We would understand that, as a consequence of friendly forethought, one Government should give advice to another in a benevolent spirit ”

“ In spite of the oppressive bonds of the East India Company, the young settlement, containing the noblest blood of old Europe as well as its most exalted aspirations, grew so powerfully that in 1806, when the Colony passed into the hands of England, a strong national sentiment and a spirit of liberty had already been developed. ”

“ Arrayed against us we find numerical strength, the public opinion of the United Kingdom thirsting and shouting for blood and revenge, the world-wide and cosmopolitan power of Capitalism, and all the forces which underlie the lust of robbery and the spirit of plunder. Our lot has of late become more and more perilous. ”