Le Roy Hooker

“ And one cannot repress the feeling that the people who had trekked into an unclaimed and unoccupied country for the sake of being isolated from the British, who had subdued the savage Zulu tribes and set up a civilized government of their own, were seized of sacred rights to peaceful possession and independence. ”

“ If the foreign population had much more to complain of than they have, it ought not to cause either surprise or indignation.
“And what have they to complain of? Really, the life of the average foreigner in Johannesburg is the freest imaginable. He can follow his trade, he can follow his profession, no matter what it is, without any question or hindrance from the government. ”

“ But a goodly land and access to the sea, to be of great value in their esteem, must be associated with freedom to govern themselves and to deal with the native population as an inferior and servile race not entitled to civil equality with the whites.
The Africander love of independence, and their reasonable objection to be civilly on a level with the ignorant and savage blacks, command respect and admiration; but their treatment of the natives, where unrestrained by British rule, was anything but creditable. ”

“ That the laws were clearly against slavery goes for nothing, because in a time of anarchy law is a dead letter. There is overwhelming evidence that blacks were transferred openly from one individual to another, and there are the strongest assertions from men of undoubted integrity that there was no slavery. To people in Europe it seemed impossible that both should be true, and the opinion was generally held that the farmers of the interior of South Africa were certainly slave-holders. ”

“ The first result of the new mining industry and the rapid growth of the towns was pleasant enough—the revenues of the needy republic were increased, and there was a promise of unprecedented prosperity. Nevertheless, in the tidal wave of incoming aliens from the British colonies in South Africa, from Europe and from America—most of them British, and nearly all speaking English—the far-seeing president, Paul Kruger, and other leaders of political life in the Transvaal, early recognized an element of peril to their cherished domestic institutions. ”

“ Some of them became mighty hunters of big game—like Nimrod; and even those who herded cattle and sheep were forced to protect themselves and their live stock against lions and leopards and the savage Bushmen who waged a constant warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected. In such circumstances it is not wonderful that the people who [18] had in their veins the blended blood of Holland and Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled degree courage, self-reliance and love of independence, coupled with a passion for solitude and isolation. ”

“ With this addition, however, [22] most of the uneducated South African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother, of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more.
In no other country were women more completely on an equality with men than in South Africa. ”

“ In general, South Africa is comparatively bare of forests—a fact for which denudation by man cannot account, for it is yet a country new to civilization. Some primitive forests are to be found on the south coast of Cape Colony and in Natal. These have been put under the care of a Forest Department of the government. In the great Knysna forest wild elephants still roam at large. The trees, however, even in the preserved forests, are small, few of them being more than fifty or sixty feet in height. The yellowwood grows the tallest, but the less lofty sneezewood is the most useful to man. ”

“ There is no record to show that the British government ever entertained the thought of acting as the ally of the republic. On the contrary, Sir Theophilus Shepstone was appointed as imperial commissioner to visit the scene of danger and examine into the state of the country. He was secretly instructed and authorized to proclaim the immediate annexation of the Transvaal territory to the British dominions in South Africa in case he deemed it necessary for the general safety [162] to do so, and if, in his judgment, a majority of the people would favor the step. ”

“ As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion. ”

“ The consequence of these claims would be, moreover, that the greater part of the power will be placed in the hands of those who, foreigners by birth, enjoy the privilege of depriving the country of its chief treasure, while they have never shown any loyalty to a foreign government. Besides, the inevitable consequence of the acceptance of these claims would be that the independence of the country as a self-governing, independent sovereign republic would be irreparably lost. ”

“ A further and most significant illustration is supplied by a well-known incident in connection with the revolutionary movement in Johannesburg, when miners under the control of the leading conspirators were ordered to take up arms under penalty of forfeiting their wages. That in the great majority of cases they preferred the latter course is in itself a complete exposure of the hollowness of the whole revolutionary movement. In all known cases of revolution arising from discontent on the part of a mining population it has been the miners who have taken the lead and dragged others in with them. ”

“ When the call to assemble at the Cape was signaled to the country Burghers, only seventy men from the Swellendam district responded. The nationals, who had been in revolt against the Dutch East India Company’s government, declined to obey. Further appeals by letter failed to bring any more of them in. At last, on the 7th of July, in a written communication, it was proposed by the nationals that they would rally to the defense of the country if the government would grant them amnesty for the past and pledge a reasonable redress of their grievances as soon as possible. ”

“ But there might have been brought about acquaintanceship and mutual esteem between Great Britain, the would-be Paramount Power, and the Africander race throughout the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the British colonies of Natal and the Cape—which race is and will long continue to be the dominant factor in South Africa. Out of that friendly relationship might have come a paramount power to Great Britain well worth the having, and in every way consistent with the honor of the British crown and the continued independence of the Africander republics. ”

“ He assured them that no changes would be made in the laws and customs of the country, nor would any additional taxes be levied without the expressed desire of the people. The colonists would be required to bear no cost but that of their own government as it then existed, and they would be at [40] liberty to profit largely by trade with England’s possessions in India. The colonial troops would be paid by England, on condition that they take an oath of allegiance to his Britannic Majesty—the obligation thereof to last only as long as the British occupancy of the colony. ”

“ The Orange Free State, in its entire area of 48,000 square miles, is on the great interior plateau at an altitude of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea level. The surface is mostly level, but there are occasional hills—some of them rising to a height of 6,000 feet. The land is, for the most part, bare of trees, but affords good grazing for two-thirds of the year. The air is remarkably pure and bracing. There are no blizzards to encounter. There are, however, occasional violent thunderstorms, which precipitate enormous hailstones—large enough to kill the smaller animals, and even men. ”

“ Now that we thus resist a powerful enemy, with whom it has always been our highest desire [256] to live in friendship, notwithstanding injustice and wrong done by him to us in the past, we solemnly declare in the presence of the Almighty God that we are compelled thereto by the injustice done to our kinsmen and by the consciousness that the end of their independence will make our existence as an independent state of no significance, and that their fate, should they be obliged to bend under an overwhelming power, will also soon after be our own fate. ”

“ Nearly the whole of Natal may be counted temperate; the soil is rich, the scenery is beautiful, and, with the exception of certain malarious districts at the north, the climate is healthful. Foreigners from Europe and America may reasonably hope to enjoy long life and prosperity in it. The principal crop for export is sugar, but cereals of all kinds, coffee, indigo, arrowroot, ginger, tobacco, rice, pepper, cotton and tea are grown to profit. The coal fields of the colony are large, the output in 1897 being 244,000 tons. There are 487 miles of railway, built and operated by the government. ”

“ A legislature, consisting of a Legislative Council and a House of Assembly, was established, both to be elected on a franchise wide [138] enough to include people of any race or color holding the reasonable property qualification. The sole check upon the colonial legislature retained by the imperial government was the right of the British crown to disallow any of its acts considered objectionable, on constitutional or other grounds, by her Majesty’s ministers. ”

“ They have seen, too, that to grant wholesale political privileges to the foreign residents in Johannesburg, even if those foreign residents were willing to become naturalized, would be to a great extent to deliver up the interests of all the dependent classes—the shopkeepers, the miners, the professional men—into the hands of a small group of [204] capitalists, who would use their influence, as they have used it elsewhere, to corrupt the political atmosphere and to subject the interests of every individual to their own. ”

“ Nature has divided that part of Africa lying south of the Zambesi River into three distinct and well-defined regions. A strip of lowland skirts the coast of the Indian Ocean all the way from Cape Town around to Natal, Delagoa Bay and still northeast to the mouths of the Zambesi. Between Durban, the principal port of Natal, and Cape Town this strip is very narrow in places—the hills coming down almost to the margin of the sea. Beyond Durban, to the northeast, the low plain grows wider. ”

“ In 1865 new troubles arose leading to a renewal of war between the Free State and Moshesh. Again the governor of Cape Colony acted as mediator, but his decisions were rejected by the Basutos, and new hostilities began. This time, by a heroic effort made in 1868, the whites defeated and scattered the Basutos with great slaughter, and were at the point of utterly breaking their power, when the always politic Moshesh appealed to the British High Commissioner at the Cape to take his people under British protection. ”

“ The commerce of the South African Republic, while necessarily great because of the large number of people employed by the mining industries, cannot be as accurately stated as that of states whose imports are all received through a given port or ports. Foreign goods reach it through several ports in Cape Colony, Natal, Portuguese East Africa, and in smaller quantities from other ports on the coast. ”

“ Leyds, a man of exceptional ability and integrity, who, in spite of enormous difficulties and constant attacks, has deserved and retained the confidence both of the president and the volksraad. To say that he is the ablest and most cultured official in South Africa is to say what is simply true, and if his ability has excited jealousy and resentment, it is only what a general study of human nature would lead one to expect. ”

“ It ought to be easy, therefore, for those who have filled the ears of the world with charges of Africander oppression practiced upon the foreigners in the way of “excessive customs tariff,” “extortionate duties on machinery,” and the “dynamite monopoly that made the expense of all mining operations excessive,” to convince the world-jury to which they have appealed that they have a case. They ought at least to be able to show that in British Rhodesia the impost on the profits of gold mining was not 50 per cent, while in the Transvaal it was about 8 per cent thereof ”

“ The Dutch had been remiss in not strengthening their earthwork defenses toward the sea. They had permitted English boats to take soundings off Muizenburg unmolested. And the English commanders had been encouraged to hope that the nationals in the colonial force did not intend to seriously oppose the British advance—that in all probability they would come over in a body to the British side as soon as the first engagement opened. On the other hand, the invading army was utterly without field guns and could not muster more than sixteen hundred men. ”

“ A habit has arisen of speaking as if the foreign population greatly outnumbered the burgher population. The case is quite the opposite of this. The census of Johannesburg taken in 1896 by the Johannesburg Sanitary Commission showed that the population of the place had been greatly overestimated, the male European population of all ages amounting to 31,000. As there are 25,000 burghers on the military register of the republic, it seems fair to assume that the burgher population is at least [202] 150,000, while the foreign population is probably not more than half of that. ”

“ Doubtless the colonists were influenced, to a greater degree than they realized, by the natural dislike of any civilized people to be transferred to the rule of a foreign nation. They were not the kind of people to make much of the fact that the Dutch and the English sprang from a common origin more than fourteen hundred years before—if they had any knowledge of it. ”

“ No exact statement of population can be made; estimates range from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000, of which only about 6,000 are whites. The entire territory is under the administration of the British South African Company, organized and incorporated in 1889, subject to the British High Commissioner at Cape Town. Rhodesia lies chiefly within the tablelands of South Africa and has large but yet undeveloped resources, including grazing and agricultural lands and important mining districts. Owing to the newness of the country to civilization no definite statement can be made relative to its commerce. ”

“ The farmers’ worst enemies are not now the great beasts and reptiles of former years, but the baboons, which gather in the more rocky districts and kill the lambs, and two species of insects—the white ants and the locusts—which sometimes ravage the eastern coast.
Beyond that of most countries in the world of equal extent the flora of South Africa is rich in both genera and species. The neighborhood of Cape Town and the warm, sub-tropical regions of eastern Cape Colony and Natal are specially affluent in beautiful flowers. ”

“ And this is the principal reason why the English in all South Africa have always condemned the restoration of independence to the Transvaal—and, most of all, the time and manner of the act. They have not been able to forget the fact that the terms of peace were, in a way, dictated by the Africanders as victorious invaders and holders of British territory in the colony of Natal. ”

“ The Africanders scaled the hill, shooting as they went up every man that showed on the sky line—themselves protected by the steep declivities above them, and carried the hill-top, routing and almost annihilating the British force. ”

“ The territory beyond the Vaal River, to the far northeast from Cape Colony, was left undisturbed by the British government. The Africanders living there were hundreds of miles from the nearest British outpost. Their wars with the natives projected no disturbing influence upon the tribes with whom the colonial government was in touch and for whose peace and prosperity it felt responsible. Moreover, the British authorities at the Cape were under instructions from the Colonial Office of the home government to rather contract than expand the scope of British influence in South Africa. ”

“ The white population was further recruited between 1843 and 1847 by a second Africander trek from Natal—which will be described in another chapter.
So small a body of people, of whom not more than 4,000 were adult males, occupying so vast a territory, experienced serious difficulties in establishing an efficient government. The difficulties growing out of that cause were enhanced by the very qualities in the Africanders which had led to their emigration from the old colony, and which had made them successful in their wars of conquest in the interior. ”