Francis William Reitz

“ 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. ”

“ That the British Government had all along considered the Zulus as a means of annihilating the Transvaal when a favourable opportunity occurred, is clear from a letter which the High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, wrote to General Ponsonby, in which he says:– [5] 'That while the Boer Republic was a rival and semi-hostile power, it was a Natal weakness rather to pet the Zulus as one might a tame wolf who only devoured one's neighbours' sheep. ”

“ Shortly afterwards the emigrant Boers journeyed across the Vaal River, and after two battles drove Moselikatse and his hordes across the Limpopo right into what is now Matabeleland. Andries Pretorius had come into the Transvaal after the Annexation of Natal, and lived there quietly, notwithstanding the price which had been put on his head after Boomplaats. The British Resident in the Free State, which at this time still belonged to England, was compelled to admit in a letter to the English Governor that the fate of the Free State depended upon the selfsame Pretorius. ”