Afrikaners

“ Rhodesia, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State and Natal draw away from the Cape Colony a large number of enterprising Englishmen, and consequently the Boers, not being so enterprising, nor so very fond of running from one home to another unless a great political principal is at stake, prefer to stay on their farms and multiply there, whereas the English are all the time thinned down by those everlasting discoveries and developments in the north and north-east, so that they remain numerically inferior to the Dutch. ”

“ The patriotic Boers of South Africa still dream of the day when the two Republics of the Orange and the Transvaal, at first connected by a common customs union, will be consolidated in a single 'African Holland,' possibly even in a broader confederacy, comprising all the Afrikanders from the Cape of Good Hope to the Zambesi. The Boer families, grouped in every town throughout South Africa, form, collectively, a single nationality, despite the accident of political frontiers. ”

“ The Germans, with energy and with capital, have not the requisite practice in independent colonization, nor perhaps the taste for it. The South African Dutch Boers, who have within the last seventeen years been more than once on the point of occupying the country, are, with all their good qualities, a backward people, who, had they prevailed, would have done little more than squat here and there over the country with their cattle, and carry on an incessant desultory war with the natives. ”

“ The intolerance of the Boers, their arrogance, their ignorance, on which they prided themselves, all proclaimed them as unfit to rule over white or black people. Of late years had crept in an element of treachery and disloyalty, emanating from their jealousy of the English, which by degrees was bound to permeate the whole country, spreading southward to Cape Colony itself, till the idea of "Africa for the Dutch, and the English in the sea," would have been a war-cry that might have dazzled hundreds of to-day's so-called loyal colonists. ”

“ But at the time it sounded parlous to think that anything could interrupt the calm of the tolerant British colonists and egg them against their Dutch rulers, who call them foreign adventurers. Nor could we conceive of any reason why the Boers, who have now more freedom than they ever dreamt of possessing under their own flag, including the right to partially enslave the blacks, should suddenly rise up against the English, whose money and brains are ever at the beck and call of the Dutch! ”

“ True, every white man born in civilized south Africa claims to be an Africander, but in the more restricted sense of the word it applies especially to the older colonists of the better classes. Some of these are found amongst the leading spirits of every township, often amongst leading officials. Dutch is the language spoken in their households, and the Boers regard them with an affection and respect which in the very nature of things could scarcely be accorded to the English settler, who comes amongst them a stranger and a foreigner at best. ”

“ I became familiar with their grievances—their unfair taxation; no education for their children except in Dutch; no representation in Parliament—and this in a population in which, at that time, the English and Afrikanders at Johannesburg and in the surrounding districts outnumbered the Dutch in the proportion of about 6 to 1. They laid stress on the fact that neither the Boers nor their children were, or desired to become, miners, and, further, that for the enormous sums spent on developing and working the mines no proper security existed. ”

“ We have, as I have endeavoured to show you, two Boer republics adjacent to one another, and only sparsely populated. South of them are Cape Colony and Natal, also populated by Dutchmen and blood relations of the Boers, while amongst them are many British settlers.
“I have told you how our neighbours dealt with their native servants. Now that they had been given their independence they were free to do as they liked, save that slavery would not have been permitted. But, to the Boer, native labour is everything. ”

“ The Dutch settlers held the old Biblical notions about slavery, and they resented fiercely the law of 1833 emancipating all slaves throughout the colony in 1834. The Boers at once determined to 'trek,' to leave the colony which was under the jurisdiction of the English law, and find in the South African wilderness, where no human law prevailed, food for their flocks, and the pastoral freedom of Jacob and of Abraham. The Boers would live their own lives in their own way. ”

“ Though accurate statistics of the proportion of English and Dutch-speaking inhabitants in the various South African states cannot be obtained, it is probable that in British and Dutch South Africa there were, in 1899, 400,000 Englishmen or men of English descent, 500,000 Dutch, and 3,500,000 Indians, Malays, Hottentots, and natives of the various Kaffir tribes. In Cape Colony and the Orange Free State of the white races the Dutch preponderated; in the Transvaal, Natal, and Rhodesia, the British. ”

“ Let the Dutch language have the place of honour in schools and homes.
Let alliances of marriage with the English be stamped as unpatriotic. [9]
Let every Afrikaner see that he is at all times well armed with the best possible weapons, and maintains the expert use of the rifle among young and old, so as to be ready when duty calls and the time is ripe for asserting the nation's rights and be rid of English thraldom.
Employ teachers only who are animated with truly patriotic sentiments. ”

“ And then gradually there stirred in her a warm remembrance of Africa, and of how she had always loved it, and a swift, unaccountable feeling of kinship with all the Britishers scattered far and wide who called some colony "home."
True, she was English born and English educated; but so also was she South African, for quite half her life had been passed in Johannesburg, and it was there that her actual home existed. And so, by slow imperceptible degrees, out of nowhere and without explanation, crept into her mind the sudden realisation of Africa's claim upon her. ”

“ Therefore, as the Boers would tell you, they are obliged to take them by force.”
“You are joking with us, sir, are you not?” said George.
“Indeed I am not. They think that not only is it fair and right that the natives should work without pay for them, but that it is their duty to oblige them so to work.”
“On what possible grounds, Mr Baylen?”
“Because they are an inferior race, over whom the Boers have a natural right. This is no pretence. They really think so. The Boers are, after their fashion, a very religious people. ”

“ Again the Boers had to contend with the savages, wild beasts and starvation. Here they suffered terribly, hundreds of them died and hundreds of women and children were murdered by the savages. Yet they persevered and converted the desert into two of the richest and most flourishing little republics in the world. All this is as fresh as ever in the Boer memory, yet, after the late South African War, the English beg the Boers to forgive and forget. ”

“ How any one who knows his South Africa, who knows the isolation of life among the farmers, and the utter stagnation of all ideas that exists among the people, can credit the Boers with vaulting ambitions of this sort, is always a surprise to me. I fancy such theories are mostly manufactured for the English market. Naturally I form my opinion more or less from the men in our corps who seem best worth attending to. They, most of them, have an intimate knowledge of the Colony and of one or both of the Republics, and I do not find that they take the "Great Dutch Conspiracy" at all seriously. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such were the words of President Burgers when addressing a crowd of sympathizers on his way towards the Transvaal Republic. And they were true; for excepting some English settlements, isolated and relatively small, south Africa is peopled by but one white race, of mingled French and Dutch descent, having in common the same language, habits, and religion, and being by perpetual intermarriage all brothers, cousins, or near kinsmen — the Boers. ”

“ A Swiss missionary who has lived a great part of his life in South Africa, writes to me:—"The whole of South Africa is to blame in its treatment of the natives. Take the British merchant, the Boer and Dutch official, the German colonist, the French and Swiss trader,—there is no difference. The general feeling among these is against the coloured race being educated and evangelized.... Only what can and must be said is this, that the Laws of the English Colonies are just; those of the Boer States are the negation of every right, civil and religious, which the black man ought to have." ”

“ Yet further from us on the same side stand our oldest white fellow South Africans; who were, many, not of English blood originally, though among that body of early white settlers, men who preceded us in South Africa by three centuries, were a few with English names, and though by intermarriage Dutch and English South Africans are daily and hourly blending, the bulk of these folk were Dutchmen from Holland and Friesland, with a few Swedes, Germans and Danes, and later was intermingled with them a strong strain of Huguenot blood from France. ”

“ To those new governments disaffected colonists have ever turned their eyes. When the Transvaal started into active life under the leadership of an enthusiastic and imaginative president, and made alliances with the Continental powers, Boer and Africander alike looked forward to the day, now dawning upon their vision, when the strong, young commonwealth should wrest the Cape from the wavering grasp of England. ”

“ Possessing for two centuries no book except the Bible, the South African Dutch communities, Afrikanders as they call them- selves, are fond of comparing their lot with that of the " chosen people." Going forth, like the Jews, in search of a "promised land," they never for a moment doubted that the native populations were specially created for their benefit. ”

“ At the present time, when the Transvaal Boers are in rebellion against us, it may be interesting to know something more respecting the customs, modes of thought, and ways of living of their race than is to be met with in the guidebooks or in the notes of those who have passed a few brief weeks in the show places and the busier centres of our south African colonies. ”

“ Poland restive with Russia, Polish refugees were received with open arms in Galicia, Bohemia and Hungary.
In various other parts of the world the spirit of revolution would not be quelled. More Dutch settlers in South Africa sought relief from British interference with their customs and the institution of slavery by The great Boer trek emigrating into the virgin veldt lying to the north of their former settlements. ”

“ We are told that the Boers in general are less civilized than many other people. Is that a justification of their treatment? The same might have been said of the Swiss when in olden times those rude mountaineers, the Boers of the Alps, valiantly defended their liberty and independence on the bloody fields of Morgarten, Sempach, Granson and Murten, against the superior civilization of Austria and Burgundy. But the world has long been agreed to call them heroes and to celebrate their deeds in legend and song. ”

“ How it was the Boers did not succeed at the very outset in driving the British into the sea, when we had only skeleton forces to oppose them, was best explained to me by a son of the late State Secretary, who penned the ultimatum, and whom I found among our prisoners in Pretoria. The Boers are not farmers. Speaking broadly there is scarcely an acre of ploughed land in all the Transvaal. ”

“ In Natal, the English shopkeeper has to speak to his customers in their own language. Where the Boers hold sway it is otherwise. In the Dutch parts of the Cape Colony, Captain Aylward writes: “The coloured people are tame, submissive, and industrious, speaking the language of their instructors and natural masters. ”

“ South Africa is a very serious matter indeed. I am told the Dutch colonists within the Cape will remain loyal; but our reputation as an invincible race suffers with all the natives. And then the European East, nothing at present can look blacker, and all because of passionate words and hatred. ”

“ I should not forget to mention, that in the Niagara and Gore districts there is a vast number of Dutch and German settlers, favourably distinguished by their industrious, sober, and thriving habits. They are always to be distinguished in person and dress from the British settlers; and their houses and churches, and, above all, their burial-places, have a distinct and characteristic look. At Berlin, the Germans have a printing-press, and publish a newspaper in their own language, which is circulated among their countrymen through the whole province. ”

“ But for the maintenance of the sentiment of Boer nationality by the two Boer Republics, the antagonism of Dutch and English in Cape Colony would have ere now died out, for there has been little or nothing in colonial politics to sustain it. The interests of the farmers of both stocks are identical, their rights are in all respects the same, and the British Government has been perfectly impartial. The Boers in the Colony are good citizens and loyal subjects. ”