South African Republic

“ In spite of all its hypocritical accusations, the British Government is perfectly well aware that, notwithstanding the unparalleled difficulties with which the Government and the Legislature have had to contend, the administration of the South African Republic is on a sound basis, and can, indeed, be favourably compared with that of other countries in a similar position. ”

“ We neither desire to be a united British colony, nor a united South African 129 Empire. We wish to be a united South African Republic. Such were Steve’s thoughts on the matter. But everything seemed to be tending towards a crisis. He felt that the time was not far distant when it would be decided whether a great new nation would be formed in South Africa by the fusion of the races, or whether South Africa would be put down, and kept down as a vassal state, for, perhaps, another decade, or maybe two decades. ”

“ The South African Republic falls undoubtedly under this category of States, the sovereignty of which is limited in one or other defined direction. But the fact of its sovereignty is nevertheless irrefutable. ”

“ The South African Republic will conclude no treaty or engagement with any state or nation other than the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or westward of the Republic, until the same has been approved by Her Majesty the Queen. ”

“ Her Majesty's Government have on more than one occasion repeated their assurances that they have no desire to interfere in any way with independence of South African Republic, provided that the conditions on which it was granted are honourably observed in the spirit and in the letter, and they have offered as part of a general settlement to give a complete guarantee against any attack upon that independence, either from within any part of the British dominions or from the territory of a foreign State. ”

“ He seemed to see in imagination the future he was describing.
‘You have made out a very good case for your people as a nation, Steve, but what will you do with all the Englishmen in South Africa if it should become an Afrikander republic, as you seem to wish and hope? Will you drive them out of the country, or will you let them live an Uitlander race for ever here, as this Government is doing now? Will you exclude them from your future great South African nation?’
‘Decidedly not. We should be only too pleased to have them unite with us. ”

“ Article XIV. All persons, other than natives, conforming themselves to the laws of the South African Republic (a) will have full liberty, with their families, to enter, travel, or reside in any part of the South African Republic ”

“ And this is especially important in the South African Republic, because, owing to the facility and frequency with which laws—even fundamental laws—are altered, the man who takes the oath and thereby loses his old country will never feel quite sure that something may not happen in the interval, when he is only half a citizen, to prevent his becoming a whole one. ”

“ There have been many wars and droughts and disasters of various kinds in South Africa since 1873, yet the country has advanced with rapid strides in population, in commerce, and in many other respects. The Europeans were then only about 325,000 in number, namely in the Cape Colony 235,000, in the South African Republic 35,000, in the Orange Free State 27,000, in Natal 18,000, in Griqualand West 9,000, and scattered over territory occupied by independent Bantu tribes 1,000. ”

“ In view of the use to which the two Republics have put the position which was given them, and the calamities their unprovoked attack has inflicted on Her Majesty's dominion, Her Majesty's Goverment can only answer Your Honors' telegram by saying it is not prepared to assent to the independence either of the South African Republic or the Orange Free State. ”

“ No word about the terms, the only terms on which the Boers would ever have yielded their independence.
Responsible government has been followed by the Union of the South African provinces.
South Africa is united in name, if not yet in reality, but the time will surely come, as we have said before, when, under the softening influence of time, a great united race will be born. ”

“ 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 rough Cornish miner, who is looking out with surprised eyes at our new South African world to-day, may yet give to us our greatest statesmen and noblest leader. The great African nation of the future will have its foundations laid on stones from many lands. Even to the Coolie and the Chinaman, so he comes among us, we personally should say: Stretch forth the hand of brotherhood. We may not desire him, we may not intentionally bring him among us, but, so he comes to remain with us, let South Africa be home to him. ”

“ The South African Federation.In the end we won, and peace was signed in 1902; a ‘Federation’ of all the South African colonies with a central Parliament at Capetown has recently been concluded, and the hatred between British and Dutch is now almost a thing of the past. South Africa owes its recent prosperity more to the discovery of great gold and diamond mines than to agriculture; but almost anything can be grown there. ”

“ Do you think it unjust that that little Republic down in South Africa whose gallant resistance to being subjected to any outside authority at all we admired for so many months and whose fortunes we followed with such interest, should have a speaking part? ”

“ It was such cant that enabled the Boers to carry on the war of independence against mighty England to a successful issue. It was such cant that brought the elaborate plots of Rhodes, Jameson and the Johannesburg revolutionists to utter failure. It will be such cant that will make South Africa a free and united Republic, in which all the races of the world shall live free and united! ”

“ To save England in spite of herself; to keep South Africa a part of the Empire in spite of ignorance at home, in the teeth of an armed Republic and an Afrikander ministry, required not merely an iron will and mastership in statecraft, but a reasoned and unfaltering belief in the justice of the British cause. ”

“ Again the Boers migrated, this time crossing the River Vaal, and founding a "Transvaal Republic."
In the history of the next thirty years we see not a vacillating, but rather a tentative policy, behind which was always an inflexible purpose to establish British rule in South Africa, peaceably, if possible, or by force, if compelled. The British Government was trying to bring to terms the most intractable race it had ever dealt with in all its colonizing experience. ”

“ This question is a world-wide question; it is not one in any sense peculiarly South African; it is a world-wide problem, which, as the result of much thought, careful consideration and many experiments, the nations of the civilized world will be called to adjudicate upon during the twentieth century; but it is not the question with which South Africa stands face to face at this moment. ”

“ What have we in this man, who represents English honor and English wisdom in South Africa? To a certain extent we know.
We have a man honorable in the relations of personal life, loyal to friend, [119] and above all charm of gold; wise with the knowledge of books and men; a man who could not violate a promise or strike in the dark. This we know we have, and it is much to know this; but what have we more?
The man of whom South Africa has need to-day to sustain England’s honor and her Empire of the future, is a man who must possess more than the knowledge and wisdom of the intellect. ”

“ But those men are not of us! That South Africa we love [72] whose great future is dearer to us than our own interests, in the thought of whose great and noble destiny lies the source of our patriotism and highest inspiration, for whose good in a far distant future we, Dutch and English alike, would sacrifice all in the present—this future is no more to them than the future of the Galapagos Islands. ”

“ But assuming, as most men, perhaps too hastily, do assume, that this sudden development is desirable, the English are the people most likely to carry it out effectively, and the strong and strenuous man who, with little encouragement from the government of his country, founded the British South Africa Company and acquired these territories for his countrymen, took one of the most fateful steps that statesman or conqueror has ever taken in the African continent. ”

“ Destructive as it was, the Boer campaign was not a war of annihilation. On the contrary, without it it would have been impossible for the vast South African territories to become federated into a Union of its own and at the same time to take her place as a member of another Empire from which it derived its prosperity and its welfare. The grandeur of England and the soundness of its leaders has never come out in a more striking manner than in this conquest of South Africa—a blood-stained conquest which has become a love match. ”

“ Let me remind the reader of what has been incidentally observed before, and must now be insisted on as being the capital feature of South African life—the fact that all unskilled work is done by black people. ”

“ The insistence of certain South African problems, familiar to us all, has made any synthetic survey difficult for the South African and impossible for the newspaper reader at home. We have forgotten that it is a country with a history, that it is a land where men can live as well as wrangle and fight, that it has sport, traditions, [Pg xiii] charm of scenery and weather; and in its politics we are apt to see the problems under a few popular categories, rather as a war of catchwords than the birth-pangs of a people. ”

“ The form of government of this State shall be that of a republic. ARTICLE 3. It desires to be recognized and respected by the civilized world as an independent and free people. ARTICLE 4. The people seek for no extension of territory, and desire it only in accordance with just principles, when the interest of the Republic makes such extension desirable. ARTICLE 5. The people desire to retain and maintain their territory in South Africa unimpaired. The boundaries thereof are fixed by proclamation. ARTICLE 6. Its territory is open for every foreigner who obeys the laws of this Republic. ”

“ At the present time our race in its general advance is brought face to face with forces that retard, not merely the growth of the British Empire, but the principles of freedom and humanity which underlie it. The nineteenth century is confronted in South Africa with a remnant of the seventeenth. Our brethren, oppressed by an intolerable tyranny, cry to us for help, and we, a republic under a monarchical form, go to crush a despotism under the form of a republic. ”

“ It is still more impossible to forget that one great political party in England—the party, too, which is identified by tradition with the encouragement of free colonial development—has even in these latter days done an incredible amount of harm by trying to thwart the wishes of a South African Colony in her own domestic affairs. Such episodes as the Chinese labour debates in the House of Commons, may do much to develop a spirit of nationalism in South Africa, but they will develop it at the expense of the Imperial connection. ”

“ South Africa would be peaceful. There would be silence, the silence of a long exhaustion—but not peace! Have the dead no voices? In a thousand farm houses black robed women would hold memory of the count, and outside under African stones would lie the African men to whom South African women gave birth under our blue sky. ”

“ This matter does not touch the Transvaal alone; from the lovely Hex River Valley, east, west, north, and south, our lands are being taken from us, and passing into the hands of men who not only care nothing for South Africa, but apply the vast wealth they have drawn from South African [73] soil in an attempt to corrupt our public life and put their own nominees into our parliaments, to grasp the reins of power, that their wealth may yet more increase. ”

“ In the opinion of Ministers the persistent action, both beyond and within this Colony, of the political body styling itself the South African League in endeavouring to foment and excite, not to smooth and allay, ill-will between the two principal European races inhabiting South Africa is well illustrated by these resolutions, the exaggerated and aggravated terms of which disclose the spirit which informs and inspires them. ”

“ Let us stand manfully by one another. The danger has not yet disappeared; on the contrary, never has the necessity for a policy of a Colonial and Republican Union been greater; now the psychological moment has arrived; now our people have awakened all over South Africa; a new glow illuminates our hearts; let us now lay the foundation stone of a real United South Africa on the soil of a pure and all-comprehensive national sentiment. ”

“ Now that we have our railway up to Kimberley, we have the British South African Company to take it in hand, and the object of the Government is to see that we have an extension line into these territories which will, in time to come, be recognised as portions of the Cape Colony. Gentlemen, I and my colleagues have come to the conclusion, that we cannot better advance the best interests of South Africa than by joining hand-in-hand to advance British interests westward of the Transvaal State, and right up to the Zambesi. ”