Uitlander

“ The great cardinal fact in connection with the Uitlander population is that, owing to their numbers and activity, they have brought in their train an influx of new wealth into the Transvaal of truly colossal dimensions. ”

“ British subjects associated with the Uitlander cause who venture to call upon the British Agent in Pretoria or the High Commissioner in Cape Town are regarded as conspirators and are watched by spies and all their movements are reported to the Transvaal Government.{52} The recognized leaders among the Uitlanders are black-listed in the Dutch press, their names, addresses, and occupations given so that they may be identified,—marked down in the newspapers supported by the Government—as men to be dragged out and shot without trial. ”

“ It is on Saturday nights that the bitterness of the Uitlander population is most noticeable, since then the workers from the mines along the Randt gather in the city and discuss their grievances, which then become magnified with every additional glass of liquor. It is then that the city streets and places of amusement and entertainment are crowded with a throng that finds relaxation by abusing the Boers. The theatre audiences laugh loudest at the coarsest jests made at the expense of the Boers, and the bar-room crowds talk loudest when the Boers are the subject of discussion. ”

“ Also all over Cape Colony and Natal there are hordes of disloyal Dutch ready to rise at the first chance. Besides, Leyds is stirring up the Continent against us, and here Van Zwieten is gathering information and sending it in cypher to Pretoria. Oh, there's trouble ahead, Brenda. The Uitlander business is only a pretext for war. If we don't proclaim war, Kruger and Steyn will. ”

“ Constant droppings will wear away a stone. The constant hacking and pegging away at the Government began to take effect on the Uitlander public. They began to believe it, saying, ‘Where there is smoke there must surely be fire?’ At least such was the effect on the least-informed portion of the Uitlander population. ”

“ He hates to be taxed and resents it. He has stood stock still in South Africa for two centuries and a half, and would like to stand still till the end of time, for he has no sympathy with Uitlander notions of progress. He is hungry to be rich, for he is human; but his preference has been for riches in cattle, not in fine clothes and fine houses and gold and diamonds. The gold and the diamonds have brought the godless stranger within his gates, also contamination and broken repose, and he wishes that they had never been discovered. ”

“ And so it is throughout the world today,—in the United States, in England, in France, in the British Colonies, wherever the individual thrives and the State is prosperous—the compromise of divided political power among all classes, all factions, is the great guarantee of their well being. ... That the enfranchisement of the Uitlander would mean a complete transference of political power into his hands involves two assumptions: the first is that the Uitlanders would form a united body in politics; the second is that their representatives would dominate the Volksraad. ”

“ The natural contempt which the Englishmen, who composed the majority of the Uitlander population, always have for persons and races not their intellectual or social equals, soon created a gulf between the Boers and the newcomers. ”

“ In 1890 the inrush of outsiders alarmed the Boers, and the franchise was raised so as to be only attainable by those who had lived fourteen years in the country. The Uitlanders, who were increasing rapidly in numbers and were suffering from the formidable list of grievances already enumerated, perceived that their wrongs were so numerous that it was hopeless to have them set right seriatim, and that only by obtaining the leverage of the franchise could they hope to move the heavy burden which weighed them down. ”

“ The education of Uitlander children is made subject to impossible conditions. The police afford no adequate protection to the lives and property of the inhabitants of Johannesburg; they are rather a source of danger to the peace and safety of the Uitlander population. ”

“ They are reproduced to enable those who have no knowledge of the Boer—his petty tyrannies and annoying and irritating habits, and the vexatious regulations from which the Uitlander continually suffered—to form an idea of the terrible mental gulf which existed between oppressor and oppressed. ”

“ What the Uitlanders wanted was reform—under the existing Republic.
What they proposed to do was to secure these reforms by, prayer, petition, and persuasion.
They did petition. Also, they issued a Manifesto, whose very first note is a bugle-blast of loyalty: "We want the establishment of this Republic as a true Republic."
Could anything be clearer than the Uitlander's statement of the grievances and oppressions under which they were suffering? Could anything be more legal and citizen-like and law-respecting than their attitude as expressed by their Manifesto? No. ”

“ The innocent Uitlander public were led by the nose. When a meeting was convened by 139 the self-elected leaders of the so-called Union, the public were only too glad to attend a meeting where some excitement was promised them. They went to hear the inspired spoutings of their self-elected leaders, and cheered where they were expected to do so, or listened indifferently to eloquent advocates, speculators, etc. Many of them were surprised to be told that they really had any grievances. They had always thought they were better off in this country than they had been in their own land ”

“ Moreover, there are in all classes a considerable number who only want to make money and clear out, and who, while possibly sympathising with reform, feel no great interest in a matter which may only concern them temporarily. But a very large and constantly increasing proportion of the Uitlanders are not birds of passage; they contemplate a long residence in the country, or to make it their permanent home. These people are the mainstay of the reform movement as they are of the prosperity of the country. They would make excellent citizens if they had the chance. ”

“ Sir Hercules Robinson, who was regarded sympathetically by the Dutch population of South Africa, had succeeded Loch as high commissioner. Both high commissioner and the imperial government were hopeful that Kruger might even yet be induced to modify his policy; the Uitlanders now entertained no such hope and they prepared to appeal to arms to obtain redress of their grievances. The first proposals for an armed rising came from Rhodes in June, but it was not until November that the Uitlander leaders came to a definite understanding with the Cape premier as to the course to be pursued. ”

“ From the fact that they were a community extremely preoccupied by their own business, it followed that the Uitlanders were not ardent politicians, and that they desired to have a share in the government of the State for the purpose of making the conditions of their own industry and of their own daily lives more endurable. How far there was need of such an interference may be judged by any fair-minded man who reads the list of their complaints. ”

“ Hearing nothing but English spoken, seeing nothing all round them that was not far more English than Dutch, though English with a half-colonial, half-American tinge, it was natural that the bulk of the Uitlanders should deem themselves to be in a country which had become virtually English, and should see something unreasonable or even grotesque in the control of a small body of persons whom they deemed in every way their inferiors. ”

“ So far as the Uitlanders themselves are concerned, their action was most natural and justifiable, and they have no reason to exculpate themselves for rising against such oppression as no men of our race have ever been submitted to. Had they trusted only to themselves and the justice of their cause, their moral and even their material position would have been infinitely stronger. ”

“ The Uitlanders were the enslaved genii that had wrought this miracle upon that treeless veldt. Their civilised skill and educated intellects had accomplished what would have taken centuries to achieve under the Boer system. Yet the ignorant Boers were the masters, and ruled over intellect and civilisation. This, to our heroes, seemed even more incongruous and wonderful than the marvels which were spread out before them. ”

“ If he pays a high rent for his house, [195] that is not the fault of the government, but of the land speculators who have bought up building stands. If his water supply is somewhat defective, it is the fault of the big foreign capitalists, who think more of the dividends they put in their own pockets than of the water they put into the people’s mouths.
“A government which depends on the goodwill of a strictly Sabbatarian population allows the Uitlander to spend his Sunday exactly as he pleases. He may play lawn tennis if he likes—and, indeed, he generally does so ”

“ For years it had been the hope of the Uitlanders that this would come, and that there would be an end to a position that was well-nigh intolerable. Never before had a large body of intelligent men been kept in a state of abject subjection by an inferior race, a race almost without even the elements of civilization, ignorant and brutal beyond any existing white community, and superior only in the fact that they were organized and armed, whereas those they trampled upon were deficient in both these respects. ”

“ These demands of the Uitlanders will seem all the more absurd when it is understood that they do not ask for a voice in the government as citizens of the country. None of these English-speaking people have so much as offered to become citizens of the Transvaal. They are not even willing to be. They wish to keep their right of citizenship in their own country, that they may have the protection of England, and be able to return there as soon as they have made their fortunes. ”

“ It does not come within the scope of this treatise to deal with the case of the Uitlanders, but I have given the foregoing, because it is a clear and concise statement of that case, and because it expresses the strong conviction that I and many others have had from the first, that the worst enemy the Boers have is their own Government. ”

“ A number of memorials were read from Rustenberg, Waterberg, Piet Retief, Utrecht, Middelberg, Zoutpansberg, and Krugersdorp, signed by about 500 burghers, stating that while they valued the friendship of the peace-abiding Uitlanders they petitioned the Raad not to extend the franchise or alter last year's law. ”

“ What is the future? His Boers, the backbone of the country, are perishing off the land; hundreds have become impoverished loafers, landless hangers-on of the town population. In his own interests he should recruit his Republic with new blood—and the sands are running out. I say this irrespective of [Pg 147] agitation about Uitlanders. The fabric will go to pieces of its own accord unless something is done."
Such is the opinion of Mr. Merriman, a friend of the Transvaal, yet every day in Europe one is told that its misfortunes are due to the Uitlanders. ”

“ To such a degree were these violations carried on with regard to the Uitlanders (chiefly English) who, relying on the guarantee of the Transvaal Government, had settled and invested millions of capital in the country, that, dreading for their lives after the murder of Edgar, they presented the petition of March 28th, 1899, to the British Government. No government in the world, approached in such a manner, could have refused to move ”

“ Three-fifths of the entire white Transvaal population were Uitlanders, the majority of them English. They own four-fifths of the total wealth invested in the State. About half of them have been domiciled, with house and other fixed property, for periods of from five to ten years and more. ”

“ Mr Philip Martin. England was powerless to help the Uitlanders as long as they chose to remain inert and submissive under the yoke. Dr Jameson and his dauntless band had demonstrated that no outside heroism could lift the yoke from their shoulders while they bent beneath it so passively. Only from their own ranks must the Wallace and the Bruce rise to free them.
Ned and his chums had already read some of the literature of these Uitlanders, explaining and excusing themselves for their inaction during the Raid, or even supporting the tyrants in their oppression. ”

“ He has pictured the woes of the Uitlanders because they are not allowed to govern, and because their children are not taught English in the schools, and moreover, because they are made to pay heavy taxes for the gold they mine and carry away. They have still another grievance. Any favor that the Boers show at all is shown to Germans, and not to Englishmen. The Boers will not allow any of the products of Cape Colony within their borders, but prefer to do their trading with Germany. A dreadful offence truly, that they choose their own markets! ”

“ Even now most of the Uitlanders will have left us, and those who have not gone are hurrying as fast as possible to the frontiers. Well, they had better do so, for after 11th October it will be an evil day for any of them should we catch them. Only a few who have permits signed are to be allowed to stay, and those we will set to work at native labour. ”

“ Take them as a whole, the Boers are not pleasant people to live with, especially to those who are within their power, as the natives have found out sufficiently, and as the British have found out ever since Majuba, and the retrocession of the Transvaal. The wrongs of the Uitlanders were only one symptom of a disease which originated at Pretoria in 1881, and was steadily spreading itself all over South Africa. ”