Union of South Africa

“ Whereas by an Act of Parliament passed in the ninth year of Our Reign, intituled “An Act to constitute the Union of South Africa,” it is enacted that it shall be lawful for the King, with the advice of the Privy Council, to declare by Proclamation that, on and after a day therein appointed, not being later than one year after the passing of the Act, the Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony, shall be united in a Legislative Union under one Government under the name of the Union of South Africa. ”

“ The tide of confederation, and corporate union is manifestly rising, the wave of extended British influence is flowing northwards, the various nationalities and states of this vast country are educating themselves by experience to see the folly and sterile weakness of isolation, and are learning to realise the inherent strength, and vitality of mutual co-operation, based on a self respecting, yet unselfish responsibility to South Africa as a whole. ”

“ On the one hand the Union of South Africa is henceforth recognised as a nation, a nation whose representatives signed the Treaty of Versailles on a parity with the representatives of the Mother State. The link of sentiment is not over strong as it is. There will be a natural reluctance on the part of any British Government which desires to retain the imperial connection, to subject that link to undue strain. ”

“ There are many who now say that the next big trouble in South Africa will be with the blacks. This apprehension, if there be any reason in it, is another incentive for the whites to combine to make settlements secure and numerous, where they can defy any movement among the blacks. It is an additional incentive to us in the old land to see what we may do to make this union of the whites as British in feeling, as liberty loving, as British institutions can make it. The Boers in fighting have not lost their freedom. They have only lost one form of collective and separate independence. ”

“ But the Union and its making are of great interest also for the general student of politics and history, concerned rather with the development of a nationality than with the niceties of constitutional law. From this point of view the Union comes as the close of a century of strife, as the aftermath of a great war, and indicates the consummation, for the first time in history, of what appears as a solid basis of harmony between the two races in South Africa. In one shape or other union has always been the goal of South-African aspiration. ”

“ And certainly, if such a union of neighbouring Colonies is anywhere a desirable thing, it is more than usually desirable here; for South Africa is essentially one social and economic whole, and the State jealousies are a real drawback to her prosperity. There has never been any question of the internal advantages of federation. Men talked of it so long ago as the seventies—and that is a long time in the history of South Africa—and Lord Carnarvon's abortive Act provided the necessary machinery. ”

“ Nor is it easy to forecast how the relationship of the Mother Country with the South African Union can preserve its present character if the Union persists in a native policy, which would seem bound sooner or later to involve the whole of the sub-Continent in racial strife. For many reasons the imperial problem in South Africa is the thorniest of the imperial connection. ”

“ Africa must be made great by a union of all its people, but those who read between the lines and ascertained the real opinions of those who were guiding the movement knew perfectly well that although the Imperial power might be allowed at first to be a faineant king, the Mayor of the Palace with real authority was to be the people of Dutch extraction—the Africanders—throughout Southern Africa. ”

“ That such a state of things will arrive is rendered probable not only by the phenomena to be observed to-day in South Africa, but by the experience of the Southern States of the American Union, where almost exactly what I have described has come to pass, with the addition that the inferior race has in theory the same political rights as the superior. How will the relations of two races so living together be adjusted? ”

“ It has been suggested, for instance, that a union between the new Colonies and Natal, which have comparatively few outstanding points of difference, might be reinforced later by the adhesion of the Cape, where there are special conditions and difficulties, and of Rhodesia. But, whatever happens. South African statesmen are already taking the only sane course of clearing the ground in advance. A Customs Union is an accomplished fact. A Railway Union is at least in the air—an arrangement, that is, under which the trunk lines, at any rate, shall be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is power to alter the Constitution with the consent of a majority of the electors in a majority of the States and of a majority of the electors of the Commonwealth (sect. 123) —a power which has been freely used.
The case of South Africa is sometimes cited as a precedent for loosening the bonds in the United Kingdom. It is a strong precedent for closer union. The South Africa Act, 1909, created in fact as well as in name, not a Federation but a true Legislative Union. ”

“ But it has only come because British statesmen showed, firstly, in the war, their inflexible resolution to stamp out the policy of separation, and secondly, after the war, their devotion to the real welfare of South Africa in a policy of economic reconstruction, and in the establishment of those free and equal British institutions under which—by the final dying out of a spurious nationalism based on racial prejudice and garbled history—South Africa may become a real, living nation. ”

“ Of course, their best friends discountenanced this visit, as we have noted from the South African Press, but it seems to be the general opinion that even though no appeal lies under the Union Constitution to the British Crown as regards native rights, an extraordinary anomaly seems to exist in this: That the Natives of South Africa within the Union appear to have fewer rights than those outside the Union, especially so far as an appeal to London on various matters affecting their interests is concerned. ”

“ At this time the Governor of Natal, as representing the King, was Supreme Chief of the Zulus in that Colony. The Natives lived happily under these protecting reservations, and the white people had no complaint against the just restraint of the Imperial suzerainty.
In 1909, His Majesty's Government passed the Union Constitution, sweeping away all these safeguards. In that Act they practically told South Africa to do what she liked with the Natives in these three Colonies and South Africa is doing it. Where, then, is this "growing spirit"? ”

“ The immense preponderance and central position of the Rand mining industry makes South Africa practically a single economic system. The very bitterness of the long political and racial struggle which had preceded intensified the argument for really effective union. ”

“ So much has been said in the past about sanctions and measures to be taken against South Africa, but unfortunately little has been done to force the Union Government to change its policy. It is therefore imperative that all those who have the interest of the Africans at heart should start thinking in new lines in order to effectively assist our African brothers to deliver them out of the bondage under which they find themselves at present in that unhappy country. ”

“ In order to find employment for poor whites, Coloured railway employees who had served the country faithfully and well were dismissed. A white South Africa has been declared in the Union Parliament and from every platform. The white race must preserve its dominance. To this end a rigorous policy of repression was adopted; and the enthusiastic hopes of an extension of franchise rights to our northern fellow-men, that was entertained by Cape politicians and the Imperial Parliament, is now as far distant as the Greek Kalends. ”

“ A new appeal must, therefore, be made to all right-minded South Africans, irrespective of party or race, to join the new Party, which will be strong enough to safeguard the permanent interests of the Union against the disruptive and destructive policy of the Nationalists. Such a central political party will not only continue our great work of the past, but is destined to play a weighty rôle in the future peaceable development of South Africa. ”

“ When we add to this the high price of living, owing to the duties imposed on goods, &c., the lookout does not seem cheerful. It is not probable that the British government will again resume its sway here, even if invited unanimously by the Boers, but it is possible that some system of Union or Confederation will before long take place amongst the different states of South Africa ”

“ Only by the creation of a central government could South Africa be wisely and successfully governed. [34]
The opportunity for testing the strength of the movement for closer union came with the meeting of an inter-colonial conference in May 1908 to consider the thorny questions of tariff and railway rates. In the meantime the Jameson ministry had given place to the Bond nominee ministry with Mr Merriman as premier (see Cape Colony: History) , but the movement initiated by Jameson had received the support of the Bond as well as that of the Botha administration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having defined the Imperial policy in South Africa to be the maintenance of the integrity of that federation of freemen which is the British Empire, the upholding of the banner of European justice and humanity in the Dark Continent, and for the promotion of these ends the fusion of all strains of the European race in one community, let us now consider the general lines of State action requisite to carry out that policy. ”

“ An independent, but still a federated, South Africa was the object of Dutch intrigue during the twenty years that followed. To-day we are for the first time within measurable distance of federation under the British flag; and if we hear less about it, it is because men realize its difficulties better, and approach it on different lines. South Africa is moving slowly but surely towards federation, not by the invention of schemes and constitutions, but by the gradual removal of the countless rivalries and restrictions which form a solid material barrier against the best intentions in the world. ”

“ The well-worn abuse, in the Dutch press, of the Rand and its capitalists has this additional object, that it may stimulate that jealousy of the Transvaal which is already strong enough in the coast Colonies. Political as well as material considerations—they are inextricably intertwined all through the chapter—require that States as well as individuals should present a united front.
Federation is so plainly the natural goal to which South Africa is tending that adventitious mischief-making can hardly delay it when the time is ripe. ”

“ The absence of continuous, wise, and statesmanlike policy, which has for the most part marked the tone of those, who have had the Imperial guidance and control of South African affairs in the past, has had the effect of sowing the seeds of enmity to the Government of the Mother Country, which it will require all the wisdom, and tact, and conciliatory sympathy possible to be displayed in the future, in dealing with this magnificent part of the Empire, to allay. It will demand the greatest skill to prevent the permanent alienation, andPg 130 estrangement of South Africa from Great Britain. ”