population could not (census of 1891) read or write.]
[Footnote 73: Five colleges receive Government grants.]
[Footnote 74: The small grant for religious purposes made in Cape Colony
was in 1895 being reduced, and was to expire shortly.]
[Footnote 75: The census of 1891 gives the numbers as follows: Dutch
Reformed Church, 306,000; Church of England, 139,000; Wesleyans,
106,000; Congregationalists, 69,000; Presbyterians, 37,000; Roman
Catholics, 17,000; Mohammedans, 15,000.]
CHAPTER XXIV
POLITICS IN THE TWO BRITISH COLONIES
The circumstances of the two South African Colonies are so dissimilar
from those of the British Colonies in North America and in Australasia
as to have impressed upon their politics a very different character. I
do not propose to describe the present political situation, for it may
change at any moment. It is only of the permanent causes which give
their colour to the questions and the movements of the country that I
shall speak, and that concisely.
The frame of government is, in Cape Colony as well as in Natal,
essentially the same as in the other self-governing British Colonies.
There is a Governor, appointed by the home Government, and responsible
to it only, who plays the part which belongs to the Crown in Great
Britain. He is the nominal head of the executive, summoning and
proroguing the Legislature, appointing and dismissing ministers, and
exercising, upon the advice of his ministers, the prerogative of pardon.
There is a cabinet of five persons, including the heads of the chief
administrative departments, who are the practical executive of the
Colony, and are responsible to the Legislature, in which they sit, and
at whose pleasure they hold their offices. There is a Legislature
consisting of two houses--an Assembly, whose membership was raised in
December, 1898, from seventy-nine to ninety-five, and a Legislative
Council, with twenty-three members, besides the Chief Justice, who is
_ex officio_ President. In Cape Colony (for of the arrangements in Natal
I have spoken in a previous chapter) both houses are elected on the same
franchise--a low one; but the districts for the election of members of
the Council are much larger, and therefore fewer, than the Assembly
districts, so the former body is a small and the latter a comparatively
numerous one.[76] The rights and powers of both houses are theoretically
the same, save that money bills originate in the Assembly; but the
Assembly is far more powerful, for the ministry holds office only so
long as it has the support of a majority in that body, whereas it need
not regard a hostile vote in the Council. Either the English or the
Dutch language may be used in debate. Ministers have the right of
speaking in both houses, but can, of course, vote only in the one of
which they are members by popular election. If it happens that there is
no minister who has a seat in the Council (as was the case in 1896), it
is usual for the cabinet to allot one to be present in and look after
that chamber for the day.
This cabinet system, as it is called, works pretty smoothly, on lines
similar to that English original whence it is copied. The most
interesting peculiarity is the Cape method of forming the smaller House.
In England the Upper House is composed of hereditary members; in the
Canadian confederation, of members nominated for life--both of them
methods which are quite indefensible in theory. Here, however, we find
the same plan as that which prevails in the States of the North American
Union, all of which have senates elected on the same franchise, and for
the same term, as the larger house, but in more extensive districts, so
as to make the number of members of the senate or second chamber
smaller. Regarding the merits of the Cape scheme, I heard different
views expressed. Nobody seemed opposed in principle to the division of
the Legislature into two houses, but many condemned the existing Council
as being usually composed of second-rate men, and apt to be obstructive
in its tendencies. Some thought the Council was a useful part of the
scheme of government, because it interposed delay in legislation and
gave time for reflection and further debate. One point came out pretty
clearly. No difficulty is deemed to arise from the fact that there exist
two popularly elected houses equally entitled to control the
administration,[77] for custom has settled that the Assembly or larger
house is that whose vote determines the life of a ministry. But it
follows from this circumstance that the most able and ambitious men
desire a seat in the more powerful chamber, leaving the smaller house to
those of less mark. This is the exact reverse of what has happened in
the United States; where a seat in the Senate is more desired than one
in the House; but it is a natural result of the diverse arrangements of
the two countries, for in the Federal Government the Senate has some
powers which the House of Representatives does not enjoy, while in each
of the several States of the Union, although the powers of the two
houses are almost the same, the smaller number of each Senate secures
for a senator somewhat greater importance than a member of the larger
body enjoys. The Cape Colony plan of letting a minister speak in both
houses works very well, and may deserve to be imitated in England, where
the fact that the head of a department can explain his policy only to
his own House has sometimes caused inconvenience.
So much for the machinery. Now let us note the chief points in which the
circumstances of Cape Colony and of Natal (for in these respects both
Colonies are alike) differ from those of the other self-governing
Colonies of Britain.
The population is not homogeneous as regards race, but consists of two
stocks, English and Dutch. These stocks are not, as in Canada, locally
separate, but dwell intermixed, though the Dutch element predominates in
the western province and in the interior generally, the English in the
eastern province and at the Kimberley diamond-fields.
The population is homogeneous as regards religion, for nearly all are
Protestants, and Protestants of much the same type. Race difference has
fortunately not been complicated, as in Canada, by ecclesiastical
antagonisms.
The population is homogeneous as respects material interests, for it is
wholly agricultural and pastoral, except a few merchants and artisans in
the seaports, and a few miners at Kimberley and in Namaqualand.
Four-fifths of it are practically rural, for the interests of the small
towns are identical with those of the surrounding country.
The population is not only rural, but scattered more thinly over a vast
area than in any other British Colony, except north-western Canada, and
parts of Australasia. In Natal there are only two white men to the
square mile, and in Cape Colony less than two. Nor is this sparseness
incidental, as in North America, to the early days of settlement. It is
due to a physical condition--the condition of the soil--which is likely
to continue.
Below the white citizens, who are the ruling race, there lies a thick
stratum of coloured population numerically larger, and likely to remain
so, because it performs all the unskilled labour of the country. Here
is a condition which, though present in some of the Southern States of
America, is fortunately absent from all the self-governing Colonies of
Britain, and indeed caused Jamaica to be, some time ago, withdrawn from
that category.
The conjunction of these circumstances marks off South Africa as a very
peculiar country, where we may expect to find a correspondingly peculiar
political situation. Comparing it to other Colonies, we may say that the
Cape and Natal resemble Canada in the fact that there are two European
races present, and resemble the Southern States of America in having a
large mass of coloured people beneath the whites. But South Africa is in
other respects unlike both; and although situated in the southern
hemisphere, it bears little resemblance to Australia.
Now let us see how the circumstances above described have determined the
political issues that have arisen in Cape Colony.
Certain issues are absent which exist, not only in Europe and the United
States, but also in Australia and in Canada. There is no antagonism of
rich and poor, because there are very few poor and still fewer rich.
There is no working-man's or labour party, because so few white men are
employed in handicrafts. There is no Socialist movement, nor is any
likely soon to arise, because the mass of workers, to whom elsewhere
Socialism addresses itself, is mainly composed of black people, and no
white would dream of collectivism for the benefit of blacks. Thus the
whole group of labour questions, which bulks so largely in modern
industrial States, is practically absent, and replaced by a different
set of class questions, to be presently mentioned.
There is no regularly organized Protectionist party, nor is the
protection of native industry a "live issue" of the first magnitude.
The farmers and ranchmen of Cape Colony no doubt desire to have custom
duties on food-stuffs that will help them to keep up prices, and they
have got such duties. But the scale is not very high, and as direct
taxation is difficult to raise in a new country with a scattered
population, the existing tariff, which averages twelve and a half per
cent, _ad valorem_ (but is further raised by special rates on certain
articles), may be defended as needed, at least to a large extent, for
the purposes of revenue. Natal had a lower tariff, and has been more
favourable in principle to free trade doctrine, but she has very
recently (1898) entered the S. African Customs Union, therewith adopting
a higher tariff. Manufactures have been so sparingly developed in both
Colonies that neither employers nor workmen have begun to call for high
duties against foreign goods. Here, therefore, is another field of
policy, important in North America and Australia, which has given rise
to comparatively little controversy in South Africa.
As there is no established church, and nearly all the people are
Protestants, there are no ecclesiastical questions, nor is the progress
of education let and hindered by the claims of sects to have their
respective creeds taught at the expense of the State.
Neither are there any land questions, such as those which have arisen in
Australia, for there has been land enough for those who want to have it,
while few agricultural immigrants arrive to increase the demand.
Moreover, though the landed estates are large, their owners are not
rich, and excite no envy by their possession of a profitable monopoly.
If any controversy regarding natural resources arises, it will probably
turn on the taxation of minerals. Some have suggested that the State
should appropriate to itself a substantial share of the profits made out
of the diamond and other mines, and the fact that most of those profits
are sent home to shareholders in Europe might be expected to make the
suggestion popular. Nevertheless, the idea has not, so far, "caught
on," to use a familiar expression, partly, perhaps, because Cape Colony,
drawing sufficent income from its tariff and its railways, has not found
it necessary to hunt for other sources of revenue.
Lastly, there are no constitutional questions. The suffrage is so wide
as to admit nearly all the whites, and there is, of course, no desire to
go lower and admit more blacks. The machinery of government is deemed
satisfactory; at any rate, one hears of no proposals to change it, and,
as will be seen presently, there is not in either Colony a wish to alter
the relations now subsisting between it and the mother country.
The reader may suppose that if all these grounds of controversy,
familiar to Europe, and some of them now unhappily familiar to the new
democracies also, are absent, South Africa enjoys the political
tranquillity of a country where there are no factions, and the only
question is how to find the men best able to promote that economic
development which all unite in desiring. This is by no means the case.
In South Africa the part filled elsewhere by constitutional questions,
and industrial questions and ecclesiastical questions, and currency
questions, is filled by race questions and colour questions. Colour
questions have been discussed in a previous chapter. They turn not, as
in the Southern States of America, upon the political rights of the
black man (for on this subject the ruling whites are in both Colonies
unanimous), but upon land rights and the regulation of native labour.
They are not at this moment actual and pungent issues, but they are in
the background of every one's mind, and the attitude of each man to them
goes far to determine his political sympathies. One cannot say that
there exist pro-native or anti-native parties, but the Dutch are by
tradition more disposed than the English to treat the native severely,
and, as they express it, keep him in his place. Many Englishmen share
the Dutch feeling, yet it is always by Englishmen that the advocacy of
the native case is undertaken. In Natal both races are equally
anti-Indian.
The race question among the whites, that is to say the rivalry of Dutch
and English, would raise no practical issue were Cape Colony an island
in the ocean, for there is complete political and social equality
between the two stocks, and the material interests of the Dutch farmer
are the same as those of his English neighbour. It is the existence of a
contiguous foreign State, the South African Republic, that sharpens
Dutch feeling. The Boers who remained in Cape Colony and in Natal have
always retained their sentiment of kinship with those who went out in
the Great Trek of 1836, or who moved northward from Natal into the
Transvaal after the annexation of Natal in 1842. Many of them are
connected by family ties with the inhabitants of the two Republics, and
are proud of the achievements of their kinsfolk against Dingaan and
Mosilikatze, and of the courage displayed at Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill
against the British. They resent keenly any attempt to trench upon the
independence of the Transvaal, while most of the English do not conceal
their wish to bring that State into a South African Confederation, if
possible under the British flag. The ministries and legislatures of the
two British Colonies, it need hardly be said, have no official relations
with the two Dutch Republics, because, according to the constitution of
the British empire, such relations, like all other foreign relations,
belong to the Crown, and the Crown is advised by the British Cabinet at
home. In South Africa the Crown is represented for the purpose of these
relations by the High Commissioner, who is not responsible in any way to
the colonial legislatures, and is not even bound to consult the colonial
cabinet, for his functions as High Commissioner for South Africa are
deemed to be distinct from those which he has as Governor of Cape
Colony. Matters relating to the two Republics and their relation to the
Colonies are, accordingly, outside the sphere of action of the colonial
legislatures, which have, in strict theory, no right to pass resolutions
regarding them. In point of fact, however, the Cape Assembly frequently
does debate, and pass resolutions on, these matters; nor is this
practice disapproved, for, as the sentiments of the Colony are, or ought
to be, an important factor in determining the action of the home
Government, it is well that the British Cabinet and the High
Commissioner should possess such a means of gauging those sentiments.
The same thing happens with regard to any other question between Britain
and a foreign Power which may affect the two Colonies. Questions with
Germany or Portugal, questions as to the acquisition of territory in
South Central Africa, would also be discussed in the colonial
Legislatures, just as those of Australia some years ago complained
warmly of the action of France in the New Hebrides. And thus it comes to
pass that though the Governments and Legislatures of the Colonies have
in strictness nothing to do with foreign policy, foreign policy has had
much to do with the formation of parties at the Cape.
Now as to the parties themselves. Hitherto I have spoken of Natal and
the Cape together, because their conditions are generally similar,
though the Dutch element is far stronger in the latter than in the
former. In what follows I speak of the Cape only, for political parties
have not had time to grow up in Natal, where responsible government
dates from 1893. In the earlier days of the Cape Legislature parties
were not strongly marked, though they tended to coincide with the race
distinction between Dutch and English, because the western province was
chiefly Dutch, and the eastern chiefly English, and there was a certain
rivalry or antagonism between these two main divisions of the country.
The Dutch element was, moreover, wholly agricultural and pastoral, the
English party mercantile; so when an issue arose between these two
interests, it generally corresponded with the division of races.
Political organization was chiefly in English hands, because the
colonial Dutch had not possessed representative government, whereas the
English brought their home habits with them. However, down till 1880
parties remained in an amorphous or fluid condition, being largely
affected by the influence of individual leaders; and the Dutch section
of the electorate was hardly conscious of its strength. In the end of
that year, the rising in the Transvaal, and the War of Independence
which followed, powerfully stimulated Dutch feeling, and led to the
formation of the Africander Bond, a league or association appealing
nominally to African, but practically to African-Dutch patriotism. It
was not anti-English in the sense of hostility to the British
connection, any more than was the French party in Lower Canada at the
same time, but it was based not only on the solidarity of the Dutch race
over all South Africa, but also on the doctrine that Africanders must
think of Africa first, and see that the country was governed in
accordance with local sentiment, rather than on British lines or with a
view to British interests. Being Dutch, the Bond became naturally the
rural or agricultural and pastoral party, and therewith inclined to a
protective tariff and to stringent legislation in native matters. Such
anti-English tint as this association originally wore tended to fade
when the Transvaal troubles receded into the distance, and when it was
perceived that the British Government became more and more disposed to
leave the Colony to manage its own affairs. And this was still more the
case after the rise to power of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who, while receiving
the support of the Bond and the Dutch party generally, was known to be
also a strong Imperialist, eager to extend the range of British power
over the continent. At the same time, the attachment of the colonial
Dutch to the Transvaal cooled down under the unfriendly policy of that
Republic, whose government imposed heavy import duties on their
food-stuffs, and denied to their youth the opportunities of obtaining
posts in the public service of the Republic, preferring to fetch
Dutch-speaking men from Holland, when it could have had plenty of
capable people from the Cape who spoke the tongue and knew the ways of
the country. Thus the embers of Dutch and English antagonism seemed to
be growing cold when they were suddenly fanned again into a flame by the
fresh Transvaal troubles of December, 1895, which caused the resignation
of Mr. Rhodes, and the severance from him of his Dutch supporters. Too
little time has elapsed since those events to make it possible to
predict how parties may reshape themselves, nor is it any part of my
plan to deal with current politics. In 1897 feeling still ran high, but
it had not destroyed the previously friendly social relations of the
races, and there was then reason to hope that within a few months or
years mutual confidence would be restored.
So far as I could ascertain, both local government and central
government are in the two Colonies, as well as in the Orange Free State,
pure and honest. The judiciary is above all suspicion, and includes
several distinguished men. The civil service is managed on English
principles, there being no elective offices; and nothing resembling what
is called the "caucus system" seems to have grown up. There are in the
Cape Legislature some few members supposed to be "low-toned" and open to
influence by the prospect of material gain, but, though I heard of
occasional jobbing, I heard of little or nothing amounting to
corruption. Elections were said to be free from bribery, but as they had
seldom excited keen interest, this point of superiority to most
countries need not be ascribed to moral causes.
Reviewing the course of Cape politics during the thirty years of
responsible government, that course appears smooth when compared with
the parallel current of events in the Australian Colonies. There have
been few constitutional crises, and no exciting struggles over purely
domestic issues. This is due not merely to the absence of certain causes
of strife, but also to the temper of the people, and their thin
dispersion over a vast territory. In large town populations excitement
grows by the sympathy of numbers, but South Africa has only five or six
towns in which a public meeting of even three hundred citizens could be
gathered. The Dutch are tardy, cautious and reserved. The doggedness of
their ancestors who resisted Philip II. of Spain lives in them still.
They have a slow tenacious intensity, like that of a forest fire, which
smoulders long among the prostrate trunks before it bursts into flame.
But they are, except when deeply stirred, conservative and slow to move.
They dislike change so much as to be unwilling to change their
representatives or their ministers. A Cape statesman told me that the
Dutch members of the Assembly would often say to him: "We think you
wrong in this instance, and we are going to vote against you, but we
don't want to turn you out; stay on in office as before." So President
Kruger observed to me, in commenting on the frequent changes of
government in England: "When we have found an ox who makes a good leader
of the team, we keep him there, instead of shifting the cattle about in
the hope of finding a better one;" and in saying this he expressed the
feelings and habits of his race. To an Englishman the Dutch seem to want
that interest in politics for the sake of politics which marks not only
the English (and still more the Irish) at home but also the English
stock in North America and Australia. But this very fact makes them all
the more fierce and stubborn when some issue arises which stirs their
inmost mind, and it is a fact to be remembered by those who have to
govern them. The things they care most about are their religion, their
race ascendency over the blacks, and their Dutch-African nationality as
represented by their kinsfolk in the two Republics. The first of these
has never been tampered with; the two latter have been at the bottom of
all the serious difficulties that have arisen between them and the
English. That which was in 1897 exciting them and forming the crucial
issue in Cape politics was the strained condition of things which
existed in the Transvaal. I propose in the following chapter to explain
how that condition came about, and to sketch its salient features.
[Footnote 76: There are for the Council seven electoral provinces, each
of which returns three members to the Council, besides one for
Griqualand West and one for British Bechuanaland.
A Redistribution Act of 1898 altered the areas of some of the electoral
divisions, and the number of members returned by some, so as to adjust
representation more accurately to population.]
[Footnote 77: Some friction has, however, arisen from the right claimed
by the Council of amending money bills, especially for the purpose (one
is told) of securing grants to the electoral provinces they represent.]
CHAPTER XXV
THE SITUATION IN THE TRANSVAAL BEFORE THE RISING OF 1895
The agitation at Johannesburg, which Dr. Jameson's expedition turned
into a rising, took place in December, 1895. I spent some time in
Pretoria and Johannesburg in the preceding month, and had good
opportunities of observing the symptoms of political excitement and
gauging the tendencies at work which were so soon to break out and fix
the eyes of the world upon the Witwatersrand. The situation was a
singular one, without parallel in history; and though I did not know
that the catastrophe was so near at hand, it was easy to see that a
conflict must come and would prove momentous to South Africa. Of this
situation as it presented itself to a spectator who had no personal
interest involved, and had the advantage of hearing both sides, I
propose to speak in the present chapter.
To comprehend the position of the Transvaal Boers one must know
something of their history. From the brief sketch of it given in earlier
chapters (Chapters XI and XII) the reader will have gathered how unlike
they are to any European people or to the people of the United States.
Severed from Europe and its influences two hundred years ago, they have,
in some of the elements of modern civilisation, gone back rather than
forward. They were in 1885, when the Rand goldfields were discovered,
and many of them are to-day, a half-nomad race, pasturing their flocks
and herds over the vast spaces of what is still a wilderness, and
migrating in their waggons from the higher to the lower pastures
according to the season of the year--
--Omnia secum
Armentarius Afer agit, tectumque laremque
Armaque, Amyclaeumque canem, Cressamque pharetram.
Living in the open air, and mostly in the saddle, they are strangely
ignorant and old fashioned in all their ideas. They have no literature
and very few newspapers. Their religion is the Dutch and Huguenot
Calvinism of the seventeenth century, rigid and stern, hostile to all
new light, imbued with the spirit of the Old Testament rather than of
the New. They dislike and despise the Kafirs, whom they have regarded as
Israel may have regarded Amalek, and whom they have treated with equal
severity. They hate the English also,[78] who are to them the hereditary
enemies that conquered them at the Cape; that drove them out into the
wilderness in 1836; that annexed their Republic in 1877, and thereafter
broke the promises of self-government made at the time of the
annexation; that stopped their expansion on the west by occupying
Bechuanaland, and on the north by occupying Matabililand and
Mashonaland; and that were still, as they believed, plotting to find
some pretext for overthrowing their independence.[79] This hatred is
mingled with a contempt for those whom they defeated at Laing's Nek and
Majuba Hill, and with a fear born of the sense that the English are
their superiors in knowledge, in activity, and in statecraft. It is
always hard for a nation to see the good qualities of its rivals and the
strong points of its opponents' case; but with the Boers the difficulty
is all the greater because they know little or nothing of the modern
world and of international politics. Two centuries of solitary pastoral
life have not only given them an aversion for commerce, for industrial
pursuits, and for finance, but an absolute incapacity for such
occupations, so that when gold was discovered in their country, they did
not even attempt to work it,[80] but were content to sell, usually for a
price far below its value, the land where the gold-reefs lay, and move
off with the proceeds to resume elsewhere their pastoral life. They have
the virtues appropriate to a simple society. They are brave,
good-natured, hospitable, faithful to one another, generally pure in
their domestic life, seldom touched by avarice or ambition. But the
corruption of their Legislature shows that it is rather to the absence
of temptation than to any superior strength of moral principle that
these merits have been due. For politics they have little taste or gift.
Politics can flourish only where people are massed together, and the
Boer is a solitary being who meets his fellows solely for the purposes
of religion or some festive gathering. Yet ignorant and slow-witted as
they are, inborn ability and resolution are not wanting. They have
indeed a double measure of wariness and wiliness in their intercourse
with strangers, because their habitual suspicion makes them seek in
craft the defence for their ignorance of affairs; while their native
doggedness is confirmed by their belief in the continued guidance and
protection of that Providence whose hand led them through the wilderness
and gave them the victory over all their enemies.
This was the people into whose territory there came, after 1884, a
sudden swarm of gold-seekers. The Uitlanders, as these strangers are
called (the word is not really Dutch, one is told, but an adaptation
from the German), who by 1890 had come to equal and soon thereafter
exceeded the whole number of the Boers, belonged to many stocks. The
natives of England, the Cape, and Natal were the most numerous, but
there were also many English-speaking men from other regions, including
Australians and Americans, as well as a smaller number of Germans and
Scandinavians, some Russians (mostly Jews) and a few Italians and
Frenchmen. Unlike as these newcomers were to one another, they were all
still more unlike the rude hunting and pastoral people among whom they
came. They were miners, traders, financiers, engineers, keen,
nimble-minded men, all more or less skilled in their respective crafts,
all bent on gain, and most of them with that sense of irresponsibility
and fondness for temporary pleasure which a chanceful and uncertain
life, far from home, and relieved from the fear of public opinion, tends
to produce. Except some of the men from the two Colonies, they could not
speak the Boer _Taal_, and had no means of communication, any more than
they had social or moral affinities, with the folk of the land. There
were therefore no beginnings of any assimilation between them and the
latter. They did not affect the Boers, except with a sense of repulsion,
and still less did the Boers affect them. Moreover, there were few
occasions for social intercourse. The Uitlanders settled only along the
Witwatersrand, and were aggregated chiefly in Johannesburg. The Boers
who had lived on the Rand, except a few who came daily into the towns
with their waggons to sell milk and vegetables, retired from it. It was
only in Pretoria and in a few of the villages that there was any direct
social contact between the two elements.
Although less than half of the immigrants came from England, probably
five-sixths spoke English and felt themselves drawn together not only by
language, but by community of ideas and habits. The Australians, the
Americans, and the men from Cape Colony and Natal considered themselves
for all practical--I do not say for all political--purposes to be
English, and English became the general spoken tongue not only of
Johannesburg, but of the mining districts generally. 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.
However, before I describe their sentiments and their schemes, some
account must be given of the government under which they lived.
As was explained in a previous chapter (Chapter XII) the South African
Republic was formed by the union, between 1858 and 1862, of several
small and theretofore practically independent republican communities.
Its constitution was set forth in a document called the Grondwet,[81] or
"Fundamental Law," enacted in 1858 and partly based on a prior draft of
1855. It is a very crude, and indeed rude, instrument, occasionally
obscure, and containing much matter not fit for a constitution. It
breathes, however, a thoroughly free spirit, save as regards Kafirs and
Roman Catholics, recognizing the people as a source of power, laying
down the old distinction between the three departments of
government,--legislative, executive, and judicial,--and guaranteeing
some of the primordial rights of the citizen. By it the government was
vested in a President, head of the executive, and elected for five
years, an Executive Council of five members (three elected and two _ex
officio_), and a Legislature called the Volksraad, elected by the
citizens on a very extended suffrage, and declared to be the supreme
power in the State. The Volksraad consists of one chamber, in which
there are at present twenty-four members. The President has the right of
speaking, though not of voting, in it, but has no veto on its action.
Though there are few constitutions anywhere which give such unlimited
power to the Legislature, the course of events--oft-recurring troubles
of all sorts, native wars, internal dissensions, financial pressure,
questions with the British Government--have made the President
practically more important than the Legislature, and, in fact, the main
force in the Republic. The Executive Council has exerted little power
and commanded little deference, while the Volksraad has usually been
guided by the President and has never taken the direction of affairs out
of his hands. Both legislation and administration have been carried on
in a rough-and-ready fashion, sometimes in violation of the strict
letter of the law. In particular the provision of the Grondwet, that no
statute should be enacted without being submitted for a period of three
months to the people, has been practically ignored by the enactment as
laws of a large number of resolutions on matters not really urgent,
although the Grondwet permits this to be done only in cases which do not
admit of delay. This has, however, been rectified by a law passed
subsequently to 1895, altering the provision of the Grondwet.
In 1881, when the Republic recovered its independence, there were
neither roads, railways, nor telegraphs in the country. Its towns were
rough hamlets planted round a little church. Its people had only the
bare necessaries of life. The taxes produced scarcely any revenue. The
treasury was empty, and the Government continued to be hard-pressed for
money and unable to construct public works or otherwise improve the
country till 1885, when the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand began
to turn a stream of gold into its coffers. Riches brought new
difficulties and new temptations. Immigrants rushed in,--capitalists,
miners, and traders. As the produce of the gold-field increased, it
became plain that they would come in ever increasing numbers. The old
Boers took alarm. The rush could hardly have been stopped, and to stop
it would have involved a check in the expansion of the revenue. It was
accordingly determined to maintain the political _status quo_ by
excluding these newcomers from political rights. The Grondwet declares
(Article VI.) that "the territory is open for every foreigner who obeys
the laws of the Republic," and as late as 1881 an immigrant could
acquire the electoral franchise after a residence of two years. In 1882,
however, this period was raised to five years, and in 1887 to fifteen.
In 1890, by which time the unenfranchised strangers had begun to agitate
for the right to be represented, a nominal concession was made by the
creation of a new chamber, called the Second Volksraad, for membership
in which a newcomer might be eligible after taking an oath of allegiance
followed by four years' residence, the right to vote at elections to
this chamber being attainable after the oath and two years' residence.
This Second Raad, however, is limited to the consideration of certain
specified subjects, not including taxation, and its acts can be
overruled by the First Volksraad, while its assent is not required to
the acts of that body. It has therefore turned out little better than a
sham, having, in fact, been created only as a tub to throw to the
Uitlander whale. The effect of the legislation of 1890 and subsequent
years down to 1894 (legislation too intricate and confused to be set
forth in detail here) has been to debar any immigrant from acquiring the
right to vote for the First Volksraad until he has passed the age of
forty and resided for at least twelve years in the country after taking
the oath and being placed on the local government lists, lists on which
the local authorities are said to be nowise careful to place him. Nor
does birth in the Republic confer citizenship, unless the father has
taken the oath of allegiance. President Kruger, who has held office
since 1881, was chiefly instrumental in passing these laws, for his
force of character, long experience of affairs, and services in the
crisis of 1877-81 gave him immense power over the Raad, in which he
constantly spoke, threatening the members with the loss of national
independence unless they took steps to stem the rising tide of foreign
influence. As a patriot, he feared the English; as a Boer Puritan of the
old stubborn stock, he hated all foreigners and foreign ways, seeing in
them the ruin of the ancient customs of his people. He carried this
antagonism so far that, being unable to find among his citizens men
sufficiently educated to deal with the growing mass of administrative
work which the increase of wealth, industry, and commerce brought, he
refused to appoint Dutch-speaking men from the Cape or Natal, because
they were natives of British Colonies, and recruited his civil service
from Holland. The Hollanders he imported were far more strange to the
country than Cape Dutchmen would have been, and the Boers did not, and
do not now, take kindly to them. But they were, by the necessity of
their position, anti-English, and that was enough.
Meanwhile the old Boer virtues were giving way under new temptations.
The Volksraad (as is believed all over South Africa) became corrupt,
though of course there have always been pure and upright men among its
members. The civil service was not above suspicion. Rich men and
powerful corporations surrounded those who had concessions to give or
the means of influencing legislation, whether directly or indirectly.
The very inexperience of the Boer ranchman who came up as a member of
the Volksraad made him an easy prey. All sorts of abuses sprang up,
while the primary duties of a government were very imperfectly
performed. Hardly any administration was needed while the Transvaal had
a population of wandering stock-farmers. But when one hundred thousand
white immigrants were congregated along the Witwatersrand, and were
employing some fifty thousand native workpeople, an efficient police, an
abundant water-supply, good sanitary regulations, and laws to keep
liquor from the natives became urgently needed; and none of these things
was provided, although taxation continued to rise and the treasury was
overflowing. Accordingly, the discontent of the Uitlanders increased. It
was no longer a mere question of obtaining political rights for their
own sake, it was also a question of winning political power in order to
reform the administration, and so secure those practical benefits which
the President and the Volksraad and the Hollander officials were either
unable or unwilling to give. In 1892 an association, called the National
Union, was formed by a number of Uitlanders, "to obtain, by all
constitutional means, equal rights for all citizens of the Republic, and
the redress of all grievances." Although nearly all those who formed it
were natives either of England or of the British Colonies, it did not
seek to bring the country under British control, but included among its
aims "the maintenance of the independence of the Republic."
Nevertheless, it incurred the hostility of the President and his
friends, and its petitions were unceremoniously repulsed. This tended to
accentuate the anti-Boer feeling of the Uitlanders, so that when Sir H.
Loch, the High Commissioner, came up from the Cape in 1894 to negotiate
regarding Swaziland and other pending questions, he was made the object
of a vehement demonstration at Pretoria. The English took the horses out
of his carriage and drew it through the streets, waving the British flag
even over the head of President Kruger himself, and shouting "Reform!
reform!" This incident redoubled Mr. Kruger's apprehensions, but did not
shake his purpose. It suggested new plans to the Uitlanders, who had
(shortly before) been further incensed by the demand of the Government
that they should, although debarred from the suffrage, serve in a
military commando sent against the Kafir chief Malaboch. Despairing of
constitutional agitation, they began to provide themselves with arms and
to talk of a general rising. Another cause, which I have not yet
mentioned, had recently sharpened their eagerness for reforms. About
1892 the theory was propounded that the gold-bearing reefs might be
worked not only near the surface, but also at much greater depths, and
that, owing to the diminution of the angle of the dip as the beds
descend into the earth, a much greater mass of gold-bearing rock might
be reached than had been formerly deemed possible. This view, soon
confirmed by experimental borings, promised a far longer life to the
mines than had been previously expected. Those who had come to the Rand
thinking they might probably leave it after a few years now conceived
the idea of permanent residence, while the directors of the great mining
companies, perceiving how much their industry might be developed,
smarted more than ever under the maladministration and exactions from
which the industry suffered.
These were the events and these the causes that had brought about the
state of things which a visitor saw at Pretoria and Johannesburg in
November, 1895. Revolution was already in the air, but few could guess
what form it would take. The situation was a complicated one, because
each of the two main sections of the population, Boers and Uitlanders,
was itself subdivided into minor groups. The Uitlanders were of many
nationalities; but those who spoke English were so much the most
numerous that I shall speak of them only, dismissing the remainder with
the remark that while many of them sympathized with the Reform movement,
few of them gave it active support, while most of the Germans, moved by
anti-British feeling, favoured President Kruger's Government.
The English section, including Cape and Natal men, Australians and
Americans, consisted of three sets of persons: the middle classes, the
capitalist mine-owners, and the working men. The middle class people,
traders, professional men, engineers, and the like, either belonged to
or were in sympathy with the National Union. It was they who had formed
it. They had recently presented to the Volksraad a petition, signed by
thirty-eight thousand non-enfranchised residents, asking for reforms,
and this petition had been scornfully rejected, one member saying, with
no disapproval from his colleagues, that if the strangers wanted to get
what they called their rights they would have to fight for them. Their
agitation had been conducted publicly and on constitutional lines,
without threats of force. It was becoming plain, however, in 1895, that
some at least of the leaders were now prepared to use force and would
take arms whenever a prospect of success appeared. But under what flag
would they fight? Would they adhere to their original idea, and maintain
an independent South African Republic when they had ejected the dominant
oligarchy and secured political power for all residents? Or would they
hoist the Union Jack and carry the country back under the British
Crown? No one could speak positively, but most thought that the former
course would be taken. The Americans would be for it. Most of the Cape
people who came of Dutch stock would be for it. Even among the pure
English, some talked bitterly of Majuba Hill, and declared they would
not fight to give the country back to Britain which had abandoned it in
1881.
The motives of these Reformers were simple and patent. Those of them who
had been born and lived long in Africa thought it an intolerable wrong
that, whereas everywhere else in South Africa they could acquire the
suffrage and the means of influencing the government after two or three
years' residence, they were in the Transvaal condemned to a long
disability, and denied all voice in applying the taxes which they paid.
Thinking of South Africa as practically one country, they complained
that here, and here only, were they treated as aliens and inferiors.
Both they and all the other Uitlanders had substantial grievances to
redress. Food was inordinately dear, because a high tariff had been
imposed on imports. Water-supply, police, sanitation, were all
neglected. Not only was Dutch the official language, but in the public
schools Dutch was then the only medium of instruction; and English
children were compelled to learn arithmetic, geography, and history out
of Dutch text-books. It was these abuses, rather than any wish to bring
the Transvaal under the British flag, or even to establish a South
African Confederation, that disposed them to revolt against a Government
which they despised.
The mine-owning capitalists were a very small class, but powerful by
their wealth, their intelligence, and their influence over those whom
they employed. They had held aloof from the agitation which began in
1892, because they did not themselves care for the franchise, not
meaning to spend their lives in the Transvaal, and because they knew
that political disturbances would interfere with the mining industry.
The leading man, and certainly one of the ablest men among them,[82]
foresaw trouble as far back as June, 1894, when he wrote that the unrest
of the country came "from the open hostility of the Government to the
Uitlanders, and its hostility to all principles of sound Government; the
end will be revolution;" and a few weeks later wrote again: "The mining
companies ought to have arms. The courage of the Boers is exaggerated.
If they knew there were in Johannesburg three thousand well-armed men,
they would not talk so loud of destroying the town." Nevertheless, these
capitalists, like capitalists all over the world, disliked force, and
long refused to throw themselves into the movement. They raised a fund
for the purpose of trying "to get a better Volksraad"--whether by
influencing members or by supplying funds for election expenses has
never been made clear. However, these efforts failed, and they became at
last convinced that the loss of their industry from misgovernment was,
and would continue, greater than any loss which temporary disturbances
might involve. The vista of deep-level mining, which had now opened
itself before them, made their grievances seem heavier. Before they
entered on a new series of enterprises, which would at first be costly,
they wished to relieve mining from the intolerable burdens of a dynamite
monopoly, foolishly or corruptly granted to a firm which charged an
extortionate price for this necessity; of a high tariff both on
food-stuffs, involving large expenses in feeding the workpeople, and on
mine machinery; of extravagantly heavy railway rates for coal; and of a
system which, by making it easy for the Kafir workers to get drunk,
reduced the available amount of native labour by one-third, and
increased the number of accidents in the mines. These burdens made the
difference of one or two or three per cent, on the dividend in the best
mines, threatened the prospect of any dividend on the second best, and
made it useless to persevere with the working of a third class, where
the ore was of a still lower grade. Such were the considerations which
at last determined several of the leading mine-owners to throw in their
lot with the Reform party; and the fusion of the two streams gave a new
force to the movement. This fusion took place in the middle of 1895, and
had become known to many, though not to all, of the Johannesburgers in
November of that year. It inspired them with fresh hopes, and made them
think that the day of action was near. The object of these capitalists
was to obtain better government, not the extinction of the Republic, or
its addition to the territories of Britain. This, however, was not the
main object of Mr. Rhodes (then prime minister of Cape Colony and
managing director of the British South Africa Company), with whom they
were (though the fact was known only to a very few of the leaders) by
this time in communication. Although he was largely interested in some
of the mines, his aim was, as even his opponents have now admitted, not
a pecuniary one. It was (as is generally believed) to prevent the
Transvaal from passing under anti-British influences, and to secure that
it should ultimately become incorporated in a confederation of the
several States and Colonies of South Africa under the British Crown.
There were probably others among the leaders who shared this purpose;
but some did not, and here was a question which would seem to have
divided the chiefs as it divided the rank and file. A rising there was
to be. But under what flag? This vital point was left unsettled, and at
the last moment it caused a fatal delay.
The third class of Uitlanders consisted of the white workmen. It was the
most numerous class, and its action would evidently be decisive. When
the visitor who heard the situation discussed--for there was no secrecy
observed--asked about the attitude of the working men, he received no
very definite answer. The general belief was that they would respond to
a call to arms; some from patriotism, because most of them were
Englishmen and Australians; some because they meant to make the
Transvaal their home, and had an interest in good government; some from
sympathy with their employers; some from the love of a fight, because
they were men of mettle. One or two of the Reform leaders were able
speakers, and meant to rouse them by eloquence when the proper moment
arrived. The result showed that a majority--that is, of the
English-speaking workmen--were willing to fight. But when the day of
battle seemed to be at hand, many, including most of the Cornish miners,
proved to be indifferent, and departed by train amid the jeers of their
comrades.
These three sections of Uitlanders constituted a numerical majority not
merely of the dwellers on the Rand, but of the whole white population of
the country.[83] There are about 65,000 Boers, all told, and about
24,000 male citizens over the age of sixteen. The English-speaking
Uitlanders numbered nearly 100,000, of whom fully one-half were adult
males. Seven-eighths of these were gathered on the Rand. Had they been
armed and drilled and unanimous, they would have been irresistible. But
they were not unanimous, and were, moreover, not only unarmed but also
unorganized, being a crowd of persons suddenly gathered from the four
winds of heaven.
Over against the Uitlanders stood the native Boer population, among whom
we must distinguish two classes. The majority, consisting of the old
"true blues," who hated the British Government and clung to their
national ways, supported the Boer Government in its stubborn refusal to
grant reforms. The President in particular had repeatedly declared
himself against any concession, insisting that no concessions would
satisfy the disaffected. He looked upon the whole movement as a scheme
to destroy the independence of the country and hand it over to England.
Exercising by his constant harangues in the Volksraad, what has been
called a "dictatorship of persuasion", he warned the people that their
customs, their freedom, their religion, were at stake, and could be
saved only by keeping the newcomers out of power. He was confirmed in
this policy of resistance by the advice of his Hollander officials, and
especially of the State Secretary, an able and resolute man.
But the President, though powerful, was not omnipotent. There existed a
considerable party opposed to him, which had nearly overthrown him at
the last preceding presidential election. There was in the Volksraad a
liberal minority, which advocated reforms. There were among the country
Boers a number of moderate men who disliked the Hollander influence and
the maladministration of the Government, and one was told (though with
what truth I could not ascertain) that the trekking which went on out of
the Transvaal into Mashonaland and to the far north-west was partly due
to this discontent. There was also much opposition among the legal
profession, Dutch as well as English, for attacks had been made upon the
independence of the judiciary, and the reckless conduct of legislation
gave displeasure. So far back as 1894 the Chief Justice, a man greatly
respected for his abilities and his services to the State, had delivered
a public address warning the people against the dangers which threatened
them from neglect of the provisions of the constitution. Whether this
party of opposition among the enfranchised citizens would have aided the
Reform movement was doubtful. They would certainly not have done so had
the British flag been raised. But if the movement had sought only the
destruction of Hollander influence and the redress of grievances, they
would at any rate have refused to join in resisting it.
"Why," it may be asked--"why, under these circumstances, with so many
open enemies, and so many wavering supporters, did not President Kruger
bow to the storm and avert revolt by reasonable concessions?" He had not
a friend in the world except Germany, which had gone out of her way to
offer him sympathy. But Germany was distant, and he had no seaport. The
people of the Orange Free State had been ready to help the Transvaal in
1881, and from among the Boers of Cape Colony there might in the crisis
of that year have come substantial succour. But both the Free State and
the Cape Boers had been alienated by the unfriendly attitude of the
President in commercial matters and by his refusal to employ Cape
Dutchmen in the Transvaal service. The annoyance of these kindred
communities had been very recently accentuated by a dispute about the
drifts (_i.e._, fords where waggons cross) on the Orange River. It was
therefore improbable that any help could be obtained from outside
against a purely internal movement, which aimed solely at reform, and
did not threaten the life of the Republic.
The answer to the question just put is to be found not so much in the
material interests as in the sentiments of the old Boer party. They
extended their hatred of the English, or rather perhaps of the British
Government, to the English-speaking Uitlanders generally, and saw in the
whole movement nothing but an English plot. If the President had cared
to distinguish, he might have perceived that the capitalists cared, not
for the franchise, but for the success of their mines; and he might, by
abolishing the wasteful concessions,--which did not even enrich the
State, but only the objects of its ill-directed bounty,--by reducing the
tariff, and by keeping drink from the blacks, have disarmed the
hostility of the mine owners, and have had only the National Union to
deal with. Even the National Union would have lost most of its support
if he had reformed the administration and allowed English to be used in
the schools. He might have taken a hint from the Romans, who, when they
admitted a large body of new citizens, managed to restrict their voting
power, and might, in granting the suffrage to those who had resided for
a certain period on the Rand, have kept the representation of the Rand
district so small that it could not turn the balance against the old
Boer party in the Volksraad. Had he gone further, and extended the
franchise to all immigrants after, say, five years' residence, he might
not only have disarmed opposition, but have made the South African
Republic a powerful State, no considerable section of whose inhabitants
would thereafter have thought of putting themselves under the British
Crown. To have gone this length would no doubt have been to take the
risk that a Republic of Boers might become before long a Republic of
Englishmen, with an English President; and from this he naturally
recoiled, not merely out of personal ambition, but out of honest
national feeling. But short of this, he might, by dividing his enemies,
have averted a grave peril, from which he was in the end delivered, not
by his own strength, but by the mistakes of his antagonists. However, he
kept the ship steadily on her course. He had grown accustomed to the
complaints of the agitators, and thought they would not go beyond
agitation. When pressed to take some repressive measure, he answered
that you must wait for the tortoise to put its head out before you hit
it, and he appeared to think it would keep its head in. He is one of the
most interesting figures of our time; this old President, shrewd, cool,
dogged, wary, courageous; typifying the qualities of his people, and
strong because he is in sympathy with them; adding to his trust in
Providence no small measure of worldly craft; uneducated, but able to
foil the statesmen of Europe at their own weapons, and perhaps all the
more capable because his training has been wholly that of an eventful
life and not of books.
This was how things stood in the Transvaal in November, 1895. People
have talked of a conspiracy, but never before was there, except on the
stage,[84] so open a conspiracy. Two-thirds of the action--there was
another third, which has only subsequently become known--went on before
the public. The visitor had hardly installed himself in an hotel at
Pretoria before people began to tell him that an insurrection was
imminent, that arms were being imported, that Maxim guns were hidden,
and would be shown to him if he cared to see them, an invitation which
he did not feel called on to accept. In Johannesburg little else was
talked of, not in dark corners, but at the club where everybody lunches,
and between the acts at the play. There was something humorous in
hearing the English who dominate in so many other places, talking of
themselves as a downtrodden nationality, and the Boers as their
oppressors, declaring that misgovernment could not be endured for ever,
and that those who would be free themselves must strike the blow. The
effect was increased by the delightful unconsciousness of the English
that similar language is used in Ireland to denounce Saxon tyranny. The
knowledge that an insurrection was impending was not confined to the
Transvaal. All over South Africa one heard the same story; all over
South Africa men waited for news from Johannesburg, though few expected
the explosion to come so soon. One thing alone was not even guessed at.
In November it did not seem to have crossed any one's mind that the
British South Africa Company would have any hand in the matter. Had it
been supposed that it was concerned, much of the sympathy which the
movement received would have vanished.
As I am not writing a history of the revolution, but merely describing
the Johannesburg aspects of its initial stage, I need not attempt the
task--for which, indeed, no sufficient materials have as yet been given
to the world--of explaining by what steps and on what terms the
Company's managing director and its administrator and its police came
into the plan. But it seems probable that the Johannesburg leaders did
not begin to count upon help from the Company's force before the middle
of 1895 at earliest, and that they did not regard that force as anything
more than an ultimate resource in case of extreme need. Knowing that the
great body of the Uitlanders, on whose support they counted, would be
unorganised and leaderless, they desired, as the moment for action
approached, to have a military nucleus round which their raw levies
might gather, in case the Boers seemed likely to press them hard. But
this was an afterthought. When the movement began it was a purely
Johannesburg movement, and it was intended to bear that character to the
end, and to avoid all appearance of being an English irruption.[85]
To the visitor who saw and heard what I have been describing--and no
Englishman could pass through without seeing and hearing it--two
questions naturally presented themselves. One related to the merits of
the case. This was a question which only a visitor considered, for the
inhabitants were drawn by race or interest to one side or the other. It
raised a point often debated by moralists: What are the circumstances
which justify insurrection? Some cases are too clear for argument.
Obviously any subject of a bloodthirsty tyrant ruling without or against
law is justified in taking up arms. No one doubts that the Christian
subjects of the Sultan ought to rebel if they had a prospect of success;
and those who try to make them rebel are blamed only because the
prospect of success is wanting. On the other hand, it is clear that
subjects of a constitutional Government, conducted in accordance with
law, do wrong and must be punished, if they take arms, even when they
have grievances to redress. Here, however, was a case which seemed to
lie between the extreme instances. The Uitlanders, it need hardly be
said, did not concern themselves with nice distinctions. In the interior
of South Africa Governments and Constitutions were still in a
rudimentary stage; nor had the habit of obeying them been fully formed.
So many non-legal things had been done in a high-handed way, and so many
raids into native territories had been made by the Boers themselves,
that the sort of respect for legality which Europeans feel was still
imperfectly developed in all sections of the population. Those of the
Reformers, however, who sought to justify their plans, argued that the
Boer Government was an oligarchy which overtaxed its subjects, and yet
refused them those benefits which a civilised Government is bound to
give. It was the Government of a small and ignorant minority, and, since
they believed it to be corrupt as well as incompetent, it inspired no
respect. Peaceful agitation had proved useless. Did not the sacred
principle of no taxation without representation, which had been held to
justify the American Revolution, justify those who had been patient so
long in trying to remove their grievances by force, of course with as
little effusion of blood as possible?
On the other hand, there was much to be said for the Boers, not only
from the legal, but from the sentimental, side of the case. They had
fled out of Cape Colony sixty years before, had suffered many perils and
triumphed over many foes, had recovered their independence by their own
courage when Britain had deprived them of it, had founded a commonwealth
upon their own lines and could now keep it as their own only by the
exclusion of those aliens in blood, speech and manners who had recently
come among them. They had not desired these strangers, nor had the
strangers come for anything but gold. True, they had opened the land to
them, they had permitted them to buy the gold-reefs, they had filled
their coffers with the taxes which the miners paid. But the strangers
came with notice that it was a Boer State they were entering, and most
of them had come, not to stay, and to identify themselves with the old
citizens, but to depart after amassing gain. Were these immigrants of
yesterday to be suffered to overturn the old Boer State, and build up on
its ruins a new one under which the Boer would soon find his cherished
customs gone and himself in turn a stranger? Had not the English many
other lands to rule, without appropriating this one also? Put the
grievances of which the Uitlanders complained at their highest, and they
did not amount to wrongs such as had in other countries furnished the
usual pretext for insurrection. Life, religion, property, personal
freedom, were not at stake. The worst any one suffered was to be
overtaxed and to want some of those advantages which the old citizens
had never possessed and did not care to have. These were hardships, but
were they hardships such as could justify a recourse to arms?
The other question which an observer asked himself was whether an
insurrection would succeed. Taking a cooler view of the position than it
was easy for a resident to take, he felt some doubt on this point, and
it occurred to him to wonder whether, if the Government was really so
corrupt as the Uitlanders described it, the latter might not attain
their object more cheaply, as well as peaceably, by using those
arguments which were said to prevail with many members of the Volksraad.
Supposing this to be impossible,--and it may well have been found
impossible, for men not scrupulous in lesser matters may yet refuse to
tamper with what they hold vital,--were the forces at the disposal of
the Reform leaders sufficient to overthrow the Government? It had only
two or three hundred regular troops, artillerymen stationed at Pretoria,
and said to be not very efficient. But the militia included all Boers
over sixteen; and the Boer, though not disciplined in the European way,
was accustomed to shoot, inured to hardships by his rough life, ready to
fight to the death for his independence. This militia, consisting of
eighteen thousand men or more, would have been, when all collected, more
than a match in the field for any force the Uitlanders were prepared to
arm. And in point of fact, when the rising took place, the latter had
only some three thousand rifles ready, while few of their supporters
knew anything of fighting. As the Reform leaders were aware that they
would be out-matched if the Government had time to gather its troops, it
has been subsequently hinted that they meant to carry Pretoria by a
_coup de main_, capturing the President, and forthwith, before the Boer
militia could assemble, to issue a call for a general popular vote or
plebiscite of all the inhabitants, Boers and Uitlanders, which should
determine the future form of government. Others have thought that the
Reformers would not have taken the offensive, but have entrenched
themselves in Johannesburg, and have held out there, appealing meanwhile
to the High Commissioner, as representative of the Paramount Power, to
come up, interpose his mediation, and arrange for the peaceable taking
of such a general popular vote as I have mentioned. To do this it might
not have been necessary to defend the town for more than a week or ten
days, before which time the general sympathy which they expected from
the rest of South Africa would have made itself felt. Besides, there
were in the background (though this was of course unknown to the visitor
and to all but a few among the leaders) the British South Africa
Company's police force by this time beginning to gather at Pitsani, who
were pledged to come if summoned, and whose presence would have enabled
them to resist a Boer assault on the town.
As everybody knows, the question of strength was never tested. The
rising was to have been ushered in by a public meeting at the end of
December. This meeting was postponed till the 6th of January; but the
Company's police force, instead of waiting to be summoned, started for
Johannesburg at the time originally fixed. Their sudden entrance, taking
the Reform leaders by surprise and finding them unprepared, forced the
movement to go off at half-cock, and gave to it an aspect quite
different from that which it had hitherto borne. That which had been a
local agitation now appeared in the light of an English invasion, roused
all the Boers, of whatever party, to defend their country, and drew from
the High Commissioner an emphatic disclaimer and condemnation of the
expedition, which the home Government repeated. The rising at
Johannesburg, which the entrance of the police had precipitated, ended
more quickly than it had begun, as soon as the surrender of the
Company's forces had become known, for the representatives of the High
Commissioner besought the Uitlanders to lay down their arms and save
the lives of the leaders of that force.[86] This they did, and, after
what had happened, there was really nothing else to be done.
The most obvious moral of the failure is the old one, that revolutions
are not so easy to carry out as they look when one plans them
beforehand. Of all the insurrections and conspiracies recorded in
history, probably not five per cent. have succeeded. The reason is that
when a number of private persons not accustomed to joint action have to
act secretly together, unable to communicate freely with one another,
and still less able to appeal beforehand to those on whose eventual
support they rely, the chances of disagreement, of misunderstanding, of
failure to take some vital step at exactly the right moment, are
innumerable; while the Government in power has the advantage of
united counsels, and can issue orders to officers who are
habituated to prompt obedience.[87] In this instance, the plan was being
conducted by three groups of persons in three places distant from one
another,--Johannesburg, Pitsani, and Cape Town,--so that the chances of
miscarriage were immensely increased. Had there been one directing mind
and will planted at Johannesburg, the proper centre for direction, the
movement might have proved successful.
Another reflection will have occurred to the reader, as it occurred to
the visitor who saw the storm brewing in November, 1895: Why could not
the Reformers have waited a little longer? Time was on their side. The
Uitlanders were rapidly growing by the constant stream of immigrants. In
a few years more they would have so enormously outnumbered the native
Boers that not only would their material strength have been formidable,
but their claim to the franchise would have become practically
irresistible. Moreover, President Kruger was an old man, no longer in
strong health. When age and infirmity compelled his retirement, neither
of the persons deemed most likely to succeed would have thrown obstacles
in the way of reform, nor would any successor have been able to oppose a
resistance as strong as Mr. Kruger's had proved. These considerations
were so obvious that one asks why, with the game in their hands at the
end of a few years, the various groups concerned did not wait quietly
till the ripe fruit fell into their mouths. Different causes have been
assigned for their action. It is said that they believed that the
Transvaal Government was on the eve of entering into secret relations,
in violation of the Convention of 1884, with a European Power, and that
this determined them to strike before any such new complication arose.
Others hint that some of those concerned believed that a revolution must
in any case soon break out in the Transvaal, that a revolution would
turn the country into an independent English Republic, that such a
republic would spread Republican feelings among the British Colonies,
and lead before long to their separation from the mother country. To
prevent this, they were resolved to take control of the movement and
steer it away from those rocks. Without denying that these or other
still more conjectural motives which one hears assigned may have
influenced some of the more long-sighted leaders,--and the Transvaal,
with its vast wealth and growing population, was no doubt becoming the
centre of gravity in South African politics,--I conceive that a more
obvious cause of haste may be found in the impatience of those Uitlander
residents who were daily vexed by grievances for which they could get no
redress, and in the annoyance of the capitalists, who saw their mining
interests languishing and the work of development retarded. When people
have long talked over their wrongs and long planned schemes for throwing
off a detested yoke, they yield at last to their own impatience, feeling
half ashamed that so much talk should not have been followed by action.
Whatever were the motives at work, whatever the ultimate aims of the
leaders, few things could have been more deplorable than what in fact
occurred. Since the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 nothing has done
so much to rekindle racial hostility in South Africa; nothing has so
much retarded and still impedes the settlement of questions which were
already sufficiently difficult.
I have described in this chapter only such part of the circumstances
which led up to the rising as I actually saw, and have, for reasons
already stated, confined myself to a narrative of the main facts, and a
statement of the theories put forward, abstaining from comments on the
conduct of individuals. The expedition of the British South Africa
Company's police took place after I left the country. Of it and of what
led to it oral accounts have been given by some of the principal actors,
as well as by many independent pens, while the visible phenomena of the
Johannesburg movement have been less described and are certainly less
understood. I have dwelt on them the more fully not only because they
are a curious episode in history which will not soon lose its interest,
but also because the political and industrial situation on the
Witwatersrand remained in 1897 substantially what it was in November
1895. Some few reforms have been given, some others promised. But the
mine owners did not cease to complain, and the Uitlanders were excluded
from the suffrage as rigorously as ever. The Transvaal difficulty
remained, and still disturbed the tranquillity of South Africa. The
problem is not a simple one, and little or no progress had been made
towards its solution.
[Footnote 78: Since the first edition of this book appeared, Mr. Selous
has told me--and no one's authority is higher, for he has lived much
amongst them--that this statement is exaggerated, and that, great as has
been and is the dislike of the Boers to the British Government, the
average Boer is friendly to the individual Englishman.]
[Footnote 79: I was told that their frequent term (when they talk among
themselves) for an Englishman is "rotten egg," but some persons who had
opportunities of knowing have informed me, since this book was first
published, that this is not so. Another common Boer name for an
Englishman is "red-neck," drawn from the fact that the back of an
Englishman's neck is often burnt red by the sun. This does not happen to
the Boer, who always wears a broad-brimmed hat.]
[Footnote 80: Their laws at one time forbade the working of gold mines
altogether, for they held with the Roman poet (_aurum inrepertum et sic
melius situm_) that it does least harm when undiscovered.]
[Footnote 81: I have elsewhere analysed (in the _Forum_ for April, 1896)
this constitution, and discussed the question whether it is to be
regarded as a true Rigid constitution, like that of the United States,
of the Swiss Confederation, and of the Orange Free State, or as a
Flexible constitution, alterable by the ordinary legislative machinery.
Further examination of the matter has confirmed me in the view there
suggested, that the constitution belongs to the latter category.]
[Footnote 82: Copies of the letters written by Mr. Lionel Phillips were
seized after the rising and published by the Boer Government.]
[Footnote 83: There were some 700,000 Kafirs in the Transvaal, but no
one reckoned them as possible factors in a contest, any more than sheep
or oxen.]
[Footnote 84: This operatic element appeared in the rising itself, when
a fire-escape, skilfully disguised to resemble a Maxim gun, was moved
backward and forward across the stage at Johannesburg for the purpose of
frightening the Boers at a distance.]
[Footnote 85: It is hardly necessary to point out the absurdity of the
suggestion that the Company intended to seize the Transvaal for itself.
The Company could no more have taken the Transvaal than it could have
taken Natal. It was for self-government that the insurgent-Uitlanders
were to rise, and they would have objected to be governed by the Company
at least as much as they objected to be governed by the Boers. Such
individual members of the Company as held Rand mining shares would have
profited by the better administration of the country under a reformed
Government, but they would have profited in exactly the same way as
shareholders in Paris or Amsterdam. This point, obvious enough to any
one who knows South Africa, is clearly put by M. Mermeix, in his
interesting little book, _La Revolution de Johannesburg_. Other fanciful
hypotheses have been put forward, which it seems needless to notice.]
[Footnote 86: Much controversy has arisen as to the promise which the
Boer commandant made, when the police force surrendered, that the lives
of its leaders should be spared. Whatever might have happened
immediately after the surrender, they would in any case not have been
put to death in cold blood at Pretoria, for that would have been a
blunder, which a man so astute and so far from cruel as the President
would not have committed.]
[Footnote 87: When a conspiracy succeeds, the chief conspirator is
usually some one already wielding some civil or military power, as Louis
Napoleon did when he overcame the French Assembly in 1851.]
CHAPTER XXVI
THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICA
Though I do not attempt to present in this book an account of the
agricultural and mineral resources of South Africa, some words must be
said regarding its economic prospects--that is to say, regarding the
natural sources of wealth which it possesses, their probable
development, and the extent to which that development will increase the
still scanty population. The political and social future of the country
must so largely depend on its economic future that any one who desires
to comprehend those political problems to the solution of which the
people are moving, must first consider what sort of a people, and how
large a people, the material conditions which nature furnishes are
likely to produce.
The chief charm of travel through a new country is the curiosity which
the thought of its future inspires. In South Africa, a land singularly
unlike any part of Europe or of North America, this curiosity is keenly
felt by the visitor. When he begins to speculate on the future, his
first question is, Will these wildernesses ever become peopled, as most
of North America and a large part of Australia have now been peopled,
and if so, what will be the character of the population? Will South
Africa become one of the great producing or manufacturing countries of
the world? Will it furnish a great market for European goods? Will it be
populous enough and rich enough to grow into one of the Powers of the
southern hemisphere?
Let us begin by recalling the physical features of the country. Most of
it is high and dry; all of it is hot. The parts which are high and dry
are also healthy, and fit for the races of Europe to dwell in. But are
they equally fit to support a dense population?
South Africa has three great natural sources of wealth: agricultural
land, pasture-land, and minerals. The forests are too scanty to be worth
regarding: they are not, and probably never will be, sufficient to
supply its own needs. Fisheries also are insignificant, and not likely
ever to constitute an industry, so we may confine ourselves to the three
first named.
Of these three agriculture is now, and has hitherto been, by far the
least important. Out of an area of two hundred and twenty-one thousand
square miles in Cape Colony alone, probably not more than one
one-thousandth part is now under any kind of cultivation, whether by
natives or by whites; and in the whole country, even if we exclude the
German and Portuguese territories, the proportion must be even smaller.
There are no figures available, so one can make only the roughest
possible conjecture. As regards more than half of the country, this fact
is explained by the dryness of the climate. Not only the Karroo region
in the interior of Cape Colony, but also the vast region stretching
north from the Karroo nearly as far as the west-coast territories of
Portugal, is too arid for tillage. So are large parts of the Free State,
of the Transvaal, and of Matabililand. Where there is a sufficient
rainfall, as in many districts along the south and south-east coasts,
much of the country is too hilly and rough for cultivation; so that it
would be well within the mark to say that of the whole area mentioned
above far less than one-tenth is suitable for raising any kind of crop
without artificial aid. Much, no doubt, remains which might be tilled,
and is not tilled, especially in the country between the south-eastern
edge of the great plateau and the sea; and that this land lies untouched
is due partly to the presence of the Kafir tribes, who occupy more land
than they cultivate, partly to the want or the dearness of labour,
partly to the tendency, confirmed by long habit, of the whites to prefer
stock-farming to tillage. The chief agricultural products are at present
cereals, _i.e._, wheat, oats, maize, and Kafir corn (a kind of millet),
fruit and sugar. The wheat and maize raised are not sufficient for the
consumption of the inhabitants, so that these articles are largely
imported, in spite of the duties levied on them. There is a considerable
and an increasing export of fruit, which goes to Europe,--chiefly to the
English market--in January, February, and March, the midsummer and
autumn of the southern hemisphere. Sugar is grown on the hot lands of
Natal lying along the sea, and might, no doubt, be grown all the way
north along the sea from there to the Zambesi. Rice would do well on the
wet coast lands, but is scarcely at all raised. Tea has lately been
planted on the hills in Natal, and would probably thrive also on the
high lands of Mashonaland. There is plenty of land fit for cotton. The
tobacco of the Transvaal is so pleasant for smoking in a pipe that one
cannot but expect it to be in time much more largely and carefully grown
than it is now. Those who have grown accustomed to it prefer it to any
other. With the exception of the olive, which apparently does not
succeed, and of the vine, which succeeds only in the small district
round Cape Town that enjoys a true summer and winter, nearly all the
staples of the warmer parts of the temperate zone and of subtropical
regions can be grown in some district or other of the country.
The introduction of irrigation would enormously enlarge the area of
tillage, for some of the regions now hopelessly arid, such as the
Karroo, have a soil of surprising fertility, which produces luxuriant
crops when water is led on to it. Millions of acres might be made to
wave with corn were great tanks, like those of India, constructed to
hold the rains of the wet season, for it is not so much the inadequacy
of the rainfall as the fact that it is confined to three or four months,
that makes the country arid. Something might also be hoped from the
digging of artesian wells dug like those which have lately been
successfully bored in Algeria, and have proved so infinitely valuable to
parts of Australia. Already about three hundred thousand acres are
cultivated with the aid of irrigation in Cape Colony. At present,
however, it has been deemed hardly worth while to execute large
irrigation works or to bore wells.[88] The price of cereals has sunk so
low over all the world that South Africans find it cheaper to import
them than to spend capital on breaking up waste lands; and there is
plenty of land already which might be cultivated without irrigation if
there were settlers coming to cultivate it, or if Kafir labour was
sufficiently effective to make it worth the while of enterprising men to
undertake farming on a large scale. The same remarks apply generally to
the other kinds of produce I have mentioned. As population grows, and
the local demand for food increases, more land will be brought under the
plough or the hoe. Some day, perhaps, when the great corn-exporting
countries of to-day--North America, La Plata, central India, southern
Russia--have become so populous as to have much less of their grain
crops to spare for other countries, it will become profitable to
irrigate the Karroo, on which the Kafir of the future will probably
prove a more efficient labourer than he is now. But that day is distant,
and until it arrives, agriculture will continue to play a very
subordinate part in South African industry, and will employ a
comparatively small white population.
Ever since the last years of the seventeenth century, when the settlers
were beginning to spread out from the Cape Peninsula towards the then
still unknown interior, the main occupation of the colonists, first of
the Dutch and afterwards of both Dutch and English, has been the keeping
of cattle and sheep. So it remains to-day. Nearly all the land that is
not rough mountain or waterless desert, and much that to the
inexperienced eye seems a waterless desert, is in the hands of
stock-farmers, whose ranges are often of enormous size, from six
thousand acres upward. In 1893 there were in Cape Colony about 2,000,000
cattle, in Natal 725,000, in the Orange Free State 900,000, and in
Bechuanaland the Bamangwato (Khama's tribe) alone had 800,000. Of these
last only some 5,000 are said to have survived the murrain, which worked
havoc in the other three first-mentioned territories also. In 1896 there
were in Cape Colony alone 14,400,000 sheep and 5,000,000 Angora and
other goats. The number of sheep might be largely increased were more
effective measures against the diseases that affect them carried out.
All the country, even the Kalahari desert, which used to be thought
hopelessly sterile, is now deemed fit to put some sort of live stock
upon, though, of course, the more arid the soil, the greater the area
required to feed one sheep. To the traveller who crosses its weary
stretches in the train, the Karroo seems a barren waste; but it produces
small succulent shrubs much relished by sheep, and every here and there
a well or a stagnant pool may be found which supplies water enough to
keep the creatures alive. Here six acres is the average allowed for one
sheep. Tracts of rough ground, covered with patches of thick scrubby
bushes, are turned to account as ostrich farms, whence large quantities
of feathers are exported to Europe and America. In 1896 the number of
ostriches in Cape Colony was returned as 225,000. The merino sheep,
introduced about seventy years ago, thrives in Cape Colony, and its wool
has become one of the most valuable products of the country. In the Free
State both it and the Angora goat do well, and the pasture lands of that
territory support also great numbers of cattle and some horses. The Free
State and Bechuanaland are deemed to be among the very best ranching
grounds in all South Africa.
Although, as I have said, nearly all the country is more or less fit for
live stock, it must be remembered that this does not imply either great
pecuniary returns or a large population. In most districts a
comparatively wide area of ground is required to feed what would be
deemed in western America a moderate herd or flock, because the pasture
is thin, droughts are frequent, and locusts sometimes destroy a large
part of the herbage. Thus the number of persons for whom the care of
cattle or sheep in any given area provides occupation is a mere trifle
compared to the number which would be needed to till the same area.
Artesian wells might, no doubt, make certain regions better for pastoral
purposes; but here, as in the case of agriculture, we find little
prospect of any dense population, and, indeed, a probability that the
white people will continue to be few relatively to the area of the
country. On a large grazing farm the proportion of white men to black
servants is usually about three to twenty-five; and though the
proportion of whites is, of course, much larger in the small towns which
supply the wants of the surrounding country, still any one can see with
how few whites a ranching country may get along.
The third source of wealth lies in the minerals. It was the latest
source to become known--indeed, till thirty-two years ago, nobody
suspected it. Iron had been found in some places, copper in others; but
neither had been largely worked, and the belief in the existence of the
precious metals rested on nothing more than a Portuguese tradition. In
1867 the first diamond was picked up by a hunter out of a heap of
shining pebbles near the banks of the Orange River, above its confluence
with the Vaal. In 1869-70 the stones began to be largely found near
where the town of Kimberley now stands. This point has been henceforth
the centre of the industry, though there are a few other mines elsewhere
of smaller productive power. The value of the present annual output
exceeds L4,000,000, but it is not likely to increase, being, in fact,
now kept down in order not to depress the market by over-supply.
Altogether more than L100,000,000 worth of diamonds have been exported.
The discovery of diamonds, as was observed in an earlier chapter, opened
a new period in South African history, drawing crowds of immigrants,
developing trade through the seaports as well as industry at the mining
centres, and producing a group of enterprising men who, when the various
diamond-mining companies had been amalgamated, sought and found new ways
of employing their capital. Fifteen years after the great diamond finds
came the still greater gold finds at the Witwatersrand. The working of
these mines has now become the greatest industry in the country, and
Johannesburg is the centre toward which the import trade converges.
I need not repeat the description given in a previous chapter (Chapter
XVIII) of the Rand mining district. The reader will remember that it
differs from all the other gold-fields of South Africa in one essential
feature--that of the comparative certainty of its yield. Accordingly, in
considering the future of South African gold, I will speak first of
those other gold-fields and then separately of the Rand district.
Gold has been found in many places south of the Zambesi. It occurs here
and there in small quantities in Cape Colony, in somewhat larger
quantities in Natal, Zululand, and Swaziland, in the eastern and
north-eastern districts of the Transvaal, at Tati in northern
Bechuanaland, and in many spots through Matabililand and Mashonaland. In
all (or nearly all) these places it occurs in quartz reefs resembling
those of North America and Australia. Some reefs, especially those of
the northern region between the Limpopo and Zambesi, are promising, and
great quantities of gold have in times long past been taken out of this
region. As already explained (Chapter XVII), it seems probable, though
not certain, that in many districts a mining industry will be developed
which will give employment to thousands, perhaps many thousands, of
natives, and to hundreds, perhaps many hundreds, of white engineers and
foremen. Should this happen, markets will be created in these districts,
land will be cultivated, railways will be made, and the local trades
which a thriving population requires will spring up. But the life of
these gold reefs will not be a long one. As the gold is found in quartz
rock, and only to a small extent in gravel or other alluvial deposits,
the mining requires capital, and will be carried on by companies. It
will be carried on quickly, and so quickly with the aid of the
enormously improved scientific appliances we now possess, as to exhaust
at no distant period the mineral which the rocks contain. I saw in
Transylvania in 1866 a gold mine which was worked in the days of the
Romans, and was being worked still. But mining now is as different from
the mining of the ancients or of the middle ages as a locomotive engine
is from an ox-waggon, such are the resources which chemical and
mechanical science place at our disposal. Accordingly, the payable parts
of the quartz reefs will have been drained of their gold in a few years,
or, at any rate, in a few decades, just as many of the silver lodes of
Nevada have already been worked out and abandoned. There will then be no
further cause for the existence of the mine-workers at those points, and
the population will decline just as that of Nevada has declined. These
South African districts will, however, be in one point far better off
than Nevada: they possess land fit everywhere for ranching, and in many
places for tillage also. Ranching will, therefore, support a certain,
though not large, permanent population; while tillage, though the
profitable market close by will have been largely reduced by the
departure of the miners, will probably continue, because the land will
have been furnished with farmhouses and fences, perhaps in places with
irrigation works, and because the railways that will have been
constructed will enable agricultural products to reach more distant
markets, which by that time may possibly be less glutted with the
cereals of North and South America. Accordingly, assuming that a fair
proportion of the quartz reef gold-fields turn out well, it may be
predicted that population will increase in and round them during the
next ten years, and that for some twenty years more this population will
maintain itself, though of course not necessarily in the same spots,
because, as the reefs first developed become exhausted, the miners will
shift to new places. After these thirty or possibly forty years, that is
to say, before the middle of next century, the country, having parted
with whatever gold it contains, will have to fall back on its pasture
and its arable land; but having become settled and developed, it may
count on retaining a reasonable measure of prosperity.
This forecast may seem to be of a highly conjectural nature. Conjectural
it must be, if only for this reason: that the value of most of the
quartz reefs referred to is still quite uncertain. But one cannot visit
a new country without attempting to make a forecast of some kind; and
the experience of other countries goes to show that, while deposits of
the precious metals are, under our present conditions, no more an
abiding source of wealth than is a guano island, they may immensely
accelerate the development of a country, giving it a start in the world,
and providing it with advantages, such as railway communication, which
could not otherwise be looked for. This they are now doing for
Matabililand and Mashonaland, countries in which it would not at present
be worth while to construct railroads but for the hopes attaching to the
mines. This they may do for Zululand and Swaziland also, should the
reefs in those districts prove profitable.
So much for the quartz reefs. As has been observed, the gold mines of
the Witwatersrand differ in the much greater certainty of their yield
and in the much greater quantity of auriferous rock which they have been
ascertained to contain. It is probable that gold of the value of
L700,000,000 remains to be extracted from them. Already a population of
at least 150,000 white men has collected in what was in 1885 a barren
wilderness; already about L15,000,000 of gold per annum is being
extracted. It is practically certain that this production and population
will go on increasing during the next few years, and that the mines will
not be worked out before the middle of next century at earliest. For the
next fifty years, therefore, the Rand district will be the economic and
industrial centre of South Africa and the seat of the largest European
community. What will it be after those fifty or perhaps sixty years,
when the _banket_ beds have been drained of their gold to a depth of
5,000 feet, the greatest at which mining seems to be practicable? It is
possible that the other industries which are rising as ancillary to
mining may for a while and to a reduced extent hold their ground.
Probably, however, they will wither up and vanish. The land will remain,
but the land of this highest part of the Transvaal, though fit for
pasture, does not lend itself to tillage. The probabilities, therefore,
are that the fate of Nevada will in time descend upon the
Witwatersrand--that the houses that are now springing up will be
suffered to fall to ruin, that the mouths of the shafts will in time be
covered by thorny shrublets, and that soon after A.D. 2000 has been
reached this busy hive of industry and noisy market-place of
speculation will have again become the stony solitude which it was in
1880. For all practical purposes, however, an event a hundred years away
is too distant to be worth regarding. The world will in A.D. 2000 be so
different from what it is now that the exhaustion of the Rand gold-field
may have a different bearing from any which we can now foresee.
Johannesburgers themselves are not disquieted by thoughts of a future
that is even half a century distant. The older sort will not live to see
it, and the younger sort expect to have made their fortunes long before
it arrives. Still it must be remembered that, so far as minerals go,
South Africa is now living, not on her income, but on her capital, and
that in twenty-five years half or more of the capital may be gone.
There are other metals in the country besides the precious ones. The
presence of extensive coal-beds in the Transvaal and Natal has been a
circumstance of the first importance for the profitable working of the
Rand gold-beds, and may encourage the growth of some kinds of
manufacture.[89] Iron is abundant both in the Transvaal and in
Mashonaland, and has been found in many other districts, often in the
neighbourhood of coal. It is not worked now, because all iron goods can
be obtained more cheaply from Europe; but it may one day grow into an
industry, as copper-mining already has in Little Namaqualand on the west
coast.
The mention of coal and iron brings us to another branch of the
subject--the possibility of establishing manufactures which may become a
source of wealth and the support of an industrial population. At present
the manufactures are insignificant. All the textile goods, for instance,
nearly all the metal goods, and by far the larger part even of the beer
and spirits (intended for the whites) and mineral waters consumed in
the country come from Europe. The Boers in the two Republics and the
Boer element at the Cape have neither taste nor talent for this kind of
industry, and such capital as exists is naturally attracted to mining
enterprises. Nevertheless, it may be thought that as capital accumulates
things will change, and that the English part of the population in the
two British Colonies will take to manufactures, as it has done in
Australia. Let us see whether this is probable.
To enable South African manufacturers to compete on a large scale with
the established manufacturing countries, such as those in north-western
Europe or north-eastern America, three things are needed--a large
market, cheap sources of mechanical power, cheap and efficient labour.
Of these the first is at present wanting, and even should the growth of
the Rand mining district raise the white population of the two Colonies
and two Republics from something over 700,000 to 1,200,000, that number
of consumers will still be too small to encourage the expenditure of any
large capital in endeavouring to produce articles which the immense
manufacturing establishments of Europe, working for populous markets,
can turn out more cheaply. As to mechanical forces, there are no rivers
to give water-power; and though Natal, Zululand, and the Transvaal
provide coal, the quality of the mineral is inferior to that obtainable
in South Wales or Belgium or Pennsylvania. But the most important
conditions for success are those connected with labour. In South Africa
skilled labour is dear because scarce, and unskilled labour is dear
because bad. As was explained in a preceding chapter, all rough, hard
work is done by natives; not that white men could not, in the more
temperate regions, perfectly well do it, but because white men think it
beneath them and only fit for blacks. Now black labour is seldom
effective labour. The mixed race called "Cape boys" are good drivers,
and quite fit for many kinds of railway work. They are employed in the
building trades and in sawmills, and to some extent in such trades as
bootmaking. The Kafirs of the eastern province and of Natal are more raw
than the "Cape boys." They make good platelayers on railways, and having
plenty of physical strength, will do any sort of rough work they are set
to. But they have no aptitude for trades requiring skill, and it will
take a generation or two to fit them for the finer kinds of carpentry or
metal-work, or for the handling of delicate machinery. Besides, they are
often changeable and unstable, apt to forsake their employment for some
trifling cause. Their wages are certainly not high, ranging from ten to
twenty shillings a month, besides food, for any kind of rough outdoor
work. Miners are paid higher, and a Malay mason will get from thirty to
forty shillings a week; but a white labourer at twice the price would,
for most kinds of work, be cheaper. Nor is it easy to get the amount of
native labour that may be needed, for the Kafir prefers to till his own
patch of ground or turn out his cattle on the veldt. The scale for white
workmen is, of course, far higher, ranging from L2 10_s._ to L8 a week,
according to the nature of the work and the competence of the artisan.
Such wages are nearly double those paid in England, treble those paid in
some manufacturing districts of Germany or Belgium, higher even than
those paid in the United States. It is therefore evident that, what with
the badness of the cheaper labour and the dearness of the better, a
manufacturer would, in South Africa, be severely handicapped in
competing with either Europe or the United States. Protectionists may
think that a high tariff on foreign manufactured goods would foster
industrial undertakings in these Colonies. Such a tariff would, however,
need to be fixed very high to give the local factory a chance--so high,
indeed, that it would excite serious opposition from the consumer. And,
in point of fact, there has been hitherto no cry for a tariff to protect
home manufactures, because so few people are at present interested in
having it. Such protection as exists is directed to food-stuffs, in
order to please the agricultural classes, and induce a wider cultivation
of the soil; and the tariff on other goods is almost solely for revenue.
The conditions I have described may, and probably will, change as the
industrial training of the natives improves and their aversion to labour
declines under the pressure of increasing numbers and a reduction of the
quantity of land available for them. But a review of the present state
of things points to the conclusion that no great development of
manufactures, and of a white population occupied in manufactures, is to
be expected, at least for some time to come.
Three other observations must at this stage be made. Till very recently,
South Africans had what the Psalmist desired--neither poverty nor
riches. There were hardly any white paupers, because the substratum of
population was black; and as few black paupers, because a Kafir needs
nothing but food. On the other hand, there were no rich whites. The
farmers, both agriculturists and ranchmen, lived in a sort of rude
plenty, with no luxuries and very little money. Everybody was tolerably
well off, nobody was wealthy. There were large stock-farms, as in
Australia, but the owners of these farms did not make the immense gains
which many Australian squatters and some American cattle-men have made.
Accordingly, when capital was needed for the development of the mines it
was obtained from home. A few successful residents did, no doubt, make
out of the diamond fields large sums, which they presently applied to
the development of the gold-fields. But by far the greater part of the
money spent in opening up mines, both on the Witwatersrand and
elsewhere, has come from Europe, chiefly from England, but to a
considerable extent also from France, Germany and Holland. Accordingly
nineteen twentieths at least of the profits made by the miners are paid
to shareholders in those countries, and not expended in South Africa.
Even among those who have made fortunes out of diamonds or gold by their
personal enterprise on the spot, the majority return to Europe and spend
their incomes there. The country, therefore, does not get the full
benefit, in the way either of payments for labour (except, of course,
labour at the mines) or of increased consumption of articles, out of its
mineral products, but is rather in the position of Mexico or Peru in the
seventeenth century, when the bulk of the precious metals won from the
mines went to Spain as a sort of tribute. There are at this moment
probably not more than a dozen rich men, as Europe counts riches,
resident in the country, and all of these are to be found either at
Johannesburg or at Cape Town. Most of them will after a time betake
themselves to Europe. Nor is there any sign that the number of local
fortunes will increase; for the motives which draw men away from
Johannesburg to Europe are likely to continue as strong in the future as
they are at present.
Secondly, as the whites are not--except at Johannesburg, where the
lavishness of a mining population is conspicuous--large consumers of
luxuries, so the blacks are poor consumers of all save the barest
necessaries of life. It is not merely that they have no money. It is
that they have no wants, save of food and of a few common articles of
clothing. The taste for the articles which civilized man requires is
growing, as the traders in Bechuanaland have already begun to find, but
it grows slowly, and is still in a rudimentary stage. The demand which
South Africa is likely to offer either for home-made or for imported
products must, therefore, be measured, not by the gross population, but
by the white population, and, indeed, by the town-dwelling whites; for
the Dutch farmer or ranchman, whether in the British Colonies or in the
Dutch Republics, has very little cash in his pocket, and lives in a
primitive way. It is only the development of the mines that makes South
Africa a growing market for European goods.
Thirdly, there is not much European immigration, except of artizans; and
these go chiefly to the gold mines of the Rand. Few agriculturists come
out, because farms have seldom been offered by any of the Governments on
the same easy terms as those which prevail in Canada or New Zealand, and
because the climate and the existence of a black population deter the
agricultural classes of northern Europe. Although the Government of Cape
Colony has little or no land obviously fit for tillage to dispose of,
because all the untilled area not absolutely barren has been
appropriated for stock-farms, still there are districts on the south
coasts of Cape Colony, as well as in Natal and in the healthy uplands of
Mashonaland, which Englishmen or Germans might cultivate with the
assistance (in the hotter parts) of a little native labour, and which
Italians or Portuguese might cultivate by their own labour, without
native help. The Germans who were brought out in 1856 throve in body and
estate on the farms which they tilled with their own hands near
Grahamstown. Nevertheless, few agricultural immigrants enter, partly, no
doubt, because so much of the land is held by a comparatively small
number of persons, and reserved by them (as just observed) for pastoral
purposes only. Neither do men go from Europe to start ranching, for the
pastoral lands are taken up, except in those wilder regions where no one
could thrive without some previous experience of the country. The
settling of the newer parts of the country, such as those between the
Zambesi and the tropic of Capricorn, is chiefly carried on by the Boers
of the Transvaal, and, to a less extent, of the British Colonies; for
the Boers retain their passion for trekking out into the wilderness,
while the English, with few exceptions, like to keep within reach of
one another and of civilisation. Accordingly, the country receives
comparatively few recruits from rural Europe, and its agricultural
population grows only by natural increase. There are probably more
natives of India to-day tilling the soil in Natal alone than the whole
number of agriculturists who have come from Europe in the last thirty
years. Legislation which should attract such agriculturists by the offer
of tillage farms of moderate size would be a great benefit to the
Colonies.
We may now endeavour to sum up the facts of the case, and state the
conclusions to which they point.
South Africa is already, and will be to an increasing extent, a country
of great mineral wealth. It is only in the diamond-fields, especially
those of Kimberley, and in the gold-fields of the Witwatersrand, that
this wealth has yet been proved to exist, so far as regards precious
stones and precious metals, but it may exist also in many other
districts. It is not confined to precious stones and metals, and when
these have been exhausted, copper, iron, and coal may continue to
furnish good returns to mine-owners and plenty of employment to
work-people. The duration of the gold-fields generally is uncertain, but
those of the Witwatersrand will last for at least half a century, and
will maintain for all that period an industrial population and a market
for commodities which, though small when measured by the standard of the
northern hemisphere, will be quite unique in Africa south of the
equator.
South Africa is, and will continue to be, a great grazing country; for
nearly all of its vast area is fit for live stock, though in large
regions the proportion of stock to the acre must remain small, owing to
the scarcity of feed. It will therefore continue to export wool, goats'
hair, and hides in large quantities, and may also export meat, and
possibly dairy products.
South Africa has been, is, and will probably continue to be for a good
while to come, a country in which only a very small part of the land is
tilled, and from which little agricultural produce, except fruit, sugar,
and perhaps tobacco, will be exported. Only two things seem likely to
increase its agricultural productiveness. One of these is the discovery
of some preservative against malarial fever which might enable the
lowlands of the east coast, from Durban northward, to be cultivated much
more largely than they are now. The other is the introduction of
irrigation on a large scale, an undertaking which at present would be
profitable in a few places only. Whether in future it will be worth
while to irrigate largely, and whether, if this be done, it will be done
by companies buying and working large farms or by companies distributing
water to small farmers, as the Government distributes water in Egypt and
some parts of India, are questions which may turn out to have an
important bearing on the development of the country, but which need not
be discussed now.
South Africa has not been, and shows no sign of becoming, a
manufacturing country. Water power is absent. Coal is not of the best
quality. Labour is neither cheap nor good. Even the imposition of a
pretty high protective tariff would not be likely to stimulate the
establishment of iron-works or foundries on a large scale, nor of
factories of textile goods, for the local market is too small to make
competition with Europe a profitable enterprise. In these respects, as
in many others, the conditions, physical and economic, differ so much
from those of the British North American or Australian Colonies that the
course of industrial development is likely to be quite different from
what it has been there.
From these conclusions another of great importance follows. The white
population will remain scanty in proportion to the area of the country.
At present, it is, in the two British Colonies and the two Dutch
Republics, only about one and a half persons to the square mile, while
over the other territories it is incomparably smaller.
The country will probably remain, so long as present agricultural
conditions continue, a wilderness, with a few oases of population
scattered at long distances from one another. The white inhabitants
will, moreover, continue to be very unequally distributed. At present,
of a total population in the last-mentioned four States of about
730,000, more than one-fourth lives in the mining district of the Rand;
one-sixth is found in the five principal seaports on the southern and
south-eastern coast; the remaining seven-twelfths are thinly dispersed
over the rest of the country in solitary farms or villages, or in a very
few small towns, the largest of which, Kimberley, has only 10,000
inhabitants. The only towns that are growing are those five seaports,
and Johannesburg with its tributary mining villages. Assuming the
present growth of the Rand to continue, it may have in ten years about
500,000 whites, which will be not much less than a half of the then
white population of the whole country. Stimulated by the trade which the
Rand will supply, the five seaports will probably also grow; while
elsewhere population may remain almost stationary. Unless the gold reefs
of the country beyond the Limpopo turn out well and create in that
region miniature copies of the Rand district, there seems no reason to
expect the total number of whites to reach 1,200,000 in less than twenty
years. After that time growth will depend upon the future of
agriculture, and the future of agriculture depends on so many causes
independent of South Africa that it would be unsafe to make any
predictions regarding it. I know some South Africans, able men, who
think that the day will come when the blacks will begin to retire
northward, and a large white population will till their own farms by
their own labour, with the aid of irrigation. Of the advent of such a
day there are no present signs, yet stranger changes have happened in
our time than this change would be. Other South Africans believe that
minerals not less valuable than those which the last twenty years have
revealed are likely to be discovered in other places. This also may
happen,--South Africa, it has been said, is a land of surprises,--and if
it does happen there may be another inrush like that which has filled
the Rand. All that one can venture to do now is to point out the
probable result of the conditions which exist at this moment; and these,
though they point to a continued increase of mineral production, do not
point to any large or rapid increase of white inhabitants.
Twenty years hence the white population is likely to be composed in
about equal proportions of urban and rural elements. The urban element
will be mainly mining, gathered at one great centre on the
Witwatersrand, and possibly at some smaller centres in other districts.
The rural element, consisting of people who live in villages or solitary
farmhouses, will remain comparatively backward, because little affected
by the social forces which work swiftly and potently upon close-packed
industrial communities, and it may find itself very different in tone,
temper, and tendencies from its urban fellow-citizens. The contrast now
so marked between the shopkeeper of Cape Town and the miner of
Johannesburg on the one hand, and the farmer of the Karroo or the
Northern Transvaal on the other, may be then hardly less marked between
the two sections of the white population. But these sections will have
one thing in common. Both will belong to an upper stratum of society;
both will have beneath them a mass of labouring blacks, and they will
therefore form an industrial aristocracy resting on Kafir labour.
[Footnote 88: It is still doubtful whether very large areas can be
irrigated by means of artesian wells.]
[Footnote 89: The Transvaal coal-fields are said to extend over 56,000
square miles; there is also a coal-field in the eastern part of Cape
Colony, near the borders of the Orange Free State.]
CHAPTER XXVII
REFLECTIONS AND FORECASTS
In preceding chapters I have endeavoured to present a picture of South
Africa as it stands to-day, and to sketch the leading events that have
made its political conditions what they are. Now, in bringing the book
to a close, I desire to add a few reflections on the forces which have
been at work, and to attempt the more hazardous task of conjecturing how
those forces are likely to operate in the future.
The progress of the country, and the peculiar form which its problems
have taken, are the resultant of three causes. One of these is the
character which nature has impressed upon it. Of this I have already
spoken (Chapter VI), pointing out how the high interior plateau, with
its dry and healthy climate, determined the main line of European
advance and secured the predominance, not of the race which first
discovered the country, but of the race which approached it, far later
in time, from its best side. It is also in this physical character that
one must seek the explanation of the remarkably slow progress of the
country in wealth and population. South Africa began to be occupied by
white men earlier than any part of the American continent. The first
Dutch settlement was but little posterior to those English settlements
in North America which have grown into a nation of seventy-seven
millions of people, and nearly a century and a half prior to the first
English settlements in Australia. It is the unhealthiness of the east
coast and the dryness of the rest of the country that are mainly
accountable for this tardy growth--a growth which might have been still
more tardy but for the political causes that drove the Boers into the
far interior. And again, it is the physical configuration of the country
that has made it, and is likely to keep it, one country. This is a point
of cardinal importance. Though divided into two British Colonies, with
several other pieces of British territory, and two Boer Republics, the
habitable parts of South Africa form one community, all the parts of
which must stand or fall together. The great plateau is crossed by no
lines of physical demarcation all the way from the Zambesi to the Hex
River (some fifty miles north-east of Cape Town), and the coast regions
are closely bound by economic ties to the plateau, which through them
touches the outer world. Popular speech which talks of South Africa as
one whole is scientifically right.
The two other causes that have ruled the fortunes and guided the
development of the country have been the qualities and relations of the
races that inhabit it, and the character of the Government which has
sought from afar to control the relations of those races. These deserve
to be more fully considered.
English statesmen have for more than fifty years been accustomed to say
that of all the Colonies of Great Britain none has given to the mother
country so much disquiet and anxiety as South Africa has done. This is
another way of expressing the fact which strikes the traveller--that no
other British Colony has compressed so much exciting history into the
last sixty or seventy years. The reason is undoubtedly to be found in
the circumstance that South Africa has had two sets of race questions to
deal with: questions between the whites and the aborigines, questions
between the Dutch and the English. It is this latter set of questions
that have been the main thread of South African annals. Why have they
proved so troublesome? Why are they so troublesome to-day, when we ought
to be able to look at them with a vision enlarged and a temper mellowed
by wide experience? Partly from an element inherent in all race
questions. They are not questions that can be settled on pure business
lines, by an adjustment of the material interests of the parties
concerned. They involve sentiment, and thus, like questions of religion,
touch the deeper springs of emotion. And they spring from, or are
involved with, incompatibilities of character which prevent the men of
either stock from fully understanding, and therefore fully trusting, the
men of the other. Suspicion, if not positive aversion, makes it
difficult for two races to work together, even where the political
arrangements that govern their relations are just and reasonable. But
something may also be ascribed to certain malign accidents which blasted
the prospect, once fair, of a friendly fusion between the Dutch and the
English peoples that seemed eminently fit to be fused. The British
annexation of Cape Colony occurred at an unfortunate time. Had it
happened thirty years earlier no difficulties would have arisen over the
natives and slavery, because at that time the new philanthropy had not
begun to influence English opinion or the British Government. Had it
happened in later days, when steam had given quicker and more frequent
ocean communication, Britain and the Colony would each have better known
what the other thought and wished, and the errors that alienated the
Boers might never have been committed. The period which followed the
annexation was precisely the period in which the differences between
English feeling and colonial feeling were most marked and most likely to
lead to misunderstanding and conflict.
For there has been in the antagonism of the Boers and the English far
more than the jealousy of two races. There has been a collision of two
types of civilisation, one belonging to the nineteenth century, the
other to the seventeenth. His isolation, not only in a distant corner
of the southern hemisphere, but in the great, wide, bare veldt over
which his flocks and herds roam, has kept the Boer fast bound in the
ideas and habits of a past age, and he shrinks from the contact of the
keen restless modern man, with new arts of gain and new forms of
pleasure, just as a Puritan farmer of Cromwell's day might shrink were
he brought to life and forced to plunge into the current of modern
London. Had the Boers been of English stock, but subjected to the same
conditions as those which kept the seventeenth century alive in the
country behind the Cape, they too would have resisted the new ways of
the new rulers; but their identity of race and speech with those rulers
would have abridged the struggle. It is the fact that the old Cape
settlers had a language of their own, and a sense of blood-kinship to
hold them together that has enabled the Dutch element to remain
cohesive, and given them an Afrikander patriotism of their own--a
patriotism which is not Dutch, for they care nothing for the traditions
of Holland, but purely Africander.