By A. MILLIARD ATTERIDGE.
The tide of emigration from Ireland has set chiefly towards America
and Australia. In South Africa, therefore, the Irish element among
the colonists has never been a large one. But, despite its
comparatively small numbers, it has been an important factor in the
life of South Africa. Here, as in so many other countries, it has
been the glory of the sons of Erin to be a missionary people. To
their coming is due the very existence of the Catholic Church in
these southern lands.
When Dr. Ullathorne touched at the Cape on his way to Australia in
1832, he found at Cape Town "a single priest for the whole of South
Africa," an English Benedictine, who soon afterwards returned to
Europe in broken health. Few Irish immigrants had by that time found
their way to the Cape. They began to arrive in numbers only after the
famine year.
The founder of the Catholic hierarchy in South Africa was the Irish
Dominican, Patrick R. Griffith, who, in 1837, was sent to Cape Town
by Gregory XVI. as the first Vicar Apostolic of Cape Colony. His
successors at the Cape, Bishops Grimley, Leonard, and Rooney, have
all been Irishmen, and nine in every ten of their flock have from the
first been Irish by birth or descent. In the earlier years of Bishop
Griffith's episcopate there was a large garrison in South Africa on
account of the Kaffir wars. Many of these soldiers were Irishmen. At
Grahamstown in 1844 the soldiers of an Irish regiment stationed there
did most of the work of building St. Patrick's Church, one of the
oldest Catholic churches in South Africa. They worked without wages
or reward of any kind, purely out of their devotion to their Faith,
giving up most of their leisure to this voluntary labor.
Ten years after Bishop Griffith's appointment, Pius IX. separated
Natal and the eastern districts of Cape Colony from Cape Town, and
erected the Eastern Vicariate Apostolic. Once more an Irish prelate
was the first Bishop--Aidan Devereux, who was consecrated by Bishop
Griffith at Cape Town in the Christmas week of 1847. The great
emigration from Ireland had now begun, and a stream of immigrants was
arriving at the Cape. Bishop Devereux fixed his residence at Port
Elizabeth, and of his four successors up to the present day three
have been Irish. Bishop Moran, who went out to Port Elizabeth in
1854, was consecrated at Carlow in Ireland by Archbishop (afterwards
Cardinal) Cullen. The third Vicar Apostolic was Bishop Ricards, and
the present bishop is another Irishman, Dr. Hugh McSherry, who
received his consecration from the hands of Cardinal Logue in St.
Patrick's Cathedral at Armagh.
Until the discovery of the diamond deposits in what is now the
Kimberley district, some forty years ago, the Irish immigrants had
chiefly settled in the ports and along the coast. But among the
crowds who went to seek their fortunes at the diamond fields were
large numbers of adventurous Irishmen. The mission church established
at Kimberley became the centre of a new bishopric in 1886, when the
Vicariate of Kimberley, which for some time included the Orange Free
State, was established, and an Irish Oblate, Father Anthony Gaughran,
was appointed its first bishop. He was succeeded in 1901 by his
namesake and fellow countryman, the present Bishop Matthew Gaughran.
The gold discoveries on the Witwatersrand about Johannesburg produced
another rush into the interior in the days after the first Transvaal
war. A great city of foreign immigrants--the "Uitlanders"--grew up
rapidly on the upland, where a few months before there had been only
a few scattered Boer farms. Irishmen from Cape Colony and Natal, from
Ireland itself, and from the United States formed a large element in
the local mining and trading community. They were mostly workers. Few
of them found their way into the controlling financier class, which
was largely Jewish. The Irish were better out of this circle of
international gamblers, whose intrigues finally produced the terrible
two years' bloodshed of the great South African war. Many engineers
of the mines were Irish-Americans. Huge consignments of mining
machinery arrived from the United States, and many of the engineers
who came to fit it up remained in the employ of the mining companies.
Until after the war, the Transvaal and Johannesburg had depended
ecclesiastically on the Vicar Apostolic of Natal, but in 1904 a
Transvaal Vicariate was erected, and once more the first bishop was
an Irishman, Dr. William Miller, O.M.I.
We have seen how Irish the South African episcopate has been from the
very outset. Most of the clergy belong to the same missionary race,
as also do the nuns of the various convents, and the Christian
Brothers, who are in charge of many of the schools. Of the white
Catholic population of the various states of the South African Union,
the greater part are Irish. There are about 25,000 Irish in Cape
Colony in a total population of over two millions. There are some
7,000 in Natal, I,500 in Kimberley, and about 2,000 in the Orange
River Colony. In the Transvaal, chiefly in and about Johannesburg,
there are some 12,000 Irish. A few thousand more are to be found
scattered in Griqualand and Rhodesia.
As has been already said, the total numbers are not large in
proportion to that of the population generally, and they belong
chiefly to the industrial and trading classes. The most notable names
among them are those of prelates, priests, and missionaries, who have
founded and built up the organization of the Catholic Church in South
Africa. But there are some names of note also in civil life. Sir
Michael Gallwey was for many years Chief Justice of Natal; the Hon.
A. Wilmot, who has not only held high official posts, but has also
done much to clear up the early history of South Africa, is Irish on
the mother's side; Mr. Justice Shiel is a judge of the Cape Courts;
Eyre and Woodbyrne are Irish names among the makers of Rhodesia; and
amongst those who have done remarkable work in official life may also
be named Sir Geoffrey Lagden, Sir William St. John Carr, and the Hon.
John Daverin. Lagden was for many years British Resident in
Basutoland, the Switzerland of South Africa, where the native tribes
are practically independent under a British protectorate. Griffith,
the paramount chief of the Basuto nation, has been a Catholic since
1911. Sir Geoffrey's tactful policy and wise counsels did much to
promote the prosperity of this native state, and during the trying
days of the South African War, he was able to secure the neutrality
of the tribesmen.
In the Boer wars, Irishmen fought with distinction on both sides.
General Colley, who fell at Majuba in the first Boer War, was a
distinguished Irish soldier. Another great Irishman, General Sir
William Butler, has written the story of Colley's life. Butler
himself was in command of the troops at the Cape before the great
war. If his wise counsels had been followed by the Government, the
war would undoubtedly have been avoided. He refused to have any part
in the war-provoking policy of Rhodes and Chamberlain, and warned the
Home Government that an attack on the Dutch republics would be a
serious and perilous enterprise. When the war came, England owed much
to the enduring valor of Irish soldiers and to the leadership of
Irish generals. One need only name General Hart, of the Irish
Brigade; General French, who relieved Kimberley, and who is now
(1914) Field-Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of the British army in
France; General Mahon, who raised the siege of Mafeking; Colonel
Moore, of the famous Connaught Rangers, now (1914) commandant and
chief military organizer of the Irish National Volunteers; and,
finally, Lord Roberts, who took over the chief command and saved the
situation after the early disasters. Lord Kitchener, who acted as
Roberts's chief-of-staff, succeeded him in the command, and brought
the war to an end by an honorable treaty with the Boer leaders, is a
native of Ireland, but of English descent, and he passed most of his
boyhood in Ireland, in Co. Kerry, where his father had bought a small
property. I used to know an Irish Franciscan lay brother who told me
he had taught the future soldier "many games" when he was quite a
little fellow.
Of the regiments which took part in the war none won a higher fame
than the Munster and the Dublin Fusiliers and the Connaught Rangers.
It was in recognition of their splendid valor that the new regiment
of Irish Guards was added to the British Army.
But the majority of Irishmen sympathized with the Boer republics, and
many of them fought under the Boer flag, of these were legally
British subjects, but many were naturalized burghers of the
Transvaal, and many more were United States citizens, Irish-Americans
from the Rand gold mines. There were two small Irish brigades under
the Boer flag, those of McBride and Lynch (the latter now a member of
the British House of Commons), and an engineer corps commanded by
Colonel Blake, an American. At the first battle before Ladysmith it
was one of the Irish brigades that kept the Boer guns in action,
bringing up ammunition under a rain of shellfire. During the Boer
retreat and Roberts's advance on Pretoria, Blake's engineers were
always with the Boer rearguard and successfully destroyed every mile
of the railway as they went back. Blake had served in the United
States cavalry, had learned mining while on duty in Nevada, and had
then gone to seek his fortune at Johannesburg. The great leader of
the Boer armies, now the Prime Minister of the new South Africa which
has happily arisen out of the storm of war, has Irish connections.
Louis Botha lived before the war in the southeast Transvaal, not far
from Laings Nek, and near neighbors of his were a family of Irish
settlers bearing the honored name of Emmet. The Emmets and the Bothas
were united by ties of friendship and intermarriage, and one of the
Emmets served with Louis Botha during the war.
The Irish colonists of South Africa keep their love for faith and
fatherland, but, as in the United States, they have thoroughly and
loyally thrown in their lot with the new country of which they have
become citizens. Few in number though they are, they are an important
factor in the new Dominion, for their national tradition inspires
them with civic patriotism, and their religion gives them a high
standard of conduct and puts before them, as guides in the work of
life and the solution of the problems of the day, the Christian
principles of justice and charity.