THE TRANSVAAL.--ITS HISTORY.
The Transvaal as its name plainly indicates is the district lying north
or beyond the Vaal river. The Orange river as it runs down to the sea
from the Diamond Fields through the inhospitable and little known
regions of Bushmansland and Namaqualand used to be called the Gariep and
is made up of two large rivers which, above their junction, were known
as the Gariep Kye and the Knu Gariep,--the tawny and the orange
coloured. The former which is the larger of the two is now known as the
Vaal, and the latter as the Orange. The Vaal rises in the Drakenberg
mountains and is the northern border of the Orange Free State or
Republic. The country therefore beyond that river received its present
name very naturally.
This southern boundary of the Transvaal has always been marked clearly
enough, but on every other side there are and have been doubts and
claims which are great difficulties to the administrator of the new
Colony. To the west are the Zulus who are, at this moment, claiming
lands which we also claim. Then above them, to the north-west are the
Portuguese who are not perhaps likely to extend their demands for inland
territory, but who are probably quite as much in doubt as we are as to
any defined boundary between them and the natives.[1] To the north I
think I may say that no one yet knows how far the Transvaal goes. The
maps give the Limpopo river as a boundary, but I think Sir Theophilus
Shepstone will own that Great Britain cannot, should she wish to do so,
make good her claim to lordship over the native races up to the Limpopo
without a considerable amount of ---- arrangement with the tribes. And
yet the matter is one that must be settled with accuracy because of the
hut tax. From the natives living under the protection of the British
Crown in the other colonies of South Africa a direct tax is
levied,--10s. or 14s.,--on each hut occupied, and it is indispensable to
the Government of the new Colony that the same system shall be
introduced there. We cannot govern the country without a revenue, and
from our black subjects this is the only means of collecting a
revenue,--till we begin to make something out of their taste for strong
drinks. It was inaccuracy as to their northern and north-eastern
boundaries which brought the South African or Transvaal Republic to that
ruin which induced us to seize it;--or, in other words, the lands which
the Dutch claimed the natives claimed also, and these claims were so
ambiguous, so progressive, so indefinite, that to have yielded to them
would have been to give up the whole country. Sicocoeni who was the
Chief most specially hostile to the Republic in its last days claimed
even the site on which stood Pretoria the capital, where the Volksraad
or Parliament of the Republic sat. In dealing with the Natives as to
boundaries nothing can be got by yielding. Nor does it seem possible to
trust to abstract justice. Between Sicocoeni and Mr. Burgers, the last
President of the Republic, it would have been impossible for abstract
justice to have drawn a true line so confused had the matter become. It
can only be done by a strong hand, and can only be done well by a strong
hand guided by a desire equally strong to do what is right. As an
Englishman I feel sure that we shall have the one, and, again as
Englishman, I trust that we shall have the other. The habitations of
hundreds of thousands of Natives are concerned. I find that the coloured
population of our new Colony is variously stated at numbers ranging from
250,000 to 800,000. It is all guess work;--but there is no doubt that
the multitude of human beings concerned is very great. Were we to annex
everything included in the Dutch maps of the Transvaal, the true number
would probably be much greater than the larger of those above given.
You, my readers, probably think that the more we include the better for
them, even though they should be made to pay a tax of 10s. a hut. So do
I. But they don’t. They want to be independent,--as are the Zulus down
on the sea coast. It is therefore impossible not to perceive a
difficulty. A line to the North and North-East must be drawn;--but no
possible line will satisfy the natives. To the West and North-West the
matter is probably as doubtful, though not as difficult. The numbers are
fewer and the people less warlike. But to the South-West there is
another problem to be solved. There is a territory North by West of the
Vaal river, including the little town of Bloomhof, which we, by British
award declared to be independent. Governor Keate of Natal was appointed
as arbitrator to draw a line between the Republic and the natives, and
he declared this territory to be a portion of Bechuanaland. But the
Transvaal, rejecting Governor Keate’s award, took the territory and
governed it. Are we now to reject it and give it back to the Bechuanas,
or are we to keep it as part of the annexed Colony? This also will add
something to the difficulty of defining our new possession.
The history of the European occupation of the Transvaal is the same as
the history of all South Africa during this century. The Dutch have been
ever running away from the English, and the English have sometimes
pursued them and sometimes determined that they should go whither they
would and be no longer accounted as British subjects. They have
certainly been a most stiff-necked people with whom to deal,--and we by
their inability to amalgamate with ourselves have been driven into
vacillations which have not always been very creditable to our good
sense. We have been too masterful and yet not masterful enough. In Natal
as we have seen, we would not allow them to form a Republic or to throw
off their British allegiance. Across the Orange river we have fought
them and reduced them,--at Boom Plaats, as I shall describe when giving
the little history of the Orange Free State,--and then have bid them go
their own way and shift for themselves.
The Dutch of South Africa have hated our ways, though I do not think
that they have hated us. What they have practically said to us is as
follows. “No doubt you are very fine fellows, and very strong. We do not
intend to pit ourselves against you. We first took and cultivated and
civilized this Cape Colony. But as you want it in God’s name take it and
use it, and do with it as you list. But let us go and do as we list
elsewhere. You don’t like slavery. We do. Let us go and have our slaves
in a new land. We must encounter endless troubles and probably death in
the attempt. But anything will be better to us than your laws and your
philanthropy.” We could not hinder them from going. There was at one
time a desire to hinder them, and the Colonial Attorney General in 1836
was consulted as to the law on the subject. There was an old Dutch law,
he said, forbidding the Colonists to cross the border; but that could
hardly be brought in force to prevent persons from seeking their
fortunes in other lands. We have already seen in regard to Natal, how
Lieut.-Governor Stockenstrom, when appealed to, declared that he knew of
no law which prevented His Majesty’s subjects from leaving His Majesty’s
dominions and settling elsewhere. That these people must be allowed to
go away with their waggons wheresoever they might choose was evident
enough; but the British rulers could not quite make up their minds
whether it was or was not their duty to go after the wanderers.
When the Dutch first made their way into the country now called the
Transvaal they were simply on their road to Natal. News had reached them
of the good land of Natal and they endeavoured to get to it by going
northwards across the Orange river. While pursuing their way through
what is now the Free State they encountered a terrible savage named
Mazulekatze, who was at the head of a tribe called the Matabele, with
whom they had to fight to the death. This warrior was a Zulu and had
fought under Chaka the king of the Zulus;--but had quarrelled with his
lord and master and fled out of Zulu Land westwards. Here he seems to
have created the tribe called Matabele, some of whom were Zulus and some
natives and some warriors who had joined him, as being a great fighting
Chief, from other tribes. He was as terrible a savage as Chaka himself,
and altogether “ate up” the less warlike Bechuanas who up to his time
possessed the land thereabouts. This seems to have been the way with
these tribes. They were like water running furiously in a torrent which
in its course is dashed over a rock. The stream is scattered into
infinite spray the particles of which can hardly be distinguished from
the air. But it falls again and is collected into this stream or the
other, changing not its nature but only its name. The Zulus, the
Bechuanas, the Matabeles, and the Kafirs seem to have been formed and
reformed after this fashion without any long dated tribal consistency
among them. When the Dutch came to the Vaal river, groping their way to
Natal, they found Mazulekatze and his Matabeles who was still at war
with some of these Bechuana tribes south of the Vaal river. This was in
1837, the year before the final abolition of slavery which by the law of
1834 was arranged to take place in 1838. The Dutch were nearly
exterminated, but they succeeded in driving Mazulekatze out of the
land. Then there was a quarrel among themselves whether they should
remain in that land or go eastward to the more promising soil of Natal.
They went eastward, and how they fared in Natal has already been told.
For ten or eleven years after this the “trekking” of the Dutchmen into
the Transvaal was only the onward movement of the most hardy of the
class, the advanced pioneers of freedom, who would prefer to live on
equal terms with the Savage,--if that were necessary,--than to have any
dealings with English law. These were men at that time subject to no
rule. Some were established north and west of the Vaal where
Potchefstrom and Klerksdorp now are; others south and east of the Vaal.
As to the latter there came an order for the appointment over them of
British magistrates from Sir Henry Smith who was then the Governor of
the Cape Colony. This was an offence which could not be borne. Andreas
Pretorius, that most uncompromising, most stiff-necked and self-reliant
of all the Dutchmen, had left Natal in disgust with this Governor and
had settled himself in these parts. He instigated a rebellion against
British authority,--not with the view of at that moment claiming land
north of the Vaal, but of asserting the independence of those who lived
to the south of it. Then came the battle of Boom Plaats and the Orange
Sovereignty,--as will be told in the section of my Work devoted to the
history of the Orange Free State. It was when flying from this battle,
in 1848, that Pretorius crossed the Vaal. “For you there is safety,” he
said to his companions as he started. “For me there is none.” Then he
fled away across the river and a reward of £2,000 was set upon his head.
This I think may be regarded as the beginning of the occupation of the
Transvaal territory by a European or Dutch population.
A sort of Republic was at once established of which Pretorius was at
first the acknowledged rather than the elected Chief. The most perfect
freedom for the white man,--which was supposed to include perfect
equality,--was to be maintained by a union of their forces against the
Natives of the country. Mazulekatze had been ejected, and the Bechuanas
were again coming in upon their old land. Then there were new troubles
which seemed always to end in the subjection of a certain number of the
Natives to the domestic institutions of the Dutch. The children of those
who rebelled, and who were taken as prisoners, were bound as apprentices
in the families of the Dutch farmers,--and as such were used as slaves.
There can be no doubt that such was the case. All the evidence that
there is on the subject goes to prove it, and the practice was one
entirely in accordance with Dutch sympathies and Dutch manners. It is
often pointed out to an enquirer that the position of the little urchins
who were thus brought into contact with civilization was thereby much
improved. Such an argument cannot be accepted as worth anything until
the person using it is brought to admit that the child so apprenticed is
a slave, and the master a slave-owner. Then the argument is brought back
to the great question whether slavery as an institution is beneficial or
the reverse. But even a Dutchman will generally avoid that position.
Such was the condition of the territory when the English determined that
they would signify to their runaway subjects that they were regarded as
free to manage themselves as they pleased across the Vaal. Of what use
could it be to follow these Dutchmen beyond that distant river, when, if
so persecuted, they would certainly “trek” beyond the Limpopo? Further
back than the Limpopo were the Zambesi and the Equator. And yet as
matters then stood a certain unpronounced claim was implied by what had
been done between the Orange and the Vaal. A treaty was therefore made
with the people in 1852, and for the making of the treaty Messrs. Hogge
and Owen were despatched as Her Majesty’s Commissioners to meet
Pretorius and a deputation of emigrant farmers, to settle the terms on
which the Republic should be established. There were two clauses of
special interest. One prohibited slavery in the new Republic,--a clause
so easy to put into a treaty, but one of which it is so impossible for
an outside power to exact the fulfilment! Another declared that the
British would make no alliances with the natives north of the Vaal
river,--a clause which we have also found to be very inconvenient. It
would have been better perhaps merely to have told these Boers that if
we found slavery to exist we should make it a casus belli, and to have
bound ourselves to nothing. This would have been “high-handed,”--but
then how much more high-handed have we been since?
Andreas Pretorius was the first President of the now established and
recognised nationality which, with a weak ambition which has assisted
much in bringing it to its ruin, soon called itself the South African
Republic,--as though it were destined to swallow up not only the Free
State but the British Colonies also. In this, however, Andreas Pretorius
himself had no part. The passion of his soul seems to have been
separation from the British;--not dominion over them. He died within two
years, in July 1853, and his son was elected in his place. The father
was certainly a remarkable man,--the one who of all his class was the
most determined to liberate himself from the thraldom of English
opinions. Mr. Theal in his history[2] of South Africa well describes how
this man had become what he was by a continued reading of the Old
Testament. The sanguinary orders given to the chosen people of the Lord
were to him orders which he was bound to obey as were they. Mr. Theal
quotes a special passage from the twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy, to
which I will refer my reader--“When thou comest nigh unto a city fight
against it.” The Israelites are enjoined either to slay or to enslave.
And Pretorius felt that such were the commands given to him in reference
to those natives among whom his lot had cast him. They were to him the
people of the cities which were “very far off,” and whom he had divine
order to enslave, while the more unfortunate ones who would still fain
occupy the lands on which it suited him and his people to dwell, were
“the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the
Hivites and the Jebusites” whom the Lord had commanded him utterly to
destroy. With such authority before him, and while black labour was so
necessary to the cultivation of the land, how could he doubt about
slavery? In studying the peculiarity of the Dutch character in South
Africa and the aversion of the people to our ways we have always to
remember that they had been brought up for ages in the strictest belief
in the letter of scripture. The very pictures in their bibles were to
them true pictures, because they were there. It was so two hundred years
ago with a large sect in Europe,--from which sect they had sprung. They
had grown in the new land without admixture with the progressing ideas
of Europe. They had neither been enlightened nor contaminated by new
systems of belief, or unbelief. So it has come to pass that an
institution which is so abhorrent to us as to make us feel that the man
who is stained by it must be a godless sinner, is still to them a
condition of things directly authorized and ordered by the Almighty. By
our persistency, by our treaties, by our power, by enforcing upon their
inferior condition as the very trade-mark of our superiority the command
that slavery shall exist no longer, we have driven them to deny it, and
have almost convinced them that slavery is no longer possible. But that
heartfelt hatred of slavery which is now common to all of us in England
has not yet reached the Dutchman of South Africa,--and is hardly as
strong in the bosoms of all British South African Colonists as it might
be.
After the death of the elder Pretorius the Republic had by no means a
quiet or a bloodless time. The capital was then at Potchefstrom, near
the Vaal, while the enormous territory claimed by it to the north was
almost without government. There are stories of terrible massacres
amidst the records of the Republic,--of fearful revenge inflicted on
the white men by the Savage whose lands had been taken from him, and of
tenfold, hundredfold revenge following quick upon the heads of the
wretched people. “Thou shalt utterly destroy them!” And therefore a
whole tribe was smothered and starved to death within the caves in which
they had taken refuge. We read that, “For years afterwards the supremacy
of the white man was unquestioned in that part of the Transvaal, and we
can easily believe it.”[3] But for some years the Republic hardly had
any other history but that of its contests with the Natives and its
efforts to extend its borders by taking land wherever its scanty
European population could extend itself. The cities “very far off” were
all their legitimate prey. As the people thus followed out their destiny
at great distances the seat of Government was moved from Potchefstrom to
Pretoria, which city was named after the founder of the Republic.
Upon the death of Andreas Pretorius in 1853 his son became President;
but in 1859 he was elected President of the Free State in the room of
Mr. Bostrof, who had then retired. When at Bloemfontein he advocated
measures for joining the two Republics under the name of the South
African Republic. Already had risen the idea that the Dutch might oust
the English from the continent, not by force of arms but by Republican
sentiment,--an idea however which has never travelled beyond the brains
of a few political leaders in the Transvaal. I do not think that a trace
of it is to be found in the elder Pretorius. Mr. Burgers, the last
President, of whom I shall have to speak presently, was so inflated by
it, that it may be said to have governed all his actions. The idea is
grand, for a South African Dutchman patriotic, and for a Republican
Dutchman not unnatural. But such ideas must depend on their success for
their vindication. When unsuccessful they seem to have been foolish
thoughts, bags of gas and wind, and are held to be proof of the
incompetency of the men who held them for any useful public action.
Neither will Mr. Pretorius junior nor Mr. Burgers ever be regarded as
benefactors of their country or as great statesmen; but the bosoms of
each have no doubt swelled with the aspiration of being called the Dutch
Washington of South Africa. I think I may say that Mr. Brand, who is now
President of the Orange Free State, is imbued with no such vaulting
ambition, whatever may be his ideas on the course of things in the womb
of time. He is mildly contented to be President of the Free State, and
as long as the Free State has a history to be written he will be spoken
of as the man who in the midst of its difficulties made its existence
possible and permanent.
The Volksraad of the Free State did not sympathise with the views of
their President from the Transvaal, and in 1863 he resigned the place.
He was soon re-elected President of the Northern Republic and remained
in that office till he quarrelled with his own Volksraad or was
quarrelled with by them. He struggled hard and successfully to extend
the bounds of the Empire, and claimed among other lands that tract of
land of which I have already spoken, which is far to the south-west of
the Transvaal, but still to the north or north-west of the Vaal, where
a tribe of the Griquas, a branch of the vast tribe of the Bechuanas,
were living. The question of a boundary in that direction was submitted
to Governor Keate as umpire, and his decision, which was hostile to the
claims of the Republic, was accepted by the President. But the Volksraad
repudiated their President, declaring that he had acted without their
authority, and refused to surrender the land in question. Oddly enough
after this, it is,--or it is not,--at this moment a portion of British
territory. I do not know with what face we can hold it;--but still I
feel sure that we shall not abandon it. Pretorius was so disgusted with
his Volksraad that he resigned his office. This happened in 1872. Mr.
Burgers, the late President, was then elected for a term of five years,
and was sworn into office on 1st July of that year.
Mr. Burgers, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Capetown, is still a
man in the prime of life and is entitled to be spoken of with that
courtesy which always should be extended to living politicians who have
retired from office. Unless the proof to the contrary be so apparent as
to be glaring,--as to be impossible of refutation,--the motives of such
men should not be impugned. When a man has held high office in his
State,--especially when he has been elected to that office by the voices
of his fellow-citizens,--he is entitled to the merit of patriotism
unless the crime of selfish ambition or unclean hands have been brought
home against him by the voices which elected him. No such charges have
been substantiated against Mr. Burgers, and I shall therefore speak of
him with all the respect which patriotism deserves. He was chosen
because he was supposed to be fit, and I have no reason to doubt that he
strove to do his best for his adopted country. But the capacity of a
Statesman for the office he has filled is always open to remark, whether
he be still in power or shall have retired. In the former case it is
essential to oust an incompetent man from his place, and in the latter
to defend the course by which such a one has been ousted. As a public
man,--one who devotes himself to the service of the people,--is entitled
to the most generous construction of his motives, which should be
regarded as pure and honest till their impurity and dishonesty shall
have been put beyond question,--so is he justly exposed to all that
criticism can say as to the wisdom of his words and deeds. The work on
which he is employed is too important for that good-natured reticence
with which the laches of the insignificant may be allowed to be
shrouded.
When Mr. Burgers was elected President of the Transvaal Republic he was,
or shortly before had been, a clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church in
the Cape Colony, who had differed on matters of creed with the Church to
which he belonged, and had consequently cast off his orders. He was
known as an eloquent enthusiastic man, and was warmly welcomed in the
Transvaal,--where, if ever, a silent, patient, unobtrusive officer was
wanted for the work which had to be done in consolidating the Republic.
The country at the time was very poor. The Treasury was empty,--a paper
currency had been set afloat in 1865, and was of course greatly
depreciated. Taxes were with difficulty collected, and the quarrels with
the natives were incessant. Mr. Burgers succeeded in raising a loan,
and borrowed £60,000, which the bank who lent the money will now receive
from the pockets of tax-payers in England. A considerable portion of
this sum has, I believe, already been repaid out of money voted by the
House of Commons. He established a national flag,--which was we may
suppose a cheap triumph. He had a gold coinage struck, with a
portraiture of himself,--two or three hundred gold pieces worth 20s.
each--which I will not hurt his feelings by calling sovereigns. This
could not have cost much as the coinage was so limited. They were too
all made out of Transvaal gold. He set on foot a most high flown scheme
of education,--of which the details will be given elsewhere and which
might not have been amiss had it not been utterly impracticable. He
attempted to have the public lands surveyed, while he did not in the
least know what the public lands were and had no idea of their limits.
There was to be a new code of laws, before as yet he had judges or
courts. And then he resolved that a railway should at once be made from
Pretoria through the gold fields of the Transvaal down to Delagoa Bay
where the Portuguese have their settlement. For the sake of raising a
loan for this purpose he went in person to Holland,--just when one would
have thought his presence in his own country to be indispensable, and
did succeed in saddling the Republic with a debt of £100,000 for railway
properties,--which debt must now, also, be paid by the British
tax-payers. To all this he added,--so runs the rumour among those who
were his friends in the Republic--many proud but too loudly spoken
aspirations as to the future general destiny of the South African
Republic. His mind seems to have been filled with the idea of competing
with Washington for public admiration.
In all this there was much for which only the statesman and not the man
must be blamed. The aspirations in themselves were noble and showed that
Mr. Burgers had so far studied his subject as to know what things were
good for a nation. But he had none of that method which should have
taught him what things to put first in bestowing the blessings of
government upon a people. We remember how Goldsmith ridicules the idea
of sending venison to a man who is still without the necessaries of
life.
“It’s like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.”
It was certainly a shirt, and other of the simplest of garments, which
the people of the Transvaal then wanted;--the ordinary calico shirt of
taxation and the knee-breeches of security for property;--while Mr.
Burgers was bestowing ruffles upon them in the shape of a national flag
and a national gold coinage with his own portrait. Education is
certainly one of the first wants of a people, but education will not be
assisted at all by a law declaring that all schoolmasters shall have
ample incomes, unless there be funds from which such incomes may be
paid. What is so excellent as a good code of laws;--unless indeed it be
some means of enforcing them, without which the best code in the world
must be ineffective? A code of laws is to be had with comparatively
little difficulty,--almost as easily as the flag. There are so many that
an aspiring President need only choose. But that regular system of
obedience to the laws which has to found itself on a well-collected
Revenue, and which is the very essence of government, should come first,
and in such a country as that which Mr. Burgers was called upon to
govern, the establishment of this system should have been the care of
the Governor before he had thought of a new code. Mr. Burgers rushed at
once to the fruition of all the good things which a country can possess
without stopping to see whether they were there, to be enjoyed. Such was
his temperament. Nothing more plainly declares the excessive wealth of
France and of England than the plenty of their gold coinage;--therefore
certainly let us have some gold pieces in the Transvaal. How proud are
the citizens of the United States of their Stars and Stripes! Therefore
let us have a flag. How grand is the education of Prussia! Therefore let
us have schools every where!
I myself think that the measure most essential for the development of
the resources of the Transvaal is a railway to Delagoa Bay. I cannot
therefore quarrel with Mr. Burgers for holding the same opinion. But it
was characteristic of the enthusiasm of the man that he, leaving his
country in uttermost confusion, should himself rush off to Europe for a
loan,--characteristic of his energy that he should be able to raise, if
not a large sum of money, railway plant representing a large sum--and
characteristic of his imprudence that all this should have been done
without any good result whatever. A railway to a country is a great
luxury, the most comfortable perhaps that it can enjoy; but Mr. Burgers
does not seem to have understood that a nation like a man, should be
able to provide for itself the necessaries of life before it looks for
luxuries.
As in this I am accusing Mr. Burgers, so also am I defending him from
many of the charges which have been brought against him. His fault
hitherto has been an ambition to make his country great before it had
been made secure; but in what he so did there is no trace of any undue
desire for personal aggrandizement. As a nation rises in the world, so
will its rulers rise. That a President of a young Republic should be
aware of this and feel that as honour and wealth come to his people so
will they come to him, is fair enough. It is but human. I believe that
Mr. Burgers thought more of his country than of himself. That he was
sanguine, unsteady, and utterly deficient in patience and prudence was
the fault of those who elected him rather than of himself.
All these follies, if they were follies, could have been nothing to us
but for our close proximity to the borders of the Transvaal. While the
gold was being coined and the flag was being stitched, there were
never-ending troubles with the Natives. The question of the right to
territory in a country which was inhabited by native races when it was
invaded by Europeans is one so complex that nothing but superior force
has as yet been able to decide it. The white races have gradually
obtained possession of whatever land they have wanted because they have
been the braver and the stronger people. Philanthropy must put up with
the fact, and justice must reconcile herself to it as best she may. I
venture to express an opinion that to the minds of all just men, who
have turned this matter in their thoughts with painful anxiety, there
has come a solution,--which has by no means satisfied them, but which
has been the only solution possible,--that God Almighty has intended
that it should be as it is. The increasing populations of the civilized
world have been compelled to find for themselves new homes; and that
they should make these homes in the lands occupied by people whose
power of enjoying them has been very limited, seems to have been
arranged----by Destiny. That is the excuse which we make for ourselves;
and if we do not find verbal authority for it in Deuteronomy as do the
Boers, we think that we collect a general authority from the manifested
intention of the Creator.
But in the midst of all this the attempts to deal justly with the
original occupants of the soil have of late years been incessant. If we
buy the land then it will be ours of right. Or if we surrender and
secure to the Native as much as the Native wants, then are we not a
benefactor rather than a robber? If we succour the weak against the
strong then shall we not justify our position? If in fact we do them
more good than harm may we not have quiet consciences? So we have dealt
with them intending to be just, but our dealings have always ended in
coercion, annexation, dominion and masterdom.
In these dealings who has been able to fix a price or to decide where
has been the right to sell? A few cattle have been given for a large
territory or even a few beads; and then it has turned out that the
recipient of the cattle or beads has had no title to dispose of the
land. But the purchaser if he be strong-handed will stick to his
purchase. And then come complications as to property which no judge can
unravel. Shall the law of the Native prevail or European, laws? and if
the former who shall interpret it,--a Native or a European? Some years
ago a Zulu king conquered a native tribe which lived on lands which are
now claimed as part of the Transvaal and then sold them for a herd of
cattle to the Dutch Republic. Time went by and the conquered people were
still allowed to live on the land, but the Dutch still claimed it as a
part of their empire. Then there arose a warrior among the tribe which
had been conquered; and the number of the tribe had increased with
peace; and the warrior said that he was then on his own territory and
not there by sufferance. And now that he was brave and strong he
declared that all the land that had once belonged to his tribe should be
his. And so there came war. The warrior was Secocoeni, the son of
Sequani who had been conquered by Dingaan the King of the Zulus, and the
war came up in the time of Mr. Burgers and has been the cause of our
annexation of the Republic. It should have been the first duty of Mr.
Burgers to have settled this affair with Secocoeni. His title to the
land in question was not very good, but he should have held it or
yielded it. If not all he might have yielded some. Or he might have
shown himself able to conquer the Native, as Dutchmen and Englishmen
have done before,--and have consoled himself with such justification as
that I have mentioned. But with his coins and his flags and his railway
he seems to have lost that power of inducing his Dutchmen to fight which
the Dutch leaders before his time have always possessed. There was
fighting and the Dutch had certain native allies, who assisted them
well. The use of such allies has become quite customary in South Africa.
At the very moment in which I am writing we are employing the Fingos
against Kreli and the Galekas in Kafraria. But Mr. Burgers with his
allies could not conquer Secocoeni although he was again and again
rebuked by our Secretary of State at home for the barbarity with which
he carried on the war. It is thus that Lord Carnarvon wrote to our
Governor at the Cape on the 25th January 1877. “I have to instruct you
once more to express to him”--President Burgers,--“the deep regret and
indignation with which H.M. Government view the proceedings of the armed
force which is acting in the name and under the authority of the
Transvaal Government, and that he is rapidly making impossible the
continuance either of those sentiments of respect and confidence towards
him, or of those friendly relations with him as the Chief of a
neighbouring Government, which it was the earnest hope of H.M.
Government to preserve.” This was a nice message for a President to
receive, not when he had quelled the Natives by the “armed force which
is acting in the name and under the authority of the Transvaal
Government,”--and which was undoubtedly the Transvaal army fighting for
the just or unjust claims of the country,--but when that armed force had
run away after an ineffective effort to drive the enemy from his
stronghold!
Whether Mr. Burgers ever received that message I do not know. It was not
written till a day or two after the arrival of Sir Theophilus Shepstone
at Pretoria,--to which place he had then gone up as British
Commissioner, and could hardly have been handed to the President much
before the final overthrow of his authority. Under these circumstances
we may hope that he was spared the annoyance of reading it. But other
annoyances, some from the same source, must surely have been enough to
crush any man, even one so sanguine as Mr. Burgers. During all the
latter period of his office he was subjected to a continued hail-storm
of reproaches as to slavery from British authorities and British
newspapers. These reached him generally from the Cape Colony, and Mr.
Burgers, who had come from the Cape, must have known his own old Colony
well enough himself to have been sure that if not refuted they would
certainly lead to disaster. I do not believe that Mr. Burgers had any
leaning towards slavery. He was by no means a Boer among Boers, but has
come rather of a younger class of men and from a newer school. But he
could only exist in the Transvaal by means of the Boers, and in his
existing condition could not exert himself for the fulfilment of the
clause of the treaty which forbad slavery.
Then he had against him a tribe of natives whom he could not conquer,
and at the same time the British Government and British feeling. And he
had not a shilling in the Treasury. Nominal taxes there were;--but no
one would pay them. As they were all direct taxes, it was open to the
people to pay them or to decline to do so. And they declined. As no one
had any confidence in anything, why should any one pay five or ten
pounds to a tax gatherer who had no constable at his back to enforce
payment? No one did do so, and there was not a shilling in the
Treasury. This was the condition of the South African Republic when Sir
Theophilus Shepstone arrived at Pretoria on January 22nd, 1877, with six
or seven other gentlemen from Natal and a guard of 25 mounted
policemen.