THE AFRICANDERS’ FIRST WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
Notwithstanding their native love of independence, and their protest to
the British throne against the act of annexation, the Africanders of
the Transvaal might have acquiesced in the British rule had they been
fairly treated. There was a good promise of peace at first. The
finances of the country were at once relieved by the expenditure of
English money in liberal amounts. Numbers of the leading Africanders
retained their official positions at the request of the British
commissioner, Sir Theophilus Shepstone. It is only reasonable to
suppose that the people at large would have settled down to permanent
content as British subjects had the affairs of the newly constituted
colony been administered to the satisfaction of the leaders.
But, instead of following a policy dictated alike by wisdom and
righteousness, the very opposite seems to have been the rule observed
in the attempt to govern these new and most difficult subjects of the
British crown. A number of mistakes—so called—were made which, as even
Canon Knox Little admits, were a sufficient justification of the
Africander leaders in plotting and agitating against the British
connection.
The first of these mistakes was the too early recall of Sir Theophilus
Shepstone, who had so deftly managed the bloodless though arbitrary
annexation, who knew the country well and was much respected by the
people. In place of his rule as special commissioner was substituted an
administration under Sir Bartle Frere as governor of Cape Colony and
British High Commissioner for South Africa. There being no
representative government in the Transvaal after annexation, the
administration became, perhaps necessarily, autocratic both in form and
in spirit. Sir William Owen Lanyon, who had been appointed governor of
the Transvaal, was an officer of some renown in dealing successfully
with native uprisings, but proved totally unfit for the delicate
management required in governing the Africanders. He has been described
as haughty and arrogant in mind, indisposed to excuse the rudeness of
the Transvaal farmers, and incapable of tolerating the social equality
so dear to them. His swarthy complexion, also, made against his
popularity, for it suggested the possibility of a strain of black blood
in his veins—a blemish unpardonable in the eyes of any slaveholding
people. Under his rule complaints were ignored, taxes were levied and
peremptorily collected by distraint, and soon the latent discontent
broke out into open and active disaffection.
The second mistake—if it does not deserve a harsher name—was the
failure to institute the local self-government by representatives
promised by Sir Theophilus Shepstone when he proclaimed annexation. The
text of that part of the proclamation reads thus:
“And I further proclaim and make known that the Transvaal will remain a
separate government, with its own Laws and Legislature, and that it is
the wish of her Most Gracious Majesty that it shall enjoy the fullest
legislative privileges compatible with the circumstances of the country
and the intelligence of the people. That arrangement will be made by
which the Dutch language will practically be as much the official
language as the English. All laws, proclamations and government notices
will be published in the Dutch language; and in the courts of law the
same may be done at the option of suitors to a case. The laws so in
force in the State will be retained until altered by competent
legislative authority.”
Not one of these promises was ever fulfilled. The volksraad was never
convened. The promised constitution of local self-government was never
promulgated. Instead of redeeming these promises the Transvaal was put
upon the status of a crown colony in 1879, and the legislature proposed
for it was to consist of some crown officials and six members—all to be
the nominees of the governor.
Mr. Bryce, in his “Impressions of South Africa,” calls this failure to
redeem a promise authoritatively made as a concession to a people whose
independence was being arbitrarily subverted, a “blunder.” Canon Little
uses a still softer term, calling it a “mistake”; and adds, “It was
given in good faith, and in good faith was received. Sir Theophilus
Shepstone tried to fulfill it. He at once submitted his views as to the
necessary legislative arrangements. No action whatever was taken on it,
either by Conservatives or Liberals, and his dispatch is probably lying
uncared for in the Colonial Office now!”—(1899.)
And so, in the mutations of language as currently used in history and
in Christian ethics, it has come to pass that this piece of national
treachery—this treachery of the strong against the weak—this treachery
implicating both of the leading political parties of Great Britain and
their chiefs, is only a “blunder,” a “mistake”!
One real and very serious blunder was committed, if one judges of it
from the view point of the policy intended to be pursued in the
Transvaal by the British government. The Africanders had accepted,
under protest, the act of annexation mainly because they were in mortal
fear of the Zulus. That reason for submission the British proceeded to
remove by overthrowing the Zulu power.
In the northeast Sir Garnet Wolseley defeated Sikukuni and established
what promised to be a permanent peace. In 1879 Sir Bartle Frere
inflicted a like reverse upon Cetawayo, in the southeast, and so
completed the subjugation of the Zulus. The blunder in taking this
course declared itself when, after subduing the natives at great cost
of blood and treasure, the British found that in so doing they had
relieved the Africanders of the one fear that thus far had prevented
them from reasserting their independence.
Many people, both in England and in South Africa, regarded the
annexation of the Transvaal as final. But leading members of the
Liberal party, then in opposition, had emphatically condemned it, and
this had raised hopes in the Transvaal Africanders and their
sympathizers in England that when Gladstone came into power again the
things which they regarded as wrong would be righted. Such hopes were
doomed to disappointment.
In 1880 the Liberals carried the country and took office in April of
that year. Guided by information derived from the crown officials in
South Africa, the new ministers were misled as to the measure of
discontent in the Transvaal, and declared that the act of annexation
would not be reversed.
This flat refusal brought matters to an immediate issue. The Transvaal
burghers, though they had continued to agitate and protest and
memorialize the throne, had waited with considerable patience for three
years, hoping for either a restoration of their independence or—as the
next best thing—the instituting of such a representative local
government as had been promised them by the imperial authorities. But
now the new Liberal government, after using the Transvaal grievances
for electioneering purposes, had refused to consider and redress those
grievances; the military administration of a mere crown colony
continued in full force under the detested Sir William Owen Lanyon; and
there appeared to be no hope that the promises made to mollify their
indignation when their independence was being subverted would ever be
fulfilled.
It has been said, in extenuation, that the British government of this
time was too busy with other pressing matters to give the attention
necessary to a correct understanding of the condition, and the rights
and the wrongs, of the Transvaal Africanders. And it has been said, in
further extenuation, that there was an honest intention on the part of
the government to fulfill the promises made—some time—as soon as the
authorities could get to it. Be that as it may, at the end of three
years, which had brought no betterment of their state, the burghers
concluded that their protests and their patience had been wasted, and
determined to wait no longer.
Accordingly a mass-meeting was held at Paardekraal, in December, 1880,
at which it was resolved to appeal to arms. The burghers elected
Messrs. Pretorius, Paul Kruger and Joubert to proclaim for them the
re-establishment of their former government as the South African
Republic, which was done in Heidelberg, and the national flag was
raised, on the 16th of December, 1880.
The first battles of this war were little more than skirmishes. The
British troops were scattered through the country in small detachments,
which the Africanders—every man of whom was a marksman and an
experienced fighter—found it easy to either cut off or drive before
them to positions that could be fortified.
The nearest available British troops, besides those already in the
Transvaal, were in Natal. General Sir George Colley, governor of that
colony, raised what force he could and marched northward to check the
uprising. Before he could enter the Transvaal, however,
Commandant-General Joubert crossed the border into Natal and took up a
strong position at Laing’s Nek. This now historic spot is a steep ridge
forming the watershed between the Klip River, a tributary of the Vaal,
and Buffalo River, a confluent of the Tugela, which flows into the
Indian Ocean. Here a sanguinary battle was fought on the 28th of
January, 1881. The British attacked the Africanders with great spirit,
but Joubert’s position was invulnerable. The ridge protected his men
from the artillery fire of the British, while they, in charging up the
slope, were cut down by the accurate rifle fire of the Africanders, and
forced to retreat. On the 8th of February, in the same neighborhood, on
the Ingogo heights, the British were again defeated after suffering
severe loss.
General Colley now decided to seize by night Majuba Hill, which is
really a considerable mountain, rising nearly 2,000 feet above Laing’s
Nek, and commanding that ridge for the purpose of artillery fighting.
On the night of February 26th, leaving the main body of his army in
camp, and unaccountably forgetting to order it to advance on the enemy
so as to divert attention from his tactical movement, General Colley
led a smaller division to the top of Majuba Hill.
The burgher force was thrown into temporary dismay when they first
observed British soldiers in that commanding position. But when there
was no advance against them in front, and no artillery fire from the
top of Majuba, they sent out a volunteer party to storm the hill. The
story of that charge has gone into history to stay as an example, on
the one side, of rugged bravery and splendid courage achieving victory,
and on the other of equal bravery and courage strangely betrayed by
some one’s blunder into defeat and ruinous disaster. Why the main force
of the British army was not ordered to co-operate in the movement, why
there were no entrenchments thrown up on the hill, why the order,
“Charge bayonets,” so eagerly looked for by the British soldiers on the
hill-top, was never given, General Colley did not live to tell—no one
else knew. The Africanders scaled the hill, shooting as they went up
every man that showed on the sky line—themselves protected by the steep
declivities above them, and carried the hill-top, routing and almost
annihilating the British force. General Colley and ninety-two of his
men were killed, and fifty-nine were made prisoners.
In the meanwhile additional British troops were hurrying to the scene
of conflict, under command of Sir Evelyn Wood. What the outcome would
have been of further hostilities between the Africanders and the
greatly increased British force no one can tell. The sudden and
surprising action of the British government, that put an end to the
war, was not based upon any estimate of the probable issue of continued
conflict, but altogether upon the moral aspects of the situation as
seen by Mr. Gladstone and his associates in the British cabinet. Before
Sir Evelyn Wood could strike a single blow toward wiping out the
disgrace of Majuba Hill, the home government, on the 5th of March,
1881, ordered an armistice, and on the 23d agreed to terms of peace by
which the Transvaal was restored to its former political independence
in all regards, save that it was to be under the suzerainty of the
British crown.
In August, 1881, a more formal convention was held at Pretoria, when it
was agreed that the Transvaal government should be independent in the
management of its internal affairs; that the Republic should respect
the independence of the Swazies, a tribe of natives on the eastern
border of the Transvaal; that British troops should be allowed to pass
through the territory of the Republic in time of war; and that the
British sovereign should be acknowledged as suzerain of the Republic
and have a veto power over all treaties between the government of the
Transvaal and foreign nations.
Several of the stipulations in this convention were very distasteful to
Paul Kruger and other leading spirits in the Transvaal, and also to the
volksraad. Negotiations for desired changes were continued until 1884,
when, on the 27th of February, a revision called the London Convention
was made and signed, formulating the obligations of the Republic as
follows:
The Sovereign of Great Britain was to have, for the space of six months
after their date, a veto power over all treaties between the Republic
and any native tribes to the eastward and westward of its territory,
and between it and any foreign state or nation except the Orange Free
State.
The stipulations of the two previous conventions respecting slavery,
those of 1852 and 1881, were to be observed by the Republic.
And the Republic was to accord to Great Britain the treatment of a most
favored nation, and to deal kindly with strangers entering its
territory.
Nothing whatever was said in this latest convention of the suzerainty
of the British Sovereign mentioned in that of 1881, and, as this
instrument, negotiated in London with Lord Derby, the Colonial
Secretary, was understood to take the place of all former conventions,
the Africanders of the Transvaal have contended very reasonably that
the omission is sufficient evidence of the renunciation of suzerainty
by the British government. Furthermore, by the London Convention of
1884, the British crown for the first time conceded to the Transvaal
the title of “The South African Republic,” by which name it has ever
since been designated in all diplomatic transactions and correspondence
between it and other states.