THE AFRICANDER REPUBLICS AND BRITISH POLICY.
The surprising policy pursued by the British government in arbitrarily
annexing the Transvaal in 1877, and in restoring its independence in
1881, after a brief and indecisive conflict at arms, and when strong
re-enforcements had placed the imperial troops in position to crush the
Africander uprising, caused widespread dissatisfaction and bitter
controversy both in England and in South Africa. Why had the country
been annexed at all? And seeing it had been annexed, why was it so
ignominiously yielded up immediately after the disgrace of Majuba Hill?
There were many at home and in the South African colonies who would
have been satisfied to restore the independence of the Transvaal—but
only after having inflicted on the Africander forces at least one
crushing defeat.
The only reply of the Liberal government was to the effect that the
annexation, and the refusal to reverse it, had been due to
misapprehension of the facts; that the officers of the crown in South
Africa, partly through ignorance and partly through prejudice, had
reported that there was no such passionate desire for independence
among the Africanders as was pretended by their leaders, and as was
proved to exist by the uprising; that as soon as the facts were known
it became the duty of a liberty-loving people like the English to honor
their own principles by the immediate retrocession of the Transvaal
without waiting to first avenge defeats and vindicate the military
superiority of Great Britain; and that a great country better
illustrated her greatness by doing justice and showing mercy, even at
great cost to herself, than by taking a bloody revenge for reverses
suffered on the fields of war in trying to enforce a policy now seen to
be morally wrong.
Moreover, associated with these moral considerations were reasons of
statecraft that made it appear wise as well as right to let the
Transvaal go. The Africanders of the Orange Free State, of Cape Colony,
of Natal, were known to be in warm sympathy with their brethren of the
Transvaal. Of course, the power of Great Britain could crush, in time,
a rebellion as extensive as the whole Dutch-speaking population of
South Africa, but at what cost of treasure and blood and bitter
disloyalty to the British crown! In comparison to the inevitable
results of a general civil war the loss of the Transvaal was as
nothing. How well grounded were these fears of a general uprising in
1881 may be seen in the earlier events of the second Africander War of
Independence in 1899. With no late grievance against Great Britain to
redress, the Orange Free State made common cause with the South African
Republic from the first, and the Africanders of Cape Colony and Natal
were more than suspected of aiding and abetting in a covert way the
cause for which the two republics had taken the field.
If the British ministers counted upon some recognition of the
magnanimity displayed in making the retrocession immediately after
defeat—of the humanity which renounced revenge for the humiliation of
Majuba Hill when it was within easy reach—they were disappointed. The
Africanders saw not generosity, not humanity, but only fear as the
motive for the sudden and easy yielding of the British; and to their
natural exultation they added contempt for their late antagonists, and
so became and have continued very unpleasant neighbors for so
proud-spirited a people as the English. And this is the principal
reason why the English in all South Africa have always condemned the
restoration of independence to the Transvaal—and, most of all, the time
and manner of the act. They have not been able to forget the fact that
the terms of peace were, in a way, dictated by the Africanders as
victorious invaders and holders of British territory in the colony of
Natal.
In order to view intelligently the causes of the second Africander War
of Independence, it is necessary to consider the general trend of
events in South Africa, and the conflicting policies sought to be
carried out there during the few years following the restitution of
independence to the Transvaal.
The South African Republic emerged from its brief and successful
struggle for independence impoverished and in a state of political
chaos, but rejoicing, nevertheless, in a sense of national freedom, and
more than ever confident that it enjoyed the special favor of Heaven.
The old constitution, or Grondwet, was revived, the volksraad was
convoked, and an election was held, resulting in the choice of Mr. Paul
Kruger to be president. Mr. Kruger immediately planned for bold and
far-reaching movements on three sides of the republic’s territory.
A great trek to the north for the occupation of Mashonaland was
projected but never carried out. To the south Zululand was now open,
and into it went a number of adventurers as trekkers, followed, a
little later, by others who took service under one of the warring
native chiefs. When these took steps to set up a government of their
own in the northern districts of Zululand the British authorities
interfered and restricted their claim to a small territory of about
three thousand square miles, which enjoyed an independent existence as
the New Republic from 1886 to 1888, when it was annexed by the
Transvaal.
Other bands of Africanders raided parts of Bechuanaland, to the west,
taking forcible possession of territory or obtaining grants of land by
devices not always honorable. These intimidated the native chiefs into
an acknowledgment of their authority and established two small
republics, Stella and Goshen, to the north of Kimberley.
These proceedings opened the eyes of the British government to the
policy upon which the South African Republic had entered—to annex
Bechuanaland and close the way of British communication with regions
still farther north in which the nation had become interested. To check
these designs in time, a military expedition under Sir Charles Warren
entered Bechuanaland toward the end of 1884, expelled the Africanders
without bloodshed, and proclaimed the whole region a crown colony under
the name of British Bechuanaland. This territory was annexed to Cape
Colony in 1895. In 1885 a British protectorate was established over a
still more northerly region, covering the whole country as far as the
borders of Matabeleland. In 1888 the British hold was made yet more
secure by a treaty with the king of the Matabele, Lo Bengula, by which
he bound himself to cede no territory to, and to make no treaty with,
any foreign power without the approval of the British High
Commissioner.
The raising of the British flag at St. Lucia Bay, on the Indian Ocean,
in 1884, and a treaty with the Tonga tribes, binding them to make no
treaties with any other power than the English, completed the hold of
the British crown on the eastern coast line up to the southern border
of the Portuguese possessions.
The Africanders, denied expansion on the north, sought compensation in
the acquisition of Swaziland, to the east of the Transvaal republic—a
small but fertile region and possessing considerable mineral wealth. It
was inhabited by some 70,000 Kaffirs, near of kin but hostile to the
Zulus. After long negotiations, in which the South African Republic,
Cetawayo of the Zulus, and the British authorities took part, the
Africanders secured a concession of right to build a railway through
the marshy region lying between Swaziland and the sea to the coast at
Kosi Bay; this concession was granted in 1890 and laid in abeyance
awaiting the acquisition of Swaziland itself, through which the railway
must run. In 1894 the whole territory of Swaziland was placed under the
control of the South African Republic, subject to a formal guaranty of
protection to the natives.
It is difficult to determine whether it was Africander dullness or
British sharpness, or both, that omitted from the Swaziland convention
of 1894 the concession to the South African Republic, granted in 1890,
of a right to construct a railway to the sea through the marshy
district of Tongaland lying next the coast line. But it was omitted
from that instrument, and it was held that, as the later convention
superseded and voided the earlier one, the provision for access to the
sea had lapsed. Whereupon the British government promptly secured the
consent of the three Tonga chiefs concerned, and proclaimed a
protectorate over the whole strip of land lying between Swaziland and
the ocean, up to the southern portion of the Portuguese territory. Thus
by a stroke of statecraft the access of the Africanders to the sea by
railway communication entirely under their own control was effectually
stopped.
Within nine years the British control established in Bechuanaland in
1885 was extended over the whole unappropriated country as far north as
the Zambesi. By a new treaty made with Lo Bengula in 1888 the sphere of
British influence was further expanded to embrace not only
Matabeleland, but Mashonaland also—a partially explored territory to
the eastward, over which Lo Bengula claimed some authority.
The next step in working out the policy of the British in South Africa
was the granting of a royal charter to a corporation known as the
British South African Company, formed to develop this eastern and
undefined region of Lo Bengula’s territory. Mr. Cecil Rhodes was
conspicuous as the leader in this movement. The purpose of the company
was twofold: To develop the gold fields supposed to exist there, and to
forestall the Transvaal Africanders in taking possession of the
country. The charter not only invested the company with the rights of a
trading corporation, but also with administrative powers as
representative of the British crown. In 1890 the pioneer emigrants
under this management began to arrive in the chartered territory and
commenced to found settlements and build forts along the eastern
plateau.
With the conflicts which arose between the British South African
Company and the Portuguese—complicated by alliances with the natives,
with the wars which arose therefrom, and with the final adjustments and
treaties that followed—we have nothing to do in these pages. The one
fact that is of interest to us in closing this chapter of conflict in
statecraft is that at last the British succeeded in isolating the
Africanders from the sea, and in throwing around them a perfect cordon
of British territories and pre-emptions. By chartering the British
South African Company to the north of the Transvaal the last link in
the chain that inclosed the two Africander republics was completed. For
there had been left no possibility of advance toward the sea eastward
on the part of the Transvaal Republic—in the Arbitration Treaty of 1872
Great Britain had obtained pre-emption rights over the Portuguese
colonial possessions.