Development of Dutch Rule
[Sidenote: Development of the Two Republics]
From 1854 to 1877 the two Republics developed along very different
lines. Their general principle of government was the same, but it was
not administrated in the same way. In form their constitutions were
nominally republican; in practice they became essentially arbitrary and
absolutely antagonistic to British and Colonial ideas of government.
The coloured people who, in hundreds of thousands, were established
around the Dutch, had few civil rights and no political ones. They
were the prey of small military bodies, the source of an enforced
labour which could not in practice be distinguished from slavery, the
object of personal contempt and with little protection from public law
or private conscience. Citizenship was practically limited to the
Boer, in the Transvaal; and in the Orange Free State, through the
stringent military conditions connected with the privilege, the same
result followed for some years. The right of participating in the
Government of the country was thus confined to one class, the burghers
or native-born Dutch citizens. These alone could elect the President,
the Executive Council and the Volksraad, or popular Assembly.
[Sidenote: Important Differences]
There were important differences, however, in the further evolution of
the Republics. Something of this was due to the modified feeling of
the Orange River Boers towards England, to their proximity to the Cape
and to the fact of English settlers being scattered amongst them with
the natural result of friendly association and occasional
intermarriage. They, therefore, approximated in character and type to
the Dutchmen of Cape Colony. The Boer of the Transvaal, on the other
hand, was entirely isolated, of unmixed stock and with sentiments of
hostility toward everything British as strong and stern as they were
when he first left Colonial territory. Both Republics were allowed to
develop their own institutions in their own way and were, as the
Bloemfontein Convention of 1854 declared, "to all intents and purposes
a free and independent people." No slavery, or trade in slaves, was to
be permitted, however, and what might be termed Imperial rights of
control over native questions was retained along lines enunciated as
follows, by Sir M. E. Hicks-Beach, in a despatch dated November 20,
1879: "Neither by the Sand River Convention of 1852, nor at any other
time, did Her Majesty's Government surrender the right and duty of
requiring that the Transvaal should be governed with a view to the
common safety of the various European communities." The same
principle, of course, covered the Free State position and, later on,
was applied in connection with Moshesh and the Basuto question.
[Sidenote: Early Organization]
Without roads and bridges, churches and schools, or the ordinary
machinery of government, the Dutch of the Free State commenced the work
of organization in 1854, and the ultimate result reflects considerable
credit upon the ignorant burghers of those scattered communities. As
in the Cape Colony and the Transvaal the fundamental law was the old
Roman system as modified by the Legislature of Holland prior to 1652.
The official language was Dutch, and the Courts were constituted after
the Dutch fashion. For a short period Josias Hoffman was President,
and then Jacobus Nicolaus Boshof was elected to the position.
Relations with Moshesh and the Basuto tribe constituted the chief
trouble of this early period. The continuous object of this ambitious
ruler was to recover certain territory which had once belonged to
tribes of which the remnants now acknowledged his rule. The Boers
wished to retain regions which had in great part appeared as wild and
empty wastes when they had settled there. Apart from the general
question, both sides were aggressive and warlike. Each hated the
other, and the intermittent struggles which ensued were of the usually
merciless character. But Moshesh was too much for the Boers in skill
and craft, and, in 1858, the Free State President, after appealing in
vain to his Transvaal brethren for aid, turned to Sir George Grey, who
was then Governor of the Cape. Sir George accepted the position of
mediator, studied the situation closely, and came to the apparent
conclusion that the claims of Moshesh were in a measure just. To him,
therefore, he gave a piece of territory which the Boers believed to be
theirs, and handed over to the latter an outlying mission station which
had hitherto acknowledged Basuto authority. Mr. Boshof promptly
resigned the Presidency, and was succeeded by Marthinus Wessel
Pretorius, a son of the famous general. He devoted himself to
effecting a union with the Transvaal republics of the time, but was
unsuccessful, owing to conflicting interests and jealousies and to the
declaration from Cape Town that such action would dissolve the
Conventions with Great Britain.
[Sidenote: Chronic Condition of War]
Meantime, and during the greater part of the years from 1854 to 1868,
the Boers of the Free State were in a chronic condition of war with the
Basutos. There were few direct conflicts, and the troubles consisted
mainly in raids, the burning of houses or kraals, the stealing of
cattle, or the kidnapping of children. The Basutos fought in much the
same Fabian manner that the Boers themselves practiced, and met
invaders concealed behind rocks or cairns or the ever-present kopje.
The region ruled by Moshesh was a compact and round-shaped territory
lying between Natal, Cape Colony and the Free State. Its surface was
broken by steep hills or mountains with more or less flat summits
admirably fitted for villages or kraals, and with every requisite for
defence in the form of perpendicular wall-like sides. [Sidenote: The
Basutoland] Between these natural fortresses were the sweeping and
fertile valleys where the Basutos grew their corn and raised their
cattle, and which for years it was the delight of the Boers to raid; as
it was the primal pleasure of the Basutos to pour down in sudden forays
from their rocky fastnesses upon Dutch territory. This constant
interchange of robbery and pillage embittered the character of both
peoples, but naturally had the most degrading effect upon that of the
Boer. For a presumably civilized and Christian race to be engaged year
in and year out in the seizure of cattle from a savage enemy and in the
occasional enslavement of children or the shooting down of stray
individuals and small parties of a mobile enemy could not but have an
evil influence upon a character so peculiar as was that of even the
best and most enlightened of the emigrant farmers.
[Sidenote: Basutoland Overrun]
After a decade of this sort of intermittent struggle, however, the
Boers were encouraged by familiarity with that part of the Basuto
country which lay in the valleys and fields to try the task of storming
some of the strongholds of the enemy. With the aid of a few small
cannon, the first attempts were successful and surprisingly easy. Thus
encouraged, within the three years following 1865, the greater part of
Basutoland was overrun and the best cornfields captured. They were
promptly "annexed" to the Free State, and then attention was devoted to
the French missionaries, who had, meanwhile, been doing a splendid work
amongst the natives. They were turned out of the country in which half
a million of dollars had been expended upon their stations; their homes
were plundered and the private property of men who had, in some cases,
been laboring for thirty years in the region was confiscated;
furniture, books and other items of value were destroyed, and all
redress was refused. Permission was afterwards given to re-occupy
their stations, not as such, but as farms for which $500 was in each
case to be paid the Boer Government. Much of the conquered territory
was also surveyed and sold. But the power of the Boers was a very
fitful one. With a weak Government at home they were unable to hold
the regions which they captured from time to time, and the result was a
re-occupation by the Basutos, an attempt to cultivate their fields,
further reprisals, and more attacks upon the mountain strongholds.
Upon one occasion the Boers destroyed all the growing crops of an
extensive section. But Thaba Bosigo, the central fortress of the
country, could not be subdued by any force available.
[Illustration: AN ARMORED TRAIN SHELLING A BOER BATTERY AT NIGHT.]
[Illustration: BOERS CROSSING THE MALMANI FORD NEAR MAFEKING]
[Sidenote: Basutoland under British Rule]
In 1867 one last struggle occurred, and then Moshesh, weakened by age
and realizing that his sons were much as other natives were, and did
not possess the ability to hold the country together when his own end
had come, turned to Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor and High
Commissioner at Cape Town, and asked that his people be proclaimed
British subjects. This was done, partly from a wise unwillingness to
have the Free State so immensely strengthened as it would have been by
the possession of Basutoland, partly by a natural objection to have so
large a number of natives dispersed over the country without home or
special object, and partly by dislike of the policy which the Boers had
been for years pursuing in regard to savages generally and missionaries
in particular. The Free Staters were intensely annoyed. They had lost
the opportunity for a lasting revenge upon their enemy and the
possibility of possessing the Switzerland of South Africa. In the
light of after events the action of Sir Philip Wodehouse seems almost
Providential, and is certainly one of the few instances where British
statecraft was really brought into play in this part of the world.
Were the Basuto strongholds in possession of Dutch sharpshooters and
fortified by German science and artillery, the struggle of 1899-1900
would be infinitely more serious than it is at the time of writing.
[Sidenote: "The Hollanders"]
The Boers of the Free State bitterly resented this annexation.
Although now governed by the wisest Dutchman who has come to the front
in South Africa--Jan Hendrik Brand--(afterwards better known as Sir
John Brand) who had succeeded Pretorius as President in 1865--they were
also greatly influenced by a small and compact body of men, known as
Hollanders, who had obtained possession of nearly all the offices of
emolument in the State. These Hollanders afterwards drifted largely
into the Transvaal where they had fuller and freer scope for
anti-British sentiment and policy; and for isolation from the British
ideas and principles which gradually and, in the end, powerfully,
controlled the policy of President Brand. Meantime, however, these
adventurers from Holland had much influence in the Free State. In
1858, when the Basutos had driven back the farmers and were threatening
their homes and cattle during one of the ups and downs of the long
struggle, a number of the Boers, and even some of the Hollanders, were
in favor of seeking annexation to Cape Colony, and actually a
resolution to that effect went through the Volksraad. But five years
later, when fifteen hundred and fifty signers of a memorial asked the
Volksraad to press an agitation to this end, the situation in regard to
the Basutos had meanwhile changed, and the Hollanders opposed the
proposition strongly. The movement was never seriously revived.
Speaking in this connection at the prorogation of the Cape Parliament
in September, 1868, Sir Philip Wodehouse declared that: "Entirely on my
own responsibility, giving expression only to my own opinions, I may
say that I regard the measures which severed from their allegiance the
European communities in those regions to have been founded in error."
[Sidenote: The Boers Protest]
This Hollander party refused to enter into any negotiation with the
High Commissioner concerning the Basutoland annexation, indulged in
much talk about French and Russian intervention, and finally despatched
two Commissioners to London armed with a long and emphatic protest.
Fortunately for all concerned, the British Government approved of the
policy pursued by Sir Philip Wodehouse and authorized him to take such
further action as, to his knowledge of local conditions, might seem
desirable. This wisdom of this course was so unusual and striking in
connection with South African affairs that a tribute of respect seems
due to the Colonial Secretary of that period--the Duke of Buckingham
and Chandos. The annexation was, in fact, in the immediate interest of
the Free State as well as in the future interests of Great Britain. It
gave the exhausted republic a rest from protracted and injurious
conflict. It afforded an opportunity for the statesmanship of the new
President to assert and express itself. It facilitated the development
of a friendliness between Cape Colony and the Free State which, so long
as President Brand lived and ruled (1865-88), did much for the general
good of South Africa and something for the improvement of individual
character amongst the less implacable farmers of the little republic.
There was indeed much for a statesman to do. Ideals of Government
amongst the best of the Boers were still so crude as to be almost
laughable. Masses of useless paper money were in existence. Farms or
ranches had been neglected, many cattle destroyed and heavy debts
incurred.
[Sidenote: Discovery of Diamonds]
Just at this moment the discovery of diamonds effected a revolution in
South African affairs. As this incident is variously described by many
writers, and as its importance is so great from an historical point of
view, I propose to pin my faith upon the record given by Dr. George M.
Theal. His position as a civil servant and Historiographer to the Cape
Government would, perhaps, lay the most impartial of historians open to
occasional allegations of favoritism in dealing with annals so
permeated with Dutch and English rivalry as are those of South Africa.
But there can be no question as to his accuracy in treating of such
questions of fact as this.[1] He states that: "One day, in 1867, a
child on a farm in the north of Cape Colony was observed to be playing
with a remarkably brilliant pebble, which a trader, to whom it was
shown as a curiosity, suspected to be a gem of value. It was sent for
examination to a qualified person in Grahamstown, who reported that it
was a diamond of twenty-one carats weight and that its value was £500.
Search was immediately commenced in the neighborhood by several persons
in odd hours, and soon another, though much smaller, was found. Then a
third was picked up on the bank of the Vaal River, and attention was
directed to that locality. During 1868 several were found, though as
yet no one was applying himself solely to looking for them. In March,
1869, the 'Star of South Africa' was obtained from a Korana Hottentot,
who had been in possession of it for a long time without the least idea
of its value except as a powerful charm. It was a magnificent
brilliant of eighty-three carats weight when uncut, and was readily
sold for £11,000."
[1] The Story of the Nations Series. _South Africa_, p. 322.
[Sidenote: Ownership and Territorial Rule]
The lower Vaal then became the scene of a bustling, restless and
struggling population of miners and speculators. Wealth and diamonds
go together, and with them naturally came questions of ownership and
territorial rule. The latter was and had been in dispute for many
years. The southern bank of the river was probably Free State
territory, but the ownership of the northern bank was in grave doubt.
No actual government had been established there, although the
Transvaal, the Free State, the Batlapin tribe of natives, and the
Griqua captain--Waterboer--all claimed portions of the ground. There
was naturally much disorder at the mines, both north and south of the
River, under such conditions, and, finally, as the bulk of the miners
were British subjects, the High Commissioner at Cape Town decided to
interfere, and proposed a general arbitration. President Brand
declined the suggestion, but President Pretorius of the Transvaal
acceded, and a Court was established at Bloemhof, on the northern bank
of the Vaal, with Mr. Keate, Governor of Natal, as final Umpire. From
the information then available there seems no doubt that the Award
issued by Mr. Keate in October, 1871, was just. He acted, and could
only act, upon the evidence presented to the Court, and, as the Free
State refused to work up or present its case, and as Waterboer was
enabled by the use of a clever advocate to prepare a fairly strong one,
the region in dispute was finally awarded to him. He had already
offered his claim to the territory to the British authorities, and, as
soon as the legal decision was announced, Sir Henry Barkly, as High
Commissioner, proclaimed the Diamond Mines and what had long been
familiarly known as Griqualand West, to be a British dependency.
Afterwards, during the holding of a special Court for the settlement of
individual ground-claims, a minute search into the history of the
region south of the Vaal revealed an unsuspected flimsiness in
Waterboer's title, and the judgment of the Court thereupon threw out
all titles based upon Griqua grants. This very impartial
verdict--under all the circumstances of the case--at once gave
President Brand a position in the matter which he did not hesitate to
use. He went to London and laid his case before the British
Government, which replied that the possession of the country in
question was a necessity to the paramount Power in South Africa, but
that he would be given $450,000 as a settlement of the Free State
claims. This he accepted.
[Sidenote: A Momentous Decision]
The decision was as momentous in its results as the annexation of
Basutoland. Without the possession of Griqualand West, the British
Government and settlers, and Cape Colony itself, would have been shut
off from expansion to the north. The unclaimed country from the
Limpopo to the Zambesi would have been open to the raids and eventual
occupation of the Boers of the two Republics. The diamond mines of
South Africa--with their hundreds of millions' worth of precious
stones--would have been in the hands of England's enemies as well as
the gold mines. Matabeland and Mashonaland and the empire created by
Cecil Rhodes to the north and west of the republics would have been
alien ground. The development of British South Africa would, in a
word, have been effectually confined to the limited region south of the
Orange River and the Drakensberg Mountains. The Keate Award,
therefore, and the dispute between the two Dutch Governments and that
of Great Britain, turned upon more important issues than the discovery
of diamonds. The Boers did not really want the latter, but it is
fairly evident now that they fully appreciated the importance of
holding the only route to the north which still remained open to
British acquisition. Had President Brand shared in the hostile
sentiments of many of his own people and of his compatriots over the
Vaal toward Great Britain, he would never have sold his claim even for
the sum which did so much to place the finances of the Free State upon
a sound footing. From this time forward to the end of the century,
however, the Orange Free State enjoyed a condition of progressive
prosperity. Roads, public buildings and bridges were constructed. A
fairly good system of Dutch public schools was established in the
villages, though it did not greatly affect the farmers on their wide
ranches. [Sidenote: Railway from Cape Town] A railway was run through
the country from Cape Town to Pretoria, largely at the expense of the
Cape Government, while branch lines in time connected the Free State
system with Durban, in Natal, and with Port Elizabeth and East London,
on the southeast coast of Cape Colony. President Brand was re-elected
to his position until he died in 1888, leaving the highest of
reputations as a wise administrator, a warm friend of Great Britain,
and a sincere admirer of British institutions. After his time other
influences predominated, and the first evidence of this was in the
election of Mr. F. W. Reitz--previously Chief Justice of the State--as
his successor.
[Sidenote: Condition of the Transvaal]
Meanwhile, the Transvaal State, or South African Republic as it called
itself, was passing through an infinite variety of more or less painful
experiences. The region possessed by the Boers north of the Vaal is a
great tract of fairly fertile and level land broken here and there by
rugged hills. The climate is varied, but upon the whole pleasant and
healthful. Its wheat-producing capabilities are famed throughout South
Africa. Coffee and tobacco also thrive. But cattle-raising was and is
the primary pursuit of almost the entire white or Dutch population.
The Boers of this region did not arrive there all at once, or found
their State upon conditions of mutual interest and a basis of common
principles. Their one tie of union, their single basis of
co-operation, was hatred of the English. Whether trekking north from
Cape Colony under Potgieter and fighting the Matabele for a country to
live in; or leaving Natal in utter disgust at the proposed free
institutions of the new British administration; or crossing the Vaal
from the Orange River Sovereignty to escape from even friendly
relations with British communities; they were, and remained, the most
implacable, the most ignorant, the most isolated and unmanageable of
the emigrant farmers. At first the Boer population numbered only some
sixteen thousand, and in 1837, after the destruction of Moselkatze and
the Matabele power on the south side of the Limpopo, an unsuccessful
attempt was made to form a common government. A little later four
republics--Pochefstroom, Zoutpansberg, Lydenburg and Utrecht--were
established, but without much effect so far as practical government was
concerned. A period of wild license followed, and was marked by much
cruelty towards the natives as well as anarchy and strife amongst the
farmers themselves.
[Sidenote: Transvaal Under Pretorius]
In all the great region between the Orange River and the Limpopo these
conditions, however, prevailed between 1836 and 1850 to a greater or
lesser degree. South of the Vaal a check came through the vicinity of
British power and population; but north of that historic river there
was little ameliorative influence until about 1864. Marthinus Wessel
Pretorius became President of one of the Transvaal sections, or
republics, in 1857, and by 1860 had united the entire region under his
control. Even then, however, there was a further period of civil war
until, in 1864, Pretorius succeeded in obtaining general acceptance by
the people and a legal election, with S. J. P. Kruger as
Vice-President. He at once resigned the Presidency of the Orange Free
State, which he had also held since 1858--but without success to his
efforts at uniting the northern and southern republics--and devoted
himself to breaking the power of the Baramapulana tribe which had
established itself, in great and growing strength, upon the southern
banks of the Limpopo and in territory which the Boers thought they
should control. During more than three succeeding years the Transvaal
tried in vain to subjugate this tribe. The State, however, had no
money, and could not even pay for the transport of ammunition from
Durban, on one occasion, while its people were not united in the
prosecution of the war. The result was a practical withdrawal from the
Zoutpansberg region; a recognition of the independence of the
Baramapulana under the nominal form of a small annual tribute; and the
creation of difficulties amongst other tribes which realized the check
thus given to a people who had often oppressed them and frequently
attacked their kraals. Wars followed with the Baralong and other
clans, and the Republic presently found itself unable to assert its
authority over the natives within its claimed sphere of supremacy, or
to even hold its own territory intact. By 1870, when the Transvaal
became mixed up in the Diamond Fields controversy and entered into the
arbitration resulting in the Keate Award, the condition of the people
was deplorable. [Sidenote: Ignorance and Isolation] The generation
which was now grown up had absolutely no knowledge of anything beyond
their own family circle, and had no acquaintance whatever with books,
or history, or external affairs. The rivers were unbridged, the
Treasury was empty, the salaries of the officials were only
occasionally paid and trade was carried on by barter in the absence of
gold or silver. The natives around them could not be more densely
ignorant, or more completely isolated, than were these farmers on the
veldt with all their thriving flocks and herds and stores of grain and
vegetables and fruit. Whatever the poverty of intellect, or knowledge,
or the primitive nature of their government, there was never any lack
of food and wealth of cattle amongst the Dutch of the Transvaal. Like
the Matabele and Zulu in their days of power, the Boers always
possessed these requisites of life. Yet they would not pay taxes, or
support their government, or educate their children.
[Sidenote: Discontent and Disintegration]
President Pretorius was compelled to resign as a result of his
participation in the Diamond Fields' arbitration, and the Reverend
Thomas Francois Burgers, a clergyman of unorthodox views, who had
distinguished himself as a lawyer, was elected, in 1872, to the
position. He was an able man, but somewhat visionary for the strained
situation which required his attention. He had to deal with a few
thousand ignorant men of seventeenth century views who were unable to
govern themselves, or to control the surrounding natives, and be
expected within a few years to mould out of this unpromising material a
prosperous Republic with colleges, railways, telegraphs and a great
name amongst the nations of the world. That his dreams were afterwards
in a measure realized reflects credit upon his patriotism and
perspicacity; but his policy broke down before the obstacles of the
immediate present. Money to the extent of $450,000 was obtained from
Holland, which the President visited in 1874, under authority from the
Volkraad. With this sum railway material was purchased for a proposed
line from Lorenzo Marques to Pretoria, and a Superintendent of
Education was brought back to manage a system which was not yet in
existence and for the creation of which there was neither money nor
popular desire. When Mr. Burgers arrived home again he found
discontent and disintegration everywhere visible, and his educational
scheme was put aside; while his railway material was sent to rot at the
Portuguese port for want of more money to carry on the enterprise.
Then the strong Bapedi tribe under Sekukuni rose in rebellion; many of
the Boers refused to fight under an agnostic President; and a large
commando which he succeeded in getting together failed to accomplish
anything and in the end stampeded homeward. The first result of this
failure was anarchy, and the secondary consequence was the development
of a situation, through the menacing attitude of the Zulu forces upon
the frontier, which brought about annexation to the British Crown and
the creation of the strictly modern phase of the South African question.