Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Garrett Alley, and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
A CENTURY OF WRONG
ISSUED BY
F.W. REITZ
_State Secretary of the South African Republic_
WITH PREFACE BY
W.T. STEAD
"Audi Alteram Partem"
LONDON:
"REVIEW OF REVIEWS" OFFICE, MOWBRAY HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, W.C.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
PREFACE. _By W.T. Stead_. vii.
INTRODUCTION 1
THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE 4
THE FOUNDING OF NATAL 13
THE ORANGE FREE STATE 17
THE SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC 23
THE CONVENTIONS OF 1881 AND 1884 33
CAPITALISTIC JINGOISM--FIRST PERIOD 37
CAPITALISTIC JINGOISM--SECOND PERIOD 49
CONCLUSION 89
APPENDIX A.--Lord Derby's Dispatch on Convention of 1884 101
B.--The Annexation of the Diamond Fields 105
C.--The Reply to Mr. Chamberlain's Dispatch on Grievances 109
D.--The Final Dispatch of Mr. State Secretary Reitz 127
E.--The Text of the Conventions, 1852, 1881, and 1884 128
INDEX 149
PREFACE.
"In this awful turning point of the history of South Africa, on the eve
of the conflict which threatens to exterminate our people, it behoves us
to speak the truth in what may be, perchance, our last message to the
world."
Such is the _raison d'être_ of this book. It is issued by State
Secretary Reitz as the official exposition of the case of the Boer
against the Briton. I regard it as not merely a duty but an honour to be
permitted to bring it before the attention of my countrymen.
Rightly or wrongly the British Government has sat in judgment upon the
South African Republic, rightly or wrongly it has condemned it to death.
And now, before the executioner can carry out the sentence, the accused
is entitled to claim the right to speak freely--it may be for the last
time--to say why, in his opinion, the sentence should not be executed. A
liberty which the English law accords as an unquestioned right to the
foulest murderer cannot be denied to the South African Republic. It is
on that ground that I have felt bound to afford the spokesman of our
Dutch brethren in South Africa the opportunity of stating their case in
his own way in the hearing of the Empire.
Despite the diligently propagated legend of a Reptile press fed by Dr.
Leyds for the purpose of perverting public opinion, it is indisputable
that so far as this country is concerned Mr. Reitz is quite correct in
saying that the case of the Transvaal "has been lost by default before
the tribunal of public opinion."
It is idle to point, in reply to this, to the statements that have
appeared in the press of the Continent. These pleadings were not
addressed to the tribunal that was trying the case. In the British press
the case of the Transvaal was never presented by any accredited counsel
for the defence. Those of us who have in these late months been
compelled by the instinct of justice to protest against the campaign of
misrepresentation organised for the purpose of destroying the South
African Republic were in many cases so far from authorised exponents of
the South African Dutch that some of them--among whom I may be reckoned
for one--were regarded with such suspicion that it was most difficult
for us to obtain even the most necessary information from the
representatives of the Government at Pretoria. Nor was this suspicion
without cause--so far at least as I was concerned.
For nearly a quarter of a century it might almost have been contended
that I was one of the leading counsel for the prosecution. First as the
friend and advocate of the Rev. John Mackenzie, then as the friend and
supporter of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, and latterly as the former colleague and
upholder of Sir Alfred Milner, it had been my lot constantly, in season
and out of season, to defend the cause of the progressive Briton
against the Conservative Boer, and especially to advocate the Cause of
the Reformers and Uitlanders against the old Tory Administration of
President Kruger. By agitation, by pressure, and even, if need be, in
the last resort by legitimate insurrection, I had always been ready to
seek the establishment of a progressive Liberal Administration in
Pretoria. And I have at least the small consolation of knowing that if
any of the movements which I defended had succeeded, the present crisis
would never have arisen, and the independence of the South African
Republic would have been established on an unassailable basis. But with
such a record it is obvious that I was almost the last man in the Empire
who could be regarded as an authorised exponent of the case of the
Boers.
That in these last months I have been forced to protest against the
attempt to stifle their independence is due to a very simple cause. To
seek to reform the Transvaal, even by the rough and ready means of a
legitimate revolution, is one thing. To conspire to stifle the Republic
in order to add its territory to the Empire is a very different thing.
The difference may be illustrated by an instance in our own history.
Several years ago I wrote a popular history of the House of Lords, in
which I showed, at least to my own satisfaction, that for fifty years
our "pig-headed oligarchs"--to borrow a phrase much in favour with the
War Party--had inflicted infinite mischief upon the United Kingdom by
the way in which they had abused their power to thwart the will of the
elected representatives of the people. I am firmly of opinion that our
hereditary Chamber has done a thousand times more injury to the subjects
of the Queen than President Kruger has ever inflicted upon the
aggrieved Uitlanders. I look forward with a certain grim satisfaction to
assisting, in the near future, in a semi-revolutionary agitation against
the Peers, in which some of our most potent arguments will be those
which the War Party has employed to inflame public sentiment against the
Boers. But, notwithstanding all this, if a conspiracy of Invincibles
were to be formed for the purpose of ending the House of Lords by
assassinating its members, or by blowing up the Gilded Chamber and all
its occupants with dynamite, I should protest against such an outrage as
vehemently as I have protested against the more heinous crime that is
now in course of perpetration in South Africa. And the very vehemence
with which I had in times past pleaded the cause of the People against
the Peers would intensify the earnestness with which I would endeavour
to avert the exploitation of a legitimate desire to end the Second
Chamber by the unscrupulous conspirators of assassination and of
dynamite. Hence it is that I seize every opportunity afforded me of
enabling the doomed Dutch to plead their case before the tribunal which
has condemned them, virtually unheard.
In introducing _A Century of Wrong_ to the British public, I carefully
disassociate myself from assuming any responsibility for all or any of
the statements which it contains. My _imprimatur_ was not sought, nor is
it extended to the history contained in _A Century of Wrong_, excepting
in so far as relates to its authenticity as an exposition of what our
brothers the Boers think of the way in which we have dealt with them for
the last hundred years.
That is much more important than the endorsement by any Englishman as
to the historical accuracy of the statements which it contains. For what
every judicial tribunal desires, first of all, is to hear witnesses at
first hand. Hitherto the British public has chiefly been condemned to
second-hand testimony. In the pages of _A Century of Wrong_ it will, at
least, have an opportunity of hearing the Dutch of South Africa speak
for themselves.
There is no question as to the qualifications of Mr. F.W. Reitz to speak
on behalf of the Dutch Africander. Although at this moment State
Secretary for President Kruger, he was for nearly ten years Chief
Justice and then President of the Orange Free State, and he began his
life in the Cape Colony. The family is of German origin, but his
ancestors migrated to Holland in the seventeenth century and became
Dutch. His grandfather emigrated from Holland to the Cape, and founded
one of the Africander families. His father was a sheep farmer; one of
his uncles was a lieutenant in the British Navy.
Mr. Reitz is now in his fifty-sixth year, and received a good English
education. After graduating at the South African College he came to the
United Kingdom, and finished his studies at Edinburgh University, and
afterwards at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the Bar in 1868.
He then returned to the Cape, and, after practising as a barrister in
the Cape courts for six years, was appointed Chief Justice of the Orange
Free State, a post which he held for fifteen years. He was then elected
and re-elected as President of the Orange Free State. In 1893 he paid a
lengthy visit to Europe and to the United Kingdom. After Dr. Leyds was
appointed to his present post as foreign representative of the South
African Republic, Mr. Reitz was appointed State Secretary, and all the
negotiations between the Transvaal and Great Britain passed through his
hands.
Mr. Reitz's narrative is not one calculated to minister to our national
self-conceit, but it is none the worse on that account. Of those who
minister to our vanity we have enough and to spare, with results not
altogether desirable. In the long controversy between the Boers and the
missionaries Mr. Reitz takes, as might be expected, the view of his own
people.
An English lady in South Africa writing to the _British Weekly_ of
December 21st, in reply to the statement of the Rev. Dr. Stewart, makes
some observations on this feud between the Boers and the missionaries,
which it may be well to bear in mind in discussing this question. The
lady ("I.M.") says:--
Dr. Stewart naturally starts from the mission question. I speak
as the daughter of one of the greatest mission supporters that
South Africa has ever known when I say that the earliest
missionaries who came to this country were to a very large extent
themselves the cause of all the Boer opposition which they may
have had to encounter. When they arrived, they found the Boers at
about the same stage of enlightenment with regard to missions as
the English themselves had been in the time of Carey. And yet, in
spite of prejudice and ignorance, every Boer of any standing was
practically doing mission work himself, for when, according to
unfailing custom, the "Books" were brought out morning and
evening for family worship, the slaves were never allowed to be
absent, but had to come and receive instruction with the rest of
the family. But the tone and methods which the missionaries
adopted were such as could not fail to arouse the aversion of the
farmers, their great idea being that the coloured races, utter
savages as yet, should be placed upon complete equality with
their superiors. At Earl's Court we have recently seen something
of how easily the natives are spoilt, and they were certainly not
better in those days. When, however, the Boers showed that they
disapproved of all this, the natives were immediately taught to
regard them as their oppressors, and were encouraged to
insubordination to their masters, and the ill-effects of this
policy on the part of the missionaries has reached further than
can be told. May I ask was this the tone that St. Paul adopted in
his mission work among the oppressed slaves of his day?... It is
not those who do _not_ know the Boers, like Dr. Stewart, but
those who know them best, like Dr. Andrew Murray, who are not
only enamoured of their simple lives, but who know also that with
all their disadvantages and their positive faults they are still
a people whose rule of life is the Bible, whose God is the God of
Israel, and who as a nation have never swerved from the covenant
with that God entered into by their fathers, the Huguenots of
France and the heroes of the Netherlands.
Upon this phase of the controversy there is no necessity to dwell at
present, beyond remarking that those who are at present most disposed to
take up what may be regarded as the missionary side should not forget
that they are preparing a rod for their own backs. The Aborigines
Protection Society has long had a quarrel with the Boers, but if our
Imperialists are going to adopt the platform of Exeter Hall they will
very soon find themselves in serious disagreement with Mr. Cecil Rhodes
and other Imperialist heroes of the hour. That the Dutch in South Africa
have treated the blacks as the English in other colonies have treated
the aborigines is probably true, despite all that Mr. Reitz can say on
their behalf. But, whereas in Tasmania and the Australian Colonies the
black fellows are exterminated by the advancing Briton, the immediate
result of the advent of the Dutch into the Transvaal has been to
increase the number of natives from 70,000 to 700,000, without including
those who were attracted by the gold mines. In dealing with native races
all white men have the pride of their colour and the arrogance of power.
The Boers, no doubt, have many sins lying at their door, but it does not
do for the pot to call the kettle black, and so far as South Africa is
concerned, the difference between the Dutch and British attitudes toward
the native races is more due to the influence of Exeter Hall and the
sentiment which it represents than to any practical difference between
English and Dutch Colonists as to the status of the coloured man. The
English under Exeter Hall have undoubtedly a higher ideal as to the
theoretical equality of men of all races; but on the spot the arrogance
of colour is often asserted as offensively by the Briton as by the Boer.
The difference between the two is, in short, that the Boer has adjusted
his practice to his belief, whereas we believe what we do not practice.
That the black population of the Transvaal is conscious of being treated
with exceeding brutality by the Boers is disproved by the fact that for
months past all the women and children of the two Republics have been
left at the absolute mercy of the natives in the midst of whom they
live.
The English reader will naturally turn with more interest to Mr. Reitz's
narrative of recent negotiations than to his observations upon the
hundred years of history which he says have taught the Dutch that there
is no justice to be looked for at the hands of a British Government. The
advocates of the war will be delighted to find that Mr. Reitz asserts
in the most uncompromising terms the right of the Transvaal to be
regarded as an Independent Sovereign International State. However
unpleasant this may be to Downing Street, the war has compelled the
Government to recognise the fact. When it began we were haughtily told
that there would be no declaration of war, nor would the Republics be
recognised as belligerents. The war had not lasted a month before this
vainglorious boast was falsified, and we were compelled to recognise the
Transvaal as a belligerent State. It is almost incredible that even Sir
William Harcourt should have fallen into the snare set for him by Mr.
Chamberlain in this matter. The contention that the Transvaal cannot be
an Independent Sovereign State because Article 4 of the Convention of
1884 required that all treaties with foreign Powers should be submitted
for assent to England may afford a technical plea for assuming that it
was not an Independent Sovereign International State. But, as Mr. Reitz
points out, no one questions the fact that Belgium is an International
Independent Sovereign State, although the exercise of her sovereignty is
limited by an international obligation to maintain neutrality. A still
stronger instance as proving the fact that the status of a sovereign
State is not affected by the limitation of the exercise of its
sovereignty is afforded by the limitation imposed by the Treaty of Paris
on the sovereign right of the Russian Empire to maintain a fleet in the
Black Sea. To forbid the Tsar to put an ironclad on the sea which washes
his southern coast was a far more drastic limitation of the inalienable
rights of an Independent International Sovereign State than the
provision that treaties affecting the interests of another Power should
be subject to the veto of that Power, but no one has protested that
Russia has lost her international status on account of the limitation
imposed by the Treaty of Paris. In like manner Mr. Reitz argues that the
Transvaal, being free to conduct its diplomacy, and to make war, can
fairly claim to be a Sovereign International State. The assertion of
this fact serves as an Ithuriel's spear to bring into clear relief the
significance of the revival by Mr. Chamberlain of the Suzerainty of
1881. Upon this point Mr. Reitz gives us a plain straightforward
narrative, the justice and accuracy of which will not be denied by
anyone who, like Sir Edward Clarke, takes the trouble to read the
official dispatches.
I turn with more interest to Mr. Reitz's narrative of the precise
differences of opinion which led to the breaking-off of negotiations
between the two Governments. Mr. Chamberlain, it will be remembered,
said in his dispatch he had accepted nine-tenths of the conditions laid
down by the Boers if the five years' franchise was to be conceded. What
the tenth was which was not accepted Mr. Chamberlain has never told us,
excepting that it was "a matter of form" which was "not worth a war."
Readers of Mr. Reitz's narrative will see that in the opinion of the
Boers the sticking point was the question of suzerainty. If Mr.
Chamberlain would have endorsed Sir Alfred Milner's declaration, and
have said, as his High Commissioner did, that the question about
suzerainty was etymological rather than political, and that he would say
no more about it, following Lord Derby's policy and abstaining from
using a word which was liable to be misunderstood, there would have been
no war. So far as Mr. Reitz's authority goes we are justified in saying
that the war was brought about by the persistence of Mr. Chamberlain in
reviving the claim of suzerainty which had been expressly surrendered in
1884, and which from 1884 to 1897 had never been asserted by any British
Government.
Another point of great importance is the reference which Mr. Reitz makes
to the Raid. On this point he speaks with much greater moderation than
many English critics of the Government. Lord Loch will be interested in
reading Mr. Reitz's account of the way in which his visit to Pretoria
was regarded by the Transvaal Government. It shows that it was his visit
which first alarmed the Boers, and compelled them to contemplate the
possibility of having to defend their independence with arms. But it was
not until after the Jameson Raid that they began arming in earnest. As
there is so much controversy upon this subject, it may be well to quote
here the figures from the Budget of the Transvaal Government, showing
the expenditure before and after the Raid.
Public Special Sundry
Military. Works. Payments. Services. Total.
£ £ £ £ £
1889 75,523 300,071 58,737 171,088 605,419
1890 42,999 507,579 58,160 133,701 742,439
1891 117,927 492,094 52,486 76,494 739,001
1892 29,739 361,670 40,276 93,410 528,095
1893 19,340 200,106 148,981 132,132 500,559
1894[1] 28,158 260,962 75,859 163,547 521,526
1895[2] 87,308 353,724 205,335 838,877 1,485,244
1896 495,618 701,022 682,008 128,724 2,007,372
1897 396,384 1,012,686 248,864 135,345 1,793,279
1898[3] 163,451 383,033 157,519 100,874 804,877
Of the Raid itself Mr. Reitz speaks as follows:--
The secret conspiracy of the Capitalists and Jingoes to overthrow
the South African Republic began now to gain ground with great
rapidity, for just at this critical period Mr. Chamberlain became
Secretary of State for the Colonies. In the secret correspondence
of the conspirators, reference is continually made to the
Colonial Office in a manner which, taken in connection with later
revelations and with a successful suppression of the truth, has
deepened the impression over the whole world that the Colonial
Office was privy to, if not an accomplice in, the villainous
attack on the South African Republic.
Nor has the world forgotten how, at the urgent instance of the
Africander party in the Cape Colony, an investigation into the
causes of the conflict was held in Westminster; how that
investigation degenerated into a low attack upon the Government
of the deeply maligned and deeply injured South African Republic,
and how at the last moment, when the truth was on the point of
being revealed, and the conspiracy traced to its fountain head in
the British Cabinet, the Commission decided all of a sudden not
to make certain compromising documents public.
Here we see to what a depth the old great traditions of British
Constitutionalism had sunk under the influence of the
ever-increasing and all-absorbing lust of gold, and in the hands
of a sharp-witted wholesale dealer, who, like Cleon of old, has
constituted himself a statesman.
When Mr. Reitz wrote his book he did not know that immediately after the
Raid the British Government began to accumulate information, and to
prepare for the war with the Republic which is now in progress. The
reason why Mr. Reitz did not refer to this in _A Century of Wrong_ was
because documents proving its existence had not fallen into the hands of
the Transvaal Government until after the retreat from Glencoe. Major
White and his brother officers who were concerned in the Raid were much
chaffed for the incredible simplicity with which he allowed a private
memorandum as to preparations for the Raid to fall into the hands of the
Boers. His indiscretion has been thrown entirely into the shade by the
simplicity which allowed War Office documents of the most secret and
compromising nature to fall into the hands of the Boers, showing that
preparations for the present war began immediately after the defeat of
the Raid. The special correspondent of Reuter with the Boers telegraphed
from Glencoe on October 28th as follows:--
The papers captured at Dundee Camp from the British unveil a
thoroughly worked out scheme to attack the independence of both
Republics as far back as 1896, notwithstanding constant
assurances of amity towards the Free State.
Among these papers there are portfolios of military sketches of
various routes of invasion from Natal into the Transvaal and Free
State, prepared by Major Grant, Captain Melvill, and Captain Gale
immediately after the Jameson Raid.
A further portfolio marked secret styled "Reconnaissance Reports
of Lines of Advance through the Free State" was prepared by
Captain Wolley, on the Intelligence Division of the War Office,
in 1897, and is accompanied by a special memorandum, signed by
Sir Redvers Buller, to keep it secret.
Besides these there are specially executed maps of the Transvaal
and Free State, showing all the natural features, also a further
secret Report of Communications in Natal north of Ladysmith,
including a memorandum of the road controlling Lang's Nek
position.
Further, there is a short Military Report on the Transvaal,
printed in India in August last, which was found most
interesting. The white population is given at 288,000, of whom
the Outlanders number 80,000, and of the Outlanders 30,000 are
given as of British descent--which figures the authorities regard
as much nearer the truth than Mr. Chamberlain's statements made
in the House of Commons.
One report estimates that 4,000 Cape and Natal Colonists would
side with the Republics in case of war, and that the small
armament of the Transvaal consists of 62,950 rifles, and that the
Boers would prove not so mobile or such good marksmen as in the
War of Independence.
Further, the British did not think much of the Johannesburg and
Pretoria forts.
A further secret Report styled "Military Notes on the Dutch
Republics of South Africa," and numbers of other papers, not yet
examined, were also found, and are to be forwarded to Pretoria.
The Free State burghers are now more than ever convinced that it
was the right policy for them to fight along with the Transvaal,
and they say, since they have seen the reports, that they will
fight with, if possible, more determination than ever.
It may be contended, no doubt, upon our part that these private reports
were none other than those which every Government receives from its
military attachés, but it must be admitted that their discovery at the
present moment is most inopportune for those who wish to persuade the
Free State that they can rely upon the assertions of Great Britain that
no design was made upon their independence. If at this moment the
portfolios of a German Staff Officer were to fall into the hands of an
English correspondent, and detailed plans for invading England were to
be published in all the newspapers as having been drawn up by German
officers told off for that purpose, it would not altogether tend to
reassure us as to the good intentions of our Imperial neighbour. How
much more serious must be the publication of these documents seized at
Dundee upon a people which is actually at war.
The concluding chapter of Mr. Reitz's eloquent impeachment of the
conduct of Great Britain in South Africa is devoted to a delineation of
what he calls Capitalistic Jingoism. It is probable that a great many
who will read with scant sympathy his narrative of the grievances of his
countrymen in the earlier part, of the century will revel in the
invective which he hurls against Mr. Rhodes and the Capitalists of the
Rand. If happier times return to South Africa, Mr. Reitz may yet find
the mistake he has made in confounding Mr. Rhodes with the mere
dividend-earning crew, who brought about this war in order to diminish
the cost of crushing gold by five or six shillings a ton. In the
realisation of the ideal of Africa for the Africanders Mr. Rhodes might
be more helpful to Mr. Reitz and the Dutch of South Africa than any
other living man. Whether it is possible for them to forget and forgive
the future alone will show. But at present it seems rather as if Mr.
Reitz sees nothing between Africanderism and Capitalistic Jingoism but
war to the death.
Mr. Reitz breaks off his narrative at the point immediately before the
Ultimatum. Those curious politicians who begin their survey of the war
from the launching of that declaration will, therefore, find nothing in
_A Century of Wrong_ to interest them. But those who take a fresh and
intelligent view of a long and complicated historical controversy will
welcome the authoritative exposition of the causes which, in the opinion
of the authors of the Ultimatum, justified, and, indeed, necessitated
that decisive step. To what Mr. Reitz has said it is only necessary to
add one fact.
The Ultimatum was dated October 9th. It was the natural response to the
menace with which the British Government had favoured them three days
previous, when on October 6th they issued the formal notice calling out
the Reserves for the avowed object of making war upon the South African
Republic.
Whether they were right or wrong, it is impossible to withhold a tribute
of admiration and sympathy for the little States which confront the
onslaughts of their Imperial foe with such heroic fortitude and serene
courage. As Dr. Max Nordau remarks in the _North American Review_ for
December:--
The fact that a tiny people faces death without hesitation to
defend its independence against an enemy fabulously superior in
number, or to die in the attempt, presents an aspect of moral
beauty which no soul, attuned to higher things, will disregard.
Even friends and admirers of England--yea, even the English
themselves--strongly sense the pathos in the situation of the
Dutch Boers, who feel convinced that they are fighting for their
national existence, and agree that it equals the pathos of
Leonidas, William Tell, and Kosciusko.
Over and above all else the note in the State Secretary's appeal which
will vibrate most loudly in the British heart is that in which he
appeals to his countrymen to cling fast to the God of their forefathers,
and to the righteousness which is sometimes slow in acting, but which
never slumbers or forgets. "It proceeds according to eternal laws,
unmoved by human pride and ambition. As the Greek poet of old said, it
permits the tyrant, in his boundless self-esteem, to climb higher and
higher, and to gain greater honour and might, until he arrives at the
appointed height, and then falls down into the infinite depths."
Who is there who remembers the boastings of the British press at the
outbreak of the war can read without awe the denunciations of the Hebrew
seers against the nations and empires who in arrogance and pride forgot
the Lord their God?
"Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord God of
Hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee. And the
most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up."
This, after all, is the great issue which underlies everything. Is there
or is there not in the affairs of men a Providence which the ancients
pictured as the slow-footed Nemesis, but which we moderns have somewhat
learned to disregard? "If right and wrong, in this God's world of ours,
are linked with higher Powers," is the great question which the devout
soul, whether warrior or saint, has ever answered in one way. When in
this country a leading exponent of popular Liberalism declares that
"morally we can never win, but that physically we must and shall," we
begin to realise how necessary is the chastisement which has fallen upon
us for our sins. If this interpretation of the situation be even
approximately correct, the further we go the worse we shall fare. It is
vain for us to kick against the pricks.
W.T. STEAD.
_January 1st, 1900._
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: 1894.--Year of Lord Loch's visit (in June) to Pretoria.]
[Footnote 2: 1895.--Conspiracy, culminating in the Raid.]
[Footnote 3: 1898.--First nine months.]
A CENTURY OF WRONG.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION.
BROTHER AFRICANDERS!
Once more in the annals of our bloodstained history has the day dawned
when we are forced to grasp our weapons in order to resume the struggle
for liberty and existence, entrusting our national cause to that
Providence which has guided our people throughout South Africa in such a
miraculous way.
The struggle of now nearly a century, which began when a foreign rule
was forced upon the people of the Cape of Good Hope, hastens to an end;
we are approaching the last act in that great drama which is so
momentous for all South Africa; we have reached a stage when it will be
decided whether the sacrifices which both our fathers and we ourselves
have made in the cause of freedom have been offered in vain, whether the
blood of our race, with which every part of South Africa has been, as it
were, consecrated, has been shed in vain; and whether by the grace of
God the last stone will now be built into the edifice which our fathers
began with so much toil and so much sorrow.
[Sidenote: The alternative of Africanderdom.]
The hour has struck which will decide whether South Africa, in jealously
guarding its liberty, will enter upon a new phase of its history, or
whether our existence as a people will come to an end, whether we shall
be exterminated in the deadly struggle for that liberty which we have
prized above all earthly treasures, and whether South Africa will be
dominated by capitalists without conscience, acting in the name and
under the protection of an unjust and hated Government 7,000 miles away
from here.
[Sidenote: The necessity of historical retrospect.]
In this hour it behoves us to cast a glance back at the history of this
great struggle. We do so not to justify ourselves, because liberty, for
which we have sacrificed everything, has justified us and screened our
faults and failings, but we do so in order that we may be, as it were,
sanctified and prepared for the conflict which lies before us, bearing
in mind what our people have done and suffered by the help of God. In
this way we may be enabled to continue the work of our fathers, and
possibly to complete it. Their deeds of heroism in adventures with Bantu
and Briton shine forth like guiding stars through the history of the
past, in order to point out the way for posterity to reach that goal for
which our sorely tried people have made such great sacrifices, and for
which they have undergone so many vicissitudes.
The historical survey will, moreover, aid in bringing into stronger
relief those naked truths to which the tribunal of impartial history
will assuredly testify hereafter, in adjudging the case between
ourselves and our enemy. And the questions which present themselves for
solution in the approaching conflict have their origin deep in the
history of the past; it is only by the light of that history that it
becomes possible to discern and appreciate the drifting straws which
float on the currents of to-day. By its light we are more clearly
enabled to comprehend the truth, to which our people appeal as a final
justification for embarking upon the war now so close at hand.
History will show convincingly that the pleas of humanity, civilisation,
and equal rights, upon which the British Government bases its actions,
are nothing else but the recrudescence of that spirit of annexation and
plunder which has at all times characterised its dealings with our
people.
THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.
The cause for which we are about to take up arms is the same, though in
somewhat different form, as that for which so many of our forefathers
underwent the most painful experiences centuries ago, when they
abandoned house and fatherland to settle at the Cape of Good Hope, to
enjoy there that freedom of conscience which was denied them in the land
of their birth. In the beautiful valleys lying between the blue
mountains of the Cape of Good Hope they planted the seed-germ of
liberty, which sprang up and has since developed with such startling
rapidity into the giant tree of to-day--a tree which not only covers a
considerable area in this part of the world, but will yet, in God's good
time, we feel convinced, stretch out its leafy branches over the whole
of South Africa. In spite of the oppressive bonds of the East India
Company, the young settlement, containing the noblest blood of old
Europe as well as its most exalted aspirations, grew so powerfully that
in 1806, when the Colony passed into the hands of England, a strong
national sentiment and a spirit of liberty had already been developed.
[Sidenote: The Africander spirit of liberty]
As is forcibly expressed in an old document dating from the most
renowned period of our history, there grew out of the two stocks of
Hollanders and French Huguenots "a united people, one in religion,
united in peaceful reverence for the law, but with a feeling of liberty
and independence equal to the wide expanse of territory which they had
rescued as a labour of love from the wilderness of nature, or from its
still wilder aboriginal inhabitants." When the Dutch Government made way
for that of Great Britain in 1806, and, still more, when that change was
sealed in 1814 by a transaction in which the Prince of Orange sold the
Cape to Great Britain for £6,000,000 against the wish and will of the
inhabitants, the little settlement entered upon a new phase of its
history, a phase, indeed, in which its people were destined by their
heroic struggle for justice, to enlist a world-wide sympathy on their
behalf.
[Sidenote: England's native policy.]
Notwithstanding the wild surroundings and the innumerable savage tribes
in the background, the young Africander nation had been welded into a
white aristocracy, proudly conscious of having maintained its
superiority notwithstanding its arduous struggles. It was this sentiment
of just pride which the British Government well understood how to wound
in its most sensitive part by favouring the natives as against the
Africanders. So, for example, the Africander Boers were forced to look
with pained eyes on the scenes of their farms and property devastated by
the natives without being in a position to defend themselves, because
the British Government had even deprived them of their ammunition. In
the same way the liberty-loving Africander burgher was coerced by a
police composed of Hottentots, the lowest and most despicable class of
the aborigines, whom the Africanders justly placed on a far lower social
level than that of their own Malay slaves.
[Sidenote: Slachter's Nek.]
No wonder that in 1815 a number of the Boers were driven into rebellion,
a rebellion which found an awful ending in the horrible occurrence of
the 9th of March, 1816, when six of the Boers were half hung up in the
most inhuman way in the compulsory presence of their wives and children.
Their death was truly horrible, for the gallows broke down before the
end came; but they were again hoisted up in the agony of dying, and
strangled to death in the murderous tragedy of Slachter's Nek. Whatever
opinions have been formed of this occurrence in other respects, it was
at Slachter's Nek that the first bloodstained beacon was erected which
marks the boundary between Boer and Briton in South Africa, and the eyes
of posterity still glance back shudderingly through the long vista of
years at that tragedy of horror.
[Sidenote: The missionaries.]
This was, however, but the beginning. Under the cloak of religion
British administration continued to display its hate against our people
and nationality, and to conceal its self-seeking aims under cover of the
most exalted principles. The aid of religion was invoked to reinforce
the policy of oppression in order to deal a deeper and more fatal blow
to our self-respect. Emissaries of the London Missionary Society
slandered the Boers, and accused them of the most inhuman cruelties to
the natives. These libellous stories, endorsed as they were by the
British Government, found a ready ear amongst the English, and the
result was that under the pressure of powerful philanthropic opinion in
England our unfortunate people were more bitterly persecuted than ever,
and were finally compelled to defend themselves in courts of law
against the coarsest accusations and insults. But they emerged from the
ordeal triumphantly, and the records of the criminal courts of the Cape
Colony bear indisputable witness to the fact that there were no people
amongst the slave-owning classes of the world more humane than the
Africander Boers. Their treatment of the natives was based on the theory
that natives ought not to be considered as mature and fully developed
people, but that they were in reality children who had to be won over to
civilisation by just and rigid discipline; they hold the same
convictions on this subject to-day, and the enlightened opinion of the
civilised world is inclining more and more to the same conclusion. But
the fact that their case was a good one, and that it was triumphantly
decided in their favour in the law courts, did not serve to diminish,
but rather tended to sharpen, the feeling of injustice with which they
had been treated.
[Sidenote: Emancipation of the slaves.]
A livelier sense of wrong was quickened by the way in which the
emancipation of the slaves--in itself an excellent measure--was carried
out in the case of the Boers.
Our forefathers had become owners of slaves chiefly imported in English
ships and sold to us by Englishmen. The British Government decided to
abolish slavery. We had no objection to this, provided we received
adequate compensation.[4] Our slaves had been valued by British
officials at three millions, but of the twenty millions voted by the
Imperial Government for compensation, only one and a quarter millions
was destined for South Africa; and this sum was payable in London. It
was impossible for us to go there, so we were forced to sell our rights
to middlemen and agents for a mere song; and many of our people were so
overwhelmed by the difficulties placed in their way that they took no
steps whatever to receive their share of the compensation.
Greyheads and widows who had lived in ease and comfort went down
poverty-stricken to the grave, and gradually the hard fact was borne in
upon us that there was no such thing as Justice for us in England.
[Sidenote: Slavery at the Cape.]
Froude, the English historian, hits the right nail on the head when he
says:--
[5] "Slavery at the Cape had been rather domestic than predial; the
scandals of the West India plantations were unknown among them.
Because the Dutch are a deliberate and slow people, not given to
enthusiasm for new ideas, they fell into disgrace with us, where
they have ever since remained. The unfavourable impression of
them became a tradition of the English Press, and, unfortunately,
of the Colonial Office. We had treated them unfairly as well as
unwisely, and we never forgive those whom we have injured."
[Sidenote: The Glenelg policy.]
[6] But this was not all. When the English obtained possession of the
Cape Colony by convention, the Fish River formed the eastern boundary.
The Kaffirs raided the Colony from time to time, but especially in 1834,
when they murdered, plundered, and outraged the helpless Colonists in an
awful and almost indescribable manner. The Governor was ultimately
prevailed upon to free the strip of territory beyond the Fish River from
the raids of the Kaffirs, and this was done by the aid of the Boers. But
Lord Glenelg, the Colonial Secretary, reversed this policy and restored
the whole territory to the natives. He maligned the Boers in even more
forcible terms than the emissaries of the London Missionary Society, and
openly favoured the Kaffirs, placing them on a higher pedestal than the
Boers. The latter had succeeded in rescuing their cattle from the
Kaffirs, but were forced to look on passively while the very same
cattle, with the owner's brand marks plainly visible, were sold by
public auction to defray the cost of the commando. It was useless to
hope for justice from Englishmen. There was no security for life and
property under the flag of a Government which openly elected to uphold
Wrong. The high-minded descendants of the proudest and most stubborn
peoples of Europe had to bend the knee before a Government which united
a commercial policy of crying injustice with a veneer of simulated
philanthropy.
[Sidenote: The Dutch language.]
But it was not only in regard to the Natives that the Boers were
oppressed and their rights violated. When the Cape was transferred to
England in 1806, their language was guaranteed to the Dutch inhabitants.
This guarantee was, however, soon to meet the same fate as the treaties
and conventions which were concluded by England with our people at later
periods.
The violator of treaties fulfilled its obligation by decreeing in 1825
that all documents were for the future to be written in English.
Petitions in the language of the country and complaints about bitter
grievances were not even acknowledged. The Boers were excluded from the
juries because their knowledge of English was too faulty, and their
causes and actions had to be determined by Englishmen, with whom they
had nothing in common.
[Sidenote: The Great Trek.]
After twenty years' experience of British administration it had become
abundantly clear to the Boers that there was no prospect of peace and
prosperity before them, for their elementary rights had been violated,
and they could only expect oppression. They were without adequate
guarantees of protection, and their position had become intolerable in
the Cape Colony.
They decided to sell home, farm, and all that remained over from the
depredations of the Kaffirs, and to trek away from British rule. The
Colony was at this time bounded on the north by the Orange River.
[Sidenote: Legality of the Trek.]
[7] At first, Lieutenant-Governor
Stockenstrom was consulted; but he was of opinion that there was no law
which could prevent the Boers from leaving the Colony and settling
elsewhere. Even if such a statute existed, it would be tyrannical, as
well as impossible, to enforce it.
The Cape Attorney-General, Mr. Oliphant, expressed the same opinion,
adding that it was clear that the emigrants were determined to go into
another country, and not to consider themselves British subjects any
longer. The same thing was happening daily in the emigration from
England to North America, and the British Government was and would
remain powerless to stop the evil.
The territory to the north of the Orange River and to the east of the
Drakensberg lay outside the sphere of British influence or authority,
and was, as far as was then known, inhabited by savages; but the Boers
decided to brave the perils of the wilderness and to negotiate with the
savages for the possession of a tract of country, and so form an
independent community rather than remain any longer under British rule.
[Sidenote: The Manifesto of Piet Retief.]
In the words of Piet Retief, when he left Grahamstown:--
We despair of saving the Colony from those evils which threaten
it by the turbulent and dishonest conduct of vagrants who are
allowed to infest the country in every part; nor do we see any
prospect of peace or happiness for our children in a country thus
distracted by internal commotions.
We complain of the severe losses which we have been forced to
sustain by the emancipation of our slaves, and the vexatious laws
which have been enacted respecting them.
We complain of the continual system of plunder which we have for
years endured from the Kaffirs and other coloured classes, and
particularly by the last invasion of the Colony, which has
desolated the frontier district and ruined most of the
inhabitants.
We complain of the unjustifiable odium which has been cast upon
us by interested and dishonest persons, under the name of
religion, whose testimony is believed in England to the exclusion
of all evidence in our favour; and we can foresee, as the result
of this prejudice, nothing but the total ruin of the country.
We quit this Colony under the full assurance that the English
Government has nothing more to require of us, and will allow us
to govern ourselves without its interference in future.
We are now leaving the fruitful land of our birth, in which we
have suffered enormous losses and continual vexation, and are
about to enter a strange and dangerous territory; but we go with
a firm reliance on an all-seeing, just, and merciful God, whom we
shall always fear and humbly endeavour to obey.
In the name of all who leave this Colony with me.
P. RETIEF.
[Sidenote: The English in pursuit.]
We journeyed then with our fathers beyond the Orange River into the
unknown north, as free men and subjects of no sovereign upon earth. Then
began what the English Member of Parliament, Sir William Molesworth,
termed a strange sort of pursuit. The trekking Boer followed by the
British Colonial Office was indeed the strangest pursuit ever witnessed
on earth. [8] The British Parliament even passed a law in 1836 to impose
punishments beyond their jurisdiction up to the 25th degree south, and
when we trekked further north, Lord Grey threatened to extend this
unrighteous law to the Equator. It may be remarked that in this law it
was specially enacted that no sovereignty or overlordship was to be
considered as established thereby over the territory in question.
[Sidenote: The Trichardt Trek.]
The first trek was that of Trichardt and the Van Rensburgs. They went to
the north, but the Van Rensburgs were massacred in the most horrible way
by the Kaffirs, and Trichardt's party reached Delagoa Bay after
indescribable sufferings in a poverty-stricken condition, only to die
there of malarial fever.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: Theal, _History of the Boers_, page 64.]
[Footnote 5: _Oceana_, page 34.]
[Footnote 6: Theal, page 62.]
[Footnote 7: Theal, 102.--Cachet.]
[Footnote 8: 6 & 7, William IV., ch. 57.]
THE FOUNDING OF NATAL.
[Sidenote: Murder of Piet Retief.]