The Boers in the Cape Colonies have been prospering in a marked degree since
the British accession in 1814, enjoying ideal liberty and good government
upon perfect equality with the English colonists.
The people of the Orange Free State fared equally well under best relations
with the British Government up to the outbreak of the present war.
In
the Transvaal the Boers were more handicapped, being furthest removed from
profitable Cape connections, and having to cope with powerful hostile tribes
within their border. The most redoubtable, under Secoecoenie, was subdued
during the British occupation in 1878. Then followed the short war of 1880,
with the voluntary retrocession and peace of January, 1881. All appeared to
progress remarkably well for about ten years after, until the irrational
treatment by the Boers of British subjects in the Transvaal furnished the
first cause of friction, and engendered at last the Johannesburg crisis with
the Jameson incursion, followed by four years' vain attempts on the part of
England to bring about satisfactory and peaceful relations.
The Afrikaner Bond had been inaugurated some thirty years ago, under the
mask of a constitutional organization, professing loyalty to England; that
body had succeeded in hiding its object, which was no less than the
expulsion from South Africa of all that is English, and which object was
brutally avowed since the outbreak of the war by declarations in the Press
and by incendiary speeches of Colonial Bond leaders and members of the Cape
Parliament.
The British Government did not view very seriously the information it
received regarding the Bond menace until the definite action of the
Transvaal Government partially opened its eyes prior to the Johannesburg
revolt. The hope was, however, still clung to in an undefined way that
patience and forbearance would yet overcome Boer prejudice and disperse
racial antipathies, and with characteristic self-confidence as well, things
were allowed to drift rather out of hand.
The two Republics had been de facto allied some time before the Johannesburg
crisis in 1895. Both were then already provided with very abundant armaments
of up-to-date types, with equipments and preparations far and away above any
conceivable needs except indeed for a coup d'état against British supremacy
and to sustain a Colonial revolt.
On
the occasion of the Jameson incursion the Orange Free State promptly
appeared near the scene with best equipped mounted Boer commandoes and
artillery to assist the Transvaal if needed.
Before 1881 and some time subsequently there had been continued progress
towards the assimilation of the English and Boer races in South Africa. This
was marred by Afrikaner Bond doctrines and intrigues proceeding from a
Hollander coterie, the formula being "Afrika voor de Afrikaners"—the aims
including the usurpation of British authority in the Colonies, supremacy of
the Boer nation under one great Republican federation, and an affiliated
status with Holland which should restore that people, all to the prejudice
of England, to a political and economic significance and power surpassing
its former epoch of European and Colonial eminence. As to the incentives to
the Boer nation, these were principally the plunder of capital investments
and land conquests, which the people had learnt to consider legitimate and
in fact incumbent as a duty to themselves and descendants.
The means employed in that conspiracy were a subtle, so to say, occult
propaganda to seduce a simple people to false convictions, to induce the
creation of gigantic armaments, a secret service employing at a vast cost
journalism, emissaries, and agencies, to gain partisans and allies outside
South Africa, the Transvaal mint to coin the sinews of war from the
appropriation of the mines and their output, the dynamite factory (that Bond
corner-stone for manufacturing ammunition[11]), a system of immigration from
Holland towards supplanting the English factor and to introduce auxiliaries.
Other such means were: laws for admitting auxiliaries to immediate full
burgher rights and privilege to carry arms, from which Uitlanders were
rigorously excluded, the rabid campaign proscribing the English language and
fostering High Dutch instead (which was much less understood by the entire
Boer people, and much harder for them to learn than English). To the above
list of devices came the exhaustive efforts to obtain an independent seaport
for the Transvaal, first at St. Lucia Bay, then at Delagoa Bay (ostensibly
with a German syndicate, and since by subsidizing Portugal or suborning
Portuguese notables and officials).
The climax of duplicity is reached when it is averred that the pursuit of
such an organized programme during the past twenty years and more had meant
peace only, never a thought of conquest, as Ambassador Leyds so innocently
declared after failing to gain abroad the hoped-for support for the
monstrous Bond enormity.
The Afrikaner Bond leaders would have preferred the war to have been
deferred a little longer—preferably to a moment when England might be
embroiled elsewhere. It was also thought of importance that the Transvaal
should first realize the auriferous "underground rights" situated around the
Johannesburg mines, which Government asset was expected to net at least
fifty million pounds sterling. The sales had already been advertised, and
were in preparation when the outbreak of the war intervened. Upon the word
"ready," flashed from Bloemfontein, followed at once the fateful Pretoria
ultimatum. The proceeds of those underground rights must now come in
afterwards to defray the war bill.
FOOTNOTES:
11. President Krüger's reference to that factory is well known, styling it
as one of the corner-stones of Boer independence.
