South Africa and the Transvaal War (Vol. 1-8). Louis Creswicke

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      Before going further, we must examine the situation between the Governor of the Cape, the President of the South African Republic, and the Home Government.

      When we look back at Boer history, we find the details of annexation and restoration repeating themselves with the consistency of the chorus of a nursery rhyme. What the Government of the Cape accomplished the Government at home proceeded promptly to undo, till the problems connected with Boer liberty and British rights became so tangled and so intricate that they could only be solved by the sword.

      It may be remembered that in 1854 Sir George Grey, the then Governor of the Cape, applied himself to the puzzle. He started with the best hopes. He saw before him a vista of labour, of argument, of contradiction, but the tangles, he believed, could eventually be smoothed out. In the anxiety to avoid trouble and responsibility, and possibly in an amiable desire to conciliate the parties at home, the Imperial Government had conceded territories and alienated subjects without having made an effort to discover the wishes of the people, or to try a free form of government suited to South Africa. He was in favour of a Federal Union wherein the separate Colonies and States, each with its local government and legislature, should be combined under one general representative legislature, led by a responsible Ministry, specially charged with the duty of providing for common defence. This plan of Federal Union seemed to appeal to the Burghers of the Orange Free State, for the Volksraad decided that "a union of alliance with the Cape Colony, either on the plan of federation or otherwise, is desirable." Sir George Grey was not permitted to pursue his policy, for the British Government decided against the resumption of British sovereignty over the Orange Free State. The same forward and backward movement, the same sort of political chasé et croisé, was again carried on from 1876 and 1877 to 1881. It was decided that a Federal Union should be created between such African Colonies as were willing to join. To further this scheme Sir Bartle Frere, after a long and arduous career in India, was appointed Governor and High Commissioner by Lord Carnarvon, the then Colonial Secretary. But Sir Bartle was too late. Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who had been sent out to the Transvaal on Special Commission to confer with the President on the question of Confederation, had already annexed the Transvaal. The reasons for the annexation were many and excellent. Firstly, the Transvaal Republic, vulgarly speaking, was out at elbows. It was bankrupt, helpless, languishing. The sorry sum of 12s. 6d. represented the entire wealth of the Treasury. The Zulu chief Cetchwayo was waiting to "eat up" the Boers, and the Boers were unceasing in their efforts to encroach on Zulu territory. But the deplorable state of affairs is better described by quoting Sir T. Shepstone's letter on the subject.

      "It was patent to every observer," writes Sir T. Shepstone, "that the Government (of the Transvaal) was powerless to control either its white citizens or its native subjects; that it was incapable of enforcing its laws or of collecting its taxes; that the Treasury was empty; that the salaries of officials had been and are months in arrear; that sums payable for the ordinary and necessary expenditure of government cannot be had, and that such services as postal contracts were long and hopelessly overdue; that the white inhabitants had become split into factions; that the large native populations within the boundaries of the State ignore its authority and laws; and that the powerful Zulu king, Cetchwayo, is anxious to seize upon the first opportunity of attacking a country the conduct of whose warriors has convinced him that it can be easily conquered by his clamouring regiments." He again writes: "I think it necessary to explain, more at length than I was able to do in my last despatch, the circumstances which seem to me to forbid all hope that the Transvaal Republic is capable of maintaining the show even of independent existence any longer, which induced me to consider it my duty to assume this position in my communications with the President and Executive Council, and which have convinced me that, if I were to leave the country in its present condition, I should but expose the inhabitants to anarchy among themselves, and to attack from the natives, that would prove not only fatal to the Republic, but in the highest degree dangerous to her Majesty's possessions and subjects in South Africa."

      The proclamation of the annexation of the Transvaal was issued on the 12th of April 1876, and on the previous day Sir T. Shepstone wrote: "There will be a protest against my act of annexation issued by the Government, but they will at the same time call upon the people to submit quietly, pending the issue. You need not be disquieted by such action, because it is taken merely to save appearances, and the members of the Government from the violence of a faction that seems for years to have held Pretoria in terror when any act of the Government displeased it. You will better understand this when I tell you privately that the President has from the first fully acquiesced in the necessity for the change, and that most of the members of the Government have expressed themselves anxious for it—but none of them have had the courage openly to express their opinions, so I have had to act apparently against them, and this I felt bound to do, knowing the state and danger of the country, and that three-fourths of the people will be thankful for the change when once it is made."

      As a matter of fact the annexation was received with rejoicing all over the country. "God save the Queen" was sung, and special thanksgiving services were held in many of the churches. The Union Jack was run up, the Republican flag hauled down without a dissentient voice. The arrival of British troops—the first battalion of the 13th Regiment—was hailed with curiosity and pleasure, the Boers with their women and children turning out to meet it and hear the band play. The financial effects of the new departure were magical. Credit and commerce were at once restored. Valueless railway bonds rose to par, and the price of landed property was nearly doubled. On the Queen's birthday, the first after the annexation, the 24th of May 1877, the native chiefs were invited to attend, and the Union Jack was formally hoisted to the strains of the National Anthem. This same flag was within a few years ignobly hauled down during the signing of the Convention at Pretoria, and formally buried by a party of Englishmen and loyal natives. But for the time being all seemed pleased with the new state of affairs. As Mr. Haggard says, it is difficult to reconcile the enthusiasm of a great number of the inhabitants of the Transvaal for English rule and the quiet acquiescence of the remainder at this time, with the decidedly antagonistic attitude subsequently assumed. His description of the situation in "The Last Boer War" seems to be more near the truth than any forthcoming: "The Transvaal, when we annexed it, was in the position of a man with a knife at his throat, who is suddenly rescued by some one stronger than he, on certain conditions which at the time he gladly accepts, but afterwards, when the danger is passed, wishes to repudiate. In the same way the inhabitants of the South African Republic were in the time of need very thankful for our aid, but after a while, when the recollection of their difficulties had grown faint, when their debts had been paid and their enemies had been defeated, they began to think that they would like to get rid of us again, and start fresh on their own account with a clean sheet."

      In the management of affairs it appears that Mr. Burgers began to set an example of the policy which Mr. Kruger has since followed: the policy of trying to sit on either side of the fence. Mr. Kruger has struggled more and more violently to accomplish this feat as the years advance and he advances in years. He has tried to grab the advantages attendant upon the possession of gold mines and schemed to acquire a great financial status, and yet at the same time to keep up his affectation of piety and to maintain his pristine condition of bucolic irresponsibility. Brought face to face with Sir T. Shepstone's scheme for annexation, Mr. Burger privately encouraged the proposed action of the Government—he and his colleagues even stipulating for pension and office—while publicly he lifted up his protest against the innovation.

      The Boer, with his usual craft, had decided that the British Government should set him financially on his feet, which feet he meant promptly to use for running away from his responsibilities. Some declare that the policy of Sir T. Shepstone was premature, that he should have waited until the Boer had soaked further in the slough of insolvency into which he was fast sinking. But Sekukuni was threatening, and on the south-eastern frontier Cetchwayo, with a force some thirty thousand strong, was waiting his opportunity. The promise of the future was a general holocaust, in which Boer men, women, and children, farms and flocks would be annihilated. Sir T. Shepstone, had he been other than a Briton, might have stayed his hand and waited СКАЧАТЬ