The Transvaal from Within Part 1

The Transvaal from Within.

by J. P. Fitzpatrick.

PREFACE

It was originally designed to compile a statement of the occurrences of 1895-6 in the Transvaal and of the conditions which led up to them, in the hope of removing the very grave misunderstandings which existed. Everybody else had been heard and judged, the Uitlander had only been judged. It therefore seemed proper that somebody should attempt to present the case for the Uitlander. The writer, as a South African by birth, as a resident in the Transvaal since 1884, and lastly as Secretary of the Reform Committee, felt impelled to do this, but suffered under the disability of President Kruger's three years' ban; and although it might possibly have been urged that a plain statement of facts and explanations of past actions could not be fairly regarded as a deliberate interference in politics, the facts themselves when set out appeared to const.i.tute an indictment so strong as to make it worth while considering whether the Government of the Transvaal would not regard it as sufficient excuse to put in force the sentence of banishment. The postponement of publication which was then decided upon for a period of three years appeared to be tantamount to the abandonment of the original purpose, and the work was continued with the intention of making it a private record to be printed at the expiry of the term of silence, and to be privately circulated among those who were personally concerned or interested; a record which might perhaps be of service some day in filling in a page of South African history.

The private circulation of that work during June of the present year led to suggestions from many quarters that it should be supplemented by a chapter or two dealing with later events and published; and the present volume is the outcome of these suggestions.

It is realized that much of what might properly appear in a private record will be considered rather superfluous in a book designed for wider circulation. For instance, a good deal of s.p.a.ce is given to details of the trial and the prison life of the Reformers, which are of no interest whatever to the public, although they form a record which the men themselves may like to preserve. These might have been omitted but that the writer desired to make no alterations in the original text except in the nature of literary revision.

The writer may be charged by the "peace" party with deliberately selecting a critical and anxious time as opportune to contribute a new factor to those already militating against a peaceful settlement. Two replies could be made to this: one an excuse and one an answer. It would be an excuse that the writer did not deliberately select the time of publication, but that the Transvaal Government in its wisdom chose to impose silence for three years, and that the project with which their action had interfered was resumed at the earliest possible moment. The coincidence of another crisis with the date of emanc.i.p.ation may be an unlucky coincidence, or it may be a result. But there is neither necessity nor intention to offer excuses. The responsibility is accepted and the answer is that a case so sound needs only to be understood, that a recital of the facts must help to dispel the mists of race prejudice and misunderstanding which are obscuring the judgment of many; and that a firm but strictly just and dignified handling of the question by the Imperial Government is the only possible way to avert a catastrophe in South Africa. It is essential therefore that first of all the conditions as they are should be understood; and this record is offered as a contribution to that end. Let the measure of its truth be the measure of its usefulness!

The reader is not invited to believe that the case is presented in such form as it might have been presented by an impartial historian. It is the Transvaal from within, by one who feels all the injustice and indignity of the position. With the knowledge, however, that a good case is spoiled by overstatement and with the desire to avoid injustice to others an earnest attempt has been made to state the facts fairly. In how far that attempt has been successful the reader must decide for himself.

J.P.F.

July, 1899.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

IN EARLIER DAYS.

When, before resorting to extreme measures to obtain what the Uitlanders deemed to be their bare rights, the final appeal or declaration was made on Boxing Day, 1895, in the form of the manifesto published by the Chairman of the National Union, President Kruger, after an attentive consideration of the doc.u.ment as translated to him, remarked grimly: 'Their rights. Yes, they'll get them-over my dead body!' And volumes of explanation could not better ill.u.s.trate the Boer att.i.tude and policy towards the English-speaking immigrants.

'L'Etat c'est moi' is almost as true of the old Dopper President as it was of its originator; for in matters of external policy and in matters which concern the Boer as a party the President has his way as surely and as completely as any anointed autocrat. To anyone who has studied the Boers and their ways and policy-who has given more than pa.s.sing consideration to the incidents and negotiations of the present year{01}-it must be clear that President Kruger does something more than represent the opinion of the people and execute their policy: he moulds them in the form he wills. By the force of his own strong convictions and prejudices, and of his indomitable will, he has made the Boers a people whom he regards as the germ of the Africander nation; a people chastened, selected, welded, and strong enough to attract and a.s.similate all their kindred in South Africa, and then to realize the dream of a Dutch Republic from the Zambesi to Capetown.

In the history of South Africa the figure of the grim old President will loom large and striking-picturesque, as the figure of one who by his character and will made and held his people; magnificent, as one who in the face of the blackest fortune never wavered from his aim or faltered in his effort; who, with a courage that seemed, and still seems, fatuous, but which may well be called heroic, stood up against the might of the greatest empire in the world. And, it may be, pathetic, too, as one whose limitations were great, one whose training and a.s.sociations-whose very successes-had narrowed, and embittered and hardened him; as one who, when the greatness of success was his to take and to hold, turned his back on the supreme opportunity, and used his strength and qualities to fight against the spirit of progress, and all that the enlightenment of the age p.r.o.nounces to be fitting and necessary to good government and a healthy State.

To an English n.o.bleman, who, in the course of an interview, remarked, 'My father was a Minister of England, and twice Viceroy of Ireland,' the old Dutchman answered, 'And my father was a shepherd!' It was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever-present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the ant.i.thesis. He too was a shepherd, and is-a peasant. It may be that he knows what would be right and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realizes that to educate would be to emanc.i.p.ate, to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices, to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread, to give unto all men the rights of men would be to swamp for ever the party which is to him greater than the State. When one thinks on the one-century history of the people, much is seen that accounts for their extraordinary love of isolation, and their ingrained and pa.s.sionate aversion to control; much too that draws to them a world of sympathy. And when one realizes the old Dopper President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations-trying to fight both fate and Nature-standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea-one sees the pathos of the picture. But this is as another generation may see it.

To-day we are too close-so close that the meaner details, the blots and flaws, are all most plainly visible; the corruption, the insincerity, the injustice, the barbarity-all the unlovely touches that will by-and-by be forgotten-sponged away by the gentle hand of time, when only the picturesque will remain.

In order to understand the deep, ineradicable aversion to English rule which is in the heart and the blood and the bones of every Boer, and of a great many of their kindred who are themselves British subjects, one must recall the conditions under which the Dutch came under British rule. When, in 1814, the Cape was finally ceded to England, it had been twice acquired and held by conquest. The colonists were practically all Dutch, or Huguenots who had adopted Dutch as their language, and South Africa as their home. In any case they were people who, by tradition, teaching and experience, must have regarded the English as their enemies; people in whom there must have been roused bitter resentment against being handed over with the land to their traditional enemies. Were they serfs or subjects? has been asked on their behalf. Had Holland the right, the power, over freemen born, to say to them, 'You are our subjects, on our soil, and we have transferred the soil and with it your allegiance to England, whose sovereignty you will not be free to repudiate.' The Dutch colonist said 'No.' The English Government and the laws of the day said 'Yes.'

Early in the century the Boers began to trek away from the sphere of British rule. They were trekkers before that, indeed. Even in the days of Van Riebeck (1650) they had trekked away from the crowded parts, and opened up with the rifle and the plough new reaches of country; pioneering in a rough but most effective way, driving back the savage races, and clearing the way for civilization. There is, however, a great difference to be noted between the early treks of the emigrants and the treks 'from British rule.' In the former (with few exceptions) they went, knowing that their Government would follow them, and even anxious to have its support and its representatives; and the people who formed their migrating parties were those who had no or insufficient land in the settled parts, those who were starting life on their own account, or those whose families could not be located and provided for in the cramped circ.u.mstances of the more occupied parts. In the other case, rich and poor, old and young, went off as in the days and in the fashion of Moses or Abraham. They went without leave or help of the Government; secretly or openly they went, and they asked nothing but to be left alone. They left their homes, their people, the protection of an established Government and a rough civilization, and went out into the unknown. And they had, as it appeared to them, and as it will appear to many others, good reasons for taking so grave a step. For, although the colonists of South Africa enjoyed better government, and infinitely more liberty, under British rule, than they had under the tyrannical regime of the Dutch East India Company twenty years before (against which the Boers had twice risen in rebellion) there were many things which were not as they should have been. A generation had grown up which knew nothing of the arbitrary and oppressive rule of the old Dutch Company. Simple folks have long memories, and all the world over injuries make a deeper and more lasting impression than benefits; and the older generation of Boers, which could recall a condition of things contrasting unpleasantly with British rule, also remembered the executions of Slagters Nek-a vindication of the law which, when all allowance has been made for disturbed times, and the need of strong measures to stop rebellion in a newly-acquired country, seems to us to-day to have been harsh, unnecessary, and unwise in policy, and truly terrible in the manner of fulfilment.

The Boers have produced from their own ranks no literary champion to plead or defend their cause, and their earlier history is therefore little known, and often misunderstood; but to their aid has come Mr. George McCall Theal, the South African historian, whose years of laborious research have rescued for South Africa much that would otherwise have been lost. In his 'History of the Boers' Mr. Theal records the causes of the great emigration, and shows how the Boers stood up for fair treatment, and fought the cause, not of Boers alone, but of all colonists. Boers and British were alike harshly and ignorantly treated by high-handed Governors, and an ill-informed and prejudiced Colonial Office, who made no distinction on the grounds of nationality between the two; for we read that Englishmen had been expelled the country, thrown in gaol, had their property confiscated, and their newspapers suppressed for a.s.serting their independence, and for trifling breaches of harsh laws. The following extract gives the best possible synopsis of the causes, and should whet an appet.i.te which can be gratified by the purchase of Mr. Theal's book:

Why, then, did these men abandon their homes, sacrifice whatever property could not be carried away, and flee from English rule as from the most hateful tyranny? The causes are stated in a great ma.s.s of correspondence addressed by them to the Colonial Government, and now preserved, with other colonial records, in declarations published by some of them before leaving, in letters to their relatives and to newspapers, and in hundreds of pages of printed matter, prepared by friendly and hostile hands. The declaration of one of the ablest men among them a.s.signs the following as the motives of himself and the party that went with him:

'GRAHAM'S TOWN, 'January 22, 1837 '1. 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.

'2. We complain of the severe losses which we have been forced to sustain by the emanc.i.p.ation of our slaves, and the vexatious laws which have been enacted respecting them.

'3. We complain of the continual system of plunder which we have for years endured from the Kaffirs and other coloured cla.s.ses, and particularly by the last invasion of the colony, which has desolated the frontier districts, and ruined most of the inhabitants.

'4. 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.

'5. We are resolved, wherever we go, that we will uphold the just principles of liberty; but, whilst we will take care that no one is brought by us into a condition of slavery, we will establish such regulations as may suppress crime, and preserve proper relations between master and servant.

'6. We solemnly declare that we leave this colony with a desire to enjoy a quieter life than we have hitherto had. We will not molest any people, nor deprive them of the smallest property; but, if attacked, we shall consider ourselves fully justified in defending our persons and effects, to the utmost of our ability, against every enemy.

'7. We make known that when we shall have framed a code of laws for our guidance, copies shall be forwarded to this colony for general information; but we take the opportunity of stating that it is our firm resolve to make provision for the summary punishment, even with death, of all traitors, without exception, who may be found amongst us.

'8. We purpose, in the course of our journey, and on arrival at the country in which we shall permanently reside, to make known to the native tribes our intentions, and our desire to live in peace and friendly intercourse with them.

'9. We quit this colony under the full a.s.surance that the English Government has nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves without its interference in future.

'10. 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 G.o.d, whom we shall always fear, and humbly endeavour to obey.

'In the name of all who leave the colony with me,

'P. RETIEF.'

But formal declarations such as the above are not in all instances to be trusted. It is much safer to compare numerous doc.u.ments written at different times, by different persons, and under different circ.u.mstances. For our subject this means of information is as complete as can be desired. The correspondence of the emigrants with the Cape Government was the work of many individuals, and extended over many years. The letters are usually of great length, badly constructed, and badly spelt-the productions, in short, of uneducated men; but so uniform is the vein of thought running through them all, that there is not the slightest difficulty in condensing them into a dozen pages. When a.n.a.lyzed, the statements contained in them are found to consist of two charges, one against the Imperial Government, the other against the agents in South Africa of the London Missionary Society.

The Imperial Government was charged with exposing the white inhabitants of the colony, without protection, to robbery and murder by the blacks; with giving credence in every dispute to statements made by interested persons in favour of savages, while refusing to credit the testimony, no matter how reliable, of colonists of European extraction; with liberating the slaves in an unjust manner; and generally with such undue partiality for persons with black skins and savage habits, as to make it preferable to seek a new home in the wilderness than remain under the English flag.

The missionaries of the London Society were charged with usurping authority that should properly belong to the civil magistrate; with misrepresenting facts; and with advocating schemes directly hostile to the progress of civilization, and to the observance of order. And it was a.s.serted that the influence of these missionaries was all powerful at the Colonial Office in London, by which the colony, without a voice in the management of its affairs, was then ruled absolutely.

In support of the charges against the Imperial Government, the emigrants dwelt largely upon the devastation of the eastern districts by the Kaffirs' inroad of December, 1834, which was certainly unprovoked by the colonists. Yet Lord Glenelg, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, justified the Kaffirs, and not only refused to punish them, but actually gave them a large slip of land, including the dense jungles along the Fish River, that had long been part of the colony; and made no other provision against the recurrence of a destructive invasion than a series of treaties with a number of barbarous chiefs, who had no regard for their engagements. This event is the most prominent feature in the correspondence of the emigrants; it is fairly recorded, and the language used is in general much more moderate than that employed by the English frontier colonists when relating the same circ.u.mstance.

Next stands the removal of all restraint from the coloured population of the colony, without the protection to the whites of even a Vagrant Act. Several of the colonial divisions had been for ten or twelve years overrun by fugitives from the Basuto and Betshuana countries, who had been driven from their own homes by the troubles already recorded. These people were usually termed Mantatees or Makatees, from the supposition that they were all subjects of Ma Ntatisi. Towards the eastern frontiers Kaffirs, and after the war Fingos, wandered about practically wherever they chose. In the remainder of the colony Hottentots, free blacks, and mixed breeds came and went as they pleased. How is it possible, said the farmers, for us to cultivate the ground, or breed cattle, with all these savages and semi-savages constantly watching for opportunities to plunder us-with no police, and no law under which suspicious characters can be arrested and made to account for their manner of living?

Much is said of the reproofs of Sir Benjamin D'Urban by the Secretary of State, and, after 1838, of the dismissal of that Governor, (1) The emigrants a.s.serted that he was the best Governor the colony had had since it became subject to England; they dwelt upon his benevolence, his ability, his strict justice, his impartiality to white and black, his efforts to promote civilization; and then they complained, in words more bitter than are to be found when they referred to any other subject, that the good Governor had been reproved, and finally deprived of his office, because he had told the plain truth, regardless of the London Missionary Society; and had endeavoured to mete out to black criminals the same justice that he would have meted out had they been white. There is now no one in South Africa who does not agree with the emigrants in this matter. Nearly half a century has pa.s.sed away since Sir Benjamin D'Urban was forced into retirement by Lord Glenelg; and during that period the princ.i.p.al measures which he proposed have been approved of and adopted, while the successors of those missionaries who were his bitter opponents are at present among the strongest advocates of his system of dealing with the natives.

Sir Benjamin D'Urban remained in South Africa, after being deprived of office, until the reversal of his policy towards the natives was admitted by most people even in England to have been a mistake. He did not leave the Cape until April, 1846, just after the commencement of the War of the Axe.

Concerning the liberation of the slaves, there is less in this correspondence than one might reasonably expect to find. Many scores of pages can be examined without any allusion whatever to it. Nowhere is there a single word to be found in favour of slavery as an inst.i.tution; the view of the emigrants, with hardly an exception, being fairly represented in the following sentence, taken from a letter of the Volksraad at Natal to Sir George Napier: 'A long and sad experience has sufficiently convinced us of the injury, loss, and dearness of slave labour, so that neither slavery nor the slave trade will ever be permitted among us.'

[The allusions to the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, and to slavery as an inst.i.tution, will be considered by many to need some modification or explanation. The Dutch even to-day speak of the emanc.i.p.ation as the real cause of the great exodus; and the system of indenture, and the treatment of natives generally by the Boers, cannot fairly be regarded as warranting the view expressed by Mr. Theal in connection with this letter to Sir George Napier.]

It is alleged, however, that the emanc.i.p.ation, as it was carried out, was an act of confiscation. It is stated that most of the slaves were brought to the colony in English ships, and sold by English subjects; that when, in 1795, the colony was invited by English officers of high rank to place itself under the protection of England, one of the inducements held out was security in slave property; at the same time those officers warning the colonists that if France obtained possession she would liberate the slaves, as she had done in Martinique, thereby ruining this colony as she had ruined that island; that the English Government had recently and suddenly changed its policy, and required them to conform to the change with equal alacrity, whereas they were convinced that gradual emanc.i.p.ation, with securities against vagrancy, was the only safe course. The emanc.i.p.ation had been sudden, and the slaves had been placed upon a perfect political equality with their former proprietors. The missionaries applauded this as a n.o.ble and generous act of the Imperial Government, and they were told that by everyone in England it was so regarded. But at whose expense was this n.o.ble and generous act carried out? Agents of the Imperial Government had appraised the slaves, generally at less than their market value. Two-fifths of this apprais.e.m.e.nt, being the share apportioned to the Cape out of the twenty million pounds sterling voted by the Imperial Parliament, had then been offered to the proprietors as compensation, if they chose to go to London for it, otherwise they could only dispose of their claims at a heavy discount. Thus, in point of fact, only about one-third of the appraised amount had been received. To all slave-holders this had meant a great reduction of wealth, while to many of those who were in debt it was equivalent to the utter deprivation of all property.

As regards the missionaries, a crusade was organized by some of these worthies, who had themselves married Kaffir women, and who spared no effort and showed no scruple in blackening the name of colonist.

The views and interests of the colonists and of these men were so different that concord was hardly possible. The missionaries desired that the blacks should be collected together in villages: the colonists were unwilling that they should be thus withdrawn from service. 'Teach them the first step in civilization, to labour honestly for their maintenance, and add to that oral instruction in the doctrines of Christianity,' said the colonists. 'Why should they be debarred from learning to read and write? And as there can only be schools if they are brought together in villages, why should they not be collected together?' replied the missionaries.

Then came another and a larger question. By whom should the waste places of the land, the vast areas which were without other occupants than a few roving Bushmen, be peopled? 'By the white man,' said the colonists; 'it is to the advantage of the world in all time to come that the higher race should expand and be dominant here; it would be treason to humanity to prevent its growth where it can grow without wrong to others, or to plant an inferior stock where the superior can take root and flourish.' 'By Africans,' said the missionaries; 'this is African soil; and if mission stations are established on its desolate tracts, people will be drawn to them from the far interior, the community will grow rapidly, those enlightened by Christianity here will desire in their turn to enlighten their friends beyond, and thus the Gospel teaching will spread until all Africa stretches out its hands to G.o.d.' Coupled with such arguments, which were constantly used by missionaries in the early part of this century, before their enthusiasm was cooled by experience, were calculations that appealed strongly to the commercial instincts of people in England. A dozen colonial farmers required something like a hundred square miles of land for their cattle runs; on this same ground, under missionary supervision, three or four hundred families of blacks could exist; these blacks would shortly need large quant.i.ties of manufactured goods; and thus it would be to the interest of trade to encourage them rather than the colonists. 'Already,' said they, 'after only a few years' training, many blacks can read as well or better than the ordinary colonists, and are exhibiting a decided taste for civilization.'

There was thus a broad line of demarcation between the colonists and such of the missionaries as held these views, and the tendency on each side was to make it still broader. It was deepened into positive antipathy towards those missionaries who, following Dr. Vanderkemp's example, united themselves in marriage with black women, and proclaimed themselves the champions of the black population against the white. Everyone acquainted with South African natives knows how ready they are to please their friends by bringing forward charges against anyone whom those friends dislike. Unfortunately the missionaries Vanderkemp and Read were deceived into believing a great number of charges of cruelty made against various colonists, which a little observation would have shown in most instances to be groundless; and thereupon they lodged accusations before the High Court of Justice. In 1811 between seventy and eighty such cases came before the Circuit Court for trial. There was hardly a family on the frontier of which some relative was not brought as a criminal before the judges to answer to a charge of murder or violent a.s.sault. Several months were occupied in the trials, and more than a thousand witnesses were examined, but in every instance the most serious charges were proved to be without foundation. Only a few convictions, and those of no very outrageous crimes, resulted from these prosecutions, which kept the entire colony in a ferment until long after the circuit was closed.

Thus far everyone will approve of the sentiments of one party or the other according to his sympathy, but in what follows no unprejudiced person who will take the trouble to study the matter thoroughly can acquit the anti-colonial missionaries of something more faulty than mere error of judgment. For years their writings teemed with charges against the colonists similar to those they had brought before the High Court of Justice. These writings were circulated widely in Europe, where the voice of the colonists was never heard, and they created impressions there which no refutation made in South Africa could ever counteract. The acts, the language, even the written pet.i.tions of the colonists, were so distorted in accounts sent home, that these accounts cannot now be read by those who have made themselves acquainted with the truth, without the liveliest feelings of indignation being excited.

The colonists learned that in England they were regarded as cruel barbarians because they refused to permit Hottentot herds, swarming with vermin, to be seated in their front rooms at the time of family prayer. They found themselves pictured as the harshest of taskmasters, as unfeeling violators of native rights. And of late years it had become plain to them that the views of their opponents were being acted upon at the Colonial Office, while their complaints were wholly disregarded.