Life in Afrikanderland as viewed by an Afrikander / A story of life in South Africa, based on truth

In all times of stress and struggle, it is not from our friends and supporters, but from our enemies and opponents, that we receive the best and most practical instruction. If an evil or a peril exist, it is surely best to know it; and if serious treason be hatching in dark places, publicity may easily rob it of its main strength and neutralise its virulence. Further, in order to rightly understand racial conflicts—of all the most bitter—we must put ourselves in our adversary’s place in order to arrive at just conclusions. We are quite aware that in issuing this uncompromising attack upon British supremacy in South Africa the writer is viewing everything from an entirely anti-English standpoint, but surely it is of great practical importance that we should be accurately informed as to the way in which our adversaries regard us. More practical instruction can be obtained thus than in any other manner. The intense hostility of the writer to England is manifest, and a perusal of these pages is calculated to be of real service to those to whom, as to ourselves, the solidarity and permanence of the British Empire is a primary consideration.
To my mother do i dedicate this work, who, i am sure, had she lived to read it, would have approved the sentiments expressed herein, and would have thoroughly sympathised with the earnest object for which this work has been written, viz., the ultimate triumph of TRUTH.
CIOS.
To the Reader,
Gentle Reader, I have written this story in the English language—a language learned by me, as a foreign language, for the chief purpose of placing before the English reading public a true and faithful version of the character and life of an Afrikander. So many libels and false stories have of late been spread in England and all over the world about the Boers by enemies of the people inhabiting the Colonies and States of South Africa, that I could not resist the temptation to write something in which the truth and nothing but the truth would be told. I have made the attempt; whether it is to be successful or not, the reading public must decide.