South Africa, vol. II.

by Anthony Trollope

Then, on 29th August, 1848, was fought the battle of Boom Plats half-way between the Orange River and Bloemfontein. Sir Harry Smith, the Governor, had come himself with six or seven hundred English soldiers and were joined by a small body of Griquas,—who were as a matter of course hostile to the Dutch. There were collected together about a thousand Dutch farmers all mounted. They were farmers, ready enough to fight, but not trained soldiers. More English were killed or wounded than Dutch. A dozen Dutchmen fell, and about four times that number of English. But the English beat the Dutch. This decided the fate of that territory for a short time,—and it became British under the name of the Orange River Sovereignty. Pretorius with his friends trekked away north, crossed the Vaal River, and there founded the Transvaal Republic,—as has been told elsewhere. A reward of £2,000 was offered for his apprehension;—an offer which might have been spared and which was happily made in vain.

Major Warden was reinstated as governing Resident, and the British power was supposed to be so well consolidated that many colonists who had hitherto remained contented on the south of the river now crossed it to occupy the lands which the followers of Pretorius had been compelled to desert. But the British were not very strong. The Basutos, a tribe of Natives who have now for some years lived in the odour of loyal sanctity and are supposed to be a pattern to all other Natives, harassed the Europeans continually. War had to be proclaimed against them. Basuto Land will be found in the map lying to the north of Kafraria, to the south east of the Orange Free State, south west of Natal, and north-east of the Cape Colony,—to which it is bound only by a narrow neck, and of which it now forms a part. How it became British shall be told hereafter;—but at the time of which I am now writing, about 1850, it was very Anti-British, and gave poor Major Warden and the Dutchmen who were living under his rule a great deal of trouble.

Then, in 1851, the Sovereignty was declared to be to all intents and purposes a separate Colony,—such as is the Transvaal at this moment. A Lieutenant Governor was appointed, who with the assistance of a council was empowered to make laws,—but with a proviso that such laws should not be binding upon Natives. To speak sooth British laws are not absolutely binding upon the Natives in any of the South African Colonies. In the Cape Colony or in Natal a Native may buy a wife,—or ten wives. There has always been the acknowledged impossibility of enforcing Africans to live at once after European habits. But here, in this new Colony which we had at last adopted, there was to be something peculiarly mild in our dealings with the black men. There was to be no interference with acts done within the limits of the jurisdiction of any native Chief. The Lieutenant Governor or “Resident was instructed to maintain the government of the native Chiefs over their people and lands in the utmost integrity.”[11] It is odd enough that from this territory, on which the British Governor or British Colonial Secretary of the day was so peculiarly anxious to defend the Natives from any touch of European tyranny, all the native tribes have been abolished, and here alone in South Africa the European master is fettered by no native difficulty;—is simply served by native servants. The native locations were to be peculiarly sacred;—but every Native has been scared away. The servants and workmen are foreigners who have come into the land in search of wages and food. The remarkable settlement at Thaba ’Ncho, of which I shall speak in a following chapter, is no contradiction to this statement, as the territory of the Baralongs of which Thaba ’Ncho is the capital is not a portion of the Orange Free State.

But with all our philanthropy we could not make things run smoothly in our new Colony. Moshesh and the Basutos would have grievances and would fight. The Governor of the Cape, who should have had no trouble with a little Colony which had a Governor of its own, and a Council, and instructions of a peculiarly philanthropic nature in regard to the Natives, was obliged to fight with these Basutos on behalf of the little Colony. This cost money,—of which the people in England heard the facts. It was really too much that after all that we had done we should be called upon to pay more money for an uncomfortable internal Province in South Africa which was not of the slightest use to us, which added no prestige to our name, and of which we had struggled hard to avoid the possession. There was nothing attractive about it. It was neither fertile nor pretty,—nor did it possess a precious metal of any kind as far as we knew. It was inhabited by Dutch who disliked us,—and by a most ungrateful horde of fighting Natives. Why,—why should we be compelled to go rushing up to the Equator, crossing river after river, in a simple endeavour to do good, when the very people whom we wanted to serve continually quarrelled with us,—and made us pay through the nose for all their quarrels?

It seems to have been forgotten then,—it seems often to have been forgotten,—that the good people and the peaceable people have to pay for the bad people and the quarrelsome people. There would appear to be a hardship in this;—but if any one will look into it he will see that after all the good people and the peaceable have much the best of it, and that the very money which they are called upon to pay in this way is not altogether badly invested. They obtain the blessing of security and the feeling, not injurious to their peace of mind, of having obtained that security by their own exertions.

But the idea of paying money and getting nothing for it does create irritation. At home in England the new Colony was not regarded with favour. In 1853 we had quite enough of fighting in hand without having to fight the Basutos in defence of the Dutch, or the Dutch in defence of the Basutos. The Colonial Secretary of that time was also War minister and may well have had his hands full. It was decided that the Orange Free State should be abandoned. We had claimed the Dutch as our subjects when they attempted to start for themselves in Natal, and had subjugated them by force of arms. Then we had repudiated them in the nearer region across the Orange. Then again we had claimed them and had again subjugated them by force of arms. Now we again repudiated them. In 1854 we executed, and forced them to accept, a convention by which we handed over the Government of the country to them,—to be carried on after their own fashion. But yet it was not to be carried on exactly as they pleased. There was to be no Slavery. They were to be an independent people, living under a Republic; but they were not to be allowed to force labour from the Natives. To see that this stipulation was carried out it would have been necessary for us to maintain magistrates all over the country;—or spies rather than magistrates, as such magistrates could have had no jurisdiction. The Republic, however, assented to a treaty containing this clause in regard to slavery.

In 1854 we got rid of our Orange River Sovereignty, Sir George Clerk having been sent over from England to make the transfer;—and we congratulated ourselves that we had now two independent Republics between us and the swarming hordes of the north. I cannot say how soon there came upon Downing Street a desire to resume the territory, but during the following troubles with the Basutos such a feeling must, one would say, have arisen. When the Diamond Fields were discovered it is manifest that the independence of the Orange Free State was very much in our way. When we were compelled by the run of circumstances to have dealings with native tribes which in 1854 seemed to us to be too remote from our borders to need thought, we must have regretted a certain clause in the convention by which,—we did not indeed bind ourselves to have no dealings with natives north of the Vaal river, but in which we declared that we had no “wish or intention” to enter into such treaties. No doubt that clause was intended to imply only that we had at that time no hidden notion of interference with the doings of the proposed Republic by arrangements with its native neighbours,—no notion of which it was to be kept in the dark. To think the contrary would be to suppose that the occupants of the Colonial Office at home were ignorant of language and destitute of honesty. But there soon came troubles from the clause which must have caused many regrets in the bosoms of Secretaries and Under Secretaries. Now at any rate we are all sure that Downing Street must repent her liberality, and wish,—ah, so fruitlessly,—that Sir George Clerk had never been sent upon that expedition. With a Permissive South Africa Confederation Bill carried after infinite trouble, and an independent State in the middle of South Africa very little inclined to Confederation, the present holder of the Colonial seals[12] cannot admire much the peculiar virtue which in 1854 induced his predecessor to surrender the Orange territory to the Dutch in opposition to the wish of all the then inhabitants of the country.

For the surrender was not made to please the people of the country. Down in Natal the Dutch had wanted a Republic. Up in the Sovereignty, as it was then called, they also had wanted a Republic when old Pretorius was at their head. But since that time there had come troubles with the Basutos,—troubles which were by no means ended,—and the Dutch were now willing enough to put up with dependence and British protection. The Dutch have been so cross-grained that the peculiar colonial virtue of the day has never been able to take their side. “We have come here only because you have undertaken to govern us and protect us,” said those of the Dutch who had followed and not preceded us across the Orange. And it was impossible to contradict them. I do not think that any body could now dispassionately inquire into the circumstances of South Africa without calling in question the wisdom of the Government at home in abandoning the control of the territory north of the Orange River.

But the Republic was established. For some years it had a most troubled life. Mr. Boshof was elected the first President and retained that office till 1859. He seems to have been a man of firmness and wisdom, but to have found his neighbours the Basutos to be almost too much for him. There was war with this tribe more or less during his whole time. There was a branch of the tribe of the Basutos living on a territory in the Free State,—a people whom I will describe more at length in a following chapter,—over whom and over whose property Moshesh the Chief of the Basutos claimed sovereignty; but it was impossible for the Free State to admit the claim as it could itself only exist by dictating boundaries and terms to the Baralongs,—which they were willing enough to receive as being a protection against their enemies the Basutos.

In 1860 Mr. Pretorius became President of the Free State,—the son of the man who had been the first President of the Transvaal,—and the man himself who was President of the Transvaal before Mr. Burgers. But the difficulties were altogether beyond his power, and in 1863 he resigned. Then Mr. Brand was appointed, the gentleman who now holds the office and who will hold it probably, if he lives, for many years to come. His present condition, which is one of complete calm, is very much at variance with the early years of his Presidency. I should hardly interest my reader if I were to attempt to involve them in the details of this struggle. It was a matter of life and death to the young Republic in which national death seemed always to be more probable than national life. The State had no army and could depend only on the efforts of its burghers and volunteers,—men who were very good for a commando or a spasmodic struggle, men who were well used to sharp skirmishes in which they had to contend in the proportion of one to ten against their black enemies. But this war was maintained for four years, and the burghers and volunteers who were mostly married men could not long remain absent from home. And when a peace was made at the instance of the Governor of the Cape Colony and boundaries established to which Moshesh agreed, the sons of Moshesh broke out in another place, and everything was as bad as before. All the available means of the Free State were spent. Blue-backs as they were called were printed, and the bankers issued little scraps of paper,—“good-fors,” as they were called,—representing minute sums of money. Trade there was none and the farmers had to fight the Basutos instead of cultivating their land. At that time the condition of the Free State was very bad indeed. I think I may say that its preservation was chiefly due to the firmness of Mr. Brand.