Cetywayo and his White Neighbours / Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal

by H. Rider Haggard

THE ANNEXATION

Anxiety of Lord Carnarvon—Despatch of Sir T. Shepstone as Special Commissioner to the Transvaal—Sir T. Shepstone, his great experience and ability—His progress to Pretoria and reception there—Feelings excited by the arrival of the mission—The annexation not a foregone conclusion—Charge brought against Sir T. Shepstone of having called up the Zulu army to sweep the Transvaal—Its complete falsehood—Cetywayo’s message to Sir T. Shepstone—Evidence on the matter summed up—General desire of the natives for English rule—Habitual disregard of their interests—Assembly of the Volksraad—Rejection of Lord Carnarvon’s Confederation Bill and of President Burgers’ new constitution— President Burgers’ speeches to the Raad—His posthumous statement —Communication to the Raad of Sir T. Shepstone’s intention to annex the country—Despatch of Commission to inquire into the alleged peace with Secocoeni—Its fraudulent character discovered—Progress of affairs in the Transvaal—Paul Kruger and his party—Restlessness of natives—Arrangements for the annexation—The annexation proclamation.

The state of affairs described in the previous chapter was one that filled the Secretary of State for the Colonies with alarm. During his tenure of office, Lord Carnarvon evidently had the permanent welfare of South Africa much at heart, and he saw with apprehension that the troubles that were brewing in the Transvaal were of a nature likely to involve the Cape and Natal in a native war. Though there is a broad line of demarcation between Dutch and English, it is not so broad but that a victorious nation like the Zulus might cross it, and beginning by fighting the Boer, might end by fighting the white man irrespective of race. When the reader reflects how terrible would be the consequences of a combination of native tribes against the Whites, and how easily such a combination might at that time have been brought about in the first flush of native successes, he will understand the anxiety with which all thinking men watched the course of events in the Transvaal in 1876.

At last they took such a serious turn that the Home Government saw that some action must be taken if the catastrophe was to be averted, and determined to despatch Sir Theophilus Shepstone as Special Commissioner to the Transvaal, with powers, should it be necessary, to annex the country to Her Majesty’s dominions, “in order to secure the peace and safety of Our said colonies and of Our subjects elsewhere.”

The terms of his Commission were unusually large, leaving a great deal to his discretionary power. In choosing that officer for the execution of a most difficult and delicate mission, the Government, doubtless, made a very wise selection. Sir Theophilus Shepstone is a man of remarkable tact and ability, combined with great openness and simplicity of mind, and one whose name will always have a leading place in South African history. During a long official lifetime he has had to do with most of the native races in South Africa, and certainly knows them and their ways better than any living man; whilst he is by them all regarded with a peculiar and affectionate reverence. He is par excellence their great white chief and “father,” and a word from him, even now that he has retired from active life, still carries more weight than the formal remonstrances of any governor in South Africa.

With the Boers he is almost equally well acquainted, having known many of them personally for years. He possesses, moreover, the rare power of winning the regard and affection, as well as the respect, of those about him in such a marked degree that those who have served him once would go far to serve him again. Sir T. Shepstone, however, has enemies like other people, and is commonly reported among them to be a disciple of Machiavelli, and to have his mind steeped in all the darker wiles of Kafir policy. The Annexation of the Transvaal is by them attributed to a successful and vigorous use of those arts that distinguished the diplomacy of two centuries ago. Falsehood and bribery are supposed to have been the great levers used to effect the change, together with threats of extinction at the hands of a savage and unfriendly nation.

That the Annexation was a triumph of mind over matter is quite true, but whether or not that triumph was unworthily obtained, I will leave those who read this short chronicle of the events connected with it to judge. I saw it somewhat darkly remarked in a newspaper the other day that the history of the Annexation had evidently yet to be written; and I fear that the remark represents the feeling of most people about the event; implying as it did, that it was carried out, by means certainly mysterious, and presumably doubtful. I am afraid that those who think thus will be disappointed in what I have to say about the matter, since I know that the means employed to bring the Boers—

“Fracti bello, fatisque repulsi”—

under her Majesty’s authority were throughout as fair and honest as the Annexation itself was, in my opinion, right and necessary.

To return to Sir T. Shepstone. He undoubtedly had faults as a ruler, one of the most prominent of which was that his natural mildness of character would never allow him to act with severity even when severity was necessary. The very criminals condemned to death ran a good chance of reprieve when he had to sign their death-warrants. He had also that worst of faults (so called), in one fitted by nature to become great—want of ambition, a failing that in such a man marks him the possessor of an even and a philosophic mind. It was no seeking of his own that raised him out of obscurity, and when his work was done to comparative obscurity he elected to return, though whether a man of his ability and experience in South African affairs should, at the present crisis, be allowed to remain there, is another question.