Through South Africa / His Visit to Rhodesia, the Transvaal, Cape Colony, Natal

by Henry M. Stanley

Wolf!

Whenever President Kruger can get an opportunity to utter a word which will reach the public ear, he harps upon the independence of the country being in danger, and the dynamite concession being the corner-stone of that independence. The cry of the wolf being at the door has enabled him to enjoy fifteen years of office, with its princely emoluments, and to the ossified brains of his burghers the same old story may be related with endless repetitions.

The Dynamite Disgrace.

At one electioneering meeting the President said that he refused to have electric trams at Johannesburg because he could not see his burghers deprived of the means of selling their forage. He also assured his audience that the Dynamite Company should be compelled to manufacture dynamite from the products of the country—although it is well known that almost every constituent of it must be imported from Europe. He also stated that the Dynamite Company was essential to the independence of the State since it made the manufacture of gunpowder possible, whereas he knows well that the ingredients of the composition must be purchased abroad.

At another place the President said: “I get so much money from the mines that in a short time I shall be able to pay for the dynamite factory. I will not break the factory. I will not allow any importation of the ingredients to take place, but at the same time I will not throw up the factory.” The people were unable to perceive any nonsense in his words. As the factory can only manufacture 80,000 cases a year, and as 250,000 cases are needed, it never struck them that 170,000 cases would have to be bought elsewhere, nor that as dynamite cannot be made in the Transvaal without obtaining its constituents elsewhere did it seem necessary to ask how the President could keep his promise.

The Presidential Dotard will be Elected a Fourth Time.

If one will read the above carefully over, he will be able to gauge the intellect of this wonderful statesman fairly well, and measure the sense of the people who gape at these absurdities. What with political economy drawn from Isaiah and practical life being ordered by what the prophet Isaiah said, with a future policy based upon the manufacture of dynamite in the Transvaal, and the support of the tariffs of the Netherlands Railway, and the ensuring of a produce market at Johannesburg by not allowing the people of that city to have electric trams, the payment of 225,000 pounds a year to keep the forts in order, and 200,000 pounds interest on the capital expended on the wholly useless structures, the constant denunciation of the murderer Rhodes, the squandering of 80,000 pounds a year to spare the Transvaal from another surprise like the Jameson raid, It appears to the simple burghers that their President is the only fit man for the office he holds, and that Kruger is only second to Washington.

And yet both President and people are within reach and close connection with every possible civilised influence; but the truth is that their dull, dense, and dark minds are impenetrable to good sense, impervious to reason, and insensitive to the noble examples we see at Johannesburg. Though there may be neither rhyme nor reason in anything the Presidential dotard may say or do, the burgher farmer will cling to him and make him victor over all rivals for a fourth time.

My Advice to “The Bright, Clever Men at Johannesburg.”

This is the wonderful incongruity I spoke of that such a President and people as above described should be rulers over the enlightened progressive community of Johannesburg. At a dinner at the Club I quietly suggested a corrective of this incongruous and unprecedented condition of things, and said that it lay in the saying: “It was expedient that one man should die for many.” I was conscious of being stared at, and, indeed, if with all their intellectual capacity the idea never entered their minds before, I can quite understand their surprise. But it appears to me that if, according to their own admission, they have tried everything—pleading, arguments, petitions, resolutions, menaces, bribery—and all have failed, relief can only come through one of two things, viz.: Active interference of England, or a determination on their own part to endure no more. As to the first, every public man in England knows that the active interference of England in a matter of this kind is impossible. It may be her moral duty to interfere, but those bright, clever men at Johannesburg should know as well as we do that the present age and times will not admit of national action on grounds purely moral. The story of their wrongs will always receive sympathy, but to move a nation to action something more than sympathy is required. We delivered the Transvaal territory over to the charge of its own citizens, and they only are responsible for what happens in their territory. If their laws are oppressive or unjust to the strangers residing amongst them, the strangers may withdraw, or endure the evils of which they complain as well as they can. It is not for us to advise them what they should do; the choice must lie with themselves. They may fly the country or leave their properties in the charge of trustworthy Boer agents, if any such can be found, or they may continue to suffer all that the Boers may choose to inflict, or they may all unite in ceasing work and pay neither dues, taxes or bribes until justice be done to them, but we cannot interfere until we know what Johannesburg has resolved upon doing. What we may do in any event is not worth discussing—no, not until the Johannesburg people act like Englishmen.