Oom Paul's People / A Narrative of the British-Boer Troubles in South Africa, with a History of the Boers, the Country, and Its Institutions

by Howard Clemens Hillegas

The Dutch East India Settlement, as it was officially called, attracted hundreds of immigrants. The reports of a salubrious climate, good soil, and, more than all, the promised religious toleration, were the allurements that brought more immigrants from Holland, Germany, and France. Cape Town even then was one of the most important ports in the world, owing to its great strategic value and to the fact that it was about the only port where vessels making the long trip to the East Indies could secure even the scantiest supplies. The provisioning of ships was responsible, in no small degree, for the growth of Cape Town and the coincident increase in immigration.

When all the available land between Table Mountain and Table Bay was settled, the new arrivals naturally took up the land to the northward, and drove the bellicose natives before them. Like their Pilgrim prototypes, they instituted military organizations to cope with the natives, and they were not infrequently called upon for active duty against them. It was owing to this savage disposition of the natives that the settlers confined their endeavours to the vicinity of Table Bay.

When immigrants became more numerous and land increased in value, the pilgrims of more daring disposition proceeded inland, and soon carried the northeastern boundary of the settlement close to the Orange River. The soil around Table Bay was extremely rich, but farther inland it became barren and, by reason of the many lofty table-lands, almost uninhabitable. The Bushmen, too, were constantly attacking the encroaching settlers, whose lives were filled with anything but thoughts of safety, and high in the northern side of Table Mountain is to be seen to-day an old-time fort that was erected by the settlers to ward off natives' attacks upon Cape Town.

The Dutch East India Company, which controlled the settlement, looked with disfavour upon the enlargement of the original boundary of the colony, and attempted to enforce laws preventing such action. The settlers in the outlying district felt that they owed no allegiance to the laws of the colony in which they did not live, and refused to obey the company's mandates. Then followed a long-drawn-out controversy between the settlers and the East India Company, which resembled in many respects the differences between England and her American colony.

It was during this period of oppression that the settlers of the Cape of Good Hope first exhibited the betokening signs of a nation. The communities of Hollanders, Germans, and French were constantly in such close communication with one another that each lost its distinguishing marks and adopted the new manners and customs which were their collective coinage. They suffered the same indignities at the hands of the East India Company, and naturally their sympathies drew them into a closer bond of fellowship, so that almost all national and racial differences were wiped out.

Never in the history of South Africa were all things so favourable for the establishment of a truly Afrikander nation and government. A leader was all that was necessary to throw off the yoke of continental control, but none was forthcoming.

At this propitious time the Napoleonic wars in Europe resulted so disastrously for France that she was compelled to cede to England the South African settlement, which had been acquired with the annexation of Holland, and the settlers believed their hour of deliverance from tyranny had arrived. They hailed the coming of the British forces with hopes for the improvement of their conditions, fondly believing that the British could treat them with no greater severity than that which they had suffered under the rule of the Dutch Company.

But their hopes were short-lived after the British garrison occupied Cape Town, and they soon learned that they had escaped from one kind of torment and oppression only to be burdened with another more harassing. The British administrators found a friendly people, eager to become British subjects, and, by exercise of undue authority, quickly transformed them into desperate enemies of British rule. The American colonies had but a short time before taught British colonial statesmen a dire lesson, but it was not applied to the South African colony, and the mistake has never been remedied.

Had the lesson learned in America been applied at that time, British rule would now be supreme in South Africa, and the two republics which are the eyesore of every Englishman in the country would probably never have come into existence. The British administrators ruled the colony as they had been taught in London, and allowed no local impediments to swerve them. The result of this method of government was that the Boer settlers, who had opinions of their own, became bitterly opposed to the British rule. The administrators attempted to coerce the Boers, and formulated laws which were meat to the newly arrived English immigrants and poison to the old settlers.

One of the indirect causes of the first Boer uprising against the British Government at the Cape was the slavery question. In the Transvaal there is a national holiday--March 6th--to commemorate the uprising of 1816, and it is known throughout the country as "Slagter's Nek Day." To the Boers it is a day of sad memory, and the recurrence of it does not soften their enmity of the English nation.