Meanwhile, the Transvaal State, or South African Republic as it called itself, was passing through an infinite variety of more or less painful experiences. The region possessed by the Boers north of the Vaal is a great tract of fairly fertile and level land broken here and there by rugged hills. The climate is varied, but upon the whole pleasant and healthful. Its wheat-producing capabilities are famed throughout South Africa. Coffee and tobacco also thrive. But cattle-raising was and is the primary pursuit of almost the entire white or Dutch population. The Boers of this region did not arrive there all at once, or found their State upon conditions of mutual interest and a basis of common principles. Their one tie of union, their single basis of co-operation, was hatred of the English. Whether trekking north from Cape Colony under Potgieter and fighting the Matabele for a country to live in; or leaving Natal in utter disgust at the proposed free institutions of the new British administration; or crossing the Vaal from the Orange River Sovereignty to escape from even friendly relations with British communities; they were, and remained, the most implacable, the most ignorant, the most isolated and unmanageable of the emigrant farmers. At first the Boer population numbered only some sixteen thousand, and in 1837, after the destruction of Moselkatze and the Matabele power on the south side of the Limpopo, an unsuccessful attempt was made to form a common government. A little later four republics—Pochefstroom, Zoutpansberg, Lydenburg and Utrecht—were established, but without much effect so far as practical government was concerned. A period of wild license followed, and was marked by much cruelty towards the natives as well as anarchy and strife amongst the farmers themselves.
Transvaal Under Pretorius
In all the great region between the Orange River and the Limpopo these conditions, however, prevailed between 1836 and 1850 to a greater or lesser degree. South of the Vaal a check came through the vicinity of British power and population; but north of that historic river there was little ameliorative influence until about 1864. Marthinus Wessel Pretorius became President of one of the Transvaal sections, or republics, in 1857, and by 1860 had united the entire region under his control. Even then, however, there was a further period of civil war until, in 1864, Pretorius succeeded in obtaining general acceptance by the people and a legal election, with S. J. P. Kruger as Vice-President. He at once resigned the Presidency of the Orange Free State, which he had also held since 1858—but without success to his efforts at uniting the northern and southern republics—and devoted himself to breaking the power of the Baramapulana tribe which had established itself, in great and growing strength, upon the southern banks of the Limpopo and in territory which the Boers thought they should control. During more than three succeeding years the Transvaal tried in vain to subjugate this tribe. The State, however, had no money, and could not even pay for the transport of ammunition from Durban, on one occasion, while its people were not united in the prosecution of the war. The result was a practical withdrawal from the Zoutpansberg region; a recognition of the independence of the Baramapulana under the nominal form of a small annual tribute; and the creation of difficulties amongst other tribes which realized the check thus given to a people who had often oppressed them and frequently attacked their kraals. Wars followed with the Baralong and other clans, and the Republic presently found itself unable to assert its authority over the natives within its claimed sphere of supremacy, or to even hold its own territory intact. By 1870, when the Transvaal became mixed up in the Diamond Fields controversy and entered into the arbitration resulting in the Keate Award, the condition of the people was deplorable. Ignorance and Isolation The generation which was now grown up had absolutely no knowledge of anything beyond their own family circle, and had no acquaintance whatever with books, or history, or external affairs. The rivers were unbridged, the Treasury was empty, the salaries of the officials were only occasionally paid and trade was carried on by barter in the absence of gold or silver. The natives around them could not be more densely ignorant, or more completely isolated, than were these farmers on the veldt with all their thriving flocks and herds and stores of grain and vegetables and fruit. Whatever the poverty of intellect, or knowledge, or the primitive nature of their government, there was never any lack of food and wealth of cattle amongst the Dutch of the Transvaal. Like the Matabele and Zulu in their days of power, the Boers always possessed these requisites of life. Yet they would not pay taxes, or support their government, or educate their children.
Discontent and Disintegration
President Pretorius was compelled to resign as a result of his participation in the Diamond Fields' arbitration, and the Reverend Thomas Francois Burgers, a clergyman of unorthodox views, who had distinguished himself as a lawyer, was elected, in 1872, to the position. He was an able man, but somewhat visionary for the strained situation which required his attention. He had to deal with a few thousand ignorant men of seventeenth century views who were unable to govern themselves, or to control the surrounding natives, and be expected within a few years to mould out of this unpromising material a prosperous Republic with colleges, railways, telegraphs and a great name amongst the nations of the world. That his dreams were afterwards in a measure realized reflects credit upon his patriotism and perspicacity; but his policy broke down before the obstacles of the immediate present. Money to the extent of $450,000 was obtained from Holland, which the President visited in 1874, under authority from the Volkraad. With this sum railway material was purchased for a proposed line from Lorenzo Marques to Pretoria, and a Superintendent of Education was brought back to manage a system which was not yet in existence and for the creation of which there was neither money nor popular desire. When Mr. Burgers arrived home again he found discontent and disintegration everywhere visible, and his educational scheme was put aside; while his railway material was sent to rot at the Portuguese port for want of more money to carry on the enterprise. Then the strong Bapedi tribe under Sekukuni rose in rebellion; many of the Boers refused to fight under an agnostic President; and a large commando which he succeeded in getting together failed to accomplish anything and in the end stampeded homeward. The first result of this failure was anarchy, and the secondary consequence was the development of a situation, through the menacing attitude of the Zulu forces upon the frontier, which brought about annexation to the British Crown and the creation of the strictly modern phase of the South African question.
CHAPTER VI.
Development of Cape Colony.
Gradual Growth of Cape Colony
The dismemberment of South Africa, which commenced in the days of the Great Trek, which was made more distinct by the Conventions of 1852-4, and was destined to culminate in the Conventions of 1881-4, was at first somewhat of a boon to Cape Colony. It removed about ten thousand of the most discontented, restless and ignorant portion of its population and left plenty of land and room for the occupation of future immigrants. They came slowly, however, as the Kaffir wars had given the country a bad name and the reputation of its climate was not particularly good. But, between 1845 and 1850, some five thousand British settlers were brought in under aid from the Government, and a little later a number of Germans who had fought for England in the Crimean war migrated to the Cape. In 1858, two thousand German peasants were settled on lands near the southern coast of the Colony which had once belonged to the Kaffirs. They made excellent settlers, and in time merged with the British population, which came to predominate in the eastern part of the country, as the Dutch did in the western section.