Advancement During Grey's Governorship
Back he went to South Africa amid general rejoicings at the Cape, but with the refusal of the new Government at home to take any steps whatever in the direction of federation. But, as if to expressly mark the Queen's sympathy with Grey's Imperial ideas, Prince Alfred was sent out in 1860 to make a tour of South Africa, and to evoke, as he did, the same sentiments of loyalty as were aroused by the visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada at about the same time. Cape Colony, Natal and the Orange Free State were visited with due ceremony by the Governor and the Prince, and at Bloemfontein one of the arches of welcome contained the significant motto: "Loyal, though discarded." During the succeeding year Sir George Grey finally left the Cape to take up the Governorship of New Zealand, at a critical period in its troubles with the Maoris, and at a time when the Duke of Newcastle, Colonial Secretary, had given him to understand that the Governor-Generalship of Canada and ultimately of India were open to him after leaving South Africa. But duty seemed to require him in New Zealand, and thither he went to live for years as Governor, for other years as Prime Minister, and for a still longer period as a private citizen. During the eight years in which he had ruled Cape Colony he had inaugurated representative institutions and established schools, libraries, hospitals, public works, roads and railways. The Cape Town and Wellington Railway, the first line in the Colony, was his enterprise. The great ostrich-farming industry of the future was started by him. Above all, he won the affection and respect of the most varied types of native races, and the after voluntary submission of Moshesh, the Basuto, to British authority may be largely traced to the friendly feeling inspired by a visit which Grey paid to the rocky heights of Thaba Bosigo. In his greatest aim he had failed, and in later days he became eccentric and erratic in his views; but none the less does South Africa owe much to the life and memory of Sir George Grey.
His successor, Sir Philip E. Wodehouse, was a man of ability who had been Governor of British Guiana, and was afterwards for five years Governor of Bombay. His administration was signalized by the inauguration of a new and wiser policy on the part of the Colonial Office. Whether it was that the Manchester School, in reaching the meridian of its power during these years, had temporarily overlooked South Africa; or that it had become apparent even to the Colonial Office that the man on the spot must be allowed some latitude; or that Sir Philip Wodehouse was more trusted and less feared by the Home authorities than Grey; is not visible upon the surface. But the fact remains that in 1865 British Kaffraria was finally incorporated with Cape Colony, and definite responsibility assumed for its government and control, and that in 1868 Basutoland was annexed to British dominions—not to the Cape Colony—and perhaps the most rugged and strongest natural fortress in the world prevented from falling into Boer hands. Sir Henry Barkly, an experienced Australian Governor, assumed charge in 1870, and a year later Griqualand West, with its vast potentialities as a diamond-producing country and as the only available British route to the far interior, was annexed and placed, like Basutoland, under the authority of the Cape Governor as High Commissioner for South Africa and direct representative of the Crown and the Colonial Office.
Natal a Separate Colony
Meantime Natal, which had up to 1856 been under the control of the Governor at the Cape, was in that year made a separate Colony governed from the Colonial Office under a Lieut.-Governor, and with only partially representative institutions. Zululand and the Zulus were to this region what the Kosas had been to the Cape settlers so far as the fear of raids and the dangers of war were concerned. Of actual and serious war there was but little from the time of the Boers until 1879. Of trouble in management, however, there was abundance because of the number of Zulus within as well as from the Zulus without the strict limits of Colonial territory. In 1873 Cetywayo was installed under authority of the British Government as head of the Zulu nation, and from this time dates the inauguration of the serious situation which culminated six years later and ended in the annexation of a large part of that region in 1887, and the protectorate established over the sea-coast country, called Tongaland, in the same year. These two events marked a singularly wise expression of Imperial policy, as they checked and prevented the realization of the greatest ambition of the Transvaal Boers—the obtaining of a sea-port. While this extension was taking place in the east under the general administration of Sir Hercules Robinson (afterwards Lord Rosmead) as High Commissioner, and the whole sea-coast region from Portuguese territory to Cape Town was being made British, a similar expansion had occured in the north and west.
Zululand Annexed
It was to a great extent forced upon the British authorities by Boer aggressiveness which, after the war of 1880-1 and the succeeding Conventions, had become very marked. The Transvaal Dutch first trekked into Zululand when it had been placed again under Cetywayo's rule—after the war of 1879 and in the useless hope of avoiding its annexation—and endeavored to establish there another Boer republic. In order to prevent this and to protect the Zulus, under pledges previously made, the Imperial Government had to formally annex the greater part of the region. Then the Transvaalers turned to the west, and a large number trekked into Bechuanaland, threatened to cut off British territory and trade from the interior and menaced the independence of Khama—a wise and friendly ruler to the north of Bechuanaland. Sir Charles Warren's expedition of 1884 was despatched by the Imperial Government and checked this movement, though at the serious risk of war, and forced the Boers to recede. Bechuanaland was then made a Crown Colony. Khama's Country was proclaimed, in 1885, a British Protectorate, while in the preceding year, the important naval station of St. Lucia Bay, just south of Zululand and about the ownership of which there was some doubt, had also been annexed. Four years previously Griqualand West had been taken from the direct control of the Colonial Office and annexed to Cape Colony, and, in 1895, the Dutch of the Cape had recovered somewhat from the angry feelings provoked by the Warren expedition and the repulse of Boer ambitions which its success involved, and permitted Mr. Rhodes to arrange the annexation of all Bechuanaland to the Colony and its consequent removal from the control of the Governor as High Commissioner to his charge as the constitutional Governor of the Cape.
Mr. Rhodes Premier of Cape Colony
This curious combination of duties had been first created in 1847 when Sir Henry Pottinger, for a few brief months, held the position of Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner for South Africa. The latter position simply involved, at that time, certain powers of control over border tribes and certain specified authority in negotiation. There were then no recognized independent States in South Africa, and no self-governing powers at the Cape to complicate matters. In time these conditions developed, and yet the Governor of the Cape, responsible to his Ministers and Parliament for every detail of local government, remained apart from that Parliament as the centre of a thousand strings of diplomacy and negotiation throughout all South Africa and the Governor of various regions, with undefined powers and with responsibility only to the Colonial Office or the Crown. In 1889, for example, Cape Colony was under complete self-government, and Natal only partially so—the latter having a Governor of its own. Basutoland, Pondoland, Bechuanaland, the Khama Country and the sphere of British influence to the far north were under the Governor of Cape Colony as High Commissioner only. In the same year the latter region came under the direct control of Cecil Rhodes as Chairman of the British South Africa Company, and Mr. Rhodes, in 1890, became Premier of Cape Colony and the responsible adviser of the Governor. Zululand and Tongaland were at the same time subject to the joint control of the Governors of Cape Colony and Natal, though not in any way governed by the Ministers of either official. Meantime, Swaziland (northwest of Tongaland) was managed by alternate British and Boer Committees, and ultimately was allowed to pass into the hands of the Transvaal; while the latter Republic was nominally under the Queen's Suzerainty and the Orange Free State was absolutely independent.
Gold not the Cause of Expansion