3. To this they consider belong—
a. The establishment of a firm union between all the different European nationalities in South Africa.
b. The promotion of South Africa's independence."
Dutch and English not Harmonious
There was also a clause of gratuitous impertinence towards the Imperial country—through whose grant of absolute self-government in 1872 the Bund was now beginning to aim, with practical effort, at the racial control of the Colony—in the declaration that "outside interference with the domestic concerns of South Africa shall be opposed." Under the general principles of the platform these "domestic concerns" meant, of course, the relation of the different States toward each other, and the growing rivalry of Dutch and English in matters of Colonial Government, as well as the old-time question of native control and the newer one of territorial extension on the part of Cape Colony. So long as President Brand lived and ruled at Bloemfontein there remained, however, some check upon the Bund as well as upon President Kruger. If he had opposed the Bund actively, as he certainly did in a passive and deprecatory sense, the result might have been a serious hindrance to its progress. Brand's policy was to, indirectly and quietly, keep the Cape Colony and the Free State in harmonious and gradually closer co-operation instead of promoting that closer union of the two republics which was one of the ideals of the Bund leaders. He refused to accept Kruger's proposal of isolating their countries from the British possessions, and thus promoting the policy which, without doubt, had, since 1881, been shaping itself in the latter's mind. But, in 1888, Sir John Brand died, and was succeeded by F. W. Reitz. The influence of the new régime became at once visible in the platform above quoted, and in the whole succeeding policy of the Free State. It now assumed a more and more intimate alliance with the Transvaal, and frequently, during these years, the question of a union of the two countries was discussed. In 1896 Reitz resigned and accepted the State Secretaryship of the Transvaal—a position analogous in personal power, though not in the matter of responsibility to the people, with that of a Colonial Premier. Mr. M. T. Steyn became President of the Free State and the triumvirate of Kruger, Steyn and Reitz formed, with Mr. W. P. Schreiner and Mr. J. W. Sauer, in the Cape Parliament and Afrikander Bund, a very strong Dutch combination. Just where Mr. Hofmeyr stood it is hard to say now, but the probabilities are that, he was pretty well acquainted with the plots and schemes of these leaders.
Mr. Cecil Rhodes to the Front
Meanwhile Mr. Cecil Rhodes had come to the front in mining, in speculation, in wealth, in financial organization, in politics, and in a great policy of Empire expansion. He had studied South Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi as few or no Englishmen have ever been able to do. He understood its Governments, its peoples and its racial complexities with the innate thoroughness of genius or of a woman's intuition. To him the looming menace of the Afrikander Bund was as clear AS it had been to President Brand, and, from the time when lie entered the Cape Parliament in 1880 and became Premier in 1890 until his retirement from the latter post in 1895, his whole heart and ambition was devoted to preventing Dutch expansion and to checkmating the new Dutch organization with its clever manipulators at Pretoria, Bloemfontein and Cape Town. To this end he founded the famous British South Africa Company, and, by acquiring control over the vast areas of Mashonaland and Matabeleland, effectually checked Dutch expansion to the north of the Transvaal. With this in view he urged upon British statesmen the annexation of Bechuanaland, a huge strip of country to the west of the same Republic; and supported with his influence the annexation of Zululand on the south-east coast, into which many Boers had trekked and for the possession of which they had an intense ambition as opening the way to the sea. His reasons seldom appeared on the surface, and some of them were not fully comprehended in South Africa itself until long after their accomplishment. But there is no doubt that as Mr. Rhodes' power at the Cape became felt, as the great interests of the Chartered Company grew more manifest in their importance to the Empire, and as the wealth and ability of its Chairman became a factor in London as well as in the Colony, so also his influence at the Colonial Office was enhanced.
Rhodes' Policy of Conciliation
At the same time he developed this line of action for many years in conjunction with a policy of public conciliation toward the Dutch everywhere. If, eventually, a system of kindly co-operation could be evolved and the principles of the Afrikander Bund rendered comparatively harmless by the winning over of its strongest men at the Cape to his side, and to the continuous expansion of British power in the common interest of a United South Africa, so much the better. If he failed in this he did not, however, propose that the Empire should some day find itself face to face with the problem of a thin line of English settlement—mixed with Dutch—along the sea-coast, in rivalry or conflict with a united Afrikander nation holding all the keys of the interior to the north and stretching from the Delagoa region on the east to the German possessions on the west. Hence his continuous acquisition of territory, and hence the present position of the two republics—surrounded by British soil except for the small strip of Portuguese possessions to the east of the Transvaal. Hence, also, his hope that as British power grew in South Africa the Bund would eventually see the futility of its effort to make the whole country a Dutch republic, and would meet his policy of conciliation at least half way. Between 1890 and 1895, when the Jameson Raid and his resignation of the Premiership took place, Mr. Rhodes' speeches teemed with expressions of friendliness toward the Dutch, of appreciation of their rights in South Africa, of sympathy with all legitimate aspirations, of appeals for co-operation. In his Ministry, from time to time, he managed to include leaders of the roll such as W. P. Schreiner, J. W. Sauer, T. N. G. Te Water, and so prominent a Boer supporter of later days as J. X. Merriman. But it seems to have become gradually apparent to his mind that conciliation was practically useless; that the influence and power of the Afrikander movement was daily growing stronger; that Kruger had become too great a force with the Dutch of the Cape for him to be checkmated by friendly demonstrations or appeals; and that the oppression of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal was a growing evidence of Boer unity and arrogance just as the increasing electoral strength of the Cape Boers was a proof of their developing power. England's Ignorance of the Situation And, above all, he was aware that while this web of inter-state Dutch conspiracy was building up the Afrikander Bund into a great anti-British force, England was profoundly ignorant of the whole matter and was resting in the belief, expressed by passing travellers and presented by the usual number of superficial political theorists, that the Dutch and English of South Africa were not only dwelling together in amity, but were developing increased sympathy, and that the Uitlander trouble, of which vague reports were beginning to reach the British public, was more or less the creation of a transition period of development and would soon settle itself.
To meet the dulled vision of the British people, to settle the Transvaal issue without war between the Republic and the Empire, to play with President Kruger at his own game and overthrow him by an internal rebellion, Rhodes approved the general idea of the Jameson Raid and of external assistance to the people of Johannesburg. The policy was carried out rashly and prematurely by his deputy, the Uitlanders were not ready and did not redeem their promises, it failed and he had to retire from office. But one important result was achieved. The eyes of the British public were in some measure opened to the seriousness of the situation in South Africa. Mr. Chamberlain and the members of the Imperial Ministry no doubt knew something already of the general position from private advices—if in no other way—and it was for this reason that they stood by Mr. Rhodes when the Raid came before a Parliamentary Committee for investigation. They had not, of course, known of the Raid itself or supported its aggressive action. The code of honor, personal and political, is too high amongst British statesmen to permit of anyone but a sensational journalist or an unusually violent partisan accepting such a supposition for a moment. But they did understand the motive and were not prepared to punish the self-confessed originator, although obliged to allow the legal punishment of the active participators. Mr. Rhodes could not defend himself, and Mr. Chamberlain could not publicly support him in connection with the matter, without avowing their belief in the disloyalty of a portion of the population of Cape Colony and their knowledge of a secret conspiracy shared in by the chiefs of two nominally friendly republics. The former would have involved the making of unwise charges which, in the nature of things, could hardly have been proved, and if proved would have done more harm than good; the latter would have meant a war which it might still be possible to avert.