A Century of Wrong

by Jan Christiaan Smuts

The Basutos.

Not fifteen years had elapsed since the Convention between England and the Free State before it was broken by the English. It had been solemnly stipulated that England would not interfere in Native affairs north of the Orange River. The Basutos had murdered the Freestaters, plundered them, ravished their wives, and committed endless acts of violence. After a bitter struggle of three years, the Freestaters had succeeded in inflicting a well-merited chastisement on the Basutos, when the British intervened in 1869 in favour of the Natives, notwithstanding the fact that they had reiterated their declaration of non-interference in the Aliwal Convention.

The Diamond Fields.

[18] To return to the Diamond Fields, as Froude remarks: "The ink on the Treaty of Aliwal was scarcely dry when diamonds were discovered in large quantities in a district which we had ourselves treated as part of the Orange Territory." Instead of honestly saying that the British Government relied on its superior strength, and on this ground demanded the territory in question, which contained the richest diamond fields in the world, it hypocritically pretended that the real reason of its depriving the Free State of the Diamond Fields was that they belonged to a Native, notwithstanding the fact that this contention was falsified by the judgment of the English Courts. [19] "There was a notion also," says Froude, "that the finest diamond mine in the world ought not to be lost to the British Empire."

The ground was thereupon taken from the Boers, and "from that day no Boer in South Africa has been able to trust to English promises."

Later, when Brand went to England, the British Government acknowledged its guilt and paid £90,000 for the richest diamond fields in the world, a sum which scarcely represents the daily output of the mines.

But notwithstanding the Free State Convention, notwithstanding the renewed promises of the Aliwal Convention[20]—the Free State was forced to suffer a third breach of the Convention at the hands of the English. Ten thousand rifles were imported into Kimberley through the Cape Colony, and sold there to the natives who encircled and menaced the two Dutch Republics.[21] General Sir Arthur Cunynghame, the British Commander-in-Chief in South Africa, admits that 400,000 guns were sold to Kaffirs during his term of office. Protests from the Transvaal and the Free State were of no avail.[22] And when the Free State in the exercise of its just rights stopped waggons laden with guns on their way through its territory, it was forced to pay compensation to the British Government.

"The Free State," says the historian Froude, "paid the money, but paid it under protest, with an old-fashioned appeal to the God of Righteousness, whom, strange to say, they believed to be a reality."

It seems thus that there is no place for the God of Righteousness in English policy.

So far we have considered our Exodus from the Cape Colony, and the way in which we were deprived of Natal and the Free State by England. Now for the case of the Transvaal.