The Africanders

by Le Roy Hooker

Again Mr. Pretorius offered himself as mediator, and by common consent a new election was held in which Pretorius was chosen president by a large majority over Van Rensburg. With Pretorius as president, and Paul Kruger as commandant-general, the government was of such harmony and strength as prevented any further open rebellion on the part of disaffected burghers.

But though the civil strife was ended, the injury it had inflicted was well nigh incurable. It is to be reckoned chief among the causes of the weakness in after years that made it possible—and, in the judgment of some, necessary and justifiable—for the British government to thrust in its strong hand and subvert the independent but [[156]]tottering republic that it might substitute therefor a more stable colonial administration. The treasury had been impoverished. Taxes were uncollected and irrecoverable. Salaries and other public liabilities were heavily in arrears. Worse than all these, the republic had forfeited the confidence of other nations to that degree that no one believed in its stability. Even its nearest neighbor and sister republic, the Orange Free State, no longer desired union, preferring to stand alone before the constant menace of the Basutos rather than to be joined with a country wherein efficient government seemed to have perished. To make matters still worse, the discord among the whites was turned to advantage by their colored foes.

When the several factions in the Transvaal united on Mr. Pretorius as their executive head, in 1864, the white population, all told, did not exceed 30,000—less than one person to three square miles—while the blacks in the same territory numbered hundreds of thousands. During the three years succeeding 1861 the prevailing anarchy made it impossible to give attention to cessions of land agreed to by the Zulu chiefs. In consequence, the boundaries had not been fixed, and these districts remained unoccupied by the [[157]]whites. With the restoration of something like order in 1864, the government realized that its relations with some of its native neighbors required definition and formal settlement. This was successfully done, and the lines mutually agreed upon between the whites and the native authorities were duly marked.

A leading spirit among the Zulus of this time was Cetawayo, a chief of remarkable subtlety and power. In less than two months after the settlement and marking of boundaries in the southern region of the Transvaal Cetawayo found some pretext for repudiating his bargain, appeared on the borders of Utrecht at the head of a Zulu army, in February, 1865, and removed the landmarks so lately set up. During the negotiations that followed, Cetawayo did not appear at any conference, but the presence of his force on the border so far affected the final settlement that the boundary was changed near the Pongolo River, restoring a small district in that region to Zululand.

This was a time of perpetual struggle with the blacks. Some of the tribes had been made tributary to the Republic, others were practically independent, and with these frequent and cruel wars were waged. Unspeakable atrocities were [[158]]perpetrated on both sides—the Kaffirs slaughtering without mercy such white families as they were able to surprise in a defenseless state, and the Africanders inflicting vengeance without mercy when they came upon the savages in kraal or mountain stronghold.

The whites could always defeat the natives in a pitched battle, but to hold so vast a number in subjection was beyond their power. And they seem to have relished everything connected with an expedition against the blacks but the expense; they had an invincible dislike to paying taxes for any purpose.

In a rude way these Transvaal Africanders lived in the enjoyment of plenty derived from their flocks and herds, but metal currency was almost unknown to them. Such business as they transacted was mostly in the nature of barter. They were yet too crude and primitive in their ideas to value aright the benefits secured to a civilized community by a well organized and firmly administered government controlling fiscal and other domestic matters of general interest, as well as directing foreign policies.

The public treasury was in a state of chronic emptiness. The paper currency depreciated more and more till in 1870 its purchasing value [[159]]was only twenty-five per cent of its face value. Public works and proper internal administration were unknown. Largely, every man’s will was his law, which he was disposed to enforce upon others—whether black or white—by the strong hand.

In 1872 Mr. Pretorius became cordially disliked by the people and was forced to resign the presidency, because he had accepted the finding of the arbitration which awarded the diamond fields to Nicholas Waterboer instead of to the Transvaal Republic. His successor, Mr. Burgess, a native of Cape Colony and an unfrocked clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church, was an unfortunate choice. Learned, eloquent and energetic, he was nevertheless deficient in practical business wisdom and in political acumen, and he was much distrusted by the burghers on account of his theological opinions. Some of them charged that he was guilty of maintaining that the real Devil differed from the pictures of him in the old Dutch Bibles, in that he had no tail. For this and worse forms of heterodoxy he was blamed as the cause of the calamities experienced by the nation during his presidency. Mr. Burgers is said to have formed many visionary though patriotic plans for the development [[160]]of his country and the extension of the Africander power over the whole of South Africa, but his people were not of the sort that could appreciate them, nor had he command of resources sufficient to carry them out.

Then drew near the culmination of evil—the inevitable consequence of weakness in numbers; of indisposition to submit to a strong government; of a treasury impoverished by civil war; of continual conflict with the savage blacks; and, withal, of a state of anarchy among themselves. In 1876 the portents of approaching calamity multiplied. In a war with Sikukuni, a powerful Kaffir chief paramount in the mountainous district to the northeast, the Africanders were worsted so completely that they returned to their homes disheartened and in confusion. On the southeast their border was threatened by hordes of Zulus under Cetawayo, now manifesting a decided disposition to attack.