The Africanders

by Le Roy Hooker

The first of these mistakes was the too early recall of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who had so deftly managed the bloodless though arbitrary annexation, who knew the country well and was much respected by the people. In place of his rule as special commissioner was substituted an administration under Sir Bartle Frere as governor of Cape Colony and British High Commissioner for South Africa. There being no representative government in the Transvaal after annexation, the administration became, perhaps necessarily, autocratic both in form and in spirit. Sir William Owen Lanyon, who had been appointed governor of the Transvaal, was an officer of some renown in dealing successfully with native uprisings, but proved totally unfit for the delicate management required in governing the Africanders. He has been described as haughty and arrogant in mind, indisposed to excuse the rudeness of the Transvaal farmers, and incapable of tolerating the social equality so dear to them. [[167]]His swarthy complexion, also, made against his popularity, for it suggested the possibility of a strain of black blood in his veins—a blemish unpardonable in the eyes of any slaveholding people. Under his rule complaints were ignored, taxes were levied and peremptorily collected by distraint, and soon the latent discontent broke out into open and active disaffection.

The second mistake—if it does not deserve a harsher name—was the failure to institute the local self-government by representatives promised by Sir Theophilus Shepstone when he proclaimed annexation. The text of that part of the proclamation reads thus:

“And I further proclaim and make known that the Transvaal will remain a separate government, with its own Laws and Legislature, and that it is the wish of her Most Gracious Majesty that it shall enjoy the fullest legislative privileges compatible with the circumstances of the country and the intelligence of the people. That arrangement will be made by which the Dutch language will practically be as much the official language as the English. All laws, proclamations and government notices will be published in the Dutch language; and in the courts of law the same may be done at the option of suitors to a [[168]]case. The laws so in force in the State will be retained until altered by competent legislative authority.”

CECIL J. RHODES.

Not one of these promises was ever fulfilled. The volksraad was never convened. The promised constitution of local self-government was never promulgated. Instead of redeeming these promises the Transvaal was put upon the status of a crown colony in 1879, and the legislature proposed for it was to consist of some crown officials and six members—all to be the nominees of the governor.

Mr. Bryce, in his “Impressions of South Africa,” calls this failure to redeem a promise authoritatively made as a concession to a people whose independence was being arbitrarily subverted, a “blunder.” Canon Little uses a still softer term, calling it a “mistake”; and adds, “It was given in good faith, and in good faith was received. Sir Theophilus Shepstone tried to fulfill it. He at once submitted his views as to the necessary legislative arrangements. No action whatever was taken on it, either by Conservatives or Liberals, and his dispatch is probably lying uncared for in the Colonial Office now!”—(1899.)

And so, in the mutations of language as currently [[169]]used in history and in Christian ethics, it has come to pass that this piece of national treachery—this treachery of the strong against the weak—this treachery implicating both of the leading political parties of Great Britain and their chiefs, is only a “blunder,” a “mistake”!

One real and very serious blunder was committed, if one judges of it from the view point of the policy intended to be pursued in the Transvaal by the British government. The Africanders had accepted, under protest, the act of annexation mainly because they were in mortal fear of the Zulus. That reason for submission the British proceeded to remove by overthrowing the Zulu power.

In the northeast Sir Garnet Wolseley defeated Sikukuni and established what promised to be a permanent peace. In 1879 Sir Bartle Frere inflicted a like reverse upon Cetawayo, in the southeast, and so completed the subjugation of the Zulus. The blunder in taking this course declared itself when, after subduing the natives at great cost of blood and treasure, the British found that in so doing they had relieved the Africanders of the one fear that thus far had prevented them from reasserting their independence.