FOOTNOTES:
[2] In the Fortnightly Review, August 1902. Ideal with this subject: “Negrophilism in South Africa.”
THE AFRICANDER PARTY
ITS ORIGIN, ITS GROWTH, ITS AIMS
By the HON. A. WILMOT
Member of the Legislative Council, Cape Colony; Author of “History of Our Own Times in South Africa,” &c., &c.
One of the greatest statesmen whose experience and ability have assisted the Imperial Government declares that it was only after two years’ residence that he understood the political problems affecting South Africa. Hundreds rush in where Milners fear to tread, and the little knowledge which induces superficial views and rash judgment on a merely primâ facie case are now at present, as they have been in the past, among the causes which impede the progress of a vast country which we hope will yet become a great federated dominion under the British crown.
It is because of the vital importance of going to the root of the political questions affecting South Africa that this paper is written.
The origin of the Africander party is traceable principally to discontent with British rule. The Cape Colony, as our readers know, was obtained by conquest in 1806, and by purchase from the Netherlands for six million pounds sterling in the year 1814. Mr. Paul M. Botha, Member of the Orange Free State Volksraad for Kroonstadt, states the case from the Dutchman’s point of view, and tells us that as England said that South Africa was her country she ought to have governed it, instead of which she shirked responsibilities and was guilty of the most glaring inconsistencies. One day England blew hot and the next cold. “One moment she insisted on swallowing us, and the next moment she insisted on disgorging us.” For example, the Orange Free State was declared British territory because a governor said, “You can never escape British jurisdiction.” Then we were abandoned because the next governor said, “The country was a howling wilderness.” The Transvaal was annexed, and Sir Garnet Wolseley declared: “The rivers will sooner run back in their courses than that England will give back the Transvaal.” Shortly after that the Transvaal was retroceded, after Majuba, because the British Ministry said, “We have been unjust in annexing this country.”[3]