The most obvious moral of the failure is the old one, that revolutions are not so easy to carry out as they look when one plans them beforehand. Of all the insurrections and conspiracies recorded in history, probably not five per cent. have succeeded. The reason is that when a number of private persons not accustomed to joint action have to act secretly together, unable to communicate freely with one another, and still less able to appeal beforehand to those on whose eventual support they rely, the chances of disagreement, of misunderstanding, of failure to take some vital step at exactly the right moment, are innumerable; while the Government in power has the advantage of united counsels, and can issue orders to officers who are habituated to prompt obedience.[87] In this instance, the plan was being conducted by three groups of persons in three places distant from one another,—Johannesburg, Pitsani, and Cape Town,—so that the chances of miscarriage were immensely increased. Had there been one directing mind and will planted at Johannesburg, the proper centre for direction, the movement might have proved successful.
Another reflection will have occurred to the reader, as it occurred to the visitor who saw the storm brewing in November, 1895: Why could not the Reformers have waited a little longer? Time was on their side. The Uitlanders were rapidly growing by the constant stream of immigrants. In a few years more they would have so enormously outnumbered the native Boers that not only would their material strength have been formidable, but their claim to the franchise would have become practically irresistible. Moreover, President Kruger was an old man, no longer in strong health. When age and infirmity compelled his retirement, neither of the persons deemed most likely to succeed would have thrown obstacles in the way of reform, nor would any successor have been able to oppose a resistance as strong as Mr. Kruger's had proved. These considerations were so obvious that one asks why, with the game in their hands at the end of a few years, the various groups concerned did not wait quietly till the ripe fruit fell into their mouths. Different causes have been assigned for their action. It is said that they believed that the Transvaal Government was on the eve of entering into secret relations, in violation of the Convention of 1884, with a European Power, and that this determined them to strike before any such new complication arose. Others hint that some of those concerned believed that a revolution must in any case soon break out in the Transvaal, that a revolution would turn the country into an independent English Republic, that such a republic would spread Republican feelings among the British Colonies, and lead before long to their separation from the mother country. To prevent this, they were resolved to take control of the movement and steer it away from those rocks. Without denying that these or other still more conjectural motives which one hears assigned may have influenced some of the more long-sighted leaders,—and the Transvaal, with its vast wealth and growing population, was no doubt becoming the centre of gravity in South African politics,—I conceive that a more obvious cause of haste may be found in the impatience of those Uitlander residents who were daily vexed by grievances for which they could get no redress, and in the annoyance of the capitalists, who saw their mining interests languishing and the work of development retarded. When people have long talked over their wrongs and long planned schemes for throwing off a detested yoke, they yield at last to their own impatience, feeling half ashamed that so much talk should not have been followed by action.
Whatever were the motives at work, whatever the ultimate aims of the leaders, few things could have been more deplorable than what in fact occurred. Since the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 nothing has done so much to rekindle racial hostility in South Africa; nothing has so much retarded and still impedes the settlement of questions which were already sufficiently difficult.
I have described in this chapter only such part of the circumstances which led up to the rising as I actually saw, and have, for reasons already stated, confined myself to a narrative of the main facts, and a statement of the theories put forward, abstaining from comments on the conduct of individuals. The expedition of the British South Africa Company's police took place after I left the country. Of it and of what led to it oral accounts have been given by some of the principal actors, as well as by many independent pens, while the visible phenomena of the Johannesburg movement have been less described and are certainly less understood. I have dwelt on them the more fully not only because they are a curious episode in history which will not soon lose its interest, but also because the political and industrial situation on the Witwatersrand remained in 1897 substantially what it was in November 1895. Some few reforms have been given, some others promised. But the mine owners did not cease to complain, and the Uitlanders were excluded from the suffrage as rigorously as ever. The Transvaal difficulty remained, and still disturbed the tranquillity of South Africa. The problem is not a simple one, and little or no progress had been made towards its solution.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICA
Though I do not attempt to present in this book an account of the agricultural and mineral resources of South Africa, some words must be said regarding its economic prospects—that is to say, regarding the natural sources of wealth which it possesses, their probable development, and the extent to which that development will increase the still scanty population. The political and social future of the country must so largely depend on its economic future that any one who desires to comprehend those political problems to the solution of which the people are moving, must first consider what sort of a people, and how large a people, the material conditions which nature furnishes are likely to produce.
The chief charm of travel through a new country is the curiosity which the thought of its future inspires. In South Africa, a land singularly unlike any part of Europe or of North America, this curiosity is keenly felt by the visitor. When he begins to speculate on the future, his first question is, Will these wildernesses ever become peopled, as most of North America and a large part of Australia have now been peopled, and if so, what will be the character of the population? Will South Africa become one of the great producing or manufacturing countries of the world? Will it furnish a great market for European goods? Will it be populous enough and rich enough to grow into one of the Powers of the southern hemisphere?