In spite of the disturbed condition of the country, two independent inquiries, each of which was concerned with matters of cardinal importance to the future of South Africa, were concluded before the second year of the war had run its course. From the report addressed to Mr. Chamberlain by the Land Settlement Commission, of which Mr. Arnold-Forster was chairman, and from that presented to Lord Milner by Sir William (then Mr.) Willcocks[302] on Irrigation in South Africa, there emerged three significant conclusions. Racial fusion, or the ultimate solution of the nationality difficulty, was to be found in the establishment of British settlers upon the land, living side by side with the Dutch farmers and identified with them by common pursuits and interests; the possibility alike of the successful introduction of these settlers and of the development of the hitherto neglected agricultural resources of South Africa depended upon the enlargement and improvement of the cultivable area by irrigation; and the only existing source of wealth capable of providing the material agencies for the realisation of these objects was the Witwatersrand gold industry. British agricultural settlers for the political, irrigation for the physical regeneration of South Africa—this was the essence of these two Reports.
"We desire to express our firm conviction," wrote the Land Settlement Commissioners,[303] "that a well-considered scheme of settlement in South Africa by men of British origin is of the most vital importance to the future prosperity of British South Africa. We find among those who wish to see British rule in South Africa maintained and its influence for good extended, but one opinion upon this subject. There even seems reason to fear lest the vast expenditure of blood and treasure which has marked the war should be absolutely wasted, unless some strenuous effort be made to establish in the country, at the close of the war, a thoroughly British population large enough to make a recurrence of division and disorder impossible."
The irrigation report.
Apart from its mineral development, Sir William Willcocks points out,[304] South Africa has remained "strangely stationary. Fifty years ago it was a pastoral country importing cereals and dairy produce, and even hay from foreign countries. It is the same to-day. Half a century ago it needed a farm of 5,000 acres to keep a family in decent comfort; to-day it needs the same farm of 5,000 acres to keep a single family in comfort." West of the great Drakenberg range it is an arid, or semi-arid, region. The reason is not so much that the rainfall is deficient, as that the rain comes at the wrong time, and is wasted. What is wanted is water-storage, with irrigation works to spread the water upon the land when it is needed by the farmer. Nothing short of the agency of the State will serve to bring about this physical revolution; for bad legislation must be annulled, and a great intercolonial system of water-husbandry, comparable to those of India and Egypt, must be created. Hitherto agriculture, in spite of the latent possibilities of the country, has scarcely been "attempted"; for, with the exception of the extreme south-western corner of the Cape Colony, the "conquered territory" of the Orange River Colony, and the high veld of the Transvaal, the agricultural development of South Africa "depends entirely on irrigation."
But, great as was the claim of agriculture, the claim of the gold industry was at once more immediate and more imperative.
"Valuable as water may be for agricultural purposes," Sir William Willcocks wrote, "it is a thousand times more valuable for gold-washing at the Rand mines."
And again:
"The prosperity and well-being of every interest, not only in the Transvaal, but in South Africa generally, will depend on the prosperity of the Rand, certainly for the next fifty years. Though my life has been spent in the execution of irrigation projects and the furtherance of agricultural prosperity, I feel that, under the special conditions prevailing in South Africa, the suggestion of any course other than the obvious one of first putting the Rand mines on a sound footing as far as their water supply is concerned, would have constituted me a bigot. Ten acres of irrigable land in the Mooi or Klip river valleys, with Johannesburg in the full tide of prosperity, will yield as good a rent as forty acres with Johannesburg in decay."
And the prosperity of the mines is not only essential in the present: it is to be the instrument for the development of the permanent resources of the Transvaal:
Economic importance of Rand.