Lord Milner's Work in South Africa / From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902

by W. Basil Worsfold

"The mineral wealth of the Transvaal is extra-ordinarily great, but it is exhaustible, some say within a space of fifty years, others within a space of one hundred years. It would be a disaster indeed for the country if none of this wealth were devoted to the development of its agriculture. Agricultural development is slow, but it is permanent, and knows of no exhaustion. If the companies working the gold, coal, and diamond mines were by decree compelled to devote a percentage of their gains to the execution of irrigation works on lines laid down by the Government, they would assist in the permanent development of the country and would be investing in works which, though slow to give a remuneration, would, at any rate, be absolutely permanent. It would thus happen, that when the mineral wealth of the country had disappeared, its agricultural wealth would have been put on such a solid basis that the country would not have to fall from the height of prosperity to the depth of poverty."

These were conclusions of so fundamental a nature that no statesman could afford to overlook them; and, in point of fact, Lord Milner kept them steadily in sight from first to last in all that he did for the administrative and economic reconstruction of the new colonies.

Another effort of the civil administration which was carried on successfully during the war was the teaching of the Boer children in the refugee camps. The narrative of the circumstances in which the camp schools were first organised, of the manner in which teachers came forward from all parts of the empire to offer their services, and of the complete success which attended their efforts, was told three years later by Mr. E. B. Sargant, the Education Adviser to the Administration. The report in which the story appears not only affords a record unique in the annals of educational effort, but adds a pleasing and significant page to what is otherwise a gloomy chapter of the war.[305] Mr. Sargant was invited by Lord Milner to organise the work of educational reconstruction in the new colonies in the autumn of 1900. He was then travelling in Canada, in the course of a journey through the empire undertaken for the purpose of investigating the methods and conditions of education in the several British colonies; and he reached Capetown on November 6th, 1900. At that time the headquarters of the new Transvaal Administration had not been established in Pretoria; but in the Orange River Colony certain schools along the railway line and elsewhere had been opened under the military Government. From observations made in December in the two new colonies, Mr. Sargant had begun to fear that the work of educational reorganisation would have to be indefinitely postponed, when a visit to the Boer prisoners' camp at Seapoint, Capetown, gave him the idea from which the whole system of the camp schools was subsequently evolved. Here he found that a school for boys and young men had been provided by the prisoners themselves, but that it was destitute of books and of almost all the necessary appliances. Mr. Sargant's appeal on behalf of this school met with a ready response from the Cape Government. What could be done here, he thought, could be done elsewhere. The nearest refugee camp to Capetown was at Norval's Pont, on the borders of the Orange River Colony; and it was here that Mr. Sargant determined to make his first experiment.

Origin of the camp schools.

"Having provided myself," Mr. Sargant says, "with several boxes of school books, I left Capetown on the last day of January and took up my quarters in the camp already named. The Military Commandant threw himself heartily into the experiment, although at that time the provision of food and shelter for each new influx of refugees was a matter of great difficulty. Fortunately Norval's Pont, being nearer the base of supplies than the other camps, had a few marquees to spare. In two of these I opened the first camp school, remaining for a fortnight as its headmaster. The rest of the teachers were found in the camp itself. It was apparent from the first that the school would be a success. The children flocked to it, and the mothers who brought them were well content with the arrangement that the religious instruction should be given in Dutch and other lessons in English. Here, as in several other camps which were visited later, I found that a school, taught through the medium of Dutch, had already been opened by some of the more serious-minded of the people. In this case, an offer was made to me by the Commandant to suppress this school and to send the children to my marquees. This I refused, and in less than two months I had the gratification of knowing that teachers and children had come voluntarily to the Government school, and that the tents in which they had been taught formed one of a row of six which were needed to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of scholars."[306]

Over-sea teachers.

After this initial success Mr. Sargant made arrangements, first from Bloemfontein, and afterwards from Pretoria, for the establishment of such schools in all the refugee camps; and by the end of May, 1901, there were 4,000 children in the camp schools, as against 3,500 in the town schools of the two colonies. In the following month it became evident that the local supply of teachers would be insufficient to meet the demands of the rapidly increasing schools; and Lord Milner devoted much of his time during his leave of absence to making arrangements for the introduction of a number of well-trained teachers from England, and subsequently from the over-sea colonies. Before these welcome reinforcements could arrive, however, the number of children in the camp schools, apart from the Government schools in the towns, had risen to 17,500, and the supply of South African teachers was exhausted. "In many cases," says Mr. Sargant, "the services of young men and women who had passed the sixth, fifth, and even fourth standard were utilised temporarily." With the new year, 1902, drafts of carefully chosen and well-qualified teachers from England began to arrive. Both the Board of Education for England and Wales and the Scotch Education Department took up the work of selection and appointment, and the co-operation of the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Governments was obtained.[307] From this time forward the system of the camp schools was steadily extended; and on May 31st, 1902, the date of the Vereeniging surrender, when the attendance reached its highest point, more than 17,000 Boer children were being thus educated in the Transvaal camps, and more than 12,000 in those of the Orange River Colony.[308]

Administrative progress, 1901.

Apart from this unique and significant effort, the reports furnished by the various departmental heads to Lord Milner in December afford striking and sufficient evidence of the progress of the civil administration in both the new colonies during the year 1901. In the Orange River Colony the sphere of operations of the departments existing at the time when Sir H. Gould-Adams was appointed Deputy-administrator (March, 1901), had been increased, and new departments were being organised. A statement issued by the financial adviser on August 29th showed that for the period March 13th, 1900 (the occupation of Bloemfontein) to June 30th, 1901, the "real" revenue and expenditure of the colony were respectively £301,800 8s. and £217,974 18s.; an excess of revenue over expenditure of £83,825 10s. And during the half-year July 1st-December 31st the revenue collected was about one-third in excess of the actual civil expenditure.[309] The progress in education was remarkable. At the end of February, 1902, there were 13,384 children on the roll of the Government schools, camp and town,[310] or nearly 5,000 more than the greatest number at school at any one time under the Republic, and the reorganisation of both higher and technical instruction had been taken in hand. A system of local self-government had been commenced by the establishment of Boards of Health at Bloemfontein and in all districts in the protected area, while in the capital itself the Town Council was again at work. The Agricultural Department formed on July 1st, 1901, had taken over a large number of sheep and cattle from the military authorities, and a commencement of tree-planting under an experienced forester had been made. The Land Board was created in October, with two branches concerned respectively with Settlement and Repatriation. The Settlement branch was occupied especially in procuring land suitable for agricultural purposes, and its efforts were so successful that by the end of April, 1902, 150 British settlers had been placed on farms. The Repatriation branch was engaged in collecting information as to the whereabouts of the absentee Boer landowners and their families, and the condition of their lands and houses; in investigating the possibility of importing fresh stock, and in collecting vehicles, implements, seed-corn, and the other necessaries which would be required to enable the Boer population, when repatriated, to resume their normal pursuits. Also temporary courts, pending the re-opening of the ordinary civil courts, had been established.

In the Transvaal the work was on a larger scale. Five departments, those of the Secretary to the Administration (afterwards Colonial Secretary), the Legal Adviser (afterwards Attorney-General), the Controller of the Treasury (afterwards Treasurer), the Mining Commissioner and of the Commissioner for Native Affairs, were already organised. The progress achieved by the heads of these departments in the Transvaal, and by Sir H. Gould-Adams and Mr. Wilson in the Orange River Colony, formed collectively a record the merit of which was acknowledged by "an expression of the high appreciation of His Majesty's Government of the services which they had rendered in circumstances of exceptional difficulty."[311]