Читать книгу Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - C. H. Thomas - Страница 8

Table of Contents

To resume the cursory history of the Transvaal. Mr. Burger, during his Presidency in the early seventies, went to Europe with the mission of attracting capital to the development and exploitation of gold, etc., then already authentically discovered; also, to provide for the building of a railway connecting with Delagoa Bay. The Transvaal Boers were at that time exceedingly poor, and without a sufficient revenue for properly maintaining the administration. Beyond creating a lively interest, his success was confined to an agreement with a company in Holland for building a section of that railroad, which, however, fell through, because the Transvaal proved ultimately unable to furnish its quota of the necessary funds. The present President fared better. A Dutch company styled "The Nederlandsch Zuid Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappy," abbreviated "Z.A.S.M.," undertook the work and completed it in 1887, from the Portuguese border to Pretoria. The line from Pretoria to the Natal border was soon after built, as also several extensions around the Wit-waters Rand, and that from Pretoria to Pietersburg. The section connecting Delagoa Bay as far as the Transvaal border had previously been completed by McMurdo, and is the subject of the present Berne arbitration.[2]

The contract conferred to the Dutch Company a monopoly, and most advantageous financial terms as well. By that time great strides had been made in the development of the Transvaal gold-fields, especially at the Wit-waters Rand (Johannesburg); and immigration on a large scale from all parts of the world had set in, and was constantly increasing with vast amounts of investments in mercantile and other enterprises, as well as in mining industries. At first, equitable laws governed burghers and Uitlanders alike, administered by an independent judiciary. All desirable security was afforded for person and property, with confidence in the safety of investments, and great general prosperity kept pace with ever-increasing activities and enterprise.

It was a great satisfaction to Uitlanders that the peace of 1881, and the reinstatement of Transvaal independence, had restored harmony between Boer and English, and that a policy was being followed to preclude friction between the respective Governments. Those facts largely stimulated investments and enhanced confidence. By 1887 the alien population had already exceeded 100,000, and the capital investments £200,000,000 sterling, and the desire so ardently entertained by the people of the land, for twenty years back, was gratified at last. The burghers shared in the prosperity to a very large degree, and in lieu of former poverty, competence and wealth became the rule, and many of them became exceedingly rich. It was not unusual to hear Boers expressing undisguised gratitude, not merely for the natural gold deposits, but specially also that people had come to prospect and to invest capital, without which the wealth of the land would have remained unexploited and lain fallow. Harmony and cordiality were the proper outcome between foreigners and Boers. The influx of capital and of immigrants continued to increase, but not so the happy conditions. These were gradually getting marred by a spirit of variance, no one seemed to know how. The study of this paper will reveal it. The variance between Boers and Uitlanders began to be specially discernible from 1887 and had been increasing like a blight ever since. This was noticeably coincident with the numerous arrivals of educated Hollanders employed for the railways and the Government administration.

In the earlier period of the Transvaal Republic, one year's residence was first held sufficient for acquiring full franchise or burgher rights and voting qualifications. The condition was successively raised to two, three, and five years; but in 1890 laws were passed which required fourteen years' probation, with conditions which virtually brought the term to twenty-one years, and even then left the acquisition of full franchise to the caprice of field-cornets and higher officials. Englishmen and their descendants were at one time totally and for ever excluded and disqualified just merely because of their nationality whilst Hollanders were admitted in very large numbers without having to pass any probation at all or only comparatively short terms. The English language became a target for hostility and as good as proscribed; impracticable and ludicrous attempts even were made to exclude its use in Johannesburg, where hardly any Uitlander understood Dutch, whilst every Boer official was well versed in English: market and auction sales were to be conducted only in Dutch; bills of fare at hotels and restaurants were also to be in full-fledged Dutch only—and all this, it must be remembered, some years before the Jameson incursion took place.

The judiciary, which, according to the "Grondwet" (Constitution), was the highest legal authority, was by one stroke of enactment rendered subservient and subordinate to the First Volksraad. The then Chief Justice (Kotzee) was ignominiously deposed for honourably contending against the grave departure from right and justice in subverting the sacred prerogative due to the highest tribunal, which Boer and Uitlander alike relied upon for independent justice.

A new system of education was next introduced which admitted only High Dutch as the medium of instruction in public schools. As only Hollander children could benefit by such tuition, and whereas those of other immigrants could not understand that language, the effect was that parents of English and other nationalities had to combine in establishing private schools or else to employ private teachers at their own expense—whilst paying, in the way of taxation, for Hollander public schools as well. That oppressive system was subsequently somewhat modified in a manner which admitted the English language as a medium for a portion of the school hours, the proportion so accorded being larger in Johannesburg and other such wholly English-speaking centres than in other parts of the State; but the amelioration did not take place until after much irritation and expense had been occasioned, nor did it meet the case of hardship more than half-way. I may here place the remark that the public educational department is conducted without stint of expenditure in providing from Holland the amplest and best school equipments and highly salaried Dutch professors and teachers.

Irritating class legislation began to be systematically resorted to, to the prejudice of Uitlanders (the majority of whom, it will be borne in mind, were English), which painfully pointed to a fixed determination on the part of the Boers to lord it over them as a totally inferior class, allowing them no representation, and to treat them, in fact, just as a conquered people placed under tribute and proper only to be dominated and exploited.

Boers could walk or ride about armed to the teeth, whilst Uitlanders were forbidden to possess arms under penalty of confiscation and other punishments (except sporting-guns under special permit). The like irritations became rampant by 1890 already.

The alien population were at first too much occupied with their prosperous vocations to combine in the way of protesting against such prevailing usage. The Press was, however, eventually employed, and the Government was approached with respectful petitions praying for redress of the most glaring causes of discontent; but those were invariably either disdainfully rejected or ignored, or, if some matter was relieved, other more exasperating enactments were defiantly substituted. They were cynically told that they had come to their (the Boer's) country unasked, and were at liberty, and in fact invited, to leave it if the laws did not please them. This was said, well knowing that to leave would involve too great sacrifices of homes and investments. The Uitlanders could not, however, be brought to the belief that the Government of a conscientious people could persist in dealing with them as if a previous design had existed—first to inveigle them and their capital into their midst, with the object of goading and despoiling them afterwards. The course of petitioning and respectful remonstrances was therefore persevered in, but all to no purpose. Indignation and resentment were the natural result of those failures. There appeared no alternative but to submit or else to abandon all and leave the country.

It is true that numerous Uitlanders acquired competences, and some were amassing fortunes, but such prizes were comparatively few. The majority just managed, with varying success, to reap a reasonable return for their outlays and energies, or only to live more or less comfortably. The fashion of luxurious and unthrifty living, so prevalent among the "nouveaux riches" and the section who vied with them, impressed the Boers with the notion that all were getting rich, and that soon there would be nothing left for them in the race. In their Hollander Press they were reminded that the gold, in reality belonging to them, was rapidly being exhausted, and the wealth appropriated by aliens, whose hewers of wood and drawers of water they would finally become. All this galled them to the heart, and the Government readily lent itself to proceedings intended to balance conditions in favour of their burghers, as the process was described. I will adduce a few instances. As is well known, it is only burghers and some privileged Hollanders who are employed in Government service, from President down to policeman. There are very few exceptions to this rule, which also applies to the nominations of jurymen, who are well paid too. The salaries of all, especially in the higher grades, had been largely augmented; the President receiving £8,000 per year, and so on downwards.

For Government supplies and public works the tenders of burghers only, and perhaps of some privileged persons, are accepted. In many instances the tenderers are without any pretence of ability for the performance of the contract, but are nevertheless accepted, performing only a sub rosa rôle. One such instance occurred some years ago when a burgher who did not possess £100—a simple farmer and a kind of "slim" speculator—received by Volksraad vote the contract for building a certain railway.[3] The price included a very large margin to be distributed in places of interest—as douceurs of £1,000 to £5,000 each, and £10,000 for the pro forma contractor and his Volksraad confederates; all those sums were paid out by the firm for whom the contract was actually taken up.

Similarly in contracts for road making, repairing, and making streets, etc., etc. On one occasion a rather highly placed official obtained a contract for repairing certain streets in Pretoria for £60,000. The work being worth £20,000 at most, the difference went to be shared by the several official participants.

One of the first instances of glaring peculation occurred about fifteen years ago in relation with the Selati railway contract obtained by Baron Oppenheim.[4] The procedure was publicly stigmatized as bribery. It had transpired that nearly all the Volksraad's members had received gifts in cash and values ranging each from £50 to £1,000 prior to voting the contract, but what was paid after voting did not become public at the time of exposure.

The acceptance of those gifts was ultimately admitted, in the face of evidence adduced in a certain law case; denial became, in fact, impossible. The plea of exoneration was that those gifts had been freely accepted without pledging the vote. The President publicly exculpated the honourable members, expressing his conviction that none of them could have meant to prejudice the State in their votes for the contract; and as there had been no pledge on their part, the donor had actually incurred the risk of missing his object. From that time the practice of obtaining and selling concessions or of sinecures and other lucrative advantages grew quite into a trade; and receiving douceurs became a hankering passion from highest to lowest, but happily with not a few exceptions where the official's honour was above being priced.

There was nothing shocking in all this venality to the bulk of the Johannesburg speculator class and others of that category. The rest assessed official morality at a depreciated value, but hoped the blemishes might be purged out with other and graver causes for discontent, if Uitlanders, were only granted some effective representation in public matters. That appeared to be the only constitutional remedy. But this continued to be resentfully refused, even in matters which partook of purely domestic interest, such as education, municipal privileges, etc. The latter were opposed upon the specious argument that such extended rights would constitute an imperium in imperio, and thus a condition incompatible with the safety and the conservation of complete control.

In the usual intercourse with burghers and officials a great deal of exasperating and even humiliating experiences had often to be endured, Uitlanders being treated as an inferior class, with scarcely veiled and often with arrogant assumption of superiority.

I witnessed a field cornet enjoying free and courteous hospitality at a Uitlander's house, while being entertained by his host and others in the vernacular Dutch, peremptorily object to the conversation in English in which the lady of the house happened to be engaged with another guest at the further end of the table. His remark was to the effect "that he could not tolerate English being spoken within his hearing"; this was in about 1888.

No wonder that under such conditions and ungenial usage Englishmen and other Uitlanders were put in a resentful mood, and many of them bethought themselves of methods other than constitutional to improve their position.

Identification was resorted to with the Imperial League, a political organization called into being in the Cape Colony to stem Boer assertiveness there and to restrain Bond aspirations. It was also seriously mooted to obtain the good offices of Great Britain as an influence for intervention and remonstrance.

It was not that the Transvaal Government was unaware of its duty and responsibility to remove causes which produced discontent and resentment among by far the larger section of the people under its rule. It seemed rather that the Uitlanders were provoked with systematic intention.