South Africa and the Boer-British War Part 22

"There was the murder of Green in Lydenburg, who was called to the Boer camp, where he went unarmed and in good faith, only to have his brains blown out by the Boer with whom he was conversing; there was the public flogging of another Englishman by the notorious Abel Erasmus because he was an Englishman and had British sympathies; and there were the various white flag incidents. At Ingogo the Boers raised the white flag, and when in response to this General Colley ordered the hoisting of a similar flag to indicate that it was seen, a perfect hail of lead was poured on the position where the General stood; and it was obvious that the hoisting of the flag was merely a ruse to ascertain where the General and his staff were. There was the ambulance affair on Majuba, when the Boers came upon an unarmed party bearing the wounded with the Red Cross flying over them, and after asking who they were and getting a reply, fired a volley into the group, killing Surgeon-Major Cornish."

These are facts of history, and the Boers have played the same savage game in all their wars with the English. The policy of Kruger has from the first been engineered to exclude immigrants, to repel all foreigners especially held in abhorrence by the Transvaal government, and constantly denied civil rights a.s.sociated with civilization.

After a naturalized subject "shall have been qualified to sit in the Second Volksraad for ten years (one of the conditions for which is that he must be thirty years of age), he may obtain the full burgher rights or political privileges, provided the majority of burghers in his ward will signify in writing their desire that he should obtain them, and provided the President and Executive shall see no objection to granting the same! It is thus clear that, a.s.suming the Field-cornet's records to be honestly and properly compiled, and to be available for reference (which they are not), the immigrant, after fourteen years' probation during which he shall have given up his own country and have been politically emasculated, and having attained the age of at least forty years, would have the privilege of obtaining burgher rights should he be willing, and able to induce the majority of a hostile clique to pet.i.tion in writing on his behalf, and should he then escape the veto of the President and Executive.

[Sidenote: The Copingstone to Mr. Kruger's Chinese Wall]

This was the coping-stone to Mr. Kruger's Chinese wall. The Uitlanders and their children were disfranchised forever, and as far as legislation could make it sure, the country was preserved by entail to the families of the "Voortrekkers." The measure was only carried because of the strenuous support given by the President both within the Raad and at those private meetings which practically decide the important business of the country.

The great statesman Kruger, when asked just to "open the door a little"

to outsiders, began an address in a village near Johannesburg by saying, "Burghers, friends, thieves, murderers, newcomers and others."

The particular propriety of this was that for a long time Kruger could not be persuaded to visit Johannesburg. He hated the flouris.h.i.+ng, stirring and steadily increasing city, and mistrusted the people, because he knew that his methods could not for a great while be submitted to by an enlightened community. He relaxed his vigilant att.i.tude of hostility at last so far as to become the guest of the people of the city, and when he was civilly treated, and the fact that the Johannesburgers had been handsome in entertainment, he reviled them as "a set of lick-spittles."

[Sidenote: The Wise Man's Treatment of the Natives]

The style of the wise man's treatment of the natives appears in this:

The "April" case was one in which an unfortunate native named April, having worked for a number of years for a farmer on promise of certain payment in cattle, and having completed his term, applied for payment and a permit to travel through the district. On some trivial pretext this was refused him, his cattle were seized, and himself and his wives and children forcibly retained in the service of the Boer. He appealed in the nearest official, Field-cornet Prinsloo, who acted in a particularly barbarous and unjustifiable manner, so that the Chief Justice before whom the case was heard (when April, having enlisted the sympathy of some white people, was enabled to make an appeal), characterized Prinsloo's conduct as brutal in the extreme and a flagrant abuse of power perpetrated with the aim of establis.h.i.+ng slavery. Judgment was given against Prinsloo with all costs. Within a few days of this decision being arrived at, the President, addressing a meeting of burghers, publicly announced that the Government had reimbursed Prinsloo, adding, "Notwithstanding the judgment of the High Court, we consider Prinsloo to have been right."

[Sidenote: A Misleading Reputation]

President Kruger has had provided for him a reputation that is astonis.h.i.+ngly misleading. His part in public affairs has been one of vehement and vindictive self-a.s.sertion, partic.i.p.ation in intrigue for office and for salaries--the constant intrusion of his personality in the rudest and most selfish ways into everything that concerns the state, disregarding the law, and with complete indifference to the rights of all persons except those who recognize him as their master.

Abstaining himself from intoxicating drinks, he has long sustained a liquor ring in dispensing horrible drinks at scandalous profit. Given to self-praise for lofty purity in matters of state, he maintained a dynamite ring that cut off a large revenue, seemingly for no better reason than that his friends--his sycophant friends--were of it, and he has stooped to studied interference between employers and employed, that he might break up reasonable relations, believing himself in a position to profit by agitations; and in this insidious proceeding he has used secret service funds in the organization of hostilities for the embarra.s.sment of employers, not because they had wronged the laboring man, but for the reason that they were not on their knees to him.

All this the world has accepted as manifestations of virtue, domestic kindliness and the religious sensibilities that are always in the public eye, that the mult.i.tude may gaze upon the goodness of the great and good man. The sincerity of his character as a professor of piety is not doubtful, but he carries into that, as into everything else, an ostentatious egotism, that among some nations and peoples is regarded as unbecoming a Christian statesman. It is fair to say of him that the one thing in which he seems to have profound convictions in addition to his self-esteem and hatred of English-speaking people, is in his devotion to the doctrines of the Old Testament. He does not seem to have made the acquaintance of the New Testament.

[Sidenote: Racial Prejudices, Racial Hatreds]

He has sought to keep apart the merchants and the miners, fearing their united power might interfere with his characteristic proceedings. He has lost no opportunity to promote belligerency among white laborers, and utterly and always ignores the rights as men of the natives. When intriguing with organized labor he has shown all the surface indications of partners.h.i.+p in carrying on, as the inside historian Fitzpatrick says, "an anticapitalist campaign with the Government press," and also "fostering the liquor industry with its thousands of reputable hangers on"; and more than all, he has without hesitation or variation flagrantly indulged racial prejudices and incited racial hatreds in South Africa, the most deplorable and dangerous possible use of power, and he has found constant consolation and been greatly sustained in his public pursuits by the hatred of the Whites against the Black and Brown people. But his favorite investment and educational enterprise is in arousing the animosities of the Boers against the British, that they may be at the same alt.i.tude with his own.

It is to the rough violence of President Kruger, his disregard of the laws, studied demoralization of his own courts, that he has repeatedly, recklessly overruled with sheer brute force--his heedless refusal to aid in the prosperous development of his own country, his gross and violent opposition to progress of all kinds--to the extension and protection of legitimate industries, and steadfast cares for those that are illegitimate, and sinister partic.i.p.ation in corrupting schemes surrounded and inspired by the noisy congratulations of his habitual flatterers--all this afflicting him with the elephantiasis of conceit.

It is to that and his effusion of arrogance to which we trace with certain steps the remote sources and the rampant rus.h.i.+ng of the war, that is so destructive and wanton. There is no good in it, unless it involves the downfall of the Kruger tyranny, an example of individual caprice of a type of ruthless misgovernment, not surpa.s.sed in the self-indulgence of those who rule the barbarous tribes of Africa or sit on the gaudy thrones of Asia.

[Sidenote: Ill.u.s.trating Specifications]

So much accusation must for full effect be ill.u.s.trated by specifications. In 1897 the Burghers, the ruling cla.s.s behind President Kruger, had heavy losses from the ravages of Rinderpest and there followed a great work of benevolence in the shape of purchases by the Government of a mult.i.tude of mules, to take the place of the oxen that had perished; and there was a.s.sociated with this, provision made in "mealies," the corn of the country, to save the alleged starving.

Under a form of favoritism by a Government that was the personal property of Mr. Kruger, anything could be done under the pretense of saving the rulers of the land said to be suffering by pestilence and famine. Government officials were greatly interested in the contracts for the salvation of the people. The historian Fitzpatrick says: "The notorious Mr. Barend Vorster, who had bribed Volksraad members with gold watches, money and spiders, in order to secure the Selati Railway concession, and who although denounced as a thief in the Volksraad itself, declined to take action to clear himself and was defended by the President, again played a prominent part. This gentleman and his partners contracted with the Government to supply donkeys at a certain figure apiece, the Government taking all risk of loss from the date of purchase. The donkeys were purchased in Ireland and South America at one-sixth of the contract price. The contractors alleged that they had not sufficient means of their own and received an advance equal to three-quarters of the total amount payable to them; that is to say, for every 100 which they had to expend they received 450 as an unsecured, advance against their profits."

Investigation of this scandal was hushed up, but the money payable under the contracts was all exacted and all lost. There is nothing to show that the people got any good of it. The s.h.i.+ppers of mules persuaded the majestical President that the health of those animals demanded the ventilation of the upper decks, and that the vessels might not be topheavy there must be double cargoes, mules for the bereaved Boers on top, and food for the famine-stricken, none of whom were in actual want, carried in the hold as ballast. Here was a double stroke of the ingenuity of contractors, and the profit was swollen accordingly.

[Sidenote: Free and Independent Krugerism]

The benevolent President was a fierce defender of the money makers by this transaction. There are a few figures that indicate the scientific political economy by which the formidable President wins the affections of the populace and guards his free state from harm. His particular friends are in office, of course, and they have fixed salaries to a great extent. It shows the progress made by the Government, that the amount of those salaries was twenty-four times as great in 1899 as in 1886, having risen from 51,831, 3s. 7d., to 1,121,394, 5s. This is the revenue that goes to the promotion and perpetuation of free and independent Krugerism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEMBERS OF THE FIRST VOLKSRAAD, S.A.R. J. W. VanDerryst (Bode), S. P Dutoit, A. K. Loveday, J. H. Labuschagne, J. G. G. Ba.s.sle (Stenographer), A. J. Havinga (a.s.s. Bode). B. J. Vorster, J. P.

Goetser, L. Botha, J. DeGleroq, J. L. VanWiok, A. Bieperink. D. I.

Louw, I. K. DeBeer, P. I. Schutte. W. J. Fogkens, Sec., A. D.

Wolmarans, F. G. H. Wolmarans, H. M. S. Prinsloo, J. P. Meyer, J. DuP.

DeBeer, J. H. De LaReis.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRESIDENT KRUGER AND HIS CHIEF ADVISERS IN THE WAR. A.

Wolmarans, F. W. Reitz (State Secretary), S. M. Berger, J. M. H. k.o.c.k, Com. Gen'l P. J. Joubert, President S. J. P. Kruger, P. J. Cronje (Supt. of Natives).]

[Sidenote: President Kruger's Nepotism]

The law forbids the sale of liquor to the natives, and yet they are to an astonis.h.i.+ng degree habitually drunk on the Rand, and the cost of labor in the great mines is largely increased by the disabilities of men a great part of the time under the influence of liquor, and the men themselves perish at a shocking rate. We quote again the historian Fitzpatrick: "The fault rests with a corrupt and incompetent administration. That administration is in the hands of the President's relations and personal following. The remedy urged by the State Secretary, State Attorney, some members of the Executive, the general public, and the united pet.i.tion of all the ministers of religion in the country, is to entrust the administration to the State Attorney's department and to maintain the existing law. In the face of this, President Kruger has fought hard to have the total prohibition law abolished and has successfully maintained his nepotism--to apply no worse construction. In replying to a deputation of liquor dealers he denounced the existing law as an 'immoral' one, because by restricting the sale of liquor it deprived a number of honest people of their livelihood--and President Kruger is an abstainer!

"The effect of this liquor trade is indescribable; the loss in money, although enormous, is a minor consideration compared with the crimes committed and the accidents in the mines traceable to it; and the effect upon the native character is simply appalling."

This is a shocking indictment, and the history in it has been hidden under a boisterous sentimentalism, to the effect that the eccentricities of monstrous vulgarity should be accepted as the graces of supernaturalism of true natural greatness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE IN MARKET SQUARE, KIMBERLEY, THE CITY OF DIAMONDS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RICHEST DIAMOND MINES OF THE WORLD, KIMBERLEY, SOUTH AFRICA]

CHAPTER III.

The Boers and British Gold and Diamonds.

[Sidenote: Solomon's Ophir]

Solomon obtained his supplies of gold, it is believed, from the Transvaal. There is something more in this than imagination and conjecture. There are two excellent harbors on the South African coast that confronts the Indian Ocean, and in Solomon's great days he was a "sea power" there and his s.h.i.+ps were on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, so that his connection with African gold mining is not at all improbable. The Transvaal mines are neither remote nor inaccessible from the best ports on the coast of Eastern Africa. Solomon obtained the "gold of Ophir," and it was by making "a navy of s.h.i.+ps in Ezion-Geber, which is beside Eloth, on the sh.o.r.e of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, s.h.i.+pmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir and fetched from thence gold * * * and brought it to King Solomon." The visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon in his glory is testimony of the familiar splendor of his fame in Africa.

[Sidenote: How the Gold was discovered]

The Leydenburg gold fields were first made definite and certain in the public eye by the writings of a German explorer, Herr Carl Mauch, which attracted adventurers from California, New Zealand and Australia. In February, 1875, the official reports in Pretoria stated that notice was given to the Landrost of Leydenburg of the discovery of alluvial gold between thirty and forty miles eastward of that town, which is situated 5,825 feet above the sea. In 1873 the Postmaster-General at Pretoria received a letter from the Landdrost of Leydenburg and with it two ounces and a half of gold. This had been found on a farm thirty miles from Leydenburg. Other gold discoveries were soon made and among them nuggets in the walls of mud houses. A letter was published in the "Transvaal Advocate" giving interesting incidents of gold finding. We quote as follows:

[Sidenote: Reports About Early Gold Finds]

"In the bed of a spruit running through the farm (Hendricksdale) alluvial gold was found in sufficient quant.i.ty to justify the opinion that it was present in paying quant.i.ties, and this opinion was confirmed from day to day by the following facts:

"1st. Messrs. McLachlan, Palmer and Valentine, with two Kaffirs, and without proper appliances, found in fourteen days the first sample of two ounces, among which is a nugget the size of a half sovereign, somewhat longer, but more flattened.

2nd. Mr. Valentine with two Kaffirs found and sent to the cas.h.i.+er of the Standard Bank of Natal a second sample of above two ounces, in which was a nugget as large as a middle sized bean.

"One of the farms distinguished by gold, that of Erasmus and Mullers, was at this time hired for thirty years at 200 per annum.

"Among these hills are caves, in one of which one might travel underground for hours, and here, in olden times, the natives sheltered themselves and cattle in many an inter-tribal war. Skulls and bones of men and cattle are found, and tradition, whether justly or not, brands the occupiers as cannibals. Near some of the southern sources of the Um Saabi, or Sabea, is the Spitz Kop, 100 feet high, under which the first gold in the district was found, and the gold district was in early times supposed to be about fifty miles long by eight broad, and six or eight farms were known to have gold upon them. The gold was found about three feet below the surface, the upper layer being red clay; then large gravel quartz in fragments, limestone and a cindery fused substance, like slag from a smelting furnace, but softer; below this is a soft black soil, which when put in the box reminds one of a mixture of tar and oil, and with this a soft white clay is found. The quartz when pounded proved also to have gold in it, and so did the cylinder layer, and the stones of which the cattle kraal was built contained gold. The best finds were usually under or between the large boulders.

[Sidenote: The Most Interesting Specimen]

"The latest testimony I can give is that I saw thirty-one ounces of gold a day or two ago brought from McMc and Pilgrim's Rest, and that one of my friends not long ago sent 145 ounces home. But to me the most interesting specimen was a half ounce obtained from the country to the southeast of Matabeleland, probably about half way between Hartley Hill and the ruins of Mazimboeye Zimboae--or Zimbabye--of Herr Mauch, in which direction I have reason to believe that alluvial fields as rich as and more extensive than those of Leydenburg await the coming of the explorer who shall unite to skill in prospecting patience, perseverance and tact in dealing with the various native tribes, whose friends.h.i.+p must be cultivated and a.s.sistance gained before the richest of all the districts of Southeastern Africa shall be ready to surrender its treasures to the enterprise and industry of Europe."

United States Consul Macrum writes from Pretoria to the State Department in regard to the gold production in South Africa in 1897 and 1898: