Impressions of South Africa Part 18

The English section, including Cape and Natal men, Australians and Americans, consisted of three sets of persons: the middle cla.s.ses, the capitalist mine-owners, and the working men. The middle cla.s.s people, traders, professional men, engineers, and the like, either belonged to or were in sympathy with the National Union. It was they who had formed it. They had recently presented to the Volksraad a pet.i.tion, signed by thirty-eight thousand non-enfranchised residents, asking for reforms, and this pet.i.tion had been scornfully rejected, one member saying, with no disapproval from his colleagues, that if the strangers wanted to get what they called their rights they would have to fight for them. Their agitation had been conducted publicly and on const.i.tutional lines, without threats of force. It was becoming plain, however, in 1895, that some at least of the leaders were now prepared to use force and would take arms whenever a prospect of success appeared. But under what flag would they fight? Would they adhere to their original idea, and maintain an independent South African Republic when they had ejected the dominant oligarchy and secured political power for all residents? Or would they hoist the Union Jack and carry the country back under the British Crown? No one could speak positively, but most thought that the former course would be taken. The Americans would be for it. Most of the Cape people who came of Dutch stock would be for it. Even among the pure English, some talked bitterly of Majuba Hill, and declared they would not fight to give the country back to Britain which had abandoned it in 1881.

The motives of these Reformers were simple and patent. Those of them who had been born and lived long in Africa thought it an intolerable wrong that, whereas everywhere else in South Africa they could acquire the suffrage and the means of influencing the government after two or three years' residence, they were in the Transvaal condemned to a long disability, and denied all voice in applying the taxes which they paid.

Thinking of South Africa as practically one country, they complained that here, and here only, were they treated as aliens and inferiors.

Both they and all the other Uitlanders had substantial grievances to redress. Food was inordinately dear, because a high tariff had been imposed on imports. Water-supply, police, sanitation, were all neglected. Not only was Dutch the official language, but in the public schools Dutch was then the only medium of instruction; and English children were compelled to learn arithmetic, geography, and history out of Dutch text-books. It was these abuses, rather than any wish to bring the Transvaal under the British flag, or even to establish a South African Confederation, that disposed them to revolt against a Government which they despised.

The mine-owning capitalists were a very small cla.s.s, but powerful by their wealth, their intelligence, and their influence over those whom they employed. They had held aloof from the agitation which began in 1892, because they did not themselves care for the franchise, not meaning to spend their lives in the Transvaal, and because they knew that political disturbances would interfere with the mining industry.

The leading man, and certainly one of the ablest men among them,[82]

foresaw trouble as far back as June, 1894, when he wrote that the unrest of the country came "from the open hostility of the Government to the Uitlanders, and its hostility to all principles of sound Government; the end will be revolution;" and a few weeks later wrote again: "The mining companies ought to have arms. The courage of the Boers is exaggerated.

If they knew there were in Johannesburg three thousand well-armed men, they would not talk so loud of destroying the town." Nevertheless, these capitalists, like capitalists all over the world, disliked force, and long refused to throw themselves into the movement. They raised a fund for the purpose of trying "to get a better Volksraad"--whether by influencing members or by supplying funds for election expenses has never been made clear. However, these efforts failed, and they became at last convinced that the loss of their industry from misgovernment was, and would continue, greater than any loss which temporary disturbances might involve. The vista of deep-level mining, which had now opened itself before them, made their grievances seem heavier. Before they entered on a new series of enterprises, which would at first be costly, they wished to relieve mining from the intolerable burdens of a dynamite monopoly, foolishly or corruptly granted to a firm which charged an extortionate price for this necessity; of a high tariff both on food-stuffs, involving large expenses in feeding the workpeople, and on mine machinery; of extravagantly heavy railway rates for coal; and of a system which, by making it easy for the Kafir workers to get drunk, reduced the available amount of native labour by one-third, and increased the number of accidents in the mines. These burdens made the difference of one or two or three per cent, on the dividend in the best mines, threatened the prospect of any dividend on the second best, and made it useless to persevere with the working of a third cla.s.s, where the ore was of a still lower grade. Such were the considerations which at last determined several of the leading mine-owners to throw in their lot with the Reform party; and the fusion of the two streams gave a new force to the movement. This fusion took place in the middle of 1895, and had become known to many, though not to all, of the Johannesburgers in November of that year. It inspired them with fresh hopes, and made them think that the day of action was near. The object of these capitalists was to obtain better government, not the extinction of the Republic, or its addition to the territories of Britain. This, however, was not the main object of Mr. Rhodes (then prime minister of Cape Colony and managing director of the British South Africa Company), with whom they were (though the fact was known only to a very few of the leaders) by this time in communication. Although he was largely interested in some of the mines, his aim was, as even his opponents have now admitted, not a pecuniary one. It was (as is generally believed) to prevent the Transvaal from pa.s.sing under anti-British influences, and to secure that it should ultimately become incorporated in a confederation of the several States and Colonies of South Africa under the British Crown.

There were probably others among the leaders who shared this purpose; but some did not, and here was a question which would seem to have divided the chiefs as it divided the rank and file. A rising there was to be. But under what flag? This vital point was left unsettled, and at the last moment it caused a fatal delay.

The third cla.s.s of Uitlanders consisted of the white workmen. It was the most numerous cla.s.s, and its action would evidently be decisive. When the visitor who heard the situation discussed--for there was no secrecy observed--asked about the att.i.tude of the working men, he received no very definite answer. The general belief was that they would respond to a call to arms; some from patriotism, because most of them were Englishmen and Australians; some because they meant to make the Transvaal their home, and had an interest in good government; some from sympathy with their employers; some from the love of a fight, because they were men of mettle. One or two of the Reform leaders were able speakers, and meant to rouse them by eloquence when the proper moment arrived. The result showed that a majority--that is, of the English-speaking workmen--were willing to fight. But when the day of battle seemed to be at hand, many, including most of the Cornish miners, proved to be indifferent, and departed by train amid the jeers of their comrades.

These three sections of Uitlanders const.i.tuted a numerical majority not merely of the dwellers on the Rand, but of the whole white population of the country.[83] There are about 65,000 Boers, all told, and about 24,000 male citizens over the age of sixteen. The English-speaking Uitlanders numbered nearly 100,000, of whom fully one-half were adult males. Seven-eighths of these were gathered on the Rand. Had they been armed and drilled and unanimous, they would have been irresistible. But they were not unanimous, and were, moreover, not only unarmed but also unorganized, being a crowd of persons suddenly gathered from the four winds of heaven.

Over against the Uitlanders stood the native Boer population, among whom we must distinguish two cla.s.ses. The majority, consisting of the old "true blues," who hated the British Government and clung to their national ways, supported the Boer Government in its stubborn refusal to grant reforms. The President in particular had repeatedly declared himself against any concession, insisting that no concessions would satisfy the disaffected. He looked upon the whole movement as a scheme to destroy the independence of the country and hand it over to England.

Exercising by his constant harangues in the Volksraad, what has been called a "dictators.h.i.+p of persuasion", he warned the people that their customs, their freedom, their religion, were at stake, and could be saved only by keeping the newcomers out of power. He was confirmed in this policy of resistance by the advice of his Hollander officials, and especially of the State Secretary, an able and resolute man.

But the President, though powerful, was not omnipotent. There existed a considerable party opposed to him, which had nearly overthrown him at the last preceding presidential election. There was in the Volksraad a liberal minority, which advocated reforms. There were among the country Boers a number of moderate men who disliked the Hollander influence and the maladministration of the Government, and one was told (though with what truth I could not ascertain) that the trekking which went on out of the Transvaal into Mashonaland and to the far north-west was partly due to this discontent. There was also much opposition among the legal profession, Dutch as well as English, for attacks had been made upon the independence of the judiciary, and the reckless conduct of legislation gave displeasure. So far back as 1894 the Chief Justice, a man greatly respected for his abilities and his services to the State, had delivered a public address warning the people against the dangers which threatened them from neglect of the provisions of the const.i.tution. Whether this party of opposition among the enfranchised citizens would have aided the Reform movement was doubtful. They would certainly not have done so had the British flag been raised. But if the movement had sought only the destruction of Hollander influence and the redress of grievances, they would at any rate have refused to join in resisting it.

"Why," it may be asked--"why, under these circ.u.mstances, with so many open enemies, and so many wavering supporters, did not President Kruger bow to the storm and avert revolt by reasonable concessions?" He had not a friend in the world except Germany, which had gone out of her way to offer him sympathy. But Germany was distant, and he had no seaport. The people of the Orange Free State had been ready to help the Transvaal in 1881, and from among the Boers of Cape Colony there might in the crisis of that year have come substantial succour. But both the Free State and the Cape Boers had been alienated by the unfriendly att.i.tude of the President in commercial matters and by his refusal to employ Cape Dutchmen in the Transvaal service. The annoyance of these kindred communities had been very recently accentuated by a dispute about the drifts (_i.e._, fords where waggons cross) on the Orange River. It was therefore improbable that any help could be obtained from outside against a purely internal movement, which aimed solely at reform, and did not threaten the life of the Republic.

The answer to the question just put is to be found not so much in the material interests as in the sentiments of the old Boer party. They extended their hatred of the English, or rather perhaps of the British Government, to the English-speaking Uitlanders generally, and saw in the whole movement nothing but an English plot. If the President had cared to distinguish, he might have perceived that the capitalists cared, not for the franchise, but for the success of their mines; and he might, by abolis.h.i.+ng the wasteful concessions,--which did not even enrich the State, but only the objects of its ill-directed bounty,--by reducing the tariff, and by keeping drink from the blacks, have disarmed the hostility of the mine owners, and have had only the National Union to deal with. Even the National Union would have lost most of its support if he had reformed the administration and allowed English to be used in the schools. He might have taken a hint from the Romans, who, when they admitted a large body of new citizens, managed to restrict their voting power, and might, in granting the suffrage to those who had resided for a certain period on the Rand, have kept the representation of the Rand district so small that it could not turn the balance against the old Boer party in the Volksraad. Had he gone further, and extended the franchise to all immigrants after, say, five years' residence, he might not only have disarmed opposition, but have made the South African Republic a powerful State, no considerable section of whose inhabitants would thereafter have thought of putting themselves under the British Crown. To have gone this length would no doubt have been to take the risk that a Republic of Boers might become before long a Republic of Englishmen, with an English President; and from this he naturally recoiled, not merely out of personal ambition, but out of honest national feeling. But short of this, he might, by dividing his enemies, have averted a grave peril, from which he was in the end delivered, not by his own strength, but by the mistakes of his antagonists. However, he kept the s.h.i.+p steadily on her course. He had grown accustomed to the complaints of the agitators, and thought they would not go beyond agitation. When pressed to take some repressive measure, he answered that you must wait for the tortoise to put its head out before you hit it, and he appeared to think it would keep its head in. He is one of the most interesting figures of our time; this old President, shrewd, cool, dogged, wary, courageous; typifying the qualities of his people, and strong because he is in sympathy with them; adding to his trust in Providence no small measure of worldly craft; uneducated, but able to foil the statesmen of Europe at their own weapons, and perhaps all the more capable because his training has been wholly that of an eventful life and not of books.

This was how things stood in the Transvaal in November, 1895. People have talked of a conspiracy, but never before was there, except on the stage,[84] so open a conspiracy. Two-thirds of the action--there was another third, which has only subsequently become known--went on before the public. The visitor had hardly installed himself in an hotel at Pretoria before people began to tell him that an insurrection was imminent, that arms were being imported, that Maxim guns were hidden, and would be shown to him if he cared to see them, an invitation which he did not feel called on to accept. In Johannesburg little else was talked of, not in dark corners, but at the club where everybody lunches, and between the acts at the play. There was something humorous in hearing the English who dominate in so many other places, talking of themselves as a downtrodden nationality, and the Boers as their oppressors, declaring that misgovernment could not be endured for ever, and that those who would be free themselves must strike the blow. The effect was increased by the delightful unconsciousness of the English that similar language is used in Ireland to denounce Saxon tyranny. The knowledge that an insurrection was impending was not confined to the Transvaal. All over South Africa one heard the same story; all over South Africa men waited for news from Johannesburg, though few expected the explosion to come so soon. One thing alone was not even guessed at.

In November it did not seem to have crossed any one's mind that the British South Africa Company would have any hand in the matter. Had it been supposed that it was concerned, much of the sympathy which the movement received would have vanished.

As I am not writing a history of the revolution, but merely describing the Johannesburg aspects of its initial stage, I need not attempt the task--for which, indeed, no sufficient materials have as yet been given to the world--of explaining by what steps and on what terms the Company's managing director and its administrator and its police came into the plan. But it seems probable that the Johannesburg leaders did not begin to count upon help from the Company's force before the middle of 1895 at earliest, and that they did not regard that force as anything more than an ultimate resource in case of extreme need. Knowing that the great body of the Uitlanders, on whose support they counted, would be unorganised and leaderless, they desired, as the moment for action approached, to have a military nucleus round which their raw levies might gather, in case the Boers seemed likely to press them hard. But this was an afterthought. When the movement began it was a purely Johannesburg movement, and it was intended to bear that character to the end, and to avoid all appearance of being an English irruption.[85]

To the visitor who saw and heard what I have been describing--and no Englishman could pa.s.s through without seeing and hearing it--two questions naturally presented themselves. One related to the merits of the case. This was a question which only a visitor considered, for the inhabitants were drawn by race or interest to one side or the other. It raised a point often debated by moralists: What are the circ.u.mstances which justify insurrection? Some cases are too clear for argument.

Obviously any subject of a bloodthirsty tyrant ruling without or against law is justified in taking up arms. No one doubts that the Christian subjects of the Sultan ought to rebel if they had a prospect of success; and those who try to make them rebel are blamed only because the prospect of success is wanting. On the other hand, it is clear that subjects of a const.i.tutional Government, conducted in accordance with law, do wrong and must be punished, if they take arms, even when they have grievances to redress. Here, however, was a case which seemed to lie between the extreme instances. The Uitlanders, it need hardly be said, did not concern themselves with nice distinctions. In the interior of South Africa Governments and Const.i.tutions were still in a rudimentary stage; nor had the habit of obeying them been fully formed.

So many non-legal things had been done in a high-handed way, and so many raids into native territories had been made by the Boers themselves, that the sort of respect for legality which Europeans feel was still imperfectly developed in all sections of the population. Those of the Reformers, however, who sought to justify their plans, argued that the Boer Government was an oligarchy which overtaxed its subjects, and yet refused them those benefits which a civilised Government is bound to give. It was the Government of a small and ignorant minority, and, since they believed it to be corrupt as well as incompetent, it inspired no respect. Peaceful agitation had proved useless. Did not the sacred principle of no taxation without representation, which had been held to justify the American Revolution, justify those who had been patient so long in trying to remove their grievances by force, of course with as little effusion of blood as possible?

On the other hand, there was much to be said for the Boers, not only from the legal, but from the sentimental, side of the case. They had fled out of Cape Colony sixty years before, had suffered many perils and triumphed over many foes, had recovered their independence by their own courage when Britain had deprived them of it, had founded a commonwealth upon their own lines and could now keep it as their own only by the exclusion of those aliens in blood, speech and manners who had recently come among them. They had not desired these strangers, nor had the strangers come for anything but gold. True, they had opened the land to them, they had permitted them to buy the gold-reefs, they had filled their coffers with the taxes which the miners paid. But the strangers came with notice that it was a Boer State they were entering, and most of them had come, not to stay, and to identify themselves with the old citizens, but to depart after ama.s.sing gain. Were these immigrants of yesterday to be suffered to overturn the old Boer State, and build up on its ruins a new one under which the Boer would soon find his cherished customs gone and himself in turn a stranger? Had not the English many other lands to rule, without appropriating this one also? Put the grievances of which the Uitlanders complained at their highest, and they did not amount to wrongs such as had in other countries furnished the usual pretext for insurrection. Life, religion, property, personal freedom, were not at stake. The worst any one suffered was to be overtaxed and to want some of those advantages which the old citizens had never possessed and did not care to have. These were hards.h.i.+ps, but were they hards.h.i.+ps such as could justify a recourse to arms?

The other question which an observer asked himself was whether an insurrection would succeed. Taking a cooler view of the position than it was easy for a resident to take, he felt some doubt on this point, and it occurred to him to wonder whether, if the Government was really so corrupt as the Uitlanders described it, the latter might not attain their object more cheaply, as well as peaceably, by using those arguments which were said to prevail with many members of the Volksraad.

Supposing this to be impossible,--and it may well have been found impossible, for men not scrupulous in lesser matters may yet refuse to tamper with what they hold vital,--were the forces at the disposal of the Reform leaders sufficient to overthrow the Government? It had only two or three hundred regular troops, artillerymen stationed at Pretoria, and said to be not very efficient. But the militia included all Boers over sixteen; and the Boer, though not disciplined in the European way, was accustomed to shoot, inured to hards.h.i.+ps by his rough life, ready to fight to the death for his independence. This militia, consisting of eighteen thousand men or more, would have been, when all collected, more than a match in the field for any force the Uitlanders were prepared to arm. And in point of fact, when the rising took place, the latter had only some three thousand rifles ready, while few of their supporters knew anything of fighting. As the Reform leaders were aware that they would be out-matched if the Government had time to gather its troops, it has been subsequently hinted that they meant to carry Pretoria by a _coup de main_, capturing the President, and forthwith, before the Boer militia could a.s.semble, to issue a call for a general popular vote or plebiscite of all the inhabitants, Boers and Uitlanders, which should determine the future form of government. Others have thought that the Reformers would not have taken the offensive, but have entrenched themselves in Johannesburg, and have held out there, appealing meanwhile to the High Commissioner, as representative of the Paramount Power, to come up, interpose his mediation, and arrange for the peaceable taking of such a general popular vote as I have mentioned. To do this it might not have been necessary to defend the town for more than a week or ten days, before which time the general sympathy which they expected from the rest of South Africa would have made itself felt. Besides, there were in the background (though this was of course unknown to the visitor and to all but a few among the leaders) the British South Africa Company's police force by this time beginning to gather at Pitsani, who were pledged to come if summoned, and whose presence would have enabled them to resist a Boer a.s.sault on the town.

As everybody knows, the question of strength was never tested. The rising was to have been ushered in by a public meeting at the end of December. This meeting was postponed till the 6th of January; but the Company's police force, instead of waiting to be summoned, started for Johannesburg at the time originally fixed. Their sudden entrance, taking the Reform leaders by surprise and finding them unprepared, forced the movement to go off at half-c.o.c.k, and gave to it an aspect quite different from that which it had hitherto borne. That which had been a local agitation now appeared in the light of an English invasion, roused all the Boers, of whatever party, to defend their country, and drew from the High Commissioner an emphatic disclaimer and condemnation of the expedition, which the home Government repeated. The rising at Johannesburg, which the entrance of the police had precipitated, ended more quickly than it had begun, as soon as the surrender of the Company's forces had become known, for the representatives of the High Commissioner besought the Uitlanders to lay down their arms and save the lives of the leaders of that force.[86] This they did, and, after what had happened, there was really nothing else to be done.

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 a.s.signed 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 a.s.signed 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 languis.h.i.+ng and the work of development r.e.t.a.r.ded. 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 r.e.t.a.r.ded and still impedes the settlement of questions which were already sufficiently difficult.

I have described in this chapter only such part of the circ.u.mstances 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Wit.w.a.tersrand 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.

[Footnote 78: Since the first edition of this book appeared, Mr. Selous has told me--and no one's authority is higher, for he has lived much amongst them--that this statement is exaggerated, and that, great as has been and is the dislike of the Boers to the British Government, the average Boer is friendly to the individual Englishman.]

[Footnote 79: I was told that their frequent term (when they talk among themselves) for an Englishman is "rotten egg," but some persons who had opportunities of knowing have informed me, since this book was first published, that this is not so. Another common Boer name for an Englishman is "red-neck," drawn from the fact that the back of an Englishman's neck is often burnt red by the sun. This does not happen to the Boer, who always wears a broad-brimmed hat.]

[Footnote 80: Their laws at one time forbade the working of gold mines altogether, for they held with the Roman poet (_aurum inrepertum et sic melius situm_) that it does least harm when undiscovered.]

[Footnote 81: I have elsewhere a.n.a.lysed (in the _Forum_ for April, 1896) this const.i.tution, and discussed the question whether it is to be regarded as a true Rigid const.i.tution, like that of the United States, of the Swiss Confederation, and of the Orange Free State, or as a Flexible const.i.tution, alterable by the ordinary legislative machinery.

Further examination of the matter has confirmed me in the view there suggested, that the const.i.tution belongs to the latter category.]

[Footnote 82: Copies of the letters written by Mr. Lionel Phillips were seized after the rising and published by the Boer Government.]

[Footnote 83: There were some 700,000 Kafirs in the Transvaal, but no one reckoned them as possible factors in a contest, any more than sheep or oxen.]

[Footnote 84: This operatic element appeared in the rising itself, when a fire-escape, skilfully disguised to resemble a Maxim gun, was moved backward and forward across the stage at Johannesburg for the purpose of frightening the Boers at a distance.]

[Footnote 85: It is hardly necessary to point out the absurdity of the suggestion that the Company intended to seize the Transvaal for itself.

The Company could no more have taken the Transvaal than it could have taken Natal. It was for self-government that the insurgent-Uitlanders were to rise, and they would have objected to be governed by the Company at least as much as they objected to be governed by the Boers. Such individual members of the Company as held Rand mining shares would have profited by the better administration of the country under a reformed Government, but they would have profited in exactly the same way as shareholders in Paris or Amsterdam. This point, obvious enough to any one who knows South Africa, is clearly put by M. Mermeix, in his interesting little book, _La Revolution de Johannesburg_. Other fanciful hypotheses have been put forward, which it seems needless to notice.]

[Footnote 86: Much controversy has arisen as to the promise which the Boer commandant made, when the police force surrendered, that the lives of its leaders should be spared. Whatever might have happened immediately after the surrender, they would in any case not have been put to death in cold blood at Pretoria, for that would have been a blunder, which a man so astute and so far from cruel as the President would not have committed.]

[Footnote 87: When a conspiracy succeeds, the chief conspirator is usually some one already wielding some civil or military power, as Louis Napoleon did when he overcame the French a.s.sembly in 1851.]

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?

Let us begin by recalling the physical features of the country. Most of it is high and dry; all of it is hot. The parts which are high and dry are also healthy, and fit for the races of Europe to dwell in. But are they equally fit to support a dense population?

South Africa has three great natural sources of wealth: agricultural land, pasture-land, and minerals. The forests are too scanty to be worth regarding: they are not, and probably never will be, sufficient to supply its own needs. Fisheries also are insignificant, and not likely ever to const.i.tute an industry, so we may confine ourselves to the three first named.

Of these three agriculture is now, and has. .h.i.therto been, by far the least important. Out of an area of two hundred and twenty-one thousand square miles in Cape Colony alone, probably not more than one one-thousandth part is now under any kind of cultivation, whether by natives or by whites; and in the whole country, even if we exclude the German and Portuguese territories, the proportion must be even smaller.

There are no figures available, so one can make only the roughest possible conjecture. As regards more than half of the country, this fact is explained by the dryness of the climate. Not only the Karroo region in the interior of Cape Colony, but also the vast region stretching north from the Karroo nearly as far as the west-coast territories of Portugal, is too arid for tillage. So are large parts of the Free State, of the Transvaal, and of Matabililand. Where there is a sufficient rainfall, as in many districts along the south and south-east coasts, much of the country is too hilly and rough for cultivation; so that it would be well within the mark to say that of the whole area mentioned above far less than one-tenth is suitable for raising any kind of crop without artificial aid. Much, no doubt, remains which might be tilled, and is not tilled, especially in the country between the south-eastern edge of the great plateau and the sea; and that this land lies untouched is due partly to the presence of the Kafir tribes, who occupy more land than they cultivate, partly to the want or the dearness of labour, partly to the tendency, confirmed by long habit, of the whites to prefer stock-farming to tillage. The chief agricultural products are at present cereals, _i.e._, wheat, oats, maize, and Kafir corn (a kind of millet), fruit and sugar. The wheat and maize raised are not sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants, so that these articles are largely imported, in spite of the duties levied on them. There is a considerable and an increasing export of fruit, which goes to Europe,--chiefly to the English market--in January, February, and March, the midsummer and autumn of the southern hemisphere. Sugar is grown on the hot lands of Natal lying along the sea, and might, no doubt, be grown all the way north along the sea from there to the Zambesi. Rice would do well on the wet coast lands, but is scarcely at all raised. Tea has lately been planted on the hills in Natal, and would probably thrive also on the high lands of Mashonaland. There is plenty of land fit for cotton. The tobacco of the Transvaal is so pleasant for smoking in a pipe that one cannot but expect it to be in time much more largely and carefully grown than it is now. Those who have grown accustomed to it prefer it to any other. With the exception of the olive, which apparently does not succeed, and of the vine, which succeeds only in the small district round Cape Town that enjoys a true summer and winter, nearly all the staples of the warmer parts of the temperate zone and of subtropical regions can be grown in some district or other of the country.

The introduction of irrigation would enormously enlarge the area of tillage, for some of the regions now hopelessly arid, such as the Karroo, have a soil of surprising fertility, which produces luxuriant crops when water is led on to it. Millions of acres might be made to wave with corn were great tanks, like those of India, constructed to hold the rains of the wet season, for it is not so much the inadequacy of the rainfall as the fact that it is confined to three or four months, that makes the country arid. Something might also be hoped from the digging of artesian wells dug like those which have lately been successfully bored in Algeria, and have proved so infinitely valuable to parts of Australia. Already about three hundred thousand acres are cultivated with the aid of irrigation in Cape Colony. At present, however, it has been deemed hardly worth while to execute large irrigation works or to bore wells.[88] The price of cereals has sunk so low over all the world that South Africans find it cheaper to import them than to spend capital on breaking up waste lands; and there is plenty of land already which might be cultivated without irrigation if there were settlers coming to cultivate it, or if Kafir labour was sufficiently effective to make it worth the while of enterprising men to undertake farming on a large scale. The same remarks apply generally to the other kinds of produce I have mentioned. As population grows, and the local demand for food increases, more land will be brought under the plough or the hoe. Some day, perhaps, when the great corn-exporting countries of to-day--North America, La Plata, central India, southern Russia--have become so populous as to have much less of their grain crops to spare for other countries, it will become profitable to irrigate the Karroo, on which the Kafir of the future will probably prove a more efficient labourer than he is now. But that day is distant, and until it arrives, agriculture will continue to play a very subordinate part in South African industry, and will employ a comparatively small white population.

Ever since the last years of the seventeenth century, when the settlers were beginning to spread out from the Cape Peninsula towards the then still unknown interior, the main occupation of the colonists, first of the Dutch and afterwards of both Dutch and English, has been the keeping of cattle and sheep. So it remains to-day. Nearly all the land that is not rough mountain or waterless desert, and much that to the inexperienced eye seems a waterless desert, is in the hands of stock-farmers, whose ranges are often of enormous size, from six thousand acres upward. In 1893 there were in Cape Colony about 2,000,000 cattle, in Natal 725,000, in the Orange Free State 900,000, and in Bechua.n.a.land the Bamangwato (Khama's tribe) alone had 800,000. Of these last only some 5,000 are said to have survived the murrain, which worked havoc in the other three first-mentioned territories also. In 1896 there were in Cape Colony alone 14,400,000 sheep and 5,000,000 Angora and other goats. The number of sheep might be largely increased were more effective measures against the diseases that affect them carried out.

All the country, even the Kalahari desert, which used to be thought hopelessly sterile, is now deemed fit to put some sort of live stock upon, though, of course, the more arid the soil, the greater the area required to feed one sheep. To the traveller who crosses its weary stretches in the train, the Karroo seems a barren waste; but it produces small succulent shrubs much relished by sheep, and every here and there a well or a stagnant pool may be found which supplies water enough to keep the creatures alive. Here six acres is the average allowed for one sheep. Tracts of rough ground, covered with patches of thick scrubby bushes, are turned to account as ostrich farms, whence large quant.i.ties of feathers are exported to Europe and America. In 1896 the number of ostriches in Cape Colony was returned as 225,000. The merino sheep, introduced about seventy years ago, thrives in Cape Colony, and its wool has become one of the most valuable products of the country. In the Free State both it and the Angora goat do well, and the pasture lands of that territory support also great numbers of cattle and some horses. The Free State and Bechua.n.a.land are deemed to be among the very best ranching grounds in all South Africa.

Although, as I have said, nearly all the country is more or less fit for live stock, it must be remembered that this does not imply either great pecuniary returns or a large population. In most districts a comparatively wide area of ground is required to feed what would be deemed in western America a moderate herd or flock, because the pasture is thin, droughts are frequent, and locusts sometimes destroy a large part of the herbage. Thus the number of persons for whom the care of cattle or sheep in any given area provides occupation is a mere trifle compared to the number which would be needed to till the same area.

Artesian wells might, no doubt, make certain regions better for pastoral purposes; but here, as in the case of agriculture, we find little prospect of any dense population, and, indeed, a probability that the white people will continue to be few relatively to the area of the country. On a large grazing farm the proportion of white men to black servants is usually about three to twenty-five; and though the proportion of whites is, of course, much larger in the small towns which supply the wants of the surrounding country, still any one can see with how few whites a ranching country may get along.