Impressions of South Africa | Page 2

of British and Dutch South Africa except the Transvaal. Another is the extension of the two great lines of railway from the coast into the interior. This extension has given Bulawayo and Matabililand a swift and easy communication with Cape Town, thereby strengthening immensely the hold of Britain upon the interior, and lessening any risk that might be feared of future native risings. It has also opened up a new and quick route from the coast of the Indian Ocean at Beira into the heart of Mashonaland, and brought the construction of a railway from Mashonaland across the Zambesi to Lake Tanganyika within the horizon of practicable enterprises. A scheme of government has been settled for the territories of the British South Africa Company south of the Zambesi (Southern Rhodesia), which is now at work. The prospects of gold mining in that region are believed to have improved, and the increase of gold production in the mines of the Witwatersrand has proved even more rapid than was expected in 1896. An agreement has been concluded between Britain and the German Empire relating to their interests on the coast of the Indian Ocean, which, though its terms have not been disclosed, is generally understood to have removed an obstacle which might have been feared to the acquisition by Britain of such rights at Delagoa Bay as she may be able to obtain from Portugal, and to have withdrawn from the South African Republic any hope that State might have cherished of support from Germany in the event of a breach with Britain.
These events, however, great as is their bearing on the future, are of less present moment than those which have sprung from Dr. Jameson's expedition into the Transvaal in December, 1895, and the internal troubles in that State which caused and accompanied his enterprise. It rekindled race feeling all over South Africa, and has had the most disastrous effects upon every part of the country. To understand these effects it is necessary to understand the state of opinion in the British Colonies and in the two Republics before it took place. Let us examine these communities separately.
In Cape Colony and Natal there was before December, 1895, no hostility at all between the British and the Dutch elements. Political parties in Cape Colony were, in a broad sense, British and Dutch, but the distinction was really based not so much on racial differences as on economic interests. The rural element which desired a protective tariff and laws regulating native labour, was mainly Dutch, the commercial element almost wholly British. Mr. Rhodes, the embodiment of British Imperialism, was Prime Minister through the support of the Dutch element and the Africander Bond. Englishmen and Dutchmen were everywhere in the best social relations. The old blood sympathy of the Dutch element for the Transvaal Boers which had been so strongly manifested in 1881, when the latter were struggling for their independence, had been superseded, or at least thrown into the background, by displeasure at the unneighbourly policy of the Transvaal Government in refusing public employment to Cape Dutchmen as well as to Englishmen, and in throwing obstacles in the way of trade in agricultural products. This displeasure culminated when the Transvaal Government, in the summer of 1895, closed the Drifts (fords) on the Vaal River, to the detriment of imports from the Colony and the Orange Free State.
In the Orange Free State there was, as has been pointed out in Chapter XIX., perfect good feeling and cordial co-operation in all public matters between the Dutch and the English elements. There was also perfect friendliness to Britain, the old grievances of the Diamond Fields dispute (see page 144) and of the arrest of the Free State conquest of Basutoland having been virtually forgotten. Towards the Transvaal there was a political sympathy based partly on kinship, partly on a similarity of republican institutions. But there was also some annoyance at the policy which the Transvaal Government, and especially its Hollander advisers, were pursuing; coupled with a desire to see reforms effected in the Transvaal, and the franchise granted to immigrants on more liberal terms.
Of the Transvaal itself I need say the less, because its condition is fully described in Chapter XXV. There was of course much irritation among the Uitlanders of English and Colonial stock, with an arrogant refusal on the part of the ruling section and the more extreme old-fashioned Boers to admit the claims of these new-comers. But there was also a party among the burghers, important more by the character and ability of its members than by its numbers, yet growing in influence, which desired reform, perceived that the existing state of things could not continue, and was ready to join the Uitlanders in agitating for sweeping changes in the Constitution and in