Impressions of South Africa | Page 2

because they
lie outside the present crisis. One is the entrance of the Colony of Natal
into the South African Customs Union, an event which created one
uniform tariff system for the whole 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as she may be able to obtain from Portugal, and to have withdrawn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