Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed | Page 9

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.
FOOTNOTES: