Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

SOUTH AFRICA, 1895-1933

By 1895 the Transvaal Republic presented an acute problem. All political control was in the hands of a rural, backward, Bible-reading, racist minority of Boers, while all economic wealth was in the hands of a violent, aggressive majority of foreigners (Uitlanders), most of whom lived in the new city of Johannesburg. The Uitlanders, who were twice as numerous as the Boers and owned two-thirds of the land and nine-tenths of the wealth of the country, were prevented from participating in political life or from becoming citizens (except after fourteen years’ residence) and were irritated by a series of minor pinpricks and extortions (such as tax differentials, a dynamite monopoly, and transportation restrictions) and by rumors that the Transvaal president, Paul Kruger, was intriguing to obtain some kind of German intervention and protection. At this point in 1895, Rhodes made his plans to overthrow Kruger’s government by an uprising in Johannesburg, financed by himself and Beit, and led by his brother Frank Rhodes, Abe Bailey, and other supporters, followed by an invasion of the Transvaal by a force led by Jameson from Bechuanaland and Rhodesia. Flora Shaw used The Times to prepare public opinion in England, while Albert Grey and others negotiated with Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain for the official support that was necessary. Unfortunately, when the revolt fizzled out in Johannesburg, Jameson raided anyway in an effort to revive it, and was easily captured by the Boers. The public officials involved denounced the plot, loudly proclaimed their surprise at the event, and were able to whitewash most of the participants in the subsequent parliamentary inquiry. A telegram from the German Kaiser to President Kruger of the Transvaal, congratulating him on his success “in preserving the independence of his country without the need to call for aid from his friends,” was built up by The Times into an example of brazen German interference in British affairs, and almost eclipsed Jameson’s aggression.

Rhodes was stopped only temporarily, but he had lost the support of many of the Boers. For almost two years he and his friends stayed quiet, waiting for the storm to blow over. Then they began to act again. Propaganda, most of it true, about the plight of Uitlanders in the Transvaal Republic flooded England and South Africa from Flora Shaw, W. T. Stead, Edmund Garrett, and others; Milner was made high commissioner of South Africa (1897); Brett worked his way into the confidence of the monarchy to become its chief political adviser during a period of more than twenty-five years (he wrote almost daily letters of advice to King Edward during his reign, 1901-1910). By a process whose details are still obscure, a brilliant, young graduate of Cambridge, Jan Smuts, who had been a vigorous supporter of Rhodes and acted as his agent in Kimberley as late as 1895 and who was one of the most important members of the Rhodes-Milner group in the period 1908-1950, went to the Transvaal and, by violent anti-British agitation, became state secretary of that country (although a British subject) and chief political adviser to President Kruger; Milner made provocative troop movements on the Boer frontiers in spite of the vigorous protests of his commanding general in South Africa, who had to be removed; and, finally, war was precipitated when Smuts drew up an ultimatum insisting that the British troop movements cease and when this was rejected by Milner.

The Boer War (1899-1902) was one of the most important events in British imperial history. The ability of 40,000 Boer farmers to hold off ten times as many British for three years, inflicting a series of defeats on them over that period, destroyed faith in British power. Although the Boer republics were defeated and annexed in 1902, Britain’s confidence was so shaken that it made a treaty with Japan in the same year providing that if either signer became engaged in war with two enemies in the Far East the other signer would come to the rescue. This treaty, which allowed Japan to attack Russia in 1904, lasted for twenty years, being extended to the Middle East in 1912. At the same time Germany’s obvious sympathy with the Boers, combined with the German naval construction program of 1900, alienated the British people from the Germans and contributed greatly toward the Anglo-French entente of 1904.

Milner took over the two defeated Boer republics and administered them as occupied territory until 1905, using a civil service of young men recruited for the purpose. This group, known as “Milner’s Kindergarten,” reorganized the government and administration of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony and played a major role in South African life generally. When Milner left public life in 1905 to devote himself to international finance and the Rhodes enterprises, Lord Selborne, his successor as high commissioner, took over the Kindergarten and continued to use it. In 1906 a new Liberal government in London granted self-government to the two Boer states. The Kindergarten spent the next four years in a successful effort to create a South African Federation. The task was not an easy one, even with such powerful backing as Selborne, Smuts (who was now the dominant political figure in the Transvaal, although Botha held the position of prime minister), and Jameson (who was the prime minister of the Cape Colony in 1904-1908). The subject was broached through a prearranged public interchange of letters between Jameson and Selborne. Then Selborne published a memorandum, written by Philip Kerr (Lothian) and Lionel Curtis, calling for a union of the four colonies. Kerr founded a periodical (The State, financed by Sir Abe Bailey) which advocated federation in every issue; Curtis and others scurried about organizing “Closer Union” societies; Robert H. (Lord) Brand and (Sir) Patrick Duncan laid the groundwork for the new constitution. At the Durban constitutional convention (where Duncan and B. K. Long were legal advisers) the Transvaal delegation was controlled by Smuts and the Kindergarten. This delegation, which was heavily financed, tightly organized, and knew exactly what it wanted, dominated the convention, wrote the constitution for the Union of South Africa, and succeeded in having it ratified (1910). Local animosities were compromised in a series of ingenious arrangements, including one by which the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the new government were placed in three different cities. The Rhodes-Milner group recognized that Boer nationalism and color intolerance were threats to the future stability and loyalty of South Africa, but they had faith in the political influence of Smuts and Botha, of Rhodes’s allies, and of the four members of the Kindergarten who stayed in South Africa to hold off these problems until time could moderate the irreconcilable Boers, In this they were mistaken, because, as men like Jameson (1917), Botha (1919), Duncan (1943), Long (1943), and Smuts (1950) died off, they were not replaced by men of equal loyalty and ability, with the result that the Boer extremists under D. F. Malan came to power in 1948.

The first Cabinet of the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 by the South African Party, which was largely Boer, with Louis Botha as prime minister. The real master of the government was Smuts, who held three out of nine portfolios, all important ones, and completely dominated Botha. Their policy of reconciliation with the English and of loyal support for the British connection was violently opposed by the Boer Nationalists within the party led by J. B. M. Hertzog. Hertzog was eager to get independence from Britain and to reserve political control in a South African republic to Boers only. He obtained growing support by agitating on the language and educational issues, insisting that all government officials must speak Afrikaans and that it be a compulsory language in schools, with English a voluntary, second language.