Another murder and deed of shame in South Africa’s account with England!

In the meantime Sir Harry Smith had annexed the Free State as the “Orange River Sovereignty,” on the pretext that four-fifths of the inhabitants favoured British dominion, and were only intimidated by the power of Pretorius from manifesting their wishes.

But the British Resident soon came into collision with Moshesh, the great and crafty head chieftain of the Basutos.

The Boers were called up to assist, but only 75 responded out of the 1,000 who were called up. The English had then to eat the leek. The Resident informed his Government that the fate of the Orange River Sovereignty depended upon Andries Pretorius, the very man on whose head Sir Harry Smith had put a price of L2,000. Earl Grey censured and abandoned both Sir Harry Smith and the Resident, Major Warden, saying in his despatch to the Governor dated 15th December, 1851, that the British Government had annexed the country on the understanding that the inhabitants had generally desired it. But if they would not support the British Government, which had only been established in their interests, and if they wished to be freed from that authority, there was no longer any use in continuing it.

The Governor was clearly given to understand by the British Government that there was in future to be no interference in any of the wars which might take place between the different tribes and the inhabitants of independent states beyond the Colonial boundaries, no matter how sanguinary such wars might happen to be.

In other words, as Froude says, “In 1852 we had discovered that wars with the Natives and wars with the Dutch were expensive and useless, that sending troops out and killing thousands of Natives was an odd way of protecting them. We resolved then to keep within our own territories, to meddle no more beyond the Orange River, and to leave the Dutch and the Natives to settle their differences among themselves.”

And again: “Grown sick at last of enterprises which led neither to honour nor peace, we resolved, in 1852, to leave Boers, Kaffirs, Basutos, and Zulus to themselves, and make the Orange River the boundary of British responsibilities. We made formal treaties with the two Dutch States, binding ourselves to interfere no more between them and the Natives, and to leave them either to establish themselves as a barrier between ourselves and the interior of Africa, or to sink, as was considered most likely, in an unequal struggle with warlike tribes, by whom they were infinitely outnumbered.”

The administration of the Free State cost the British taxpayer too much. There was an idea, too, that if enough rope were given to the Boer he would hang himself.

A new Governor, Sir George Cathcart, was sent out with two Special Commissioners to give effect to the new policy. A new Treaty between England and the Free State was signed, by which full independence was guaranteed to the Republic, the British Government undertaking at the same time not to interfere with any of the Native tribes north of the Orange River.

As Cathcart remarked in his letters the Sovereignty bubble had burst, and the silly Sovereignty farce was played out.

Not fifteen years had elapsed since the Convention between England and the Free State before it was broken by the English. It had been solemnly stipulated that England would not interfere in Native affairs north of the Orange River. The Basutos had murdered the Freestaters, plundered them, ravished their wives, and committed endless acts of violence. After a bitter struggle of three years, the Freestaters had succeeded in inflicting a well-merited chastisement on the Basutos, when the British intervened in 1869 in favour of the Natives, notwithstanding the fact that they had reiterated their declaration of non-interference in the Aliwal Convention.

The ground was thereupon taken from the Boers, and “from that day no Boer in South Africa has been able to trust to English promises.”

Later, when Brand went to England, the British Government acknowledged its guilt and paid L90,000 for the richest diamond fields in the world, a sum which scarcely represents the daily output of the mines.

But notwithstanding the Free State Convention, notwithstanding the renewed promises of the Aliwal Convention the Free State was forced to suffer a third breach of the Convention at the hands of the English. Ten thousand rifles were imported into Kimberley through the Cape Colony, and sold there to the natives who encircled and menaced the two Dutch Republics. General Sir Arthur Cunynghame, the British Commander-in-Chief in South Africa, admits that 400,000 guns were sold to Kaffirs during his term of office. Protests from the Transvaal and the Free State were of no avail. And when the Free State in the exercise of its just rights stopped waggons laden with guns on their way through its territory, it was forced to pay compensation to the British Government.

“The Free State,” says the historian Froude, “paid the money, but paid it under protest, with an old-fashioned appeal to the God of Righteousness, whom, strange to say, they believed to be a reality.”

It seems thus that there is no place for the God of Righteousness in English policy.

So far we have considered our Exodus from the Cape Colony, and the way in which we were deprived of Natal and the Free State by England. Now for the case of the Transvaal.