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BORDER DISPUTES

[1866-1877 A.D.]

From the date of their first settlement in the Orange river territories, the Boers were continually at feud with their Basuto neighbours on the eastern border. In 1866 they organised a powerful expedition, and attacked Moshesh. The expedition was successful, Moshesh was defeated, and a treaty was arrived at, by which he gave up possession of a portion of Basutoland, and acknowledged himself the subject of the Free State. This treaty did not, however, by any means terminate the strife; a period of feud continued, in the course of which Moshesh and his followers were reduced to very dire straits. They appealed to Great Britain for assistance, and in 1869 a treaty was agreed to between the high commissioner and the Orange Free State, defining the borders between the Orange Free State and Basutoland. All the fertile tract of country lying to the north of the Orange river and west of the Caledon, originally a part of Basutoland, was ceded to the Free State.

The Basutoland difficulties were no sooner arranged than the Free Staters found themselves confronted with a serious difficulty on their western border. In the years 1870-1871 a large number of diggers had settled on the diamond fields, which were situated on the boundary between the Griqua chief Waterboer and the Free State. At the time both the Free State and Waterboer claimed the district, and the Free State established a temporary government over the diamond fields, but the administration of this body was satisfactory neither to the Free State nor to the diggers. At this juncture Waterboer offered to place the territory under the administration of Queen Victoria. The offer was accepted, and on October 27th, 1870, the district was proclaimed, under the name of Griqualand West, British territory. President Brand contended at the time that Waterboer's title was a bad one. The matter involved much correspondence and no little irritation between the British government and the Free State until 1876.

It was then finally disposed of by Lord Carnarvon, who granted to the Free State £90,000 in compensation for any possible harm or wrong which the Free State might have sustained from the annexation. In making this concession, it is right to state that Lord Carnarvon, having gone into the question, declined to acknowledge any validity in the Free State claim to the territory in question. One thing at least is certain with regard to the diamond fields -they were the means of restoring the credit and prosperity of the Free State. In the opinion, moreover, of Doctor Theal, who has written the history of the Boer republics and has been a consistent supporter of the Boers, the annexation of Griqualand West was probably in the best interests of the Free State. Fortunately at the time the Free State had an enlightened and liberalminded ruler in President Brand, who avoided collisions and encouraged amicable relations with the British authorities.

In spite of the troubles on her borders, the Free State, under Brand's beneficent and tactful guidance, made progress in various directions. Villages sprang up, roads were constructed, and a postal service was established. Tea-planting was encouraged by the government. At the same time the Free State Boers, like their Transvaal neighbours, had drifted into financial straits. A paper currency had been instituted, and the notes currently known as "bluebacks"-soon dropped to less than half their normal value. Commerce was largely carried on by barter, and many cases of bankruptcy occurred in the state. But as British annexation in 1877 saved the Transvaal from bankruptcy, so did the influx of British and other immigrants to the diamond fields, in the early seventies, restore public credit and individual

[1880-1895 A.D.]

prosperity to the Boers of the Free State. The diamond fields offered a ready market for stock and other agricultural produce. Money flowed into the pockets of the farmers. Public credit was restored. "Bluebacks" recovered par value, and were duly called in and redeemed by the government. At a later date valuable diamond mines were discovered within the Free State, of which the one at Jagersfontein is the richest. Capital from Kimberley and London were soon provided with which to work them. The relations between the diggers and the Free State Boers, after the question of the boundary_was once settled, remained perfectly amicable down to the outbreak of the Boer war in 1899.

In 1880, when a rising of the Boers in the Transvaal against Sir Owen Lanyon was threatening, President Brand showed every desire to avert the conflict. He suggested to the authorities at Cape Town that Sir Henry de Villiers, chief justice of Cape Colony, should be sent into the Transvaal to endeavour to gauge the true state of affairs in that country. This suggestion was not acted upon, but when, in 1881, the Boers in the Transvaal broke out into open rebellion and war followed, Brand declined to take any part in the struggle. At a later date he urged that peace should be brought about, and expressed his friendly sentiments towards the British government. In spite of the neutral attitude taken by Brand during this period, there can be no question that a certain number of the Free State Boers, living in the northern part of the Free State, went to the Transvaal and joined their brethren then in arms against the British government. In 1888 Sir John Brand died. He had been president of the country since 1863, and in him the Boers, not only in the Free State but in the whole of South Africa, lost one of the most enlightened and most upright rulers and leaders they have ever had. Throughout his long official career he remained on cordial terms of friendship with Great Britain.

THE NEW RÉGIME

In 1889 an agreement was come to between the Free State and the Cape Colony government, whereby the latter were empowered to extend, at their own cost, their railway system to Bloemfontein. The Free State retained the right to purchase this extension at cost, a right which they exercised within the course of a few years. In the same year Mr. Reitz was elected president of the Free State. His accession to the presidency marked the commencement of a new and disastrous line of policy in the public affairs of the country. Mr. Reitz had no sooner got into office than a meeting was arranged with President Kruger, at which various terms of the agreement dealing with the railways, terms of a treaty of amity and commerce, and what was called a political treaty, were discussed and decided upon. The political treaty referred in general terms to a federal union between the two states, and bound each of them to help the other, whenever the independence of either should be assailed or threatened from without, unless the state so called upon for assistance should be able to show the injustice of the cause of quarrel in which the other state had engaged. In 1889 the Free State, having accepted the assistance of the Cape government in constructing its railway, entered into a customs union convention with them. In 1895 the Free State volksraad passed a resolution, in which they declared their readiness to entertain a proposition from the Transvaal in favour of some form of federal union. In the same year President Reitz retired from the presidency of the Free State on the ground of ill-health, and was succeeded by Judge Steyn. In 1896

[1897-1900 A.D.] a further offensive and defensive alliance between the two republics was entered into, under which the Free State took up arms on the outbreak of hostilities with the Transvaal in 1899.

In 1897 President Kruger, being bent on still further cementing the union with the Free State, himself visited Bloemfontein. It was on this occasion that President Kruger, referring to the London convention, spoke of Queen Victoria as a kwaaje Frau, an expression which caused a good deal of offence in England at the time, but which, to any one familiar with the homely phraseology of the Boers, obviously was not meant by President Kruger as insulting. In order to understand the attitude which the Free State took at this time in relation to the Transvaal, it is necessary to review the history of Mr. Reitz from an earlier date. Previous to his becoming president of the Free State he had acted as its chief justice, and still earlier in life had practised as an advocate in Cape Colony. In 1881 Mr. Reitz had, with his successor President Steyn, come under the influence of a clever German named Borckenhagen, the editor of the Bloemfontein Express. These three men were principally responsible for the formation of the Afrikander Bond. From 1881 onwards there is no doubt that they cherished the one idea of an independent South Africa, in which a monopoly of independence was to be held by the Boers.

Brand during his lifetime had been far too sagacious to be led away by this pseudo-nationalist dream. He did his utmost to discountenance the Bond when it was started by Mr. Reitz and Mr. Borckenhagen, inasmuch as he saw full well that it was calculated to cause mischief in the future. At the same time his policy was guided by a sincere patriotism, which looked to the true prosperity of the Free State as well as to that of the whole of South Africa. It was only after his death that the fatal development of an exclusively Dutch policy arose in the Free State. From his death may be dated the disastrous line of policy which led to the extinction of the state as a republic. The one prominent member of the volksraad who inherited the traditions and enlightened views of President Brand with regard to the future of the Free State was Mr. G. J. Fraser, the son of a Presbyterian minister, who had acted as a minister in the Dutch Reformed church since the middle of the century.

The economic progress of the Free State, which began with the discovery of the diamond fields, has been redoubled since the construction of the railway through its territory to Johannesburg, thus fully justifying the forward commercial policy adopted in the teeth of Transvaal opposition. In illustration of this we have only to cite the fact that, in 1898-1899, out of a total revenue of about £650,000, more than half represented. the earnings of the railway.

THE FREE STATE AND PRESIDENT KRUGER

On entering Bloemfontein in 1900 the British obtained possession of certain state papers which contained records of negotiations between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The evidence contained in these state records so clearly marks the difference between the policy of Mr. Kruger and the pacific, commercial policy of President Brand and his followers, that the documents call for careful consideration. From these papers it was found that, in 1887, two secret conferences had taken place between the republics. At the first of these conferences, held in Pretoria, there were present President Kruger, with his state secretary and state attorney, Messrs. Bok and Leyds and a commission of the Transvaal volksraad. On the other side the deputa

[1896-1897 A.D.]

tion from the Free State volksraad was composed of Messrs. Fraser, Klynveld, and Myburgh.

The result of this conference was a secret session of the Transvaal volksraad and the proposition of a secret treaty with the Free State, by which each state should bind itself not to build railways to its frontier without the consent of the other, the eastern and northern frontiers of the Transvaal being excepted. The railway from Pretoria to Bloemfontein was to be proceeded with; neither party was to enter the customs union without the consent of the other. The Transvaal was to pay £20,000 annually to the Free State for loss incurred for not having the railway to Cape Colony. Such a treaty as the one proposed would simply have enslaved the Free State to the Transvaal. It was rejected by the Free State volksraad in due course, but President Kruger determined on a still more active measure, and proceeded to interview President Brand at Bloemfontein. A series of meetings took place in October of the same year (1887). President Brand opened the proceedings by proposing a treaty of friendship and free trade between the two republics. President Kruger, however, soon brushed these propositions aside, and responded by stating that, in consideration of the common enemy and the dangers which threatened the republic, an offensive and defensive alliance must be preliminary to any closer union. Brand refused to allow the Free State to be committed to a suicidal treaty, or dragged into any wild policy, which the Transvaal might deem it expedient to adopt. The result of the whole conference was that Kruger returned to Pretoria completely baffled, and for a time the Free State was saved from being a party to the fatal policy into which others subsequently drew it. Independent power of action was retained by Brand for the Free State in both the railway and customs union questions.

THE BREAK WITH GREAT BRITAIN

After Sir John Brand's death, as already stated, Mr. Reitz became president, and consistently followed out that policy which, as one of the founders of the Bond, he had endeavoured to inaugurate throughout Dutch South Africa. A series of agreements and measures in the volksraad gradually subordinated those true Free State interests which Brand had always protected to the mistaken ambition and narrow views of the Transvaal. Mr. Fraser in vain tried to stem the tide of Krugerism within the Free State, but the extent to which it had travelled after Brand's death was evidenced by the election for president in February, 1896, when Mr. Steyn was elected against Mr. Fraser by forty-one votes to nineteen. That this election should have taken place immediately after the Jameson raid probably increased President Steyn's majority. At the same time the history of the state after Brand's death renders it probable that Mr. Fraser's defeat was only a question of degree. Mr. Fraser continued, down to the outbreak of the war of 1899, consistently to denounce the policy on which the Free State had embarked, warning his countrymen continually that this policy could have but one end-the loss of their independence. Underlying the state policy there was undoubtedly the belief, if not with President Steyn himself, at least with his followers, that the two republics combined would be more than a match for the power of Great Britain should hostilities eventually occur.

In December, 1897, the Free State revised its constitution in reference to the franchise law, and the process of naturalisation was reduced from five to three years. The oath of allegiance to the state was alone required, and no

[1833-1838 A.D.] renunciation of nationality was insisted upon. In 1898 the Free State also acquiesced in the fresh convention arranged with regard to the customs unions between the Cape Colony, Basutoland, and the Bechuanaland protectorate. These measures suggest that already a slight reaction against the extreme policy of President Kruger had set in. But events were moving rapidly in the Transvaal, and matters had proceeded too far for the Free State to turn back. In 1899 President Steyn suggested the conference at Bloemfontein between President Kruger and Sir Alfred Milner, but this act, if it expressed at all a genuine desire for reconciliation, was too late. President Kruger had got the Free State ensnared in his meshes. The Free Staters were bound practically hand and foot, under the offensive and defensive alliance, in case hostilities arose with Great Britain, either to denounce the policy to which they had so unwisely been secretly party, or to throw in their lot with the Transvaal. War occurred, and they accepted the inevitable consequence. In September, 1899, Sir Alfred Milner sent a despatch to President Steyn, informing him that the exigencies of the situation demanded that he should take some steps to protect his line of communications, and that he was stationing a force near the Orange Free State frontier. Sir Alfred Milner at the same time expressed the hope that the difference between the British government and the Transvaal might still be adjusted, but if this hope were disappointed, he should look to the Free State to preserve strict neutrality, in which case the integrity of their territory would in all circumstances be respected. In similar circumstances Sir John Brand had remained neutral in 1881, but he was unfettered by any treaty with the Transvaal. For President Steyn and the Free State of 1899, in the light of the negotiations we have recorded, neutrality was impossible. Before war had actually broken out the Free State began to expel British subjects, and the very first act of war was committed by Free State Boers, who, on the 11th of October, seized a train upon the border belonging to Natal.6

THE TRANSVAAL

The historic life of the Transvaal begins with the Great Trek, or general exodus of the Cape Colony Boers, who, being dissatisfied, especially with the liberal policy of the British government towards the natives, removed northwards in large numbers between the years 1833 and 1837. By 1836 some thousands had already crossed the Vaal, that is, had reached the "TransVaal" country, which at that time was mostly under the sway of the powerful refugee Zulu chief Moselekatse, whose principal kraal was at Mosega in the present Marico district on the west frontier. To avenge the massacre of some emigrant bands, the Boers under Maritz and Potgieter attacked and utterly defeated Moselekatse at this place in 1837. Next year the Zulu chief withdrew beyond the Limpopo, where he founded the present Matabele state between that river and the Zambesi, thus leaving the region between the Vaal and Limpopo virtually in the hands of the trekkers. But their position was rendered insecure on the east side by the military despotism of the fierce Zulu chief Dingaan, who, after the murder of his brother Chaka, had asserted his authority over the whole of Zululand and most of the present Natal. The situation was rendered almost desperate by the complete route and wholesale massacre (1838) of the right division of the emigrant Boers, who had ventured to cross the Buffalo under Peter Retief, and who were defeated by Dingaan, first at Umkongloof (Aceldama), then at Weenen

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