South Africa and the Transvaal War (Vol. 1-8). Louis Creswicke
but they will at the same time call upon the people to submit quietly, pending the issue. You need not be disquieted by such action, because it is taken merely to save appearances, and the members of the Government from the violence of a faction that seems for years to have held Pretoria in terror when any act of the Government displeased it. You will better understand this when I tell you privately that the President has from the first fully acquiesced in the necessity for the change, and that most of the members of the Government have expressed themselves anxious for it—but none of them have had the courage openly to express their opinions, so I have had to act apparently against them, and this I felt bound to do, knowing the state and danger of the country, and that three-fourths of the people will be thankful for the change when once it is made."
As a matter of fact the annexation was received with rejoicing all over the country. "God save the Queen" was sung, and special thanksgiving services were held in many of the churches. The Union Jack was run up, the Republican flag hauled down without a dissentient voice. The arrival of British troops—the first battalion of the 13th Regiment—was hailed with curiosity and pleasure, the Boers with their women and children turning out to meet it and hear the band play. The financial effects of the new departure were magical. Credit and commerce were at once restored. Valueless railway bonds rose to par, and the price of landed property was nearly doubled. On the Queen's birthday, the first after the annexation, the 24th of May 1877, the native chiefs were invited to attend, and the Union Jack was formally hoisted to the strains of the National Anthem. This same flag was within a few years ignobly hauled down during the signing of the Convention at Pretoria, and formally buried by a party of Englishmen and loyal natives. But for the time being all seemed pleased with the new state of affairs. As Mr. Haggard says, it is difficult to reconcile the enthusiasm of a great number of the inhabitants of the Transvaal for English rule and the quiet acquiescence of the remainder at this time, with the decidedly antagonistic attitude subsequently assumed. His description of the situation in "The Last Boer War" seems to be more near the truth than any forthcoming: "The Transvaal, when we annexed it, was in the position of a man with a knife at his throat, who is suddenly rescued by some one stronger than he, on certain conditions which at the time he gladly accepts, but afterwards, when the danger is passed, wishes to repudiate. In the same way the inhabitants of the South African Republic were in the time of need very thankful for our aid, but after a while, when the recollection of their difficulties had grown faint, when their debts had been paid and their enemies had been defeated, they began to think that they would like to get rid of us again, and start fresh on their own account with a clean sheet."
In the management of affairs it appears that Mr. Burgers began to set an example of the policy which Mr. Kruger has since followed: the policy of trying to sit on either side of the fence. Mr. Kruger has struggled more and more violently to accomplish this feat as the years advance and he advances in years. He has tried to grab the advantages attendant upon the possession of gold mines and schemed to acquire a great financial status, and yet at the same time to keep up his affectation of piety and to maintain his pristine condition of bucolic irresponsibility. Brought face to face with Sir T. Shepstone's scheme for annexation, Mr. Burger privately encouraged the proposed action of the Government—he and his colleagues even stipulating for pension and office—while publicly he lifted up his protest against the innovation.
The Boer, with his usual craft, had decided that the British Government should set him financially on his feet, which feet he meant promptly to use for running away from his responsibilities. Some declare that the policy of Sir T. Shepstone was premature, that he should have waited until the Boer had soaked further in the slough of insolvency into which he was fast sinking. But Sekukuni was threatening, and on the south-eastern frontier Cetchwayo, with a force some thirty thousand strong, was waiting his opportunity. The promise of the future was a general holocaust, in which Boer men, women, and children, farms and flocks would be annihilated. Sir T. Shepstone, had he been other than a Briton, might have stayed his hand and waited till the Boers were effectually swept away, but being a Briton he acted as such, doubtless arguing that,
"As we under Heaven are supreme head,
So, under him, that great supremacy,
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold."
THE WEB THICKENING
It must be remembered that between the Zulus and the Boers no boundary line had ever been fixed, and that for over a dozen years the Zulu chiefs had repeatedly implored the British Governor in Natal for advice and help in their dealings with these aggressors. It had been part of the Dutch policy—if policy it may be called—to force the Zulu gradually to edge further and further from the rich pasture lands sloping eastward of the Drakensberg Mountains, and spreading to right and left into the north and west of Zululand. Little notice had been taken of their petitions, and the Zulus had determined to take the law into their own hands. Cetchwayo, therefore, when the news of our annexation of the Transvaal reached him, was like a wild beast baulked of its prey. He was anxious for an occasion for his young warriors "to wash their spears" in the gore of his enemies, and was naturally disappointed to find them under the protection of the white man. The Natal Government attempted to soothe him—to promote peace. He remained sullen and simmered. He vented his spleen by putting several young women to death for having refused to marry his soldiers. On being remonstrated with by the Natal Government, he expressed himself with engaging candour. His own words, without comment, describe the character with which we had to deal.
"Did I ever tell Mr. Shepstone," his Majesty cried, "that I would not kill? Did Mr. Shepstone tell the white people I made such an arrangement? Because if he did he deceived them. I do kill; but I do not consider that I have done anything yet in the way of killing. Why do the white people start at nothing? I have not yet begun. I have yet to kill. It is the custom of our nation, and I will not depart from it. Why does the Governor of Natal speak to me about my laws? I shall not agree to any laws or rules from Natal, and by so doing throw the large kraal which I govern into the water. My people will not listen unless they are killed, and while wishing to be friends with the English I do not agree to give my people over to be governed by laws sent to me by them. Have I not asked the English to allow me to wash my spears since the death of my father, Upandi, and they have kept playing with me all the time, treating me as a child?" … A good deal more followed in this strain. Since his accession the gallant Cetchwayo had decided to "wash his spears" in the blood of his neighbours, and whatever the British might have to say in the matter, wash them he would. It was obvious, therefore, that a ruffian of this kind, backed by a bloodthirsty following, was a permanent danger to our Colony of Natal and to its white inhabitants. Something must be done to remove the disquiet caused by the utterances of the savage. Sir Henry Bulwer (the Governor of Natal)—to conciliate the king and to allay his fears lest his territory, like that of the Boers, should be annexed—proposed that a commission should investigate the rival claims of Boers and Zulus on border questions, and settle them by arbitration. But what Sir H. Bulwer proposed Sir Bartle Frere, High Commissioner in South Africa, disapproved. He felt that Cetchwayo and his host would be a standing menace to the borders of Natal. Nevertheless he agreed to a discussion of the vexed boundary question between Boer and Zulu, in which the commissioners declared unanimously against the claims of the former. Certain land only to west of the Blood River, held by the Boers and unchallenged by the Zulus, was confirmed to the Dutch settlers in their occupation of the same. But to this decision Sir Bartle Frere considered it expedient to add some saving clauses. These demanded, first, that Cetchwayo should adhere to the guarantees he had given and not permit indiscriminate shedding of blood; second, that he should institute from his existing military system the form of tribal quotas; third, that he should accept the presence of a British Resident; fourth, that he should protect the missionaries and their converts; and lastly, that he should surrender certain criminals and pay certain fines. His Zulu Majesty was given thirty days to consider the subject. Instead of considering he flouted it. The result was war.
THE ZULU WAR