Boer History1872 in South Africa: Barkly, Burgers, Brand, and the Annexation Bill
Barkly, the Annexation Bill, and the Cape Parliament — Colony 1872
Sir Henry Barkly governed the Cape Colony and held Her Majesty’s high commission when the year opened. He had taken the oaths at Capetown on the 31st of December 1870. The ministers who sat with him were not a cabinet that fell if they lost a vote. They held their offices by direct appointment of the secretary of state, carried out the instructions the governor gave, and might propose measures and speak in both chambers, but they had no votes. That arrangement mattered in 1872 because the year’s Cape question was not whether a ministry would resign: it was whether the houses would take, as a colonial charge, the diamond territory Barkly already governed as high commissioner. [3]
On the 24th of January 1871 Earl Kimberley had instructed Barkly not to be a party to the annexation of any territory which the Cape Colony would be unable to govern and defend by its own unaided resources. London would accept new ground only if the Cape paid for it and raised its own force. The possession of the diamond-fields by any state or colony was regarded everywhere in the country as a great prize, and the governor had believed that the Cape legislature would be eager to secure it. In July 1871 the colonial secretary moved that the territory commonly designated the diamond-fields should be annexed to the colony. The divisions were narrow. Molteno’s amendment that the house could not at present entertain the question was lost by 27 against 25. On the 20th of July Smith’s proposition was carried only by 27 votes against 26. In the legislative council the resolution survived by 10 votes to 9. Barkly then abandoned the design of bringing in an annexation bill during that session. On the 5th of August the houses, without a division, authorised him only to keep order, collect revenue, and administer justice pending the boundary dispute, with the assurance that the government did not intend to take one inch of territory from the Free State. [3]
Those votes had not annexed the fields. They had given the high commissioner a narrow leave to keep order while Waterboer’s name was still the legal cover. On the 21st of October 1871 Barkly proclaimed the territory British. On the 8th of December a commission issued appointing him governor of Griqualand West. The Cape Parliament had still not taken the ground as a colonial district. That is why this year’s bill existed: Barkly now asked the houses to do what they had refused to put into a statute in 1871 — to make the diamond territory a Cape charge, governed and defended from Capetown, under Kimberley’s condition that the colony must do it unaided. [3]
The Cape Parliament this year refused to adopt that annexation bill. The high commissioner introduced it. The houses would not take Griqualand West as a colonial charge. The refusal mattered because Kimberley’s condition of the 24th of January 1871 still stood, because the July and August votes of 1871 had been carried by two votes and by one, and because a territory already flying the British flag now remained outside the colonial roll: not a Cape district, not a Free State district, and not Waterboer’s camp in any fiction the police and the magistrates could still uphold. Barkly still governed from the castle, and he still governed Griqualand West. The prize that had been regarded everywhere as worth the taking stayed outside the Colony’s law. [3]
The same houses had taken the Lesuto. Basutoland had been annexed to the Cape Colony by the Act of August 1871, ratified by the Queen in council on the 3rd of November, but had not been made subject to colonial law: the duty of legislating for the territory was vested in the governor. C. D. Griffith had assumed on the 2nd of August 1871 as chief magistrate and governor’s agent. The select committee of 1871 had reported a wide field of profitable commercial enterprise, that the country having already been declared British territory it would be undesirable for the colony not to obtain legislative control, and that annexation did not appear likely to entail any additional burden. The hut-tax to the 31st of May 1871 had brought 3721 pounds of 4753. That contrast stood on the colonial roll when the diamond bill was refused: a mountain country taken as a Cape charge because it seemed cheap, and a diamond territory, regarded everywhere as a great prize, left as a separate government under the high commissioner. Griffith remained the agent at Maseru. The Caledon remained the fixed boundary. Colonial law was still withheld from the Lesuto. The governor was still the legislator there. The hut-tax still came in; the diamond licences still went outside the colonial treasury. [3]
Kimberley, Gilfillan, and Griqualand West as a Separate Government — Diamond Fields 1872
Griqualand West was the name given to the whole territory annexed to the British dominions in October 1871. It was about 17800 square miles. The part between the Vaal, the Vetberg line, and the line from Ramah to Platberg, over which Free State courts had exercised jurisdiction, contained between 140 and 150 occupied farms. Over 200000 acres in it were held under British titles granted during the Sovereignty period. No Griquas were living within that farm country. About 1000 Europeans, young and old, were residing on the farms. The dry diggings that had drawn the camps — Dutoitspan, Bultfontein, and the mine first spoken of as Kimberley in June 1871 — lay in the Pniel district, where Barkly had hoped Truter, popular with the diggers, would continue under the British flag. He did not. [3]
On the 4th of November 1871 a small party of the Cape frontier armed and mounted police, under Inspector Gilfillan, took possession of the dry diggings and hoisted the British flag. The great majority of the diggers kept very quiet. Truter handed him a protest. On the 16th of November a British magistrate assumed duty at the pans. On the 18th Truter retired to Bloemfontein. On the 8th of December those acts were approved in the Queen’s name, and Barkly was commissioned governor of Griqualand West. The year opened with that separate government already in being: Gilfillan’s hoist on the ground, Barkly’s commission in the papers, and the Cape houses still uncommitted to a statute of annexation. [3]
The Cape Parliament’s refusal to adopt Barkly’s annexation bill left that machinery where the 8th of December had put it. Mining operations continued. The method by which the territory was governed remained the high commissioner’s, not the Cape’s and not Brand’s. What had not yet been held was any court for the settlement of disputed claims to land. What had not yet been offered was any compensation to the Free State. What had not yet been done was any incorporation of the territory with the Cape Colony. The refusal mattered on the pans because the flag Gilfillan had hoisted was now a government of its own, paid and directed from the high commission, while the diggers still bought farm produce from the republic whose courts had been ordered off the claims. [3]
Blacks were not allowed to walk about the camps after nine in the evening; canteen-keepers were forbidden to sell intoxicating liquor to them except with the written permission of their employers; and they were not allowed to buy or sell diamonds. Those camp rules had been part of the attempt to keep order among thousands of men on a few square miles of claimed ground. They did not make the territory a Cape district. Two mines remained a long distance east of the line from Ramah to Platberg, inside the Free State: Jagersfontein and Koffyfontein. The principal fields, Kimberley among them, remained under Barkly’s separate commission through the year the Cape would not take them. [3]
Erasmus of the 24th of February, Marico, and Middelburg — South African Republic 1872
North of the Vaal the year opened under an acting president. Marthinus Wessel Pretorius had laid down his office after the award of the 17th of October 1871 reached Pretoria on the 16th of November. Lieutenant-Governor Keate of Natal, sitting as umpire, had cut off from the Republic not only the country of the Barolong and the Batlapin and the open land toward the desert, but the whole district of Bloemhof, part of Potchefstroom, and part of Marico — farms occupied by the earliest European settlers. The volksraad was in session when the award arrived. Public meetings applauded those who advised resistance to the dismemberment of the state. The principal officers thought it prudent to resign. The state secretary Proes retired first, though he had little or nothing to do with the arbitration; the reverend Mr. Swart was elected in his stead. The state attorney Klein then sent in his resignation and received an honourable discharge. Pretorius followed. The volksraad directed Daniel Jacobus Erasmus, the oldest unofficial member of the executive council, to act as president until an election could be held. [3]
On the 24th of November 1871 the volksraad instructed the acting president how to proceed, and on the following day Erasmus published a proclamation and a protest against the Keate Award. He announced that Pretorius had had neither authority nor right to sign the acts of submission singly and without his colleagues, that the whole arbitration was therefore invalid, and that the award would not be acknowledged as binding. He would take steps to assure the inviolability of the territory and to protect the rights of property within it. Copies went to Barkly on the 2nd of December. The high commissioner replied that he had nothing to do with the dispute between the executive and the legislature of the Republic, that he adhered to the arbitration, and that he intended to abide by and maintain the award. Kimberley approved that reply. The protest mattered in 1872 because it was the legal ground on which Erasmus still acted at Pretoria, and because London had already told him the award would be maintained. [3]
In point of fact the award never was enforced. The only way Keate’s line could have been held was for Great Britain to take direct control west of it and keep a strong military or police force there. The Imperial Government was unwilling to take that step. The South African Republic therefore continued to embrace the field-cornetcies occupied by the farmers, and a landdrost remained in the village of Bloemhof and held a court there. Beyond the parts occupied by farmers, disorder soon reigned. The clans quarrelled with each other, and European vagabonds of almost every nationality went among them fomenting jealousy and strife. Pretoria considered it no part of its duty to protect people whom the high commissioner had declared independent, and when it was pointed out that mischief-makers were crossing over from the Republic, retorted that a much larger number of the same class went there from the British possessions without check. That was the ground Erasmus still held when this year opened: a paper award, an unenforced line, and a landdrost’s court at Bloemhof on farms Keate had written away. [3]
In October 1871 the volksraad had resolved that landdrosts should be stationed at the villages of Zeerust and Middelburg, thus creating new districts out of portions of older ones. Acting President Erasmus proclaimed those districts on the 24th of February 1872. Middelburg, on the eastern side of the state, had previously been part of Lydenburg. Marico, as the new district was termed, of which Zeerust was the seat of magistracy, was proclaimed with boundaries including two long-settled field-cornetcies, one of which was almost entirely cut off by the Keate Award. The 24th of February mattered because Pretoria put a landdrost at Zeerust and a landdrost at Middelburg on a map the Natal umpire had already drawn a line across, and because Bloemhof’s court was left sitting on the same unenforced ground. Erasmus was not inventing villages. He was giving magistracies to places the volksraad had named while the award, which London said it would maintain, had no force on the farms. [3]
Burgers of Hanover, Robinson, and the Oath of the 1st of July — South African Republic 1872
The chief political desire of the largest party among the burghers, reeling under the Keate Award, was to obtain as president a man competent to meet the British authorities in South Africa on a footing of equality in controversy. All other qualifications were to be subservient to this one of cleverness in combating an opponent by argument. To get such a man it was necessary to look beyond their own state, and according to the constitution the president had been required to be an elector of 5 years’ standing and a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. To meet that difficulty, in November 1871 the volksraad amended the constitution. The president was to be chosen by a majority of the burghers entitled to vote, to hold office for 5 years unless he resigned sooner or was dismissed for lawful reasons, to be above 30 years of age, to be a member of a Protestant Church, and never to have been convicted of a dishonourable offence; but it was not necessary that he should be a burgher of the Republic at the time of his election. Anyone with those qualifications who received requisitions signed by at least 100 qualified voters and published in the Staats Courant one month before the election was eligible. Every burgher over 21 years of age, resident 12 months or having purchased burgher rights, was entitled to vote. The voting was to be by ballot papers. The amendment mattered in this year because it opened the Pretoria chair to a Cape clergyman who was not yet a burgher. [3]
There was a strong party in favour of electing President Brand of the Orange Free State to be president of the South African Republic also. The programme of its leaders was the close union of the two Republics, under one constitution if possible, and if that could not be effected, under one president, leaving to each state its own constitution. Union, they said, would have come years earlier had Sir George Grey not stated that in such a case Great Britain would no longer regard the conventions as binding. Of what value, after all, were those conventions? Great Britain violated them at will, would not permit a third party to interpret them, and allowed a hostile high commissioner to interfere north of the Orange despite their clauses. The most glaring violations they enumerated were the stoppage of ammunition to the Free State, the interference on behalf of the Basuto, the special magistrate and police on the Vaal, the interference between the Republic and Waterboer with the design of acquiring the diamond-fields, the interference with various Bantu tribes, the dismemberment of the Free State, and the open sale of guns and ammunition to blacks at the diamond-fields — against which Erasmus had protested not only as forbidden by the conventions but as dangerous in the highest degree to the peace of the whole of South Africa. The party then proposed to treat the conventions as annulled, to push on the waggon-road being constructed between Lydenburg and Delagoa Bay so as to reach a port that was not under the English flag, to establish a gunpowder manufactory in the country, to give Britain no show of justice for an attack, but to maintain their rights and, if attacked, to defend themselves. [3]
Requisitions embodying those views in language more or less guarded were sent to Brand with over 1000 signatures. He declined to allow himself to be put in nomination. Officially he replied that constitutional questions prevented him from accepting; privately he gave his true reasons. His was the part of the peacemaker. He visited the principal men who wished him to head both Republics, and discussed the matter with them. England would certainly regard the union of the two states under such circumstances as a menace. The large number of English people in South Africa could not be expected to join against their mother country, although many of them might disapprove of the Imperial authorities. In face of the enormously rapid increase of the blacks on every side, peace, friendship, and the uttermost good will ought to exist between white people in the country, no matter what nationality their ancestors were of. He had strong hope that justice would ultimately be done to the Republics, because he believed the errors came from ignorance of facts, not from an inclination to be harsh. Hundreds of intelligent Englishmen were now visiting the distant interior; the gold-bearing reefs discovered in the winter of 1871 in Zoutpansberg, of which Edward Button had exhibited specimens to the volksraad on the 8th of September 9 miles south-east of Marabastad, were attracting them and would continue to do so. Through those visitors the truth concerning the Republics — which was not believed in England when it came from South Africans — would become known. Only have patience, he said, and all would come right. A large proportion — probably over two-thirds — of the burghers of the Orange Free State were in full sympathy with the party Brand was endeavouring to pacify. He succeeded, owing to his personal influence and the confidence felt in his integrity. What hung on that refusal was the chair Erasmus was holding only until an election could be held: Bloemfontein would not take Pretoria as well. [3]
Having failed to secure Brand, the burghers looked round for someone else with the requisite qualifications. There was a clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church — the reverend Thomas François Burgers — stationed at Hanover in the Cape Colony, who had in recent years been prominently before the public. Accused of holding heretical views, in 1864 he had been condemned and suspended from the ministry by an ecclesiastical tribunal; but as he held his appointment from the Colonial Government, he brought his case before a court of law and won it. From the supreme court of the Cape Colony his opponents appealed to the Privy Council of England, and in 1865 judgment was given in his favour. In 1866 he gained a case which he brought in the supreme court against the presbytery of Graaff-Reinet for depriving him of his seat. Burgers was a member of one of the oldest families in South Africa, and had a very strong feeling of sympathy with his countrymen. He had received a good education in Europe. A patriot, a fluent speaker in both Dutch and English, and possessed of unbounded energy, he seemed in all respects but one to be the man that was needed. His creed was not in unison with that of 19 twentieths of the people of the Republic, and in the interior of South Africa this meant a great deal. In the anxiety of the burghers to get a clever man as their president, that was overlooked. It was not yet known that he was fond of forming large visionary plans and trying to carry them into effect without sufficient means. [3]
Only one other candidate — W. Robinson — was put forward. At the election 3352 votes were given, of which 2964 were for Burgers, and on the 1st of July 1872 he took the oath of office as president of the South African Republic. The constitution of November had opened the chair to a man who was not yet a burgher. The requisitions of 100 voters published in the Staats Courant one month before the election were in hand. The ballot papers had been counted. Erasmus’s acting presidency had run from November to the 1st of July. The majority the burghers gave the clergyman of Hanover was 2964 of 3352. Robinson had the remainder. Brand had declined over 1000 signatures; the two Republics remained under two presidents. Erasmus’s Marico and Middelburg of the 24th of February, and Bloemhof’s unenforced court, were the ground the new president inherited. The party that had wanted Brand, and the Delagoa waggon-road that was to reach a port not under the English flag, still stood when Burgers took the oaths. [3]
Brand, the Notes destroyed before 1872, and Jagersfontein — Orange Free State 1872
Brand still governed at Bloemfontein when the year opened, in the oaths from the 2nd of February 1864. He was the peacemaker who had declined over 1000 signatures for the Pretoria chair. On the 7th of November 1871 he had enjoined all officers and burghers of the Free State to avoid anything that might cause a collision with the incoming British authorities at the diamond-fields, in the fullest confidence that England would yet do justice once the true condition of affairs was known. The volksraad, in session from the 4th of December, had agreed on the last day to publish a protest, signed by F. P. Schnehage as chairman and Joh. Z. de Villiers as secretary, against Barkly’s proclamation of the 27th of October and the proceedings of the high commissioner, and likewise against the establishment of British supremacy over the Campbell grounds west of the Vaal, claimed by the Free State by virtue of a purchase in 1861 from the general agent of the Griqua chief Adam Kok. A very large proportion of the burghers had been disposed to take up arms, even though defeat was certain, in order to draw the attention of European powers. Brand had opened that session with an address of confidence that the government of England would do no injustice, and that the difficulties were solely to be ascribed to erroneous impressions. Action so rash as war had been overruled. That protest still circulated when this year opened. Hamelberg, sent as diplomatic agent, still went unrecognised in London. [3]
The Cape Parliament’s refusal to adopt Barkly’s annexation bill did not close the dispute between the Free State and the high commissioner. The Campbell grounds west of the Vaal still stood under the proclamation of the 27th of October 1871. The volksraad’s protest still stood against British supremacy over that territory and against all the proceedings of the high commissioner. No court had yet sat to settle disputed claims to land. No compensation had yet been offered. The refusal mattered in Bloemfontein because it left Griqualand West a separate British government instead of a Cape district, and because Brand’s burghers, who had been held to paper rather than to a war they would lose, now saw Capetown itself decline to take the ground Barkly had proclaimed. [3]
Though the principal diamond-fields had been severed from the Free State, two mines remained within its limits: those on the farms Jagersfontein and Koffyfontein, both a long distance east of the line from Ramah to Platberg. The loss of the largest diamond-mines only affected the state treasury nominally, for the cost of government there had absorbed the whole of the receipts. An excellent market for farm produce of all kinds remained, and the people of the Free State made good use of it. Gold and silver money speedily became plentiful, and before the close of 1871 the bluebacks, or paper currency, rose to be worth 19 shillings and 6 pence in the pound. The public revenue was then at the rate of a little over 80000 pounds a year, and the expenditure was kept well within it, so that the loans were being paid off. Of the 43000 pounds in notes issued to meet the Basuto war expenses, 17000 pounds were called in and destroyed before 1872. The notes mattered because the republic that had lost Kimberley still sold grain and stock to the camps, still worked two lesser mines inside its own line, and entered this year with its paper climbing and its war debt shrinking. [3]
In May 1871 the volksraad had provided for landdrosts at Bethlehem and Rouxville, thus creating two new districts. Prosperity was dawning on the Republic after the series of arduous struggles its citizens had gone through. The monument erected in Bloemfontein in remembrance of the men who had fallen in the war with the Basuto had been unveiled with befitting ceremony on Monday the 29th of May 1871, after religious service in the Dutch Reformed Church. Addresses had been made by the state president, the chairman of the volksraad, and other men of note, one of the most stirring by the clergyman of the English Church, who trusted that the Free State through all time would be found fighting, as in the past, only when its cause was just. That monument still stood when the notes were called in. Bethlehem and Rouxville remained new districts. Jagersfontein and Koffyfontein remained east of the line from Ramah to Platberg. The produce market still took the farms’ grain and stock to the fields the Cape would not annex. Brand’s peacemaking still held the two Republics from one president. The Free State still sold produce to the camps it no longer governed. [3]