At this point, De Wet exploded. It was he and Steyn who had long been recognized as the main obstacles to a peace conference (and thus Milner’s principal remaining hope of a breakdown). Steyn was now too ill to come to Pretoria, but clearly De Wet spoke for him.
De Wet: ‘I cannot agree. I think it would be dishonourable if I did not say so. I see no chance of putting a body on such a head. Whatever conditions may be added to the preamble, I cannot get over the difficulty of the preamble.’
Milner: ‘Very well, then; it is clear that we cannot go further.’
But Kitchener and Smuts were equally intent on keeping the talks going.
Kitchener: ‘I think we should draft a document and let General De Wet see it before he expresses an opinion.’ Smuts: ‘I am willing to assist in putting the draft into proper form. …’63
All the generals then withdrew, leaving the Boer lawyers, Smuts and Hertzog, to wrestle with Milner and his legal adviser, Sir Richard Solomon, Attorney General at the Cape.64 Predictably, negotiations ran smoothly once De Wet was out of the room. The draft agreement was duly put to the full committee and, with one long addendum, the text was cabled to London.65
Compared with the Middelburg terms, there were only three significant changes – all to the benefit of the Boers. First, the amnesty for colonial rebels, the rock on which Kitchener believed Middelburg had been wrecked a year earlier. As a concession, Milner had now arranged with the Cape government that all Cape rebels, except for leaders, would be exempted from imprisonment, and they would be let off with permanent disfranchisement. Natal rebels, by contrast, would have to take their chance under the ordinary law.66
Second, there was the question of native rights in the two new colonies. Would the right to vote depend on education? Would at least the better-off Africans and Coloureds be given the same political rights as they had in Cape Colony? Or would the present colour bar be continued? At Middelburg, it had been proposed to exclude the grant of the franchise to ‘Kaffirs’ (there was no mention of Indians or Coloureds) ‘before’ representative government was granted.67’ Now it was proposed to exclude the consideration of the question of granting the vote to ‘natives … until after’ its introduction.68 This subtle change in prepositions meant, in effect, that Milner was proposing that they should make the exclusion permanent. Once self-governing, no Boer state would give the vote to Africans. What about Chamberlain’s claim: ‘We cannot consent to purchase a shameful peace by leaving the Coloured population in the position in which they stood before the war’?69
Third, financial help for the shattered ex-republics. According to the Middelburg terms, Britain was to pay their enemies’ pre-war debts up to a figure of £1 million. By the new Clause 11 and its addendum, Britain would agree to increase this figure to £3 million. And, by the new Clause 12, Britain would offer generous loans to burghers, in addition to assisting loyalists.70
The increasing chance of agreement naturally increased Milner’s sense of frustration. He had sent a last ‘over-my-dead-body’ cable to Chamberlain on the 21st. Negotiations had ‘taken a turn for the worse’. The Boers were making ‘preposterous proposals’. He was himself ‘in a weak position, as Kitchener does not always support me even in the presence of Boers’. He begged the Cabinet to postpone replying if Kitchener sent them ‘strange proposals’; this would give him time to block them. ‘My own conviction is that Boers are done for, and that if the assembly at Vereeniging breaks up without peace they will surrender left and right. The men here are either anxious to upset negotiations or bluffing, in reliance on our weakness, probably the latter.’71
Still, Milner recognized that he could not hope for much from Chamberlain, given ‘public feeling’ at home in Britain, and abroad. 72 (The Kaiser had sent a cable to the King en clair on 2 May, congratulating him on offering ‘most liberal’ terms and ‘fervently hoping’ the Boers would accept them.) Chamberlain had made it clear in January that the Middelburg terms still lay on the table. If there was any hope for Milner’s policy of fighting the war to the bitter end, it all depended on Steyn and De Wet.
The proposed terms of peace (‘terms of surrender’ was the phrase Chamberlain preferred)73 astonished the frock-coated officials of the Colonial Office when they received the text on 22 May. It did not strike them as ‘preposterous’ at all.
H. W. Just: ‘The document seems on the whole to be very satisfactory. It is practically the same as the terms under the Botha negotiations. …’
F. Graham: ‘To my mind the arrangement is so satisfactory that I suspect a trap; but I fail to find it The native franchise… is the only point worth hesitating about. As clause 9 stands the native will never have the franchise. No responsible Govt, will give it to him. I should have preferred the words “If the franchise is given it will be so limited as to preserve the just predominance of the white race as in the Cape Colony.”‘
H. W. Just: ‘Yes, it would not be in accordance with the traditions of British policy in South Africa to use words implying a doubt whether any civilized native would ever receive the franchise.’
Sir Montague Ommaney (Permanent Secretary): ‘Clause 9 seems to me to want nothing except the omission of the word “after” …
‘Clause 11 does not bear close examination. The proposed Commission will be no real safeguard against wholesale fraud…. The point is, are we prepared to pay these three millions to secure the termination of the war, knowing that it involves still heavier payments to the loyalists.’
Next day, Chamberlain saw the Permanent Secretary and they discussed what changes in the terms to recommend to the Cabinet. By this time, he had received Milner’s private cables denouncing the new terms, especially the ‘detestable’ Clause 11.74 To Milner he cabled back, acidly, “There should be some argument more cogent than the money cost to justify risking failure on this point. Can you supply it, and would you go so far as to wreck agreement at this stage upon this question.’75
The Cabinet discussed the new terms on the 23rd, and were pleased with them – especially with the introduction; the terms were an ‘improvement’ on Middelburg. Chamberlain raised two main points of objection, following the line of the Colonial Office staff. What about Clause 9 and native political rights? It seemed a bit odd. Why not strike out the crucial word ‘after’? Otherwise, the natives would be permanently disfranchised.’76
Back came Milner’s reply: ‘Clause 9. Yes. That was the object of the clause. Clause suggested by you would defeat that object. It would be better to leave out clause altogether than propose such a change. While averse in principle to all pledges, there is much to be said for leaving question of political rights of natives to be settled by colonists themselves.’77 Chamberlain, and the Cabinet, gave way to Milner. The crucial ‘after’ remained in Clause 9, the word that made mockery of Chamberlain’s claim that one of Britain’s war aims was to improve the status of Africans.78
On Clause 11 and its addendum (£3 million to cover their enemies’ war debts), the Cabinet compromised with Milner. The clause was amalgamated with Clause 12 (loans to cover war losses), and so avoided the objection that the £3 million would now be paid as a free gift.79 Otherwise, Milner failed to change the terms, and Salisbury’s Cabinet left Kitchener’s new peace terms much as they had found them. On 27 May, the text was cabled back to South Africa, to be put at once before the Boer delegates at Vereeniging. One slim chance of blocking agreement had been gained by Milner. The Cabinet had agreed to allow the Boers only time for a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.80
Should they say yes, or should they say no, and fight on to the bitter end? It was a question that had echoed and re-echoed around the tents of the burghers ever since Roberts’s peace offer of June 1900, nearly two years before. There was not a single leader who had set his face unequivocally against coming to terms with the British. Even the most tenacious champions of independence, Steyn and De Wet, the twin war gods of the Free State, had now agreed that the volk must swallow their pride, surrender t
erritory (including the richest part of the country, the Rand), and accept protectorate status for the rest— terms that were ten times as humiliating as those rejected by Kruger at Bloemfontein three years before.81 (Indeed, nothing showed more clearly how much enthusiasts like Smuts had over-estimated the Boer military strength in 1899, and ‘provoked the war’, as Smuts now confessed at Vereeniging.)82 But Milner and Kitchener on 19 May had, of course, rejected that protectorate plan, even with all the gold of the Rand thrown in. Peace was to cost still more, nothing short of annexation. Could they say ‘yes’ to this?
What if they said ‘no’? The military answers to this question were given in detail at Vereeniging, and broadly confirmed Kitchener’s – and Milner’s – claims. For months now, Kitchener had pinned his faith on the ‘bag’. Despite all his set-backs, he had asserted he was on the verge of victory, and he was right —in the Transvaal, at any rate.
When the sixty delegates had first gathered in the great marquee at Vereeniging on 15 May, each man had been asked to report on his own district. There were recognized to be three main military obstacles to continuing guerrilla war: shortage of horses, shortage of food, and the miserable condition of the commandos’ women and children – those who had not been put in concentration camps, but had remained with the commandos in the veld. One by one, the Transvaal delegates confirmed Kitchener’s own claims that the burghers were at the end of their tether. Despite their large strength on paper – ten thousand in the Transvaal alone, and as many again in the Free State and Cape, compared to the British estimate of a grand total of twelve thousand – the picture was one of almost unrelieved gloom. One-third of the men had no horses. Food, especially mealie grain, was critically short. Some fourteen Transvaal districts would have to be abandoned to the enemy, who could then concentrate their strength against the rest.83 On 1 May, the Middelburg delegate, de Clercq, reported his area ‘almost hopeless’. There were no slaughter cattle, and enough grain to last only a short time. Out of eight hundred horses, only a hundred remained. The district must be abandoned; yet how could burghers escape anywhere with horses like theirs? The picture was equally dismal in much of eastern and southern Transvaal: no slaughter cattle, horses wretched, impossible to sow mealies, because of the continual hustling between blockhouses. Commandant Schoeman (Lijdenburg) was reported to have said, ‘Although but a short time ago there had been eight hundred head of cattle, they had now all been carried off. Grain there was none.’ Should fighting be continued, he was at a loss to know how to provide for the women.84 Landrost Bosman (Wakkerstroom): ‘The men in my district told me that if I came back and reported that the war was to be continued, they would be obliged – for the sake of their wives and children – to go straight to the nearest English camp and lay down their arms.’ 85
It was the sufferings of their women and children, above all, that had demoralized the Transvaal commandos. Not, it must be emphasized, the sufferings of the women and children in the concentration camps. On the contrary, it was the plight of those who had been left in the veld and refused, according to Kitchener’s latest policy, admittance to these camps. ‘The women were in a most pitiable state,’ Botha was quoted as saying, ‘now that the lines of the blockhouses had been extended in all directions over the country. Sometimes the commandos had to break through the lines and leave the women alone….’86 The plight of the women was in turn exacerbated by another ominous new development: the African menace, real or imaginary.
Throughout the war, the meekness of the African majority had been one of the most striking features. None of the peoples who had been worsted in recent native wars – Basutos, Zulus, or Magatos – had seized their opportunity to pay off old scores and recover lost territory. With the exception of Linchwe’s raid on Derdepoort in November 1899 (and Linchwe was led by a British officer), the Africans had behaved with unexpected restraint. This was all the more surprising, given the way they had been treated by the Boers, who had cheerfully looted their cattle, flogged and murdered those who helped the British, and even massacred the whole civilian population of a Transvaal village, Modderfontein.87
However, it was now apparent that the natives were stirring. The worm had turned. At Zoutpansberg in the north, they were ‘getting out of hand’. Much the same was said at Bethel and Carolina.88 And, in May, a most alarming episode occurred at Holkrantz, near Vryheid, in a part of Zululand annexed by the Transvaal.
Dinizulu, the Zulu Chief, had protested repeatedly to the British against cattle raids and murders by Boer commandos. The British had done nothing. Recently, the Boers had taken the cattle, burned the kraals, and driven out the women and children of a Zulu tribe, whose Chief was called Sikobobo. The Boers claimed this was a just punishment for the tribe’s helping the British as scouts and guides. Sikobobo claimed that he owed first allegiance to Dinizulu, the paramount Chief, who lived on the Natal side of the border, and had asked for his assistance. Potgieter, the local field cornet, then sent an insulting message to Sikobobo, read out in front of the men of the tribe: ‘That Sikobobo and his people were no better than fowl-lice and challenging him to come to Holkrantz and retake his cattle before they were all consumed.’ Sikobobo took up the challenge in traditional Zulu fashion.
That night, 6 May, his impis, armed with guns and assegais, attacked Potgieter, killed fifty-six Boers, wounded three more, and recaptured 380 cattle, at a loss to his own force of fifty-two killed and forty-eight wounded. So far, the women and children in this district had not been molested, but the Zulus had been restrained with difficulty.89
Thus, the Transvaal was now threatened from two sides: the natives were stirring, and the women and children were correspondingly vulnerable, just when their menfolk were least able to protect them. These commandos – ‘bitter-einders’ they called themselves – were a dwindling band, facing extinction as a military force. This was how Botha had summed up the situation in the Transvaal in early May; Acting President Burger, and even General De la Rey, agreed. ‘Fight to the bitter end?’ asked De la Rey. ‘Do you say that? But has the bitter end not come?’90
In the Free State, no. That was De Wet’s blunt answer, and his own report as Commandant-General of 6,120 men was echoed by most of the Free State leaders.91 Grain was scarce, and so were horses, naturally. But morale was still reasonably good, largely because the commandos’ womenfolk were either safely in the concentration camps, or could fend for themselves on the veld; and the Free State Kaffirs were generally prepared to collaborate. General Froneman (Ladybrand) had eighty families in his district; the local Kaffirs were helping the commandos by buying clothes for them in Basutoland. General Badenhorst (Boshof) said he had enough cattle to last years. General Prinsloo (Bethlehem) had enough slaughter cattle and corn to supply other districts. However, the blockhouses were a ‘source of constant annoyance’. General Brand (Bethulie) said parts of his division had been entirely laid waste, but he could still hold out for a year.92
What of the third front, the 3,300-strong invasion force in the far west and north-west of Cape Colony? Smuts answered equally bluntly that nothing much could be expected from this quarter. The commandos could maintain themselves. But there would be no general Afrikaner rising in the Cape. Too few horses, too little forage, and the colonials were afraid of the penalties for rebellion. Should all the Boer forces try to concentrate in the Cape? An attractive idea; but how were they to transport them there? asked Smuts. The Boer cause must stand or fall by virtue of what could be achieved in the republics.93
In mid-May it had been the Transvaal government – represented by Acting President Burger and Generals Botha and De la Rey – who had most vehemently argued the case for peace. Now, a fortnight later, eloquently supported by Smuts, the Transvaal generals continued to press their case, and the Free State’s counter-arguments began to falter.
The case for ending the war, at its simplest, was that the war was ending anyway. They must now win the peace.
Six months earlier, the tide had s
et finally against them – their commandos immobilized and starving, beaten at last by blockhouses and food burning; their womenfolk threatened by Kaffirs. And, to set against all these sacrifices, there was no prospect of foreign intervention, or any corresponding gain. Negotiate now, said Botha and De la Rey and Smuts, while we still have control of our destiny, and can keep the volk together as a nation. Fight on, and the volk will die (or suffer a fate worse than death). The threat was not only to the lives of individuals, but to the continued existence of the nation. And, most ominously of all, Botha added, ‘There are men of our own kith and kin who are helping to bring us to ruin. If we continue the war, it may be that the Afrikaners against us will outnumber our own men.’94
Botha was not exaggerating. There were already 5,464 handsuppers (or ‘ensoppers’ or ‘yoiners’) – Boers recruited to fight in the British army as National Scouts, guides, transport drivers and so on.95 De Wet’s own brother, Piet De Wet, was leading the ‘handsuppers’ in the Free State. It was not difficult to imagine the new politics of the Transvaal if the volk were thus left divided. In the next six months, the remnants of the guerrillas could be squeezed out into the deserts and forests, and the Uitlanders would become the political heirs of Milner’s clean slate, the de-Afrikanerized Crown Colonies. In short, the Beits and the Wernhers, the Rhodes’ and the Fitzpatricks, would have at last worked their will on South Africa — hand in hand with Milner. This was the fate worse than death from which Botha intended to save the volk: the ‘Pax Milner’. Instead, they must accept the ‘Pax Kitchener’. They could retain their political supremacy, at least in the long term, by reasserting Afrikaner unity, by keeping their political majority intact for the day when, according to the terms now offered, Milner’s new Crown Colonies lapsed, and white South Africans were free to govern themselves, as free as Canadians or Australians.
The Boer War Page 90
