These were compelling arguments, which persuaded Leyds to review his position—and sweetened the pill for his fiancée. Only two obstacles remained, one spiritual, the other material.
Leyds discussed the first with Kruger at their next meeting at the Amstel Hotel. He believed in God but, he confided, he wasn’t really a churchgoer. Would that be a problem? Kruger considered this carefully, ‘drew deeply on his pipe’ and replied that it needn’t stand in the way as long as the state attorney fulfilled his obligations.
The second matter related to Leyds’s fears of being dismissed the way Jorissen had been. That wasn’t the kind of subject to raise with Kruger, but Moltzer came to his rescue and together with Leyds drew up a watertight contract. On the first day of every month, a twelfth of his £1000 stipend would be paid out in gold. Leyds would receive £200 in advance to cover his travel expenses to Pretoria. The appointment would be for three years and if ‘Mr W.J. Leyds was not re-appointed on at least the same terms’, he would be entitled to an ‘immediate payment of £1000’. All in all, this offered sufficient security.
Kruger wasn’t overjoyed with the contract Moltzer presented, a gesture he regarded as a sign of distrust. But, well, it was the morning of Saturday 14 June 1884, the time of his departure was drawing near, there wasn’t much choice. Return to the Transvaal without a state attorney? Muttering, he signed the document.
Leyds signed too—for three years—so he thought.10
For thou are dust
Pretoria, October 1884
It was a relief to arrive at their destination after the arduous journey. ‘Pretoria has made quite a favourable impression on us,’ Louise Leyds wrote to her family back home, ‘it nestles in the mountains and from the outside the houses look cheerful and friendly; most of them have a veranda with roses or ivy, and gardens around them.’ Willem went so far as to call it ‘a little paradise’. The couple stayed at the European Hotel, but Louise had already set her sights on a house ‘which, from the outside, has stolen my heart’. Willem was to be sworn in on Monday 6 October and they had the weekend before them to recover from the gruelling trip.11
The past months had been hectic. The contract that Willem had signed in spite of everything, their wedding in Amsterdam and the honeymoon in England followed by preparations for their departure, and finally boarding the steamship Trojan. The voyage was not one they wished to repeat. The weather had let them down. It had been cold and rainy, even around the equator; the ship tossed and rolled ‘in a most peculiar fashion’. Louise was seasick all the way, rarely left the cabin, and when she finally felt like eating, the food was disappointing. It was ‘an English table, of course’, so ‘by definition inedible’, but ‘the way it was prepared surprised even Louise. I say even Louise’, for after all she had lived in England for several years and was not unaccustomed to it.
Willem had found diversion in the company of other passengers. Those who made the strongest impression on him were the members of a ‘German expedition to Angra Pequena’, a village on the coast of South West Africa, present-day Namibia. It was Leyds’s first experience of international politics. The German Chancellor Bismarck had never cared much for colonies, but this summer he experienced a change of heart. The expedition on board the Trojan was a ‘completely private venture undertaken by the Bremen millionaire-merchant Lüderitz’, who had ‘purchased large tracts of land from the natives there’ and would now enjoy official protection. ‘So Angra is the first German colony,’ Leyds observed, more or less correctly—Togo and Cameroon had been declared German protectorates only a few weeks earlier. Leyds thus witnessed at first hand the arrival of an important new player on the southern African scene.12
The Trojan sailed into Cape Town a day behind schedule, because of the inclement weather. As a result, Willem and Louise Leyds missed the connecting mail train and were obliged to spend a few days at the foot of Table Mountain. Their sudden exposure to the alien environment came as a shock. Louise in particular, not at her best after the voyage, was aghast. ‘We stood there on shore in the dazzling sun, engulfed by black, yellow, brown etc. people. We Amsterdammers complain about the Jews being brash, heavens! Glory to Amsterdam! Jews are positively meek compared to these people, and what’s more, there are so few of them.’ And then the streets, or what passed for them. ‘I think Capetonians would do better to tear down that barren rock and use it to pave the streets of Cape Town. They really are in a dreadful state. When it rains, they’re thick with mud and when one of the many strong winds blows, we are enveloped in thick clouds of dust.’13
The couple had no regrets about leaving Cape Town. On Tuesday 23 September, they took the train to the north, unprepared for the lunar landscape that awaited them. In a letter to Moltzer, Willem summed up the journey in a single word, ‘frightful’. Louise wrote to a friend in the East Indies about the ‘desert’ they had travelled through. ‘No bush, no tree, no water, no bird or insect to be seen, nothing but heaps of stone. And every hour a little station, a few houses, sometimes just one. Terribly monotonous.’ And that for 40 hours with 55 stops in between, up to De Aar, roughly halfway on the 1600-kilometre journey to Pretoria. The regular train line stopped at De Aar. Rails had been laid as far as Kranskuijl, but for that one had to transfer to an open goods carriage: two benches with a canvas sheet overhead.
The line ended in Kranskuijl. The next leg of the journey, up to Kimberley, was by stagecoach. ‘Rather amusing’, Louise reflected later, which, considering the occupants of the vehicle, attests to a remarkable sense of humour. The luggage was piled high on the roof and fastened with rope to the back and sides of the coach. In front were two coachmen and three passengers; a fourth lay on the roof, on top of the luggage. Crammed inside were two women, three mothers with babies, four children and one ‘incredibly fat, heavy, large man’. And, of course, Mr and Mrs Leyds.
On the journey the ten horses were ‘whipped incessantly’ and ‘the passengers lurched from side to side’. At times the carriage ‘balanced precariously on two wheels as if it was uncertain which way to go’. No wonder the horses had to be changed every three hours. The temperature too went from one extreme to another. ‘We were hot during the day, very cold in the evenings and especially at night, particularly when we were travelling at speed.’ Fortunately, as time went by, there was more to see. ‘The landscape improved slightly, now there were not only bushes but also dry grass’ and occasionally a large termite nest. Near Beaconsfield, on the outskirts of Kimberley, they passed close to ‘the kaffirs’ tents’. Louise was appalled. ‘Filthy and so small!’
Their arrival in Kimberley was an experience, if only because of the fanfare that greeted every stagecoach. It was a typical boom town built out of nothing after the spectacular discovery of diamonds in 1871. Since then, mining operations had left a deep scar on the landscape. The Big Hole brought prosperity to a great many people, but as usual the bounty was distributed inequitably: fortunes for the magnates, good money for the intermediaries, peanuts for the predominantly black miners.
To Louise Leyds it was ‘an abomination. The whole town consists of nothing but fortune-hunters and scum, people who want to get rich quickly and without any effort.’ She wanted to see the famous Big Hole with her own eyes, but as they approached it they were suddenly surrounded by ‘a swarm of coloured [mixed-race] people . . . They were wild and rude to each other and inspected us with great curiosity.’ So the party beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately there was a hotel ‘that would pass muster even in Amsterdam’, with lovely furniture ‘and white servants’. It was more pleasant there than outdoors. As in Cape Town, the streets were unpaved and the wind, even stronger, filled the air with ‘red dust. We were constantly walking in a solid cloud of dust. The wind swept up dust in front of us, behind us, all over the show.’
From Kimberley it was still about 500 kilometres to Pretoria. That meant at least another three days by stagecoach, a far smaller one this time and ‘truly, even worse than dreadful. The Kimberley carria
ge was luxurious by comparison.’ They could see the road beneath them through the wide gaps between the floor planks. And there was nothing to stop the dust coming in. They suffered most during the first part of the journey, through the Orange Free State. Things improved after crossing the Vaal River, the border to which the Transvaal owes its name, especially after they had reached Potchefstroom. There was more vegetation and less dust.
Their arrival in Pretoria made up for it all. It was just unfortunate that it had already grown dark ‘because [the town] nestles snugly between the hills’. But this they only saw the following day, Friday 3 October, ten days after their departure from Cape Town. Here, in any case, was an abundance of water ‘bubbling up from a spring’. And, happily, lots of vegetation, weeping willows in particular, ‘that grow rapidly; in 15 years one has a large shady tree’. In the centre was ‘a large square with outspanned oxwagons belonging to the farmers who come to Pretoria for the sacramental supper of Nagmaal; they travel and sleep in those wagons.’ The sight of them turned Louise’s thoughts to their own huge trunks, which were being transported by oxwagons like these. That would certainly take time. Even so, she had ‘already grown accustomed to everything here. Only the kaffirs are rather strange. Some of them walk through town quite naked, with nothing more than a woollen blanket or an animal skin wrapped around them.’14
These letters in which Willem and Louise Leyds describe their first impressions of South Africa are beautiful and evocative. Louise at least was an observant correspondent with an eye for telling detail. Her reports would have given her family and friends a vivid idea of the culture shock the couple must have experienced when they suddenly found themselves travelling through that distant, dusty, alien world. Readers today may be shocked in a different way, by their unabashed belief in white superiority. Whatever compromises the Leydses may have had to make in adapting to the primitive living conditions in the Transvaal, they were not uncomfortable with the Boers’ confidence in their supremacy over the black population.
But there were still challenges in abundance. For Willem they mainly had to do with his working conditions. They were ‘rather disorganised’, to put it mildly, as he wrote to Moltzer at the end of his first week. To start with, ‘my arrival was not exactly festive’. Kruger had apparently not read his letter from Cape Town ‘and no one was there to welcome us’. It was only on the following morning that General Smit went round to the European Hotel to greet them. Leyds nevertheless went to introduce himself to the members of the Volksraad, the supreme legislative body.
Work began in earnest on Monday morning, after he had taken his oath of office. As usual, he wanted to study the files as soon as he could, but it wasn’t so simple. ‘The laws here! Enough of them, to be sure. But they keep passing new legislation without giving a thought to the old. It causes endless confusion and contradiction. Just imagine, there isn’t even a complete set of Government Gazettes in my office.’ Nor did he find any Blue Books, the official British government publications that were ‘indispensable’ to ‘anyone like myself, to whom everything is unfamiliar’. When his request to purchase them was turned down, he promptly ordered a set ‘for myself’ and paid for them out of his own pocket. In short, there was ‘enough for me to do. A consistent body of law is of great importance here. I shall of course direct my efforts to that end.’15
From this it transpires that the state attorney was responsible for far more than instituting prosecutions and heading the judicial system. This wouldn’t have occupied much of his workday, as crime hadn’t yet become a serious problem in the Transvaal. He could easily manage the police force and the prison system as well. Far more time-consuming was his function as legal adviser ‘on matters of every kind, more than you can imagine. They regard me as a walking encyclopaedia they can and may consult by looking up any random word.’ ‘They’ referred in the first place to the state president, Kruger, who was also chair of the Executive Council, which further comprised the commander-in-chief, the minister of native affairs, the state secretary, the minutes secretary and two members with voting rights but no specific function. The members of the Volksraad could make use of his services as well, as could ‘every public servant’. Add to this his involvement in decision-making processes in the Executive Council and it is no exaggeration to say that Leyds’s position was equivalent to that of a minister of justice.
It entailed a great deal of work. His days in Pretoria started early and ended late. In the first week he attended four evening meetings and still took work home afterwards. On top of it all, the climate made everyone ‘lethargic. After a while, just walking, taking a stroll seems to become almost impossible. The most time one can spend on intellectual activity seems to be five hours a day, if one doesn’t want to suffer adverse effects. Many people here are already overworked. But I can’t possibly manage in five hours.’ His average working day was going to be two or three times as long.16
Besides ‘time and climate’, Leyds had to deal with enemies of flesh and blood right from the start. In his orientation interview with Chief Justice John Kotzé, the dismissal of the former state attorney happened to be mentioned in passing. Leyds remarked that he had no comment on the ins and outs of the matter, but he was critical of the way they had gone about it. Jorissen had been dismissed without being given an opportunity to defend himself. This wasn’t the proper procedure, according to Leyds, who only heard after the meeting that ‘Kotzé himself was the moving spirit behind the intrigue’. Relations between the two men never recovered.
The same applied to Leyds’s relationship with Du Toit, one of the members of the Transvaal delegation in Europe. He too had been instrumental in Jorissen’s dismissal, but in his case there was another, more compelling reason for the friction. In 1880, Du Toit had been one of the founders of the Afrikaner Bond, a political organisation in the Cape Colony which sought a merger with the other British colony, Natal, as well as the independent republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Its aim was to establish ‘an Afrikaner union for all who considered Africa their home, in the interests of a United South Africa’. Kruger was initially sympathetic to this emergent Afrikaner nationalism, as may be concluded from Du Toit’s appointment as minister of education in the Transvaal.
But the first cracks in Du Toit’s position of trust appeared soon after the delegation returned from Europe. He had dealt with a delicate border issue without consulting anyone else and, according to Leyds, meddled in various matters which had nothing to do with education and were beyond his brief. ‘He neglected his own department, was always in the Exec. Council, whether wanted or not, airing his views on everything and more.’ Even more harmful for his position was the fact that Du Toit was becoming increasingly explicit about his commitment to Afrikaner unity, which he considered more important than the independence of the South African Republic. This was expressed, for example, by his promotion of their preferred language, Afrikaans, to the detriment of Dutch, official language of the Transvaal.
On this issue the president’s views were diametrically opposed to Du Toit’s. The Transvaal’s independence was far more important to him than Afrikaner unity. The only book he ever read, and always carried with him, was the Bible—the official Dutch version, needless to say. And rather than trust what he considered anglicised Afrikaners in the Cape Colony, he increasingly recruited staff from the Netherlands, his new state attorney to begin with. After his clash with Kruger, Du Toit launched his own newspaper, De Republikein, which frequently attacked Leyds and others from the Netherlands.
Hence, soon after his arrival in Pretoria, Leyds was confronted with the divisions in Transvaal society. Fortunately he was quick to grasp this kind of situation and at the end of his first working week he urged Moltzer to be discreet. ‘Please think twice before divulging information that comes from me. You know how quickly small talk finds its way back to Africa. A trifle could do me a lot of harm.’ Those were wise words. As a newcomer in the Boer community Leyds was vulnera
ble, because of his nationality, his liberal outlook and his youthful appearance. Every self-respecting Boer had a beard. Leyds was aware of this—he had started growing one even before Kimberley—but that still didn’t make him a real Boer. It would take far more than that, a commitment to the Boers’ faith most of all.17
And that would have presented a new set of problems. Religion, like nationalism and language, was one of the dividing issues within the Transvaal community. As few as they were, the Boers were quick to make distinctions on religious grounds. The British Blue Books that Leyds consulted put the population of ‘the Transvaal territory’ in the late 1870s at little more than 32,000—adult male—‘Europeans of Dutch origin’ and around 5000 ‘Europeans of non-Dutch origin’. These figures pale into insignificance compared with the 770,000 ‘Kaffirs’. Still, there were enough Boers to sustain three Christian denominations. All three were Protestant and more or less reflected the schisms that had occurred in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century. So there was a Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, a Nederduitsch Gereformeerde Kerk and a Gereformeerde Kerk, each with its own buildings, ministers and rites.
The last of the three was the smallest, newest and most conservative. But more importantly, it was the church Kruger belonged to. In 1859 he had been a member of the first group that broke away to establish a Vrije Gereformeerde Gemeente, consistent with the canons of Dordrecht of 1618–19. This was Calvinism in its most orthodox form, espousing a belief in predestination and divine intervention in the personal life of every human being by an omnipotent God. The Bible, especially the Old Testament, was the only reliable authority for the faithful, who sang only psalms, not ‘secular’ songs, during worship. They considered themselves the new people of Israel, a Chosen Nation, with the Transvaal as their Promised Land.
The Boer War Page 4
