The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  They mustn’t throw away another opportunity. That had happened a few months earlier around Christmas 1898, when the Uitlanders had first appealed to the British head of state. It had been in response to the death of an English boilermaker, Tom Edgar. He had been shot in his own home by a Johannesburg policeman who had come to arrest him. The authorities maintained it was self-defence. To the British community it was murder, committed by one of the despicable ‘Zarps’. A Tom Edgar Relief Committee was set up with help from the South African League, and thousands of Uitlanders demonstrated in the streets. They called for a hearing of the policeman, who was out on bail, better protection against random actions by the police, and more political rights. Those demands were set out in a petition, which was presented to Her Majesty’s representative in Cape Town a few days later.

  Milner was in London for talks at the time. The reaction of his deputy, Lieutenant-General Sir William Butler, commander-in-chief of the British troops in South Africa, came as a shock. Butler was sympathetic to the Boers, that much was known, and he had little time for the Uitlanders. That was no secret either. But no one had expected him to refuse the petition—as he did. Moreover, he informed Chamberlain that it was ‘all a prepared business’, fabricated by the South African League, whom he considered the ‘direct descendants’ of the raiders and reformers of 1895. Butler was sure that Rhodes was behind it.

  But he was wrong about that. It was FitzPatrick—in the wings—who had orchestrated it. Milner probably forgave him for the mistake when he got back to Cape Town. But what he didn’t forgive was Butler’s refusal to accept the petition. It was an unspeakable act of defiance, which Milner called ‘out-Krugering Kruger’. It was a flagrant and inexcusable breach of his carefully planned policies. If it were up to him, Butler would have been stripped of his command. And in time, he actually was. Six months later, Butler was forced to resign.

  Milner didn’t have to wait that long for another chance to correct Butler’s error. At the end of March 1899, he received the second petition from the Uitlanders, which was potentially explosive, as he knew from his experience as a journalist for the Pall Mall Gazette. If it was used properly, the voting issue could swell into a ‘stirring battle cry’ in Britain itself—that’s where it had to happen.

  Milner had already taken care of public opinion in South Africa. He was on good terms with the editor-in-chief of the Cape Times and had the support of two Transvaal newspapers owned by Wernher, Beit & Co. The Star had been the leading English-language newspaper on the Rand for years, and in March it had been joined by the Transvaal Leader. Both papers had been instrumental in stirring up complaints from the Uitlanders, which they did with renewed vigour when the negotiations between Pretoria and Johannesburg fell through. The chief editor of The Star, William Monypenny, played a prominent role. He had come from Fleet Street specially to add a toxic finishing touch to the rabble-rousing and to work as correspondent for The Times in England.

  Things were going well in Johannesburg as far as Milner was concerned. FitzPatrick and Monypenny were the perfect firebrands to keep stoking the flame of nationalism. Now the spark needed to catch in London, which was more of a problem. The Uitlanders’ second petition attracted attention and support, in government circles and from the public, but it failed to provoke the conflagration Milner had been hoping for. To his annoyance South Africa disappeared from the front pages in the course of April. What should he do? Too much pressure on Chamberlain would be counterproductive, he had seen that. There was nothing for it but to steel himself and wait for another opportunity.

  It came a couple of weeks later. Chamberlain made the opening move. He needed a hot-blooded statement from the high commissioner for the Blue Book he was having compiled about the latest developments in the Transvaal. That he could get. But Milner put extra work into it and added ‘some vitriol’ of his own. The result is known as the ‘Helot Dispatch’. The Boers, Milner wrote, were reducing thousands of British subjects to slavery, like the helots of ancient Sparta. Their appeals to the British government had been futile. What were they waiting for? ‘The case for intervention is overwhelming’, he concluded. The regime in Pretoria had nothing to offer except malicious lies about Britain’s intentions.

  Milner realised perfectly well it was a gamble. By the same token, Chamberlain might have felt pressured by the urgency of his tone. Or the explicit call for intervention might raise objections in the Cabinet. This time he didn’t have to wait long. On 9 May 1899, he received a telegram saying, ‘The despatch is approved. We have adopted your suggestion.’ That was wonderful news. Chamberlain was in agreement and, by the looks of it, Lord Salisbury too. Whitehall agreed to immediate intervention: peaceful intervention for the time being, but one thing leads to another. Milner was sure that when the Blue Book was published, his Helot Dispatch would jolt the British public out of their complacency.

  The only pity was that pacifists were suddenly starting to crawl out of the woodwork. First, Prime Minister Schreiner and Jan Hofmeyr in the Cape Colony, followed by President Steyn in the Orange Free State. They insisted on a personal meeting with Kruger. Milner was against it, but with the world looking on, he could hardly refuse. Chamberlain thought it a good idea. The publication of the Blue Book was postponed for the time being.

  On 31 May 1899, Milner reported at the place Steyn had proposed for the meeting, the railway station in Bloemfontein. He came not to negotiate but to issue an ultimatum: full electoral rights for all Uitlanders after five years’ residence, with immediate and retroactive effect, and seven representatives in the Volksraad. His only fear was that Kruger, the sly old fox, would actually concede—and start haggling afterwards. That would put Milner back to square one. He would have to start building up the tension all over again. His best hope was that the Bloemfontein Conference would fail.

  It did. Kruger had not come to the talks in the capital of the Orange Free State with high expectations, but he did observe the rules of the game. Concessions and compromises. On the third day, for instance, he produced a carefully prepared reform bill, like a rabbit out of a hat. Five seats in the Volksraad for the gold-mining districts and voting rights for Uitlanders within variable time frames: within two to seven years, depending on how long they had been in the Transvaal.

  Relative to the population demographics, this was a substantial concession. According to the most recent census, published in the State Almanac for the South African Republic of 1899, the electorate—adult male Boers—comprised fewer than 30,000 voters. The total white population in the Transvaal had grown to almost ten times that number: 290,000 men, women and children. The statistics further included a coloured population of 600,000. Of the white population in Johannesburg and its immediate surroundings, over 50,000 were male Uitlanders. Once they were armed with voting rights, there were more than enough of them to significantly impact the political balance of power in the Transvaal.153

  Kruger’s offer came close to meeting Milner’s demands. Promisingly close, thought Chamberlain, who promptly congratulated Milner by telegram. Dangerously close, thought Milner, who raised countless objections and warned Chamberlain that the talks were on the brink of collapse. The reaction from London—keep going, ‘Boers do not understand quick decisions’—reached him too late. On 5 June 1899 Milner walked out of the conference, free to return to his original plan and provoke a head-on confrontation.154

  Joe Chamberlain spent a long time dithering. He agreed with his high commissioner in South Africa that they would have to bring Kruger to his knees. But so much the better if they could achieve this by diplomatic means. It wouldn’t need to come to an armed struggle as long as the old Boer leader accepted Britain’s terms: equal rights for the Uitlanders. They had made such an issue of it that they couldn’t back down without losing face. But the most contentious issue was British supremacy in South Africa. This was something Kruger would have to acknowledge, one way or another, officially and in practice.

  That is why Cham
berlain was troubled by Pretoria’s reply to his letter of 15 December 1898 on the question of suzerainty. It was dated 9 May 1899 and had presumably been written by someone other than Leyds—Leyds had left Pretoria at the end of March. The hair-splitting in some of the legal passages was still obviously his work, but one sentence was unusually hard-hitting. It argued that the Transvaal’s right to self-determination was not based on the London Convention of 1884, but was simply a right in itself. Leyds had never expressed himself with such self-confidence—well, presumption in fact. Milner was taken aback. Chamberlain also considered the Transvaal’s claim to full sovereign status unacceptable. He saw it as a threat to ‘our position as the paramount power in South Africa’.155

  This would certainly justify tightening the diplomatic thumbscrews on the Boer republic. But war? Chamberlain hadn’t reached that point in June 1899. Milner’s haste to break off the talks with Kruger in Bloemfontein had alarmed him and the entire staff of the Colonial Office—with the exception of the under-secretary, Lord Selborne, Milner’s rock and anchor through thick and thin. Moreover, if it came to an armed confrontation, Chamberlain would be dependent on the War Ministry for troops—and that was more than just a formal obstacle. Lord Lansdowne headed a decaying and hopelessly divided department, which was blasé about the military threat posed by the Boers. They had made no preparations of any significance.

  The country as a whole was not yet fired up for war. Newspapers like The Times and the Morning Post beat the drum for the Uitlanders as best they could. On Milner’s advice Percy FitzPatrick published a hawkish book, The Transvaal from Within, which became the bestseller of the summer season. But there were other opinions as well. The Blue Book, which incorporated the Helot Dispatch, was not enough to get the fires burning. There were murmurs of scepticism and dismay. The satirical weekly magazine Punch showed a very different ‘South African helot’: well fed, with a heavy gold chain standing for wealth not slavery, stylish clothes and a jewelled tie pin. ‘Such a man may be many things, but a helot he is not.’156

  For a while the threat of war seemed to have passed. In mid-July 1899, Pretoria agreed to more concessions than Kruger had already proposed in Bloemfontein. A new law gave the Uitlanders six seats in the Volksraad and voting rights after seven years, with retroactive effect. This prompted Chamberlain to congratulate Milner—again. It prompted Milner to warn his minister—again—to watch out for the traps and pitfalls in the Boers’ proposal. He also had a counter-proposal. A joint (British–Transvaal) commission of inquiry to look into the franchise issue from all angles.

  Selborne agreed immediately, which helped to get Chamberlain ‘back on the old right tack’. On 28 July 1899, in the only House of Commons session that dealt with South Africa that year, he was far less enthusiastic about the latest reforms in Pretoria. It wasn’t about getting voting rights two years earlier or later, he said. It wasn’t about the petty details. A special committee—he had learned from Milner’s advice—would be in a better position to judge all of that. No, this was about something more fundamental. It was about ‘the power and authority of the British Empire... It is the question of our predominance.’ This was a clear statement and it persuaded both the government and opposition parties. Parliament was satisfied and went into recess. The Cabinet members went off to their summer residences, Chamberlain to Highbury, his country estate in Birmingham, to devote himself to his orchids. The proposal to set up a joint commission of inquiry was put to the Transvaal government.

  Three weeks later, on 19 August 1899, a reply came from Pretoria. They saw a joint commission as an infringement of the Transvaal’s autonomy and rejected the proposal on those grounds. But Kruger came up with a new offer which, on the face of it, seemed extraordinary. Voting rights for the Uitlanders after five years, with retroactive force, and ten seats for the Rand in a Volksraad that would be enlarged to a total of 36 members. That was even more than Milner had asked for in Bloemfontein. But there was one string attached. In return the British government would have to renounce its claims to suzerainty and stop meddling in the Transvaal’s internal affairs.

  It seemed like a final offer, a last concession—and it was. But that made no difference to the way it was received in Cape Town and London. The authorities there reacted exactly the way they had on previous occasions. Milner rejected the offer out of hand as yet another ploy by the Boer leader, an inadequate concession that failed to take account of Britain’s status ‘as the Paramount Power in South Africa’. Chamberlain needed a few more days. In his initial reaction he called it ‘a complete climb down’ on Kruger’s part and told Lord Salisbury that the crisis had been warded off. But on 24 August it turned out that he had changed his mind after hearing Milner’s arguments. And this time, there would be no turning back. Now, he conveyed a very different message to the prime minister and the secretary for war, Lord Lansdowne. He said the Boers would have to clarify their offer and withdraw their conditions, which were totally unacceptable. If they failed to do so within a week to ten days, they were presumably not interested in peace. In that event, Britain would immediately dispatch an expeditionary force of 10,000 men. Two days later Chamberlain ran out of patience. In a speech delivered from the lawns of Highbury Hall, he repeated his warning to Kruger. He said the president of the Transvaal had set impossible conditions and was withholding the details of his reform proposals. Things couldn’t continue like this. ‘The sands are running down in the glass.’157

  The threat was clear. But Kruger made no further concessions. On the contrary, he withdrew his second offer and left the question of a joint commission open. Too half-hearted, in Chamberlain’s opinion. On his instructions, Lord Salisbury summoned the Cabinet members back to London.

  The Cabinet convened on 8 September 1899. Chamberlain presented a memorandum, summarising his standpoint once again. The Uitlanders were being treated as ‘an inferior race, little better than Kaffirs or Indians’. Great Britain’s position was being jeopardised in South Africa, as was its prestige in its colonies and the rest of the world. The president of the Transvaal was unwilling to accede to the justified demands of the British government. They had no choice but to bare their teeth. Chamberlain assured the honourable members that this did not necessarily mean war. Kruger had the reputation of being a man who would ‘bluff up to the cannon’s mouth and then capitulate’. An expeditionary force of 10,000 men would persuade him that they were in earnest. This would probably make him give up.

  Not all the ministers agreed with Chamberlain’s point of view and certainly not with his aggressive tone, but his last argument—Kruger’s notorious posturing—won them over. The Cabinet agreed to the immediate dispatch of an expeditionary force. Once it arrived in Natal, probably at the beginning of October, they would issue an ultimatum.

  The prime minister, Lord Salisbury, had the last word. He was sombre. He didn’t believe that Kruger would back down. He had no doubt they were heading for war, for Britain possibly the biggest since the Crimean War. He bitterly regretted it, especially as the stakes were so low, ‘all for people whom we despise and for territory which will bring no power to England’. But there was no other choice. He knew that South Africa was strategically too important to the British Empire. Some time earlier, he had expressed these thoughts to his son-in-law Lord Selborne, the under-secretary for the colonies: ‘The real point to be made good to South Africa is that we, not the Dutch, are Boss.’158

  Paul Kruger stood firm: no more concessions. Chamberlain wanted war: that much was obvious from his doom-laden speech of 26 August. And the same message was there, in as many words, in the letter he wrote two days later. For months Kruger had done everything in his power to meet Britain’s demands. This was the result. Kruger no longer believed in Britain’s good faith. ‘It is our country you want,’ he had snapped back at Milner on the last day of their talks in Bloemfontein in early June. It was now two months later, 2 September 1899, and he had been proved right. More than that, it was not only Mi
lner; ‘Camberlen’ too wanted to incorporate the Transvaal in the British Empire. There was no doubt in Kruger’s mind. No matter how much the Boers in the Cape Colony and the Orange Free State pleaded for further negotiations, he no longer believed anything could come of it. He had done enough listening. Schreiner and Hofmeyr, Steyn and his right-hand man, Abraham Fischer, and of course his own state secretary and state attorney, Reitz and Smuts—all of them had given him well-intentioned advice, but look where it had led.

  It had all started with the Great Deal, in early April. It was the capitalists who had sabotaged it, there was no denying that, but it had also been naive to trust FitzPatrick. Moreover, the reply to Chamberlain’s suzerainty letter, in early May, had been carelessly worded. Leyds had prepared a draft, in his usual meticulous style, but Reitz—or Smuts, he wasn’t sure which—had added those passages about the Transvaal’s inherent rights as an independent state under international law. They had struck the wrong chord with Milner and Chamberlain, and Reitz had been forced to back down in their further communications.

  To say nothing of the frustrating voting rights they had talked him into conceding—completely against his will. First, his proposal to Milner at the Bloemfontein Conference in early June. Then the reform bill that the Volksraad passed in mid-July. Finally, the last offer of 19 August, making even more concessions than Milner had asked for. And the outcome? Threats from Chamberlain. The more Kruger conceded, the more the British demanded. What more could he do? Young Boers were clamouring to drive the British into the sea. Friendly governments urged discretion. A decision had to be taken. There would be war.

  The Rand had already drawn that conclusion. In the first six months of 1899 the gold mines had produced record yields, but in the South African winter of that year Johannesburg and its surrounds found themselves facing a reverse gold rush. In August it was almost an exodus. Tens of thousands of black miners were laid off. An even greater number of Uitlanders were looking for somewhere else to go. In September there was utter panic. A stampede of miners, craftsmen, barkeepers and prostitutes. Anyone lucky enough to squeeze into a train, an oxwagon or any other vehicle fled to the Cape Colony or Natal. By late September most of the gold mines had shut down. Johannesburg became just another quiet, provincial town.159