Constitution of the Union of South Africa

Ten years after the closing of South Africa to immigration by the Dutch East India Company a momentous decision was taken as to the best method of recruiting the labour required for the farms and other industries at the Cape. The directors sent a series of questions to be answered by the local council as to the means of improving the industrial and financial position of the Cape, the most important being whether it would be advisable to rescind the order prohibiting European immigration or to rely for labour on slaves. Hitherto the climate of the Cape peninsula had proved quite suitable for manual work by Europeans ; but unfor tunately in the council only one member, the captain of the garri son, de Chavonnes, raised his voice for free immigration and free labour. The arguments of the other members of the council pre vailed. Slave labour was cheaper, white labourers were apt to be more troublesome and more touchy on their rights; and the council paid no heed to the contention of Chavonnes that though white artisans and labourers were more expensive they did more and better work than slaves and above all that an influx of Europeans for service would help to secure a .predominantly European popu lation in a country admirably adapted to them, whereas, once slave labour was established, white men would gradually regard it as beneath their dignity to work. So the future fate of South Africa was determined as of a country with two grades of population, the European masters disdaining to do any but the most skilled form of manual work and the hewers of wood and drawers of water composed, not merely of the natives but, since they were often inapt for the work, also of imported coolies from the East Indies or islands of the Indian ocean ; a new element which further com plicated the already serious racial problem.

Native Opposition.

About 177o, some Boer farmers had reached the banks of the Great Fish river, more than 400 miles to the east of Capetown. Here they found themselves up against the Xosas, the advance guard of the great Bantu race, which for centuries had been making their way down Africa from their original homes in the neighbourhood of the great interior lakes. Physically they were a magnificent race, very different from the puny Bushmen and the uncouth Hottentots. They began their migration southwards as early as the 9th century A.D., and came in spasmodic waves, pushing aside the original inhabitants. There appear to have been three main divisions of them, the more westerly invaders into Bechuanaland, the central wave of Barotse, who remained in the neighbourhood of the Zambesi, and the most formidable of all, the east coast invaders, Tembus, Pondos, Xosas and behind them the Swazis and Zulus north of Natal. By the beginning of the i8th century the Xosas had crossed the Kei river and by the last quarter of it were occupying the Amatola mountains and were found by the Boer pioneers on the further side of the Great Fish river.

Decline of the Company.

The discovery of this formidable obstacle to Boer expansion coincided with the close of the term of office (1751-71) of t'._e last great Dutch governor, Ryk Tul bagh. His 20 years' rule is regarded as the halcyon time of the Dutch company's period, for he was a just and humane man, who repressed the official corruption which had always been one of the standing grievances of the free burghers. But in the time of his successor, Plettenberg, the grievances of the settlers were aggra vated. The company itself was in a bad way and, instead of pay ing its officials properly, winked at their supplementing inade quate salaries by engaging in trade and spoiling the market for the free burghers; the burghers also complained that they had no rep resentation on the Council of Policy which ordered the affairs of the community, and the frontiersmen in the eastern districts had a special grievance in the refusal of the officials to support them adequately in their troubles with the Xosas and other Bantu tribes. Finally in 1795, on the eve of the first British occupation,

the farmers of the eastern districts, Swellendam and Graaff Reinet drove away the company's officials and set up a republic.

When the company's rule in South Africa came to an end in this year, after lasting for nearly a century and a half, the settlement had been extended from the tiny fort, vegetable garden and store house at the base of Table mountain right up to the Great Fish river on the east and over the Karoo almost as far as the Orange river to the northwest and to the Nieuwveld and Zuurberg moun tains to the north. The little party of some 8o servants of the company brought out by van Riebeek had expanded to a com munity of about 16,000 Europeans, with control over about 17, 00o slaves and an uncertain number of Bushmen and Hottentots. The Boer is a pastoralist and hunter, and by no means inclined to agriculture : for his great herds he required tracts of country, thousands of acres in extent, and he desired to see no country from his rough homestead which he could not call his own. Strangers not of his own race he resented as alien to his ideas. Deeply religious in his simple way, the Boer head of the household read from the Scriptures and led the singing of hymns daily to his family and dependents ; while almost the only social pleasure he allowed himself, was once a year when with all his household he trekked, sometimes 10o miles away, to the nearest church for Holy Communion. Objecting to interference by Government officials and regarding himself as the absolute ruler over his own depend ents, at the same time he expected help from the Government when he was in difficulties with border tribes.

The Cape was captured after very little fighting by a British land and sea force under Admiral Elphinstone and Generals Craig and Clarke in Sept. 1795, nominally on behalf of the prince of Orange, who had been turned out of Holland by the republican allies of France. 'In the death-struggle with France it was essen tial for England not to let this stage on the route to India fall into the hands of the enemy, and until the Peace of Amiens a hold was kept on it for strategic reasons. The government of the gen erals and governors who acted during the eight years of this first occupation was conciliatory and raised no serious opposition among the Boers. Fortunately there is a very interesting account of society at the Cape during most of this period in the letters written by Lady Anne Barnard, whose husband was secretary of the Government during the terms of office of Lord Macartney and Sir George Yonge. At first there was some trouble with the rebels of Swellendam and Graaff Reinet, and fighting with the Bushmen in the north and the Xosas in the east continued. But at any rate, when the Batavian republic received the country back in 1803, it was in no worse condition than it had been when the English took it over. By this time the company was dead and the Govern ment of Holland succeeded to their charge. Mist, the first com missioner-general, and his successor Janssens introduced several economic, legal and social reforms, but did not stay long enough to see the fruits of their labour: for in 18°6 the British sent an other force under Admiral Popham and General Baird to wrest the Cape from Napoleon's Dutch allies. With still less fighting than at the first occupation Janssens submitted to the inevitable and once more the British entered into possession. During the rest of the war the administration, except for Lord Caledon's brief term, was kept in the hands of soldiers. Finally by the peace of 1814 England obtained the Dutch colonies of Guiana and the Cape for a payment of i6,000,000; and since then Cape Colony has remained a part of the British Empire.