Lecture 4

Industrialisation and exploitation

In 1843, the British colonial administration annexed Natal in 1843, a large area of Xhosa territory known as "Kafraria" in 1846, and the Orange Free State in 1848.

In 1867, diamonds were discovered near Kimberley and Britain annexed the diamond fields in 1871.

In 1877, Britain annexed the Transvaal, but in 1880, in the first Anglo-Boer War, which was fought between the British and the Boer forces of a temporary Boer republic set up at Heidelberg under Paul Kruger, the British were defeated.

In 1882, Paul Kruger became President of the South African Republic located in the Transvaal.

In 1883, the Germans annexed Angra Pequena in South West Africa.

In 1886, gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand, the area stretching eastwards and westwards of Johannesburg.

Suddenly, the scramble for land became transformed into a scramble for gold.

But the gold lay under the Transvaal, the Boer Republic.

For a while, all time and effort was taken up in extracting, commercialising and marketing the gold.

The gold on the Witwatersrand is a particularly fine and requires the treatment of several tons of earth to extract the smallest of quantity.

Thus, although some machinery was already available, manpower was in great demand.

To ensure the commercial viability of such an industry, the manpower had to be cheap and plentiful.

The black population fitted the bill exactly.

Black workers from all over South Africa, and from countries to the north flooded into the Transvaal in order to work on the gold and diamond mines.

However, Cecil Rhodes, the British mining magnate, who became Prime Minister of the Cape in 1890, could not stand by and watch the uncooperative Paul Kruger manage affairs in the Transvaal.

There were three parties are opposing Kruger: Rhodes and the Rand mining magnate who were discontent with the high taxation Kruger had imposed on the mining industry, the uitlanders, that is, the foreign workers - both white and black - who were denied all democratic rights in the Boer Republic, and the British Government.

The result of this collective discontent was the second Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.

This war saw the two colonial masters of black South Africans, one English-speaking and the other Afrikaans-speaking, locked in a bitter struggle for colonial supremacy.

The Boers had the sympathy of most countries in the world, including Germany, France and Russia, but Britain's sea-power was supreme.

By the end of 1900 the Republic capitals of Bloemfontein and Pretoria had fallen and the Orange Free State and the Transvaal were under British occupation.

Kruger went into exile in Holland.

The ending of hostilities was confirmed in the Treaty of Vereeniging which was signed in Pretoria on the 31st May 1902.

The terms of the treaty were extremely generous, and amounted in effect to an abdication of British responsibility for the protection of black rights.

The treaty put into doubt the fundamental question of black franchise rights.

In effect, despite their military defeat, the Boers were getting exactly what they wanted: self-government, equality for the Afrikaans language with English, and the right to dominate the blacks as they pleased.

The Act of Union passed by the British parliament, which established the Union of South Africa in 1910, consolidated the precedents established in the Treaty of Vereeniging.

Political power was a virtually handed over to the Afrikaners and the democratic rights of franchise for the country's majority were by-passed.

Lord Gladstone, the new governor General, offered General Botha, the Boer War hero, the opportunity to form a Cabinet.

By 1910, therefore, power of the the two colonial masters in South Africa was divided in two ways: the Afrikaans-speaking whites controlled the political arena while the English-speaking whites controlled business and commerce.

This was to be the situation in broad terms until the end of apartheid in 1994, eighty-four years later.

It should be recalled at this point, too, that in Namibia, formerly South West Africa, German colonisation was having a devastating effect.

The first Imperial Commissioner of German South West Africa was Heinrich Goering, the father of Reichsmarschall Herman Goering.

The German subjugation of the peoples of South West Africa is well-documented and is recognised as one of the most vicious of all colonial occupations.

In a precedent for the extermination of six million Jews in the Second World War, the indigenous Herero and Nama peoples were systematically exterminated, with the remnants of their civilisations being forced eventually to flee into exile in Botswana, despite valiant attempts at resistance led by the Herero leaders, Samuel Maharero and Hosea Kutako, and the Nama leader, Hendrick Witbooi.

Thus, South West Africa, today called Namibia, was to remain from the end of the 19th century up to its independence in 1990 the victim of powerful colonial authorities, first the Germans and later the South Africans, in spite of United Nations mandates and international pressure to reverse the situation.

With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, one question begged an answer.

Should South Africa support Britain or Germany?

The situation was confused and the choice not obvious.

For their parts, General Botha, the Prime Minister of the Union Parliament, together with Jan Christian Smuts, who had been educated at Cambridge and the Middle Temple in England, but who had switched his allegiance from Britain and from Cecil Rhodes and had supported Kruger, eventually becoming State-Attorney of the Transvaal, believed that South Africa, as part of the British Empire, was automatically at war with the Germany.

Parliament supported this belief.

But many South Africans, who still remembered the Anglo-Boer War, believed that Britain had been as aggressive with the former Boer republics as Germany had been to its colonies.

Some South Africans saw the war in Europe as an opportunity to fight for the total independence of South Africa and the declaration of a republic.

Some thought South Africa should remain neutral.