This not a revisionist history, nor is it a work of scholarship; it is a brief polemic. It intends no exculpation for wrong-doing and it denies no-one’s suffering. This the last of a three-part series. The first was published on 19 January, and the second on 27 January.
Contempt for British colonial hegemony in South Africa comes from all sides of the demographic spectrum.
This is surprising, because for the Afrikaners the collapse of British imperial resolve that followed its victory in the Anglo-Boer War led directly to the withdrawal of Britain from South Africa, the formation of the Union, and the total replacement of British hegemony by an Afrikaner hegemony that would remain in place for 80 years until its replacement by the ANC.
The Afrikaners – I concede that the collective is questionable – lost the war but won a peace materially facilitated by an adversary that had lost its appetite to govern, and – where it exists − their contempt for that adversary is misplaced.
Even harder to understand is the equally misplaced contempt for British colonialism felt by dark-skinned South Africans, for their long walk to freedom would have been much shortened had the British held fast to the imperial ambition for which they are so bitterly reviled, and – having won the military dimension of the Boer War encounter − established a single, unitary self-governing Crown colony consisting of the four provinces that lay under their control in 1902, subject to the colour-blind franchise that had existed in the Cape for 50 years, and a constitutional recognition of equal rights for all subjects of the Crown that was the effect of Proclamation 50 of 1828.
We know that the Cape franchise was qualified by gender and wealth, but it would have provided a fine platform for progressive liberalisation, especially as the ensuing years after 1902 were to bring in a universal unqualified franchise to Britain under a Liberal government.
To what extent can the British be credited for having a commitment to a universal franchise in South Africa?
Let the following facts speak for themselves.
In February 1901, Louis Botha responds to Kitchener’s overtures for peace, and the two generals meet in Middelburg to negotiate, even though Kitchener has made it clear that British annexation of the two Boer republics is a non-negotiable.
Willingness to talk
Astonishingly, this does not appear to represent an obstacle to Botha’s willingness to talk, and in fact Kitchener describes Botha’s attitude at the talks as being friendly and reasonable.
Although the Boers are not to retain their independence, they are promised self-government, surely the next best thing, and compellingly for Botha, the question of franchise rights for the dark-skinned Transvaalers was to be a matter for a future decision by the self-governing legislative body. There is nothing here substantively inimical to the interests of the Boers, and the British government is confident that Botha will accept the oral proposals made by Kitchener, and that peace will ensue. Except for one problem.
Following the meeting, Kitchener sends Botha the British proposals in writing and an unaccountable thing happens. There is silence from Botha, a silence that lasts nine days, whereafter Botha rejects the peace proposal out of hand, without giving reasons. Why? Because between the cordial meeting and the dispatch to Botha of the written proposals, a telegram has been sent by the British Colonial Secretary Chamberlain to Kitchener.
It contains the fateful words: “… the legal position of Kaffirs (sic) will be similar to that which they hold in the Cape Colony”, and adds a private note: “one of the war aims is to protect the natives”.
In other words, a condition for cessation of hostilities is a universal colour-blind franchise in the Boer Republics. This is undoubtedly what sticks in Botha’s craw, this is what scuppers the talks, and this is what prolongs the War for another 18 months.
Forget the Uitlanders, Britain is fighting the Boers for the rights of the dark-skinned in the Republics. That there will be a sea change in Britain’s position in May 1902, when Chamberlain’s demand has been dropped is widely regarded as a betrayal of the expectations of the dark-skinned Transvaalers, but I disagree with such a view.
War exhaustion
We must remember that a state of war exhaustion affected both parties to the talks, and the insistence by the British on such a pre-condition for a cessation to hostilities would have led the Boers to a dogged and hopeless fight to the last man and woman standing.
Moreover, there is in fact some ethical nicety to what appears to be British backtracking on its commitment to a colour-blind franchise: the Boer Republics are in terms of the peace treaty to become self-governing and as self-governing states they will have the exclusive power to adopt whatever constitutional arrangements they like. It would have seemed both inappropriate and unrealistic for the British to impose such an arrangement on an independent state, an arrangement which they the British would not have been in a position to enforce.
Apropos the requirement outlined by Chamberlain in his telegram: this is not a flash in the pan posture, for after Milner becomes Governor of the Transvaal he is so mercilessly harried by Chamberlain on the need for franchise extension that Milner finally throws in the towel and resigns.
Thus it is that, in 1902, with the independence of the Boer Republics a fait accompli, and British dominion sliding into history, the way is clear for Union, the Land Act of 1913, the cancellation of the Cape constitution, the rise to power of the National Party and the imposition of apartheid.
Before I leave the subject of the War there is the matter of the Internment Camps, erroneously called “concentration camps”. I might have been inclined to describe this as an issue of intransigent hostility between Boer and Brit to this day, except that it does not seem to be a matter of difference at all. The nomenclature reflects a universally shared belief − they were “concentration camps”, and their existence is a blot of pure evil on the scabbard of the British imperial sword.
Denied by nobody
The suffering brought about by the camps is denied by nobody, and the scorched earth campaign that caused them is reviewed by all with a visceral sense of horror. But when the horror subsides we are left to review the facts, and to confront that same hard ontological conundrum we have met before: does the bad drive out the good or the worse?
It is generally known that some 28,000 men, women and children died in the camps, and every death was a tragedy. It is less well known that nearly 90,000 men, women and children survived the camps. Had the camps never been established by the British, had Boer women, children and hensoppers been abandoned on a denuded veld, what then would the mortality count have been?
And what do we make of the comments of two Boer generals that I still can’t fathom; Louis Botha says that the Boers can be only too “thankful” that their women are under English “protection,” and then, at the Vereeniging peace pow-wow in May 1902, when the consequences of the camps must have long been all too readily known, Christiaan De Wet says − in an attempt to find means of continuing a hopeless war – that Boer women and men non-combatants should “try to gain admission” to the internment camps.
Were the Boer generals aware of something that eludes us today? As far as the scorched earth policy is concerned, the wanton destruction that it occasioned still has the power to appal. But, in the context of war, was it wanton?
In every war at all times in human history it has been the tactic of combatants to destroy their adversaries’ supply lines. The farms were the supply lines that sustained the guerrilla war. British soldiers were being killed. Kitchener destroyed the Boer supply lines. In the words of Koos de la Rey, who refused to hate the British, “it was war, just war”.
In the context of the scorched earth policy we also need to remind ourselves that in 1901 Kitchener repeatedly offered the Boers reasonable peace terms, the peace terms that they finally accepted at Melrose House.
With the formation of Union in 1910, the putative colonial period comes to an end, and whatever injustice prevails thereafter cannot be laid at the door of colonialism (although I have regularly heard South Africans denounce apartheid as a colonial evil).
Narrative of racism
But we still have the narrative of racism to deal with, in respect of which the Land Act of 1913 is regarded as a foundation stone. The commonly accepted allegation is that the Act “stole” 70% of South Africa from its dark-skinned inhabitants. This is untrue. What was stolen was not land, but the constitutional right of the dark-skinned to acquire and own land. This was in itself unforgivable, and it cost them dearly before the injustice was put right in 1994.
But in a strange way there was a rough justice about the Act. For the overwhelming majority of dark-skinned South Africans, land was occupied not by right of title deed, but by right of legacy. It was in acknowledgement of this anachronistic custom that the Act tried to reconcile the collision of these two competing principles of land occupation. Did the Act drive out the good … or the worse? Had there been no land allocation on a racial basis as established by the Act, and no prohibition of land purchase on the open market by all, what would the position have been of the millions of dark-skinned South Africans who at that stage of the history of South Africa occupied land by legacy right?
This is a large question, but we can safely say that the so-called “tribal lands” otherwise reserved by the Act for exclusive occupation by the dark-skinned would soon have fallen to the ownership of the moneyed light-skinned.
And so we get to the issue of apartheid, the consequences of which were a racially based ocean of suffering. I am not aware that anybody today denies this self-evident truth. The question I pose is whether apartheid grew out of racial hatred, or out of something more universal in the world of power relations and the instinct for domination: competitive advantage.
Skin colour difference was something like a god-given opportunity for the aggrandising human spirit to appropriate power and the prosperity that flowed from it. Is this an overwrought finesse that seeks to fine tune racial hostility conveniently out of existence? I appreciate that it will seem this way to many millions of South Africans.
Consequence of apartheid
Racial hatred has shown its ugly hand many times over in our history, but I can’t help feeling that racial hatred has been a consequence of apartheid rather than a cause of it, and – for what my personal feeling is worth – I have been transported by a sense of joy at the widespread evaporation of racial hatred following the annulment of apartheid. For me, the injustice of apartheid lay in its violation of constitutional rights, and it is in the remorseless protection of constitutional rights that our aspiration never to repeat that injustice lies.
Finally, a brief note on words and meaning. There is of course no such thing as a neutral language. Nor would we want there to be, for words are our only repository of meaning, and even neutrality is a position. The words historians use represent no exception to this rule.
Contemporary historiography and political commentary are replete with embedded tropes that signify meaning: consider, for instance, why it is that historians use the word “government” to describe a company, “colonists” to describe opportunity seekers, “wars” to describe conflicts, “capitalists” to describe entrepreneurs and businessmen, and “concentration camps” to describe internment camps?
They are not only entitled to make judgements of this sort, they are obliged to do so. It is their task.
Obligation
But as cultural mores are subject to fashion, we – readers and consumers of the products of the commentariat − have our own obligation to question such judgements. With this in mind, it is time, I propose, to challenge the judgements embedded in the words “colonialism” and “racism”, to put our obsession with past injustice behind us, and to address ourselves to the vigilant protection of our constitutional rights which alone will protect us from the injustice of domination.
[Image: Holiday Time in Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, James Ford’s 1899 depiction of the Cape Town of a utopian future welcoming the first Governor-General of a united South Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Iziko_sang_Holiday_Time_in_Cape_Town.jpg]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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