Few states, particularly a predominantly rural and backward one like the ZAR, would have coped easily with the mushrooming of a city like Johannesburg and the great influx of immigrants. Yet the ZAR succeeded remarkably well in devising a proper local administration for Johannesburg and other towns, appointing mostly competent officials to run them. It allowed foreign capital into the colony without restrictions, imposed a low tax of only 5% on declared profits, and enacted an efficient mining code. With revenue from the mining industry the ZAR built railways linking Johannesburg to ports, and improved the road system. Enough food reached Johannesburg to feed the rapidly expanding population. After 1895 Kruger made impressive progress with administrative reform.
Kruger’s critics hammered the state on two issues: its protectionist economic policies and the franchise. Even before gold was discovered Kruger had accepted a plan for industrialisation that would increase the state’s economic independence. It handed to individuals or companies the exclusive right to produce articles such as liquor, soap, bricks, leather and dynamite, all buttressed by heavy protective tariffs. His policy made good sense in a predominantly agrarian society developing its own manufacturing sector, but not in a rapidly expanding gold economy.
The mining industry, intent on holding down costs, complained vociferously about the high railway rates, the price of dynamite, corruption, and the scarcity of black labour, all of which were estimated to cost the mining industry more than £2 million a year. Kruger’s proclivity for giving concessions and posts to incompetent family, friends and supporters made matters worse.
From soon after the discovery of gold, thousands of foreign fortune-seekers flooded the ZAR. To prevent these ‘Uitlanders’ from winning power through the ballot box, Kruger’s government in 1890 extended the period necessary to qualify for the vote from one year to fourteen years. They also created a second Volksraad to represent Uitlander interests. This became the focus of all the wrath of the immigrant population.
Kruger’s principal Afrikaner opposition was a faction called the Progressives, who urged the rapid modernisation of the republic. They operated under the leadership of Commandant-General Piet Joubert, and during the 1890s included bright, enterprising men like Louis Botha, J.H. (Koos) de la Rey, Carl Jeppe, Ewald Esselen and Schalk Burger. They attacked maladministration, corruption, the conservative educational system and the parochial ways of Kruger’s government. The Progressives commanded the support of about a third of the elected representatives in both houses of the legislature. In the 1893 presidential election Kruger only narrowly defeated Joubert.
The Progressives also demanded a substantial lowering of the franchise qualifications, convinced that the Uitlander demand for the franchise was only a bluff and that they would not sacrifice their British citizenship for the vote. But, prepared as Kruger was to modernise the state, he drew the line at franchise reform. By now there were some 44 000 white foreigners in the ZAR, 28 000 from outside South Africa. These Uitlander males, according to some estimates, outnumbered the burghers eligible to vote.
Kruger himself believed that there were 60 000 to 70 000 Uitlanders and about 30 000 burghers. Perception was what counted. Bold reform of both the severe franchise qualification and a concession on the price of dynamite would have eased much of the agitation against the ZAR. But Kruger obstinately refused to change his position until it was too late. Jan Smuts noted at Kruger’s death that ‘he typified the Boer character both in its brighter and darker aspects’.
Kruger’s reluctance to reform the franchise became the pretext for British aggression, led by Joseph Chamberlain and Alfred Milner. They wanted war not so much because Kruger was obstinate and blocked rapid development, but because he was flexible and pragmatic on most issues and because he appointed bright new men – of whom Smuts was one – to modernise his administration. Left to itself, the ZAR would soon dominate South Africa. This was a prospect that Milner had to prevent, even if it meant war.
