From the first day of signing a peace treaty the vanquished Boer leaders knew that Britain was in a hurry to bring about the unifi cation of the four British colonies and intended this state to be a British South Africa.
But there were politicians who opposed Milner’s aggressive imperialism and wanted a South African South Africa. They knew they could not lose any time in healing the divisions between the bittereinders and hensoppers, starting their own newspapers and establishing political parties. Financially crippled in the war, the Boer leaders looked to supporters in Europe to help their cause.
Botha, De la Rey and De Wet went to Europe to raise funds for Boer widows and orphans. They were able to raise only slightly more than £100 000. Of greater importance was their meeting with Paul Kruger and getting access to republican funds overseas, for use in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. This money was spent not on relief work (which as Smuts privately explained, they were willing to leave to the British authorities), but on the acquisition of newspapers and on other projects that could promote an Afrikaner political revival.
Two of the most important Dutch-language newspapers that were established were De Volksstem (Pretoria), which was initially established in 1873 and reappeared in 1905 under the influential editor Dr F.V. Engelenburg, and Het Westen (Potchefstroom), which was first printed in November 1904 and had an influence far beyond the western Transvaal. The generals also made an unsuccessful bid for Land en Volk (Pretoria), edited by Eugène Marais.
The fervour of Afrikaners to ensure the survival and development of their culture and language, of which the Christian National Education schools were one manifestation, was also responsible for the second Afrikaans language movement. The movement was heralded by the revival of the Taalbond in 1903 by J.H. (Onze Jan) Hofmeyr and other Cape Afrikaners. The Taalbond aimed to develop the volkstaal (people’s language) which some of these men regarded as Dutch rather than Afrikaans.
In the north, however, author and journalist Gustav Preller and the poets Eugène Marais, Jan F.E. Celliers and J.D. du Toit (Totius) pressed for the use of Afrikaans in literary works and public life. Two of the most haunting poems drawing on the folk memory of the suffering endured during their Vryheidsoorlog and the Boer predicament after Vereeniging were Marais’ ‘Winternag’ and Celliers’ ‘Dis al’. The austere statement of bleak despair expressed in these poems stirred Afrikaners.
The serious rift between National Scouts and Volunteers on the one hand and bittereinders on the other was not healed with the coming of peace. In October 1902 Eugène Marais declared in Land en Volk that ‘the feelings of hate are deep as the ocean and wide as God’s earth’. The Dutch Reformed church required collaborators to confess their ‘guilt’ before being granted the sacraments. In 1903 some of the hensoppers and joiners established a separate Scout church, but by 1906 it had virtually ceased to exist. The Milner regime, many collaborators came to feel, had not lived up to their expectations. They joined bittereinders in condemning the British authorities.
The new Boer leaders came exclusively from the ranks of the bittereinders. After the death of Paul Kruger in Switzerland in July 1904, his embalmed body was taken to Pretoria and his funeral five months after his death further stimulated the Afrikaner political resurgence. In January 1905, under cover of agricultural societies, the political party Het Volk was established in the Transvaal under the chairmanship of Louis Botha, supported by Jan Smuts, C.F. Beyers and other South African War notables. A similar development occurred in the Orange River Colony with the formation of Orangia Unie in May 1906 led by J.B.M. Hertzog, Abraham Fischer and C.R. de Wet.
Milner was aware that the new colonies had to advance a form of self-government, but his proposal encountered strong opposition. It fell to Chamberlain’s successor, Alfred Lyttelton, to anounce the grant of responsible government. Although based on the idea of promoting reconciliation between Boer and Briton, it should not be regarded merely as a magnanimous gesture. It was also designed to gain and ensure the loyalty of the majority of white South Africans to the imperial-commonwealth connection.
Recommendations on the details of the constitution were made in July 1906 by a commission of inquiry. At stake was the basis and nature of the delimitation of constituencies – there was never a possibility of anyone except white inhabitants obtaining the franchise. In retrospect it seems that nothing but gross gerrymandering could have prevented an electoral victory for the ‘Boer parties’ in the two states. No black or coloured people received the vote despite the representations of various organisations. The British government would appear to have been compelled by Clause Eight of the Vereeniging agreement not to grant black people in the new colonies the vote before self-government had been introduced; but no such restraint seems to have been necessary regarding coloured and Indian inhabitants.
In February 1907 Het Volk won the election in the Transvaal, obtaining 37 seats to the 21 of the main opposition, the Progressives, who were backed by gold-mining and financial interests. Louis Botha became premier and headed a cabinet responsible to the legislative assembly. In the Orange River Colony’s election of November 1907 Orangia Unie won a massive victory by obtaining 30 seats to the Constitutional Party’s eight. Abraham Fischer became prime minister. When Merriman’s South African Party won the 1908 general election in the Cape Colony, three of the four states were governed by Afrikaner or Afrikaner-supported parties.
