The real Kruger and the Transvaal; the Britons' side, the Boers' side, the historical facts

Front matter

n->X)Tq%l

Book—

Copyright Is

Foreword

This little biography is not a political pamphlet in jdisguise. Those who want transcripts of State papers, the text of conventions, or the like, will have to seek them elsewhere. My aim has been to tell the story of Kruger the Man, not to write a history of the Transvaal. What sort of a man is he ? What are his ideals, his ambitions, his methods? What was the condition of things that made the autocratic rule of this patriarch so long possible at the end of the nineteenth century ? Why his distrust of and enmity to England? These questions I have endeavored to answer.

Fair play forbids, and loyalty to England does not require, that because Oom Paul is now at war with us I should seek to put the worst construction on all his acts, or should repeat every scrap of idle gossip against him that is floating around Gape Town bar-rooms.

So far as possible, facts have been obtained at first hand from men who participated in the events here described. Free use has been made of the information given by contemporary writers. Newspapers, from the Cape Town Colonist of seventy-four years ago to the last arrivals by mail, have been pressed into service; and in the chapters describing the early life of Kruger I have been indebted to the many books of South African travel issued by missionaries, explorers and others, during the first half of this century.

F. A. M

October. 1899.

Preface

The war that is now being waged in South Africa, between the Britons and the Boers, is a subject of far more than ordinary interest to Americans,

The Boers are descendants of the same sturdy Dutch stock which is the ancestry of a great number of our people, and we are so closely allied to the English by the double ties of blood and language that the present struggle assumes somewhat the aspect of a family affair with us.

With the divided sympathies which exist among us as a people, it is particularly desirable to learn the exact situation, and the causes which have led to this unfortunate war.

Nearly all published works upon the subject are written with more or less prejudice, as they are mainly the writings of Englishmen or Boers, whose sympathies are naturally biased in favor of their own nations.

This w r ork has been carefully arranged with a view to placing the facts before American readers in such a manner as to give the argument on both sides, followed by an impartial historical summary.

The first section of the book, " Paul Kruger: His Life Story," is an excellent personal description of the characteristics and habits of the remarkable man who is at the head of the Transvaal Republic, together with a fair presentation of the English side of the case by Mr. Fred. A. McKenzie, an Englishman, who writes with comparatively little prejudice.

This is followed by 4 4 The Transvaal Boer Speaking

\ PREFACE.

for Himself," which involves a presentation of the other side of the story by M. J. Du Plessis, a native of Johannesburg, and an able defender of his country's cause,

In the concluding portion of the work, "A Brief History of the Transvaal Republic/ ■ the writer has endeavored to present the actual historical facts so clearly and concisely as to enable the reader to obtain a distinct understanding of the exact situation.

There have been wrongs and mistakes upon both sides. Which nation is the most to blame for the present war is left to the reader to determine. In preparing the book many authorities have been consulted to arrive at the real facts, and the writer trusts the reader will be satisfied with the result.

C. T. B.

December, 1899.

PAUL KRUGER:

HIS LIFE STORY.

Chapter I

Paul Kruger is a primitive man, who, by sheer force of commanding personality, has succeeded in life without any of the aids of modern civilization. If we can fancy a patriarch of the days of Abraham planted down amongst us, he would find himself less out of touch with the ways and manners of our time than is this Boer ruler. Brought up from early boyhood, almost wholly out of touch with the complex emotions and artificial ways of the nineteenth century, he is one in whom the essential passions of humanity were allowed free play. He has studied life, not from books but from nature, in defending himself against savages, in protecting his herds against wild beasts. Of city life, he even to-day knows almost nothing. Existence in close streets would suffocate him. His home in Pretoria would be regarded by the European as quite rural, and during his seventy-five years he has not spent more than a few weeks in large centres of population.

Apart from gunpowder, tobacco and steel, he owes civilization for little. We rely for our safety on the policeman and the soldier ; he long looked for his to his readiness with his rifle. Our lines of action are fixed for us by hoary law ; his were, for nearly fifty years, those dictated by family tradition and personal will. We pride ourselves on our complex needs, on our education, on our manifold interests in life; his needs are of the simplest — a gun, a bag of oatmeal, and a strip of dried meat suffice him. Even now, surrounded by men who indulge in all the luxuries of life, he still keeps to the simplest fare. Of education, in the scholastic sense of the term, he has next to none. He can only read his Bible slowly, and ordinary writing is practically incomprehensible to him. Books and newspapers, save the one Book, are ignored by him ; and the one form of secular literature he looks at is State papers. His writing is confined to signing his own name, and that is an operation only performed with difficulty. His language is a patois limited to a few hundred words; and, though he understands English, he never speaks it.

To-day, as President of the Transvaal Republic, a millionaire, and the practical autocrat of a State as large as France, he still lives after the manner of a simple farmer. Up at five in the morning in summer, and a little later in winter, he drinks an early bowl of coffee, and then takes his big pipe and goes out on the veranda of his house to receive visitors. Men of all kinds come to see him. Once he welcomed all; to-day his door is shut on most strangers. None can wonder that he has tired of receiving curious globe-trotters, who gazed at him as at some wild beast, only to come back to Europe and write ridiculing his manners and appearance. A visitor now has to be introduced by one of the President's friends; but a burgher, however poor or rough, can walk in without ceremony, and discuss the affairs of the land with the utmost freedom. It is a sight worth going far to look on, the President and a party of burghers laughing together, poking each other in the ribs to emphasize their own wit, and filling the air with their tobacco smoke.

About half-past seven the informal levee ends, and Kruger enters his sitting-room for family prayers. A brief address accompanies the short passage of Scripture, and is followed by a long prayer. After breakfast come affairs of State. Though head of a republic, Kruger no longer trusts himself unprotected amidst the people. Two sentries stand always in front of the gateway to his house, and when he leaves home for the Government buildings, escorts of armed cavalry precede and follow his carriage, bearing with them the Transvaal flag. When the Volksraad, or Parliament, is meeting, sittings begin at nine in the morning, and Kruger is a constant attendant, taking part in all the debates. Four hours of political work, varied by frequent adjournments for smoking and conversation, bring him to dinner-time.

He has no merely nominal task in this work of government. Everything centres around him. The Volksraad is more or less subordinate to him, and his political influence is sufficient to carry everything he wants. Time after time great efforts have been made to break his power there. Cliques have been formed amongst the members. Great sums of money have been spent in bribing representatives to oppose the President. But the end has always been the same. If the Raad resists too strongly, Kruger simply says that he will resign, and that threat is enough to bring all to their senses. For it is an article of faith among the rural Boers of to-day that the safety of their State is bound up with Paul Kruger.

He has to see to everything himself. His assistants can arrange details, but the final decision, even in the most trivial affair, rests wath the Executive Council, which means the President. Those who picture him as the tool of clever Hollanders hardly know the man. He uses Hollanders so far as they serve his purpose, but no further ; and the moment any one sets himself against him, that man is practically wiped out of Transvaal politics. Needless to say, all this cannot be done without a real knowledge of men. The President knows the best way to influence his often obstinate subjects. To one he appeals on religious grounds, silencing him with a text of Scripture, or the example of an Old Testament patriarch ; another he convinces by a harsh and vivid parable ; a third he laughs down. Friends and foes alike admit that he is most obstinate. Once an idea gets into his head, it remains there ; and once he has fixed on a purpose he carries it out, however far round he has to go to get to it. He may turn and twist for a time, but his end is always the same. He has not, perhaps, the nimbleness of thought on which men of to-day pride themselves ; but he is not dependent on the latest visitor for his ideas.

When the morning's work is done he returns home for dinner, to his modest one-storied house. Mrs. Kruger, like the good German housewife she is, cares nothing for her husband's political affairs, but takes every care to see that his clothes are properly aired, and his meals are cooked to his liking. His food is of the simplest. He has not yet lost the old love for fat mutton, or for such homely dishes as "kop en portgis" (sheep's head and trotters). Coffee is his great drink — coffee first thing in the morning, coffee last thing at night. The State allows him, besides his salary of £8,000 a year, a further grant of £300 for "coffee money/' and rumor says that his good wife makes the coffee money meet all the household expenses. He takes meat three times a day ; chop or steak for breakfast, a roast for dinner, and meat of some kind for supper; and at dinner time he likes to have plenty of vegetables. He drinks no wines or spirits, varying his coffee with milk.

After dinner comes a brief nap, and then again to affairs of State. It is often about six o'clock before the old man can withdraw from routine business, and go again out on his veranda with his pipe. Once more visitors flock in, usually only the more intimate being then received. The President's tobacco pouch is passed round, and much busines^is done on that stoep. At about seven the President again leads in family worship, then comes supper, and soon after eight o'clock he is in bed.

Illness is almost unknown to him, though during the past three years he has shown signs of the great strain his position involves. But his nerves were hardened by many years on the veldt, and he is almost indifferent to pain. It is told how once when in Europe, suffering from toothache one night at Lisbon, he deliberately hacked away at his gum with a pocket-knife until the tooth was out.

In any attempt to estimate President Kruger two things must be remembered. First, he is sincerely religious ; secondly, his ideas of political morality are not those of Europe. None who impartially considers the man can doubt the sincerity and strength of his religious convictions. They permeate his every action and speech, and nothing makes him so indignant as to be charged with falseness. The one thing he has never forgiven Mr. Chamberlain is the accusation that he did not keep his promises. His Bible, as has been said, is his one book; once a month he. conducts the service in the little "Dopper" church near his home, and he is never so happy as when discussing points of doctrine with strangers. Although a member of the most extreme Protestant sect in the world, he does not carry the doctrines or practices of his church to their utmost. For instance, he now discards the favorite and orthodox dress of his communion, the short jacket and wide-brimmed hat. He does not insist on the excommunication of all who are not *'Doppers. M But while willing to look with lenient eye on partly orthodox folks, such as Presbyterians, Lutherans or members of the regular Dutch Church, he regards Jews and Roman Catholics as outside the pale, and no Jew or Roman Catholic can participate in any way in the government of the Transvaal Republic.

His ideal is not so much a republic as a theocracy. The vision of a kingdom of God on earth, a kind of modern reproduction of Palestine under Solomon, haunts his dreams. He sincerely regards the Boers as the* Chosen People of God, and the great mass of his subjects accept the same view. In the days of President Burgers he led an attack on that ruler because he had started a war "when God was not on our side." He regards the victory at Majuba Hill as a direct interposition of Providence in favor of his people. ''The nation that fears God and obeys Him is the only prosperous nation" is his motto.

But alongside with this sincere piety is a side of his character which repels one trained in English morality. The Boer in old days could only survive by using his wits against the black man. He learnt from the Kaffir a subtlety, a power of drawing fine distinctions, a cunningness, and a way of keeping promises in the letter but not in the spirit, which to us seem to ill accord with common honesty. "Gunning is accounted amongst the Boers the highest proof of talent," wrote a traveler nearly seventy years ago. "No people can trick or lie with more apparent sincerity, their phlegmatic insensibility to shame and external simplicity of demeanor alike contributing to their success." To deceive an opponent, as was done with the Johannesburgers after the capture of Jameson, to tell half truths, to fool, is accounted th^ height of strategy, especially when you are dealing with an adversary in whose honor or honesty you as little believe as Kruger does in that of the English.

Nor is his view of political rectitude of a kind thatcommends itself to Englishmen. He believes in sticking to his friends, whatever those friends may have done; and if one is too zealous, and plunders a treasury, or brutally ill-treats a native, or injures an Englishman, and is convicted by a court of law and sentenced to fine or imprisonment, the President is almost sure to remit the imprisonment or to find a way of making up the fine. He does this, not because he sanctions the wrong-doing, but because he feels he must loyally stand by his friends.

Like most Boers, he sees no harm in personal profit out of politics. There is little reason to believe that he himself has ever been largely bribed ; and his great wealth acquired in recent years can be easily accounted for by the increased value of his land. But he sanctions and openly defends politicians and members of the Volksraad accepting presents from interested parties. He heaps up posts and public wealth on his relations in a way that would put Tammany Hall to shame. He believes it is lawful for the Chosen People to "spoil the Egyptians. "

In short, President Kruger is not an ideal character such as novelists create. He is a strong man, of great virtues and great faults, one whose character is singularly noble in many ways and sadly deficient in others. In remembering the conditions from which he has come, one may well wonder that the limitations are not greater.

He makes an easy subject for ridicule. His uncouth appearance, his odd attempts at state and show of dignity, his old-fashioned dress, his strange prejudices, are the subjects of many a laugh throughout South Africa. He was m 1891 asked to be patron of the Queen's Birthday Ball. He declined in horror, alleging that a ball was a kind of Baal worship, akin to those practices for which the Lord had, through His servant Moses, ordained the punishment of death. "As it is therefore contrary to His Honor's principles, His Honor cannot consent to the misuse of his name in such a connection," his secretary wrote. His dress is certainly not made in Bond street or Fifth avenue. The baggy trousers, the shiny frock coat fastened by the top button, and the old silk hat, strike every visitor as ludicrous. Nor are his manners those that would pass muster with the Four Hundred. He spits freely wherever he is/ and he shares the common Boer idea that pocket handkerchiefs are more for ornament than for use. He does not see the necessity of a daily shave, and the stubby beard of four days' growth adds no attractiveness to his appearance.

Yet his sense of humor is in some ways keen. It often takes the boyish form of giving his companion a sly dig in his side, or coming unexpectedly behind a companion and tapping him on the head with anything that is handy. It is sometimes hard for the outsider to appreciate this humor. A Boer jailer once showed it in its highest form. He was flogging a prisoner, and, after laying on twenty-five lashes with the cat, demanded that the prisoner should say "Thank you" for what he had received. The Kaffir refused, whereupon the jailer gave another cut. It is true that it requires a special sense to appreciate the funniness of this.

Mr. Kruger's humor sometimes takes the form of sly verbal digs, especially at his religious opponents. Once the Jews presented a petition asking for grants for their schools. The old President turned on them with benevolent gaze. "Why are you so small-minded ?" he asked. "I am not. I take your Old Testament and read it, why do you not take my New Testament? If you do, you will have the same privileges as others. I will lay your grievances before the Executive Council. Your religion is free, but you must obey the law."

On another occasion he consented to open a Jewish Tabernacle. "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I declare this building open," he said in a loud voice, so that all could hear.

Yet a third example of his humor. When the members of the Johannesburg Reform Committee were released from prison, some of them went to thank the President. Kruger naturally despised them. "You know," he said, "I sometimes have to punish my dogs, and I find that there are two kinds of dogs. Some of them who are good come back and lick my boots. Others go away and snarl at me. I see some are still snarling, but I am glad you are not like them."

"Oh, that was only my joke," he said, when he saw that they took the parable ill.

Chapter II. First I M Prkssion S

Paul Kruger was born under the British flag, and for the first ten years of his life was a British subject. Of direct German descent — not Dutch, as is popularly supposed— he came from the family of one Jacob Kruger. who in 1713 arrived in Cape Town a youth of seventeen, in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Caspar Kruger, a descendant of Jacob, settled down on. a farm in Beulhock, near Colesburg; and on October 10th. 1825, his son Stephanus Johannes Paulus was born.

It is said that the impressions one receives in early rhildhood remain throughout life: and in the case of Paul Kruger, childish impressions were one and all calculated to give a hatred of British rule. Cape Colony was then at its lowest point. The Dutch farmers, who had been hastily transferred to the British Crown, did not appreciate the change ; and it must be confessed that the actions of the British officials were not calculated to give them a very high idea of the value of their new citizenship. Cape Colony was on the very boundaries of civilization ; and its white population was so thinly scattered that each family had perforce to be an isolated unit, almost wholly out of touch with its neighbors. In former years each farmer had been given as much land as he could walk across in half an hour, and consequently most of the farms were three miles in diameter, their boundaries marked by heaps of stones, and only a very small portion of the land cultivated.

First Impressions.

Schools were practically unknown, and it was only with the utmost difficulty that the children could be taught to read. Young Paul never got beyond being able to trace out his name and to spell his Bible. The usual teachers were old and discharged soldiers, who were taken on the farms because they were fit for nothing else, and who, as the farmers used laughingly to remark : "Must be fit to teach because they could do no other thing/' It will be remembered how when M. Stoubert was appointed to the cure of Ban de la Roche., he asked to be taken to the chief school, and w r as shown a miserable hovel where a number of children were crowded together- — noisy, w r ild, and making no attempt to learn. A little, withered old man was lying on a bed in the corner. Stoubert went up to him. "Are you the schoolmaster, my good friend ?" "Yes, sir." "And what do you teach the children?" "Nothing, sir/' "Nothing! how is that?" "Because," replied the old man simply, "I myself know nothing." "Why, then, were ybu appointed schoolmaster?" "Why, sir, I had been taking care of the Waldbach pigs for a great number of years, and when I got too old and infirm for that, they sent me here to take care of the children."

The same system applied in Cape Colony. All of young Kruger's book learning was obtained from a "meister" such as this, and from an old Boer woman.

It is difficult for us to now realize that in his childhood Kruger was brought up amidst the slave population. Around the farm would be, as on every farm, a number of blacks, whose future was wholly in his father's hands. If his parents took him into the town on a market day he could see in the central square slaves being publicly flogged for theft and other petty offenses ; and his eye could hardly avoid gazing on placards with announcements like this:

A SLAVE WOMAN AND HER FOUR CHILDREN.

At Messrs. JONES & COOK'S sale on Saturday morning will be sold the slaves named as below stated :

AMDOCA, a female, 28 years old, housemaid.

MUGTILDA, a female, 14 years old, housemaid.

TITUS, a boy, 10 years old, apprenticed to a tailor.

JOHN, five years old.

AUGUST, one year and three months old.

The two latter will be sold with their mother.

A credit of six months, with interest from day of sale, will be given upon approved security.

Wolff & Bartman, Auctioneers.

The colony was at least ten weeks' distance from England, and no news could reach it from Europe until months after the event. Books were scarce, newspapers few, small and dear. There had been a museum, but it was closed for want of support ; and the public library consisted of a stock of almost useless volumes, mainly old divinity. One of the amusements of the people of Cape Town was visiting the convict ships that called on their way to Van Diemen's Land.

All the colonists were most desperately poor, and the dollar, nominally worth four shillings, only realized eighteen pence. Civil servants were often months behind with their salaries. Credit was universal, and there was hardly a farm in the colony which was not mortgaged.

The white men, divided in the two great cliques of the English administrators and the Dutch farmers, lived in almost hourly peril of their lives. On the farms it

First Impressions.

^3 was necessary to be continually armed ; and long before the boy Kruger was strong enough to hold a musket he could use a bow and arrow with considerable skill, helping with them to drive off the wild animals attacking his father's cattle. The farmers were threatened with two great perils. The Kaffirs and Bushmen were continually leaving their borders and killing whatever whites they could find. The 36,000 slaves in the colony were never to be relied on. The white man held his own only by his skill with his rifle and his readiness in wielding the sjambok. The farmers were — most of them— in the worst straits, especially those on the frontiers. A local journal in 1835 described them as ' 'miserably deficient in clothing, in furniture, in culinary utensils, in apartments — half a dozen people often sleeping in the same room, without instruction, destitute of books. " They lived in the simplest fashion, making almost everything for themselves that they required, lacking what are now considered the most elementary requirements of civilization or of common decency. They mostly slept in the same clothes as they worked in, often not changing their attire for weeks altogether. In some parts there almost seemed a danger of their sinking to the depths of the ignorance and superstition of the Hottentots. From this they were only saved by two things — their passionate love of liberty and their zeal for religion.

In the Kruger household religion was regarded as the main affair of life. The father was a member of the narrowest section of the Dutch Church in South Africa, afterwards known as Doppers. It is difficult for an outsider to understand the real differences between the Doppers and the Established Church. The principal one was that the Doppers would sing only psalms in their worship, objecting to "man-made" hymns on the ground that they were "carnal." They further believed it was not right to

First Impressions.

follow changes of fashion in personal dress, and they could be distinguished by their large vests buttoned up to the chin, their short jackets and wide-brimmed hats. But the Dopper spirit went beknv that. To be a Dopper meant to object to change of any sort in any way, to resist every reform, good or evil, simply because it w T as a reform, to be imbued with a spirit of Toryism, such as to the people of Europe would seem incomprehensible and incredible.

The Krugers and all the Dutch farmers had not taken kindly to English rule. They had many grievances. Our Government would not permit them to fight the native tribes with the same severity as formerly. They blamed us for the depreciation of the coinage. They said they had been ill-treated by England withdrawing her preferential tariff on Cape wanes. Then came the final blow. In 1833 and 1834, England ordered the emancipation of the slaves. Compensation was allowed to the owners, but the regulations and restrictions were such that very few of the farmers received the money the English Parliament had granted them. The Cape Colony was flooded with a number of idle wanderers hanging around every farm, refusing to work, making the country unsafe. The emancipation of the slaves alone would not have turned the Dutch farmers from us, but that, coming on the top of many other grievances, made the burden intolerable. "We white African farmers,'* they said, "cannot live with any feeling of security in a country with so many black tribes under Her Majesty's Government. We have been oppressed under British rule, which oppressions we cannot even name, for these no newspaper could contain : they would certainly fill a large volume." Many had already by ones and twos made the plunge into the great unknown country to the north. It was now determined to do this on a large scale. Under the leadership of Pot-

First Impressions.

gieter, a great army of farmers abandoned their homes, piled their belongings in big ox-wagons, and trekked to the far interior. They had strange visions, these wanderers — not only were they escaping from British rule, but they hoped to penetrate through the wild country right into Palestine, the land which was rightly theirs as the chosen people of the Lord. Among these wanderers Caspar Kruger held a prominent place ; and young Paul Kruger, then ten years old, marched at the head of an ox-wagon going due north.

Chapter III. The Making Of The Man

In South Africa the drift of civilization is ever not westward but northward. The Vortreekers were, as they knew, taking their lives in their hands in thus plunging into the wilderness; but the spirit of the wanderer was in their veins; and most of them were never so happy as when, w r ith all their household goods in an ox-wagon, they roamed the land, surrounded by their flocks and herds,