Lecture 10

Industrialisation and exploitation #2

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

In 1882 (July), the Republic of Stellaland (Star Land) had been created by Afrikaners under the leadership of its elected president Gerrit Jacobus van Niekerk, a farmer from Transvaal.

Later in 1882 (October), the State of Goshen, named after the biblical Land of Goshen, was founded by Nicklaas Gey van Pittius.

In 1883 (August), Stellaland and Goshen united to form the United States of Stellaland.

Stellaland's laws and constitution were practically identical to those of the South African Republic.

It was also presumed that the small country could eventually be incorporated into the neighbouring South African Republic, thereby enabling tacit Boer expansionism.

In Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes and the British administration believed that it was necessary to control Stellaland in order to maintain the mining-industry’s trade routes open.

In February 1884, Great Britain unilaterally declared Stellaland a British protectorate.

Rhodes fears and the concern of the British administration were well-founded.

On 10th September 1884, President Paul Kruger declared the area to be under the protection of the South African Republic.

Six days later (September, 1884), the Republic of Stellaland was annexed by the Afrikaners.

In December 1884, the British colonial forces under Sir Charles Warren invaded the territory and entered Vryburg, the capital.

In August 1885, the Republic was abolished and incorporated into British Bechuanaland.

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.

In 1887, Rhodes bought a stake in the Transvaal gold mines and formed the Gold Fields of South Africa Company.

In 1887, he set out to buy the Kimberley mine.

At this time, Paul Kruger wanted to extend his control over Mashonaland and Matabeleland.

King Lobengula, the son of Mzilikazi, of the Matabele stood in the way of both Paul Kruger and Cecil Rhodes.

In August 1889 the King wrote to Queen Victoria to complain:

"The white people are troubling me much about gold. If the queen hears that I have given away the whole country it is not so."

Cecil Rhodes made his views on African rights clear, eight years earlier, when he wrote to his friend W.T. Stead in August 1891:

"I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race."

In October of 1888, Rhodes used John Moffat, the missionary, to negotiate with Lobengula and obtain mining concession from him.

In 1889, at Rhodes’ request, the British government granted a charter to the British South Africa Company to exploit the territory.

The British government did not set a northern limit on the right to territorial concessions.

Between 1890 and 1895, Rhodes was frustrated in his expansionist ambitions by Paul Kruger, the Germans, the Belgians and the Portuguese.

Rhodes intended to extend the company’s control into Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi), in addition to the Bechuanaland Protectorate (Botswana).

In 1890, Rhodes’ Pioneers entered Matabeleland and then Mashonaland and set up a fort at Salisbury (named after the British Prime Minister), now Harare.

Rhodes’ influence was so strong to the north and south of the Zambezi River that the new territories were named after him, i.e. Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia.

In 1890, Cecil Rhodes became Prime Minister of Cape Colony.

By 1891, De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. owned 90% of the world’s diamond fields.

This made expansion northwards possible.

Between 1890 and 1895, Rhodes was frustrated in his expansionist ambitions by Paul Kruger, the Germans, the Belgians and the Portuguese.

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

Kruger persisted in cutting off supply routes from the Cape to the north across the Vaal River.

Rhodes, together with high commissioner Sir Herbert Robinson and British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain, gave his support to a plan to attack Kruger.

On 29th December 1895, an unauthorised raid was carried out on the Transvaal.

The raiding party was led by Leander Starr Jameson, Rhodes’ Matabeleland administrator.

The raid is called “the Jameson Raid.”

The raid was intended to provoke an uprising by the Uitlanders.

Uitlanders was the name given to foreigners, i.e. non-Afrikaners, working in the gold fields of the Transvaal Republic.

The discovery of gold had made the Transvaal the richest and potentially the most powerful nation in Southern Africa.

But it attracted so many Uitlanders (approximately 60,000 in 1896) that they quickly outnumbered the Afrikaners (approximately 30,000).

This caused Kruger to discriminate against the Uitlanders.

The workers were expected to recruit an army and prepare for an insurrection.

The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place.

But the Jameson Raid was a precursor of the Second Anglo-Boer War (11th October 1899 – 31st May 1902)

Following the failure of the raid, Rhodes resigned all his political and business positions.

He refused to denounce Jameson.

Rhodesia and Bechuanaland were taken over by the British government.