Transvaal Colony

• 1. A Colony Born from Defeat

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  The Transvaal Colony was declared in 1902, when Britain dissolved the South African Republic at the end of the Second Boer War. The peace agreement was called the Treaty of Vereeniging. It committed the crown to a free grant of £3,000,000 for the Boer farmers whose lands had been burned. It was a striking opening: paying the people you had just defeated before you had governed them a single day. The man who would run the new territory, Alfred Milner, came with a clear plan. He wanted to anglicise the population through two routes: increase the English-speaking settlers and teach Boer children primarily in English. Self-rule would follow, but only once British influence was firmly established. The Boers had different ambitions. They wanted their farms restored, their Dutch language back in courts and schools, and ultimately their own government returned to them. Those two visions could not both succeed. The gold mines of the Witwatersrand near Johannesburg had virtually stopped producing since 1899. Everyone with a stake in the new colony needed them running again.

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• 2. Rebuilding a Burned Colony

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  The British scorched earth policy had left Boer farms, livestock, and food supplies deliberately destroyed across the Transvaal. At the end of the war, Boer men were held as prisoners of war and their families remained in concentration camps. Repatriation depots opened in every district, stocked with food, seed, agricultural tools, plough animals, stone, and building materials. The entire operation began in the winter of 1902. All feed for the depot animals had to be brought in, since the surrounding farmland had been stripped bare. Refugees from the concentration camps and returning prisoners received food rations that lasted almost a year. Families received token grants regardless of their ability to repay. Smaller loans attracted no interest; larger ones were secured by mortgage at four percent interest.

  Roman-Dutch law, the legal code the former republic had used, was translated into English so the courts could continue functioning. A Resident Magistrate was appointed in every district, taking on the role of District Commissioner. An Assistant Magistrate carried out the day-to-day legal and judicial duties. Each district commission included one British subject and two Boers. One Boer representative had surrendered early in the war; the other had held out until the final surrender.

  By March 1903, administrators aimed to have most Boer farmers back on their land. Nineteen million pounds had been committed to war damages, grants, and loans. State agricultural departments were reformed to modernise farming methods across the territory. By 1908, those reforms had produced a surplus of maize and beef. Two other schemes fared poorly. An attempt to settle poor whites as tenant farmers on state land broke down for want of capital and labour. A plan to attract English-speaking settlers to shift the colony's demographic balance also failed, drawing too few takers to make a difference.

  Within fifteen months of the war's end, municipal governments held elections based on property valuation. Voters' rolls were published in both English and Dutch.

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• 3. The Mine Labour Problem

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  By the end of 1901, gold mining had resumed on the Witwatersrand. The industry's pre-war workforce was gone, and finding replacements proved far more complicated than anticipated. White miners' wages had been high going into the war, and the mine owners had no appetite to raise them. Black miners' wages had been cut before the war and never restored, so Black workers showed little interest in returning. Unskilled white labour was too expensive for the underground work that needed doing.

  The Chamber of Mines and the mining magnates settled on a solution in 1903: import cheap labour from China. George Farrar introduced the enabling legislation at the Transvaal Legislative Council on the 28th of December 1903. The council debated it for thirty hours. By the 30th of December, after three readings, the bill passed. The law came into force in February 1904. The employment contracts written for Chinese workers were extremely restrictive. To win over anxious white miners, the scheme had been promoted through warnings that without new labour, mining jobs would shrink. The job restrictions placed on Chinese workers would later be extended, in a sharper form, to Black miners.

  By 1906, the gold mines of the Witwatersrand were in full production. In 1907, South African gold mines produced thirty-two percent of the world's total gold output. By 1910, all Chinese labour on the Witwatersrand had ended.

  George Farrar's legislation had been passed without consulting the Boer generals. They regarded this exclusion as proof that their political voice counted for nothing in the new administration. That conviction would soon produce a response.

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• 4. The Boers Organize

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  In 1903, Alfred Milner's administration offered three seats in the Transvaal Legislative Council to Louis Botha, Jan Smuts, and Koos de la Rey. All three refused. Milner's officials doubted the generals spoke for the broader Boer population. They also declined to hear the generals' views on the Chinese labour question. That dismissal proved costly.

  In 1904, Louis Botha called a Volkskongres, a people's congress, that pulled together the scattered Boer political forces across the Transvaal. In January 1905, out of that gathering, Botha and Jan Smuts founded a new unified party called Het Volk. The party pursued two goals: reconciliation with Britain and full Boer self-rule in the Transvaal. Het Volk calculated that reconciliation would attract the British Liberal opposition. Framing the Chinese labour issue as harmful to white workers could pull in the English labourer vote as well.

  E. P. Solomon formed the Transvaal Responsible Government Association in late 1904. It drew from ex-colonial officials, former ZAR figures, diamond magnates, and labour and business interests. The association called for colonial self-determination and would later rename itself the Nationalists. A rival English formation, the Transvaal Progressive Association, took shape in November 1904 and became active from February 1905. George Farrar and Percy Fitzpatrick led it; its base lay in the mining industry. The Progressives preferred a legislature nominated by the High Commissioner, with strong links to Britain.

  The Liberal Party came to power in Britain in January 1906. Jan Smuts travelled to London and persuaded the new government to design an electoral system that would favour Het Volk. More than a year would pass before that system was put to the test.

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• 5. The 1907 Election

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  On the 20th of February 1907, voters in the Transvaal Colony cast ballots in the first free election under British oversight. Het Volk stood 43 candidates and won 34 seats outright. All the rural constituencies fell to Het Volk except Barberton. Three seats in Pretoria went to the party, along with four on the Witwatersrand. Three independents aligned themselves with Het Volk after the count, giving the party 37 of the 69 seats.

  The Progressive Party contested 34 seats and won 21, with twenty on the Witwatersrand and one in Pretoria. Five Randlords secured seats for the Progressives. The Nationalists won six seats, four on the Witwatersrand and two in Pretoria, but their leader Richard Solomon failed to carry his own constituency. The Transvaal Independent Labour Party contested fourteen seats and won three, all on the Witwatersrand. Its leader Frederic Creswell also failed to win a seat.

  Louis Botha was sworn in as Prime Minister of the Transvaal and took the Agriculture portfolio. Jan Smuts became Colonial Secretary. J. de Villiers took the Attorney-General and Mines roles. Henry Charles Hull became Treasurer. Johann Rissik took Land and Native Affairs, Harry Solomon handled Public Works, and Edward Rooth served as party whip. The full cabinet assembled for the first time in March 1907. The Progressives took the opposition benches, with Abe Bailey serving as their whip.

  Het Volk's view was that Black and white miners together provided enough labour for the industry to continue. Louis Botha pursued a gradual repatriation of Chinese workers, weighing the territory's economic interests against his party's election promises.

  By 1908, the Boers had won electoral control of the Natal, Orange River, and Transvaal colonies. The question of how to unite all four territories under a single government could no longer be deferred.

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• 6. The National Convention

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  In May 1908, Jan Smuts, as Transvaal Colonial Secretary, proposed a gathering of all four South African colonies. The delegates would settle customs and railways agreements and decide whether to draft a constitution for a united country. The aim was to find workable common ground between Boers and English on the political, racial, and economic tensions the colonies shared.

  On the 12th of October 1908, thirty delegates met in Durban under the chairmanship of Sir Henry de Villiers. Twelve came from the Cape Colony, eight from the Transvaal, and five each from the Orange River and Natal colonies. Sixteen delegates came from an English background; the remaining fourteen were of Boer origin.

  Jan Smuts and the Liberal British government both preferred a union over a federation. That preference settled the first and most fundamental question before the convention.

  Three colonies, the Transvaal, the Orange River, and Natal, wanted no Black enfranchisement at all. The Cape Colony wished to preserve the limited franchise it already extended to all races. The British government was prepared to accept whatever the convention decided. The 1904 census had counted 1,269,951 people in the Transvaal Colony alone, of whom 937,127, or nearly 74 percent, were Black. The compromise let each colony keep its existing arrangements, though any change would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.

  Rural seats were assigned fifteen percent fewer constituents than average; urban seats carried fifteen percent more. This weighted political power toward the Afrikaner countryside. It would be one of several reasons why Jan Smuts lost the 1948 South African general election. D. F. Malan swept to power, beginning what became Apartheid.

  Alfred Milner had written plainly about this kind of calculation. He wrote, in a note about the difficulties of the peace process: 'If I did not have some conscience about the treatment of blacks I personally could win over the Dutch in the Colony and indeed all the South African dominion without offending the English. You have only to sacrifice 'the nigger' and the game is easy. Any attempt to secure fair play for them makes the Dutch fractious and almost unmanageable.' His words were written about the peace treaty. They described a calculation that had shaped every major decision since.

  The draft South Africa Act was released for public viewing on the 9th of February 1909. By the 19th of August 1909, it had passed through the British Parliament and become law. When the Union of South Africa took effect in 1910, the Transvaal Province it created was geographically larger than the South African Republic had been. The constituency formula agreed in Durban would shape South African politics for four more decades.

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