Watson Memoir of Muriel Viscountess Lowther

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80381-903-7
Verlag: Grosvenor House Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Childhood memories of her parents and their acquaintances in particular Rudyard Kipling and the secret language, which he taught her and his own children, incorporating Xhosa clicks and Soswati whistles, which she remembered to her dying day. Her own views of the main characters and the important events of her father's life. She demonstrates acute observations of the principal political issues and her father's important role in them.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Watson, Andrew

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2
My mother always said that it was the only time my father lost his reason when, at the last moment, in March 1896, he was persuaded to throw in his lot with the Reform Committee. He was the last to join. The true history of the Jameson Raid is lost in a maze of plot and counterplot. To what extent the reformers were merely a pawn in the game of chess played by Cecil Rhodes and President Kruger against each other can only be surmised. It was a clash between a pastoral, proud and independent race, against a pulsing, progressive, industrial new population. These newcomers, or the Uitlanders as they were named by the Boers had been drawn to the Transvaal by its mineral wealth with the promise of fortunes to be made out of the gold embedded within the quartz of the newly discovered reef. They came from their respective countries, where they had enjoyed a voice in the government of their own countries, and they therefore felt that they were entitled to a say in the government of their adopted country. They argued that through the development of the mineral wealth of the Transvaal, plus the millions of capital entrusted to them by European investors, they had created a new and rich South Africa, far removed from the poor pastoral country it had been before their arrival. The Boers themselves had benefited in more ways than one by this foreign capital. The Uitlanders had purchased farms from them, for a price far in excess of the value of the land and beyond their wildest dreams and yet, although the Uitlanders were pouring money into the pockets of the Republic, they had absolutely no say in the government of the country. The Uitlanders had a just grievance, but President Kruger had no love for the British. As a boy of 12 he had taken part in the Great Trek when the Boers had felt themselves pushed out of the Cape by the English. They had packed their families and their belongings into the ox wagons, and trekked off into the blue, experiencing untold hardships. Some settled in the Transvaal and formed their independent republic far removed, they believed, from the interference of the detested Uitlanders. No wonder President Kruger was determined to keep his independence at all costs and to hold the Uitlanders at bay come what may. He was wise enough to know that many of them were not here to stay, but merely to make what they could from the country and return whence they came. Interviewed by a reporter in 1887 he was asked if he did not consider that an intelligent man with a stake in the country, whatever his nationality should not be entitled to have a voice in the affairs of the country through representation on the legislative. “The President was sitting in an armchair and received me wearily”, the reporter states, “he settled down to vigorous smoking through a long German pipe, a maid brought us tea. Later the President cleared his nose in a manner peculiar to himself. ‘If it is within the law it can be done,’ he said, ‘if it is not in compliance with the law, it cannot be done. Wealth cannot break the law. A man would have to stay 20 to 40 years in the country to earn that representation.’” In 1892 he showed signs of a change of thought, when he stated that he desired to add to the burghers of the state, but he would only look for the people who had been obedient to the laws of the country and it would make no difference between rich man and poor men, only between good men and bad men. So, over the years President Kruger had promised and counter promised. Away back in 1882 he had promised that full rights of citizenship would be given after five years of residence in the Republic. But in 1895 the problem was still unsolved and the position was such that no Uitlander could ever hope to attain these rights in full and his children, although born in the Republic, would remain aliens like himself. The next year a petition signed by 32,000 inhabitants was rejected by the Volksraad with scornful laughter and so the agitation and frustration grew, until it reached boiling point in the autumn of 1895, when all it needed was a spark to set the whole Rand ablaze. The boards themselves were divided on the subject, the middle party headed by General Joubert believed that the Uitlanders were entitled to the franchise and unless it were granted, trouble was bound to follow. Like the Uitlanders, Cecil Rhodes had come up against a brick wall. President Kruger and the Republic were the supreme obstacle to his dream of South African unity. He wanted to open the way to the north for his railways, so after a stormy interview with Kruger in 1894 on Cape and Transvaal relations, he admitted the hopelessness of ever coming to any form of agreement with the President. It was a clash of personalities. Kruger went too slowly at the pace of his ox wagons, and Rhodes did everything too fast, owing to his bad health he was working against time and he had neither diplomacy, statesmanship or tact. He cut ruthlessly through every obstacle to further his aims. But President Kruger was the nut that he could not crack, and in 1895 it was railway politics which brought his failure to come to an agreement with the President to a head. Kruger wanted his port in Delagoa Bay (ed. note: now Maputo Bay) and until he could accomplish this, he would not allow any other railway into his country. Left to themselves Boers would not have had a yard of railway lines within their border, they were not interested in railways. But the Uitlanders had created a community which could not be fed by ox wagons. Johannesburg had been threatened by famine in 1894 because of the drought the oxen could not make the journey to the railhead. The railway from the Cape had been thrust by Rhodes through the Free State to the very borders of the Republic, only 50 miles from the mines, and all the supplies and machinery for the mines had to come by ox wagon from the border. Then Kruger closed the two drifts over which the ox wagons had to bring the goods dumped on the border by the railway. Truckloads of goods piled up on the border and Johannesburg was in despair. Towards the autumn of 1895 the tension in Johannesburg was so explosive that Kruger could not ignore the possibility of an open revolt and he tentatively agreed to negotiate terms with the Uitlanders. The plot was hatched. The Uitlanders were determined to make a demand for the franchise once and for all, and this time if they were refused, they in their turn would refuse to recognise the government officials and they would appeal to the Boers as a whole, many of whom were in favour of compromise. This plot was to hold the town Johannesburg, which, after all, they had built, owned and occupied. To this end they imported food and arms, the Reform Committee came into being. That they wanted to hold a pistol at Kruger’s head is clear and that they did not intend insurrection against the Republic, in the beginning, is certain. It was originally a gigantic game of bluff which they believed they could get away with. The sole aim was the redress of their grievances. They had not planned to seize Johannesburg with the Union Jack flying but to frighten Kruger into submission of their rights. But, as time went on, the plot thickened. They decided to issue an ultimatum to Kruger. On its being treated with the usual contempt, they would take possession of Johannesburg and the same night seize the state arsenal and the seat of government at Pretoria and appeal to the whole of South Africa to see that their wrongs were righted. They thought they could do this without a shot being fired, if it could be done by complete surprise, so the success of the enterprise depended on absolute secrecy. Help from outside they must have, so they appealed to Cecil Rhodes. At this point the plot became reality, Cecil Rhodes swept into the arena and the Reform Committee became the pawns in a game of higher politics centred round Cecil Rhodes, with the probable connivance of Chamberlain. In all the books that have been written about Jameson Raid, very little has ever been said to explain the reluctance of the reform leaders; my father, Lionel Phillips, John Hays Hammond and Percy Fitzpatrick and Frank Rhodes (Cecil’s brother) to bring about the open insurrection in Johannesburg which they were expected to accomplish by Cecil Rhodes and Dr Jim [Jameson]. Cecil Rhodes must have thought that there was every chance that the leaders could bring off their coup with his help from outside and he overestimated their capacity in the role of full scale revolutionaries. They were men who had made fortunes in the last 10 years, they were all respected in the mining industry. They were exasperated and frustrated by cruelties refusing to give them the franchise but I doubt that their grievances were so great as to launch them into full-scale revolution. Cecil Rhodes, on the other hand, was a visionary with an unfulfilled idea and was prepared to ride roughshod over any obstacle that stood between him and his goal of a united South Africa. If Dr Jameson had been the leader of the Reform committee in Johannesburg and Cecil Rhodes the invading force, they would more than likely have succeeded where the more cautious leaders failed. Once Cecil Rhodes entered into the plot, all the people involved were swept forward to its disastrous conclusion. I believe that my father was persuaded to join at the last minute, being the largest employer of labour on the Rand, in direct touch with importing machinery in bulk to the mines, who was the obvious cover for smuggling arms into the republic. With his help, the trouble of getting arms through was removed. Rifles were smuggled in...