Still the Boer on the Veldt is a factor with which we shall have to reckon. One continuous cry is echoed from Pretoria all throughout the Transvaal. "Your independence is threatened by the Uitlander, be prepared to fight as your fathers did in defence of this sacred cause." By every vile means does the servile Hollander press keep alive race hatred, and one day, not far distant,

great care be not exercised, Mr. Kruger, his Oligarchs and Hollanders, will discover that they have raised a Frankenstein which will devour them. Long ago every shadow of pretence of respecting the Convention vanished. The Boer-cum-Hollander Ring has excluded every outsider from a share in the administration, or a voice on questions of taxation and expenditure, although nine-tenths of the revenue comes out of Uitlanders' pockets. No alien can acquire burgher rights, neither is he free to establish any business in face of a monopoly granted to others. His children must receive their instruction in the public schools in Dutch! The press has been muzzled!

The right of public meeting is denied! He can be expelled from the country at the sweet will of the Executive and he has no remedy before the tribunals of Justice. Until the repeal of the immigration law recently announced, he could not move freely in and out of the country without a pass, thus being on the same footing as a Kaffir. And, lastly, the authority of the Supreme Court has been practically subordinated to the whims or rascality of about thirty men, who comprise the Executive and the so-called Conservative majority in the Volksraad. And yet we are told that no steps should be taken by the Suzerain

to protect the inhabitants of the Transvaal, to whom she guaranteed complete self-government and the enjoyment of all civil rights!

Still less has any inquiry been made into the treatment Kaffirs have received at the hands of the Boers. All Her Majesty's duties towards the unfortunate natives were conveniently ignored in 1884, when the functions of the British Resident were deliberately excluded from the new Convention. This dereliction has been most serious, for every Uitlander as well as Kaffir in the South African Republic is labouring under the effects of Mr. Gladstone's cowardly surrender of supervision over the truculent Boer in his relations to the black man, and at any moment retribution may be exacted. To appreciate this we must examine into the injuries already inflicted on some native tribes, and must remember that others may be exposed any day to similar treatment by these uncivilised Boers.

CHAPTER VI

BOER TREATMENT OF THE KAFFIR

PERSONS who picture the ordinary Boer as a model of piety, rough and rude, but honest and deeply religious, form a very highly coloured estimate of his character. On the contrary, at heart and in habits he is the same narrow-minded bigot, with the identical notions of his right to enslave the Kaffir, as was his father the Voortrekker. The old Testament is his standard, and he rarely wanders beyond its first four Books.

Of the doctrines of forgiveness, charity and mercy, as exemplified in Christ's teaching, he is absolutely ignorant, and, had Trooper Halkett been a Boer, our Lord's words would have made no more impression on him than on a rock.

Boer proneness to enslave the black man was manifested by the Sand River Convention, wherein a special clause was inserted to prevent this practice. All to no avail, and again, in 1881, it was deemed imperative, in view of the infractions of the Sand River Convention relating to slavery, again to insert the declaration in the Convention of that date. Once more it was embodied in the Convention of 1884, Article 8 of which runs thus: "The South African Republic renews the

declaration made in the Sand River Convention and in the Convention of Pretoria, that no slavery will be tolerated by the Government of the said Republic."

In defiance of this Article, I maintain that in many districts, under the form of apprenticeship, Kaffir children and youths have been over and over again enslaved by the Boers. Let us proceed by steps. In the Blue Book, C 1776, p. 9, presented to both Houses of Parliament in April 1877, there appears a graphic extract from the Cape Argus, dated December 9, 1876, descriptive of atrocities committed on Kaffir tribes by the Boers, both in 1868 and at that date. This account corresponds so nearly with what I witnessed with my own eyes in 1895, that I append a portion of that extract, and later I shall proceed to narrate what has come under my own observation.

"In the year 1868, a public meeting was held at Potchefstroom, in the Transvaal, to consider the war then going on with natives in the district of Zoutpansberg. Some statements were made at that meeting which have a singular relation to what is now going on in the district of Lydenburg. In 1868 innocent blood was shed by commandoes, and Government officers were guilty of treachery. Such things are done again in 1876. Lest we should be charged with exaggeration, we shall let our witnesses speak for themselves. First; as to the atrocities mentioned at the meeting in 1868. One of the speakers was the Rev. Mr. Ludorf, and, according to a report of the proceedings at the meeting, he said, 'That on a particular occasion a number of native children, who were too young to be removed,

had been collected in a heap, covered with long grass and burnt alive; other atrocities had also been committed, but these were too horrible to relate.' Called upon to produce proof of this horrible story, the reverend gentleman named his authority in a solemn declaration to the State Attorney. At the same meeting, Mr. J. G. Steyn, who had been Landdrost of Potchefstroom, said: 'There now was innocent blood on our hands which had not yet been avenged, and the curse of God rested on the land in consequence.' Mr. Rosalt remarked that 'It was a singular circumstance that in the different Colonial Kaffir wars, as also in the Basuto wars, one did not hear of destitute children being found by the commandoes, and asked how it was that every petty commando that took the field in this Republic invariably found numbers of destitute children. He gave it as his opinion that the present system of apprenticeship was an essential cause of our frequent hostilities with the natives.' Mr. Jan Talyard said, 'Children were forcibly taken from their mothers, and were then called destitute, and apprenticed.' Mr. Daniel van Vooren was heard to say, 'If they had to clear the country, and could not have the children they found, he would shoot them.' So much for the statements made regarding the sacrifice of innocent blood. As to treachery, Mr. Field-cornet Furstenburg stated that when he was at Zoutpansberg with his burghers the Chief Katse-Kats was told to come down from the mountains; that he sent one of his subordinates as a proof of amity; that whilst a delay of five days was guaranteed by Commandant-General Paul Kruger, who was then in command, orders were given at the same