-Caveat Lector-
Coincidence of a century
Duncan Du Bois Citizen 4th june 1999
ONE hundred years ago this week the Bloemfontein conference between
President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal and Britain's High Commissioner in
South Africa, Sir Alfred Milner, ended abruptly casting a grave shadow of
uncertainty over the sub-continent. A century later, although not threatened
by war, this week's election has served to highlight the historical
parallels with which the country is faced.
Ostensibly the issue that brought Kruger and Milner face to face in
a railway carriage in Bloemfontein exactly a century ago was that of the
franchise. Milner wanted voting rights for the approximately 60 000 male
British residents - uitlanders, as they were called - who were living in the
Transvaal. His view was that as taxpayers and entrepreneurs, they were
contributing to the wealth of Kruger's republic and therefore deserved the
right to vote. In 1999, with the staging of South Africa's sec-ond election
based on universal franchise, an issue that came strongly to the fore in the
election campaign concerned the rights of minorities.
The tyranny of majoritarianism, as this column remarked on May 7,
has bred a sense of haplessness if not hopelessness among minority groups in
the past five years. Having a vote but no meaningful say in how their taxes
are spent (and squandered) has led some to believe that they have been
effectively disenfranchised. That alienation and isolation has been
reinforced by the discriminatory effects of affirmative action and racist
labour laws to the extent that whites, indians and coloureds often feel they
have become uitlanders in the country of their birth. This in turn is
fuelling a new wave of uitlanders - those who are emigrating from South
Africa.
Of course, in 1899, the franchise issue was simply a smokescreen to
mask the real purpose of Britain's casus belli. Conquest of the Transvaal
was necessary so as to give Britain direct control of the richest gold mines
in the world. By 1898 the Transvaal had overtaken Russia, Australia and even
America in gold production. The Bloemfontein conference was therefore pretty
much a facade as far as Milmer was concerned.
British PM Lord Salisbury later remarked that in maneouvering kruger towards
war ha and his government "were doing the work for the capitalists(T
Packenham-the boer war p112.JA Hobson in his book The war in south africa
published in 1900 claimed somewhat presciently given the esyablishment of
the new world order this century that the war was fought "in order to place
a small international oligarchy in power in pretoria"
Ironically those who invested so much money and effort in seeking to
control Pretoria have just this year relocated to London. Having made
pilgrimages to Dakar and Lusaka in the mid-1980s so as to pave the way for
an ANC government over South Africa, the London listings of Anglo-American
and others would seem to indicate a history that has gone full circle.
In 1899 foreign policy was firmly dictated from the imperial capital
- London. In 1999, however, the question has been raised as to what extent
liberated South Africa's foreign policy is being determined by ANC
donor-friendly countries. Recently Mandela received $20 million from Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Suharto of Indonesia and Gaddati of
Libya are also known ANC donors.
Moreover, as the current head of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), our foreign
poli-cy agenda is obviously also being determined by NAM (nuts and
mendicants) issues which mostly are not in South Africa's best inter-ests.
Liberal elements led by Cape Prime Minister William Schreiner urged
Kruger in 1899 to make "reasonable concessions" to British requests, while
the Cape Times reeled off a series of inflammatory editorials against
Kruger. Working in tandem, in what packenham calls "an invisible nexus
of loyalty" sections of the british press called on the governmentto take
firm and and prompt action against kruger. The result was a climate of
manufactured opinion which bred confused and distorted judgements
Confrontational and demanding, they urged no negotiable policy standpoints
on crime and corruption. Ironically, the hitherto liberal DP emerged as the
most outspoken and aggressive in its opposition to the ANC.
But the so-called Independent Press, when not mute about the dangers
of an ANC two-thirds majority generally provided the ANC ' with generous
coverage. Group Parliamentary editor Zubeida Jaffer even went so far as to
float the idea that compared with India's pre-carious democracy, an ANC
two-thirds major-ity could have a "stabilizing" effect on South Africa. If,
as it seems, history repeats itself, the Independent Press may come to
regret its pref-erence for the ANC in the same way that the London Press
later regretted its support for Milner's war against the Boer republics.
Four months after the failed Bloemfontein conference, war broke out
in South Africa. That war would claim at least 22 000 British, 26 000 Boer
and 12 000 African lives during its 32 month duration - some 61 lives a day.
In 1999 South African society is being devastat-ed by a pandemic and by a
crime wave that resembles anarchy. Each day more than 1 500 people are being
infected by the HIV-virus while hundreds die each day of Aids. And since
1994, more than 130 000 people have been murdered by criminal elements.
The Anglo-Boer war also nearly fulfilled Milner's desire to
de-Afrikanerise South Africa. By 1902 one fifth of the volk were fighting
for the British - the joiners, while 26 000 Afrikaners had perished in
Kitchener's deplorable concentration camps. But after the war, to Milner's
dismay, the Afrikaner re-established his political and cultural ascendancy.
This week's election, however, reflected the disarray into which the
Afrikaner has once again fallen. Wednesday's ballot paper saw at least four
Afrikaner leaders competing for the vote of the volk. In considering the
contribu-tions of Pik Botha, FW De Klerk, Roelf Meyer and others to the
ethnic disarmament of the Afrikaner, Milner might, conceivably, have found
some kindred spirits.
A century ago the Boer republics stood on the brink of becoming
failed states as a result of the war that followed. Although today there is
no threat of war, last month the British Institute of Strategic Studies
stated that if SA continued along its present path itwill most certainly
become a failed state
==============================
Also 100yrs ago the Brits were fughting a righteous war against the Boers
about the franchise now they are fighting a righteous war against the serbs
about what (the franchise?)
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