No, the locomotive does not fail us
I need time to contemplate, here in my
hall
What caused me to have these
cattle-wagons coupled to the train?
What caused me to connect the trains
public address system to their
passengers?
What caused me to connect their lives
with mine?
At that time when our war-hero burnt the
homes of our enemies
At that time when our war-hero let waste
away their children and women
At that time when our war-hero wanted not
victory but complete subjugation of the
enemy
At that time I belonged to those who knew
nothing about it
In May 1902 peace was declared and the
long tragic chapter of the Boer-British
war ended. It was an honour, that our
war-hero had requisitioned my old house
in Johannesburg, in the Oval at
Jeppestown. Our next house was a fine
place in Saratoga Avenue, Doornfontain. I
reopened my old offices in Primrose
Buildings, Fraser Street, opposite the
Second Stock Exchange. It was a very busy
centre, because most of the stockbrokers
and Tattersalls bookies shared
offices in the vicinity. More Exchange
and racecourse business took place in
Fraser Street at that time than anywhere
else in town
At that time please, believe me
I had not the slightest notion
that our war-hero had introduced
concentration camps to subjugate the
enemy!
We all
have been somehow dragged
into it
Stop! Perhaps, I should formulate more
precisely
perhaps, someone else is
taking notes?
I had reached the age of thirty in 1896;
and I had acquired considerable
reputation among people I lived with. I
did not take notes of speeches by
politicians anymore, I was a politician
myself. The battle for water made me one
in those early days when Johannesburg was
just a digging place for gold and
diamonds. In 1893, more than five hundred
ratepayers had signed a petition, asking
me to stand as their representative on
the newly founded Sanitary Board.
All available water of the White Waters
Ridge was used for the pumps in the
mines. Drought brought miseries to the
Ridge besides the water shortage. The
precious vegetables withered away. Food
for the mules and oxen grew scarce. They
transported away everything what was
produced in Johannesburg, they
transported everything what was consumed
in Johannesburg; they needed more and
more food which became less and less
affordable.
When diamonds and gold-deposits were
found 1869 in Kimberley and 1886 in White
Waters Ridge Witwatersrand
called by the Boers who administered it
as their territory it did not take
much time until the white waters
oozed away in the mining shafts. But no
Boer would give up his god-trusting
farm-work in order to involve himself in
mining. Here and there, a Boer would sell
a piece of farmland to a speculating
Uitlander, as he would call a foreigner,
for sure but soon, the Uitlanders
did represent two third of the population
in the Boer-Republic of President Paulus
Oom Kruger, and we, the
Britons, were the majority. The Boers did
not like to sell to us what they grew on
their farmland.
When we started to shoot rockets into the
sky to try to milk rain-clouds, we
received a shocked reprimand from Krugers
capital Pretoria for our, as they called
it, blasphemous action. A sturdy burgher
named Oompje Halyard rose in
wrath in the Volksraad and delivered one
of the most remarkable protests ever made
in a parliament.
How much longer, he
thundered, are these godless people
in Johannesburg to be allowed to continue
this outrage? Day by day they are
sticking their fingers in the eye of the
Lord!
So, if we were capable to use a
rocket-technique to milk rain-clouds why
then did we not close the forty-mile-gap
from Johannesburg to the Southern border
of Transvaal with a railway-line? Thanks
to the hostility of Kruger and his people
which deprived us of the right to
participate in decision-making!
But this time the wily President realised
that the miners had been tried far
enough. Word went from Pretoria that a
bonus of £20 would be paid to the first
250 wagons of foodstuff to reach
Johannesburg from beyond the Transvaal
border. The wagons rolled in, and the
town was saved.
However, for the sake of the Republic
itself Kruger could not deny Johannesburg
its railway indefinitely. The gold now
pouring from the furnaces must be fed to
a greedy world as safely and quickly as
possible. To entrust such precious cargo
to the hazards of even the fastest mule
transport was madness.
Kruger gave orders for a railway to be
built, and again, promptly and painfully,
found himself at war with his old enemy
Cecil Rhodes. The sickly boy who had come
to South Africa twenty years ago was now
nearing the zenith of his power. He had
become the Colossus, whose powerful gaze
dwelt ceaselessly on the map of Africa
from the Cape far up towards the mighty
Congo and even beyond, planning,
administering, dreaming.
His almost mystical vision of the Africa
that was to be had long cherished as its
central feature a railway stretching from
the Cape to Cairo a huge iron
spine from which the ribs would grow in
due time. The day had not yet come to
push the great project forward. But
meanwhile he was busy linking the Cape
with the Transvaal border.
The last forty miles from the border to
Johannesburg proved a problem which
rapidly acquired the temper of high
explosive. Kruger had given the
concession for all railways within the
Transvaal to a Netherlands company, with
the idea that the line from Pretoria to
Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East Africa
should be completed first.
Puffing clouds of smoke on his verandah,
the old president thought happily of the
traffic that would roll over the Delagoa
line, bringing much needed funds to his
treasury. To his circumscribed mind it
was all so simple. Johannesburg was 349
miles from Delagoa Bay, 482 miles from
Durban, and 1.000 miles from Cape Town.
Obviously the shortest route was the
cheapest, and Rhodes could stamp and fume
on the border as much as he liked.
But things did not turn out that nice
simple way at all. Kruger had forgotten
that the Netherlands Railway Company,
having won a priceless monopoly, might be
expected to earn riches for itself. To
his bewildered mortification, the railway
from the Cape to Johannesburg was
completed in September 1892, more than
two years before the line to Delagoa Bay,
which was opened in October 1894. And
just over a year later a third coastal
link with Durban came into being.
Most mortifying of all, Kruger learned
that even the thousand-mile long Cape
line would carry goods to the Rand at a
cheaper rate than that to Delagoa Bay. No
wonder Kruger once growled in anger
against Rhodes: That young man I
like not! He goes too fast for me!
So, there were these two men: old Oom
Paul, puffing clouds of smoke on his
Pretoria stoep, and scheming always how
better to oppress and humiliate the
Uitlanders! Then there was the Good
Giant, Cecil Rhodes, whose shadow
stretched from the Cape to the Zambezi
...
For a long while the Uitlanders, denied
the vote, struggled by constitutional
means to gain their rights. Their voice
was the Transvaal National Union, a body
drawn from all classes who felt that
conditions were becoming intolerable.
They reached the limit of their patience
during 1895, when the Volksraad in
Pretoria made it plain that they had no
intention of bringing about reforms. Then
the thought of revolution reared its
dangerous head
The real power behind the scenes was
Cecil Rhodes himself; but his position
was difficult. He was head of the big
Rand company known as Consolidated
Goldfields, which gave him natural
interest in Transvaal affairs. But he was
now also Prime Minister of the Cape
Colony, and that complicated matters
severely.
Nevertheless, Rhodes was vitally
interested in the Transvaal. He suffered
as much as anyone from the tremendous
taxations imposed by the Volksraad; and
his imperialistic spirit longed to see a
fairer form of government in the country,
and his fellow-Englishmen enjoying the
rights of full citizens.
So a plan for outright revolution was
launched on its fateful way. It was not
the idea of any particular man. Certainly
Rhodes did not want it. It simply grew
out of many discussions.
Briefly, the plot was this. The leaders
in Johannesburg would deliver an
ultimatum regarding their rights to the
Volksraad. It would without doubt be
treated with contempt, whereupon the
revolutionaries would seize power in
Johannesburg and declare themselves the
provisional government of the Transvaal.
The same night they would raid the State
arsenal in Pretoria, the capital. Thus,
armed and holding the reins of power,
they would appeal to the rest of South
Africa and the world, and submit the
future of the Transvaal to a referendum
in which every white person would join.
Naturally all this could not be
accomplished without some uproar, and the
moment retaliation began, argued the
plotters, they would have a reasonable
excuse for the intervention of an
organised British striking force.
That was the crux of the whole scheme.
The nearest border from which such a
force could come was Bechuanaland, with
no railway-connection and therefore two
days march away. But how could the
men be assembled secretly, yet fully
equipped and prepared to ride with all
speed to the aid of the revolutionaries?
It was a knotty problem. And with it
there entered into the affairs of the
Transvaal a man whose name was shortly to
resound throughout South Africa, Great
Britain, and doubtless in foreign
capitals where the activities of Britain
and her associates were watched with the
keenest interest.
The man was Dr. Leander Starr Jameson
doctor of medicine, administrator,
soldier and a close friend and confident
of Rhodes who had drawn him deeply into
his plans for developing Africa. At a
critical moment in his dealings with the
Matabele king, Lobengula, Rhodes turned
to Jameson and begged him to go north and
soothe the despot. Jameson went to
Matabeleland, handled the touchy tyrant
with admirable diplomacy, and later
accompanied the Pioneer Column sent North
by Rhodes and his Chartered Company to
occupy the territory called Mashonaland.
Not long afterwards he became
Administrator of the new country, and
proved himself altogether a fitting
lieutenant for the maker of history
...
The cloak of fantasy began to unfold the
whole enterprise. Rhodes, after some
argument with London, had bought for
railway construction a strip of the
Bechuanaland Protectorate where Jamesons
force could safely gather. So that
construction parties might be
protected, the Colonial Secretary gave
permission for a band of men to be
recruited at Pisani on the border.
About eight hundred men came forward,
some from disbanded Imperial Police, some
from the Mashonaland Mounted Police, the
rest from here and there.
For three weeks the men were drilled and
trained at Pisani in warlike exercises.
Without knowing clearly what it was all
about, they grew more and more eager for
action. But in Johannesburg confusion and
uncertainty now reigned. While hopes and
fears ebbed to and fro, the burghers
calmly gathered in Pretoria to celebrate
Naghtmaal, and thus innocently frustrated
the plot to seize the arsenal, on which
so much depended.
The supply of arms and ammunition
smuggled into Johannesburg was not nearly
large enough for the Reformers
needs. And the leaders had become so
divided in opinion and swayed by anxious
fears that the more level-headed saw
clearly that the best course was to
postpone the whole scheme.
Even Rhodes in Cape Town had grown
anxious and uncertain that he declared:
Im sure the right thing is to
give up the scheme.
One of the oddest features of the whole
fantastic plot was the free and easy way
in which compromising letters and
telegrams were sent to and fro. So it was
inevitable that news of the scheme and
Jamesons intentions were openly
discussed in Pretoria, and even seeped
through to London.
In Johannesburg the people themselves
were strangely divided. A share-market
boom was on, and speculators were much
more concerned with buying and selling
than with the plot thickening around
them. Others watched and listened
fearfully to the warlike talk, then
hastily packed their belongings and
rushed to the small railway yard at
Braamfontein to buy tickets and flee
elsewhere. At one time over five thousand
people were lined up to board the trains
surely a world record queue for
those days.
When Dr. Jameson ignored Rhodes
order to abandon the coup and let his
eight hundred men loose on 29th December
1895 my wife and my three kids
were enjoying Durbans sea-front
We received first-hand news of the raid
in a strange and tragic way. We were on
the train returning from Durban which
passed the down train from Johannesburg
at Glencoe Junction. The two trains
pulled up side by side and there was much
cheery talk and laughter as friends and
acquaintances greeted each other. All the
news of the raid was passed to those
returning from the coast.
Jameson and his men were caught in a trap
set by the Boers; he would surrender
within the next hours.
Then the trains parted ours to
bear us safely home, the other one
plunged over the bridge into the Glencoe
River, killing thirty-two people and
injuring over fifty.
Doctor Jameson had lost eighteen men
killed and about forty wounded.
Can I calculate both figures against each
other?
I can, because as one of the very few
witnesses I saw that the world had been
saved from a worse scenario at
least for a while
I am talking about the confrontation of
the two world powers, Great Britain and
Germany. The worst international reaction
was set in motion by the German Kaiser
Wilhelm, who sent Kruger a telegram,
which became famous, congratulating him
on his firm stand against the invaders.
Some time before this he had taken
another step which annoyed Britain, and
which gave me one of the most interesting
nights of my life.
Together with other members of the
Sanitary Board I had been taken to
Lourenço Marques as the guest of the
well-known Johannesburg financier, Solly
Joel. The official reason for the trip
was never disclosed, but the guests spent
some cheery evenings playing poker.
One night Joel said to me: Why dont
you go down to the wharf to see the men-o-war?
I thought this rather strange, but took
the hint.
The visit was well worth while, for I
found the stage set for a first-class
international incident. Lying at anchor
in the harbour were German warships.
Although I did not know it at the time,
the Kaiser had offered to send marines
from these ships to Pretoria if Kruger
wanted them to reinforce the Boer
Commandos for the anticipated clash with
the British.
The German warships were an ominous
spectacle. But what made my heart beat
faster was the realisation that beyond
them in the bay were British warships,
silently and decorously watching. It was
not hard to imagine what would have
happened if a false move had been made.
And, splendidly exciting as a ringside
view of such an incident would have been,
I prayed that it would not happen. For if
two Great Powers had flown at each others
throat in that humid, peaceful port the
consequences would have been fearful
beyond imagining.
Luckily for the world nothing happened,
thanks to the Foreign Minister for
Portugal, the Marquis de Soveral, who
adamantly refused to allow the Germans to
pass through Portuguese territory. The
rival warships quietly went their
separate ways
And for another
nineteen years Britain and Germany
maintained a polite if hair-trigger
peace.
But at our corner of the world another
war between Boers and Britons was
postponed for only a few years.
Before the Jameson-raid the
Transvaal-government had handed the
important dynamite business over to one
Lippert, a German financier friend of
Krugers. This Lippert Concession,
as it was called, was bitterly resented
by the mine-owners, who had to pay
heavily for their dynamite. The
discontent it aroused was one of the
chief causes of the Reform Plot. As a
result of the political troubles and
quarrels, after the Raid there was not
sufficient storage space for the
dynamite. So, on 19th February 1896, a
train full with deadly cargo had been
left standing the third day already in
the blazing sun. That day, a shunting
engine sent to move the dynamite trucks
bumped against them. Nitroglycerine may
have oozed out of the cartridges, and the
concussion of the engine immediately set
off a monstrous explosion.
The number of dead reached nearly one
hundred, with scores of native bodies
never recovered.
In less then four years the second Boer
War would begin. At the end of this war I
would loose my house to the winner of
this war
The TAZARA-Express will soon follow the
tracks of this man, who as almost no one
else has coined the military history of
the British Empire and who, for
the first time, realised in Africa a
railway-scheme exclusively for military
purposes.
That is why the cattle-wagons remain
attached
That is why the KNOWING VOICES wont
be silenced
Valid is the spoken word!
Click!
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