Carl Borckenhagen, editor of the _Bloemfontein Express_, and F. W. Reitz, who succeeded Sir J. Brand as President of the Orange Free State, and was subsequently State Secretary of the Transvaal, earnestly joined the Bond. The former was a German, whose honest and intense hatred of England was apparent in all his leading articles, while the life-dream of the latter was to see the establishment of the Dutch Republican United States of South Africa. Branches of the Bond were formed in the Cape Colony, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State, and in 1882 the first Congress of the Bond was held at Graaff Reinet. A very astute and profoundly able plotter was already at work in the person of Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr, who had started "The Farmers' Protection Society" with the expressed purpose of watching over Dutch farmers, and stirring them up to take an interest in politics. Hitherto the Dutch bucolic mind had lain fallow. It was now to be cultivated in order that it might produce fruit at parliamentary elections, and, as a more powerful means to that end, "The Farmers' Protection Society" was amalgamated with the Bond in the year 1883. Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr then assumed the reins of management, and, as a Member in the House of Assembly for Stellenbosch, began to wield a power which at last developed into that of a colonial Earl of Warwick, or king-maker. Ministries were formed at his bidding, and cabinets accepted his control. Certainly Mr. Hofmeyr very wisely and astutely modified the ostensible objects of the Bond, and he was helped to do so by the fact that the Hollander party in the Government at Pretoria became stronger than the Africanders. Indeed, the Rev. S. J. Du Toit, the founder of the Bond, was worsted in the Transvaal by the men from the old country. But to make up for this, their march in the Cape Colony was so triumphant that the President of the Bond at the Paarl Congress in June 1900 was able to glory in the fact that since 1884 the Cape Colony had been ruled under responsible government almost exclusively by the aid of the Africander Bond. In 1885 there were twenty-five Bond Members of Parliament who held the balance of power, and there can be no doubt that Sir Thomas Upington, Sir Gordon Sprigg, and Mr. Rhodes sought and accepted their support. When Mr. Rhodes became Prime Minister in 1890 he was in harmony with the Bond, but certainly did not sympathise with its real object. Each party masked its idea, and each party thought that it was successfully using the other for its own objects. Objects diametrically opposite: Mr. Rhodes desired the supremacy of the British Imperial Power, and the Africander party really aimed at the formation of a Republican South Africa.