South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
In these dealings who has been able to fix a price or to decide where
has been the right to sell? A few cattle have been given for a large
territory or even a few beads; and then it has turned out that the
recipient of the cattle or beads has had no title to dispose of the
land. But the purchaser if he be strong-handed will stick to his
purchase. And then come complications as to property which no judge can
unravel. Shall the law of the Native prevail or European, laws? and if
the former who shall interpret it,--a Native or a European? Some years
ago a Zulu king conquered a native tribe which lived on lands which are
now claimed as part of the Transvaal and then sold them for a herd of
cattle to the Dutch Republic. Time went by and the conquered people were
still allowed to live on the land, but the Dutch still claimed it as a
part of their empire. Then there arose a warrior among the tribe which
had been conquered; and the number of the tribe had increased with
peace; and the warrior said that he was then on his own territory and
not there by sufferance. And now that he was brave and strong he
declared that all the land that had once belonged to his tribe should be
his. And so there came war. The warrior was Secocoeni, the son of
Sequani who had been conquered by Dingaan the King of the Zulus, and the
war came up in the time of Mr. Burgers and has been the cause of our
annexation of the Republic. It should have been the first duty of Mr.
Burgers to have settled this affair with Secocoeni. His title to the
land in question was not very good, but he should have held it or
yielded it. If not all he might have yielded some. Or he might have
shown himself able to conquer the Native, as Dutchmen and Englishmen
have done before,--and have consoled himself with such justification as
that I have mentioned. But with his coins and his flags and his railway
he seems to have lost that power of inducing his Dutchmen to fight which
the Dutch leaders before his time have always possessed. There was
fighting and the Dutch had certain native allies, who assisted them
well. The use of such allies has become quite customary in South Africa.
At the very moment in which I am writing we are employing the Fingos
against Kreli and the Galekas in Kafraria. But Mr. Burgers with his
allies could not conquer Secocoeni although he was again and again
rebuked by our Secretary of State at home for the barbarity with which
he carried on the war. It is thus that Lord Carnarvon wrote to our
Governor at the Cape on the 25th January 1877. “I have to instruct you
once more to express to him”--President Burgers,--“the deep regret and
indignation with which H.M. Government view the proceedings of the armed
force which is acting in the name and under the authority of the
Transvaal Government, and that he is rapidly making impossible the
continuance either of those sentiments of respect and confidence towards
him, or of those friendly relations with him as the Chief of a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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