Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South AfricaAnderson, Andrew A.
History
Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa
Anderson, Andrew A.
Africa, Southern -- Description and travel; Anderson, Andrew A. -- Travel -- Africa, Southern
Montsioa belongs to the Baralong tribe of the Bechuana family; he and
his people have always been loyal to the English Government, and during
the Transvaal rebellion many loyal Boers fled to him for protection, and
were hospitably received. The people are in their habits and customs
similar to those in Monkuruan's country. Montsioa is a quiet,
well-disposed chief, and has been cruelly used by the Boers for his
loyalty to England; one of his sons, and most of his brave men, have
been shot down like dogs, and his women and their children killed in
cold blood, and many of them taken into captivity, all for keeping true
and loyal. He has been shamefully and disgracefully forsaken, and left
to battle alone against these murdering freebooters, who were supported
by the Transvaal Government, and supplied with guns and ammunition to
carry on their unholy war, and now he has lost the greater portion of
his people, and nearly all his cattle and property. The British
Government, moved by the voice of the English people and our loyals at
the Cape, at the eleventh hour sent out a force under Major-General Sir
Charles Warren, to see justice done him. Will they compel the Boers to
return the stolen property, and the women and children they have taken
into the Transvaal as slaves, for they will be nothing less? Will they
deliver up the murderers of Mr. Bethel and others? Never was a more
cruel and unjust war made against people than this, by a people
professing Christianity, who have, by their cold-blooded and atrocious
acts, stamped themselves as a nation of murderers and robbers, and for
such acts they are not worthy of retaining the Transvaal as an
independent country. It is useless for that Government to deny any
complicity in these wars, they are well known to have been the
promoters--there is evidence sufficient to prove this. I was told by
some of the influential Boers in Pretoria, soon after peace was
restored, and the first convention made, in July 1881, that they
intended to go and punish Montsioa and Monkuruan, by driving them out of
their territories and taking their land, for their loyalty to England in
protecting loyal Boers. As they stated, "We will not have these natives
on our border who have helped you English," showing what their intention
was as soon as they were confirmed in their republic. I have deemed it
necessary to state these facts, that the English people may know in any
future dealings with whom they have to meet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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