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Slagter's Nek marked the dividing of the ways between the British Government and the Afrikaners. And the separation soon became more marked. There were injudicious tamperings with the local government and the local ways, with a substitution of English for Dutch in the law courts.
All the Afrikaners in the Cape Colony have been working for years past for this end. "For thirty years the Cape Dutch have been waiting their chance, and now their day has come; they will throw off their mask and their yoke at the same instant, and 200,000 Dutch heroes will trample you tinder foot.
It was the bond of peace and concord; and he concluded by declaring his well-grounded fears that the Afrikaner Bond was a device of the devil directed against the well-being of the entire Afrikaner nation. The Afrikaner Bond has as final object what is summed up in its motto of "Afrika voor de Afrikaners." The whole of South Africa belongs by just right to the Afrikaner nation.
It is with real grief that I must record my convictions against the Boer nation as solely and entirely guilty, but with this qualification, that its responsibility is much attenuated by the fact, as I will endeavour to show, that the bulk of that people has been unconsciously decoyed as tools of a gigantic intrigue, a conspiracy which was originated some thirty years ago by an infamous Hollander coterie, and operated since by its product and engine, the now well-known "Afrikaner Bond Association," with its significant motto of "Afrika voor Afrikaners" its object being no less than the eviction of all that is English from South Africa, and to substitute a federation of all South African States into one free and independent Republic, the affiliation to be with Holland instead, and Dutch the common and official language, other nations, in return for afforded aid, to participate in the trade and other advantages wrested from England.
Nothing could have been more propitious than that very Jameson incursion to fan race hatred and to advance the projects of the Afrikaner Bond "Afrika voor de Afrikaners," for, whilst no one acquainted with the facts can for a moment doubt the guilt of the Transvaal Government for having systematically provoked that attempt at revolution, "Bond" propaganda and paid journalism had a rare chance to set up the theory that annexation on behalf of Great Britain had been foully planned the Prince of Wales even being an abettor of the attempted coup d'état purely to gratify the lust of greed for the gold and diamonds of the poor innocent Boers.
The Afrikaner Bond professed its objects to be peace and harmony, but it really contained the pernicious seeds of division and strife, to set up enmity between English Afrikaners and Boer Afrikaners. He pointed out the sincerity of friendly relations on the part of England towards both the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republics.
In the efforts of gaining adherents to the cause it is of importance to distinguish three categories of persons The class of Afrikaners who are to some extent deteriorated by assimilative influences with the English race, whose restoration to patriotism will need great efforts, discretion, and patience.
After having succeeded in producing race hatred between Boer and English, the next step had been to convince the Boer leaders and the people of the inevitableness of a contest for ensuring the supremacy of the Afrikaners, coupled with the absolute necessity of the complete expulsion of the entire British element.
This was marred by Afrikaner Bond doctrines and intrigues proceeding from a Hollander coterie, the formula being "Afrika voor de Afrikaners" the aims including the usurpation of British authority in the Colonies, supremacy of the Boer nation under one great Republican federation, and an affiliated status with Holland which should restore that people, all to the prejudice of England, to a political and economic significance and power surpassing its former epoch of European and Colonial eminence.
For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a record of the gradual spreading of the Afrikaners over the huge expanse of veld which lay to the north of them. Cattle raising became an industry, but in a country where six acres can hardly support a sheep, large farms are necessary for even small herds.
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