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Updated: June 28, 2025
I had always found him the most willing and reliable of officers, and he had won the respect and trust of every man who knew him. He was faithful to the end. Although he might well have joined our enemies, he preferred to set the seal of fidelity upon his life by his imprisonment. Long may he live to enjoy the trust of the Afrikander people! I remained late that evening in the town.
At that period, whilst the siege of Kimberley was in progress, it is certain that serious consideration was given to this question of common action on the part of Rhodes and of the two men who practically held the destinies of the Transvaal in their hands de Wet and General Botha, with Mr. Hofmeyr as representative of the Afrikander Bond at their back.
How could we have been in a truly festive mood without the sight of that beloved banner, which it had cost so many sacrifices to protect, and to save which so much Afrikander blood had been shed. And in many of us the thought suggested itself: "O, Vierkleur of our Transvaal, how much longer shall we be allowed to see you unfurled?
Were it not that so many of my compatriots lacked that which is so largely characteristic of the British soldier, the quality of patriotism and the intense desire to uphold the traditions of his nationality, I would ask what people in the world would have been able to conquer the Afrikander?
If anybody, in a sermon or in a speech, try to impress on him the seriousness of the situation, pointing out how our ancestors have suffered and how we have to follow in their steps, our hero of yesterday, the jolly lad who was laughing boisterously and joking a minute ago, is seen to melt, and the tears start in his eyes. I am now referring to the true Afrikander.
We will call them X., Y. and Z. Now X. is an American, Y. is an Englishman, whose peach-like countenance yet bears the newly healed scar of a bullet wound, and Z. is an Afrikander. Here begins the story: Upon a certain day of wind, rain and cloud, news came that the Boches were massing behind their lines for an attack, whereupon X., Y. and Z. were ordered to go up and verify this.
In our own day, every enemy of England, from the mad Mullah to the mad Kaiser, has had his advocates at home; and the champions of Boer and Boxer, of Afridi and Afrikander, of the Mahdi and the Matabele, have been usually the same persons. The English, it would appear, differ from other misguided rascals in never being right even by accident.
Although an Englishman by birth, he was at heart an Afrikander, for he had accepted the Orange Free State as his second fatherland. Like many another Englishman, he had become a fellow-citizen of ours, and had enjoyed the fat of the land. But now, trusty burgher that he was, he had drawn his sword to defend the burghers' rights.
We hope and trust that so sure as the sun shall rise in the east and set in the west, so surely may this our flag, now wrapped in sorry mourning, soon flutter aloft again in all its glory, over the country on which Nature lavishes her most wondrous treasures." The Afrikander character may be called peculiar in many respects.
After that the Afrikander trusted Rhodes not I, though; I always write I distrust Rhodes and so came the Jameson raid. Now how could we have confidence after all this in British Government? "I do not think Transvaal Government have been wise; I have many times told them so. They made great mistake when they let people come in to the mines.
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