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Updated: May 28, 2025
An almost complete reconstruction of the Free State Government was rendered necessary by an episode which occurred soon after Steyn's return to his own country. When he and his colleagues crossed the Vaal they found Elliott again engaged on a drive. On the night of July 10 they were surprised at Reitz by Broadwood, who had joined Elliott's command, and all except Steyn were captured.
F.W. Reitz considered it to be his duty not only to the nation but also to himself as a citizen, to say that, in case the proposal of the British Government should be accepted, it would be necessary for the meeting to make provisions as to whose signatures should be attached to the necessary documents. He himself would not sign any document by which the independence would be given up.
Reitz, the State Secretary, it is to be regretted, undertook a public defence of the system which he has frequently expressed his disapproval of; but the more favourable construction which he endeavoured to place upon the law was immediately removed by a plain statement from the President to the exact contrary effect.
Generals, commandants, and burghers, no longer in the grimy costumes of the battlefield, but in the black garb of the legislator, filled the circles of chairs; bandoliered burghers, consuls and military attachés in spectacular uniform, business men, and women with tear-stained cheeks filled the auditorium; while on the official benches were the heads of departments and the Executive Council, State Secretary Reitz and General Schalk Burger.
Mr. Reitz even went so far as to express the confident hope that at the close of the war a British minister and British consuls would reside at Pretoria, but he was positive upon the question of receiving any one who was known as an agent of Great Britain. No one who assumed this relation toward the English Government would be acceptable to the Transvaal and Orange Free State.
'This gang, which I wish to be clearly understood was spread over the whole of South Africa, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the Cape Colony, used the Bond, the press, and the pulpit to further its schemes. 'Reitz, whom I believe to have been an honest enthusiast, set himself up as second sponsor to the Bond and voiced the doctrine of this gang: "Africa for the Africanders.
It was a continuous line of block-houses connected by barbed wire, to prevent the Boers crossing the railway lines, and virtually corralling their forces in certain districts until want of food forced them to surrender. Captain Reitz asserts that the block-house system did more to end the war than the whole British Army.
As far as we are concerned, they might even take cannon along with them to guard us, if only they would take us out oftener. Here, too, the moral tone of the burghers is kept up by religious services, and by the great devotion of the Rev. Mr. Viljoen, clergyman of Reitz, in the Orange Free State, who is a fellow-prisoner of ours.
F.W. Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary; whilst this gentleman again, when lecturing at Johannesburg in July last, naively deplored the confusion of people's ideas who see anything wrong in the Afrikaner Bond, adding: "Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do or talk about." "The peace of South Africa is only possible under Boer supremacy," is the Bond shibboleth.
Reitz, and he did his best to get me to become a member of his Afrikander Bond, but, after studying its constitution and programme, I refused to do so, whereupon the following colloquy in substance took place between us, which has been indelibly imprinted on my mind ever since: 'Reitz: Why do you refuse? Is the object of getting the people to take an interest in political matters not a good one?
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