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Being "Fighting-Commandant" of the Witwatersrand goldfields, and, therefore, an officer of the Transvaal army, my movements on that day excited great interest among my colleagues in the Chamber. After reading General Joubert's note I said, as calmly as possible: "Yes, the die is cast; I am leaving for the Natal frontier. Good-bye. I must now quit the house. Who knows, perhaps for ever!"
Bad external circumstances, which ruin many a character, will be removed, and this change may mean salvation to many who are lost. Here I should like briefly to relate a story I came across in an account of the gold mines of Witwatersrand.
Many reforms were specified as desirable, and the franchise question was raised, with the object of getting the Government to make some reasonable provision in lieu of the registration clause, which was found in most cases to be an absolute bar. The discovery of the Witwatersrand conglomerate formation soon helped to swell the flowing tide of prosperity.
He was succeeded in 1901 by his namesake and fellow countryman, the present Bishop Matthew Gaughran. The gold discoveries on the Witwatersrand about Johannesburg produced another rush into the interior in the days after the first Transvaal war.
The Germans have already proved that cotton and tobacco are certain to become profitable export crops. The mine-owners of the Witwatersrand, on which Johannesburg stands, have begun a movement which they hope will result in the immigration of 100,000 white laborers to the mining field.
The excitement was intense. In Johannesburg a number of men were prepared to make a dash on Pretoria to effect the forcible release of the prisoners, and had any steps been taken to enforce the commandeering law within the Witwatersrand district, without doubt a collision would have taken place.
The question now is, Is there anything further that we can do? For my part, I think that there is. We might offer to surrender Witwatersrand and Swaziland; we might also relinquish our rights to a foreign policy; we might even accede to an English Protectorate. If France has been able to do without Alsace and Lorraine, surely we can do without the goldfields. What benefit have they ever done us?
The Boers, whose belief that we were going to treat them fairly and justly has been a pleasant feature in the whole of these negotiations, and will, believe me, be an inestimable factor of value in the future history of South Africa the Boers with reluctance and under pressure, but guided by the Committee, with whom they were on friendly terms, were willing to agree to a distribution which allotted one more seat to meet this increase of the population in the Witwatersrand area, and the proposal then became 33, 6, and 30, or, including Krugersdorp Rural, 34, 6, 29.
It was on one of these visits to Krugersdorp, a township within the Witwatersrand Fields, twenty miles from Johannesburg, that the President, appreciating the fact that besides his beloved burghers there might, owing to the proximity of the fields, be some unregenerate aliens present, commenced his address as follows: 'Burghers, friends, thieves, murderers, newcomers, and others. This was not ill-judged and laborious humour; it was said in absolute earnest.
When the war began and all the large mines on the Witwatersrand and all the big industries and stores in Johannesburg and Pretoria were obliged to cease operations, much distress prevailed among the poorer classes of foreigners who were left behind when the great exodus was concluded, and after a few months their poverty became most acute.
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