State for more than a few months when Sir Theophilus Shepstone annexed it in 1877. The following picture is from a book published by the late Alfred Aylward, the Fenian, more anti-British than the Boer himself, who was present at the time, and wrote his book in order to enlist sympathy for the movement then (1878) organized to obtain a cancellation of the annexation. The value of Aylward's testimony would not be fairly appreciated without some explanation.
Sir Bartle Frere describes him (and quotes Scotland Yard authorities who knew him well) as one of the party who murdered the policeman at Manchester, and one of the worst and most active of the dynamiting Irishmen—a professional agitator, who boasted of his purpose to promote the Transvaal rebellion. Major Le Caron, too, stated on oath before the Parnell Commission that money was sent by the Irish Rebel Societies, through Aylward, to stir up the Transvaal rebellion. This is what Aylward says:
All South Africa was for the moment at rest, with the exception of the district of Utrecht, where an old-standing grievance with Cetewayo was the cause of some little alarm and excitement (i.e., Cetewayo's threatened invasion). Still, the Transvaal was disturbed throughout its whole extent by the expectation of some pending change—a change coming from the outside, which had been invited by an active, discontented party, chiefly foreigners, dwellers in towns, non-producers, place-hunters, deserters, refugees, land-speculators, 'development-men,' and pests of Transvaal society generally, who openly preached resistance to the law, refusal to pay taxes, and contempt of the natural and guaranteed owners of the country in which they lived, in the distinctly expressed hope that foreign intervention would fill the country with British gold, and conduce to their own material prosperity. The Boers, spread over a country larger than France, were stunned into stupor by the demonstrative loudness of the party of discontent. In some districts they (the Boers) were poor, and could not readily pay the taxes imposed upon them by the wars and railway projects of the Government. Their Volksraad was in Session, but its every action was paralyzed by the gloom of impending dissolution.
The Republic owed £215,000, which it had no immediate means of paying. Its creditors were clamorous; whilst the Executive, turn to which side it would, found itself confronted by threats, reproaches, accusations of slavery and cruelty based upon hearsay, and which, like the annexation that steadily approached, could not be met, because neither of them had yet assumed the evidenced consistency of actual fact. There was no public opinion to support the Government or to save the Republic. The Boers lived far apart from each other, whilst the annexationists and the party of disorder dwelt, in compact communities, in towns and mining villages. Into the midst of this confusion—into the capital of this bewildered State—entered Sir Theophilus Shepstone and his staff. He had not come to seize the country—he had come as 'an adviser, as a helper, and as a friend'; but his advent was a blight—an incubus which rendered additionally powerless the unfortunate President and his Council. The coming of Sir Theophilus Shepstone was, to the minds of nearly all, but too clearly the forerunner of change. In the face of this additional whet to the anticipations of the party of disturbance, something that has been described as anarchy prevailed. Everyone waited; all fell into a state of expectation; no one attempted to save the State, or repel the danger. At the same time, there was no anarchy in the proper sense of the word. Justice sat on her seat; criminals were arrested and brought to trial; actions at law were heard and determined; and in no one place, save the goldfields, was authority, even for a moment, defied. There the law vindicated itself without having used violence or shed one drop of blood. Not one single public outrage, not one unpunished crime, marked this period of suspense, which is described by partizan writers as a time of chaos and anarchy.
Peace was granted to Secocoeni, and the quietness and gloom of the country became even more profound.
Now, had a commission, royal or joint, been opened in Pretoria to inquire into the truth of the allegations made against the Government, history might perhaps be able to record that judgment, followed by justice, had overtaken the Transvaal. No commission was opened. There was a banquet and a ball. The suspense increased in intensity. Understrappers, and agents of the discontented faction, filled the country with rumours of impending annexation, and sometimes of impending conquest. The Boers, the inhabitants of the country, asked day after day what was the mission of the English Commissioner. They visited him in hundreds; but he knew the wonderful advantage to be gathered from the heightening of the mystery, and the intensifying of the excitement. He listened to everyone; but he maintained a gloomy and impassive silence, neither checking the aspirations of the annexationists, nor dissipating the forebodings of the farmers.
News arrived that troops were marching towards, and massing on, the border; rumours spread that annexation was inevitable. Sir Theophilus sought not to alleviate the anxieties of the Government, nor to quell the now rising alarm amongst the people; he simply sat still and listened, watching the writhings and stragglings of the doomed Volksraad, and awaiting a favourable moment to end its existence.
At length someone determined to ask: 'Was it not possible to avert this annexation which loomed before every mind, brooding like a shadow upon the country?' He went to Sir Theophilus; he asked his question; and at length the oracle spoke. Without moving a muscle of his wonderfully impassive countenance, without even raising his eyes to look at the interlocutor, Sir Theophilus calmly murmured: 'It is too late!—too late!' And so, without the authorization of the home Government, without the consent of her Majesty's High Commissioner, without the concurrence of the Volksraad, against the will of thirty-nine-fortieths of the people, and in defiance of the protest of their Executive, as Mr. Anthony Trollope puts it, Sir Theophilus said: 'Then and from thenceforth the Transvaal shall be British property!' So he put up the Queen's flag.
Now, it is impossible to conceive anything more admirable for its discretion, more wisely calculated as to the moment of its occurrence, or more suavely and yet firmly done than this act. There was not a blow struck, not a shot fired; and the first impulse of nearly every person in the country, whether in principle opposed to annexation or not, was to congratulate Sir Theophilus Shepstone on the skill, tact, and good fortune with which he had put an end to the excessive anxiety, the mental strain, the fears, hopes, and expectations by which the whole country was paralyzed. Whether the annexation be now held to be right or wrong, its execution, so far as regards the act itself, was an unparalleled triumph of tact, modesty, and firmness.
It was not discovered at the moment, and it never entered into any man's mind to consider, that it was the presence in Pretoria of Sir Theophilus himself that had created the anxiety, and caused the paralysis; and that it was his arts and presence that had tightened and strung up into quivering intensity the mind of the country. He had broken the spell; he had introduced certainty in place of uncertainty; and he was congratulated, and very properly so, for the manner in which he had brought to a conclusion his hazardous mission.
Sir Theophilus Shepstone's despatches record his negotiations with President Burgers, and the arrangement which allowed him to make a formal protest against the annexation, so as to satisfy his Irreconcilables, whilst he in reality not only assented to the measure, but even assisted the completion of it, and discussed the details with Shepstone, who in turn had revised President Burgers' 'protest.'
On April 3, 1877, Shepstone had written to Frere:
Mr. Burgers, who had been all along, as far as his conversation and professions to me went, in full accord with me, had suddenly taken alarm; he made impossible proposals, all of which involved infinite delay, and, of course, dangerous agitation. As far as I am concerned, it is impossible for me to retreat now, come what may. If I were to leave the country, civil war would at once take place, as the natives would consider it the sunshine in which they could make hay in the Transvaal; the goldfields are in a state of rebellion against the Transvaal Government, and they are kept from overt acts only by my warnings and entreaties.
And eight days later he wrote to Mr. Robert Herbert enclosing his letter under 'flying seal' to Frere:
There will be a protest against my act of annexation issued by the Government, but they will at the same time call upon the people to submit quietly, pending the issue; you need not be disquieted by such action, because it is taken merely to save appearances, and the members of the Government from the violence of a faction that seems for years to have held Pretoria in terror when any act of