Page 26 - SARB: 100-Year Journey

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The uitlanders (foreigners) had demands. They wanted the vote, which they were denied as non-citizens. President Paul Kruger was worried that if they obtained the right to vote, they would soon take over the government of the ZAR, rendering the territory a British colony again.
The coup led by Dr Leander Starr Jameson was timed to coincide with an envisaged uprising by the uitlanders. On 29 December 1895, Jameson and his armed forces crossed the border from what was then called Bechuanaland (Botswana), anticipating that when they reached the Witwatersrand they would join an already violent uprising. It was not to be so. The uitlanders had not even agreed on what kind of government would take over from President Kruger.
In light of the disagreement, Rhodes decided to call off the raid – but it was too late. There was no way of alerting Jameson, who was on his way to the Witwatersrand. Besides, the coup was such an open secret that it was common gossip in restaurants and bars. In any event, the uitlanders recoiled at the idea of a violent insurrection, rendering the entire scheme a failure.
Consequently, the ZAR government received warning of the attack. Jameson was forced to surrender on 2 January 1896 at Doornkop, near Krugersdorp, in today’s Mogale City. The coup was a catastrophe. The uitlanders who had been part of the plot were put on trial in Johannesburg, an event depicted in Breaker Morant, a movie about the raid. Some were sentenced to death, but these were later commuted to fines.
Rhodes was forced to resign his position as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. The hostilities between the English and Afrikaans people worsened. The kinsmen of the ZAR and the Free State cooperated closely with the Kruger government, as they faced a common enemy.
Lord Alfred Milner, Britain’s High Commissioner to the ZAR, was a loyal supporter of British colonial expansion. When President Kruger was re-elected in 1898, Milner told Prime Minister Chamberlain that the only solution was war between Britain and the Boer republics. But this was not so simple: there needed to be a trigger.
It came in December 1898, when Transvaal policeman Barend Jones shot an uitlander called Tom Edgar. The incident involving a drunk Edgar, and his subsequent refusal to be arrested on his premises was commonplace. But to the uitlanders it was political. It became a cause célèbre. The attainment of the vote became an important factor in the outbreak of war as the political tensions between the Afrikaners and the British subjects in the Transvaal worsened.
In May 1899, presidents Kruger of the ZAR and Martinus Steyn of the Free State held a summit with Lord Milner in Bloemfontein in an effort to stem the onset of war. The two presidents made some concessions, but no outright solution was forthcoming.
Following the failed talks, Milner requested the British government to send more troops to South Africa. The troops arrived in the third quarter of that year. This induced more concessions from the ZAR, but Milner rebuffed the offer. On 11 October 1899, war erupted. The sound of gunfire on the battlefields lasted three years.
Lord Alfred Milner. /Getty Images
The signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902, marking the official end of the Anglo-Boer War. /Getty Images