CENTRAL South Africa
forms an immense plateau, covering nearly a million square miles, and
situated at an average height of four thousand feet above the sea-level.
Nature has provided access to this great table-land from the southern
shores of the continent by three mighty steps—the coast-land, the Little
Karroo, and the Great Karroo. The coastal region, lying under mountain
ranges which intercept and condense the moisture arising from the ocean,
rejoices in an abundant and regular rainfall. The Little Karroo is a
very much drier area, but it can at least boast of rivers which even in
the height of summer are never wholly destitute of running water. But
the Great Karroo forms another and quite different feature in the
geography and hydrography of South Africa. The Hottentot word karroo
signifies dry, hard, barren, and this precisely is the nature of the
forbidding plains which form the Great Karroo. These plains have been
described as a country of mountains without summits, rivers without
water, trees without shade, and herbage without verdure. They have
exercised a marked influencei upon the history of South Africa and the
character of its inhabitants. We shall strive in vain to understand the
general movement of Cape history, the slow expansion northward and
eastward, and the spirit of sturdy independence which animated the
pioneer as he roamed ever further afield in the search for pasture,
unless we picture clearly to ourselves these burning plains, bounded by
distant blue mountains, shimmering in the hot sunshine, and covered with
deceptive mirage. The Great Karroo was for generations the limit of
habitable South Africa. To the colonist it was a boundary, a horizon and
a challenge. It was the region of privation and thirst, of danger and
disease, of wild beasts and wilder Bushmen. Beyond it lay a
grass-covered country, with a rich soil and a plentiful water supply,
eminently adapted to agricultural and pastoral pursuits. But as yet no
white man had crossed the dreaded Karroo and looked upon that land of
promise. More than a century elapsed after the first settlement of the
Cape before an enterprising expedition, travelling along the west coast,
reached the Great River, now known as the Orange, and yet another fifty
years passed before the middle Orange was crossed, and the fertile
regions of Central South Africa became known to Europeans.
It is important to remember that the Cape was for a century and a half a
Dutch possession. When in 1652 Jan van Riebeek founded the earliest
European settlement at the foot of Table Mountain, Holland was at the
flood-tide of its political influence and commercial prosperity. The
eighty years’ conflict with Spain had resulted in the complete triumph
of the Dutch arms. Dutch admirals disputed with English the control of
the English Channel, and a few years subsequent to van Riebeek’s arrival
at the Cape a Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and destroyed British
men-of-war anchored in the Medway. The Dutch East India Company had
acquired a practical monopoly of the sea-borne traffic with India and
the East. And it was in order to provide a port of call for the outgoing
and returning vessels of this Company that a township was established
and a castle built at the Cape of Good Hope, under the name and title of
“ the frontier fortress of India.”
It was only under the stress of circumstances and in consequence of the
independent spirit of the colonists that the settlement was slowly
extended beyond the narrow limits of the Cape peninsula. The East India
Company itself had no desire or intention to colonise the country. All
it wanted was a haven at which its fleets could recuperate for a week or
two, and lay in fresh supplies of water, meat and vegetables.
But the class of men who found their way to the shores of South Africa
had been nurtured amid the industrious life and the free institutions of
Holland. They were ill content to toil for the Company upon the hard
terms which the latter offered, and claimed the rights of free burghers.
They crossed the downs by which the Cape peninsula is shut in, and
moving ever further eastwards built up new communities at Stellenbosch
and Drakenstein, Zwartland and Tulbagh, Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet. In
1688 the ranks of these free burghers were powerfully reinforced by the
arrival of a number of Huguenot refugees, who, driven forth from their
own fair France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, sought a new
home in these southern climes. The French emigrds soon lost the use of
their own language, which the Company forbade them to employ, and within
two or three generations were completely merged in the colonists of
Dutch or German descent. It has been calculated that towards the close
of the eighteenth century the population of South Africa was composed,
roughly speaking, of about one-half of Dutch blood, one-sixth of French,
one-sixth of German, and the remainder of other nationalities. All these
spoke a form of simplified Dutch known as Cape Dutch, which has lost
almost all the inflectional endings of the Dutch of Holland, and in
vocabulary exhibits many affinities with the Dutch of the seventeenth
century.
During the wars which convulsed Europe at the end of the eighteenth and
the beginning of the nineteenth century Holland and England were ranged
on opposite sides. The days of the Dutch East India Company were already
numbered, and the British Government, intent upon the control of the
trade route to India, landed a body of troops at the Cape, and with very
little difficulty secured the capitulation of the Dutch garrison and the
surrender of the country to the English crown (1795). The first British
occupation of the Cape lasted for eight years. Hostilities in Europe
were then temporarily suspended by the Treaty of Amiens, which also
provided that the Cape should be restored to the Netherlands, or, as it
was then called, the Batavian Republic. Thus for three years South
Africa fell again under Dutch rule, but in 1806 it was captured for the
second time by an English force, and passed finally under the dominion
of Great Britain. The claim of the latter to the rightful possession of
the country rests partly upon conquest and partly upon purchase. By a
convention signed in London in 1814 the British Sovereign agreed to
return to the Prince of the Netherlands all colonies and settlements
which had been wrested from Holland during the Napoleonic wars,
excepting only the Cape of Good Hope and Demerara in South America, for
which latter possessions the Prince of the Netherlands agreed to accept
an indemnity of six million pounds sterling. The Cape colonists were not
consulted when their destinies were disposed of, but, though they
regretted the withdrawal of the friendly Batavian rule, they were for
the most part indifferent to the form of government under which they
lived, provided only their liberty of action remained unimpeded and no
obnoxious taxes were imposed.
When the Cape of Good Hope passed into the hands of the British, the
colonists were almost to a man a Dutch-speaking community. Out of the
twenty-five thousand individuals who composed the population in 1805
there were not more than seventy or eighty British subjects. The
earliest administrators under the English regime, by retaining the use
of the Dutch language in Church and State, and reinstating as civil
officials a number of men who had been in the service of the Batavian
Republic, did much to reconcile the burghers to the change of
government. Twenty years subsequently, however, a later Governor, Lord
Charles Henry Somerset, decreed that the English language alone should
be legal for all public documents and judicial proceedings—a measure
which soon became a fertile cause of misunderstanding and resentment.
There was apparently some reason for the change. Up to 1820 the only
individuals of British descent resident in the Colony were the chief
personages on the civil establishment, the naval staff at Simon’s Town,
some Cape Town merchants, a certain number of missionaries, chiefly of
the London Missionary Society, and a few hundred mechanics and labourers.
But in that year immigration on an extensive scale was undertaken. The
British Government voted a considerable sum of money for the settlement
of suitable families in South Africa, and nearly five thousand emigrants
of British birth were conveyed to the Cape, and received grants of land
on the eastern border of the Colony. For these the use of the English
language was indispensable ; but the old Dutch population, who still
outnumbered the new-comers in the proportion of eight to one, counted it
a serious grievance that they could no longer approach the Government
through the medium of a language which had prevailed in the country for
nigh on two centuries.
But though the language had been suppressed in the State, it still held
its own in the Church. The forty thousand colonists who in 1820 retained
the use of the Dutch language were without exception members of the
Dutch Reformed Church. This Church occupied, during practically the
whole of the nineteenth century, a unique and influential position in
South Africa. For a long period it was in receipt of State support, its
ministers being wholly or partially salaried from the public funds. As
the Church of the Dutch-speaking colonists, the repository of their
ancient traditions, the guardian of their cherished language, and the
expression of the national strivings of a people to whom a share in the
political life of the country was denied, it wielded a wide-spread and
on the whole a salutary influence. We shall do well to grasp firmly
these three important factors in the situation when Andrew Murray
entered upon his life-task—a predominantly Dutch-speaking population,
the Dutch language banished from Government offices and law courts, and
the Dutch Reformed Church as the guardian of the language, and the
outward and visible bond of union between the scattered elements of the
Dutch population.
We find then, settled upon the soil of South Africa for good or ill, two
white races, sprung originally from the same racial stock, animated by
the same love of liberty, professing the same form of religion, but
distinct in temperament and training, in political aims and national
ideals, and separated above all by the insuperable barrier of language,
which made their complete fusion an apparent impossibility. In the veins
of Andrew Murray flowed the blood of both these races, and he was in a
real sense the embddiment of the highest ideals both of the older Dutch
and the newer British strains. It was his constant endeavour to promote
a better understanding and a heartier good will between the two classes
of colonists. For this he possessed special gifts. He spoke both
languages with equal ease. He moved among both peoples with equal
familiarity. He was large-hearted enough to sympathize with both
sections in their attempts to live their own lives and shape their own
destinies. He was broad-minded enough to recognize what was noble and
praiseworthy in the aims and objects of either race. And he had
discernment enough to see that the national ambitions of English and
Dutch were not at bottom incompatible, and could be harmonized by the
exercise of patience, forbearance and mutual regard.
Andrew Murray’s ministerial career, as the following pages will show,
was cast in the most stirring and by far the most important period in
the history of South Africa. His public life covered two-thirds of a
century, when English and Dutch were feeling after their true position
and part in the scheme of things South African, and consciously or
unconsciously endeavouring to adjust their relations to each other.
During these years the contest between the two racial ideals continued
without intermission, sometimes in the form of mere passive suspicion
and antagonism, but also rising sometimes to angry disputes and actual
hostilities. When Andrew Murray was a boy of eight, a wide-spread
emigration into Central South Africa commenced on the part of those
Dutch colonists who were determined to throw off their allegiance to the
British Crown. This remarkable movement, which is known as the Great
Trek, led to the founding of the Boer republics north of the Orange and
the Vaal rivers. A series of important events followed during the second
half of the century. Representative institutions and responsible
government were introduced into British South Africa. The discovery of
diamonds on the borders of the Orange Free State and of gold in the
Transvaal brought about an economic revolution in South Africa, and
profoundly modified the course of its future history. The Transvaal in
1877 was surreptitiously annexed to Great Britain, but the stout
burghers, rising in protest, won back their independence after a few
short and sharp encounters with the British forces. The British South
Africa Company (better known as the Chartered Company) was founded in
1889, and a vast territory to the north of the Transvaal, stretching
right across the Zambesi as far as the Great Lakes of Central Africa,
was secured to Great Britain by the foresight and enterprise of Cecil
John Rhodes. Soon afterwards the inevitable and tragic conflict between
Briton and Boer came to a climax. Envy of the wealth which had come to
the Transvaal through its gold mines precipitated first the Jameson
Raid,1 and then the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, which issued in the
extinction of the republics. But when the union of the States of South
Africa under the British flag was consummated in 1910, the Boer rose
again to power, like the phoenix from its ashes, and obtained political
control of the destinies of South Africa. And thus at present matters
stand, the British being the possessors and nominal lords of the
country, and the Boers its real masters.
It must not be assumed that Andrew Murray had a direct share in all the
events and movements outlined above. He was first and foremost a servant
of Jesus Christ, devoting himself heart and soul to spiritual labours
for the welfare of the flock committed to his care. But it was
impossible, for one who sympathized so deeply with the people among whom
he lived and laboured, to remain indifferent to their social and
national development. During the first years of his career, when he was
the sole minister of a population scattered over an area considerably
larger than that of Great Britain and Ireland, circumstances compelled
him to take an active interest in civil affairs. There were at that time
hardly any men of education and ability who were conversant with both
the Dutch and English languages, and Andrew Murray, by virtue of his
intellectual qualifications and high Christian character, wielded great
influence with both sections of the community. In this manner he was
forced, almost against his will, to enter the political arena, and once
at least to engage in a political mission to England.1 But in later
years and under altered conditions he stood more and more resolutely
aloof from political life, and only on rare occasions, when some great
national crisis seemed to call for a word of warning or appeal, did he
venture to intervene in public affairs.
It but remains to describe in brief fashion the general situation when
Andrew Murray’s career commenced. At the close of 1848 there occurred a
brief pause in the history of the Cape Colony. The seventh Kaffir War
had been concluded; the eighth and most serious was still concealed by
the curtain of futurity. The grant of representative institutions was in
the air, but the British Government had not as yet passed any definite
promise to introduce them. The determined resistance protracted during
the whole of 1849, to the scheme of making the Cape a penal settlement,
had not yet , begun. Sir Harry Smith, Governor and High Commissioner,
who had recently returned from a triumphal tour through South and
Central South Africa, during which he had annexed fifty thousand square
miles between the Orange and the Vaal to the Queen’s dominions,3 was at
the height of his great popularity. The Cape Colony counted at this time
some one hundred and twenty-five thousand white inhabitants, at least
three-fourths of whom were Dutch-speaking. Across the Orange River, in
the newly-annexed Orange River Sovereignty, were found about twelve
thousand Dutch farmers, very half-heartedly attached to British rule;
and beyond the Vaal River there lived another eight or ten thousand
independent Boers, under a by no means stable form of republican
government. These twenty thousand emigrants constituted Andrew Murray’s
first parish.
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The whole country already
settled by white people was of vast extent. Between Cape Town, in the
extreme west, and Graaff-Reinet, the most considerable town in the east,
stretched a distance of five hundred miles; from Graaff-Reinet to
Bloemfontein, the centre of Andrew Murray’s great parish, it was another
three hundred miles. Three hundred miles further north lay Pretoria,
subsequently the capital of the Transvaal Republic, which extended
northward for yet another two hundred and fifty miles to the
Zoutpansberg range. In all this great territory there was not, in 1848,
a single mile of railroad. The immense distances had to be traversed,
frequently over very indifferent roads and through flooded rivers, by
the uncomfortable Cape cart, the roomier horse-waggon, or the
slow-moving, springless ox-waggon. In such a country, trader such
circumstances, and amongst primitive farmers, whom Sir Benjamin D’Urban,
a former Cape Governor, once described as "a brave, patient,
industrious, orderly and religious people,” Andrew Murray commenced his
life-work. |