THE TRANSVAAL BOER SPEAKING FOR HIMSELF

Selected and translated by R. Acton. 

120 pages, white printed paper wraps (paperback), stapled binding, a very good copy.

 Mendelssohn (Sidney) South African Bibliography, volume 1, page 495: ‘The degree of hatred and contempt for the British expressed by this exceedingly candid, and apparently genuine, Transvaal Boer is very marked, and right through the volume the warning is reiterated " keep from English ways "; the writer admits that he did not even like to hear English spoken, while the fear is expressed that if the Boers copied English manners they would eventually become servants of the British. Progress is condemned even such progress as was achieved by the Stellenbosch College the author remarking that " it led to no good, and was the way to forfeit the Lord's blessing." It is stated that the Boer's dislike to English government arose nearly eighty years ago, and has been kept up by repeated acts of injustice, since that time. The tragedy of Slachter's Nek is recapitulated, with complaints of British tyranny, and encomiums on Kruger and his Government for their mild treatment of the Johannesburg reformers. Du Plessis considered that the Transvaal ought to alter the electoral laws, but with regard to the English element he says, " I should be inclined to say, never give them the vote." He asserts that he had never met with an Afrikander who sympathised with the English Imperial Annexation party.’ 

This production is a curtailed edition of a larger Dutch work by the author, and the compiler and translator expresses his sympathy with the political independence of the Boer Republics.