Book Reviews
| Date | 01 July 1960 |
| Published date | 01 July 1960 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1960.tb00182.x |
Book
Reviews
THE
UNIFICATION
OF
SOUTH
AFRICA,
1902-1910, by L. M.
Thompson,
Clarendon
Press:
Oxford
University
Press
;pp. 550;
50S.
THIS
weighty book brings
much
needed
warning
to
the
sometimes precipitate
framers
of
constitutions for
embryo
states, in Africa
and
elsewhere, from the
truly
'sad
and
sorrowful' story of the unification of
South
Africa
just
fifty years
ago. Checking
the
published accounts from the unpublished
papers
of almost
all the leading participants in the work of
the
National
Convention of 19°8-9,
Professor
Thompson
has analysed, in clear, almost
day
to day, detail, the
deliberations which
produced
the
draft
embodied a few months later, virtually
unchanged, in the British Parliament's
Union
of
South
Africa Act. Besides
evidence cited from well-known
public
figures there is
much
from members
of
the
Milner
Kindergarten
(R.
H. (Lord) Brand, Patrick
Duncan,
Richard
(Judge)
Feetham),
which shows
them
as always active
behind
the
scenes
and
as a rule
behind
Smuts.
The
extent of
the
influence
of
perhaps
the
most
impor-
tant
of them, Lionel Curtis,
must
remain
obscure since his voluminous corres-
pondence (which he declined to use autobiographically),
went
up
in flames in a
fire
at
his Kidlington home. As for
the
story as a whole, the very restraint
with
which
this book is
written
makes it the more
lamentably
clear
that
some of the
best
men
of
their generation were led astray by passing fashions
of
thought
or
by the pressure of
purely
local circumstances.
South
Africa
had
of course newly emerged from
what
was in essence civil war.
In
this the coloured
and
African
inhabitants
had
been
non-combatant
and
(though they were even
then
about
three-quarters
of
the total population)
Her
Majesty's
Government
had
agreed
at
the Peace
made
in 1902
that
the definition
of
their rights
and
status should be deferred till the defeated Boers
had
recovered
self-government for themselves.
These
ex-Republican Boers were almost to a
man
averse to
the
concession
of
any
political rights to 'natives'.
This
extreme
view was
shared
by a
number
of
British
South
Africans few even
of
the
more
liberal
of
these were inclined to make native rights abreaking
point
in negotia-
tions
with
such
men
as General Botha for a solid
union
of
the
rival white peoples.
Even the
grand
old Whig,
Mr.
J. X.
Merriman,
who as early as 1906
had
judged
Milner's reconstruction
and
Her
Majesty's Government's
Transvaal
constitution to be
attempts
"to
reconcile the whites over the
body
of
the
blacks",
insisted only on having
the
Cape
franchise
'entrenched'.
The
enlightened Smuts
hedged;
he was
prepared,
for the present, to accept
and
even
entrench
the
existing rights of
Cape
voters;
but
while confessing once
that
his
mind
was "full
of
Cimmerian
darkness"
about
the
ultimate
future of the African peoples he
would leave
the
Union
Parliament
of
the
future to deal
with
the future situation.
Only
a few individuals saw the
danger
of
such a
course-notably
the
Schreiners,
the writer, Olive,
and
her
brother
W. P., ex-premier
of
the
Cape,
who led a
forlorn hope to fight the case in London.
The
rest,
judging
union
vital on
any
terms, stood
out
staunchly for the
draft
agreed by the National Convention,
and
nothing
but
the draft.
The
work
of
this Convention little
merited
such respect,
though
it was
doubtless
an
achievement
that
'the
spirit
of
union'
prevailed,
making
its
unanimity
complete.
The
actual
draft
was almost entirely
the
work
of
Smuts
17°
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