His ministers had practically no power
over him, and thus everything was more or less in his hands. On urging
them, as I often did, to go in for a system under which the ministers
should be directly responsible to the people, not to the Governor, I
would be told, "Oh, we can always get rid of you, if you do anything
wrong, by an appeal to the Colonial Office." It was not until after I
left the Cape that popular government was brought into effect.
'What sort of South Africa did I find? The bulk of the whites were Boers,
who were most conservative in their ideas. There were no railways, and I
had great difficulty in making that innovation acceptable to the Boers.
Effort was requisite for the construction of harbours, a matter of
equally vital importance, which I took in hand. It was desirable to give
South Africa every possible element of a high civilisation, as, farther,
universities, schools, and libraries. A mixture of Saxon and Dutch, she
had to work out her destiny on her own lines, untrammelled by the Old
World. Also, she must enlighten that cloud of a barbarous Africa which
was pressing down from the north.
'How South Africa has changed since then! To illustrate that,
Bloemfontein was quite a small place in the far wilds. Nobody knew where
the capital of the freshly created Orange Free State was to be.
Pages:
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145