“Modus vivendi”

The population of the Transvaal to be divided into two classes, pending the continued presence of the large floating portion consisting of Uitlanders who derive their subsistence from the mining industries, viz.:—­

1st Class.—­The fixed or burgher estate.

2nd Class.—­The floating or alien estate or Guests.

The 1st Volksraad to be elected by burghers only, and to represent the highest legislative and administrative powers.

The 2nd Volksraad to be elected by Uitlanders and burghers, and to be vested with all such reasonable legislative powers as will cover the domestic, industrial, and vocative interests of both burghers and guests.

The Uitlander franchise shall be limited to representation in the 2nd Volksraad, and be extended under usual fair conditions of eligibility to all white persons after two years’ residence, retrospectively reckoned.

Aliens may be admitted to full burgher rights and vote for 1st Volksraad, President, and Commandant-General, after five years’ residence, if approved of by two-thirds of the burghers of his ward, possesses landed property to the value of L1,000, and has not been convicted here or elsewhere of any degrading crime.

Members of both Volksraads and for public service shall be eligible without respect of creed.

The exploitation of mines shall be subject to a tax of 25 per cent., reckoned upon the yearly net profits, such revenue to be applied at the discretion of the 1st Volksraad solely for the benefit of the burgher estate—­schools, hospitals, universities, pensions, by means of permanent endowments.

The Government of the Transvaal undertakes:—­

1.  There shall be no identification or co-operation permitted, on the part of any of the Transvaal people, with the association known as the Afrikaner Bond, or any such-like political complot.

2.  The recognition of British paramountcy over South Africa, including the Transvaal, in so far as it does not clash with the intentions and provisions set forth in the conventions of 1881 and 1884, and does not extend to interference with or curtailment of complete internal autonomy.

3.  Renunciation of indemnity claim re Jameson incursion.

4.  To regulate the question of coloured British subjects resident in the Transvaal upon a genial basis, irrespective of the Bloemfontein arbitration award upon that subject.

5.  Poll and war taxes shall be abolished.

6.  Dual rights equal with the Dutch language shall be accorded to the English language, similarly as is done in the Cape Colony for Dutch.

7.  The railways and dynamite factory to be expropriated as soon as possible—­the loans required thereto to be amortized within twenty years, and pending those expropriations the freights upon coal and oversea goods shall be reduced 10 per cent, and the price of explosives 20s. per case, these reductions to be met from the revenue accruing to the burgher estate from the tax upon mining profits.