“Has not Providence over-ruled and guided the painful course of events in South Africa since the beginning of this year (1896)?  Who can doubt it?

“The stab which was intended to paralyse Africanderdom once and for all in the Republics has sent an electric thrill direct to the national heart.  Africanderdom has awakened to a sense of earnestness and consciousness which we have not observed since the heroic war for Liberty in 1881.  From the Limpopo as far as Cape Town the Second Majuba has given birth to a new inspiration and a new movement amongst our people in South Africa.  A new feeling has rushed in huge billows over South Africa.  The flaccid and cowardly Imperialism, that had already begun to dilute and weaken our national blood, gradually turned aside before the new current which permeated our people.  Many who, tired of the slow development of the national idea, had resigned themselves to Imperialism now paused and asked themselves what Imperialism had produced in South Africa?  Bitterness and race hatred it is true!  Since the days of Sir Harry Smith and Theophilus Shepstone and Bartle Frere to the days of Leander Jameson and Cecil Rhodes, Imperialism in South Africa has gone hand in hand with bloodshed and fraud.  However wholesome the effects of Imperialism may be elsewhere, its continual tendency in this country during all these years has been nothing else but an attempt to force our national life and national character into foreign grooves; and to seal this pressure with blood and tears....  This is truly a critical moment in the existence of Africanderdom all over South Africa.  Now or never!  Now or never the foundation of a wide-embracing nationalism must be laid.  The Iron is red hot, and the time for forging is at hand....

...  The partition wall has disappeared.  Let us stand manfully by one another.  The danger has not yet disappeared; on the contrary, never has the necessity for a policy of a Colonial and Republican Union been greater; now the psychological moment has arrived; now our people have awakened all over South Africa; a new glow illuminates our hearts; let us now lay the foundation stone of a real United South Africa on the soil of a pure and all-comprehensive national sentiment.”

Such language caused the Jingoes to shudder—­not because it was disloyal, because that it certainly was not, but because it proved that the Jameson Raid had suddenly awakened the Africanders, and that owing to this defeat of the Jingoes a vista of further and greater defeats widened out in the future.  The Colonial Africanders would certainly have to be reckoned with, in case an annexation policy were followed with regard to the Republics.

[Sidenote:  Victory of the Africander Party in the Cape Parliament.]

For some time the Jingoes cherished the hope that they would gain the majority in the Cape Parliament under an amended Redistribution Act.  The General Election of 1898 took place, with the result that the Africander party obtained a small majority, and later, under a Redistribution Act forced upon them by the Jingoes, the majority of the former was considerably increased.