SEEDS OF UNREST

The military successes of the British army early in 1900, followed by the annexations of the Orange Free State and Transvaal, generated among many black people a mood of optimism that a new future was dawning, a future in which their interests would be safeguarded, and in which their status and influence in South African society would be progressively advanced. The expectation that a British military victory would be followed by an extension of political, educational and commercial opportunities for black people, especially for those living in the Boer republics, determined the support for the war of the vast majority of members of the black elite.

Before the end of the war, however, some blacks had already begun to argue, on the basis of the measures enacted during the early period of British administration in the Transvaal, that progress towards reform might not be as smooth as had earlier seemed possible. One of the first signs of a new, rather more pessimistic, mood among some members of the black elite was the publication of a series of short articles in Ipepa lo Hlanga, a newspaper controlled by men prominent in the Natal Native Congress, warning against the excessive influence exercised by leaders of the Transvaal mining industry. In December 1900 a contributor warned that: