Episode 286 - German Mercenary von Brandis formally Proclaims Johannesburg

Welcome back to the history of South Africa podcast with me your host, Des Latham.
This is episode 286 - Johannesburg is proclaimed but the flow of water and cash provs challenging.

We’ll start however, with the Orange Free State. Its president Johannes Brand was certainly carved from an original chunk of Boer marble — even the British empire recognized his magnificence, at least, Queen Victoria, who was knighted him.

Brand was one of the main movers behind the first attempt at uniting the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State but the open hostility by Paul Kruger and the Burghers of the Transvaal scuttled his plans. President Brand had been voted into office in 1872 and for the next 20 years, the Free State was characterised by relative tranquility and modest prosperity. After Britain formally annexed Basutoland and Griqualand West, the Free State experienced a few ructions, but there was little friction between the Afrikaaners and their English compatriots.

Brand was steadfast in his belief that the Republics should remain neutral when it came to Great Britain, while Paul Kruger’s Transvaal was openly hostile to London. The Free State leader was a warded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Victoria in 1882, turning Brand into Sir Johannes Brand. That rankled the still more. Kruger wanted utter independence, whereas Brand was willing to negotiate based on what was best for the Free State.

A deeply religious man, Johannes Brand was extremely popular with the burghers of the Orange Free State, and his expression "alles zal recht komen als elkeen zijn plicht doet" (all will be well if everyone does his duty) is one of the most recognisable sayings of his presidency.

Nor were there serious difficulties with black Free Staters, mainly because in the Free State, blacks had no rights and couldn’t own land and avoided the territory. It wasn’t like the Cape, where jobs abounded.

In 1885, there were about an equal number of blacks and whites living in the Free State, with the independent Basutoland on the eastern border and territory around Thaba ‘Nchu prosperous under Basutho chief, Moroka the second. The Total population of the Free State in 1885 was 140 000 — smaller than most counties in England, which is amazing because the Free State was almost exactly the same size as the whole of England.

Free State is 129 825 square kilometers, England is 130 279 square kilos. The Free State also lay directly between the Cape, which England controlled, and the Transvaal, which it thought of as a suzereignty. The reason for all this preamble is that railways were coming to South Africa, albeit slowly. In 1885, there were only 1 318 miles of track in operation and 1 213 of those were in the Cape, 115 miles in Natal. By contrast, 5 133 miles of track had been laid in Australia, and even New Zealand had longer lines - 1 486 miles.
The new gold fields of the Witwatersrand were going to need railway lines urgently. By the end of July 1886 a crowd of 600 diggers had rushed to the district and had camped on two main farms, Turftontein and Doornfontein. Unlike the early rush to Kimberley, in this case there were no black diggers because of the discriminatory legislation prohibiting blacks from owning claims in the Transvaal. The South African Republic had passed a law in 1885 explicitly excluding blacks from buying or working their own claims or even dealing in precious stones and metals. They were practicing their race-based legislating for a much more refined version which would pop up in the 20th Century.
But there was another reason which haunts Johannesburg to this day — there was very little water particularly during winter. Millions of litres were required to wash the ore and sieve the gold, no water, no mining. Providing water was going to cost a fortune, something beyond the cash flow of small operators.