Post by simon darkshade on Aug 7, 2018 12:52:25 GMT
1947 Part 6c
The Union of South Africa in 1947 was a young and strong country facing a bright dawn. Its verdant forests, bountiful plains and rich mountains were beginning to attract a new wave of migrants from war-torn and tired Europe looking for a new life under the southern sun. The divisions of the past were slowly beginning to ebb away, with the shared experience of war forging a common bond between the Anglo-Saxon majority and the Boer minority and liberal reforms continuing to improve the lot of the black populace. A mighty military machine honed to razor sharp precision through conflict throughout Africa and beyond gave it the greatest single strength on the Dark Continent south of the Pyramids. The commercial and industrial cities of Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Victoria, East London, Port Elizabeth, Mafeking, Windhoek and Kimberly drove an engine of growth that surpassed previous heights with apparent effortlessness. New discoveries of minerals and resources had renewed the reputation of the southern tip of Africa as one of the richest locations in the world.
It was a vast land that stretched from the Namib and Kalahari deserts in the north to the verdant fields of the Veld, Natal and the Southern Cape and the lush woodlands about the Great Escarpment. Few lands are as rich in game and wildlife, with the hinterland teeming with lions, leopards, antelope, wildebeest, buffalo, wild boar, rhinoceroses, elephants, giraffes, yale and zebra. Ten great national parks cover large tracts of land, preserving the flora and fauna of the land under the protection of the Crown and protecting many rare and wondrous dinosaurs within their deepest jungles. Fabled griffons and wyverns can be found in the soaring Drakensburg Mountains, along with the dread wyrms that give the range its name. Her oceans and rivers are rich with fish and marine life, including the mighty blue whales, huge great white sharks and wise giant turtles.
In the land dwelt many peoples. The oldest humans were the original African inhabitants, largely made up of the Zulu, Xhosa, Basuto, Bapedi, Bechuana, Herero and Matabele tribes. They made up over a third of the population despite their numbers having been reduced by wars, plagues and the terrible Mfecane of the 1820s; the national census is thought to have considerably undercounted the African populace due to a number of practical factors. The descendants of the first Dutch colonists, variously known as Boers or Afrikaners, made up the second largest European group of the population and were concentrated mainly in the rural north east. Other Europeans came from France, Italy, Spain Germany, Poland and Scandinavia, especially Sweden. Many Indians and Chinese had dwelt in Natal and around Cape Town since the middle of the 19th century. The largest white ethnic group was from the British Isles, which made up just over 40% of the total population through steady waves of immigration over the last 167 years since the British conquest of the Dutch Kaapcolonie in 1780.
The South African economy had grown rapidly during the war due to the insatiable demand for its mineral and agricultural resources. Its gold, silver, platinum and diamonds paid for a large part of the Empire’s war effort and its iron, bronze and coal fueled the factories that laid the foundation for victory. As her traditional trading partners of Britain, Canada and the United States turned their manufacturing might towards warlike purposes, the South African domestic steel, chemical, heavy engineering and automotive industries flourished. Annual steel production had risen to five and a half million tons and the Union’s coal mines turned out a staggering thirty two million tons, much of which came from new mines in the north of the country.
General Motors and Austin had dominated the prewar automobile manufacturing industry in South Africa but their dominance had been challenged by the establishment of local subsidiaries of Ford and Morris in 1946 and the growing popularity of imported Land Rovers. ICI’s Durban plant had been turned over to the manufacture of poison gas and explosives during the war and now returned to more peaceful purposes. Anglo-Saxon Petroleum had begun construction on the largest oil refinery in Africa at Cape Town and had begun exploration for new deposits in the northern deserts. South African Railways, nationalized in 1938 and the largest single employer in the nation, was engaged in a programme of modernization and expansion of its network in the interior and the surveying of a new railway from Kimberly to Luanda. The mighty Cape to Cairo Railway, the most vital artery of the British Empire in Africa, celebrated the 25th anniversary of its completion in 1946 and its double tracked route through mountains, jungles and savannah had seen trade explode since the resumption of peacetime commercial traffic.
The Cape of Good Hope and its mighty harbour had been a prize without price as, until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1864, it controlled one of the most vital strategic positions in the world as it sat astride the oceanic route to India and the Far East. Since its discovery by Bartholomew Diaz in 1487, it had attracted the attention of many maritime European powers and an outpost was established by the Dutch in 1652. The Castle of Good Hope was soon surrounded by a thriving town and colony. The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the late 17th Century were not directly felt in the Cape Colony and it continued to thrive over the next century. This changed in 1781, a year that marked the British conquest of the Cape.
British rule changed the Cape Colony. Within twenty years, the Dutch language and Roman-Dutch law was replaced by the use of English and common law. Free colonists arrived in significant numbers to help secure the strategic port for the Empire against Dutch, Spanish or French aggrandizement and expanded its reach well beyond the borders of the Dutch epoch. Several thousand Dutch descended settlers moved away beyond the constraints of British rule into the vast hinterland of the Cape in the period following the Napoleonic Wars and encountered significant native resistance. The Xhosa tribe were defeated in a series of wars between 1795 and 1810 that saw their native lands swallowed up by the British Empire. The largest influx of British colonists occurred in the period between 1815 and 1825, when over 50,000 flocked to new lands along the eastern frontier.
Then came the Mfecane, a series of bloody wars between the native tribes of Southern Africa driven by the unparalleled ambitions and craving for conquest of one man – Shaka Zulu. Armed with a magic spear and a thirst for revenge, Shaka turned one small peaceful tribe into a Spartan warrior nation of over 100,000 trained men and set them loose. Thousands were slain in an orgy of destruction unseen in the Old World since the rampage of the Mongols six centuries before. Tens of thousands were displaced amid the chaotic war and the conflict spilled over into the Cape Colony and the new settlements around Port Natal. An army was hurriedly mustered in Cape Town made up of hastily dispatched reinforcements from Britain and India, the local garrison and hundreds of militiamen. On April 27th 1825, they set off for Natal
Thus began the first of the two Anglo-Zulu Wars. It was a bloody campaign, with several pitched battles putting the tried and tested might of British rifles, cannon, horse and wizardry against the raw power of the dreaded Zulu impis. Each attack saw the Zulu unable to break the laagers and squares of the British and their intensely concentrated firepower, although many fell to their spears in bitter battle. The Zulu in the field had no answer to the charge of British heavy cavalry, massed Enfield rifles that could slay at a thousand yards and well honed battle magic that tore hills asunder and called fire and lightning from clear skies. The final battle on the hill of Arion was desperately close with the British squares pushed to the point of breaking by the continued assault of over 50,000 assegai wielding Zulu throughout a long and terrible day. When the red sun fell close to the horizon and all hope seemed lost, a peal of trumpets and blasts of trumpets heralded the arrival of the British cavalry wildly thundering out of the sunset. Their ferocious charge broke the Zulu army and the terrible King Shaka was struck down and slain by the valiant knight Sir Richard Sharpe. The Zulu threat pushed back from the borders of the Cape for a generation.
The parlous state of the defences of Southern Africa and the close-run battle was one of the major factors that lead to a shift in British policy towards the colony. The other was the discovery of gold near Carnarvon. The South African Gold Rush of 1832 lead to a massive influx of British and European prospectors and settlers that swiftly began to change the demographic nature of the Cape Colony. A new governor was appointed, the practice of slavery fully suppressed in line with the rest of the Empire and the rights and privileges extended to all King William’s subjects. This was perhaps the last factor that ultimately lead to the Great Trek of 1836-1842 which saw 10,000 Boer Voortrekkers set out for virgin lands beyond the Orange and Vaal Rivers. They were swiftly replaced by the steady streams of thousands seeking to make their fortune or make a new life on the rich frontier at the bottom of the world. They came for silver, for diamonds, for gold and for glory.
The foundation of South Africa’s national wealth for the last century had been mining and it dominated the economy in 1947, employing over 400,000 workers and comprising 29% of GDP. The Cape and Witwatersrand gold rushes of 1832 and 1884, the Karoo silver rush of 1853 and the great Kimberly diamond strike of 1867 had established South Africa as the world’s leading producer of precious metals and diamonds and began the process that placed Cecil Rhode’s De Beers and Imperial Mining among the foremost mining corporations in the solar system. Other rare and precious minerals such as platinum, chromium, rhodium and doranium were found in large quantities as exploration extended across and far below the hills and mountains of Southern Africa. Huge deposits of coal, iron and bronze provided the raw materials for modern power, industry and the sinews of war and peace.
It was the wealth of the earth that made the fortune of Cecil Rhodes, the Father of South Africa and the richest man in the world. Arriving in Durban in 1870, he failed in his initial cotton farming enterprise and almost died in a swimming accident that significantly impacted his character and temperament. After a cautious beginning, he encountered great success on the Kimberly diamond fields, where he systematically bought up smaller firms and discovered the richest diamond pipe yet found in 1872 with the aid of loyal dwarven companions. He expanded his interests into gold and silver mines, vineyards, fruit orchards and railways with uncanny luck that went above and beyond the blessings of a benevolent genie bestowed upon him in 1875 after he found a tarnished copper lamp on the shores of Table Bay. Many have speculated as to the content of the three wishes he exacted from the deal, but no reputable sources have been forthcoming.
After returning from Oxford, he rode with Sir Garnet Wolseley’s cavalry in the Second Anglo-Zulu War and was mentioned in dispatches for his role in the victory at Isandhlwana. As well as entering public life as a Member of the Cape Parliament, Rhodes turned his interest north, sending forth emissaries to gain exclusive mining and territorial concessions from Matabele chieftains and receiving a Royal Charter for his British South Africa Company, establishing what would later become the colony and Dominion of Rhodesia. His clever endeavours and bold maneuvers won Katanga for the British Empire out from under the nose of Leopold II of Belgium. In 1885, Rhodes established De Beers to cement his control over the diamond industry in Southern Africa. He sponsored the successful expedition of Allan Quatermain to the uncharted heart of the continent that uncovered the eldritch mysteries of King Solomon’s Mines in 1887.
Rhodes was knighted in 1886 and became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in 1889. He promoted policies of imperial expansion and oversaw the annexation of Bechuanaland and Basutoland and the beginnings of the grand transcontinental railway that would be his greatest legacy to the world. The gold of the Witwatersrand presented the means to fully develop the region and Rhodes became involved in a protracted struggle with Prime Minister Paul Kruger of the semi-autonomous Transvaal Colony over control of the mines and the formation of a South African federation. Matters came to a head in 1895, when Rhodes’ protégé Leander Starr Jameson lead a mounted column of BSAC troopers and volunteer riders to Johannesburg from Rhodesia after a popular and parliamentary uprising that caused the downfall of the Kruger Ministry and the ascent of an interim government made up of members of the Johannesburg Reform Committee. Rhodes basked in the success and moved towards the initiation of discussions for a federation of Britain’s most developed South African colonies.
The Great Rebellion of 1899/1900 was perhaps Cecil Rhodes’ finest hour. He mustered local forces, placated large sections of the Afrikaner population in the Cape Colony and Natal and doggedly held back the Boer advance until such time as Lord Roberts and Kitchener arrived in December 1899 with a 125,000 strong army. The subsequent campaign took just over 9 months to be bought to a successful and crushing conclusion, with the Boers bought to the heel by the airships and aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps and the armoured trains, mechanical ironclads and super howitzers of the British Army. In 1902, Rhodes became the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, a dominion that joined together the Cape Colony, Kimberly, Natal, Bechuanaland, Orange River and Transvaal as a single entity under the Crown.
In the aftermath of victory, Rhodes could have been vindictive towards the defeated foe, but instead embraced them and worked towards conciliation as part of his efforts to encourage unity among all the peoples of the British Empire. His support for Imperial Preference proved vital to Prime Minister Sir Joseph Chamberlain in his successful efforts in 1903/04 and his proved to be the most dominant voice in the biannual meetings of the Imperial Council over the next decade. After initial reluctance, Rhodes grew to support the campaign of Mohandas Gandhi to gain equal treatment for Indians in Natal, particularly after the latter’s Victoria Cross for his role in the Bambatha Rebellion of 1906; he was known to remark that he could always respect a man who had stood up to a Zulu charge.
In 1914, Rhodes marked a quarter of a century as the leader of his country. Rhodesia to the north had grown and expanded greatly and was well on the path to becoming a Dominion in its own right. The outbreak of the World War proved a further challenge that he gainfully accepted and he persuaded his erstwhile opponent Jan Smuts to serve as commander of the South African Expeditionary Force. Over 320,000 South Africans served in the Middle East, Gallipoli, East Africa and France between 1915 and 1918 and 29,000 offered the ultimate sacrifice for King and Empire. After representing the nation at the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, Rhodes retired as Prime Minister after thirty years service, handing over power to Jameson. He was made a Duke and Knight of the Garter by King George V and spent the next two decades as an esteemed elder statesman of the Empire.
In 1926, Jameson gave way to national hero General Smuts. He lead his country through times of depression, war and peace over the next two decades, forging a middle path between liberalism and conservatism, Englishman and Boer, black and white and appealing to a wide section of society with policies of common sense and social concern. His victory in the 1945 election had paved the way for the continuing transformation and maturation of the young nation as her doors opened to immigration from Britain and Europe, wide-sweeping social reforms were mooted and great new roads and power stations were planned for the growing industrial economy. Institution of a national system of free education and universal pensions and health insurance were the main domestic priorities of the United Party. The South African Communist Party was banned by a narrow vote in 1946 in the light of Comintern-backed espionage and a strong line was taken on socialist leaning miner’s unions in a bitter 1946 strike. Internationally, South Africa played a significant role in the League of Nations, supporting the interests of small and medium nations and being a strong advocate of collective security and international arbitration.
The Smuts Government had set a goal of an annual population increase of 1% through subsidized European immigration and a system of assisted passage, similar to that put in place in Australia. It aimed to address labour shortages in heavy industry and services and build a large domestic market for South African products. Thousands in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Yugoslavia, Italy and France looked favourably upon the thousands of colourful posters and newsreels that offered a new, prosperous life far from terror and strife and warmth and wealth in the peace of the southern sun. Initial emphasis focused upon migrants from the Home Islands due to the common bonds of language, faith, family and fidelity to the Crown.
Substantial internal migration from poor native villages and the countryside to the great cities had contributed to political tensions between Englishman and Boer since the midst of the 19th century. The British dominated colonies held fast to the principles of multi-racial suffrage and equality before the Crown, whilst the Orange River Colony and Transvaal attempted to keep to some of the more traditional beliefs and customs. This disagreement was one factor in the Great Rebellion of 1899. The dawn of the 20th century had seen the winds of change blowing across the veldt and the successful efforts of the future Field Marshal Gandhi pave the way for fair treatment of the Indian populace. The 1920s and 1930s were marked by the progressive dismantling of legislative obstacles to equality. With the British Empire ruling over lands and continents filled with white, yellow, red, blue, purple and green, no moral or logical argument could stand against giving the selfsame rights to brown and black.
The report of the Fagin Commission of 1943 into racial relations, co-authored by the eminent Messrs Ebenezer Scrooge and Abraham Fagin, racial relations had recommended ending the last vestiges of segregation of the black minority and bringing relevant legislation across all twelve provinces into line with that of the Union Government. There was localized vocal opposition from the some of the traditional Boer heartlands in rural Transvaal but this was balanced by general support from the British and European dominated cities. The sterling service provided by the black subjects of the King alongside their white, Indian and coloured brothers in the recent war had done much to erode the grim residue of prejudice.
The South African experience of the Second World War had been part way between that of Canada and Australia. It had never faced the threat of invasion or direct enemy action and had made prodigious advances in the development of its domestic industrial capacity. The fruits of her farms and riches of her mines would support a field force the size of which had never been previously contemplated. The South African military had fought with great success in North Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe and cemented its position as the most powerful military force in Africa. Prior to September 1939, only a small professional land force had served under the colours and South Africa’s major means of defence came through the powerful squadron of the Royal South African Navy, built around the new battleship HMSAS South Africa.
In 1945, the South African Army reached its peak strength of 1,279,234 men in 17 divisions, the Royal South African Air Force 396,578 men and 3268 aircraft and the Royal South African Navy fielded 172 ships, 518 aircraft and 124,329 men. This had been reduced to 250,000 by early 1947 supported by the hundreds of thousands of veterans in the territorial Commandos. Two brigades were on occupation duty in Japan and Germany as part of the arrayed strength of the Empire, a dozen battalions served in various capacities throughout Africa, RSAN destroyers cruised the Aegean alongside the battleships and carriers of the Mediterranean Fleet and fighter squadrons flew over the fields of France and Austria-Hungary.
The South African Expeditionary Force first saw action in brigade strength in France alongside the British Army in 1940, but their true baptism of fire and blood came in the East African and North African Campaigns. The conquest of Italian East Africa and liberation of Abyssinia had been completed by early 1941 and the 2nd South African Infantry Division took part in the smashing victories of the Desert Army over the Italians in Operation Compass. Much of its cavalry and mobile infantry were diverted to the Middle Eastern Front where they helped turn the tide against powerful Turkish offensives. The legendary South African and Rhodesian Army Corps once again wrote its proud story into the pages of history by playing a major role in stopping the rampages of Rommel in the latter half of the year.
In the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, the Iberian Campaign, or the Second Peninsular War as it was called by some, was a long and savage one. The men of III South African Corps served throughout the struggles of 1941 and 1942 and the rebounding offensives of 1943 and 1944 that pushed the swastika back over the Pyrenees. Perhaps the largest contribution by the South African Army was in the Battle of Italy; no less than six infantry and two armoured divisions fought under Field Marshal Alexander’s banner in his grand crusade that took them from the beaches of Sicily to the gates of Rome by the beginning of 1944. Whilst it was a troop of Crusader tanks of the 2nd New Zealand Division that made the first contact with General Giraud’s Second French Army in the great link up of the Allied armies in Austria in January 1945, South African Commandos were the first to meet the Red Army in the passes of the Carpathians a month later.
The Commandos also fought alongside the American hunter Jungle Jim and the legendary Tarzan and his forces of wild animals and cultured apes in the West African Campaign, routing out Nazi stormtroopers and Fallschirmjager from the jungles of Cameroon and Nigeria in two long years of difficult fighting. Despite the best precautions tropical medicine and arcane inoculations could provide, dozens were laid low with a strange malady that began with protracted influenza. The Lord of the Apes himself came to their aid, dosing them with a vile tasting concoction that swiftly returned them to health. He could not be drawn on the nature of the disease, only saying that it was not a matter for men.
Two formations served outside of Africa and the Mediterranean and both gained records of distinction. I South African Corps had been withdrawn from the Italian battlefront in early 1944 as part of the buildup of British and Commonwealth forces for Operation Overlord and re-entered action in July as Montgomery and Bradley began their twin breakouts from Argentan to the Somme and from Vire to the Loire. They took part in the drive to the Rhine and the Battle of Hamburg, ending the war in Denmark alongside the Swedish Army. The all-volunteer 9th South African Infantry Division served in Malaya and the Far East against the Japanese, arriving in Georgetown in March 1942 in the heavily guarded Cardinal convoy that helped steady the hard pressed defences of the Empire in its hour of need. For men who came from the verges of the Kalahari and Namib Deserts, they crossed many rivers over the next three years – the Chao Praya, the Mekong, the Pearl, the Yangtze and the Yellow among them – before ending the war at the feet of the massive broken statue of Genghis Khan in the sands of the Gobi.
The Royal South African Air Force saw service above the Western Desert, Spain, the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Western Europe. The domestically produced Wellesley medium bombers were unsuitable to frontline service against Germany, but provided steady utility against Italy, Ottoman Turkey and the forces of the Spanish junta in addition to maritime patrol around the entirety of Africa. The Royal South African Navy sent a detachment of vessels lead by HMSAS South Africa to the Mediterranean in early 1940, whilst its cruisers were attached to the patrolling groups of the South Atlantic and West Africa Stations. The heavy cruiser Capetown was shifted to the Mediterranean and proved to be one of Admiral Hornblower’s most valuable vessels. The commissioning of the battleship HMSAS Good Hope in April 1941 came at an opportune time for the Empire and she was assigned to the Far Eastern Fleet at Singapore pending the arrival of the Grand Fleet later in the year.
The Royal Tour of 1947 was welcomed across the political and social spectrum and the personal popularity of the King and Queen reached new heights with the frequent visits to the major cities and towns. Princess Elizabeth delighted a crowd in Victoria by trying on a traditional local hat while feeding an oliphaunt at the zoo and His Majesty King George VI solemnly accepted the ceremonial offer of an empty Coca-Cola bottle from a San Bushman from the Kalahari in an event that perplexed yet amused domestic and foreign observers alike. Song and dance played a significant role in the tour, ranging from the massive Zulu indaba at Eshowe to a charming rendition of the well known folk tune Mbube by popular singer Solomon Linda in Johannesburg; in the former instance, the King was heard to remark that there was a reason that the Zulus were considered second only to the Gurkhas as the greatest martial race of the Empire.
The Union of South Africa in 1947 was a young and strong country facing a bright dawn. Its verdant forests, bountiful plains and rich mountains were beginning to attract a new wave of migrants from war-torn and tired Europe looking for a new life under the southern sun. The divisions of the past were slowly beginning to ebb away, with the shared experience of war forging a common bond between the Anglo-Saxon majority and the Boer minority and liberal reforms continuing to improve the lot of the black populace. A mighty military machine honed to razor sharp precision through conflict throughout Africa and beyond gave it the greatest single strength on the Dark Continent south of the Pyramids. The commercial and industrial cities of Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Victoria, East London, Port Elizabeth, Mafeking, Windhoek and Kimberly drove an engine of growth that surpassed previous heights with apparent effortlessness. New discoveries of minerals and resources had renewed the reputation of the southern tip of Africa as one of the richest locations in the world.
It was a vast land that stretched from the Namib and Kalahari deserts in the north to the verdant fields of the Veld, Natal and the Southern Cape and the lush woodlands about the Great Escarpment. Few lands are as rich in game and wildlife, with the hinterland teeming with lions, leopards, antelope, wildebeest, buffalo, wild boar, rhinoceroses, elephants, giraffes, yale and zebra. Ten great national parks cover large tracts of land, preserving the flora and fauna of the land under the protection of the Crown and protecting many rare and wondrous dinosaurs within their deepest jungles. Fabled griffons and wyverns can be found in the soaring Drakensburg Mountains, along with the dread wyrms that give the range its name. Her oceans and rivers are rich with fish and marine life, including the mighty blue whales, huge great white sharks and wise giant turtles.
In the land dwelt many peoples. The oldest humans were the original African inhabitants, largely made up of the Zulu, Xhosa, Basuto, Bapedi, Bechuana, Herero and Matabele tribes. They made up over a third of the population despite their numbers having been reduced by wars, plagues and the terrible Mfecane of the 1820s; the national census is thought to have considerably undercounted the African populace due to a number of practical factors. The descendants of the first Dutch colonists, variously known as Boers or Afrikaners, made up the second largest European group of the population and were concentrated mainly in the rural north east. Other Europeans came from France, Italy, Spain Germany, Poland and Scandinavia, especially Sweden. Many Indians and Chinese had dwelt in Natal and around Cape Town since the middle of the 19th century. The largest white ethnic group was from the British Isles, which made up just over 40% of the total population through steady waves of immigration over the last 167 years since the British conquest of the Dutch Kaapcolonie in 1780.
The South African economy had grown rapidly during the war due to the insatiable demand for its mineral and agricultural resources. Its gold, silver, platinum and diamonds paid for a large part of the Empire’s war effort and its iron, bronze and coal fueled the factories that laid the foundation for victory. As her traditional trading partners of Britain, Canada and the United States turned their manufacturing might towards warlike purposes, the South African domestic steel, chemical, heavy engineering and automotive industries flourished. Annual steel production had risen to five and a half million tons and the Union’s coal mines turned out a staggering thirty two million tons, much of which came from new mines in the north of the country.
General Motors and Austin had dominated the prewar automobile manufacturing industry in South Africa but their dominance had been challenged by the establishment of local subsidiaries of Ford and Morris in 1946 and the growing popularity of imported Land Rovers. ICI’s Durban plant had been turned over to the manufacture of poison gas and explosives during the war and now returned to more peaceful purposes. Anglo-Saxon Petroleum had begun construction on the largest oil refinery in Africa at Cape Town and had begun exploration for new deposits in the northern deserts. South African Railways, nationalized in 1938 and the largest single employer in the nation, was engaged in a programme of modernization and expansion of its network in the interior and the surveying of a new railway from Kimberly to Luanda. The mighty Cape to Cairo Railway, the most vital artery of the British Empire in Africa, celebrated the 25th anniversary of its completion in 1946 and its double tracked route through mountains, jungles and savannah had seen trade explode since the resumption of peacetime commercial traffic.
The Cape of Good Hope and its mighty harbour had been a prize without price as, until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1864, it controlled one of the most vital strategic positions in the world as it sat astride the oceanic route to India and the Far East. Since its discovery by Bartholomew Diaz in 1487, it had attracted the attention of many maritime European powers and an outpost was established by the Dutch in 1652. The Castle of Good Hope was soon surrounded by a thriving town and colony. The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the late 17th Century were not directly felt in the Cape Colony and it continued to thrive over the next century. This changed in 1781, a year that marked the British conquest of the Cape.
British rule changed the Cape Colony. Within twenty years, the Dutch language and Roman-Dutch law was replaced by the use of English and common law. Free colonists arrived in significant numbers to help secure the strategic port for the Empire against Dutch, Spanish or French aggrandizement and expanded its reach well beyond the borders of the Dutch epoch. Several thousand Dutch descended settlers moved away beyond the constraints of British rule into the vast hinterland of the Cape in the period following the Napoleonic Wars and encountered significant native resistance. The Xhosa tribe were defeated in a series of wars between 1795 and 1810 that saw their native lands swallowed up by the British Empire. The largest influx of British colonists occurred in the period between 1815 and 1825, when over 50,000 flocked to new lands along the eastern frontier.
Then came the Mfecane, a series of bloody wars between the native tribes of Southern Africa driven by the unparalleled ambitions and craving for conquest of one man – Shaka Zulu. Armed with a magic spear and a thirst for revenge, Shaka turned one small peaceful tribe into a Spartan warrior nation of over 100,000 trained men and set them loose. Thousands were slain in an orgy of destruction unseen in the Old World since the rampage of the Mongols six centuries before. Tens of thousands were displaced amid the chaotic war and the conflict spilled over into the Cape Colony and the new settlements around Port Natal. An army was hurriedly mustered in Cape Town made up of hastily dispatched reinforcements from Britain and India, the local garrison and hundreds of militiamen. On April 27th 1825, they set off for Natal
Thus began the first of the two Anglo-Zulu Wars. It was a bloody campaign, with several pitched battles putting the tried and tested might of British rifles, cannon, horse and wizardry against the raw power of the dreaded Zulu impis. Each attack saw the Zulu unable to break the laagers and squares of the British and their intensely concentrated firepower, although many fell to their spears in bitter battle. The Zulu in the field had no answer to the charge of British heavy cavalry, massed Enfield rifles that could slay at a thousand yards and well honed battle magic that tore hills asunder and called fire and lightning from clear skies. The final battle on the hill of Arion was desperately close with the British squares pushed to the point of breaking by the continued assault of over 50,000 assegai wielding Zulu throughout a long and terrible day. When the red sun fell close to the horizon and all hope seemed lost, a peal of trumpets and blasts of trumpets heralded the arrival of the British cavalry wildly thundering out of the sunset. Their ferocious charge broke the Zulu army and the terrible King Shaka was struck down and slain by the valiant knight Sir Richard Sharpe. The Zulu threat pushed back from the borders of the Cape for a generation.
The parlous state of the defences of Southern Africa and the close-run battle was one of the major factors that lead to a shift in British policy towards the colony. The other was the discovery of gold near Carnarvon. The South African Gold Rush of 1832 lead to a massive influx of British and European prospectors and settlers that swiftly began to change the demographic nature of the Cape Colony. A new governor was appointed, the practice of slavery fully suppressed in line with the rest of the Empire and the rights and privileges extended to all King William’s subjects. This was perhaps the last factor that ultimately lead to the Great Trek of 1836-1842 which saw 10,000 Boer Voortrekkers set out for virgin lands beyond the Orange and Vaal Rivers. They were swiftly replaced by the steady streams of thousands seeking to make their fortune or make a new life on the rich frontier at the bottom of the world. They came for silver, for diamonds, for gold and for glory.
The foundation of South Africa’s national wealth for the last century had been mining and it dominated the economy in 1947, employing over 400,000 workers and comprising 29% of GDP. The Cape and Witwatersrand gold rushes of 1832 and 1884, the Karoo silver rush of 1853 and the great Kimberly diamond strike of 1867 had established South Africa as the world’s leading producer of precious metals and diamonds and began the process that placed Cecil Rhode’s De Beers and Imperial Mining among the foremost mining corporations in the solar system. Other rare and precious minerals such as platinum, chromium, rhodium and doranium were found in large quantities as exploration extended across and far below the hills and mountains of Southern Africa. Huge deposits of coal, iron and bronze provided the raw materials for modern power, industry and the sinews of war and peace.
It was the wealth of the earth that made the fortune of Cecil Rhodes, the Father of South Africa and the richest man in the world. Arriving in Durban in 1870, he failed in his initial cotton farming enterprise and almost died in a swimming accident that significantly impacted his character and temperament. After a cautious beginning, he encountered great success on the Kimberly diamond fields, where he systematically bought up smaller firms and discovered the richest diamond pipe yet found in 1872 with the aid of loyal dwarven companions. He expanded his interests into gold and silver mines, vineyards, fruit orchards and railways with uncanny luck that went above and beyond the blessings of a benevolent genie bestowed upon him in 1875 after he found a tarnished copper lamp on the shores of Table Bay. Many have speculated as to the content of the three wishes he exacted from the deal, but no reputable sources have been forthcoming.
After returning from Oxford, he rode with Sir Garnet Wolseley’s cavalry in the Second Anglo-Zulu War and was mentioned in dispatches for his role in the victory at Isandhlwana. As well as entering public life as a Member of the Cape Parliament, Rhodes turned his interest north, sending forth emissaries to gain exclusive mining and territorial concessions from Matabele chieftains and receiving a Royal Charter for his British South Africa Company, establishing what would later become the colony and Dominion of Rhodesia. His clever endeavours and bold maneuvers won Katanga for the British Empire out from under the nose of Leopold II of Belgium. In 1885, Rhodes established De Beers to cement his control over the diamond industry in Southern Africa. He sponsored the successful expedition of Allan Quatermain to the uncharted heart of the continent that uncovered the eldritch mysteries of King Solomon’s Mines in 1887.
Rhodes was knighted in 1886 and became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in 1889. He promoted policies of imperial expansion and oversaw the annexation of Bechuanaland and Basutoland and the beginnings of the grand transcontinental railway that would be his greatest legacy to the world. The gold of the Witwatersrand presented the means to fully develop the region and Rhodes became involved in a protracted struggle with Prime Minister Paul Kruger of the semi-autonomous Transvaal Colony over control of the mines and the formation of a South African federation. Matters came to a head in 1895, when Rhodes’ protégé Leander Starr Jameson lead a mounted column of BSAC troopers and volunteer riders to Johannesburg from Rhodesia after a popular and parliamentary uprising that caused the downfall of the Kruger Ministry and the ascent of an interim government made up of members of the Johannesburg Reform Committee. Rhodes basked in the success and moved towards the initiation of discussions for a federation of Britain’s most developed South African colonies.
The Great Rebellion of 1899/1900 was perhaps Cecil Rhodes’ finest hour. He mustered local forces, placated large sections of the Afrikaner population in the Cape Colony and Natal and doggedly held back the Boer advance until such time as Lord Roberts and Kitchener arrived in December 1899 with a 125,000 strong army. The subsequent campaign took just over 9 months to be bought to a successful and crushing conclusion, with the Boers bought to the heel by the airships and aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps and the armoured trains, mechanical ironclads and super howitzers of the British Army. In 1902, Rhodes became the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, a dominion that joined together the Cape Colony, Kimberly, Natal, Bechuanaland, Orange River and Transvaal as a single entity under the Crown.
In the aftermath of victory, Rhodes could have been vindictive towards the defeated foe, but instead embraced them and worked towards conciliation as part of his efforts to encourage unity among all the peoples of the British Empire. His support for Imperial Preference proved vital to Prime Minister Sir Joseph Chamberlain in his successful efforts in 1903/04 and his proved to be the most dominant voice in the biannual meetings of the Imperial Council over the next decade. After initial reluctance, Rhodes grew to support the campaign of Mohandas Gandhi to gain equal treatment for Indians in Natal, particularly after the latter’s Victoria Cross for his role in the Bambatha Rebellion of 1906; he was known to remark that he could always respect a man who had stood up to a Zulu charge.
In 1914, Rhodes marked a quarter of a century as the leader of his country. Rhodesia to the north had grown and expanded greatly and was well on the path to becoming a Dominion in its own right. The outbreak of the World War proved a further challenge that he gainfully accepted and he persuaded his erstwhile opponent Jan Smuts to serve as commander of the South African Expeditionary Force. Over 320,000 South Africans served in the Middle East, Gallipoli, East Africa and France between 1915 and 1918 and 29,000 offered the ultimate sacrifice for King and Empire. After representing the nation at the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, Rhodes retired as Prime Minister after thirty years service, handing over power to Jameson. He was made a Duke and Knight of the Garter by King George V and spent the next two decades as an esteemed elder statesman of the Empire.
In 1926, Jameson gave way to national hero General Smuts. He lead his country through times of depression, war and peace over the next two decades, forging a middle path between liberalism and conservatism, Englishman and Boer, black and white and appealing to a wide section of society with policies of common sense and social concern. His victory in the 1945 election had paved the way for the continuing transformation and maturation of the young nation as her doors opened to immigration from Britain and Europe, wide-sweeping social reforms were mooted and great new roads and power stations were planned for the growing industrial economy. Institution of a national system of free education and universal pensions and health insurance were the main domestic priorities of the United Party. The South African Communist Party was banned by a narrow vote in 1946 in the light of Comintern-backed espionage and a strong line was taken on socialist leaning miner’s unions in a bitter 1946 strike. Internationally, South Africa played a significant role in the League of Nations, supporting the interests of small and medium nations and being a strong advocate of collective security and international arbitration.
The Smuts Government had set a goal of an annual population increase of 1% through subsidized European immigration and a system of assisted passage, similar to that put in place in Australia. It aimed to address labour shortages in heavy industry and services and build a large domestic market for South African products. Thousands in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Yugoslavia, Italy and France looked favourably upon the thousands of colourful posters and newsreels that offered a new, prosperous life far from terror and strife and warmth and wealth in the peace of the southern sun. Initial emphasis focused upon migrants from the Home Islands due to the common bonds of language, faith, family and fidelity to the Crown.
Substantial internal migration from poor native villages and the countryside to the great cities had contributed to political tensions between Englishman and Boer since the midst of the 19th century. The British dominated colonies held fast to the principles of multi-racial suffrage and equality before the Crown, whilst the Orange River Colony and Transvaal attempted to keep to some of the more traditional beliefs and customs. This disagreement was one factor in the Great Rebellion of 1899. The dawn of the 20th century had seen the winds of change blowing across the veldt and the successful efforts of the future Field Marshal Gandhi pave the way for fair treatment of the Indian populace. The 1920s and 1930s were marked by the progressive dismantling of legislative obstacles to equality. With the British Empire ruling over lands and continents filled with white, yellow, red, blue, purple and green, no moral or logical argument could stand against giving the selfsame rights to brown and black.
The report of the Fagin Commission of 1943 into racial relations, co-authored by the eminent Messrs Ebenezer Scrooge and Abraham Fagin, racial relations had recommended ending the last vestiges of segregation of the black minority and bringing relevant legislation across all twelve provinces into line with that of the Union Government. There was localized vocal opposition from the some of the traditional Boer heartlands in rural Transvaal but this was balanced by general support from the British and European dominated cities. The sterling service provided by the black subjects of the King alongside their white, Indian and coloured brothers in the recent war had done much to erode the grim residue of prejudice.
The South African experience of the Second World War had been part way between that of Canada and Australia. It had never faced the threat of invasion or direct enemy action and had made prodigious advances in the development of its domestic industrial capacity. The fruits of her farms and riches of her mines would support a field force the size of which had never been previously contemplated. The South African military had fought with great success in North Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe and cemented its position as the most powerful military force in Africa. Prior to September 1939, only a small professional land force had served under the colours and South Africa’s major means of defence came through the powerful squadron of the Royal South African Navy, built around the new battleship HMSAS South Africa.
In 1945, the South African Army reached its peak strength of 1,279,234 men in 17 divisions, the Royal South African Air Force 396,578 men and 3268 aircraft and the Royal South African Navy fielded 172 ships, 518 aircraft and 124,329 men. This had been reduced to 250,000 by early 1947 supported by the hundreds of thousands of veterans in the territorial Commandos. Two brigades were on occupation duty in Japan and Germany as part of the arrayed strength of the Empire, a dozen battalions served in various capacities throughout Africa, RSAN destroyers cruised the Aegean alongside the battleships and carriers of the Mediterranean Fleet and fighter squadrons flew over the fields of France and Austria-Hungary.
The South African Expeditionary Force first saw action in brigade strength in France alongside the British Army in 1940, but their true baptism of fire and blood came in the East African and North African Campaigns. The conquest of Italian East Africa and liberation of Abyssinia had been completed by early 1941 and the 2nd South African Infantry Division took part in the smashing victories of the Desert Army over the Italians in Operation Compass. Much of its cavalry and mobile infantry were diverted to the Middle Eastern Front where they helped turn the tide against powerful Turkish offensives. The legendary South African and Rhodesian Army Corps once again wrote its proud story into the pages of history by playing a major role in stopping the rampages of Rommel in the latter half of the year.
In the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, the Iberian Campaign, or the Second Peninsular War as it was called by some, was a long and savage one. The men of III South African Corps served throughout the struggles of 1941 and 1942 and the rebounding offensives of 1943 and 1944 that pushed the swastika back over the Pyrenees. Perhaps the largest contribution by the South African Army was in the Battle of Italy; no less than six infantry and two armoured divisions fought under Field Marshal Alexander’s banner in his grand crusade that took them from the beaches of Sicily to the gates of Rome by the beginning of 1944. Whilst it was a troop of Crusader tanks of the 2nd New Zealand Division that made the first contact with General Giraud’s Second French Army in the great link up of the Allied armies in Austria in January 1945, South African Commandos were the first to meet the Red Army in the passes of the Carpathians a month later.
The Commandos also fought alongside the American hunter Jungle Jim and the legendary Tarzan and his forces of wild animals and cultured apes in the West African Campaign, routing out Nazi stormtroopers and Fallschirmjager from the jungles of Cameroon and Nigeria in two long years of difficult fighting. Despite the best precautions tropical medicine and arcane inoculations could provide, dozens were laid low with a strange malady that began with protracted influenza. The Lord of the Apes himself came to their aid, dosing them with a vile tasting concoction that swiftly returned them to health. He could not be drawn on the nature of the disease, only saying that it was not a matter for men.
Two formations served outside of Africa and the Mediterranean and both gained records of distinction. I South African Corps had been withdrawn from the Italian battlefront in early 1944 as part of the buildup of British and Commonwealth forces for Operation Overlord and re-entered action in July as Montgomery and Bradley began their twin breakouts from Argentan to the Somme and from Vire to the Loire. They took part in the drive to the Rhine and the Battle of Hamburg, ending the war in Denmark alongside the Swedish Army. The all-volunteer 9th South African Infantry Division served in Malaya and the Far East against the Japanese, arriving in Georgetown in March 1942 in the heavily guarded Cardinal convoy that helped steady the hard pressed defences of the Empire in its hour of need. For men who came from the verges of the Kalahari and Namib Deserts, they crossed many rivers over the next three years – the Chao Praya, the Mekong, the Pearl, the Yangtze and the Yellow among them – before ending the war at the feet of the massive broken statue of Genghis Khan in the sands of the Gobi.
The Royal South African Air Force saw service above the Western Desert, Spain, the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Western Europe. The domestically produced Wellesley medium bombers were unsuitable to frontline service against Germany, but provided steady utility against Italy, Ottoman Turkey and the forces of the Spanish junta in addition to maritime patrol around the entirety of Africa. The Royal South African Navy sent a detachment of vessels lead by HMSAS South Africa to the Mediterranean in early 1940, whilst its cruisers were attached to the patrolling groups of the South Atlantic and West Africa Stations. The heavy cruiser Capetown was shifted to the Mediterranean and proved to be one of Admiral Hornblower’s most valuable vessels. The commissioning of the battleship HMSAS Good Hope in April 1941 came at an opportune time for the Empire and she was assigned to the Far Eastern Fleet at Singapore pending the arrival of the Grand Fleet later in the year.
The Royal Tour of 1947 was welcomed across the political and social spectrum and the personal popularity of the King and Queen reached new heights with the frequent visits to the major cities and towns. Princess Elizabeth delighted a crowd in Victoria by trying on a traditional local hat while feeding an oliphaunt at the zoo and His Majesty King George VI solemnly accepted the ceremonial offer of an empty Coca-Cola bottle from a San Bushman from the Kalahari in an event that perplexed yet amused domestic and foreign observers alike. Song and dance played a significant role in the tour, ranging from the massive Zulu indaba at Eshowe to a charming rendition of the well known folk tune Mbube by popular singer Solomon Linda in Johannesburg; in the former instance, the King was heard to remark that there was a reason that the Zulus were considered second only to the Gurkhas as the greatest martial race of the Empire.
