The Katz out of the bag

I was recently made aware of yet another spat on one of the Boer War Facebook groups, with my name being flung around by a True Believer:

While I am flattered that I have made such an impact on Mr Katz, that I clearly live rent-free in his head, I note that he – like all my other voluble detractors – has yet to find the time to go through a chapter of ‘Kruger’s War’, and to point out why each of the statements I make is wrong, and why the references I use to support them are completely invalid. Simply claiming a reference that you don’t like can be ignored because it is ‘British’ or ‘jingo’ or whatever is not good enough; to dismiss all my thousands of references, you’d expect Katz and others to offer counter-references or explanations of why, for example, my use of the memoirs of John Fraser or Michael Farrelly or Yves Guyot or John Buttery is completely unacceptable… even though they left us with first-hand accounts from the heart of the matter.

I am amused by his statement: ‘ridiculous claims of Boer aggression’. This is the sort of thing that proves beyond doubt that someone is not approaching the study the Boer War with anything like an open mind. Not even Mr Katz could deny that the Boers mobilised their forces to the frontiers, issued an ultimatum, declared war, and invaded / annexed British territory – thus sparking the Boer War. However one wants to try and excuse it, the simple fact is that Southern Africa was at peace on 10 October 1899, and was plunged into war by Kruger’s gang the next day. None of that can be denied and one is left to ponder if Katz equally demands ‘the sources’ of those who dare to suggest that Nazi Germany’s aggression started WW2 in Europe – would Mr Katz also think it ‘ridiculous’ to make that perfectly reasonable claim?

Of course, it takes two to tango, but one has to be resolutely ignorant to pretend there was no ‘Boer aggression’ when it comes to Kruger’s invasions of Natal and the Cape Colony. Declaring war, invading, and annexing the territory of a neighbouring state is pretty much as ‘aggressive’ as it gets, and yet Katz then treated the group to this outburst:

Simply claiming that the British ‘sought to destroy the republics’ does not make it true – especially when one realises that, after the British won the war, they quickly granted them both self-rule. There was, of course, an ongoing diplomatic dispute with the Transvaal in the late 1890s – but this was entirely Kruger’s fault, due to the terrible way his corrupt regime was treating the uitlanders, non-whites, Catholics and Jews. But Katz, like so many others, seeks to pretend that Milner had the power to turn this diplomatic spat into a war – which, even had he wanted to, he quite simply did not.

Furthermore, the reader will note that Katz rather sneakily uses the plural ‘republics’, suggesting there was also some sort of tension between London and the Orange Free State – which is complete make-belief. But don’t take my word for it, here is how a long-serving, senior member of the OFS Volksraad described the unjust insanity of Steyn plunging his republic into a war against Great Britain:

‘Just a month after the last session of the Volksraad, in which both the President and the Volksraad had declared that no just cause of war existed, an ultimatum, signed by both Presidents, Kruger and Steyn, was hurled at the British Government, and lit the flames of war around our prosperous and, hitherto, peaceful little State. Our forces commenced operations against the power which, up to that moment, was our friend. Nothing on earth could, in my opinion, justify the policy which designedly had brought it about that that power was now our enemy’.[1]

How would Mr Katz explain away that first-hand account of the Orange Free State being bounced into a blatantly unjust attack on the British Empire?

Despite Katz’s claims, in reality, Great Britain had hardly any troops in theatre with which to invade the republics (about a tenth of what theorists reckoned would be required)[2], and no benefit to be derived from so doing.

What is more, one of the more damning findings of the post-war Royal Commission was that, quite simply, there was no plan in place in the event of a war with the Boer republics, let alone a scheme to invade them.^[3] And far from this admission of a complete lack of preparedness being a cover-up, it was actually deeply embarrassing for the War Office and the army. As The Spectator thundered in August 1903, the report was so damning as to be ‘surely one of the most amazing documents to which a General can ever have had to sign his name. Not only had there been no preparation for the Boer War, but there had been no preparation for any war of any kind whatever. Every arrangement that was made seems to have been made on the supposition that the British nation, even three weeks before the Boer commandos marched into Natal, was about to enjoy the blessings of eternal peace.’^[4]

And:

‘It is perhaps not altogether remarkable, under the circumstances above described [the absence of preparations for war on the British side], that no plan of campaign ever existed for operations in South Africa… “When Sir George White arrived in Natal he had no instructions in regard to the wishes of the Government as to any particular plan of campaign, nor was he aware of any general plan of operations in South Africa”.’^[5]

**

Rather making one doubt his commitment to democracy, Katz dismisses the perfectly reasonable aspirations of the uitlanders to gain a fair franchise, by entertainingly pretending that their situation was analogous with the migrant workers in the modern-day UAE:

Of course, in reality, there is virtually no similarity between the two situations. The uitlanders had settled in the Transvaal just a few years after it was established by other British subjects, and the republic was still under British suzerainty. Kruger – who, like most of the other Transvaal big hitters, was also born a British subject – practiced continual chicanery to deny a fair franchise to any but the self-appointed ‘Chosen People’, despite this being in direct contravention of the peace settlement at the end of the First Boer War. And, again, unlike the Indian migrant workers in the Emirates (or ‘Emirites’ to Katz), the uitlanders did not enter the country on a 2-year work permit, sponsored by an employer, on the understanding that they are guests in a country which has been inhabited by those in charge for centuries. In stark contrast, the uitlanders were no less or more settlers in the new country than the Boers were; plus the uitlanders were almost entirely responsible for building the nation, were paying virtually all the tax, and were liable to be called up for military service.

In his book, Fueling the Empire, John Stephens comprehensively refutes this line of argument. After pointing out that the Transvaal / ZAR of the 1880s was by no means a long-established country that had suddenly been overrun by fortune-seekers trying to take over the reins of state, he writes:

‘In the 1880s, the ZAR was never more than a collection of admittedly growing, but still far-flung, isolated communities. Due to their greater access to modern weapons, they could dominate to subjugation their surrounding black communities, extracting labour from them as tribute, but not much more. The ZAR was only regarded as a state because Britain, for its own purposes, had seen fit to recognize it was such, and that recognition only pre-dated the arrival of the first uitlanders by five years. Even then, all are agreed that the ZAR’s independence was conditional and that it lacked sovereignty. There was no good reason why people, coming to what can at best be described as a nascent state, perennially indigent, with no industry, no commerce or economy, and no expertise to change said situation, should be denied full participation in that state by those whose only claim was that they had arrived a few years earlier. Even more so, when those earlier arrivals had in the space of those years not achieved anything constructive, except for the fact that they had survived.’^[6]

Besides, no one was demanding ‘immediate citizenship’; all the uitlanders were asking for was for the franchise rules of the Transvaal to be brought in line with the rest of the territories in Southern Africa. Hardly an unreasonable or outlandish request, and had Kruger implemented a franchise system similar to that of the Orange Free State, the issue would have been solved. No less a man than Commandant-General Joubert (that ‘arch-jingo’…) admitted that the war was caused by Kruger’s ‘blind obstinacy’^[7] and said that all it would have taken to avoid it was for the Transvaal to adopt a five-year franchise law.^[8]  But, of course, that would have meant that Kruger’s corrupt clique would have quickly been voted out, derailing their gravy train, and ending their crazy dreams of establishing an Afrikaans Empire ‘from the Zambesi to Cape Town’:

‘Their determination to keep political power exclusively to themselves was revealed by the President himself, in an unwary moment, when he replied to an advocate of the uitlanders, “You see that flag? If I grant the franchise, I may as well pull it down”. In reality it was not a republic that the Transvaal was zealous to maintain, but an oligarchy by the Boer minority of its inhabitants’.[9]

Sounds somewhat like another political regime, a little later in South Africa’s troubled history.

Instead of granting a fair franchise to the uitlanders, the old troll clung on to absolute power for dear life, and – in an act of ocean-going stupidity – plunged the region into war:

‘The Transvaal Republic went to war rather than concede a measure of reform in favour of the uitlanders, and had no sooner declared war that it openly avowed that the object of the war was not so much the maintenance of the Transvaal franchise in its existing form, as the destruction of British power in South Africa.’^[10]

Katz’s desperate attempt to pretend that the Boer invasion and annexation of British territory was in no way at all ‘aggressive’ is a truly extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence… hint: just repeating that an invasion and annexation of someone else’s land is not really aggressive when the Boers do it (and only when the Boers do it) doesn’t count as extraordinary evidence.

It would be interesting to see how Katz explains away this rather inconvenient evidence of Boer aggressive intent:

[Smuts] ‘called upon the government to launch a sudden whirlwind of assault and simultaneously to prepare for a long war; to fall on the British in Natal and destroy them before they built up their forces; to drive through to Durban and Cape Town; to hold the coast and coastal ranges against the seaborne counterstroke; to enforce upon the Afrikaner people a total mobilisation of manpower and wealth; to stir up revolt in India and the other mutinous lands of the Empire; to incite the Empire’s foreign enemies in Europe and America; to pull down the whole crazy structure of the British Empire; to build an Afrikaner Republic that would inherit British power from Cape Town to the Zambesi’.^[11]

‘The Dutch came forward confident in their success: they were going to sweep the English helter-skelter in front of them into the sea. “From the Zambesi to Simonstown, all Africa for the Afrikander.” Their leaders told them that they were vastly superior in numbers to the English troops against them and their artillery better; their Creusot guns could outshoot the English; the Germans had promised them help; their cause was just. As they came out of the high, barren steppes of the Transvaal and the Free State they saw before them the green fertile land of Natal. It was to them like the Promised Land to the Israelites, and they came on singing the Volkslied, the national hymn, cheering with excitement and filled with a high exaltation as if they were Crusaders.’^[12]

Called out on the group, Katz then frantically attempted to pretend that Kruger’s invasions of British territory were ‘pre-emptive’ – which is, of course, the excuse always trotted out by ghastly regimes when they attack a neighbour. Just because someone claims it, does not make it true… Hitler’s propagandists attempted the same to explain their invasions of Poland and the USSR, for example:

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2023/09/21/only-fighting-for-independence/

Given that Katz apparently lectures at the SANDF war college, it is remarkable that he appears blissfully unaware of the Caroline test. The main criteria is that a nation must act out of ‘an instant and overwhelming necessity’, and furthermore, to ‘pass’ the Caroline test, any such pre-emptive strike must meet two distinct requirements:

– The use of force must be necessary because the threat is imminent and thus pursuing peaceful alternatives is not an option (ie. necessity)

– The response must be proportionate to the threat (ie. proportionality)

The reader will note that the side which launched an attack – or their latter-day apologists – do not just get to explain away their aggression by declaring it to have been ‘pre-emptive’. Kruger’s invasions did not even come close to meeting the requirements of the Caroline test, and thus cannot in anyway be considered ‘pre-emptive’ – as Katz really should know.

Those with rather more open minds might find this article instructive on that front:

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2017/12/16/a-war-of-aggression-portrayed-as-a-war-of-necessity/

And what ‘imminent threat’ does Katz really want us to believe Kruger’s invasion was ‘pre-empting’? In October 1899, there simply was no threat to the Transvaal:

There were even fewer British troops scattered across the Cape Colony, so where – exactly – was this ‘instant’ danger? It was, of course, entirely make-belief, and simply spouted out to excuse Kruger’s long-planned attack on British territory: as Katz must know.

Katz is also desperate to overlook all the plotting and planning that Kruger and his clique had been up to in the years prior to him starting the war. It would be fascinating to learn how Katz explains away the 1887 Secret Conferences, for example, where – more than 8 years prior to the Jameson Raid that he keeps pretending was the start of all the troubles – Kruger started pressuring the Orange Free State to join him in an offensive alliance against the British… let me guess: that was ‘pre-emptive’ too?

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2020/09/22/secret-conferences-pretoria-june-1887/

What, one wonders, is Katz’s take on these Secret Conferences? Does he simply deny they took place? Does it not interest him why Pakenham completely omitted to mention them? Perhaps he questions the validity of my references – even though I quote directly from the first-hand account of a member of the Orange Free State delegation:

‘President Kruger declared that he placed an offensive and defensive alliance as the primary and essential basis of any negotiations with the Orange Free State’[13]

‘the South African Republic desired nothing more nor less than the offensive and defensive alliance which, in my opinion, would have been a breach of the Convention of the 23rd February, 1854, by virtue of which we held Sovereign Independence. That independence would have been imperiled thereby, and ourselves made sharers in the animosity cherished against the British Government, which appeared very clear to me during the conference in Pretoria in June, 1887’.[14]

Ridiculous to talk of Boer aggression? Really?

And how about all the gun-running and rabble-rousing that Kruger’s massively well-funded Secret Service was up to in British territory? And the Bogus Conspiracy?

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2024/04/15/massing-on-the-other-side-of-the-border/

All perfectly guiltless too… right? Nothing to see here?

So what actually, I wonder, is Mr Katz’s agenda here? There is no way he can be unaware of all this, and if he took the position that there was wrong on both sides, I would largely agree with him, and that would be the basis for a rational, interesting discussion. Instead, one is left wondering why he so determined to say that black is white, and up is down, and to twist himself in knots to deny the blatantly obvious. What motivates his bizarre desperation to paint the Boer republics – the side which no one can deny started the war – as the perfectly innocent victim in all this?

NOTES:

[1] Fraser, Episodes of my Life, p.257

[2] Churchill, My Early Life, p.228

[3] Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.429

[4] Spectator, 29 August 1903

[5] Sydney Morning Herald, 21 October 1903, p.5, quoting the Minutes of Evidence, taken before the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.429

[6] Stephens, Fuelling the Empire, p.298

[7] Nasson, The War for South Africa, p.36

[8] Pakenham, The Boer War, p.104

[9] Stalker, Natal Carbineers, p.123

[10] Gibson, Story of the Imperial Light Horse in the South African War 1899-1902, p.16

[11] Govt. Archives, vol. xcvi, no.95, The Military Position of the South African Republic in the Probable Event of War (4 September 1899). The manuscript that survives is in Isie Smuts’ handwriting. Quotations are from Dr Jean van de Poel’s translation, quoted in Hancock, Smuts, Volume 1: The Sanguine Years, p.105

[12] Armstrong, ‘Grey Steel’, p.94-95

[13] Fraser, Episodes of my Life, p.137

[14] Fraser, Episodes of my Life, p.146-147