Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa
By Martin Meredith
PublicAffairs, 570 pp., $35.

South African politics is confusing. Even insiders struggle to make sense of it. But Martin Meredith’s Diamonds, Gold, and War, a new book about the formation of the modern state of South Africa between 1871 and 1910, sheds light on the enormous challenges facing the country’s leaders today.

Meredith’s previous book, The Fate of Africa, explained how modern black African leaders have, almost universally, destroyed their economies with Marxist economic policies and war. Meredith detailed every major failure (along with the few successes) of those black leaders, occasionally alluding to how they destroyed the infrastructure built by colonialists. Some readers might even have inferred that Meredith had a hankering for colonialism. Such assumptions are laid to rest by his latest book, which offers an unvarnished portrait of what we might call (borrowing from the famous Churchill quote) “Britain’s worst hour.”

Modern South Africa is made up of several states that were independent as late as 1899. The Cape Colony was controlled by the British, as was Natal. The Transvaal and the Orange Free State were run by the Boers, who are primarily of Dutch descent. The Dutch first arrived in the Cape in 1652, followed by British private and government interests who came in force at the beginning of the 19th century. The Dutch and the British squabbled from then on. The British were slightly more tolerant and inclusive, even allowing property-owning Indians and mixed races to vote in elections. However, both the British and the Boers disregarded the rights of local tribes, particularly the Zulu and the Xhosa, the latter of whom predominate in South Africa’s contemporary ruling party. The Boers wanted independence from British rule, so in the 1830s many left the Cape region. They eventually settled the areas where gold and diamonds would later be discovered.

Meredith does a superb job of quoting the eminent Britons who visited South Africa at the time, such as Rudyard Kipling and Anthony Trollope. The latter, who was in Kimberley during the diamond rush, had this to say: “There are places to which men are attracted by the desire of gain which seem so repulsive that no gain can compensate the miseries incidental to such an habitation.”

Meredith offers an unvarnished portrait of what might be called 'Britain’s worst hour.'

Trollope’s description of Kimberley could easily describe many places in Africa today, and Meredith brings modern concerns over the “resource curse” to life. It is likely that the independent Boer republics would have survived far longer if diamonds and gold had not been discovered in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal between 1871 and 1874. This gave the British a reason for annexation, absent which the relatively peaceful (if also racist and isolationist) Boers probably would have continued farming.

From the 1880s onward, leading British colonialists urged London to give them greater control over mining resources. The most prominent of these colonialists was the ruthless and vainglorious Cecil Rhodes, who took significant risks in buying the rights to diamond mining during market slumps in order to eventually dominate diamond production. Rhodes also manipulated his Boer allies and shored up British support to become prime minister of the Cape Colony. Meredith depicts both his immorality and his Machiavellian nature, which apparently allowed Rhodes to justify almost any behavior if it furthered his desire for Britain to rule all of Africa and place him in charge.

Lusting for power, Rhodes lied to the British government on numerous occasions, often exaggerating the dangers posed to British interests by indigenous tribes and the Boers, and he acted against the advice of British diplomats. Rhodes financed his own raiding parties into present-day Zimbabwe, betraying King Lobengula of the Ndebele, and he also supported the infamous Jameson raid into the Transvaal, which nearly sparked a war with the Boers.

When war finally did break out toward the end of 1899, the British expected to win easily, but the Boers were courageous and intelligent fighters. Once their defeat in conventional warfare became inevitable, the Boers began waging a guerrilla campaign in the vast landscapes of the Transvaal, supported by their families who remained on homesteads. British military leaders soon decided to round up all the women and children up into what essentially became concentration camps. Although their intent was not to kill the prisoners, the British managed the hygiene and food in the camps so badly that over 26,000 women and children died (predominantly children under the age of 16).

This was without a doubt one of the most barbaric acts ever committed by British soldiers in the name of their government. But it did have the desired effect of forcing the Boers to the negotiating table. After more than two years of war, the Treaty of Vereeniging gave Britain control of the Boer republics. However, its apparent lack of interest in administering the republics was so great that within a few years effective control had been handed back to the Boers, allowing for the beginning of racial segregation.

In 1910, when London formed the Union of South Africa under the British Crown, its major concession to Boer leaders was to increase segregation. Although the book ends at this point, it illuminates what followed. The Boers finally gained control of the entire country in 1948, following a backlash against British rule, after which apartheid reigned until the early 1990s. (The first free elections were held in 1994.)

With so much oppression over the previous century, it is understandable why vestiges of black hatred toward whites remain in South Africa. It also understandable why Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, who is known to dislike Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, will do virtually nothing to challenge his rule, since Mugabe was a fellow fighter against white hegemony.

While not as ambitious or as significant as Meredith’s previous book, Diamonds, Gold, and War is a fine history of the formation of the most powerful country in Africa. It will certainly make uncomfortable reading for Rhodes’ scholars, who may be shocked to learn of the bloodshed caused by the man whose name they wear with pride.

Roger Bate is a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute. He studied the history of South Africa while researching for his Ph.D.