Word: transvaal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Good Hope during the Napoleonic Wars. In the 1830s parliamentary idealists in London decreed an end to slavery in the Empire, and some of the Afrikaners, dependent on their slaves, trekked into the wilderness to the north. The leaders of these trekboers (wandering farmers) founded two independent republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. No one but the native blacks would have cared had not a rich diamond pipe been found at Kimberley in the Orange Free State and an immense stratum of gold at Witwatersrand ("the Rand") in the Transvaal. As largely British "Outlanders" poured into the Rand...
Britain was ill prepared for conflict. Despite its burgeoning Empire, its army was small-fewer than 320,000 men, most of them already tied down in colonial duties. (France had an army of 4 million.) War was, in fact, totally unnecessary. The British wanted political representation in the Transvaal for the Outlanders. Kruger was willing to bargain, but South African High Commissioner Alfred Milner, unfortunately, was the go-between. He was a dedicated warmonger, secretly backed by millionaire gold entrepreneurs. Troops were sent. They marched into the first 20th century war ready to fight with 19th century tactics...
...believe that was in the Transvaal...
...Kaffirboethie!" (nigger lover), a stocky man in a safari suit yelled at the political speaker in the Transvaal town of Rustenburg. A burly youth then launched a right hook at the heckler. Scuffles erupted throughout the hall before baton-swinging police managed to restore a semblance of order...
...curious Paris meeting raised many questions. Was the flamboyant Rhoodie, who has been accused of high living and free spending during his years as Pretoria's influence peddler, trying to gain some kind of immunity from prosecution? He is currently wanted in the Transvaal, Prime Minister Botha an nounced last week, on grounds of "fraud and possibly theft." Furthermore, if Van den Bergh was a former superspook, why did he clumsily allow the press to discover the details of the Paris meeting? If he and Van Zyl were acting in their government's behalf, why did South African...