The Kingdom of South Africa
The history of Dutch South Africa goes back many centuries. From the Dutch foundation of Cape Town in 1652, to the British Occupation of the Dutch Cape Colony from 1795 until the fall of the British Empire in 1814, to the Great Trek, to the Dutch-Zulu War, it is safe to say that Dutch South Africa has had a long and storied history. It is not surprising that after years of direct rule from Amsterdam and The Hague that the people of Dutch South Africa would want to have control over their own affairs and destiny while still keeping ties with their much-beloved mother country.
The movements for the self-rule of Dutch South Africa began in earnest during the 1890s and 1900s when numerous intellectuals and statesmen throughout the colony began to call for the colonists and denizens of Dutch South Africa to have more control over the running of the colony. One of the events that led to this greater call for self-rule was the Witwatersrand Gold Rush of 1892 [1], the largest gold rush up to the that point in the history of the colony and a gold rush that lead to the rapid industrialization of the colony, the rapid extraction of minerals of all kinds from the colony and the large influx of prospectors, migrant workers and immigrants, both Dutch and non-Dutch, into the colony, with the non-Dutch speaking immigrants being referred to as “Uitlanders”, an Afrikaans word meaning foreigner or outsider. This was much to the chagrin of the mostly impoverished and agrarian population of Boers throughout much of Dutch South Africa, the Boers being the descendants of the Voortrekkers of the Great Trek that settled much of the interior of South Africa during the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s.
Mining in the Witwatersrand, circa 1895
Native African and Uitlander Mine Workers, 1894
One other major factor in the movement for South African rule was the development of the Afrikaans language as its own language separate from the Dutch language and not just a dialect of the Dutch language. The Afrikaans language evolved gradually from the Hollandic dialect of the Dutch language, the dialect of the Dutch language most widely spoken by the Dutch settlers of South Africa, and eventually by the African natives that came under the rule of the Dutch settlers, with some influences from German, spoken by the many German immigrants to Dutch South Africa, and as well as the Khoisan languages of southern Africa. For most of the early history of Dutch South Africa, the Afrikaans language was not considered its own language, but was instead just considered a crude dialect of the Dutch language known as “African Dutch” or the more derogatory “Kitchen Dutch.” However, starting in the 1880s, many in Dutch South Africa began to consider their own dialect of Dutch to be a different language altogether. In 1884, the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Society of Real Afrikaners) was formed in Cape Town by different South African-Dutch/Afrikaner intellectuals, writers and journalists. Throughout the years, members of the society wrote and published through said society a number of books, magazines and journals in the new Afrikaans language or dialect.
One of the most prominent early advocates for South African self-rule was Jacobus Herculaas de Rijk, a South African-Dutch and Afrikaner former army general, veteran of the Dutch-Zulu War and a politician in the Assembly of the colonial region of Transvaal. In 1895, de Rijk and other assemblymen in Transvaal wrote and sent a petition to King Louis Napoleon II of the Netherlands requesting more autonomy for the colony of Dutch South Africa with the advent of new mineral wealth, industrialization, immigration, among other factors. However, the Dutch government of King Louis Napoleon II and Prime Minister Abraham Kuijper refused these requests in no uncertain terms. This greatly angered the aforementioned assemblymen, but they decided to wait and bide their time for a better chance at autonomy and perhaps even self-rule.
Jacobus Herculaas de Rijk
Abraham Kuijper
In 1897 and 1898, in what became known as the South African Miner’s Strike, numerous labor strikes occurred throughout the rural and inland regions of Dutch South Africa, the cause of the strikes being low wages, bad conditions in the mines and living quarters and the hiring of foreign nationals over Boers and other Dutch South Africans. On July 11, 1897, things finally reached a breaking point when, during a strike at one of the diamond mines outside of Vooruitzigt [2], soldiers of the Dutch South African Army opened fire on the striking miners after an altercation took place between one of the miners and an infantryman. After that, all hell broke loose, as units of Dutch South African Militia, units of militia raised from local towns for more minor duties than those of the military, and as a result more sympathetic towards the concerns of the locals, joined the striking miners in fighting back against the Dutch South African Army or Nederlands Zuid-Afrikaans leger (NZAL). One influential militia commander Christiaan de Wet soon became the recognized as the leader of the militiamen and miners, and soon afterwards, after a long and bloody fight, the city of Vooruitzigt fell to the rebels, after which a newly made flag of the “South African Republic” or “Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek” was raised over the city. The South African Rebellion had begun.
Flag of the South African Republic
Christiaan de Wet
South African Boer rebels, 1897
South African Rebels ambush Dutch soldiers, 1897
In spite of this spontaneous start, as well as clandestine funding from both Europa and Portugal through their neighboring colonies, with the rebels managing to capture a number of towns in the Orange region, the South African Rebellion only lasted for nine months, as the NZAL, led by largely by young South African generals such as Andrius Botha, J.M.B. Hertzog and Jan Smuts, and reinforced with forces from the Dutch Army in the Netherlands, has quickly able to suppress the rebellion with their superior numbers, weapons and organization. Christiaan de Wet, leader of the rebellion, was then arrested and soon afterwards executed in Vooruitzigt. Still, the effects of the rebellion were felt as far away as Amsterdam and The Hauge, with the Dutch government fearing a larger rebellion in the future. As a result, the Miners’ Strike came to an end and some months later, on June 1, 1898, King Louis Napoleon II officially granted the Colony of Dutch South Africa a limited degree of autonomy and self-rule with the establishment of a Dutch South African Assembly in the colonial capital of Lodewijksburg [3] and an elected Governor-General, with the previous Governor-General Titus van Asch van Wijck stepping down and Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey unanimously being elected as the first elected and South African Governor-General of Dutch South Africa.
Titus van Asch van Wijck, last un-elected and non-South African Governor of Dutch South Africa
For the next decade, the South African people were mostly content with the new status of the colony. Still, many, including Governor-General de Rijk, Transvaal Assemblyman and future Governor-General Schalk Willem Burger and NZAL General Andrius Botha, among others, still wanted for South Africa to become its own sovereign nation with its monarchical ties with the Kingdom of the Netherlands maintained and in a relationship similar to the relationship that existed between the Kingdom of Quebec and the Empire of Europa. The South African Republicans, led by former South African rebel leader Gerhardus Maritz, still existed but were a fringe within Dutch South Africa, with their anti-monarchical, reactionary and sometimes anti-semitic rhetoric turning away most Dutch South Africans and Afrikaners.
Schalk Willem Burger
Gerhardus Maritz
In October, 1911, the Great World War broke out soon after Europa invaded the Netherlands. With the mother country under attack and being invaded by the continental hegemon of the Empire of Europa, the Afrikaner people of Dutch South Africa were whirled up into a patriotic frenzy, seeing the struggle of their mother country as a struggle for South Africa as well, and this was a sentiment widely promoted in Dutch propaganda in South Africa. Thus, by the end of 1911, over a million Dutch South Africans/Afrikaners volunteered for military service in the metropolitan Netherlands to fight against the forces of Europa, with many of these men signing up to fight in colonial battalions. Some black African soldiers also volunteered and were conscripted into the Dutch South African Army to fight in Europe or Asia, but these soldiers were always put into segregated Native Colonial Battalions separate from white volunteers and conscripts and always led by white officers.
The first Afrikaner soldiers to arrive in the metropolitan Netherlands arrived by ship in December, 1911 in the city of Leiden. Almost immediately after the South African Colonial Battalions arrived in Leiden, they were immediately sent to the front-lines of battle to fight against the Europan armies. Throughout the next three years, the Afrikaner soldiers showed immense bravery under fire and in the line of battle, and they quickly gained a reputation for tenacity, courage, resourcefulness and grit during battle. Other South African Colonial Battalions were sent to South East Asia to fight against the Europans in Dutch Burma. It should also be noted that many South African veterans of the Great World War, such as a number of future South African Prime Ministers, among others, would go on to become famous in the history of South Africa.
Afrikaner soldiers on the western front of the Great World War, 1912
South African Generals Andrius Botha and Jan Smuts outside of Maastricht, 1913
Black and White South African soldiers in Dutch Burma, 1912
All the way back in Dutch South Africa, things remained mostly peaceful aside from a few anti-war protests by radical South African Republicans. All of this changed in March, 1917 with the independence of Mittelafrika during the Germanian Civil War, and soon afterwards, units of the NZAL and South African Militia were deployed to the Dutch South African-Mittelafrikan border, which became the scene of complete and utter chaos in the wake of the Mittelafrikan declaration of independence and then the Carolinian invasion and annexation of the lands along said border. During this time, numerous skirmishes between the South African armies and militias and the rebellious African tribes began along the Carolinian-Dutch borders in southern Africa. By 1920, most of these skirmishes had ended. During the Mittelafrikan War, numerous South African soldiers were also sent to Mittelafrika to assist the Mittelafrikan army in maintaining their independence and suppressing the many revolts by rebellious Africans. Numerous Afrikaners also served as private mercenaries and soldiers of fortune in Mittelafrika, with some remaining in the jungles of Mittelafrika for years after the end of the Mittelafrikan War.
An South African Army Camp on the South African-Mittelafrikan Border, 1917
South African Militia Cavalry in the Kalahari desert, 1917
South African Mercenaries in the Katanga region of Mittelafrika, 1918
Black South African soldiers in a Native Battalion on the South African-Mittelafrikan Border, 1918
After the Great World War, as a result of many Afrikaners having fought in the war in both Europe and Asia, as well as the Mittleafrikan War, a growing number of Afrikaners continued to call on the mother country for a greater level of autonomy, the number of those wanting as such increasing more and more over the years. In 1915, the Dutch government finally recognized Afrikaans as its own language separate from the Dutch language, but this was still not enough [4]. By the end of the decade, Queen Louise Napoleona of the Netherlands, as well as several of her advisers, decided that the time had finally come to give the Afrikaners some self-rule. On September 24th, 1919, Louise Napoleona announced that "By the end of 1920, our brethren in South Africa will have their own self-ruling government tied closely to our monarchy and state." As such on May 21st, 1920, the Kingdom of South Africa was declared with Queen Louise Napoleona as its monarch, while the nation elected its own "self-ruling and sovereign government" from the capital in Lodewijksburg. Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey was asked to be the first Prime Minister, but he declined due to his own poor health. As a result, Andrius Botha, a longtime general in the Dutch South African Army and veteran of the Great World War, became the first Prime Minister of the Kingdom of South Africa. Meanwhile, tensions between white South Africans and the native black Africans remained tense, with the native black Africans still being relegated to the status of disenfranchised second-class citizens with no political representation and limited political rights.
The first fifteen years of the history of the Kingdom of South Africa was a time of peace and political consolidation. Only a few years of independence, Prime Minister Andrius Botha died of a heart attack on his 60th birthday on September 27, 1922. As such, he was succeeded by his political protégé and former general Jan Christoffel Kemp, although Kemp only served for less than a year before the next elections were held, after which Tielman Roos of the Conservative Party was elected Prime Minister. Roos served as Prime Minister for most of the rest of the 1920s, and his premiership was marked by a further industrialization of South Africa, the construction of new railroads, an increased white settlement and development of rural areas, increased immigration from Europe and a large-scale crackdown on the South African Republican movement, after which the movement became largely irrelevant with its leader Gerhardus Maritz being imprisoned for life on charges of high treason.
Jan Christoffel Kemp
Tielman Roos
In 1929, Prime Minister Tielman Roos lost the election of that year to James Barry Munnik Hertzog, leader of the Classical Liberal Party and a former general and veteran of both the South African rebellion and the Great World War. J.B.M Hertzog served as Prime Minister for the next six years, during which relations were greatly improved with the Mittelafrikan Reich under Führer von Bachenheim. As both South Africa and Mittelafika were white-run minority rule states in Africa, and were both in the Fascist Sphere, the two naitons had a vested interested in maintaining good relations and working together to suppress unruly native African tribes that would revolt from time to time. One other interesting development of the Hertzog premiership was the rise of new and extremist political parties in South Africa. These included the Fascist Party of Great War veteran and former Foreign Minister Oswald Pirow, modeled on the Manifest Destiny Party of the Republican Union of America and supporting the Strong Man Theory, Scientific Marxism and Spiritual Marxism, and the Radical Socialist Party of the English-born trade union leader Wilhelm Hendryk Andrews, modeled on the Eduists of Brazil and Patagonia.
J.B.M. Hertzog
Oswald Pirow
Wilhelm Hendryk Andrews
It should be noted that the Kingdom of South Africa did not bear the same prejudices as their other Protestant allies, and while its government and population still desired to keep Black Africans as second-class citizens and completely subservient to the white population, they welcomed any and all peoples from Europe, even those from Ireland, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans that would have not been accepted in either the Republican Union or Britannia. This also included the Portuguese refugees from the parts of former Portuguese Angola and Mozambique now under the control of the Confederation of the Carolinas that were dispossessed of their land and possessions. As a result, South Africa saw a lot of immigration from these parts of Europe and Portuguese Africa in the years after the Great World War. Still, in an effort to “fit in” with the rest of South African society, many of these immigrants, soon after their arrival in Dutch South Africa, adopted Dutch given names, and sometimes even surnames, and then converted to any number of forms of Protestantism, Dutch or otherwise.
In the election of 1935, Jan Smuts of the Classical Liberal Party, another former general and veteran of the South African Rebellion and the Great World War, as well as a close friend of J.B.M Hertzog, became Prime Minister of the Kingdom of South Africa after defeating Tielman Roos of the Conservative Party, as well as Oswald Pirow of the Fascist Party and Wilhelm Hendryk Andrews of the Radical Socialist Party, in a landslide victory for the premiership. As a result, the future of the Kingdom of South Africa seemed destined to remain with the status quo for the foreseeable future.
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[1] IOTL the Witwatersrand Gold Rush took place in 1886.
[2] OTL's Kimberly.
[3] OTL's Johannesburg.
[4] As a result of this, the NZAL was renamed in Afrikaans as the Nederlandse Suid-Afrikaanse leër (NSAL).