Why were the Boers so powerful

[Marius]

I suspect not a great number; the Witwatersrand gold rush was in 1886, just fourteen years before the Second Boer War so none who had been born to Uitlanders who had rushed into the republics as a result would have been old enough to vote anyway, and the miners were disproportionately composed of single men, or men whose wives were not with them.

True, but there would have been a few who made their way to the Transvaal before the gold rush.

Apparently Scots were used often as priests and teachers by the Boers, but I have the feeling they were generally assimilated.

I met a guy once called Lyle McPherson who was one of the most Afrikaans people I have ever met.

 

[Thoresby]

On the subject of uitlanders on the Transvaal I thought Boers were the majority of the overall white population and a massive majority of the voters but Uitlanders were a majority in the key central areas around the mines.

 

[katchen]

Religion was important. Calvinism apparently trumped coming from someplace else. I'm sure many Dominionist Americans in the mold of R.J. Rushdoony or Gary North would have been welcome in South Africa by the Broederbond. But try prying Americans loose from America!

 

[Julius Vogel]

There were all sorts of franchise games that were played too during the Union negotiations, alongside the usual urban/rural gerrymandering that was so common in that era.

IIRC, if the British had stuck firm (which they didn't for all sorts of reasons, good or otherwise), there would have been less "safe" Afrikaner electorates, which might have altered the early Union balance of power..