Note Back to Main Text — Chapter II

"This is now our time," he wrote, in the same year, "to establish the Bond, while a national consciousness has been awakened through the Transvaal War. And the Bond must be our preparation for the future confederation of all the States and Colonies of South Africa. The English Government keeps talking of a confederation under the British flag. That will never happen. We can assure them of that. We have often said it: there is just one hindrance to confederation, and that is the English flag. Let them take that away, and the confederation under the free Afrikander flag would be established. But so long as the English flag remains here the Afrikander Bond must be our confederation. And the British will, after a while, realise that Froude's advice is the best for them: they must just have Simon's Bay as a naval and military station on the road to India, and give over all the rest of South Africa to the Afrikanders."[21]