Note Back to Main Text — Chapter III

This singular display of mingled effrontery and duplicity marked the closing months of the year (1897). In the February following Mr. Krüger was elected to the presidency of the South African Republic for the fourth time. It was generally recognised that the success of his candidature was inevitable, but few, within or without the Transvaal, had expected him to secure so decisive a victory over his competitors. The figures—Krüger 12,858, Schalk Burger 3,750, and Joubert (Commandant-General) 2,001—were additional evidence of the impotency or lukewarmness of the reform party among the burghers. The first act of President Krüger, on his return to power, was to dismiss Chief Justice Kotzé. Mr. Kotzé's struggle for the independence of the law courts, thus summarily closed, had commenced a year before with what was known as the "High Court crisis." At that time President Krüger had obtained power from the Volksraad by the notorious law No. 1 of 1897 to compel the judges, on pain of dismissal, to renounce the right, recently exercised, to declare laws, which were in their opinion inconsistent with the Grondwet (Constitution), to be, to that extent, invalid. As a protest against this autocratic proceeding the entire bench of judges threatened to resign, and the courts were adjourned. The deadlock continued until a compromise was arranged through the intervention of Chief Justice de Villiers. The President undertook to introduce a new law providing satisfactorily for the independence of the Courts, and the judges, on their side, pledged themselves not to exercise the "testing" right in the meantime. In February, 1898, Chief Justice Kotzé wrote to remind President Krüger that his promise remained unfulfilled,[35] withdrawing at the same time the conditional pledge not to exercise the "testing" right given by himself. The President then dismissed Mr. Kotzé under Law No. 1, compelled a second judge, Mr. Justice Amershof (who had supported the Chief Justice in the position he had taken up) to resign, and appointed, as the new Chief Justice, Mr. Gregorowski, who, as Chief Justice of the Free State, had presided at the trial of the Reformers in 1896, and at the time of the crisis a year before had declared that "no honourable man could possibly accept the position of a judge so long as Law No. 1 remained in force." The judicature was now rendered subservient to the Executive, and the Uitlanders were thus deprived of their last constitutional safeguard against the injustice of the Boer and Hollander oligarchy.