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59-614: The ZARP was the mounted and foot police of the ZAR, a nation that was mainly rural with a strong frontier spirit as the Boers had only arrived in the Transvaal less than 50 years before during the Great Trek. The ZARP were established as a para-military police force whose primary function was to uphold the authority of the state, rather than upholding justice. The Boers were only a minority in

118-693: A black miner was publicity flogged in Johannesburg's central square for being absent at work without permission, the Johannesburg Observer reported that his entire back from the neck down was "one mass of raw flesh", calling the flogging a "horrible and bloodcurdling" sight. In 1892, the District Surgeon for Johannesburg reported that he overseen 6,869 floggings over the course of the past year. Initially reserved for blacks, in May 1892

177-695: A disturbance to the republic's existence, he would be punished by death. Marais then paddled the Sand and Dwars rivers in January 1854. His small gold finds were exhibited at the courthouse in Potchefstroom in January 1854. After submitting his final report to the ZAR government on April 7, 1855, he left the ZAR in 1855 to settle in Dordrecht , Cape Colony. In 1856, Lieutenant Lys travelled to Pretoria from Pietermaritzburg and became stuck crossing

236-512: A law passed by the volksraad (people's council) of 8 September 1893, all "Chinamen" as the law called Chinese were required to have a special pass to allow them to live in the ZAR that was to cost £25 per year, and allow the ZARPs to imprison any Chinese found without the pass or an invalid one. Starting in 1889, the ZARPs forced the Chinese community to the western side of Johannesburg, and in 1894

295-406: A law was formally passed stating all Chinese as of 1 August 1894 had to live in a neighborhood of west Johannesburg and would require a pass to be allowed out of the designated neighborhood. Other laws passed by the volksraad stated that the Chinese were not permitted to walk on pavements or footpaths; were not allowed to ride public carriages; were excluded from the first and second class section of

354-566: A marsh on the farm Driefontein , today's Germiston , which would become the Knights Mine. On returning to his wagon, he discovered conglomerate rock that, when crushed, contained gold. Though there were smaller mining operations in the region, it was not until 1884 and the subsequent 1886 discovery at Langlaagte that the Witwatersrand gold rush got underway in earnest. Explorer and prospector Jan Gerrit Bantjes (1840-1914)

413-495: A minority in their own country. Before the gold rush, the ZAR had essentially no police force, with a system of night watchmen serving as the police force with justice being handled by the landdrost (magistrate), assisted by the wyksmeester (warden) who ran the local jail. In the event of a serious crime, the local field cornet would call out the kommando to handle the matter. The founding of Johannesburg with its hundreds of thousands of miners drawn from all over South Africa and

472-471: A number of incidents where people were shot down by the ZARPs on the streets of Johannesburg. A Johannesburg newspaper that supported the government of President Paul Kruger complained in 1898 about the "indiscriminate reckless firing by foolish young constables". The ZARPs were recruited from the poorest elements of the urban Transvaal Boer society who needed to feel superior to blacks, and were much given to whippings and shootings. The largest contingents amongst

531-432: A power shift and the Transvaal passing into British hands, eventually turning it into a British colony. As a result, beginning in 1890 the Transvaal government passed a series of laws refusing voting rights and citizenship to immigrants who had not both resided in the republic for fourteen years and were over forty years of age. This successfully disenfranchised the uitlanders from any meaningful political role. This attitude

590-479: A small triangular piece of land to cram as many plots onto as possible. This is the reason Johannesburg's central business district streets are so narrow. There is a dispute as to the origin of the name Johannesburg and to whom Johannes , a common Dutch name, the city was named after. One theory is that it is named after two state surveyors who were sent to choose an area for the layout of the new town, Johann Rissik and Christiaan Johannes Joubert . Within 10 years,

649-562: A standard of living four times higher than was possible in Britain. He was a muscular and burly man standing at 6'4, and had a reputation as a troublemaker. Edgar, coming home drunk one night was involved in a brawl with another Englishman that was mistakenly reported to the ZARPs as a murder as Edgar beat the other man senseless. When the ZARPs kicked in the door of Edgar's house to arrest him, he tried to strike one with an iron rod, leading for Constable Barend Jones to shoot him dead. The facts of

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708-403: A team of companions, were curious and rode over 400 km to Bantjes' camp at Vogelstruisfontein, where they stayed with him for two nights near what would later become Roodepoort . Rhodes purchased the first batch of Witwatersrand gold from Bantjes for £3000. This purchase was the first transaction of the newly formed company, Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa. News reached the rest of

767-434: A trifle, and insulting Uitlanders (who are not allowed to carry arms), whenever an excuse offers. The killing of Edgar by a squad of ZARPs who broke into his house and murdered him in bed as he was talking to his wife, is a notorious example. The murderers were arrested, tried, acquitted and some of them promoted. Such was the municipal condition of Johannesburg up to the present crisis." In the same book, Bigger also condemned

826-496: A vast number of uitlanders (Afrikaans for "outlanders"), the disparaging term used by the Boers to describe the foreigners who arrived in the Transvaal during the Witwatersrand Gold Rush who quickly became the majority in the new city of Johannesburg. Johannesburg was a highly multicultural city, being made up of people from all over the world, and as such greatly resented by the Boers, who feared becoming more of

885-595: A warrant and to shoot him in self-defense. The ZARPs came to be portrayed in Britain and elsewhere in the British empire as an oppressive police force that was persecuting the British uitlanders . In a book written in 1899 to justify Canada's involvement in the Boer war, the Canadian author Emerson Bristol Biggar wrote: "Drunken ZARPs (policemen) swagger about brandishing revolvers, occasionally shooting down poor natives for

944-524: The Battle of Bergendal where they were destroyed as a unit. Individual members as well as the last contingent of the ZARPs continued to fight in the ZAR during the guerrilla and final stage of the Second Boer War. The British historian Thomas Pakenham wrote about the way that British image of the ZARPs completely changed as: "How ironic that the notorious “bully boys” of Johannesburg, the epitome of

1003-718: The Crocodile and Jukskei rivers and exploring the Suikerboschrand in the south during October and November 1853. On December 1, Marais sought approval from the Volksraad to look for gold, which was accepted with the provision that the Commission of the existing districts of the Republic would be notified if it was discovered. He was also warned that if he told any foreign power about any potential finds that caused

1062-548: The High Commissioner for South Africa, Sir Alfred Milner , and the Colonial Secretary , Joseph Chamberlain , used the denial of rights to the uitlanders as their main point of attack against the Transvaal. They encouraged uitlander agitation and pressed uitlander claims, with veiled threat of war, upon Kruger's government. In the end, British insistence and Kruger's intransigence led to the outbreak of

1121-605: The Johannesburg area. The Transvaal government, under President Paul Kruger , were concerned as to the effect this large influx could have on the independence of the Transvaal. The uitlanders were almost entirely British subjects. Therefore enfranchising the uitilanders, at a time when the Crown was keen to consolidate its colonial hold in South Africa, risked creating a powerful fifth column that could ultimately lead to

1180-597: The Transvaal ", the ZARPs like the Staatsartillerie had serious disciplinary problems. In 1886, gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand, leading to the Witwatersrand Gold Rush that transformed the Transvaal from a poor, mainly rural republic into a wealthy state that began to urbanise. The boomtown of Johannesburg had emerged, becoming a city in less than a year. The gold rush attracted

1239-497: The alluvial mines of Barberton and Pilgrim's Rest and local tribes had suspected the existence of gold deposits. In 1886, gold was found in the Witwatersrand region. Scientific studies show that the "Golden Arc", which stretches from Johannesburg to Welkom , used to be a massive inland lake, and silt and gold deposits from alluvial gold settled in the area that formed the found gold. The first discovery of gold in

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1298-414: The highveld , a place of vice and immorality that needed to be brought under control. A particular obsession was the selling of alcohol to the black miners with one white British women living in Johannesburg, Florence Philips , described the black miners under the influence of alcohol as being "more like demons than men, or the smiling cheery creatures one had always been accustomed to see". The belief-which

1357-479: The uitlanders were people from Britain and Australia, and several of the Anglo uitlanders wished to see the ZAR annexed as a British colony. British uitlanders approved of the treatment of Indian merchants by the ZARPs, seeing them as economic competitors. Fiddes, an agent for Alfred Milner , the British high commissioner for South Africa, visited Johannesburg to tell several Anglo uitlander community leaders that

1416-471: The "Randtram", even though it was a railway and not dedicated to tram traffic. This was the first working railway line in the Transvaal . The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand also created a super-wealthy class of miners and industrialists known as Randlords . Many Randlords built large estates and mansions on the Parktown Ridge. The Witwatersrand Gold Rush had a significant role in both

1475-591: The Anglo-Boer war the ZARPs carried the Mauser rifle. Leo Amery stated that “the police were first-class fighters, combining the skill of the Boer with the courage and self-sacrifice of the disciplined soldier”. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote that the ZARPs were "bullies in peace, but were certainly heroes in war". The “fighting” ZARPs accompanied the Boer forces from the ZAR that invaded Natal. They participated in many major and minor engagements but gained enduring fame at

1534-462: The British government intended to make an issue of the treatment of the Indians, and asked them not to support the ZAR government in their public statements. Fiddes, speaking on behalf of Milner told them that however much they approved of discrimination against the Indians that this was a useful way to spark diplomatic friction between the Transvaal and Britain that might lead to a war. The Transvaal

1593-490: The ZAR state attorney-general to reluctantly to grant permission for the ZARPs to provide a medical facility for the treatment of prostitutes, albeit with the orders to keep the costs of such a facility as low as possible. Besides for prostitution, the ZARPs were much concerned with attempting to prevent the sale of alcohol to blacks. Lieutenant Gerard Van Dam of the ZARPs blamed the illegal alcohol canteens selling to blacks on "low class Russians or Polish Jews", who he claimed were

1652-564: The ZAR, and greatly feared the black majority, hence the emphasis on the ZARP as a para-military force intended more to inspire fear than respect. From 1881 to 1896 the ZARPS were part of the Artillery and then began a separate existence as an independent entity. The basis of the ZAR's military was the kommando system, under which all able-bodied white men could be called up for military service in

1711-408: The ZAR, that "England would not longer accept the maladministration and especially about the ill-treatment of her subjects which was worse here that elsewhere. On this point England would take action". Fraser concluded that his government was prepared to go to war over the issue, a remark that struck Smuts as highly ominous. Shortly afterwards, in January 1899, a British Uitlander named Thomas Edgar

1770-487: The ZAR. Protests began in the uitlander community and a petition was presented to the British vice-consul in Johannesburg, demanding that Britain intervene to end what they called the systematic oppression by the ZARPs. In response to the British pressure, Constable Jones was tried for murder, but acquitted in February 1899 with the judge Antoine Klock ruling that Jones had a legitimate reasons to enter Edgar's house without

1829-565: The ZARPs for their inability to end the sale of alcohol to blacks, writing "the Boer government of the Transvaal stands condemned by the liquor traffic". In 1899, the force consisted of 10 officers, 100 NCO's and 1400 men. The majority of the force was foot police but they all took to the field and entered the Second Boer War as mounted forces. The ZARPs fought well and earned a reputation for their tenacity, skill and courage. In peacetime they carried swords, carbines and revolvers. During

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1888-497: The brutal Boer, who had helped precipitate the war by shooting Tom Edgar, should now come to be regarded by the British as heroes cast in their own mould." Witwatersrand Gold Rush The Witwatersrand Gold Rush was a gold rush that began in 1886 and led to the establishment of Johannesburg , South Africa . It was a part of the Mineral Revolution . In the modern-day province of Mpumalanga , gold miners in

1947-421: The businesses that sold supplies to the mining companies and the gold prospectors; Greeks owning the majority of the restaurants and cafes of Johannesburg; and most of the grocery stores of Johannesburg were owned by Indians and Chinese. For the 900 or so men serving in the ZARP, police duties were at least in part a way to assert power and to remind the uitlanders that the Transvaal was "their" country. Even worse

2006-610: The country and escorted to the border, where he returned to the Cape Colony . Another find by Pieter Jacob Marais, who had dug gold in California, was recorded in 1853 on the Jukskei River but was subject to similar secrecy. He arrived at Potchefstroom on September 3, 1853. Marais explored the northern slopes of the Witwatersrand, a few kilometers from the future main reef, finding small gold samples while panning

2065-462: The event of an emergency. The professional military of the Transvaal consisted of the Staatsartillerie (State Artillery), who in 1899 numbered 314 men. The para-military ZARPs comprised the closest the ZAR had to a professional infantry and cavalry. The ZARPs were divided into three sections; the Foot, Mounted and Native sections. Through the ZARPs were known to the burghers as the "disciplined force of

2124-526: The eviction, some 40 people were forced out of their homes at night to be beaten and whipped, and a child died as a result of the injuries she had endured. As the colored people were from the Cape colony, making them into British subjects, the eviction led to a formal diplomatic note of protest from Edmund Fraser, who represented the British government in Pretoria. Fraser warned Jan Smuts , the attorney-general of

2183-517: The failed Jameson Raid in 1895-1896 and the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899. The British mine owners orchestrated the coup of the Boer government, which controlled the Witwatersrand, triggering the Second Boer War. Uitlanders An uitlander , Afrikaans for "foreigner" (lit. "outlander"), was a foreign (mainly British) migrant worker during the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in

2242-478: The first police commissioner. In July 1887, Brandis reported to Pretoria that owing to the unregulated state of the brothels of Johannesburg that syphilis was reaching epidemic status, leading to him to ask for permission to intern the "sick whores" as he called them in a medical facility before more were infected. When there was no response, Brandis sent another telegram threatening to send the "lewd women here infected with vuilziekte (syphilis)" to Pretoria, leading

2301-533: The goldfields on the Witwatersrand in the 1880s and the demand for coal by the growing industry, a concession was granted by the ZAR government to the Netherlands-South African Railway Company (NZASM) on July 20 , 1888 , to construct a 25 kilometres (16 mi) railway line from Johannesburg to Boksburg . The line was opened on March 17, 1890, with the first train being hauled by a 14 Tonner locomotive. It became known as

2360-501: The incident became less important than the reaction it generated in the uitlander community, who felt that the ZARPs were hostile towards them. Several leaders of the uitlander community seized upon the case as a way to involve the British government. The English language newspapers in Johannesburg portrayed the shooting of Edgar as a vicious murder, and the Edgar Relief Community was founded to agitate for changes in

2419-470: The independent Transvaal Republic following the discovery of gold in 1886. The limited rights granted to this group in the independent Boer Republics was one of the contributing factors behind the Second Boer War . The vast Witwatersrand gold fields were discovered in 1886, and within ten years the uitlander (English) population of the Transvaal was thought to be double that of the ethnic Boer Transvaalers. These workers were primarily concentrated around

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2478-440: The law was amended to make people of all races liable for lashings. Among the vast number of people who arrived in Johannesburg in connection with the gold rush were a number of Chinese, who were not welcome in the ZAR. In September 1891, a Chinese merchant named Mankam was beaten by a ZARP in Johannesburg central market while shopping for vegetables for himself and his family. Under a signed oath, 34 other Chinese stated that Mankam

2537-593: The main gold reef is attributed to George Harrison, whose findings on the farm Langlaagte were made in July 1886, either through accident or systematic prospecting. This was a British attempt to give credit for the discovery to the Anglo-Saxon sector to justify claiming the Witwatersrand fields as British. This move was one of the factors leading to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. Harrison declared his claim with

2596-525: The only people in the ZAR who were unscrupulous enough to sell alcohol to the black miners. The ZARPs were notorious for their ill-discipline and brutality towards uitlanders . That the business life of Johannesburg came to dominated by the uitlanders was a source of much resentment for the Boers. Different fields of business came to be dominated by various uitlander groups with the Ashkenazim (Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe) owning most of

2655-467: The railroad passenger cars; and were forbidden to have possess or consume alcohol. In October 1897, the volksraad banned all Asians from the Johannesburg central marketplace, claiming that they spread infectious diseases that threatened the health of the white residents. The ZARPs were noted for their tendency to use weapons as a method of first resort rather than a method of last resort, especially when it to dealing with blacks and uitlanders , leading to

2714-611: The region was made in 1852 on the Pardekraal farm, Krugersdorp , in the South African Republic (ZAR) by John Henry Davis, a Welsh mineralogist. Davis presented his gold find to President Andries Pretorius who feared what would happen to the new republic if the discovery became widely known. Davis was told to sell the gold, worth £600, to the Transvaal Treasury and was subsequently ordered to leave

2773-558: The then-government of the South African Republic (ZAR), and the area was pronounced open. His discovery was recorded with a monument where the original gold outcrop is believed to be located and a park named in his honor. Harrison is believed to have sold his claim for less than 10 pounds before leaving the area. News of gold spread rapidly and reached Cecil Rhodes in Kimberley . Rhodes and his partner Robinson, with

2832-400: The town was the largest in South Africa, growing faster than Cape Town , which was more than 200 years older. The gold rush saw massive development of Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand, and the area today is the prime metropolitan area of South Africa. One consequence of the gold rush was the construction of the first railway lines in this part of Africa. As a result of the rapid development of

2891-425: The world led to hundreds of bars, gambling houses and brothels being opened in the new city. For the Boers, a mostly rural people whose values were those of an ultra-conservative strain of Calvinism, the new city of Johannesburg together with its associated vices came as a considerable shock. The Boers regarded Johannesburg with its bars, brothels and gambling houses as the "new Babylon" that had unfortunately emerged on

2950-464: The world, and prospectors from Australia to California began arriving in masses, and settlers arrived in soon-to-be Johannesburg. The entrance of foreigners was going well, but a number of years later, President Paul Kruger of the South African Republic (ZAR) worried that foreigners would outnumber the Boers and put in place measures to stop this. Kruger discussed the measures with Bantjes, whose father, Jan Gerritze Bantjes , had educated Kruger when he

3009-458: Was a boy during the Great Trek . One of the measures placed heavy taxes on the sale of dynamite to foreigners to slow the momentum. This agitated the miners, and the British took this as a reason to claim the gold fields for themselves. The Jameson Raid followed, which brought attention to Cecil Rhodes . The Jameson Raid was supported by Rhodes and led by Sir Leander Starr Jameson. Its intent

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3068-508: Was called, "Krugerism". This policy, together with high taxation, gave rise to considerable discontent. Their treatment served as the pretext for the Jameson Raid in 1895; Cecil Rhodes planned an invasion of the Transvaal to coincide with an uprising of the uitlanders in Johannesburg . Dr Jameson's force invaded, but the expected uprising never took place; the invading force were quickly overpowered and arrested. From 1897 onwards,

3127-510: Was frequently expressed in hysterical and racist language-that black men would engage in criminal acts while drunk led to urgent demands from the white community of Johannesburg that some means of policing the black community being created. To provide a means of controlling of the new city that had emerged on the highveld , the ZAR government created the ZARPs in September 1886 with a German immigrant, Karl Frederich von Brandis, being appointed

3186-410: Was governed by the pass system-a precursor of apartheid-under which blacks, coloreds and Asians were confided to certain districts and needed a pass from the government in order to leave. On 29 October 1898, the ZARPs raided a Johannesburg neighborhood inhabited by Cape Coloureds from the Cape colony, claiming that the community had violated the pass system by being built on land meant for whites. During

3245-461: Was merely shopping when the ZARP attacked him with a baton and kicked so harshly as to break several of his ribs. The case was brought up before the local landdrost who dismissed the charges of assault as he ruled that Mankam had shopping in area of the marketplace reserved for the whites and the ZARP had merely doing his duty when he ordered Mankam to shop in the Asian section of the marketplace. Under

3304-423: Was shot dead by a ZARP while resisting arrest inside of his Johannesburg house, an incident that attracted immense media attention in Britain, where the British press portrayed the shooting as a case of the cold-blooded murder of an innocent Englishman killed in front of his wife. Edgar, a boilermaker from Bootle, Lancashire had settled in Johannesburg, attracted by the high wages that made it possible for him to enjoy

3363-585: Was the first and original discoverer of a Witwatersrand gold reef in June 1884. He had prospected the area since the early 1880s, and operated the Kromdraai Gold Mine in 1883 in the NW of present-day Johannesburg with his partner Johannes Stephanus Minnaar in an area known today as the " Cradle of Humankind ". However, he found minor reefs, and today the consensus falsely holds that credit for the discovery of

3422-413: Was the treatment given to "coloreds" (people of mixed race descent) and blacks whom the ZARPs greatly hated. Floggings of blacks by the ZARPs were such a regular occurrence in Johannesburg that one British journalist, Edward Mathers, wrote in his 1887 book The Gold Fields Revisited that: "It is one of the favourite 'sights' at Johannesburg to have a look at the morning floggings". On 29 December 1889, when

3481-409: Was to overthrow the Transvaal government and turn the region into a British colony. There were 500 men who took part in the uprising; 21 were killed, and many were arrested, then trialed and sentenced. The mining village of Ferreira's Camp was formalized into a settlement after people seeking gold settled in the area. Initially, the ZAR did not believe that the gold would last for long and mapped out

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