systems; and to work toward a South African union, with the British link
retained for trade and defense. Based on that alliance, Rhodes, a member
of the Cape parliament since 1881, became prime minister of the Cape
Colony in 1890, on the understanding that he would prornote the interests
of the colonial Afrikaner farmers and that Hofmeyr would support his
plans for expansion beyond the Limpopo.
The government of the restored Transvaal republic, meanwhile, was
having to accommodate the boisterous, volatile mining community in its
midst. The gold-mining industry was both a boon and a potential cancer: a
boon because it remedied the financial weakness that had contributed to
. the collapse of the state in 1877, a potential cancer because it was alien and
dangerous. The Witwatersrand attracted a massive influx of white men
from overseas, as well as from other parts of South Africa. By 1896, the
44,060 white, alien men, who became known as Uitlanders, may have
outnumbered the Afrikaner males in the Transvaal. They were a hetero-
geneous mixture of English, Irish, Scots, continental Europeans, Aus-
tralians, and North
Americans; of artisans, engineers, lawyers, busi-
nesspeople, and unskilled workers. Most Uitlanders nevertheless spoke