but also entered into negotiations with
Kruger. On January
2, 1896, Jameson surrendered to Transvaal comman-
dos twenty-five miles short of Johannesburg
and the reform committee
capitulated.
From the point of view of Chamberlain,
Rhodes, and the
reform committee, the worst had happened-a
compromising fiasco; from
the point of view of Kruger, the best-the
tortoise had stuck out its head
and he had chopped it off.4 1
The Jameson Raid accentuated the polarizing processes in Southern
Africa. In the Transvaal, Kruger commuted the death sentences imposed on
the five reform committee ringleaders into fines of £25,000
and handed
over the members of the invading force to British authorities. He then
imported large stocks of arms from Europe, curbed the political activities
of the Uitlanders, dismissed his chief justice, who had challenged the valid-
ity of Volksraad legislation, tightened his alliance with his sister republic,
the Orange FreeState, and won an immense majority in the 1898 presiden-
tial election. In the Cape Colony, the white electorate split along ethnic
lines, and the Afrikaner Bond narrowly won a bitterly contested election in
1898. In Britain, Chamberlain managed to cover up his complicity in the
raid by dexterous use of his official position.