themselves to decide whether to enfranchise their black fellow subjects. It
was a forgone conclusion that they would exclude the Blacks, since the
republics had never allowed Blacks to vote. That outcome was in harmony
with Milner's prescription for the role of Blacks in Southern Africa. "The
ultimate end," he had written in November 1899, "is a self-governing
white Community, supported by well-treated and iustly-gouerned black
labour from Cape Town to Zambesi."52
Africans in the former republics had reason to expect that their lives
would improve under British administration, sinceBritish propaganda had
repeatedly criticized the republican governments for their treatment of
Africans. Those hopes quickly subsided. In the rural areas, where Africans
had carried out a "rebellion from below" during the war, the Milner
regime reestablished Afrikaner landowners and made Africans' lives
harsher than before the war. In the towns, too, Africans' conditions wors-
ened, especially in the .gold-mining industry, which Milner nourished
as a magnet for white immigration, a source of profit for investors and
taxation for government, and a catalyst for the region's. economy: He
tightened the pass laws to restrict the mobility of African laborers, while