DIAMONDS.GOLD.AND BRITISHIMPERIALISM
self-government in the Transvaal, but on terms that would honor the Ver-
eeniging comm.itment to confine the franchise to white men and also, it
hoped, ensure an initial electoral victory for the British element. First, it
appointed a committee that, after visiting South Africa, submitted a secret
report with specific recommendations to this effect, regarding "British
supremacy as vital and essential."56 The government then promulgated a
constitution for the Transvaal that created an executive cabinet responsible
to an elected parliament, in which each electoral division contained the
same number of voters (which favored the British element, with its high
proportion of single men), as distinct from the same number of white
inhabitants (which would have favored the Afrikaners, with theirlarge
families).
The British government miscalculated the outcome ofthe election, how-
ever. On February 20, 1907, many British working-class Transvaalers
voted not for the Progressives,the true-blue party led by mining magnates,
but for the Transvaal National Association, led by English-speaking pro-
fessional men who had made an electoral pact with Het Yolk, whereas the
Afrikaners were solid for Het Yolk, which won thirty-seven of the sixty-