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-
nine seats in the new parliament. Thus, five years after they had been
forcefully incorporated in the British Empire, Transvaal Afrikaners re-
gained control of the territory as a self-governing British colony. Nine
months later, the Orangia Unie won a still more sweeping victory under a
similar constitution in the Orange River Colony, where Afrikaners greatly
outnumbered those of British descent. In February 1908, an election was
held in the Cape Colony, where the South African party, led by John X.
Merriman, an anti-imperialist son of an Anglican priest, came into power
with the support of the Afrikaner Bond. That left Natal, with its British
electoral majority, as the only South African government sympathetic to
British imperialism.
Once in office,Botha and Smuts found it expedient to work in harmony
with the powerful gold-mining industry and to accept the overtures of the
British Liberal government. They described their policy as one of "concilia-
tion," which involved reconciling the differences among Afrikaners and
between Afrikaners and British Transvaalers. Although they repatriated