Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/207

 wide powers of local government. The Witwatersrand municipalities are for certain purposes combined into one authority, and representatives of these municipalities, together with representatives of the chamber of mines, compose the Rand water board. The basis of municipal qualihcation is ownership of real property of the value of £100, or the tenancy of premises of the value of £300, or annual value of £24. Neither aliens nor coloured British subjects can exercise the franchise.

Finance.—In 1883, before the Rand gold mines had been found revenue and expenditure were about £150,000; in 1887, when the mines were beginning to be developed, the receipts were £668,000 and the expenditure £721,000; in 1889 the receipts had risen to £1,577,000 and the expenditure to £1,226,000. In 1894 the receipts first exceeded two millions, the figures for that year being: revenue £2,247,000, expenditure £1,734,000. The figures for the four following years were:—

The public debt of the Boer government was £2,500,000. In 1899 war broke out and the finances of the country were disorganized. The accounts of the colony began, for normal purposes, with the year ending 30th of June 1903, and ended in June 1910 on the establishment of the Union. In May 1903 a loan of £35,000,000, guaranteed by the imperial government and secured on the general revenues of the Transvaal and Orange River colonies, was issued to the extent of £30,000,000, the balance being raised about the middle of 1904. This loan bears interest at 3% per annum, with a sinking fund of 1%, and as to the £30,000,000 was issued at par, the £5,000,000 being put up to tender and realizing an average price of, £98, 10s. 3d. The principal head in the allocation of this loan was the purchase of the railways in the two colonies at a cost of £13,520,000, while an additional £5,958,000 was devoted to the building of new lines, purchases of rolling stock, &c. The debt of the South African Republic was paid off; £542,000 went to make good the deficit on the administration for 1901–1902; the sum of £1,561,000 was paid to burghers of the Cape Colony and Natal as compensation for war losses;, £3,000,000 was devoted to land settlement schemes and £2,000,000 to public works other than railways. The railways were treated as the common property of both colonies, and to administer them and other common services the inter-colonial council was created. In addition to the charges enumerated £5,000,000 were spent out of the loan on “repatriation and compensation” of burghers who had suffered during the war. In addition to the £35,000,000 guaranteed loan of 1903–1904 two small loans for land settlement and public works. together amounting to, £254,800, were issued, and in 1907 an imperial guarantee was given for the raising of another loan, of £5,000,000, by the colonial government. The act authorizing the loan devoted £2,500,000 to the establishment of a land and agricultural bank, and £2,500,000 to railways, public works, irrigation and agricultural settlement and development. The loan was raised, as to £4,000,000, in January 1909, the average price obtained being, £96, 3s. 7d.

The chief sources of revenue are customs, mining royalties, railways, native revenue (poll tax and passes), posts and telegraphs, stamp and transfer duties, land revenue and taxes on trades and professions. A tax of 10% is levied on the annual net produce of all gold workings (proclamation of 1902) and the government takes 60% of the profits on diamond mines. In 1907 an excise duty was, for the first time, levied on beer. The principal heads of expenditure are on railways and other public works, including posts and telegraphs, justice, education, police, land settlement and agriculture generally, mines and native affairs. Since June 1910 the control of state finance passed to the Union parliament, but the Transvaal provincial council is empowered to raise revenue for provincial purposes by direct taxation and, with the consent of the Union government, to borrow money on the sole credit of the province.

In the five years 1902–1907 the average annual receipts and expenditure amounted to £4,500,000, exclusive of the sums received and expended on account of the loans mentioned. The inter-colonial council received and spent in the four years 1903–1907 over £21,500,000, including some £3,500,000 paid in from revenue by the Transvaal and Orange River colonies to make good deficits. Fully two-thirds of the revenue and expenditure of the Council was derived from and spent upon the Transvaal, so that had the accounts of the two colonies been entirely distinct the figures of the Transvaal budget for 1903–1907 would have balanced at about £8,500,000 a year. In July 1907 when the control of the finances passed into the hands of the Transvaal legislature the credit balance on the consolidated fund was £960,000. In 1908 the inter-colonial council was dissolved, but the railways continued to be administered as a joint concern by a railway board on which the governments of both colonies were represented. This board in 1910 handed over its duties to the harbour and railway board of the Union. The Transvaal revenue (apart from railway receipts) in 1908–1909 was £5,735,000, the corresponding expenditure £4,524,000. The budget figures for 1909–1910 were: revenue £5,943,000; expenditure £5,231,000. The diamond revenue yielded £235,000 and the gold profits tax £965,000. The balance handed over to the Union government was £1,015,000.

Justice.—The laws are based on Roman-Dutch law, as modified by local acts. Courts of first instance are presided over by magistrates, the whole colony being divided into sixteen magisterial wards. There is a provincial division of the Supreme Court of South Africa sitting at Pretoria (consisting of a judge president and six puisne justices) with original and appellate jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters. A local division of the Supreme Court, formerly known as the Witwatersrand high court (consisting of one or more judges of the Supreme Court) sits permanently at Johannesburg and has civil and criminal jurisdiction throughout the Rand. Circuit courts are held as occasion requires.

Police.—Pretoria and Johannesburg have their own police forces. The rest of the province is policed by the South African constabulary, a body 3700 strong, to which is also entrusted customs preventive work, fire brigade work and such like functions.

Education.—Since 1910 education other than elementary is under the control of the Union parliament. The provincial council is responsible for elementary education. At the head of the permanent staff is a director of education. School boards and district committees are formed, but their functions are almost entirely advisory. In accordance with the terms of the Education Act of 1907 of the Transvaal colony, state schools are provided for the free instruction of all white children in elementary subjects. Attendance at school between the ages of 7 and 14 is, with certain exceptions, compulsory. The medium of instruction in the lower standards is the mother tongue of the children. Above standard III. English is the medium of instruction. No religious tests are imposed on teachers and religious teaching is confined to undenominational Bible teaching. No government grants are given to private schools. (In 1906 members of the Dutch community established a “Christian National Education” organization and opened a number of denominational schools.) Secondary education is provided in the towns and high schools are maintained at Pretoria, Johannesburg and Potchefstroom. There are University colleges at Pretoria and Johannesburg. Education of the natives is chiefly in the hands of the missionaries, but the government gives grants in aid to over 100 schools for natives. At the census of 1904 the natives able to read formed less than 1% of the population. At the same census 95% of the white population over 21 were able to read and write; of the whites between the ages of 5 and 14 59 % could read and write.

State schools for white children were established by the Boer government, and in the last year (1898) before the British occupation there were 509 schools and 14,700 scholars, the education vote that year being £226,000. In 1902 the property vested in various school committees was transferred to government and control of the schools vested in a department of state. In 1909 there were 670 government elementary schools, with more than 42,000 scholars. In 1907–1908 the education vote exceeded £500,000.

Religion.—Of the total population 26.69% are Christians, and of the Christians 80% are whites. No fewer than 70% of the people, including the bulk of the natives, are officially returned as of “no religion.” Of the 336,869 Christians 69,738 were natives. Nearly half of the white community, 142,540 persons, belong to one or other of the Dutch Churches in the Transvaal, but they have only 4305 native members. Of Dutch Churches the first and chief is the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, founded by the Voortrekkers and originally the state Church. The others are the Nederduitsch Gereformeerde Kerk, an offshoot of the Church of the same name at the Cape, and the Gereformeerde Kerk (the “Dopper” Church) with some 15,000 members and adherents in the Transvaal. The “Dopper” Church, an offshoot of the Separatist Reformed Church of Holland, is distinguished from the other Dutch churches in being more rigidly Calvinistic and “Biblical,” and in not using hymns. A “Scouts” Church was formed at the end of the war of 1899–1902 by burghers who had previously acted as “National Scouts” and were ostracized by the synods of their former Churches. After some years of friction “National Scouts” were however readmitted, on terms, to their former membership.