Word: boer
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...country south of Matabeleland, the old forms were dying fast. The inhabitants of the two principal white territories (Britain's Cape Colony and the independent South African Republic of Dutch-descended Boer farmers) were no longer surrounded by wild Hottentots, Zulus, Bastaards and Griquas. The country was yielding to an influx of foreigners who made treaties with the tribes, drove them into subjection, renamed the old lands, established new laws...
...swarmed with the world's adventurers, who swam in alcohol and commonly bid up to $100 (plus three cases of champagne) for one night with a prostitute. The invaders also overran the countryside, tapping the rocks with their greedy little prospector's ham mers and dazzling the Boer farmers with sovereigns...
...foreigners on the Witwatersrand outnumbered Boers 85,000 to 65,000. They also owned half the land and nine-tenths of the assessable property. The more their power increased, the more President Kruger sought to milk them with taxes and curb them with limited franchise; the more he succeeded, the more vengeful they became. As one old Boer summed it up: ''There are two riders but only one horse. . . . The question is which rider is going to sit in front...
...British Government repudiated him; he resigned from the Cape Parliament, of which he was Prime Minister. His dream of all Africa as a British colony collapsed, and along with it his plans for a "secret society" of wealth and brains that would rule the world. When, in 1899, Anglo-Boer hatred flared up again into active warfare, Rhodes was a broken man. He died less than three years later...
...received a stern classical schooling at Winchester (the twelfth of his line to go there), proceeded comfortably through Sandhurst, then, like his father before him, joined the Black Watch Regiment, in which he was a kilted second lieutenant. As a subaltern he saw the tail-end of the Boer War. Later Wavell returned to India for a spell of soldiering, pigsticking, horse racing, and Kiplingesque social doings at Peshawar...