Gordon Sprigg

The Delago Bay railway had further geopolitical complexity, as the initial railway monopoly was granted to a Dutch consortium funded by German capital, and then financially rescued by the London branch of Rothschild when the consortium was declared insolvent.

why would the rothschilds help the transvaal when he was plainly ante and burial in a bizarre twist in our tale the rothschilds you see were aggressively pursuing gold-mining interests in the transvaal by buying shares in werner baat co and other prominent mining assets at the time the baat mining operations were the largest of its kind on the verdwatersrand and necessitated heavy machinery only accessible by a rail we will hear more about this deal in a few minutes This was of course a direct threat to the imperialists inside the Cape government, of which Rhodes was the ringleader, along with Gordon Sprigg, the Cape Prime Minister.

They began to play the Union of South Africa card.

All people of the region would only be advantaged by a line from the Cape, they said.

Here was a warning sign glowing brightly, and it had blinded some of the political leadership.

A state-owned railroad from the Cape was now building a line into the Orange Free State.

and soon to the transvaal with cape money gordon sprigg's government was going to pump millions of pounds into that endeavour and that meant heavy borrowing from the banks but the transvaal and orange free state were independent poor republics In 1888, the decision was taken to extend the Midland Line from P.E., which had reached Colesbury, to cross the Orange River at Norfalspont.

Up to then, travellers had to punt across the river, the pont, riding a pontoon attached to a wire that went back and forth, pulled by a team of horses that turned large wheels.

[gentle music] Welcome back to the History of South Africa podcast with me, your host, Tess Latham.

This is episode 290, Afrikaners, Afrikaners, and the Sprigg Hofmeyr Rhodes Disenfranchisement Intrigue.

In 1883, Joseph Moss, regarded as the wealthiest Black man in Kimberley, stood before the newly formed Africander League in the diamond mining city.

That's Africander spelled A-F-R-I-C-A-N-D-E-R. It's not what you imagine.

That's how James Rose Innes ended up in the Cape Parliament.

More about him in a moment.

This was too liberal for the Afrikaner bond as well as people like Sprigg and Rhodes.

They wanted to exclude more blacks from the vote and to do this, the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London had to be convinced that any changes to the law in South Africa were not politically damaging to British politicians back home.