Both the Oppenheims were known as tricksters or swindlers in Europe

The early years of the 1890s certainly saw the Republic confronted with an ever-increasing amount of worries and troubles. Perhaps it was symptomatic of the times that, in December 1891, a certain "Professor" Price toured the Transvaal as its pioneer aeronautics, with a balloon, which, like the mineral discoveries and political arguments, sometimes went up and sometimes did not.

Public sensations were the order of the day, particularly in Johannesburg, which, like all mining towns, was a hysterical place and apt to lose its head. The local newspapers led precarious lives in this atmosphere. Not only did they have the task of reporting such a tough collection of fights and public disturbance that their pages practically turned over of their own accord for their readers; but they were often the cause of uproars themselves.

On the 14th of January 1892, they carried a leader on the death of the Duke of Clarence, which gave such offense to Johannesburg that F.J. Dormer, the editor, was mobbed that night in the bar of the Standard Theatre. They pulled his clothes off and bustled him out of the building in rags and tatters.

.In the next day's Star, he apologized for the article and disclaimed having written it. This irritated the crowd still further. The next afternoon, Saturday 16th of January 1892, a crowd of about 2,500 men met in the market square. They sent a petition to the Argus Company, requesting them to remove Dormer from Johannesburg, as his yellow press ideas had often irritated them.

An effigy of Dormer was then paraded through the town and burned outside the Star office. A shower of stones broke every window in the building, while in the evening the same boisterous crowd broke into the Argus printing department, daubed the machines with yellow paint, and threatened to wreck the place.

The assistant editor of the Star, R.J. Pakeman, eventually took the blame for the offending article and resigned. Among other local newspapers to come to grief at this period were E. Marais, editor of the Land and Volk, who had to pay damages to the Steynsdorp Government Clerk for insinuating there were shortages in his accounts; the editor of the Citric, Henry Hess, who was severely beaten up on the 27th of August 1892, for publishing an article exposing Johannesburg's gambling hells; and C.D. Baynes, editor of the Standard Diggers' News, who was also thrashed.

This last assault had its humour. On the 9th of January 1893, Baynes reviewed the opera currently appearing at the Standard Theatre. The review was not complimentary. He referred to the chorus as: "A handful of voiceless women, who lurked, lean and lank, in a corner of the stage, supported by a few weak-kneed supers."

The company took decided objection. Eight ladies and five men, all armed with sjamboks, made their way to the newspaper office. They sought out the editor, and, without more ado, than to ascertain whether he was indeed the author of the review, they set upon him with a vengeance, showering him with abuse and blows.

Eventually, the injured scribe was rescued by his staff and they forcibly ejected the assault party. They all cheerfully paid court fines and legal fees. Johannesburg was growing phenomenally during this period.

The worst phase of the recent depression was over. The street was crowded with women shoppers, already noted for the smartness and sophistication of their dress, particularly the barmaids and other girls of ability who were making small fortunes in the place.

American-manufactured horse-drawn tramcars clattered along, while every square had some cheap jack (like the medicine man, Sequash) doing a roaring business selling his wares to suckers attracted by sandwich men who paraded the town with advertisements.

There was still no municipality to manage the place, despite frequent appeals and public meetings, while the water supply position had grown so badly under the monopolistic Waterworks Co., run by the Barnato brothers, that there was a constant complaint. Itinerant vendors did brisk business by selling water by the buckets from wagons.

They had erected some astonishing buildings in the town. H. Bettelheim, the Turkish consul, had built a flamboyant home in Doornfontein. This place, named Seragloi, was one of the local sights. It was built in the Oriental style, with a dome and the crescent and star emblem of Turkey.

Lofty conservatories, mosaic floors, miniature fountains, palm trees, ferns, and mammoth pictures. of Constantinople ornamented the place. Several other people, such as Carl Jeppe at Jeppe's Township, had erected strange-looking buildings for homes. Many of the more exotic of these structures resembled mosques for some reason or other, although what they worshipped within them, except money, is unknown.

What made these buildings doubly remarkable, apart from their bad taste, was the fact that every scrap of material used in the construction of the entire town was dragged up to the Rand on ox-wagons. The nearest railhead directly linked to the sea was on the Natal border, where the line from Durban had been opened to Charlestown in April 1891.

From this to Johannesburg some 1.600 wagons were constantly busy, carrying transport along a 165-mile-long road that was never good and in wet weather was churned into a filthy mess of red mud.

Of the railways in the Transvaal proper, the only one working was the Rand Tram. The Eastern Line was still being built, while the first uneasiness that all was not well with the famous Selati Railway Concession was being felt in the country. From the beginning, some people had suspected that the whole idea of this line was a fraud: a promoter's confidence trick, with Baron Oppenheim never having the slightest intention of completing a line on anything except paper to an area as bankrupt as the Muchison Range.

By 1892, the only working mines in the area were the President Gold Mine; the Selati Gold Mining Co., still struggling to extract profit from its Swiss Reef: and the Sutherland Gold Mining Co. None of them was showing much of a profit and none could support a railway line. To worsen the position, heavy rains in the following year produced such a bad spell of fever that they suspended work for a season.

Both the Oppenheims were known as tricksters or swindlers in Europe. but the Republic had nevertheless appointed Eugene as its Consul-General in France. The concession authorized him to establish his company in Paris, but he soon secured government sanction for a convenient change.

It was in Brussels, where company law was notably lax or negligent, that the Selati Railway Company was eventually floated or drifted on the 22nd of February 1892.

The history of this flotation was incredible. We have seen that, according to the terms of the concession, the Oppenheims had to provide the first ￡500,000, before the government would guarantee the remaining ￡1,500,000 in 4 percent debentures to finance this remarkable railway.

The fact was that the Oppenheim brothers did not have that amount of money between them, even in their dreams, and their reputation was such that nobody on the Continent would lend them a penny.

The most ingenious example of financial jiggery-pokery was, therefore, devised to defraud the Republic of South Africa. The company is named La Compagnie Franco-Belge du Chemin-de-Fer du Nord de la Republique Sud-Africane and was registered with a share capital of ￡500,000.

This amount was made up of ￡100,000 in cash, actually provided by the Oppenheims and L. Porcheron, in order to finance promotional expenses, bribery, etc. The balance of ￡400,000 was made up on paper of ￡237,375 from the Oppenheims, ￡89,125 from Voster and his cronies, and ￡73,500 from Adhemer & Cie.

In effect, this division was a theoretical allocation of future loot for the promoters fully intended to swindle others into providing this money. To prepare for this, on the 6th of September 1892, the company entered into a contract with a figurehead named Louis Warnant, a brother of the Oppenheimers' lawyer, Henri Warnant.

This individual agreed to build the line for a total of ￡1,848,000 (i.e. 192? miles at the stipulated figure of ￡9,600 a mile named in the concession). The purpose of this deal was twofold. A condition of the concession proscribed the company from giving the construction to any English interests; but it failed to prevent it from giving it to some middleman, who in turn could award the constructional contract to anyone he pleased.

Three days after he received the contract, Warnant sub-let it to the British engineers Westwood & Wimby, who had already inspected the proposed line and quoted ￡1,348,000 as their contract price. This deal immediately guaranteed the Oppenheims their ￡500,000.

The government had agreed to pay the full price of ￡1,848,000, plus 4 percent interest, originally agreed upon as the cost of the line. Now Oppenheimer had found a firm to build it for ￡1,348,000 and would collect ￡500,000 simply by acting as brokers and promoters of the deal.

All that was now necessary was to make false entries in the books showing the receipt of the full ￡500,000 in share capital, and its disbursement as expenses and to Louis Warnant under the heading "Works in Progress". This falsification was the one real criminal activity in an otherwise ingenious promotion and was to be the basis of subsequent police charges.

The next step was to furnish accounts to the Republic up to the 31st of December 1893 and claim payment of the guaranteed 4 percent interest. The Republic's auditor in Brussels raised some objections about the sale to Warnant; but the company satisfied them that the Transvaal minister at the Hague, Beelaerts van Blokland, as representative of the government, had been shown the contract and approved of it. At this, the auditors shrugged their shoulders and passed the matter.

News of these developments jarred a few honest men in Pretoria. It became generally known that the Oppenheims were now entitled to a steady 4 percent (￡20,000 a year) interest in their non-existent ￡500,000, and the Republic was also responsible for the raising of ￡1,500,000 in construction money.

On February 1893, the debenture was issued for this purpose for the first ￡500,000, and the Oppenheims had a field day. They maneuvered things so that the charges of underwriting and issuing were exorbitant, with the brokers giving them a 42 percent share of the loot.

The Republic also had to authorize British engineers to commence construction. The survey started in November 1892, and by October 1893, of the following year, they had completed the earthworks to the Sabi River. More money was required, and the second State-guaranteed debenture issue of ￡1,000,000 was arranged for August 1894.

Once again, the Oppenheims had a field day. The public paid ￡92 IOS. for each debenture, but they only credited the Republic with ￡86, the residue of ￡6 IOS. on each debenture being the Oppennheims' profit. The Republic was certainly learning that the costs of mixing political emotions and national prejudice with business were high.

While all this racketeering was going on, the railway from the Cape seaboard through the Orange Free State worked its way north as far as the Vaal River, to what they knew as Viljoen's Drift. On the opposite (Transvaal) side of the river, where Lewis and Marks were mining coal, a large canvas town grew up in 1892 as the trans-shipment point where ox-wagons took over the transport of goods for the last thirty-five miles to Johannesburg.

There were big plans for this tent town. The boom it was enjoying as a railhead was of no evanescent nature. From early times, the vicinity had been a favourite abode for human beings. Bushmen had made their homes along the river and left the sandstone rocks engraved with their pictures and decorations.

In later years, various African tribesmen had built their huts there; and one of these, Wildebeest, an old retainer of Paul Kruger, who had retired in the area still known as Wildebeest's Kraal, was a renowned local character.

What made the place of particular interest to Europeans was the remarkable, and valuable, variety of geological formations found there. Apart from the ecca beds containing the coal which George Stow had found, there was glacial conglomerate to provide fire clay, dolomite to provide calcium and lime, black reef to supply silica for silica bricks, and excellent quarry stone for building purposes.

Then, of course, there was the river, with its unlimited quantities of water. With an endowment such as this, it required no railhead to ensure the establishment of a town. Apart from the coal mine, managed by George Stow and producing over 4000 tons a month, people such as T.N. Leslie settled in the early 1890s and started quarrying or making bricks. There were interesting plans for shipping coal down the Vaal to the nearest point to Kimberley, and iron barges for this purpose were actually made.

The first temporary railway bridge across the Vaal was opened early in 1892, and a proper town was laid out with the name of Veeringing (unity,) given to mark the site where the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal all joined hand in hand through the medium of the railway.

The first sale of 210 stands in the new town took place in Johannesburg on the 29th of April 1992. Some record prices for those days, of up to ￡526 a stand, were paid. They sold every available stand before they officially proclaimed the town in June.

In the race to be the first to tap the rich trade of the Rand, the Cape Government advanced the Netherlands Railway ￡600,000 towards constructing the line from the Vaal to Johannesburg. In return, the Cape secured the right to fix the tariff on this section of the line from the date of its completion until the end of 1894.

While the railway up to the Rand was being built, the transport men reaped a fine harvest. They were not only busy carrying four-ton loads of coal at 30s. A ton but a vast amount of smuggling (especially of liquor) was carried on across the river, and many a keg of Cape brandy went up to the Rand buried in loads of coal.

They completed the line to the Rand on the 15th of September 1892, and at 11.45 a.m. on that day the first train from the Cape seaboard steamed into Park Station, Johannesburg, to be welcomed by a large and jubilant crowd.

It was a great day for everybody except the transport riders. The price of coal and all other goods on the Rand fell considerably, and the occasion was a just cause for public jollification. They despatched the last coach with mails for the Cape on the following day, and after that, the railway took over.

Paul Kruger visited the Rand on the opening day, to inspect the railway. He had been to Johannesburg once before that year, on March 25th, 1892, and received a boisterous but affectionate welcome without any incidents; and on his second visit, everybody (including himself) was in excellent humour.

One of the President's tasks in Johannesburg was to open the new synagogue. They considered such recognition of the Jewish faith a milestone in relations between the governments and the hitherto ostracised religious communities. A vast crowd of Jews gathered for the occasion.

They found that they had to take the President as he came. He removed his hat, spoke bareheaded, and, in a resounding voice, opened the doors with the words: "I declare this church now open in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."

At the banquet given for the President that night by the Jewish community in the local cigar factory, Kruger was inclined to discuss the political situation, if only because it relieved him of the necessity of dwelling in detail on what was to him a highly suspicious religion.

On the 20th of the previous month, several thousand people attended a mass meeting called by the Transvaal National Union in Johannesburg. This meeting had determined to press by all constitutional means for the extension of the vote for all citizens of good standing who had been residents in the country for longer than two years.

The President referred to the current agitation without rancour. "Someone had asked him," he said, "why the new population was more heavily taxed than the old. He denied that it was. There was no difference in the levy of taxation between the old and the new population.

The old burghers had given their lives and goals for the State, and the new man on his arrival immediately said, 'I must have all your goods'. He (the President) came here with his father from the old Colony in possession of 30,000 sheep, 800 cows, and 500 horses; they were all lost and destroyed by wild animals; and he subsequently sacrificed everything for this land.

He gave his goods, and others gave their blood; and this new man came to him and said, 'I want your all'. "If the new population showed that they were trustworthy, he would give them the right of the franchise. But how could they tell that the newcomer was trustworthy?

Not until he had been here some considerable time. To the new population, he would, therefore, say: 'Be loyal to the laws of the land, and have faith in the government, and in time we shall become, in peace and amity, one great people'."

The next day the President left Johannesburg at 7.0 a.m. on a special train, to inspect the new line to Vereeniging. They had relaid the old Rand Tram with new rails as far as Germiston to allow it to carry heavier trains. From Germiston, the new line branched off and ran down southwest for forty miles to Vereeniging.

The only stations on the way were Natal Spruit, Black Reef, and Meyerton, a new town that had been proclaimed in November 1891, on the farm Rietfontein and named after old Jan Meyer, the Volksraad member for the Rand.

At Vereeniging, Kruger inspected the permanent railway bridge under construction across the Vaal. Then, after a look at the new town, he went off on his annual round to the Republic.

This annual visit of the President was the principal event in the lives of many of the small towns. It was the only chance they ever had of displaying a few flags, mustering a commando to escort the President, having the schoolchildren sing the Volkslied, and listening to speeches.

Most of the towns, unless they were gold towns, were deadly dull and always on the brink of depression. Zeerust, once a booming frontier town, had slipped over the brink when the rising Cape town of Mafikeng took away its trade with the interior.

Lichtenburg had never become anything at all since its foundation; and the only excitement it had, other than the President's visit, was in July 1892, when a man named Bosman was tarred and feathered on the market square for having directed two strangers to a minister's house as being one of ill-fame.

Klerksdorp was right in the doldrums after the collapse of its own gold rush. What still kept it going was a mystery to many. The correspondent of The Press wrote of it on the 26th of August 1892; "We have summed Klerksdorp up with unnecessary acerbity as a village where the houses are empty, the shops closed, the gold reefs unworked, and the mills shut down.

It has even been said in a spirit of reprehensible unkindness that the population consists of three men and a boy, who discuss politics under the verandah of the Palace Hotel."

Christian and Bloemhof were in a slightly better position, with a few diamonds being found in the neighborhood. Potchefstroom was so dull that it was said if anybody yawned all the neighbours ran into the street to hear what was up.

Of course, the towns along the transport roads to Natal and Rhodesia had some life from the passing traffic, while the endless squabbles with the Africans enlivened things in the far north. Commandant-General Joubert would travel up and exchange threats with the various chiefs at odd intervals.

Mujaji also occasionally sent the neighbouring farmers scurrying for safety. In 1892, Schiel and Commandant Pretoria had busied themselves in surveying her location and becoming off-border farms. Mujaji ordered them to stop, and in reply, Pretorius demanded an interview with the as-yet invisible Queen. Mujaji guilefully sent her aged sister; and Pretorius, knowing no better, accepted her as the Queen and ordered her to keep the peace.

With such a sleepy crowd of townlets to visit, it was perhaps understandable that they delivered the only speech of the moment made by the President on his tour on the Rand, at Boksburg, in October 1892. Kruger always liked the East Rand. Back in 1886, he had bought a farm there himself, from Albert Broderick.

This place, known as Geduld (patience), had hardly demanded that admirable quality from its illustrious owner. Gold had been found on it, and the President had the pleasure of making some money himself from the riches of his country when he sold the farm for ￡89,200 to the Geduld Syndicate.

Boksburg, in those days, was also one of the pleasantest towns on the Rand. The place had been fortunate, in that its first Mining Commissioner was a farsighted individual named Montague White. Besides his normal duties, white had set out to beautify the place.

He planted trees by the tens of thousands; built a wall across the Vogelfontein Spruit; and planned a dam on so magnificent a scale that it was known as White's Folly. Even Kruger had been aghast at the scope of the thing until the rains filled it up and provided Boksburg with a splendid lake for recreational purposes.

In this congenial setting, then, the President made his most interesting speech of the tour. "stand between two fires, the old and the new population," he said. "Now, as regards the franchise, a twenty-year residence qualification is as impossible and absurd as an indiscriminate franchise showered on everybody immediately after arrival in the country would be.

You will see that would endanger the independence of the State, and in refusing this, the Volksraad listens to the majority of the people. However, I have made up my mind no longer to obstruct the uitlander from getting his privileges.

I will do my best when the Volksraad next meets to bring the present five years residence stipulation for power to vote down to two years. The residence qualification for eligibility to sit in the Second Chamber (where the Uitlanders' interest principally be), I will try to get reduced from fifteen to four years and the stipulation for First Chamber membership will be ten years.

This was certainly something, and it was apparent that Kruger had modified his views about the newcomers to such a considerable extent that if he put his concessions into practice, there would be little further cause for the quarrel between himself and the diggers on the question of the franchise.

With this twenty matter off his chest, the President, in due course, returned to Pretoria to prepare, not only for the usual Volksraad session due to start in May of the coming year but for the new presidential election, also due in the early months of 1893.

Pretoria was already bursting with excitement over the coming presidential election. Like the Rand towns, the capital was bustling and well out of the depression of the past years.

Its own National Bank had been opened by Kruger on the 20th of April 1891, on a concession for a bank and mint granted by the Volksraad on the 5th of August of the previous year to Labouchere Oyens & Co. of Amsterdam. Dr. Leyds was the syndic of the bank. Apart from one or two property manipulations, which made a few subsequent investigators raise their eyebrows, the bank functioned normally and was an asset to the community.

Another concession, the Pretoria Electric Lighting Concession, also functioned properly. The streets were electrically lit for the first time on the 8th of September 1892, by 102 lamps using 150 volts; while more important still, the railway from Germiston to Pretoria was completed in December 1892, and on Saturday afternoon, the 17th of that month, the first engine, pulling a ballast train, arrived in town.

The engine spent most of the night being inspected by the townspeople, blowing its whistle as though it were a hen cackling with pride at having at long last laid the desired railway egg.

The first proper train from the seaboard reached the capital on the 1st of January 1983. It was be flagged but had no official reception, as that was reserved for the approaching opening of the Eastern Line.

A number of factors combined to make the 1893 Presidential election the most important and hardest fought the Republic had ever known. There was dissatisfaction with the Government among many people in the Republic. Corruption and embezzlement in the civil service had infuriated even the old burghers; and Kruger's inability to bring some of his officials to order made even his farmer supporters think that perhaps a change of presidents might be for the better, for a new broom was certainly needed to clean out the Government.

It was not only rumours about the Selati Railway which had upset the public. In Johannesburg, what they knew as the Stand Scandal was being exposed in the courts, with evidence that many of the high local officials had been dabbling in the property market and using their government positions to give them an advantage.

Bribery of individual officials was common knowledge all over the Republic, while in Pretoria there was a considerable local scandal at a court case in which Gerrit Ferstegan was tried for blackmailing Christian Joubert, the Minister of Mines, by stealing documents from his office which showed him to be bankrupt and thus ineligible for his high office.

On the Rand, there was a major scandal brewing about illicit gold buying. The theft of gold from the mines had reached almost unbelievable proportions. Gold and amalgam were being systematically stolen from the mills by both white and black employees and traded to illicit gold buyers, who haunted the hundred of shady canteens existing along the Rand.

It was computed that at least 10,000 ounces of amalgam were being stolen each year. When the Chamber of Mines doubted this figure and, in 1893, as a test, instructed certain agents to buy stolen amalgam in order to discover the availability of supplies, they had the mortification of obtaining 1,200 ounces without any difficulty whatsoever. Ugly accusations were being freely made over the extent of the organizations behind the traffic.

The mine owners were constantly petitioning the Volksraad for the creation of a separate Illicit Gold Buying investigatory department of the police, with special powers to deal with this type of crime. The "special powers" of search and arrest suggested by the Chamber of Mines were so extensive that, had they been granted, a reign of terror would have been introduced on the Rand, with the general public at the mercy of a host of petty bureaucrats who were often I.G.B.s (Illicit gold buyers) themselves.

This drastically silly Golds Thefts Bill proposed by the mines never went as far as the Volksraad. In any case, it would never have seriously disturbed the illicit gold traffic. It was symptomatic only of the impotent rage of the mine owners, who felt themselves being robbed and helpless to do anything about it.

In July 1889, the Volksraad obliged them by imposing penalties of ￡500 for the illegal possession of gold amalgam, but in the same breath, they gave the mine owners a fresh grievance by resolving to stop all Sunday work.

Each one of the concessions handed out by the government had given offense to some section of local society. The Railway Concession was one of the most general causes of grievance against the Government. They considered the Netherland Company being to the Republic what the Old Man of the Sea was to Sinbad, a dead weight on the back. It was slowly moving, suffering from acute initial inertia in getting started, with a chronic shortage of trucks for coal; and its officials, securely protected by a monopoly, are inclined to be bureaucratic and insolent.

The dynamic monopoly, in particular, was steadily working up the tempers of the mine owners. Since the granting of this concession, it had been a matter of endless intrigue, lobbying of politicians, bribery, and argument. Germany, Britain, and the mine owners at the unfairness of the whole monopoly made loud protests.

The original concessionaire, the South African Explosive Company Limited, had its headquarters in Paris and was as big a racket as the Selati Railway Company. Kruger's dream, as we have seen, had been to promote the Republic's own explosive factory; but the quality of the local dynamite imported in bulk and packed in the Transvaal was as bad as its price was high.

The local mixture was weak in force, erratic in behaviour, and emitted heavy fumes. It sold for ￡5 2s. 6d. a case, compared to ￡3 4s. 1Od. for the imported product. As 3,000 cases a month were being consumed at that time, it meant a considerable loss to the mines. Inevitably, there was endless bickering between the company and the mines.

In the face of the gathering storm, the company, in February 1892, offered to reduce the price by ten shillings a case, if the mines would accept the monopoly without further quibble. They refused this offer. Instead, the mine owners were pressing the Volksraad to annul the whole concession and either manufacture explosives themselves or allow free importation.

The agitation shook the Government in the end. They appointed a commission of inquiry to investigate the matter. The company did something to improve its product, but the whole affair had become so notorious and Britain was complaining so loudly that the concession was a breach of the London Convention and discrimination against British trade that the Government was forced to cancel the concession in 1892 and once again allow the importation of dynamite, against a duty of 1OS, a case.

This was seemingly an improvement, but the Government had only done it as a way of getting around the London Convention. It immediately constituted itself the sole importer and then delegated its monopoly for fifteen years to an agent, the same L.G. Vorstmann who had been the managing director of the original concession company and had flitted and bribed his way with considerable profit through all the scandal and inquiries into the new arrangement.

Still, another scandal of the day was the continuing inability of the police and goals to cope with the criminal element in the population. Despite the warning of the death sentence imposed on McKeone and Cooper, the odious game of highway robbery of African mineworkers returning to their homes was continuing on a disgraceful scale.

Many of the robbers were backveld farmers of the poor white type, who relied on the fact that equally backward district officers of those parts would dismiss any complaints by the Africans as "lies".

The state of the goals remained as notorious as the police force. When the infamous Jacob van der Venter was given four years' jail in Johannesburg for horse theft, he smuggled some dynamite into the prison and on the 14th of March 1893 blew the place up and escaped in the confusion.

For months after that, Van der Venter set the whole Transvaal by the ears. He rode about, robbing the farmhouse with complete impudence. At Pietersburg, he attended divine service in the courthouse and the police were too afraid to tackle him. To the local newspaper correspondent he stated, in the manner of a celebrity, that he was glad to find the district so prosperous, as shown by all the valuable he had found in the houses he had visited.

For the information of the police, he added that he was keeping to the main highways in his travels, in order to avoid the bad characters who lived in the veld. The suave gentleman then went off to Barberton, for, like many of the desperadoes, he regarded it as home.

There he declined and wined the barmaids, and the local church warden was much impressed by the interest the "distinguished visitor from Johannesburg" showed in the church plate. It was only on the 4th of July 1893 that Van der Venter overstepped the mark.

He entered the local gymkhana, and the police recognized him. Just after winning the thread-the-needle race, he discovered the police closing in on him. He jumped on a horse and raced for the hills, while bullets whistled about the ears of the spectators.

The horse stumbled. Van der Venter fell. He pulled out his pistol, but the first two chambers were empty. Just as he was about to pull the trigger on the third chamber, Constable Thomas jumped on him, and, for at least a little while, he joined the tough chain gang housed in Barberton gaol.

With all this sensational going on, it was a wonder that the electorate had much to disturb them. There were stormy political meetings all over the country for months before the presidential elections.

Burghers and uitlanders alike contributed much hot air, and there were quite a few repercussions. In Johannesburg, a certain Reverend Dewdney Drew said too much at a meeting of the local Temperance Society. On the 30th of November 1892, they arrested him for libel after accusing Kruger and his officials of wholesale bribery.

J. Keith and H.C. Marais, proprietor and sub-editor of the Transvaal Advertiser, were both arrested on the 31st of January 1893 and charged with lese-majeste after accusing Kruger of using public money for his own electioneering purposes. A short while later, Dr. F.V. Engelenburg, editor of De Volksstem, also landed in jail after having challenged H. Lofthouse to a duel on account of remarks made by the latter gentleman in a pamphlet supporting the liberal General Joubert against Kruger.

The Presidential candidates were Paul Kruger, Commandant-General Piet Joubert, and Judge Kotze. All parties accused one another of malpractices, bribery of voters, and the extreme use of bogus votes and the names of people who had died.

The actual balloting was so close there had to be several recounts; and then strange stories of fakes and swindles in the remoter country districts were told, with old takhaar supporters of Kruger using the claws of fowls to reach into ballot boxes and remove votes cast for Joubert.

The final result was: Paul Kruger had 7,881 votes; Piet Joubert had 7,009 votes; and Judge Kotze 76 votes. The Joubert party was bitterly disappointed with this result. They lodged a strong protest. The committee formed to scrutinize the ballot forms failed even to agree on the legal validity of the whole election. The Volksraad, nevertheless, accepted the result by 18 to 3 on the 12 of May 1893.

Kruger was thus returned for his third presidential term, and the five-year period was denied to be momentous.