Diamonds, Gold, and War Quotes

“A Boer’s idea of life is, that he should pay no taxes of any sort or kind, that he should be amenable to no sort of law he disliked, that there should be no police to keep order, that he should be allowed to kill or punish the Natives as he thought fit, that no progress towards civilization should be attempted, that all foreigners should be kept out of the country & that he should be surrounded by a waste of land many miles of extent each way which he called his farm, in fact that he should have no neighbours as the smoke of another man’s fire was an abomination to him. These Transvaal Boers are the only white race I know of that has steadily been going back towards barbarism. They seem to be influenced by some savage instinct which causes them to fly from civilization . . . Altogether I regard them as the lowest in the scale of white men & to be also the very most interesting people I have ever known or studied.”
― Martin Meredith, Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa

“When an Englishman once has your property in his hand, then he is like a monkey that has its hands full of pumpkin seeds - if you don’t beat him to death he will never let go.’ He”
― Martin Meredith, Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa