South Africa General Mission

Posted in Swazieland during July 1899, with two one penny and a half-penny green, South African Republic postage stamps datestamped with an 'EMBABAAN', Swazieland double-circle datestamp in black.

From May 1899, the South African Republic, known by the British as the Transvaal, came increasingly under pressure from London. Many Europeans left the Republic, with an exodus of ten thousand Europeans from Johannesburg, before the outbreak of war on 11^th October 1899. The very rich left first, traveling in comfort. Many others arranged for their families to leave, where they sought safety in Natal or Cape Colony. As Swazieland was administered by the South African Republic, so the missions were closed and left in the hands of the local faithful ‘evangelists’. The missionaries and their children reached Portuguese territory, just an hour before it was known that war had been declared. They encamped in the Lebombo Mountains and were escorted by fellow comrades to the coast at Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa. They could not return until peace was confirmed by the British authorises in 1902.¹ The cover illustrated here is the last date I have seen from Swazieland before the South African War.²

References

1 Woolgar, J., (2021), TRANSVAAL Postal Department staff before and after the South African War, Gravesend.

2 For Embabaan - see The Index of the 'The Transvaal Philatelist', Cumulative Index' on this website.