Jan didn’t need to do anything complicated to organise the referendum. Since there was no seat to contest or anything of that sort, he only had to win by voting share. There was no need to redraw electoral boundaries or such or to even define them.
There were two ways he obtains the votes. Gather everyone together and have everyone raise their hands in support of the motion. Or set up polling stations in various parts of the town. The former sounded like a logistical nightmare. Even if they were able to gather everyone, business would halt to a stop in the port. He didn’t want any disruption to economic activities.
The latter was decided upon easily. Compulsory or voluntary voting? If he made it compulsory, the motion would have more legitimacy. But making it voluntary only made those who felt strongly about the matter to come vote. That meant the radicals from both the traditionalist and feminist parties would come out. But those who sat on the fence wouldn’t give a damn.
He doubted he had as much influence as the Voortrekker leaders Potgieter and Pretorius, so he left it as voluntary. Even if he made it compulsory, he wouldn’t be able to enforce it.
Now the last part. Where should the polling stations go?
His first thought was the gathering spots of the town. The only places were the Church. But the only people who would go there to cast their votes would likely oppose this motion. He scratched the Church out of the list of possible locations.
The first one would have to be the Port to prevent any disruption of activities. Dockworkers could come and cast their votes quickly.
The second one would have to be the town hall right in the centre of town, to enable easy access.
The third one must cater to rural farmers.
Like every nation divided politically between the rural and urban classes, Jan was expecting many of the rural Boers to vote against it. So, he was not going to allocate them a polling station in the rural districts. If they want to vote, they must come to the town. This would remove many of those rural farmers who would vote against it because their friends and families told them so, whilst leaving those who felt strongly about the matter. They are farmers, they won’t give two shits about politics. They only care whether their crops grow well and whether their cattle are healthy.
Anyway, with these plans in place, he could see himself winning. But he wanted to be sure of it. The elves were the most important part of the plan.
He was going to add two polling stations in the Zulu districts. The locations can be decided by the Zulus. He didn’t care. It was likely the Zulu chiefs would make everyone vote in support, since they for some reason are supportive of Women’s Suffrage. And he didn’t care if the Zulus enforced secret ballots, or they dispatched someone in the cubicle watching the voter vote.
By some freak incident that the votes didn’t support his motion, he could easily exclude the Zulu ballots by saying that this matter concerns the Boer side of town. If it gave him a majority, he would include it and obtain victory. The Boers might complain, but the majority wins. Legitimately, so it was unlikely his bureaucrats would resign due to the loss of trust.
He assigned the matter to the Englishman Russell who helped him rig the previous referendum. He would provide the discretion he needs. It would be held in a week or so to give time for announcements to be made, and arrangements to be discussed with Zulu chiefs.
In a quaint meeting room of the Smith’s Gun Store Sect, Jan was making small talk with the Sect Leader who was appropriately named Smith. Their Khoikhoi elf apprentice handed over some cups of tea to the both.
Sect Leader Smith sniffed the tea, nodding in approval to its scent.
Blowing on the hot tea, Jan sipped as well.
“Alright, I’ll get into business. I need guns, and I need a lot of them. The production methods you cultivators use are not enough. I need more guns in a shorter amount of time.”
Smith grunted.
“What do you propose outsider? What do you know about making guns?”
“I know that our Boer guns are all flintlock, which is severely outdated. The British government is converting most of their firearms to percussion locks using percussion caps. One of the key advantages it provides is that the shooter will be able to fire in the rain.”
Smith nodded.
“It’s true. We have many orders requesting their guns to be switched from flintlock to percussion caps. But it's hard to get our hands on them, the British government is buying up the last one of them to complete their transition. Once they’re done, we should be able to get our hands on them. The Black Market does have them on sale but at extremely high prices.”
“But there is no need to source percussion caps from the British. I’ve heard that the French have some local production. Even the Americans have started manufacturing them.”
“It is as I’ve said. Most of these Western armies are transitioning their flintlock guns into percussion lock, it's hard to get our hands on them.”
“The design is patented right?”
“Of course.”
Jan smirked.
“Then I’m sure you have some counterfeited ones. Any successful prototypes to show?”
“We are still working on it. I’m trying my best to reach the percussion cap realm. I need more time to cultivate this.”
Hmm… A Sect Leader needed to both manage his or her sect as well as focus on increasing their power level. What if he had them focus solely on reaching the next realm whilst he handled the administration for them? Why does it also sound like a university professor trying to research while dealing with bratty university students?
Jan placed a gold nugget onto Smith’s desk, making him baulk at the shiny gold object.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“This is what you will receive every month if you do as I say. From now on, focus on your cultivation. The administration of your sect shall be handled by us. If you ask me, it is a good deal. Don’t you cultivators want to defy the heavens? Here is your opportunity to focus on doing that. But, I will require your assistance in training a couple of my men in gunsmithing.”
The cultivator began laughing.
“Gunsmithing is not something as easy as A-B-C. It will require months, and years to get a man to be able to make a gun.”
“But I’m not interested in getting a man to smith a gun. I only need a man to work on a small component of the gun. What I will be proposing is not a new way or novel way of manufacturing. It is something our ancestors have done, the logical next step. For example, in a kitchen, does a chef prepare the entire dish by themselves? No, their assistants prepare the meat, spice the meat, and cook the meat. What does the chef do then? They put it all together. This is what you will do. You will be the chef. It is known as the assembly line manufacturing process.”
“Interesting, but what if I refuse?”
Jan shrugged.
“There is always another cultivator down the road. I don’t care how many rejections I face; someone will accept. You will be able to live a good life. Do you see the English merchants with their clothes of numerous dyes? You can wear something like that. Or you could wear an ostentatious suit paired with a splendid top hat like a British aristocrat. I don’t care. So, are you interested?”
“Why not? I have nothing to lose.”
He gave the same offers to all the gunsmiths around Pietermaritzburg and poached over numerous Sect Leaders to come to Port Mpande to set up shop. Pretorius might be annoyed with this talent acquisition, but it is not as if he is poaching everyone. And the Port was still in his sphere of influence. Even if the gunsmiths moved shop, all the guns will eventually lead to him.
Jan wanted a large facility. During their war to assert their independence against the British, it was likely the British navy would blockade them. He will not be able to rely on merchants for guns. Thus, he needed to mass-produce them. He needed enough for every Boer in the Republic. He needed enough to equip every Xhosa with a firearm. And he will also need another production line for artillery pieces.
Boer workers will not only do this, and he was going to have to supplement it with Zulu labourers. There was the threat of these workers going back home to the Zulu Kingdom to set up their gun manufacturing workshops. But, since they were using the assembly line manufacturing methods, each man would only know how to smith the component they are tasked with, so it’s unlikely they would be able to do so.
Jan set up another Joint Venture with the Zulu, and Nokuthula was willing to give a 50-50 share this time. It was likely she was more cooperative after the land surveyors kept finding motherloads of coal in the Zulu’s land. But he needed iron.
Hopefully, there is iron, the Zulus used iron spears, they must have obtained it from somewhere.
Like all other previous Joint Ventures, he decided to let the Zulus name it to stroke their egos. It was called the Assegai Weapons Manufactories. The Assegai was a throwing spear, and since firearms and cannons were also projectile weapons, it was deemed to be a suitable name.
For the firearm, wood, iron and brass are required. Wood served as the base, whilst components like the barrel and ramrod were made with either iron or brass.
Ammunition was lead balls and gunpowder. Gunpowder was interesting. Its widespread use around the world made the formula public. If one scoured for books, one could easily find the formula for gunpowder.
One needs nitrate, usually potassium nitrate or KNO3 to supply oxygen for the reaction. Then you’ll need charcoal or some other carbon fuel source, and finally sulphur. Sulphur lowers the ignition temperature required, allowing combustion to increase. Graphite is also added to prevent unwanted ignition due to a discharge of electrostatic charge.
Proportions by weight are as follows 75% potassium nitrate, 15% softwood charcoal, and 10% sulfur. It can be mixed and matched but the composition could be left up to the gunsmith Sects managing the facility.
Now, coal might be used to replace charcoal since it's carbon, but he’ll let the experts handle it.
The issue was potassium nitrate. The way to get it is by imports. Chile and California, or whatever it’s called in this world. Those were the cheapest.
If one had caves with bats in them, one can collect bat guano or bat shit. By filtering it, one can get potassium nitrate, naturally. If you can obtain potassium nitrate from bat excrement, then what about obtaining them from human excrement…
Who knew that shit can be worth its weight in gold.
There was a place known as a nitrary or saltpetre works that are common in Europe to produce potassium nitrate. Bury human excrement. Water them and allow the leeching process to take place, allowing the potassium nitrate to come to the surface via efflorescence. Efflorescence is the migration of a salt to the surface of a porous material, in this case, soil, where it will coat over it. The powder is collected before being sent to a boiler where it is concentrated.
Then there is the nitre bed process. One will mix human excrement with soil and wait for the microbiology in the soil to decompose amino-nitrogen into nitrates. Water is used to separate the soil from the nitrates before purifying it into potassium nitrate by adding wood ash.
Of course, these are impractical. With the huge potassium nitrate deposits in other parts of the world, it made little sense to do this. Plus, he knew no Boer would be willing to work in this type of labour. He could only make do with contracting elves, and even then, their wages would be high. In the event of a war, it would be best for the Republic to buy up a huge stockpile of potassium nitrate from the foreign market and stockpiling them.
In the modern world, no one does this. And it is manufactured with chemicals. Yay for science.
The last thing he needed was sulphur. Since he is in this world’s version of Africa, then he could rely on the rich mineral deposits of the continent. Iron is plenty in Africa. What’s the relationship between iron and sulphur? Well, its child is pyrite, or its’ more famous name, fool’s gold. Yes, it looked like gold. Purify the compound and he should be able to get iron and sulphur.
Jan was counting on the surveyors to get it right. They won’t be able to find most of the deposits where modern-day companies mined, but he hoped for the best.
Economists might criticize the focus on autarky. After all, globalised and international trade drives the prices of goods down. But well, they were pretty isolated. An unrecognised Republic that can easily be blockaded by sea. Even if they seized Port Natal, they lacked a navy to defend it. And since Jan knew the war was coming, structuring the economy into an autarky was the only way they were going to sustain any continued war efforts.
A war with the British is a war of attrition. They needed to squeeze Britain in the balls until the taxpayers back in the homeland complained about the rising cost of a stupid frontier war in South Elfrica. Now, the British government cannot let go of the Cape Colony. Like the VOC before it, it needed the Cape Colony to serve as a refuelling station for its ships between India and Europe. And unlike a small trading outpost in India, they were talking about a giant MNC known as the East-India Company.
The first war will not be able to expel them. He was sure of that. And he didn’t want them to be expelled completely. Once the British were gone, then the elves are all going to look at the white men left in Elfrica and work on expelling them.
First of all, the Western Cape is largely settled with big plantations and farms. We’re talking about a sizeable human population there. The Eastern Cape, old Xhosa territory, was relatively depopulated since most of the men didn’t want to deal with angry Xhosas across the border and trekked to the Boer Republics.
In the best scenario, if cooperation was the Xhosas were possible, it will be a quick conquest of the Eastern Cape. The details of many men, Boer men, were going to perish did not escape him. Perhaps he could hash out an agreement with the Xhosa before they begin the conflict. Families who hid in their laagers and did not fight back would be spared, and a safe passage would be guaranteed to the Boer Republics.
The issue was that he was a Boer, part of the group that settled on their lands. Were they willing to come to the table and talk? A couple of gifts of firearms should sway their Queen Sarhili to the table.
Of course, the Boers won’t be fighting alongside the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape. They’ll be busy focusing on the seizure of the British settlements in Natal. Port Natal and St Lucia will be some of the first towns to be seized.
Port Mpande was a small port. They needed an international trading port in the future. Port Natal served that purpose.
The issue was that Jan was afraid of escalation. The British might see the seizure of Port Natal as a threat they must put down, and they won’t be able to treat the matter lightly. They might dispatch garrisons from their overseas colonies to all converge on them.
Although, some words of submission and docility might make them not be as harsh in their retaliation. They would see Natalia Republic as an excellent client state, and they could quickly hash out an agreement of peace. Of course, such an arrangement won’t last.