SOUTH AFRICA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1679, 4 May 1904, Page 21

SOUTH AFRICA.

CAPETOWN, -April 26. It is supposed that the Lydenburg bushrangers are part c-f a gang of two hundred recruited from tho riff-raff or Johannesburg and Pretoria. . Four hundred constabulary and a, number of civilian volunteers were summoned to prevent an anticipated attempt to 100-t a town. They dispersed the gang, and split it into small parties, who fled back, into the country. [lt was cabled last week, in connection with the arrest of seven ex-burgh-ers near Lydenburg, that a leading Afrikander had stated that three exrebel commandants in Great Namaqualand (north of Cape Colony) are conducting an active revolutionary propaganda, and have established a secret society, the penalty of treachery to which is death.] Mr A. Lyttelton. Colonial Secretary, in reply to a question in the House of Commons, upheld the instructions given by the Crown agents in the Transvaal regarding the purchase of articles not produced in South Africa in the interests of the colonial taxpayer; also, the instructions to- pay due regard to the claims of the British manufacturer and Hftvent the pressure of middlemen. Jforty-threo natives were killed through the breaking of a cage-rope in the Robims'on deep-level mine, in' the Transvaal. Tho victims^fell two thousand feet,.