On the first day of the new year, Henry came to Johannesburg to meet Roque for a drink.
"What's wrong with you?" Rock was surprised to see Henry. As the chief of Pretoria Police, Henry was also very busy.
"Hahahaha, it's okay, I just want to drink with you." Henry was so happy that he could see his back molars, laughing loudly and patting Rock's shoulder hard.
Roque was helpless and looked at Keppel with questioning eyes.
Keppel is Henry's assistant, and his status is similar to that of Reed next to Roark.
By the way, after returning to Johannesburg from Kimberley, Reed, Martin, and Gaude were promoted to inspectors at the same time. Reed's current position is assistant chief of police, and Martin and Gaude are both senior commando commanders.
Keppel didn't dare to speak, so he said "Lacie" in an exaggerated way.
oh!
Rock suddenly understood.
Sure enough, as soon as he sat down in Rock's office, Henry couldn't wait to share: "Lock, I'm getting married!"
marry?
Shouldn't we get engaged first?
"Before Christmas, I went to Cape Town to visit General Hopkins. General Hopkins approved my marriage to Lacey. Next month, I will hold a wedding with Lacey in Pretoria.
, remember, you are not allowed to go anywhere then, you are my main best man." Henry is here to assign work, the main best man has a heavy responsibility, and Rock, as Henry's best friend, has no shirk.
In fact, at the level of Henry and Rock, it is very difficult to find a best man. After all, people with similar status as Henry and Rock almost all get married and have children after they have become famous. There are very few singles like Henry and Rock.
In other words, it can also be understood that in the Transvaal, Henry and Roque were both popular diamond kings, and no one cared about Roque's skin color at this time.
Just kidding, Rock is now a serious aristocrat. He holds a high position in Johannesburg and has many assets to his name. Any one of these is enough for people to ignore Rock's skin color.
Don't think that white people are not snobbish. The aristocrats among white people are the most snobbish. General Hopkins, Lacey's father, is the best example.
When Henry was penniless, General Hopkins drove Henry out of the army in order to cut off the connection between Henry and Lacey.
Now Henry is also in a high position, has many assets in his name, and has a higher title than Roque. General Hopkins immediately rushed to find Henry. Don't listen to Henry's nice words, he went to Cape Town to find Huo
Pukins in name only, but in fact General Hopkins moved his family to Pretoria three months ago.
Although General Hopkins' station was at Ladysmith.
"What kind of gift should I give you? Can I use gold to make you a set of furniture?" Roque was very vulgar at the moment.
"Shall I give you some gold? I also have a gold mine, okay!" Henry looked down on Roque's money.
Well, it is said that Rock still has selfish motives in this regard. Henry must not know how much gold Rock has hidden in the basement of Rock Gold Mine, otherwise Henry would probably vomit blood.
"How about I give you a car as a gift?" Rock wanted to be new and different. Cars are very cheap these days. Xiaosi just bought one a few days ago.
It's a bit sad to say that out of the four colonies in the Cape, so far, only Stoudemire has a Daiham car.
This car was bought by Stoudemire for fun. In order to service the car, Stoudemire hired a driver, a maintenance engineer, and two repairmen from Daimler.
Only a guy with a lot of money like Stoudemire is willing to make such an investment regardless of the cost.
In fact, the car itself was pretty good for this era, with a 30-horsepower engine, headlights, windshield, and two-door, five-seater styling. Stoudemire couldn't put it down, but Rock scorned it.
WTF!
There is no industrial beauty, no personality at all, the whole car is ugly, and you have to hire a maintenance team to buy a car. How fragile is this!
Oh, Daimler is the future Daimler-Benz. In 1926, Mercedes-Benz and Daimler merged to establish a unified German automobile industry Concern relying on Deutsche Bank.
"Pull him down, you might as well give me a BMW!" Henry said in shock.
Rock almost stared out of his eyes. It took him a long time to realize that Henry was talking about horses, the kind of horses that eat grass.
"Okay, I'll give you the best BMW." Rock couldn't laugh or cry. The horse Henry mentioned was a racehorse, which was completely different from the "BMW" in Rock's impression.
Horse racing is considered a traditional sport in the UK, because horse racing has spawned a series of competitions and a large-scale horse lottery. The gold mine owners in Johannesburg like horse racing. In fact, they use horse racing to gamble. An excellent horse horse is worth tens of thousands of pounds.
, much more valuable than a car.
In the evening, Rock entertained Henry at home, and Owen also came to share the meal. Rock was one against two, and he knocked down both Henry and Owen at the wine table.
Early the next morning, Henry and Roque went to Ziwei Town to visit this "model of a residential area" in Philip Matilda's words.
After Philip Matilda visited Ziwei Town, he was full of praise for Ziwei Town. He also had lofty ambitions, saying that he would develop at least 20 small towns like Ziwei Town around Johannesburg and plant Ziwei trees.
The city of Johannesburg named the bigster tree as the city flower of Johannesburg.
Mr. Mayor probably didn’t expect that the reason why Ziwei Town is what it is today is because of Rock’s reckless investment. Outsiders probably think that Rock is a fool. He is giving away a farm and a house. He can’t wait to give away those things.
The professor and the farmer were worshiped as ancestors.
In fact, these professors are much harder to serve than our ancestors. Today's Johannesburg is a cultural desert. To make a city rich and sustainable, it is necessary to improve the cultural level of residents. Simply being able to read and write is not enough.
You also need to learn to integrate everything, and then you can reflect the value of a professor.
As for the farmer, this is actually a good business. Rock has never given away the farm for free. Rock bought one acre of land from the Johannesburg Municipal Government for about one shilling, and then treated the farm as low wages.
For workers, an acre of farmland probably costs about one pound.
One pound is equal to 20 shillings. If you do the math, you will know how big the profit is.
Of course, only Roque can handle this business. Henry is also hoarding land around Pretoria, but he cannot give it away after buying it, even if it is used as salary to pay for the workers of the Matilda gold mine.
They also asked for security from the Locke gold mine, so Henry was very sad. Locke sold an acre of land for one pound, and Henry couldn't sell it for ten shillings an acre.
"Most of the residents of Ziwei Town are police officers from the Johannesburg Police Station, as well as employees of Ziwei Hospital and Ziwei Public School. This ensures the basic quality level of the residents of Ziwei Town. At least no one urinates or throws away garbage casually.
What, every night, the residents of Ziwei Town will place their garbage at a fixed garbage transfer station. The town government hires cleaning personnel to transport the garbage directly to a distant abandoned mine for deep burial. This alone, Johannesburg and Biller
Tolia can't do it." Luo Ke is still very proud. In terms of hygiene, Luo Ke has very high requirements, and the results are of course very good. Everyone who comes to Ziwei Town will quickly fall in love with it.
Regarding sanitation, it was absolutely a tragedy for most cities at this time. Even London, the capital of the British Empire, was the famous "Fog City".
It sounds pretty good, right? It's ethereal and has a bit of a fairy spirit.
In fact, this is not the case at all. The industrial power these days is still steam engines. For heating and cooking, either coal or firewood is used. The smoke generated is directly emitted into the atmosphere without treatment. This means that there is no PM2.5 measurement these days.
, otherwise cities like London will be labeled "unfit for human habitation".
The sanitary conditions of Ziwei Town are good. In fact, it is also proved that the industrial level of Ziwei Town is relatively low. There is no industry in the whole town, not even a train station, so pollution is out of the question.
Henry obviously didn't think about this aspect and only saw the glamorous side of Ziweizhen, so he nodded repeatedly.
"This will be our vote bank in the future. If the Transvaal does not hold popular elections, forget it. If they do, the people here will definitely not vote for the Boers. Their current lives have nothing to do with the Boers."
Rock is still confident about this.
"The situation here is not bad. There are still a lot of Boers in Pretoria." Henry was a little embarrassed, but this is not Henry's problem: "You are in Johannesburg, you can stop the Boers outside Johannesburg, Pretoria
No, this is a sensitive period, and the Boers are still demanding that those responsible for the harm to the Boers during the war be held accountable. Although it is impossible to hold them accountable, we still have to restrain ourselves now."
This is just wishful thinking. Who was "murdering" the Boers during the war?
Expedition!
It's not even "mutilation". It's normal for war actions during the war to have no bottom line. The Boers' current combat method is actually infinitely close to "unrestricted warfare", so of course the expeditionary force headquarters can also use "unrestricted warfare"
"Unrestricted War" counterattack, so it is impossible to talk about who is right and who is wrong. Everyone has his own master. If you can't win, don't blame others.
"How many Boers are there in Pretoria now?" Rock felt heavy. In recent times, Rock rarely went to Pretoria and didn't know much about Pretoria.
"Two or three thousand," Henry gave a vague number. The real number should be much higher than this.
"Isn't Pretoria being rebuilt?" Roque was a little curious. Inspired by Johannesburg, in fact, Pretoria has almost torn down the entire city and rebuilt it. Even the most famous church has been demolished. I heard that the next step is
We also need to demolish the Palace of Justice, where Adelaide lives, which is not a small effort.
"Reconstruction also requires a process. Those Boers who returned to Pretoria were farmers before the outbreak of the war. They came back to fight for compensation." Henry was a little depressed. The farms around Pretoria were not being used now.
When Henry bought it, he was bought by Stoudemire, so these two are the main "culprits."
"The Boers asked for 10 million pounds in war compensation, but the Governor-General only promised 1 million, and it was not compensation, but compensation." Henry was quite relieved to see how Ade bargained, and it was 9%.
ten.
"Haha, ten million, I'm not afraid of the wind blowing my tongue." Roque laughed. The little property the Boers had before the war was not worth ten million.
In fact, this cannot be said. Although most of the Boer property before the war was on the farm, the farm itself was also worth a lot of money. If you look at the farms run by the Chinese now, you will know that the land on the farm, as well as the cattle and sheep, are worth a lot of money.
It really adds up to a lot of value.
It's a pity that this is a bad debt now. To compensate for the losses, you need to provide evidence of the losses. The Boer farmers cannot prove how much property they lost in the war, and the expeditionary force headquarters will certainly not admit that there was looting during the war, so
The final result must be unsatisfactory to both parties.
But even if they are not satisfied, the negotiations must be pushed forward with difficulty. It is the consensus of everyone to end the war as soon as possible. Not only the British government cannot hold on, but the Boers cannot hold on.
After the war broke out, many Boers fled to neighboring German Southwest Africa and Portuguese East Africa.
The local Herero people in German South-West Africa were in rebellion, and the Germans themselves were too overwhelmed to care about the Boers.
As for Portugal, all they can do is to provide a place for the Boers to live for the little money they have in their pockets. The Boers cannot just sit back and rest, otherwise they will definitely be kicked out by the Portuguese in the end, so the Boers are eager to
Return home.
"You have to be careful. If the Boers knew how beautiful Ziwei Town is now, what do you think they would do? What was it called before?" Henry reminded Rock.
"It seems to be called Krugersdorp. No one knows this name now. It is now called Ziwei Town and will always be called Ziwei Town in the future." Rock is not afraid of those Boers. Now the Boers can't even enter Johannesburg.
Come, don’t even think about it in Ziwei Town.
Rock has made a lot of efforts to protect Ziwei Town, including the escort teams of Rock Gold Mine and Crocodile Bay Company. The total number of escort teams in these two places is thousands of people. The Boers currently have no organized armed forces at all.
Because of its strength, Rock is not afraid of anything soft or hard.
After chatting along the way, we entered Ziwei Town. The first thing we passed was Ziwei Public School.
As usual, there are police officers with police dogs on duty outside the iron fence of the public school. Their task is not only to protect the order of the school from being affected, but also to check all strangers who try to enter Ziwei Town. In Ziwei Town,
The police have the right to check passers-by at any time. If the purpose is unclear and they have no legitimate identity, they will be taken back to the police station for further interrogation.
Yes, it's an interrogation. It sounds like a violation of rights, right?
These days, no one will talk to you about rights. Power and violence are the mainstream of society. The Boers will not talk about rights to the Zulus, and the British will not talk about rights to the Boers.
Those who came out to fool around will have to pay it back sooner or later.