The object of the Bond, as stated by Du Toit in _De Transvaalse Oorlog_, was the "creation of a South African nationality ... through the establishment of this Bond in all states and colonies of South Africa." Its organisation was to consist of a central governing body (_bestuur_), with provincial, district, and ward _besturen_. The central _bestuur_ was to be composed of five members, two for the Cape Colony, and one each for the Transvaal, Natal, and Free State, who were "to meet yearly in one or other of the chief towns of the component states." The provincial _besturen_, consisting of one representative from each of the district _besturen_, were to meet every six months at their respective colonial or state capitals.[22]
[Footnote 22: _De Transvaalse Oorlog_, pp. 7 and 8.]
The first Congress of the Afrikander Bond was held at Graaf Reinet in 1882. In the draft constitution then drawn up for the approval of its members, the relationship of the Bond to the British Government in South Africa was defined with commendable frankness. In the "Programme of Principles" was the article:
In itself acknowledging no single form of government as the only suitable form, and whilst acknowledging the form of government existing at present, [the Bond] means that the aim of our national development must be a united South Africa under its own flag.
And it was upon the basis of this "Programme of Principles" that the earliest Bond organisations were formed in the Transvaal, the Free State, and the Cape Colony. In the year following the Graaf Reinet Congress, however, the "Farmers' Protection Association" was amalgamated with the Bond in the Cape Colony, and the influence of Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr led the joint organisation to adopt a modified "programme." Mr. Hofmeyr, who was destined afterwards to assume the undisputed headship of the Bond, was an economist as well as a nationalist. He was intensely interested in the development of the country districts, and he saw that the conditions of agriculture could hardly be improved without the co-operation of the British and more progressive section of the farming class. He also knew that an organisation, professing to forward aims of avowed disloyalty, would rapidly find itself in collision with the Cape Government. With the growth of Mr. Hofmeyr's influence the policy, though not the aims, of the Bond was changed. All declarations, such as the clause "under its own flag," inconsistent with allegiance to the British Crown were omitted from the official constitution, and its individual members were exhorted to avoid any behaviour or expressions likely to prevent Englishmen from joining the organisation. As early as 1884 the Bond secured the return of twenty-five members to the Cape Parliament, and it was their support that enabled the Upington Ministry to maintain itself in office against an opposition which consisted of the main body of the representatives elected by the British population; and from this date onwards it was the recognised aim of Mr. Hofmeyr to control the Legislature of the Colony by making it impossible for any ministry to dispense with the support of the Bond members, although he refrained from putting a ministry of Bondsmen into office. To have done this latter might have united the British population and their representatives in a solid phalanx, and endangered the success of the effort to separate the British settlers in the country districts from the more recent arrivals from England--mostly townsmen--which remained a fruitful source of Afrikander influence up to the time of the Jameson Raid. By representing the new British population, which followed in the wake of the mineral discoveries, as "fortune-seekers" and adventurers and not genuine colonists, the Bond endeavoured, not merely to widen the natural line of cleavage between the townsman and the countryman, but actually to detach the older British settlers from sympathy with the mother country, and, by drawing them within the sphere of Afrikander nationalist aspirations, to make them share its own antagonism to British supremacy.