He annexed it in order to save it.

Had the English abandoned it to itself, the Boer territory would have been occupied by Basutos and the Zulus, and the Boers would have disappeared from the face of the earth.
4 .-- _The Annexation of the Transvaal and the Conventions of 1881 and 1884._ M.Kuyper is very unjust when he reproaches the English with the massacre of the Zulus; for it was all to the profit of the Boers, who, it may be added, rendered no assistance.

Once delivered from their native enemies by the English, the Boers appointed, December 16th, 1880, a triumvirate, composed of Pretorius, Krueger and Joubert.

They demanded the re-instatement of the South African Republic, under British protection; they commenced attacking small detachments of English troops, and on February 27th they surrounded a force on Majuba Hill, killing 92 officers and men, General Colley among them, wounding 134, and taking 59 prisoners.

That is what is called "the disaster of Majuba Hill." An army of 12,000 men was on the way out; Mr.Gladstone, in his Midlothian Campaign, had protested against the annexation; and, although, after he became Prime Minister, he supported it in the speech from the Throne, the hopes he had given to the separatists proved well founded, for after this defeat he became a party to the Convention of 1881, by which the independence of the Transvaal, under the suzerainty of England, was recognized.
5 .-- _The Convention of 1881 inapplicable._ It must be confessed, that the Liberal Government committed a grave error.