government at the Cape, maintaining strict neutrality. In this position Brand followed the habit of a lifetime, and it earned him a British knighthood. Despite the changing political climate and the polarisation of political positions, Brand remained hugely popular with the burghers of the Orange Free State. The presidential elections of 1883 could on content have become a political battle between the pan-Dutch Afrikaner Bond supporters and followers of the Brand-line. However, Reitz, as the ideal pan-Dutch candidate, again refused to stand against Brand. Only when Brand died in office five years later, the time was ripe for change. Reitz stood candidate and won a landslide victory on the ticket of Afrikaner nationalism. He was inaugurated as state president in the Tweetoringkerk (Two-Towers Church) in Bloemfontein on 10 January 1889. As president Reitz was one of the first Afrikaners to actively develop a so-called Bantu policy, in philosophy and terminology going beyond contemporary ideas on segregation between white and black. Under his government Indian immigrants were by law forbidden to settle in the Orange Free State (1890). This led to a confrontation with the British government and an extensive correspondence between Reitz and the British high commissioner in Cape Town, in which internal sovereignty was claimed and established. In economic terms, the late 1880s were a period of growth in the Orange Free State. Agriculture picked up, and the railway system became an important source of income as well. Reitz was instrumental in the modernisation of farming, propagating new techniques and a scientific approach to the prevention of plagues. Here Reitz showed himself the agriculturalist and model farmer his father had been before him. Under Reitz's presidency the new meeting hall for the Volksraad, the so-called Vierde Raadszaal (Fourth Council Hall) was opened (1893), and the new Government Building received a second floor (1895). Outside Bloemfontein the road network received attention. As could be expected, immediately after he was inaugurated, Reitz contacted the government of the South African Republic with the objective to establish new and closer political ties. Already on 4 March 1889 the Orange Free State and the South African Republic concluded a treaty of common defence at Potchefstroom. Treaties about trade and the railways were to follow. Even earlier, in January 1889, the Volksraad charged Reitz to negotiate a customs treaty with both the British South African colonies and the South African Republic. On 20 March 1889