In the period from the 1890s onwards, the instability of the South African Republic, the war, the subsequent fragility of the new Union and the continued industrial strife all contributed to a vigorous development of the common law relating to offences against the state, and, especially as African opposition grew, to the development of statute law aimed at controlling and criminalising political opposition. The trial for treason of leading industrialists following the failure of the Jameson Raid in 1896, the rebellion of Afrikaners in the Cape during the South African War and the Zulu rebellion in Natal gave the courts the opportunity to consider the common law relating to high treason. The Cape rebellion, the immediate post-war regime in the conquered Transvaal, the Afrikaner rebellion in 1914, and the strikes of 1913–14 and 1922 were occasions for the proclamation of martial law. These led the courts to consider their role vis à vis the state, and also to the emergence of the view among politicians that common law was inadequate and that new statutory law was needed which would cover these situations. This view, and the rise of black political movements, were behind the original architecture of the statutes that were to be so prominent a part of South African legality.