natalia, no 42 (2012)

NataliaJournal of the

Natal Society FoundationNo. 42 (December 2012)

FS

Published by the Natal Society Foundation Trust P.O. Box 11093, Dorpspruit 3206, South Africa

SA ISSN 0085-3674

Natalia 42 (2012) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2012

ii

Cover illustration

This photograph was taken on 12 June, 2009 by Angela Hough, a psychologist working at the Rob Smetherham Bereavement Services for Children, whose offices in Gallwey Lane overlooked the Colonial Building.

Page design by M.J. Marwick Printed by Intrepid Printers

Pietermaritzburg


iii

ContentsEDITORIAL ....................................................................................... v

ARTICLES Barbara Tyrrell’s Caravan Verse Elwyn Jenkins ................................................................................ 1 A jubilee in a turbulent year Vertrees C. Malherbe ..................................................................... 9 Sugar and settlers: early Isipingo Duncan Du Bois ............................................................................ 19 A tale of two phoenixes: The Colonial Building and its architect William Powell Stephen Coan ................................................................................ 33 Gandhi and some contemporary African leaders from KwaZulu-Natal Anil Nauriya .................................................................................. 45 “A setback to the harmonious race relations in this charming city of scented flowers”: the August 1959 riots in Petermaritzburg Sibongiseni Mkhize ........................................................................ 65 Gun accidents in early KwaZulu-Natal Roger Ingle .................................................................................... 80

NOTES AND QUERIES .................................................................... 87

OBITUARIES Radclyffe Macbeth Cadman .......................................................... 108 June Farrer ..................................................................................... 111 Edmond Hall ................................................................................. 113 Kader Hassim ................................................................................ 116 Winton Arthur (Wog) Hawksworth ............................................... 122 Kathleen Gordon-Gray .................................................................. 125 Huw Jones ..................................................................................... 126 Joy Roberts .................................................................................... 127 Laurence Schlemmer ..................................................................... 129 Louis Sennett ................................................................................. 135

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES .................................................. 136

SELECT LIST OF RECENT KWAZULU-NATAL PUBLICATIONS ............................................................................... 155

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ......................................................... 160

Page


iv


v

Editorial

NOBODY will ever be able to accuse Natalia 42 of suffering from anorexia. We offer no fewer than seven different articles contributed by authors as far apart geographically as Cape Town and New Delhi and covering

topics ranging from Mahatma Gandhi’s interaction with African leaders during his years in South Africa to gun accidents in the early days of the Colony of Natal, and from the 1960 University of Natal Jubilee marking 50 years of tertiary education in this province to the so-called beer hall riots in Sobantu which had taken place the previous year. Articles on early pioneers of the sugar industry at Isipingo, the light-hearted verse written by artist Barbara Tyrrell about her travels in her caravan, and the recently restored Colonial Building in Pietermaritzburg and its architect complete our offering. And it is from the illustrations submitted with the latter that we have chosen our dramatic front cover picture showing the building going up in flames during the course of that restoration.

We also carry more obituaries than previously, ranging from a former Robben Islander to a former Administrator of Natal. The question of whom to eulogise and whom to leave out has long been a vexed issue and a topic of debate at Natalia editorial committee meetings. We cannot pretend that our selection is anything other than arbitrary and idiosyncratic. Next year we propose to follow the system adopted by some overseas newspapers: reducing the number of full obituaries while at the same time noting the passing of more people in a summarised “other lives” section. However, the selection of who is placed in which category is also likely to prove arbitrary and idiosyncratic.

In certain previous issues of Natalia, the Notes and Queries section has been somewhat thin. Not this year. We have some substantial items on the centenary of the Voortrekker/Msunduzi Museum, the Msimang brothers of Edendale who played a significant role in the early ANC, two culinary items dealing with the mysteries of nastergalkonfyt and bunny chow, while two members of the editorial committee have been in reminiscent mood about their experiences of “Singing” in primary school.


vi

What we do not carry this year, for the first time since the journal first appeared in 1971, is either a reprint of a rare document or a previously unpublished piece. Various possibilities were considered by the editorial committee, but were rejected for a variety of reasons.

Natalia must surely be unique in running almost completely on altruism. Our many contributors do not receive a cent; the Editor and his committee spend many hours on the journal without any financial reward; the entire Natalia corpus is available on the Internet without charge. The only costs involved in the production of the journal are those for layout, printing and publishing on the Internet. These are met by the Natal Society Foundation, and the cover price of an individual copy is set at a highly subsidised rate. In a publishing world too often ruled by crass commercialism, it is a salutary reminder that the dissemination of knowledge is an activity which is inherently valuable and worthwhile.

Finally, two items of personalia. Bill Bizley has been both a member of the Natalia editorial committee for many years and a valued contributor of interesting articles. Unhappily, his contribution to Natalia 42 has been severely restricted by neurological problems. We wish him well. Pat McKenzie, after retiring as deputy director of the former Natal Society Library, took over as secretary to the Natal Society Foundation, and also as minutes’ secretary for the Natalia editorial committee. Ill health at the end of last year precipitated his sudden resignation on doctor’s orders, and he has subsequently relocated to Durban. His long and faithful service must be recorded with gratitude.

JACK FROST

1Natalia 42 (2012), Elwyn Jenkins pp. 1 – 8

Barbara Tyrrell’s Caravan Verse

by Elwyn Jenkins


Introduction

Barbara Tyrrell celebrated her hundredth birthday in 2012. She was born on 15 March 1912 in Durban. Her father worked for the Department of Native Affairs, and they moved to Eshowe. She was immersed in Zulu language and culture from birth. Her great-uncle, Frederick Finney, accompanied Cetshwayo as an interpeter on a state visit to Queen Victoria in 1882. At the age of two, she was present at a performance of Zulu dancers given in honour of Henry Rider Haggard.

She trained at the Natal Technical College Art School and obtained a BA (Fine Art) from the University of Natal, after which she worked as a fashion artist and art teacher. From 1944, when she made her first unaccompanied trip into the field, she dedicated her life to researching and recording the traditional dress and ornament of rural people, which she knew was fast disappearing. Fluent in Zulu, she sketched only what her sitters permitted, drawing on her inherited knowledge of African etiquette in recording her subjects, all of whom she knew by name and paid for their time.

She enjoyed a lifelong collaboration with the writer T.V. Bulpin, illustrating his publications, and he later published her book Suspicion is My Name and republished her classic Tribal Peoples of Southern Africa. She married the cinematographer Peter Jurgens in 1952 and they made their home in Richmond. The Bhaca people of that region became the subject of her special


2


interest. Barbara and Peter had one son, Peter, who later collaborated with his mother on her book African Heritage. Her husband died in 1963 and her son in 1998. She retired to Muizenberg, where, on her 90th birthday, representatives of a clan of the Thembu in period ceremonial dress paid her homage.

The University of Natal awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1965, and President Thabo Mbeki bestowed the Order of Ikhamanga (Silver) on her in 2008. An exhibition in her honour was opened in the Iziko National Gallery in Cape Town on her birthday in March 2012. Complementing the strong design aspect of her works in watercolour and pen and ink were items of adornment and costume from the Iziko collections. The official announcement of the exhibition, called Iqholo le Afrika – Her African Pride – pinpointed her legacy: “[The exhibition] brings to younger audiences the beauty and power of the work and relationships forged by Barbara Tyrrell. Celebrated by her sitters and their descendants, re-evaluated and rightly acknowledged in a post-democratic [sic] society, Barbara Tyrrell has earned her centenary exhibition at last.”

IN THE EARLy 1940s, “when not even station wagons had been invented”, a daring young woman

bought an old vegetable-hawker’s van and embarked on an adventurous life that would bring her high respect, an honorary doctorate from the University of Natal, and the Order of Ikhamanga. Barbara Tyrrell’s work, illustrating and documenting the disappearing tribal dress of African people, is a priceless record. An appreciative article about her on the website of the Killie Campbell Library1 lists her books – Tribal Peoples of Southern Africa, Suspicion is My Name, African Heritage, and Barbara Tyrrell: Her African Quest2 – but has one gap: it says Tribal Peoples was her first book, whereas in fact it was her second.

Barbara Tyrrell’s first book, a little volume printed on wartime paper, was published in 1945 by the Durban publisher, Knox.3 A Medley of South African Caravan Verse contains simple poems about her travels in her van, il-

lustrated with equally simple black and white drawings. The illustrations bear little resemblance to her later portraits of models in traditional dress, and re-flect, rather, the cartoons she drew while in high school. The poems give us an intimate picture of her playful, sensitive nature that is not openly displayed in her other books. Barbara Tyrrell chuckled when I reminded her of this quaint relic. “My book of poems? People just laugh at me about them!” And indeed, she has always been modest about them. She opened her collection with an “apology”:

This isn’t poetryDon’t you see?It doesn’t even pretend to be,So please don’t ask too much of me.4

Barbara was teaching an art class of the Port Elizabeth Technical College in the city library one day, when she looked out of the window. “I noticed, down in the square, a panel van with windows, used for ferrying nuns around the town: in those days a rare


3


A Bhaca sangoma dressed in the manner of a married woman. Her long, beaded hair, the goatskin shoulder straps and switches are indicative of her

profession. She sits in the bula or “smelling out” posture.(Barbara Tyrrell, Tribal Peoples of Southern Africa, p. 161.)


4


type of vehicle. In that instant an idea was born. In that second I visualised a home on wheels and freedom to paint and travel.” The next day she bought a 1934 Chevrolet from a Greek, who bestowed his benediction: “A good van, God bless her.”5

“Nixie’s” her name Don’t you see?She has given up commerceFor lands faery –For koppies and kloofs and barren veldAnd mountainous ridges where berg

snows melt.6

Her kitted-out “caravan” intrigued people wherever she went, whether in cities or in the remote places where she sought out people still leading their traditional way of life. Often she was asked, “What are you selling?”

At a service station back in P.E.,Two service men discussing

“Nixie” –

Eyed up and down with expert precision

Then, both heads together, they give their decision:

“Ambulance!” quoth one, in round-eyed gloom,

“No!” pronounced the other, conde-scending, “Bedroom!”7

Barbara’s poems express her love of travel around the country. In “Nixie’s Nostalgia” her little van cajoles her:

Oh I’ve contracted an aching desireTo release my brake and shake a tyre;To roll away to those regions highWhere the Drakensberg talks to the

mighty sky!Oh Driver of Mine, – I’d like to speakOf sunrise over Cathedral Peak –Do you recall that brilliant shineOf gold on the krantzes, Driver of

Mine?Surely you long for mists that riseFrom dawning valleys to melt the

skies?8

Barbara Tyrrell with her van Nixie. (From Barbara Tyrrell: Her African Quest, p vii.)All illustrations by kind permission of Barbara Tyrrell


5


Of course she’ll give in, as her mother knows:

Just look at that! It gives me pain!She’s poring over that map again –It means she’ll go, as go she must,She has an attack of the wanderlust!It really is a heavy load To own a daughter who loves “the

road”!9

Barbara’s love of what makes the South African landscape so special speaks in line after line:

A lone white house, spectral in the trees;

Mimosa perfume, floating on the breeze;

A tank with red paint peeling from its side;

An empty yard …10

The poet in her relates intimately to the places she passes through and where she camps:

We camped that night near the desolate house

– We nearly left, but on leaving we read

The name on its gate – “Endwell,” it said,

Somehow sadly. So back we came;We could not resist that wistful name.A moon climbed over the white Dutch

gableSilvered the sheds and deserted stable.Suffused the night, a spectral sceneAs strange as I have ever seen!11

To Barbara, picturesque place names capture the essence of the country. “Read these names” she invites the reader in her poem “Maps”, and they roll out:

Malelane and Mafeteng,Montagu Pass, Teyateyaneng!Qumbu and Ntonjaneni,Blanco and Izingolweni!Pampoenpoort and Paauwpan,Honeynestkloof and Kuruman!Tsitsikamma and Kommetjie,Keiskama Hoek and Coligny!12

Coming from KwaZulu-Natal, she has a special love for the Drakensberg. She devotes a poem to the “Berg wind”, that typical feature of winter in the Midlands.

Have you ever heard windIn an old mealie field?Its rustle and tearAs the mealie stalks yieldTheir withering spines! …Somehow the song of the wind – To me –Hails from the ’BergWhere it’s clear and free.13

Lines from “Where my caravan has rested” take an unusual view of her travels:

Thanks to you, oh lovely treeFor shelter you afforded me!Thank you willow, found so late,In dreamy dusk at the Golden Gate!Thank you fir in BasutolandOn “Donkerhoek” near Ladybrand!Thank you, twirly coastal tree,At a camping site Amanzimtoti!Thank you, “thorns” of various racesIn Zululand, and other places!14

She remembers, too, the birds – the coucal, the lourie and the hadeda ibis:

I have heard the fukwe in the caneFirst, their beseeching call then the

pattering rainAnd storm; then that liquid call againQuietly now, appeased, in the dripping

rain.In the Mtunzini bush I’ve often heardThe startled chatter of the gwalagwala

birdAnd watched him creep from branch

to branch. AbsurdThe way he vanished, without another

word!And floating down to sunset and the

evening starComes ever anon the cry of “Hah Dee

Dah!”A mocking call, to tease wherever

you areSailing, trailing, wailing from afar.15


6


Her poetry can have power and an eye for detail, similar to that of the English nature poet, John Clare (1793-1864). This is her dramatic description of the burning of a sugar cane field at night:

In the “break”, the watchful Shangaans standing by

Crushing tiny fires as they creepAcross to unlit cane, while the soft

winds sweepThe holocaust on. Each cane a wandOf leaping menace. And, Busy on the fringe, small black and

blackened Boys, beating, and when they

slackened“Bula, abafana, bula!” cameThe voice of the planter. FlameLit the Shangaans with the lone

white man,Like a demon party. Cane knives,

kerries! CanYou see the vivid green of that

adjoining field –This one still aflicker with sultry

flame? ShieldYour eyes! This heat! There a dazed

thing Flies from the fire on terrified wing –Flops to the safety of the burn

beyond…16

Caravan life can be pretty miserable – any caravanner today would recognise this lament:

A caravan life is a halcyon songAnd nothing, you say, could ever go wrong! But think again! Rain!A caravan, I must confide,Is a tiny place to be cooped inside!17

Camping on her own, she admits, was not always easy. “In those far-off days when I began the work, there hung a sort of taint over caravanners, a hint of something not quite respectable, a hangover, I suppose, from the old suspicions harboured against gypsies.

Thus in my mobile home I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, especially as there were no camp sites to set the seal of respectability upon gypsies.”18

In “Girl caravanner” she confides:

So much menace in the dark!So many bogeys to do one harm!One is, alas, obliged to parkIn screaming distance of a farm!19

In her poem “If – ”, prompted by Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same title about “being a man, my son”, she regretfully writes:

If I were a man, up there I’d restOn yon bleak ridge, near the eagle’s

nest! …And some nights, yes, I’d leave my

vanAnd trek off alone – if I were a man –And sub-camp under the eloquent starsWith Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and

Mars!20

In fact, in all her solitary travels, Barbara was never threatened or robbed.

Eventually Nixie was replaced by a larger, purpose-built van. In later years, Barbara had the company of her husband, the cinematographer Adrian (“Pete”) Jurgens, with whom she had settled in Richmond. After he died, her companion was her son Peter (“Ottie”) – who, she said, as a boy diverted the children while her models posed.

Barbara’s close friend was Dr Killie Campbell of Durban, who would provide her with a bath and bed on her return from her travels. The Killie Campbell Library, part of the Camp-bell Collections of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, purchased 700 of her 1200 original field-sketches in water-colour and pen and ink, while the Op-penheimer family’s Brenthurst Library acquired the remainder. Her finished


7


In her caption to this painting, Tyrrell writes, “Bhaca women dance their way across the hills to a party at a friend’s homestead. They approach in single file as a sign that they come in peace. They wear the gala dress that was common some twenty years ago when beads were plentiful. Today married status is still indicated by lengthened, red-ochred hair, although now sometimes augmented with twists of wool or string. The style of dress is relatively unchanged, but the beadwork on the clothes is missing. Goatskin skirts are still correct and essential wear for married women, and goats are plentiful for feasting and for sacrifice.”

(Barbara Tyrrell and Peter Jurgens, African Heritage, p. 172.)


8


art works are held in many important collections.21

When I telephoned Dr Tyrrell to ask if I could write about her, she cheerfully responded, “yes, sure!” She ends her Caravan Verse:

Over the hills and over the dalesPuffing and panting, the Nixie trails –She puffs “Tot siens” and pants

“Goodbye!”“Sala Kahle” – and so do I.22

AcknowledgementsI acknowledge the kind permission of Dr Barbara Tyrrell to reproduce her words and illustrations.

A shorter version of this article ap-peared in Country Life, March 2012.

NOTES1 Winters, Y. “Barbara Tyrrell and the Campbell

collections: a rewarding relationship”, http://campbell.ukzn.ac.za/?=node/55 (accessed 15 December 2011).

2 Tyrrell, Barbara. Tribal Peoples of Southern

Africa (Cape Town, Books of Africa, 1968).Tyrrell, Barbara. Suspicion is my Name (Cape

Town, T.V. Bulpin, 1971).Tyrrell, Barbara and Peter Jurgens. African

Heritage (Johannesburg, Macmillan, 1983).Tyrrell, Barbara. Barbara Tyrrell: Her African

Quest (Muizenberg, Lindlife, 1996).3 Tyrrell, Barbara. A Medley of South African

Caravan Verse: Written and illustrated by Barbara Tyrrell (Durban, Knox, 1945).

4 Tyrrell, Medley, p.3. 5 Tyrrell, African Quest, p.53.6 Tyrrell, Medley, p.10.7 Tyrrell, Medley, p.10.8 Tyrrell, Medley, p.28.9 Tyrrell, Medley, p.12.10 Tyrrell, Medley, p.22.11 Tyrrell, Medley, p.23.12 Tyrrell, Medley, p.13.13 Tyrrell, Medley, p.29.14 Tyrrell, Medley, p.42.15 Tyrrell, Medley, p.34.16 Tyrrell, Medley, p.35.17 Tyrrell, Medley, p.26.18 Tyrrell, Tribal Peoples, n.p.19 Tyrrell, Medley, p.19.20 Tyrrell, Medley, p.21.21 Tyrrell, African Quest, p.xix.22 Tyrrell, Medley, p.44.

9

Natalia 42 (2012) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2012Natalia 42 (2012), Vertrees C. Malherbe pp. 9 – 18

A jubilee in a turbulent yearby Vertrees C. Malherbe

This was to have been lighthearted: “The University of Natal’s Golden Jubilee – a daughter-in-law remembers.” My father-in-law, Dr. E.G. Malherbe, was vice-chancellor of UN1 at the time of its 50th anniversary, and I have the letters to my parents in which I describe a feast of entertainments and lectures. I soon discovered that such a way of telling is impossible. The year in question is 1960. The jubilee commemorated the founding in 1910 of Natal University College. The central event was the National Conference on Education which opened on 9th July and ended on the 21st. For those who attended it was indeed the celebration that “jubilee” denotes. Half a century has not erased its relevance. But events have a context and 1960 was a time of relentless and premonitory turbulence. However naively, the letters recall that experience also.

ON 24 January 1960, Durban was the site of a portent. In the previous year, residents of

Cato Manor had vented their despera-tion over the police raids which came thick and fast to enforce the Beer Act of 1908. The result: loss of life, destruc-tion of public and private property, and unassuaged anger which simmered near the surface. Months passed and the grievance was exacerbated by

forced removals, in the name of slum clearance, to KwaMashu. On a Sunday afternoon in January, the prolonged standoff erupted. Nine policemen lost their lives in Cato Manor. Then, on 21 March, the nation was rocked by the Sharpeville Massacre. It is believed that the seemingly trigger-happy actions of the police at Sharpeville, who killed 69 persons and wounded nearly 200, owed something to nervousness due to

A jubilee in a turbulent year

10


the police fatalities at Cato Manor just two months earlier. I wrote my parents:

As you probably know, a State of Emergency has been declared here. Not that you’d notice it in your daily comings and goings. A friend of Paul’s who has been a leader in the Liberal Party was one of the three Europeans arrested in a pre-dawn swoop in Pietermaritzburg … It’s incredible that the Government can be so blind to its own shortcomings and mismanagement … They blame it all on the Liberals, the Anglican Church, the English Press, etc., and bearing in mind their great admiration for Hitler in years gone by, one wonders just how they’ll proceed from here.2

There was more. Already, on 21 Janu-ary, a rockfall at the Coalbrook North Colliery, in the Orange Free State, had become South Africa’s worst mining disaster. Four hundred and seventeen men – all but six African – were trapped underground in a shaft which filled with lethal methane gas. For loss of life, it was reckoned to be the third worst acci-dent in mining’s history. Johannesburg’s Golden City Post published allegations respecting the failure of management to heed warnings received just ahead of the tragedy. At some point in that crisis-fraught month, Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd announced that the National Party was ready to act on its long-held desire to make South Africa a republic.

E.G. and Janie Malherbe in 1972, seven years after he had retired as Principal, both looking very spry at the time of their Golden Wedding anniversary.

The occasion was a dinner given in their honour at Malherbe Residence in Pietermaritzburg to celebrate the event.

(Photo: University Archives, Pietermaritzburg)


11


Amidst all of this, South Africa was visited by Britain’s Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan. On 3 February he warned Parliament: “The wind of change is blowing through this conti-nent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.” Verwoerd kept his cool but his party was outraged. Minister of External Affairs Eric Louw voiced its much-used objection to interference in a sovereign state’s domestic affairs. The country would wait 30 years for another opening of Parliament which, like that one, was notable for more than fancy dress and misguided prescriptions.

Three days after Sharpeville, Brit-ain’s Royal Ballet launched the univer-sity’s celebrations with “The Sleeping Beauty” at Durban’s Alhambra Theatre. Already, the PAC’s Robert Sobukwe and ANC’s Albert Luthuli were in de-tention, and public meetings of more than twelve persons were forbidden:

We arrived on the early side and saw swarms of people already there, who proved to be non-European picketers – university students who were fed up because there were no seating arrangements for them.

Personally I don’t think it would have mattered a bit to allow those who can afford it to attend, but I do think it is a shame that they had to behave in that way.

Had I sent this to The Daily News or The Mercury, I might have signed it “Non-racist,” so convinced was I that my views were untainted by anything as nasty as racism. Google the event, as I have just done, and find the testimony of lifelong activist Abdool Kader Hassim, who must have been among the students we passed on our way into the theatre.

Hassim told South African History On-line (SAHO) that the “highlight of his activities” as a member of the Durban Students’ Union “was the boycott of the golden jubilee celebrations of the Natal University in 1960”.3 We witnessed this example – with no discernible sense of its import for the future.

Ten days later, my husband Paul, our six-year-old son, four-year-old daughter and I left as planned on a Cape holiday. If my letters are to be believed, we were not in any way discomfited by the nation-wide State of Emergency declared on the 30th, or news of the march by 30 000 Langa residents, led by Philip Kgosana, on our destination, Cape Town. “We’ll miss some nice things while we’re away – especially the party at Campbell House4 for the ballet dancers.” That party (and the gala performance itself) is described by E.G. in his memoir, Never a Dull Moment.5 The Malherbes, to a man, were smitten by Antoinette Sibley, the soon-to-be prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet. It is no surprise that she is well represented in the memoir’s photos. Also at the party were 20 or so vice-chancellors who happened to be in the city for meetings of the Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth. It was un-thinkable at the time that, a year later, the connection with the AUBC would be severed.

In southern Natal we picked up a hitchhiker – a policeman who had conducted a prisoner to wherever space had been found to detain him or her. After Sharpeville, and the Day of Mourning for its victims (28 March), thousands were arrested and the prisons were overflowing. With the service so stretched, our passenger had been stranded with no way back to his station. In Cape Town the most visible sign of


12


the national turmoil was closure of the historic Castle to visitors – no more a prime tourist attraction but a swarming military headquarters. Verwoerd was absent when we visited Parliament. On 9 April he had narrowly missed death when shot twice on the side of the head by David Pratt, invariably and incor-rectly identified as “a Natal farmer”.6 When we returned home I reported: “All is back to normal, at least on the surface, here in Durban.”

May brought British actress Rosa-linde Fuller. She contributed to the celebrations with the one-woman show she had honed to perfection. We found her “superb, and the selection of stories extremely interesting” – she “acted out

seven”. What were they, I wonder? Four years later, in British Honduras, she held her audience rapt “for two full hours” with selections by Chekhov, de Maupassant, Dickens and Gordimer. She was in her late sixties, and still very beautiful. E.G. had seen her perform in New York when he was a doctoral stu-dent at Columbia. That was in the early 1920s (when, it was later discovered, she had had an affair with the equally glamorous Scott Fitzgerald). Fuller’s appearance coincided with Sobukwe’s conviction for incitement. He was sen-tenced to three years’ imprisonment (at the end of which he would be interned, virtually for life, on Robben Island.)7 Luthuli, who had burned his passbook

Vertrees Malherbe wonders what Rosalinde Fuller’s stories were. The University Archives in Pietermaritzburg provide the answer where memory

fails. Several copies of Fuller’s programme lie in the Malherbe files.(Photo: University Archives, Pietermaritzburg)


13


as an act of defiance after Sharpeville, awaited trial in detention.

By June, coverage of NU-connected activities – notably, the “From our World” exhibition – crowded the pa-pers. Best remembered by myself is the display of photographs by Yusuf Karsh of Canada. Karsh lived until 2002 and by then had photographed most of the 20th century’s famous and powerful. He had a great gift for capturing what made them so. Janie also made news. Union Day, on 31 May, had marked the founding of the Union of South Africa. In 1960 the Union, like the university, reached its golden anniversary. When she found that no official commemora-tion was planned, Janie took flowers to lay at the statue of the first prime minister (and her father’s cousin), Louis Botha.8 She let the press know what she discovered: a statue plastered with insulting stickers. Would this once have raised a call for action? In 1960 the waters were muddied: a republic was on the table.

9 July: Durban’s City Hall was packed when Governor-General C.R. Swart welcomed guest speakers from overseas and opened the National Con-ference on Education. As Cato Manor had echoed at Sharpeville, so now the “wind of change” was resonant. Swart’s central point: “Criticism of our way of life and our method of tackling our problems has in recent years become what may be termed international sport” – a clear message for those on the platform whom he regarded as fly-by-nights, no matter how distinguished they might be in the world from whence they came to visit us. He proceeded: “What they don’t understand is that a good deal of the indigenous popula-tion is still very primitive,” and he gave some examples. Coughing began

– who knew where it started? – and the audience threatened to drown out Swart, “the highest person in the land”. In his memoir, E.G. described a tense situation. How to thank the speaker? How restore the ambience? For many of us not troubled by those problems, the episode had been shocking, but was yet of a piece with familiar “white politics”. I wrote to my parents: “Paul said afterwards that he was ‘too polite to cough, but too impolite to clap’. It was an exhilarating evening, all told, and got things off to a roaring start with everyone expecting big things.”

The exhilaration came with the lec-ture by Dr C.W. de Kiewiet, an eminent historian who, 20 years before, had pub-lished A History of South Africa, Social and Economic. In it he said: “Within the British Empire can be studied most of the problems which the struggle for existence on the earth entails … It is South Africa that is clearly the most complex and arresting of the British dominions.” 9 By then, he had left to pursue his studies. He spent most of his life in the United States and, at the time of the lecture, was president both of Rochester University and the American Association of Universities. E.G. wrote: “Completely ignoring the remarks of the Governor General, Dr de Kiewiet very soon lifted the thoughts of the audience to great spiritual heights which markedly contrasted with what went before.”10 His relief is apparent.

The memoir names academic free-dom as the subject of De Kiewiet’s talk11 but I recorded it as “America’s role in Africa”:

One point he made was that America must somehow get out of i ts involvement with Berlin so that it can concentrate on the millions in Africa and Asia, and he got into trouble with


14


the local German representatives over that. He also got into trouble with the Israelis for calling S.A. “the Israel of Africa.” However, he says he managed to soothe all of these gentlemen (he told us this later).

The telling later would have occurred at one of the many social gatherings. The De Kiewiets and senior Malherbes were old acquaintances. In the strange way that things often happen, we had heard that, at a Rochester party, Mrs De Kiewiet met someone who told

her she had been “to a ‘very pretty wedding in Maryland’ last summer and that the bride was going to S.A. Mrs. De K. asked if the groom were Paul Malherbe”.12 On 12 July, honorary degrees were conferred on De Kiewiet and three others: biologist Sir Ju-lian Huxley of Britain, statistician Prof. J. Iden-burg of the Netherlands, and South Africa’s own Harry Oppenheimer.

Monday, 11 July: the Queen’s birthday and a public holiday. The City Hall was again overflowing when Sir Vivian Fuchs talked and showed slides of the achievement for which he was knighted. Fuchs had been leader of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition which in 1957-58 made the first successful land crossing of the con-tinent – a distance of 2 158 miles.

He is one of the best looking men you can imagine, wonderful voice, commanding presence and obviously a born leader. All the ladies are in raptures, including me. The trip was the most phenomenal feat as we all know, but when you see the pictures of vehicles sagging into deep crevasses, buildings under construction which have filled up with tons of snow overnight, and howling gales, pack ice breaking away at inopportune moments and heaven knows what, then you marvel the more …

The announcement, sent out to sister universities and learned societies, in Latin, with English and Afrikaans translations, of the 50th anniversary Founders’ Day

celebrations of the University of Natal. (Photo: University Archives, Pietermaritzburg)


15


E.G. tells of resistance to inviting Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary – who in 1953, with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, had reached Everest’s summit – to a conference devoted to education.13 With their presence amongst us, objections vanished. The two were well known to each other, Hillary having accompanied Fuchs on the last 700 miles of the polar crossing.

Sir Julian Huxley was the speaker on the night when he and others were capped. His topic was “Man’s New Vi-sion of Himself”. I reported: “He makes no bones about repudiating Christian-ity and talked of the necessity for new religions … He also has very dear to his heart the subject of over-population … He is not a polished speaker … but packed a lot into his speech.” E.G. noted that Huxley was the “only overseas lecturer” to respond to Swart’s strictures

respecting their right to criticise14 – do-ing so on grounds which then, as now, were unexceptionable. Towards the end of the conference, Huxley lectured on “Human Ecology”: it was wishful think-ing to imagine that, should agricultural land be exhausted, the seas will feed us. He evoked an unforgettable image: if populations were not controlled the day was coming when humans “would crawl like maggots over the dead car-cass of the earth”.

The day after Huxley’s first speech, Janie entertained the overseas guests to lunch at Campbell House. A surreal moment: my conversation with Lady Huxley – a beautiful woman with the bluest eyes, all the bluer for the gor-geous hydrangea-blue hat she was wearing. Seeming in earnest for my opinion, she asked what I’d thought of Sir Julian’s lecture. Of course I was

Campbell House, scene of many of the social functions referred to in the article, built in 1954 as the residence of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Natal

after E.G. Malherbe had moved from Pietermaritzburg to Durban. (Photo: Sally Frost)


16


fulsome, and not quite finished when Lady Huxley closed the subject with “I thought he went on rather long!” I remember nothing after that.

Durban was at its winter best and tables were scattered across the lawn, overlooking the city. Paul and I stood with our plates, wondering whom we dared to join, when we spied two seats at a small table.

We ended up sitting with a Dr Venables from England and Sir Edmund Hillary. It was rather overwhelming to think that Sir Edmund is the only man in the world who has been both on top of Everest and to the South Pole, but there was nothing in the least overwhelming about him personally. No one could be more unaffected or easier to talk to about anything in the world and he talks about his normal business of beekeeping with his brother, and climbing Everest with Tensing, as though each was merely a very good way of being outdoors and getting some exercise.

That evening Dr Vera Brittain spoke: “She was extremely entertaining and interesting, giving the history of the emancipation of women.” American that I am, I knew nothing of Brittain but Janie admired her and had her books. I set about reading Testament of Youth. She was generous with her time and also addressed Durban’s Association of University Women.

Some speakers were local, including Dr Peter Cook,

Rector of the new Bantu university in Zululand which Dad and many others have opposed so strenuously. He started by saying that he is a civil servant and therefore can’t speak freely, which brought hoots from the audience for, of course, that is one of the very things most wrong with a government-run university.

The break with Cook grieved E.G. as they had been colleagues in the 1930s at the National Bureau for Education and Social Research, and during World War II in the Army Education Services. I missed the illustrious South African, Laurens van der Post, but Paul eased my disappointment with the news that he sounded “as vague and mystical as he is in his books”.

Harsher comments followed Sir George Catlin’s lecture:

He proved a real ass with the most affected speech and mannerisms and how he can have been so in demand all his life as a political scientist I can’t imagine, though perhaps it is better when one reads his work and is not distracted by his mannerisms or baffled by his accent.

This was surely unfair, and ungrate-ful for his high regard (by no means universal in Britain) for the country of my birth. Vera Brittain and Catlin were the parents of Shirley Williams who became one of the century’s dynamic women in government.

The conference, climax of the jubilee, was over. For almost two weeks we had been distracted from the day-to-day state of the nation – bar some news of our city councillor:

We have a marvellous councillor, a woman named Jenny Jenkins … Lately she got embroiled in championing bikinis. They are not allowed on Durban beaches and she says we are losing holiday trade on this account. The opposition said they wouldn’t hear of allowing it until there is complete segregation on the beaches so there is no danger of black men seeing white women in bikinis.

There it was: “race” relations – the perennial issue. Yet despite my abid-ing interest in the question, my letters


17


carry one reference only to the presence or absence of persons not white at the conference. The University Women arranged for three speakers to sum up its impact. One, the “principal of an Indian high school”, testified to “the lack of racial feeling at the Conference, what a rare experience it is for a ‘man of colour’, and how much this meant to him personally”.

On 5 October the white electorate voted for a republic, to come into effect the next year:

Verwoerd in his speech talked about “the English” as though they were foreigners living inside S.A. borders, instead of English-speaking South Africans, and Albert Hertzog is busy rewriting history. If Mam were here she’d have a letter to the editor about what he attributed to General Louis Botha.15

Some members of the United Party – the official opposition – resigned and formed the Progressive Party. By De-cember Paul, Janie and other Malherbes had joined the “Progs” who supported a new constitution, based on the Molteno Report. The proposals included the gradual extension of the franchise: “… it will be far too liberal for most of the voters, while perhaps far too slow to satisfy African aspirations.”

And so the year ended. But not quite: in 1961 the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded retrospectively to Luthuli, who was both banned and on a suspended sentence for burning his passbook. In December he was granted 10 days to travel to Oslo. In his speech of acceptance, Luthuli called for racial equality and condemned the National Party’s policies as a threat to peace. The Nobel Peace Prize 1960 was a first for the country, which continued to punish the winner.

In this day and age, cities pride themselves on conference centres. They host specialised gatherings which are functional, seldom inspirational. The National Conference on Education and the rest of the jubilee had the purpose of informing, uplifting and entertain-ing. The concept was sui generis. The celebrations drew on links, painstak-ingly established, with the talents and perspectives of the “outside world” – Britain and the Commonwealth, Europe and America. It was of its time, but forward looking.

Those intentions were compromised by the circumstances of the host coun-try. Although not designed as an all-white occasion it was, de facto, close to that. The University of Natal laboured with complex arrangements respect-ing provision of tertiary education for “non-white” students. I had written to my parents, in February: “Dad has been much praised in local papers for his forthright speeches condemning the university apartheid measures of the government.” In Natalia 4016 I found a quotation from Fatima Meer, recalling her days as a student at the University of the Witwatersrand: “Upon hearing that I was fraternising with white stu-dents when I went around giving out anti-apartheid posters with members of the Non-European Unity Move-ment (NEUM), my parents suggested that I return to continue my studies at the University of Natal where special classes were being offered to so-called ‘non-Europeans’.” Here is material for an ironist. Most of us conform to our time and its ethos; some stretch the boundaries; a few, like Fatima Meer, leap ahead.

In 1961, the conference papers were published with the title Education and our Expanding Horizons – a vision as timely now as it was then.17


18


NOTES AND REFERENCES1 In terms of the University of Natal Private

Act No. IV of March 1948, Natal University College became an independent university, the University of Natal, on 15 March 1949.

2 My letter of 31 March 1960. Paul: my husband, Paul Nel Malherbe. The friend referred to was Hans Meidner, admired post-war student leader and brave activist, who became a distinguished botanist.

3 For more detail see Surendra Bhana and Goolam Vahed, “‘Colours Do Not Mix’: Segregated Classes at the University of Natal, 1936–1959,” Journal of Natal and Zulu History, Vol. 29, 2011, pp. 94-95 and passim. See also Kader Hassim’s obituary elsewhere in this issue of Natalia.

4 The vice-chancellor’s residence, on the university’s Durban campus, completed in 1954.

5 My parents-in-law were Mam and Dad to us, but here I call them E.G. and Janie.

6 The shooting happened at the Union Exhibition on the Witwatersrand. On the 8th, the ANC and PAC had been declared illegal in terms of the Unlawful Organisations Act.

7 He was released into house arrest in Kimberley in 1969, where he lived for another nine years until his death from lung cancer in 1978.

8 A 3d stamp had been issued, showing South Africa’s six prime ministers in profile: Botha, Smuts, Hertzog, Malan, Strydom, Verwoerd. Smuts, who was twice PM (Botha, Smuts, Hertzog, Smuts), was shown once.

9 Published by Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941. See p. 178.

10 Never a Dull Moment, pp. 323 and 325.11 Never a Dull Moment, p. 323.12 Paul and I married on 2 August 1952 at

my home, “Rose Hill,” in Sandy Spring, Maryland.

13 Never a Dull Moment, p. 320.14 Never a Dull Moment, p. 325.15 Janie and E.G. were in Wales, for a conference

on bilingualism.16 Natalia 40, 2010, p. 152.17 R.G. Macmillan, P.D. Hey & J.W. Macquarrie

eds, Education and Our Expanding Horizons, Proceedings of the National Conference … (University of Natal Press, 1961).

19

Natalia 42 (2012) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2012Natalia 42 (2012), Duncan du Bois pp. 19 – 32

Sugar and settlers: early Isipingo

by Duncan Du Bois

IT WAS LACK of interest in J.C. Byrne & Co.’s land alloca-tions that resulted in Dick King’s

5 816-acre farm Isipingo becoming the residence of a settler who, af-ter Edmund Morewood, became the greatest pioneer of the sugar industry. He was Michael Jeffels. He arrived in Natal with his wife Mary and two chil-dren aboard the Sovereign in March 1850. Although assigned land for cot-ton cultivation near Byrne, Jeffels pre-ferred to forfeit it and pursue his own enterprise.1 He immediately procured a piece of land, which he called Albion, from King at the far south end of the Isipingo flat near the Mbogintwini (to-day’s eZimbokodweni) river. He built his house above the river near what became the old South Coast road and

initially planted beans, cotton, oats and mealies. In addition he collected salt and made soap to augment his income. He noted that when he arrived there were only three other settler families in the district.2

Isipingo was not only the southern outpost of Durban Division in 1850; it was also the southern frontier of settler presence in Natal. It was situated at the southern end of an extensive flat plain bounded on the north side by the Mlazi river where, in later years, the Reunion sugar estate was established. To the west lay an African reserve; to the south the eZimbokodweni river and an African reserve beyond that. James Ecroyd, who settled at Isipingo in 1851, described the soil as “rich alluvial loam”.3 Dick King does not


20


appear to have exploited the soil to any degree and seemed content, certainly until 1854 when he planted his first sugar cane crop, to lease out or to sell off parcels of land from his extensive property.4 The first recorded cultivation of note in Isipingo was of cotton grown by John Galloway and Alfred Southam, who arrived in Natal in 1848. Writing from his Island Plantation estate to Lieutenant-Governor West in April 1849, Galloway, who had 20 acres of cotton, sought to impress West with a sample of his crop. At the same time he lamented the difficulty he had in obtaining African labour and advocated a land tax to compel Africans to work.5 Labour problems proved perennial in the area, as in other parts of Natal, which later resulted in the introduction of indentured Indian workers. However, Galloway and Southam’s enterprise was short-lived. Uncertainty as regards labour and doubts about the profitability of large-scale cotton production saw them sell up and leave.6 In 1849 Southam sold his land to Sidney Platt, who was soon joined by his brother Laurence. Initially Platt grew beans on his 250-acre holding but swamped the market.7 By 1851 he was asking four shillings an acre for his land.8 In 1851, Laurence bought his own farm and named it Prospecton.9

Other pioneers to settle in the Isipingo district included William Joyner with his wife and five children, who arrived aboard the Conquering Hero in June 1850. He lived in Durban for two years before moving to Isipingo. Robert Mack and his son, James, who arrived aboard the Henrietta in July 1850 “with half-a-crown in his pocket”, as he put it, also gravitated to Isipingo.10 Living conditions for the

new settlers were extremely difficult. Before proper housing could be built wattle and daub huts thatched with grass served as basic shelters. “Nature lay close at hand everywhere, untamed and dangerous,” wrote Eric Slayter. Snakes, bats and insects abounded. Sheets of calico cloth were hung across ceilings in an attempt to prevent such creatures from falling on the heads of those within. Joyner feared leopards and set traps for them – unsuccessfully.11 Basic foodstuffs were either unobtainable or in short supply. James Ecroyd, in a letter to his mother in 1851, lamented the absence of sugar, milk and butter and how he was surviving on dry bread and treacle.12 Years later the Mercury recalled the “mealie and pumpkin” diet on which so many of the settlers of the 1850s had relied for their sustenance.13 Money was also scarce. Ecroyd remarked that “for cash almost any kind of tools or implements may be bought at half the price they are worth in England”.14 Of the new settlers, William Joyner built the first permanent home from bricks he produced from local clay. The name Dingwall, as his farm and his home were called, was the name of his birthplace in Ross and Cromarty, northern Scotland. Writing in 1862, Natal Mercury editor John Robinson aptly summed up the challenge which the Natal colonist faced when he stated, “His life is pre-eminently one of work, frequently of privation, certainly of struggle.”15

Charles Barter in The Dorp and Veld, published in 1852, stated, “Natal undoubtedly possesses the means of producing a staple article of export, sufficient to ensure her own ultimate prosperity.” He saw cotton as the most promising crop


21


and did not even mention sugar.16 But, as Alfred Southam and John Galloway discovered at Isipingo, cotton production was not only labour intensive but it was also very costly. Cecil Rhodes later described it as a “sink” with a “capacity to absorb any amount of capital” after he and his brother abandoned their efforts at cotton growing in the Umkomanzi (today’s uMkhomazi) valley during the early 1870s.17 Difficulties with parasitic pests during the 1850s added to the woes of those who tried cotton cultivation and by 1857 it had ceased to be a settler enterprise.18 Cotton never constituted an appreciable percentage of Natal’s exports, whereas by 1875 sugar had reached unquestioned predominance in the colonial economy.19 Ironically, it was in January 1849, while he was employed as a manager for the Natal Cotton Company, that Edmund Morewood, the man who initiated the Natal sugar industry, advised the directors to cultivate sugar and coffee.20

Despite the adulation heaped upon him for his pioneering efforts, Morewood’s role in the history of sugar in Natal was a brief one. In December 1852 he announced that Compensation was up for sale. The reason he gave for quitting was “the want of sufficient capital to carry out the manufacture of sugar”. By March 1853 he had left Natal, never to return.21 It was at that point that the role of sugar pioneer passed to Michael Jeffels, and Isipingo became the cradle of the Natal sugar industry.22 In his tribute to Jeffels, sugar historian Robert Osborn wrote that he was “the one man, more than any other, to whom the South African sugar industry owes its determination to make the most of

the certainty established by the lone pioneer, Edmund Morewood … that Natal could produce sugar as good as any and as a commercial success”.23

In May 1852, Jeffels was the first at Isipingo to purchase plant cane from Morewood. In August he added to that by importing a further quantity directly from Mauritius. The extent of his initial cane cultivation was just two acres.24 Soon afterwards Joyner, Platt and Mack followed his example. Whereas Morewood had used very basic wooden rollers to produce his first sugar, Jeffels exemplified the “pioneering individualism” to which Peter Richardson has ascribed the success of Natal’s new industry,25 by ordering a proper iron-made mill from the Vauxhall foundry in Liverpool.26 The first of its kind in the colony, it arrived in July 1853. By June 1854 Jeffels had 20 acres of cane and earned accolades from the Mercury, which claimed that his sugar was the finest yet produced in Natal.27 At that time Jeffels also became the first planter regularly to send sugar through to Durban.28 Whereas he later admitted that he had been needy and had even gone without shoes in 1853, in July 1854 his second imported iron mill arrived from England.29 His success continued on its upward trajectory when, early in 1855, his sugar won top prize at an exhibition in Cape Town and was later also exhibited in Paris.30 In the October 1855 issues of the Natal Star Jeffels advertised the sale of his Green Natal cane plants at 15 shillings per thousand.

The absence of proper equipment had frustrated Morewood in his efforts to produce sugar. To tackle that challenge, Jeffels suggested at a meeting of fellow planters in Durban the formation of a


22


company to erect a central mill which could meet the needs of a number of small cane growers. However, he was ahead of his time and nothing came of the proposal.31 By 1854 there was a growing clamour in the sugar growing districts for machinery to convert the cane into a manufactured state as the extent of land under cane cultivation rapidly increased,32 thereby substantiating Hattersley’s observation that “no great enlargement of the total area under cultivation took place until the commencement of sugar farming on the coast”.33

Robert Babbs arrived in Natal in September 1850 aboard the Globe. Like Jeffels, he declined to take up his Byrne & Co. land allotment near Umhlali and settled at Isipingo. He became known to his fellow colonists for his literary ability, having won a prize of £25 from the Natal Society in 1853 for the best essay on Natal.34 Between August and October 1855, the Mercury published five lengthy letters from Babbs in which he discussed the labour issue. Essentially he opposed the imposition of hut tax on Africans (which commenced in 1849) arguing that it brought no benefits to them nor did it address the interests they had.35 He came to the conclusion that the solution to labour problems was the “importation of labourers from every part of the world”.36 Ironically, three months later Babbs contradicted himself in his response to a government request for information to be furnished regarding the numbers of Indian labourers planters might require. He stated that although he could not pledge himself that he would not require imported labour within a five-year period, he remained “of the opinion that there is an abundance of kaffir

labour to supply the whole colony”.37 That statement was also at odds with his role as chairman of a meeting of planters, held at the Trafalgar Hotel in Durban in November 1855, when Babbs drafted a petition setting forth the labour requirements of planters and calling for the introduction of Chinese and Indian labour.38

As a labour-intensive occupation, sugar cane cultivation required a large number of regular labourers. In the manufacturing season a high proportion of those had to be semi-skilled to operate the milling equipment. In spite of the presence of a large indigenous population, the Native Affairs Commission of 1852-1853 found that a “uniformly insufficient supply of labour” had arisen because of an “over-abundance of land located in the reserves”. Consequently, Africans enjoyed a degree of economic independence in that their needs did not compel them to subject themselves to regular employment by colonial planters.39

A feature of the frontier settlement of Isipingo in the 1850s was its sense of community. Although Jeffels was at the forefront of cane cultivation, it was a joint venture in the district. Equally deficient in expertise and all previously bean planters, Jeffels, Joyner, the Platts, and Dick King embarked individually but collectively on the sugar enterprise. Together with Babbs and Mack, they attended the first auction of locally grown sugar held in Durban in 1855.40 They all had a relationship with Dick King, the original landowner in the district, in that their farms were once part of his extensive estate. Issues concerning education and religion strengthened their bonds. When the first marriage in


23


the district took place in 1853 (between Sam Rose and Martha Davenport) no church building existed in which the couple could exchange their vows.41 For a long time, as a report in the Mercury noted, the residents of Isipingo lamented “their religious and educational destitution”. Despite meetings to obtain subscriptions to construct a building that could be used for divine services on a Sunday and as a school building during the week, no progress was made. Early in 1856 at a meeting on Jeffels’s Albion estate, a committee was formed to oversee the erection of a church which was built in due course on half an acre of land donated by Edward Priddle.42 Local settlers donated £27-10-0 towards the £55 cost of the building, the balance of which was provided by the Anglican Bishop of Natal, J.W. Colenso. Although the church building of the parish of St James was completed in 1856, it was destroyed by fire in 1869 and rebuilt in 1872.43

By 1856 there were more than 30 settler families in the Isipingo district.44 With the nearest and only school on the coast for colonists being some 20 kms away in Durban, Isipingo parents were anxious to have a school in their district. To that end they petitioned the Colonial Secretary. In a memorial written by Babbs and signed by 17 local settlers, a request was made for an annual grant of £25 for education. In motivating the request Babbs made a telling point: the Isipingo district was equally important, if not more important, than other districts that received grants because it was “the most fertile in the colony”. The reply from the Acting-Governor was disappointing. Although he anticipated that education would receive attention

from the Council, he was “unwilling to make any arrangement in advance”.45 In June 1859 the Member of the Legislative Council for Durban County, Adolph Coqui, appealed for £50 to be budgeted on the 1860 Supply Bill for a school at Isipingo.46 In 1861 the Report of the Superintendent of Education noted that Isipingo School had 37 registered pupils. It was one of 27 schools in the colony at the time.47

Community involvement was also reflected in the participation of local men in the Isipingo rifle club which was loosely formed in 1856.48 It was common practice to form rifle groups as a basic defence network. Settler communities like the one at Isipingo were small and isolated and therefore vulnerable to any unrest that might occur in the neighbouring African reserves. During the period under discussion no such disturbance occurred. However, in January 1861 planters and householders met to discuss the need to form a volunteer corps. In the memorial they drew up addressed to the Acting-Governor, Major Williamson, they also asked for government assistance in the erection of a fort for protection of their cattle “to prevent them being stolen by the natives”.49 There was no response from the colonial government as regards the request for a fort. In June, Jeffels, in his capacity as chairman of the meeting of Isipingo residents who gathered once again in the school-room to discuss the need for local security, wrote to the Colonial Secretary stating that the volunteer corps would require between 36 and 40 rifles.50At this time resident magistrates of other districts forwarded lists of volunteers to the Colonial Secretary’s office. The largest list, containing 80 names, emanated


24


from the Tugela Division, Victoria County. 51 Unrest on the Tugela border, termed a “Zulu demonstration”, caused a wave of insecurity to spread through the colony.52 In November 1861, the Isipingo Volunteer Corps was formally proclaimed under the captaincy of Dick King. The corps was required to meet fortnightly for a drill and to hold a special parade on the Queen’s birthday.53 In 1862 it had a membership of 29 men.54

In other civic-related matters, Babbs was a member for Ward 2 in the Durban County Council until his resignation in September 1855.55 Osborn has claimed that Jeffels was a Durban councillor56 but that was not the case. Instead, Jeffels was reported as having attended meetings of the county council.57 Established in terms of Ordinance 3 of 1854, the purpose of county councils was “to provide better government of the different parts of the district”. It was envisaged that county councils would assist in basic governance such as the provision of roads and in suppressing illegal trade in gunpowder and firearms.58 As an incentive to local communities to accelerate the building of roads and bridges, the ordinance committed the government to expend in any county at least double the amount that the county raised in local rates.59 Nonetheless, the sums of money involved were so small as to make the whole exercise worthless. A case in point was the sum of £13-8-10¼ which the Auditor John Hathorn acknowledged as having been raised for the half year ended June 1855 in Durban County.60 Not surprisingly, Lieutenant-Governor John Scott, in his opening address to the first elected council in March 1857, noted that the workings of the

county councils had been haphazard. He recommended that the ordinance be repealed, adding that such councils could work only in situations where the population density was greater.61

As a community, Isipingo was very nearly wiped out in April 1856 when 27 inches of rain fell over a five-day period.62 The Isipingo flat was described as “one vast sea”.63 In its edition of April 25 the Mercury provided a detailed account of how Dick King, with the aid of a raft, rescued Mr M.B. Smart and his family from the rooftop of their home situated on land leased from King. Rising waters had forced the Smarts to spend two days and three nights marooned on the roof of their house. Whole plantations were devastated from Verulam to Isipingo, with losses estimated at over £30 000. William Joyner lost a new steam mill that he was still busy assembling. This proved financially crippling for him and for a while he was forced to turn to house painting in order to survive.64 Babbs and Jeffels were fortunate that their newly ordered steam mills were en route to Durban when the flooding took place.65

By July, Jeffels had once again made history by being the first in Natal to erect and operate a steam-powered mill. The Mercury was ecstatic about this progress and described Jeffels’s sugar as “fully equal to the best qualities ever imported”. On a personal note, it paid tribute to him as “the type of a class that forms the pioneers of all successful colonisation”. 66 For the rest of 1856 and into 1857 H.W. Currie, engineer and machinist, ran an advertisement in the Mercury which featured a letter Jeffels had written in praise of the expertise Currie had shown in erecting the first steam-powered


25


mill. By August, Babbs also had a steam mill running – the second one in the colony. As the Mercury correctly observed, these developments served to hasten the production of sugar and showed what vast strides had been made since Morewood’s humble beginning.67 Moreover, that progress was Isipingo-based. Of 12 sugar mills at work in Natal in 1856, eight were to be found on the Isipingo flat.68 By the end of 1857 the concentration of sugar planters in the Isipingo basin involved 13 families and a total of 476 acres of plantation.69

At that time, to the north in Victoria County, J.B. Miller had established

Oaklands alongside Morewood’s Compensation. Adolph Coqui was part of a group that started Chaka’s Kraal sugar estate. James Renault Saunders was established on his Tongaat estate, Sam Bishop had 110 acres at Bishopstoke, and A.B. “Sugar” Kennedy was planting cane on his Sea Cow Lake estate, the latter two both on the Mngeni river. South of the Mngeni Henry Milner’s sugar estate was established at Springfield, and Ralph Clarence was at Clare estate. Sugar cultivation was advancing at a rate unequalled by any other enterprise within the colony. Within two years the value of sugar exported rose from

Lamport’s sugar mill, Isipingo, c 1878


26


£483 in 1856 to £2 008 in 1857.70 From 1858 the sugar belt leapfrogged beyond Isipingo into the area known as Lower Umkomanzi Division (later Alexandra County) when Crown Land grants were taken up there and a new community of settlers made sugar cultivation the mainstay of their livelihood.

From 1858 two issues dominated the lives of sugar planters: labour and capital. The tentative steps taken by Morewood and Jeffels earlier in the decade had evolved into a feasible and worthwhile enterprise. Prospects of windfall profits from sugar resulted in an inflation of land prices. This encouraged banks to offer credit at higher rates to would-be sugar planters, thereby increasing indebtedness.71 Driving the increased dependence on credit was the urge to increase production by modernising equipment. Whereas in 1856 there were only two steam mills, by 1864 the majority of the 58 mills at work were steam-driven.72 Despite the logic of central milling, first proposed by Jeffels in 1854, planters plunged headlong into purchasing their own mills and machinery. For Robert Babbs at Isipingo, this phase of speculative growth proved his undoing.

From November 1857 he leased an additional 58 acres of land from W.R. Thompson at Clairmont. In July 1858 he took out leases on two parcels of land, 177 and 271 acres respectively, at Isipingo. Possibly encouraged by the praise he received from a Cape Town newspaper for the quality of his sugar,73 in April 1860 he added an additional 168 acres which he obtained from Dick King. In December 1860 Babbs earned another accolade for his sugar, on that occasion from the

Cape Agricultural Society.74 In 1861 he imported a 40-horsepower boiler, the largest in Natal. At that time he employed a workforce of 120 Africans.75 When Mercury editor John Robinson visited the South Coast in 1861, he remarked that Babbs had the second greatest extent of land under cane in the colony – 360 acres – and the largest mill.76 But by December 1861 he was insolvent, having been forced to borrow on his assets at crippling rates of interest. A report in the Natal Star noted that Babbs’s “plans were too liberal and vast to result in success in times so commercially and in other respects tight as the present”.77 In May 1862 Babbs and his family relocated to London.78 When his Umlaas Plantation was subsequently put up for public auction, the inventory of his movable and immovable property illustrated the extent of his acquisitive appetite. The listing in the Government Gazette was as follows: various types of machinery, a 30-horsepower steam engine, two batteries of 1 500 gallons each, buildings, boilers, stables, outbuildings, agricultural implements, 99 acres of property at Wentworth and 40 to 50 tons of oat forage.79 Whatever Babbs’s contribution was to the founding of the sugar industry at Isipingo, it was dissipated amidst the protracted legal tussles which then ensued amongst his creditors.80

In the closing years of the decade labour deficiencies tended to dominate the concerns of Isipingo planters. These arose out of what Jeffels termed “the rapidly extended operations of the country”, referring to the growth of cane cultivation. At a public meeting in February 1858, he noted that he had had no more than two Africans seeking work in recent months and called


27


for “steps to be taken immediately to supply … the deficiency”.81 In response, the Mercury, as the champion of the sugar enterprise, praised Jeffels for his “forcible representation” in outlining the nature of the labour shortage.82 Since Tongaat sugar planter James Renault Saunders had first broached the possibility of importing indentured Indian labour in 1855, the Mercury had enthusiastically endorsed the idea as a practical measure to secure “an adequate supply of reliable and effective labour”.83 However, Lieutenant-Governor John Scott was dilatory in sending the necessary application to the India Board, the India Government and the Land and Emigration Commission, and as a result hopes of some formal progress in that direction did not materialise in 1858.84 In the elections held in March 1859 for a new Legislative Council, Adolph Coqui, who was elected for Durban County, which included Isipingo, pledged that he would support “any judicious steps to place the supply of labour on a more reliable footing, either by local measures or by immigration”.85 In May several petitions requesting the resolution of the labour shortage were submitted to the Legislative Council. They included requests from Isipingo and Lower Umkomanzi Division.86

A select committee of members of the Legislative Council was appointed to consider ways of resolving the labour shortage. Its findings resulted in the passage of legislation in June 1859 which opened the way for the importation of indentured labour. Although Robert Babbs, as noted above, had no difficulty in hiring African labourers, his experience was evidently not shared by other planters

in the district, for the record shows that seven Isipingo planters submitted requests for indentured labour. Sidney and Laurence Platt each requested 15 Indians with Laurence stating his need as being urgent. Jeffels and George Thompson each indented for 12 Indians; Joyner applied for six, W.A. Atkinson for 10 and Edward Priddle requested 20.87 Jeffels was prescriptive about his order. He wanted “nine young men and three boys” and stated that he intended to have one Indian as a cook and one as a groom while the rest would be employed as “agricultural labourers”.88 But when the Indians assigned to him arrived, they evidently did not measure up to his requirements for he refused to accept them, saying he would prefer “to await the arrival of the next Calcutta ship”.89 By May 1861, a survey of the allocation of indentured Indian labour in the Isipingo basin showed that 113 were being employed. Dick King and Robert Mack were the largest employers with 36 and 34 respectively.90 R.B. Willy, the field cornet for Ward 2 of Durban County, which included Isipingo, commented in his survey submitted for the annual Blue Book that, ironically, Africans had been more inclined to work since the arrival of the first Indians. Willy ascribed that to the poor maize crop Africans had had in the previous season.91

From being isolated, virtually deserted and uncultivated as it was 10 years earlier, by 1859 Isipingo was described as a “flourishing little township”.90 Its produce, Isipingo sugars, was advertised as “dry and bright” and available from the stores of H. and W.H. Savory.91 Besides the establishment of a church and a school, by 1860 Isipingo also boasted


28


a twice-weekly postal service link with Durban.92 It was managed by Mr E.J. Pugh, who was appointed postmaster on 30 December 1859 at a salary of £10 per annum.93 He was also the schoolmaster,94 while his school-room served as a centre of social interaction until the county hall was officially opened in July 1863.95 Meetings of the Temperance Society were held there,96 as well as public education lectures such as the one given by Dr J.E. Seaman entitled “The story of chemistry” in January 1862.97 The school-room was the venue for a meeting held in July 1861 to discuss the disturbances on the Tugela border and to call for the establishment of a volunteer corps.98 Sessions of the branch court were also held in the school-room. The presence of indentured Indians on the local sugar estates began to have a bearing on court business. One such instance occurred early in 1862 when the only business of the court concerned a dispute that had arisen amongst Indians on the estate of Mr R.F. Bingham.99

The Indian presence also had an economic impact in that a market for what were called “coolie stores” came into being. A statement of sales at Beningfields’ public auction held in Durban in June 1861 showed that Robert Mack of Isipingo had purchased 35 bags of rice, five bags of dholl and a bag each of garlic and black pepper for his indentured labourers.100 The extent of that business was well illustrated by the £3 351 Beningfields Auctioneers paid to the colonial government following the sale of Indian foodstuffs and spices. The transaction was termed the “largest that [had] ever taken place in this colony,” according to the Natal Star.101 The various Indian items – rice, dholl, turmeric,

coriander, tamarinds, ghee, chillies, garlic – attracted considerable customs charges for the importer. For example, the invoiced cost of 210 tons of rice landed by the Tyburnia in April 1861 was £1 443-15-0. But after freight, insurance, customs, warehousing and other dues were added, the final cost reached £3 168-12-0.102

By 1862 considerable progress had been made in the “cradle of the South African sugar industry”, as Robert Osborn has defined Isipingo.103 Planters were buoyant in their outlook. Adolphus Noon calculated that he needed an additional 35 indentured labourers before July 1862 in order to meet his labour needs.104 A report in the Natal Star early in 1862 described the crops in the district as “looking unusually well” and promising to “partly repay planters for their losses in recent years”.105 An international assessment of Isipingo sugar by Layton and Hulbert of Mincing Lane in London had rated it highly, describing it as a “handsome specimen”.106 In retail stores in Natal “Isipingo sugars” competed for sale alongside “Tongaat Estate sugars”.107 However, the original band of pioneers was diminishing and being replaced by newcomers. A sketch map of the area made in 1864 shows several newcomers, namely, [William] Quested, [Thomas] Bailey, [Absolom] Clothier, [J.B.S.] Austin and [James] Fayers.108

In 1860 William Joyner sold his Dingwall estate and took up a Crown Land grant in Lower Umkomanzi Division at Ifafa.109 He also cancelled his order for six indentured Indians.110 Babbs, as noted, returned to England. M.B. Smart, another of the original planters who arrived in 1853, had prospered, apart from the losses


29


he incurred in the flood of 1856, becoming the fifth sugar planter in the district to erect a steam mill.111 But by 1863 he had vacated the district and disposed of his Milverton estate to John Daniel Koch.112 Smart died in April 1864 leaving his wife and seven children.113 Milverton was combined with Babbs’s Umlaas Plantation and renamed Reunion Sugar Plantation. In 1866 it was declared insolvent.114 The Mercury of 21 August 1866 advertised the sugar estate of another Isipingo pioneer, Sidney Platt, as being for sale.

Dick King, the first settler to receive title to Isipingo,115 had married Clara Noon in December 1852 and they became parents to seven children.116 Although he had a steam mill by 1857 and 110 acres under cane by 1861,117 the mainstay of his survival seemed to derive from the ongoing sales of parcels of land from his extensive property. In 1861 a further 258 acres of King’s land was advertised for auction.118 A surviving fragment of correspondence from 1864 shows King as “desirous of clearing all [his] liabilities”. In a letter to the general manager of the Natal Land and Colonisation Company, Carl Behrens, he stated that he was “relying on the Company to arrange [his] affairs in accordance with [his] wishes”.119 The financial depression of the mid-1860s saw him compelled in 1868 to sell off the Reunion part of his estate, some 600 acres in extent.120 He was still growing cane at the time of his death in 1871.Two years earlier, Robert Mack, the second settler after Jeffels to plant sugar on the Isipingo flat, passed on at the age of 69.121

An early death at just 50 years of age was the fate of Michael Jeffels, the greatest pioneer of sugar in Isipingo and in Natal after Edmund Morewood.122

One of the better-educated settlers, Jeffels had a Cambridge MA degree. (He had attended Queen’s College.123) He showed forward thinking on the issue of central milling whilst his views on the labour question had commanded authority. Described as “an exceedingly nice man” by James Ecroyd, his immediate neighbour,124 Jeffels was widely respected. In 1859 he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Durban County.125 Shortly afterwards he was appointed to assist the resident magistrate of the county with cases held in the branch court which took place in the school-room at Isipingo.126 His interest in sugar production saw him visit Mauritius in 1860 and he recounted his observations and comparisons with Natal in a series of detailed articles in the Mercury. 127 Unlike Babbs, he was careful with money and once stated that he “owed no man a sixpence”.128 His last will and testament reflected his solvent state of affairs in that he bequeathed to his wife Mary the sum of £50 per year chargeable to his farm, Albion.129 He left his 130-acre farm to his son Frederick William together with all his machinery, cattle and implements. The remainder of his property he divided between his son and his sister, Laura E. Munro. In 1899 Albion was sold and became part of the Prospecton Sugar Estate.130

Jeffels died on 12 February 1862. His passing was ignored by the Natal Witness and barely noted by the Natal Star and the Natal Mercury,131 which were preoccupied in reporting the news of the death of the Prince Consort, the husband of Queen Victoria, in December 1861. The cause of Jeffels’s death was not stated but the fact that his will was drawn


30


up only months before, on 5 October 1861, may suggest that he was ill. That assumption is corroborated by the fact that correspondence he had been conducting with the Colonial Secretary’s office on behalf of the Isipingo community for the formation of a volunteer corps ceased after June 1861. Further exchanges of correspondence on this matter bore the signature of another Isipingo planter, Adolphus Noon. Furthermore, Jeffels’s name was not among the 30 signatories of a letter dated 20 September 1861 requesting the government to supply arms and ammunition to the Isipingo Volunteer Corps.132 Nonetheless, with the passing of Michael Jeffels in 1862 the initial era of the history of sugar and settlers on the South Coast came to an end.

NOTES

1 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository (PAR), CSO 56, Part 4, p. 9: Register of Deeds, 2 February 1857. Jeffels forfeited 112½ acres on the Lovu near Byrne.

2 Robert F. Osborn, Valiant Harvest: the founding of the South African Sugar Industry, (Durban, 1964), 275; Natal Mercury, 4 February 1858.

3 Letters of James Ecroyd – emigrant to Natal 1850-1853, 19 January 1851, 102, MS ECR, Killie Campbell Collection.

4 Osborn, Valiant Harvest 283.5 PAR, CSO 13, Part 2, No.136, 12 April 1849.6 Hattersley, British Settlement of Natal,

(Cambridge, 1950), 134-135. A record of licences issued by the Resident Magistrate of Durban in 1853 showed John Galloway as having a retail shop in West Street. See: PAR, CSO 63, 30 September 1853.

7 Hattersley. British Settlement of Natal, 227; Slayter, Eric, Isipingo: village in the sun, ?Durban, 1961), 29.

8 Letters of James Ecroyd, 19 January 1851, 102.

9 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 279.10 Hattersley, British Settlement of Natal,163.

11 Slayter, Isipingo, 33; 36-37. Tiger Rocks at Isipingo beach received that name after settlers shot a leopard there in the 1850s, mistakenly describing it as a tiger (Slayter, 33).

12 Letters of James Ecroyd, 6 February 1851, 132.

13 Natal Mercury, 23 October 1882.14 Letters of James Ecroyd, 19 January 1851:

108, 132.15 John Robinson, Natal: a practical guide,

(London, 1862), 42.16 C. Barter, Dorp and Veld or Six Months in

Natal, (London, 1852), 165-167.17 B.J.T. Leverton, The Natal Cotton Industry

1845-1875: A study in failure, (Pretoria, 1963), 25.

18 Hattersley, British Settlement of Natal, 228-229.

19 B.J.T. Leverton , The Natal Cotton Industry, 38.

20 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 8.21 Ibid., 40; 44.22 Ibid. 41.23 Ibid. 275.24 Ibid. 275-276.25 Peter Richardson, “The Natal sugar industry

in the nineteenth century,” in W. Beinart, P. Delius and S. Trapido (eds.), Putting a plough to the ground, (Johannesburg, 1986), 133.

26 Letter to the Editor, Natal Mercury, from Michael Jeffels, 14 October 1858.

27 Natal Mercury, 28 June, 1854.28 Letter to the Editor, Natal Mercury, from

Michael Jeffels, 14 October 1858.29 Letter to the Editor, Natal Mercury, from

Michael Jeffels, 11 November 1858; Osborn, Valiant Harvest,276.

30 Natal Mercury, 14 March 1855; Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 276.

31 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 277.32 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 48. Between the

Umhlatuzana river and Isipingo 130 acres was under cane by 1854.

33 A.F. Hattersley, More Annals of Natal, (London, 1936), 25.

34 Natal Mercury, 17 January 1855.35 Letter to the Editor, Natal Mercury, from

Robert Babbs, 31 August 1855. 36 Letter to the Editor, Natal Mercury from

Robert Babbs, 5 October 1855.37 PAR, CSO 56, Part 3, 19 January 1856.38 Natal Star, 14 November 1855.


31


39 C. Ballard, John Dunn: the white chief of Zululand, (Johannesburg, 1985), 38-39. The number of Zulus living in Natal during the 1850s was estimated at between 90 000 and 100 000. See: M. Palmer, The History of Indians in Natal, (Cape Town, 1957), 10.

40 Natal Mercury, 23 June 1855.41 Slayter, Isipingo, 35.42 Natal Mercury, 14 March 1856.43 Revd P.E. Goldie, Parish of Isipingo –

Centenary Record 1856-1956, (Isipingo, 1956), 5; Slayter, Isipingo, 52; 62.

44 This was the figure the Revd William Clifford Holden noted in his History of the Colony of Natal, (London, 1854) 251.

45 PAR, CSO 85, 27 March 1856; 21 April 1856.

46 Natal Legislative Council, Votes and Proceedings, Vol. IV, 1859, 146.

47 PAR, CSO 130, No.356, 11 March 1861.48 Slayter, Isipingo, 42.49 Natal Star, 26 January 1861; PAR, CSO 129,

No. 260, 15 February 1861.50 PAR, CSO 135, No. 1080, 26 June 1861.51 PAR, CSO 131 , No. 596, 1 May 1861; 2

May 1861; 27 April 1861.52 Natal Mercury, 23 July 1861.53 Natal Government Gazette, Vol. 13, No.

681, 19 November 1861; Natal Government Notice No. 139, 1861.

54 Natal Blue Book, 1862, G7.55 Natal Mercury, 12 October 1855.56 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 277.57 Natal Mercury, 7 December 1855.58 Ibid., 8 February 1854.59 Ibid., 1 February 1854.60 PAR, CSO 78, No. 143, 10 July 1855.61 Natal Legislative Council, Votes and

Proceedings, Vol. 1, 1857, p. 7.62 Natal Mercury, 18 April 1856.63 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 54.64 Anthony Hocking, Renishaw: The Story of

the Crookes Brothers, (Bethulie, 1992), 40; Slayter, Isipingo, 43.

65 PAR, CSO 85, No. 328, 31 March 1856; Natal Mercury, 18 April 1856.

66 Natal Mercury, 25 July 1856. The Natal Star of 30 July 1856 described Jeffels’ sugar as being of a “very superior quality for colour and dryness.”

67 Natal Mercury, 8 August 1856.68 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 129.69 Natal Mercury, 4 February 1858.70 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 57-58.

71 Peter Richardson, “The Natal sugar industry in the nineteenth century,” in Beinart, Delius and Trapido (eds.), Putting a Plough to the Ground, 136.

72 Ibid. 138.73 The Cape Monitor, quoted in the Natal

Mercury, 10 December 1858.74 Natal Star, 15 December 1860.75 S. O’Byrne Spencer, British Settlers in

Natal: A Biographical Register, Vol. 2, (Pietermaritzburg, 1983), 1-2.

76 Natal Mercury, 11 April 1861.77 Natal Star. 11 January 1862.78 Spencer, British Settlers in Natal, Vol. 2, 2.79 Natal Government Gazette, Vol. XIV, No.

724, 16 September 1862.80 Statement by Carl Behrens, KCM MS Sou,

1799.81 Natal Mercury, 4 February 1858. Referring

to African labour, James Ecroyd stated that “the habits of the kaffirs are generally indolent”. See: Letters of James Ecroyd, MS ECR, Killie Campbell Collection, 183.

82 Natal Mercury, 11 February 1858.83 Ibid., 2 May 1855.84 PAR, GH 32, Natal No. 1, Lytton to Scott,

25 June 1858.85 Natal Mercury, 20 January 185986 Natal Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 236, 1859.87 PAR, CSO 119, No. 38, 8 January 1860;

No 68, 16 January; No. 69, 16 January; No. 83, 20 January; No. 121, 28 January; No. 143, 13 March 1860. CSO 120, 24 March 1860. These applications were lodged in terms of Government Notice No. 1 of 1860 which invited “persons desirous of obtaining coolies” to submit formal requests.

88 PAR, CSO 119, No. 69, 9 March 1860.89 Ibid, CSO 128, No. 104, 16 February 1861.90 P.E. Goldie, Parish of Isipingo, 7.91 Natal Star, 26 March 1859; 23 and 30 April

1859.92 Natal Government Gazette, Vol.12, No. 581,

3 January 186093 Natal Blue Book, 1871, M.22.94 Ibid., 1862, T.2.95 Natal Mercury, 4 August 1863.96 Ibid, 7 March 186197 Natal Star, 18 January 1862. 98 Natal Mercury, 23 July 1861.99 Natal Star, 22 February 1862.100 PAR, CSO 133, No. 842, 13 June 1861.

Statement from Coolie Immigration Agent, Edmund Tatham.


32


101 Natal Star, 8 June 1861.102 PAR, CSO 131, 9 April 1861. 103 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 41.104 PAR, CSO 139, No. 1664, 13 November

1861.105 Natal Star, 11 January 1862.106 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 66.107 See advertisements in Natal Mercury, 8

March 1860.108 Rough Sketch of Isipingo Estate,1864, Killie

Campbell Collection, KCA224.109 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 282.110 PAR, CSO 128, No. 104, 16 February 1861.111 Natal Mercury, 8 December 1859.112 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 284.113 Natal Mercury, 12 April 1864.114 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 284; Natal

Government Gazette, Vol. XVIII, No. 997, 13 March 1866.

115 H.F. Fynn had owned it in the 1820s and early 1830s.

116 Slayter, Isipingo, 35.117 Osborn, Valiant Harvest,283.118 Natal Star, 25 May 1861.

119 Letter to Carl Behrens, 26 October 1864. KCM 9540.

120 Natal Government Gazette, Vol. XX, No. 1108, 24 March 1868.

121 Natal Mercury, 1 July 1869.122 This compliment was paid to him by the

Natal Mercury in its edition of 30 September 1858.

123 Natal Mercury, 18 February 1862.124 Letters of James Ecroyd, MS ECR, Killie

Campbell Collection, 102.125 Government Notice No. 91, 31 October

1859.126 Government Notice No. 100, 12 November

1859.127 Ibid.128 Letter to the Editor, Natal Mercury, from M.

Jeffels, 11 November 1858.129 PAR, AGO 1/8/5, No. 145A, 5 October 1861.130 Osborn, Valiant Harvest, 277.131 Ibid.132 PAR, CSO 137, No. 445, 20 September 1861;

PAR, CSO 138 No.1635, 19 November 1861.

33

Natalia 42 (2012) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2012Natalia 42 (2012), Stephen Coan pp. 33 – 44

A tale of two phoenixes:The Colonial Building and its

architect William Powell

by Stephen Coan

ON SATURDAY morning, 13 June 2009 Pietermaritzburg was a city in shock. The dra-

matic image filling the entire front page of the Weekend Witness explained why: the dome of the Colonial Building in Church Street incandescent with fire.

The photograph was taken by An-gela Hough, a psychologist working at the Rob Smetherham Bereavement Services for Children whose offices in Gallwey Lane overlooked the Colonial Building. “We saw smoke coming out of the main tower just after 12,” she said. “Then flames ... and smoke and fire through the roof. The tower caught alight about 30 minutes later.”

According to a Witness reporter on the scene, bystanders “were in awe of

the magnitude and intensity of the blaze that claimed the building and scores of onlookers peered out of their windows in office blocks.”1 “The roof, with sev-eral domes, fell in and the interior was destroyed by the fire, which started in the late morning.”2

“Msunduzi Municipality fire engines arrived on the scene within a short time, but fire-fighters seemed to be waging a losing battle as police and Msunduzi traffic officers secured the scene. Church Street was sealed off with emergency tape while scores of people stopped to watch the fire blaze out of control. What started as a small fire just before noon eventually consumed the building from one end to the other. It is believed the fire started on the second

A tale of two phoenixes: the Colonial Building and its architect William Powell

34


floor, but by 1.20 pm it had reached the far end of the building and engulfed both the first and second floors.”3

Pietermaritzburg Tourism director, Melanie Veness, said the destruction of the building was catastrophic for local tourism: “The Colonial Build-ing is one of Pietermaritzburg’s most significant and impressive buildings. It is both architecturally and historically significant.”4 “It was heart wrenching to stand and watch the flames engulf that beautiful dome and ravage that exquisite facade.” 5

Adding to the sense of shock was the knowledge that after decades of neglect plans for the building’s refurbishment had been announced in 2004. Reno-vations had begun in earnest in July 2010 when the site was handed over to contractors GVK-Siya Zama with Nick Grice, of Grice, Small & Petit, as project architect. According to a spokesperson for Grice, Small & Petit, when the fire struck “contractors were halfway through their two-year R80-million contract and had completed 40% of the work required”.6 “Much of the initial ‘slow’ work had been completed and we were fully on track to finish in the required time.”7

Ironically, the danger of fire had been a major concern of the building’s architect, William Henry Powell. In 1899, when the building was still under construction, Powell had written a letter to the public works department urging the colonial government to institute a variety of measures “to render this building less liable to take fire”.8

In the days following the fire the damage was assessed and surprisingly, given the extent of the blaze, the prog-nosis was good. After an inspection on 15 June, Grice said, “the damage was in fact ‘a lot less’ severe than he had ex-

pected.”9 “‘Most of what was destroyed was actually the renovations done on the building ... the section worst af-fected was the part that we were nearly done with.’”10

Grice said all the walls remained intact and the marble staircase at the entrance was practically untouched while a plan of action on how to tackle reconstructing the building was well under way. “I think that luck was on our side.”11

Against all the odds, it looked as though the Colonial Building would rise phoenix-like from the ashes; a res-urrection as remarkable as that of the building’s architect who had revived his career and his reputation following a ruinous public scandal.

The story of that scandal is to be found in an unpublished manuscript titled Each to His Taste by Sydney Powell, the second of four sons born to Powell and his wife, Anne. 12

Born in 1877, Sydney’s early child-hood was spent in the Powell family home – “a tall old house, with a noisy road (Gray’s Inn Road) at the back and, in front, green peace”13 – situated in Mecklenburg Square in Bloomsbury, London, where his father had his offices on the ground floor. A brass plate on the door bore Powell’s name above the initials F.R.I.B.A – Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Powell’s exact date of birth is un-certain but he was probably born in 1850; neither is it known where he was educated. It is thought he served articles with a Folkestone architect, Joseph Gardner, in the late 1860s before mov-ing to London where he was employed in the practice of Sydney Smirke. Ac-cording to a note in his ARIBA nomina-tion papers of 1873, Smirke said he had found Powell’s conduct “had always


35


been that of a gentleman”14. Powell subsequently left Smirke’s office and set up his own practice.

Though Powell lived and worked at a prestigious address he was not concerned with status. “The church we went to was in Red Lion Square, in the midst of a slum area,” says Sydney. “It was anything but a fashionable church, but my father was no devotee of the fashionable, and my mother had little voice in the matter.”15

It was a long walk to church and Sydney recalls that walking was a fa-voured pastime of his father, especially on Sundays. “To walk was the regular thing ... [My father] knew London as a pilot knows the intricate and devious waterways of a great port ... he liked the Surrey side, and we would walk miles along the Blackfriars or the Waterloo Road.”16

Though Sydney records that his childhood was “remarkably placid” he goes on to add that the later history of “our family was a history of the unde-signed, the unexpected, of bolts, often calamitous, out of the blue”. 17

At the age of nine Sydney was sent to a preparatory school in Worthing while the family home moved to Elstree in Hertfordshire, just outside London. Sydney’s father accompanied him on the train to Worthing “and with us went another boy and his mother, the wife of a Gray’s Inn barrister. I had never met the boy before, nor his mother; but my father seemed to know her well. Perhaps he had met the barrister professionally or at their club. At any rate, we were both of us new boys, and soon became chummy.”18

This arrangement was repeated at the beginning of each term: the two boys, now the best of friends, being accom-panied by the two adults. “I sometimes

wondered why they did,” writes Syd-ney. “It seemed unnecessary, as we were fully capable of travelling unescorted, and did so on the return journey (at the end of term). In the train they used to pay little attention to us, but to be taken up with themselves. At the age I was then, I was innocent enough to draw no inferences from this.”19

Sydney’s school friend enlightened him: “His father had been down to see him ... and had told him that he must think no more about his mother; that she had gone away and he would never see her again. She had become a bad woman, and he was taking him away from the school because it was my father who had made her bad, and he wished to part his son from the son of that man.”20

Sydney had heard nothing of this from home: “Both my parents were still writing, and I hoped for the best. But I did notice that my father’s letters now had his office address on them, while my mother’s were from our home at Elstree.”21

At the end of the summer term Sydney returned to Elstree. “At home I found my mother and two younger brothers and was told that I should be seeing my father soon, but that he was now living in London ... My mother had not said a derogatory word of him, and I noticed no change in her appear-ance or manner. Grown-ups being a law unto themselves, I did not probe into the question of my father’s absence. If he was living in London now, that was his and my mother’s business. It was a grown-ups’ affair altogether. Its effects might be regrettable, but whatever they were they had to be ac-cepted, as one accepts a wet day or a cold in the head. There is always the consciousness of living in a different

36


All post-fire damage photos courtesy of Grice, Small & Petit


37

All restoration photos courtesy of GVK-Siya Zama


38


world from the grown-up; of meeting them only when they stepped on your territory; of never being able to meet them on theirs. When they chose they shut themselves entirely off from you, so that it was impossible to know very much about them. I was a few months past my eleventh birthday.”22

The day after his arrival at Elstree Sydney went to London with his elder brother, William, where they met his father. “He was at his office and he took us to lunch, and then out to the Oval where there was a cricket match. He was as unchanged as my mother, and easily the liveliest of our party. For that matter, he was usually the liveliest of any party; but today he was particularly jolly: to have escaped from the office, to see some cricket, and to have us with him. Had I been a little older and known what I knew, I should have thought it all rather mysterious.”23

The new school term found Sydney attending Aldenham, a private school near Elstree where his older brother had preceded him. Occasionally their father would visit the two boys and they would go out walking together. One visit stood out in Sydney’s memory: “Our father descended on us and took us in a wagonnette to Croxley, where he was staying, in a cottage facing the Green. It was a glorious outing, with green peas and lamb and cherry pie for dinner ... Then, after a happy afternoon, back through the leafy lanes in the summer twilight. That was the last time I saw him for several years.”24

“He had gone, we were told, to South Africa and, we, later on, were to follow him. Here was the news, and here was the material for mystery, had I seen it as such.”25

“Nine or ten years later I heard the whole story from my older brother – as

much of it, that is, as he could tell me, and as much as I ever heard, for there were puzzling gaps in it. My father had bolted with the lady. It looked, as my brother said, as if he had gone temporar-ily out of his mind, for after staying a week with her on the Channel Islands, he returned home. Whether they quar-relled, or whether he simply told her that all was over, I never learned.”26

“But explanations were necessary, on his part as on the lady’s (their absence not having been accounted for in ad-vance, I suppose) and her husband and my mother then came into possession of certain facts. The immediate sequel was divorce proceedings, instituted by the barrister. The case was fought, and filled, my brother said, columns in the London papers. The husband got his decree. For my father the result was professional ruin, for people then were more particular than they are now, and he was a well-known man. Moreover, although he did not specialise, he did a great deal of domestic architecture. He hung on till he saw that he had no hope of living the scandal down, then decided to go to South Africa, which was booming owing to the discovery of gold there. Almost at once he was on his feet again, and in less than two years had built a comfortable practice and acquired a second reputation. But what he had lost could never, in South Africa, be regained, for he had been on the threshold of a great career.”27

Initially Powell and his wife agreed to separate but “it was some time before my mother made up her mind what to do. She had some private means, but not enough to bring up a young family with, and she yielded to my father’s pleadings for reconciliation. But she had taken a hurt which was never quite to heal.”28 A year after Powell had gone to South


39


Africa, where he set up an architectural practice in Durban, he was joined by his elder son, William. His wife Anne, to-gether with Sydney and his two younger brothers, Owen and Stewart, followed a year later.29

The Powells lived in a house in Ridge Road on the “extreme edge of the Be-rea, the residential hill suburb”30 and Sydney attended Durban High School. “With my father and brother I walked of a morning to a bus terminus; and we took first the bus and then a tram for town. I brought my lunch with me and sometimes had it at my father’s office (at 29 Field Street), which was a large block that he had built. His reputation was growing.”31

Among the other structures designed by Powell in Durban are the dining hall in the Durban Club (1890); the public baths in Field Street (1891) and Durban Boys High School (1894). In Pieterma-ritzburg he designed the Victoria Club in Langalibalele (Longmarket) Street (1895), the Victoria Hall at Maritzburg College (1897), and the Colonial Build-ing in Church Street (1895-1901).

A competition for the design of the Colonial Building in Church Street was announced on 18 July 1894, the prize for the winning design was £100. Powell won the competition in February 1895 and was subsequently appointed architect at a fee of £33 953. Edward Gwinnett Bompas was named Resident Clerk of Works to oversee the construction. The building was required to house the staff and records of the Deeds Office, Surveyor General and Audit Department.

Construction did not go smoothly. On 16 April 1896, Powell wrote to J. Barnes, Engineer: Public Works Department, requesting the removal of Bompas, citing several reasons,

including Bompas “not keeping the same hours as the men, being scarcely ever on the scaffold, being employed by the government on other work, [and] undertaking private work”.32 He also noted that Bompas’s age rendered him “unfit for the arduous task entailed by a full performance of the duties attached to his office”.33

By January 1897 the situation had not been remedied and Powell wrote again to Barnes pointing out that Bompas’s inadequacy was “due to his advancing years and the decline of those powers so essential to the holder of such a posi-tion”.34 Powell detailed several errors in construction that had required to be rectified due to Bompas’s poor perfor-mance, as well as “serious mistakes made in the setting out of the main front of Block A involving the pulling-down and re-erection of a considerable por-tion of the work now done”.35 Bompas was relieved of his duties and appointed to a post in the drawing office of the Public Works Department and a Mr Farley appointed Clerk of Works.

The foundation stone was laid on March 23, 1897, by the Governor of Natal, Sir W. Hely-Hutchinson. Shortly afterwards the masons went on strike and a long debate began about the necessary fire precautions for the build-ing and the type of hydraulic systems required for the provision of water. In a letter of 16 July 1897, Powell noted that “urinal accommodation in the Co-lonial Secretary’s lavatory [was] likely to prove a nuisance [as] the pressure of water supply on the upper floor is extremely poor and anything but an automatic constant discharge of water would have no chance of keeping the place sweet”.36

As sections of the building were fin-ished civil servants took up residence


40


and the debate about fire precautions continued. On 20 July 1899, Powell wrote a detailed letter “regarding the fire-resisting construction of these buildings, particularly referring to the Deeds, Surveyor General’s, and Audit Departments”.37

Powell described how the design incorporated fire resistant features in-cluding “solid concrete floors covered with wood blocks, iron and concrete ceilings, and thick walls”.38 He also had advised that “no wooden fittings should be used” in these departments and that the desks “should be made of cast iron standards, sheet iron desk tops, covered with a veneer of wood for the sake of comfort”.39

During construction Powell had fur-ther “urged the government to render this building less liable to take fire by the erection of outside iron shutters to the windows of the departments above referred to. We also recommended the government erect fire-resisting doors across the corridors, dividing the three blocks, which, if closed, would prevent these long corridors becoming the means of communication by fire from one block to another.”40

Powell had also suggested installing a system of hydrants. “We submitted an entire scheme for fire-extinguishing ap-pliances throughout the building, with plans from ourselves and estimates from responsible persons.”41 The government had responded saying there was insuffi-cient water pressure to operate hydrants, to which Powell had countered that he be allowed to “insert these hydrants, so that as soon as pressure was obtain-able, they could be made use of”.42 In the meantime Powell advised, “as an alternative measure, we should be al-lowed to erect tanks within the roofs of the blocks, capable of holding from

10 000 to 20 000 gallons of water, which would be supplied by pumping water from the mains, and available for any emergency”.43

In the final paragraph “although not within our province” Powell drew at-tention to “the practice followed by the civil servants of smoking in the building, having in regard the quantity of inflammable material. It is hoped that in mentioning this subject, it will be understood that our intention is solely the preservation of the building.”44

The Colonial Building was com-pleted in 1901 but Powell did not live to see it. His son Sydney records: “my father’s health had been failing for some time past and in 1900 he died – in his fiftieth year.”45

During construction it was decided to add another floor to the building but when this decision was taken Powell was already too ill to work. Conse-quently this floor, the domed top storey, was designed by his son, William, who had joined his father’s practice as junior partner.

Following Powell’s death his widow, Anne, returned to England – “my moth-er had never liked Natal: the climate did not suit her (and as much as my father liked it, I doubt if it suited his constitu-tion) and she took the two youngest boys back with her to England.”46

Sydney’s elder brother, William, con-tinued the Powell architectural practice in Durban, at least until 1903. He was a founder member of the Natal Institute of Architects established in 1902 but his name disappears from the Natal Alma-nac after 1904 and there is no further record of him in South Africa.

However Sydney remained in South Africa and saw service in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Sydney also intended to become an architect but dur-


41


ing his teens he had a stormy relation-ship with his father and when he was due to be articled to his father, as had been his brother William, “my father told me that he feared we were too much alike in character – by which he meant too self-willed, I think – to pull together in the same office”. Powell refused to be articled to another architect: “This was not from filial affection ... but because I knew that as an architect he had no equal in South Africa.”47

Powell then decided to try for an exhibition to gain entrance to university at Oxford in England but this plan came to an end due to problems at school, which led to a violent quarrel with his father. In the meantime, Powell had begun writing. A sonnet was published in the London magazine, Temple Bar. Powell’s father was so proud he had copies of the sonnet printed and handed them out to his friends at the Durban Club. “It was a happy incident,” says Powell, “and I can’t remember that we ever quarrelled afterwards.”48

Powell finally embarked on a career in the civil service with the help of his father – “[he] knew something about it, for he was engaged in building the new offices at Pietermaritzburg, the capi-tal”.49 Powell found the work boring but kept at his writing. He saw the advent of the Anglo-Boer War as an opportunity to break “through my confines, if I could find a way of utilising it”.50 He knew someone in the Public Works Depart-ment “who had been granted leave to organise an Indian ambulance corps, and he wanted leaders for it. He said he would take me if I could get leave. I applied for it and got it.”51

Powell served with the ambulance corps in the campaign to relieve Lady-smith. “The poorly nourished Indian bearers suffered greatly,” he noted, “but

a young Indian barrister pulled them through. He was one of our leaders, and he took my attention at once by his gentle, bright manner, his aliveness, and his complete unselfishness. His name was Gandhi. I met him afterwards in Durban, and – believe it or not – we had a drink together. In a public bar.”52

When Ladysmith was relieved, the corps was disbanded and Powell joined a mounted irregular corps but when they were not sent to the front he resigned.

According to Powell’s nephew, Geoffrey Powell, in his introduction to a reprint of his uncle’s memoir Ad-ventures of a Wanderer, during the war Powell “contributed to a Durban paper and he also wrote the first guide book to Durban”. 53

Powell’s wanderings took him to Southern Rhodesia, Australia, Tahiti and New Zealand. During World War 1 he was severely wounded at Gallipoli, later marrying his nurse, Margaret. They settled in Australia, where he made a living writing novels for the railway book-stall trade. With a small legacy they bought an isolated cottage in the Blue Mountains where their near-est neighbours were Norman Lindsay, the artist and writer, and his wife. In 1925 Powell decided to move to Eng-land to further his literary career. He died there in 1952. During his lifetime he published 15 novels, two volumes of memoirs and a collection of verse.

****After its completion the Colonial

Building had a chequered history. In 1910, when South Africa was declared a union, Pretoria became the country’s administrative capital and the building then became the headquarters of the provincial government which subse-quently moved to premises in Pieterma-


42


ritz Street and in the 1970s to Natalia in Langalibalele (Longmarket) Street. The Deeds Office and the Surveyor Gen-eral’s Office remained in the Colonial Buildings before moving to their current premises in Pietermaritz Street.

Though the Colonial Building was a declared a national monument in 1991 its future remained uncertain. “For a while the administration and research staff of the Natal Museum occupied the building while the top floor of the museum ... was being constructed, then it was the turn of the Small Claims Court.” Thereafter, from 1997, the Colonial Buildings stood “empty and neglected”.54

By 2004 the “the sturdy outer facade hid a death trap of collapsing ceilings, wobbly floorboards eaten by woodbor-ers and, in parts, large gaping holes where the floors had simply caved in and where structures like fireplaces had been removed.” 55 The deserted building had also attracted the attention of vandals and thieves. “In 1998 the KwaZulu-Heritage Council discovered that thieves had removed all the copper flat-roof sheeting from the roof, allow-ing the rain to pour into the building. The entire security system had been removed as well as the cast aluminium staircase capping, two tons of lead lin-ing from the toilets and all the cast iron Victorian fireplace hearths.”56

Over the years various uses for the building were proposed to the city council. “In 1989, the Security Police wanted to use the building as their headquarters but this was opposed by council and the City Residents’ and Ratepayers’ Association. There was a furore in 1988 when the Department of Justice decided to use the building as the magistrate’s court. A high-powered delegation from council flew to Pretoria

to protest that the movement of prisoner and police vehicles would detract from the ambience of Church Street, which had just been pedestrianised. One of the proposals that council was considering was the conversion of the building into an ‘upmarket colonial hotel of national importance’. Following a visit by then minister of justice, Kobie Coetsee, plans to use the building as a magistrate’s court were put on hold.”57

“By 1990 there was talk that the building would be sold and in 1992 it was put up for sale, but there were no takers. Former city mayor, the late Pam Reid, along with a group of arts enthu-siasts, had made a bid in the eighties to have the building converted into a theatre and opera house complex. Plans were drawn by architect Gordon Small and the cost of the conversion at the time was one million rands. Reid was upset that the scheme was shelved until it finally sank without trace.”58

Finally, in 2004, plans were an-nounced for the restoration and refur-bishment of the building and a project team was appointed by the national Department of Public Works to restore it while also being sensitive to the needs of the new tenants, the Master of the High Court and Justice Department, and architect Nick Grice was appointed pro-ject leader. Once his designs and draw-ings were complete the documentation was handed over to the Department of Public Works who put the project out to tender in 2006.

A tender was subsequently awarded to G. Liviera and Sons but in May 2007 an interim order from the Durban High Court put a hold on matters pending a review and appeal against the decision by the Department of Public Works. This was the result of GVK-Siya Zama having taken legal action over the


43


awarding of the tender to G. Liviera and Sons. The Durban High Court judgment found in their favour and the site was handed over to GVK-Siya Zama on 25 June 2008 and work began. It was estimated it would take two years to complete the restoration.

Almost exactly a year later the dra-matic fire brought restoration to a halt. In July 2009 investigations “revealed that the fire that damaged the Colonial Building was started by a workman’s blowtorch igniting bitumen as he worked on the roof”.59 But, as noted above, the damage was not as bad as first thought; the restoration resumed and was completed in February 2011. According to a “fact sheet” issued by GVK-Siya Zama at the time, the project included complete refurbish-ment, renovation, rehabilitation, and waterproofing of the existing building. “Parts of the roof were replaced and re-waterproofed; in most cases this was done using applications such as lead, as it would have been when the building was originally built.”

The interior of the building had re-quired especial attention. “Ceilings and timber floors were replaced; as well as all electrical reticulation and plumbing. A new air-conditioning system was installed, along with extensive steel shelving and archive rooms, all in line with the requirements of the new ten-ants, the Master of the High Court and Justice Department.” “Where possible, original materials were re-used, where this was not possible, elements were replaced using similar materials as close as possible to the original.”

At a function to mark this event Grice said it had been a “privilege to be able to work on a building of this nature” and he paid tribute to William Henry Powell for his “marvellous control in

conceiving and designing a building like this in the first place”.60

NOTES1 “Reader snaps the perfect picture”, Kavith

Harrilal, Weekend Witness, p.7. 13 June 2009.2 “Landmark building gutted”, Sandile Waka-

Zamisa, Weekend Witness, p.3, 13 June 2009.3 Ibid.4 Ibid.5 Ibid.6 “The history of a city icon”, Sharon Dell, p.4,

Weekend Witness, 12 June 2009.7 Ibid.8 Letter from W.H. Powell to J.F.E. Barnes,

20 July 1897, Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, Vol. PWD2/22, PWD1267/1899.

9 “T-Rex clears up fire debris”, Angelo C. Louw, p.4,The Witness, 16 June, 2009.

10 Ibid.11 Ibid.12 The unpublished manuscript is titled Each

To His Taste – An Autobiography by Sydney Powell. A photocopy of a section of this manuscript was sent to the author by Sydney Powell’s nephew, the late Geoffrey Powell in 2003 and provided the basis for the article “A Victorian Affair” published in The Witness on 29 July 2004 of which this article is a much revised and enlarged version. The original manuscript, as well as books and other material relating to Sydney Powell, was donated to the National Library of Australia in 2003 by Geoffrey Powell where they are held as Papers of Sydney Powell, Bid ID 3646265. Each To His Taste is thought to have been written about 1942 and is a sequel to the earlier Adventures of a Wanderer published in 1928.

13 Each To His Taste MS, p.1.14 www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/arch_

bottom_left.php?archid=1302. Consulted 16 July 2012. According to this website an example of Powell’s work in London was “illustrated in Academy Architecture (1899:6): a house, No 34 Grosvenor Square in the fashionable Free Renaissance style.”

15 Each To His Taste MS, p.3.16 Ibid., pp.3-4.17 Ibid., p.2.18 Ibid., p.5.19 Ibid., pp. 8-9.20 Ibid., p.9.21 Ibid.22 Ibid., pp.9-10.23 Ibid., pp.10-11.24 Ibid., p.15.25 Ibid., pp.15-16.


44


26 Ibid., p.16.27 Ibid., pp.16-17.28 Ibid., p.17.29 In his introduction to the 1986 edition of

Sydney Powell’s Adventures of a Wanderer (see note 53) Geoffrey Powell states that a fifth son was born in Durban (p.vi). However there is no mention of this son in the Each To His Taste manuscript. Complicating matters, in my article “A Victorian Affair” published in The Witness on 29 July 2004 it states “Another son, Norman, was born in Durban.” I can find no mention of Norman in my correspondence with Geoffrey Powell and am unable find a source for “Norman”. Perhaps the name was mentioned in a telephone conversation.

30 Ibid., p.23.31 Ibid.32 Letter to J. Barnes from W.H. Powell,

Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, PWD 2/20, PWD1590/1896.

33 Ibid.34 Letter to J. Barnes from W.H. Powell dated

25 January 1897, Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, PWD 2/29, PWD242/1897.

35 Ibid. Powell had more success with his recommendation that marble be used for the stairway from the entrance hall. The cost was £660 as opposed to £480 for stone. J. Barnes, Engineer, Public Works Department considered the longevity of marble justified the extra expense.

36 Letter from W.H. Powell to J. Barnes, 20 July 1897, Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, Vol. PWD2/22, PWD1267/1899.

37 Ibid.38 Ibid.39 Ibid.40 Ibid.41 Ibid.42 Ibid.43 Ibid.44 Ibid.45 Each To His Taste MS, p.52.46 Ibid.47 Ibid., p.36.

48 Ibid., p.37.49 Ibid.p.38.50 Ibid., p.50.51 Ibid.52 Ibid., pp.50-51.53 Adventures of a Wanderer, Sydney Powell,

first published by Jonathan Cape 1928. This quotation is from Geoffrey Powell’s introduction to the 1986 edition published by Hutchinson, p.x. Geoffrey Powell (1914-2005), soldier, author and historian, was the only child of Owen Powell, the son of the architect William Powell, and his wife Kitty. During World War Two while serving with the 1st Airborne Division he took part in the battle of Arnhem in September 1944 where he won a Military Cross. After the war Powell served in Java, Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus. He transferred to the Civil Service and for 12 years worked for MI5, on security policy and counter-espionage. On leaving MI5 in 1977, he founded the Campden Bookshop in Chipping Campden and also helped to establish the Campden and District Archaeological and History Society. Among his books are The Kandyan Wars: The British Conquest of Ceylon (1973), Men at Arnhem (1976) and Suez: The Double War (in collaboration with Roy Fullick)(1979); Plumer: The Soldiers’ General (1990) and Buller: A Scapegoat? (1994).

54 “New lease brings new life”, Nalini Naidoo, The Witness, 28 July 2004, p.9.

55 Ibid.56 Ibid.57 Ibid.58 Ibid.59 “Blowtorch sparked Colonial inferno”, Angelo

C. Louw, p.4, The Witness, 3 July 2009.60 “Restoration: work on city’s Colonial Building

almost complete”, p.3, The Witness, 23 February 2011.

Natalia 42 (2012), Anil Nauriya pp. 45 – 64

Gandhi and some contemporary African leaders

from KwaZulu-Natalby Anil Nauriya

EXCEPT FOR some visits, mainly to India and England, M.K. Gandhi (1869-1948) was

in South Africa during the period May1893-July1914. Some scholars in the last few decades have suggested that Gandhi and the African leadership in early 20th-century South Africa had little or no awareness of or contact with one another and were like ships crossing at night. A closer scrutiny, however, indi-cates multiple contacts between Gandhi and the African leadership. Evidently these were more extensive than has hitherto been assumed. This article is, however, confined to Gandhi’s interface with African leaders from what is now known as KwaZulu-Natal.

That Gandhi’s ethnographic ideas had evolved considerably even while he was in South Africa is evidenced by his remarks in a speech at the Johannesburg YMCA on 18 May 1908: “If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races commingle and produce a civilisation that perhaps the world has not yet seen?”1

Gandhi’s African interface in Natal before Phoenix-InandaIt is generally assumed that the initial interface that Gandhi had with the African leadership in KwaZulu Natal was when he met John Langalibalele

45


Gandhi and some contemporary African leaders from KwaZulu-Natal

46


Dube (1871-1946) in 1905. By this time Gandhi had a journal of his own, Indian Opinion, which had commenced publication from Durban in June 1903, enabling him to express himself on topics of his choice. Before this, in the period from 1893, his journalism in or about South Africa usually took the form of occasional pamphlets and let-ters to editors of the established Natal press. In the pre-Indian Opinion phase, information touching on Gandhi’s in-terface with the African leadership is therefore not as definite as it is for the subsequent period. It is not possible to assert categorically that such interaction existed; nor is it possible, contrariwise, to rule it out. There are certain things one may reasonably infer from what is known even about this early period. The African journal Inkanyiso, published from Pietermaritzburg, had taken early note of Gandhi. Founded as an Anglican Christian journal, Inkanyiso Yase Natal was effectively under independent African control, chiefly of Solomon Kumalo.2 The significantly sympathetic

interest the journal took in Gandhi was such that it seems unlikely that Gandhi himself would have been unaware of it or that he did not have some manner of contact with Inkanyiso’s primarily African journalists and, with what was, from around January 1895, its African proprietorship. The journal expressed satisfaction on learning that “the Natal Law Society’s objection to Mr Ghandi [sic] being allowed to practise in the Supreme Court of the Colony has been overruled”.3 “We know not,” it continued, “whether prejudice against his colour, or fear for the loss of fees, prompted the opposition ….”4 It saw common factors between the Indian and the African plight: “Already has it been intimated that it is advisable in the interests of the white mechanic that Natives should retire from the struggle to gain a livelihood lest amongst the “survival of the fittest” we should see too many dark skins, and now we find that the Indian, however qualified, must keep back too. How absurd prejudice is when you come to think of it!” 5

Having come under African own-ership from the beginning of 1895, Inkanyiso’s editorial of 4 January 1895 referred to itself as being the only such paper in Natal.6 Citing discrimination against himself on grounds of colour in Durban’s restaurants, Inkanyiso’s editor referred in this context also to Gandhi’s experience:

Mr M.K. Gandhi in his “Open Letter” pointed to the fact that even respectable Indians had been refused a night’s lodging in certain hotels, but he was violently attacked by most of the South African journals, and told that he was guilty of gross exaggeration. It was no doubt felt that treatment such as he complained of was unworthy of Englishmen, hence the indignation.7

M.K. Gandhi in London, 1909 (Photograph: National Gandhi

Museum, New Delhi)


47


On political issues such as the ques-tion of franchise, Inkanyiso supported Gandhi and the Indian position:

Mr M.K. Gandhi’s very temperate letter in the Mercury on the subject of the Indian franchise has only to be read by any justice loving person in order to be convinced that the Indian in Natal is being deprived of what is his by right. Mr Gandhi very shrewdly points out that the Indian would be perfectly satisfied to have, what the Mercury and others have always admitted he ought to have, viz., the same rights here as he would enjoy in India. In his own country he is not excluded from what the Englishman is admitted to and neither should he be in South Africa if justice is of any value to the colonist.8

“But,” added Inkanyiso, those who

take a narrow and selfish view of things have never yet been able to see the real beauties of such qualities as justice and fairness, and we must not be surprised if the lofty and humanitarian sentiments which it is so easy, and often so convenient, for men to give expression to, are so often set aside and forgotten when they should be practised.9

A few days later Inkanyiso noted edi-torially the concern that had been caused among colonists by the establishment of the “Indian Congress”, a reference to the Natal Indian Congress which had been founded in 1894.10 The journal asked, pointing to the colonist, that

if his conscience tells him that he is behaving justly and honourably towards the coloured races in the country, he will not surely mind a little bit of organisation among either the Natives or the Indians who desire no more than the establishment of friendly relations between all sections of the community, based on the firm foundation of justice and fairness.11

It noted also Gandhi’s benign ex-planation of the objects of the Indian Congress and congratulated the colo-nists “on their escape from an imaginary danger”.12 Gandhi’s explanation of the objects of the Natal Indian Congress had been published a couple of days earlier.13 In continuation of its firm sup-port for Indian grievances, Inkanyiso observed:

It is amusing to read the various arguments which are brought against the admission of the Indian to the franchise. That these arguments are, all of them, weak and often absurd is evident to those who hear them: and what is more, they go to show that the objection to Indians and Natives enjoying the franchise is not made on principle, but from prejudice.14

In yet another editorial note in the same issue of Inkanyiso, it was sug-gested that “it would only be just to ad-mit Natives and Indians to the franchise, but this privilege is refused them”.15 Yet “what the Colonist is so much alarmed at are the political objects of the Indian Congress”.16 The journal reiterated its support for granting the franchise “to all those of Her Majesty’s subjects in Natal” whose qualifications were equal to Europeans, asserting strongly: “No honest and fair reasons have yet been given as to why the Indians should be excluded….”17 A week later Inkanyiso noted: “The Indian Congress in Natal is being bitterly attacked and Mr Ghandi [sic] abused presumably for standing ready to protect Indians from injustice. In Natal this is not surprising.”18 In the following month the journal remarked:

At the Richmond meeting on the subject of the Indian franchise, Mr Harrow said that in New Zealand the Maoris were allowed several representatives in the House. He


48


thought that Natal should allow the Asiatics a representative: Mr Ghandi [sic] would be superior to anyone already there. So with the Natives – let them appoint a man. Mr C. Hammond and Mr G. Alexander of course vetoed so fair a proposal. Is it not a farce – nay more, hypocrisy – to talk of defending Native interests against the Indians and yet to deny the coloured races the privilege of appointing one or two gentlemen (white) to look after their interests? Does not this look as if the colonists were determined that the interests of both Natives and Indians shall be neglected if possible? It certainly does.19

Given such solidarity and consistent support by Inkanyiso to Gandhi’s efforts and Indian causes, one may discount the possibility that Gandhi was not acquainted with the journal or with its proprietor-editor, Solomon Kumalo.

Actually, in April-May 1895 there had been a controversy in the Natal press, arising from a series of articles,

“Christianity vs Natives” published in Inkanyiso. Gandhi was, as we shall see, aware of this debate. Certain mission-ary attitudes in Africa were specifically critiqued in a series of articles published in Inkanyiso beginning on 19 April and concluding on 31 May 1895.20 Provoked by the Inkanyiso articles, The Times of Natal joined issue on 18 June 1895, while the Bishop of Natal in an address rebutted The Times of Natal, and “practically endorsed Inkanyiso’s indictment”.21 Referring to the bishop’s address, Pyarelal, Gandhi’s secretary in India and later biographer, writes: “A well-marked clipping of this address preserved among Gandhiji’s records bespeaks the deep interest it evoked in him.”22 Bishop Arthur Hamilton Baynes’s address appears to have been frowned upon in a section of the Natal press, which suggested that his ideas would change with time. But the bishop earned the respect of Gandhi who had followed the debate quite closely.23

M.K. Gandhi leading a small group of striking Indian coal mine workers out of Newcastle on October 29, 1913, en route to the Transvaal border to defy the

government’s Restriction Act and to court arrest(Photograph: National Gandhi Museum, New Delhi)


49


April 1895, when the Inkanyiso-initiated debate was on, happened to be the very month of Gandhi’s own visit to the Christian mission at Mariannhill near Pinetown, a village “16 miles by rail from Durban”. The Mariannhill monastery was established and run by the Trappists, a German Catholic order. Seeking them out initially for their simplicity and vegetarianism, about which Gandhi had read while he was in England, he was pleasantly surprised by what he found at Mariannhill. “The principle of liberty, equality and fra-ternity is carried out in its entirety,” he noted.24 The emphasis on handwork and the various workshops – “blacksmiths’, tinsmiths’, carpenters’, shoemakers’, tanners’ ”, the oil machine and the print-ing department – had impressed Gan-dhi, as had the convent and the skills taught there. “They have the ironing, sewing, straw-hat manufacturing and knitting departments, where one can see the Native girls, dressed in clean costumes, working assiduously.”25 He found the quarters for the African in-mates somewhat cramped – remarking on “the closeness and the stuffy air”, the beds were “separated by only single boards” and “there was hardly space enough to walk”.26 But on the whole Gandhi came back satisfied that the Trappists believed in no colour distinc-tions. He praised the Trappists for their good treatment of the over 1 200 Afri-cans who lived on the mission: “They believe in no colour distinctions. These Natives are accorded the same treat-ment as the whites. They are mostly children. They get the same food as the brothers, and are dressed as well as they themselves are.” 27

Whether the issues raised in Inkanyi-so had a bearing on the timing of Gan-dhi’s visit to Mariannhill is difficult to

say for certain. But some significance of the write-up in Inkanyiso may be sought in the fact that this outspoken African journal had put forth a broad rather than a narrow or denominational view of Christianity. This would most definitely have struck a chord with Gandhi. It had seemed to postulate a Tolstoyan view of Christianity for emulation, thus possibly contributing, directly or indirectly, to stimulating Gandhi’s life-long passion for the thinker. Inkanyiso was not pub-lished after 1896. Its regular readers would have noticed a name occurring with increasing regularity as the author of some communications published in it – that of John L. Dube.28

The connection with John Dube There appears to have been a growing interest on Gandhi’s part in the question of land as it affected Africans. Some indication of this is available between the founding of Indian Opinion in June 1903 and the shifting of the Internation-al Printing Press and the Indian Opinion offices to Phoenix after Gandhi founded that settlement in November-December 1904 in John Dube’s Inanda neighbour-hood.29 Dube’s Ilanga Lase Natal had started publication a few months before Indian Opinion. In early 1904 The Natal Mercury carried a letter, touching on the subject of African land rights, by Josiah Mapumulo, who was apparently connected with the Native Vigilance Committee in Natal. Mapumulo, who would come to be known in subsequent decades as a leading intellectual and regular writer in John Dube’s Ilanga Lase Natal, pointed out in his letter to The Mercury that Africans were being deprived of all but the inferior lands; he proceeded to warn: “We won’t sit complacently still while our country is being parcelled out exclusively for


50


Europeans. It must not be forgotten, too, that we have an army of sympathisers in the British Parliament who would read-ily take up our cause, and fight strenu-ously for our legitimate grievances till we get redress.”30 The letter appears to have impressed Gandhi, who still had faith in the sense of fairness of the British Parliament. Mapumulo’s letter was carefully cut out and preserved in Gandhi’s papers and forms part of his collection preserved in the library at Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad, whose database holds the press clipping under the title “Native Vigilance Commit-tee”, 28 January 1904. As we shall see, during his subsequent years in South Africa, beginning specifically from the very next year, Gandhi would speak up for African land rights. Mapumulo’s letter reveals another characteristic that underlay Gandhi’s own outlook at this time, that of counter-posing the British Government or constitutional institutions against the discrimination encountered in South Africa.

Nelson Mandela has observed:

M.K Gandhi and John Dube, first president of the African National Congress, were neighbours in Inanda, and each influenced the other, for both men established, at about the same time, two monuments to human development within a stone’s throw of each other, the Ohlange Institute and the Phoenix Settlement. Both institutions suffer today the trauma of the violence that has overtaken that region; hopefully, both will rise again, phoenix-like, to lead us to undreamed heights.31

The extent of the interface between Dube and Gandhi has been the subject of discussion.32 In her biography of John Dube, Heather Hughes implies that Gandhi’s first visit to Dube’s Ohlange institution took place only in Novem-ber 1912.33 Maureen Swan, an earlier scholar on Gandhi in South Africa, had suggested a higher degree of impact: the inspiration for Gandhi’s Inanda settle-ment lay not in the ideas of Ruskin and

M.K. Gandhi and others under arrest, 1913. He is seen on the right, standing next to Miss Sonja Schlesin, his secretary

(Photograph: National Gandhi Museum, New Delhi)


51


Tolstoy alone, she suggested, but in the more immediate example of John Dube:

John L Dube, an American-educated Zulu, editor of the weekly Ilanga lase Natal, was already directing a communal settlement at Phoenix when Gandhi decided to buy land in the same area. Dube’s settlement included a school and training facilities for various trades, all of which Gandhi’s commune was eventually to offer. If Gandhi had no prior knowledge of Dube’s work, then the establishment of his commune, in the same area, is a most striking coincidence.34

In 1905 Gandhi, writing in the Gu-jarati section of his journal, quoted appreciatively a “very impressive” speech that John Dube had made in his presence at the Natal residence of Marshall Campbell. In the course of what Gandhi described as an “eloquent speech”, Dube had argued that for the Africans “there was no country other than South Africa; and to deprive them of their rights over lands, etc., was like banishing them from their home.”35

Hailing him as an African “of whom one should know”, Gandhi expressed his appreciation for Dube, who “imparts education to his brethren, teaching them various trades and crafts and preparing them for the battle of life”.36 In the context of the interest that Gandhi had started taking in African land rights, as indicated also by the careful preserva-tion of the Mapumulo letter, Dube’s words fell, so far as Gandhi was con-cerned, on receptive soil. In addition to the land question, on other matters as well, Gandhi remained impressed with and in contact with Dube and the institu-tions the latter established at Ohlange.

Dube had been much influenced by Booker T. Washington and his institu-tion at Tuskegee in the United States.37 Two years earlier, in 1903, Gandhi had

written a significant article in appre-ciation of Booker T. Washington and the educational aspects of his work at Tuskegee.38 Relying on an article in the journal East and West, Gandhi set out the facts of Washington’s life, his birth as a slave, his intrepid desire for an education, his association with the Hampton Normal and Agricultural In-stitute in Virginia and then the founding of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Gandhi observed:

His idea about combining industrial education with a knowledge of letters merely, as might well be imagined, was not taken up enthusiastically. He therefore travelled from place to place, lecturing to the people on the advantage of his system. In his struggle for reform, he found Miss Olivia Davidson to be a worthy helper, whom he afterwards married.39

It has been suggested that John Dube’s industrial school was “most representative of Tuskegee’s influence in South Africa”.40

Although Indian Opinion focused mainly on Indian concerns, the impact of John Dube’s speech on Gandhi can-not be discounted. Gandhi’s support for the land rights and educational needs of Africans is reflected in his journal’s multiple references to John Dube and to the latter’s paper, Ilanga Lase Natal. A couple of months after the reference by Gandhi to John Dube’s August 1905 speech, Gandhi’s paper quoted appre-ciatively and in extenso a “trenchant” reply given by the editor of Ilanga lase Natal, meaning, in all likelihood, John Dube himself, to a correspondent, Henry Ancketill, who had opposed the acquisition of landed property by Af-ricans.41 This was followed by further references, as we will see presently.


52


Meanwhile, with the coming of 1906, the poll tax issue boiled over into the Bhambatha rebellion. Even as Gandhi asked Indians to offer their services to the government in a bid to perform what he saw as his duty as a subject of the Empire and prepared to establish an ambulance corps, his sympathies and dilemmas appeared to approximate to John Dube’s own. Referring to the inci-dent in the course of the African revolt in Natal before promulgation of mar-tial law in which two policemen were killed, Gandhi commented wryly on the official response in which some Afri-cans “were prosecuted under the martial law, and 12 of them were condemned to death and blown up at the mouth of a cannon …. Twelve lives have been taken for two.”42 Gandhi’s anguish at the execution of 12 Africans is again evident in his contemporary account, albeit using language then current, of a search and clash that followed:

The small party of soldiers that was on Bambata’s [sic] trail included the Englishmen who had shot the 12 Kaffirs. Bambata [sic] and his men encircled the party and, though they fought very bravely, the soldiers were defeated in the end and managed to escape with great difficulty. Some of them were killed. The dead included those who had shot the 12 Kaffirs. Such is the law of God. The executioners met their death within two days.43

Interestingly, the next issue of Gan-dhi’s journal carried, with the heading “A Strange Coincidence”, an extract from John Dube’s Ilange Lase Natal which expressed a similar thought:

A remarkable thing about the first fight with Bambata [sic] is that the four troopers who were killed were all in the firing party at the execution of the 12 men at Richmond. What does this

mean? Call it a remarkable coincidence if you please, but we regard it as having a very deep meaning, whether we are superstitious or not.44

It is evident that Gandhi had come to notice a conflict between his sense of duty and his sense of justice.

With the 1906 experience, Gandhi became even more conscious of African rights, especially with regard to matters concerning land and education. In an editorial in late 1906, Gandhi’s paper heaped praise on John Dube along with Joseph Baynes as also on the Bishop of Natal, Arthur Hamilton Baynes. A sermon by the bishop was appreciated for urging that Africans and Indians in Natal be freed from their “admit-ted grievances”; Joseph Baynes was commended for his criticism of the Unoccupied Land Tax Bill, then before Parliament, which was iniquitous as between Europeans on the one hand and Africans and Indians on the other; and John Dube was hailed as a “self-sacrificing leader”, who had “boldly published” a manifesto in Ilanga Lase Natal, criticising colonial policies that worked unfairness towards Africans.45

It appears that both Dube’s Ilanga Lase Natal and Gandhi’s Indian Opin-ion were conscious that the espousal of the causes of their respective con-stituencies led occasionally to less than enthusiastic references to those outside these constituencies and that this phenomenon called for correction. Towards the end of 1906, Gandhi’s journal carried, under the heading “Fair Enough”, the following extract from Ilanga Lase Natal: “We candidly admit that whatever may be found in our policy that does not admit of the good of all persons, must be deleted.” 46 As we shall see, some months later, Gandhi on his part would, in clear recognition


53


of the justice of African demands, begin to commend to the African people the path of passive resistance.

There was enough familiarity be-tween Gandhi’s Phoenix institution and John Dube’s Ohlange for developments at the Ohlange institution intermittently to be reported in Gandhi’s paper. For example, the addition of a building at Ohlange was reported.47 Important functions at Ohlange were noticed and Gandhi’s journal heartily commended the efforts John Dube had made towards African education, holding him out as an inspiration for all coloured people. The address by the Governor of Natal (Sir Matthew Nathan) at the opening of the new school at the Ohlange Industrial Institute was reported at length in Gan-dhi’s journal which commented:

Mr Dube is to be warmly congratulated upon a success that has culminated in a ceremony such as took place at the Ohlange Mission Station last Monday. He must have felt, when he heard Sir Matthew Nathan’s wise words of encouragement, that his years of strenuous endeavour on behalf of his people had not been spent in vain. Mr Dube is a splendid disciple of Mr Booker Washington, and his energetic faith is to be commended to all presently designated “inferior” peoples in South Africa. If the colonial-born Indian will but take heart from so bright an example, and realise that there is something greater even than the ideal of becoming an office employee, he will have done much to better his own condition and that of the land of his birth.48

There is little doubt that the sense of appreciation between the two neigh-bouring leaders and institutions devel-oped on both sides. The Gandhi-led Indian struggle, involving passive resistance by courting arrest, started

in the Transvaal. It evoked an editorial appreciation in Ilanga Lase Natal which was reproduced in Indian Opinion dur-ing Gandhi’s imprisonment in Johan-nesburg in January 1908. Dube’s paper expressed admiration for the “the coura-geous manner in which the Indians are acting in the Transvaal”, observing that “it is common for the Bantu to admire pluck” and that this was so “especially when the plucky contender has a fair claim for Justice”.49

With such editorials appearing in the African press, fears were voiced in colonial circles that similar movements could develop among the African peo-ple. Responding to these apprehensions in an interview to The Natal Mercury, Gandhi observed:

… if the natives were to adopt our methods, and replace physical violence by passive resistance, it would be a positive gain to South Africa. Passive resisters, when they are in the wrong, do mischief only to themselves. When they are in the right, they succeed in spite of any odds. It is not difficult to see in Natal, that, if Bambata, instead of murdering Inspector Hunt, had simply taken up passive resistance, because he felt that the imposition of the poll-tax was unjustifiable, much bloodshed would have been avoided….50

This stance was more than a reit-eration of Gandhi’s position against violent action; it was also an invita-tion to the African people that Gandhi would repeat more than once before leaving South Africa. Clearly, Gandhi was fine-tuning his political posi-tions so as to place himself as far as possible in a position of minimal or “no-contradiction” with respect to the African leadership. With increased mutual respect and appreciation, inter-action between the two neighbouring


54


institutions was bound to increase also on other, including cultural, planes. A visit by the Phoenix Settlement School to the Ohlange Industrial School was reported in Gandhi’s journal some three weeks before his release from Pretoria prison. Exhibiting some familiarity with Ohlange, Gandhi’s journal noted in its report of the visit: “The Ohlange School has already outgrown its fine two-storey building so that Standard III with its 37 pupils has to be taught in the old refectory. The carpenter shops, smithy and turning benches were also much admired.”51 A musical performance held at the Ohlange Industrial School was also appreciatively reported in Gandhi’s journal in the following month.52

Increasingly, Gandhi emphasised the inter-connectedness of African and Asian interests, even if not their amal-gamated identity. The Zulu chief Dinu-zulu had been tried and convicted on various counts of high treason. He was defended by W.P. Schreiner, a famous lawyer based in the Cape whose sister, the writer Olive Schreiner, became a deeply valued friend of Gandhi. In 1909

Gandhi had complimented W.P. Sch-reiner, when both were on a visit to Lon-don, for his “noble and self-sacrificing work in connection with the welfare of the coloured races of South Africa under the Draft South Africa Act.”53 Dinuzulu, who was serving a term in prison, was discharged soon after the formation of the Union of South Africa. John Dube and other African leaders in Natal had close links with the House of Dinuzulu. Welcoming the subsequent discharge of Dinuzulu, Gandhi wrote: “It was no doubt right and proper that the birth of the Union should have been signalised [sic] for the Natives of South Africa by the clemency of the Crown towards Di-nizulu [sic]. Dinizulu’s [sic] discharge will naturally fire the imagination of the South African Natives.”54

Gandhi saw in the new attitude, then exhibited in South Africa, ground for hope for Asians as well. This may be compared with the way Inkanyiso in 1895 had seen African and Indian demands as inter-woven and non-con-flicting: Gandhi asked: “Will it not be equally proper to enable the Asiatics in

M.K. Gandhi at a farewell meeting held in Durban in 1914 (Photograph: National Gandhi Museum, New Delhi)


55


South Africa to feel that there is a new and benignant spirit abroad in South Africa by conceding their demands, which are held, I make bold to say, to be intrinsically just by nine out of every 10 intelligent Europeans in this continent?”55

The founding of the ANCWhen the South African Native Na-tional Congress (SANNC), later to be renamed the African National Congress (ANC), was founded in January 1912, Gandhi’s Indian Opinion welcomed the event as “The Awakening of the Natives”. It wrote: “Our friend and neighbour, the Rev. John L. Dube, Prin-cipal of the Ohlange Native Industrial School, has received the high honour of being elected the first president of the newly-inaugurated Inter-State Native Congress.”56 The journal expressed appreciation of the manifesto issued by John Dube “to his countrymen” and published extracts from it. These extracts from Dube’s manifesto con-cluded:

We have been distinguished by the world as a race of born gentlemen – a truly glorious title, bestowed on few other peoples – and by the gentleness of our manners (poor though we may be, unlettered and ill-clad) and by the nobility of our character shall we break down the adamantine wall of colour prejudice and force even our enemies to be our admirers and our friend.57

The formation of such an African or-ganisation had already been presaged in a report that Indian Opinion had carried more than five months earlier.58

Gokhale’s visit to South AfricaThe eminent Indian statesman, Gopal Krishna Gokhale visited South Africa in October-November 1912. Gandhi

acted as the main organiser of the visit, escorting Gokhale throughout the tour. The historic meeting between John Dube, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Gandhi took place in November 1912. It was only earlier in the year that Gan-dhi’s journal had occasion to welcome the election of John Dube as president of the new formation and warmly to praise the manifesto issued by him. On the morning of 11 November, 1912, Gokhale was taken by Gandhi to meet John Dube at the Ohlange Institute and discuss political issues.59 Gokhale received a warm welcome from the staff and students of Dube’s school. The occasion is saturated with historical significance. Gokhale had been presi-dent of the Indian National Congress in India in 1905; Gandhi would became president of that organisation in 1924. Thus eight decades before the complete liberation of South Africa, a past and a future president of the Indian National Congress were calling on the leader of the African National Congress.

Characteristically not mentioning Gandhi’s own visit to Ohlange, his journal reported: “Mr Gokhale then paid a visit to the Natal Industrial School at Ohlange and spent some time discuss-ing the Native question with the Rev. John Dube, principal of the school, and president of the Native Congress. The students sang a couple of Zulu songs and the band played popular music”.60 John Dube’s paper Ilanga Lase Natal, carrying a fuller account, mentioned Gandhi as well:

We of Ohlange have been greatly honoured by the visit of the Hon. G.K. Gokhale on Monday morning last. He came over from the Phoenix settlement with Mr Gandhi and a few friends, and was received by our boys and girls who greeted him with cheers


56


and gave him an exhibition of band and vocal music.61

The same issue of Ilanga carried an editorial on Gokhale’s visit to South Africa.

It observed:

The reception and attention that are being given by the government and people of South Africa to the Hon. G. K. Gokhale, and the hearing he has received on all sides when he has touched upon the unsatisfactory relations existing between the European and Indian population of the Union, convey a lesson of importance to the Native population. We have seen and heard a great man whose knowledge and experience is equal to that of the foremost statesmen of our day, and he is a black man …. We Natives of South Africa have not been given the opportunity of taking part in the affairs of our fatherland, and consequently cannot boast of such leaders as are Messrs Gokhale and Gandhi … The Natives have taken a most important step in establishing a representative Congress of their own. They should perfect that organisation and support their congress and men they have chosen to office by every means in their power. Let them speak as those having authority, and the claims of the Natives to attention will at least always have a hearing.62

Significantly, the Ilanga editorial acknowledges the leadership attributes of Gandhi and Gokhale and stresses the need to bring about circumstances and possibilities that may help build and engender such leadership within an African context.

In the evening of 11 November 1912 John Dube and Charles Dube attended the banquet held in Durban in honour of Gokhale.63 Charles Dube, John Dube’s younger brother, had attended the

founding conference of the African Na-tional Congress at Bloemfontein earlier in the year. Both Charles Dube and his wife, Adelaide Dube, were associated with the Ohlange institution. Interest-ingly, among the European invitees at the banquet that evening was Dr J.B. McCord.64 Dr McCord had founded and ran the Zulu hospital in Durban where Katie Makanya, one of the two famous Manye sisters, worked as his assistant and dispenser.65

In the following year came the land legislation that was almost universally condemned by Africans in South Africa. Gandhi’s paper severely condemned the Natives Land Act as an “Act of con-fiscation” and supported John Dube’s criticism of the enactment:

The Natives Land Act of the Union Parliament has created consternation among the Natives. Indeed, every other question, not excluding the Indian question, pales into insignificance before the great Native question. This land is theirs by birth and this Act of confiscation – for such it is – is likely to give rise to serious consequences unless the government takes care.66

John Dube’s appeal to the British public against that Act was also repro-duced in extenso.67

Alfred Mangena (1879-1924)The affairs in the colony, a report in Gandhi’s journal noted, were discussed at a recent meeting in London of “near-ly 30 Liberal members of Parliament and others” and “among those present were Mr Fox Bourne, Secretary of the Aborigines’ Protection Society, and Mr Mangena, an educated native of Na-tal”.68 The latter was Alfred Mangena, who would practise law in Pretoria, edit the Advocate and, along with Gandhi


57


and others, be involved with protesting the Draft Union Act in 1909 and, as in the case of Gandhi, also be associated with the Universal Races Congress to be held in London in 1911.

The closer contacts that were now emerging between Africans and Indians were reflected in the African sources of inspiration that the Indian com-munity came to identify, the African achievements which it celebrated and the African demands which it found itself supporting or in sympathy with. In September 1908, two years after Alfred Mangena was first mentioned in Gan-dhi’s journal, the journal re-published from the East Rand Express, under the heading “A Successful Zulu”, a note on Mangena to mark his being called as a barrister by Lincoln’s Inn, London.69 The journal noted that Mangena was born near Ladysmith and educated at a mission station in the Cape Colony. It was reported also that Mangena’s father, Stomels, “was a veteran of Cetshwayo and fought with his tribe against the British in the Zulu war”. The report appeared to show awareness of work that Mangena had earlier done in the Cape Town area. African activism was a feature of which some Indians were probably at least somewhat aware when they set about seeking redress of their own grievances.

On 7 June 1909 Gandhi made an important speech in Germiston in the Transvaal, openly commending passive resistance to Africans: “Nor could such a weapon, if used by the Natives, do the slightest harm.”70

Soon thereafter, it was two KwaZulu-Natal Africans who were appointed by the Transvaal Native Congress to pro-vide assistance to the African delegation proceeding to London in 1909. Within days of Gandhi’s speech at Germiston,

the Transvaal Native Congress “ap-pointed Alfred Mangena (already in London) and instructed him to work in co-operation with the other delegates, viz. Hon W.P. Schreiner, Messrs J. Tengo Jabavu, Advocate Gandhi and others”.71 This information is based on the proceedings of the Transvaal Native Congress, 24 June, 1909, Resolution No 2.72 It appears that both Pixley Ka Isaka Seme and Mangena were so requested by the Transvaal Native Congress, which “instructed Mangena and Seme to work in co-operation with Schreiner, J. T. Jabavu, Mahatma Gandhi (who went to London on behalf of the Trans-vaal Indians) and other delegates”.73

Of three “young” lawyers who were among the founding figures of the ANC, Pixley Seme, Alfred Mangena (who was appointed senior treasurer), and George D. Montsioa (who was appointed re-cording secretary), the first two were, as we have seen, from Natal. Mangena was the first African barrister-at-law and set up practice in Pretoria and Johannes-burg after his return to South Africa in 1910. Mangena makes an early appear-ance in the pages of Indian Opinion in 1906. In 1912 Mangena also started the Pretoria-based Bantu-English weekly Advocate. It could not have been pub-lished for long, however, and appears to have closed down the following year.

Pixley Seme (1881–1951)The Inanda-born Pixley Seme is cred-ited with having been the driving force in the formation of the African National Congress although the idea of such an organisation had been discussed in Af-rican circles for quite some time.

Preparations leading up to the birth of the African National Congress began with Pixley Seme, who had returned


58


from his studies abroad to start a law practice in Johannesburg, supplying the new energy that was needed. At the end of July 1911, Gandhi’s Indian Opinion informed its readers, relying on a Mercury telegram: “Preliminary arrangements have been completed … for the union of the various native as-sociations throughout South Africa and a congress of the new organisation will be held next month.”74 It was reportedly expected at this stage that Dr Walter Rubusana was to be the president of the new organisation and an executive of 30 members had reportedly been set up.75

Indian Opinion described Pixley Seme as “a young Zulu attorney prac-tising in Johannesburg”, who would be the “hon. treasurer of the new society”.76 Seme was quoted as saying: “We will discuss questions affecting the status of Natives as a whole, such as the Pass Law.” 77 Seme was also quoted as saying that the new African organisation was “anxious to have an inter-state college erected in a proper place”.78 Gandhi had supported the proposal for such a college since 1905.79

Pixley Seme’s statement provided yet another cause for satisfaction to Gandhi who had been recommending the course of passive resistance to the Africans since at least the time of his speech in Germiston on 7 June 1909. As we have seen, this was reiterated by Gandhi in the Indian Opinion of 1 January 1910. The expectation that these methods might now be adopted found expression in the Indian Opinion report in its issue of 29 July 1911. On the methods to be adopted by the new African organisa-tion to achieve its various objectives, it was noted in the report:

Seme was at pains to remove any suspicion that force in any degree

would be countenanced, but it is clear that the lessons of the Indian agitation have not been lost on the natives, and though nothing definite was said to indicate reliance on passive resistance, it is not improbable that in certain eventualities recourse will be had to it.80

1911 was also the year when Pixley Seme called on Gandhi at Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg. An account of this meeting has become available from the memoirs of Dr Pauline Podlashuk, a medical doctor who was active in the suffragette movement in South Africa as secretary of the Women’s Enfranchisement League. It was Dr Podlashuk who had earlier translated Tolstoy’s Russian-language letter ad-dressed to Gandhi in 1910.81 Present at the Gandhi-Seme meeting in 1911, the account she provides in her memoirs of her visit to Tolstoy Farm is fairly detailed and specific.82 Dr Podlashuk, accompanied by Miss Stewart Sand-erson, who was then joint secretary of the Women’s Enfranchisement League, were received at Lawley Station near Tolstoy Farm by Gandhi’s friend and associate, Hermann Kallenbach. The two women then waited for Kallenbach to receive another guest arriving by the same train. That was Pixley Seme. According to Podlashuk the party, in-cluding Pixley Seme, met Gandhi in his library, “a large room lined with shelves full of books”, where “Mr Gandhi told Dr Seme about his passive resistance movement and how he had settled the women and children on the farm”. The party was shown around the farm and the workshops “where the boys were learning shoe-making and tailoring and the women, basket-making”. Gandhi and Kallenbach were to speak in Johan-nesburg that evening and they all took


59


the train back to town. The train had started pulling out when Kallenbach ran to the stationmaster, who signalled it to stop. Dr Podlashuk recalled:

Naturally, all the passengers looked out of the windows to see what was happening and they saw a most curious sight for South Africa. Coming toward the train were four dark men, three who looked like Indians – Kallenbach looked like one too – and a Native. With them were two young white girls. The train stopped and our party went into a first class carriage which carried the sign “Reserved”. I did not know then that this sign meant that the carriage was reserved for non-Europeans.

That Pixley Seme did draw upon and invoke events in Gandhi’s life we know from a subsequent account. More than a decade later, on a voyage from Cape Town to England in December 1922, Pixley Seme would recount to Sobhuza II of Swaziland the earlier 1893 incident of Gandhi’s eviction from a train in Pietermaritzburg; Seme, who was accompanying King Sobhuza II as his legal adviser on questions concern-ing Swaziland which were to be taken up with the British Government, sought to stress that it was against racial dis-crimination that Gandhi had protested and once discrimination was removed, with the provision of a first class cabin and no imposition of a colour bar, other discomforts, if any, on the ship did not matter.83

July 1911, when Pixley Seme figures in Indian Opinion, was significant also for the First Universal Races Congress held in London. Indian Opinion had in its columns been mentioning plans for such a conference as early as 1909.84 Gandhi was on the honorary general committee of the conference, along with

others, including Alfred Mangena, Dr Abdurrahman of the African People’s Organisation, Olive Schreiner from South Africa and E.W. Blyden, the famous African intellectual from Sierra Leone, and Dr W.E.B. DuBois, who was later known as the pioneering force behind the Pan-African movement.85

The Msimang brothers: (a) Richard (1884-1933) and (b) Selby (1886-1982)The two Msimang brothers, Richard and Selby, played a key role in the his-tory of African nationalism and were associated with the founding circles of the ANC. The SANNC Constitution which was drawn up in 1919, had, in Chapter IV, Clause 13 emphasised “pas-sive action” as a means to be used. It has been suggested that this “was perhaps a reflection of the impact Gandhi’s pas-sive resistance campaigns among South African Indians had made upon African opinion”.86 If so, it is of some inter-est to note that Richard W. Msimang (1884-1933), who “often served as the legal adviser” of the South African Native National Congress, is reputed to have been “primarily responsible” for drafting the constitution of the SANNC in 1919.87 Richard Msimang was among the first students at John Dube’s Ohlange Institute.88 Thus he was perhaps there when Gandhi set up camp at Phoenix nearby. From 1910 Richard Msimang, having meanwhile qualified as a lawyer in England, established a legal practice in Johannesburg, where incidentally Gandhi, too, had set up base.

While individual factors and threads may be points for further research, there appears to have been a general consensus within the organised African


60


leadership in South Africa by this time that unity and peaceful action was the way to go forward.

The younger of the two brothers was Henry Selby Msimang, one of the founders of the African National Congress. His papers at the Alan Pa-ton Centre and Struggle Archives in Pietermaritzburg confirm that he knew Gandhi personally. There was also physical proximity. Selby Msimang worked with Pixley Seme and Seme’s law offices in Johannesburg were close to Gandhi’s. From the manuscript of Selby’s Autobiography, and recorded interviews available among his papers, it is instructive to note the following observations by Selby about Gandhi: (a) “When Seme would be away from the office for weeks, then I would go to him for advice.” (b) “Gandhi’s office was just opposite our office. Except that if I had any difficulty in the office during Seme’s absence I would go and consult him [and] he helped me get over certain of these difficulties.” (c) “Gandhi was a very reserved man. But open, anybody could see him.” (d) “I am not sure whether or not Gandhi was practising. But he knew South African law – he was very connected.”89

In the natural course of things, such consultations which Selby Msimang had with Gandhi could not have hap-pened unless there was a high degree of understanding between Pixley Seme and Gandhi. This understanding clearly existed even if there might not at this stage have been joint action on the ground among the various communities in South Africa.

There is on record also a notewor-thy assessment by Selby Msimang of organised politics at the time. He re-called some 70 years later that around this time, “the leadership level of the

African political community would, in any case, have found Indian politics too radical to countenance an alliance”.90

Not entering into an alliance did not, of course, mean not seeking mutual assistance or not inter-connecting. The interconnections between African and Indian-oriented circles were multi-dimensional. Thus Selby Msimang had worked also with Gandhi’s close associate and Phoenix trustee, Lewis Walter Ritch (1870-1964).91 Ritch had qualified as a lawyer in the course of his association with Gandhi and inherited Gandhi’s law practice after the latter’s departure from South Africa. One may appreciate better the full significance of Selby Msimang’s observation about the comparative radicalism of African and Indian politics at the time by not-ing that he himself was active in the African trade union movement and was considered around 1919 as, argu-ably, its most prominent figure. P.L. Wickins holds that at this time Selby Msimang “eclipsed Kadalie in prestige and influence”.92

However, John Dube evidently came to be impressed by civil disobedience and the Indian campaign led by Gandhi, though he did not himself resort to it. This is supported by a record of a dis-cussion between Rev. W.W. Pearson, Rev. Charles Andrews’ collaborator, who met Dube at the conclusion of Gandhi’s last (1913) campaign in South Africa. Pearson and Andrews had arrived in Durban harbour on January 2, 1914, shortly after Gandhi’s release from Bloemfontein prison; disembarking at The Point, they were received by Gandhi at whose Phoenix Settlement near Ohlange they would stay during much of their visit. Dur-ing his stay Pearson, accompanied by


61


Raojibhai Manibhai Patel, then living in Gandhi’s Phoenix settlement, called on John Dube. Patel kept a record of the conversation and of Dube’s remarks. It appears in Patel’s Gujarati-language memoir of life at Phoenix, Gandhiji Ni Sadhna, published in India in 1939. Half-a-century later a translation-adaptation of this work into English was done by Abid Shamsi, then head of the English Department, St Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad.93

In his conversation with Pearson, John Dube refers to a strike by Indian workers. The 1913 movement initiated by Gandhi had been accompanied by and involved strikes by mine-workers, plantation workers and indentured la-bour, and gaoling, not only of men but also women.

Dube had witnessed the tortures to which Indian men, women and chil-dren were subject in the course of the strike and was deeply impressed by their willpower.94 He was witness to an incident involving police beating Indian workers. Dube recalled that the latter refused to budge saying that “so long as our Gandhi Raja is not released, we shall not go back to work”.95 Dube, who witnessed the police open fire upon Indian workers, credited Gandhi with having “revived that strength in your nerves”.96

Patel’s account of the Dube-Pearson conversation is credible because it accords also with the editorial views expressed in Dube’s paper on the earlier round of the Indian struggle in 1908. As we have seen, Ilanga Lase Natal had in early 1908 appreciated “the courageous manner in which the Indians are acting in the Transvaal”.97

The onset of passive resistance: Indian women jailed in Natal, African women in the OFSThere is an epilogue to the story of Gandhi’s interface with KwaZulu-Natal African leaders of his time, which de-serves mention because of its long-term impact on events, although the scene now shifts in some measure to outside KwaZulu-Natal and even outside South Africa. Gandhi had in April 1913 made known the possibility of his wife Kas-turba and other Indian women courting arrest in the Asian agitation. Here was a case of a cross-fertilisation of ideas, for Gandhi is believed also to have, in turn, been influenced by the African women’s struggle in the Orange Free State, which followed immediately, in focusing still further on involvement of women in the next round of his movement in South Africa. The Asian movement was resumed in 1913 as the authorities failed to honour their commitment to repeal the £3 tax on members of former indentured Indians’ families and failed also to resolve the fresh issues which had arisen about the validity and rec-ognition of Indian marriages. This fol-lowed upon Justice Searle’s judgment in the Cape Supreme Court on March 14, 1913 in Bai Miriam’s case. The judg-ment directly concerned Indian women as the status of most Indian marriages became questionable under the new legal dispensation. On April 19, Gandhi informed the Indian statesman Gokhale of the decision:

Most of the settlers here including the womenfolk will join the struggle. The latter feel that they can no longer refrain from facing gaol no matter what it may mean in a place like this. Mrs Gandhi made the offer on her own initiative and I do not want to debar her.98


62


A few days later the South African press reported from Johannesburg of the Indian Women’s Association having telegraphed the Minister of the Interior seeking an amendment of the law “so as to recognise the validity of Indian marriages which have been affected by the Searle judgment”.99 The women stated that they “are prepared to offer passive resistance and go to gaol with their husbands rather than suffer the indignity which the judgment subjects them to”.100 Ultimately Kasturba Gan-dhi, Valiamma and other Indian women were imprisoned in various prisons in Natal in the course of this movement. The prisons included Newcastle and Pietermaritzburg, among others. Indian women courted arrest from September 1913, after the African and Coloured women in the Orange Free State whose agitation against the pass laws had begun in the interregnum. This agita-tion by African women was hailed by Gandhi’s journal in a bold front-page headline as “Native Women’s Brave Stand”.101 In the Asian agitation, Gan-dhi’s wife, was arrested on September 23 and not released until 22 December 1913. Interestingly, Gandhi himself ended up in Bloemfontein prison at the end of 1913.

Gandhi, in a speech in London four years earlier (12 November 1909), had moved to the conceptual edge of the Empire, interpreting adherence or loyalty to it as being dependent upon adherence to the principle of equality underlying the British Constitution.102 He would not now stand at this periph-ery longer than necessary; yet the final step would not be taken in Africa, nor immediately upon his arrival in India in January 1915 in the midst of the Great War.

NOTES1 Gandhi, M.K. The Collected Works of Ma-

hatma Gandhi [henceforth CW] (Ahmedabad, Navajivan Trust, [1958-1994]) vol. 8 p. 246.

2 Meintjes, Sheila “The Early African Press in Natal: Inkanyiso Yase Natal: April 1889- June 1896”, Natalia 16, 1986, pp. 6-11.

3 Inkanyiso Yase Natal, 7 Sep.1894.4 Idem.5 Idem.6 Inkanyiso, editorial dated 4 Jan,1895 repro-

duced in Meintjes, “The Early African Press in Natal”, p. 7.

7 Inkanyiso, 28 June 1895.8 Inkanyiso, 6 Sep.1895. 9 Idem. [Italics as in original]. Gandhi’s letter

to the Natal Mercury was published on 5 Sep.1895. Gandhi CW vol.1 pp. 251-3.

10 Inkanyiso, 27 Sep.1895.11 Idem. [Italics as in original].12 Idem.13 The Natal Advertise, 25 Sep. 1895; Gandhi,

CW vol. 1 pp. 256-7.14 Inkanyiso, 27 Sep.1895.15 Idem.16 Idem.17 Inkanyiso, 4 Oct.1895.18 Ibid. 11 Oct.1895.19 Ibid. 29 Nov.1895. 20 The first two serial articles, published in

Inkanyiso on 19 and 26 Apr.1895, are cited in Pyarelal Mahatma Gandhi: The Early Phase (Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House, 1965), pp.711-14 and p.806.

21 Pyarelal Mahatma Gandhi: The Early Phase, pp. 714 and 806 (citing The Natal Witness, 21 June 1895).

22 Ibid. p.716.23 Hunt, James D. Gandhi and the Nonconform-

ists: Encounters in South Africa, (New Delhi, Promilla & Co., 1986) p.12. Gandhi would re-main in personal contact with Bishop Baynes of Natal during the organisation of the Indian Ambulance Corps in 1899. (See his letter to Bishop Baynes, Before 11 December 1899, Gandhi CW vol 3 pp. 127-8). It was Bishop Baynes who had intervened with the Natal Government so as to have Gandhi’s offer concerning the organisation of the Indian Ambulance Corps during the South African War accepted. (See Indian Opinion, 22 July 1914 and 23 Sep.1914; Gandhi, CW vol. 12 p.465.

24 The Vegetarian, 18 May 1895; Gandhi, CW vol. 1 p.224.

25 Ibid. p. 226.26 Idem.27 Idem.


63


28 See, for instance, Inkanyiso, 24 Nov.1893 which referred editorially to a letter on “Manual Training” from J.L. Dube; see also Dube’s letter in Inkanyiso, 13 July 1894.

29 The International Printing Press was founded by Madanjit Vyavaharik in 1898 in Durban at Gandhi’s suggestion. It published Indian Opinion from 1903 onwards. [Gandhi, CW vol. 3 p. 256n., and Bhana, Surendra and Hunt, James D. Gandhi’s Editor: The Letters of M.H. Nazar 1902-1903 (New Delhi, Promilla & Co.,1989) p. 8]. For a while, until the Ohlange institution acquired a press of its own, John Dube’s paper, Ilanga Lase Natal, was printed at the International Printing Press. [Reddy, E. S. Gandhiji’s Vision of a Free South Africa (New Delhi, Sanchar Publishing House, 1995) p. 49].

30 Sabarmati Sangrahalaya, Ahmedabad, India, Gandhi Papers: Serial no. 4127.

31 Mandela, Nelson “Gandhi The Prisoner: A Comparison”, in Nanda, B.R. (ed.) Mahatma Gandhi: 125 Years (New Delhi, Indian Coun-cil of Cultural Relations, 1995) p. 8.

32 See Hughes, Heather First President: A Life of John L. Dube Founding President of the ANC (Johannesburg, Jacana, 2011) pp. 109-13 and pp. 171-2. Earlier, another writer had asserted that “even a man like Dube was ap-parently unknown to Gandhi”. (Switzer, Les “Gandhi in South Africa: The Ambiguities of Satyagraha”, Journal of Ethnic Studies, vol. 14(1), 1986, p. 125, cited in Hunt, James D. An American Looks at Gandhi: Essays in Satyagraha, Civil Rights and Peace [New Delhi, Promilla & Co., 2005] p. 8 and p.92 note 37).

33 Ibid., p. 172.34 Swan, Maureen Gandhi: The South African

Experience (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1985) pp. 59-60.

35 Indian Opinion, 2 Sep. 1905; Gandhi, CW, vol. 5, p. 55. According to Heather Hughes, the speech by John Dube, praised by Gandhi, was made in late August 1905 and that among those present on the occasion, apart from Gan-dhi himself, was also Dube’s wife Nokutela. (Hughes First President, p.113).

36 Idem.37 See Davis, Jr, R. Hunt “John L. Dube: A South

African Exponent of Booker T. Washington”, Journal of African Studies, vol, 2 (4), 1975, pp. 497-528.

38 Indian Opinion, 10 Sep. 1903; Gandhi, CW vol. 3 pp. 437-40.

39 Ibid., p. 439.40 Marable, W. Manning, “Booker T. Washington

and African Nationalism”, Phylon, 1974, vol. 35(4), 1974, pp. 398-406.

41 Indian Opinion, 18 Nov.1905.42 Indian Opinion, 7 Apr. 1906; Gandhi, CW vol.

5 p. 266.43 Indian Opinion, 14 Apr. 1906; CW vol. 5

p.281.44 Ibid. 21 Apr.1906.45 Ibid. 24 Nov.1906. 46 Ibid.15 Dec.1906.47 Ibid. 2 Feb.1907.48 Ibid. 30 Nov.1907.49 Indian Opinion, 18 Jan.1908, reproducing a

comment by Ilanga lase Natal.50 The Natal Mercury, 6 Jan.1909; Gandhi CW

vol.9 p.127.51 Indian Opinion, 1 May 1909. 52 Ibid. 19 June 1909.53 Gandhi’s letter to W. P. Schreiner, 24 July

1909; Gandhi, CW vol. 95 (Supplementary vol. V) p. 5.

54 Indian Opinion,11 June 1910; Gandhi, CW vol. 10p.263.

55 Idem.56 Indian Opinion, 10 Feb.1912.57 Idem.58 Indian Opinion, 29 July 1911.59 Ilanga Lase Natal, 15 Nov.1912 .60 Indian Opinion, 23 Nov.1912.61 “Our Distinguished Visitor”, Ilanga Lase

Natal, 15 Nov. 1912.62 “Mr Gokhale’s Visit”, Ilanga Lase Natal, 15

Nov.1912.63 Indian Opinion, “Souvenir of the Hon. Gopal

Krishna Gokhale’s Tour in South Africa, Oc-tober 22 – November 18, [1912]” p.36.

64 Idem.65 Margaret McCord The Calling of Katie

Makanya (Cape Town, David Philip, 1995), pp.167-82, 206-8. The hospital was opened by Dr James McCord in May 1909 and is now a large institution. Katie Makanya’s sister was the famous Charlotte Maxeke (1874-1939), probably present at the founding of the ANC in 1912, and who went on to become the first president of the Bantu Women’s League.

66 Indian Opinion, 30 Aug.1913.67 Idem.68 Indian Opinion, 26 May 1906.69 Ibid. 5 Sep.1908.70 Ibid. 12 June 1909; Gandhi, CW vol. 9 p. 244.

This suggestion was reiterated by Gandhi in his journal on New Year’s Day, 1910. The provocation for this was provided by a seating arrangement by the Pretoria Town Council that discriminated against an African youth. In response to this situation, Gandhi recom-mended passive resistance, or satyagraha as he preferred to call it. “In a country like this”, he continued, “the coloured people are placed in an extremely difficult position. We think


64


there is no way out of this except satyagraha. Such instances of injustice are a natural con-sequence of the whites’ refusal to treat the coloured people as their equals. It is in order to put an end to this state of affairs that we have been fighting in the Transvaal, and it is not surprising that the fight against a people with such deep prejudice should take a long time [to bear fruit].” (Indian Opinion, 1 Jan.1910; Gandhi, CW vol. 10 p.113). In less than four years after Gandhi’s Germiston speech, and the reiteration on 1 January 1910 of the suggestion that Africans ought to use passive resistance, African women in the Orange Free State did in fact take to passive resistance.

71 Walshe, Peter The Rise of African National-ism in South Africa: The African National Congress 1912-1952 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971) p.22.

72 Ibid., p. 28n. citing “Schreiner Papers”.73 Odendaal, Andre Vukani Bantu!: The Begin-

nings of Black Protest Politics in South Africa to 1912 (Cape Town, David Philip,1984) p. 205 and p. 347n.

74 Indian Opinion, 29 July 1911, “A Native Union: The Lessons of the Passive Resistance Movement”.

75 Idem.76 Idem.77 Idem.78 Idem.79 Indian Opinion, 30 Dec. 1905; Gandhi, CW

vol. 5 p. 172 and Indian Opinion, 17 Mar. 1906; Gandhi, CW vol. 5 pp. 234-5.

80 Indian Opinion, 29 July 1911.81 That the translation from the original Russian

was by Pauline Padlashuk is acknowledged in Gandhi, CW vol, 10, p. 370n and p. 512n. The translation was published in Indian Opinion, 26 Nov.1910.

82 Podlashuk, Pauline The Adventure of Life: Reminiscences of Pauline Podlashuk,; ed. by Seftel, Effie and Nasatyr, Judy (Johannesburg, Pan Macmillan, 2010) pp. 69-75.

83 Kuper, Hilda Sobhuza II, Ngwenyama and King of Swaziland: The story of an hereditary ruler and his country (New York, Africana Publishing Co.,1978) p. 81.

84 Indian Opinion, 12 June 1909 and 16 Apr.1910.

85 Spiller G. (ed.) Papers on Inter-Racial Prob-lems Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress (London, P.S. King & Son, 1911) p. xxxvii. Gandhi did not himself attend the Congress but sent his associate Henry Polak.

86 Karis, Thomas and Carter, Gwendolen M.(eds.) From Protest to Challenge: Volume 1

Protest & Hope 1882-1934 bySheridan Johns III (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1972) p. 62. Also see Reddy Gandhiji’s Vision, p. 75 note 85.

87 Msimang, R.W., Natives Land Act 1913: Specific Cases of Evictions and Hardships, etc. Reprint. (Cape Town, Friends of South Afri-can Library, 1996). Introduction by Timothy Keegan, p. v.

88 Idem.89 Alan Paton Centre and Struggle Archives,

Pietermaritzburg, John Aitchison Collection: PC14/1/3/2/11.

90 Swan, Gandhi, p.133, note 161. Swan inter-viewed Selby Msimang at Pietermaritzburg in September 1976.

91 Deane, Dee Shirley, Black South Africans: A Who’s Who: 57 Profiles of Natal’s Leading Blacks (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1978) p.117.

92 Wickins, P. L. The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1978) p.43.

93 Patel, Raojibhai M. The Making of the Ma-hatma: Based On “Gandhiji Ni Sadhna”, (Ahmedabad, Ravindra R. Patel, 1990) pp. 213-17. The title of Patel’s Gujarati work ought to be more correctly translated as Gandhiji Ni Sadhana. A more detailed ac-count of the Dube-Pearson interaction, being a complete translation of the relevant section of Raojibhai Patel’s work, is available in Nayar, Sushila Mahatma Gandhi: Satyagraha at Work vol.IV (Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publish-ing House, 1989) pp.714-6. Nayar, however, utilises a Hindi language translation (1959) of Patel’s Gujarati language (1939) work. A further and direct translation from the Gujarati version is available in E.S. Reddy’s essay on Gandhi and Dube in Reddy, Gandhiji’s Vision, pp 23-5.

94 Patel, The Making, pp. 216-7.95 Idem.96 Ibid. p. 217. See also the report “Indian Resist-

ers” in The Bloemfontein Post, 30 October, 1913, a week prior to Gandhi’s arrest near Charlestown, in which striking Indian mine-workers in Natal are quoted as saying that they were “only prepared to receive instructions or advice from Mr Gandhi”.

97 See note 49 supra.98 Gandhi to G.K. Gokhale, 19 Apr.1913; Gandhi

CW vol. 12 p. 41.99 The Bloemfontein Post, 7 May 1913.100 Idem.101 Indian Opinion, 2 Aug. 1913. See also Indian

Opinion, 5 July 1913.102 Ibid. 11 Dec.1909; Gandhi CW vol.9 p. 542.

Natalia 42 (2012), Sibongiseni Mkhize pp. 65 – 79

“A setback to the harmonious race relations in this charming

city of scented flowers” 1:The August 1959 riots in Pietermaritzburg

by Sibongiseni Mkhize

Introduction

In 1959 a series of popular revolts erupted in Natal, starting in Cato Manor in Durban and spreading out to other urban centres and rural areas. Relatively large protesting crowds were involved in these incidents which occupied the second half of 1959. This article seeks to investigate the events which occurred in Pietermaritzburg in the context of countrywide disturbances. These events will be analysed against the background of anti-apartheid political mobilisation, which occurred during the 1950s. I will explore the issues which sparked off these Pietermaritzburg events, the kinds of organisation, the crowd behaviour which occurred and the protagonists. Furthermore, I will examine their significance in the politics of anti-apartheid resistance. The reasons why these riots occurred at this particular point in time will be the subject of my analysis.

65


The August 1959 riots in Pietermaritzburg

66


Background to the Pietermaritzburg riotsIn June 1959 there were widespread riots and disturbances in the Durban African area of Cato Manor. The fun-damental causes were socio-economic, arising from such factors as poor living conditions and widespread poverty. But it was the exhaustive beer raids on il-legal stills that provided the flashpoint. In municipally-controlled areas it was illegal for Africans to brew their own beer. Instead, they were obliged to pur-chase it from the municipal beerhalls. Proceeds from the beerhalls were then supposedly used for the development and administration of African facilities.2

The Cato Manor incident was echoed in similar events in many towns and rural areas of Natal, with women be-ing at the forefront. In the towns the municipal monopoly over the brew-ing of traditional beer, utshwala, the police raids, influx control, low wages and unemployment appeared to be the main reasons for riots. Women accused their menfolk of spending their mea-gre incomes in beerhalls. In the rural areas discontent centred around land shortages, betterment schemes, cattle culling, cattle dipping, influx control, and poverty which was perceived to be caused by the government’s policies.3 African women played an active role in the protests of the 1950s, and were vociferous in opposing their proposed subjection to the pass laws and the curtailment of informal sector activity.4 A common feature of these struggles is that they were led by women. Although the oppression was hard on both men and women there were differences in the way African men and women were treated by the apartheid laws.

The position of African women in society in both rural and urban areas

explains why it was women who took the lead in confronting the state, even if that involved violence. Many Af-rican women in towns did not work in industry. This, together with their relative freedom from the pass laws, helps to explain their militancy. For them involvement with urban industrial society was neither as humiliating nor as brutal as that experienced by their menfolk and this may have conditioned their attitude to authority.5 C. Walker has pointed out that:

Women in the towns in South Africa during the 1950s were frustrated by the state of flux and uncertainty that surrounded the urban family, the position of women was often contradictory, their status confused. On the other hand women’s new position was not always sanctioned by society. In the eyes of the law they were still subordinate to men, while their right of residence in town was increasingly insecure, especially after 1952 when the tighter influx control measures were introduced.6

In the case of women in the rural areas Walker argues that:

By the 1950s African women’s reproductive function within the reserves was strained to near breaking point. By then it had become manifestly clear that the reserves were no longer functioning as viable subsistence bases for migrant workers.7

It was this complex set of forces that led to the Natal riots of 1959. Follow-ing the Cato Manor incident there was a wave of urban and rural militancy from August 1959. Some of the towns and rural areas that were affected were Estcourt, Mooi River, KwaDweshula in Port Shepstone, Harding, Ixopo, Camperdown and New Hanover.8 This militancy could also be seen against the


67


background of the hesitation of men to confront apartheid. One can also argue that there was a perception that state re-action to mass protest actions would not be as harsh on women as on men. The other main point is that most men were working and there was always the threat of dismissal, so the people who had the time to organise were often women.

Municipalities relied on profit from official beer sales for the provision of services to Africans. Municipal Bantu Revenue accounts were used to finance urban African housing and recreational facilities, and to subsidise welfare ac-tivities such as feeding schemes and milk funds in the townships.9 This explains why municipalities regarded the controlled sale of utshwala as vital.

The raids by police did not deter women from brewing, either for do-mestic consumption or for sale. African women continued to defy the law, brew-ing liquor at home to sell in order to earn a few pennies more and to retain a traditional form of hospitality. Because of the meagre wages their men brought home, the women deeply resented the money they drank away in the beer-halls.10 The municipal monopoly over the brewing and sale of beer was seen as not only restricting the cultural ex-pression of the African working class; it was also viewed as exacerbating the economic deprivations of African work-ers.11 It was against this background of discontent about beer brewing, liquor raids, removals, poverty, unemploy-ment and influx control that women revolted in Natal in 1959. Two months after the Cato Manor incident of June 1959 Pietermaritzburg experienced what were officially referred to as “Native Disturbances”. These events shared some of the features, which had

taken place in Durban’s shantytown of Cato Manor.

These protest activities by women have been the subject of scholarly analysis. Terms such as “Natal Distur-bances”, “Natal Riots”, and “Beerhall Riots” have been widely used to refer to a wave of protest by women in Natal. In my analysis I will attempt to go beyond just seeing them as disturbances or mere riots but as vents of political mobilisa-tion amidst the intensification of state repression of anti-apartheid opposition. Seeing the incidents as mere “beer-hall riots” conceals some important dynamics concerning the position of African women and African communi-ties during the late 1950s. The issue of liquor brewing and dipping tanks was important and helped to galvanise Af-rican women’s opposition to the white administrators.

Women’s demonstrations in PietermaritzburgPietermaritzburg was not going to be immune from the riots, which were taking place in Natal. The Native Administration Department purported to be concerned with improving race relations in Pietermaritzburg. In his annual reports, D.N. Bang, who was the manager of that department, always commended the city for its excellent re-cord on race relations. The disturbances of 1959 came as a shock to him and he reported that

In the middle of August, the city’s long and excellent record of harmonious race relations received a setback when large groups of women carried out demonstration at the Sutherlands Police Station, outside the Bantu Men’s Hostel and the beer halls. Parties wielding sticks raided the beer halls and then left pickets.12


68


On 8 August 1959, a crowd of African women marched to the office of the Na-tive Administration Department.13 They were complaining about the lack of em-ployment, low wages and influx control, and they demanded that the authorities allow domestic brewing.14 Soon after this incident, on Friday 14 August, a crowd of African women estimated at between 200 and 300 congregated in Pietermaritzburg to see the Chief Native Commissioner. However, before going to the Chief Native Commissioner’s office they started by staging a protest at Sutherlands Police Station in Ples-sislaer, Edendale, where about 30 of their colleagues were being detained, allegedly for carrying dangerous weap-ons.15 This crowd at Edendale involved women from both urban and rural areas around the city. Some came from as far as Durban and Camperdown.

The additional Native Commissioner, Mr Otte, went to Sutherlands to listen to the women’s grievances. Their main grievance was that their men were not giving them enough money. Others included the enfeeblement of their husbands by the government, poverty, influx control, unemployment, and in-creased taxation. The Zulu word they used for enfeeblement or emasculation was ukuthenwa, which can be translated as “castration”16. Perhaps the women saw themselves as taking over from the men who had been rendered powerless. The word ukuthenwa has a symbolic importance because it is commonly believed that a man’s private parts, especially testicles, are his source of power.

After speaking to Mr Otte at Suther-lands, the women boarded buses to town with the aim of speaking directly with the Chief Native Commissioner. Car-rying sticks, they gathered at an open

space next to the ematsheni (beerhall) in Retief Street to await others who were still due to arrive by bus.17 When one police officer asked the women why they were carrying sticks they told him that they had agreed that they would recognise each other in that way.18 More women arrived at the paddock where others were already standing.19 A call for police assistance came from the beerhall and 56 policemen arrived. In the paddock the women danced and sang in a circle. Suddenly they rushed straight towards the police who were stationed between them and the beerhall. The police charged and the screaming women scattered in all di-rections.20 After this baton-charge the women invaded the beerhall from the rear and upset some of the tables with beer mugs on them.21 The male patrons of the beerhall were dispersed by this action. The demonstration continued until evening when women started to board the buses back home.

On the following day the situation was still tense and the Retief Street beerhall was closed. Business contin-ued at other beerhalls in Ortmann and Havelock roads. However, in the case of the Havelock Road beerhall Bang reported that:

Before I got there I saw women wielding sticks making their way from the beerhall. The police then arrived but they were too late. The women had cleared the beer hall and had thrown away their sticks. The hall was then closed, and the police briefed to watch entrances and be on the look out in case of any attempts being made to burn property.22

This demonstration by women was part of the struggle by African women to challenge their white authorities. Piet-ermaritzburg provided a meeting place


69


for both rural and urban women, as it was where the office of the Chief Na-tive Commissioner was situated. There was a strong likelihood that this action of protest and defiance influenced what took place in Sobantu Village the next day. The Sobantu revolt was different in that it involved both men and women and, unlike the women’s demonstrations elsewhere, this event involved a small community from the same township and was related to local problems that the residents experienced. The Sobantu revolt also differed from the women’s demonstrations in the targets identified by the crowd and in the amount of dam-age caused.

Before plunging into an examina-tion of the riots I will start by outlining Sobantu’s economic and socio-political context before and during the 1950s. The intention is to highlight the impor-tant aspects, which might have led to the eruption of violence on the weekend of August 14-16.

Sobantu: A model villageSobantu Village was built in 1927 to accommodate Africans, particularly middle class Africans who had profes-sional jobs in town, and it was situated on the south-eastern side of Pieterma-ritzburg.23 It was also hoped that the establishment of Sobantu would be a solution to the problem of informal settlement around the edges and in the backyards of Pietermaritzburg.24 From its establishment the place had been referred to as the Native Village, but in 1947 it was renamed Sobantu to honour Bishop J.W. Colenso on whose farm it had been built.25 It was situated within a short walking distance from the white residential area of Bishopstowe and from the city’s central business district. The first houses that were built were the

sub-economic types, but later economic houses were also built in order to cater for those who could afford them. The expansion of Sobantu was halted in 1954. This worsened the housing cri-sis as the community of Sobantu was growing. The last houses were com-pleted in 1957, bringing Sobantu’s final complement to 1091.26 By this time an estimated 3 000 villagers were living in 545 houses, with more already under construction.27

The Pietermaritzburg City Council, which was responsible for the admin-istration of Sobantu, was aware of this problem. Two white officials were responsible for the day-to-day running of the village. They were the superinten-dent and his assistant. From 1958 the su-perintendent was S.W.D. St John Ward who had been an assistant since 1955, and a policeman before. His assistant was R.V. Taylor. These white officials stayed with their families in Sobantu. It has been argued that the relationship of villagers with the municipality as a whole depended largely on the degree of rapport between the residents and the superintendent, as he was the official with whom they were in direct and daily contact.28 Sobantu residents complained about Ward’s attitude. Although he was effective in reducing large arrears in rentals, his method of calling tenants to account at 4 a.m. could not have improved his popularity or that of the city council.29

Up to the mid-1960s Sobantu was the only African residential area within the Pietermaritzburg borough and as such it was directly controlled by the city council.30 In 1954 Sobantu was ear-marked by the Minister of Native Affairs, H. F. Verwoerd, for removal as it was not sited in accordance with the Group Areas Act.31 It was not only the minister’s


70


disapproval, which cast a dark shadow over Sobantu’s future; there were also the nearby white property owners who opposed Sobantu’s expansion. It should be pointed out that during the 1950s there was centralisation of the control of African townships by the Department of Native Affairs in Pretoria. The threat of removal came during the mid-1950s and made it impossible for any expan-sion of the village to take place. The future of Sobantu was uncertain and in 1956 the Pietermaritzburg City Council reported, “The city council is faced with the problem of finding suitable land to establish its future Native location aris-ing from the refusal of the Minister of Native affairs to allow the extension of the existing Sobantu Native Village”.32 The proposal to remove Sobantu was opposed by the city council as well as the Liberal Party (LP) and the African National Congress (ANC).33 Sobantu was regarded as a “model village” and its cordial relationship with the city’s Native Affairs Department led to it being held in high esteem.

The body that purported to be rep-resenting the residents of Sobantu was the Sobantu Advisory Board, but its members did not enjoy the support of the majority of the residents. During the late 1950s the board members were S.T. Khu-malo, T.J. Mkhize, J.M. Sikhosana, S.S. Zondi, P.J. Ngcobo and L.B. Msimang.34 Regrettably the advisory board files do not give biographical information on its members as this would have helped in understanding what kind of people stood for elections to this board. Members of this board used to stay in office for a long time. It has been argued that this was due to the fact that very few residents took an interest in choosing their official representatives.35

During the late 1940s an opposition group had been formed, known as the Sobantu Residents’ Association or Isolomuzi Vigilant Association. It con-sisted of people such as G. Khumalo, A. Mngadi, L. Mtshali, K. Tlale and H. Dladla. This group accused the advisory board of being unaccountable to the resi-dents. This situation continued during the 1950s and numerous letters were written by the association to the city council complaining about the advisory board which they claimed was an illegitimate and unrepresentative body. The promi-nent figure in the Isolomuzi was Godfrey Khumalo who used to write letters to the Town Clerk and the Chief Native Commissioner in which he complained about poor municipal administration in Sobantu, and he saw himself as the “chief” of Sobantu.36 Khumalo’s actions should be viewed against the background of his vendetta with the advisory board from which he had been expelled. Khu-malo had been a teacher for many years. He was also active in the formation of development schemes in Sobantu, some of which were the Bantu Co-operative Union in 1937, the Bantu Social Services in 1939, the Bantu Workers’ Club in 1943 and the Community Sunday Services in 1944.37 In 1946 he was accused of being unscrupulous after it was found that he had embezzled some funds for the Ikhwezi Committee of the village.38 He was a gifted organiser, musician and a good public speaker. In 1949 he was charged with the failure to pay rent, and that led to his subsequent expulsion from the village.39

In 1956 Bang reported that there was “a strained atmosphere, particularly among the educated and semi-educated group of natives who have taken to read-ing both European and native papers


71


avidly”.40 This atmosphere was related to the material hardships that most young people were experiencing. They found themselves unemployed in an urban area in which they enjoyed Section 10 rights. To worsen the crisis caused by the shortage of housing and by unem-ployment, economic rents for houses were introduced in December 1956.41 This was a directive from the central government and it forced residents with an income of more than ₤15 per month to pay economic rentals. This measure resulted in rental increases of up to 100% in some cases.

While residents were still astonished by the news of rent increases the coun-cil announced that there was going to be a possible increase from 2/- to 8/6d

per month on electricity charges.42 The electricity tariff was only one of their nu-merous problems. Besides the economic rentals, since January 1959 the residents had been facing an increase in the Bantu General Tax.43 To add to these pressures the Department of Bantu Education rec-ommended that a levy of 2/- per family be paid for buildings to cover the rent for the school buildings.44 Bang was, how-ever, reluctant to implement this measure as he was unsettled by the relatively high tension and unemployment in the village. He argued that this levy was going to constitute an added burden and recom-mended that its introduction be delayed.45

These increased financial demands were proving to be too heavy for a com-munity that was already facing over-

Daniel Nielson Bang (1910-1985) pictured (centre) with a group of Zulus in traditional dress. The provenance of the photograph is unknown but it was probably taken in the early 1950s during his time at “Bantu Affairs”. Bang grew up on a Norwegian mission station in northern Zululand and regarded Zulu as his first language, Norwegian as his second and English as his third. After his time at Bantu Affairs, he lectured in Zulu at the University of Natal. (Information and photograph supplied by his granddaughter, Marina Bang)


72


crowding and unemployment. It would appear that the local Native Administra-tion Department was sensitive to this op-position, for early in August 1959 Bang recommended to the city council that the electricity tariffs and school levy be suspended for another year on the ground that “unemployment is rife and for other reasons there is a feeling of tension. The introduction of additional charges at this moment is therefore inadvisable”.46 To this the council concurred, but the mes-sage did not reach the Sobantu residents early enough to avoid the riots which took place in the middle of August. Ac-cording to Seethal, it was these increases, in conjunction with other grievances and events, which precipitated a riot in Sobantu from 14-16 August 1959, with damage estimated at ₤23 000.47

“A distressing shock to all of us”On Saturday, 15 August, an outbreak of violence occurred at Sobantu Vil-lage. Although these riots were related to the tense atmosphere, which had prevailed since the previous day, they had some interesting features which differentiated them from the beerhall incidents. The purpose of this section is to investigate these riots in the light of mass mobilisation which was prevailing in the province. Issues such as how and why they took place will be important to explore. Aspects such as the targets identified by this crowd are also worthy of analysis. The question of whether this was just a spontaneous event, or a carefully planned political action is also important. The behaviour of the crowd during the incident showed that the event was influenced by what had taken place in Cato Manor. The nature of the participants in this incident also makes it different from the previous protest

actions in the city in which crowds were predominantly composed of women.

On Saturday afternoon the overseer at the Ortmann Road beer hall, which was adjacent to Sobantu, was assaulted by a band of people armed with sticks when he refused to let them in with their weap-ons. N. H. Nicholson was later taken to hospital with lacerations to his scalp and chin and a compound fracture.48 The carrying of sticks can be viewed as an intention to attack, but this was also part of what African men, particularly in the rural areas, did. However, the beating of Nicholson reflected the atmosphere that was prevalent at the time. This relatively minor incident was likely to be related to the widespread attacking of the beerhalls. Bang viewed the assault on Nicholson as mere thuggery because the attackers took some of the money when it was spilt on the floor.49 However, this was not an isolated incident in view of what occurred subsequently.

Bang seemed to be sensitive about the turbulent atmosphere, which had surfaced in Pietermaritzburg. Suspecting that municipal institutions such as beer-halls were in danger of being attacked, he spent the whole day patrolling them. To add to his anxiety, when he was driving past the bus terminus at Sobantu Village at 6 p.m. he noticed a crowd of young people assembled there. “As I drove past they shouted Afrika! Mayibuye iAf-rika! Asinifuni! (Come Back Africa! We don’t want you!) and gave the thumbs up signal of the ANC. I then warned the superintendent that the atmosphere was unwholesome and also reported to the police”.50 The incident shows that there was an advanced level of political consciousness in the village. The chant-ing of slogans suggests that the spirit of resistance had found fertile ground in the local youth.


73


The drama which ensued after the arrival of police, shocked the admin-istrators and other interested groups who viewed Sobantu as a model village which co-operated with its administra-tors. At 6.30 p.m. Constable de Kock’s police van was stoned at the bus stop. Ward, the superintendent of Sobantu, went with his police when he heard the commotion. He approached from the eastern side of the Sobantu hall only to be met by a hail of stones. They were forced to retreat to the offices and by then Constable de Kock had reached the superintendent’s house. Accord-ing to Bang’s report, De Kock warned Ward to evacuate the white women and children but, as stones were falling on the roof and driveway, he argued that it was necessary to fire two shots each in into the air in order to get to his car.51 It was not only Ward’s family that had to be evacuated, there was also that of Taylor, the assistant superintendent at the village.

According to Bang’s report, “Mr Taylor came to take over while Mr Ward took the families away. He then took some men with him and proceeded towards the mob, which listened to him for a while, but resumed stone throw-ing so he and his men were obliged to retreat”.52 Meanwhile the road near the Ortmann Road beerhall was bar-ricaded and cars passing there were pelted with stones. The village shopping centre was then attacked by a group of Africans, and police reinforcements arrived.53 However, it should be taken into consideration that Bang was not an eyewitness, but he reported what he was told by the police and Ward as he left Sobantu before the flare-up of violence. His report suggests that the police knew about the deaths of two people. The crowd used sticks, stones

and bricks to fight the police. This was what provoked the police, who were led by Major O. Kjelvei, to use their revolvers to defend themselves. They allegedly fired at the feet of the advanc-ing mob, aiming at the leaders who were at the front.54

During this pandemonium, two Afri-cans who were part of the crowd were killed. The official sources estimated the crowd to consist of about 300 men and a few women. It was reported in The Natal Witness that the two were “well-known agitators” and led the crowd, which was stoning the police and the village of-ficials.55 The use of the word “agitators” implies that other people were just stirred up to revolt and they did not share the sentiments of the leaders of the crowd. There was a conflict of opinion about who actually killed these two people. Africans argued that Ward fired the two fatal shots. This was, however, disputed by Bang who pointed out that this was not possible as there was a 2,5 metre high wall separating the mob from his house. He further argued that “in any case, the two Africans who were killed were shot while he was evacuating Mrs Ward and Mrs Taylor and their families and the police are in possession of the full facts relating to their deaths”.56 According to The Natal Witness,

Rocks started landing on the roof on the Ward family as they were getting ready for bed. The rocks came from the direction of the Sobantu Hall. Two South African policemen in a van arrived and advised Mr St John Ward to evacuate his family. He switched off the light in his home and took his wife and children to the front and then went into the yard to fetch his car. He and the two policemen fired shots into the air, which caused the mob to disperse. He took out his car and drove his family to Topham Road


74


police station, where they were still staying with Sergeant Gafney and his wife yesterday.57

However, the fact of the matter was that two Africans, George Radebe and Gordon Ndlovu, died of gunshot wounds.58 The police fire dispersed the crowd and the people ran towards the schools. The police suspected that there was a pre-arranged plan when they saw the crowd using cans of what appeared like paraffin or petrol to ignite the school buildings.59 According to Ilanga, all three village schools were set alight. At the Russell Infants’ School the water tap at the kitchen was left open from Saturday to Monday, and on the wall was written “Mayibuye i-Afrika”.60 Even though the Pietermaritzburg Fire Department was called, the tumultuous situation impeded them from continu-ing with their work, so they ended up watching helplessly as the buildings were razed. The Natal Witness reported that:

At the primary school a school office was fired first, then the staff room, two lobbies and six classrooms. In addition, windows in the buildings were damaged, doors broken, a typewriter burnt and crunched underfoot, and books and records hurled in an untidy heap to feed the flames. Blackboards were ripped from the walls and tossed on to the floor. In one classroom the head-twisted iron roofing is hanging down amid the other debris; in other a film projector is lying still in its case but irreparably damaged.61

To a certain extent this incident of the burning of the school could be seen as a result of people’s frustration with Bantu Education. These schools fell under the control of Department of Bantu Educa-tion, which during the 1950s had cen-tralised the control of education.62 It was

the same department that had recently proposed a levy of 2/- on residents of Sobantu. There is a strong likelihood that the destruction of the schools was because they were perceived as govern-ment property.

Bang pointed out that a feature of the rioting at Sobantu Village was that it was carried out almost entirely by youths, many of which were obviously schoolchildren. Only a few older men and women took part. The preponder-ance of youngsters in the crowd can be viewed as a legacy of a situation where those who had just finished school were finding themselves joining the ranks of the unemployed.63

Finding themselves unemployed in a situation where they had to support their families was a cause of bitterness. One study has revealed that political con-sciousness was high among the youth of the township.64 Peel mentions the case of a retired teacher she interviewed, who pointed out that she recalls noticing the prevalence of pictures of Kwame Nkrumah and the African continent on the exercise books of pupils.65 Pupils were showing their identification with the liberation struggles that were taking place in Africa, and with the African continent, which was still under colo-nial rule. Nkrumah was also significant in the sense that he epitomised Africa’s ability to eradicate foreign domination.

These violent incidents at Sobantu took place in a community that was under stress. As has been pointed out above, the people of Sobantu were un-certain about their position during the 1950s as there was a threat of removal. There was also a housing shortage and the increase in rentals. Unlike the other demonstrations, which were led predominantly by women, this one did not belong to any specific sex. Even


75


though the people of Sobantu were prevented by officials from holding political meetings, many often went to Edendale to attend ANC meetings on Sundays.66 Sobantu’s image as a model village was tarnished and the city’s claims for having an excellent record on race relations were shattered by this incident. The letter from the Town Clerk to the Secretary for Bantu Education il-lustrates this when he said that “as race relations have always been so good in Pietermaritzburg it was rather surpris-ing that the disorderly behaviour oc-curred at Sobantu village on 15 August 1959”.67 It was the last thing that the local authorities would have expected to happen in Sobantu. The crowd focused its attention on corporation property, breaking anything that was possible to break. Houses belonging to several municipal police were stoned.68 This destruction was not only directed at property, but also at individuals who were seen to be associated with the municipality. Lawrence Msimang, a member of the Advisory Board, nar-rowly escaped when the mob came to attack his house and he only survived by hiding in the kitchen with his family.69 One municipal policeman was also hurt.

Different people and organisations expressed their dismay at what had taken place during the weekend. The ANC and the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) issued a press statement in which they denounced the use of violence but pointed out that violence was provoked by the action of the municipal police.70 The statement was issued by Dr C. Motala and A. Gumede in which they expressed their deep regret about the events of Friday and Saturday. The Lib-eral Party also expressed its regret about the destruction, which had occurred at Sobantu and asked for a commission

of inquiry to be set up.71 However, the commission of inquiry was never insti-tuted. The Mayor, C. B Downes, also expressed his disappointment at what had taken place at Sobantu. In line with the official view of the time, he argued that “it was just a minority of hooligans who were responsible for this and not the proper citizens of Sobantu”.72 Other organisations also sent their letters to the Town Clerk to express their sym-pathy with the Native Administration Department.73 The mayor’s view was echoed by other African organisations such as the Urban Bantu School Board, which pointed out that:

Sobantu Village has for many years enjoyed the reputation of being one of the model Bantu Villages in South Africa. It has been a beautiful, loyal and quiet village. The events of last weekend came as a distressing shock to all of us. We have no doubt that the ruins of the fine buildings, as they now stand, have convinced everyone of the futility of violence and rioting. We feel sure that such things will not happen again in Sobantu.74

In his report D.N. Bang also echoed Downes’s sentiments when he said,

It is my opinion that the local native has had little to do with what has taken place. I am firmly of the opinion that the ANC have instigated a few local firebrands to cause trouble, and the sooner the ANC gets banned the better. Unfortunately the masses are in sympathy with any movement which has as its ultimate aim the removal of European control, so one cannot expect much active support from them in suppressing the radical element. Moreover, they are afraid of reprisals. An instance is the case of Mr. L.B. Msimang, who, for the sake of his own safety, has resigned from the Village Advisory Board.75


76


Bang’s report seems to suggest that there was a substantial ANC support in the village. He even pointed out that when he went to Sobantu on the Monday he found that “wherever I went those who greeted me gave the ANC’s thumb up signal”.76 There is a strong likelihood that the ANC was involved in the Sobantu riots, although official documents and newspapers cannot give information as to what extent.

Godfrey Khumalo, who had been an ardent foe of both the Native Adminis-tration Department and the Sobantu Ad-visory Board since the 1940s, also sent his letters with some recommendations about what to do to avoid riots in the future. Unlike many others, he did not see the Sobantu riots as the work of a few irresponsible hooligans. He argued that municipal policies were responsible for the riots. He stated that

The roo t cause i s munic ipa l oppression. The city council is to blame for allowing it to destroy the children of Africa... The riots are the flowers of seed planted over the last 30 years, through the abuse of the 1927 Native Administration Act by the local authorities.’77

The determination to sabotage what was seen as corporation property con-tinued even after the Sobantu riots of the Saturday. At Edendale on Sunday an Indian a garage owner, Dookran, foiled an attempt to burn a bus which belonged to the corporation.78 On Monday there was an attempt, by what the Witness called “Native trouble makers”, to burn the Mthethomusha school at Edendale. The police, who were patrolling nearby, saw the fire and they put it out with the help of some members of the public.79 In the afternoon police went to the Have-lock Road area when African women linked arms and blocked the roads

against the buses travelling to and from the bus stops.80 Probably the women were doing this because this area was adjacent to the beerhall. A deputation of women claiming to be leaders of the Friday march came to see Bang about their grievances. Their grievances in-cluded “a 1d-a-day increase in wages for their menfolk, relaxation of influx control so that their men can come to the city freely and obtain work, and a reduction of rent at Sobantu Village”.81 The wage increase demand was in line with the South African Congress of Trade Union’s (Sactu) campaign for a living wage82.

Political events such as meetings and other forms of protest continued in the city after the above-mentioned inci-dents. Bang was becoming perturbed about what was taking place. The Afri-cans that he had thought he understood clearly for many years were changing before his eyes. In his annual report for 1959 he argued that

It is regretted that the unrest, which occurred during the last corporate year, continued on a modified scale this year. From time to time meetings were held by certain Bantu organisations and trade union leaders, preceded by the circulation of pamphlets, and these meetings had an unsettling effect on the Bantu population. Beer halls and markets were boycotted and women armed with sticks actually raided the beer halls on certain occasions. A strange phenomenon was noticeable in that the men offered no resistance. They were in fact, so terrified that they fled in a panic and did not return for days.83

This quotation seems to suggest that trade unions were becoming active in the politics of resistance in Pietermaritzburg. What also seems to have perplexed Bang was the gender issue involved in beer-hall boycotts. The fact that men offered


77


no resistance was astonishing to him. Women were taking the men’s role of carrying sticks and using them against men. Women were using male symbol-ism to assert their position in society.

ConclusionOne can conclude that the August riots in Pietermaritzburg were part of a series of many popular struggles that were tak-ing place in Natal, both in the urban and the rural areas. These demonstrations were led by women and they focused on grievances that specifically affected women as well as their communities, irrespective of gender. In August 1959 in Pietermaritzburg women marched to the city wanting to see the Chief Native Commissioner. These women came from different urban and rural areas around Pietermaritzburg. It was a convergence of urban and rural griev-ances. There is a strong likelihood that there were links between the women’s demonstration and the outbreak of violence at Sobantu on Saturday 14th. This violence shocked the Native Ad-ministration Department, which did not expect such a revolt to take place in a village, which was seen as a “model village”. The city council and the NAD blamed hooligans for what occurred in Sobantu. They could not imagine that the residents of Sobantu, who had a reputation for good behaviour, could express their anger and frustration in that manner. Sobantu was a commu-nity under extreme stress with socio-economic problems such as housing shortages, increases in rentals, and overcrowding. There was also a threat of removal under the Group Areas Act of 1950. At the same time there was an increase in the rate of unemployment for the educated youth in the village. Anti-apartheid resistance was also

making its impact in Sobantu as there was substantial support for the ANC. It seems also that the Saturday event was carefully planned, as there was a group of youth that were shouting resistance slogans. Unlike the other events, which were led predominantly by women, the Sobantu crowd was heterogene-ous, although the young males formed a large portion. The Sobantu incident could therefore be viewed as both a reaction to the local problems as well as a contribution to the countrywide anti-apartheid popular struggles which were taking place at the time.

NOTES1 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/4/2/340, Ref. 197/21, G.

F. Khumalo to TC, 19 August 1959.2 J. Yawitch, “Natal 1959: The Women’s

Protests” paper at Conference on the History of Opposition in South Africa, University of Witwatersrand, 1978. pp. 296-9. L. K. Ladlau, “The Cato Manor Riots, 1959-1960”, Unpublished MA Thesis, Durban, University of Natal, 1975, p. 34.

3 T. Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1983), p. 149; K. Luckhardt and B. Wall, Organize or Starve: The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), p. 304; L. Kuper, “Rights and Riots in Natal”, Africa South, Volume 4, Number 2 January-March 1960, p. 21; A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1958-1959 (Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1959), pp 42-4.

4 P. O. Tichmann, “African Worker Action in Durban”, Unpublished MA Thesis, Durban University of Natal, 1983. p.50.

5 Lodge, Black Politics (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1983), p. 141.

6 C. Walker Women and Resistance in South Africa (London, Onyx, 1982), p. 149.

7 Ibid. p. 146.8 Lodge, Black Politics, p. 195; Race Relations

Survey 1958-1959, pp. 140-1; Natal Witness, 17 August 1959; Daily News, 17 August 1959; UmAfrika, 22 August 1959; Ilanga, 22 August 1959.

9 Ladlau, “The Cato Manor Riots”, p. 3410 Luckhardt and Wall, Organize or Starve, p. 303.11 Tichmann, “African Worker Action”, p. 49.


78


12 Pietermaritzburg Corporation Yearbook, 1959-1960, p. 139.

13 NAD, TC Files, Minute Book 25, Ref. 152/202, NAC Minutes, 11 August 1959.

14 Ibid.15 The Natal Witness, 15 August 1959; The Natal

Daily News, 15 August 1959; UmAfrika, 22 August 1959; Ilanga lase Natal, 22 August 1959; D. R. Bonnin, “Class Consciousness and Conflict in the Natal Midlands, 1940-1987: the Case of the BTR Sarmcol Workers”, Unpublished M SocSc Thesis, Durban, University of Natal, 1987, p. 160.

16 Ilanga, 29 August 1959.17 Ilanga, 29 August 1959; Daily News, 15

August 1959; Natal Witness, 15 August 1959; UmAfrika, 22 August 1959.

18 Ilanga, 29 August 1959.19 It has not been possible to find the estimate of

the number of women who gathered in Retief Street, but the number of police suggests it was a large crowd.

20 Natal Witness, 15 August 1959.21 Ibid.22 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214,

Bang to TC, 20 August 1959.23 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/4/2/74, Ref. 140/1

Native Housing, p. 1-3; For a detailed account on the history of Sobantu Village see H. Peel, “Sobantu Village: An Administrative History of a Pietermaritzburg Township, 1924-1987”, Unpublished BA Honours Thesis, Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal, 1987.

24 “The Environmental and Development Challenges of Sobantu Village”, Introduction prepared by the University of Natal’s School of Environment and Development for Coursework Examination, a component of which was the study of Sobantu village.

25 S.W. Kirkpatrick, “Sobantu Planning Initiative” (Final Draft) Prepared for KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Administration (May 1994), p. 11; H. Peel, “Sobantu Village” in J. Laband and R. Haswell (eds), Pietermaritzburg 1838-1988: A New Portrait of an African City (Pietermaritzburg, Shuter and Shooter, 1988), p. 82; A. Xaba and E. Ntshangase’s talks during the field examination for Masters students in the School of Environment and Development at Sobantu Community Hall, 15 July 1997.

26 Ibid. p. 128.27 C.E.P. Seethal, “Civic Organisations and the

Local State in South Africa, 1979-1993”, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Iowa, 1993, p. 203.

28 Peel, “Sobantu Village”, p. 132.29 Ibid. p. 133.

30 Ibid. p. 82.31 NAD, TC Files Vol. 4/4/2/74, Refs. 140/1 and

140/110, Sobantu Village: Proposed Removal of Inhabitants, Letter from Town Clerk to Secretary for Native Affairs, Pretoria, 6th November 1956; Ref. 140/1 Chief Native Commissioner’s Memo 28/12E Second Location for Pietermaritzburg: Points for discussion on 30.07.57; “Native Housing and the future of Sobantu Village” Pietermaritzburg Corporation Yearbook 1955-1956, p. 32.

32 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/4/2/74, Ref. 140/1, Native Housing at Edendale, Joint Confidential Publication of the city council and The Local Health Commission.

33 H. Peel, “Sobantu Village”, pp. 113-4.34 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/4/2/340, Ref. 198/3

Sobantu Advisory Board Meetings.35 Ibid. p. 123.36 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/4/2/340, Ref. 197/21;

Refs. 197/21(40); 198/02. In one of his letters he even asked why the Bantu Authorities Act was not applicable to Sobantu village.

37 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/4/2/340, Ref. 197/21 G. F. Khumalo’s correspondences to Chief Native Commissioner and Town Clerk.

38 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/4/2/340, Ref. 197/21, Letter from W. Chiliza to Town Clerk, February 1946.

39 Ibid. Letter from the Secretary for Native Affairs to Chief Native Commissioner, 4 November 1952.

40 Quoted in Peel, “Sobantu Village”, p. 126.41 Ibid. p. 128; Seethal, “Civic Organisations”, p.

205.42 Peel, “Sobantu Village”, p. 130; NAD, TC Files,

NAC Minutes, Minute Book 25, 11 August 1959.

43 Ibid.44 NAD, TC Files, NAC Minutes, Minute Book

25, 11 August 1959; Peel, “Sobantu Village”, p. 131.

45 Ibid.46 Peel, “Sobantu Village”, p. 130; NAD, Minute

Book 25, 11 August 1959.47 Seethal, “Civic Organisations”, p. 205.48 Natal Witness, 17 August 1959; Ilanga, 22

August 1959; NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214 Bang’s report to TC.

49 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214, Bang to TC.

50 Ibid.51 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214,

Bang to TC.52 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214,

Bang’s report to TC.53 Peel, “Sobantu Village”, p. 136.


79


54 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214, Bang’s report to TC.

55 Natal Witness, 17 August 1959.56 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214.57 Natal Witness, 17 August 1959.58 UmAfrika, 17 August 1959.59 Natal Witness, 17 August 1959.60 Ilanga, 22 August 1959.61 Natal Witness, 19 August 1959.62 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214,

Letter from Town Clerk to the Secretary for Bantu Education (Pretoria), 6 September 1959.

63 Corporation Yearbook 1958-1959, p. 12964 Peel, “Sobantu Village”, pp. 125-6.65 Ibid. p. 126.66 Ibid.67 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref.199/214,

Letter from Town Clerk to the Secretary for Bantu Education (Pretoria), 06 September 1959.

68 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214, Bang to TC; Corporation Yearbook 1959-1960, p. 139.

69 UmAfrika, 22 August 1959; NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214, Bang’s report to TC.

70 Natal Witness, 17 August 1959; See also NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214, Letter from NIC to Mayor, 5th October 1959.

71 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214,

Letter from Liberal Party to Mayor, 24 August 1959.

72 Natal Witness, 17 August 1959; Ilanga, 22 August 1959.

73 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214, Letters from: African Welfare Society to Mayor, 25 August 1959; Natal African Teachers’ Union to the Mayor, 25 August 1959; Local Health Commission to Mayor, 11 September 1959.

74 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214, Letter from the Urban Bantu School Board to Town Clerk, 26 August 1959.

75 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/5/551, Ref. 199/214, Bang to TC.

76 H. Peel, “Sobantu Village”, p. 141.77 NAD, TC Files, Vol. 4/4/2/340, Ref. 197/21,

Letter from G. F. Kumalo to Town Clerk, 19 August 1959.

78 Natal Witness, 17 August 1959; UmAfrika, 22 August 1959; Ilanga, 22 August 1959.

79 Natal Witness, 18 August 1959.80 Ibid.81 Ibid.82 Luckhardt and Wall Organize or Starve! The

History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), p. 244.

83 Corporation Yearbook, 1959-1960, p. 32.

80Natalia 42 (2012), Roger Ingle pp. 80 – 86

Gun accidents in early KwaZulu-Natal

by Roger Ingle


DURING THE first three dec-ades of the 19th century, a small group of white adven-

turers resided at the then remote Port Natal to trade and to maintain somewhat precarious communication with the Zulu nation. The hopeful prospect for this risky enterprise was the lucrative harvesting of ivory and buffalo hides. Guns were essential to this task. How-ever, it seems the hunters were often in more danger from their own firearms than from the elephant and buffalo.

Their guns would have been typical of the muzzle-loading hunting pieces that played such an important role in our national heritage. In particular, one thinks of the huge gun widely used by the early hunters and frontiersmen at

the Cape and later by the Voortrek-kers in their move northward into the interior.1 This was the bobbejaanboud, a spectacular class of gun uniquely South African. In vernacular Cape Dutch, it describes the unusual shape of the wooden stock, viz. a baboon thigh. Many were monsters, some with a muzzle reaching as high as a man’s chin and with a bore often one inch in diameter and firing a lead ball wrapped in linen weighing over a hundred grams. It required a sturdy soul to shoot them. Most were smooth-bore and some with straight grooves cut in the inner surface of the barrel, this sometimes being mis-taken by collectors for rifling. The long barrel had little to do with ballistics. It was to enable the muzzle-loading


81


flintlock gun to be loaded by a man on horseback, with the butt resting on the ground. When the trigger was pulled, a flint, held in a spring-loaded cock, would fall and strike a serrated iron friz-zen, thus creating a spark. This would ignite some exposed priming powder in a small pan on the side of the barrel. The resulting flash would go through a small touch hole to fire the charge in the barrel.

When at the bay in 1839, the well-travelled hunter and explorer Adulphe Delegorgue 2 describes such a uniquely African gun and the preparation of the ball it fired.

But whether you accompany me on a crocodile hunt, or whether you follow me in pursuit of buffalo, hippopotamus, rhinoceros or elephant, remember that the gun must be single-

barrelled, of enormous calibre and that two tenths of the bullet must be tin. This is a sine qua non observed by all South African hunters.

He attempted to hunt hippo in the Umgeni River but was “defeated by the mighty mosquito”. There was a good market for hippo ivory as it was harder than elephant ivory and thus used in the manufacture of dentures. An illustra-tion in his book Voyage dans L’Afrique shows a classic bobbejaanboud with a barrel about one metre long extending back to what appears to be a cap-lock ignition system. It is more likely that his gun at that time was a flint-lock, the percussion cap-lock system not being in general use till much later. Perhaps the illustration was produced some time after his African experiences.

The travelling hunter at the time would have had several guns, some being of smaller calibre with perhaps a fowling piece for game for the pot. When in pursuit of dangerous game, a trusty gun-bearer would be close at hand with a second elephant gun in the event of a shot being botched. Added to this danger, the use of exposed black powder and the muzzle-loading system was intrinsically dangerous. There were numerous accidents at the time and later, well into the 19th century. The accounts that follow have been taken from a number of published sources. Modern place names have been used to identify localities while the language and spelling of those who witnessed the events have been left unchanged. The big guns used considerable quantities of gunpowder and large stores of it were required to sustain operations during the long periods between visits by schooners to the bay or overland trips from the Cape Colony. The unregulated

Bobbejaanboud


82


mass-storage of gunpowder led to an inevitable consequence.

In 1835, Mr Collis was the prin-cipal trader in Durban, representing the Grahamstown firm of Maynard & Norden. Beads, guns, gunpowder, lead and other basic essentials were exchanged for ivory. The inhabitants of the port mostly lived in grass huts in the Zulu style or in more primitive bush shelters. Mr Collis, on the other hand, had a more substantial dwelling. His store was made of reeds plastered with daub and stood amidst a lush vegetable garden surrounded by virgin bush. The site later became part of the central business district of Durban. One day in 1835, this peaceful bay-side setting was suddenly devastated by a huge explo-sion. The event was recorded by Allen Gardiner 3 in his Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country.

26 th – Mr Col l i s ’s magazine , containing fifteen pounds of powder, had yesterday exploded; and himself, his infant child, the native nurse, and a Hottentot named Class, had been

killed while several natives were seriously burnt. The circumstances which led to this awful scene were related by a native who was present, and so severely burnt that it is scarcely thought he can recover. Mr Collis had gone into the store for the purpose of taking out a gun for Class then in his service but who had accompanied me from the colony as Mr Berkin’s servant. In order to try the flint, he had imprudently snapped the lock, with the muzzle pointed towards a powder barrel, when the gun which had been carelessly put by loaded but without priming, went off; and the explosion, which was heard at the Umgeni, took place. The mangled bodies of Mr Collis and the Hottentot were blown to a considerable distance; the skull of the infant, which was in the arms of the servant girl, seated on the outside of an adjoining building, was fractured; and she shortly after died of the injury she had sustained.

Mr Collis’s wife was one of only two white women in Durban at the time. She must have had a sad and lonely return to England.

The flash from a muzzled-loaded flintlock gun


83


Nathaniel Isaacs preceded Allen Gardiner. He was an early pioneer who was shipwrecked while trying to enter the bay in 1825. He hunted and traded in the area and kept a detailed diary. In August 1826 he wrote of an accident which occurred on a small hill on the side of the Bluff overlooking the present-day oil-storage sites at Fynnlands – a small park marks the spot today.

11th August, 1830 – Early this morning I was awakened by the report of a musket, which was followed by a hideous howl. I leaped from my bed and ran towards the mob who had collected at the bottom of the kraal, and there beheld a most painful sight. A poor boy was lying prostrate on the ground, his arm nearly shattered off, with a deep wound in his belly that exhibited his entrails and the upper part of his thigh lacerated. He was bleeding a good deal and faint from the loss of blood, with which he was covered. In fact, the poor creature was so mangled that I had no hopes of reviving him. The natives began already to howl, conceiving him to be dying or dead.

William and Francis Fynn, like myself, were inexperienced, and knew not what to do. We sent for Shingarn, the old native doctor, and then looked into medical books for information. My own judgement was that the arm was much too shattered to be in anyway set again, and that nothing would do but amputation. The native doctor came, and displayed his knowledge by saying that he could do nothing for the dying youth. William Fynn resolved on cutting off the arm at the elbow; accordingly, we gave the sufferer 40 drops of laudanum and drove all the natives away.

Powder horn

Modified Brown Bess


84


Laudanum is a solution of opium dissolved in alcohol. Forty drops is enough to transport the stoutest soul to Shangri-La. He continues:

I went to keep his friends from approaching, who were coming to mourn, while William, with his razor, operated; and as soon as the arm was off, I sewed the parts together, dressed the wounds, then lodged the lad in a hut, regulated his diet, put three boys to superintend him, and left him as well as could be anticipated from his mangled condition. The boy had been sitting at the entrance of a hut of another who had been trained to the use of the musket, and was cleaning it. The musket being loaded, accidently went off, and the poor boy, while looking at his companion cleaning the piece, received its contents in his arm and body.

The boy recovered from this ordeal, albeit with one arm. Isaacs wrote of another accident which had occurred some months before, this time involv-ing a powder horn. Present-day shooters of muzzle-loading black powder guns are prohibited from dispensing powder from a powder flask or powder horn at the firing range. For safety reasons, powder charges have to be separately weighed and held in individual contain-ers. Although this is a departure from the usual way powder horns and flasks were used, it is a prudent rule. Isaac’s diary underscores this.

15th October, 1830 – It appeared from the evidence elicited, that two of our musket party having been sent to the Cayles, they went to Umtondese’s kraal to beg some corn from their sister, who was the chief’s wife. Entering the hut of the chief’s brother, where some females were sitting, who asked them what they had got in their horns, Nonqua took a little powder

out and set fire to it. The women’s curiosity not being satisfied, the man put some more on the ground, forgetting, at the same time, to put the stopper into the horn. As soon as it had ignited it communicated with that in their horns, when a violent explosion took place, which blew up the hut. Both the boys were burnt, and the people became greatly alarmed. The chief, perceiving the hut on fire, and not seeing his brother, thought from the cries from Nonqua, and observing the other running away, that he had killed his brother; he therefore, without considering, ran after the boy, who was dreadfully burnt, and himself and his people beat him.

Later, another burning powder horn nearly changed the course of history in KwaZulu-Natal. The defeat of King Dingane was expedited in 1839 when Prince Mpande, Dingane’s brother

Redman 4 bore, being held by the author


85


broke away from the Zulu king with 15 000 followers. The Voortrekker Volksraad soon took steps to form an alliance with Mpande. A delegation led by a landdrost went to conclude the agreement. The party must have been filled with apprehension. The horror of the fate of Piet Retief’s recent visit to Dingane must have been much in mind that day. Adulphe Delegorgue was there to witness the event. During the negotiations, for some unexplained reason, Mr Morewood’s powder horn ignited.4 There was a violent explosion. Fortunately the only casualty was Mr Morewood, who caught fire and, to put it in the polite language of the day, was “severely burnt about the loins”. The deal was concluded successfully. As Delegorgue observed, had one fragment touched the King, the matter would have taken a different course.

As Durban grew, sporting guns be-came very popular. Charles Barter was a lawyer who had a successful career in those early days. He arrived in Durban in 1851 and had the following to say of his fellow passengers:

But whatever their age, or calling, or previous habits, or to whatever employment they might look forward on their arrival in the land of promise, not one of them was without a gun. Such a collection of fire-arms I had never seen before – singles and doubles, smooth-bores, two-grooved, and poly-grooved, of all sizes and qualities, from pea-rifle to the monster elephant-gun using four-ounce balls, from the costly and highly-finished Lancaster to the cheap Birmingham pistols; revolving and not revolving; all these, and many more were there to be found. The very ladies carried light fowling pieces and the caboose was continuously beset by bullet-casters, to the great discomfort of the good-natured black who presided

there. As many of them had never handled a piece before, some of their manipulations were amusingly eccentric; but when they began actually to load and fire “for practice”, I trembled with apprehension, and the captain, sympathising with me on account of his spars and rigging, put a hasty stop to the exhibition. I need scarcely say that not more than two or three of these men, since they landed in the colony, have ever had occasion to take gun or pistol in hand, unless to offer them for sale.

By 1854 there was sufficient interest to form a Volunteer movement. Mus-ketry could have helped to promote gun safety but it had a slow start and the dreaded powder horn again left its mark; perhaps on the loins of a Volunteer or two. George Russell lived and worked in Durban at the time, and in his book History of Old Durban he described an accident.

Not content with learning how to carry, shoulder, and present arms, we must hurry on to the real thing, so soon began with what the Instructor called “blank cartridge”, but as guns were of all sizes and no cartridges were to be had, while very few knew how to make them, we overcame the difficulty by bringing our own powder horns and flasks, with paper or rag for wadding in our pockets. A slovenly carpenter man, standing in the rank between John J. Chapman (spared to be Mayor of Pietermaritzburg) and myself, after firing his fowling piece once or twice, was preparing to “load and prime”, when his powder flask was blown out of his hand and exploded. The shock and scare caused Chapman and myself to feel for our wounds but, as nothing gory resulted, we descended upon the carpenter in wrath by way of gratitude. This incident led to a general order prohibiting flasks and imposing cartridges.


86


The cartridge referred to was a measured charge of powder and a ball wrapped in a paper sleeve. This would be torn open, the powder poured down the barrel followed by the compressed paper from the cartridge to form a wad and then the ball. Subsequently, old Tower muskets were issued with factory-made cartridges, and later the Durban Rangers were issued with out-of-date Brunswick muzzle-loading rifles, one of the worst rifles ever to see service in the British Army. They fired a ball cast with a raised ring encircling it which engaged two rifling grooves in the bore. George described how he had to dismount, pick up a stone and ham-mer the ramrod to get the ball down the barrel and seated on the wad. It is sur-prising there are no records of broken hands and airborne ramrods.

The introduction of metallic car-tridges, more stable powders and breech-loading guns over the years that followed must have saved many a life along the way.

NOTES1 Muzzle-loading guns were made in quantity at

the Cape from the early 19th century onwards until the later advent of breech-loaders. However, some gunsmiths may have used intricate components such as lock springs supplied by specialist British and Continental makers who served the trade.

2 See Natalia 4, p 43 and Natalia 5, p 30.3 Allen Gardiner was an ex-Royal Navy officer

who, after the untimely death of his young wife and retrenchment on half pay, decided to devote the rest of his life to opening up new areas for missionary work. The Zulus in South East Africa became his first priority. He was a brave, headstrong man with deep convictions and thus controversial. In 1835 he named the bay d’Urban after the then Governor of the Cape. On his return to England he wrote Nar-rative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country based on his diary during his stay in KwaZulu-Natal.

4 Edmund Morewood was the harbour master of the Voortrekkers at the time of the Battle of Congella.

ReferencesBerkovitch, Barry The Cape gunsmith Delegorgue, Adulphe Travels in Southern Africa,

2 vols. (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1990, 1997)

Bailey, D. W. British military long arms 1715 – 1865

Barter, Charles The dorp and the veld. (London: William S. Orr and Co., 1852)

Gardiner, Allen Narrative of a journey to the Zoolu Country in South Africa: undertaken in 1835. (London: 1836)

Russell, George History of old Durban. (Durban: P. Davis & Sons, 1899)

87


Notes and Queries

THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL SOCIETY AND THE KILLIE CAMPBELL MEMORIAL BURSARYIan Smith writes

T HE SOUTH AFRICAN National Society (Sans) was founded in Cape Town in 1905 after a series

of meetings which began the year before and involved such notable people as Lord de Villiers and J.H. Hofmeyr. The stimulus for its establishment seems to have been the threat to the existence of Cape Town Castle. Mrs Koopmans de Wet, a foundation member of Sans, was particularly active in the successful campaign for its preservation. Other campaigns followed. The realisation of the need to protect the rapidly dwindling rock art and floral heritage of southern Africa resulted in the Bushman Relics Protection Act in 1911 after significant pressure from the politically connected members of Sans

in the young Union government. These same members played a leading role in the establishment of Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens two years later. Sans continued to play a significant, though diminishing, role in the preservation of South Africa’s heritage in the twentieth century.

Immediately after its foundation and even before Union, branches were es-tablished in several centres. The Natal branch was founded in 1907. Sadly, however, as the century wore on, the branches faded. In 1980 the Cape Town branch closed leaving only the Natal branch in existence.

The aims of Sans are clearly spelt out in its constitution and a brief syn-opsis is:

Notes and Queries

88


• to cultivate a love for, and appre-ciation of, the natural, historical and cultural heritage of South Africa and all its peoples,

• to promote interest in, and appre-ciation of, those aspects of natural resources, history and culture which are important all the South African people,

• to give general support and public-ity to the S.A. Heritage Resources Agency and the Amafa/Heritage KwaZulu-Natali, the heritage con-servation organisation for this prov-ince, in their task of preserving the natural, historical and cultural heritage of South Africa, and

• to support any other body or organ-isation engaged in, or faced with, a similar task

With these aims it is hardly surprising that the late Dr Killie Campbell was deeply involved in the Durban branch of Sans and, besides her unique contri-bution through her home Muckleneuk, she spearheaded the drive to ensure the preservation of the Old Court House, now the Local History Museum, as well as the Robinson home, now the Old House Museum. Working in tandem with her longtime friend and fellow member of Sans, Daphne Strutt, she played a significant role in providing some of the exhibits and old photo-graphs for the Durban Room of the Local History Museum.

The preservation of Drakensberg rock art together with the preservation of the Dlinza forest near eShowe are further examples of the work of the local branch of Sans.

Public meetings of Sans, to which interested people are invited, are held on the second Tuesday of each month at 5 pm at the KwaMuhle Museum, 130 Ordinance Rd., Durban.

Since 1982 the Durban branch of Sans has awarded the Dr Killie Camp-bell Memorial Bursary in honour of Dr Campbell’s work. The bursary is awarded to post-graduate students in the discipline of History, attending a university in KwaZulu-Natal. Their area of research, or their dissertation, needs to be on a topic relating to South Africa, preferably KwaZulu-Natal. The bursary has been awarded annually for the past 30 years. Two recent recipients are Barbara Wahlburg, who became head of research at the Albert Luthuli Museum, and Mxoloisi Mchunu, pres-ently senior research officer of the KZN Legislature research library. The amount to be awarded is discussed by the committee each year, and for 2013 it is in anticipated that it will be in the region of R15 000 to R20 000.

Information concerning the bursary is to be circulated to the various universi-ties and education departments – e.g. the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Zululand, Unisa, and the Department of Education.

For further information contact: The Chairman,South African National SocietyP.O. Box 47688Greyville 4023or by email: [email protected]

Notes and Queries

89


A NOTABLE CENTENARYBy John Deane

IN a time when national and international chain stores take an ever greater share of the

retail market, we see the closure and disappearance of businesses that once seemed to be permanent features of a city’s commercial life. One could rattle off a string of shop names that were well known to generations of people in Pietermaritzburg and Durban, but which are now no more. A noteworthy survivor in the capital is the family firm Ghëla Outfitters, which has been in business for over 100 years, in the same premises on the corner of Langalibalele (previously Longmarket) and Retief streets.

In 1911 Ghëla Dayaram came to Pietermaritzburg from India, set up in business as a tailor, and then brought his family over to join him. His son Hark-ishan learnt the skills of the trade and in due course took over the business, being succeeded in turn by his sons Jay, Nana and Madan. Though they do stock ready-made men’s clothing, tailoring is still a very important part of the busi-ness – the making and expert alteration of garments. Jay, who runs the Liberty Midlands Mall branch, was trained not only in the family shop, but also at the Tailor and Cutter Academy in London.

Ghëla Outfitters has survived not only the economic ups and downs of the past century, but the discriminatory social and political conditions that prevailed for most of that time. One example of the petty prejudice it was subjected to is scarcely credible in the 21st century. Long before the notorious Group Areas Act of 1950, residential and business segregation was generally applied in Natal. Retief Street was the recognised

The premises of Ghëla Dayaram when the firm opened in 1911

Ghëla Dayaram today, still on the same site

boundary between the European and Indian residential areas of central Piet-ermaritzburg. The Ghëlas’ shop (with many white customers) and their home were on the same site, and for a time certain windows had to be bricked up because they “overlooked the European area”. Such memories, which might be amusing if they were not so hurtful, are part of the story of this fine family firm as it enters its second century in the city.

Notes and Queries

90


A LIFE OF STUDY AND SERVICEBy John Deane

SOME MORE BUNNY CHOWBy Elwyn Jenkins

NATALIA notes with sadness the death of Dr Charles Swaisland in Oxford in July 2012 at the

age of 93. In his retirement he was for many years a volunteer assistant at the Rhodes House Library in Oxford, where his main task was to compile a territorial index of the papers of the Aborigines’ Protection Society, on which he was a recognised authority since his 1968 doctoral thesis on the society. His interest extended far wider than the APS, however. His knowledge of 19th-century southern African history enabled him to assist many researchers, his advice and guidance being always generously given. Some of those who sought his help became personal friends. Of particular importance to KwaZulu-Natal is the fact that Charles Swaisland rescued for Rhodes House a collection of Bishop Colenso’s papers when an old house in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, was demolished. He took a keen interest in the restoration of the Colensos’ house at Bishopstowe near Pietermaritzburg from 1995 to 2009, and made generous donations to

assist the work.His connections with Africa and

South Africa were many, possibly be-ginning when as a young man serving in the Friends’ Ambulance Service in the Second World War he spent some time recuperating in Durban, and stayed with a Quaker family in Pietermaritzburg.

After the war he spent 15 years as a district officer in Nigeria, later lectured in administration at the University of Birmingham and at universities in South Africa, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mauritius. He acted as a monitor during the first demo-cratic elections in Zimbabwe in 1980 and South Africa in 1994. In recent years he had been Vice-Chairman of Anti-slavery International, active in Overseas Aid, a local councillor and local museum administrator. He spent holidays restoring old coaches on the North Norfolk Railway, and attended evening classes in Chinese language!

Charles Swaisland is survived by his wife Cecillie (who contributed an article in Natalia 23/24) and two daughters.

IN HIS NOTE on “Banyan trees and bunny chow”,1 Adrian Koopman gives the etymology of “bunny” and

“chow” and a possible date of origin for this quintessential KwaZulu-Natal meal. There is a lot more that can be said about it.

“Bunny chow” is defined by Rajend Mesthrie in his A Dictionary of South

African Indian English as “a take-away meal comprising curry stuffed into the hollowed-out part of a half or quarter loaf of bread”. 2 That “bunny” comes from the Hindu word for merchants and traders is undisputed. But the origin of “chow” that Koopman quotes the lexi-cographer Jean Branford as giving in A Dictionary of South African English3

Notes and Queries

91


may not be right. She says it comes from the Chinese and means “food”, but Mary Alexander has a different ver-sion: “Chow is South African informal [English] for food, perhaps from ‘chow-chow’, a relish that gets its name from the French chou (cabbage).”4 Whether it comes from Chinese or French, it is not a uniquely South African word: it is recorded in both British and American dictionaries.

There is a cluster of words relating to bunny chow. Koopman records that bunny chows are called “bunnies”. Another name, that he does not men-tion, is “kota” (for “quarter”), while the hollowed-out piece of bread is known as “the virgin”.5 “When ordering a bunny chow in Durban, the local slang dictates that you need only ask for a ‘quarter mutton’ (or flavour and size of your choice),” according to Wikipedia.6

One version of the origin of the food is briefly quoted by Koopman from A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (DSAEHP).7 There are at least three others. The

DSAEHP citation is worth quoting in full, as it sounds authoritative. It comes from a letter by G. Varma in the Daily News of 16 January 1984:

Your readers may be interested to know that this tavern [sc. the Queen’s] gave birth to the “Bunny Chow”… I asked a friend to bring some lunch for me. Since we had no containers, I asked him to cut the bread at the crust … scoop out the soft portion and fill it with curry… In those days all Gugerati [sic] Hindu businessmen were called “Banias”, so we called our take-away lunches “Bunia Chow”. On my return to Durban in 1981 after an absence of over 25 years, I noted “Bunny Chow” had become a household name.8

Other versions are given in an article on Bunny Chow in Wikipedia:

One story … has it that a restaurant run by people known as Banias (an Indian caste) first created the scooped-out bread and curry dish in Grey Street, Durban. The food was a means to serve take-aways to excluded people. During the apartheid regime, Indians

Bunny chow hollowed out Bunny chow, filled with chicken and dahl, and topped with the hollowed out bread

Notes and Queries

92


were not allowed in certain shops and cafes so the shop owners found a way of serving the people through back windows etc…

An alternative story … is that, as in India, merchants who traditionally sold their wares under the “bania” tree… were called “bania”… It is more likely that the name “bania chow” was adopted to describe the staple meal of Indian merchants than taken from a restaurant run by Banias, though the true origins remain somewhat disputed.

Stories of the origin of bunny chow date as far back as the migrant Indian workers’ arrival in South Africa. One account suggests that [they] required a way of carrying their lunches in the field. 9

Websites abound with recipes for bunny chow and advertisements for the best outlets in KwaZulu-Natal. But that has not inhibited Cape Town from muscling in. A quotation in the DSAEHP from the Cape Times of 15 January 1986 proclaims, “That old Cape favourite Bunny-Chow – a loaf of bread stuffed with snoek or curry”.10 Old Cape? Snoek? Enough to make a KwaZulu-Natal purist shudder.

The House of Govenders (Govenders House of Currries, Govenders Curry Kitchen etc) founded the Bunny Chow Barometer in 2004. According to the QuarterBunny website, “It all started when Chris Chappé and Donovan Baney were sitting having a bunny at Govenders (one of many!) and thought people should instantly know where to find a good one.’11 Now called the Coca-Cola Bunnychow Barometer, it is part of the “Celebrate Durban” initiative, and is held annually in September on the banks of the uMngeni at the Blue Lagoon. Its aim is to provide the public

with a guide to the best bunny chow es-tablishments. In 2011 about 50 eateries competed. For more information and publicity, the Quarterbunny website of-fers “the inside scoop on bunny chows”, and you can order a t-shirt emblazoned on the front I BUNNY CHOW.

The ramifications of bunny chow go further. In 2006 a South African film company released a comedy called Bunny Chow. Directed by John Barker, it starred Kagiso Lediga, Kim Engelebrecht, Joey Rasdien and David Kibuuka. A synopsis is given on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb):

Three comedians and a weird guy named Cope embark on a raucous weekend journey to Oppikoppie, South Africa’s biggest rock festival. The guys slip out of the city for a few dusty and increasingly absurd days with hopes of mass debauchery, drugs, rampant sex, true love and conquering the comedy stages, but they get more than they bargained for.12

I have watched the opening scenes, where I was struck by the visual evo-cation of Durban’s modernist flatland architecture (the film is shot in cinema vérité style). But I could go no further. A scathing review on IMDb concludes, “Guess SA comedy’s gonna stay in the stone age a little longer. Nice work guys.”13 Another review tries hard to be patriotic: “It’s the movie’s subject matt-ter that really makes it worth watching. In a local industry dominated by heavy, imported messages, it takes a certain amount of guts to make a movie this frivolous and fun.”14

From movies to crime – to the world of TV films about Cold Case Files. Pietermaritzburg has its own unsolved case, the Bunny Chow Murder. Some time after 1960 – I have not been able to trace newspaper reports, and am writing

Notes and Queries

93


from memory – a woman was murdered in the middle of the day in her house in the sedate suburb of Bisley. Her killer lay in wait for her inside the gate to her driveway. While he (presumably it was a male) was waiting for his victim to return home, he set about consuming a bunny chow, but left part of it uneaten when her arrival interrupted his meal. The only clue that he left was that the bunny chow had a hardboiled egg inserted in the curry. At that time, the sole bunny chow outlet in the province that sold this culinary variation was in Howick. But there the trail went cold. Perhaps a reader may be able to con-tribute a note on the subject to the next issue of Natalia.

NOTES1 Koopman, Adrian. “Banyan trees and bunny

chow,” Natalia, 41, December 2011, pp. 90-1.2 Mesthrie, Rajend. A Dictionary of South

African Indian English (Cape Town, UCT Press, 2010), s.v.

3 Branford, Jean. A Dictionary of South African English (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1980).

4 Alexander, Mary. “South African English.” http://www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com (accessed 14 December 2011).

5 Wik iped ia . “Bunny chow” . h t tp : / /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunny_chow (accessed 14 December 2011).

6 Ibid.7 A Dictionary of South African English on

Historical Principles (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996).

8 DSAEHP, s.v.9 Wikipedia. “Bunny chow”.10 DSAEHP, s.v.11 QuarterBunny. http://quarterbunny.co.za

(accessed 14 December 2011).12 Internet Movie Database. “Bunny Chow”.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837786/ (accessed 14 December 2011).

13 Ibid.14 Channel24. “Bunny chow”. http://www.

channel24.co.za/Movies/Reviews/Bunny-Chow-20081201 (accessed 14 December 2011).

REVD JOHN DUBE MADE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

In May, 2012 the presidential guest house in KwaZulu-Natal, King’s House, built in 1904 as a coastal residence for Natal’s colonial governors, was renamed after John Langalibalele Dube, the first president of the ANC by President Jacob Zuma. This issue of Natalia also features a review of the first biography of Dube. It is thus of interest that the researches of Natalia editorial committee member Sylvia Vietzen turned up the following item on Dube in the issue of 25 September, 1936 of Indian Opinion.

THE Rev. John Dube, one of the best known Native leaders of Natal, has had the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy conferred upon him by the University of South Africa. (It was Professor Edgar Brookes who was the chief motivator of this. – Ed.) This is a signal honour, and the first occasion that it has been conferred on a Native by a South African university. The Rev. Dube, who is the son of a

chief who relinquished his rights to chieftainship in order to become a Christian minister, was educated at Adams Mission, Amanzimtoti. Many years ago he went to America to study medicine, but later abandoned it entirely in favour of the Church. He then returned to South Africa as a minister under the American Mission Board. He was the first president of the South African National Native

Notes and Queries

94


“THE LAST OUTPOST”: THE NATALIANS, SOUTH AFRICA AND THE BRITISH EMPIREShelagh Spencer writes

THE MSUNDUZI/VOORTREKKER MUSEUM CENTENARY (1912-2012)1 Bill Guest, who has written a centennial history of the museum, gives an overview of its remarkable growth

THIS is the title of a chapter by John Lambert (an ex-Pietermaritzburg resident and

historian, most of whose academic career has been in Pretoria), in Settlers and expatriates: Britons over the seas, edited by Robert Bickers and published

in 2010 by the Oxford University Press. It is a companion volume to the latest Oxford History of the British Empire. Lambert is also the author of Betrayed Trust: Africans and the State in Colonial Natal. (University of Natal Press, 1995)

THE VOORTREKKER Museum was established on 16 December 1912 in the picturesque Church of

the Vow Building on Pietermaritzburg’s Church Street. It was launched with the initial intention of accumulating items of interest relating to both “English and Dutch” pioneer settlements in the region. This broad collection policy may have been in response to the enthusiasm with which many English-speaking members of the local community supported the efforts of the Dutch Reformed Church

Congress and has been president of the Natal Native Congress since its inception. The Rev. John Dube is also the founder and principal of the Ohlange Institute at Phoenix, near Durban, the only Native school in Natal for higher education which is entirely controlled by Natives. He founded the well-known Native newspaper, Ilanga Lase Natal, of which he is the editor. For many

years he has taken a prominent part affecting Native welfare and is regarded with respect by both Europeans and Natives. He has addressed the Rotary Club on two occasions on the Native Bills, and was the first Native, in this case too, to address its members. He is a forceful public speaker in both Zulu and English and has written much on Native subjects.

The original Church of the Vow

Notes and Queries

95


to re-purchase and restore an historical structure which it had deconsecrated and sold in the 1860s. By 1937, when the museum was declared a National Monument, its objectives had narrowed to the Voortrekker focus which was in keeping with its name and in response to an inflow of donated items which threatened to fill it to overflowing.

For nearly four decades the Voortrek-ker Museum survived on a shoe-string budget. Its council attributed these straitened circumstances to the “step-motherly treatment” of the govern-ment, which insisted that it was not a “state institution” but a “state-aided” museum that should more appropriately be financed by the local provincial and municipal authorities. In practice, only token contributions were forthcom-ing from those sources and by way of private funds. Virtually all expenses had to be covered by an initial annual

state grant of £150 (R300), which was increased to £240 (R480) in the mid-1920s and remained unchanged into the 1940s. Consequently, the expand-ing collection was confined to the old church building, a council member served as honorary secretary-treasurer and the poorly-paid staff was restricted to a curator and a caretaker. The former was almost certainly lacking in any for-mal training, judging by the subsequent confusion arising out of the cataloguing system developed in those early years.

The museum enjoyed a dramatic change of fortune when, in April 1948, it was transferred from the control of the Department of the Interior to that of the more sympathetic Department of Education, Arts and Science. More significantly, in the following month the National Party came into office with a decidedly more assertive attitude towards the promotion of symbols of

The Andries Pretorius House, restored after removal in 1981 from its original site on his farm Welverdiend in the Edendale valley

Notes and Queries

96


Afrikaner cultural heritage such as the Voortrekker Museum. By 1955 its annual state grant had risen by almost 300% to £700 (R1 400). There was an-other 300% increase by 1967, a further 400% by 1973, an additional 94% by 1980 and 479% more by 1985.

These hefty financial injections, coupled with vigorous appeals for pri-vate donations, enabled the Museum to reinforce its Voortrekker focus. This was achieved, firstly, with the opening in 1960 of a much-needed additional building, the E.G. Jansen Extension, named after one of its dedicated early trustees and, secondly, by the unveiling in 1961 of the Piet Retief statue. A year later this bastion of Afrikanerdom in the heart of the old trekker capital was further strengthened when the neigh-bouring new Voortrekker Memorial Church was consecrated. It was exactly 101 years after the deconsecration of the original Church of the Vow and replaced the “Toring” (Spire) Church which had served its congregation in the intervening years. The Voortrekker focus was emphasised even more with the erection in1970 of the Gerrit Maritz statue and the removal in 1981 of the Andries Pretorius house from the site of his farm Welverdiend (subsequently known as Edendale) to be reconstructed adjacent to the museum.

By 1980, when the National Monu-ments Council awarded the Voortrekker Museum its bronze plaque, it enjoyed a vastly improved national profile that attracted 60 000 visitors a year, rising to 65 000 in 1982. This included increas-ing numbers of what were still broadly termed “non-white” persons, who were quietly admitted in contradiction of the official policy of segregation. In 1985 the South African Museums’ Association honoured the museum

with its so-called “accreditation”, the first of more than 200 institutions in the subcontinent to be so recognised. Meanwhile, it continued to expand with the 1982 opening of the Voortrekker house at 333 Boom Street. In 1984 the Museum’s ongoing spatial crisis was eased with the purchase from the Dutch Reformed Church of what was named the Ou Pastorie (Old Manse), which had been opened as a manse in June 1954 in close proximity to the Church of the Vow building.

In 1989, after protracted negotiations, the museum also gained the magnificent Longmarket Street Girls’ School build-ing for which new exhibits featuring aspects of the trekker lifestyle were ini-tially planned. More recently, in 2010, after the Dutch Reformed congregation had moved out of the centre of town, the 1962 Church of the Vow building and its adjacent hall were acquired, provid-ing ample room for expansion for the foreseeable future.

The house in Boom Street was the Voortrekker Museum’s first but by no means its only satellite. In 1989 it assumed control of Zaaylager Farm, just across the Bushman’s River from present-day Estcourt. There, in Febru-ary 1838, Gerrit Maritz’s laager had successfully resisted Zulu attack when other Boer parties encamped at Weenen and elsewhere in the midlands were overwhelmed. It was also believed to be the site of the first trekker farm established beyond the Orange River, where Hans “Dons” de Lange had built an irrigation furrow and planted crops – hence zaai (saai), to “sow”. The intention was that this would become a working farm museum in imitation of those already established overseas but with employees dressed as Voortrekkers and a restaurant offering traditional

Notes and Queries

97


trekker cuisine complete with witblitz (“white lightning” liqueur).

In 1989 the Voortrekker Museum also took over the management of a property on the northern side of Majuba mountain, scene of the 1881 Boer vic-tory over the British. Here, too, there were ambitious plans to develop a major tourist attraction, complete with accommodation and a funicular railway up to the battle-site. More relevant to the Trek era were discussions about developing additional satellites at Veg-kop in the Orange Free State, where the Voortrekkers won a significant victory over Mzilikazi’s Ndebele, at Retief’s Pass in the Drakensberg, through which the ill-starred leader was said to have entered Natal, and at Bloukrans, one of the sites where trekker families were killed by the Zulu following Retief’s death at King Dingane kaSenzangak-hona’s capital.

The Vegkop, Retief ’s Pass and Bloukrans options were not pursued

but in 1993 the Voortrekker Museum did acquire control over the monument at Blood River. Council accepted that it was the most obvious institution to develop this new shrine to Afrikaner heritage and nationalism, situated on the laager site of the 16 December 1838 Boer victory over the Zulu.

By 1994 the Museum’s spatial re-sponsibilities had expanded out of all recognition in little more than 80 years since its establishment. Its staff comple-ment had also grown, increasing from the initial two to 12 by 1985 and 27 a decade later. In September 1977 Dr Ivor Pols was appointed curator and three years later his post was upgraded to director, befitting the first university graduate in that position. He brought to it a much-needed professional expertise which, for all the industry and com-mitment of his predecessors, had been seriously lacking.

The National Government’s financial generosity continued until its demise.

The Longmarket Street Girls’ School building, adjacent to the museum and acquired for it in 1989 after protracted negotiations with the province

Notes and Queries

98


Between 1985 and 1991 the annual state grant increased a further 317%. In addition, several ad hoc amounts were awarded for building alterations and the acquisition of more properties. The museum’s financial situation was improved even further by the outgoing government’s final gestures of largesse in the form of R3 million to upgrade the Pietermaritzburg Museum complex, Zaaylager and Majuba, followed by another R500 000 for various projects and a massive R1.3 million annual grant for 1994/5. Afrikaner nationalism had already passed its zenith when, in 1994, the democratically elected ANC Gov-ernment came to power. This heralded a phase of uncertainty concerning the museum’s administrative and financial future until June 1998 when govern-ment recognised the institution as one of five national museums that would remain under central, not provincial, control and funding.

The Voortrekker Museum was now expected to transform its collection,

exhibits and staff. Prompted by two far-seeing memoranda which Ivor Pols had produced in 1982 and 1993, council had already decided that the school building would not, after all, be utilised for the extension of Voortrek-ker themes. Instead, it was to become a multi-cultural museum representing all ethnic groups residing in KwaZulu-Natal. The older premises, at the Church Street end of the property, were to retain the exclusively Voortrekker identity for which they were originally intended and internationally renowned. But, as the political climate in South Africa changed, the main focus and centre of gravity of the Pietermaritzburg complex shifted towards Longmarket Street. A concerted effort was made to begin col-lecting items which reflected the mate-rial culture of previously marginalised groups and to reflect them in a variety of new exhibits planned for the school building.

Beginning in 1993, the staff and the council were also transformed in

The Blood River/Ncome battlefield, showing the Voortrekker laager recreated in bronze oxwagons on the one side and the new Ncome Museum on the other side

of the river

Notes and Queries

99


an effort to reflect the region’s multi-ethnic demographic profile. By 2011 the museum’s personnel comprised 30 Africans and three Indians, as well as one coloured employee and four white persons. There was still a gender im-balance in that females only occupied 15 of the 38 posts. Africans then held two of the three “senior management” and two of the four “middle manage-ment” positions. In 2002 the first black director, Sibongiseni Mhkize, a history graduate of the local university campus, succeeded Ivor Pols. He has since been followed in that office by two more black appointees. In 1999 council’s first black chairman, Professor J.S. Mapha-lala of the University of Zululand, was appointed. He has also had two black successors, who were joined by several other black members of council.

The new policy of multi-cultural transformation was most dramatically illustrated by the fate of the museum’s satellites. While Voortrekker House in Boom Street was retained, the trekker focus was not maintained elsewhere as the management of Zaaylager farm, the Majuba property and the Blood River Monument were all returned to their respective owners. Instead, from 1998 government placed the Museum Council in charge of one of the nine new “Heritage Sites” which it had identi-fied as being of great significance to previously marginalised ethnic groups. Its brief was to build a monument, di-rectly across the river from the existing Blood River memorial, which was to honour the Zulu warriors who fell on 16 December 1838 in defence of their kingdom. An initial R3.75 million bud-get was provided, followed by a further R800 000 grant-in-aid.

Although still incomplete, what has since emerged there is not a sombre

tribute to the dead but a museum which constitutes a triumphant celebration of Zulu culture, military traditions and ethnic consciousness. The Blood River Monument and Ncome Museum are probably unique in southern Africa in offering visitors two different interpre-tations of the same momentous his-torical event. The development of this project, complete with its own budget, staff and construction programme, soon became a major focus of council’s atten-tion, eventually raising it to the level of a partner rather than a mere satellite of the Pietermaritzburg operation.

The process of multi-cultural trans-formation made a change of name for the Voortrekker Museum essential. “Msunduzi Museum (Incorporat-ing the Voortrekker Complex)” was agreed upon after several options had been considered. Meanwhile, the implementation of the new policy at-tracted considerable funding from the new ANC Government. Between 1994 and 2009/10 the annual state grant increased by 549%, by which stage it amounted to nearly R8.7 million. Huge additional grants were awarded from the Government’s “Transformation Fund” – R365 000 in 2003 to spend on the Pietermaritzburg site and R285 000 to further develop Ncome, with another R693 000 awarded in 2004/5 for general expenditure and a further R1 million in 2005/6. In recent years annual increases in the state grant have been more mod-est while expenditure continues to es-calate, raising the possibility of a return to the financially lean years of nearly a century ago.

The use of state funds for such pur-poses can probably best be justified by generating public interest in the institu-tions so favoured. In 2009/10 the Msun-duzi Museum attracted 17 333 visitors,

Notes and Queries

100


its success in the school market being already well established in an urban area with a large number of educational institutions. In that year Ncome drew 16 475 visitors and clearly appealed more to adults, for whom its various “Living Heritage” events and its annual 16 December “Day of Reconciliation” celebration held strong interest. In 2012 the focus has been much more, though not exclusively, on Pietermaritzburg as the Msunduzi Museum’s schedule of

centenary celebrations draws to a close on that anniversary. It is to be hoped that this well-advertised programme will have the effect of attracting renewed public interest to what has undoubtedly become one of South Africa’s major heritage complexes.

1 Based on Guest, Bill Trek and Transition A History of the Msunduzi and Ncome Museums (in-corporating the Voortrekker Complex)1912-2012. (Pietermaritzburg, Msunduzi Museum, 2012).

THE MSIMANG BROTHERS OF EDENDALE WHO HELPED FOUND THE ANCby Peter Croeser

TWO Edendale, Pietermaritzburg, brothers played a key role in founding and establishing the

African National Congress which celebrated its centenary in 2012. Richard and Selby Msimang, grandsons of one of the founding kholwa fathers of Edendale, Daniel Mavuso Msimang, helped organise the ANC launching conference 100 years ago and were elected to serve on its first executive committee.

In January 2012, delegates and digni-taries from all over Africa and overseas gathered for the ANC Centenary cel-ebrations in Bloemfontein. They paid a special visit to the Wesleyan Methodist church at Waaihoek, Mangaung, outside Bloemfontein where the South African National Native Congress (SANNC) – renamed the African National Congress in 1923 – was born on 8 January, 1912.

The ANC was the brainchild of four young overseas-educated black South African lawyers, three of them from Na-tal. Richard Msimang of Edendale, Pix-

ley Ka Isaka Seme of Inanda (nephew of John Langalibalele Dube) and Alfred Mangena from Estcourt. The fourth was George Montsioa, grandson of the Para-mount Chief of the BaRolong Tswana of Mafikeng. It was at a meeting of the four young lawyers in Pretoria in 1911 that the decision was taken to launch a national body representing the political interests of all black South Africans.

Richard Msimang (1884-1933) the son of Joel Msimang, founder of the In-dependent Methodist Church of South Africa, was among the first pupils of the Ohlange Institute, founded by John Langalibalele Dube at Inanda, outside Durban. He later attended Healdtown at Fort Beaufort in the Eastern Cape. When he was 17, in 1901, he was sent to an English public school, Queen’s College, in Taunton, Somerset, where he also studied law through the Uni-versity of London.

In November 1910, he returned to South Africa and opened a legal prac-tice in Johannesburg. His first major

Notes and Queries

101


project for the SANNC was researching with his brother Selby and author Sol T. Plaatje the impact of the 1913 Land Act which saw hundreds of thousands of black South Africans displaced.

Richard had a sharp legal mind and represented the ANC on many occa-sions in negotiations with government. He also chaired the committee that compiled the 1919 constitution of the SANNC. A keen sportsman at school and in later life, he was vice-chairman of the South African Non-White Athlet-ics Union and a founder member of the Johannesburg Bantu Football Associa-tion in 1929.

Henry Selby Msimang (1886-1982), the younger brother of Richard, was born in Edendale, but received his primary education at the Emakosini Primary School in Nhlangano, in south-ern Swaziland, at the mission station established by his father, Joel.

He completed his education at Healdtown and qualified as a teacher, but never taught. He moved to the Transvaal and started work in 1908 as a court interpreter in Germiston, and then as a postmaster in Krugersdorp

before clerking for Advocate Pixley Ka Isaka Seme in his Johannesburg office. As Seme’s assistant he became deeply involved in the preliminaries to the Mangaung, Bloemfontein, conference that gave birth to the ANC.

Following the launch of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) on 8 January 1912, Selby, who was based in Johannesburg, took on the day-to-day administration of the SANNC, assisting the elected secretary, Sol Plaatje, who was then living in Kimberley. He later took on the labour portfolio and served on the Anti-Natives Land Act committee with his brother, Richard, raising funds to send a deputa-tion to Britain in an attempt to get the Natives Land Act of 1913 repealed. He supported himself in a variety of jobs while continuing his active association with the ANC.

In 1917 he edited the short-lived Bloemfontein newspaper Morumioa In-xusa (Messenger) and became involved in the labour movement, organising a strike of Bloemfontein municipal workers. For this he was arrested and detained, but returned to the fray in

Richard Msimang Selby Msimang

Notes and Queries

102


1919 by making contact with Clements Kadalie, founder of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU). Together they planned the establish-ment of a national ICU and in 1920 held a meeting in Bloemfontein with this in mind. Msimang was elected president of the national ICU. When Kadalie failed to be elected to the executive he withdrew with his supporters. This led to increasing animosity between Msimang and Kadalie, resulting in Msimang’s resignation as president and his distancing himself from the ICU until after Kadalie’s resignation in 1929. Msimang then rejoined and during the decline of the ICU he held the post of national propagandist. From 1928 to 1937 he worked as a labour advisor in Johannesburg.

Msimang also became a member of the Joint Council for Europeans and Bantu. He was still involved in the activities of the SANNC/ANC and served on the national executive com-mittee of the ANC during the terms of office of presidents J.T. Gumede (1927-1930) and Pixley Seme (1930-1937). In 1932 he was a member of the so-called revival committee that wanted to strengthen the organisation from within to prevent its stagnation. Three years later, during the first meeting of the All-African Convention (AAC) in Bloemfontein in December 1935, he was elected secretary.

From 1942, however, he settled in Edendale near Pietermaritzburg. Con-tinuing his deep interest in the labour movement he became a member of the

Native Representative Council (NRC) in 1948 and in December that year he represented the ANC in discussions with the AAC in an unsuccessful at-tempt to reconcile the two organisa-tions. Early in 1949 he represented the ANC in discussions with prominent Indian leaders in an effort to reconcile Africans and Indians after bloody clashes between them in Durban and surrounding areas in January of that year. When Albert Luthuli defeated A.W.G. Champion as president of the ANC in 1951, Msimang was elected provincial secretary, but he later lost interest in the ANC and resigned the following year.

In 1953 Msimang, together with Peter Brown and Alan Paton, founded the non-racial Liberal Party of South Africa. From 1956 until 1968, when the party was declared a prohibited organisation and was forced to disband, he served on the executive committee and, in due course, became the national vice-chairperson. His activities were, however, hampered in 1965 when he was banned from attending meetings for five years by the government. Failure to make one of his mandatory weekly visits to the police station (due to ill-health of a family member) resulted in him being sent to prison. He was then in his seventies.

In later life he joined the IFP, becom-ing a member of Inkatha’s National Council in 1975 before finally retiring from national politics (at 89). He died in Edendale at the age of 95.

Notes and Queries

103


NASTERGALKONFYT AND UMSOBO JAMby Adrian Koopman

THE members of the Natalia Editorial Board were spreading purple jam onto freshly-baked

scones. It was a research session, set up to determine, by taste alone, whether or not “nastergalkonfyt” and “umsobo jam” (see photograph) were one and the same thing. The umsobo jam, bottled by Hilton Honey Farms, had been bought locally in Pietermaritzburg; the nastergalkonfyt had been bought at a “country food shop” in the little town of Clarens in the eastern Free State. After the tasting session, the general consensus was that “nastergalkonfyt” and “umsobo jam” are simply two names for the same preserve.

Retired botany professor Esmé Hen-nessey, who grew up as the daughter of a country doctor in the uMzinto district,1 says in a letter2 that the jam is made from the fruit of the plant Solanum nigrum. She explains:

The English name (hardly, if ever, used in South Africa) is ‘black nightshade’. The Zulu name is mSoba, which is the only name I knew for the plant in my childhood.

Hennessy and her playmates used to eat the berries straight off the bush. Her mother

… once tried to make jam from them but Mum was not a cook and the results were not good. However, some of the more-domesticated farmers’ wives in the district (uMzinto) stewed the fruit for inclusion in fruit pies. 3

Three names for the same plant, then: the Latin name Solanum nigrum, the Afrikaans name “nastergal”, and the Zulu name “umsobo”. And each of these shows variation of form, depending on

the authority consulted. Let us take the name “nastergal” first. Smith gives all the following forms for the Afrikaans name of this plant:4

n a g t e g a a l b o s s i e , n a g s k a a l , nagskaalbossie, nastegal, nastergal, nastegaalbossie, and nastergaalbossie.

Smith states:

The original was the Dutch vernacular ‘nachts-schaduw’ (= nightshade) which in v[an]d[er] Stel’s time had become corrupted into ‘nagtegaal’, perhaps as a result of striving after meaning, as it is very doubtful if the bird ‘nagtegaal’ (nightingale) was in any way associated with this plant.

How “nagtegaal” then became “nas-tergal” is not explained. It is quite con-ceivable that a hand-written “g” at some time was incorrectly copied as an “s”.

Windmill advert at the Country Food Shop in Clarens

Notes and Queries

104


The Zulu name for the plant also shows variation. Hilton Honey Farms markets the jam under the name “um-sobo”, and Doke and Vilakazi5 also record the word as “umsobo”. The Clarens country food shop uses the form “msoba”, Esmé Hennessy writes this as “mSoba”, and Van Wyk and Gericke6 acknowledge both “umsoba” and “msoba”, but not “umsobo”. On the other hand, while Hennessy, the Clar-ens food shop, Doke and Vilakazi, and Smith, are all prepared to identify this plant by the botanical name Solanum nigrum, Van Wyk and Gericke say it is Solanum retroflexum. They oblig-ingly add:

Several other species such as S. nigrum, S. chenopodioides and S. melanocera-sum are similar to S. retroflexum and are used in the same way, both for their fruit and for the young leaves, which are popular as pot herbs.

Whatever the name, and whatever form the name takes, it seems that this jam has a very special place in the hearts, and indeed, on the palates, of South Africans. Inside the Clarens country food shop is a small poster which emphasises this point. With a nimble linguistic shift from the word

“nastergalkonfyt” displayed on the windmill outside (see photograph), the poster is headed “NASTERGAL JAM”. It goes on to describe this jam as a “rare find”, a “sweet delicacy”, and “the caviar among jams”. It explains:

Those who have tasted nastergal jam become addicted to the dark sweet-berry taste, the little fruit exploding in the mouth, and the syrupy juice that turns everything a royal purple.

It seems that this “caviar among jams” has even found its way into South African literature. The poster quotes Antjie Krog, in her book A Change of Tongue:

If she likes somebody, she opens jam with whole orange pieces; if she wants to impress somebody, she opens her green-fig jam bottled with copper pennies; but nastergal, bane-wort, picked with endless patience, a batch never consisting of more than a cup or two, takes first prize. This is really for special people.

The poster ends by promising that “Nastergal jam is delicious served with traditional mealie bread.” I must re-member that next time I am organising a jam-tasting session with the Natalia Editorial Board …

Nastergalkonfyt from Clarens in the eastern Free State and Umsobo jam from Hilton Honey Farms. Their taste proved indistinguishable.

Notes and Queries

105


NOTES1 See Hennessy, E. 2000. Memories of a country

doctor’s daughter. Natalia 30. pp. 31-372 Personal communication dated 10.07.20113 Personal communication dated 24.05 2012.

Esme Henessey wrote: “My mother would not have objected to the quote. I am an even worse cook than she was and so were both my grandmothers – so it runs on both sides of the family and we cheerfully admit it! Mum once made what was intended to be China-guava jelly (China-guavas are very small-fruited guavas of, probably, South American origin so Goodness knows where the English vernacular name came from: there are red-skinned and yellow-skinned varieties and we had both in the grounds of the house in Umzinto). When the concoction had been cooked and strained it was the most beautiful, clear ruby-red. It was poured into Ball jars to set and be stored. When the day came for the first jar to be broached (it was at lunch time and we were looking forward to having some on our bread

and butter) Dad opened the jar and made to dip a spoon in the jam. Only the spoon struck rock! Eventually Dad (later that day when he came back from his afternoon hospital round) took a hammer to the Ball jar and removed the glass; then washed the solid mass of guava brittle, dried it and broke it into pieces. For quite a while after that we had pieces to suck which tasted splendid and lasted longer than bits of toffee! Although we asked Mum to make more she declined to do so, so when that batch was gone we were deprived of our delicious sweeties.”

4 Smith, C.A. 1966. Common Names of South African Plants. Pretoria: Government Printer. p. 346.

5 Doke, C.M. and Vilakazi, B.W. 1957. Zulu-English Dictionary. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press.

6 Van Wyk, Ben-Erik and Gericke, Nigel. 2000. People’s Plants: A Guide to Useful Plants of South Africa. Pretoria: Briza Publications. p. 57

SONGS OF MY YOUTHNatalia editorial committee member John Deane recalls the musical side of his primary school education at Merchiston

AT A government primary school in Natal in the 1940s some of our teachers, and

our principal, were British born, and most of the textbooks and readers we used were from overseas. There were very few locally-produced alternatives available, and so we had the Beacon Readers, the Haliburton Readers, the King’s Highway, Ballard’s Fundamental Arithmetic, Baker and Bourne, Samples from the Bookshelf, The Silver Book of Verse, Phillips’ School Atlas (where each country’s map had a small corner inset showing “The British Isles to the same scale”). I forget what history textbooks we used, but some of them were probably from Britain, and I suppose teachers had to

provide whatever local additives were prescribed – Jan van Riebeeck, the Great Trek, and the Battle of Blood River. I don’t remember any mention of the Anglo-Zulu War – probably too sensitive, considering the thrashing the British were given at Isandlwana. Similarly, and probably in the interests of nation-building, we weren’t taught that just 40 years previously two little Boer republics gave the mighty Empire a real run for its money.

There was no school library, and those of us who were avid readers were members of the Natal Society Library Children’s Section for a sub-scription of two shillings and sixpence a year, I think. There were few local authors writing South African stories

Notes and Queries

106


for South African children, and so we devoured the books of P.C. Wren, G.A. Henty, Percy F. Westerman, Richmal Crompton, Hugh Lofting and Capt. W.E. Johns. Most of these were “boys’ books”, and I hope that girls had as much choice as we did. We liked the weekly comic Film Fun, and the paper many of us bought every week from the CNA was the Champion with its exciting instalments about Rockfist Rogan, R.A.F., the detective Colwyn Dane, and many others. You could say that our reading, in and out of school, was anglocentric.

No list of the books we used at school would be complete without the National Song Book. Once or twice a week we would unwillingly traipse down to “Singing”. It was a boys’ school, and this activity was rather looked down on. Our headmaster had a fine baritone voice, and at school concerts he would usually sing a solo, like “The Mountains of Mourne” or “The Road to Man-dalay”. It went down a treat with the parents, but it embarrassed us boys to think that the head, of all people, should actually sing¸ on a stage, by himself. (This was the inhibited innocence of the last male generation before pop singers were invented.)

The Singing lessons usually began with some breathing exercises, and sight-reading from a book designed to teach us to sing from tonic sol-fa nota-tion. This, incidentally, was one of the few locally-produced books, written by Cyril Wright, who did so much to promote music in Natal schools. After the tonic sol-fa drill and warm-up, out came the National Song Book, and it was time to sing real songs.

For the rest of the lesson we would be transported to that fairest isle, all isles excelling, that land of hope and

glory, which God had made mighty, and we asked Him to make it mightier yet. Because, you see, Britons never, never, never, shall be slaves. (They’d owned and traded a good many in their time, but be slaves? Never!) And of course we were Britons, even though we were South African schoolboys. The king was on the coins, the Union Jack flew at the masthead, we were members of the Commonwealth, helping the Mother Country to fight Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. Several times a month we would run down to the school fence and watch regiments marching from the Drill Hall up Commercial Road on their way to the railway station, bound for East Africa, North Africa or Italy. Our juvenile pat-riotism was matched, and also formed, by the songs we sang. Even in the age of steel no one doubted that hearts of oak were our ships, jolly tars were our men, who always were ready (“Steady, boys, steady”) and they’d fight and they’d conquer again and again. We wouldn’t admit to actually liking Singing lessons, but we imbibed it all.

With adult hindsight, one realises that most of those songs, whatever sentiments they conveyed, were very good ones – so good that their tunes were shamelessly used for parodies. Even if we didn’t know much about Wales, our Singing teachers made sure we knew “Men of Harlech”. The words “Rhyfelgyrch Gwyr Harlech” in brack-ets under the title remained a mystery to us, and we never asked. That would have been showing too great an interest in Singing. But we knew that fierce the beacon light is flaming, with its tongues of fire proclaiming, chieftains sundered to your shaming, strongly now unite. We weren’t quite sure what it was all about, but we could sing it lustily, while Miss B. dealt out the special kind of

Notes and Queries

107


punishment that school pianos must endure. So when, a few years later at Scout campfires we encountered “The National Anthem of the Ancient Brit-ons”, the new words slipped effortlessly into the well-known tune, and we could enjoy asking what’s the use of wearing braces, vests and pants and boots with laces, spats or hats you buy in places down in Brompton Road; what’s the use of shirts of cotton, studs that always get forgotten, these affairs are simply rot-ten – better far is WOAD! Woad’s the stuff to show, men, woad to scare your foemen, boil it to a brilliant hue and rub it on your back and your ab-do-men …. Listen to a Welsh male-voice choir and tell me the tune itself isn’t magically stirring. School Singing lessons had come into their own. From a distance our campfire might have sounded like a pre-match warm-up at Cardiff Arms Park – well, except for the volume and the vocal quality. But the tune was there, embedded, a permanent part of our mental furniture, thanks to Miss B., Miss S. and The National Song Book. And so it was with many other songs. Of course we showed no gratitude for this gift, and our Singing teachers in their

darker moments probably thought they were casting pearls before real little swine. If gratitude can be belated, ret-rospective, or posthumously bestowed, that’s what I feel now.

****

On the opposite side of the sub-conti-nent, another Natalia committee member, Elwyn Jenkins, was having a rather different musical indoctrina-tion. He writes:

In South West Africa, at the par-allel-medium Emma Hoogenhout Primêre Skool (formerly the Leut-weinstrasse School) in Windhoek, our songs were either from the FAK (Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge) Sangbundel, or Viennese waltzes. So we were either standing to attention, bawling out Die Lied van Jong Suid Afrika (“Op-staan, handhaaf en bou”) or crooning about “Green Vienna woods so gay” where we wandered the livelong day as the breezes blow and the branches sway, while outside, the sun was so hot it would explode the tyres on the bicyles leaning against the wall.

Obituaries

108


Obituaries

Radclyffe Macbeth Cadman (1924 – 2011)

RADCLyFFE Macbeth Cadman was born on a small farm at Heatonville, Zululand on 13

January 1924 and he was educated at Durban High School. He served as a sub-lieutenant with the Royal Navy dur-ing the Second World War after which he completed a BA at the University of Cape Town. Awarded an Elsie Ballot scholarship to Cambridge he read law at Trinity Hall, qualifying as MA(Cantab) LL.B

While at Cambridge he formed a life-long friendship with Geoffrey (now Lord) Howe, the erstwhile British Foreign Secretary and distinguished British parliamentarian with whom he holidayed on the Norfolk Broads. Together they protested at the Labour Government’s deposition of Chief Seretse Khama of Bechuanaland (now Botswana) after the chief’s marriage to a white woman drew protests from the Verwoerd Government in South Africa.

Radclyffe Cadman

On his return to South Africa, Cad-man was admitted to the Bar and began practising as an advocate in Durban. His political career commenced in 1961 when he was elected as the United Party

Obituaries

109


member for Zululand. He subsequently lost this seat in 1966 and thereafter served in the Senate and in the House of Assembly as an MP representing a Durban parliamentary constituency. Cadman was one of the formidable and widely respected parliamentary speak-ers of his time and his parliamentary colleagues attest to the fact that Cadman was one of the few members that Prime Minister Vorster avoided engaging in debate in the House. In Natal Cadman was elected leader of the majority party in 1972 and served in this capacity until 1977.

After the United Party was dissolved in July 1977 Cadman became leader of the New Republic Party, the successor to the UP and became leader of the Official Opposition. Prime Minister Vorster then called a snap election and the NRP was decimated, losing 31 of the 41 seats it held. Cadman lost his seat and formally retired from active party politics, returning to the Cadman Sugar Estate near Eshowe in Zululand.

However, his contribution to public life was not yet ended. In 1984 Cadman agreed to accept the post of Administra-tor of Natal, on condition that he was not required to join the ruling National Party.

Cadman’s term of office as Admin-istrator (1984-1989) coincided with the beginning of a period of reform in South Africa’s hardline apartheid policies. During his term, the Buthelezi Commission concluded its work recom-mending a multiracial government for the province. This led to negotiations in the province between the Provincial Ex-ecutive and the KwaZulu Government which culminated in the KwaZulu-Natal Indaba, a forum which recommended a single government for the province as a whole. This was rejected by the P.W.

Botha Government but found form in a watered-down version – the Joint Ex-ecutive Authority, with equal represen-tation from the Natal Executive (which by this time represented all three houses of the Tri-cameral Parliament) and the KwaZulu Government. While the JEA represented the first genuine attempt at multiracial provincial government, it was rejected by the political formations in exile as being too little too late and it faded away with the reforms initiated by the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.

Cadman was a most successful Administrator. His tenure was char-acterised by his intellect, political impartiality and deep understanding of the politics and people of Natal. He presided over a period of profound change with the abolition of the elected Provincial Council in 1986 (a result of the Tri-cameral political dispensa-tion), the introduction of a multiracial Executive Council (MEC) consisting of members of the White, Indian and Coloured population groups and the eventual representation of the African (Zulu) people via the Joint Executive Authority.

He led the province with distinction, sensitivity and great dignity and he and Mrs Cadman were greatly respected and admired as the first citizens of the Province. In the Cadman era, Parkside, the Administrator’s official residence, hosted gracious receptions, garden and dinner parties and official functions not seen since.

On the 30 October 1987 Cadman was awarded the Order for Meritori-ous Service Class I: Gold by the then State President P.W. Botha. An extract from the citation reads, “Mr Cadman is one of the most respected figures to have emerged in the public life of Natal over the past 25 years. Throughout his

Obituaries

110


successful career in the legal profes-sion, as a farmer, parliamentarian and Administrator of Natal, he has been motivated by a desire to foster better relations between Afrikaans and Eng-lish speaking South Africans, to help establish an appropriate structure for the political representation of all the country’s population groups and to advance the system of free enterprise.”

The citation goes on to say “Mr Cadman’s qualities of leadership were appreciated in other spheres as well. Amongst other things he was elected to the central committee of the Cane Growers Association and also served as chairman of the Natal Performing Arts Council. In addition to his deep interest in music and the arts, Mr Cadman also had a profound interest in the conserva-tion of nature and the environment. He established a successful conservancy in his own farming district and served as a member of the Natal Parks Board until his appointment as Administrator of Natal in 1984. Until his death he served on the Natal Parks Board of Trustees.”

The closing paragraph of the Cita-tion reads, “Throughout his career, Mr Cadman has proven himself to be a man of absolute integrity in both his personal and public life and has been acclaimed for showing a breadth of vision and strength of leadership when these qualities were most needed in a changing society.”

Somewhat reserved and cerebral, Cadman treated all with courtesy and respect irrespective of colour, sex, creed or station in life. Scrupulously honest, he understood that with public office came responsibility rather than privilege. No blue light brigade, nor entourage for him even when the in-

ternecine war between Inkatha and the ANC was setting the province ablaze.

Proud of his settler heritage, Cadman was deeply attached to Zululand, to the development of which his forebears had contributed significantly. A member of the Anglican Communion, Cadman greatly admired his grandfather, an An-glican minister and staunch supporter of Bishop Colenso. Indeed, before the new Cathedral could be built in Pieter-maritzburg on the St Peter’s site in the late 1970s to unite the former separate parishes of St Peter’s and St Saviour’s, legislation was required to reverse a statute of the colonial Natal Parliament and Radclyffe Cadman was the man who piloted it through Parliament as a non-controversial private member’s motion.

In his eventual retirement Cadman was happiest on his farm Stowe, sur-rounded by his family, his dogs, his library and his beautiful garden. He was married to Anne (née Randles, the well known Pietermaritzburg family) a descendant of the Rorke family of Rorke’s Drift fame.

Cadman leaves an admirable legacy and to quote his son Andrew from the eulogy at his funeral “he led life with integrity, in support of family, in ser-vice of community and true to a higher purpose”.

PETER MILLER

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS1. Andrew Cadman – Funeral eulogy to R.M.

Cadman2. The Daily Telegraph – London3. Order of Meritorious Service Class 1 – Gold

– Citation4. Former members of Parliament, V.A. Volker

and G.N. Oldfield

Obituaries

111


June Farrer (1925 – 2012)

JUNE, the eldest of three children, was born in Pietermaritzburg on 28 February 1925. Her early life

was spent in the country town of Ixopo and on her aunt Frances Gold’s farm in the Ixopo district. Her brother Ian was born on 19 September 1926 and, close in age and of equally shy and sensitive natures, the two children became inseparable friends and companions. They received their first lessons from a tutor, an immigrant from England, and later attended Ixopo Junior School. The children enjoyed the freedom of country life, spending happy times in the peaceful town and the farm.

June’s sister Ann was born in 1934. After moving several times, the family finally settled in Pietermaritzburg in the house at 43 Miller Street where June and Ann were to live for many years, and Ian until his death. June’s education continued at Scottsville Primary School and she matriculated at Pietermaritz-burg Girls’ High School.

During the war years, June’s father, John Bernard Farrer served in the army, seeing action in Greece and Austria and her mother Natalie was a member of the South African Women’s Army Service.

June recalled how during those years, because of the proximity of their house to the Drill Hall, many men from the army and air force would pass by. Her mother, to show her sympathy and sup-port for the servicemen, would call out to them and invite them in for tea and cakes, her hospitality being readily ac-cepted by the homesick men.

This area of Pietermaritzburg was always to have special meaning for June as her mother, (born Agnes Natalie Murray), grew up in the gracious family residence “Atholl” in Bulwer Street.

June Farrer

June joined the Natal Society Li-brary on 1 April 1945 on a salary of £5 a month. The library was then in Longmarket Street, a renovated but antiquated building with few staff amenities. Hours were long, to eight o’clock on a Friday evening. June’s first years at the Lending Section’s counter required her to stand for many hours, but during those years she made the acquaintance of many of Pietermaritz-burg’s prominent citizens and to hear her reminiscences was always a delight.

June studied by correspondence with the South African Library Association and after completing the Elementary Diploma, qualified with the Intermedi-ate Library Diploma in 1954.

Her competence was recognised and in the mid-1950s she was appointed as head of the Lending Section, a role for which her careful work and ability to deal tactfully with staff and members of the public adequately equipped her.

Obituaries

112


During this time, June gained the experience needed to manage the library as a whole. She was able to see the wid-er picture of service excellence, while dealing with the minute details which heading a section of a library entailed. Her leadership style was gentle but firm.

In 1958, she was appointed as deputy chief librarian, a post she held until her retirement. From this time forward, she acted as library head and as secretary of the Natal Society Council meetings in the absence of the chief librarian.

She served on the Natalia editorial committee as secretary, and as a much-valued, sharp-eyed proof reader for 18 years from 1972 until 1990.

June enrolled with the University of Natal and while studying part-time, gained a BA degree in 1969. She con-tinued studying with Unisa and, in the mid-1970s, gained the post-graduate Higher Diploma in Librarianship.

June was fully involved in all the library’s developments. She assisted the chief librarian, Sue Judd, in the plan-ning of the new library building and in 1975, was present when it opened its doors to its first borrowers.

She saw the start of the Housebound Service, the change from the Market Square Branch Library to the Children’s Reference Library, and its subsequent establishment as the Bessie Head Chil-dren’s Library in the new addition; the computerisation of the library’s func-tions and the establishment of branch libraries in the suburbs, a development which she personally headed.

June worked at the side of the staff, never seeing her role only as a senior manager. It was this ability to be in-volved with ongoing work and projects that set June apart from many other team leaders. She was as comfortable helping to process books as she was

in her role as deputy chief librarian, or acting head. Her office was always open to senior members of the staff needing advice, or perhaps simply a chat to ease some moment of pressure. It was at these times when her distinctive chuckle could often be heard, as some new or remembered incident was recounted. It was indeed June’s delightful sense of humour and sense of fun that will be remembered with affection by everyone who knew her.

Her colleagues recalled her methodi-cal approach to her work in which she applied only the highest standards. To Shona Wallis, retired chief librarian, and Pat McKenzie, administrator and later deputy director, at whose sides she worked for many years, she was not only a respected colleague but a friend. Shona expressed what was thought by all:

“June, an extremely kind and gentle person, was a legend in the library world.” (The Witness, 29 February 2012 p. 9).

Of Ann’s lifetime memories of June’s particular kindness, perhaps one of the most touching was of her thoughtful assistance to their brother Ian. Ann recalled that she cooked for him until his death in 1993.

She retired in 1990 after service of 45 years.

After the transfer of the Natal Society Library to the municipality in 2004, June, in a part-time capacity, became special adviser on the special book collections that had been entrusted to the Natal Society, which were trans-ferred to the Alan Paton Library at the University of Natal. These comprised the bequeathed O’Brien and Hattersley collections and the Africana collections of old Natal books and documents.

Obituaries

113


June embraced retirement with en-thusiasm and she was at last afforded the time to devote herself to reading, art and gardening. She joined an art group with Padca, (Pietermaritzburg and District Care of the Aged) attending art classes in the old library’s gallery, producing delicate and beautiful work in which she showed great ability and by so doing, revived a remarkable tal-ent for botanical drawings. Her garden provided hours of pleasure; its success based not only on hard work but a keen horticultural knowledge.

June loved all animals and spoke of-ten of the dogs which had lived with her family. In her own home at 277 Bulwer Street she was never without at least one stray cat, which had moved in as soon as opportunity presented itself.

If June’s work occupied much of her life before retirement, it was with her family that her heart really lay. She was devoted to all members of her family and was never happier than when in the company of her sister Ann with whom she shared a lifetime’s memories and mutual interests. These included a

love of classical music and the tuneful melodies of the early to mid-twentieth century.

In March 2011, June sold her house and preparations were made to accom-modate her at Ann and her husband Ian Player’s home, Phuzamoya, in the Karkloof. She moved in September 2011 and although then in poor health, spent her last months in peace and hap-piness, enjoying the relaxed country atmosphere and the beauty of the farm. She died peacefully on 24 February, 2012 four days before her 87th birthday.

At June’s memorial service on 10 March, family members, friends and former colleagues paid tribute to her in a gathering on the farm. During the cer-emony, a plum tree was planted which was a reminder of the one in Ixopo which June had known as a child. In her notice in The Witness, Ann described June as “admirable, courageous and wise”, and this is indeed how she will always be remembered by her family and her many friends.

JENNIFER LANCASTER

Edmond Hall, MMM, JCD (1927–2011)

CO L O N E L E d d i e H a l l , commanding officer of the Natal Carbineers from April

1985 to July 1990, after serving as second in command from June 1981, came from a family that devoted more years to that regiment than any other family since the Second World War. Not long before he passed away the Carbineers celebrated his 60 years of devoted service. For a few months, from May to July 1990, he also enjoyed the

distinction of having his son, John, as his Regimental Sergeant-Major – surely unique in Citizen Force/Reserve Force history. His own father, A.G. (Alfie) Hall, had served the regiment for 56 years.

In 1950 Eddie enrolled in the band as a cornet player and remained a bands-man throughout his military career, including his years as commanding officer. At one point there were three generations of Halls in the band: Alfie,

Obituaries

114


Eddie and John. Eddie Hall’s Carbineer career began on 1 July 1952 when he became G6784 (later 67854760BV) Carbineer E. Hall, and in April 1961 he was promoted to intelligence sergeant in Battalion HQ. On 7 March 1962 he was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant (then termed assistant field cornet) as intelligence officer. He rose steadily through the ranks, becoming command-ing officer on 1 April 1985. In July 1959 Eddie was involved in the resuscitation of the then Royal Natal Carbineers Band Committee, and he was probably the only commanding officer to play in his unit’s regimental band. He also served as a band instructor for cadets at St Charles College (12 years), Hil-ton College (two years), Maritzburg Technical High School (three years), and Maritzburg College (six years). He himself had been educated at Kearsney College.

He also served during the States of Emergency from March to May 1960 and in April 1961 and it was here that his leadership qualities came to the fore. In June 1959 he participated in the guard of honour during the visit of the Governor-General to Pietermaritzburg, and in July 1962 he performed orderly duties on the occasion of a visit of the State President to Natal – two of numerous ceremonial duties during his years with the regiment. From August to November 1976 Major Hall saw service with the Carbineers at Ogongo in the operational area of the then South West Africa (Namibia). On one occa-sion, during a firefight, Eddie climbed on to an anthill waving a walking-stick in an attempt to attract the attention of a nearby Land Rover! For this performance he earned the nickname “Lucky Ed”. The Carbineers returned to the “Border” from July to October

Edmond Hall1977, and Eddie returned to this the-atre of operations in 1978 (for election monitoring) and again in 1981 for three months at Kavango West.

During his time as commanding of-ficer, Lieutenant-Colonel (or Comman-dant as the rank was termed then) Hall faced difficult challenges, from policing duties in increasingly hostile African townships to growing resistance to Citizen Force service. His effective leadership style was based on team-work, applied through his monthly co-ordinating conferences. His first official parade upon assuming command was the once familiar retreat ceremony at the Royal Agricultural Show on 15 May 1985. Following his retirement from the Carbineers in 1990, he was promoted to full colonel on Natal Command’s Citizen Force liaison staff. He also served on the Part-time Forces (later the Reserve Forces) National Council, and was also for many years chairman and a trustee of the Royal Natal Carbineers Association. On 27 November 2010

Obituaries

115


a function was held in the Carbineers Warrant Officers’ and Sergeants’ Mess to commemorate Colonel Hall’s 60 years of service. Following the passing of Colonel Peter Francis in May 2009 he also served as honorary colonel until his own death. He was awarded numer-ous medals and decorations, including the Military Merit Medal (MMM) for service beyond the call of duty, and the John Chard Decoration (JCD).

Colonel Hall also enjoyed a lifelong commitment to the renowned Carbineer shooting team. He shot in the team from 1956 and from 1972 captained it to many victories for the Emma Thresh and Royston Memorial floating trophies and in many other competitions. On numerous occasions from the 1950s to the 1980s he posted the highest scores in the Emma Thresh and Royston Memo-rial, in the process winning provincial colours for shooting.

In November 1987, on the initiative of the Nationalist government, he repre-sented the Carbineers at the opening of a new Delville Wood Museum in France. The irony was not lost on Colonel Hall, when at an assembly of retired senior officers he commented on the Nation-alists’ opposition to South African participation in both World Wars on the British or Allied side.

Eddie Hall’s dedication to the Natal Carbineers was such that in 1989 a new floating trophy for commitment, the Eddie Hall Cup, was inaugurated. The award honours the Carbineer who most typifies the spirit and fellowship of the Regiment. The first recipient was none other than Eddie Hall!

In civilian life Eddie Hall was for many years the head of AG Hall (Pty) Ltd, the family painting and renovating business in Pietermaritzburg. Estab-lished in 1902 (with roots stretching

as far back as 1862) the business cel-ebrated its centenary in 2002, joining Allison’s Saddlery and McDonald’s Seeds as 2002 centenarians. It is the second oldest such family concern in Pietermaritzburg, and has been re-sponsible for renovations to many of the city’s public buildings, such as St Mary’s Catholic Church, where the Hall family worships.

The firm was established by Ed-mond (Ted) Hall (1880-1958) at 167 Longmarket (Langalibalele) Street and initially focused on painting, glazing and wallpaper hanging. In the Natal Directory for 1918 an advertisement appears for “EJ Hall: House decorator, painting, paperhanging, graining etc.” Also “Practical Workmen [are] sent to all parts of the Province.” Interest-ingly, on the same page there appears an advert for W. Hay’s biscuit factory. The Hays were also a long-serving Carbineer family, most notably Colonel Len Hay who was a prominent rugby player and administrator.

Altogether five generations of the Hall family have been born and bred in Pietermaritzburg. The first Hall, a painter, came to Natal in 1862 as an 18-year-old. Eddie joined the firm in 1956 and took charge of it in 1963. In November 1961, when the Carbineers made application for his appointment to commissioned rank, one of the points in the motivation was the fact that he was “in business with his father, AG Hall, an old established Pietermaritzburg firm”.

On 18 October 1952 Eddie married Denise (Denny) Bonnefin who has sup-ported him in his business and military endeavours, as well as raising his fam-ily. They were married for 59 years and had two sons, John and Alan, and two daughters, Trish and Odette.

MARK COGHLAN

Obituaries

116


Kader Hassim (1934 – 2011)

A COMMITTED revolutionary who was jailed on Robben Island for his anti-apartheid

activities, Kader Hassim died in a Pietermaritzburg hospital after a long illness on his birthday on 10 November, 2011, at the age of 77.

Born in Dundee, KwaZulu Natal, in 1934, of parents both born in India, he was to devote much of his life to improving the lot of his fellow man as an activist, unionist, and lawyer fighting oppression, injustice and exploitation.

He was repeatedly placed under house arrest from 1964 on. Eventually, in 1971, both he and his wife, Nina were detained under the Terrorism Act in 1971 and he was sentenced to eight years in prison on Robben Island.

While he was in prison he was struck off the roll of attorneys by the Natal Law Society for his political activities. It was, in his view, an unjust action and he made them pay dearly for it by be-coming the first attorney to successfully force the society to apply on his behalf for his re-admission in 1996.

He was also the first attorney to suc-cessfully enlist support from the Su-preme Court in ruling against his being held in isolation in prison as punishment for helping his fellow prisoners draft a petition against the jail authorities.

His activism started almost immedi-ately after completing school at Umz-into High in 1951. Strongly influenced by Marxist-Leninist socialism, and by Trotsky’s idea of a permanent revolu-tion, he was involved with NEUM (the Non-European Unity Movement, re-vived in 1985 as the New Unity Move-ment) but it was to the African Peoples Democratic Union of Southern Africa

Kader Hassim

(Apdusa), which he joined in 1964, that he would devote much of his life.

He was introduced to trade unions while working for a spell in the leather industry in Pietermaritzburg in 1953 before studying law at the University of Natal’s Non-European section in Durban. He was active in both the mass leather-workers’ strike in Pietermaritz-burg in 1960 and a student boycott of the university’s Golden Jubilee celebra-tions in the same year.

He also joined the Durban branch of the Society of Young Africa (Soya), formed by Karrim Essack and the ac-tivist husband and wife team, Dr Zulei Christopher and lawyer Enver Hassim in 1955. Kader Hassim was an active member of Soya, becoming editor of its journal, The Soyan.

His widow, Nina, in a tribute to Kader Hassim at a memorial gathering on 19 May 2012, recalled the impact of the university years:

“Soyans were expected to study local and international politics in depth. They attended lectures and study groups on

Obituaries

117


political theory, the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions, Marxism/Le-ninism, the rise of Stalin and the purge of the Bolsheviks; also the works of Trotsky and Deutscher, who chronicled the rise of Stalin and the purge in Russia. Trotsky’s idea of a permanent revolution as society develops from one stage to the next had resonance. The Chinese revolution, in particular, was of great interest and Kader was a lifelong believer in the Chinese method of struggle and the way they not only had conducted themselves but also their revolution. He marvelled at the way they adapted as circumstances changed.

“During the mid- to late 50s the students all over South Africa were very restive. The universities were go-ing to be closed to black students and the effects of “Bantu” and “Coloured Education” were a source of anger. The movement decided that in that tense and heightened atmosphere students should go out to mobilise and form an organisation of their own. Many Soyans became involved. However, it was also at the height of the polemic between the different factions or tendencies of the movement.

“As a result of the political work at the university the students boycotted the segregated graduation, and also pick-eted the performances put on when the university celebrated its Golden Jubilee celebrations.

“When the huge Cato Manor march took place Kader and other students from the Durban Students’ Union (DSU) and Soya joined the march. The police fired on the marchers and the students were witness to people killed on the corner of Berea Road and Syringa Avenue.”

Kader Hassim excelled at university and went on to complete a post-graduate

LL.B. degree with a number of distinc-tions. When offered a scholarship to study overseas he consulted senior com-rades who told him that the movement required him to remain in South Africa.

It was “a decision he never regretted. He was too loyal to harbour regrets. The struggle always took precedence over everything else. It is ironical that some of those who stopped him from going themselves eventually left the country,” recalled Nina Hassim.

“He believed in freedom and justice. He gave a large part of his life, over 60 years, to the Unity Movement as a member of the Society of Young Af-rica (Soya) and The African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa (Apdusa). Because the contribution of organisations other than the ANC involved in the liberation struggle are being erased by the re-writing of his-tory in South Africa, it is important to remember the contribution and role of the organisations to which he was com-mitted,” she added.

In 1961 he was articled to Enver Hassim at the legal practice of A. Christopher and Co in Durban. The two were close comrades who had worked together during the Pietermaritzburg leather workers’ strike but also in Soya and Apdusa. The Apdusa branch in Durban was a large one and published a national newspaper Ilizwi Lesizwe. Enver Hassim, assisted by Kader, was responsible for the production of the newspaper. This involved cutting, pasting, artwork and layout, as well as overseeing its printing and distribution. This experience proved invaluable to Kader later when he returned to Piet-ermaritzburg and the group acquired their own fully functional press in the 1980s and 1990s.

Obituaries

118


In 1963, when he finished his articles Kader, together with V.S Rajah and Pat Naidoo, came to Pietermaritzburg and set up practice. Their purpose was twofold – to work professionally and do political work in the Apdusa branch. However, as the first year was tough financially both Rajah and Naidoo left, leaving Kader to run the practice on his own. Apdusa political work ranged from Edendale, where some members worked at the hospital, as well as in what was called the sewerage farm where the Indian municipal workers lived near the dump, and in town.

Among other things they published and distributed political pamphlets. It was a race to get them out before the police could confiscate them. After a year of this the police intimidation mounted to such an extent that it began affecting the local Apdusa member-ship’s activities.

“In May 1964 three of the members including Kader and myself were called before a magistrate and warned not to take part in political activity,” recalls Nina Hassim.

“In June 1964, Kader was house arrested and banned. He was only 29 years old, probably the youngest house arrestee at the time, especially as most restricted people had banning orders and were not house arrested as well.

“The banning order was for five years and was renewed in 1969. Throughout his banning he still took part, sometimes by proxy, in the affairs of the group. He was careful and was ready at any time to leave the room if he was raided.

“Some time in 1969 Kader was asked for financial help for the people who had entered the country to do political work and recruit for training. Kader, usually so measured and thoughtful, agreed. He was probably tired of the lonely and

stultifying years of house arrest. This activity gave him something concrete to do. They survived for six months without being detected, at a time when there was naked fascism. Detention of people who were politically involved could take place without recourse to the law, first for 90 days and later indefinite detention.

“Kader himself was detained under the Terrorism Act on the 17th February 1971 and was charged in June 1971. Originally he was kept in Greytown, then at the old prison next to the old gallows. While he was not violently physically assaulted he did undergo the usual sleep deprivation and psychologi-cal torture. This included threats, degra-dation and obscenities and one always expected the worst. He was worried about family and friends. Once a gun was laid where he could see it, and he admitted in an interview that he even thought of suicide. The security police also confronted Kader with one of Kar-rim Essack’s organisers, who wanted to assault him.

“Just before he was charged he was set up by the security police in a very cruel way. It was simple entrapment. While he was at the old prison a warder offered to help him escape. We were sent messages for money to assist in this escape and to pay the warder.

“It is unclear whether the security police were in it from the beginning or got wind of it after the offer was made. At any rate they did and then pulled in people for interrogation. They were furious with Kader and threatened him. However they could do very little be-cause unknown to them the hero of this affair was Morgan Naidoo, who came to see me and told me not to do anything and that saved Kader because the arch torturer, Swanepoel, told Kader that if

Obituaries

119


he had tried to escape he would have shot him. Knowing Rooi Rus Swane-poel, that was quite likely!

“The trial itself dragged on for nearly a year. It was a strange mixture of truth and the bizarre. There were a few memorable moments but the trial was notable for the extreme bias of the judge, who never accepted that torture was routine or saw anything wrong with the camp the security police set up in Mkambathi forest to torture and inter-rogate the peasants and others from the Transkei. At the end of the trial Kader was sentenced to 21 years but because some of it was concurrent, his effective sentence was eight years. From Pieter-maritzburg they were taken to Leeukop prison and from there to Robben Island.

“Robben Island is a bleak, cold place. Kader said Leeukop was so cold, un-pleasant and overcrowded, that he was happy to go to Robben Island. It was a relief to be away from the police. But no sooner there than events unfolded rapidly. At first he was put with the Namibians – Swapo members who were warm and loving and also with some of the older ANC prisoners. The prisoners decided that as there were two lawyers, they wanted them to draft a petition of grievances. The job fell to Kader. Fifty prisoners signed the petition.

“As far as the prison authorities were concerned the petition was treason and Kader was immediately put in isolation or solitary confinement as punishment. He managed at the next visit to get word out about his predicament and when the urgency became apparent, lawyers and counsel went to see him and took his plight to court. This was a ground-breaking case; never before had anyone taken on the prison authorities in this way. I must mention here that it was through the work of his counsel,

the late Dr Peter Hunt and Mr Dison that the power of the prison authorities came under scrutiny.

“Never again could someone be thrown into solitary on a whim or have the handbook or regulations for the treatment of prisoners withheld. Judge Diemont dismissed the argument that he had no jurisdiction over the prison authorities as there was nothing in the regulations that allowed or disallowed prisoners recourse to the court, and while he could not force the prison authorities to allow prisoners to study, or take away the right of the officer commanding regarding privileges, he asked them to use their discretion. The most important thing was that he ruled that the order of solitary confinement was invalid because there was no fair hearing. Kader was immediately freed after having spent six months thus.

“He said his time on Robben Island was one of learning. He did formal stud-ies and completed the B Compt degree. He learnt to play the guitar, read music and skip. He played table tennis. In 1974 he was the singles champion and doubles champion with A. Mlangeni. Because of his family medical history he believed he came out fitter than if he had remained outside prison, and that prison gave him extra years of life.

“Prison was not always rosy or happy. Because he had stood up to the authori-ties over the petition there was residual envy on the part of the ANC. Mandela had for years maintained that prisoners could not use the court to take on the prison authorities, and had been shown to be wrong.

“In discussions, Kader would not let them get the upper hand on political and other issues affecting the prison-ers. There was a time when he was estranged from some members of the

Obituaries

120


ANC in the single cells and they refused to lend him books. A few brave ANC people, who respected him, did break that embargo. When the Black Con-sciousness members came to Robben Island they put a stop to this. They made his life tolerable. They were a source of comradeship. His was the last cell and the nearest to them and messages were sent through him.

“Kader persevered through it all and he never ever regretted that period of his life. He believed that once you have endured prison you would never fear prison. He was released on 5 April and banned once again on 9 April 1980.

“When he was released he was not re-admitted as an attorney, having been struck off the roll whilst in prison. Morgan gave him a job in his office. He discovered that Apdusa was virtually dead, its members dispersed, and almost apolitical. This was the inevitable result of the mass arrests before the trial and the fear that the ruthlessness of the state and the draconian laws of the time instilled. He started to get people to regroup. When the banning order was withdrawn on 28 April 1982 he could do political work openly. The organ-isation was revitalised, old members brought in and new members recruited. Contact was made with other people in other parts of the country. The printing of pamphlets and the re-printing of the literature went on apace. In this period Kader started a fully functional press for the organisational work. He was assisted by professional printers. Kader believed that the organisation should be self-funded and independent. The members gave donations and an annual braai helped to maintain the press and pay for the organisation’s needs.

“Kader knew that the organisation could not work in isolation and so

overtures were made to other political groups. There was a lot of camaraderie between the Azapo and BC groups, some trade unions as well as Sacos, Sached and other left-leaning indi-viduals. He was one of the founders of Lawyers for Democracy, which was an alternative to the Congress-led legal groups. He also worked with members of Sacos, the South African Council on Sport.

“A lot of political work was done against the Tricameral Parliament and the next wave of arrests took place. Kader was detained on 21 August 1984 with several of the NIC members. They were released by the court on a technicality on 7 September 1984. Kader immediately went into hiding in Durban. Some of the NIC members went to the British embassy but Kader remained in hiding. He told City Press (23 September 1984) that it was not a life and death issue and that he did not “want to give Britain the opportunity to be the champion of South Africa’s oppressed people”. He gave himself up on 8 October 1984 and was released on 18 October 1984.

“Apart from the old Soyans and Apdusans the other group who had remained committed in the main to the Unity movement position were the former Anti-CAD people in the Western Cape. Many meetings were held and these initiatives resulted in the formation of the New Unity Move-ment (NUM) in 1985. The NUM, how-ever, did not measure up to the original promise. Once again ideological prob-lems surfaced. The split of 1958 was re-lived; agreements and policy were undermined. There was a lack of clarity on major theoretical issues as well as financial matters. To this day money is

Obituaries

121


still owed to Apdusa for work done or literature supplied.

“In the end Apdusa Natal was forced to break relations with the Western Cape grouping and the organisation was once again on its own. Kader concentrated all his energy on Apdusa Natal. He inter-acted at all levels spreading the ideas of the organisation as well as writing extensively on events. Apdusa Views was almost entirely his work. There are many gems in these writings. When an issue of Apdusa Views was banned he appealed and won.

“Many wide-ranging and impor-tant topics were dealt with. He wrote amongst other things about the attack on freedom of expression, ANC support for dictators, the abuse of cultural practices, racialism, and fascism. He wrote about the family of Trotsky who had survived the Stalinist purge and so showed the international link and solidarity.

“As early as 2005 he wrote “The Judi-ciary in Crisis”, an indictment of Judge John Hlophe and the way he behaved, the misuse of the judiciary, the use of transformation and racialism to further narrow interests. The saga of Judge Hlophe is still unresolved after all these years. Before he died he was thinking of writing about the appointment of Judge Moegoeng; such an article would have dealt with the threat the ANC poses to the Judiciary.

“In 2009 when he was already very sick he undertook a major defence of Apdusa and its leading members. An academic, Ciraj Rassool, had ingrati-ated himself with Jane Gool who provided him with material which he used as a basis for a thesis. This thesis was an unwarranted besmirching of the history of an important and principled organisation and its founders and lead-ing theoreticians. Kader sought help

from others to rebut that vilification. When none was forthcoming he spent many months, though ill, and completed the Rebuttal of Ciraj Rassool’s Denigra-tion of Tabata which was posted to the website in April 2010. It was a labour of true loyalty to the founders of the movement and one which he did with precision and care and is of historical significance.

“In April 2011, though ill, he dealt with the spectre of fascism and whether those who did not support the ANC and the DA should abstain from voting, which is what usually happens. The times called for a new approach to fas-cism and corruption. He believed that the principal contradiction remained that between capital and labour, and defended that position.

“Kader grappled with ill-health for a number of years. It started a long time ago when he was quite young and was diagnosed with impaired glucose toler-ance and became diabetic in time. About 1987 he had a heart attack which left some damage to his heart, but he car-ried on doing the things he had to do. The only concession he made was that he worked as a lawyer for half a day only to conserve his energy and time for political work.

“The last years of his life were ex-tremely stressful medically. He lived with renal failure. He had a number of operations as he feared having a de-bilitating stroke and he also underwent surgery for two fistulas. The latter were a failure in many respects. He had a lot of discomfort which he stoically lived with. Dialysis did not prolong his life, yet he was still trying to write on rel-evant and important topics.”

PETER CROESER, based on the tribute of NINA HASSIM

Obituaries

122


Winton Arthur (Wog) Hawksworth, 1935-2012

WINTON “Wog” Hawksworth died on 26 March 2012. His death brought to an end an

illustrious career and an era. He was an outstanding academic and mentor, also playing an influential role in yachting administration and the control of drug abuse in sport. He touched the lives of many thousands of people, especially students, all of whom will remember him for his kindness and concern for others.

Wog was born in Port Shepstone. Like many small boys on the coast, he developed a passion for fishing, one which he shared with Sam Ramsamy, who later became Chairman of the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (Nocsa); this connection was to lead to a turning point later in Wog’s life, when he became involved in the control of drug abuse in sport. From Sezela government school to Glenwood High School was a big step, but Wog showed his mettle by matriculating as the school dux in 1952. A one-year spell at African Explosives and Chemical Industries (AECI) in Umbogintwini cemented his interest in chemistry, prompting him to register for a science degree at the University of Natal in Pi-etermaritzburg in 1954, thus beginning his long association with the Depart-ment of Chemistry in Pietermaritzburg. He graduated with an Honours degree in chemistry in 1957, an MSc in 1958 and a PhD in 1966, finally retiring from the university as Professor of Physical Chemistry in 1995, after 37 years of service.

Wog was a physical chemist who specialised in teaching and research in the fields of electrochemistry and thermodynamics, interests which de-

“Wog” Hawksworth

veloped from his time as a research student of Professor C.J.G. Raw. His close friend in the department, Dr Edwy Kyle, represented the other major fields in physical chemistry at the time, viz reaction kinetics and spectroscopy. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship that led to the modernisation of the physical chemistry teaching programme in Pietermaritzburg. By the end of the 1960s, the programme was regarded as the most relevant and best taught in the country.

In his research Wog focused on the phenomenon of thermal diffusion in liquid mixtures, also known as the Soret effect. A visible example (from the gas phase) is when the hot rod of an electric heater is surrounded by tobacco smoke: as the small particles of air nearest the hot rod are heated and acquire increased kinetic energy, they literally push the slower moving particles of tobacco smoke away from the rod. The force that pushes the smoke particles away is

Obituaries

123


known as a thermophoretic force. The point is that the force is not the same for all particles: in solution this means that not all particles diffuse across a tem-perature gradient at the same rate. These differences are expressed in terms of the Soret coefficient for a particular species. In principle, particles with different Soret coefficients can be separated by application of a temperature gradient. A major application is in oil separation technology, for example.

Wog and his students measured Soret coefficients of a host of different species in solution, so contributing to a world-wide database of Soret coefficients. It has to be said that this was no easy task: incredibly precise temperature control is required in the laboratory, and there were no commercial instruments avail-able at that time to do the measurements – all the instruments in Pietermaritzburg were designed and built by Wog. He quickly established a reputation as a superb experimental chemist, earning him British Council and CSIR grants to collaborate with the world leader in the field, Professor H.J.V. Tyrell of Chelsea College, University of London. Wog enjoyed no less than three sabbatical leaves at Chelsea as a visiting lecturer. The quality of his work is reflected by publications in prestigious journals such as the Journal of Chemical Physics and Electrochimica Acta.

Wog’s interest in chemistry took a fascinating turn when he retired from the University in 1995. He was invited by Sam Ramsamy to head up the Nocsa Drugs and Anti-Doping Commis-sion. Thus began his long association with the problem of the misuse of performance-enhancing drugs in sport that only ended a few months before his death. He has to be the envy of all retired academics! During that time

he earned a reputation as an expert in the field. He understood exactly the limitations of techniques such as mass spectroscopy and chromatography that are used for the analysis of a drug sample – not surprisingly, given his background in physical chemistry. Furthermore he (like others) began to question the true meaning of a measured concentration for a drug molecule that occurs naturally anyway. Is it the result of a natural variation, or is it due to misuse of a drug? A good example of this so-called “molecular riddle” is that of the Swedish cross-country skier Eero Mantyranta, who won three gold medals at the Winter Olympics. Tests showed that he had 15% more red blood cells than normal, but he didn’t have any signs of blood doping!

Wog was invited to speak at numer-ous international conferences on drugs in sport, attending his last conference (the US Anti-doping Agency confer-ence on Drugs in Sport in London) only five months before his death. He was also invited to serve on the Drug Commission of the International Swim-ming Federation, the only non-medical scientist on the committee. However, in his mind, discussions in commissions and at conferences were all very well, but more important was to educate the youth about the dangers of sports drug abuse. To this end, he gave lectures to children at schools all over the country, no-holds-barred addesses that illustrated the damaging effect of drug abuse on the physiologies of young men and women.

The notion of community service now looms large as one of the promo-tion criteria at South African universi-ties. Community service for Wog took many forms, but he is best known for his contribution to South African sail-

Obituaries

124


ing. Yachting was a passion for him, one which began with sailing a Mirror dinghy at Midmar Dam with his wife Pauline. He served on the committee of Henley Midmar Yacht Club (HMYC) for over a decade, nine years as com-modore of the club, and later went on to become president of both the Natal Yachting Association (SAS/KZN) and the South African Yacht Racing associa-tion (Sayra/SAS).

But his contribution to sailing ex-tended far beyond the administration of the sport. He went on to become an international race officer of high stand-ing, officiating at countless provincial and national regattas, as well as at prestigious regattas such as the Lipton Cup and world championships. On his retirement he received a certificate from the International Sailing Federa-tion “in recognition and appreciation of his contribution to the sport of sailing during his term as an international race officer”.

His most significant contribution to South African sailing was probably through his involvement with Nocsa: together with Sam Ramsamy and President Nelson Mandela he fought successfully for the inclusion of an increased number of South African sporting codes (including sailing) at the Barcelona Olympics. To quote the president of the International Olympic committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, Professor Hawksworth “deserves rec-ognition for a remarkable contribution, as a volunteer, to the development of sport and Olympism, and the promo-tion of friendship and solidarity among peoples”.

The last phrase fits well with how Wog treated people. His students loved him because he saw them as young men and women with fears and aspirations, not simply as students who needed to be taught chemistry. He was the most encouraging of lecturers, who often acted as a life coach. Some of his phrases are still used in the department today, a good example being his oft-repeated reference to the “cold frontiers of science”. He understood better than most the demands of original research, and that you, the student, felt “cold out there” when an experiment was not working or the results made no sense. He was recognised in the sailing fraternity as scrupulously fair, in par-ticular with regard to the management of regattas; to quote Vernon Goss, a life president of the Point Yacht Club and trustee of SAS Sailing KZN: “Wog was South Africa’s greatest race officer ... an exceptional gentleman in all respects, and his invaluable contribution to South African Sailing can never be equalled.” Above all, Wog was a family man, a devoted husband to Pauline, and a father who gave his two sons, Douglas and Mark, unconditional love and support. It is hard to imagine another man who got it so right in all aspects of his life. His philosophy was that life should be played by the rules. “Keep to the rules” he would advise, or you will “end up in the shit … and it is very difficult to get out of the shit!”

Wog lived his life to the hilt right up to the end – it is a life that we can celebrate, as much as we mourn its end.

JOHN FIELD

Obituaries

125


Kathleen Gordon-Gray (1918–2012)

KATHLEEN Gordon-Gray (née Huntley) died peacefully in P ie te rmar i t zburg on

January 13, 11 days before her 94th birthday. She is survived by her only daughter, Celia.

Gordon-Gray was no ordinary person. She was, in fact, a most extraordinary and generous woman. Not only was she the South African expert on Cyper aceae and some other plants of KwaZulu-Natal (see Google Scholar for a list of some of her publications), she was a wife, mother, excellent lecturer in the then botany department at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus, and a much sought-after confidante and friend to students and colleagues alike.

It was her gentle and caring manner, ability to listen, and her almost infinite patience and desire for perfection, that were her enduring qualities.

I never heard her speak ill of anyone, and if she had a fault, it was that she ac-cepted her lowly academic status in the de partment as women often did in those days, foregoing promotion to realise her professional calling.

Even to the last, wracked with arthritis, she was alert and working on Cyperaceae with Jane Browning and with another of her closest co-workers, C. J. (Roddy) Ward; the well-known KZN plant collector and field ecologist.

G o r d o n - G r a y w a s b o r n i n Pietermaritzburg and graduated with a BSc and MSc in 1939. Her PhD was awarded in 1959. All her degrees were obtained from the University of Na-tal. After teaching at Girls Collegiate School (1940 to 1945), she was ap-pointed as a junior lecturer to teach ex-servicemen. She rose through the ranks

Kathleen Gordon-Gray

in the botany department, becoming an associate professor (1977 to 1978).

She was, sadly, required to retire at the age of 60 in 1978, but continued to work on her beloved KZN plants, and the Cyperaceae in particular.

Gordon-Gray was essentially a home girl, collecting some 4 000 specimens, mainly from KZN. My fondest memo-ries of her date back to the sixties, when the botany department in Pieter-maritzburg was arguably in its heyday.

From the late fifites to the early seventies, a remarkable number of botanists passed through the depart-ment, and many undergraduates and postgraduates came under the spell of Doc G-G, as she was fondly known. If it had not been for her, I would have become a zoologist, and I know of many others who pursued a career in botany because of her influence.

Thus, almost single-handed, she recruited many botanists who became well known in their particular botani-

Obituaries

126


cal fields and then they themselves re-cruited other botanists and ecologists.

Some noteworthy students and col-leagues were Don Killick, Denzil Edwards, Mike Wells, Clare Reid, Jim Ross, Fiona Getliffe, Roger El-lis, Charles Stirton, Esmé Hennessy, Ken Tinley, Brian Huntley and Trevor Arnold.

One thing that she is well known for is her annotations on herb arium sheets, that are often accompanied by her me-ticulous drawings and notes of what she believed to be diagnostic features.

When she died, Gordon-Gray was still working on Cyperaceae with Jane

Browning. Typical of her, she shunned the limelight, and was belatedly award-ed the South African Association of Botanists Silver Medal in 1998. She certainly deserved greater recognition in her lifetime.

Yet through her teaching and supervi-sion, she was inspirational and provided sound theoretical and practical train-ing in the fundamentals of taxonomy, anatomy, breeding systems and ecology of her beloved sedges and grasses.

EUGENE MOLL With acknowledgments to

The Witness

Huw Jones (1932–2012)

HUW was a man of boundless vitality and enthusiasm with an ever-expanding range of

interests. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford and served for 12 years with the Colonial Office in Swaziland where he was District Commissioner and ADC to the Resident Commissioner. This was a formative period and awakened his lifelong interest in that part of southern Africa. In 1968 Huw left Swaziland for a brief period with the United Nations in India, followed by 18 years with the World Bank as a senior population specialist. During this time he began his highly productive career as an author. Besides writing reports published by the organisations he worked for, in 1969 he co-authored the scholarly Development in Swaziland, A Regional Analysis. He never lost his interest in issues of development in post-colonial Africa, but after his retirement to

Huw Jones

Gloucestershire in 1988 he was able to give full rein to his irrepressible curiosity about the Swaziland region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Over the years, 18 published articles followed on diverse themes.

Obituaries

127


They ranged from the question of the pre-colonial Swazi population to cartographical issues, the history of early white settlers, colonial units of volunteer mounted infantry, Swazi kings, the north-western sector of the Anglo-Zulu War, Swazi involvement in the Pedi War of 1879 and the Anglo-Boer War. He also addressed the vexing problem of historical sources, and matters of research methodology.

In his “retirement” Huw undertook more sustained writing challenges and published seven more books. Between 2007 and 2011 he concentrated his at-tention on history closer to home than Swaziland, and brought out four books on aspects of Gloucestershire local his-tory. His three previous books were all on aspects of southern African history. A Biographical Register of Swaziland to 1902 appeared in 1993. This was an enormous, complex, painstaking work of scholarship that spoke to his unparalleled knowledge of the history of Swaziland. A Gazetteer of the Second Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 (1999), which he co-authored with his son, Meurig, was a work of a similarly high order. Both will long remain invaluable reference tools for future historians.

However, the book that will be his monument is The Boiling Cauldron:

Utrecht District and the Anglo-Zulu War, 1879, beautifully produced by The Shermershill Press in 2006. The literature of the Anglo-Zulu War is saturated with books that reiterate the familiar tale, but occasionally works do appear that genuinely break new ground. Huw’s deeply researched analy-sis of the open frontier of north-western Zululand where competing claims by the Swazi, Zulu and Boers collided is significant because the region had previously been relatively neglected by historians, and the role played in its affairs by the Swazi largely ignored. Huw’s account did more than any other book yet written to put that vital area of operations during the Anglo-Zulu War into informed context. The battle of Hlobane on 28 March 1879 was second only to Isandlwana as the greatest Zulu victory of the war, and Huw’s painstak-ing and detailed analysis (which built on his earlier ground-breaking articles) is undoubtedly the most authoritative now available, and functions as a sharp cor-rective to most other accounts.

Huw was diagnosed with cancer in March 2011, and after a short period of remission died peacefully at home on 8 June 2012 with his wife Barbara and three children at his side.

JOHN LABAND

Joy Roberts 1926 – 2011

JOY Roberts, a former chair of the Edendale Welfare Society, died on Christmas Day, 2011.

She personified the spirit of volun-teerism, having worked full-time and without pay for the society for more than 40 years. She was also a former chair of the Midlands Black Sash.

Her son, Jonathan Hey, said: “She touched so many lives during her life and never with huge fuss or drama, always gave with quiet dignity and service.” He described his mother as a woman who lived by the motto: “Al-ways rise above the occasion.”

Obituaries

128


Roberts (née Hendry) was born in Durban in 1926 and married her first husband Peter Hey at the age of 22. After their marriage they went to Cam-bridge University. Roberts had studied social work at Natal University and did her honours in psychology.

The young couple went to London and New York and spent a year in New Zealand before returning to South Af-rica where her husband accepted a post at the university in Pietermaritzburg.

Roberts developed an increasing political awareness. Her husband had started a theatre production company, the Phoenix Productions, and they put on shows that were open to audiences of all races. This meant that venues were restricted to university halls or community organisations like the old Lotus Hall at the bottom of East Street. In 1961 they put on the first mixed-race play to a mixed-race audience.

Roberts joined the Black Sash in 1962 and became chair of the Edendale Welfare Society in 1967.

In an interview with the Alan Paton Oral History Project last year Roberts discussed her involvement in the Black

Sash. “I was involved in Edendale Welfare and I used to have arguments with some people who thought it was wrong to do the government’s business for them. ‘You shouldn’t be involved in welfare. Just let them sink’, they said. ‘It’s the state’s responsibility. You are doing their job for them.’

“Well,” said Roberts, “that was hard, because you couldn’t turn your back on the children. I couldn’t, anyway.

“You could do battle in small ways — things like grants, which, at that stage, were very much geared to white grants being higher than Indian grants, and coloured grants, and black grants were very small.

“So you could put in your word of protest there.”

Her first husband died in 1962 after a long illness, and in 1967 she married Simon Roberts, a prominent lawyer. While he battled on the legal front, she did her bit in the trenches.

Roberts’s commitment was recog-nised by the city in 2005 when she was presented with a Certificate of Ap-preciation by former president Nelson Mandela.

But instead of putting the photograph of herself and Mandela in a place of prominence, Jonathan said, his mother put the photograph quietly behind the door, not wanting to draw attention to it.

Roberts will be remembered as a hu-manitarian who made a big difference to many people’s lives in her quiet way.

She leaves behind her son Jonathan, daughter Jean and step-children, Guy, Stephanie and Nicola.

A memorial service was held for her at the Church of the Ascension in Hilton.

TRISH BEAVER(With acknowledgments to The

Witness)

Joy Roberts

Obituaries

129


Laurence Schlemmer, 1936–2011

LAURIE Schlemmer was born into what he always said was “a fairly boring” Afrikaans family

(though half of it was English-speaking) in Pretoria, but once, on a long trip into Zululand, I got him to explain his origins to me and they were extremely complex. He was, he said, about one twelfth Jewish and the name Schlemmer is German Jewish. Lawrie was proud of the fact that the great Oskar Schlemmer, sculptor, painter and designer, was a bit too progressive even for the Bauhaus movement he was associated with and that his paintings were specially selected by the Nazis for an exhibition of “Degenerate Art”.

Lawrie’s father was an accountant but as a boy Lawrie was always fas-cinated by the less respectable side of society and went to Pretoria University to study criminology, ending up with a degree in Social Work His real educa-tion came, however, when he became a social worker, moving amidst every variety of down-and-out, semi-criminal and highly distressed people. What he couldn’t but be struck by was that while apartheid was then at its height and South African society was constrained within a sort of Calvinist strait-jacket, such folk paid scant attention to laws of any kind and made their own com-plicated arrangements with reality. Like most social workers who have entered the profession through a sympathy for the downtrodden, he quickly realised that this was a world entirely without sentiment, principle or even belief. Down-and-outs had no problem at all in making quite contradictory arrange-ments with the other actors in their life. They could accommodate themselves to almost any set of circumstances

Laurence Schlemmer

and would negotiate a way through by making deals with criminals and cops, social workers and shebeens, Salvation Army workers and hookers. Lawrie remained permanently impressed with the ingenuity of it all long after he gave up social work for sociology, attending Wits where he became a lecturer in the subject.

Soon, however, he moved to the University of Natal in Durban, rapidly becoming professor and setting up the Centre for Social and Development Studies (CSDS), which became a hive of activity and spawned the influential journal Indicator. Lawrie was an inde-fatigable worker and turned himself into a remarkable all-round social scientist with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sociology, politics, economics and anthropology of South African society – and with a considerable knowledge of comparable societies elsewhere. More than most, he understood South Africa as a remarkable laboratory of the social

Obituaries

130


sciences in which almost every kind of human plight and contradiction was present. He was endlessly fascinated simply to understand how it all worked.

Lawrie was a natural libertarian who had no time for racism of any kind and favoured a bohemian lifestyle. Durban in the late 1960s and 1970s was a political and social hub all of its own. It had all the life and the foreign intermixing of a great port city. As now, its social fabric wove together a dominant Zulu majority with 600 000 Indians, leaving whites and Coloureds far behind. Economically, it was the fastest growing part of the country and a major labour movement was silently growing underfoot. At the same time Natal (or, rather, KwaZulu) was home to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, by far the most significant of the homeland leaders. Buthelezi, who had grown up in Luthuli’s shadow, made no secret of the fact that he had always been a strong ANC man and was determined to see the end of apartheid. Increasingly, Buthelezi loomed over not only the Durban and Natal but also the national scene as by far the most significant internal black leader.

The Durban campus in those years was home to a group of young white radicals, many of whom were working to help build black trade unions: Rick Turner, Mike Kirkwood, Alec Erwin, Johnny Copelyn, Jesmond Blumenthal and others. Lawrie worked with this group and often lived in shared houses with its members. A contemporary observes that “the house Lawrie and Jesmond ran on Lighthouse Road, on the Bluff, was remarkable for the fact that all the apartheid laws were first abolished there. It had a floating population of white, black, Coloured and Indian people. Sexual liaisons

quite normally crossed colour lines, there was generally a party going on and the plentiful drink that flowed was usually bought at shebeens after mid-night”. In the midst of all this Lawrie was frantically working (and smoking) away at books, articles, surveys, reports and speeches, quite normally working through the night before jumping onto a plane to give a talk at the other end of South Africa before returning to base to repeat the feat. His colleagues regarded this blur of energy and creativity with awe and, when he finally left, gave him a cartoon picture of himself as the turbo-prof, leaping on and off planes with talks hurriedly put together in the departure lounge.

Lawrie had learnt from his social work days that you could do most things if you kept your own counsel. So at home and by night he was a bohemian and libertarian, by day a hard working academic, and found he was in ever increasing demand to address chambers of commerce and the like. He could deal with any milieu because he did not advertise his radical views or personal preferences and found that even at the height of apartheid South Africa you could not only have friends of all races but of all political persuasions. People were just people and if you treated them properly you could get past the ideol-ogy. So he would chat away happily to campus marxists, Inkatha activists, conservative Afrikaners and anyone else who came his way. His efforts to help unionise black workers led him into contact with Buthelezi, for Buthe-lezi supported the great Durban strike wave of 1973 and the workers happily elected him as their honorary President.

One of the reasons that Lawrie re-spected Rick Turner was that when this occurred some of the trade union organ-

Obituaries

131


isers such as Alec Erwin were upset and said Buthelezi was too conservative a figure to be acceptable, whereas Rick argued, as did Lawrie, that they had promised the workers democracy and so they must respect their democratic choice. Lawrie enjoyed discussing French marxism and existentialism with Rick but he appreciated the fact that Rick’s sort of theorising was strongly grounded in respect for the classic lib-eral rights of free speech, free choice and free expression. As a sociologist Lawrie was simply far too eclectic to be a marxist and as a libertarian he was instinctively wary of any creed – apartheid, Communism, or any form of religion – which would try to exercise authority over how he should live or what he should think.

In a sense, Lawrie recognised Buthe-lezi as a kindred spirit for he was tightly bound to his position as homeland leader but somehow negotiated a strong relationship with the exiled ANC and the local black workers as well as with business and white liberals. Buthelezi asked Lawrie to become director of the Inkatha Institute and, daringly, at the time, Lawrie accepted. When I visited the Durban campus in 1978 this asso-ciation placed Lawrie on the leftward limits of what was possible at the time and I found he knew far more about the world of black politics than any other white I met. Typically, Lawrie had hired black researchers at CSDS long before any other university department had crossed the colour line.

Lawrie was sharing a house with Rick Turner when an unknown gunman shot Rick through the ground floor window. Lawrie had to do whatever he could to try to save Rick, to ferry his children out of the way and to deal with the ensuing commotion. Buthelezi was among the

first on the scene – he had been on his way to the airport when he heard the news and hurriedly diverted his official car, for he had been devoted to Rick. For years afterwards Lawrie wondered if the murder had not been an accident committed by a security policeman who had meant only to spy but he later found evidence which suggested the murder had been deliberate and that the assassin was still at large.

In 1979-80 Buthelezi and the ANC quarrelled bitterly and thereafter the ANC viewed Inkatha as its deadly rival and enemy. At around that time Lawrie pitched up at CSDS one Saturday morn-ing to find the Security Police waiting for him: they wanted access to the office of one of his black researchers. Why, Lawrie asked? They explained that the man had multiple car registrations in his name and this was a clear sign of an MK operative since infiltrating MK guerrillas needed a car with a legitimate registration number. They had no war-rant but threatened to go and get one if Lawrie refused to open up the office. Typically, he bargained: he would open the office if they would let him be present while they searched it. Lawrie opened it and the police rapidly found damning evidence inside. So where is this guy, they demanded? “God knows where in Umlazi”, said Lawrie. “And he has no phone. You’ll have to wait till he comes in on Monday.” Once the police had gone he phoned the researcher from a call box and advised him to leave the country immediately.

Not long after Lawrie got a message smuggled in from the researcher, now an MK exile in Lusaka. you tipped me off, he said; now I’ll return the favour. His comrades, he said, were very angry with Buthelezi and wanted to kill him. They were also talking of coming to

Obituaries

132


kill Lawrie because of his association with Buthelezi. “Trouble is”, Lawrie told me, “you can’t run your life on the basis of death threats. You get too many of them.” So he did nothing. But the Buthelezi-ANC rift was now affecting Lawrie’s life across the board. On the campus student radicals denounced him because of his link with Inkatha and even within CSDS Lawrie began to have trouble with the young Turks that he had himself recruited. There was a fundamental difference of philosophy between them. Lawrie took the catholic view that every party and social forma-tion was interesting and worthy of study and he was happy to have a plurality of approaches and styles within CSDS. The marxists wanted one style, one approach and a “progressive” selection of projects which would ultimately be subject to the needs of the progressive movement (ie. the UDF/ANC). In the short term this boiled down to an im-mediate demand that the CSDS (ie. Lawrie) must have nothing to do with Inkatha. Lawrie regarded this line as so obviously illiberal and unsuited to proper social science research that he had difficulty taking it seriously. The problem was that these were illiberal, indeed quasi-revolutionary times and this new form of ANC-centred political correctness grew apace, as did justifica-tions for political violence in pursuit of the “correct” progressive ends.

One day Lawrie heard that his uni-versity office had caught fire. He rushed there – too late. His vast and irreplace-able collection of books, papers and ephemera had all been destroyed. Then he heard that his home was also on fire. This was even more alarming since it was a first floor flat and if his wife Monica were inside, she would have no escape. Luckily, she wasn’t. But his

home was completely destroyed. It was an obvious case of simultaneous arson. The next day it was observed that a lead-ing campus radical, who had frequently denounced Lawrie, was missing. It was universally assumed that he was the culprit and that he’d fled into exile. But it was now clear that Lawrie would be a continuing target and his position was untenable. So after 20 golden years in Durban – the centrepiece of his life – Lawrie gave up the Inkatha Institute and the CSDS that he had created and moved to Johannesburg to become chairman of the Centre for Policy Stud-ies. Under him it was a lively place, though he continued to have problems with young Turks enthused with the new political correctness. Lawrie loved nothing better than messing about with old cars so his collection of cars moved with him. The gardens of all the houses he lived in were always full of charac-terful older cars – six or seven of them – though his pride and joy was the 1934 Chrysler fire engine he had picked up. He spent many hours, Chesterfield in hand, scrutinising every car magazine in the country for the old Citroens and Renaults that he loved.

Lawrie retained many links with Natal and for a while he and Monica had a cottage up the North Coast. Once I asked him if he was never tempted to return to Durban; so beautiful, warm all year round, so interesting. “Trouble is”, he said, “Durban is just a bit too small.” I said, hey, it’s got three million people. “No”, he said, “for someone like me it’s just that bit too small. What it means is that sooner or later you start bumping into some of your ex-wives.” Gee, I said, how many ex-wives have you got, Lawrie? “Oh God, I don’t know”, he said. “I don’t remember.” In fact most of the time that I knew him he was

Obituaries

133


pretty solidly partnered with Monica, his faithful support in all things and quite a force in her own right.

With the great change of 1990 in the offing the Broederbonders who con-trolled the HSRC decided they’d better make Lawrie their vice president. Given his pre-eminence as a social researcher, he might have expected such recogni-tion decades before but he had, of course, been miles too liberal for them to touch. Ever the chameleon, he took immediately to his new environment, wearing suits and speaking Afrikaans all day long. But in no time the ANC exiles returned and immediately wanted to take over the cultural commanding heights: the SABC, the universities – and the HSRC. These pressures clearly had to be accommodated, which meant some people had to get the chop to make room for them. Lawrie told me it was quite absurd: neither the Broeders nor the ANC people were any good at research. But, of course, the inevitable happened and the Broeders reached agreement with their ANC counterparts that Lawrie – the most distinguished researcher in the organisation – should be the first one to get the chop.

And so it came about that Lawrie – a former dean of the social sciences at Na-tal, a professor at Wits, strategy director of the Urban Foundation, founder mem-ber of the Academy of Science of South Africa, vice president of the Institute of Race Relations, president of the SA Political Studies Association, research associate of the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (Germany), president of the Association for Sociology in Southern Africa, and the author or co-author of 300 publications and 15 books – was out of a job. I could see he was very hurt. For over 40 years he’d been the go-to man for anyone doing social research

in South Africa, and also as a pollster, speaker and political commentator. What are you going to do now, I asked? He laughed. “Return to basics. And I do mean basics. I’m a hunter-gatherer.” And so he was. He was a director of the survey firm, Markdata, was endlessly sought out as a consultant or project manager by a raft of NGOs, and a vari-ety of research projects, big and small, came his way. He had a pension income but he could no more imagine a life without research projects meeting their deadline by working through the night than he could imagine a life without cigarettes, dogs or old cars.

Around this time Lawrie and I worked together on a big book on the 1994 elections. One day we got a call from the ANC at Shell House. They explained that people who qualified as heroes of the struggle were going to be able to claim some sort of annuity. They were, as a result, flooded out by people claiming to be heroes of the struggle (Hots) and, er, well the truth was that they hadn’t kept very good records or, indeed, any records at all, so they had no idea who was a hero and who was a chancer. Okay, we said. Well, could we help them? They had there in their office a white guy claiming to be a Hots. He had certainly been in MK since he’d misbehaved and ended up in an MK prison camp in Tanzania. But now he’d rocked up claiming to be a Hots on the basis that he had burned down Law-rie’s office and home in Durban. Could we verify that? I passed the phone to Lawrie. “A white guy? What does he look like? Hmmm. What does he say his name is?” A name was pronounced. “yes, that’s the bastard”, said Lawrie. “Oh hell, give him the money.” He turned to me and said “I often wished that guy a lot of harm but I never wished

Obituaries

134


him anything as bad as an Umkhonto prison camp.”

Lawrie and I worked together on many projects. He was enormous fun and had an endlessly inventive mind. He was also quite a perfectionist and often insisted we go an extra mile or two just to get things exactly right. But he was also an extraordinary raconteur and had a huge fund of anecdotes. Most of all, his detailed knowledge was amazing. If you were doing poll-ing in Botswana or Zimbabwe he had detailed knowledge of Shona or Barotse customs and beliefs. If you wondered aloud about the impact of affirmative action on small business he would start telling you in detail about the problems of small metal-bashing firms on the East Rand. If you were doing a farm survey he would betray a detailed knowledge of the particular problems of sugar, timber and wheat farmers. And so on it went. He was a cornucopia of social and historical knowledge and of shrewd opinions. I never saw him stumped. He was incomparably, irreplaceably good. Typically enough in the new South Africa, he was never awarded an honor-ary degree.

But he was also outrageous. During the 1994 elections he and I had to give a series of press conferences on the results of our opinion surveys. Lawrie would arrive one minute late, the raw data in his hand. He would plonk that down in front of me and get up to make (vacuous) introductory remarks to a room full of journalists and TV cam-

eras while I flipped through the data. He would then introduce me and say that I would talk about the major find-ings. I would then, deadpan, expatiate solemnly on what I’d learned in the last three minutes, while Lawrie hurriedly flipped the data himself and then broke in with fresh data and analysis. And so we would carry it off for an hour or more without ever revealing that we had had no idea about any of it till Lawrie walked in. It was a Laurel and Hardy act after which we’d go out for a beer and a lot of laughter. At that point I think we had a sort of complete respect for one another, that we’d been good enough as a quick study to do it and also enough of a performer to carry it off. The thing I could never get used to was that Lawrie knew he could do that and get away with it, but he just assumed I could too, without asking. It was unnerving.

Lawrie carried on working flat out till he died. He told Monica that if he had anything bad, he didn’t want to know. So he was never told he had cancer. The day before he died he looked up at me, owlishly. “How’s tricks? What are you up to? Tell me the news.” I told him and it was just like it has always been: interesting, politically incorrect, nail-on-the-head insight – and fun.

Lawrie Schlemmer died in Cape Town on 26 October, 2011. He leaves his wife, Monica, a son, Julian, and a daughter, Lucia.

R.W. JOHNSON

Obituaries

135


Louis Sennett 1924–2012

LOUIS Sennet t , a former managing director at Hulett A l u m i n i u m , w a s a l s o a

long-standing chairperson of the Pietermaritzburg and District Council for the Care of the Aged (Padca), served as chair of the Maritzburg Country Club from 1974 to 1976 and was president of the Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Industry (PCI) in 1985.

He was the driving force behind the completion and furnishing of Riverside Park Home, Padca’s flagship frail care home, and the development of Wood-grove retirement village.

An analytical chemist, Sennett worked in Zambia before moving to Pietermaritzburg in 1959, shortly after marrying his late wife Phyllis. The couple came to KZN to try their hand at chicken farming. This did not work out so he returned to formal employment, getting a job at Hulett Aluminium, which was known as Alcan at the time. He rose up the ranks of the company, becoming chief chemist and eventually being appointed managing director.

Hillary Mumford, CEO of Padca, in preparing her tribute to Sennett, learnt from his former colleagues that he was instrumental in developing the lucra-tive aluminium foil market in South Africa. Mumford said that Sennett’s involvement with Padca began in the early 80s. He was a member of the general committee and chairperson of the Ken Collins House management committee and became chairperson of Padca in 1987. She said he recognised that welfare organisations had to be run on sound business principles in order to survive and was instrumental in turn-ing Padca into a strong and successful organisation. Mumford added that as a result the organisation was able to build Riverside and Woodgrove.

Louis Sennett

On his retirement Sennett received an award from Padca in recognition of three decades of distinguished service to the aged in Pietermaritzburg.

According to friends and colleagues, Sennett had a superb memory, and numbers were his passion. He initially resisted the use of computers within Padca and staff were later astounded when he mastered using a computer at the age of 82, revelling in Excel, e-mail and Internet banking.

Mumford was told that he would relax with a Sudoku book, tackling the most difficult puzzle. Sennett also had a passion for woodwork and the building of clocks both large and small. He trav-elled overseas and locally, especially to the Kruger Park and to fish off St Lucia. After he retired, his snooker af-ternoon was sacrosanct and he enjoyed socialising, particularly in his beloved Woodgrove pub.

Sennett grew up as one of four chil-dren in a farming family in Senekal in the Free State. He leaves no children.

NALINI NAIDOOWith acknowledgments to The Witness.

Book Reviews and Notices

136


Book Reviews and NoticesLABOURER OR SETTLER? COLONIAL NATAL’S INDIAN DILEMMA 1860-1897.by DUNCAN DU BOIS Durban: Just Done Productions, 2011. 216 pp. illus. map.ISBN: 978-1-920315-65-8. R190

DUNCAN Du Bois’ book, Labourer or Settler? – Colonial Natal’s Indian Dilemma 1860-1897, is a veritable tome of information on the goings-on in colonial Natal from the time of the arrival in 1860 of the first group of Indian indentured labourers from India. The book conveys detailed information on the role that different colonial prime ministers and other leading white figures played in the politics of Natal during this period, with particular reference to their reactions to the arrival and settlement of the Indian indentured labourers.

Over the years, there has been much scholarship on the history of Indian indenture in South Africa, but largely from “inside” indenture. Among the trail blazers or pioneers in this field are Bridglal Pachai, Surendra Bhana, and Joy Brain. Recent scholars who have written on the Indian indentured history include Goolam Vahed and Ashwin

Desai [2007]. Du Bois’ contribution is a necessary one, as he writes mainly from the perspective and vantage point of the dominant and powerful white set-tler community, and of their responses to the indentured labourers. Du Bois foregrounds a neglected but crucial angle to the history of indentured Indi-ans. While the other historians allude to this history, he explores in close detail the changing reactions and attitudes of white settlers to the arrival of Indians as they became a growing and permanent presence in the colony.

The study is principally about Sir John Robinson, who was the editor of The Natal Mercury, which was estab-lished in 1852, eight years before the arrival of the indentured labourers. The newspaper itself became an important medium where opinions on indentured labour were routinely expressed and which served to mould white settler opinion. Du Bois points out that The


137


Mercury strove to champion the cause of the sugar planters. Robinson also became Prime Minister of Natal, and wielded strong influence.

The narrative of indentured Indians in South Africa is well known. As the colony was developing its sugar indus-try it needed labour. At the request of some 50 white sugar planters, it was decided to import workers from India as a panacea to the problem of the shortage of labour. Although there was a large indigenous population, Du Bois rightly points out that Africans enjoyed a cer-tain economic independence in that the needs of their subsistence economy did not require them to subject themselves to regular employment by the colonial farmers. Some scholars argue that Afri-cans actively resisted being co-opted in the new proletarianising economy of the colony [See Atkins 1993]. However, as Bhana [2012], citing the works of John Laband and P.S. Thompson, observes, this did not prevent the colonials from moving away from their own policy of “trusteeship”, to land ownership or land appropriation; and to luring Africans away from peasant labour and their traditional moorings to mining and manufacturing pursuits. Thus began the infamous migrant labour system.

The first group of Indian indentured labourers – 342 in total – arrived in Durban, or Port Natal, on 16 November 1860 on the SS Truro. The decision to import Indian labour was to change the economic and socio-cultural landscape of South Africa radically. Du Bois states that Robinson noted that the arrival of Indians was “the harbinger of a new dispensation … though in a sense far wider than we expected”.

Indisputably, the Indian indentured labourers had a huge impact on the economic development of colony. J.R.

Saunders, a well-known sugar planter, noted that “each shipload of coolies brings with it, indirectly, importation of capital and capitalists” [in Du Bois 2011:45].

As Indian immigration to Natal swelled, however, with many labourers opting to remain in Natal when their “girmits” [a vernacularised version of the word “agreement”] expired, the white colonists became apprehensive of the growing Indian presence, and words such as “threat”, “menace”, “influx” or “invasion” were frequently used to describe the new Indian presence. Du Bois points out that between 1876 and 1886 the increase was 278%, where the number of Indians actually eclipsed the size of the white population. The per-ception that many indentured workers did not go back to India because Natal was a “paradise” for Indians needs to be re-examined. We should remember that there were several push factors that forced the indentured workers out of India. Ironically, many of the push factors in India were created by the British Raj, the ruling power at the time in India. In addition, returning to India was not a simple matter. Apart from problems of poverty and famine in India, there was also caste stigmatisa-tion for those who had crossed the dark waters or kala pani, as Desai and Vahed argue. Distanced from their homeland, which began to exist only in receding memory, the labourers were reluctant to leave the “familiar temporariness” of their new abode, to use a phrase from V.S. Naipaul’s classic diasporic novel, A House for Mr Biswas.

As it emerges, Du Bois’s narrative shows how the Indian indentured labourers were seen solely as mere labour units, reduced to chattels or com-modities. Du Bois notes that they were


138


considered as “work hands”. Given the economic boom that the Indian presence signalled, many sugar planters were less inclined to halt their entry. It is clear that the colonists were quite happy to use the workers’ labour but expressed growing resentment about their becom-ing a permanent fixture in the colony. The colonists were caught between the Scylla of improved economic prospects and the Charybdis of an alien and un-wanted presence in what they saw as their colony. Du Bois rightly refers to this as a “paradox”, stating that “while resentment towards the presence of the Indian as a settler intensified, simulta-neously economic demands for fresh batches or indentured Indian labour reached new levels of necessity”. [Du Bois 2011:12]

Du Bois’ research is revealing, as we see the extent to which the colonial leaders went in dealing with what they saw as the “growing coolie evil”. [Du Bois 2011:71] Among the coterie of prominent men who executed colonial history, the names of John Moreland, Sir John Robinson, Harry Escombe, Harry Sparks, J.R. Saunders all frequent the pages of Du Bois’ book. Many have become prominent in the popular imagination as they were honoured by having places in the region named after them. However, in Du Bois’ study we see these luminaries in a different light. I read with incredulity that Huletts also feared being “swamped by Asiatics”. My grandparents worked for Huletts in Kearsney and several generations of our families were in Huletts’ employ, and revered them as benevolent employers.

What is also revealing, from Du Bois’ study, is that representatives of the British Crown, such as the Lord Cham-berlain in London, and Lord Elgin, Viceroy of India, were not consistent in

their objections to the various efforts to control the interests and welfare of Indi-ans. Equally disconcerting, as Du Bois reveals, is that some Christian leaders supported these anti-Indian sentiments. Du Bois records, for example, that the Revd Ezra Nuttall, a Methodist mis-sionary in Verulam in 1882, referred to the “influx” of “Arab” traders. To his credit, however, the Revd Dr Lancelot Booth, founder of St Aidan’s Anglican Indian Mission, did draw attention to the “debilitating effects on women la-bouring in the canefields for 11 hours a day”. [Du Bois 2011:27] Du Bois con-cludes that generally Christian churches did not act as a “pressure group” against the discrimination meted out to the Indians. As a layperson in the Anglican Church in South Africa, I wondered what the faith and church affiliations of many of the white colonists were.

Du Bois’ study recounts in detail the different pieces of anti-Indian legisla-tion that were introduced to protect the interests of the white settlers. Much of this history is occluded from gen-eral knowledge, and Du Bois’ research exposes the relentless and systematic attempts to prevent further immigra-tion and to make life so difficult for the Indian indentured workers that they would opt to return to India at the end of their indentured contracts. There were also attempts to halt the arrival of free or “passenger” Indians, who were mainly businessmen. Both groups were subjected to a battery of discriminatory laws. Legislation to prevent the granting of business licences to passenger Indi-ans was an attempt to reduce the social and commercial impact of Indians, and forestall the competition they exerted against white entrepreneurs. Bhana [2012] points out that it is necessary to chart chronologically the changing


139


attitudes of the colony in relation to Indian labourers. He cites the rise of white working class influence on Na-tal’s politics as an important factor in increasing anti-Indian sentiments in the 1890s – a condition, he points out, that was not prominent in the 1860s.

Du Bois records that other legislation included prohibiting Indians from own-ing land and, from the 1890s onwards, enjoying the franchise. Robinson, followed by Escombe, was directly responsible for denying Indians the vote. Du Bois states that it was “through Robinson’s efforts that Indians were excluded from the franchise and that they posed no political challenge to the dominance of white colonists”. [Du Bois 2011:170] Escombe actually cites practices in other colonies, such as Mauritius and Fiji, to justify policies in Natal. He speaks of the “coolie curse” “sucking the lifeblood of the European storekeepers”. [Du Bois 2011: 183]

Robinson also advocated residen-tial segregation. The “free coolie population [should be] confined to a distinct locality … where their natural peculiarities will not interfere with the comfort of European settlers”. [Du Bois 2011:30] Clearly, there were growing class distinctions that influenced these sentiments, as Robinson asserted in The Natal Mercury that “restrictions and regulations as regards residential locations should apply only to the lower orders among Indians”. [Du Bois 2011:44]

The colonists also complained about the labourers being a health hazard and, at times, quarantined the ships at the harbour, as in 1896. Du Bois states directly and without equivocation that “much of the municipal history of colonial society concerns its efforts to impose its will and standards on an

emerging class of settlers whose pres-ence it resented. Sanitation and town planning by-laws served as the means to discriminate against Indians and to segregate them from white society”. [Du Bois 2011: 69] Robinson had de-scribed Indians as the most “unsanitary class of people”. [in Du Bois 2011:70]

There was no denying the visible squalor of certain dwellings, given the erection of shacks and shanties, but Du Bois rightly points out that many em-ployers reneged on their duty to provide adequate housing for the labourers.

These colonial leaders clearly fol-lowed a policy of expediency, influ-enced more by conservative white public opinion and the ballot box than the demands of justice, decency and fair play. To be fair, however, there were times when Robinson had a change of heart and used The Natal Mercury to commend good treatment of the Indians. He exhorted his countrymen to “discharge our trusteeship” as a blessing, and called for compassion. Robinson introduced the more benign notion of “coolie management”, and argued that “economic expediency needed to be balanced with humanitar-ian concern”. [Du Bois 2011:37] The Colonial Office, too, was opposed to blatant discrimination; consequently, as Du Bois shows, the legislation was couched in ways that did not make it too obvious that Indians were being directly targeted. The institution of a Protector of Indian Immigrants was inaugurated, and several commissions were set up to look at the abuse and inhuman treatment of the Indians but, as Du Bois shows, they were not exactly impartial and thorough. He notes that “the humanitarian aspect of the inquiry was played down – even sanitised – so that in the interests of the planters the


140


system of indentured immigration could be reinstated”. [Du Bois 2011: 49]

The nub of the problem – and this is Du Bois’ thesis – was whether the Indian indentured worker, and the pas-senger Indian who followed, should be given the status of “settler” or relegated to the status of “labourer”. Given the white colonists’ rather conventional view of “labourer” this became a press-ing dilemma, one that defined the poli-tics of the region for many decades. Du Bois concludes that there “never was a clear statement of acceptance by white colonial Natal of the settler status of Indians”. [Du Bois 2011:182]

Throughout Labourer or Settler?, Du Bois presents a focused chronicle. He comes across as a dispassionate scholar, diligently presenting hard data or facts, through his very commendable use of primary sources. His animated and graphic re-creation of the history of those times is indeed remarkable. His research shows that there was no at-tempt at whitewashing that history – all records seem meticulously preserved, and he has been studious in explor-ing them closely, and constructing a credible and compelling narrative. He allows the facts to speak for themselves. To his credit, he is not defensive of the white colonial leaders, who perpetrated acute injustices against Indians, nor does he present information selectively. Du Bois does acknowledge that the legislation was oppressive to Indians. As he points out, for example, in his portrayal of Robinson: “White settler attitudes, perhaps best exemplified by John Robinson, shifted from paternal-ism to protection of white interests and the perpetuation of white domination”. [Du Bois 2011:10] Interestingly, Du Bois allows the leaders to incriminate themselves by what they say and do;

nor does he rationalise their behaviour and actions.

It is clear that Du Bois values objec-tivity as the mark of the historian, and does not adopt a combative or polemi-cal style. However, this very approach, arguably, leads to a certain “mutedness” in the overall presentation. Du Bois’ approach raised the question for me of the role of the scholar or historian. Does an historian fix his colours to the mast, and declare where he stands or does he remain neutral? Should a scholar take sides, especially in colonial histories, where the battle-lines are clear from the vantage point of post-colonial critique.

In reading the book, which I found highly informative on many fronts, I wondered how a reflective, theorising, stance might develop a more robust analysis of this historical narrative, supported by the thorough empirical, if somewhat traditional, historical ap-proach that Du Bois adopts. I appreciate that Du Bois is setting himself a very specific goal – chronicling a “straight history” [to use Hayden White’s formu-lation] – and delimiting the boundaries of his study. Initially presented as a Masters dissertation, Labourer or Set-tler? is an impressive study in its scope and execution. One does not normally expect critique of historiographical approaches at this level. However, I wonder what it might mean, in present-ing a top-down imperial history, to take a broad, wide-ranging critical view of that very history? How might a scholar working in the 21st century benefit from some of the critical thinking that has been generated in the 20th, especially in relation to reading colonial history?

I appreciate that Du Bois eschews an intrusive, ideological rendering, but I wondered how he might go beyond the notion that archival labour is more than


141


an “extractive exercise”, to use Ann Laura Stoler’s critique [2008]. After all, at the start of the study, Du Bois himself promises a “fresh review of a formative period in the history of KwaZulu- Na-tal”. [2011:8] Critics such as Madhavi Kale [1998] have been critical of the sole dependence on colonial archives in the history of Empire, particularly in relation to its history of labour. Indeed, Subaltern Studies in general, which evolved to counter the dependence on dominant constructions of imperial his-tory, argue against the sole dependence on colonial archives.

Antoinette Burton [2011], in her insightful re-reading of British imperi-alism, takes a global and world perspec-tive, inducing a critique of the Western liberal humanist tradition, defined by race representation and a white hege-monic masculinity. This background is pertinent too, incidentally, to a study of Chinese coolie or indentured migra-tion, occurring at roughly the same time as Indian indentured labour. What were the peculiarities of this “Age of Colonial Capital”, in which this study is located, and the nature of plantation economies, that determined the way the white settlers behaved? Further, Kale shows through her research that the Imperial state worked closely with the British colonies to set up the indentured system. Kale and other historians, such as David Northrup [1995], argue for a comparative approach to the study of indenture, so that the history of each region is understood more comprehen-sively and in a more critical light.

These caveats are suggested, not to invoke a solely heroic narrative of Indi-an history in South Africa, or to present a one-dimensional narrative of “perpe-trator” and “victim”, or to deny the cul-tural chauvinism of Indians themselves,

but to attempt a holistic, global, critical view of that history. Further, this is also not to deny the combative role that eminent British thinkers played in the politics of Empire in both the metropole and colony – activists such as William Wilberforce and Olive Schreiner, for example, to name just two.

From discourses on Orientalism, as propounded by Edward Said [1979], we appreciate how the sovereignty of the Western self and culture was assumed and assured, and how the Other was constructed, in order to legitimise West-ern policy and practice. From the re-search that Du Bois presents, we realise that the Natal colony was a racialised landscape, governed tacitly by reductive dichotomies, such as “civilised West” and primitive or othered East, and this provided the context where the cultural chauvinism of the British was practised and generally accepted unquestioningly. As Du Bois states: “Colonialism was an accepted European practice during the 19th century,” [Du Bois 2011:188] and that there was implicit need to keep “Anglo-Saxon traditions”. Fanon reminds us how black “deviance” in general was constructed in the colonial mind, as a way of justifying western hubris, and how the pathologies of rac-ist imperial societies played themselves out and were accepted as “normal”. Contemporary “whiteness” studies also foregrounds the shoring up of white hegemony historically – of white normativity and natural entitlement, of the invisible ways in which whiteness manifested itself, to generally produce an unquestioned white western subjec-tivity – all elements, arguably, that we find as the subtext of Du Bois’ narrative.

The essential argument around the difference between the status of “la-bourer” and that of “settler” may be


142


seen in the light of the concept of “ab-stract bodies”. James Duncan [2002], deploying the notion of “abstract space” in plantation economies, such as Ceylon, shows how “abstract bodies” were produced and regulated, through various technologies of control. Joanne Sharp explicates this notion: “Abstract bodies are bodies that are docile, useful, disciplined, rationalised, normalised, and controlled sexually. In short, they are economic investments to be pro-tected and utilised to their greatest ca-pacity … Plantation owners’ ideas were based on a nineteenth century belief in scientific solutions to what were seen as highly interrelated problems of race, moral depravity, disease, material squa-lor and political disorder. They tried to transform what was seen as the flawed native body into the abstract body of the labourer, a body that corresponded to abstract routines of labour in time and space.” [Sharp 2009:66]

In addition, Du Bois’ study would have benefited from a consideration of the theoretical distinction in the lit-erature between settlers and migrants. The latter are seen as people who move to another country and lead diasporic lives but do not necessarily enjoy inher-ent political rights; the former usually establish political orders of conquest. According to Belich, an “emigrant joined someone else’s society; a set-tler or colonist made his own”. [Belich 2005:53] Other features of settler co-lonial states include the permanency of settlement; creating political and economic conditions, usually as a result of racial exclusion, that favour settlers over migrants and indigenous peoples, institutional settler privilege [especially relating to land allocation practices] and distinct legal and social structures. Seen in this light, can the

labourer ever become a settler? For her part, Kale argues that Indian indentured labour must be seen in terms of imperial labour re-allocation rather than labour migration. This makes the impersonal category of “labour” more important [for the colonials] than the category of “labourer”.

In the context of South Africa, the history set out in Labourer or Settler? adumbrates the development of class–race conflict in a capitalist society, of worker relations and struggles, of state-engineered racism – that came to define the South African apartheid era and the rest of the 20th century. Du Bois’ narrative shows implicitly that there were powerful interests that shaped white bourgeois society in South Africa, and that the colonists followed an unabashed ruling class agenda. The underside of this, of course [although, admittedly, this is not Du Bois’ nar-rative], was the long and convoluted struggles of defiance in different forms and in which diverse peoples partici-pated, that also marked the history of South Africa in the 20th century, culmi-nating in the first democratic elections in 1994. The complex history that Du Bois constructs and documents at a specific and particular period of colonial history in South Africa does illustrate the “working of the law of unintended consequences”, [Du Bois 2011:181] but in ways that wildly surpassed the colonial imagination at the time.

REFERENCESAtkins, Keletso E. 1993. The Moon is Dead!

Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843-1900. Portsmouth NH, Heinemann.

Bhana, Surendra. 2012. Personal email correspondence with the reviewer.

Belich, James. 2005. “The rise of the Angloworld: Settlement in North America and Australia, 1784-1918.” In Phillip Buckner, R Douglas


143


Francis [eds], Rediscovering the British World. Calgary, University of Calgary Press, pp. 39-57.

Burton, Antoinette. 2011. Empire in Question – Reading, Writing and Teaching British Imperialism. Durham, US, London, Duke University Press.

Desai, Ashwin and Goolam Vahed. 2007. Inside Indenture – A South African Story, 1860-1914. Durban, Madiba Publishers.

Du Bois, Duncan. 2011. Labourer or Settler? – Colonial Natal’s Indian Dilemma 1860-1897. Durban, Just Done Productions.

Duncan, J. 2002. “Embodying Colonisation? Dominance and Resistance in 19th Century Ceylonese Coffee Plantations.” In Journal of Historical Geography, Vol 28, No 3, pp.317-338.

Kale, Madhavi. 1998. Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery and Indian Indentured Labour. Philadelphia, Universi ty of Pennsylvania Press.

Northrup, David. 1995. Indentured Labour in the Age of Indenture 1834 -1922. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books.

Sharp, Joanne P. 2009. Geographies of Postcolonialism. London, Sage Publications.

Stoler, Ann Laura. 2008. Along the Archival Grain – Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

White, Hayden. 1975. Metahistory – The Historical Imagination in 19th Century Europe. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.

BETTy GOVINDEN

FIRST PRESIDENT: A LIFE OF JOHN L. DUBE, FOUNDING PRESIDENT OF THE ANCby HEATHER HUGHES Johannesburg: Jacana, 2011, 312 pages, illustrations.

THE name of John Langalibalele Dube is increasingly in the public consciousness. Next to King Shaka International Airport, for example, is the Dube trade port with its new statue. And coinciding with the centenary of the African National Congress (ANC), Heather Hughes has clearly picked an ideal subject. But there is a broader reason why this biography is so timely. It has now become routine for major speeches made by government figures to include a standard denunciation of “colonial oppression” along with apartheid. While there are justifiable reasons for this, it creates one-dimensional history, a victimology that discounts the lives of those who adapted to, and in many cases thrived under, the colonial regime. Dube’s life constitutes a classic case study of the ambiguities and contradictions of the kholwa community, who were anything but victims.

When Dube died in February 1946 on his 75th birthday, having suffered from diabetes and then a stroke, his study was emptied by persons unknown. Bar a few books everything disappeared into oblivion. So Heather Hughes has faced the challenge of relying on the public record to reveal Dube the private man. The public persona is remarkable enough: founder of Ohlange mission school, editor of Ilanga lase Natal, minister, farmer, business entrepreneur, writer, and first president of what would become the ANC.

Hughes, in contrast to previous inter-preters who used a linear trajectory of Dube’s life that ended as a perceived conservative, reveals a man of conflict-ing beliefs who was constantly pushed and pulled by radical and moderate instincts. This is not entirely unusual in the human condition, but it is par-ticularly fascinating in the context of the early years of the African middle


144


class with its challenges and complex connections.

Conflicting identity underlies this biography. Dube grew up at the Inanda mission station founded by the Lindleys where his father James was the first African pastor and the Dubes were the leading kholwa family. His origins were complex: Zulu, Qadi (many of whom fought for the British in the Anglo-Zulu War) and Lala (people driven out of Zululand south of the Thukela River). At the age of 10 he joined Adams Col-lege where he was schooled under a highly intensive, regimented regime of intellectual effort and physical labour. As would happen regularly in black educational institutions, food (in this case the quality of the sugar supplied with the mealie meal) was a catalyst for student revolt. Dube was found guilty of stealing oranges and eggs and taking snuff. In 1886 he was in trouble again and briefly left Adams, but on his return experienced a total spiritual and intel-lectual conversion under the influence of the American missionary William C. Wilcox, an advocate of industrial missions.

Wilcox became a father figure and sponsor of Dube’s further education in the United States. Already absorbed in an American missionary world view, this was a logical move and Dube was one of the first black South Africans to travel to North America. His enrolment at Oberlin in 1887 required considerable adaptation as he had to pay his way as a manual labourer and porter. He was also acutely conscious of his imperfect English, but missionary connections enabled him to practise as a public speaker.

Illness forced an early return home and by 1893 he held a post at Adams with responsibilities at Beatrice Street

chapel in Durban, a focus of steady black urbanisation. That year Dube made a significant move to affirm his identity by achieving exemption from Native Law. Now married to Nokutela, he was posted to Incwadi mission sta-tion on the Mkhomazi River west of Pietermaritzburg where the Dubes had great success in attracting converts. He also made his first political challenge in a letter to the editor of Inkanyiso yase Natal questioning the treatment of Africans by magistrates. A succes-sion controversy over the pastorate at Inanda provided the first inkling that Dube might be too ambitious and autonomous for the American Zulu Mission (AZM) and he and Nokutela returned to America for him to qualify for ordination.

Based in New York at the Union Mis-sionary Training Institute at the close of the nineteenth century they formed an impressive partnership, speaking and singing at fund-raising functions. Dube came under the influence of the Tuske-gee movement of Booker T. Washington in particular, Afro-American ideas in general, with an emphasis on self-reliance and the redemption of Africa through pan-Africanism.

Dube was finally ordained in 1899 and returned to Natal qualified, funded and well-connected. The reward was the position of pastor at Inanda, a return to the geographic roots that Hughes argues dominated most of his life. By 1901 he had controversially founded the Ohlange industrial school with a self-help regimen that was both a financial necessity and seen as educationally beneficial. But this was interpreted as an independent move at a time when edu-cated, exempt Africans were regarded with high suspicion by the authorities whose great fear was Ethiopianism. In


145


1904 the Dubes were back in America fundraising to the same formula and earning for Ohlange Washington’s imprimatur as the Tuskegee of South Africa. Closely associated with Ohlange was the newspaper Ilanga lase Natal, a conservative, responsible but challeng-ing title of which Dube was founder and first editor.

Hughes explores the parallels be-tween Dube and Mohandas Gandhi at nearby Phoenix. Both were funda-mentally conservative with radical political aspirations ahead of their time. Dube harboured anti-Indian sentiments reflected in Ilanga, but his attempts at an early form of black economic em-powerment to counter encroachment foundered. In 1908 he gave up his Inanda position and began a process of distancing himself from both the AZM and the Qadi hierarchy to concentrate on Ohlange and Ilanga. Keeping the lat-ter going in the face of colonial hostility Hughes regards as a major achievement.

Dube’s greatest obstacle was the per-versity and hypocrisy of a supposedly civilised settler society that propagated Christianity but refused to share its spir-itual message. This had, of course, been exposed by Bishop John Colenso. Dube and exempt amakholwa occupied what Hughes describes as a “legal wilder-ness” (p.105). The defining moment ar-rived with the Bhambatha Rebellion of 1906 when the amakholwa were placed in an impossible position. Dube played an entirely honourable role, persuading the Qadi not to rebel. He advocated loyalty to and basic compliance with the authorities, but refused to ignore justifi-able African grievances. In Ilanga he published “Vukani bantu!” a wake-up call arguing for a Native Congress. His testimony to the post-rebellion com-mission of inquiry was critical of white

attitudes that had blossomed since 1893 under responsible government. His overall response to the rebellion was logical and farsighted: acknowledg-ing his “patron saint”, Washington, he argued that black South Africans were following the historic example of the British in pursuit of their rights.

Dube had kept his distance from the early Congress movement regarding it as too conservative and passive. How-ever, he became an important figure in opposition to reactionary colonial legislation that was eventually to appear as the Native Administration Act and was drawn into national politics by the move towards union. In January 1912, at Waaihoek near Bloemfontein, he was elected the first president of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), in absentia and virtually by default, for his abilities and contacts. Hughes suggests that for Dube the idea of “greatness thrust upon him” might have been congenial (p.163). As presi-dent he was energetic in campaigning against government policy as it affected the ordinary lives of African people. In broad terms he opposed legal discrimi-nation and social prejudice, and even crossed the Thukela River to campaign. The greatest challenge lay in the pos-sessory segregation of the 1913 Natives Land Act and once more he linked its appalling consequences to a lack of political representation. Nevertheless, he took a pragmatic line suggesting the legislation should await the results of the Beaumont Commission. Signifi-cantly, he ruled out passive resistance, already in use by the Indian community, as inappropriate to the temperament of the dispossessed.

In the summer of 1914 Dube was part of the SANNC delegation to London, an exercise in futility that he abandoned


146


prematurely, later using the outbreak of war as a somewhat transparent ex-cuse. It was a time of crisis for him. Estranged from Nokutela (who was to die in 1917) following the birth of his il-legitimate child, various business deals fell through, his oversight of Ohlange and Ilanga grew distant, and in 1917 he lost the presidency of the SANNC.

The needs of Ohlange constantly pulled him away from other involve-ment. But rather than the end of a reluc-tant politician, the twenties saw Dube embroiled in issues relating to Durban bylaws, the iniquitous municipal beer-hall system and the plight of rickshaw pullers. Manager of the Native Affairs Department J.S. Marwick successfully sued Dube for defamation, but this only increased his popularity. At a time of increasing segregation and harsh repres-sion, Dube witnessed the Cartwright’s Flats massacre of December 1930 as a passive spectator, exacting criticism from the communist Eddie Roux then teaching at Ohlange.

Facing the dilemma over boycott or participation that was to haunt South African opposition politics for decades, Dube took part in the Governor-Gener-al’s Native Congress on the grounds that it provided a platform for his forthright views. His relationship with Congress waxed and waned. A consistent feature of his political belief was the need for control, predictability and order and it was on these grounds that he opposed A.W.G. Champion of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (Cham-pion called him Judas Iscariot). For a while he was associated with G.H. Nicholls’ communalism proposals advocating a “tempered … nationalist vision” (p.245) based on equal oppor-tunity, social redistribution, political representation, and justice and orderly

progress, but lacked the organisational mechanism to drive this. Like other Congress members, he later served on the Native Representative Council. He was also a sugar cane farmer involved in the Inanda Agricultural Show.

The price of saving Ohlange was managerial oversight, moving off the property and relocating Ilanga to Dur-ban. This implied white encroachment on black enterprise and was another turning point for Dube. At a time of growing Zulu ethnic consciousness, and a closer relationship between the royal house and Congress, Dube (who had as-sisted the Colenso sisters in the defence of Dinuzulu in 1906) identified with the establishment of Inkatha. In 1930 he wrote the novel Insila ka Shaka and was later to produce a book on Shembe. He was involved in the Zulu succession after Solomon’s death, but ended up on the losing side. In the mid-1930s his influence in Congress was on the wane and Dube became closer to liberals and the joint councils. Consequently, Edgar Brookes successfully nominated him for an honorary doctorate from Unisa.

Was Dube a great man? This is the question Hughes asks by way of conclu-sion. His vision was syncretic, drawing on white civilisation and honourable African traditions and custom, but he was also a pragmatist. As Hughes notes, he was a complex mixture of defi-ance and compliance, radicalism and moderation, breadth and narrowness of vision (p.259). Trying to navigate a path to modernity he was constantly thwarted by the sour pessimism of colonial society. His own man, he was a controversial figure and not only to colonial administrators. With the help of his Qadi roots, American backers and Marshall Campbell he created the


147


economic and social space to operate independently.

This is historical biography at its very best. Lucid and intelligently writ-ten, it places Dube’s life in context and perspective. Devoid of sociological

jargon, philosophical diversions and theoretical obscurity it is another en-couraging indication that real historians are striking back.

CHRISTOPHER MERRETT

A MEMOIR IN LETTERS of the Phelps and Crompton Families in the 19th and 20th CenturiesSelected, edited and introduced by PENELOPE FORREST (née Phelps)Privately published. P O Box 44201 Claremont, South Africa 7735 © 2011 Penelope Forrest ([email protected]) 236pp. illus. R260 or £25, includes postage

IN the past hundred years there has been a decline in the practice – and many would say the art – of letter writing. Easier travel and the telephone provided more opportunities for people to speak rather than write to each other. Those separated by oceans and continents still use the air mail letter, but as e-mail becomes the norm, they are becoming fewer. Of the vast amount of personal e-mail now being sent and received, probably not very much becomes hard copy or is permanently kept on disk by either the senders or the recipients. Future generations may find very few interesting or significant personal letters from the present time.

Penelope Forrest’s mother preserved old family letters, and these, together with some provided by other family members, make up this remarkable col-lection. The earliest letter in the book is dated 9th May 1834 – though the narrative actually begins with a diary entry from January 1784 – and the last one was written in 1978.

The letters are accompanied by link-ing narrative and extensive genealogical tables. The latter will be of interest to keen genealogists, and also to those who find their own family names included.

Although the Memoir’s title states that it is “of the Phelps and Crompton fami-lies”, scores of other surnames appear in these family trees. As for the letters themselves, anyone with a sense of social history will find much of inter-est in them. Even detailed discussions of illnesses (of which there are many) illustrate not only the limitations of medical knowledge at the time, but also the helpless anxiety and uncertainty experienced by previous generations about sick loved ones many thousands of miles away.

Other things we may note with amusement. In 1883 19-year-old Mary Crompton of Pinetown, engaged to Inskilling Dragoons officer Edward Pennefather, wrote to her future mother-in-law in England: “I am afraid I am dreadfully young for him, but I sup-pose I shall be grown up some day & I daresay he will not be very severe.” The words “I daresay” may have the sound of timid hope, but she seems to accept a strict patriarchal order as a natural part of life.

These were large, extended, upper middle-class English families, many of whose members lived abroad for long periods, even permanently, and many


148


of them were prolific letter-writers. In 1854 Harriet Phelps, from a family of English wine merchants in Madeira, married Revd John Crompton. The wedding was a great occasion for the considerable English community in Madeira and one of John’s letters to his mother in England gives the guest list – almost all English names. He provides much other incidental information, such as, for example, the fact that “Mrs and Major Peacock were invited but Mrs was too unwell and the Major got a fall from his horse on the way, which prevented his coming and caused the absence of Dr Ross who was sent for him”. These may be small, unimportant, domestic and family matters, but when taken together they help us to bring the lives of our forebears into sharper focus.

The English climate was not good for Revd John Crompton’s “weak chest” and he therefore looked for a “Protes-tant British colony” where conditions would be better for his health. He might have gone to Bermuda, which he was told “resembles in some respects Ma-deira in climate & is supposed by many to be equally favourable to persons of tender lungs or throat”. However, he decided on Natal, and so he and Har-riet came to live in Pinetown, where they raised a large family and where he died in 1889 at the age of 74. The same timidly hopeful daughter Mary in due course accompanied her soldier husband on tours of duty in Singapore and Ceylon, and so more intercontinen-tal correspondence was generated. The pattern was repeated for various other members of the extended family.

Letters received were sometimes forwarded to other relatives as a con-venient way of passing on family news; they responded, and so the volume of correspondence increased. Incidentally,

in 1858 we find Revd Mr Crompton complaining about the unsatisfactory postal service between Natal and Eng-land. And in 1899 Mary writes from Ceylon, “I hear the Johnstons find Natal very expensive. They and some other families club together and give their cook £8 a month. What are things com-ing to!” The Cromptons of Pinetown were certainly not Colensoites, and the late bishop’s daughter Harriette comes in for some severe censure for some of her actions and utterances. (“How disgracefully Miss Colenso has behaved …. ” )

In a family which included several clergymen – and later even an archbish-op – one would expect letters to contain comments on church matters, but Jane Phelps in London writing in 1899 to her sister Harriet in Natal reveals an unex-pectedly sharp class-consciousness. The Bishop of London at the time was Rt Revd Mandell Creighton, the son of a carpenter, and Jane tells her sister, “The Creightons are an ill-mannered couple, as might be expected from their origin.” Had Jane known that her great-great-niece would more than a century later give her letter a rather wider readership, she would probably have chosen her words more carefully.

A whole section of the book is devot-ed to letters written by family members in Europe, Africa and Asia during the Second Anglo-Boer War, revealing how that last great British imperial conflict was viewed by them, and how it af-fected them.

When Penelope Forrest’s father, young Abel Phelps, arrived in South Africa from England in 1927 under the auspices of the 1820 Settler Associa-tion, he dutifully visited his Crompton relatives in Natal, and subsequently married his second cousin Natalie


149


Crompton (but only after their degree of consanguinity was deemed accept-able and safe). Natalie’s mother had been Hildegard Meyer, daughter of Ernst Gustav Meyer and Harriet Mary Bunton, and her father was Godfrey Crompton, tenth and youngest child of the Pinetown Cromptons. There is a charming letter from Godfrey Crompton in Pietermaritzburg to Hil-degard, declaring his love for her. “I have to confess that you have quite stolen my heart, which sentiment, if I judge rightly, is reciprocated by you ….” A hundred-and-one years later we will be forgiven for not heeding the postscript, “Please treat this as entirely confidential.”

The section of the book entitled “The German Connection” traces the Meyer branches of the family. Natalie was vis-iting cousins of her mother in Germany in 1936 when Hitler’s troops occupied the Rhineland, and her brother Evelyn actually entered Germany in June 1939

on a visa issued by the German Em-bassy in London. Their relatives outside Germany were in a better position to see how the political situation was rapidly deteriorating, and the sister and brother both received cables, in Natalie’s case asking anxiously when she was return-ing to England, and in her brother’s, instructing him to do so immediately.

A Memoir in Letters is generously il-lustrated, not only with the genealogical tables, but with 26 pages of facsimiles of letters and envelopes, and pictures of important people and places in the story. It was awarded the “Publica-tion of the year” prize for 2011 by the Genealogical Society of South Africa. Several works were considered, but Pe-nelope Forrest’s book was unanimously selected by the judges, who said it had “set a new benchmark in this category” – well-deserved praise that will surely be echoed many times by its readers.

JOHN DEANE

UKHAHLAMBA: UMLANDO WEZINTABA ZOKHAHLAMBA / EXPLORING THE HISTORY OF THE UKHAHLAMBA MOUNTAINSby JOHN WRIGHT and ARON MAZEL (Zulu translation of the English text by Sylvia Zulu). Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 2012. 96p, soft cover.(ISBN: 9781868145287). (R126 – R136)

THIS is a well-illustrated, attractively laid-out, sturdy, thread-sewn soft-cover book in semi-landscape format (wider than usual at 22cm high × 20cm wide).

The mountains of the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park, declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2000, and the people who have lived there, have been the subject of a number of books. They have been probed and written about by geologists, mountaineers, archaeologists and historians. But the uKhahlamba have also sheltered cave-

dwellers, hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, farmers, cattle-raiders, outdoor lovers, soldiers and thieves. Not a few of them have died violently at the hands of oth-ers, or by accident or exposure. Not all of their stories have been told.

Historian John Wright researched re-lations between hunter-gatherers of the mountains and black and white farmers for his MA thesis at the University of Natal (1968) which formed the sub-stance of a book1. He and archaeologist Aron Mazel considerably expanded


150


on the theme with their Tracks in a Mountain Range in 20072. The latest offering reviewed here is a condensed, simpler, version of the latter, published with parallel English and Zulu texts. Clearly intended for a wider audience, including secondary school learners and Zulu-speakers, it conveys the essence of the more detailed original.

The book provides a brief overview of the geological and geomorphological history of the mountains before getting down to the real focus: the history of the various people who have inhabited the mountains at one time or another for more than 25 000 years, more particu-larly the past 8 000 years.

The early hunter-gatherer mountain inhabitants are believed to have been Khoisan-speaking ancestors of the San we know today. They moved away from all but the more protected mountain areas when temperatures dropped to some five degrees centigrade colder than at present between 26 000 and 15 000 years ago. They began repopu-lating the mountains in small numbers some 8 000 years ago, and then in larger numbers about 3 000 years ago. With the advent of migrating black farmers who arrived with their livestock and subsistence crops from the north some 1 600 years ago, they moved from the northern mountains to the Thukela basin area, possibly to have closer proxim-ity to the new arrivals. Their rock art on some 600 rock shelter walls so far investigated, comprising some 40 000 surviving individual images, is one of the world’s great heritage resources.

The elucidation of their living pat-terns, diet and movements from pains-taking work by Mazel and other in-vestigators makes for fascinating, informative reading.

Black farmers began moving into the uKhahlamba foothills about 600 years ago. Much later, from the 1840s on, came white farmers from Europe, who sought to take over the land by driving out first the San and then the black farm-ers, but retaining, often forcibly, the services of the dispossessed for cheap labour on their own farms.

The harrowing history of disposses-sion is simply but lucidly told, includ-ing the shattering of the amaNgwe and Hlubi kingdoms and the subjugation of their people. The latter, engineered by the Natal colonial government’s Sec-retary for Native Affairs, Theophilus Shepstone, involved the set-up outlaw-ing, capture, trial and banning to Rob-ben Island of Hlubi Chief Langalibalele in 1874.

Eventually, through the determined efforts of Bishop John Colenso of Natal and his family and supporters, the Brit-ish Government was forced to intervene and order the Natal colonial govern-ment to allow the amaNgwe to return to their land and receive compensation for their confiscated cattle, and to re-lease the Hlubi people from the slavery imposed on them. Chief Langalibalele was released in 1877 and allowed to return to Natal to spend the rest of his life under the supervision of Chief Te-teleku Zondi of kwaMpumuza, outside Pietermaritzburg, an ally of Shepstone. In 1973, on the centenary of his arrest and trial, the leaders of the Hlubi people unveiled a memorial plaque at his grave. He died in 1889 at about the age of 75 and was taken from Mpumuza by his people to Giant’s Castle where he was buried in a rock shelter in the little berg overlooking the upper Bushmans (Mtshezi) River.

Wright and Mazel also briefly discuss the ill-fated Griqua people of Griqua-


151


land East (but space clearly precluded mention of the harrowing Griqua 1863 trek across Lesotho from Griqualand West). They also include the series of rebellions against Cape colonial rule by chiefs from eastern Cape (1877-1878) and south eastern Basutoland (1880) followed by resistance by abeSuthu and amaMpondomise in East Griqualand and the Transkei.

The historical journey continues, with increasing racially discriminatory legis-lation through the remainder of colonial and Union rule, reaching its apotheosis during the reign of the National Party (1948-1994). Appropriation of black farmland land to eradicate “black spots”, overcrowded black reserves, migrant labour, all took their toll. For-tunately the government abandoned its plans to move more than 100 000 people from the Bergville-Estcourt region but did relocate several thousand people in the 1970s and 1980s when Woodstock Dam was built in the Upper Thukela to supply water to the Witwatersrand.

Latterly tourism, and its uneasy ally, conservation, as well as forestry, sup-plying water to urban conglomerates, and retirement centres for the wealthy, have steadily replaced farming as an economic activity. On a happier latter

day note, interested members of local black communities, including some who claim at least partial San descent, are being consulted and involved in the management of rock art sites in the uKhahlamba mountains.

This is a well-written, affordable small book which offers much for the reader interested in the history of the people of the area, be they learner, stu-dent, teacher, farmer or visitor.

John Wright is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa. Aron Mazel, formerly of the Archaeology Depart-ment at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg, is an archaeologist at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, United Kingdom.

PETER CROESER

NOTES1 Wright, John B. Bushman raiders of the

Drakensberg, 1840-1870: A study of their conflict with the stock-keeping peoples in Natal. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1971. 235pp.

2 Wright, John, and Mazel, Aron. Tracks in a mountain range: Exploring the history of the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2007. 176pp.

TWO popular histories of the battle of Isandlwana have appeared in the last two years – Ian Knight’s Zulu Rising (2010), which was reviewed in the previous issue of this journal, and Adrian Greaves’ Isandlwana (2011), which is the subject of this review.

Greaves’ narrative is remarkably compressed, compared with other recent works on the subject, which is a great plus for readers who are not familiar with the Anglo-Zulu War and the battle of Isandlwana. Adrian Greaves is a practised writer on the

ISANDLWANA: HOW THE ZULUS HUMBLED THE BRITISH EMPIRE by ADRIAN GREAVES. Barnsley, U.K.: Pen & Sword Military, 2011. 240pp. £19.99.ISBN 978-1-84884-532-9.


152


war, the founder of the Anglo-Zulu War Historical Society in England, a friend of the late David Rattray of Fugitives Drift Lodge, with whom he co-authored a popular tour guide-cum-history. Ad-denda and anecdotes which swell other writers’ works are here consigned to Appendices (there are eight), and Notes are also placed at the end of the book.

The book has eight chapters. Chapter 1, Conditions at Home, describes the British Army in situ, officers regular and colonial, and the 24th Regiment, which was the mainstay of the Imperial forces in the battle of Isandlwana. Chapter 2, The Adversaries, similarly treats the Zulu kingdom and army. Chapter 3, Preparations for War, describes British annexation of the Transvaal and con-frontation with the Zulu in the cause of South African confederation; next the marshalling of armies as the Imperial forces for the invasion of Zululand and the Zulu countermeasures. Chapter 4, The Days Before, covers the advance into Zululand of the Centre (No. 3) Column under the British general Lord Chelmsford, from the crossing of the Mzinyathi on 11 January 1879, to the encampment below Isandlwana hill on the 21st. A reconnaissance in force that day leads to the fatal division of the column on the 22nd as the greater portion of it advances to a new position. The arrival of the Zulu army from Ulundi and its dispositions in the meantime are described. Chapter 5, Decoy and Defeat, is an account of the battle, in which the Zulu army annihilates that portion of the column left at the camp. Chapter 6, Flight from Isandlwana, tells of the British survivors; Chapter 7, After Isandlwana, the return of the balance of the column to Natal and the official enquiry into the defeat; and Chapter 8,

The Re-invasion and Destruction of Zululand.

Greaves also deals with many of the battle’s old chestnuts. Colonel Durn-ford, whom Lord Chelmsford blamed for the defeat, is pretty well exoner-ated. (He usually is these days, but in this instance rather too easily, I think). The story of the British infantry in the line running short of ammunition is shown to be false. Zulu mutilation of the enemy dead was not barbaric, only barbarous, a cultural thing. The partial solar eclipse that day, which some writ-ers invoke for dramatic effect, occurred unnoticed by the combatants. There are some new misconceptions, too. Colonel Pulleine takes the place of Durnford as a scapegoat, displaying incompetence, indecision and perhaps even cowardice in the face of the enemy. Lieutenants Coghill’s and Melvill’s departure(s) from the battlefield and deaths at Fugi-tives Drift are an unending source of speculation. The tribesmen of the petty chief Gamdana rather than the pursuing Zulu are the new killers of fugitives at the river.

The battle is a conundrum, because so few survivors have told us about it. That is the fascination of Isandlwana. It is susceptible of different interpreta-tions, and every author seems to have his own version. In Greaves’ account the climax comes when the Zulu break through the British line as it retreats; he adds a little further on that it is the Natal Native Contingent which gives way and the Zulu break through the gap left by it. (Meanwhile Durnford‘s mounted contingent withdraws through a gap which somehow appears in the Zulu attack.) Unfortunately, Greaves does not understand the Natal Native Contingent’s part in the battle, and he


153


makes numerous mistakes with regard to it.

The positive features of the book do not make it one of the best in the field. Greaves’ strengths are his weaknesses. He knows a great deal, and there are passages where he assumes much of his readers, too, as in his somewhat al-lusive and fragmentary description of British leaders and heroes in Chapter 1. His cavalier handling of citations may most charitably be ascribed to the same assumption of omniscience. Possibly also the way he summarily dismisses many other writers (whom he stops short of naming), because they are not as progressive in their research and interpretation.

Yet it is in research and interpreta-tion that Greaves himself falls short. For example, in the case of research, he tells us that a British detachment was cut off early in the battle, even though his evidence is flimsy. He pos-its a second, alternative route of flight from the battlefield, but there is nothing new in this and he does not explore the evidence fully. He refers to an account, apparently newly discovered, of Cap-tain William Barton of the Natal Native Horse; this is important indeed, yet his reference to it amounts to some per-sonal correspondence with authors Ron Lock and Peter Quantrell. He makes a tantalising reference to the Glasgow University Survey of the battlefield (2000), whose dig relocates the initial British line in front of the camp, and that is all – he says nothing more about the survey or its other findings.

The notes also suggest an erratic methodology. Quotations are more of-ten (but not always) cited than matters of fact and interpretation. They reveal a propensity to use late primary and

secondary sources. Page numbers are never given.

His bibliography is appalling. He does not say it is select, so one may suppose that he means it is compre-hensive, but its omission of so many important works is incomprehensible. There is nothing later on the Zulu than E. Ritter’s egregious Shaka Zulu (1955). Important contemporary accounts of events such as Edward Durnford’s Isandhlwana (1879) and A Soldier’s Life and Works (1882), John Maxwell’s My Reminiscences of the Zulu War (1979), and Hallam Parr’s A Sketch of the Kafir and Zulu Wars (1880) are not mentioned. Nor are the useful (if hagio-graphical) compilations, J. Mackinnon and S. Shadbolt’s The South African Campaign, 1879 (1882) and Norman Holme’s The Silver Wreath (1979). The official Narrative of Field Operations (1881) becomes a narrative of Field Regulations and the Precis of Infor-mation concerning Zululand (1879, 1895) becomes one of the Zulu War. David Jackson’s revisionist landmark “Isandhlwana, 1879: The sources re-examined” (1965) does not appear; nor does Ron Lock’s and Peter Quantrell’s neo-revisionist Zulu Victory (2002), all the more surprising given the Lockian tinge of Greaves’ interpretation of Zulu strategy. The list could go on. Archival and periodical literature – the little there is of it – is presented in a very sketchy and inconsistent way.

The point is that Greaves’ account of the battle evidently is weakened by discounting or ignoring such works. One sees it reflected in the text. For instance, his contentious description of Zulu operations is essentially con-jectural, not least in respect of the so-called decoying of British forces. His description of the British side is better,


154


but there is more to work with. None-theless, it is bemusing to read that Lord Chelmsford’s dividing his force in the face of the enemy saved part of it, rather than put the whole in jeopardy.

The book is entertaining. The narra-tion is straightforward, despite a num-ber of digressions, and plain in style. It

is not a scholarly work, although it has useful parts, and some of the appendi-ces are handy references. If on matters of fact and interpretation it sometimes fails, for casual readers it matters little. For aficionados it is another historio-graphical curiosity for the shelf.

P. S. THOMPSON

155

Select List of Recent KwaZulu-Natal Publications

compiled by Shelagh Spencer with the assistance of Peter Croeser, Phila Mfundo Msimang and Eckhard von Fintel

ANTHONy, Lawrence and SPENCE, Graham The last rhinos: the powerful story of one man’s battle to save a species. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2012. 321 pp. illus. ISBN: 978-0283-07170-6, R195,00BINION, Susan, ed. A pastor’s wife: conversations with wives of men in ministry. Sweetwaters: UBI Publishing, 2012. A Union Bible Institute publication,

available in English and Zulu. R75,00BÖHMER, Reinhard Bernd & Amalie Böhmer und ihre Nachkommen in Südafrika en hulle

Afstammelinge in Suid-Afrika 1862-2012. Pretoria: the Author, 2012. 254 pp. illus., maps. ISBN: 978-0-620- 53336-2. R300,00BREGIN, Elana Survival training for lonely hearts. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan, 2012. 288 pp. EAN 9781770102347BROCHURE COMMITTEE Neuenkirchen Harburg, 1886–2011. Harburg: Council of the Neuenkirchen

Congregation in conjunction with the Brochure Committee, 2011. 56 pp. illus. (plus CD)BURDON, Kim Zulu and English vocabulary. Howick: the Author, 2011. 82 pp. (with 2 CDs) R170,00 including postage. http://kimzuluresources.wordpress.com/

Available from [email protected]



156


CARLyON, John Nocturnal birds of southern Africa. Pietermaritzburg: the Author, 2012. 290 pp. illus., maps. ISBN: 978-0-620-571-9. R280,00CHAPMAN, Michael, ed. Africa inside out: stories, tales and testimonies. Pietermaritzburg: University

of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012. 148 pp. ISBN: 978-1-86914-240-7 R150,00. A Time of the Writer Festival anthology.

CHAPMAN, Michael and LENTA, Margaret, eds. S. A.Lit: beyond 2000. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press,

2011. 416 pp. ISBN: 978-1-86914-212-4. R325,00CORBETT, Trevor R. Allegiance. Cape Town: Umuzi, 2012. A spy thriller set in Durban.COOVADIA, Imraan The Institute for Taxi Poetry. Cape Town: Umuzi, 2012. A novel.COOVADIA, Imraan Transformations. Cape Town: Umuzi, 2012.DENIS, Phillipe and DUNCAN, Graham The native school that caused all the trouble: a history of the Federal

Theological Seminary of Southern Africa. Epilogue by Tinyoko Maluleke Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2011. 368 pp. illus. ISBN: 9781875053926 R200, 00DESAI, Ashwin Reading revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island. Pretoria: UNISA Press,

2012. 130 pp. illus. ISBN: 978-1-86888-683-8. R358,00DHAI, Amaboo, McQUOID-MASON, David and KNAPP VON BOGAERT,

Donna Bioethics, human rights and health law: principles and practice. Pretoria; Juta, 2010. ISBN: 973-0702-180521. R218,00DUMINY, Andrew Mapping South Africa: a historical survey of South African maps and charts. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2011. 134 pp. illus. maps. ISBN: 978-1-4314-0221-2. R299,00FROST, Sarah Conduit. Cape Town: Modjaji Books, 2010.GOLIGHTLy, Walton Shaka the Great. Cape Cod: Quercus, 2011.GOVENDER, Barlow G. and NAIDOO, Tulsidas Perimal The settler: tribulations, trials, triumph. Durban: Barlow Govender, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-620-46796-4. 151 pp. HADDAD, Beverley, ed. Religion and HIV and Aids: charting the terrain. Pietermaritzburg: University

of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011. 448 pp. ISBN: 978-1-86914-207-0. R285,00HANDLEy, John R.F. Investing from the cradle to the grave. Howick: the Author, 2010. 89 pp. illus.,

tables, diagrs. ISBN: 0-620-36871. R100,00


157


HAVISIDE, Warren Snaith Butch: my life story as told to Warren Snaith Haviside. Cape Town:Highbury

Safika Media, 2011. 171 pp. ISBN: 978-0-62051323-4. R171,00. Biography of rugby player Butch James

HOBBS, Jenny The miracle of Crocodile Flats: an affectionate satire. Cape Town: Umuzi,

2012. A novel.JENKINS, Elwyn Seedlings: English children’s reading and writers in South Africa. Pretoria:

Unisa Press, 2012. 235 pp. illus. ISBN: 978-1-86888- 652-4. KHAN, ShubnumOnion tears. Johannesburg: Penguin, 2012. 286 pp. ISBN: 9781043527961.

R117,00. A novel.KUMALO, R. Simangaliso Pastor and politician: essays on the legacy of J.L. Dube, the first president of

the African National Congress. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2012. 288 pp. illus. ISBN: 978-1-875053-90-4. R150,00LAKE, Chris Baiwa: a story of triumph over adversity. Pietermaritzburg: the Author, 2011. R150,00. Profits from sales will be donated to the Izulu Orphan Projects.LAKE, Chris and Margaret The story of Sweetwaters and Winterskloof. the Authors, 2012. Obtainable in hard copy or as a CD at Oodles Cake Shop or Cartridge Smart,

both in Hilton.LAWRANCE, Clive Whimsical notions and darker waters. Pietermaritzburg: Jive Media, 2012.LE CORDEUR, Matthew and DAVIES, Thandi Children at the forefront: a history of Thandanani Children’s Foundation

(1989–2009). Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2012. ISBN: 978-875053-96-8. R150,00McCRACKEN, Donal Patrick, ed. Essays and source material on Southern African-Irish history. Durban: The Ireland and Southern Africa Project, 2012. 188 pp. illus., maps.

(Southern African-Irish studies, vol. 4, series 2, no.1) ISBN: 978-0-620-52008-9. R100,00McQUOID-MASON, David and DADA, Mohamed A–Z of medical law. Pretoria: Juta, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-702-18666-0.

R375,00MARNEWICK, ChrisClarence van Buuren: die man agter die donkerbril. Pretoria: Protea Bookhuis,

2012. 523 pp. ISBN: 978-1-86919506-9. Afrikaans detective novel.MHLAMBI, Innocenta Jabulisile, ed. African-language literatures: perspectives on Zulu fiction and popular Black

television series. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012.


158


MILLS, Greg and HERBST, Jeffrey Africa’s third liberation: the new search for prosperity and jobs. Johannesburg:

Penguin, 2012.MUVUSO, Bongani, ed. Inkasa yenjula. Johannesburg: Imisebe Publishing, 2011. ISBN:978-1-92017-774-4. A book of poetry.NAIDOO, Logan In the shadow of Chief Albert Luthuli: reflections of Goolam Suleman. Groutville: Luthuli Museum. 93 pp. illus. ISBN: 978-0-621-39747-5. R118,00NATTRASS, Nicoli The Aids conspiracy – Science fights back. Johannesburg, Wits University

Press, 2012.NDLOVU, Mlungisi N. The original purpose of salvation. Pietermaritzburg: the Author, 2011.NGCOBO, Lauretta, ed. Prodigal daughters: stories of South African women in exile. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012. 240 pp. illus. ISBN: 978-1-86914-234-6. R195,00OLIVIER, Daphne The Kennaway woman. Melange Books (US), 2012. 204 pp. ISBN: 9781612353722. R120,00. A novel. POLELA, McIntosh My father, my monster. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2011.SCRIBA, Georg “But God made it grow”: 1 Corinthians 3:6: an historical overview of the

development from the beginning of the Hermannsburg German Evangelical-Lutheran Synod to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa. Source booklet and appendices. Pietermaritzburg: the Author, 2011. 44 pp. illus., and 40 pp.

SCHULZE, Roland Atlas of climate change and the South African agricultural sector: a 2010

perspective. Pretoria: Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 2010.SHERRIFFS, Pamela Anaximander’s reproach. Pietermaritzburg: the Author, 2011. A novel.SINCLAIR, Ian, HOCKEy, Phil, TARBOTON, Warwick and RYAN, Peter SASOL birds of southern Africa, 4th edition. Cape Town: Random House

Struik, 2011. R240,00SNYMAN, Dana The long way home: a journey through South Africa. Cape Town: Tafelberg,

2012.SPENCER, Henry There is life after sixty-five: a practical guide to ageing and successful

retirement. Pietermaritzburg: the Author, 2010.STEWART, Dianne Who’s afraid of the dark. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2012.


159


TARBOTON, Warwick Roberts’guide to the nests and eggs of southern African birds. Johannesburg:

Jacana, 2011. R224,00 or R284,00THOMPSON, Richard and MALITI, Terry Kicking the bucket: some advice on sorting out your affairs before you die. (www.kickingthebucket.co.za)VAN DEN BERG, Heinrich Phototips: principles of nature photography. Pietermaritzburg: HPH

Publishing, 2011. R199,00VAN DEN BERG, Heinrich Shades of nature. Pietermaritzburg: HPH Publishing, 2011. 490 pp.VAN DE RUIT, John Spud: exit, pursued by a bear. Johannesburg: Penguin, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-143-53024-4VAN DER WALT, J.C. Zululand true stories 1780–1978; 5th ed. – with the addition of Child slavery

in South Africa, 1837–1877. Richards Bay: the Author, 2011. 359 pp. illus., maps. ISBN: 978-0-620-49420-5. R235, 00

VOLKER, Walter Boer War stories of the Piet Retief Commando and district. Pretoria: Veritas

Books, 2012. 399 pp. illus., maps, tables. ISBN: 978-0-620-52686-9.VON FINTEL, Eckhard Lutheran Congregation Hayfields: centenary 1912–2012. Pietermaritzburg:

the Congregation, 2012. 64 pp. illus. (plus CD)VON KLEMPERER, Margaret Just a dead man. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2012. A detective novel set in

Pietermaritzburg.WRINCH-SCHULZ, Joyce Carboys, capsules and crucibles: a history of pharmacy in KwaZulu-Natal. Durban: KwaZulu-Natal Coastal Branch of the Pharmaceutical Society of

South Africa, 2000. 141 pp., illus. ISBN: 0-620-26178-1WRIGHT, John and MAZEL, Aaron uKhahlamba: umlando weZintaba zaKhahlamba: Exploring the history of the

uKhahlamba Mountains; Zulu translation of the English text by Sylvia Zulu. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012. 96 pp. illus., maps. ISBN: 9781868145287. R126,00 – R136,00XABA, Phakamani and CROESER, Peter Traditionally useful plants of Africa: their cultivation and use. Cape Town:

Cambridge University Press, 2012. 96 pp. illus. (Indigenous Knowledge Library) ISBN: 978-0-521-15710-0. R160,00

Notes on Contributors

160



STEPHEN COAN is a senior feature writer on The Witness. He is the author of Diary of an African Journey: the Return of Rider Haggard.

DUNCAN DU BOIS retired in 2010 after 30 years of teaching history up to matric level. His book Labourer or Settler? Colonial Natal’s Indian Dilemma is reviewed in this edition of Natalia. He is currently engaged in doctoral research on a thesis entitled “Sugar and settlers: the settlement and development of the Natal South Coast 1850-1910”. He is also a ward councilor representing the Bluff in the eThekwini Municipality.

ELWyN JENKINS returned to his homeland in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands three years ago, after nearly 40 years in the academic world in Gauteng. He is Professor Emeritus and also currently Professor Extraordinarius in the Department of English Studies at the University of South Africa. His latest book, Seedlings: English Children’s Reading and Writers in South Africa, was published by Unisa Press in 2012.

ROGER INGLE has been interested in antique firearms for the past 20 years. Durban born, he spent all his working life in the electronics industry. After experience overseas he joined the South African branch of a large British professional electronics company in a research and development facility. Here he headed a team that won the Industrial Development Corporation Gold Award for the first HF frequency hopping radio. He retired as a technical director of a later derivative of the company.

VERTREES MALHERBE is a Cape-based historian whose research has focused mainly on that region. She is currently going through the letters that she wrote to her parents after her arrival in South Africa, from the USA, in 1952. For the first ten and a half years she and her family lived in Durban; thus Natal was the site of her early impressions and experiences in a new country.


161


SIBONGISENI MKHIZE studied history at the University of Natal and joined the Natal Museum as an historical anthropologist in 1997. There he completed a Masters Degree on “African resistance politics in and around Pietermaritzburg” the following year, before leaving for a spell at the Durban Local History Museum in 1999. He returned to Pietermaritzburg as head of the Voortrekker Museum and was then appointed CEO of the Market Theatre Complex in Gauteng. In 2011 he moved to Cape Town when he was appointed to his present post as chief executive of the Robben Island Museum. He retains a deep interest in liberation history and is at present working on a doctoral biographic study of Edendale’s Selby Msimang.

ANIL NAURIyA studied economics, qualified for the Bar and has, since 1984, been counsel at the Supreme Court of India and the High Court of Delhi. He has written on contemporary history and politics in India and has contributed to various books and journals, the latter including the Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai and Monthly Review, New York. In recent years, he has focused increasingly on struggles in Africa.

natalia, no 42 (2012)

Documents