HiPSA: ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2024
(Delivered by Professor Howard Phillips at Protea/Aristata Bookshop, Claremont, 30 October 2024)
It is only 6 months since my last annual report was presented at our delayed 2023 AGM in April this year, but the focus of this report, as of that, continues to be on the two core underpinnings of our operation, viz. finance and membership.
In the area of finance we are in the midst of an experiment to cut our distribution costs sharply by reducing our couriering bill in Pretoria, the Peninsula and Hermanus thanks to Protea/Aristata bookshops in Claremont and Pretoria and The Book Cottage in Hermanus agreeing to act as depots for our members to collect their annual volume in person. If all our members (or their nominees) do so, this will save us at least R15,000. A round of grateful applause please for both Protea Books (especially Nicol Stassen and Zakie Sallie, this shop’s manager) and The Book Cottage for their willing collaboration, not least by Zakie, for making this meeting space available to us. We hope that this arrangement will, in turn, benefit these bookshops through the patronage of our members and their circle. I urge you to put this bookshop on your book-browsing route. If this scheme works well for HiPSA, we will try to extend it to other centres where a willing bookshop and a cluster of our members exist near to each other, in e.g. Johannesburg, Makhanda/Grahamstown, Gqeberha/PE, Stellenbosch.
As for keeping up or increasing our membership, here we have failed. Our paid-up numbers are down to 268, with unpaids at 293. In 2023 the comparative figures were 435 and 296. Giving more public lectures and using social media like FB, X and Instagram to advertise our wares have not yielded positive results, despite creative input by our social media team – for example, Elizabeth van Heyningen compiled a daily post of HiPSA extracts on X and FB to match the date. As the co-editor of our 2023 volume of FS Malan’s memoirs she also lectured on him at the Worcester Museum on Heritage Day and will do so again in Franschhoek next month. Edward Hudson, the editor of our latest volume, will be giving three lectures on his book next week. Details of where and when are in our recent newsletter. We owe both Elizabeth and Edward sincere thanks for their readiness to spread the word and publicize HiPSA’s membership and its volumes.
In terms of our forthcoming publications, we have just reprinted our long out-of-print 1938 volume, Die Duminy Dagboeke in Cape Dutch and English. It is said to be ‘one of the earliest examples of written Afrikaans’, dating from the 1790s. As for new works, in the pipeline are a translation of a journey through South Africa by a Polish scientist in the 1870s, the first book in Polish about South Africa; the private correspondence during World War I of South Africa’s second Governor-General, Lord Buxton; and an inquiry into San genocide in the Kenhardt area in the 1860s by an official investigator, Louis Anthing.
Relying on the ‘no task is too much for me’ attitude of our administrative team, Rolf Proske and Denise Fearns, of our treasurer and webmaster, Danie de Villiers, and the lively input of my Council members, I hope that my next annual report will not feature the word ‘failed’ but will instead make multiple use of the phrases ‘successful cost-cutting’ and ‘member recruitment’.
Howard Phillips (chair of HiPSA)
30 October 2024.