Publication

Pepysian Perceptions of the Cape 1798–1828; Selections from the Western Cape Diaries of Samuel Eusebius Hudson

2024-11-11T12:14:54+00:00November 10th, 2024|

Samuel Eusebius Hudson : portrait sketched by Lady Anne Barnard in 1797 This is the first time that substantial selections from the voluminous diaries of Samuel Eusebius Hudson (1764–1828) have been published. Written by an early British settler of humble social origin but of uncommon education, they are Pepysian in quantity and quality, rich in perceptions, and the more valuable for being unrevised. They cover four periods in the history of the Cape Colony between [...]

F.S. Malan – ‘n Oud Joernalis Kyk Terug – A Former Jounalist Looks Back

2024-11-20T19:35:31+00:00December 9th, 2023|

Francois Stephanus Malan, editor of Ons Land, leader of the Afrikaner Bond, twice-acting prime minister of South Africa, minister of education, of mines and industry and various other portfolios in the early Union government, is largely forgotten now. Yet he has been described as the last Cape liberal, the man who fought longest in parliament to retain the Cape’s race-free franchise and to extend it to the other provinces. This volume publishes the earlier part of his memoir which first appeared in Die Huisgenoot in the 1930s. It explores the first part of his life, from a young man growing up in the Boland to his role as a leading Cape politician. His defence of Afrikaner interests after the Jameson Raid transformed him from a rookie editor to a leading spokesman for Cape Afrikaners. It traces the influence on his life of his imprisonment by the British in the war that followed, and his role in the making of Union. In Botha’s cabinet after 1910 he played a major role in establishing the South African university system and in creating industrial legislation which provided better medical care for minors and structures for conciliation, after the divisive miners’ strikes.

‘I See You’: The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa, 1919-1930

2024-11-20T19:26:05+00:00September 6th, 2022|

The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (ICU) and its charismatic leader, Clements Kadalie, dominated the southern African political landscape of the 1920s. The movement demonstrated a wide spectrum of opposition to the established order. From humble beginnings in Cape Town in 1919, the ICU...

Francois le Vaillant: Travels into the interior of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. Vol II

2024-11-20T19:31:43+00:00August 20th, 2021|

In 1780 the young Francois Vaillant set out from Holland for the Cape to collect specimens of birds and animals. His account of his travels, which was published widely during the revolutionary period, became an influential piece of writing about South Africa, popular throughout Europe and reflected many Enlightenment attitudes.I t was the first highly critical account of Dutch colonialism and the brutality of settler expansion.

Sol T Plaatje – A life in letters

2022-07-19T09:16:11+00:00December 14th, 2020|

Sol Plaatje (1876–1932) was one of the best known political and literary figures of his generation – as journalist, writer and spokesman for his people. He spoke out against the oppressive policies of the South African government in the early decades of the twentieth century, and he is remembered for a number of important books – one of which is the diary he kept during the siege of Mafikeng, Native Life in South Africa (1916).

Indoda Ebisithanda (“The Man Who Loved Us”) – The Reverend James Laing among the amaXhosa, 1831-1836

2022-07-19T09:19:20+00:00September 4th, 2019|

This study is a critical edition of a section of the journals of the Reverend James Laing of the Glasgow Missionary Society. The first scholarly study of the Laing journals, this thesis seeks to contribute towards a new understanding of the early days of transcultural interchange on the Eastern Cape frontier. The only previous published work on Laing is William Govan's hagiographical Memorials of the Missionary Career of the Rev. James Laing, Missionary of the Free Church of Scotland in Kaffraria published in Glasgow by David Bryce and Son in 1875. This study attempts to make Laing's text as accessible to today's readers as possible. To this end, the text is a faithful transcription of the original, augmented by a contextual introduction, detailed footnotes and a comprehensive index

In a Time of Plague. Memories of the ‘Spanish’ Flu Epidemic of 1918 In South Africa

2021-11-15T20:20:16+00:00June 25th, 2018|

The so-called “Spanish” influenza epidemic of 1918 (tellingly dubbed “Black October” by contemporaries in South Africa) was the worst disease episode ever to hit the country. Part of the global pandemic which killed about 3% of the world’s inhabitants in little over a year, in hard-hit South Africa it claimed some 350,000 lives (or 5% of the population) in six weeks in September-October of 1918. During those dreadful weeks the country struggled to keep functioning in the face of this debilitating disease and consequent deaths. In flu-ravaged cities like Kimberley, Cape Town and Bloemfontein corpse-laden carts trundled through the streets to collect the dead and take them to hard-pressed cemeteries, scenes never seen before or since in the country; in the countryside silence reigned as deaths in kraals and on farms reduced helpless inhabitants to desperate straits. A whole generation of flu orphans appeared almost overnight. This volume graphically captures this short but unprecedented crisis in South Africa’s history through the memories of 127 survivors of the epidemic. Recorded on tape and in letters in the 1970s, these evoke the horror of “Black October”, providing unique, first-hand accounts of what these men and women saw and heard, how they coped medically, materially and psychologically and what mark this experience left on their lives. The memories of this very wide array of South Africans vividly evoke what it was like to live in and to live through a time of plague. As one survivor put it, “That’s worse than war.”

Hendrik Swellengrebel in Africa. Journals of Three Journeys in 1776-1777

2021-03-17T20:53:56+00:00June 25th, 2018|

Hendrik Swellengrebel was born at the Cape on 26 November 1734, the fifth child of Hendrik Swellengrebel Snr, at the time the Secretary of the Council of Policy, but from 1739 Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, and of Helena Wilhelmina ten Damme. After bidding farewell to his parents on 25 March 1746, Hendrik Jr travelled as an eleven-year-old boy to the Netherlands with the return fleet. Already then, his father intended to return to the Netherlands eventually. He had four sons and three daughters – what future did the Cape offer those children? So, he sent his sons to the Netherlands to further their studies. After their arrival there, they were taken care of by Rev. J. Schermer and his wife in Utrecht. Hendrik attended the Latin school and afterwards read law at Utrecht University. Not yet 21 years old, he completed his studies in 1755 and after that established himself as an attorney and also became a canon in the chapter at the Cathedral. In 1775 Hendrik Swellengrebel embarked on the VOC ship Alkemade, to pay a visit to the land of his birth, at that time no ordinary undertaking. The reasons for this visit were never explicitly revealed by him so far as is known. Certainly a desire to see his country of birth again played a role in this. Yet, it is not impossible that he also played with the idea of establishing himself at the Cape. His interest in the possibilities – including financial ones – offered by farming there, evident in his travel accounts and in his exchange of letters in the years thereafter, point in that direction. At the Cape, in 1776-1777, Hendrik made three journeys through the interior of the Cape of Good Hope, once even as far as the land of the Xhosa. His journals of these three journeys and the accompanying drawings commissioned by him were not published in his day and remained lying in the family archives in the Netherlands for over one-and-a-half centuries. In 1932 Dr E.C. Godée Molsbergen published ‘Journal of an overland journey that the undersigned Pieter Cloete made with Mr Hendrik Swellengrebel Esq. in the year 1776’, which he had found in the archive of the eighteenth Governor of the Cape, Joachim van Plettenberg, but which constituted only a brief summary of one of those journeys. The drawings themselves only became known even later, thanks to a publication in 1951 by A. Hallema, Die Kaap in 1776-1777. Akwarelle van Johannes Schumacher uit die Swellengrebel-Argief te Breda (The Cape in 1775-1777. Water Colours of Johannes Schumacher from the Swellengrebel Archive in Breda).

Selections from the letters of President M. T. Steyn, 1904-1910

2021-06-02T08:56:15+00:00June 24th, 2017|

President M.T. Steyn is one of the heroes Afrikaner history, leading the guerrilla war against the British from 1899-1902, and fiercely resisting submission. He was struck down by a neural disease in 1902 and was unable to participate in the negotiations that ended the war. In 1902 he went to Europe for treatment and, after a partial recovery, he returned to South Africa. Although he was unable to participate fully in post-war political events, he became an 'elder' statesman (still in his 40s) who was consulted by the leading South African politicians on such subjects as the creation of an Afrikaner nation, the self-government of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, and the making of Union. He returned briefly to political life as vice-chair of the National Convention in Durban, to decide the terms of Union. His determination to preserve a strong Afrikaner identity, combined with his wise counsel and generosity, made a great impression on the other participants, including old enemies like Dr L.S. Jameson. Sadly, his health was too poor for him to contribute to the new Union. The letters in this volume are an extraordinary record of courage and intelligence. Under other circumstances he might have played a much greater role in South Africa, even, perhaps, altering the course of events. At the same time, in the tempestuous, multi-cultural South Africa of today, 101 years after Steyn's death, many of his ideas are unacceptable, for, like his white compatriots, J.C. Smuts and J.X. Merriman, he could not imagine a society in which black men (let alone women) had a right to political equality. Yet this volume has relevance as it contributes, inter alia, to our understanding of political racism; of equal value is what it tells us about how to make a new country.

From Cattle-herding to Editor’s Chair: The Unfinished Autobiography of Richard Victor Selope Thema

2020-09-04T06:32:30+00:00July 24th, 2016|

Richard Victor Selope Thema (1886 - 1955) was one of the most influential black figures in South Africa in the twentieth century - yet little has been published about him until now. 'RV' - as he was known to his friends - was a leading member of the ANC for almost forty years from 1912, serving for many years on its National Executive. He was also a founder member of the All-African Convention, a elected member of the Natives Representative Council, and was in constant demand to serve on deputations and committees as one of the leading spokespersons for Africans of his generation. Thema was also widely recognised as the leading black journalist and intellectual of his time. Many of his early writings appeared in the ANC newspaper, Abanthu Batho, but he cemented his national reputation as founding editor of the Bantu World, a position he held for twenty years. Under his leadership, Bantu World became the leading organ of the black middle class in South Africa, and a generation of black writers launched their careers in its pages under his tutelage. It is still published today as the Sowetan. In his writings Thema was a tireless advocate of African rights and an implacable enemy of segregation. An 'Africanist' before that term was popularised by the Congress Youth League in the 1940s and 1950s, he can be considered an intellectual fore-father of both the Youth League and of the Pan-Africanists of the 1950s.

Go to Top