Publication Archive - Page 2 of 11

‘An Entirely Different World’: Russian Visitors to the Cape 1797-1870

‘An Entirely Different World’: Russian Visitors to the Cape 1797-1870

admin2022-06-05T19:50:50+00:00July 24th, 2015|

The Russian view of the Cape as represented in this volume may be unique. During the period in question, Russia had no cultural, political or economic ties with South Africa. Russians saw the Cape only as a convenient stopover en route to the Far East, to their country’s distant domains that could not be reached by sea otherwise. The Cape was one of the ‘exotic’ lands they would visit on such journeys, their first and only introduction to the African continent. Although amazed and perplexed by the ‘entirely different world’ they found here, Russian travellers would often draw unexpected parallels between life in their motherland and the realities of the Cape Colony. The selections include memoirs of such important Russian personalities as Yuri Lisyansky, Vasily Golovnin, Ivan Goncharov and Konstantin Posyet. Most of the texts appear in English for the first time.

The World’s Great Question. Olive Schreiner’s South African Letters 1889-1920

The World’s Great Question. Olive Schreiner’s South African Letters 1889-1920

admin2021-07-26T19:36:54+00:00July 24th, 2014|

The World’s Great Question features over 300 of Olive Schreiner’s key letters on South African people, politics and its racial order. They are often prophetic and can still send shivers down the spine. Immensely readable and insightful, her South African letters bring home Schreiner’s importance as one of the world’s most famous women and a foundational figure in South African literature and its political life at key junctures in its history;

Into the hitherto Unknown. Ensign Beutler’s Expedition to the Eastern Cape, 1752

Into the hitherto Unknown. Ensign Beutler’s Expedition to the Eastern Cape, 1752

admin2021-07-26T15:57:54+00:00July 24th, 2013|

By 1752, the lands beyond Mossel Bay were officially unknown. The Beutler expedition, was tasked by Governor Rijk Tulbagh to obtain a thorough knowledge of the hitherto unknown condition of these interior lands. The reader of the Journal will meet the fauna and flora of the region, as well as the indigenous peoples of the Eastern Cape.

A B Xuma. Autobiography and Selected Works

A B Xuma. Autobiography and Selected Works

admin2021-02-25T20:52:15+00:00July 24th, 2012|

Alfred Bitini Xuma (1893-1962) is best known as the president who revived the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1940s and was then defeated for office by the Congress Youth League. Less known is his important public career as a medical doctor and social reformer, or the continuity of his thought over three decades of writings and speeches, in which he articulated a consistent critique of white domination, inequality and state policies of segregation and apartheid. Xuma’s ongoing concerns with national liberation, health, and black identity lend his works a curious resonance with today’s burning issues. This volume brings together for the first time the works of this major African political and social leader of the mid-twentieth century, combining his previously unpublished autobiography with a careful selection of his prodigious output of letters, speeches, pamphlets, and submissions to government commissions.

The South African Letters of Thomas Pringle

The South African Letters of Thomas Pringle

admin2020-08-11T20:58:07+00:00November 24th, 2011|

Thomas Pringle (1789–1834) is remembered as ‘the father of English poetry’ in this country, as leader of the only Scottish settler party in 1820 and as a champion of the freedom of the press. He had an earlier career as founding editor of Blackwood’s Magazine in Edinburgh and a later one as man of letters in London and secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. The abolition of slavery in the British Empire came into force in August 1834 but, crippled since infancy and suffering from tuberculosis, he died in December 1834, aged only 45. In South Africa he worked for the relief of the hard-pressed settlers, the emancipation of the Khoisan and protection of the Xhosa on the frontier from retaliatory commando raids. In Cape Town he ran the South African Public Library, edited, with his friend John Fairbairn, the Cape’s first independent newspaper and the bi-monthly South African Journal, and established a successful ‘classical and commercial academy’ until all were brought down by the hostility of the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset. He fought back but, financially ruined, returned to his final career in Britain. His papers, sent to Cape Town by his widow Margaret, were lost but surviving letters in other collections here bring to life the character, outlook and South African career of a notable figure in our history.

Friendship and Union. The South African Letters of Patrick Duncan and Maud Selborne 1907–1943

Friendship and Union. The South African Letters of Patrick Duncan and Maud Selborne 1907–1943

admin2021-02-25T20:05:10+00:00July 24th, 2010|

This volume, published a century after Union in 1910, tells the story of the first decades of the new state. The narrative unfolds through letters exchanged weekly by two interested commentators: Scottish-born Patrick Duncan, who was initially a member of Milner’s famous ‘Kindergarten’ of young British civil servants, and who became a respected politician in the new Union. His career culminated as South Africa’s first local Governor-General. He corresponded for thirty-seven years with Maud, Lady Selborne, who was married to Milner’s successor. A feisty feminist and a fascinating character from a patrician background, she developed a lifelong friendship with Duncan, round their shared preoccupation with South Africa. The letters support the view that the first constitution was deeply flawed, although in 1910 the ‘new South Africa’ seemed almost miraculous. Bitter enemies agreed to start afresh and painfully negotiated a new constitution, using the finest international models; a political leadership emerged preaching reconciliation; change had to be accepted and worked at every level; new symbols of nationhood were painfully evolved. Almost at once the legitimacy of the state was challenged in the strikes of 1913 and 1922 and the rebellion of 1914. The letters help to show how, by 1943, South Africa had emerged as an independent nation within the Commonwealth alliance.

Alan Paton Selected Letters

Alan Paton Selected Letters

admin2021-02-25T19:55:16+00:00July 24th, 2009|

Alan Paton was a dedicated letter-writer whose letters are almost like a series of vigorous conversations, displaying his capacity for friendship, his lively personality and his principled commitment to South African society. This collection of 350 previously unpublished letters are a major aspect of his writings. They range from those written as a brilliant student of 18 to his old age, illustrating many of the facets of his literary interests, his work as a teacher and reformatory principle and his political activism.

Isaac Williams Wauchope: Selected Writings 1874-1916

Isaac Williams Wauchope: Selected Writings 1874-1916

admin2021-02-25T19:35:34+00:00July 24th, 2008|

Isaac Williams Wauchope (1852-1917) was a prominent member of the Eastern Cape African elite in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a Congregational minister, political activist, historian, poet and, ultimately, legendary hero in the Mendi disaster. A Lovedale student, he was instrumental in founding one of the first political organisations for Africans, an enthusiastic campaigner for the establishment of the University of Fort Hare. This volume assembles a selection of these writings, in English and in Xhosa, reflecting Isaac Wauchope's momentous and turbulent life.

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

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

admin2021-10-06T09:41:43+00:00July 24th, 2007|

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.

Words of Batswana: Letters to Mahoko a Becwana, 1883-1896

Words of Batswana: Letters to Mahoko a Becwana, 1883-1896

admin2021-02-23T21:45:36+00:00July 24th, 2006|

Words of Batswanapresents a selection of letters that were written by Batswana to Mahoko a Becwana (News/Words of Batswana), a Setswana-language newspaper published by missionaries of the London Missionary Society at Kuruman between 1883 and 1896. The majority of the writers were members of congregations in what are today South Africa’s Northern Cape Province and North West Province, but many also wrote from as far away as the Transvaal, Orange Free State and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Most of the writings were letters to the editor, but their intended audience was primarily other Batswana readers of the newspaper. They wrote on a wide range of topics of concern to literate, mission-educated Batswana at that time, including mission work, theology, standardization of written Setswana, cultural change and European colonization. Their letters were also often written in response to other letters or missionary articles, producing lively debates on a number of controversial issues. These writings offer a rare and revealing glimpse of conversations that took place among literate Africans during a crucial period in the formation of modern South Africa and Botswana. They are reproduced here both in their original Setswana form and as translated into English.

‘An Entirely Different World’: Russian Visitors to the Cape 1797-1870

The World’s Great Question. Olive Schreiner’s South African Letters 1889-1920

Into the hitherto Unknown. Ensign Beutler’s Expedition to the Eastern Cape, 1752

A B Xuma. Autobiography and Selected Works

The South African Letters of Thomas Pringle

Friendship and Union. The South African Letters of Patrick Duncan and Maud Selborne 1907–1943

Alan Paton Selected Letters

Isaac Williams Wauchope: Selected Writings 1874-1916

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

Words of Batswana: Letters to Mahoko a Becwana, 1883-1896

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