Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr

by

Donald B. Molteno

South Africa has suffered a most grievous loss. That loss, moreover, has been sustained at the very moment when the country can least afford it. The passing on of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr would, at any time, have left a hideous gap in our national resources of statesmanship. Today, in a menacing and uncertain situation, both at home and abroad, the loss of Hofmeyr’s ripe experience, his wise counsel, his balanced judgment, his fearless objectivity, his unerring sense of fundamental principle and ultimate values, comes as a shattering blow indeed.

I have emphasized the loss that our nation as a whole has suffered. I feel sure that Hofmeyr’s bitterest political foes would concur in this judgment. For, quite apart from his political views and principles, he was a true son of South Africa and his remarkable talents and unbounded energy were always employed unstintingly in the service of his country. But those of us who adhere to the liberal faith; who, irrespective of party alignments, regarded Hofmeyr as our leader and our hope, may perhaps claim to be in the best position of all to assess the significance of his passing. The caste society of South Africa has ever provided unpromising soil for the growth and development of democratic liberalism. In three of the former states constituting the Union, liberalism was regarded as a creed entirely alien to the traditions of the bulk of the European population. Events since 1910 seem to indicate that the traditional liberalism of the former Cape Colony never struck deep roots in the political consciousness of the Europeans there. One by one the leading protagonists of Cape liberalism has gone from us---Sauer, Merriman, Jagger, Burton, Rose-Innes, F. S. Malan. And now the last outstanding representative of that tradition (albeit of a later generation than those I have just mentioned) has also been taken away.

Probably few statesmen in South African history have had to encounter the difficulties that beset the political career of Hofmeyr. This may seem a paradox, since from a personal point of view, that career was brilliantly successful. Not only did he hold many high offices of state but his outstanding gifts secured for him a place in public estimation far higher than that of most of his ministerial colleagues. His difficulties were of a different order. They were the result of his own firmly held principles and his own ideals as to the duties of a public man. A brief review of the most important milestones along the road of his political career will, I hope, make my meaning clear.

Hofmeyr was an Afrikaner with a deep feeling for his own section of the European population. Yet he was far sighted enough to perceive that South Africa’s true interests lay in the maintenance of our free association with the British Commonwealth and Empire. When he entered Parliament in 1929, therefore, he did so as a member of the South African Party, which was committed to maintaining and fostering the British connection.

In accordance with the traditions, however, of his distinguished uncle, and also of Generals Botha and Smuts, Hofmeyr was deeply devoted to the ideal of permanent reconciliation and ultimate fusion of the British and Dutch elements of the white population. He, therefore, took a leading part in 1933 in the negotiations with the Nationalist leaders that resulted in the establishment of the United Party. As one of the leaders of the former South African Party he entered the first United Party cabinet. In his work for, and participation in Fusion he could truly feel that he had struck a blow at English-Afrikaner racialism without sacrificing his ideal of Commonwealth unity. It is true that he always held the view that constitutionally common allegiance to the Crown negatived the Union’s right of neutrality in the event of war---a right that was stridently asserted by his new leader, General Hertzog. Nevertheless, Hofmeyr felt that theoretical constitutional issues should not be permitted to stand in the way of racial reconciliation. Other considerations would in fact determine the Union’s course in the event of a menace to the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the maintenance of South Africa’s membership of the Commonwealth was, for the time being, assured.

Arnold Toynbee has drawn attention to an observable historical phenomenon according to which the surmounting of a social challenge often involves the immediate presentation of another challenge which arises from the very nature of the action adopted to meet the former. This was precisely the situation that Hofmeyr faced on the morrow of the achievement of Fusion. At the time, at all events, it appeared that Fusion had provided a successful response to the challenge of English-Dutch racialism. Yet the very success of that response, as reflected in the huge Parliamentary majority of the United Party, aggravated the challenge of White-Black racialism. A considerable section of the South African Party---notably members from Natal---had always been in favour of segregation. The liberals in that Party were in a minority. Fusion meant that a majority could be found in the House of Assembly and the Senate sufficiently large enough to ensure the abolition of the Cape Native franchise. Despite the fact that he was in the Cabinet, Hofmeyr opposed this step both by speech and vote. His efforts were, however, unavailing. The most formidable blow since Union was struck at the ideal of racial harmony in South Africa.

Although he remained for the time being in the Government, I have little doubt that it was due to his relations with his colleagues resulting from his attitude to the Native Bills that determined Hofmeyr on his resignation in 1938. The immediate occasion thereof was the Government’s nomination of a Senator, ostensibly by reason of his knowledge of the “reasonable wants and wishes” of the Coloured peoples of the Union, when the real reason was that the individual concerned was a Cabinet Minister who had lost his seat at the General Election. Hofmeyr regarded this action as one that “touches . . . ultimate political issue in South Africa. It touches the whole question of relations between the European and the non-European peoples in South Africa.” Thus his words in announcing his resignation to the House of Assembly. With prophetic insight he added: “One constitutional safeguard goes today, the next will go tomorrow.”

In 1939 Hofmeyr carried his opposition to the anti-Asiatic legislation that followed upon the passing of the Native Bills, to a point at which the United Party Caucus took the step of expelling him therefrom. It was only the extreme emergency of War that induced that Party, having shed its reactionary and pro-Nazi wing, which prior to 1939 had really dominated its counsels, to invite Hofmeyr back, not only as a member of the Caucus but as Minister of Finance and as the acknowledged second-in-command to the Prime Minister himself.

In that responsible position, and carrying a greater burden than any of his colleagues in the formidable task of ruling a divided country at war, he nevertheless continued to offer resistance to the anti-Asiatic legislation that today is involving us in grave international dispute. Despite such opposition he maintained his position on account of his indispensability. In office he achieved many social reforms such as settling the basis for the finance of Native Education, expanding immensely the facilities for the latter and extending the scope of pensions services to Africans and other formerly excluded groups of non-Europeans.

Hofmeyr’s difficulties, therefore, and the central dilemma of his political career, arose from his adherence to liberal principles in an age of reaction. The criticism of his methods is possible and understandable that, holding the views he did, he might have served the liberal cause better by refusing to accept office in United Party Cabinets and by founding a Liberal Party, pledged to a clear cut progressive democratic programme, and willing to remain in opposition until such time as it had won sufficient support to rule South Africa on its own account. It could be said in support of this view that it is in line with the logic of Hofmeyr’s own position when he resigned from the United Party Cabinet in 1938 on the non-European issue.

In the circumstances of South African political life in our generation, I myself do not believe this criticism to be well founded. I have little doubt that an attempt to found a Liberal Party, explicitly pledged to the implementation of liberal principles, would have meant Hofmeyr’s exclusion from effective political life. Had he held a revolutionary creed acceptance of such exclusion would have been the right course. Nothing, however, was further from this outlook than the revolutionary approach. This raises an issue as old as political philosophy itself---the eternal question of the relationship of means to ends. To the revolutionary, whether Communist or Fascist, or to their prototypes in other ages, the end is sovereign and its quality is unaffected by the means employed to achieve it. To the liberal, means and ends are inextricably interwoven and the values sought to be achieved are capable of entire perversion by the adoption of means inappropriate for attaining them. Not being a revolutionary, and accepting the traditional liberal conception of the relation of means to ends, the practical choice that confronted Hofmeyr throughout his political career was whether to retire from active political struggle into an ivory tower or whether to use his powers to influence the course of events, so far as within him lay, in the direction that he desired. Within the limits set by the value premises that he accepted, surely few could criticize the course he adopted. Indeed such criticism ultimately resolves itself into the passing of judgment on the liberal creed itself rather than the methods that Hofmeyr adopted in order to make his contribution towards the implementation of that creed as he conceived it.

Politics, as Bismarck once remarked, is the “art of the possible.” Political, like military, strategy necessarily often involves compromises or withdrawals in order to conserve resources and to make possible the resumption of the battle on more favourable ground. It is only if the objective itself is renounced that defeat and futility are involved. Hofmeyr always manfully upheld his objective. To the public his principles were never in doubt. Such concessions and compromises as he made were made under the pressure of political exigency. He always made it clear that for him the principle remained inviolate. “I may be old fashioned,” he once told an audience of young men, “but I still believe . . . that principle and honesty of purpose are two things that in the long run count for most in public life. Ultimately, the greatest asset which a public man can have is the belief that the public has in him that, whatsoever his personal limitations may be, he is seeking honestly and sincerely to follow the light as he sees it. So above all else I say to you, build on that solid foundation of clear and definite principles. Be prepared to go down, if need be, into the valley of misrepresentation and contumely while you keep your eyes fixed on the heights above.” Never indeed did teacher more faithfully follow his own precept than did Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr.

From the pamphlet: Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr: A Tribute, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1950 (?).