Hofmeyr and the Africans

by

D. D. T. Jabavu

The connection between Africans and the name of Hofmeyr dates from the eighties, when “Onze Jan” Hofmeyr, leader of the Bond party in the Cape Parliament, stood as champion of Native interests. In those days the political bugbear for Africans was the Sprigg government with (i) its Native Disarmament Act (1880) that threatened to involve the whole Cape in a Black-and-White war; (ii) a registration measure aimed at taking away the Native vote, though euphemistically styled “A Bill to make better provision for the Registration of Persons entitled to the Electoral Franchise” (including a clause that ruled out any person “sharing in any communal or tribal occupation of lands or place of residence”), and iii) the introduction of Pass Laws, copied from the North.

The Natives were helped out of their throes by the elder Hofmeyr, who piloted through Parliament the “removal of Native Disabilities Bill” with the object of securing exemption for Native registered voters from all irritating and humiliating colour-discrimination laws. And the result was the “Hofmeyr Act No. 39 of 1887,” which stands to this day as a minor magna charta of in the Cape Province, and which emasculated the Pass Laws in that Colony.

This chapter of history, well within the vivid recollection of us older Africans, explains the foundation of the character of the man we mourn today, because it constitutes what is known as the “liberalism” (a term of vituperation in present day political morality) which he inherited from his famous relative who fought in the old Cape Parliament as an ally of the Solomons, the Moltenos, Merriman, J. W. Sauer, Sir Fredric de Waal, Rose-Innes, Schreiner and others, against the influences of the Transvaal Republic, then characterized by its Pass Laws, its Dipping Regulations for Black travellers, its sjambok discipline for Native servants and its anti-British sentiment lingering from Voortrekker incidents.

In our day Hofmeyr has been severely denounced for being a liberal, and an election has been fought and won on that ticket. If his liberalism is a political sin then, O tempora! O mores!, we are living in degenerate days of political delinquency where justice is by popular acclamation classified as wrong, for vote catching purposes, and where repression is called decency!

White South Africa had labeled our Hofmeyr a national danger because of this liberalism---a travesty of social ethics---and one shudders to imagine what would transpire if the rest of the world were to adopt this standard of political obliquity. “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

He has at times been called a “kaffer-boetie [nigger-lover].” But if that were true I ought to know, for I have frequently been thrown into his company since 1930 in Fort Hare, and later as his co-Vice President of the South African Institute of Race Relations. I have never at any time found him a kaffer-boetie. He struck me as socially distant but spiritually close, impressing me as being par excellence a relentless champion of justice and fair play for all human beings regardless of colour and race. For example I once asked him, was it fair for aged Natives of 78 in my area (some of whom I named) to be forced to pay Poll Tax when their Native Commissioner decides they own enough cattle to be able to pay, cattle which had been worked for and kept as savings for old age, while the corresponding Coloured and European aged people received Old Age Pensions every month? He replied by asking: “What would you do under the present circumstances?” I said, give them pensions too, or at least free them from Poll Tax after sixty. The result was that he went and persuaded his Cabinet colleagues (Mr. Havenga was then Finance Minister) to institute the present arrangement of relief at sixty-five.

He hated the type of discrimination that places the Non-European at an economic dis-advantage, hence in the School Feeding Scheme that he inaugurated for Primary Schools in general, he cut out the colour bar [racial discrimination] that previously obtained in other school feeding plans.

Possibly his most significant contribution to South African politics was his religious character, that is, the way he lived out his religious convictions, where most people end in idealistic preachment. Here one need not quote chapter and verse. It is enough to say that those of us who are familiar with his activities in the world of the Students’ Christian Association clearly perceived that his work in the sphere of politics was of a piece with his practice and spirit of evangelism. Whereas we are told by those in a position to know, that politics is a dirty game of chicanery, mutual vilification and filthy lucre, unfit for sincere men specially clergymen, he proved that religion could be applied to politics. Hofmeyr proved it possible to be both a sound politician and a good Christian. We Africans know of no other South African political personality that better deserves such an encomium. May his bones rest peacefully.

From: Common Sense, January, 1949. Now in the pamphlet: Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr: A Tribute, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1950 (?).