Oba Alaiyeluwa Ademiluyi is the traditional High Priest King of the Yoruba Country, which has one of the most ancient dynasties in Africa. In the mediaval times there was much trade in Yoruba States, most of the business being done with Timbuctoo. A lot of the people of this country adopted the Islamic faith about the seventh century. The chief industries were iron works, agriculture, pepper, ivory, cloth weaving, leather making, carving and bead-work. From iron several articles were being manufactured, both for local use and for export purposes, such as agricultural implements, iron ornaments, weapons of war, utensils and such. The two great mining areas were in Nupe territory and in the Kakanda district at Ile Ife in Yorubaland. Another mining field was near Ilorin. Glass industry was chiefly carried on in Nupe.

The art of sculpture seems to have reached its zenith of development at this period. The chief industries at Ashanti and Gold Coast and Dahomey were gold, diamonds, precious stones, ivory, pepper, agriculture, bead making and carving. Corals were obtained from the sea, and of these all West African royal crowns, beaded thrones, beaded staves, and all other works of beads were usually manufactured. The rights of mining belonged to each and every individual inhabitant of West Africa, although it might seem that some portion of any precious metal mined or dug out used to be offered by the owner as a present to the King. Before the advent of Europeans or Arabs the people of West Africa worshipped God whom they called ” Olorun ” meaning ” One Supreme Being.”

The number of Christians in Yoruba is increasing. Many young people are sent to Europe and America for higher education. Like the rest of Africa, Yoruba and, indeed, the whole of West Africa except Liberia, has been made a colony of some European country. The people are no longer masters in their own land; their Kings having sought protection of European Kings. With such laws as the Crown Land Bill of 1894 (Gold Coast), the Land Ordinance of 1897 (Gold Coast), and the Forest Bill of 1911 (Gold Coast), the Foreshore Case of 1911, Lagos, and the Ikoyi Land Ordinance of 1908, Africans like the late Hon. Casely-Hayford, the late Hon. J. Sarbali, the late Hon. Safara Williams, Mr. Herbert Macauley, and others had a severe and unavailing fight in their efforts to retain some of the rights of their people.

Boswell Circus 1959

From the evidence of early Dutch and Cape paintings, it may be assumed that the first White inhabitants of the Cape were diverted by performing dogs and various animals trained to do tricks, notably monkeys (which were common household pets) and baboons. The garrisons at the Castle possibly spent part of their leisure in training such animals, and performing bears and various animals from the Orient may have been seen when in transit to Europe. In the country districts feats and tricks of horsemanship were highly esteemed, and were probably demonstrated at kermis (fair) and other occasions where the farmers gathered. Organised exhibition of performing persons and animals cannot be traced before 1810, when an application was made for leave to stage a circus in Cape Town. Except for occasional theatrical performances and amateur diversions in the town, organised entertainment was rare, and the circus was one of the first forms to develop.

One of the earliest was W. H. Bell’s circus, but by the eighties there were several, including Feeley’s, Wirth’s, Cooke’s, Val Simpson’s and that of the incomparable Frank Fillis who, coming to South Africa in 1880 to join Bell’s circus, took it over when Bell died. The two mining towns, Kimberley and Johannesburg, and the seaports of Cape Town and Durban now provided profitable ‘pitches’, and the smaller inland towns, formerly almost completely Fillis’s Circus building, Cape Town, in 1895  without entertainment, constituted a worth-while ‘circuit’.

Going overseas from time to time in order to recruit his ‘turns’, Fillis developed his circus into a major entertainment which the highest in the land were glad to patronise. He established a permanent building in Johannesburg in 1889 known as ‘Fillis’s Amphitheatre’ and specialised in spectacles such as a reconstruction of the Niagara Falls, ‘Dick Turpin’s ride to York’ and ‘Major Wilson’s last stand’. These were also staged at a structure opened in 1896 in Cape Town at the foot of Adderley Street alongside the Pier. Madame Fillis was an equestrienne of note and performed haute école at a benefit night given in Johannesburg in 1895. Mr. Lionel Phillips presented Mr. Fillis with a set of diamond studs and Madame Fillis with a ruby and diamond brooch on behalf of Johannesburg residents.

The artistes and company presented him with a gold star set with diamonds’. In spite of the high tone and spectacular scope of his performances, Fillis was frequently in financial straits. In 1900 he took an extraordinary show entitled ‘Savage South Africa’ to England, but despite the attraction of an authentic South African stagecoach, black warriors and other novelties, it failed and he was again bankrupt. He was reintroduced grandly to his old South African pitch by the impresario A. Bonamici in 1902 with an ‘Imperial Circus’, but the current depression militated against him. He faced bankruptcy again and again, and his animals were once sold over his head to pay his creditors. Finally ‘Madame Fillis’s Circus and Wild West Show’ went into opposition against him in Durban in 1910. (Vincenta Fillis, once the world’s first ‘human canon-ball, died in Durban in May 1946 at the age of 75.) Frank Fillis, with the circus that had become a national institution, then left South Africa and operated in the East. He died in Bangkok in Jan. 1922, but his sons continued in the entertainment field. The eldest, Frank, a well-known cinema manager, died in Johannesburg at the age of 80 in March 1961.

During the acute depression that followed the Second Anglo-Boer War the circus was often the only entertainment in the large towns. In addition to Fillis, Bonamici himself, Blake, Willison, Bostock and Wombwell, and F. W. A. Pagel toured during this period. Pagel and his wife survived many vicissitudes to become as much a national institution as Fillis. Born in Pomerania, Wilhelm Pagel was a professional weight-lifter, wrestler and lion-tamer. Madame Pagel also performed with the lions and tigers in her earlier days. Later she left the ring to undertake the entire direction of the complex circus organisation. She was known all over South Africa and frequently caused a sensation by driving about in the streets in an open car with a fully-grown lion beside her. She died at the Pagel training farm for animals near Pretoria in December 1939. The circus continued even after her husband retired in 1944 and after his death at Knysna in October 1948. Bostock’s Circus, based in England, visited South Africa intermittently. One of its clowns, ‘Spuds’ (George Kirk), later joined Pagel, and in 1930 formed his own circus, which was disbanded in 1944.
The cinema and other forms of entertainment were drawing audiences away from the circus except in the smaller towns, where it was a welcome diversion, and in the large towns during holiday seasons. James Boswell, who with his three brothers had come to South Africa in 1910 to perform in a circus, stayed to establish his own. It rivalled Pagel’s as a South African entertainment institution, and in 1956 African Theatres bought an interest in it and kept it on the road. Boswell celebrated his 80th birthday in retirement in April 1961. Competing with Boswell on the Southern African circuit was Wilkie’s Circus, the two amalgamating on 1 July 1963 under the direction of Wilkie, and the combined circus continued to tour. A less ambitious enterprise operating simultaneously was Doyle’s Circus, which was sold in liquidation in 1967. In 1964, the two enterprises were faced by competition on a grand scale when the famous Chipperfield’s Circus was imported lock, stock and barrel from England to settle in South Africa, and opened for the Christmas season in Cape Town. A succession of misfortunes failed to prevent its establishing itself and regularly touring the sub continent.
In 1968 the International Circus Performers’ Award was won by the clown Charlie Bale, the first South African circus artist to be so honoured. Nicknamed the Circus Oscar, the trophy is awarded every five years by an international body to a circus performer whose work is outstanding.
Source:Standard Encyclopedia of Southern Africa

Large township (now part of the city of Kimberley) on the railway from Cape Town to Johannesburg and Rhodesia. As it is also the junction for the line to Bloemfontein, extensive railway installations are situated here. It owes its existence to the discovery of diamonds in 1870 on the farm Dorstfontein. Originally the town was named Du Toit’s Pan after the former owner of the farm, Abraham Paulus du Toit, and a low-lying pan in the vicinity of the farm-house. The mine, and also the N.G. Kerk parish, the oldest in Kimberley, are still called Dutoitspan, but the town was subsequently renamed after Lord Beaconsfield, Britain’s Prime Minister at the time. With the rapid expansion of Kimberley, Beaconsfield became virtually a suburb, and in 1912 it was incorporated in the municipal area of Kimberley.

While extensive slum clearance schemes are under way, Beaconsfield has not changed very much. An interesting feature is the use of the word ‘Place’ instead of street. The former Dutoitspan magistrate’s court and adjoining jail are now used as the post office and police station respectively. The municipal library is of an early style of architecture. Beaconsfield has several historic churches. All Saints was the first permanent Anglican church in Kimberley. The Seventh-Day Adventist church, built of corrugated iron on the corner of Blacking Street and Dyer Place, is the first church of this denomination in South Africa and was to mother this faith in Africa and Australia. Pieter Wessels, owner of the farm Benoudheidsfontein, broke away from the Geref. Kerk in 1885 to observe Saturday as the Sabbath. Eventually eight families followed Wessels, one being that of N. J. de Beer, eldest son of Johannes Nicolaas de Beer who gave his name to De Beers Consolidated Mines. A Nevada miner, William Hunt, arrived in Kimberley from the Australian diggings. He introduced the isolated community to Seventh-Day Adventism, and American clergy came to the diamond-fields. When this church was built, Wessels sold his farm to the De Beers Company for £350,000; it is now Wesselton Mine. The world body of the Seventh-Day Adventists benefited, and followers of this religion were organised into 13 sections throughout the world. Wessels and his brother organised missionary work among the Bantu, financed the building of the Roeland Street church in Cape Town; Wessels also financed the Kellogg Sanatorium in the U.S.A. and founded a home for wayward girls in Chicago. Hunt went to Australia, where he pioneered his religion. Cecil Rhodes donated land in Rhodesia to this church.

The old Dutoitspan cemetery has many interesting pioneer graves, including that of Henrietta Stockdale, an Anglican nun who, in the Kimberley Hospital where she was matron, instituted the world’s first system of registering nurses. During the siege of Kimberley the relief came through Beaconsfield, whose mayor was the first to meet the relieving columns under Gen. French.

Source – Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa 1977

The Catholic history of South Africa is written large upon its coastline. Such names as Cape Cross, Conception Bay, St. Helena Bay, St. Blaize, Santa Cruz, Natal and St. Lucia tell us immediately how very Catholic their origin and development have been. In the second half of the 15th century several expeditions travelled down the west coast, successive explorers going farther south each time. Wherever they landed a stone pillar (padrão) surmounted by a cross was blessed and erected on shore, and we may well surmise that mass was said by a priest who accompanied the ships. A small church was built at Mossel Bay by Joao da Nova in 1501.

Within the next quarter of a century Europe underwent the Reformation. Its effects extended across the seas and little more is heard of Catholicism at the Cape for many years. In 1651 the Dutch settled in Table Bay. They were extremely anti-Catholic, and their hostility was strengthened by the arrival of Huguenot refugees. In 1660 a French bishop, wrecked in Table Bay, was forbidden to say mass on shore. Six Jesuit Fathers landed in 1685 on an astronomical mission, but though they secretly did what they could to attend to the spiritual needs of the few Catholics, they tell us they were not allowed to offer up the Holy Sacrifice on shore and that the Catholics were not allowed to go on board to hear mass.

From 1686 the Catholic Church disappears from the pages of South African history until, on as July 1804, Commissioner-General J. A. de Mist announced religous toleration. The ordinance declared: `All religious societies, which for the furtherance of virtue and good morals worshipped an Almighty Being, are to enjoy in this colony equal protection from the laws’. At once priests came from the Netherlands -Father Joannes Lansink, Jacobus Nelissen and Lambertus Prinsen. A room in the Castle was put at their disposal so that they could say mass for Catholic soldiers. But the following year Sir David Baird ordered the Catholic priests to leave the colony. Ten years passed before another attempt was made to enable them to return.

Lord Charles Somerset informed the Vicar Apostolic of the London district that `all religious denominations are not only tolerated, but entitled to equal privileges in the Colony, according to the fundamental laws of the Batavian Republic, guaranteed to the inhabitants by the capitulation’. But it was two years before negotiations on the admittance of a resident priest at the Cape came to anything. Bishop Edward Slater, a Benedictine, was appointed Vicar Apostolic, but permission for him to reside in Cape Town was refused by the authorities in Downing Street and so his assignment was as Vicar Apostolic of Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope. He arrived in Cape Town on New Year’s Day 1810, but stayed only three weeks. Leaving Fr. Edward Scully in charge, he continued his journey to Mauritius, never to return. Conditions were such that some of the congregation wished to run the Church on Presbyterian lines. Churchwardens sought to dictate to the priest and to control all business, money and properties. This state of affairs persisted for more than ten years, and in consequence no priest stayed longer than a year or two before leaving in disgust; yet under Scully the foundation-stone of a small church in Harrington Street was laid on 28th October 1822. But the materials used were bad, repairs had to be effected even before the building was completed, and in the torrential storms of 1837 it was almost completely washed away.

On 24th August 1837 Mgr. Patrick Raymund Griffith, an Irish Dominican, was consecrated in Dublin as Bishop of Palaeopolis and Vicar Apostolic of the Cape of Good Hope. He arrived in Table Bay on Holy Saturday, 14 April 183 8, along with two other priests, Fathers Burke, O.F.M., and George Corcoran, O.P. Bishop Griffith’s territory stretched from Table Bay to Algoa Bay, from where he journeyed by ox-wagon to Grahamstown, taking seven days. Leaving Burke in charge, Griffith returned to Cape Town on horseback. There were only some 700 Catholics in and around the town, and his funds were meagre. He set up a school, appointing Dr. Aidan Devereux, who had followed him from Ireland, as principal. The barracks in the Castle, where a room had been put at his disposal, would not serve indefinitely as a church, and so he negotiated the purchase of the site on which St. Mary’s Convent and the Bishop’s House stands today, at the foot of Hope Street. All available funds were used in the building of St. Mary’s Cathedral.

On the recommendation of Bishop Griffith, the Holy See subdivided his vast territory. Dr. Devereux was appointed Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern Districts and took up residence at Grahamstown in 1848. Realising the importance of Catholic education, Devereux set out for Europe to obtain nuns for his mission field. At his urging, Pope Pius IX established yet another ecclesiastical division to the north, where Natal was gaining in importance. The care of the new territory was entrusted to the religious congregation of Mary Immaculate, thus ensuring financial support and continuity in personnel. In Paris, Devereux obtained permission for the missionary sisters of the Assumption to come and work in Grahamstown. There Mother Gertrude, familiarly known as ‘Notre Mere’, and her little band of six nuns opened South Africa’s first convent and a school in Jan. 1850. Three Belgian priests accompanied the Bishop and the pioneer nuns, enabling resident priests to be appointed at Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort, and also travelling priests were sent to the outer districts. Fr. Van Cauwelaert went to Graaff-Reinet, Fr. J. J. de Sany to Cradock and Fr. Petrus Hoendervangers undertook the districts of Bedford, Richmond and beyond.

So Catholicism in South Africa at that time meant one bishop and two or three priests in Cape Town, George and Swellendam; a bishop in Grahamstown, and along with him Fr. Thomas Murphy, who a few months later was the first priest to visit Natal. At Fort Beaufort there were 90 Catholics; Fort Hare and Alice had 100 each; King William’s Town, Fort Grey and Fort Peddie 40 each; East London 30. Port Elizabeth, which had begun with only two Catholic families, now had two resident priests and 500 Catholics. At Uitenhage there were 80 Catholics, and in the wide territory served by Fr. Hoendervangers, Somerset East had 70, Richmond 20, Burgersdorp 50, Aliwal North 25, and Colesberg 20. In the garrison town of Bloemfontein, where he settled in 1851, there were about 70 Catholics.
In March 1852 the first band of oblates of Mary Immaculate arrived in Natal under Bishop J. F. Allard, O.M.I. The area entrusted to them stretched from the Great Kei River in the south to Quelimane in the north, and for this vast territory there were only five priests. They began at Pietermaritzburg, and Fr. J. B. Sabon, receiving the sum of £30 from his bishop, was sent to found the mission of Durban. Ten years later the first oblate missionaries crossed the Drakensberg from Pietermaritzburg into Basutoland and were joined in 1864 by the Sisters of the Holy Family, the pioneer nuns among the African people.

When diamonds were found on the Vaal River, the oblate Father Anatole Hidien went from Basutoland to the diggers’ camps round what is now Kimberley. The year 1874 saw the finding of gold at Pilgrim’s Rest, and Fr. Andrew Walshe, O.M.L, was sent there the following year by Bishop Charles Jolivet, O.M.I. (who had succeeded Allard), from Natal. Freedom of Catholic worship was granted in the Transvaal Republic in 1870, and thereafter priests settled at Potchefstroom and Pretoria.

The Catholic Church in South Africa owes much to the vision and zeal of Bishop J. D. Ricards, third Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern vicariate, who, in 1879, brought the Jesuit Fathers, not only to staff his school of St. Aidan’s in Grahamstown, but also to be the pioneers of the faith in Mashonaland. The Dominican sisters of King William’s Town – also brought by Bishop Ricards – joined the Pioneer Column in 1890, and by their devotion to duty and care of the sick have earned an honoured name. To Ricards we also owe the coming of the Trappists under Fr. (later Abbot) Francis Pfanner in 1879. He felt that if any effective missionary work was to be done among the non-European peoples, they would first have to be taught, not merely by word, but by the more effective force of example, the dignity of labour. Today Mariannhill with its cathedral church, round which are grouped many other ecclesiastical and educational buildings, is a show-place of Catholic mission work, and we find the spiritual sons of Francis Pfanner in the dioceses of Mariannhill, Umtata and Bulawayo as well as in countries overseas.

In 1886 a milestone was reached when Pope Leo XIII agreed to Bishop Jolivet’s recommendation and separated the diamond-fields and Basutoland to be a third vicariate under Bishop Anthony Gaughren, O.M.L, making the Transvaal a prefecture under Fr. Odilon Monginoux, O.M.I. About this time also the oblates of St. Francis of Sales began pioneer work in Namaqualand, where within a few decades Bishop Jean-Marie Simon of Pella made the desert blossom forth both materially and spiritually. Meanwhile Fr. Aloysius Schoch, O.M.L, the successor of Fr. Monginoux, was sent as the representative of Church and government to visit Cimbebasia, Windhoek and South-West Africa of today. As a result of his report this territory was also confided to the oblates of Mary Immaculate. Diamonds and gold and all the industrial development which followed brought a great increase in population, with an impetus in the sphere of education. The nuns of the Assumption, who had been the pioneers in 1849, were followed by the Irish Dominican sisters in Cape Town (1863) and Port Elizabeth (1867), by the Holy Family (Loreto) (1864), the pioneers in the Transvaal (1877), Dominican sisters of King William’s Town (also in 1877), including the separate branches at Oakford (1889), Salisbury (1890) and Newcastle (1896), Nazareth sisters (Cape Town) and Holy Cross in Umtata (1883), oblate Sisters of St. Francis (1884) and Precious Blood Sisters (1885). In the last decade of the century the Augustinians (1892), Ursulines (1895), Sisters of Mercy (1897) and Notre Dame in Rhodesia (1899) joined the increasing number of sisterhoods in the work of education, hospitals, and the care of the old and infirm and of orphans. In fifty years the numbers had increased from one congregation of nuns to seventeen. To these must be added the arrival of the Marist Brothers (1867) and the Christian Brothers (1897) for the education of youth.
The outbreak of the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899 brought a severe set-back in practically all spheres of missionary labour. Apart from the fact that the missionaries, few in number, joined up as army chaplains, and the flow of priests from overseas was interrupted, the general work in town and country was upset. Plans for more intense development came after Union in 1910. The Benedictine Fathers took over the northern part of the Transvaal and the Servite Fathers came to help in Swaziland in 1913. The great majority of priests, brothers and nuns who were then working in South Africa were from oversea countries. So when the First World War broke out in 194, the mission field everywhere suffered and once more the ranks were depleted by the need for army chaplains.

Another important milestone was the establishment of the Apostolic Delegation of Southern Africa on 7th December 1922, and the following day Archbishop Bernard J. Gijlswijk, O.P., was consecrated in Rome. He chose Bloemfontein as the most central place for his residence. New vicariates and prefectures were established, and four new congregations of priests arrived. There was not only expansion, but also an intensification of missionary work. Priests were given the opportunity to learn the native languages and to devote themselves solely to work among non-Europeans. South African priests were trained for work among their own people. Seminaries were set up for the training of European and non-European students, and a son of South Africa was raised to the dignity of the episcopate when David O’Leary, O.M.L, was consecrated as bishop for the Transvaal in September 1925, followed a few months later by Bishop Bernard O’Riley in Cape Town.

During all this time the yearly increase in priests and religious was remarkable. From just over 300 priests in 1921, the number grew to over 4000 by 1936. Religious brothers and nuns doubled to over 4000 during the same period. In Basutoland progress was particularly noticeable. When the first oblates founded a mission there in 1862, they were a long way behind the Protestant missionaries who had established themselves thirty years earlier. Yet today Lesotho is the most fruitful of the Catholic mission fields in Southern Africa. The Canadian oblates took the work under their wing during the early thirties; priests and religious increased enormously; and when in October 1937 the 75th anniversary of the foundation was celebrated at Roma, there were over 3000 communicants each morning during the novena.

In 1962, the Church in Basutoland, which is organised under an archbishop at Maseru and bishops at Leribe and Qacha’s Nek, celebrated its centenary. Archbishop Emanuel Mabathoana, O.M.L, is the great-grandson of Moshesh.
Catholic schools, primary and secondary, throughout South Africa are noted for their examination successes as well as for their moral and character training. As in many countries abroad, Catholics are penalised by having to pay twice for education in most parts of South Africa. Whether it be in the day schools or night classes conducted by the first priests in the Eastern and Western Cape and Natal, or in the first convent schools in the diamond and goldfields, the Church has been the pioneer in education. The Sisterhoods stepped in to meet the need for the care of orphans and the destitute.

Archbishop Gijlswijk’s successor in 1945 was Mgr. H. M. Lucas, S.V.D. Since then several new ecclesiastical territories have been established and new bishops appointed. Since Bishop E. Slater, O.S.B., was consecrated m 1818 there have been (to 1973) 94 bishops in Southern Africa. The transfer of the Apostolic Delegate’s residence from Bloemfontein to Pretoria ensured that he was in immediate touch with the authorities to deal with matters of urgency. Questions of Bantu policy, education, etc. arose frequently and demanded an ever watchful eye. An achievement of Archbishop Lucas’s period was the building in Pretoria of a national seminary for the secular clergy, while a similar one was erected in Natal for African (native) students. The latter has since been moved to Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria.

Archbishop Lucas was succeeded in 1953 by Archbishop C. J. Damiano, followed in 1961 by Archbishop F. McGeough, by Archbishop John Gordon in 1967, and by Archbishop Alfredo Polendrini, who is also pro-nuncio to Lesotho, in 1972. The Roman Catholic population of the Republic, the former Protectorates and South-West Africa was as follows in 1971: White, 165 500; non-White, 1 971488; priests, 1909; brothers, 853; sisters, 6568, from 64 different sisterhoods.

Nine South Africans have been elevated to the espiscopate. By 1971 over 200 sons of South Africa had received the priesthood and over 800 women had entered the religious life. These numbers include Whites, Coloured people and Africans.
Cathedrals
When Bishop P. R. Griffith, O.P., arrived in 1838 as the first resident Roman Catholic bishop in the Cape, he acquired a site at the top of Plein Street – Tanners’ Square – and began the building of St. Mary’s Cathedral in 1841. Completed ten years later, it is the mother church of Catholics in South Africa. (See St. Mary’s Cathedral). In striking contrast, Johannesburg, the City of Gold, was not able to build its cathedral until 1960. The influx of diggers and the subsequent expansion of the town had been so rapid that the need was for a number of small churches rather than a large cathedral. In time a central site was purchased, and the present Cathedral of Christ the King was built in Saratoga Avenue. (See Christ the King, Cathedral of.) In Durban, where the cathedral was built in 1903, commercial buildings have risen round it, and with the Indian market near by, the site has become unfit.

The origins of the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa are to be found in Cape Town and in the Baviaans River valley in the Eastern Province. In 1806 a Scottish regiment, the 93rd Southern Fencibles, was posted to the Cape of Good Hope. No chaplains were appointed to regiments at that time, and on their own initiative the men founded a Calvinist Society. In 1812 George Thom, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, arrived at the Cape, and from that society formed a congregation, mainly Presbyterian, although members of other denominations were enrolled. Thom was called to be minister of the Dutch Reformed Church at Caledon, and the congregation which he had formed was left without a minister. In 1818 Dr. John Philip of the London Missionary Society arrived and consented to minister to the congregation. Under his ministry the congregation ceased to be Presbyterian, and no services distinctively Presbyterian were held for four years. Representations were made to the Governor on the forlorn condition of the Presbyterian community, and as a result funds were raised voluntarily, a grant was secured from the Government, and the foundation-stone of the present St. Andrew’s Church in Cape Town was laid in 1827. James Adamson was the first minister, and the church was officially opened in 1829.

Meanwhile the 1810 Settlers had arrived at Algoa Bay and a Scottish company trekked to the Baviaans River valley, where, under the leadership of Thomas Pringle, services were held from the first Sunday of their arrival. A place of worship was erected at Glen Lynden in 1828, and John Pears was called as the first minister. Later on this church was taken over by the Ned. Geref. Kerk. The building still stands and has been proclaimed a historical monument.

From these beginnings the Church expanded as the country developed. Isolated Presbyterian communities sprang up wherever towns or settlements were established, e.g. at Grahamstown, King William’s Town, Queenstown, Port Elizabeth and East London. A similar development took place in Natal (mainly at Durban and Pietermaritzburg) and in the Orange Free State (at Harrismith, Bloemfontein, Bethlehem and other centres). After the discovery of diamonds and gold, congregations were formed at Kimberley and on the Witwatersrand. The Rev. Dr. James Gray of Harrismith conducted the first Presbyterian service in Johannesburg in 1887, in an unfinished building which was to become the Heights Hotel, Doornfontein. This led to the formation of the congregation of St. George’s in 1888, followed by those of Fordsburg, Jeppe, Germiston, Boksburg, Pretoria and Klerksdorp, in 1890. At Bulawayo a congregation was established during the Matabele rebellion. The movement spread in Rhodesia to Salisbury, Livingstone, Gwelo and Umtali.

In view of the growing number of Presbyterian congregations, steps were taken in 1892, through a federal council, toward the establishment of a South African Presbyterian Church. Four presbyteries, those of Cape Town, Kaffraria, Natal and Transvaal, together with the congregation at Port Elizabeth (not then attached to any presbytery), declared their willingness to become constituent parts of a united church, on a basis adopted at a meeting of the above named Federal Council held at King William’s Town in July 1896. As a result, the first general assembly of the united church was held in Durban (17-22 September 1897) under the moderatorship of Dr. John Smith of Pietermaritzburg. In 1898 the recently established congregation at Bulawayo passed a unanimous resolution attaching their congregation to the Presbyterian Church of South Africa. In 1903 the Moderator, James Gray (afterwards Dr. Gray) opened the newly erected church and then went to Salisbury to found a congregation there. As at Bulawayo, the charge at Salisbury, and later the charges at Gwelo, Livingstone and Umtali, attached themselves to the Presbyterian Church of South Africa. In the course of time the Presbyterian Church has expanded, keeping pace with economic development in the countries north and south of the Limpopo, and the vast area from the Cape to the Copperbelt is now ministered to. In 1959 the name was changed to the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa.

Missionary endeavour was an important feature of the Church’s work from the very beginning. St. Andrew’s Church in Cape Town had a missionary society, and still has, work in the early days being carried out among the slave population and the Bantu. In the Baviaans River valley Thomas Pringle held services for the native people. This missionary enterprise has been well maintained and today is carried on among the rural and urban Bantu and among the Coloured people and Indians. Educational work is carried out in Rhodesia in a large number of Church lower primary schools, in the secondary hoarding schools of Mondoro near Salisbury and David Livingstone near Bulawayo, and in an institution at Gloag Ranch, near Bulawayo, which includes an agricultural school.

Other aspects of Christian work have not been neglected. The General Assembly initiated an orphan society in 1905, and a children’s home was established at Queenstown. In King William’s Town a hostel for boys attending Dale College was set up in 1924. Theological students are trained through the divinity faculty at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, and there is therefore no need to recruit men from overseas, as was done for many years. A two-year post academic course of practical training for newly ordained ministers was instituted in Johannesburg in 1971. The Eventide Homes Committee make provision for the aged by endowing rooms and/or flatlets in existing homes for the aged.

The general assembly’s method of administering and maintaining all the Church’s various activities is through a number of standing committees, several of which now have full-time staff. These officials of the Church and their respective departments (church extension, education and training for the ministry, Christian education), together with the Church’s central office and book room, are situated in Johannesburg.

In 1972 the Church celebrated the 75th anniversary of its first general assembly, marking it by the establishment of the Presbyterian Educational Fund of R100 000 to provide bursaries for the education of needy children; by the holding of a national conference of celebration and study on the issues of Christian mission, ministry and renewal; and by the production of a history of the Church.

President Kruger

An essay in historical interpretation

Harry Mosenthal

PROFESSOR J. M. TALMON, Professor of Modern History at the Hebrew University, in an article explaining the purpose of the study of history rejected the view that the aim of history is ‘just to tell what actually happened.’ To him history was ‘a means of self-identification, a way by which we get to know ourselves, by looking at the origins, the concatenation of forces and events, which brought about our situation.’ In this essay, I have not set myself as ambitious an aim as defined by Prof. Talmon. Nevertheless, I hope that I may make a small contribution to a project which still awaits the historian: the writing of the social and cultural story of the development of South African Jewry.

A few years ago, the late Dr. Louis Mirvish, when pleading for the establishment of a Jewish Museum in Cape Town, said: ‘Every community sooner or later arrives at a stage of stability and maturity when it starts examining its past … the mainsprings of its development. We in South Africa have now reached that stage. Already there are signs of a growing interest in the history of our development, and in the course of the next generation or two this will be intensified.’ Although it may be doubted whether the interest in South African Jewish history is as widespread as Mirvish believed, I feel he was right in stressing its importance. We cannot truly understand our present situation unless we look back to our origins and form an assessment of the forces and events which brought us to our present situation.

It is in this spirit that I venture upon this excursion into communal self-knowledge in an attempt to identify some major factors which went into the making of South African Jewry and gave it its distinctive character. This essay makes no claims at completeness. It is an exploratory study of certain aspects which seem to me to be significant. I hope it may serve as a stimulus to others to probe further and more deeply.

Immigration to South Africa
A community, like an individual, may be studied in terms of the interaction of two sets of forces: heredity and environment. I propose to deal almost exclusively with the hereditary aspect (i.e., the type of Jew who came here as an immigrant), and shall content myself with a few general observations on the environmental factors (i.e., the specific South African forces and conditions which impinged upon the Jew who came here from abroad or was born here). The second aspect is, of course, at least as important as the first, but it is an entirely different subject, which requires a study on its own, Jewish immigration to South Africa falls into several clearly defined periods:

Although individual Jews arrived in small numbers during the first 150 years of European settlement (that is, until about 1800), their record does not strictly belong to Jewish history, as they did not profess Judaism, mainly, no doubt, because the constitution of the Dutch East India Company required that all its servants and settlers should be Protestants.

In the second period, which began in the early nineteenth century and continued until about 1880. South Africa received a few thousand Jewish immigrants, mainly from Germany, England and Holland. They established the first Hebrew Congregations, in Cape Town (1841), Grahamstown (1843), Port Elizabeth (1857), Kimberley (1872) and elsewhere. Those were the first groping efforts towards creating organised Jewish group life: small numbers of individuals formed themselves into Hebrew Congregations, consecrated burial grounds, built synagogues, established philanthropic institutions and laid the foundations of a corporate Jewish life.

We need not be surprised that the foundations were rather shaky and the bonds with Judaism rather tenuous, when we bear in mind the relatively small numbers scattered over vast areas, and also the great dearth of Jewish women, which resulted in frequent marriages out of the Jewish faith. It is doubtful whether the devotion of the comparatively few early enthusiasts from England and elsewhere on the Continent could have withstood the impact of the non-Jewish environment in a new land, without the subsequent reinforcements from Western and especially from Eastern Europe. If immigration of Jews to South Africa had ceased in 1860, or even in 1870, little might have remained of the few early congregations, Indeed, today there are few, if any, Jewish descendants left of the men who founded the first Congregation in Cape Town in 1841.

The new stream of immigrants coincided with the Great Divide in South Africa, the discovery and expansion first of diamonds in Kimberley (1869), and then of gold in the Transvaal, especially on the Witwatersrand (1886). which led to the gradual transformation of a backward rural country into a bustling modern industrial society. The fortune-hunters who came from Britain, Germany, France, America and elsewhere to the diamond mines and to the goldfields included numbers of Jews. They had a considerable influence upon the character of Jewish communal life, such as it was, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.

Concurrently, a different element began to reach our shores in increasing numbers I refer to the Jews from Eastern Europe, chiefly from Lithuania, who were destined to outnumber the older residents. These Russian Jews (as they were describe in the Press and in official documents settled at first in and around Cape Town and Johannesburg, but gradually spread over the whole country. They were part of the great exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe, which began in the early eighties, in the flight from political oppression and the search for economic security. Although the main stream of this immigration to South Africa started in the 1880′s, it has been established that individuals in significant numbers arrived earlier. One of the first was Samuel Marks, born in the little town of Neustadt Sugind, close to the Prussian border, who arrived at the Cape in 1868 and may be regarded as the pioneer of the Lithuanian immigration. The numbers grew steadily in the 70′s, and these Yiddish- speaking Jews were soon found in significant numbers in Cape Town, in Kimberley and other parts of the country. Official statistics became available only after the South African War. Nevertheless, it can be conjectured that the Jewish population in 1880 throughout the country was about 4,000. Ten years later it had grown to about 10,000. At the turn of the century it was in the vicinity of 25,000, and in the 1904 official census it had reached a total of some 38,000.’ These figures reflect rather vividly how the Jewish population was growing through the accession of newcomers from abroad. I estimate that in the thirty-year period from 1880 to 1910, some 40,000 Jewish immigrants entered the country. Thereafter, for various reasons, the numbers decreased, with the exception of the years 1924 to 1930. In all, in the half- century 1910 to 1960, I estimate that per haps 30,000 Jewish immigrants entered the country. The bulk of these were East European Jews.

A new type of immigrant began to arrive in the early nineteen-thirties from Germany. The impact of the oppressive Nazi regime was reflected in the steadily growing numbers of German Jews, who came to South Africa from the time that Hitler gained power until the outbreak of World War IT in all, I think, about five or six thousand individuals.

World War II marks the watershed of Jewish immigration to South Africa. Although there was a resumption at the end of the war mainly of relatives who were Joining persons already resident in South Africa immigration ceased to be a significant factor in the growth of the community and dwindled to only a couple of hundred persons per annum.

English and German Influence
We may now look a little more closely at the social and cultural changes resulting from the various streams of immigrants and at the interaction between the diverse groups. We may also try to assess the distinctive contribution which each group made.

The Lithuanians, who came in such large numbers and whose Judaism was of a more intense brand, had a determining influence in the long run on the character of South African Jewry and its institutions, One of the special points of interest in my study is to try to identify some of the ways in which the South African Jewish community reveals the heritage of Eastern Europe, especially of Lithuanian Jewry. But the influence of the earlier immigrants should not be underestimated.

By the turn of the century, the community consisted of three clearly distinguishable groups:

- the “English” Jew, i.e., those born in England or in South Africa, or anglicised Russian Jews;
- the Jews from Germany;
- the Jews from Eastern Europe.

In 1890 (or perhaps a few years earlier) the majority still belonged to the first two groups. In the year 1900. of the 25,000 Jews then in South Africa, the late Dr. Joseph Hertz pointed out that more than half were ‘Russian Jews – not anglicised,’ and at least 3,000 were German Jews. ‘English Jews,’ he said, ‘also formed a considerable portion. and in energy, public spirit and administrative matters, they formed the backbone of the various congregations.’

This is amply borne out by the personnel of the committees of the leading institutions at that time. They were at the head of the synagogues, of charitable organisations, of the Board of Deputies, of the Zionist societies and of many other institutions.

Culturally, the English Jews at the Cape carried on the traditions of Anglo-Jewry. Chief Rabbi Israel Abrahams has described the relationship thus:
‘From its inauguration, the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation had always maintained the closest association with Anglo Jewry. A number of factors combined to make the nexus strong. The Colony was a part of the Empire, and English Jewry was regarded as the Mother Community. Many of the early immigrants hailed directly from England, or came to South Africa after a period of sojourn in Britain; they consequently looked upon the latter as their Home Country. Family ties and business interests served further to cement the relationship between Cape Town Jews and their English co-religionists. Moreover, the Ministers of the Tikvath Israel Congregation had all come from England, and the Congregation had invariably acknowledged the British Chief Rabbi as their spiritual head, and accepted his ruling in all ecclesiastical matters as authoritative and decisive. In fund-raising, too, there prevailed a spirit of reciprocity. The Cape Town community often contributed to philanthropic campaigns launched by British Jewry, and, conversely, donations to the Cape Town Synagogue were, on occasion, received from Jews in England.’

Early Jewish Ministers
At that time, the synagogue and religious observance were the main expressions of Jewish life and it was in these spheres that the links with Anglo Jewry were especially noteworthy. As Rabbi Abrahams says, all the ministers of the Cape Town Congregation Tikvath Israel came from England, usually on the recommendation of the Chief Rabbi of Britain acting in consultation with a lay committee. Among these, Joel Rabinowitz (who exercised such a decisive influence), though born in Poland in 1828 and educated at a Rabbinical school there, immigrated to England at the age of 24, later ministered to the Congregation at Birmingham, and at the age of 31 took up his appointment in South Africa, After his resignation in 1882, his successor was the Rev. Frederick Abraham Ornstien, who, born in England, had ministered to the Portsmouth Congregation and also spent some time in Australia, Next came the Rev. Alfred Philip Bender: English-born, an M.A. graduate of Cambridge, he typified the ‘English gentleman’. Elsewhere, too, the ministers appointed to congregations came from England, for instance, the Rev. Samuel Rappaport, who arrived in Port Elizabeth in 1872, after having ministered to the Portsmouth Congregation; the Rev. M. Mendelssohn, of Bristol, who came to Kimberley in 1878, and was succeeded in 1884 by the young short-lived Rev. A. Ornstien, also of London.

Not only was the Nusach of prayer based on the English model, the position of the Chief Rabbi in Britain was at first unquestioned.

He was looked to in such matters as approving conversions and authorising the appointment of ministers, shochetim and marriage officers. In lay matters, too, there was a tendency to look to English precedents. Thus, when the need arose in 1903 for a representative Jewish body. the first thought was to set up a branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association. When that was rejected in favour of a strictly South African body, the name was taken from the ‘Board of Deputies of British Jews,’ although the circumstances here were very different from those prevailing in Britain and the Deputies’ here had quite a different status than that of their British counterparts.
In many respects, the Russian Jews did not find the English pattern congenial and for a period, as we shall see, there were conflicts between the newcomers and the older established group. Nevertheless, in the long run it was the Anglo-Jewish pattern which, at any rate in its externals, prevailed in South Africa, although it underwent important changes in its spirit and inner content. In other words, the basic trend was for the ‘Russian’ Jews to become acculturated to the older English-speaking section. It was a case of pouring Litvak spirit into the Anglo Jewish bottles.

Thus the pattern was established which increasingly prevailed with the passage of the years. Singer’s Prayer Book (in which the Hebrew text was accompanied by the Rev. Singer’s English translation) and later Dr. Hertz’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, came to be used in most of the synagogues. Where the vernacular was used during the service (as in the Prayer for the Royal Family and later for the State President of the Republic, and in the sermon) the medium was English, When pulpits fell vacant in the older-established congregations, the usual practice was to look for incumbents among ministers trained in Britain; and when the appointee was born elsewhere and was not fluent in English – as happened to a growing extent, especially in the newer and smaller congregations – he tried to acquire the English language as soon as possible.

Taking Root
Concurrently, however, the congregations took on more and more of a South African colouring. The organisational link with Anglo-Jewry grew weaker, and finally ceased altogether, as the local Jewish communities became more firmly rooted, The British Chief Rabbi’s authority in ecclesiastical matters fell away very soon (when Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz visited South Africa in 1926 on his pastoral tour of the Dominions, he would not have dreamed of claiming any ecclesiastical jurisdiction here, and he was welcomed primarily as a former encumbent of a pulpit in Johannesburg).

Since there has sometimes been misunderstanding on the language aspect, it should be pointed out that the use of English as the vernacular was not a deliberate choice as against Afrikaans. The synagogues merely carried on a tradition which had become entrenched in the first instance at the Cape. In those early times, Hollands (and still more so Afrikaans) was never considered a competitor. And since the Jewish community tended increasingly to live in the large urban centres, where the language of the home, the school and the street was English, it was only natural that it also became the medium of the synagogue, in those contexts in which the vernacular was at all used. (There were a few exceptions in the platteland communities.)

As already mentioned, there was a not insignificant number of German Jews at this time. What impact did they have upon communal life? In this respect, the development in South Africa differed markedly from that in the United States, where the considerable German Jewish immigration during the years 1840 to 1870 established the main pattern in religious life, philanthropic institutions and communal organisation generally – a pattern which persisted well into the 20th century, until challenged by the East European Jews and their descendants.

In South Africa, by contrast, the German Jews do not seem to have made a specifically ‘German-Jewish’ contribution to communal life – possibly because as a group they did not have strong religious and cultural ties with their homeland (indeed, many of them were rather estranged from Judaism), or because they were too few in number or because the English tradition was already too strongly entrenched. However, one should not underestimate the role which individual German Jews played in communal leadership – as seen, for instance, in the careers of persons like Moritz Leviseur and Wolf Ehrlich in Bloemfontein; Sig fried Raphaely, Emanuel Mendelssohn, Bernard Alexander and LI Reyersbach in the Transvaal.

‘Russian’ VS ‘English’ Jews
‘We turn next to the interesting theme of the interaction between the “Russian” Jews (as they were called in official documents and the general Press) and the older Jewish population. Such contemporary records as survive (regrettably, there are not many) show that there was a period of misunderstanding and friction in various matters – religious, social and cultural. Louis Herrman thus describes one of the early clashes between the two elements in Cape Town:
‘In Cape Town many of the ‘foreigners,’ as they were at first styled, would not join the congregation. About 1886 they began to form a separate ‘Association’ in spite of everything the Rev. Mr. Ornstien could do to persuade them to come in. The Committee attempted at first to conciliate them by voting £50 towards the salary of the Shochet, to kill for all, members and non- members alike. But the ‘foreigners’ engaged the services of a Shochet who had not the approval of the Chief Rabbi, to the scandal of the Rev. Mr. Ornstien, who corresponded voluminously with London, seeking interdiction from what he recognised as headquarters, but which those of whose conduct he disapproved did not recognise at all.

‘It was the conflict between East European and West European Jewry. The ‘Russian’ Jew looked upon the English as heathenish and ignorant.’ considered parts of Jewish ritual important that the others considered trivial, and trivial what the others thought weighty. The two pronounced Hebrew with a different accent. There were trifling differences in custom. The one used Yiddish and believed it to be the Jewish language, and the other despised it as a debased jargon.
‘They both became slightly anti-semitic from opposite directions and forgot the toleration which a people that so long suffered intolerance ought to remember. And so the seeds were sown for a crop of dis trust and dislike that would give rise in time to separate institutions.’

The differences between the older Anglicised Jews and the ‘greene’ element were manifested first in the religious field, and resulted in sharp conflicts and often in actual splits in many of the congregations. In Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Johannesburg and other places, the newcomers hived off to establish congregations of their own. Since the newcomers were not a homogeneous group, but had strong parochial ties with their home towns and villages, a large number of independent landsmanschaften came into existence, many of the latter established separate houses of prayer and study in which they followed the liturgical traditions of their Lithuanian origins.
What occurred in Oudtshoorn – nicknamed the ‘Jerusalem of South Africa,’ because of the intensive quality of its Jewish life – revealed the degree of divisiveness among the Litvaks themselves. The older synagogue in Queen Street was regarded as ‘too anglicised’ by some of the newcomers. The outcome was the building of the St. Johns Street Synagogue in 1892, which was nicknamed the ‘Greene’ Shul, while the Queen Street Congregation was called the ‘Englishe’ Shul, The differences between the two have thus been described:

‘A spirit of rivalry, edged on occasion by open dissension, marked for many years the relationship of the two congregations, although the members of both Kehilloth emanated from Lithuania and were reared in an almost identical cultural and social environment. Actually the main line of demarcation consisted in the fact that most of the worshippers at Queen Street hailed from Shavli – a city – and those who attended service at St. John’s Street came from Kelm. The older congregation whose members considered themselves socially superior to the Kelm Jews, preserved more decorum but met less frequently for worship. The newer congregation, on the other band, regarded their Shavli co-religionists as ignoramuses in matters spiritual, and followed a more orthodox mode of synagogal activity, which included daily services and regular Talmudic discourses.

‘Each congregation made its distinctive contribution to the religious schooling of the younger generation. The ‘English Shool’ was responsible for the establishment of the Jewish school in 1930, where Hebrew and the tenets of the Jewish faith were taught as an integral part of the general school syllabus. The ‘Greene Shool,’ not satisfied with the standard of Hebrew at the Jewish school, opened a Talmud Torah conducted on East European lines, which continued to function till 1920.

Divisions and Conflicts
These divisions and differences were found also in other spheres of Jewish life. For example, there was almost a crisis in the Chevra Kadisha in Johannesburg in the late nineties:
‘Like most of the early organisations, it was started by the ‘aristocratic’ elements, the English and German Jews, who were used to Western decorum and were conscious of social superiority, With the influx of East European Jews, causes of friction arose both as to personnel and procedure. The newcomers cared nothing for ‘manners. They accused the powers in command of dictatorship. So acute was this division that there was talk of a split. The move was quashed and good feeling was eventually restored by the tact of the leaders and by the gradual fusion of the diverse elements into the body politic of the community. By the end of 1897, harmony reigned; the Society’s Boardroom was neutral territory’, and the Chevra Kadisha was even instrumental in bringing together in amity ‘all the different congregations and benevolent associations’.”
Similarly, when steps were taken soon after the Anglo-Boer War to set up a representative Jewish body in the Transvaal , the Board of Deputies – the Russian Jews were at first unwilling to accept the leadership of an anglicised Jew like Max Langermann. A journalist in 1903, in a report to the Hebrew paper Hamelitz, wrote:
Our brethren from Russia, knowing the cold attitude of Jewish leaders in England and their ignorance of the present-day needs of Judaism and the Jews, and aware especially of the disfavour with which they regard a large variety of occupations, including 133 tailors and outfitters, 89 shoemakers, 83 builders (carpenters, bricklayers, contractors, etc.), 60 clerks and shop assistants, 50 travellers; and in smaller numbers, butchers, cattle-dealers and speculators, cabinetmakers and other furniture workers, watchmakers and jewellers. engineers, mechanics and blacksmiths, bakers, barbers, etc. Ministers of religion, synagogue officials and Hebrew teachers numbered in all 17.

As might be expected, it was mainly the younger, more adventurous type who had left the old country to seek a home in South Africa. Twenty-three per cent. were under 21 on their arrival here (some were in their teens, anything from 14 to 19 years of age): the age group 21 to 25 at the time of arrival constituted 28 per cent., and those in the 26 to 30 age group numbered 20 per cent.; the over forties constituted 8 per cent.
All the individuals who formed the subject of this study were, of course, males applying for naturalisation. The article does not give information on their marital status, but it may be assumed that a large proportion, especially among the younger age group, were unmarried. This feature of the pattern of the early immigration of East European Jews must constantly be borne in mind when trying to understand the social religious and cultural impact of that immigration. There was for long a great preponderance of males, whether unmarried or husbands temporarily separated from wives whom they had left behind until they established themselves in the new country.

It took many years before the proportion between males and females became more normal. In the first official census in 1904 that is after almost 20 years of continuous East European immigration – the males outnumbered the females by two to one: 25,864 males against 12,237 females. In 1911 the figures were 27,820 males as against 19,099 females; in 1918 there were 32,688 males as against 26,073 females; and in 1926. 39,014 males against 33,155 females. By 1951, however, males outnumbered females by less than 2,000.
Article by Gustav Saron. (South African Jewry 1965)

Encylopedia of South African Copyright : Media 24 /Naspers.

To Jan van Riebeeck goes the credit for having made the first attempt to provide services for the travelling public in South Africa. Barely two years after the establishment of the settlement at Table Bay, in 1654, he submitted for the consideration of Geraert Hulst, Director-General of the Dutch East India Company, whose ship Parel was lying in the bay, a request that he (Van Riebeeck) provide, for those visitors for whom facilities could not be furnished at the Fort, ‘a boardinghouse (ordinaris), the keeper to be supplied from the Company’s stores and gardens . . .’ 

Within another two years the Council of Policy, presided over by Van Riebeeck himself, approved a request from ‘the housewife Annetje de Boerin, wife of the Company’s gardener, Hendrick Boom, on account of her eight children, to take out the family income by opening an inn for the feeding and accommodation of men going and coming in passing ships’. The principal condition attached was that she must buy all her liquor from the Company’s own store – the first instance in South Africa of what is today called a ‘tied house’.

On 20 Sept. 1656 Annetje’s establishment met with its first competition when Jannetje Boddijs, of Doesburg, wife of the garrison sergeant, was permitted to open another tavern on similar terms. A fine was to be imposed on any member of the community who, during his working hours, indulged in ‘debauches’. From that date the liquor trade has played a major part in the South African hotel industry.

On a visit to the Cape in Oct. 1657, the Commissioner Rijckloff van Goens sr. confirmed the grant of an innkeeper’s licence to Sergeant Jan van Harwarden, to whom was allocated ‘part of an old sheepfold’ at the Fort as accommodation for travellers. From then on, the number of inns increased, most of them being of a primitive type. Among them may be mentioned De Gouden Anker, De Witte Swaen, De Laatste Penning.

As a rule the lodgers were sailors or soldiers whose demands were modest and who expected shelter for a few slivers a night. Drunkenness and violence were so frequent that the more law-abiding and prosperous strangers, unwilling to use these facilities, usually found lodging in private homes. Not only were the standards higher there, but a steady increase in the demand frequently led to the conversion of such homes into boardinghouses. Describing conditions during the 17305, O. F. Mentzel wrote: ‘Board and lodging can be obtained at these small hostelries for 34 slivers a day; wine is extra, unless it is supplied as part of the meal . . . What has been said above of humble townsmen applies even more forcibly to prominent wealthy burghers, at whose houses captains, superior officers and distinguished visitors sojourn temporarily. The charges and consequently the profits are higher, but the methods are very much the same. At these fashionable houses, board and lodging costs one rix-dollar per diem, with the style of accommodation and the quality of the table of a high standard. Here again extras make the bill mount up.

‘Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the famous French novelist, visiting the Cape in 1768, describes the efforts of rival hosts to secure lodgers from passing ships by sending representatives in boats out into the roadstead. Few records survive of these early hostelries, but we know that the Abbe De la Caille patronised a boarding-house in Strand Street, the site of which is today marked by a memorial tablet. Captain James Cook, the explorer, when he visited the Cape in yes, procured quarters for himself and members of his staff with one Brand, at the rate of half-a-crown a day, ‘for which we were provided with victuals, drink and lodging’.

Hotels in the modern sense made their appearance at the Cape soon after the first British occupation in 1795, the earliest being the Old Thatched Tavern, facing Greenmarket Square, which, despite the disappearance of the original straw roof early in the 19th century, survived, at any rate in name, until 1970. The oldest existing hotel in South Africa seems to be the Houw Hoek Inn in the Houhoek Pass (between Sir Lowry’s Pass and Caledon), which, according to tradition, was founded about 1834.

Very well known in those days in Cape Town was the London Hotel in Hour Street, as well as Morison’s.

Hotel at No. 6 Keizersgracht (now Darling Street), established about 1800 by a Scot of that name. William Wilberforce Bird, in his ‘Notes on the Cape of Good Hope’, described his stay at Morison’s in 1820: ‘We are moderately comfortable, and at a somewhat reduced cost. The charge is six rix-dollars a day, including all expenses. The house is upon the plan of an English boarding-house. A public breakfast at nine; luncheon or tiffin, as it is called, after the Indian fashion (a most essential meal, consisting of meats hot and cold, fruits, wine, etc.) at one; dinner at half-past six. This method is usual at the Cape.

‘Standards of comfort were raised with the opening in 1821 of the St. George’s Hotel at the foot of St. George’s Street, which lasted until the end of the century. Countless others followed, notably Poole’s Hotel in New Street (now Queen Victoria Street), particularly frequented by officials and parliamentarians; Widdow’s Masonic Hotel in Grave Street (now Parliament Street), the resort of Freemasons; and a number of others in the suburbs, notably the Vineyard (on the site of the present Vineyard Hotel in Newlands) and Rathfelder’s, on the way to Constantia. Several early hostelries even gave their names to suburbs, for instance, Drie Koppen, forerunner of Mowbray. Farmer Peck’s Inn at Muizenberg, opened in 1825, was one of the first seaside hotels. Renamed the Grand during the Second Anglo-Boer War, it survived into the 20th century. This had, of course, no connection with the Grand Hotel in Cape Town.

Improved amenities were to be noticed in Cape hotels during the course of the 19th century, especially after the introduction of railways had given a stimulus to travel. In 1893 the Union Steamship Company led the way by opening its own hotel in Cape Town the Grand in Strand Street repeatedly rebuilt and finally demolished in 1973. The establishment of the Grand Hotel led, six years later, to an even more ambitious undertaking by the Castle Steamship Company, headed by Sir Donald Currie, who established a first-rate hotel on the Mount Nelson estate in the Gardens. Designed by English architects and managed at first by a Swiss expert, Emil Cathrein, the Mount Nelson from the outset attracted an exclusive clientele and during the Second AngloBoer War was the unofficial headquarters of the British army and harboured prosperous refugees from the Witwatersrand (hence its nickname ‘The Helots’ Rest’).

Development of hotels in other parts of the country proceeded more slowly, but as early as 1808 there was already an inn beside the warm baths at Caledon. The arrival of the 1820 Settlers gave an impetus to English names and to such customs as the ‘ordinary’ (defined as a fixed-price meal in a public eatinghouse) in the Eastern Province. Among the earliest hotels in Port Elizabeth was the still existing Phoenix, dating back to 1840, while in Grahamstown the Cheshire Cheese (the hotel no longer exists) and similar names reminded the emigrants of the ‘Old Country”

The Boer tradition of private hospitality inhibited the development of hotels in the republics and, although by degrees this factor receded, for a long time both Durban and Pietermaritzburg were in advance of Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom and Pretoria in this respect. The Plough Hotel was one of the earliest in the Natal capital, while, in honour of Prince Alfred, Durban’s leading hostelry was, in 1860, named the Royal, an appellation which persists with great frequency elsewhere.Wayside hotels throughout South Africa were notoriously bad, primitive in their facilities and usually constructed of corrugated iron. Their condition became even more noticeable after the discovery of diamonds, and strangers arriving in Kimberley were frequently offered nothing but canvas. None the less, some of the earlier hotel-keepers there, such as Mrs. Jardine, acquired a reputation for good service and good food. Rough-and-ready were the conditions at early mining centres like Pilgrim’s Rest, Barberton and Johannesburg. In 1886, within a few months of the founding of Johannesburg, the Central Hotel opened in Commissioner Street. It was one of the first brick structures on the gold-fields. Height’s Hotel, one of the leading establishments on the Witwatersrand, dated from 1887, but was demolished some eighty years later. Another early Johannesburg hotel, the Great Britain, in the suburb named City and Suburban, was erected in 1888 and demolished in the 1960s.Barnato and Rhodes helped to produce a revolution in hotel-keeping standards – the former by starting the enterprise which developed into the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg, the latter by causing De Beers to put up a fine hotel on the outskirts of Kimberley and the Chartered Company to sponsor the Grand Hotel at Bulawayo. Equipped in 1906 by the famous London firm of blaring & Gillow at a cost of £750 000, the Carlton’s 200 rooms set an entirely new standard. In Durban, too, there were radical changes, following the opening, about 1880, of the original Beach Hotel, forerunner of the array that today lines the Marine Parade. Here the construction of the Hotel Edward in 1909 further improved the situation, helping to attract the investment of large sums in modern buildings.Hotel development proceeded more slowly in Bloemfontein, where the first hostelries included the Vrystaat Hotel in the 1860′s.

At Pretoria, too, the first hostelries were almost rural in their simplicity, notably L. Taylor’s Edinburgh Hotel in the seventies. Polley’s, originally the Transvaal Hotel, was for many years the premier rendezvous in the Transvaal capital. A still existing early hotel there is the Residentie. Mention must also be made of individual enterprise in unusual places, such as the Hotel Milner, opened by J. D. Logan at Matjiesfontein in the 1880′s, which became a resort popular with many eminent travellers.

After a lapse of generations, the place underwent rejuvenation in the 1970s.In 1882 Anders Ohlsson took over the brewery of the Chevalier Jacob Letterstedt in Newlands, Cape Town; this he modernised and greatly expanded. Ever since his time large South African breweries and liquor firms have been active in the hotel-keeping field, more especially through financial support of lessees; this was the system of ‘tied houses’. Chains of hotels have been relatively few in South Africa until comparatively recent times. Here a milestone was the founding, about 11930, of African Amalgamated Hotels Ltd., owners of leading establishments in Johannesburg and coastal cities.Attempts to improve the standards of hotel-keeping by official action go back to the beginning of the present century, but no practical steps were taken for many years. In 1936 Prof A. J. Norval, of Pretoria, prepared an authoritative survey of the situation in South Africa, published in London under the title. The tourist industry – a national and international survey. This helped to stimulate interest, but not until 1945 was the South African Tourist Corporation established, and only in 1965 was compulsory inspection and classification of hotels introduced. This is now universally enforced, being indicated by grading with varying numbers of stars (up to five) by the Hotels Board. Largely because of this, the rising numbers of well-to-do tourists, and the general influx of capital, even from the United States of America, there has been a sudden upsurge of hotel-building throughout the country. This is still in progress and in it many large companies are involved. 

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