D1.8.60: [Untitled]

D1.8.60: [Untitled]

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek reports that authorities are at an impasse, unable to increase taxation or meaningfully reduce expenditure without harming the public good. There is a considerable debt which will increasingly augment future spending. Hopefully, the colony's situation will shift and allow for fewer loans as it attempts to cover its debts and pursues financial self-sufficiency by developing all profitable resources. The government's administrative branch is under-using resources like forests and open land. He cites the unapplied, vacant Cape Flats as an example, overseen by a Superintendent of White Sands Plantations who ought to apply themselves to the area's improvement. No human assistance is provided to this conservator, making their impact minimal and unlikely to increase the Cape District's resources soon. Colonel Hill, both Magistrate and Civil Commissioner of Cape Town, the wealthiest and most populous district, is too busy to burden further. Unrelatedly, rotten Cape affairs see incompetent superiors over-deligating critical tasks to their non-vested or unelected subordinates. Over-deligating leads to general inefficacy as clerks and secretaries manage unwieldy things unconfidently. Department heads need the know-how to complement their authority and must fend off stagnation by aspiring toward progress. The affairs of Civil Commissioners and Magistrates require separating, despite the cost. Magistrates need not be so numerous as seen in the Winelands. Extending a civil commissioner's jurisdiction becomes tenable when separated from magisterial duties.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

05 July 1866

Two cut-out columns of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped). The cancelled bottom-right section of text concerning Kotzé, after the section break, is likely not by Bleek.

Reforms (at the Cape), Cape Flats (large government land), Superintendent of White Sands Plantations (or Superintendent of Drift Sands Plantations), Civil Commissioner of Cape Town, Colonel Hill, Civil Commissionerships (the Cape District should not include Stellenbosch), Divisional Council, Stellenbosch (should not be include in Cape District Civil Commisionerships), magistracy (Paarl and Stellenbosch should each have their own magistrates)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.