D1.8.29: [Untitled]

D1.8.29: [Untitled]

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek states that despite the policy standstill after the constitutionally grey Kaffrarian Annexation Bills, the legislature should still handle unrelated matters. Legislators' plan of so-called 'Separation'-of the colony into two provinces-should follow after meeting the conditions for federalism. He feels that the colony is barely large enough (population-wise?) to justify having a local parliament. Political parties should possess distinct ideologies or 'principles', unlike the regional cliques of East and West. Lacking ideational pluralism impoverishes the system, and representatives should push beyond party politics. Territorial divisions create hostility and a detrimental insular preoccupation with each locality's unique experience and well-being. Bleek strongly disapproves of Solomon's uncharacteristic motion on Fingoe passes, which he calls harassment, and recounts some historical injustices of such despotic class legislation. He subsequently comments on the 'extreme harshness [of passport system legislation] towards Black neighbours' proposed by rogue frontier farmers. This cruelty is more prevalent there than in the Western districts. The Graham's Town Parliament's treatment of natives is reminiscent of Prussian (and Russian?) despotism.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

11 May 1865

Two cut-out columns of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped).

Kaffrarian Annexation Bills (hinder domestic policy), Separation (dividing the colony into two provinces), political parties (lack pluralism), Mr Solomon (motion on Fingoe passes), Fingoe (passes for), continental despotism (doctrine of), farmers (rogue), certificates of citizenship (shooting pass-less Kafirs), Graham's Town Parliament (its treatment of natives)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. The Cape Colony Census of 1865 records a population of 496,381. According to the civil servant, Wilberforce Bird, the area of the Cape Colony in 1822 was 331,907 km² (Wilmot & Chase, 1869: 268). That was larger than the area of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, respectively. Bleek appears averse to passbook systems. It is unclear if Bleek's remark about the moderate treatment of natives by the Graham's Town Parliament is a paraprosdokian, given his general theme of continental despotism accompanied by the misleading example of the Russian Czar's treatment of his 'greatest nobles' followed by the restricted movements of Prussian subjects visiting the capital by their despotic Hohenzollern king. Bleek recommends abandoning the passport system for frontier natives entirely.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.