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The Missing Link in Theal's Career: The Historian as Labour Agent in the Western Cape

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Christopher Saunders
Christopher Saunders*
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Extract

George McCall Theal, most prolific of South African historians, deserves a modern biography. In the few, very inadequate, accounts of his life that are available there is no mention of his work as a labour agent in the western Cape. Bosman mentioned that he visited Stellenbosch and Tulbagh in 1878, but did not say what he was doing there. Babrow admits that she did not know what his first formal civil service post was. Immelman misleadingly suggests that it was a post in the Colonial Treasurer's Department, when in fact he did not join that department until March 1879.

This ignorance is not altogether surprising for, while Theal himself in his later published work and in the evidence he gave to parliamentary select committees in 1895 and 1906 provided a fair amount of information about his career before May 1878 and after March 1879, he did not say what he had done between those dates, almost as if he did not wish to remember it. In his History of the Boers in South Africa, indeed, he wrote that “when the war was over [referring to the Cape-Xhosa war, which ended in May 1878] I asked for and obtained the charge of the Colonial Archives preserved in Cape Town,” which is totally inaccurate. In the relevant volume in his History of South Africa, he mentioned that he was asked to superintend Oba's Xhosa in the Victoria East district in December 1877, and later that he had served as special magistrate at Tamacha in the King William's Town district in 1881, but there are no other references to his own career.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 7 , 1980 , pp. 273 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1980

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References

NOTES

1. Bosman, I.D., Dr. George Theal as die Geskiedskrywer van Suid-Afrika (Amsterdam, 1932), 35.Google Scholar

2. Babrow, M., “A Critical Assessment of Dr. George McCall Theal,” unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1962, 155.Google Scholar

3. Immelman, R.F.M., “George McCall Theal” in Theal, G.M., ed., Basutoland Records, I (reprint, Cape Town, 1964), 4.Google Scholar Cf. 3. The same error is to be found in Böeseken, A.J., “Theal as Baanbreker,” South African Archives Journal, 1(1959), 33–42.Google Scholar

4. Theal, , History of the Boers in South Africa (London, 1887), x.Google Scholar

5. Theal, , History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884, 1, (London, 1919), 80, 137.Google Scholar

6. Ibid, 122-25.

7. His correspondence as Government Agent with Oba and with the Civil Commissioner of Alice between December 1877 and April 1878 is printed in Cape Parliamentary Papers (CPP) A31-1878.

8. Ibid, 39. Theal's previous efforts to get individuals to move westward had not been successful, ibid, 27.

9. CPP, A22-1906, 15.

10. He later recalled that he had “entered the Civil Service…on the invitation of the Government, and with a promise of suitable employment:” CPP A22-1906, Appendix.

11. Government Notice 222, issued in King William's Town 25 February, is given in CPP A42-1879.

12. N.A. 401, Stevens to Secretary for Native Affairs (SNA), 8 September 1879; Theal, , History… 1873 to 1884, 1:122–23.Google Scholar Cf. ibid, 126-27.

13. CPP A43-1879.

14. N.A. 400, Clinton to Mills, 2 May 1878. Dr. S.A. Clinton, who brought this to the government's attention, was then made medical superintendent to look after the Africans in Cape Town and acted in that capacity until the hospital attached to the Kafir Depot was closed down in October 1879.

15. N.A. 400, Secretary, Town Council to SNA, 17 May 1878.

16. N.A. 400, Theal to SNA, 15 May, 18 May, 25 May, 14 June and 10 July 1878.

17. N.A. 400, Theal to SNA, 22 July 1878. There was a high death rate among young children at all the depots; Theal reported that “in the case of infants, very few mothers are able to supply them with natural food.”

18. N.A. 401, Theal to SNA, 12 and 19 February 1879.

19. A young African working in Cape Town alleged that the women and children had been ill-treated and forced to leave against their wishes. Saul Solomon raised the matter in the Cape Assembly and the Aborigines Protection Society took it up in London. Stevens, who was in charge of the Africans in Cape Town, gave his version in a letter of 17 July 1879 printed in CPP A34-1879. The Kafir Depot was closed in May, though the hospital remained open until October.

20. N.A. 400, Theal to SNA, 1 October 1878.

21. Theal, , History… 1873 to 1884, 1:124–25.Google Scholar Theal went on to make the point that when the Africans returned “home,” they found they had to live elsewhere.

22. N.A. 400, Theal to SNA, 2 December 1878. He added that some farmers dismissed them after six months to avoid having to begin to pay them a cash wage.

23. N.A. 401, Theal to Bright, 19 February 1879, marginal note by Ayliff. Ayliff's irritation is not surprising: the operation cost the government £29,607 (CPP A42-1879) and yet, with the desertions, the farmers of the western Cape once again vociferously complained of a labor shortage. It was argued before a parliamentary select committee in August 1879 that, because the eastern Cape Africans had deserted in such large numbers to return to their homes, Mozambican labor was to be preferred: CPP A26-1879, esp. 44.

24. N.A. 401, Theal to SNA, 12 July 1879.

25. CPP, A28-1881, Theal to SNA, Tamacha, 5 April 1881.

26. Though his Kaffir Folklore was not published until 1882. See Theal, , History of the Boers, xi.Google Scholar He presented some of the oral traditions he collected from leading Africans in the Ciskei and Transkei to the newly-formed South African Historical Society in 1918 under the title “The Kaffir Speaks” (copy in the University of Cape Town Archives, W.A. Norton Collection).

27. Theal, , History… 1873 to 1884, 1:125.Google Scholar

28. N.A. 401, Arnold to Stevens, 6 November 1879.

29. Babrow, , “Theal,” 153.Google Scholar

30. CPP, C1-1895, 15.

31. Ibid, 16.

32. Babrow, “Theal,” ch. II.

33. Peires, J.B., “A History of the Xhosa c.1700–1835,” M.A. thesis, Rhodes University, 1976, 34.Google Scholar

34. Theal, , History… 1873 to 1884, 1:299–300, 175.Google Scholar

35. Theal, History of the Boers, Preface. Cf. Theal, , ed., Catalogue of South African Books and Pamphlets (Cape Town, n.d.), 295.Google Scholar

36. Marais, J.S., Maynier and the First Boer Republic (Cape Town, 1944), vi.Google Scholar