Natalia 17 (1987) Complete

THE NATAL SOCIETY OFFICE BEARERS, 1986-1987
President: Mr M.I.C. Daly

Vice-Presidents: Dr I. Clark
H. Lundie
S.N. Roberts
Professor C de B. Webb
Trustees: M.I.C Daly
Cr Miss P. A. Reid
S.N. Roberts
Fellow of the Natal Society: Cr Miss P.A. Reid
Treasurers: Messrs Dix, Boyes and Company
Auditors: Messrs Thornton-Dibb, Van der Leeuw
& Partners
Chief Librarian: Mrs S.S. Wallis

Secretary: P. C G. McKenzie
COUNCIL
Elected Members: M.I.C Daly (Chairman)
S.N. Roberts (Vice-Chairman)
Dr F.C Friedlander
R.Owen
W. G. Anderson
A.D.S. Rose
Professor A.M. Barrett
T.B. Frost
I.M. Deane
Professor W.R. Guest (co-opted)
Associate Member
in terms of Rule 23(m): F.I.H. Martin, MEC
City Council Representatives: Cr N. M. Fuller
Cr W.l.A. Gilson (died March 1987)
Cr L. Gillooly
Cr H. Dyason
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE OF NATALIA

Editor: T.B. Frost
Dr W.H. Bizley
M.H. Comrie
J.M. Deane
Professor W.R. Guest
Ms M.P. Moberly
Mrs S.P.M. Spencer
Miss I. Farrer (Hon. Secretary)
Natalia 17 (1987) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2010

Cover Picture
The shale facade of Government House.
home of colonial governors beforc Union
and of the Natal Training College from 1912 to 1987.
(Photograph: T.B. Frost)
SA ISSN 0085 3674
Printed by Kendall & Strachan (Ply) Ltd., Pietermaritzburg

Contents
Page
EDITORIAL .. 5
REPRINT
The Centenary of Pietermaritzburg
G.H. Calpin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
NATAL SOCIETY LECTURE

Heraldry in Natal
F. G. Brownell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
ARTICLE
Pietermaritzburg - The Missing Decades
W. H. Bizley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 25
ARTICLE
Douglas Livingstone - Natal Poet?
David Robbins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
ARTICLE
Hillcrest and its contribution to Natal Education
Robin Lamplough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 55
ARTICLE
Paul Carton Sykes, 1903-1983
Joy B. Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
ARTICLE
Mary Stainbank - Sculptress of Natal
Melanie Hillebrand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
OBITUARIES
William George McConkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 77
Alexander Milne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 80
Frank Emery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Natal Training College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 85
NOTES AND QUERIES
Moray Comrie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES ................... 101
SELECT LIST OF NATAL PUBLICATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . .. 111
REGISTER OF RESEARCH ON NATAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Editorial
Regular readers of Natalia will have noted the name of Miss P.A. Reid
heading the list of Natal Society Office Bearers as its President in every
single one of the sixteen issues published so far. This year it is no longer
there. Her resignation marks the end of an era, and it is fitting that the
eloquent tribute paid to her by the Vice-Chairman of Council, Mr S.N.
Roberts, at the 1986 Annual General Meeting of the Society should reach a
wider audience than those present on that occasion, and be recorded for
posterity. He said:
Let me try to get her contribution into perspective. The Natal Society
was founded in 1851 so it is some 135 years old. During that period it
had no less than forty-six Presidents. Prior to the Reid era the longest
serving President had held office for a period of nine years.
Pamela Reid first became associated with the Natal Society Library
in an official capacity when for the period 1953-1959 she represented
the City Council on the Council of the Natal Society as a member
nominated by the City Council.
In 1960 after resigning from the City Council, she became one of the
elected members of this Council. So she has been a member of this
Council from 1953 to 1986 - thirty-three years, or nearly one-quarter
of its existence. In 1964 she was elected President and as such
Chairman, ex-officio, of this Society. She has been re-elected to this
position every year since then and I have no doubt whatsoever that had
she decided to make herself available for re-election to this Council
again, she would have been unanimously re-elected President this year
and for many years to come until, as the lawyers say, she might have
had the office by prescription. She has chosen otherwise and we must
respect her decision.
Of course, long service is not in itself necessarily a claim to fame. It
is what one does during that period of service that counts. On this
score I think that it is probable that Pam Reid's efforts will remain
unrivalled for all time. I say so for these reasons.
In 1964 when she first became President, the Natal Society was
housed in its old premises in Longmarket Street. At that time the
membership of the Society was 10767 and the library contained some
109 434 books. Book issues during the year were 341 841.
Pam Reid was instrumental in arranging the removal of the Library
from its cramped quarters in Longmarket Street to this building in
which we are meeting today. . . . It provides the residents of
Pietermaritzburg, regardless of colour, creed or gender with a most
6
civilised facility, and long may that be so. Our latest annual report
reflects our membership as 35 538, our bookstock as 398 945 and the
number of books issued during the year as just under 1,1 million.
No one should overlook the extraordinary exertions which were
necessary in order to bring about this dramatic growth and change
between 1964 and 1986. The driving force behind all that came from
Pam Reid.
She and her various Councils and Chief Librarians over the years
were responsible for negotiating an arrangement with the City Council
of Pietermaritzburg which to date has enabled this Library to maintain
in proper fashion both its privileged position as the Copyright Library
in the Province of Natal and the public library for the City of
Pietermaritzburg.
Since 1917 the Natal Society has always been recognised by
Parliament as being the body worthy of and responsible for the
considerable privilege of being the Copyright Library in Natal.
The Reid era has not been without its problems, calling for wisdom,
firmness and tact. Pamela Reid was able to provide this and more. So
with financial backing from the City Council of Pietermaritzburg and
the Natal Provincial Administration (without both of which the Natal
Society could not function) Pamela Reid has inspired the members of
her Council, and the Chief Librarian of this Library and her staff to
build this Library with its satellites into a vital part of the life of our
city.
During the Reid era the Society acquired the Weinronk property in
Commercial Road and the Lambert Wilson Library in Longmarket
Street. More recently the Natal Society had been obliged on behalf of
the City Council to take over the branch libraries which have been
operating in the Indian and Coloured areas of the city. These are what I
have called its satellites and, of course, each is part of the same system.
Under Pamela Reid's leadership, this Library became, I believe, the
first multi-racial municipal library in Natal at a time when such
attitudes were not fashionable.
I fear that I may have made this tribute to Pam Reid sound like
something in the nature of a funeral oration. It is by no means that. On
the contrary, I am in the happy position of being able to eschew those
crocodile tears of Mark Antony. As Vice-Chairman of the Council of
the Natal Society it is my good fortune and pleasure tonight to praise
Pam Reid for all she has done for all who have used our Library.
I suppose the highest recognition of what she has done in the library
world is the award a couple of months ago of Honorary Membership of
the South African Institute of Librarianship and Information Sciences,
SAILIS. It is practically unique for a person who is not a professional
librarian to be made an Honorary Member of this distinguished
Institute. I believe that this important award represents a fitting
culmination to her long career of service to the Natal Society Library
and to everyone who has benefited from its light which has shone in
our dark continent.
1988 will see the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the establishment
of Pietermaritzburg. With a special book being produced to mark the event,
7
we did not feel it appropriate to devote an entire issue of Natalia to

Pietermaritzburg and its history. But we pay tribute to our city by reprinting
the article written by G .H. Calpin for the centenary celebrations fifty years
ago. with thanks to Mr J .P.c. Laband for providing its editorial intro
duction. We also publish an evocation of that neglected period, the twenties
and thirties by Dr W.H. Bizley based on a series of interviews with elderly
Pietermaritzburg residents.
The 1987 Natal Society Annual Lecture was given by the State Herald,
Mr F.G. Brownell. We publish it here with some of the illustrative material
which accompanied its initial delivery.
Mr David Robbins, an assistant to the Editor of th e Natal Witness , was
the winner of the prestigious CNA Literary Award for 1987 with his book
Th e 291h Parallel. We regard our prior commission of an article by him on
the Natal poet Douglas Livingstone as something of a coup ..- few journals
can claim contributions by distinguished literary prizewinners.
Past issues of Natalia have carried few articles on art. That by Or Melanie
Hillebrand on the Natal sculptress Mary Stainbank is therefore particularly
welcome. Vie are also happy to be able to publish the fruits of the
researches of two regula r contributors to Natalia -- Robin Lamplough on
Hill crest and the sch o ol~ which once flourished in the area. and Pro fessor
Joy Bra in on th e life and wo rk of that great Christian humanitari an , the late
Paul Syke s.
Evcr y' e dition of Nata/ia carri es obituaries. This year wc pay tribute not
only to t\'.o distingui shed individuals - a former Judge President and a
fnnn e r Directo r of Education in Natal - but also to a di stinguish ed
inQitutiol1 , the old Natal Training College , whose origins go hack to coloni al
lim es and which , since 1912, has been tb e occupa nt and cus todian of
Government Hou se. It is a terrible irony tbat at a tim e '.'"hen the provi sion
uf education for all Natalians is perhaps the most pressin g need o f the day , a
college of e ducation is closed because the segregated system of white
ed ucation is unable to absorb all the teachers it train s. We are grateful to Mr
G eorge Dale , d former Rector of the College , for his tribute.
While not publishing a full obituary , as the lournal of the Natal Society
Na{(lliu notes with regret the passing of one of the Library's most loyal
servants . Mrs loan Hawes died very suddenly in August 1987. She had been
on the staff for thirty-one years and has been sadly missed by both
colleagues and members of the public.
After last year's attempt to widen the Register of Research, this year we
publish only the returns submitted to us. The limited response is perhaps
indicative that the Register has not fulfilled as useful a purpose as we would
have wished.
Mrs Shelagh Spencer has been a member of the Editorial Board of Natalia
since 1976. Her encyclopaedic knowledge of Natal settler history has made
her a particular asset and saved us from numerous potential inaccuracies .
She has also alerted us to the publication of many books which might
otherwise have passed unnoticed. During the past year the appointment of
her husband Brian as Librarian of the Don Africana Collection has
necessitated a move to Durban. We wish them well in their new sphere, and
rejoice that though, of necessity , less involved in the production of Natalia,
Shelagh Spencer will continue on the Board as a Reader.
8
With steadily rising printing costs, Natalia relies for its continued existence
not only on the willingness of the Council of the Natal Society to tolerate an
increasing financial burden - subscriptions by no means cover costs - but
also on the labours without pecuniary reward, of many. To our main
authors, to the contributors of shorter items such as reviews, notes and
obituaries, and to the members of the Editorial Board, our readers owe a
debt of gratitude. We are confident that their efforts have provided another
edition of abiding interest and value.
T.B. FROST
9
G.H. Calpin and the Centenary
of Pietern1arilzburg
It has long heen a feature of hooks or pamphlets 011 Pietermaritzhurg , and especially of
publicity hrochures which would attr ac t whites to invest or settle in the city. that they have been
over-complimentary. it not complacent, in ex tolling its charms.
This is why thc' a nid c by G.H. Calpin, 'History of Pieterma ritzburg', in Pietermllrilzburg
('enfenarv 1838· 1938. SUll v(l1ir Hand-Book (Pietermaritzburg. 1938), comes as such a
refreshing surpr ise . especially when the occasion for its publication is taken into account. For
in stead of bcatlllg the dru m of civic pride and self-congratulati on, and playing the usual
vari a tions on the theme of th" enkrprise and success of the white communi ty, Calpin st ruck
mo re th e not<: o f the rcu; ss io nal. For this was his way .
George Ha rold Calpi n was born in lR97 , and was educated at the Frie nds' School at Great
/\yto n in the North Ridi ng. and at Queen's College, Ca mbridge . where he read Natural
Science. After a p ~ ri, ) d as , cience master r.t Durham Schoo l, he came to Pietermaritzburg as
hea d master of Up hlds School. nIackridgc, Thereafter he followed a career as journalist and
" " ,adc"sl e r. He W,b al,o lil ,' auth o r ut a number of books on the probl ems of integrating the
v:.rio us st re ams of S"uth Afncan society , a th ellle most clearly developed in '{he SO/lfh African
W(n of Lij<': I'a /fles tlnd Ideals 0/ a Mfllti-Racial Society (Melbourn e . 1953),
As he himself wrote in the intrnductillll to his collection o f essay s. At lAlst We Have G o t Our
('"ulllrv Hack (Cape TowlI. 196-7). no wriler can rid himself of the attitude s he develops in his
early )ears . Thi,; was certaillly true of C alp in , who was a product not on ly of England's
industrial north. a I,)wl'f-Itliddk cl ass family and a Ou aker upbrin ging. bu t also of the world of
th e estab li shment. of Camhridge: and the public school where he o nce taught. The two
elements. he liked to believe. fu sed in him to form a solid deposit of common decency. a feeling
for .i list ice . a sense of tra di tion, and an abiding sympathy for th e underdog, Certainly, his was a
broader outlook th a n that of Ill any of his fellow -citizens of Piett'rmaritzburg. and his opinions.
espcciaily on matters of race , we re usually in advance of those of the white community at large,
though he could ne ver rid hi mse lf of an avowed streak of instinctive ra cial prejudice which . in
his old age, was to harden into political conservatism.
Neverthele ss , when in 19:18 he wrote his 'History of Pietermaritzburg', he was still essentially
a liheral, was th en the editor of The Natal Witness (a post he held from 1935 to 1943) and
possessed confirmed attitudes which he brought to bear. Writing when Pietermaritzburg had
barely recovered from the years of the Great Depression, and when it was still feeling the
consequences of the loss of its status as the capital of a British colony , he exposed it for what it
really was -- and to an extent still is: a charming but isolated provincial city, conservative and
somewhat self-conscious, rather envious of the more dynamic Durban which had surged ahead.
though priding itself on its cultural superiority over its brash (if economically more successful)
coastal neighbour.
He did not use the opportunity to air his progressive views on the 'native question', which
were in any case centred on the Indian community and its struggle for recognition in South
Africa. and which he was later to express in his books Indians in South Africa
(Pietermaritzburg, 1949) , and A,I, Kajee: His Work for the South African Indian Community
(Durban, 194-'1). Rather, his article shared with all other works on Pietermaritzburg up to very
recent times a hland , if almost absolute disregard of any inhabitants of the city other than the
whites. What did come out strongly, though, was his centrally-held conviction that bridges
should be formed between the Afrikaans and English-speaking white communities of South
Africa, which were developing as resolutely apart from each other as were the whites as a
10 The Centenary of Pietermaritzburg
whole from the blacks. He subsequently developed this idea at length in There Are No South
Africans (London, 1941). To his mind Pietermaritzburg, the erstwhile British colonial capital,
was in 1938 a particular case in point, for though Afrikaners might be socially tolerated there,
they were hardly accepted. Thus, by strongly emphasising the Voortrekker origins of the city
(1938 was, after all, also the centenary of the Great Trek), Calpin was trying to forge
connections between the past and his present, hetween the original Afrikaner inhabitants and
their descendants, and the more recent relicts of the British Empire. For although Calpin
entertained no extravagant hopes for Pietermaritzburg's future, he still wished that it might
continue to be the pleasant place it already was to live in.
l.P.C. LABAND
History of Pietermaritzburg
The economy of a city hangs upon its geography. Its inhabitants are half
creatures of that geography and half creatures of previous background, in
fact, of aforetime geographic influence.
You can approach Voortrekker City, a name to which Pietermaritzburg
has some substantial claims, from the sea board by a road; the safety of it
owes much to macadam and more to the white traffic line. A better way is to
descend upon it suddenly from the North and North West. For here the high
veld rolls and piles itself up into immense thrusts with massive fissures, and
then as if weary of its labour it falls gently, sprawling in its fatigue, finally to
settle down in sweeping curves round the three arcs of a bowl, the fourth
merely a lip that stretches and edges towards the Valley of a Thousand Hills
and the wave-washed coast.
This was the way of the Voortrekkers! It was the manner of it too! With a
fierce urge akin to that of the irresistible earth, men, women, and children,
inspanned and outspanned their ox wagons. Their women gave birth and
lived, gave birth and died, their men roared and rode, coaxing, groaning;
until the axles of their wagons creaked over and through the tall grass, and
brought them to the panorama of the vast bowl, but not so vast that some of
them failed to see in it the end of a journey.
In that hope Pietermaritzburg was born! It is well named, for Piet Retief
was among those, the leader indeed, that looked upon the gentle plain from
the foothills between the Tugela and Bushman; his chief lieutenant was Gert
Maritz. Piet was, in the words of the Rev. Owen, 'a man all mildness,'
intrepid, courageous; Gert, daring and shrewd withal. Neither lived to see
their endeavours crystallised in the creation of a town. It was left for others
to honour them in name and concrete achievement, in the concentration of
their forces into the laager encampment on the Bushmansrand, in the
decision to rid themselves once and for all from threat of Zulu impis and in
final victory at Blood River. Settled occupation was only then possible.
Some five hundred land sites were marked out; water was led from the Dorp
Spruit and signs of civic life hung about waiting shape and crystallisation.
The Trekkers had now exchanged Old Testament wanderings for the
Promised Land. The transition was not easy. The dangers of the
Trek were substituted by the greater dangers of settlement. A common
enemy in man found them for the most part united, strong in faith. A
common enemy in disease of cattle, sickness among themselves, occasional
fires in their single roomed houses were to test their endurance.
The Centenary of Pietermaritzburg 11
Life was no easier despite the rich harvest of mealies and vegetables.
There was too much to do to be at ease. Lest, however, the stern character
of the Trekker, demonstrated in his religious fervour, leads to the opinion
that these people were embittered, morose, and unsociable, it is worth while
to note that, particularly among their women, there was a gaiety of spirit
that showed itself in dance and song and enlivened the community with
colour in dress and ornament. The settlement was as yet isolated, an
independent unit, governing itself, educating itself, establishing a way of
life, working out a civic plan, educating itself and its young, around its pivot,
'the Church of the Vow.' The place took shape. There were rich and poor in
a relative sense; there was differentiation in houses and a reaching out to
cultural divergences. Life began to take on settled purpose, that of an
independent and sturdy republic.
It was at this stage and the date 1843 that the Volksraad admitted British
authori ty . Pietermaritzburg became a seat of governmcnt , a 'district' of
Cape Colony, with a few officials under the authority of Martin West who
rejoiced in the title of Lieutenant Governor. On his staff was Theophilus
Shc pstone. Fort Napicr was erected; a burgher defence force was formed. '
The government of this outpost was directed from Whitehall via the Cape
an incentive to the demand granted in 1848 for local self government.
A mong the 'commissioners' , the forerunners of our present city fathers,
we re P. Ferreira. W . van Aardt, A.J. Caldecott. P.J . .lung. Dr B. Poortman.
A town crier conveyed their decisions to the growing populace of I 500
Europeans and 400 houses . The ubiquitous galvanised iron arrived as the
'1!lc at blessing to become the gre atest curse of Natal building construction.'
Glirn mcrings of the outside world pierced the isolated township. Local trade
h\:gan to flourish with the entry into th e town of fa rmers from over the Berg
for supplies . Roads , somewhat primitive, were at any rate discernible , and
one great day in 1858 , schools were closed and the place took high holiday
to view the opening by the Mayor of the iron br idge, the Victoria Bridge,
the first of its kind in the whole sub-continent.'
A few years before this a change had taken place in the constitution of the
town. The place remained essentially a Dutch community until 1850 or so
\"hen the first batches of the Byme emigrants arrived from England. About
the same time there was a considerable exodus of Dutch and it was followed
by a further withdrawal when news of gold came from Australia. The new
community became as irked by the Cape authority as was the old, and it was
not long, with the aid of the local Press , set up by David Dale Buchanan,
and the representation of Sir George Grey, whose name is given to the
hospital of his foundation, before Natal was granted a charter. February of
1857 was a great month! Pietermaritzburg went to the polls after welcoming
Governor Scott. The hustings provided James Arbuthnot, a Byrne emigrant,
and John Moreland with seats in the new Legislative Council.
And so, by Royal Charter, Pietermaritzburg was announced the capital of
the Colony of Natal and the seat of government. Twenty guns barked a
salute to the Lieutenant Governor, and Jacking the 'biscope' the citizenry
made its way regularly of an evening to the House for entertainment and,
we have reason to believe, edification. But outside it the streets were dark,
water ran down them, and on the near circumference grass grew tall and
untidily. Dr Colenso had his native church in Longmarket Street, however,
and there were such places as St. Peter's Cathedral, the Wesleyan Church,
Church Street and Chapel Street, and there were such institutions as the
Natal Society, to be addressed by the learned of those days, Dr Mann and
Dr Sutherland, modern counterparts of whom are Dr Bews and Mr Hugo.
There was the Atheneaum library and reading room. And long before and
long after there was, of course, dust in August and mud in February!
In 1854 Pietermaritzburg was created a constituted borough and its seal,
an elephant and five stars, Umgungunhlovu, conqueror of the elephant,
stamped its new dignity on every subsequent page of its history. Before the
sixties, and while the Dutch were predominant, the economy of the town
was the economy of a 12th century English village, well knit, independent, a
nineteenth century autarky, forced upon it by geography and distance. Its
politics were similar, irksome at times, but more from fear of the external
world than from fact of it. With the rise to maturity the economy changed,
the politics changed. It was the change that the 12th century English village
made as it became industrialised. Politically, it was the change to fretting
against itself. The advent of the Mayor and Council was accompanied by
class distinction. The great folk of Fort Napier and the small folk,
tradesmen, did what their English counterparts did - despised one another.
The sluits, however, remained to vex and engage the Mayor and his
Council. If they did nothing else they watered the trees and foliage of the
streets and turned them into a veritable garden.
About this time, 1860, Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria's son, a
midshipman, arrived with Sir George Grey. He was sixteen, wore an Eton
suit, danced with one or two belles, laid the foundation stone of the Town
Hall. Pietermaritzburg revelled in its own importance. 'Our City' said the
council, 'promises at no distant date to be the chief city of Central Africa.' It
accommodated 3 000 Europeans and failed in its first attempt to raise £2,000
for city offices! Cetewayo was just over the border of Natal, in Zululand.
Reports of frontier attacks came to Governor West. The city felt its first
economic reverse. Governor West inspected troops and moved out.' A trade
boom was moving uncertainly. Easy borrowing drove it to climax and crash.
Bankruptcy spread from trader to trader, and then to local banks. The city
revenue dropped by two thirds. Public works were abandoned.
Perhaps the only thing that lent hope to the mass of population was the
introduction of the omnibus service to Durban. John Dare was the pioneer.
He was, perhaps, more daring than businesslike. For twenty, and then for
thirty shillings apiece he not only carried his passengers to Durban, he fed
them at Halfway House. He went bankrupt in a year. It was a year or so
after that Mr J.W. Welch ran a bus three times a week to Durban. The
journey took 11 hours. He and Mr Jessup went into fighting competition.
The latter gave it up as a bad job. A weekly postal service had been
inaugurated as early as 1846 by the Natal Witness. They used a native runner
who went up and down in a week. The official postal service was later run
by the military.
Economic depression was not the only threat to civic life in the middle of
the century. The Episcopal See of Natal was held by Bishop Colenso and
during his period of office a great schism arose in the body of Anglicans
which caused social distress in the colony, much heart burning overseas, and
considerable expense in the ecclesiastical courts. The See of
The Centenary of Pietermaritzburg 13
Pietermaritzburg was eventually separated from that of Natal. 4 The advent

of urgent projects served to turn the public mind. The discovery of coal
fields and the idea of railroads emerged as the chief subject of business, and
in the middle of the seventies the colony started on railway construction.
The depression which had become so acute as to necessitate the sale of
municipal robes to help the poor lifted steadily as the discovery of gold and
diamonds enriched the country.
The Zulus still threatened the tranquillity of the capital, and the manner
in which the captured chief Langalibalele was punished brought serious
despatches from London and a sudden recall for Sir Benjamin Pine, the
Lieutenant Governor. The reaction was immediate. The demand for home
rule and responsible government was countered by the succeeding
Governor, Sir Garnet Wolseley, who asked the legislature to grant the
executive greater powers. These were signs of political growth, a desire for
self determination, which in latter days were to emerge in political conflicts
and final self government through union. The Zulu War, bringing with it the
bloody field of Isandhlwana and the death of a score of the city's young
volunteers threw the community into mourning. Hard upon this outbreak
which cut off the Prince Imperial, the annexed Transvaal rose in revolt, an
occasion that in its consequences aggravated anti-Imperial feeling and found
its expression in a refusal to make a contribution to the cost of the Zulu war.
The last two decades of the century witnessed remarkable changes in the
city. Rising prosperity gave impetus to civic development. The Railway
appeared in 1880 and water flowed through pipes from Zwartkop Valley
making the year a veritable 'ann us mirabilis. ' Macadamised roads were now
within planning distance and the tempo quickened as well as the temper of
political thought. In 1893 Natal entered full maturity and parliamentary
status. There were great men in those days, stalwarts of the stature of Sir
Theophilus Shepstone, Sir Thomas Murray, Mr John Bird, Mayor
Macfarlane, Bishop Baynes, Harry Escombe, the number could be increased
indefinitely. When the twentieth century opened modern Maritzburg was
ready for it, in new Colonial Offices, a General Post Office, a new Town
Hall, paved sidewalks, electric light, tramcars, motor cars, waterworks, and
the whole gamut of improvements that lent speed and power to civic
endeavour. No longer isolated but epitomising the Colony of Natal, if
leaning towards a conservatism it has not yet cast off, the city projected its
thought towards the ideas that found substance later in close co-operation
with other political units and in final union.
Geography pressed upon it once more. The gold of the Rand, a severe
local economic collapse, made it and the colony seek the aid of the rest of
South Africa. The growing port of Durban demanded it. Changed
circumstances, the departure of the military, more rapid transport, served to
call down upon it such adjustments as have been witnessed in this
generation. Its social life also changed, gradually attuning itself to a new
conservatism, envious, perhaps, of younger and more prosperous
neighbours on the coast but proud, too, of its belief in a certain intellectual
superiority. Growing up about it was an academic atmosphere, the Natal
University College, a variety of schools with the English tradition
established themselves. It exchanged much for a newer isolation.
Economically it suffered a reverse as inevitable as the dawn. Its modern
adjustments are painful. It is seeking its destiny. Meanwhile into the valleys
creep its residences. On all sides of the bowl its trees and gardens give sign
of its shy self-conscious hospitality. It has been well served in the past by
men who have come to it and by men born in it. It will never reach that high
pinnacle a visionary council declared was its happy fate. It is not the chief
city of Central South Africa. It is not even a city of Central Africa!
It is what its name implies, the Voortrekker City -- the end of a journey
for many. Its ways are set in pleasant paths. May they remain to give the
inspiration to succeeding men and women for whom its founders mean so
much in high endeavour, self respect, and a fine sense of puhlic and private
duty.
G.H. CALPTN
NOTES
Calpin's style sometimes seems calculated to obscure his lack of precise historical knowledge.
Although Fort Napier was begun, as he implied, in 1843, Martin West only arrived in Natal
in December 1845.
Although the contract for the erection of the Victoria Bridge was awarded in July 1858,
it was opened only in January 1860.
Martin West died in 1849. Calpin presumably was referring to Lieutenant Governor John
Seot!.
I! was the See of Maritzburg, not Pietermaritzburg, and was not separated from the See
of Natal, but rather superimposed on it. Both Sees covered the whole of the Colony of
Natal.
15
Heraldry In Natal
(The Natal Society's Annual Lecture delivered by the State Herald,
Frederick Gordon Brownell, on Friday 27 March 1987)
Those of you who watched the recent television series Shaka Zulu will no
doubt remember seeing the British Union Flag, better known as the Union
Jack, fluttering over Lieutenant Francis Farewell's little settlement at Port
Natal. Since Farewell was an officer in the Royal Navy, 'showing the flag' in
foreign parts would have been second nature to him.
Flags are an integral part of heraldry and the Union Jack, which is in itself
a combination of three flags, based on the reputed arms of the patron saints
of England, Scotland and Ireland, was thus the first heraldic representation
to have been used in Natal. Apart from the Republic of Natalia interlude
(1839 - 1842), the Union Jack has in fact flown over Natal in one form or
another since 1824. This may sound strange since South Africa has been a
republic for the past quarter of a century, but one must bear in mind that it
is still an integral part of our national flag.
The Union Jack of course also appears in shield form charged on the
shoulder of the dexter supporter to the arms of the City of Pietermaritzburg,
while the sinister supporter is charged with the flag of the Republic of
Natalia, also in shield form.
The fact that the short-lived Republic of Natalia also had a flag of its own
was not widely known and it took considerable research to determine what
the design of that flag had been.
The first known reference to Natalia's flag is in a contemporary report of
the withdrawal of the British military detachment from Natal in 1839. The
relevant part of the report reads as follows:
On 24 December the Vectis left Port Natal with the troops and the
Boers thus released from their presence and very naturally interpreting
their departure as a final abandonment by the British and recognition
of their often-proclaimed sovereignty, fired a salute and for the first
time hoisted their new colours - those similar to the Dutch, but
placed transversely instead of horizontally - the colours of the
Republic of Natalia. 1
Since the placing of the colours transversely could mean in anyone of a
number of ways, this description was hardly satisfactory.
I am afraid the contemporary French traveller Delegorgue was no clearer
in his description of Natalia's flag, which he noted as being 'un pavillion
nouveau, inconnu, fusion des couleurs fran<;ais et hollandaises'2 (an
unknown new flag, in a combination of the French and Dutch colours).
16 Heraldry in Natal
RlPU311tK NATid I,~

'83~·IR41
The flag of the Republic of Natalia .

(Photograph: Author's collection)
From these two published descriptions it is clear that the colours of the
flag were red, white and blue; but that is about alL It was only in 1953 that
Or W.J. de Kock, then engaged in research for the Archives in Europe,
discovered an illustration of the Natalia flag, in colour, on the lid of the
holder of a petition, and on a map of the Republic of Natalia, in the
Rijksmuseum in The Hague . 3
The author of this petition, asking for Dutch protection for Natalia, was
J.A. Smellekamp who had arrived in Port Natal on the trading vessel
Brazilia on 24 March 1842.4 Although Smellekamp's activities were warmly
repudiated by the Dutch Government, we do owe to him the only known
illustrations of the Natalia flag.
These illustrations, confirmed the verbal description by another
contemporary Dutchman, Prof. U.G. Lauts, whose collection was bought
for the South African State Archives in 1925. Of the Natalia flag, Lauts,
who had obtained his information from Smellekamp, had written:
In de vlag heeft het Gemeenebest Natalia aan de Nedelandsche vlag
gedacht, en dezelfde kleuren in dezelfde volgorde gekozen. Het wit
echter gaat van eene punt in het midden aan die stok uit, om aan het
einde der vlag de geheele breedte van het doek in te nemen. 5
The British withdrawal from Port Natal in 1839 had, however, been linked
with problems on the Cape Eastern Frontier. To prevent further pressure on
that frontier from the Natal side, a British expedition under Captain Thomas
Charlton Smith comprising a detachment of 237 men of the 27th Regiment
and the Royal Artillery, accompanied by Rev. J ames Archbell the pioneer
Methodist missionary of Natal (whose grand-daughter Elizabeth Archbell
married my maternal grandfather), reached Durban on 4 May 1842. They
encamped on the site of what is still known as the Old Fort, hauled down
the flag of the Republic of Natalia and again hoisted the Union Jack. 6
Although the Trekkers objected, claiming - on the strength of the'
petition which Smellekamp was then bearing to the Netherlands - that they
were under the protection of Holland and besieged the British forces which
forces were relieved after Dick King's famous ride to Grahamstown, Natalia
had in effect come to an end. The formal annexation of Natal to the British
Crown on 12 May 1843 was largely a formality .
The use of the wildebeest or gnu as the recognized emblem for Natal can
be traced back as early as 1861. In a letter which appeared in the Natal
Heraldry in Natal 17
Mercury of 12 December 1861 in connection with the preview in

Pietermaritzburg of the Natal exhibit at the Great Exhibition held in
England in 1862, it was reported that:
The frame (of the entrance arch) bore a carved shield with the 'Gnu' of
Natal at its apex, and white letters on a black background below,
setting forth the inscription 'Colony of Natal'.
Not only has the wildebeest, since then, occupied the central position in
Natal heraldry, but it is of more than passing interest that black and white
(or silver), are also Natal's sporting colours.
In 1870 the wildebeest officially took its place in heraldry, following the
adoption by Britain of a standard pattern for Colonial flags based on the
Red and Blue Ensigns, with an appropriate colonial device in the fly.
In a debate on the proposed distinguishing flag for the Colony of Natal in
the Natal Legislative Council, the Colonial Secretary is reported as saying:
I shall now, with permission of the House, conclude my motion on the
subject of a distinguishing flag for Natal, and in doing so shall trouble
you by reading the despatch from the Secretary of State relating to it.
You will perceive that it was in consequence of the order in Council
from 'Osborne, 7th August, 1869' that we have been asked to provide
a device, and I think when you look at it, you will consider it very neat
and pretty. It comes from the office of the Colonial Engineer, the
badges contain the arms of Natal, with the usual wildebeeste
(laughter), and the arms of England over al1. 7
The device was then duly approved by the Legislative Council.
When submitting the device for approval, the Lieutenant-Governor,
Robert Keate, intimated that it had been designed by the Colonial Engineer
Peter Paterson. 8
The device was transmitted to the Secretary of State for the Colonies
under despatch No. 57 of 4 August 1870."
In this device, beneath the Royal arms, two wildebeest are depicted
running from left to right within an ornamental border, encircled by the
inscription 'Victoria dei Gratia Britanniae. Reg. F.D., Colony of Natal'. This
inscription was suitably adapted when Edward VII came to the throne.
The flag of the Governor of Natal incidentally consisted of the Union Jack
with the device for Natal within a wreath in the centre of the flag. In the
succeeding years a number of variations of this colonial device appeared.
The only known physical example of the Natal Colonial flag in existence, is
in the Killie Campbell Africana Library, and shows wildebeest running from
right to left, i.e. in the direction of the hoist. From a heraldic point of view
this is more correct than in the approved design. .
The present arms of Natal evolved from this earlier Colonial device. In
1905 York Herald, at the College of Arms in London, proposed a design
showing a single wildebeest placed in a shield below a Royal Crown. This
proposal was, however, not accepted and the arms granted to Natal by
Royal Warrant on 16 May 1907 depict on a blue shield 'in front of
mountains and on a plain, two black Wildebeest in full course, side by side,
at random'. 10
When the arms of the Union of South Africa were granted by Royal
Warrant on 17 September 1910, the quartered shield was designed to
represent the four territories which had come together to form the Union.
The second of these quarterings represents Natal. However, by Royal

Warrant dated 4 May 1911, the quarterings of the Arms granted to the
Union of South Africa by Royal Warrant in 1910, were assigned as the Arms
of the Provinces of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal and the
Orange Free State, respectively. The Arms previously granted to the Cape
of Good Hope, Natal and the Orange River Colony were thus superseded.
This would have given Natal arms with the description: 'or, two black
wildebeest in full course at random, both proper,' but the provisions of this
Royal Warrant were never implemented and the Province of Natal
continued to use the Colonial Arms granted in 1907.
In the 1907 grant of arms no crown ensigned the shield, neither did the
word 'Natal' appear beneath the shield. But by 1910 a crown (the Tudor
Crown) and the word Natal had been unofficially added, although the Natal
Provincial Secretary has been unable to trace any records dealing specifically
with this aspect. 12
In 1954, at the request of the South African Government, informal
authority was granted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11 for the Province
of Natal to re-adopt its Colonial Arms. Consent was simultaneously granted
for the crown resting upon the arms to be used. Her majesty, however,
indicated that she preferred the design of the St Edward's crown with which
she was crowned, to be used henceforth. l3
When a certified copy of Natal's arms was received from the College of
Arms in 1955, it was found that the crown now depicted was neither the
Tudor Crown nor that of St Edward, since it differs from both in a number
of significant respects. It must therefore be concluded that the College of
Arms did not in fact intend to depict a specific Royal Crown, but merely a
gold crown in general.
The Natal arms as received from the College of Arms in 1955 .

Had it not been for this decision by the College of Arms, Natal would no
doubt have lost its crown when South Africa became a Republic in 1961.
This Natal crown is thus of a distinctive design 'consisting of a circlet with
eight crosses pattee, and four arches surmounted of a cross pattee, Or, with
a cap of estate Sable' .14
Although the scroll appearing beneath the arms and bearing the name
Natal has occupied this position for many years, it was only officially added
to the arms in 1985.15
SQ much for the history of the arms and flags of Natal as such.
Another territorial flag which existed in what is now Natal for a short
while in the late 19th Century was that of the short-lived New Republic
(l884-}885), with Vryheid as its capital. The arms of the New Republic
were, on its dissolution , adopted by Vryheid as its municipal arms and were
subsequently registered with the Bureau of Heraldry.
Reverting to the series Shaka Zulu, you will no doubt remember the
traditional Zulu shield, weapons and dress. Since Natal and KwaZulu are
geographically one, there has been considerable Zulu ethnic influence on
Natal heraldry and for practical reasons I shall deal with Natal and KwaZulu
as one.
KwaZulu as a self-governing state has its own arms and flag, both of
which for obvious reasons draw heavily on Zulu cultural traditions. I would
like to dwell briefly on the symbolism of the KwaZulu arms:
Shield: As is customary, the arms are depicted on a shield - in this
case a traditional Zulu warrior's shield - which was used as a
means of protection in battle. The colours of the shield , white
(silver) with a black spot are significant in that these were the
colours of the shields of members of the royal regiment and
were made from the skins of royal cattle. As far as the single
charge in the shield is concerned, the sceptre is in reality a
short spear which symbolises the hereditary authority of the
royal lineage.
Crest: The head ring is worn only by men of high standing and
symbolises wise counsel. The head of the elephant in turn
represents strength and intelligence.
Supporters: The shield is supported by a leopard, emblem of beauty and
grace, and a lion which stands for bravery and dignity. Each
hold a stabbing spear, representing the traditional spear of the
regiments of King Shaka and allude both to the role of the
State in ensuring the protection of its people and to the forging
of the Zulu nation in the 19th century.
The KwaZulu arms.

(Photograph : Author's collection)
Motto: The motto Sonqoba Simunye means 'Together we shall

surmount' and is in allusion to the motto of the Republic of
South Africa, Ex Unitate Vires (Unity is Strength) .
A similar shield appears on the red panel in the hoist of the flag of
KwaZulu, with the colours of Inkatha in the fly.
The traditional Zulu shield has been used in a number of other coats of
arms in Natal and KwaZulu, including the arms of His Majesty King
Goodwill, in which is depicted the large hut of the King, accompanied by a
The arms of King Goodwill.

number of smaller huts, since the King's hut never stands alone. Both
supporters to the Kings arms are lions, since the King is the Ingwenyama or
Lion of the Zulus. A parallel is found in neighbouring Swaziland, where the
King is also known, and addressed, as 'Ngwenyama'.
The arms of the Buthelezi Tribal Authority employ the same type of
shield but obviously with different charges and supporters. At present we
are also registering arms for the Molefe Tribal Authority, which are
somewhat unusual in that this tribal group which lives near Vryheid is of
Basotho origin and their arms contain both traditional Zulu and Basotho
emblems.
Even civic authorities use the traditional Zulu shield shape, one example
being the arms of the Hambanathi Community Council.
Although we tend to avoid depicting specific monuments in arms, an
exception was made in that the memorial to Shaka which stands in Stanger is
commemorated in the arms of the Stanger Municipality. The arms of
Hambanathi and Stanger incidentally both contain representations of sugar
cane, the Natal and Zululand coastal area's principal cash crop.
The Zulu warrior and British soldier have also not been forgotten, both
appearing peacefully together as supporters to the arms of Eshowe.
Apart from the black wildebeest (Connochaetus gnou) whose use in Natal
heraldry - apart from in the Colonial and Provincial arms - has been
widespread, the provincial bird, the lammergeier or bearded vulture
(Gypaetus Barbatus meridionalis), and the provincial flower, the Strelitzia

regina which are featured in the lower border of the symbolic heraldic tree,
have also featured in Natal arms.
The arms of the Natal Museum.

In the arms of the Natal Museum, for example, the wildebeest and
lammergeier feature together as supporters. In the crest a Hilton daisy, a
local flower, appears between two elephant tusks, the latter in allusion to
the importance of the elephant in Natal history, while the iron age clay pot
- an artefact dating back hundreds of years - and a particularly rare Natal
butterfly feature in the shield. Virtually every facet of Natal's history which
one would expect to find represented in a museum is thus reflected in these
arms.
The strelitzia appears in the arms of Stanger Manor Primary School,
together with stars, in allusion to the Star of Bethlehem, the Terra do
Natal' traditionally having been 'discovered' by Vasco da Gama on
Christmas Day 1497 while pioneering the Cape sea route to the East,
although this was not recorded in his log-book. Although this name initially
referred to the coast of Pondoland, it was later in the Portuguese period
extended to cover the coast northwards probably as far as the Bluff. l •
We now move to a selection of Natal municipal arms. In the arms of
Pietermaritzburg this 'star' theme is repeated in the crest, an elephant
features prominently in the shield and, as already mentioned earlier, the
wildebeest supporters are charged on their respective shoulders with shields
of the earliest Natal flags.
A wildebeest head is employed in the crest of the arms of Greytown
together with - as in the arms of Pietermaritzburg - an elephant in the
shield.
New Germany, as its name implies, owes its early origins to German
settlers, hence the use in the shield of the old Imperial German colours of
red, white and black. The sailing ship in the crest, which alludes to these
settlers' immigrant origins, is appropriately charged on the sail with another
star to indicate that the ship was sailing for Natal.
The white rose in the base of the shield alludes to Natal as a then British
colony, while the cotton-boil and cogwheel are self-explanatory when one
considers the subsequent development of New Germany.
Glencoe's arms allude symbolically to coal-mining, to the generating of
electricity - by means of Jupiter's thunderbolt in the upper part of the
shield - and to the Scottish origins of the name of the municipality.
Umhlanga's arms create a very seaside atmosphere with their combination
of blue and green and little sea-horses. The star in the crest links up well
with their motto which, with all the modesty one expects of a seaside holiday
resort, declares Umhlanga to be the Star of Natal!
One of Pietermaritzburg's well known 'stars' is, I believe Mark Shute, for
many years a leading light in the Royal Agricultural Society of Natal. This
Society'S arms not only link up with those of the capital of Natal but, with
their wavy shield partition, stretch symbolically down to the coast. The red
rose of Lancaster in the crest and the unicorn supporter portray Natal's links
with the British Isles.
Onc could argue that more than enough has already been said about the
wildebeest, but I must point out that it also appears in the chief, of the
Army's Natal Command shoulder flash. Although the lower part of each
Command shoulder flash is similar, having close links with that of Army
Headquarters, each Command has its own distinctive chief. The others are
Western Province Command, with Table Mountain; Witwatersrand, with
three battery stamps used to crush gold-bearing ore; Southern Cape, based
at Oudtshoorn, with an appropriate plume of three ostrich feathers; and
Eastern Cape. based at Port Elizabeth, with an elephant -- bearing in mind
that the Addo Elephant Park is nearby and that the elephant also features
prominently in that city's arms.
Over the past few years, we in the Bureau of Heraldry have developed a
number of new heraldic charges. One of these is a demi-cogwheel trefly.
This is in effect half a cog-wheel, with the teeth terminating in trefoils. It is
used as a common charge in the arms of technical colleges to indicate that in
addition to technical subjects, a wide variety of other courses is offered.
Apart from the demi-cogwheel trefly usually only one further charge is
added to the shield. This ensures simple yet particularly striking designs. It
is said that the essence of good heraldry lies not in adding more to the
shield, but when nothing more can be left out! In other words one should
aim at utter simplicity without cluttering the shield, yet still strive for a
unique design.
In the case of the Pinetown Technical College a pine-cone, which appears
in the municipal arms, was the obvious choice.
The arms of the Durban Technical College, situated as it is on the coast,
sports a shell, while the arms of the Port Shepstone Technical College
display a traditional heraldic lymphad or galley, in allusion to the 'ship in
full sail' in Port Shepstone's municipal arms. A lymphad with its stylized
rounded hull fitted better into this design.
While on a nautical note, the badge of Naval Command East (formerly
Natal Naval Command) displays above crossed see-axes, distinctively shaped
Saxon swords with a suitable nautical pun, the provincial flower. Naval
Command West has a similar design but with a disa in place of the strelitzia.
Similarly, the badge of the Naval Dockyard, Durban, is based on that of
its counterpart in Simonstown, but with a star in the centre instead of the
Simonstown Martello Fort.
The badge of the South African Navy's new fleet replenishment vessel
SAS Drakensberg named for the mountains which separate Natal from the
interior, appropriately displays a dragon surmounting a barrulet dancetty to
indicate the distant mountain peaks. The Navy having received some
mention, I would now like to pass briefly to the arms (or shoulder flashes) of
some of Natal's army units.
That of the Congella Regiment speaks for itself, in the light of what I have
already said. Commandos, on the other hand, are essentially territorial units
and in consequence their shoulder flashes tend to have a local flavour, but
nevertheless often allude to a commando's functions. That of the Umgeni
Commando which operates in a coastal area contains a shark, while the
pallets depicted allude to the shark nets which, like a Commando, must
keep the predator (or enemy) at bay. The Umvoti Commando has in its
shoulder flash a hamerkop. This is a shy bird but when provoked makes a
determined attack on any predator.
Durban South Commando's shoulder flash contains a sword-fish. This
once again indicates that the commando is coastal based, while the sword of
course also has a definite military connotation.
Griqualand East is now a Xhosa-speaking part of Natal, and its
Commando, which is based at Matatiele, has a shoulder flash which is a
pictorial representation of the name of their home town in Xhosa, literally,
'where the frightened wild duck take to the air', thus warning the inhabitants
of intruders.
In the area of operation of the South Coast Commando, jackal are still
found. The Commando, like that wily animal, must be cunning if it wishes to
catch its prey. Although considered in some parts of the country as vermin,
the jackal is in many respects a most useful animal which deserves its place
in heraldry.
With the cricket season drawing to a close I cannot resist a passing
mention of one of Natal's thorough pests which has succeeded in making its
mark in Natal heraldry. I refer here to the Kingsmead Mynah's Club badge
of 'a mynah bird passant vested in cricketing attire . . .'.
Heraldry does have a sense of humour!
In conclusion, I am sure that all of you would at some stage or another
have seen illustrations of the flag of the State President. It is in the National
flag colours of orange, white and blue, with the National arms and letters SP
as used by the State President, on the white in the hoist. However, I do
think that particularly those of you who live in Pietermaritzburg, will find
the basic design of the flag to be somewhat familiar! Shortly before the
inauguration of our first executive State President, I was asked to come up
with one or two suitable flag designs as soon as possible. Quite by chance
my eye fell on the flag of the Republic of Natalia on a chart on the opposite
wall of my office. Merely by swinging around the triangle and changing the
colours, this tlag literally designed itself in under two minutes, while at the
The flag of the State President.

same time perpetuating into a symbol in the new constitutional dispensation,

a part of Natal's heraldic heritage.
NOTES
I Chase, J.C.: The Natal Papers, part n, pp. 115-116.
2 Delegorgue, M.A.: Voyage dans L'Afrique Australe, part I , p . 99.
3 Schoeman , J.M.: Die vlag van die Republiek Natalia , in Argiefnuus, XIX, 8 February
1977 , p. 9-10.
4 Shllter, C .F .: Englishman's Inn, p. 24.
5 Lauts , U.G.: De Kaapsche Landl'erhuizers of Nederlands Afstammelingen (1847) , p. 42.
6 Brookes, E .H. and Webb , C. de B.: A History of Natal, p. 38.
7 Natal Witness, 2 August 1870.
8 Leverton , B .J .: The origin of the Natal Coat of Arms, in Lantern, XII, 1 September 1962,
p.79.
, " CSO 384. (105111870).
II I Natal Government Gazette No. 3626 of 13 August 1907: Government Notice No. 470, 1907 ,
dated 9 August 1907.
11 Flags, Badges and Arms of the British D ominions beyond the Seas, Part n, Arms (1917),
inset containing Colonial Office notice dated August 1911.
12 Bureau of Heraldry file 2/3/5 (closed series), Letter dated 30 July 1968 from the Provincial
Secretary to the State Herald, under reference P .S. 11 6/1/1.
1.\ Circular I from the Department of the Prime Minister to the heads of all Government
D epartments , ref. PM 55/9, dated 23 March 1955.
14 Official description of the crown contained in Certificate of Registration No. 102 issued by
the Bureau of He raldry on 29 January 1969.
IS Governm ent Notice No. 430 in Government Gazette 9597 of 22 February 1985.
10 Muller. C. F.1. (ed): Five Hundred Years, A History oJ South AJrica, p. 8.
F.G. BROWNELL
25
Pietermaritzburg
the Missing Decades
The 1920s and the 1930s are the missing decades in Pietermaritzburg's
history. The inter-war years make up that grey area which, for the very
reason that it is still within living memory, appears not to need a
documented history. The result is that we are lulled into negligence when, in
fact, we are poorer in first-hand evidence of these decades than of Victorian
or Edwardian times. The pages that follow are the result of a series of
informal interviews with a group of persons whom I shall refer to hereafter
as 'my panel'. They were assured all along of the licence that is proper to an
oral testimony. So if research subsequently finds that dates are wrong, that
personages are misquoted or events misplaced, our principle was that we
would rather take those risks than lose altogether a first-hand sense of the
times. Nevertheless, corrections or emendations of this corporate testimony
would be most welcome, and could perhaps be noted in the next edition of
Naralia.
1lJ25. Dutiful sons and daughters of the Empire are marched up in droves
to the station, there to welcome Prince Edward with his least favourite piece
01 music, 'God bless the Prince of Wales'. Those in the know discover that
the personage in question does not fulfil all the expectations of a future
monarch. Fdward's renown as a small eater has nnC it seems, caught up
with him in Pietermaritzburg. The Victoria Club is hurt to the quick when
the Prince arrives from polo to a banquet in his hunour, takes one apple and
loses interest in the meal. But greater scandals follow: at the Reception in
the City Hall, he neglects to dance with the Administrator's daughters, since
he finds a young reporter from the Witness more to his taste (and entertains
her, some say, on the royal train . . . .)
Maritzburg was certainly host to some illustrious visitors in the inter-war
years. One of my panel was called by her father to the front window to
watch a straight-backed George Bernard Shaw strolling up Loop Street from
the Imperial Hotel, and on another occasion to hear the child prodigy
Yehudi Menuhin practising in Dr MacKenzie's Loop Street house. Rosa
Ponsell, Madame Galli-Curci, Jascha Heifetz, Harry Lauder, are others in a
catalogue of visitors which, if it were still intact, would make a veritable
history. Homework must be abandoned one evening in order to go and
listen to the 'fourth greatest orator in the world' (who were the other three?
~ Hitler, Lloyd George?) and indeed Srinivasa Sastri, the Indian Agent
General, had a command of English so enthralling that one could justify
skipping homework on the grounds of leaming the art of public address.
26 Pietermaritzburg - The Missing Decades
i 933. The centre standards are down but the trams still run . Rickshas are in
evidence , and a magnifying glass will show a mule wagon outside the Colonial
Building . 'Traffic control' is a permanent fixture at the city's busiest intersection!
(Photograph: From Pietermaritzburg the Progressive Capital 1933)
What sort of street scenes would these much-travelled visitors have

observed in Pietermaritzburg? The main Maritzburg thoroughfares in the
twenties and thirties had an astonishing variety of conveyance raising the
dust from the hard-topped roads. In a single street one might at any moment
see electric trams, petrol-driven cars, hissing steam lorries, horse carriages,
mule wagons, rickshas and even the occasional ox-wagon (though they
became steadily rarer as the twenties progressed). Not that there was any
danger of congestion. Tommy Boydell could stand on a soap-box in Church
Street pronouncing hotly for the Labour Party without anyone noticing that
the traffic was a hazard. (Or was it the smallness of his audience that made
this possible? In Durban a bout of fisticuffs brought crowds to listen to him!)
Despite such a varied traffic only the most rudimentary rules prevailed;
intersections were subject to genial laws of give-and-take (but then , as one
of my panel said, 'you never met anyone at intersections'.) Traffic signs and
traffic lights came in the late thirties, and until then there was only one
exception to the leisurely disorder, the traffic control that you found at the
city's chief intersection, that of Church Street and Commercial Road. Here a
uniformed personage on a podium with an umbrella swung a painted bar to
signal the right of way. It was a performance awe some enough to wa rrant an
audience, and one of its executants got to be known as 'Kewpie' in respect
of his rotund and doll-like figure.
The survival of draught traffic meant that many sites were set asi de fo r the
watering and feeding of animals. Sheds of corrugated-iro n on the Market
Square were filled with hay for replenishing horses and mules, and much
queuing had to be done for the next turn at the water trough . Many
Pietermaritzburg - The Missing Decades 27
Maritzburg shops had their mule teams stabled on their premises, which
meant of course that they had yards in which you could turn a cart and
team, an exercise that was no longer possible in Church Street itself. So the
delivery cart from P.R. Murphy, Grocer's, would require pedestrians to
stand aside as it ground across the pavement into Church Street - a ritual
still in practice after the Second World War. The bulk of wagon traffic
issued from G.W. Hollins Cartage Co. up near the station, which had the
Maritzburg contract for railway deliveries. The teams that jogged through
the streets needed a whole brigade of corporation officers to sweep up and
scrape up after them - one performed his valuable work only seconds
before George VI's car glided down Church Street in 1947.
Perhaps the most dramatic by-product of draught haulage was the forge of
Mr W. Alexander, blacksmith, a gentleman renowned almost more for his
beard than the shoes he produced for the city's mules and horses. On a
vacant plot of land next to his Chapel Street premises the animals queued up
for attention. This was a favourite place for schoolboys' dalliance - and
also for schoolgirls, insists one of my panel. At Lewis's Sweet Corner you
bought a penny 'poke' of sweetcrumbs - a newspaper cone filled with the
leftovers from sweet jars - and then you lounged sucking and watching a
trade litat was fiery and dramatic and scarcely ever let up. Mr Alexander
had another site nearby for wheelwroughting, but the chief wagon builder
was Merryweather's in lower Church Street, still in business at a time when
a good wagon could cost £300, as much as a small car.
Probably the main unit of traffic was the ricksha, with some 2 000 or more
operated by the Maritzburg Ricksha Co. They were much too essential to
the eity's commerce to be in any way tarted up or decorilted for tourists.
They could be booked for marker-day sessions. but they tended to 'nest'
outside the Teachers' Training College. waiting for custom from the station.
You took your chance on the rick shas -- onc panel-member can remember
a 'spill' as a child. when his man found t.he Chapel Street decline rather too
mueh for him. and his attempts to brake the vehicle had the effeet of
depositing his young passenger on the grass vergl:. SumI.' rickshas operated
by night. when they were scarcely discernible e xce pt for et rhythmic creaking
of springs and a single dim lamp slung beneath the seat. Another
conveyance of the twenties -- in the hierarchy of vehicles from the ricksha
to the taxi - was the pony ricksha, an altogether classie r affair. hors<.:-drawn
and with a white driver. The rank for pony rickshas had its own telephone ,
and so was more accessible for suburban orders. (If the Garden of Eden is
by definition pre-motorised, the Principal of the Training College in the
early twenties, Alexander 'Sandy' Reid, confirmed it by arriving at his own
wedding on a bicycle, there to meet his future wife who had come by
ricksha. Mind you, his motorised successor, Prof. A.E. Allsopp, had a
chain-driven Trojan, with the noise and the shape out of mechanical
antiquity. )
Though rickshas were taken for granted throughout these years, it was
eventually discovered - a sign, surely, of some investigative conscience
that many ricksha men ended their days with emphysema. Obviously this
had much to do with the hilly conditions of Pietermaritzburg. A certain
humanitarian reaction ' set in, and the municipality greatly restricted the
practice.
Was there a better facade in Pietermaritzburg than that of the Norfolk Hotel, ideally
~Jlacedin the days when the majority of the city's visitors arrived by train? There
were balconit~s at both back and front of the building, affording 'a view which it
would be difficult to better from any other vantage point in the city' .
(Photograph: Waiter Linley)
More opulent and atmospheric, surely, than the Victoria Club, th e entrance hall of
the Horse Shoe Hotel h(ld a wonderful aroma of leather and hide . and of course. was
open to ladies as well as gentlemen!
(Photograph : Wa iter Linky)
Further colourful additions to the general street scene were the small
omnibuses, first horse-drawn and later motorised, which several hotels
the Ansonia, the Imperial, the Horse-Shoe - sent up to the station to meet
the main trains, with much hallooing and shouting and ambushing of
passengers. (The Norfolk Hotel, being nearer the railway, could economise
by sending along a painted handcart.) But no street event was more
dramatic than a Maritzburg funeral. Into the streets would emerge Mr Dove
or Mr Chatton leading on foot a slow procession, its bier hauled by
magnificent black horses with white plumes. This solemn sight brought all
other road-users to a respectful halt, and there was much removing of hats
and bowing of heads. Of course when the Mountain Rise cemetery came
into use such a domestic drama was no longer possible.
Trams certainly contributed to the 'city' atmosphere of Pietermaritzburg,
having the same clanging bell and production of sparks that made them
familiar from Berlin to San Francisco. Local tram-driving was not a
comfortable occupation; the drivers open-air position made him vulnerable
to a drenching by a Maritzburg sub-tropical downpour. (A certain unsung
heroism here . . . getting his tram through as he stood in a dripping
sou'wester, facing the rain, must have tested the toughest constitution .)
Photographs of this era show Maritzburg with its tramified look - - poles and
catenary down the middle of the streets on a system that spread (so the
citizens used to boast) to all four points of the compass. Scottsville and
Botanic Gardens were the main routes, but there were also services to
Retief Street and the Showgrounds. The latter route , not getting a great
payload except in Show Week, had a single-deck tram. A branch that was
A remarkable view taken from the hill where the Rock Gardens are now situated,
with the Umsinduzi concealed by trees on the lower right and the old Grey's Nurses
Home and, further on, the city hall, centre left. This is perhaps the only surviving
photograph to show the tram line to the Alexander Park, a route that branched off
the Scottsville line at the Victoria Bridge Swimming Bath, and was used only on
special occasions.
w
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Tramway Construction. This valuable photograph from the Vere Hartc Collection '"
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takes us earlier than our period -- probably 1906-7 - but shows what an upheaval
the coming of the electric tram caused in Maritzburg streets. The solid grani te sto nes '"5'
i)<)
used as track founda tions (there in the foreground in front of the ci ty hall) explain
why the lines still re-appear through the tar some fifty years aftcr the trams have tl
been discontinued. 2
(Photograph : Vere H arl e Co llection) ~
used only on special occasions went to the Mayor's Garden in Alexandra

Park. You would use this to get to the Empire Day sports, or the 'five-a
side' finals on Union Day. At the Oval you would see another favourite
Maritzburg vehicle, the At ice-cream pony cart, manned by Charlie White,
with its ingenious trays that slotted into the ice chest, and which was doing
service well into the forties.
There were many rituals associated with trams - the furious swinging of
the brake or the accelerator wheel by the driver (who used his foot, by the
way, for that incessant bell), or the conductor leaning out from the top
under the furled green canvas to see if you had boarded. All this could be
observed on Maritzburg's favourite treat, a family ride by tram to Prestbury
if you were from Scottsville, to Scottsville if you were from Prestbury (either
way you'd see familiar faces from the other side of town). From the top deck
you could watch the conductor shifting the pantograph with a lop.g pole to
the appropriate cable at a junction. Also, the first generation of Maritzburg
trams had padded cane seats with swivel backs; so another conductor's duty
was to stroll through the tram at the terminus, throwing all the backs · over
and announcing with a gesture, as it were, that the direction had now
changed. One occupational hazard of night-riding was the flying-ants: trams
did not have glass windows, and one was reluctant to pull down the canvas
blinds that would darken the ride. Another excitement in the Christmas
season , schoolboys would put devil-crackers on the tracks to cause huge
explosions as the vehicles passed over. A more chaste exercise (reported by
a lady of my panel) consisted in laying two pins on a tram-line to make a
cross. After the tram had gone you had a pair of scissors .
One can't leave the tram era without recalling a terrible accident that
deeply shocked innocent Pietermaritzburg , namely th e 1932 level-crossing
accide nt at Mayor's Walk, when a train smashed into a tram of school
children causing many serious injuries and at least one de ath . (The site of
the crossing was actually nearer the Railway Workshops than where the
bridge exists today.) Nor should one leave the subject of trams without
remembering an ingenious modification that was performed by the City
E ngineer's department -- the constructio n of a tram for spraying. Dust
laymg, you see , was one of Maritzburg's street rituals, as was the daily
parade of prisoners from the Jail to the Qu a rry, or the pathetic troop of
sheep bundlin g alo ng to the abattoir behind a single goat (which portentous
animal returned alone after it had delivered its charges) The exciting parade
for children was the du st-laying machine , a nd very necessary it was in the
pre-macadam e ra . In most streets thi s was done by a water-cart be hind two
horses, but the tram routes were traversed by the amazing tram spray , a
tank car built up on a tram chassis.
But we must contrast the dusty streets of winter with another regular
Maritzburg event - the flooding that took place with almost every rain
storm. The gutters of the streets parallel to Church Street were primitively
shallow, while the transverse gutters were so deep as to be regular sloots,
taking rain in a flood down West Street or Chapel Street. The lower part of
the town became a great sheet of water; in a Boom Street house you might
watch the family ladders floating in the back garden. The Dorp Spruit
flooded so easily, and caused so much disruption in the Indian areas , that
the City Council eventually embarked on what was called the 'Deviation of
the Dorp Spruit'. This was essentially a straightening exercise, and Mr

lames MacGibbon, Town Clerk in the thirties, considered it the best single
contribution to city life undertaken by the Council.
Talking of the Council - when the Maritzburg trams were eventually
replaced by buses, the tracks were, in most places, laboriuosly dug up. But
in certain areas it was decided that it would be cheaper to bury them - a
Council economy that had an unforeseen consequence: to this day the
tramlines seasonally resurrect themselves and become once again visible.
Another economy: the deputy-mayor at the time, Mr A.T. Al1ison,
suggested that the obsolete granite blocks which had supported the rails be
used for waIling in the Carbineer Gardens next to the City Hall. There they
stand to this day, a tribute to the post-Depression economics of
Pietermaritzburg.
Before we get on to motor cars, we must notice yet another thrilling, if
noisy and terrifying entrant on the Maritzburg street-scene, the Brewery
steam lorries. The splash of colour these vehicles offered was not merely
because of their fiery interiors but because of the famous 'red devils' who
rode up behind, dressed in brilliant colours, and making a great spectacle as
they loaded and off-loaded the crates from the lorries. They had a glamour
sadly missing from their colleagues on coal deliveries, dressed in two dusty
muid sacks with slitted apertures for arms and neck.
Who owned the first car in Pietermaritzburg? There are various
candidates: was it Dr Russell Strapp or Dr Hill or Dr Buntine or Dr Woods?
In either case, Maritzburg had cars well before 1920, since the youngest of
these, Dr R.A. Buntine, of 151 Pietermaritz Street. was drowned when the
Galway Castle sank in 1918. Certainly it seems likely that the first car-owner
was a doctor, since the medical profession took up with the new transport
before anyone else. We must remember that doctors were required to call in
those days in a manner that was, to say the least, socially ambiguous!
And we must remember that the first cars shared the roads with every sort
of transport - steam, electric, two-footed, four-footed - all acting with a
laissez faire that made any attempt at traffic control strain one's credulity.
Dr Woods's successor, the superbly turned-out Dr Oddin-Taylor. complete
with pin-stripe suit, was once stopped by a policeman for speeding. On
being asked how he spelt his name, Oddin-Taylor drove off, saying grandly
'If you can't spell it, get lost'. (Incidentally, the lack of solid traffic rules did
not entirely apply to parking, where a sort of social law held good: it was
taken as an impertinence, especially in residential areas, for a stranger to
park his car in front of your house.) Or Baikie was the first doctor with a
Buick; Dr Burman held out to the end with horse stables behind his
Longmarket Street house. (I notice that four carriages were licensed in
Pietermaritzburg in 1938, one in 1941.)
The coming of motor-cars greatly increased the range of outdoor
expeditions, though my panel agrees that it was scarcely heard of before the
war for anyone to go to a Natal Game Reserve, and that even the
Drakensberg was mostly seen as a distant vision from the train. The state of
Natal roads and the threat of malaria restricted one's ambitions. For all that,
the late twenties saw picnickers setting off on rides that would be considered
risky even today, such as the one to Table Mountain. (One parked in the
Windy Hill area and walked up top to pick armfuls of pink everlastings.)
More manageable was the annual Training College picnic to Henley Dam,
dustily reached on open lorries. Any car setting out from Pietermaritzburg
in these years would carry not only the standard canvas and celluloid roof
folded at the back but the wheel chains and shovel that were indispensable if
it should rain. (Dr Akerman needed chains just to get up to his house below
Cordwalles.) If you used the Greytown road the chances of punctures was so
great that you would festoon your car with extra tyres, tied on the back and
along the sides. And even in the suburbs, there was so much dust raised by
the first generation of windowless cars that drivers and passengers would
often wear driving coats. Gradually weatherproof sedans and coupes started
to come in, and soon most Maritzburg children knew the joys of riding in
the dicky seat - and also, indeed, in a motor-cycle side-car, since
Douglases, BSAs, BMWs, Harley-Davidsons and above all Nortons were
now becoming familiar in the streets.
But motor-cars didn't put an end to some favourite outings by public
transport. For instance there was the popular Sunday tram ride to the
Botanic Gardens. At the wood-and-iron Gardens Tearoom the curator
would put out several rows of wooden chairs and set up his huge HMV
Gramophone, with only its shell-shaped horn for amplification, to pass the
morning with records of light classical music. The seats were invariably all
taken. Nor did Maritzburgers give up the splendid train-rides to Sweetwaters
or to Howick. I would guess, listening to accounts of these expeditions, that
thermos flasks got here comparatively recently - no picnicker set off
without a kettle and a small bundle of wood to make a fire.
The original Botanical Gardens tea room , which one might patronise on a Sunday
morning for light music, or visit at azalea time for a spectacle 'more vivid and
flamboyant' than 'in its far eastern habitat'.
Nor did motoring supersede another form of locomotion that we haven't

yet mentioned, the boats for hire along the Umsinduzi river. You set off up
stream from the Boat House in the lower Bulwer Street area - the starting
place, by the way, for that handful of intrepid souls who pioneered the
Pietermaritzburg-Durban annual canoe race, taking, in those days, about a
week to do it.
Aeroplanes, of course, were at the apex of twentieth century technical
mysteries, but in the twenties, and before Oribi was developed, Howick
seems to have been the preferred place for landings. With a progressive
conscience, busloads of schoolchildren were taken up to Howick to see
Major Miller, the doyen of early South African flying, coming in to land,
though a gruesome propellor accident on one occasion rather dampened
enthusiasm. (Some memory-scratching here. Was it Major Miller who
landed on the Pietermaritzburg Polo grounds in 1917, guided by bonfires, on
a wartime recruiting exercise?) Flying was in its dangerous infancy: one
block of children who lined up at Oribi to watch an early landing were told,
after some hours, that the plane had crashed in the Drakensberg.
With private motor transport came the advent of motor racing, a sport
that was very much suited to that mixture of adventure and under-bonnet
know-how that the car brought with it in the twenties and thirties. Not a few
Maritzburg boys brought up in this milieu would be mending, some years
hence, tanks and troop-carriers in the Western Desert. Pietermaritzburg had
a stake in two of thc country's best-known races. One of my panel was a
scholar at Merchiston (thcn, of course, over-looking Commercial Road)
when crowds of boys lined the school fence every year to see the Durban
Johannesburg motorcycle race go through. The leaders would have all
passed by 8.30 a.m., and then of course lessons would be disrupted through
the morning as boys rushed to the windows to see the stragglers go by. A
great fan was the young Roy Hesketh, who even as a boy made his
fanaticism clear by coming to Merchiston Sports Day in a model racing-car
decked out in house colours.
He would soon take part in another racing event that was Maritzburg's
very own, the annual motor-races, run on a circuit of streets around
Parkside, Maritzburg College and the Girls' High School. This drew a
nation-wide interest: the hotels were full, and various corners and bends
became national bywords, such as Angels' Angle (at the corner of Topham
and College Roads) and Devils' Bend near the Umsinduzi - which had to
be well padded with sandbags. There were drivers from overseas, like Lord
Howe with his Bentley, and the line-up included Auto-Unions, Maseratis,
Alpha-Romeos, and of course MGs, the staple fare for drivers like Roy
Hesketh.
Let's leave the streets, now, and get on to the pavements for some
reminiscences of Maritzburg shops. There seems to have been a good deal of
choice, especially in ladies' shops, in an era whcn ladies would not venture
out of a house without hat and gloves, when silk stockings had to be
repaired in matching thread, when veils were still in regular use, and when
corsetting amounted to a sort of closet-industry. The duller male. with hair
as short as women's was long, and with only two colours of shirt to choose
from, had only the glamour of tie-pins or cufflinks or (more grandly)
watches on chains to make any effect. Ladies had options - schoolgirls
could decide whether to go to Mackenzie's or to Williams & Lambert's for

their panama hats, or to get the cheaper variety from Saville's. (The
ultimate hat shop - in days when every event demanded a new production
- was that of the Misses McFarlanes in Church Street.) Another quality
shop for women was Sowden and Stoddart's, up past St Peter's, presided
over by the cultured tones of Miss Moir, who would personally conduct you
upstairs to see to the cutting of your dresses. For children who craved
entertainment both Ireland's and Topham's had an apparatus of overhead
cables that were always worth a visit. Little trucks wafted your money up
to some aerial officer who attached your change to the next down runner.
These were the days when you were served by male assistants at drapery
counters - the business of fetching down huge rolls of material (while you
sat demurely on a bentwood chair next to the mahogany counter) needed
some muscle. At Ireland's the draper-in-charge was Billy Johnston, who had
emigrated from Britain as a sufferer from TB (no rare story in the later
Empire.) This brought to Maritzburg a particularly fine tenor voice; Billy
Johnston was perhaps better known as a singer than as the expert he was on
styles and colours.
Other memorable shops were Simmer Jenkins for silverware and cutlery,
Shalimar's for craftware from China, and Ross's for family shopping under
one roof, on the model of the American departmental store. At Ogilvie's,
ladies' shoes (always in Genuine Leather) would never cost more than 35
shillings. At Merrick's groceries were individually wrapped for selection
and, of course, delivered (no lady being seen carrying goods or parcels
through the streets of Pietermaritzburg!) Delivering was a huge industry ,
The interior of the Mesdames McFarlanes' hat shop, or 'millinery establishment' as

they would prefer to call it. 'Fashion's latest decree in millinery' they claimed 'is
received by every week's mail from London and Paris'.
36. Pietermaritzburg - The Missing Decades
A well-remembered Maritzburg shop, Sowden and Stoddart's, on the intersection of

Chapel and Church Streets, occupied a site that was first used by the Natal Bank.
Here the centre-road tram standards down Church Street are still in place, and a
platform is ready for th e busy hour when 'traffic control' will be required even at this
lesser intersection.
with butchers' 'boys' and grocers' 'boys' and chemists' 'boys' bringing loads
to your door , and then presenting you with a much-travelled book for your
next order. (You wrote in it with one of those indelible pencils which
children believed caused instant death if you sucked them.) To add to the
good life, there was a great deal of shopping done on approval: delivery
'boys' would struggle out to the suburbs with huge crates of shoes or metre
wide boxes of dresses on their backs so that some 'missus' somewhere could
spend a day or two trying out samples. (In the light of the delivery industry,
some might think that a humanity towards canines was somewhat misplaced,
but drinking-troughs for dogs were fitted round most shop-entrances .
Another theory: they stopped the lifting of legs in respected portals.)
Some windows or doorways invited dalliance on the way home from
school. Chemists invariably had carboys, huge decanters of red or green
coloured water that stood in their windows restfully advertising hygiene and
tranquillity. More exciting was Eddels' shoemakers in Buchanan Street,
whose doorway was filled with leathery smells and the dim sights of belt
driven machinery, but where a stern warning to loiterers ('And That Means
You') added to the risk of waiting. However, those brave enough to climb
the spiral staircase to the upper floor were rewarded with large waste reels
for making gandagandas, toy tractors propelled by twisted rubber bands.
But were any premises so terrifying as the taxidermist in Loop Street, not
far from the museum, through whose door dimly-lit horrors gazed back at
you with glassy eyes? The dream shop for children was that of Mr 'Cockney'
lames in Church Street, a regular warren of rooms that were crammed with
toys and gifts that one could browse through for hours - masks, fireworks,
tin soldiers, celluloid dolls. (The only rival was Stacey's Tobacconists, who
sold white clay pipes for blowing bubbles.)
The familiar shops of Pietermaritzburg were eventually challenged by
giants of capitalism from outside Natal. When, in the late twenties,
l.W. Schlesinger bought the Commercial Road block opposite the City Hall
for his new African Theatres showpiece, the Grand Theatre, he cleared
away a whole network of temporary shops and businesses that had not
enhanced, it was generally conceded, the looks of the town. It soon became
clear, though, that he was setting up not only a theatre, but an African Life
Building and a Colonial Bank - a colony in fact of the Schlesinger Empire,
so that Maritzburg began to get that 1930s vertical look that had changed
cities across the world (not always for the best, as I think lovers of old Cape
Town would agree.) But Schlesinger's big challenge was still to come. In the
1930s he bought the Church Street shop of Steel, Murray & Co. to house yet
another branch of his fabulously successful O.K. Bazaars. Whether the
protest that followed came from offended sensibility, from snobbery about
bazaars, from vulnerable small businesses or simply from cussed
parochialism, it nevertheless sounded out loud and strong, and the sitting
Council refused him his licence. But they hadn't reckoned with the resources
of Mr Schlesinger. Soon afterwards there appeared in his new newspaper,
the Sunday Tribune, a picture of him at his Church Street site indicating
where he planned to establish his new home for hoboes! Protest quickly
melted away, and the new O.K. was duly installed.
By common consent Maritzburg was at its busiest and most bustling on
Friday nights during the 'Monkey Parade' (a name that was derived,
perhaps, from the short, back and sides much in demand from barbers at
this hour.) In the era of the six-day working week the best shopping time
was on Fridays after work, and shops would stay open till 9.00 p.m. Friday
was payday for workers and artisans, and the four or five second-hand marts
in town, such as Silburn's or Linforth's in upper Church Street, were
thronged with people well into the evening. The Salvation Army band took
up vigil on various street corners and attracted good crowds. All too obvious
from the upperdeck of a tram would be the drunkenness that prevailed
every payday; the sight of horizontal bodies was too typical to cause
comment.
Let's leave the shops, then, and retreat into the homes, lit by electricity of
a somewhat tenuous supply - you still needed a good stock of candles well
into the thirties. As there was not, as yet, much electric gadgetry in the
kitchen, the typical household would perhaps be more familiar to Victorians
than the generation that lay round the corner, with its 1940s Americanised
kitchens. Yet the Victorians probably didn't have (as, indeed, neither do
we) the late-imperial efficiency of two postal deliveries a day! Milk, too, was
delivered twice a day, but (despite Mr Baynes's 'model dairy' revolution in
Durban) it was not, as yet, delivered in bottles. The milk cart attendant
simply dipped a pint measure into his can and filled your jug. A very
welcome round was that of the Ice Cart, run by the Pietermaritzburg Cold
Storage Co. in North Street. If your ice chest was well insulated, you only
needed part twice a week with a sixpence for a huge block of ice. This would
be carried, dripping, with great iron calipers from the mule wagon outside
(where the ice lay under sacks) right to the chest itself. In the days before
fridges, certain familiar smells gave atmosphere to the rear of a house.
There was the meat safe, for instance, often standing in tins of water to stop
invasions of ants, with the dwindling cold roast behind its gauze.
Behind the house, too, one must have open fires for the primary heating
of water, giving a medieval tinge to domestic life. Monday was washday,
Tuesday was ironing day. On Mondays a huge cauldron would boil
away outside, ready to give powerful treatment to heavy clothes worn in
the sub-tropics. On Tuesdays the coal-stove must roar away to keep
a succession of flat irons hot for rapid pressing. In the years before
electricity moved into the rear of the home there was a range of
intermediate inventions, like copper geysers that burned paper and wood
and saved you having to prepare your bath in the zinc tub outside. Later
came Laurel paraffin stoves which were made to fit neatly on the top of a
packing case, and also petrol-burning laundry irons with small fuel-tanks
attached to them. The image remains, though, of the hard-scrubbing, hard
ironing black washerwoman, earning 2/6 for her day's work, including 6d for
bus fare, and whose main business was commenced and concluded in two
days of the week. Of course, many homes had 'permanents' - up to 3 or 4
servants who would all live on site. This would include a full-time garden
worker in what was an age of beautiful flower gardens in the front,
vegetables and fowls at the back.
In the suburbs the lady of the house would typically hold a monthly 'at
home' from 4.00 p.m., and this event entailed an even more finicky pecking
order than the one endured by the servants. A newcomer to a
neighbourhood of pretension would be spied upon (as though for scab or
rickets) for several weeks, and then called upon in a ritual visit of some
fifteen minutes. Tea must not be offered; social immunisation was not yet
complete. The newcomer had passed her first test if, on departure, some
engraved visiting cards were casually left in her tray in the hall (the cards
must not be printed, you understand, else the game is over. More than that,
by some extraordinary variation, concerning the fact that a lady never leaves
a card for a gentleman. there had to be three of them. 'Why not two?' I
asked, but my witnesses are getting rusty.) After more weeks of appropriate
quarantine, the 'newy' returned the visit, depositing three cards in your tray.
That was Graduation; she had now made it to your monthly tea-party to
eternity, so to speak, though censure could still be hinted at, both ways, by
non-attendance.
Social hygiene is one thing, actual hygiene another, and the ladies who
played this elaborate game were probably fast asleep when the most
necessary of Maritzburg's processions took place, the nocturnal visit of what
was called the soil cart or -- even more delicately - the night cart. Water
borne sewage got to the suburbs last, so the procedure of removing and
replacing pails survived there longest - which explains the general
preference for outside latrines.
Victorian heaviness lingered on in oak furniture and coir mattresses and

thick leather suitcases. (Since the annual family holiday might well take the
form of a trek by train to a rented house on the coast, the weight of luggage
was a major factor, demanding much calculation as to the size of
compartments and the muscle-power available at the coastal halt.) It was the
age of heavily lacquered furniture, and there were regular callers to do the
job. Those who couldn't afford new pieces (as for example from Reid's
Cabinet Works, which had a countrywide reputation) could make do with
standard packing cases which were of a surprisingly high quality. There was
a home industry in packing-case furniture, especially since the final varnish
came up so well.
The supreme new gadget in the homes of the twenties was of course the
wireless, the mystical equipment which brought King George's Empire
closer together. Huge clumsy outfits they were, those Marconis,
Telefunkens, Atwater-Kents, with their tuners and amplifiers in separate
components sprawling across large tables. The home of one of my panel was
neighbourhood leader, in its day, for the installation of wireless, which
arrived one Sunday in 1924, a one-valve crystal set with headphones, built
by Mr Calvert, the printer. With mounting excitement, the new set was
tested by listening to the 7.00 p.m. Sunday service from Durban, and indeed
at that hour 'Rock of Ages' sounded clearly through the headphones. When
Mr Calvert was telephoned and informed of this success, it produced in him
a sort of euphoria - 'Rock of Ages', he knew, was emanating from Cape
Town, proving him a greater engineer than he himself had fancied. One
duty of the new radio-owner was to give his neighbourhood the result of the
Durban July before it came out in the papers. Favourite programmes in the
twenties were Children's Hour with Aunt Tabitha, and the News plus 8
o'clock chimes, which latter were relayed from Durban by the process of
holding a microphone into West Street near the Post Office clock (a ritual
rather spoiled when ambitious members of the public attempted to have
themselves broadcast by yelling up from below.)
The holiest moment on the wireless was the Christmas broadcast of King
George, sounding so faint across the oscillating waves that the monarch
seemed whole oceans and hemispheres away. A missed holy moment came
in 1926 when it was announced that the miraculous invention would actually
get America live for the Dempsey-Tunny fight at 2.00 in the morning. The
men of the house kept vigil to that hour and, switching the set on, were
thrilled to hear 'Stars and Stripes' sounding loud and clear from the speaker.
The whole household was woken, only to hear the local Durban announcer
chip in and regret that the Studio couldn't get America!
The University was perhaps still too small to make much impact on the
cultural life of Pietermaritzburg. Of course, personages such as Professors
Bews, Bayer and Petrie were much respected figures in town, but children
brought up in the twenties got to know the inner precincts of the NUC when
they wrote their public examinations. There one sat in the Main Hall, which
then served as the Library, surrounded by books and wondering whether
one's efforts would earn a permanent entree to this forbidding interior. A
more cheerful University occasion was the annual departure of the 'grads
train'. In the days when university colleges formed a single collegiate entity,
degrees were of course conferred in Pretoria, and so Maritzburg's yearly

graduands were given a big send-off on the evening train-- some in such a
state as made it difficult to believe that they knew what they were about.
One of my panel remembers a 'grads train' leaving Maritzburg with a
saxophonist leaning far out of the window, playing loudly to the vanishing
platform.
The idiosyncracy of University types seemed amply confirmed when, in
the 1930s, the newly-appointed History lecturer, Mr Mark Prestwich,
managed to miss his boat from Southampton, with the result that the year's
History course started several weeks latc. In an academic society of
somewhat Scottish tone (thus 'Sandy' Reid to his ne'er-do-well students:
'Ye're a thorrrn in my flesh') the debonair and very English Prestwich
who had black satin sheets on his bed, who burned incense in his rooms (or
so the rumour went) - arrived like a sort of time-bomb. His suits of slender
cut contrasted with the padded-shoulder style that was the rage from
America and made Maritzburg men look like lesser Al Capones. He
confirmed his reputation by annnouncing that the only barber who could
manage his hairstyle lived in Durban, and also by insisting on getting off
buses before ladies and not after them - a pushy behaviour that turned out,
of course, to he copybook manners from the days of coaching.
Outside the university the intellectual life of Maritzburg was served by the
City Parliament, a sort of debating society on parliamentary lines, organised
by such devotees as Mr Newsom. the city Valuator. The motions up for
discussion were advertised in the Natal Witness, and the Parliament met
weekly above Christie's and later above Perks's tea-rooms. The sessions
were well supported; there was much enthusiasm, for instance, over a
comparatively unknown young speaker- Denis Hurley.
Thcn there was Scott's Theatre which could count on visiting stars of
international repute. It was the venue for instance, for a touring Macbeth
with Sybil Thorndyke and her husband Lewis Casson in the lead roles. A
distant relative of one of my witnesses was, aias, subject to inebriation, and
contrived to fall out of a box of the Scott's Theatre into the orchestra. And
it was here that another family black sheep fulfilled a bet to 'slap a lady's
back' in the course of an evening (a temptation provoked, it must be
admitted, by the new backless dresses which had just become the rage.)
Scott's Theatre managed to cater for every social rank in its small domain,
having not only boxes and stalls and a dress circle. but also a 'gods' high in
the rear of the building. You climbed up to i.t by dark wooden stairs and sat
on hard wooden forms, but you could avenge yourself on the affluent below
by chucking down toffee-papers during the course of the show.
What the intelligentsia of Maritzburg might not have conceded was that
the chief passage of talent through the town came to the picture-houses, and
that not because of the films they showed, but because of the international
quality of the vaudeville troupes who did the circuit of bioscopes right
through the Empire. Admittedly these were often the soapbox virtuosi who
conjured and yodelled and played any tune on request hut along with them
there came such durable stars as Harry Lauder, the De Groot string trio,
and Heifetz himself who fiddled to the Grand in 1933, some five years after
talkies had arrived.
A rather oblique shot of the entrance to the 'Rinko Bio-Vaudeville', really to

advertise the locksmith cum chocolate-seller, Mr lames Banks, next door , whose
shop rather obscures the theatre, but where the display pictures for forthcoming
attractions can nevertheless be seen. The low building further along has been
identified as the original premises of Voller's signwriters. Note the diagonal parking
permitted down the centre of Longmarket Street. Mr Bank's business was obviously
well-placed : 'Chocolates for the lady? Tobacco and cigarettes for yourself? This is
the place to obtain same! '
(Photograph: WaIter Linley)
There were two picture houses in Maritzburg through the silent era, the
Rinko (so called because it was converted from a Victorian roller-skating
rink) and the Excelsior. The latter, the 'bughouse' - built, it was said, out
of wattle and daub - held the agency for MGM ('Makes Good Movies') but
couldn't match the Rinko for the quality of its vaudeville. (Nor could the
King's Theatre which came later, and whose gimmick was to place two huge
blocks of ice in front of fans on either side of the stage and advertise itself as
air-conditioned.) The Rinko catered for a noisy junior clientele in the
afternoon (order sometimes restored by one of Maritzburg's best-known
characters, the Mental Hospital inmate 'Tom Mix') but in the evening it
took on a metropolitan respectability so great that Mr Line the stockbroker
(who imported lace curtains from England and carnation plants from
France) could hire his own permanent row of seats for the entertainment of
his friends. Mr Line himself slept peacefully through the film; when the
talkies came he gave up his row, because he couldn't sleep through the
show.
At the beginning of a Rinko evening you would be handed a programme
announcing an overture to be performed by the Rinko's own orchestra. This
was not a large ensemble, but its names engraved themselves on
Maritzburg's memory - Stanley Ricketts on piano, Tommy Cragg on
cornet, A .G. Lugsdin (later a city councillor) on clarinet, and so on. In the
silent era a good cinema orchestra varied the music with the action on the
screen. The great master of fitting the tune to the film was William Bohm,
playing on the Wurlitzer at The Prince's in Durban. Otherwise many a Natal
cinema hired the local piano teacher, who simply played unending
syncopation for the length of the film. The vaudeville circuit included names
of such prestige as the British baritone George Baker (who, after failing
with opera, 'wowed' his audience at the Grand with the nightmare song
from [o[an/he) , Ame\ita Galli-Curci, Mark Hambourg, John McCormack,
Richard Tauber, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and Maritzburg's own
'girl made good', Garda Hall, daughter of the proprietor of Hall's Cycle
Works in upper Church Street, who was now so illustrious that she recorded
for HMV and lived in England.
Loud hammering accompanied the last silent film shown at the Rinko as
the speakers were fixed in place for the first talkie, Al Jolson in 'The Singing
Fool'. This was cinematic progress, no doubt, but it was doom for the
Rinko. Its great iron roof meant that the merest patter of rain drowned any
talkie. Certainly it didn't survive the coming of the Grand, which opened in
1928, and was quite the most opulent building that Maritzburg had seen.
One of my panel remembers being shown over the theatre (he had gone to
book for the New Year show, 'Love Parade' with Maurice Chevalier) by a
manager whose chief pride was not the plush seating or the ornate panels
but the twin projectors - now you could show a film without stopping to
change reels. To the Grand in the thirties came the dance bands of Jack
Paync and Debroy Somers, and the military band of the Grenadier Guards.
The most memorable non-cinematic entertainers that passed through
Maritzburg belonged to fairs and circuses, which usually camped on the
Market Square or in Victoria Road. Pagel's Circus hardly needed a show
inside the tent, since Mr Pagel's ride through town with a lion was spectacle
in itself, and the antics of Mrs Pagel - who had diamond rings on every
finger, who sold the tickets but never gave change, who swore like a trooper
and was more terrifying than the lions - drew an audience at the gate just
to watch her alone. The fiery Pagels were apparently not daunted, in
Maritzburg, by the proximity of that splendidly eccentric society, the Order
of the Golden Age, which used to wring public conscience with a poster on
which a tiger uttered pathetically, under the ringmaster's lash , 'How long,
Oh Lord , how long?'
With the picture houses went a whole ritzy sub-culture of before-and
after-show snacks and teas. One got one's sweets at Lewis's Sweet Corner
on the way to the theatre, but on the way back one had the choice of
Christie's, the Creamery, Kean's or Perks', all of which stayed open till 10
o'clock (the white waitresses being only too pleased to get the late-hour jobs
in the years of the Depression.) Excellent live music could be had from 'The
Red Hungarian Band' which played on Fridays and Saturdays in the classy
decor of the upstairs lounge of the Creamery . (A change of personnel later
required that they rename themselves The Lisbon Gypsy Orchestra'.) Their
coup was to legalise after-church concerts on Sunday nights by charging a
shilling for entrance. No wonder Mr J. Withers Carter, who gave the organ
recitals in the City Hall , had a variable audience. The Athenaeum and
Christie's, tea-lounges in Church Street, both employed , at various times,
their resident bands . (Mrs Christie had another modest gimmick; she
dressed her waitresses in the same colour as each day's table-linen.) The
sub-culture in theatre music spilt over into a demand for sheet music and
gramophone records, Simkins's for HMV, Kemp's for Columbia.
Pietermaritzbur~ - The Missin~ Decades 43
Perhaps Maritzburg's favourite meeting point, Christie's Cafe-de-Iuxe made a great

impression with its art nouveau glass partitions between the tables. Here one could
sample the products of the Soda Fountain, 'admitted by some of the most
distinguished authorities to be one of the finest in South Africa . . . '
(Photograph: Waller Linley)
Maritzburg did not spend all of its time in front of a screen, though it is
perhaps symbolic that the King's Theatre took over the Buchanan Street
premises of Mr Bennett's well-used Gymnasium. (The Buchanan Street area
produced a hardy type - they turned up at 6.00 every morning for a
swimming session at the small public Baths.) The chief sports contests were
held on Empire Day at the Alexandra Park - an occasion that was
highlighted, in alternate years, by the arrival of the ' up' Comrades'
Marathon. One wonders if this zealous association of Sport and Empire had
anything to do with Lord Baden-Powell's visit in 1927. At any rate, such
activities produced for Pietermaritburg its very own Olympic gold medallist
in the person of Marjorie Clark, who broke the world hurdling record in the
late twenties. (She was reported not to use the front gate of the family
house, but merely to leap over the fence.)
Listening to the reports of these chaste exercises and pleasures, I began to
wonder if Pietermaritzburg was a somewhat strait-laced Georgian capital.
Not according to a 1930s equivalent of Private Eye, Mr Black's scurrilous
newsletter The Sjambok. To the amazement and secret triumph of its
citizens, Maritzburg figured in this production as wicked beyond its size,
with reports of pyjama parties and high jinks that left great metropolises
considerably in its wake. Besides, when life in Maritzburg became too strait
laced, the well-ta-do could slip out to the Star and Garter, some kilometres
out on the Durban Road, and indulge in junketings that would hardly
recommend themselves in the upper floor of the Creamery. One party,
returning the worse for wear from the Star and Garter, broke into Jesse
Smith's mason's yard, stole a marble angel, and set it up in Commercial
Road where it was discovered next morning. But for lesser mortals, bacon
and eggs at the market square Pie-cart was the satisfactory conclusion to an
evening's entertainment.
The Great Depression that spread through the Empire in the early thirties
made an indelible impression on those who lived through it, and Maritzburg
certainly had its share of first class matries walking the streets for work.
Shops closed down; sons of once-wealthy farmers queued for jobs as medical
orderlies at Grey's Hospital. The perspective, here, is inevitably a 'white'
one; it was felt that the 'natives' could retreat into some tribal heartland
away from the iron laws of supply and demand . I've no doubt this is an
ethnocentric view, but people are seldom sociologically accurate when the
struggle is on to get any sort of grip on the bare threads of a sterile
economy. Any city of the Empire knew only too well, even before the
Depression, the 'poor white' bottom of the economic pyramid. Many caught
at this level knew how to make a respectable living out of humble
circumstances, such as the solderers who called to fix your zinc baths, the
scissors sharpeners, the shoelace sellers, the paraffin-tin vase makers, the
men who lacquered furniture, and even those who (assisted by an umfaan)
still did the dirtiest job of all, chimney sweeping. (One of Maritzburg's
characters, Mr Pym the shoelace seller, neatly dressed in a frock-coat and a
top hat, was typical of the stratum washed up in the colonies. He would
recall a more illustrious youth, singing as a choirboy in Westminster Abbey.)
But after 1930 the retinue of tramps calling at your door swelled to a regular
stream, and the hobo influx was as evident here as in the United States.
With the Depression about to start biting, the girls in this 1929 photograph were
probably fortunate to have shop-floor jobs in the newly established 'Clothing
Factory' of Mr H. Withey, situated at 255 Pietermaritz Street.
(Photograph : Waiter Linley)
The Depression does not seem to be remembered as a period of despair

or bitterness; in fact it brought out a certain public inventiveness to try and
help its victims. Building Societies decreased their bond rates, railway staff
went on to a four day week to avoid lay-offs. Mrs P.H. Taylor, mayoress at
the time, thought of turning the bare veld next to the Alexandra Swimming
Baths into rock gardens, and men were employed there at 3/6 a day through
most of 1932-6, with what results we can all now see. (Incidentally a
Victorian grave was covered over by the rock gardens - that of a youth who
drowned in a gala when galas were still held in the Umsinduzi.)
One sign of a new economic realism was that young ladies were much
more likely to apply themselves to commercial subjects. They might sign on
with Mrs Kobrin's 'School of Commerce' in Harwin's Arcade, or learn to
type with Mrs Sates in Buchanan Street. It was quite a revolution, though,
when the new headmistress at Girls' High School brought in bookkeeping
for her girls in 1933, a subject which had been considered, hitherto, not
sufficiently academic. Miss Lindsay had done a degree at Columbia
University in New York, and so was probably wiser than most about the
state of the times and what they needed. But her teachers were not trained
in bookkeeping - poor Miss Eve Grundy had to learn the subject by night
that she would teach next day to her pupils.
As if the times were not difficult enough economically, Pietermaritzburg
was subjcct to successive epidemics, in 1932 and 1934, of malignant malaria,
and there were many dcaths from the disease. In the first wave, dozens of
tents were put up in the Grey's Hospital grounds; in the second the hospital
Itself could no longer cope, and patients had to be nursed at home. A
smister fact about the disease was the rapidity with which it descended - a
boy would go on to a soccer field in perfect health, and half an hour later
come off in a feverish fit of shivers. One of my panel was taken ill with
malaria while standing in the school crocodile at the station, awaiting the
arrival of Prince George. The epidemics led to a high level of public
awareness - we find a sort of twentieth century confidence, now, that
science can fight back. So if mosquito nets were unpacked from drawers,
Citronella was now available to be applied to blankets and cupboards.
Lectures and charts taught one how to distinguish anopheles mosquitoes
(they 'stood on their heads') and how to make liberal use of the new wonder
spray, Pyagra.
The Maritzburg Market was the place where all races met, where all
peoples stood patiently shoulder to shoulder. where they hired rickshas,
bargained with auctioneers, and saw publicly and plainly how the money
flowed. One wouldn't say that the lack of Group Areas Laws meant that
there was no race feeling - after all, absolute segregation leads to a lack of
feeling altogether. The casualness with which residential areas were defined
was probably the obverse of an utter confidence in the imperial hierarchy.
And certainly there were quite a few grey areas in the residential structure
of Pietermaritzburg. One of my panel lived as a boy in Boom Street and can
remember a great stir in the neighbourhood caused by a royal visit. At least
three black families (significantly with the surname Dunn) owned houses
that fronted on Boom Street. One day in the early twenties a whole crowd
of white and black neighbours congregated to witness the visit to the Dunns
of Solomon, King of the Zulus, who arrived grandly in his chauffeur-driven
car.
The people who progressed materially in these decades were the Indians,
archetypally remembered as the symbolic hawker 'Sammy' - with two
baskets over his shoulders on a long bamboo cane that creaked as he walked
- and the basket-carrying 'Mary' who came on alternate days, both having
trudged the long path from the city to the suburbs. The occasional sight of
immaculately dressed Moslem women in upper Church Street always raised
the question as to how much Indians were acculturated. When the Infectious
Diseases Hospital was built in 1937 Indian women were prevented by strong
taboos from offering themselves as nurses. In fact the difficulty of enlisting
nurses from any other race (a problem not solved, in the case of the Indians,
until the late fifties) had, in the South African perspective, an interesting
corollary. Grey's Hospital was open to all races, and so white nurses nursed
everyone, being the only ones available to do so. There was one exception:
the birth of children often took place at home, with the result that there was
quite a society of midwives, some of the very best of whom were Coloured
women. It was certainly not unheard of for a Coloured midwife to attend a
white mother at the time of a birth.
Indian shops were colourful affairs, tight on floor space but with high
vertical shelving that needed hooked rods to fetch down the fabrics that
were almost out of sight. On the streets in front were piles of army coats,
blankets and metal boxes to entice the miners who had some hours to kill
while passing through by train. But of course they were mixed in with some
well-established 'white' shops: Fairman's Fishmonger's, Turnbull's Bakery,
Arnold's Chemist - in fact P.R. Murphy's mule team came out into Church
Street not far from the gate of the mosque. There was undoubtedly a feeling
concerning the success of Indian commerce, but in a sense it was a prejudice
of class rather than of race, since the Indians did their best business with the
artisan class of the white community. Nevertheless, the white traders of
Maritzburg were not a little upset when, in 1928, the sitting mayor opened
the Paramount Stores in upper Church Street. It was claimed that, because
the Indians lived above their own stores, they didn't have to pay rates twice
as did the white shopowners. But in fact when Indians did begin to buy
houses in what was still the intact residential area of the WestlPietermaritz
Street block, a great stiffening took place, the class issue became a race
issue, and the spread was eventually limited by the Indian Penetration Act
of 1941.
No doubt a good deal of the idyll that was white life between the wars
derived from the well-nigh feudal system of servants and labourers that
supported it. It takes probably a century or two of political heat to decide
whether the underdogs, in the feudal pyramid, were content or not with
their daily existence. The retinues of black servants, delivery 'boys',
assistants, launderers, harnessers, wagoneers, coal shovellers, grass cutters,
who worked for a pittance and were never seen in shops or streets except on
errands were probably too close to primitive laws of supply and demand to
consider the issue. The ricksha industry is the controversial area here - in
retrospect it seems the most man-impounding and enslaving sort of job, but
there was great rivalry for licensed vehicles, especially as, with fares ranging
between 6d and 2/- you might, in two or three days, earn as much as the
'head boy' of a household in a month, which was usually £2.00. (Incidentally
the starting pay for a white nurse was then £1.10 a month. For those who
had to pay board and lodging, like a brand-new schoolteacher, the starting
pay was f11.3s.4d. Of this the board would be about £5 to £6. The first
block of flats in Pietermaritzburg, 'Strathallan', was not yet built and there
was a great collection of minor hotels and boarding houses - the Thanet,
the Oaks, the Summerville, Warrington House, Palmdene.) One doesn't
imply an inveterate contentment, then, if one recalls the colourful picture of
the suburban off hours period between 3.00 and 5.00 p.m. when servants
and domestics would sit along the pavements, feet dangling in the gutters,
chatting, listening, playing Jews' harps, mouth organs, squash boxes or
home-made banjos. What did they think of the curfew bell that sounded
from the tower above the police station (today's Publicity House) every
evening at to.OO p.m.·) (You often heard it, said my panel - who quite saw
the irony - as you came out of a film.) That smacks of the old South, and
yet . . . the railway station was the exit gate from undesirable employers,
just as it was the disembarking point for dozens seeking work. (Which
reminds one of another Maritzburg procession: black mothers-to-be, getting
off trains and walking slowly and grandly a few hundred yards down to the
Bale Street Maternity Home.)
fhe servant population who withdrew into invisibility at 10.00 p.m.
rewarded their employers with a touching honesty. Oxenham's Bakery
~owned by Roy Hesketh's father) used to pile each day's takings into huge
pots in easy public view and reach, and yet they were never the object of
theft. The locking of doors of Maritzburg homes seems hardly to have
occurred; only the annual holiday would warrant it. Yet the serene life could
take a violent turn, as on Sunday afternoons, when 'kitchen boys' formed
gangs to have skebenga stick fights. In those days of municipal police forces,
the Maritzburg foot patrols were usually composed of a white officer and a
black. the latter dressed as the former except for puttees and bare feet, and
with a knobkerrie instead of a truncheon. These modest troops were useless
to quell the stick fights, and a special posse of mounted police had to be
formed to control them.
Many white housewives took an active interest in thc uplift of their
servants. One of my panel remembers her mother making her house umfaan
recite his homework as he stood on the ladder hanging curtains, beforc
sending him off to night school at the old Co1cnso Church on Commercial
Road. The black serving population was not a-political in a 'Southern' sort
of way. My panel confirms how the ICU, the Industrial and Commercial
Workers' Union (though they recall it almost to a man as the International
Coloured Union) reached through to all layers of black labour, even to farm
workers who, to all appearances, ~eemed utterly a-political. (To move to
Greytown for a moment: one witness remembers lying in bed excited and
frightened of a Friday night as horsemen came to the town in droves from
outlying farms for the weekly rcu meeting.) In Maritzburg the rcu
headquarters were below Scott Street at the upper end of Church Street and
invariably there was a milling crowd thereabouts on Saturday nights. Yet
two of my panel remember preferring to walk through this crowd, and in
fact often doing so, since the alternative, Pietermaritz Street, was dimly lit
and dangerous. The ICU obviously provided an important social outlet; but
all was not well with its management of funds, which were made up of
subs carefully collected every Friday evening from kitchen and garden staff
through town and suburbs. The story is that when one of the Maritzburg
ICU officials bought a motor car (an entity beyond the wildest dreams of the
ordinary members) many withdrew in disgust.
Afrikaners might be the most pleasant neighbours, but the post-Boer War
generation were seldom generous about 'the Dutch'. One of my panel used
to seek help with his homework from a charming and talented Afrikaner
family, and yet hardly dared mention the fact to his parents. On the other
hand a certain guilt feeling about letting down the Union must have set in by
1938; you don't have to browse long through the Pietermaritzburg
Centenary eulogies and programmes to discover how 'Voortrekker City' is
trying its level best to woo the other white race, using Dingaan, of course, as
an appropriate historic villain and not mentioning the English at Port Natal
at all.
There was, it seems, a blessed innocence in Pietermaritzburg as to the
grim way that the thirties would end. On President Hindenberg's 80th
birthday in 1932, a pianist on my panel accompanied a German schoolgirl
violinist at a celebration in the Womens' Club, above Ackerman's (opposite
Somtseu's statue in Longmarket Street). Next year Germany had a new
chancellor. At the debating society at Girls' High School, a German girl
offered a passionate vindication of Hitler, but left in tears when she got no
sympathy - it seems that the putsch behaviour was already offending
children of the Empire. I'll end my portrait of a happy but stressful decade
by recalling a small incident. 1938. One of my panel, a junior clerk in the
Town Clerk's Office, is sent post-haste from an afternoon sitting of the City
Council. He wends his way past Somtseu's statue to the Post Office, and
sends off a special telegram - congratulations to Neville Chamberlain from
Pietermaritzburg for having achieved 'peace in our time'.
(My most grateful thanks are due to R. Bizley, S. Bizley, L. Davies, L.

Duffin, N. Ormond, V. Ridge, L. Ward.)
W.H. BIZLEY
49
Douglas Livingstone
Natal Poet?
Douglas Livingstone, according to The Companion to South African
Literature is 'generally regarded as South Africa's leading contemporary
poet'. It's a fair comment. In 1982, when he was awarded an honorary
doctorate in literature by the University of Natal, the citation referred to
him as 'a brilliant and universally respected poet'. Although born in the Far
East to Scottish parents, he first came to Natal as a war refugee at the age of
ten. He went to school here. And he has lived and worked in Durban, after
a stay in Rhodesia, since 1964. Can the province properly claim him as one
of its own?
There were mornings following rain:
mornings of explicit langour
when the grass and hedges, near flesh
in their lushness, shone yellow in
the sun's candour; when the sea called on
its most proper blue, deploying
leached energies at the fringes . . .
These lines from Livingstone's A Morning have a definite Natal feel. The
'Iangour', the 'lushness', the 'leached energies' and the sea's 'most proper
blue' are immediately recognisable elements in the physical quality of
Durban and the long yellow coastline which stretches to the north and south
of the city.
Indeed, much of Livingstone's poetry is shot through with his perceptions,
sometimes no more than acutely observed glances, of the environment he
knows best. This is not so surprising for a man who recently advised would
be poets to 'make your skin (your carapace against the world and its slings
and arrows) as thin as possible without actually bleeding to death through
it', (Crux, Aug. 1986). Durban and Natal have definitely penetrated
Livingstone's thin skin, Listen to the busy yet somewhat bleak flavour,
inimitably rendered in the final stanza from Steel Giraffes, of Durban
harbour:
Certainly, there is nowhere
such a dolour
of funnels, mastings, yards,
filaments of dusk ringing shrouds
woven through the word goodbye,
riveted steel giraffes
tactfully looking elsewhere,
necks very still to the sky.
50 David Livingstone - Natal Poet?
'When 1 first came to Natal,' Livingstone told me, 'I was only ten years
old, and 1 had already lived in Malaya (where 1 was born), in Scotland,
Ceylon and Australia. Yet when I started my new life here r felt as if I'd
come home.'
The unruly young Scat, who would later describe himself as a 'white
African' and an 'African poet', lived with his mother and sister initially at
Umkomaas (his father was a POW in the Far East) and felt immediately that
he had 'come home'. I asked why he thought he had felt that sense of
homecoming with such surety.
'Perhaps because this \\'a<; the first place I'd walked through a village
barefoot,' he said, 'I went everywhere, first in Umkomaas and then for years
in St Michaels-on-Sea, in my bare feet. There may well be pulses in the
earth which get to us through the soles of our feet but which we haven't
been able to measure yet. I think Africa is full of those pulses. There's really
nowhere else 1 want to live.'
We sat in Livingstone's office, a smallish room cluttered with books and
bottles of various coloured liquids and some scientific gadgets with
calibrated gauges. A map of the world's oceans adorned onc wall. At fifty
five, there is something essentially lean and tough-looking about the poet
who earns his 'bread and butter' by being a scientist. Lean body, thinning
hair, direct eyes. Lean and tough - the words describe his intellect as well:
there is space for passion, none for sentimentality. He said quite candidly
that he disliked being interviewed. He told of a journalist who had asked
why, as a poet, he did not wear his hair long. The answer was logical
enough: 'Because in a laboratory it's preferable to have short back and
sides.' The journalist had then written something about this poet who
preferred short backsides. He told me this not so much to put me in my
place as simply to share an old joke with a new acquaintance. His eyes - as
with many of his poems - are often full of laughter.
'My scientific work is very important to me,' Livingstone said. 'As a
young man, 1 had a great hankering after medicine. The impube to heal has
always been very strong. I became a laboratory technician in Rhodesia,
studying part-time. After six years I qualified as a bacteriologist. I ended up
in charge of a pathological diagnostic lab in Broken Hill, Zambia.'
I asked him if this desire to heal had manifested itself in his poetry as well
as in his 'bread and butter' career.
He didn't like the question much. 'It's possible, I suppose. But I would
hate to be writing morally healing verses. Actually, poetry is a very
ungenteel thing.'
'In what way?'
'In its unflinching confrontation with any and every subject And in the
way it's made, or at least in the way I make it,' he replied. '1 write in four
hour sessions. I drink lots and lots of wine and heap up the ashtrays. I don't
care whether l'm popular or not. I read critics with amusemenL 1 write my
poetry for an audience of one: an ideal person who is ironical, witty,
civilised, but not too civilised. I guess I'm just celebrating those things about
the earth which excite me.'
I steered the conversation back to his scientific career.
'In Broken Hill I started getting a bit tired of diagnostic lab work. I finally
had a meeting with myself and I decided to bring this healing impulse of
David Uvingstone - Natal Poet? 51
mine to the earth, or more accurately to its waters. So I came back to

Durban and got a job here in an oceanographic research institute'. 'The
sea,' he added with a smile, 'is an extremely difficult and reticent patient.'
'Do you think,' J asked, 'that your scientific work has had an impact on
your poetry?'
'Of course it has. Mind you, for many years I held back on the scientific.
It appeared in my poetry only in muted form. But recently I have said: to
hell with it. Use science, otherwise you're not being true to your times.'
Livingstone lit a long brown cigarette at this point, and turned to me with
eyes which were alight with amusement and irreverence. 'The anti-smoking
lobby makes me laugh. You should see all the nasties that issue from the
family car's exhaust. Now that overt racism is no longer acceptable, I think
people transfer the same sort of antagonisms to other recognisable groups.
These days it's the smokers. Next century it could be against bald men or
people who wear glasses.'
J questioned him about his own perceptions of racism, and he said: 'You
will have to realise that politically I'm a pathetic figure. Do you know that
when I lived in Rhodesia I actually believed in the Central African
Federation. But I eventually saw the worst face of colonialism there: people
paying lip-service to the Federation while going out of their way to sink it.
The KwaNatal Indaba reminds me of the Federation. I hope the lip-service
saboteurs don't sink it.
'I suppose I was a fairly unique animal when 1 first came to Africa. 1 had
no concept of race at all. On the boat, my best friend was a Malay
deckhand. We used to get up to al1 sorts of minor crime. And once in Natal,
I had no idea of nor interest in the division here. My first friends were the
young black caddies at the Umkomaas golf course, and later on at St
Michacls.'
'Do you consider yourself to be a Natal poet now'?' I asked. 'What does
the province mean to you?'
'It means a great deal to me. It's my home. I certainly have no intention
of moving. It's the laboratory of the world.'
He blew out a plume of grey sP.1oke. 'Let me try to explain this. I think
Natal is a microcosm of South Africa, South Africa of the world. Socially,
we've got it all: the divisions between the haves and the have-nots, the racial
problems, and so on. If we don't make it here in Natal, South Africa is not
going to make it. If South Africa doesn't make it neither will the world.
Here I am referring to the humans.
'On another level, a deeper level perhaps, T sce Natal as a microcosm of
Africa. Natal is a compressed version of the continent. It has everything.
Terror, beauty, and an immense sense of power emanating from the earth
and the waters. Then there's that mixture of the feminine - those soft,
undulating, green hills - and the masculine landscapes, all rugged and
jagged and brutal. There's witchcraft here, and also the fact that the sea has
risen and sunk two hundred metres from the original shoreline several dozen
times in the remote past. I look at Oribi Gorge and think of the sea, the
primaeval force of it there, lashing itself against the craggy cliffs.'
'Tell me about your relationship with Africa.'
'I see Europe as over-tidied, over-regimented, tame. Africa is none of
these things. Africa has an immediacy which is absolutely thrilling.'
'Do you see it as belligerent?'

He shook his head. 'We might credit it with belligerence. But it's not. It's
just there - to drag the upstart down.'
'You mean, white people?'
Again he shook his head, this time with slight impatience. 'People talk of
the hostility of Africa. I'm only aware of that when there's a neeklacing or a
bomb in a hotel or the bulldozing of squatter camps. But intrinsically it's not
hostile. T have spoken sometimes of its magnificence and malevolence. This
combination is common to all continents, but on the tamer ones it only
exists in pocket form. In Africa it's everywhere. The magnificence and the
malevolence co-existing. I think the conventional European mind doesn't
cope, and never has coped, too wel1 with this dichotomy. One needs to
accept the contradiction completely to maintain some balance. But humanity
has not even been able to accept the contradiction in itself.'
Livingstone pickcd up a copy of his Selected Poems and began paging
through it. In 19R5 the collection won him the CNA Literary Award, but his
mind was not on accolades now.
He looked up at me. 'Man is sick,' he said. He was silent a moment, then
went on: 'It's a hell of a problem, looking at man. In a basic biological
mode, man is just another life-form. If you add to this the art, music,
religion and philosophy, however, he obviously isn't just another life-form.
But if you start going along this avenue of man as a life-form plus, sooner or
later you stub your toe against things which definitely are not superior, say,
to an eland. Elands don't kill for pleasure, or in their mating rituals, and not
even for their territorial imperatives .
.Man is an anomaly, in a state of terrible imbalance. I think our so-called
spiritual and ratiocinative sides are completely at odds. There's been no real
spiritual progress since the Greeks, but a great deal on the side of technical
development. A result of this imbalance now is that man's philosophical
handling of the technological explosion has been totally inadequate.
'We're living at the beginning of a new age of barbarism,' he told me.
'Think of it like this: in our fathers' time, the district surgeon had read his
Dickens, and even the local station master could probably quote from
Shakespeare. This applies to all the races I've had contact with. When I was
a child, for example, my Chinese nanny could quote Confucius and Buddhist
law to me. She was connected to her spiritual antecedents. But does this
connection exist any longer?'
He pushed his book of poetry across the desk to me. 'Have a look at this
particular piece. It expresses pretty clearly what I believe.' The book was
open at a poem entitled A Natural History of the Negatio Bacillus. I read the
first lines:
Definition of Negatio
The distance between emotion and intellect, or heaven
and earth, when such distance constitutes pathogenesis.
Thought to be caused by a gram-negative, anaerobic,
spore-forming bacillus, probably growing readily on
artificial media, it is known to arrest psychogenesis.
'Our technologically-based popular culture,' Livingstone was saying, 'is

incredibly shallow. I' call it Kleenex art, easily assimilable and as easily
discarded. This would be bad enough, if the discarding left a void. Voids at
David Livin,f'stone - Natal Poet? 53
least can be filled with something else. But it leaves something worse. It
leaves a murkiness, a sort of hardening which makes it almost impossible to
assimilate the more spiritual material with which our various cultures
abound.'
Onset of Negatio usually occurs at puberty and there is
no known cure, except perhaps an awareness of itself
but this is usually temporary . . .
Diagnosis of Negatio
When the patient's hand curls compUlsively: aggressive
knuckles up or acquisitively down, in whichever plane
it is put.
When heaven is gone forever and earth gathers itself to
flinch from the patient's foot.
'If you glance at our own history, in Cecil Rhodes's time the materialists
stood out as exceptions. Today, everyone's a materialist. A man is judged
by his earning power, his house, his Mere. I cannot accept this at all. I've
known some wonderful people who didn't even have shoes. They're the
ones who seem to have been able to maintain a balance between emotion
and intellect.'
I was reading the final lines of the Negatio poem. They were in the form
of a 'contra-Negatio mantra'.
'0 father in heaven and my mother earth, love each
other and keep contact with each other through me
thy child.
Divorce not over me, condemn me not to the void
between, and let me not be by nothingness beguiled.
'I look on the earth as a living cell,' Livingstone told me. 'It's a miracle.
Yet inherent in it, in the whole of nature, there are implacable antagonisms.
The main one, obviously, is the force of life versus the power of death.
'It's become something of an obsession with me to follow the data coming
back from the space probes. Although our knowledge could hardly even be
described as fragmentary yet, the data induce a sense of real bleakness. Are
there populations out there who will one day send flying saucers to save us
from our folly? One hopes so!
'But I have the terrible feeling that life is an upstart in a huge and
inanimate universe. We're a lot lonelier than we think we are. Life seems
sometimes to be fighting a losing battle. Trees turning to stone, living bones
to fossils, grasslands to deserts. Perhaps the sheer mass of inanimate matter
is our destiny. But I wish to deny it. I think that life is infinitely vulnerable
and precious. This is why I became involved with pollution back in 1964. It's
my impulse to heal, to nurture life. It's life versus inanimate matter, and I
find I am getting more and more passionately involved on the side of life.'
This is the ultimate vision of Livingstone as both the scientist and the
poet: a passionate involvement with life, an almost fierce resistance to
inanimate matter, whether it be in the form of dead planets or the crippling
inertias of Kleenex art. Livingstone, whose thin skin has been penetrated
again and again by the magnificence and malevolence of Natal, of the
continent beyond,is the custodian of what he calls in one of his Giovanni
Jacopo poems the 'one Vision, one Integrity'. Life itself, whose
perpetuation is dependent on an understanding of its inherent contradictions
and on attempting to heal its imbalances.
It is worth quoting the poem Giovanni Jacopo meditates (On Aspects of

Art and Love) in full. It is Livingstone's credo as a poet, and it is typical of
his humour. The wryness of the final juxtaposition places the poet's function
in an all too human setting; it also illumines that function's importance.
The Poet's or Playwright's Function
Is to embark physically
Upon the Consciousness of his Generation;
Not merely as the Conscience
Of his Time; nor solely to reflect

Disintegration, if Disintegration
Is the Shaker of his Time's stormy Seas.
But to anchor a Present,
Nail to its Mast

One Vision, one Integrity
In a Manner so memorable
It fills Part of a Past.
The Poet's or Playwright's cnthusiasms,

These. The proper Pursuit
For a Gentleman remains to master
The Art of delaying his Orgasms.
DAYID ROBBINS
55
Hillcrest and its contribution to
Natal Education
The town of Hillcrest, with an official population in 1985 of 5291,' a

borough register in 1987 of 1 345 properties and an estimated municipal
expenditure in 1987-88 of approximately R1 million,2 lies amid the hills,
thirty five kilometres west of Durban, on the old main road to
Pietermaritzburg. Many of its residents commute daily to the multifarious
enterprises of the Pinetown-Durban conurbation. Hillcrest has enjoyed town
status only since 1971 and the older inhabitants, who once retired to the
country, recall nostalgically the village days, when no traffic lights were
necessary and when a single store served the needs of the entire community.
Even among these senior citizens, however, are few who can remember the
days when Hill Crest (as it was originally written) had as many as five
schools and made a significant if small contribution to education in Natal.
The Hillcrest railway station was (in times pre-metric) recorded as being
2 225 ft above sea-IeveJ.3 The climate, therefore, is temperate and less
taxing, especially at midsummer, than the humidity of the coast. The entire
region, furthermore, is well watered, with numerous streams draining in the
north to the Umgeni and in the south to the Umhlatuzana, which rises a few
kilometres north-west of Hillcrest, behind the eminence known as Botha's
Hill. Many farm names in the area (Sterkspruit, LangeJontein,
BuJfelJjontein) attest to the abundance of water, which is supplemented by
characteristic seasonal mists, keeping the hills green even in the grip of
winter.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the area has long attracted human settlement.
The building of the Key Ridge-Mariannhill toll road, which was opened in
1986 and which passes down the Umhlatuzana valley several kilometres
south-west of Hillcrest, led to the discovery of an extensive site of stone-age
occupation believed by the investigator to go back 120000 years.' The
nearby Shongweni Caves were certainly providing shelter for hunter
gatherers a thousand years ago and possibly considerably earlier. 5 During
the tribal turmoil of the early nineteenth century, the Umhlatuzana valley
was the haunt of cannibals" and, when Alien Gardiner travelled through the
district in 1835, he found abundant evidence of recent habitation, although
the countryside appeared deserted.' And, as the farm names quoted above
reveal, the Voortrekkers (after the battle of Blood River) established their
traditional 2 500 hectare holdings on the same hills.
By the time of the British annexation of Natal, the main road from capital
to port was well established and well used." New settlers travelling inland,
government agents on official business, merchants seeking the trade of the
56 Hillcrest and its contribution to Natal Education
interior, Boers from Transorangia carrying hides and wool to Durban,

detachments of redcoats from the garrisons, clergymen on pastoral journeys,
all moved along the road upon their various occasions. Many of them sought
refreshment at a small inn in the shadow of Botha's Hill, which was at times
so full and so noisy that discriminating guests preferred to sleep in their own
wagons. 9 This hostelry, opened very soon after British rule began and for a
while run by Cornelis Botha, one-time harbour master of Port Natal under
the Volksraad, represents the earliest known white settlement in what was
to become the town of Hillcrest. 1O On the other side of Botha's Hill, a Boer
named Hans Potgieter farmed Assagay Kraal.
In 1850, although the main road was busy, the country round about was
still sparsely populated. The tribesmen had not yet re-emerged from the
security of the Valley of a Thousand Hills to the north-east and many of the
Boer settlers (but not Potgieter) had joined the Second Trek out of Natal.
The English eye of Thomas Phipson was plainly gladdened by the evidence
that Pogieter was taming the wilderness. 'Some portions of ploughed lands,
and herds of cattle grazing,' he wrote in 1851, 'give life to a Natal landscape
usually deficient in these adjuncts. '11 George Mason, too, was struck by the
contrast between Potgieter's farm and the surrounding countryside,
describing it as 'a pretty picture when contrasted with the barren steeps and
wild craggy peaks by which it is walled in all round.'12
Mason, however, more than Phipson, had a countryman's feel for the land
he was crossing. Commenting on the veld between Field's Hill and Botha's
Hill, he remarked: 'Here the character of the country completely changed,
the soil became good and almost free from bush; the grass was shorter and
less rank than near the coast, and thickly interspersed with brilliant flowers
of scarlet, blue, white and purple. 'n Alien Gardiner's observation fifteen
years earlier was similar. He wrote of 'the downs being extensive and
elevated, the soil dry, and the grass shorter and better than that produced
on the lower grounds nearer to the sea.' Gardiner addcd another comment
which would prove prescient. He descrihed the country as 'uninteresting to
the traveller but likely one day to be held by the grazier in great
estimation' .14
But for the time being the grassland around present Hillcrest was in its
original undisturbed condition. One traveller provides information of which
the late 20th century observer needs to be specifically reminded: 'A fine
grassy plain but trees almost wholly disappeared till a short way hefore
reaching Mauritzburg, except in the remote kloofs. ',< There arc today so
many introduced trees in the area that to visualize it as treeless requires a
deliberate effort of the imagination. Guided by the work of Professor
Tainton and his associates, it is possible to conclude that the grass to which
the early travellers made reference was predominantly Themeda triandra, or
rooigras, characteristic in Natal of undisturbed veld. 16 The wildtlowers
mentioned by Mason arc less easy to identify, particularly as his journey was
made in the middle of winter, when few flowers other than those of the
aloes are in evidence. What is clear, however, is that until then human
settlement had made little impact on the environment. Mason's party
encountered antelope along the way '7 and, just a few years earlier, the
innkeeper at Botha's Halfway House was being troubled by predators, so
that some of his guests sat up half the night in a fruitless vigil. 18
Hillcrest and its contribution to Natal Education 57
These conditions continued for several decades. That avid naturalist and
inveterate collector, Henry Harford, travelling through the haunts of his
youth on Welch's omnibus in 1879, longed 'to get out of the bus and have a
look around again with the gun and net. '19 In the same year the railway from
Durban reached the district,20 being carried to the capital in 1880. This
technological advance had the effect of temporarily reducing the importance
of the wagon road, as may be deduced from the closure, about this time, of
the old Halfway House. The construction of a station at Botha's Hill,
furthermore, meant that the earliest trains passed through the area which
was to become Hillcrest without even a scheduled stop.
The discovery of minerals in the interior, however, was soon to have its
effect even upon this part of Natal. The development, particularly of the
Eastern Transvaal goldfields and later of the Witwatersrand, led to a boom
in transport riding and before long the road to Pietermaritzburg had
resumed its role as an important artery. Many Natal entrepreneurs, black
and white, entered the increasingly lucrative trade. Some built up extensive
businesses, sending their freight wagons vast distances with cargoes of great
diversity. One of these men was William Gillitt.
William Gillitt. owner of the farm Albinia at the time of the establishment of the village.
(Photograph : Author's Collection)
William Gillitt 21 (whose names were dynastic, confusingly shared by his

father and son) had emigrated with his parents from Buckinghamshire as a
boy of ten or eleven in 1849. The family settled at Wyebank, near Field's
Hill, and in 1865 young William married Elizabeth, daughter of William
Swan Field. About 1870, Gillitt purchased a 500 acre portion of the property
Everton, on which he established his own farm, Emberton. Around this
farm, in the slack winter months of the next eighteen years, he built a solid
stone wall unusual in Natal. In 1879 he allowed the NGR to establish a
watering-point at what was to become the station of GiIIitts, not far from the
Emberton homestead .
It was Alien Gardiner, as noted earlier, '4 who had observed that the time
would come when the grazier would be interested in the veld of the plateau.
As Gillitt's transport interests increased, so he acquired more and more land
around Emberton, partly at least to provide grazing for his teams of draught
oxen. One of the farms he bought lay directly west of Emberton and bore
the name Albinia. It was named after the original inn at the foot of Botha's
Hill. 22 On the survey plan of 1849 it is described simply as the 'Property of
Capt. Murison' and on the Watts map of 1855 as 'Albinia, Capt. J .
Murison'. There is no evidence that Murison ever occupied the farm. In all
probability he was a speculator, like the Cape businessman, Collison, who
(according to the 1855 map) owned three farms south of Albinia. At all
events, it was on Albinia that the village of Hill Crest was later established .
It is difficult to establish with any precision the sequence of events before
the village was established . The only documentary evidence readily
accessible is a draft of a letter written by William Gillitt in 1895 and still in
the possession of his descendants. 21 Some time earlier than 1895, Gillitt had
granted permission for a store to be built on Albinia. By 1893,'" the
leaseholder was an Italian immigrant by the name of Fregona. The store was
strategically sited beside the main road to Pietermaritzburg, at the junction
with the road from Shongweni in the west. A few kilometres away towards
the capitaL another road led east to the Zulu reserve of Inanda. And past
The Waggoner's Rest, as Fregona called his emporium," rolled not only
freight for the goldfields and farm implements for the F;-ee State but also
trade goods and illegal guns for Pondoland and the Transkei , before they
turned south at Umlaas Road.
" K'. ' " I /\" 11 , I

I ~ 7' 1').'7
Ernest Acutt was later elected Mayor of Durban,

(Photograph: Author's Collection)
The name given to the establishment and the fact that in his letter Gillitt
referred to it as an hotel indicates that some transport-riders at least used
Fregona's as a stop-over, although Gillitt's subsequent comment, 'it is more
a general store than anything else',23 clearly suggests that the comforts
offered were only rudimentary. The store must by that time have enjoyed a
certain local trade also, because into the district had moved some small
farmers, several of them with German surnames and perhaps younger sons
from the New Germany settlement in search of land. Others were black
tenants or squatters whose huts could be seen from the main road. That
Gillitt had earlier granted an acre of land for the building of a church not far
from The Waggoner's Rest suggests that the area had become reasonably
well populated.
It was this small centre of civilisation which caught the eye of an
enterprising Durban estate agent, Ernest Acutt, whose father Robert, had
founded an auction mart at the port in 1852. Acutt and his brother had just
decided to concentrate exclusively on the property business and to give up
auctioneeringY Ernest Acutt, within a few years to be elected Mayor of
Durban, negotiated with William Gillitt, in January, 1895, the fifty-year
lease of a block of land 512 acres in extent and bounded on the east by the
main road, with the road to Shongweni as the southern boundary. The
agreement is set out in the letter referred to above.23 Acutt undertook to pay
a monthly rental of £7, to be responsible for any taxes which might be
placed on the land and to fence the block with wire and iron standards. For
this undertaking, he acquired the right to sublet the land to 'respectable
tennants' (sic) and the hope of a substantial profit.
Some of the early residents of Hillcrest beside a typical wood·and·iron cottage.

Ernest Acutt divided the land into stands of varying size and became the
first to build a house there. Very soon other Durban businessmen and
professional people had followed his example, erecting wood-and-iron
holigay cottages to which they withdrew from the heat of the coast,
particularly in the December-January season. On the list of early tenants
appear names like Binns, Churchill, Greenacre, Harwin and Beningfield.
Not all the pioneer residents were migratory, however. In 1895, the Rev.
Oxley-Oxland opened a school for boys which he called Delamore. As a
result of this, the little settlement came officially to be known as Delamore
Halt, where the train stopped on a bend in the line, several hundred metres
south-west of the present Hil1crest station. The winding path along which
Oxley-Oxland's pupils travelled to and from the halt is today immortalized
in tarmac under the sign 'Crooked Lane'. A rough shelter at the halt caused
many locals to refer to the siding not as the official 'Delamore' but by the
less grandiloquent name The Soapbox'.'"
Little is known of the Rev. Oxley-Oxland's Ddamore School. It does not
appear to have lasted very long. Perhaps he was following the practice not
uncommon among English clergymen of running a school while he had sons
of his own to educate. At all events, Oxley-Oxland was not the only person
to see the pedagogic possibilities of the new township. In 1903, a young
widow with two sons, SibeIla McMillan, opened a preparatory school for
boys which she named Highbury, after a school run by her brother in
England. After many initial difficulties, Highbury grew into one of Natal's
leading junior schools and the only onc in Hillcrest proper to survive to the
present. After Sibella McMiIlan's retirement, the school was managed
~uccessively by her son, Elliott, and her grandson, Sholto. Sholto McMillan,
who chronicled the growth of his school, 27 retired in 1986 and the McMiIlan
era at Highbury ended.
In 1907 another widow with young children followed Sibella McMillan's
example. She was EIIen Baker, who (when her husband died) turned her
cottage, Redcliffe, into a primary school for girls." Mrs Baker ran Redcliffe
single-handed and provided basic schooling with few frills for the daughters
of several residents of the district, including members of the Gillitt family
and the storekeeper, Fregona, whose interests were expanding with the
village. In this way, Mrs Baker was able to send her sons to Hilton College
for their own education. Later, she married Thomas Robertson, secretary of
the Durban Club, and moved her school to the other side of the village, just
off the Inanda road. From that time, not long before the outbreak of the
Great War, it seems to have been known simply as 'The Girls' School'. 'Ma
Rob', as her later pupils called her, retired to live in neighbouring Gillitts
and died in Pietermaritzburg in 1972 at the age of 104.
Although there was only one girls' school in the village, it would not have
been possible (even had Sibella McMilIan permitted such cavalier treatment)
to refer to Highbury after 1910 just as 'the boys' school'. About that year,
former Durban chess champion Samuel Courtenay Chard, who claimed
relationship to the hero of Rorke's Drift, moved to Hill Crest and took over
the premises earlier occupied by the Rev. Oxley-Oxland. 29 Chard had been a
master at the Berea Academy of Archibald Forbes in Durban. He had later
started his own Musgrave School in fashionable Musgrave Road, on the
corner of Grant's Grove. Chard called his new venture Hill Crest School, an
indication that the present name of the town was being used early in this
century. The establishment, which was run on traditional lines imitative of
the British public school, employed several full-time teachers (including
Chard's elder son) as well as a couple of part-time specialists who came in
each week to conduct lessons in music, Dutch and drill. Chard's daughter,
perhaps with some assistance from her mother, was responsible for the
domestic arrangements of the boarding school. Chard's school appears to
have enjoyed a good reputation. Certainly it drew pupils from all over the
sub-continent, including Mozambique and the Belgian Congo. The school
closed, however, when Chard retired in 1922, his son being unwilling to
carry on the tradition.
By the 1920s Hill Crest had grown considerably. A post of the South
African Constabulary had been established not far away on the Inanda road
(at a farm now called Camp Orchards). No doubt the officers and men from
the camp were made welcome at the dances and other entertainments
arranged in the wood-and-iron community hall which had been erected on
the site of the present library. Several older residents recall attending
weddings at the hall, the old church having apparently long since
disappeared. The Waggoner's Rest, too, had gone, but across the road a
tearoom called The Pepperpots catered for the needs of locals and travellers
alike. After some initial difficulty in choosing the appropriate side of the
line, a proper railway station had been built and the introduction of a
regular daily service enabled the gentlemen of Hill Crest conveniently to
travel between their homes and their places of business in Durban,
something which would be impossible today. Old Fregona had built a
trading store opposite the railway station, thus ending the monopoly of
Christian's, which had been founded in 1908 by Willie Christian's uncle as
S.G. Wood's Main Road Supply Store. Across the street there was a a small
brick post office. Hill Crest had outgrown the holiday resort stage and
become for many a place of permanent residence.
It was to this thriving village that Miss Cecil Mayhew came in ] 918.
Formerly the Headmistress of St Anne's at Hilton Road, 30 Miss Mayhew
took over the holiday home of 1.1. Beningfield (who is credited locally with
introducing azaleas to the district). Here she started a boarding school for
girls which she called St Margaret's. It was run according to the principles of
the Parents' National Education Union, a British organization which
pioneered learning through activity, and employed several full-time teachers
who lived in rondavels in the grounds. The girls received a broad education
which emphasized European history, art and English literature. They played
tennis, netball and cricket, as well as being taught to ride and shoot. Their
riding instructor at one time was young Lance Baker, whose mother's
original property, Redcliffe, lay next to St Margaret's. The St Margaret's
girls, in their butcher-blue uniforms, soon became a familiar sight in the
Village. On Saturdays they went for long supervised walks over the
surrounding hills, to beauty spots with names like 'Fregona's Cascades' and
'Aladdin's Cave'. On Sundays, in a crocodile, they walked to the village
hall, to join local worshippers and the pupils from the other schools in
religious services conducted week by week alternately by visiting Anglican
or Methodist clergymen. When Miss Mayhew sold her school in 1931 to
return to England, St Margaret's enjoyed a high reputation. Her successor,

however, closed the school after a couple of years (a development to which
the Great Depression had doubtless contributed) and by 1934 the buildings
were once more being used as a private home.
By the time St Margaret's closed, however, another school for girls had
been opened. Known as The Firs,3! it was started in 1929 by Miss Violet
Badock, formerly a teacher at Chippenham (now King's School) at
Nottingham Road and later Senior Mistress under Miss Mayhew at St
Margaret's. The Firs at its largest had only thirty-two pupils and at various
times occupied different houses near the main road. One of them, not far
from Highbury, has now been incorporated in a cluster of garden flats
known as Pomona Gardens. The Firs was notable particularly for the close
family atmosphere which prevailed and for the bonds which developed
between Miss Badock and her pupils. Not surprisingly, perhaps, when Miss
Badock retired in 1935, the school closed .
Meanwhile, the growth of the village had continued . William Gillitt, who
died in 1899, had left the land on which it was built to his three younger sons
and, in 1924, fearing for the security of their tenure, a small group of lease
holders had formed a company called Hill Crest Properties to buy the share
of one of the brothers . After prolonged negotiation, agreement was reached
on the valuation of the properties, so that those tenants who wished to could
convert their leases to freehold. The conversion was achieved in 1926. In
1929 the property known as Redcliffe, once Mrs Baker's school, was taken
The village became a popular stop for motorists on the main route to the interior.
over by the Natal Provincial Administration and a hospital was built for the
chronic sick. It would remain for some time Hill Crest's largest institution.
By the 1930s the village had a service and filling station as well as an hotel
started by that indefatigable pioneer, Fregona, who also ran a dairy off the
Inanda Road. The Gillitt brothers, furthermore, had donated a sports and
recreation ground in memory of their father. By 1944 the village, which had
become a popular stop for motorists, had grown to the point where a regular
Health Board was necessary to manage its future development.
By the outbreak of the Second World War, of all the schools which had
opened in Hill Crest, only Highbury remained. Earlier in 1939, however,
Kearsney College had moved from its original site inland of Stanger on the
North Coast to its present position on top of Botha's Hill. After the war, the
whole area developed rapidly. In 1952 the Natal Education Department
opened the Hill Crest Primary School which (after ten years) moved to its
present premises, incorporating the grounds of old St Margaret's. It was
about this time that the custom developed of writing the name of the village
as one word. Fifteen years later still, a high school had become necessary
and it was huilt not far from the site of Mrs Rohertson's Girls' School. The
tradition started in 1895 by the Rev. Oxley-Oxland was heing carried on in a
way he could hardly have imagined.
Hillcrest, then, had been involved with schooling from the beginning. But
only the initiated would be aware of it. Of Redc!iffe and Chard's and the
Girl's School there is today no trace. The houses once occupied by The Firs
are still standing but the association has long been forgotten. Only
Delamore Road and St Margaret's Road, in themselves unremarkable
streets, carry any reminder of the schools which once bore those names. As
the centenary of the founding of Hillcrest approaches, it is to be hoped that
the civic authorities will give some thought to an appropriate way of marking
the town's long connection with education in this province.
NOTES
I Information provided by Central Statistical Service, Durban.
2 Details furnished by the Office of the Town Clerk. Hillcrest.
3 Anon., Natal: Official Railway Guide and Handbook, p. 45 (n.d.).
4 According to Jonathan Kaplan, Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg.
5 According to Aron Mazel, Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg.
" Mackeurtan, G., The Cradle Days of Natal, p. 121 (London, 1930).
7 Gardiner, A., Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country, p. 307 (London, 1836).
B Lt CJ. Gibb reported to his commanding officer, on September 5, 1843: 'The road is
very good, much better than any road I have seen in the (Cape) colony.': Hattersley. A.,
More Annals of Natal, p. 117 (London, 1936).
Y Barter, c.. The dorp and the veld, p. 19 (London, n.d.).
10 An account of the inn's history is to be found in: Lamplough, R., In Search of Mr Botha;
Natalia No. 12, p. 27, December, 1982.
11 Currey, R.N., Letters of a Natal Sheriff, p. 41 (Cape Town, 1968).
12 Mason, G.H., Life with the Zulus of Natal, p. 101 (London, 1855).
13 Ibid., p. 99.
14 Gardiner, A., op. cit., p. 307.
15 Anon., From the Cape to Natal and back, Natalia No. 5, p. 10, December, 1975.
16 Tainton, N.M. et a!., Common Veld and Pasture Grasses of Natal, p. 190 (Pietermaritzburg,
1976). The subject is more fully treated in: Tainton, N.M., The grasses and grasslands of
Natal, Neon 46, p. 12, December, 1984.
17 Mason, G,H" op. cif., p. 116.
IR Anon., From the Cape to Natal and back, Natalia No. 5, p. 11, Decemher, 1975,
19 Child, D, (cd), Zulu War Journal of Col. Henry Harford, CB., p. 9, (Pietermaritzburg,
1978),
20 Campbell, E.D., The Birth and Development of the Natal Railways, p. 72 (Pietermaritzburg,
1951 ).
21. Many of the details of William Gillitt's life were obtained from his granddaughter, Mrs
Sheila Halsted, of Emberton,
-- Mackeurtan, G., op. Cif.• pp. 299-300.
23 The text of this letter appears in Kearsney College Local History Pamphlet No. 4,
Early Hil/crest, p, 7 (Botha's Hill, 1984).
24 This and other details of the early township are taken from the pioneer essay on the subject:
Davis, H.E., A Hill Crest Record, published ahout 1950 hut now out of print.
25 Acutt, K. H., R. Acutt & Sons: One Hundred Years of Service, p. 4 (Durban, 1951).
2(, Not to be confused with 'Soapbox Siding', an early name for Escomhe, where the boxes
were used as steps to assist passengers boarding or alighting. See: Stayt, D., Where on
Earth? (Durban, 1971).
27 McMillan, 1.S.D., Highbury, (Durhan, 1978).
28 For further details oi this and other schools in the village, see: Kearsney College Local
History Pamphlet No. 3, The Forgotten Schools of Hil/crest, (Botha's Hill, 19R3). The
information about Mrs Baker was provided by her son, Mr Lance Baker, of Nottingham
Road. An account of Redcliffc appears also in: Lamplough, R., Two Forgotten Schools,
Neon 51, p. 41, December, 1986.
29 Much of the information about Samuel Chard was provided hy his daughter, the late Mrs
Gwen Gold, of Durban. An account of Chard's School appears in: Lamplough, R., Mr
Chard of Hill Crest, Neon 47, p. 24, May, 1985.
30 The Headmistress was responsible for academic matters in the school and came under the
authority of the Lady Warden. For a speculative consideration of the circumstances
surrounding Miss Mayhew's departnre from St Anne's, see: Lamplough, R., A Cameu,
Neon 44, p. 21, April 1984.
31 An account of The Firs appears in: Lamplough, R., Two Forgotten Schools, Neon 51, p. 41,
December, 1986.
ROBIN LAMPLOUGH
65
Paul Carton Sykes, 1903-1983

Philanthropists and practical humanitarians who keep in the background
very seldom receive the recognition they deserve. One such man was Paul
Carton Sykes who spent nearly fifty years in Southern Africa and who is
remembered with affection by many, especially in the Indian community in
Natal.
Paul Sykes was born at Stratford-on-Avon in 1903 and died in Durban in
1983. A conventional upper-middle-class Englishman in many ways, he was
unconventional in his aims, out of step with his generation and had
ambitions which his family and peers found difficult to understand. The
third son of a British army officer who was stationed at such well known
military establishments as Aldershot and Sandhurst, Paul Sykes described
how, during the First World War, he used to pray every night that the war
would not end before he was old enough to fight in it. Yet he grew up with a
hatred of violence and became a lifelong pacifist. In a family which was
probably no more than conventionally religious, he became a deeply
committed Christian filled with a desire to serve his fellow men in any way
or in any place to which he was called. And, although brought up in the
stratified society of early 20th century England, he refused to acknowledge
differences of class and was completely colour blind.
Sykes and his two brothers were educated at Christ's Hospital, Horsham
and took an active part in sport. He learnt and excelled at the traditional
skills of riding and shooting and was taught to box by Jimmy Wilde, a
former featherweight champion. On leaving school in 1920, he informed his
family that he intended to study for the Anglican ministry. They refused to
take the idea seriously which upset him and he decided to leave England,
accepting the offer of a job in Rhodesia. To pay for his passage he worked
as assistant teacher at a number of preparatory schools. At the same time,
encouraged by the army chaplain at Sandhurst, he began to read for the
ministry and to assist at services.
He left Britain for Rhodesia in 1923 and for the next few years he worked
as a rancher at Marandellas for five shillings per month with his keep. Later
he moved to the enormous Nuanetsi ranch with its 127 000 head of cattle.
His riding and shooting skills were put to use on the ranches but by 1926 he
realised that his interests lay with men rather than with steers. His dose
contacts with the missionaries working in the rural districts persuaded him
that they were 'doing most important work for the future'. 1 He left the
ranch, took a post as clerk at Dombashawa African industrial school and
became involved in the educational life of the school, organising games and
competitions on British public school lines. Just as he was beginning to
66 Paul Carton Sykes, 1903-1983
believe that he had found his niche, he experienced a number of severe

haemoptyses and was admitted to hospital with tuberculosis. The long stay
in hospital, at a time when rest and diet were the only treatments, gave him
the opportunity to consider his future plans. He realised that if he was to
continue in the teaching world he would have to improve his qualifications.
As soon as he was discharged from hospital he registered at the University
of the Witwatersrand to read Bantu languages and social anthropology. He
earned his keep as paid organiser of the Pathfinder organisation, with the
rank of District Master, working among African boys throughout the
Witwatersrand. Later, as Special Commissioner in the Pathfinder
movement, he started groups in Botswana, Northern and Southern
Rhodesia. Throughout his period as a student, from 1929 to 1933, he lived in
the home of Dr and Mrs Rheinallt Jones at Florida and was present at the
birth of the South African Institute of Race Relations and the Joint Council
movement.
In 1934, without writing the final examination in anthropology, he
returned to England for a holiday. While there he was offered, and decided
to accept, a teaching post near Broken Hill at the Lubwa Training College,
run by the Church of Scotland where he taught until the end of 1937. It was
while he was at Lubwa that he 'adopted' three young African men, assisting
them with their fees and taking an interest in their progress. In the case of
I. Braim Nkonde this interest extended to paying for his education at Adams
College and sharing in his subsequent career which was remarkably
successful. Sykes now suffered recurring bouts of malaria and then amoebic
dysentery which adversely affected his health and he returned to Southern
Rhodesia. He spent some time as assistant to Bishop Paget through whose
recommendation he was appointed principal of a reformatory at Figtree.
Thereafter he was employed for a short time as assistant secretary to Sir
Godfrey Huggins, later Lord Malvern, who was then Prime Minister of
Southern Rhodesia.
In 1939 Sykes returned to South Africa and acted as locum for the
assistant-secretary to the Agent-General for India, Sir Benegal Ram Rau. It
was only when he came into close contact with the Indian community that he
realised the full extent of racial prejudice in South Africa at that time. The
Agent-General, despite his rank and position, had to endure insults and
slights on numerous occasions, especially in Natal. He was turned away from
elevators in city buildings and had to accept that 'No bloody Coolies in 'ere'2
was the way of life. Sykes was introduced to the special problems of the
Indian community at this time, and when the Agent-General's permanent
assistant returned, he accepted the post of research assistant in the
University of Natal's Department of Economics, under Professor Raymond
Burrows. In his work among the Indian community Sykes had at last found a
worthwhile cause to espouse and a cause very much in line with his Christian
view of justice and the equality of all men.
The project on which Burrows was engaged was a survey of the economic
and social conditions of the Indian community in the Durban area. Sykes
was expected to visit Indian families in their homes and to assist them to
complete questionnaires. Immediately he came face to face with the poverty
and slum conditions in which many Indians were forced to live. His own
experience had made him aware of the dangers of tuberculosis and he found
Paul Carton Sykes. 1903-1983 67
it rife in the Indian community. In 1942 there were 1 300 known cases and
only 81 hospital beds available for them. It was this situation and the
inability to get anything done about it that eventually led to the formation of
the Friends of the Sick Association, or Fosa, by a group of concerned men.
The nature of tuberculosis was not well understood in the 1940s and the
Indian community had a superstitious fear of it. Almost as much they feared
the prying eyes of officialdom if they reported cases within their families.
Health inspectors might condemn the shack in which the patient lived and
there was such an acute shortage of houses in the Indian areas that there was
no hope of finding any other accommodation. Inspections by building and
sanitary officials would mean expensive repairs and, in a rented house, the
landlord would probably give them notice as trouble-makers.
Sykes found the worst living conditions in the Corporation's Magazine
Barracks which consisted of old mule stables partitioned off and with no
lighting, no privacy and no proper sanitation.
Kitchens consisted of a row of temporary wood and iron structures, open
to the weather, while ablution blocks were communal; 'hence it was no one's
business to keep them clean'. When efforts made through the usual channels
to have something done about the barracks failed, Sykes persuaded the
mayoress, Mrs Clairc EIlis-Brown, to accompany him one night on a tour of
inspection. He described her reaction: 'She was appalled. I shone the torch
on the ground (in the latrines) and she screamed in horror. As far as one
could see there was an obscene, creeping carpet of cockroaches'.' No doubt
the cleaning-up operation began soon afterwards.
To explain why the living conditions of the Indian community were so
poor in the 1940s and 19508 one must look at the effects of the depression of
the 1930s and steady urbanization after the Second World War. Hundreds of
thousands of people of all races had moved to the towns in search of work.
The unexpected influx caught local authorities with insufficient low cost
housing and no instant means of remedying the situation. White attitudes
prevented the settling of Indian families in many parts of the city and
resulted in overcrowding in those places where Indians were settled. Large
f3milies, low wages and high unemployment added to the problems of
overcrowding and made an ideal breeding ground for disease, particularly
tuberculosis. Despite the completion of enormous housing schemes at
Umhlatuzana and Chatsworth in the following decades the shortage of
Indian houses continued and still exists today. Sykes was an admirer of the
Tndian people noting that 'there runs throughout this outward evidence of
poverty and sordidness, a silver thread of striving for the higher things, of a
determination through hard work and application to improve standards ...
if not for the older ones but for the young so that they may have a fuller
inheritance than was ever realisable for themselves.'4
During the years that he worked with Burrows, Sykes became a close
friend of the Rev. Harold SatcheIl, the parish priest of St Aidan's Anglican
Mission in Durban who, like Sykes, was an admirer of the philosophical
ideas of Ruskin, Tolstoy and Gandhi. Together they read and discussed the
Vedas, the Upanishads, the Arthashastra, the Gita, the Mahabaharat and
many Hindu philosophical works. 5 Both men had come under the influence
of V.S.S. Sastri and through him became interested in the Servants of India
Society, a voluntary organisation dedicated to the service of India and its
people. Satchell and Sykes decided to form a similar society to be called the
Society of Servants of South Africa although the name sometimes resulted in
its being mistaken by some for an employment bureau! The five founder
members, two Indians, two whites and an African, who undertook to remain
anonymous, met weekly to discuss the problems and needs of the society in
which they found themselves. Having identified these they tried to stimulate
existing organisations to meet these needs. They issued a journal, The
Servitor, in which social issues of all kinds were aired, one of the first being
the neglect of physical education and open air activities in Indian schools.
They were able to persuade the Indian Teachers' Society to take an interest
in the matter by arranging displays and encouraging competition. Eventually
physical education became part of the curriculum of every school. Next they
turned their attention to the establishment of a library at St Aidan's since
the municipal library was, at the time, open only to whites.
The high incidence of tuberculosis and the shortage of facilities was the
next problem the group turned their attention to and since there was no
existing organisation to take up the challenge, the Friends of the Sick
Association, or Fosa, was founded in 1941. The first meeting was held at St
Aidan's and a care committee was formed. Fund-raising and the
dissemination of information about TB were the priorities. Members of the
organisation were asked for a small donation and active participation. Most
of the original members were young Indian men who were prepared to give
practical help in their own community, but Fosa was from the beginning
open to all races. Fosa was to work through care committees, one in each
area, the second to be formed being the Sydenham committee with Mr Pat
Poovalingam as secretary. Others followed in places as far afield as Stanger
and Dannhauser. Care committees were responsible for locating TB
patients, using the weekly lists of cases provided by the State Health
Department, and for looking after their welfare and that of their families
while they were receiving medical attention. Disability grants were applied
for on behalf of the patients and financial assistance was provided until the
grants were received. Despite the enthusiastic response of the members of
the committees and the increasing interest within the communities, it was
soon apparent that unless patients could be removed from their environment
the disease would continue to spread. It was for this reason that Sykes
decided to act on the recommendations of the Tuberculosis Commission of
1912 and to open a TB settlement. He was not at all worried about how the
settlement would be financed since he was convinced that the money would
be forthcoming for the purpose and in any case he attached very little
importance to material comforts.
The treatment of tuberculosis had hardly changed since the 19th century.
There was a choice between treating the sufferer in his own home with rest,
plenty of fresh air and a nourishing diet, or of admitting him to a sanatorium
where the same procedure was followed but under medical supervision. The
patients living in cold climates could also be removed and sent to
Switzerland or to the highveld of South Africa but this certainly did not
apply to the Natal sufferers. For Sykes and his advisers, aware of the
crowded and unsatisfactory conditions under which most of the Indians
lived, the sanatorium or settlement was the only solution. Sanatoria for
paying patients existed in Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Ladysmith and
Paul Carton Sykes, 1903-1983 69
Estcourt and were run by the Augustinian Sisters but most of the beds were
for white patients and even if Sykes' patients had been able to pay this was
not at all what he had in mind. He wanted to treat the TB patient within his
family group and not remove him from his nuclear family. He envisaged
from the start that the family would be involved in the treatment. They were
to be housed in cottages on the settlement and would be trained in the care
of the patient and of themselves to prevent the spread of the disease. He
also wanted to remove the financial worries from the sufferer so that his
recovery could be unimpeded and once he was on the way to recovery he
could live in the cottage with them.
To find suitable land within reach of Durban and on public transport
routes was far from easy. Eventually after considering offers of land at
ShaIlcross, Jacobs, Camperdown and Phoenix he found a suitable site at
Newlands East. The property, consisting of 25 acres, was owned by the
Paruk and Lockhat families and in 1944 they generously agreed to lease the
land on a quitrent basis for one shilling per year for five years. Eventually
the land was transferred to Fosa.
In December 1942, before the property transactions had been completed,
Sykcs. who had resigned from his research post to concentrate on Fosa,
moved out to the site with three young African workmen. They lived in
tents with no facilities of any kind and put up the first buildings. The
workmen were paid £3.10 per month; Sykes and the secretary, Poovalingam,
£5. Fund-raising continued and whenever a few large donations were
received building materials were bought for the next section of the
settlement which slowly took shape. Once the first buildings were ready
Sykcs appealed for voluntary workers and among the first volunteers was a
young Dutch nursing sister, who had been working in District Six. Miss
Pietcrnclla van Vlaanderen arrived in Durban in January 1943 and, to
Sykcs' delight. proved to have received specialist training in TB sanatorium
work in her native Holland. Eventually she was to become Mrs Sykes and to
carry a full share in the development of the project which, when fully
functional, included a children's hospital, cottages for the families of TB
patients, a school for their children, vegetable gardens, a poultry section and
a weaving school to help in the rehabilitation of convalescent patients.
\Vith Fosa settlement on its feet Paul Sykes offered his services to assist
with similar schemes. He was active in the establishment of the South
A friean National Tuberculosis Association (Santa) in 1947 and in 1952
i,ravelled widely in a nation-wide fund-raising appeal and also assisted with
the establishment of branches. One of his colleagues at this time writes:
'Paul was the enthusiastic sort of person you needed when you wanted to get
:,omething started- his enthusiasm was infectious and support flowed in'."
In June 1950 he volunteered to assist with the establishment of a Fosa
settlement on the Cape Flats. The Natal enterprise was by now run largely
by members of the Indian community, and the year he spent in Cape Town
enabled him to lay the groundwork, explaining and demonstrating the
principles on which the Care committees worked.
During this period he had been thinking seriously about entering the
Anglican church - his old amibition perhaps never completely abandoned.
Tn 1954 he approached Bishop Inman and arranged to be accepted for a
shortened form of training for the ministry and only when this was settled
did he break the news to his wife. Nell Sykes, who had devoted all her
energies to the Fosa work and who had been brought up and confirmed in a
Dutch nonconformist church, was astonished to learn that Paul intended to
abandon the Fosa work and make a complete change of direction. Both
were members of the Liberal Party and Nell knew that Paul was deeply
concerned about the political situation in South Africa. His reasons for
joining the ministry were that he admired the strong stand taken by the
Anglican Church in speaking out against what they believed to be unjust.
He wanted to associate himself with this stand and felt he could best do this
as a priest. In his capacity as chairman of Fosa he felt he could not speak
freely while accepting financial grants for the TB work; as a priest he would
be able to. The change was a difficult one especially for Mrs Sykes who had
devoted 25 years to nursing the sick, of which eleven had been spent at the
Fosa settlement. At this time there were over 200 patients and she had been
involved in every aspect of the work, confident that her contribution was
both useful and appreciated. Now she feared that she would not be able to
assume the role of helpmeet and co-worker in an Anglican parish, especially
as she did not feel at home with the Anglican liturgy and form of service. 7 In
the middle of 1954 the Sykes family - they now had two children - left the
Fosa settlement for a new life in Pietermaritzburg where Paul was ordained
to the priesthood in 1955.
Rev. Paul Sykes with his family, Margate c.
Paul Carton Sykes, 1903-1983 71
1956 was a year of readjustment while both learned what was expected of
them. Paul was attached to St Peter's but continued his Santa work while
Nell bex:ame interested in the National Council of Women, as adviser on
Indian affairs, and learnt to be a vicar's wife. She also did private nursing to
assist with the family finances. The following year Sykes was transferred to
Margate as parish priest and his real ministry began. His opposition to
apartheid and to racial prejudice was stronger than ever and his liberal views
were shared by many of the Anglican clergy. Ignoring the fact that the
Anglicans in Margate were mostly white and the majority conservative in
religion and politics, Sykes immediately had a notice erected stating: This is
God's House. It is open to all people for all services and at all times. Among
the first reactions was the resignation of the four Women's Guilds whose
members rejected the idea of racially mixed services. Sykes recalls that to
persuade his parishioners to change their attitude was a long and hard
struggle but when he left there in 1965 the prejudice had largely
disappeared, with all races taking communion together and sometimes from
a black priest. 8 Both Sykes and his wife looked back on the period in
Margate as active and fulfilling, with increasing congregations and the
opportunity to make new friends and to meet old ones, many of whom were
later banned or placed under house arrest.
In addition to the parish work among all population groups in Margate,
Sykes continued his work for the control of tuberculosis in the area as far as
Port Shepstone. A Santa branch was formed and mobile X-ray clinics
revealed 100 cases to be followed up out of the 1 000 examined. Fund
raising, food parcels for the needy and the establishment of a clinic in the
location followed in an attempt to help both the sick and their dependents.
Bv 1963 there were three TB clinics as well as the Hibberdene settlement to
h~ visited. In addition Paul was heavily involved in fund-raising as part of
Santa's R6 million appeal. Both Paul and Nell seemed to find fulfilment in
never-ending work and service.
In 1960 Sykes decided to accept the exchange vicarship at Pembridge,
He refordshire. He had become increasingly unhappy about the political
.'ituation in South Africa, particularly after Sharpeville. In June 1960 he
wrote despondently:
'Affairs in this country are grim and the pattern has been set, a pattern
planned by those in power. Many of our friends are inside; all honour
to them. I see little possibility of any change from within and change
when it does come, will come from outside, but not for a considerable
time. The tension is a bit wearying and we shall be glad of the relief a
year in England will give us before entering the fray once more'. 9
His memories of the green and peaceful English countryside of his youth
made retirement seem particularly attractive after his pleasant year at
Pembridge. He returned in 1961 and, although the parish and TB work were
deeply satisfying, the political situation was as depressing as ever to him. In
1965 he decided to return to England and wrote:
'It is with great reluctance that we uproot ourselves from South Africa,
where I have been for 42 years now ... Materially there can hardly be
another country so really blessed with this world's wealth and with
such a wonderful climate. But man does not live by bread and butter
alone, and as I could not lay my bones down in peace here, the move
has to be made while I still have a reasonable number of years of

vigour in me ... the position does not improve in this country.'lO
It was in July 1965 that Paul took his departure from the Margate parish
which he had grown to love. The family returned to England where he was
given charge of four churches in a rural parish in Herefordshire. The
differences between Margate and his new parish were enormous. He wrote:
'Parish life is at a very low ebb here, particularly as regards religion.
Frankly I wonder whether I am the person to galvanise it. It requires
superhuman effort to rouse any interest . . . they are dear lovable
people on the whole but when the total Sunday attendance at three
different churches is 6,1 and 7, who wouldn't be a bit depressed'.
The lack of enthusiasm, the poor attendance and the lack of generosity in
the English villages compared poorly with his active Margate parishioners.
In 1970 Sykes and his wife spent six months in Estcourt on an exchange visit
and renewed their contacts with friends all over Natal and the following year
he retired from the active ministry.
For a few years Paul and Nell worked as warden and matron at Dowty
House, a home for the aged. Nell was heavily involved in nursing and Paul's
duties allowed him time for visiting and the spiritual care of the bedridden in
the district, a ministry that he was particularly good at. During this period
there were regular visits to South Africa, their fares being paid by numerous
friends and benefactors. They were able to buy a cottage in Cheltenham
which they named 'Pondokkie' and Nell organised a luncheon club for the
housebound. Paul's health began to decline after 1976 but he never gave in
and always hoped that he would feel better after his next period in the sun.
It was during one of the visits to South Africa, in 1983, that he suffered a
stroke and was admitted to the King George V hospital where he died
peacefully on 7 May. The funeral was held in St Aidan's Church, with which
he had had a long association, and was attended by hundreds of friends of
all races. His ashes were interred beside the original cottage at the Fosa
settlement.
Paul Sykes left a loving family and a wide circle of friends in all
communities. He has been described as friendly, outgoing, gregarious,
overflowing with love for humanity, a sincere Christian and a thoroughly
good man. Perhaps his ideals are best summed up in his own words: 'Let us
never be afraid to climb a little higher, to see a little further, to give of
ourselves - our energy and our youth - so that we may put into practice
the almost limitless project of care for our fellows'. II
NOTES
1 P.C. Sykes, An old patchwork quilt, p. 3.
2 Ibid. p. 3.
3 P.C. Sykes, The story of FOSA, instalment VI. p. 17.
4 Ibid, instal. VII, p. 19.
5 Information contained in a letter to the author from Pat Poovalingam, Cape Town, 9 April
1986.
6 Rev. Sydney Knight in a letter to the author, George, 12 February 1986.
7 Letter from Nell Sykes to the author, 20 March 1986.
R Sykes, An old patchwork quilt, p. 4.
9 Sykes, Circular letter, Margate, June 1960.
10 Sykes, Circular letter. 'early 1965'.
11 Message from Rev. Paul Sykes to Greenwood Park Care Committee, 1958.
JOY B. BRAIN
73
Mary Stainbank
sculptress of Natal
Miss Stainbank's work is clever - conceived in a gross and

exaggerated manner. Critics have pedestalled it because it strikes the
birth of futurism in this country. It speaks of a morbid relishing of the
ungainly ...
The above quotation which appeared in a Natal newspaper of 1929 is typical

of much contemporary criticism of Mary Stainbank's use of avant-garde
images. She is grudgingly credited with the introduction of a modern school
of sculpture in South Africa. Opinions today, nearly sixty years later, have
changed radically. Research into the art of Natal has confirmed her status as
one of the leading sculptors of her day and, indeed, one of South Africa's
foremost artists. Her work suffered undeserved controversy and neglect
throughout her lifetime. This situation is about to be rectified as a group of
artists and art historians in Natal make preparations for a comprehensive
exhibition of her life's work to be held in Durban this year.
Mary Stainbank's career began in Durban in 1916 when she entered the
Durban School of Art (now the Department of Fine Arts, Natal Technikon)
under the renowned ceramicist, John Adams. Here she showed a
remarkable talent for portrait modelling and design and was encouraged to
choose sculpture as her career. Adams succeeded in overriding her family's
dismay at the choice of such an unladylike calling and in 1922 persuaded
them to enroll her at the Royal College of Art, London.
She obtained her diploma in 1925 but only after much opposition from the
College. The Principal, with fresh memories of the wayward behaviour of
Miss Barbara Hepworth in mind, had no desire to enroll any more women in
his sculpture school. This determined colonial planted herself on his
doorstep, however, establishing herself in the sculpture school (in a private
studio) and working quietly in isolation from her fellow students. She was
awarded a scholarship in her final year. The College deprived her of its use,
however, claiming that only students from London were eligible. Much to
her disgust it was transferred to an unknown prodigy from the Midlands,
Henry Moore.
Another factor which militated against her was her preference for
primitive African subjects, associated in Britain at the time with such
notorious decadents as Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and the Cubists whose styles
and mannerisms she brought back to Natal in 1926. Determined to run her
own business, she set up a studio at 'Coedmore', the Stainbank family estate
74 Mary Stainbank - Sculptress of Natal
at Bellair near Durban. Here she worked on numerous architectural

commissions including the decoration of the Childrens Hospital at
Addington, The Government Offices, Aliwal Street, and the Port Elizabeth
Magistrate's Court. But her sculptures - highly individual, often humorous,
with simplified forms and decoration - did not attract patrons. The South
African public admired an outdated Romantic realism kept alive by artists
such as Kottler and Van Wouw. Free-standing figures by Stainbank met with
hysterical public disapproval when they were shown at the conservative
Natal Society of Artists exhibitions during the 1930s. As a result, much of
her work was made for 'her personal enjoyment and was rarely exhibited.
During World War 11 she left her studio to join a military drawing office.
This severely interrupted her creative output. In 1945, finding that she could
no longer rely on the income supplied by public commissions, she decided to
take up an offer to join the Durban School of Art where she taught
sculptur.:: until her retirement in 1957. Her later years were marred by the
onset of arthritis which increasingly limited her output.
Without doubt, Mary Stainbank's most important work was produced
between 1926 and 1940 when her links with the British avant-garde
combined with a lively interest in the images of Africa made her one of the
most important artists of her generation.
Her enthusiasm for 'native studies' predated any attempts by her
contemporaries to create such ethnographic genres. Growing up, like many
young Natalians of the period, on a farm surrounded by black labourers
gave her an intimate insight into Zulu customs, attitudes and visual
characteristics.
The fashion of 'native studies' produced during the first half of this
century probably followed the trends of the 19th century when ethnographic
documentation such as The Kafirs Illustrated was in demand. There were,
however, few artists in Natal after 1910 skilled enough to reintroduce a
school of figure painting based on anthropological interests. This reluctance
was criticised by Leo Francois, writing for the Natal Mercury in 1929:
Are there not Native subjects also? Here, I admit, the South African
artist is failing lamentably because of his lack of anatomical
knowledge, and his aversion to figure composition. It is, therefore, left
to the newcomer from overseas who, after a few weeks drawing from
the model in the Native reserves, to set to in producing pictures of
Native life.!
Another obstacle was the public's reluctance to patronise what was felt to
be a distasteful genre. Picture owners who lived with coy Victorian nudes in
classical settings were at first reluctant to buy semi-naked Zulus in tribal
dress to put on their walls. By the late 1920s this prejudice had lessened.
Karl Gundelfinger, a Durban industrialist, was persuaded to donate an
annual money prize for 'the best painting of native life'.2 One prizewinner
was British artist Alfred Palmer who depicted a 'superior' native type in
idealised poses:
He does not in his delineation of native types seek the common
negroid type with big flat nose and thick lips, but rather that finer cast
of features which he claims is typical of the pure-bred Bantu . . . [he
said,] 'why should I take the coarse, animal, brutal, negroid type when
I can find a higher, finer type?'3
Mary Stainbank - Sculptress of Natal 75
Obviously, the average Natalian of the 1920s sympathised with Palm er's
views. The acceptance of sentimental or melodramatic views of native life
rapidly increased. Amateur artists contributed to the genre reinforcing
attitudes which were, at best, antiquarian, at worst, patronising. Enter,
then, Mary Stainbank, fresh from the London of Jacob Epstein and the
young Henry Moore.
Her student assignments produced at the Durban School of Art show a
precocious understanding of modelling and form. The most notable pieces
include portrait heads built up directly and from memory of Zulu servants
and labourers who worked on her father's farm. While in London she
continued to use the Zulu as inspiration despite opposition to what the
College referred to as 'negroid' influences. Respectable Londoners of the
twenties indentified Blacks with America (rather than Africa), jazz,
cocktails and decadence. Mary adopted certain mannerisms now associated
with the Jazz Age: distorted limbs, sharp, angular forms, and shallow
chiselled decoration. Works exhibited in Natal in 1929 and 1930 caused an
outcry. Her Enigma (1930, Artist's collection) depicts a Zulu woman with an
elaborate headdress, leaning back dreamily. The public and critics were
shocked by its crudity and lack of modelling. They were even more outraged
by Baya Huba (1932, Durban Art Museum), which is still her most
controversial work. Here three heads intertwine, their grotesque features
deliberately expressing abandonment and frenzy. The title, which was
rendered as 'we sing, we dance', was rejected as ungrammatical, and
comparisons were drawn between Palmer's 'superior' native types and
Enigma
(Photograph: Author'S collection)
76 Mary Stainbank - Sculptress of Natal
Baya Huba
Mary's 'coarse, animal, brutal negroid' creatures. As she worked in

comparative isolation from her colleagues, everyone was taken by surprise.
One is pleased to note, however, that fellow artists, for that short period,
declared her to be Natal's foremost young artist.
It is almost unfortunate that she decided to remain in Durban after her
return from London. She worked alone in the colonial atmosphere of Natal;
she also had to fight the general intolerance towards women artists at the
time. These were severe discouragements. Surely an artist of such originality
would have received appropriate recognition had she been active in
Johannesburg or Cape Town? The proposed retrospective exhibition will, it
is hoped, bring to Mary Stainbank the recognition that she so richly
deserves.
REFERENCES
Vermilion, 'Propaganda methods in art', The Natal Mercury, 5 May 1929.
2 Gundelfinger prizewinner, The Natal Mercury, 5 July 1926, p. 10; Picture selling on the
Rand, The Natal Mercury, 8 June 1928, p. 12.
3 An artist in a caravan, The Natal Mercury, 5 May 1926, p. 13.
MELANIE HILLEBRAND
77
Obituaries
William George McConkey (1898-1987)
Natal was fortunate in William George McConkey, especially - but not
only - in his strengthening of the professional traditions of the Natal
Education Department. To this his incisive intellect, respected from the first
by his colleagues, contributed much; but his determination to identify with
South Africa in general and Natal in particular ensured that he was well
placed to use that intellect. And his abilities and experience were needed in
the late forties and early fifties when lesser men might have vacillated in the
face of educational and political challenges.
When he began his career in Natal in the twenties (at the Natal Training
College), Natal's education, though embracing 'Native', Indian, Afrikaans
and English schools,was essentially English in outlook, to the extent that
few thought it necessary to learn Afrikaans effectively and Zulu was
regarded as a specialised field. McConkey set out to learn Afrikaans
Dr William George McConkey (1898-1987)
(Photograph: Natal Witness)
78 Obituaries
immediately, and to do so thoroughly, through a master's degrce and

doctorate from StclIenbosch. His carcer advanccd rapidly partly because of
this, through schools in Northern Natal and the midlands and as an inspector
in Durban, where, in addition to thc general inspectorial duties, he took on
those for all the Afrikaans in the district. He was, moreover, fluent in
German (one of his subjccts at Queen's, Belfast). He consequently knew
Natal and its people better than most, and used this knowledge - and
perhaps his awareness of the destructiveness of divisions in Ireland - to
work for a cohesive school system. The story is told that later in his career
he was able to reconcile two German factions in Paulpietersburg when their
differences threatened to undermine education in the area. He could speak
their language in more ways than one - and convince them of educational
requirements.
After the war (in which he served with Or E.G. Malherbe in Army
Education and in the Directorate of Information), his planning and
administrative talents became more fully used as he rose through Chief
Inspector, Secretary (roughly Deputy Director today) and Director. Though
in some ways a traditionalist (he sharply defended the claims of Latin in the
curriculum), he faced the fact that a full secondary education was no longer
the privilege of a few preparing for university and the professions, and he
initiated a differentiated curriculum with 'practical' courses - a significant
step at the time. He was equally concerned to improve the quality and
numbers of teachers. In the depression of the thirties teaching attracted
many able men and women; by the late forties an enquiry in which he
played a major role, showed declining numbers and academic quality,
especially among mcn. He was scnt overseas and successfully recruited over
a hundred.
Though Director for only a relatively short time (1954-59), he firmed up
the independence of Natal's education system. This did not enable it to
resist all centralising tendencies of the government (there was a political
controversy over the appointment of his successor) but did provide
some important ways of sustaining professional autonomy. Most notable,
perhaps, were the establishment of the Natal Examinations Board (some
twenty years after the Transvaal separated from the Joint Matriculation
Board), and the Planning Board of senior officials. The lattcr established a
mechanism for concerted forward planning. Moreover, McConkey himself
had a remarkable capacity to analyse rapidly and perceptively reports and
proposals with widely differing perspectives and to bring the significant
points together.
There was a rigour, perhaps even an austerity about Or McConkey's
career in and contribution to education. But the rigour came from a sense of
professi<;mal justice and equity, and it was tempered by a sense of humour
sometimes so swift and fleeting that only a slight movement of the lips gave
notice of its presence, but there nevertheless. Subsequently he was to widen
his involvement to active political issues of justice, especially as they
affected education, but in his first career he exemplified the best
characteristics of the British Civil Service, even-handedly, knowledgeably
and very ably developing the Department and those whom it was designed
specifically to serve.
A.M. BARRETI
Obituaries 79
I came to know Dr William George McConkey in the evening of his long

life. Shortly after my arrival in Pietermaritzburg to take up the editorship of
The Natal Witness, he was recommended to me as someone whose expertise
in education and politics would be an asset to the newspaper. It is generally
assumed that an editor writes everyone of his leading articles, but this is not
so, especially on smaller newspapers. The editor sets policy and vets
everything that appears in his name, but he often draws on a panel of
experts - preferably retired people with special skills and time on their
hands - to help him comment more sensibly on the various issues of the
day. Here Dr 'Mac' was invaluable, writing on educational matters, on
politics, on local government and contributing the occasional book review.
His was a quite remarkable performance for a man then past his seventy
fifth birthday. He wrote for us for almost ten years and regretted very much
that illness prevented him from achieving a decade of service as an editorial
writer. There were interruptions caused by infirmity from time to time, and
he would ring me up and say, 'you know I think I'm getting too old for thi~;
it's time for me to put down my pen.' And I would say, 'No it isn't; take a
break and when you feel well enough, let me know.' In time that call would
come, because he realised, as I did, that writing provided him with both an
interest and a stimulus that few enjoy in old age. So it was a relationship
from which both sides benefited.
Of the many issues dear to Dr 'Mac's' heart, he felt most deeply about
education and, like Dr Ernie Malherbe, was dismayed at the rapid
deterioration in black education during and after the years of Verwoerd. A
staunch supporter of the Afrikaner - I am told that he became so fluent in
the language that after giving a speech in Afrikaans during the war, he was
mistaken for Gen. Smuts - he became deeply indignant when political and
language credentials began to supersede merit as a qualification for civil
service promotion. His anger at this state of affairs, and at the
Broederbond's malign influence on education generally, ran very deep and
did not abate in old age. He detested apartheid and discriminatory spending
on education and never hesitated to say so. If it is true that men generally
become less outspoken in their old age, Dr 'Mac' was an exception to that
rule.
Apart from our regular telephonic contact, we saw each other at SA
Institute of International Affairs meetings. He was our oldest member by
far, yet the most faithful supporter of functions right up until the year before
his death. His interest in the affairs of the world and his clarity of mind at
such a great age were truly remarkable and they kept him going as he grew
more frail physically. Many was the time I thought to myself that if I had to
live to be nearly ninety, he would be my exemplar.
Dr 'Mac' will live on in the memory of those fortunate enough to have
known him. In mourning his passing, let us be grateful for a long life, well
lived in the service of others.
RICHARD STEYN
80 Obituaries
Alexander Milne (1899-1987)

Ab honesto virum bonum
nihil deterret - Seneca
(Nothing deters a good man from honourable conduct)

To the profound sorrow of his family, his colleagues in the Law and to his
great many friends, Alexander Milne, retired Judge President of Natal, died
at his home in Pietermaritzburg on 2 June 1987, at the age of eighty seven
years.
Judge Milne, or Sandy as he was known by his close friends or as Judge by
others, was born on 3 November 1899, in Aberdeen, Scotland, the son of a
seafaring captain and his wife, from whose ardent values and vigorous
discipline Judge Milne assuredly derived those qualities which formed the
cornerstone of his own strong character and which distinguished his conduct
through the years.
He arrived with his parents in South Africa in 1907 and the family settled
in the Orange Free State. He commenced his formal education in
Bethlehem where, after service in the East African campaign of 1916 as a
volunteer, although under military age but moved by a strong sense of duty
and patriotism, he returned to matriculate successfully from his old school.
In 1919 Milne went up to Exeter College, Oxford, to read law with equal
success, obtaining in the examinations a First in B.A. Honours
(Jurisprudence ).
In 1922 he was called to the Bar in the Middle Temple, London. He then
returned to South Africa and, after a term of articles with Livingston, Doull
and Dumas of Durban, he accepted his first brief in 1925.
History does not record the fortunate litigant he represented on that
occasion; possibly the good Judge, too, might not have been able to recall
the name so long after the event but that step set him firmly upon his
illustrious path.
He progressed from junior counsel to senior; he took silk during the
World War of 1939-1945 when he commanded the 7th Brigade Signal
Company and subsequently the 14th South African Motor Brigade Signals
Squadron; after the war he returned to the Bar and a successful practice
until in 1954 he was appointed to the Natal Bench of the Supreme Court of
South Africa, of which he became Judge President on 1 January 1962. In
addition, he was appointed an acting judge in the Appellate Division of the
Supreme Court for some months during 1967.
Throughout his career, his great sense of justice and fair play earned him
the respect and admiration of friend and adversary, lawyer and layman and
his courtesy endeared him to all whose good fortune it was to enjoy his
company.
After his formal retirement as Judge President of Natal on 31 October
1969, Judge Milne accepted appointments to the Courts of Appeal of
Swaziland, Lesotho and Botswana until, having served his fellow man long
and so faithfully and with such notable courage and distinction, he at last
laid aside his judicial mantle to enjoy uninterruptedly the companionship of
his wife, Margaret, amidst the tranquil surrounds, frequently with family
aJld friends, of his home in Taunton Road.
Obituaries 81
The Hon. Justice Alexander Milne (1899-1987)

However, the diversions of retirement alone were insufficient to statisfy

his enormous intellectual capacity and , amongst other matters that engaged
his inquisitive mind, he embarked boldly with his friend and colleague, Cecil
Nathan, on the mammoth undertaking of revising in its entirety
Henochsberg's Company Law, a standard reference work, for publication in
its third edition after several years of zealous research.
That it served for some eight years without revision in a great tide of
legislative enactment bears resounding testimony to the excellence of his
contribution to South African legal literature. The major task , which would
have sapped the energies of a younger man, left Judge Milne in fine fettle to
indulge in other absorbing pursuits.
Alexander Milne was consumed by an intense and burning sense of jus~
and of what was right and of what was wrong. He never failed to respond in
peace or war to what his honour and his duty required of him. It was these
qualities, which he had in great abundance, that placed him at the forefront
of his peers.
Both at the Bar and on the Bench he brought to the administration of
justice a fierce determination to have out the truth, whatever it might be,
82 Obituaries
from whatever came before him and his enqulflng mind left no trifle
unweighed in the scales of justice, which his hand always so delicately held.
A colleague of yesteryear remarked that Sandy Milne was a tiger to work
with at the Bar and a fearsome adversary to contend against. That alone is a
very eloquent tribute to him and a gracious one from his contemporary. Yet
the coin, which manifestly reflected on its obverse his personal drive and his
insatiable appetite for perfection in the pursuit of justice and his
determination to see it done, showed on its reverse a chivalrous and
hospitable man of tremendous charm and kindness, who was always ready to
encourage and help another, particularly one younger than himself, and to
offer sound advice to those who sought it. There can be none who came
away from him unrefreshed by his wisdom or unimpressed by his
philosophy.
He enjoyed debate, too, in the wider sense of the cut and thrust of
opinion and his interests and knowledge were spread widely over a
surprising range of matters. In conversation, he was a master of unremitting
questioning, delighting in the remark let slip thoughtlessly, which he
pounced upon instantly and worried, like a terrier a rat, until submission
came, quickly if prudence prevailed, from its hapless author. No ancient
Highlander's call to arms was more rousing or terrifying than his own 'What
do you mean by that?'
Away from the Law and its trappings, Sandy Milne was very much a
family man. He was devoted to his wife and their sons, John and Lindsey.
He and Margaret were married on 5 January 1927 and they shared a
rewarding life together founded on great affection and mutual respect. They
valued their many friends and delighted in welcoming them to their home;
they never failed to entertain them generously in the warmest and most
stimulating company.
Thus together they presided over their personal court, giving support to
one another and encouraging their sons wisely through the years. Margaret
took the greatest pleasure and excelled in her beautiful and magnificent
gardens while Sandy was able to draw breath away from the rigours of his
burgeoning practice and, later, the heavy burdens and responsibilities of the
Bench.
Theirs was, indeed, a house always filled with exceptional lovc and
understanding. When his beloved Margaret died on 1 January 1987, after
more than half a century of companionship and dependence, a great light
went out in Sandy's life.
But above all, Alexander Milne was a deeply religious man committed
firmly to his Christian beliefs. They afforded him a clear appreciation of the
frailties of humanity and of the temptations to which it is constantly prone.
Those beliefs, too, guided him with certainty throughout the days of his life
and commanded his every moment along the way.
While his alert and searching mind may, on occasion, have presented the
clergy with insuperable difficulties in reply to him on the finer aspects 01'
dogma or biblical interpretation, it was at the end the Church's sacraments
that brought him comfort and contentment so that he might rest easily from
his great labours.
All in all, a man excelling in stature, has passed our way.
M.J.C. DALY
Obituaries 83
Frank Emery (1930-1987)

While Natalia 17 was at the galley-proof stage of production we received the
tragic news of the untimely death of Frank Emery, struck down by an
express train a few kilometres from his home in Oxford.
Frank Emery was not a Natal man. He was a Welshman, and proud of it.
He was a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford, where he had taught
historical geography since the 1950s, and at the time of his death was its
Vice-Master. He was an authority on the Oxfordshire landscape.
Yet Frank Emery's death must be recorded in Natalia. He had an abiding
interest in Natal and Zululand, first aroused when in the late 1940s he did
his national service in the South Wales Borderers, descendant of the 24th
Regiment which was so decimated at Isandlwana and won. such glory in
defending Rorke's Drift during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. In the last
letter which I received from him, composed while on holiday in Madeira in
January 1987, he wrote, 'One feels very close to Natal here, partly because
all those ships used to call in here for coaling (1879 transports and others
among them), and partly due to the close likeness of the flora. All the South
African flowers and fruit (even to the Kaffirboom, as it used to be known)
grow in profusion here'.
Not only did he feel close to Natal. He came here on four occasions. The
first was in the late 1960s when he lectured for a full academic year on an
exchange in the Geography Department of the University of Natal in
Pietermaritzburg. In 1984 he was a visiting lecturer in both the Departments
of Geography and History. In 1979 and again in 1985 he was brought out by
the University as a distinguished academic to deliver papers at its Anglo
Zulu War Centennial and Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Conferences.
What did he have to offer? Not only 'Early Colonists' perceptions of
Natal', his last paper, a penetrating blend of his disciplines of history and
geography, but he discovered - and mined - a rich vein of historical ore,
soldiers' letters. The Welsh recruits who fought and died in 1879 were
surprisingly literate. Their letters home were offered to, and published in, a
wide variety of provincial newspapers, old boys' magazines and other
publications in response to an insatiable desire for news from Zululand.
In these dusty and forgotten journals Frank Emery found the perspective
of the common soldier, a dimension very different from, and supplementary
to, that of official reports. The result was The Red Soldier: Letters from the
Zulu War, 1879, published in 1977. A later work of similar genre, painted
on a broader canvas to take in all Queen Victoria's colonial wars in Africa
was Marching over Africa, published in 1986. His paper for the 1979
Conference and two articles published in Natalia were on the same theme.
He also delivered the annual Natal Society Lecture, published in Natalia 14,
on 'Revd John David Jenkins (1828-76), Canon of the Cathedral of Natal',
and at the time of his death was pursuing his researches on the famous (or
notorious'7) proconsul of Empire, Sir Bartle Frere.
On a personal note, I first met Frank Emery at the 1979 Conference when
I asked a question at the conclusion of his paper. He buttonholed me
afterwards with characteristic warmth and human interest. When he heard
that I was visiting the United Kingdom later that year, his immediate
response was 'But my dear chap, you must come and stay in my rooms at
84 Obituaries
Frank Emery (1930-1987)

College'. And so I did, living grandly as a pseudo-fellow and entertained

warmly in his home every evening . He generously took me to Wales for
three days, to see the Zulu War from the other side, as it were. He proudly
showed me the famous colour of the 24th Regiment, to save which Melvill
and Coghill gave their lives, now laid up in Brecon Cathedral. We stayed in
a little pub in Brecon. Here Frank was as at home and as welcome in a
humble working class environment as he was in the Fellows' Dining Room
of his College in Oxford. In 1982 I again enjoyed the hospitality of the
Emery home together with members of my family.
Frank was, until the last year or so when ill-health sapped his vitality, a
letter writer every bit as productive and as vivid as any of those soldiers of
the Queen whose literary gems he unearthed. Today I value a thick wad of
'Emery Papers'. I value, too, the memory of a warm and generous friend.
Many people in Natal will hold happy memories of his company as a guest in
their homes. With his passing, the increasingly beleaguered academic
,ommunity in Natal, too, has lost a significant and influential friend
o\erseas.
Requiescat in pace.
T .B. FROST
Obituaries 85
Natal Training College (1909-1987)

The pre-service section of the Natal College of Education, the old Natal
Training College ceases to function as an institution for the training of
teachers at the end of 1987. So passes a great and widely respected college
of education, its demise brought about by the pressures of demographic and
economic necessity and the disruptive reality of a segregated education
system. In a time of scarcity in black education the demand for white
teachers in an exclusivc\y white system has fallen to the point where even
one college of education is more than adequate for the training of the small
number of teachers required for the white schools of Natal. It is indeed sad
to contemplate the dismantling of NTC which for so many years educated
almost all of the Province's primary school teachers and collaborated with
the University in the professional training of graduate teachers.
While remembrance is still fresh we must record something of the spirit
and achievements of NTC, that institution so infinitely and enduringly
influenced by the genius loci of the former Government House, and the
special sense of community created by the girdling walls which draw people
together, yet over the lifetime of T.c. have deterred the incursions of
raiders no more menacing than the bucolic students of Cedara.
To many it would seem that the greatest achievement of NTC has been
the expression of an ethos which had encouraged in its students a humane
and caring attitude towards the community and the individual child, and a
respect for scholarship. These values have been transmitted by the benign
contagion of the labour and love of those who have served NTC, and by the
pervasive influence of this place. As NeviIle Nuttall wrote in 1959, it is a
place which warmly endears itself to the people who live and work in it as
the years go by, and its personality is apparent, in form and substance, to all
who love it.
The College was established with about eighty students who moved into
the modified and refurbished premises of Government House in 1912. In
1976 when the decision to confine its activities to the preparation of Pre
Primary and Junior Primary teachers only was taken, the enrolment was 282.
At this point most students were taking the three year course with some
staying for a fourth year specialist course. The academic staff now numbered
forty-five, and the departments included physical science, biology,
mathematics, physical education, music, technical drawing and handicrafts,
art, biblical studies and, of course, education, English, Afrikaans, history
and geography. The restriction of the training from 1977 saw a reduction in
numbers and the disappearance of men students from the courses.
A feature of any viable centre of education is a continual adaptation to
changing circumstances and an innovative response to the challenges of
research and educational need. NTC has certainly met these requirements
and it is interesting to see how often the appointment of a new rector has
coincided with the introduction of new courses, or the alteration of criteria.
Mr Gowthorpe initiated the Teacher Training classes in 1909 and became
the first principal of a college which was at that time run on traditional lines
and in many ways like a secondary school in the treatment of students and
86 Obituaries
the presentation of subjects. A member of his staff, Professor Alexander

Reid, known to everyone as Sandy, took over from Gowthorpe and initiated
the collaboration with the University whereby students took four first-year
courses at Natal University College over the two years of the Teachers'
Third Class Certificate course. The exhilarating rigours of the ride on the
upper deck of a city tram must remain vividly with all who commuted
between NTC and 'Varsity for lectures.
In 1942 Prof. A.H. Allsopp (Sloppy) became Principal and while there
were no major changes in the courses during his time, they were enriched
and some facilities enlarged. The Governor's Ballroom, that paradox of
wood and iron splendour, was demolished to make room for a new
Women's Residence and a swimming bath, and the Art Department
exchanged its rather spartan premises and assemblage of classical plaster
sculptures for the expansive facilities of the Allsopp Block, which also
included a hall-cum-gymnasium and two lecture rooms.
With the appointment of NevilIe Nuttall in 1952 came radical
developments inspired by his study tour of teacher training institutions in
Britain and some Continental countries. Not only were syllabuses revised
and academic studies broadened, but a tutorial system was introduced. This
was to prove a major factor in humanising staff-student relationships and
developing classroom skills. The College Medal was instituted by Nuttall as
a means of giving recognition to excellence, a goal he constantly set before
us all. The physical expansion of the College was considerahle in his time:
the Gowthorpe Block, the Reid Block with Students' Union and Music
Auditorium, and a men's residence later to be named Bowden Residence,
were built in Nuttall's time. But it was the achievement of a chapel for which
he had so strenuously and persistently striven that crowned his labours for
the College. Though he had to be content with an adaptation of the
Governor's kitchen he was satisfied to see the fine ideal he had so long
cherished enrich the spiritual life of NTC.
Were there but space and time one could dwell on the personalities and
diverse achievements of all the Principals and Rectors of the College. Each
of the nine in his own way added a fresh dimension to the work of NTC and
set the stamp of his style and philosophy upon the course of events. One
recalls Wynne Bowden with his single-minded devotion to the recruitment of
men, and low-key diplomacy so different from the volatile Neville Nuttall
whose fulminations both private and official could arouse hoth terror and
pity. George Dale, impetuous, at times irascible and constantly in motion
was followed by the unflappable and circumspect Ronald Tonkin, surrogate
wise uncle to staff and students alike. Then came George Harrison, urbane
in his dealings and dynamic in his innovative and often radical planning. Yet
diverse as these men may have been they had in common a concern for
people and a desire to see students enriched and fulfilled by their years at
NTC.
And what of the students -themselves, those often immature young people
drawn from the many corners of Natal and 'foreign parts'? Their
contributions to the College, both in studies and practice, on the playing
field and in wider spheres, have been generous and substantial and in some
instances, most notable. A survey of those now teaching in all phases of
Obituaries 87
education would reveal that an impressive number have exploited their

talents to the full and grown in stature, frequently beyond the expectations
of those who worked with them and tried to set them on a positive path.
One never ceases to be impressed by the professional and academic
achievements of former students, so many of whom have improved their
professional and academic qualifications and are occupying senior positions
in the schools of Natal. Among their number are a former director of
education, numerous principals of schools, workers in the advisory and
supervisory services of the Natal Education Department, and lecturers at
colleges of education.
In matters affecting relationships with the wider community outside the
sheltering and temptingly reclusive walls, NTC has reached out to make
contact with those once traditionally and now legislatively separated from
us. And progress has been made: from the netball rumpus of 1955 when the
Principal was taken to task for having allowed students to play netball
against the pupils of an Indian school (where, of course, some of them did
their practical teaching) to more recent times when students have been
drawn into coaching activities for black scholars, and where staff and
students have become heavily involved in the College's outreach programme
which attempts to spread teaching expertise and skills among unqualified
and underqualified teachers of other race groups in the Pietermaritzburg
area. The closure of NTC will sec the dispersal of the staff and students who
have done so much in this field.
NTC has made a rich and lasting contribution to education, particularly
in Natal. It is fitting to recall the College Prayer (composed by NeviJIe
Nuttall) and quote the lines which exprcss the essentials of the credo of
NTC.
Teach us to think little of our rights and much of our responsibilities;
and grant that both while we are here and when we go out into a world
of wider loyalties, we may have the courage and strength to keep our
faith and devote ourselves to the service of our fellow men, regardless
of all differences, by the common bond of thy Holy Gospel.
GEORGE DALE
88
Notes and Queries

Long-lost Letter from Natal
Editorial tribute, greatly merited, has already been paid in this issue to
Shelagh Spencer. Her departure from the editorial boardroom is a
significant loss to this journal, but - thankfully - she remains a valued
contributor to Notes and Queries. It is through her that the following letter
has found its way into Natalia. She writes:
Readers may remember Mrs Elizabeth Richardson who was the Library'S
Lending Librarian in the late 1970s. She and her family had come to Natal
when her husband was transferred by his firm to their South African
subsidiary, Scottish Cables in Pietermaritzburg. After a few years in Natal
the Richardsons returned to England and are now living at Hightown, north
of Liverpool. About four years ago, Mrs Richardson had the task of clearing
out the home of an old cousin, Miss Ann Phillips, in the village of Cliffe,
near Selby in Yorkshire, after the latter's death. In the process of sorting
out, the following letter from Thomas Palframan was found under the paper
lining of a drawer. The house, Holly Tree House, was built by Mrs
Richardson's great-grandfather Phillips. It had always been in the Phillips
family, ownership passing to Mrs Richardson's great-uncle and then to his
daughter Ann. From the tone of the letter, it would seem that Palframan
was a relative of the addressee, but as yet a relationship between the
Phillipses and the Palframans has not been established. Mrs Richardson was
certainly not aware of any Natal connections in her family.
The 'Dear Louisa' salutation is quite co-incidental. This Louisa is not the
sister of Ellen McLeod of Byrne, whose letters were published under the
title Dear Louisa.
Pietermaritzburg
Septr 1868
My Dear Louisa,
Many thanks for your interesting letter, and was glad to hear that
you are all well, but sorry to hear your family bereavement, a trial
indeed it would be to you all, but sorrowing, not as those without
hope, but in sure & certain hope of A glorious resurrection, one
removed from the family on earth to join the Family above, to be for
ever with the Lord, we may say with Baalam, let us die the death of
the righteous and let my last end be like his, but let us ever try to live
and enjoy the life of the righteous, when we remember that those
whom we loved that have passed away to the realms of light & glory
will if permitted be our guardian angels to shield us from evil, or like
Notes and Queries 89
the angel before Baalam's ass, stand in the way when we are needlessly
pursuing the wrong path, 0 let us try to follow those that have gone
before, I trust you have caught the falling mantle of the Dear Departed
Boy, and ever increasing in that indescribable Joy and peace which
passeth all human understanding, we may enjoy peace and spiritual
plenty in the wilderness as well as on the banks of the Jordan, because
we may by faith ever behold the promised land, may the Lord help us,
you as me. If I think of paying old England a visit, when I do I shall if
spared certainly pay you a visit but when I cannot say, 2 or 3 years last
have been certainly a dark page in the history of Natal, many whom we
thought was rich, have been reduced to the bare necessaries of life
through wreckless speculations and bankruptcy of others but wc arc
coming round a little as extensive Coal fields have been discovered &
copper also, and indeed Gold Fields that arc likely to turn out very
extensive, they arc 6 or 8 Hundred miles from us so I shall not be
going to the diggings yet, you ask how far we are apart. Brother Wm
about 6 miles & John 18 miles and sister 14 miles we live in the City
and in the midst of 9 churches & chapels I think within 400 yards and
about 200 yards from Legislative Council Chamber, we have got our
chapel finished inside, and erected a new vestry & orchestra with the
proceeds of our Bazaar which was nearly £700, but we still want lamps
for the Chapel and a new School room which would cost about £400
more, as we have over 200 Sunday scholars we have also commenced
open air services in a distant part of the City we are very much in need
of an independent gent & lady as city missionaries as our ministers
have so little time for visiting, some Times they ride about 60 miles to
preach 3 times which takes at least 3 days to perform the journey, my
stock of news is pretty near done. Br Wm has been lame about 4
months, the gig horses were running away and he jumped out to catch
them and fractured the small bone of the foot, but glad to say is nearly
better - I had nearly forgot to thank you all for the things you so
kindly provided for our bazaar but we have not yet received them, the
[?] friend that was to bring them sickened & died, and so we hope to
receive them the first opportunity, but I must close with love to you all
Brother & sister, Father & Mother and family
from yours
sincerely
Thos Palframan
[P.S.] Please give my kind regards to all enquiring friends, I think I
shall send a paper. Ask Thomas to write, I suppose he will soon be a
foreman. We have had very heavy rain over 60 hours and never cease,
but you will see the papers.
T.P.
Thomas Palframan (born c. 1830, West Haddlesey, Yorkshire), came to

Natal in April 1858 with his brother John (born c. 1829). The evidence points
to their being the brothers of William Palframan (c. 1824-1905), who had
emigrated to the Colony in 1851. When this letter was written Thomas was
living on Erf 19 Church Street in Pietermaritzburg and was working as a
carpenter. WilIiam was said to be living six miles away - this was possibly
90 Notes and Queries
at Slang Spruit outside the city, where he certainly was by J 872. John,
according to the letter, was 18 miles away - this was near the Lion's river.
The sister mentioned is possibly Catherine Brunyate (c. 1840-1912), the wife
of John Brunyate. Catherine was born at Snaith in Yorkshire, not far from
Selby and Cliffe. The Brunyates had come to Natal in 1862.
In 1868 Thomas had married Mary Lambden. This union was without
issue. By 1889 Thomas and Mary were living at Lydenburg in the Transvaal.
The date of his death has not been established but Mary died in Lydenburg
in 1895.
Investigating the Palframans has proved confusing, especially as two more
came to Natal in these early years, viz. William (born c. 1836), and Michael
(born c.1839), both from Selby. Their cousin William, already in the
Colony, had stood surety for the repayment of their fares.
'b MYNN 0'

The notion of fairness of mind has long been associated with the
gentlemanly pursuit of cricket, and perhaps it was the notable prowess of Lt.
Gov. Robert Keate with bat and ball that commended him as an arbitrator
in the celebrated wrangle over the ownership of the Diamond Fields. It is
unfortunate, perhaps, that Keate's cricketing achievements are not widely
known: they fill out the documented shadow of the man and might add
interest to the historical scholarship of contemporary schoolboys. Dr Peter
Brain has supplied the following short extract from The Cricketer's Week
End Book by Eric Parker (published by Seeley Service of London), and
while Notes and Queries delights in reviving awareness of Mr Keate's
sporting ability, we do wish that the record was of his more successful
outings to the crease (such outings being, of course, innings), of which there
must surely have been a great number.
Robert William Keate was the nephew of the famous Eton
headmaster, not son, as stated in Lillywhite's Scores and Biographies.
He was son of Robert Keate, surgeon to William IV and to Queen
Victoria, was in the Oxford XI, and in 1852 played for Gentlemen v.
Players. Lillywhite says that he sometimes used the pseudonym
'Biffin'. In 1867 he was appointed Governor of Natal, and died of fever
at Cape Coast Castle, aged 58, being then Governor in Chief of the
West Coast Settlement. Mr Keate had the misfortune to be bowled by
Alfred Mynn without scoring on three successive occasions. He was
afterwards defeated in a single wicket match by Mr George Leopold
Langdon. These events were commemorated by Aislabie in the
following stanza, where 'b Mynn 0' should be pronounced as a dactyl:
b Mynn O-b Mynn O-b Mynn O-Keate
Tried with his bat jolly Langdon to beat!
In vain, for with Langdon can never compete

b Mynn O-b Mynn 0-0 Mynn O-Keate!
PHILIP NORMAN
Annals of the West Kent Cricket Club.
Notes from Dundee

Amongst the occupational hazards of residence in a sophisticated capital city
is the acquisition of a mistakenly superior and insular perspective on the
affairs of the outlying districts. Mrs Sheila Henderson provides a corrective
view from Dundee:
Henderson Hall
The Administrator of Natal, the Hon. R.M. Cadman, opened
Henderson Hall, the new industrial complex of the Talana Museum,
on 1 May 1987 in the presence of many distinguished guests and
visitors representing the major sponsors of the scheme. These included
the Chamber of Mines and the Natal Mine Managers' Association,
Anglo-Vaal and Consol Limited, Toncoror and Corobrik.
The striking hall is based on the design of the palatial coal-mine
buildings erected during the 'golden age' of Dundee by randlords such
as Albu and Cullinan. It houses evocative and unusual displays on
coal-mining, glass manufacture and the building trade and also samples
of local arts and crafts such as Rorke's Drift rugs and Tactile carpets.
The brightness of the Consol Glass Trust Collection contrasts with the
utility, often grimed and gloomy, of the mining and brick displays, and
the professionalism of the industrial exhibits throws into high relief the
simplicity of the Smith cottage where 'coalopolis' had its beginnings.
'Coalopolis' - New Plans for Talana Museum
The Natal Provincial Museum Service, under the directorship of Dr
Erich Bigalke, is currently planning a display on the growth of Dundee
which will be housed in the fourth exhibition room of Henderson Hall
under the title of 'Coalopolis'. The display will complement 'The
Magic of Glass', 'The Grit and Grind of Coal' and the 'Bulk of Brick'
exhibitions opened recently, and will concentrate on the personalities
and institutions which made Dundee the 'capital of the North' in its
heyday. It is hoped that the exhibition will be opened to the public in
May 1988.
A Threatened Heritage
Dundee's old Masonic Hall, known as 'Boswell's', is under threat of
demolition. Built in 1896, the Masonic Hall is an integral part of a
complex of historic buildings in the heart of old Dundee - the others
being the old sandstone Presbyterian Church (1898), St James'
Anglican Church (1896), the old courthouses (1894 and 1903), the gaol
(1896) and the N.G. Kerk in Beaconsfield Street (1924) - which
conservationists are anxious to preserve. Perhaps the strongest
argument for preserving 'Boswell's' is that it is the only theatre pre
dating the Anglo-Boer War now surviving in Natal. During that war it
was the scene of the trials for treason of the Biggarsberg boers known
as the Natal Rebels, who paid a heavy price for their loyalty to the
republican cause.
The Masonic Hall had a considerable history of both theatre and the
cinema. Such celebrated theatrical personalities as Leonard Rayne,
Marda Vanne, Andre Huguenet and Amelita Galli-Curci played there.
Many notable political personalities also took its stage, and it was there
that, with the support of Ernest and Mabel Jansen, the modern
National Party was born.
A recent study of Dundee's historic buildings by architecture
students under the guidance of Professor Brian Kearney and Mr Rob
Haswell has emphasised the value of buildings such as this, and the
campaign for the preservation of 'Boswell's' has the support of the
Natal Regional Committee of the National Monuments Council.
Impending Declarations in Dundee

Four historic homes, dating from the turn of the century, are in the
process of declaration as national monuments. All four belonged to the
'merchant princes' of 'Coalopolis', and, thanks to their conservation
conscious owners, are remarkably unspoilt and true to their period.
Built for a leading grocer, 'Fiddeo House' at 95 McKenzie Street is a
charming and unusual gabled house. Still owned by a descendant of the
family, it has remained unaltered down to the smallest details.
'Coniston' in Harvey Street was the home of Mr Talbot, the town's
first pharmacist. Its rare period fireplaces and other interior features
have been carefully preserved and the present owners intend restoring
external details such as the wooden verandah and imposing stone and
wrought iron gates. Charles Pearson, a prominent hardware merchant,
built his house at 48 Tatham Street. It has been tastefully restored by
its present owners, Mr and Mrs Waldo Thole, and is a fine example of
its period.
'The Hollies' in Union Street was the establishment of A.A. Smith,
a successful lawyer and member of the powerful Smith 'dynasty' of
early Dundee. Mr Smith's stylish living included a conservatory and
five coach-houses. The house is remarkable for its fine mahogany
archways, fireplaces and overmantels, locally made by the master
craftsman Serridge, who also left his mark on Dundee's Edwardian
courthouse.
Ambulance Corps Memorial
A committee under the chairmanship of Mr Chetty, Headmaster of
the Dundee Indian High School, is working with the National
Monuments Council on the design for a memorial to the Indian Sepoy
Ambulance Corps which served at the Battle of Talana in October
1899. The R.A.M.C. dressing stations stood amidst a blue gum
plantation on the banks of the Steenkoolstroom, and the site has
remained untouched since 1899. The route of advance of the British
infantry is also still open, and the National Monuments Council has
laid out the artillery and infantry advance from General Penn-Symons'
camp to the summit of Talana. It makes an excellent educational trail.
The Indian Historical and Cultural Affairs Committee is undertaking
research into the Indian communities of Dundee, Dannhauser,
Glencoe, Wasbank, Hlobane and Pomeroy. Assistance from any
source and gifts or loans of documents, photographs or artefacts would
be much appreciated.
Restoration, Conservation, Adaptation

While Dundee fears for its Masonic Hall, developments in Durban and
Pietermaritzburg may encourage conservationists. In the capital, the Boom
Street house known (slightly inaccurately, as an earlier issue of Natalia
demonstrates) as 'the oldest house in town' has been carefully restored and
is now an adjunct of the Voortrekker Museum. A growing recognition of the
value of character in the townscape has no doubt influenced the architecture
of two substantial new commercial buildings - the shopping centre at the
corner of Boshoff and Boom Streets and the new premises for Game stores
in the city centre. A third promising trend is the adaptation of buildings that
have architectural merit or historical interest to new uses. The preservation
by the Edgars group of the facade of Ireland's in Pietermaritzburg is an
example of how this type of conservation-conscious development can be
commercially advantageous, and the transformation of the redundant
railway workshops in Durban into an attractive and extremely popular
complex of shops, restaurants and cinemas is a telling lesson for those who
equate demolition with progress. What a similar treatment of
Pietermaritzburg's lost Market Hall might have done for that city must
forever remain a matter for conjecture, but an interesting move in the
capital is the renovation and adaptation of private houses by non
commercial and non-official groups: the conversion of a large house in
Connaught Road in ScottsviIIe into a museum and headquarters for the
Comrades Marathon Association is one such venture, and the Midlands Arts
and Crafts Society has similarly started turning a near derelict semi-detached
House in upper Prince Alfred Street into a studio and exhibition centre. Full
documentation of these ventures promises to be interesting material for a
future edition of Natalia.
Conservation in the Workplace

A comparison of group photographs taken in 1947 and 1972 alerted Natalia's
editor to the fact that Messrs Kendal1 and Strachan, the firm that prints this
journal, has had a remarkably stable staff over many years. Of a staff of
some thirty-five people, three have been with the company for forty-onc
years and another four for forty. With another two employees in the thirty
to forty ycar bracket, the man who has notched up a quarter of Cl century
with KendalI and Strachan ranks a lowly tenth in terms of length of service.
The average for the whole staff is nineteen years, and this high degree of
job-satisfaction is widely attributed to the management skills of Mr Howard
Lumley, who retired this year after a mere thirty-four years in the business.
Kwa-Oregon
'Our aim is to show children's artefacts that reflect the human needs of kids
around the world.'
The idea of a children's museum - a museum both of children and for
children - is an appealing one, and the city of Portland, Oregon, has such a
thing. Amongst its exhibits is 'a rattle from Zulu (sic) completely
handwoven of grass'. Portland's acquisition of the rattle came about through
their Ms Tricia Knoll and Dr Tim Maggs of the KwaZulu Monuments
Council and the Natal Museum. A large number of Zulu artefacts together
with various books - including a collection of songs by Pessa Weinberg,
Our Village Bus by M. Mabetoa, and a beginner's course in Zulu - was
despatched to Oregon early in the year, and enthusiastically received. The
artefacts, identified in an explanatory list, were largely domestic articles and
utensils, but included items of traditional dress, a pair of dancing shields and
a spear, as well as '1 woven rattle - not traditional'.
Centenary of the Durban Museum

The Durban Museum celebrated its one hundredth anniversary in July. The
prime mover in its establishment was Councillor J.S. Steel, and it was first
opened to the public on 23 July 1887, with the Mayor, Councillor W.E.
Robarts, officiating. It was housed in the then Town Hall (now the central
Post Office), and in 1910 it moved into the newly-completed City Hall. The
Art Museum, which had been founded in 1892, moved with it.
The natural history collections, still remarkably fine, formed the nucleus
of the museum, and as the natural and cultural history collections grew, it
became necessary to expand into other premises. The cultural history
collection was placed first in the Old House Museum in St Andrew's Street
and then, in 1966, moved to the Old Court House adjacent to the City Hall.
The Court House itself is a most appropriate setting for the collection, being
a fine piece of architecture dating from about 1870 and, according to a
Durban municipal newsletter, Durban's first public building.
Soldier Settlement after World War I

Mrs Pam Arnold of Pietermaritzburg is researching the settlement of
soldiers in Northern Natal after the First World War. Her particular interest
is Malonjeni, on the Buffalo River near Dundee, but she is also collecting
material on any other such settlements in the Utrecht, Vryheid, Newcastle
and Ladysmith areas. She would welcome news of any person who settled
on these allotments or of their descendants, and documents and photographs
would be a great help. Her address is 6 Barry Road, Wembley, and her
telephone number (0331) 52602.
The Lady Usher Literary A ward

Any journal able to list amongst its contributors the recipient of a major
literary award - as is the case with this edition of Natalia and Mr David
Robbins's piece on Douglas Livingstone - must count itself fortunate. The
fact that the Natal Society has itself instituted an award for excellence in
South African English writing is not yet widely appreciated.
Director of the Natal Society Library, Mrs Shona Wallis, elaborates:

The Lady Usher Literary Award is available to South African writers
wh.ose work is published in South Africa. The purpose of the Award is
to promote the use of the English language in South Africa. The
administration of the Award is controlled by the Council of the Natal
Society.
The Award came about in 1984 through Miss P. Reid who was the
President of the Society at the time. She had long cherished the wish
that the Natal Society should offer a prestigious literary award.
The idea became a reality when Lady Usher, of Nottingham Road,
Natal, in response to a request from Miss Reid, gave a sum of money
to the Natal Society to be used specifically for a literary award.
To date two awards have been made: the first in 1985 to Mr R.O.
Pearse for his biography Joseph Baynes, Pioneer published by Shuter
and Shooter, Pietermaritzburg, 1983: the second in 1986 to Mr Willem
Steenkamp for his short novel The Horse Thief published by Tafelberg
Publishers, Cape Town in 1985.
Life in Durban from 1910

The allure of things colonial often diverts attention from the fascinating
minutiae of more recent times. Miss Esme Stuart has given us these glimpses
of Durban in the early years of Union and the reign of Edward VII- a time
when even Halley's Comet would do the decent thing.
Salisbury Island, not yet a concreted fortress, adorned the Bay as a
favourite picnic spot. Yachting parties would land there to lunch, and, there
being no jetty as late as the 1920s, the men would wade ashore carrying the
young ladies. Glenwood was the arborial sanctuary which its name suggests,
then known as Stella Bush and the haunt of monkeys all too prone to snatch
the lunch packets of pupils at the Stellawood School. Northwards along the
Berea the young ladies of the Girls' College were similarly plagued until the
clearing of the bush and the construction of Guildford Road. But the age
could still recompense its schoolchildren with substantial mementoes of
significant events: when Lord Methuen, the last colonial Governor, opened
the new Town Hall, 'we children were presented with small electro-plated
mugs, three-handled, with an engraving of the Hall on the side'.
Miss Stuart recalls weekly school swimming lessons in the town's only
swimming pool, 'behind the G.P.O. on West Street, small and smelly' and
the grandness of the new Beach Bath, 100 yards long and 25 wide, when it
was opened in 1912. In the larger private gardens, the contemporary status
symbol was not a swimming pool but a tennis court. She remembers too the
early bioscopes - the Pictodrome, Thornton's, and the Empire -- with their
silent films and hardworking pianists. On the corner of the Esplanade and
Field Street stood the Criterion, offering theatre of the music-hall type, with
Claude Dampier, Will Fyffe, and the Dolly Sisters providing favourite turns.
For more elevated theatrical performaces, the Theatre Royal was a
miniature of any auditorium in Shaftesbury Avenue. Many of Britain's
greatest actors graced its boards - Matheson Lang, Oscar Ashe, the
Neilson Terry's, Marie Tempest, Irene Vanbrough, Sybil Thorndyke, and
many others. All were seen in their prime. 'To the consternation of our
parents we used to attend matinees in the gods for 1I6d. We saw dozens
of first-rate performances, including the finest ballets - the Russian Ballet,
the Ballet de Monte Carlo, and Sadlers Wells (later the Royal Ballet). Their
sets were all superb.'
The Fire Station in Pine Street housed both the Fire Brigade and the
'Galloping Ambulance', the only ambulance in the town and a vehicle whose
bells and charging horses made a lasting impression. The fire brigade was
the pride of Durban, but there remains the memory of a tragic ending to a
demonstration by the brigade at Lord's Ground (Durban's major cricket
field before the creation of Kingsmead): 'the Fire Master, named Lambeth,
trusted his two children to take part in the event. Something went wrong,
and the children were burned to death'.
When motor cars became reasonably common, Isipingo was a popular
place for a drive, but for their picnics the younger set, who could not afford
cars, generally took the train and then a horse-drawn tram from the station
to the beach. Durban's electric tramway would convey children and coupon
holders from Marriott Road to the Post Office for a penny, while the full
fare was twopence. The trams had cow-catchers, and some carried large
cisterns of water to settle the dust on roads that were little more than tracks.
Vause Road and Ridge Road arc remembered by Miss Stuart for their dust.
Musgrave Road, however, 'was the Park Lane of Durban'. From Berea
Road to Mitchell Park, the road was flanked by the residences of Durban's
leading citizens: Dr Sam Campbell's, 'cream exterior, flat roof, with black
wrought iron balconies. Next came Dickenson's, with its large flamboyant;
further along, the W.G. Brown's; then Galloway House, the residence of
Mr A.H. Smith; then Waiter Greenacre's large house and garden; the
Sidney Greens', with a garden stretching down to Currie Road; Dr
McKenzie's; then Sir Benjamin Greenacre's Caister House; then Edwin
Greenacre's; a large residence housing bachelors; the Elgie's; the Egeland's;
then the Ocean View, the only hotel. All had beautiful views of the sea,
town and Bay'.
The slow pace of travel was not a major inconvenience: 'The Union Castle
mailboat arrived on Sunday mornings. When the ship was sighted, a black
ball was sent up the tall white mast that stood next to the lighthouse at the
end of the Bluff. This would be a signal for those on the Berea who intended
to meet the ship to leave for their tram journey to the Point'. A less leisurely
era was heralded in April 1918, when schoolchildren crowded onto the
Greyville golf course to witness the first official visit to Durban of an
aeroplane.
1918 also brought the Armistice, a moment of unimaginable joy. 'Soon
the Boys came home, and the gaiety of the Roaring Twenties began. Dinner
dances at the Marine and Royal Hotels were a constant delight. At the
Hotel Edward, that 'asylum for the aristocracy', as it was called, there was a
very exclusive dance club called Ciro's - an added joy in the Season.
Humbler dances were held monthly at St Thomas's Hall - good fun
because everyone knew everyone. Claret cup was the universal drink'.
'The July Handicap and the Gold Cup always brought crowds for the
Durban Season. The Governor-General with his entourage spent weeks at
King's House each July Season, when garden parties were eagerly attended
by those invited. These were great social events, with the Navy in full dress
and civilians in morning dress and their ladies in long, flowing chiffons, long
white kid gloves, and picture hats. The vista from the imposing green terrace
of King's House was very beautiful, with a glorious view of the winter blue
ocean with flowering trees and gardens in the foreground. There were
generally five ships of the Royal Navy in port from Simonstown, and the
officers were always present at the balls in the Town Hall.'
There were other significant visitors, and also less ostentatious parties in
private homes 'when carpets were rolled up, French chalk rubbed into the
floor, and, to the accompaniment of anyone at hand to play the piano, we
would dance. Walking miles across the Berea with evening shoes carried in
bags, we generally sang'. Surprise parties were popular: 'one party actually
proceeded up Musgrave Road on foot in spontaneous fancy dress,
accompanied by a home-made jazz band, to greet the surprised hosts'.
A more serious purpose underpinned some of the high-spirited fun. 'In
1920 the Durban Bachelor Girls' Club was inaugurated. May Poynton was
the first president, and was a real go-getter. On the club committee were
such well-known women as Hannah loel, Killie Campbell and Katie
Cottam. We worked to build a home for indigent girls. Any fund-raising
effort, such as mannequin parades in the garden of Muckleneuk, was
indefatigably supported. A major effort was the production of an annual
musical comedy by Gus Brown, who visited London each year and returned
with the latest dance steps and tunes. The shows were of professional
standard, and all staged at the Theatre Royal. Our annual shows always ran
for a week, and included many favourite operettas - High links, The
Arcadians, Our Miss Gibbs, The Quaker Girl, and so on. We soon reached
our target for the home, and Cambridge House was opened in ]924,
Two world wars put an end to such conventions as the use of visiting
cards. 'Mothers, with their silver card cases used to call and return calls
formally. Their "At Home" day cards were usually printed in copperplate,
one wide card and two narrow for the husbands.' The wars were destructive
of other things as well. 'The Cave Rock was an enormous natural formation
on the beach below the Bluff, near the whaling station. It had a flat top and
there was a wide hollow passage through its centre where the sea came
through, causing a dangerous backwash as the tide went out. In the early
days a Natal girl called Katie Richards had been drowned in the cave. We
were never allowed to bathe there but it was a favourite picnic spot which
we reached by the ferry. When stationed at 4th Heavy Battery during the
last war, I walked down to see this old haunt, and with an intense shock saw
only a vast heap of stones. It seemed that its huge bulk had interfered with
the sights of those 6 and 8-inch guns above at the Battery, and the artillery
had had to destroy it. Durban was never told.'
For other losses, such as that of 'Dead Man's Tree', the fig tree which
stood outside the Post Office and which for fifty years had daily been
plastered with funeral notices nailed to its trunk, Durban had only itself to
blame, together with the endless pursuit of 'progress' - a pursuit that has
not always brought improvement to either the town or its people.
Notes on Empangeni
The question of the English meanings of Zulu place names is one of both
perpetual controversy and perpetual fascination. Mr Adrian Koopman of
the Zulu Department at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg has
supplied this erudite dissertation on the name Empangeni.
Anyone can play this game. You need a Zulu dictionary (I use the
Doke & Vilakazi Zulu-English Dictionary), and any other reference
book that contains Zulu names. The game begins with an apparently
simple question, in my case 'What does "Empangeni" mean?'
Well, no problem there. E- -eni is the Zulu locative form meaning
'the place of', so all we have to do is look in Doke & V:Iakazi to see if
there is a noun umpanga or impange. Yes, here we aJ~, page 510:
-mpange (impange, izimpange) n. Species of forest tree, Olinia
cymosa.
A bit vague, that 'species of forest tree'. Let's look in Eugene Moll's
Trees of Natal to see what an Olinia cymosa is. Moll offers Olinia
emarginata, Olinia radiata and Olinia ventosa, but no Olinia cymosa.
Perhaps the Zulu names given by Moll will provide something.
Olinia ventosa: the 'hard pear' or hardepeer in Afrikaans, but no Zulu
name given;
Olinia emarginata: the 'mountain olinia' or berghardepeer, known as
uNquthu or umzaneno in Zulu and;
Olinia radiata had the aliases 'Natal olinia', Natalhardepeer and
umzaneno. It's back to Doke & Vilakazi, and let's start with uNquthu.
D. & V. offers us isinquthu (back of the head), umquthu (powdered
protective charm), and qUlhu (referring to plucking or pulling out by
the roots), but no unquthu. Perhaps it should be spelt ungquthu.
Page 563:
'-ngquthu (ingquthu, izingqulhu) n.
1. Vessel of basket-work or pottery, with flat-covered top and
small mouth;
2. Ox given to the bride's mother, extra to the lobolo cattle;
3. Thick, stumpy beard;
4. hlonipha l term for the female organ.'
Not many trees there. Perhaps A.T. Bryant's older Zulu-English
dictionary can help. But no - all Bryant can add is 'u-qutu: small kind
of grasshopper; short person'. It looks as if Moll's uNquthu doesn't
exist.
Perhaps we'll have better luck with his umzaneno. Doke & Vilakazi
have no record of umzaneno, but offer instead the abbreviated version
umzane as 'white ironwood tree, bastard sneezewood, Toddalia
lancelata'. What can Moll offer us here? The White ironwood is also
apparently known as the witysterhout, vepris lanceolata, or in Zulu,
umozane, umzane, or isutha. Umzane we have just looked up, and
umozane leads us back to the same place with D. & V.'s 'white
ironwood tree, bastard sneezewood, vepris lanceolata', although D. &
V. provides no clue as to why the white ironwood should be Toddalia
lanceolatea in one case, but Vepris lanceolala in the other. And we'd
~------ ---------------
I hlonipha term: a word used by women in respectful avoidance of another word.

better check up on that bastard sneezewood too. But first - isutha.

Here again D. & V. are reluctant to accept Moll's Zulu word, but offer
instead insutha as 'species of grass, e.g. Harpehloa capensis and
Elionurus argeneus, worn in the hair to secure hospitality when
travelling.' Not particularly useful in the present enquiry, but a handy
tip for the next time you go travelling. What does Moll say about D. &
V.'s Toddalia lanceolata? It doesn't exist. The closest Moll can offer is
Toddalipsis bremekampii, also known as the wild mandarin (wilde
naartjie in Afrikaans), or in Zulu umozane, which D. & V., as we have
just seen, regards as the Vepris lanceolata or bastard sneeze-wood. Oh
yes! - the bastard sneezewood. Back to Moll, who offers twenty three
different kinds of bastard, from the bastard brandybush to the bastard
white stinkwood, including the bastard currant resin tree and the
bastard turkey berry, but no bastard sneezewood. The 'legitimate'
sneezewood, according to Moll, also goes by the names nieshout,
Ptaeroxylon obliquum, umthathe and ubhaqa, which gives us two more
items to take back to Doke & Vilakazi. According to them, ubhaqa
has the following meanings:
1. stalk of tambootie grass, used as a torch for lighting in the hut;
2. torch, lamp, light, candle (inkanyezi enobhaqa - comet, lit.
'star with a torch');
3. tall, handsome person;
4. a forerunner, who lights the way for others;
5. beast given by bride's family to bridegroom's father.
[cf. meaning (4) for ingquthu above]
Again. no trees here, except the mention of tambootie grass, which I
have no intention of following up. We have better luck with umthathe,
for which D. & V. give:
'1. fresh mealies (before being stored);
2. sneezewood tree, pteroxylon utile,' with once more, D. & V.
differing from Moll in the botanical name. Doke & Vilakazi add the
Zulu proverb umthathe uzala umlotha: 'the sneezewood tree bears
ashes', i.e. even a good man's children may turn out bad.
But we seem to have strayed somewhat from Empangeni. Is it
perhaps a misspelling? Should there be an 'h' after the 'p':
'Emphangeni'? I see Doke & Vilakazi give umphanga 'species of bush
fern, Encephalartos, whose seed-vessel was used as children's snuff
box'. Let us see what Moll has to say about
National Monuments in Natal

The historical value of the following buildings was recognised during the
year ended 31 March 1986:
1. The Howard College building and the Memorial Tower building at the
University of Natal, Durban.
The cost of erection of the Howard College building was financed by a
grant from T.B. Davies, a shipping magnate whose son Howard was
killed duriDlg the First World War. The building was completed in 1931.
The Memorial Tower building's ground floor was completed in 1947.

The building's erection was financed, amongst others. from the
University War Memorial Fund. An important characteristic of the
building is the tower with the so-called Light of Remembrance, which is
still a nightly landmark and which serves as a permanent reminder of
those who died during the two world wars.
2. The old railway station at Bellair, Durban.
This Victorian building was erected in 1900 as part of an upgrading
project. It replaced the original station, which was built from 1876 to
1878 by the Natal Government Railway when laying the railway line
between Durban and Pinetown.
3. The Marian Villa at 282 Alexandra Road, Pietermaritzburg.
This Edwardian house, originally known as Lansdown, was designed
and erected in 1914 for Dr Conrad Akerman by the architect Clement
Stott. In' 1962, when the property was acquired by the Dominican
Order, a chapel was fitted into the layout of the building for use by the
Dominican Sisters. In 1980 the building was converted into a home for
the elderly by the parishioners of St Mary's church. The building is at
present known as Marian Villa.
4. The main building at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg.
This building was designed by the architect J. C. Tully. The foundation
stone was laid on 1 August 1910 by the Duke of Connaught and the
building was opened in 1912. It is the oldest building on this campus.
5. The old agricultural hall at Murray Park, Estcuurt.
This sandstone building, which was designed by the architects Kent and
Price of Durban, was erected by A. Fraser, a local builder. The building
was officially opened on 9 Decemher 1901.
6. The Thornley House on the farm Dundee, at Talana Hill, Dundee
district.
The Thornley farmstead was erected in about 1897 after Peter Smith,
the founder of the Borough of Dundee, purchased the farm for his
youngest son. This farmstead was occupied by the Boer forces on 20
October 1899 during the Battle of Talana Hill, during which the
farmhouse and stables were used as a field hospital and a mortuary,
respectively.
7. The George Shaw House at 67 Church Street, Utrecht.
This house with its late-Victorian feature was erected in 1905 by George
Shaw, postmaster of Utrecht (1893-1897) and later husinessman.
8. The Dirk Uys House at 242 Church Street, Utrecht.
The original portion of this house dates from the 1860s. The building
was enlarged and modernised shortly after 1910. The house, which is
one of the oldest buildings in Utrecht, is closely associated with several
prominent local members of the Uys family.
Compiled by MORAY COMRIE
101
Book Reviews and Notices

PAULINA DLAMINI: SERVANT OF TWO KINGS
compiled by H. FILTER. Edited by S. BOURQUIN
KilIie Campbell Africana Library Publications, Number 1. University of
Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg and Killie Campbell Africana Library,
Durban, 1986. RI8,50.
'NOT EITHER AN EXPERIMENTAL DOLL': THE SEPARATE WORLDS
OF THREE SOUTH AFRICAN WOMEN
edited by SHULA MARKS
Killie Campbell Africana Library Publications, Number 2. University of
Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg and Killie Campbell Africana Library,
Durban, 1987. R17,50
It is rare in South African history that the voices of black women have been
heard. The KiIlie Campbell Africana Library, in collaboration with the
University of Natal Press has boldly launched its new series with not one,
but two, exciting books loudly proclaiming the experience of black women
at two different, but crucial times in our history. They are to be
congratulated.
Paulina Dlamini's life story is unique in the published annals of Natal and
Zulu history, for it is the record of the reminiscences of a woman who
served in Cetshwayo's umuzi (homestead) as a member of his private
regiment of female servants and concubines, the isigodlo women. It gives a
personal, and female perspective on life in the royal umuzi which can be
found nowhere else.
The story was compiled by the Reverend Heinrich Filter, a missionary of
the Lutheran Church, who had met Paulina Dlamini later in her life, after
she had been converted to Christianity and become a missionary herself.
Over several years he recorded conversations he had had with her, and
towards the end of her very long life (c. 1856-1942), in 1939, when she was
in her early eighties, he brought her to his mission station at Nazareth to
complete her story. The story is in narrative form, and as the editor has
pointed out, Filter used literary licence in giving some of the characters
direct speech.
The notes of his conversations with Paulina were in the form of key words
and brief sentences, thus one must be aware that the story is shaped by
Filter's narrative choices. Moreover, the narrative was written in German,
from discussions held in Zulu. The editor, Mr S. Bourquin, has performed
the difficult task of translating the story into English, with remarkable
sensitivity to the meaning of the original Zulu notes.
Paulina, or Nomguqo as she was named, was the daughter of Prince
Sikhunyane Dlamini Nkosi, grandson of Sobhuza, king of the Swazis, taken
102 Book Reviews and Notices
hostage by Dingane's regiments, and absorbed into the Buthelezi clan as a

'bondsman'. He became a messenger of the new King Mpande, and as a tax
collector was able to build his fortune. Paulina was the offspring of his fifth
and chief wife, a member of one of Mpande's female regiments and
daughter of a prominent member of~i1~ Khumalo clan.
Paulina's story begins with her life 'as a pagan member of the Zulu royal
establishment', where service to her father was replaced by service to the
king. Pride in being selected for the king's isigodlo was tinged with the pain
at being forced to leave home forever. What comes through the narrative is
that women in Zulu society had- virtually no choices. Their lives were
arranged for them with no consultation at all. We are given a glimpse of how
women were recruited into the isigodlo, and the elaborate preparations
which accompanied their absorption into the royal household. This does not
mean they were perpetually unhappy, and one gets a sense that life in the
isigodlo was pleasant in the company of other women, although strictly
circumscribed, and also busy. The isigodlo women were indeed the servants
of the king, as Paulina explained, 'Our duties were to plant and to harvest,
to fetch water and firewood and perform all household tasks'.
The isigodlo women were also the king's concubines. Paulina's Victorian
and Christian morality forbids her to talk openly about sexual practices and
celebrations in the royal homestead. She admits, however, that at the time
'these gave us much joy and pleasure'. As an example she quotes the
celebrations of the First Fruits and the puberty ceremonies for each member
of the isigodlo.
The first part of Paufina's story, III which she describes daily life in the
king's umuzi is, perhaps, the most interesting part of her narrative. The
details of Cetshwayo's personal power, the ease with which he was able to
decide upon the life or death of members of his household, are uniquely
revealing. One begins to see how control was exerted over his enormous
household.
After Mpande's death, Cetshwayo built a new royal umzui at Ondini.
Paulina describes in detail the significance of the divisions in the umuzi, with
the isigodlo esimnyama (black isigodlo) reserved for the king's hut, those of
his wives and mother, and the elite isigodlo women. The isigodlo
esimhlophe, (white isigodlo) housed the royal children and the rest of the
isigodlo girls. Each section was fenced off from the other, and rights of entry
strictly limited.
Fascinating is the story of the nation's inkatha, a coil of grass wide enough
for the king to squat on, wrapped in cloth, symbolising the unity of the
nation and the values associated with the king's ancestors. The inkatha was
believed to have magic powers emanating from it which influenced the
king's armies, and harnessed the support of the dead ancestors as their
spirits became a footrest for the king's feet.
Much of PauHna's narrative describes dIfferent aspects of belief in magic
and spirits. Snakes, for instance, were believed to be the spirits of the
ancestors and animals were sacrificed to appease them. She acknowledges
that as a Christian she would have turned her back on these things, but there
still exists something of a magic belief when she proclaims 'I would know
that Satan was operating through those snakes'.
Book Reviews and Notices 103
Paulina's remarkable memory has also given us a wealth of original Zulu

praise songs, war songs, and national songs. Songs were even composed in
criticism of Cetshwayo's stinginess.
After five years at Ondini, the Zulu war brought catastrophe to the royal
umuzi. The isigodlo fled to Zibhebhu, who appropriated the king's cattle
and intended to keep the women to serve him. Paulina and a number of the
women escaped and returned to their homes. Civil war once again disrupted
life, and the Buthelezi people took refuge in caves in the Ingwenya
mountain range.
Paulina's conversion to Christianity can really only be understood in the
context of the complete disruption of traditional life after the 1879 war and
subsequent civil war. Nearly starving to death, people bartered large
numbers of cattle for meagre amounts of mealies from itinerant Boer
traders. One of these traders, Shede Foloyi (Gert van Rooyen) took
Paulina's family back to Natal, where they were registered as refugees, and
assigned to work for him. In his home, just three years after she first started
to work for him, Paulina had a dream which led to her conversion.
Paulina's dreams evinced considerable interest among the local Church
members, and she was sent to the missionary 10hannes Reibeling for
religious instruction at Ehlazeni. After a year, she returned to Foloyi, who
by this time had acquired a farm in Zululand. She and her master acted as
lay preachers, together discussing the services they would give to their
respective congregations, he to the whites, and she to the blacks.
The story of Paulina's evangelical work is fascinating. It, too, is a unique
testament, for seldom does one find black women evangelists, and never one
whose words have been recorded. It is rare even to hear the words of black
men's experience, except through missionary journals.
Paulina concludes her story by recounting the terrible experience of
ufuJunyane, a 'dclirious illness of the brain' believed to be caused by evil
spirits. Her description reveals a form of modern spirit possession which was
related to the defeat of the Zulu kingdom, in which medicine men were
called on to exorcise these demons by implanting ghost warriors. Even
Christianity could not wipe out the devastation of defeat and dispossession,
which is no doubt the reason for this manic possession.
Paulina, however, found solace and strength in her conversion to
Christianity. As an evangelist she found an independence and a dignity
which fulfillcd her spiritually, and gave her a stature she could never have
achieved in her previous life. She was able to avoid marriage, for instance,
and assuaged her brother's reproach by paying him lobo/a cattle herself!
What a remarkable woman, what a remarkable story.
Another remarkable story is that told in the letters of three women set in
context by Shula Marks in her beautifully and sensitively written
introduction to Not Either An Experimental Doll: the separate worlds of
three South African women.
Lily Moya, a fifteen year old Transkei schoolgirl writes to Dr Mabel
Palmer, organiser of the separate Non-European Section of the University
of Natal, appealing to be accepted as a matriculation student. She impressed
the unsentimental Mabel Palmer with her first few letters, whieh showed
great originality of expression and great anxiety for further education.
Mabel must have remembered how, long ago, she had been helped by a
benefactress to further her own education, for she responded in kind to

Lily's appeal.
'My heart aches when I see other children having gone and still going to
school', wrote Lily. Mabel's sympathies are aroused, and she makes
considerable effort to find accommodation for the young girl in Durban. She
even writes to the Native Commissioner in Umtata. Lily has captured her
imagination as 'a young thing straining at the leash with desire for some
training to fit her to take part in the life outside a native location'. Too poor
to bear the full burden of educational expenses, she approaches various
bodles to assIst wiifi Lily's educatIon. Meanwhile she sends Lily books to
encourage her in her studies.
One learns during the course of the correspondence, that Lily is caught in
an unhappy situation of servitude in her uncle's home. While she waits for
Mabel to make arrangements for her education, and as things become
increasingly untenable for her at home, she latches onto Mabel as a
potential friend. Increasingly her letters show her need and desire for
someone who will understand her. 'I wish you don't tired of me', she writes,
and, when she hasn't heard from Mabel, 'I'm withering as well as
desponding', she says.
Mabel is not entirely deaf to Lily's pleas, for she drops the formality of
addressing her letters to 'Miss Moya' and calls her Lily. She tries to get Lily
towiiie-about her experiences as a young girl living in a 'Native Location',
though Lily in fact lives in Umtata, and comes from a Christianised and
educated background. As Shula Marks points out, when Lily's response is
full of moralising, and hardly what she had hoped for, Mabel's own
ignorance and inability to imagine the deprivations and oppressions of a
young African girl become remarkably plain.
Mabel found it impossible, from her perspective of age and 'rational'
modernism espoused by the Fabians, of which she had been a part, to
comprehend the experience of an intensely religious young person, to whom
individual wickedness and witchcraft had real significance, as they had to
Paulina in a different context.
Before Mabel had finalised Lily's educational future, an impending forced
marriage induced Lily to flee to Natal. On her arrival, Mabellearns that Lily
has a 'very quiet and shy exterior', somewhat belied by the vivacity of her
letters, and indeed by the resourcefulness of her decisive escape from the
thraldom of marriage, 'that awful bondage' as she describes it. Mabel is very
sympathetic, and impressed.
But Lily's trials are not over. Strange and awkward in the Natai
environment, unhappy in the presence of young men, probably because of
her strong Anglican ethic of 'purity', Lily found it almost impossible to settle
down. Mabel would not, and could not, be the friend she so yearned for. In
fact Mabel tried hard to find a personal mentor for Lily, and appealed to
Sibusisiwe Makhanya to help the young girl to adjust to life.
Sibusisiwe remains a tantalizingly shadowy figure in the story, and what
we know comes from Shula Marks's researches. An independent and
outspoken woman, Sibusisiwe was a member of the Adams school board.
With her, Lily felt at home, but this did not cure Lily of her deep
unhappiness. She became less and less capable of working. Mabel was
deeply disappointed. Whilst rejecting any emotional overtures from Lily,
she continued however to interest herself in Lily's welfare. She tried to get
her into an all-girls school. But before she could even tell Lily, Lily ran away
and joined her mother and sister in Johannesburg.
Whilst the people in Natal consoled one another about Lily's bad
behaviour, and her inability to 'take the chance in life' she had been given,
Lily wrote to Mabel from Johannesburg that she was very ill. She expressed
strong feelings of having been manipulated, 'I was never meant to be a stone
but a human being with feelings, not either an experimental doll'.
What happened to Lily Moya? In a moving epilogue we learn how Shula
Marks traced Lily to her home in Soweto, where she lived with her family.
Her illness had got progressively worse and her family turned to diviners in
their search for a cure. She was diagnosed as being afflicted by
amafufunyane, the spirit possession which Paulina had spoken about,
associated with social stress. When exorcism did not work, and Lily ran
away again, she was committed to Sterkfontein, and twenty five years later
released into the care of her family.
The tragedy of this story stems from the social reality of the divisions and
alienation caused by colonisation and racial segregation. As Shula Marks
puts it, 'if there was much that was shared in this common western cutural
inheritance which the Christian educated elite of South Africa had by this
time made their own. there were hidden assumptions on both sides, and
chasms in experience which decisively divided them'. The world of the busy
and ageing whitc academic, the middle-aged Zulu community worker and
the fifteen-year-old Umtata schoolgirl were indeed tragically far apart.
The uniqueness of both of these books lies in their illumination of the very
different experiences of women from different social, ethnic, and class
backgrounds in South Africa. They make fascinating reading.
SHEILA MEINTJES
BEAULlEU-ON-ILLOVO, RICHMOND, NATAL: ITS PEOPLE AND

HISTORY
by CHARMIAN COULSON
Richmond Women's League and Institute, 1986. 375 pp. illus. R36.
As both my parents were born in Richmond r was greatly interested in Mrs
Coulson's book. The author arrived in Richmond in 1950, and readily
admits that when she began her rcsearch she knew very little about Natal
history and the Richmond settler families. She feels that her task would have
been easier if her grandparents and parents had actually lived in the district,
for, as she says, 'you need a granny in the Richmond graveyard to be
accepted!' Nevertheless, her enthusiasm and perseverance have enabled her
to produce a most readable and worthwhile history of Richmond.
Mrs Coulson spent fifteen years doing meticulous research in the Natal
Archives and interviewing descendants of the early settlers. Many of them
were encouraged to talk freely about their ancestors in the district, and the
author was given ready access to diaries, newspaper cuttings, letters and
photographs. The book includes accounts of the geology, flora and fauna of
the district, some written by specialist contributors, and deals briefly with
the early black people, and the Boer farmers who arrived in the late 1850s.
The list of original Boer farms and present names makes very interesting
reading for those familiar with the area. The histories of many of the Byrne
settler families are recounted, and family trees of the following families are
included: Payn, Hackland, McKenzie, Flett, Nicholson, Osborne, Newland,
Comrie, Marwick, Cockburn, Antel, Lewis and Mapstone.
Mrs Coulson has also included descriptions of life on board some of the
sailing ships, and there are interesting anecdotes based on the experiences of
the early settlers. She makes use, for example, of Harriet Nicholson's diary
to record the numerous trials of the emigrants aboard the Sandwich. They
were very seasick in the Channel, and over one 24-hour period the vessel
covered a distance of only nine miles. There was one man whom Harriet
found most objectionable. He beat his wife of only two weeks, and' . . .
began a most abominable conversation, not recorded here; in fact he is quite
an atheist . . .' Harriet also discovered to her dismay that their living
quarters were infested with bed-bugs. She killed twenty-two, only to find
' . . . nearly a hundred bugs in the gathers of a bolster not in use. 'Tis
frightful.' . . .
Mrs Coulson has included an interesting section on judicial affairs, and
does not hesitate to mention some gun-running activities. On financial
matters, the figures she gives for salaries and wages paid between 1874 and
1878 show that the Resident Magistrate was very well paid in comparison
with those engaged in other occupations. He received £450 per annum,
while the Richmond and Byrne school-teachers were paid only £36 per
annum (with additional voluntary contributions of £43 12s Id and £32 2s 6d!)
A domestic servant was paid £24 a year, but the poor postmistress at Byrne
received only £10 for the same period. (Possibly it was a not very onerous
part-time job.)
Richmond men have always responded to the call to arms, and the book
contains information on the Richmond Rifle Association, the Byrne Rifle
Range, the Richmond Troop of the Natal Carbineers, the Richmond
Mounted Rifles, the involvement of Richmond men in the Anglo-Boer War
(with a list of those besieged in Ladysmith), the Trewergie incident on the
Hosking farm during the rebellion of 1906, and the First and Second World
Wars (with lists of Richmond men who served in them.)
The author's research has enabled her to give a fascinating account of
medical, ecclesiastical and educational aspects, of farming, trading,
transport and inn-keeping activities, as well as cultural, sporting and other
recreational organizations. She shows, too, that Richmond was first in quite
a number of fields: the beautiful St Mary's Church was the first Anglican
church to be consecrated in Natal (3 April 1856); the Richmond Primary
School, though not the first, is now the oldest existing school in Natal; and
the Richmond Tennis Club, founded in 1876, is the oldest in South Africa.
The celebrated Richmond Cricket Club is certainly one of the oldest in the
Province, the game being played there as early as 1852.
The section of the book dealing with the civic development of the town
includes lists of civic dignitaries, and explains the origins of some of the
street names. Although by its very nature this book is largely a record of
white colonial endeavour, there are also chapters on the Coloured and
Indian people of Richmond and on the Amabhaca. The last mentioned was
contributed by Dr Barbara Tyrrell.
The Richmond history is well illustrated with many photographs, excellent

drawings and some maps - including a plan of Richmond village, drawn in
1853, <tccompanied by a list of the original owners of erven.
Inevitably in a book of this size there are bound to be a few errors, and
some may feel that there could have been a more detailed index. Mrs
Coulson to a certain extent disarms such criticism by pointing out that she
had no previous experience in writing or in historical research. She is to be
congratulated on the way she tackled the daunting task. As Dr Ruth Gordon
says in her foreword: 'This book will be of inestimable value to historians,
students and enquiring readers in years to come. Richmond, its environment
and its people, are here most splendidly enshrined.'
J.M. NICHOLSON
WHAT THE WORLD COUNTS WEAKNESS: a centenary history of the
Society of St John the Divine, Natal
by SISTER MARGARET ANNE S.S.J.D.
Durban, Knox Publishing, 1987. 164 pp. illus. R9.
Many people are not aware that there are orders of nuns in the Anglican
church, and yet one of them has celebrated a hundred years of work in
Natal. As Bishop Michael Nuttall remarks in his foreword to this book, 'The
Society of St John the Divine ... belongs in a very distinctive way to the
Diocese of Natal because it was founded here and has lived all its life here
ever since.' With the encouragement of Bishop Macrorie and the gift of a
large Loop Street property by Canon Usherwood, the Society began its
work in Pietermaritzburg. At various times the sisters ran St Cross
Orphanage, St Lucy's Hostel, the Good Shepherd School, St Saviour's Day
School and St John's School, all in the capital; St Martin's Home and a
Mercy House in Durban; and schools at Kloof, Frere and Dundee. In the
late 1930s there were about thirty sisters, but in recent years fewer vocations
to the religious life resulted in a smaller and older community, and greater
difficulty in continuing their various works and maintaining the complex of
old buildings which had grown up on the site between Loop and Burger
Streets. In 1968, after eighty years in Pietermaritzburg, the convent moved
to Wentworth, Durban, to a smaller home and new work 'more in
accordance with (its) present circumstances.' The Pietermaritzburg property
was sold, and only the convent chapel remains, now a Congregational
church. The fact that it is still a place of Christian worship is a source of joy
to the sisters, and also to the present reviewer, who grew up in a house not
far from the convent and who recalls how his youthful days and weeks were
punctuated by the clear tone of the little chapel bell, each stroke preceded
by a squeak from the beU mounting, so very high up in its little turret as to
make oiling a thing not lightly undertaken!
The centenary history is a very readable account of this Society of
religious whose devotion and good works have so enriched church life in this
province.
It is available from The Society of St John the Divine, p.a. Box 12183,
Jacobs 4026.
J.M. DEANE
THE WHITE MAN COMETH

by LOUIS DU BUISSON
Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1987. R32,95
The history of Natal in the period from the arrival of the first British traders
at Port Natal in 1824 to the incursion of the Boers in 1837 has been
mythologized by generations of South African writers. They have made the
doings of a handful of get-rich-quick roughs in an obscure corner of the
globe into the subject matter of a romantic adventure story about pioneers
of empire who paved the way for the triumph of British civilization over Zulu
barbarism. 'fne mytl1s were createdin the wnHngs of FareweTI, King, lsaacs
and others in the 1820s and 1830s; in popular accounts of Natal history they
have survived strongly to the present day.
The book under review, written as popular history by a journalist with
long experience of Natal, sets out to knock down tie established
stereotypes. Its focus is not so much on the history of tile Port Natal
settlement as on the relations between the Zulu monarchy, British traders,
and, later, Boer pastoralists in the reigns of King Shaka and King Dingane.
This time the good guys are the Zulu and the bad guys are the British and
the Boers.
In the first part of the book, which covers the reign of Shaka, this simple
inversion of roles does not work. The British traders may well have been the
frauds, fortune-hunters, liars, schemers and cheats that the author makes
them out to be, but to credit them with the power to manipulate the Zulu
monarchy that he gives them is to make nonsense of the political realities in
Natal-Zululand in the 1820s. The author makes virtually no attempt to
assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Zulu kingdom; the result is that
in some places the Zulu emerge as a mighty, all-conquering nation (just as
the stereotype has them), while in others they come over as little more than
the simple-minded victims of the conspiracies of a few unkempt British
adventurers.
This part of the book relies too heavily on sensationalism to ring true. It
smacks suspiciously of the kind of romanticized history which is currently
propagated by the ideologues of KwaZulu. And, paradoxically, it draws
heavily for its information on the very writers whom the author sets out to
criticize.
The second part of the book, on the reign of Dingane, works better. It
mostly manages to avoid the kind of pop judgements which mar the first
part; and the author's sympathetic treatment of the much-maligned Zulu
king is a useful antidote to the denigration that has commonly been heaped
on him. But in this part of the book, as in the first, the line between
historical fact and author's fancy is too often unclear. The process of
disentangling the one from the other is not helped by the absence of notes,
list of sources, and index.
Popular history is an immensely important field of writing. The task which
the author of this book set himself is one that much needed doing. It is
unfortunate that he did not approach it more critically.
JOHN WRIGHT
PRECIOUS STONE: the life and works of Mary Stainbank

by MARY WEBB
Durban, Knox, 1985. 186 pp. illus. R7,80.
Mary Stainbank (b. 1899) is the daughter of Dering Lee Warner Stainbank
of Coedmore, Bellair, near Durban, who came to Natal in 1857. She is a
well-known sculptress, of whose work many examples are to be found in
Durban and in other parts of the country. This story of her life also provides
many interesting facts about the Stainbank family as a whole.
THE NICHOLSON FAMILY TREE

by JOHN DUGGLEBY EDWIN NICHOLSON
Underberg, the Author, 1986. 75 pp. illus. RI5,00.
This book was written to commemorate the centenary of the Nicholson
family in Underberg. The earliest known Nicholson in this family is William
Nicholson (born c. 1690). It is his grandson Craven's 34 great-grandchildren
who form the 34 branches of the family as presented in this work.
Descendants of Branches 1 to 14 are either still in England, or are in
Canada, while Branches 15 to 34 are headed by the 22 children of John
Duggleby Nicholson (1816-1879) and William Nicholson (1819-1902), who
came to Natal in 1850, and settled at Richmond. Where possible full dates of
birth, death and marriage have been provided. J.M. (Skonk) Nicholson is
responsible for the introductory chapter 'History of the Nicholson family of
Underberg' .
There are indexes of people mentioned in the text - one for Nicholson,
and one for family members with surnames other than Nicholson.
Enquiries: John Nicholson, P.O. Box 115, Underberg, 4590.
MORE LOCAL PUBLICATIONS

During the last year new items have appeared in three of the University of
Natal Press's established series.
December 1986 saw the publication of the fourth volume of the lames
Stuart Archive of recorded oral evidence relating to the history of the Zulus
and neighbouring peoples, edited by Colin Webb and John Wright. This is
the largest volume so far published and contains the testimony of 19
informants including Ndukwana kaMbengwana, Stuart's most prolific
informant. This title is Number Four in the Killie Campbell Africana
Library Manuscript Series and is on sale at R49,95.
Shel<igh Spencer's massive work, British Settlers in Natal 1824-1857,
reached its fourth volume in July this year. Among the 170 colonists whose
lives are written up here are families particularly well kown in a variety of
fields in Natal's history - most notably the Catos, the Churchills and the
Colensos. The family of Professor Desmond Clarence, former Principal of
the University of Natal and more recently a household name as Chairman of
the Indaba, also appears. This volume, Cadle to Coventry, is priced at
R36,00.
The Ukhahlamba series is a much younger venture but seems set fair to
make a significant contribution to the literature of this province. Berg
walkers, as well as farmers, game wardens and foresters, will always be
grateful to Olive Hilliard and Linda Davis for Grasses, sedges, restiads and
rushes of the Natal Drakensberg, which was published in April at R7,95.
The Killie CampbeU Africana Library and the University Press have
recently closed their Reprint and Translation Series and launched a new
series called Killie Campbell Africana Library Publications. The first two
items are fully reviewed in this issue.
111
Select List of Recent Natal
Pub licatio ns
DEWAR, David. Some proposals for small business stimulation: a case

study of the Durban Metropolitan region. Cape Town: Urban Problems
Research Unit, University of Cape Town, 1987.
HEATH, R.A. The north coast of Natal: the provision of economic and
social infrastructure. Durban: Institute for Social and Economic
Research, University of Durban-Westville, 1986.
HENDERSON, Patricia. Waaihoek. Pietermaritzburg: Association for
Rural Advancement, 1986.
HILLIARD, O.M. Grasses, sedges, restiads and rushes of the Natal
Drakensberg. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1987.
HUDSON-REED, Sydney. Hope beyond; a memoir of Treverton's first
twenty-one years, 1964-1985. Treverton, PlBag 505, Mooi River, 3300,
1987.
LAWRENCE, Clive. Graeme Pope-Ellis, the Dusi king. Pietermaritzburg:
Shuter & Shooter, 1986.
McCARTHY, 1.1. Natal's coastal regions; towards a planning policy for
the management of urbanization. Pietermaritzburg: Natal Town and
Regional Planning Commission, 1987.
MARWICK, C.W. Green shadows. Pretoria: Forestry Branch of the
Department of Environmental Affairs, 1987.
MORRISON, Ian. Durban: a pictorial history. A photographic record of
the changing face of the City of Durban, with emphasis on its buildings.
Cape Town: Struik, 1987.
NAIDOO, K. Self-help housing at Woodview; community area 22 of
Phoenix. Pietermaritzburg: Natal Town and Regional Planning
Commission, 1987.
PADAYACHEE, Menaka. A socio-economic profile of four market
gardening communities in metropolitan Durban. Durban: Institute for
Social and Economic Research, University of Durban-Westville, 1986.
RANKIN, Sheldon. A socio-demographic profile of the 'Coloured'
community of the Durban metropolitan area. Durban: Institute for
Social & Economic Research, University of Durban-Westville, 1986.'
RANKIN, Sheldon and Tichmann, Paul. Housing strategies and the housing
environment in 'Coloured' group areas. Durban: Institute for Social
& Economic Research, University of Durban-Westville, 1986.
SCALLAN, 10yce. Dick King: feats fame family. Port Elizabeth: ScalIan,
1987.
SPIES, P.H. Perspectives in the future of Natal/KwaZulu. Pietermaritzburg:
Natal Town and Regional Planning Commission, 1986.
112
Register of Research on Natal

This list has been compiled from individual submissions from subscribers to
Natalia. Persons knowing of current research work that has not been listed
are asked to furnish information for inclusion in the next issue. A slip is
provided for this purpose.
BRAIN, Peter, and Brain, Joy
Medical history of Natal from the earliest times, with emphasis on diseases.
CHRISTISON, Grant
History of South-Western Natal (High flats , Ixopo, Underberg)
The Golds and the Christisons.
GORDON, Dr R.E.
Notable women of Natal - to be published as Petticoat Pioneers (1988).
HUTSON, T.R.
Narrow Gauge Railways, including Sugar Tramways, of Natal.
MERRETT, C.E.
History of sports facilities in Pietermaritzburg.
RUSSELL, G.
130 Years of Water Power in Natal (Waterwhcels to Pumped Power Storage).
Anglo-Boer War Concentration Camps in Natal.
WILLCOX. A.R.
The 'Cinnabar Rush' in the Drakensbcrg.

Natalia 17 (1987) Complete

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THE NATAL SOCIETY OFFICE BEARERS, 1986-1987

President: Mr M.I.C. Daly

Chief Librarian: Mrs S.S. Wallis

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE OF NATALIA

Natalia 17 (1987) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2010

home of colonial governors beforc Union

and of the Natal Training College from 1912 to 1987.

(Photograph: T.B. Frost)

SA ISSN 0085 3674

Printed by Kendall & Strachan (Ply) Ltd., Pietermaritzburg

NATAL SOCIETY LECTURE

Douglas Livingstone - Natal Poet?

Hillcrest and its contribution to Natal Education

Paul Carton Sykes, 1903-1983

Mary Stainbank - Sculptress of Natal

William George McConkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 77

Natal Training College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 85

NOTES AND QUERIES

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES ................... 101

SELECT LIST OF NATAL PUBLICATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . .. 111

REGISTER OF RESEARCH ON NATAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

we did not feel it appropriate to devote an entire issue of Natalia to

G.H. Calpin and the Centenary

Pietermaritzburg was eventually separated from that of Natal. 4 The advent

it was opened only in January 1860.

RlPU311tK NATid I,~

The flag of the Republic of Natalia .

Mercury of 12 December 1861 in connection with the preview in

The second of these quarterings represents Natal. However, by Royal

The Natal arms as received from the College of Arms in 1955 .

The KwaZulu arms.

Motto: The motto Sonqoba Simunye means 'Together we shall

The arms of King Goodwill.

(Gypaetus Barbatus meridionalis), and the provincial flower, the Strelitzia

The arms of the Natal Museum.

The flag of the State President.

same time perpetuating into a symbol in the new constitutional dispensation,

I Chase, J.C.: The Natal Papers, part n, pp. 115-116.

2 Delegorgue, M.A.: Voyage dans L'Afrique Australe, part I , p . 99.

10 Muller. C. F.1. (ed): Five Hundred Years, A History oJ South AJrica, p. 8.

What sort of street scenes would these much-travelled visitors have

used only on special occasions went to the Mayor's Garden in Alexandra

the Dorp Spruit'. This was essentially a straightening exercise, and Mr

Nor did motoring supersede another form of locomotion that we haven't

could decide whether to go to Mackenzie's or to Williams & Lambert's for

The interior of the Mesdames McFarlanes' hat shop, or 'millinery establishment' as

A well-remembered Maritzburg shop, Sowden and Stoddart's, on the intersection of

Victorian heaviness lingered on in oak furniture and coir mattresses and

degrees were of course conferred in Pretoria, and so Maritzburg's yearly

A rather oblique shot of the entrance to the 'Rinko Bio-Vaudeville', really to

Perhaps Maritzburg's favourite meeting point, Christie's Cafe-de-Iuxe made a great

The Depression does not seem to be remembered as a period of despair

(My most grateful thanks are due to R. Bizley, S. Bizley, L. Davies, L.

mornings of explicit langour

when the grass and hedges, near flesh

in their lushness, shone yellow in

the sun's candour; when the sea called on

its most proper blue, deploying

leached energies at the fringes . . .

of funnels, mastings, yards,

filaments of dusk ringing shrouds

woven through the word goodbye,

riveted steel giraffes

In vain, for with Langdon can never compete