The fight for democracy in the Cape Colony began in 1849 when Britain declared the Cape a penal colony. A non-racial movement called the Anti-Convict Association, and led by the anti-slavery activist John Fairbairn, rose up to stop Britain and the governor, Harry Smith, in their tracks.
On 4 July 1849, braving Cape Town’s infamous winter rain and wind, a large multi-racial crowd began to gather outside the Commercial Exchange on Heerengracht Street (now Adderley Street). The date had been chosen for very specific reasons, being the anniversary of the declaration of American independence. For once Capetonians of all varieties had come out, as AF Hattersley put it, ‘Coloured folk and Malays…[and] many of the comfort-loving occupants of suburban homes’ mingled together. For seven hours the crowd of 7000 stood warming their hands in their pockets and stamping their feet against the cold but all the while listening attentively to 23 speakers.
This rare showing of community solidarity had been provoked when news reached Cape Town that a ship named the Neptune had picked up 286 mainly Irish prisoners in Bermuda and was heading for Simon’s Town. Exactly ten months previous, on 4 September 1848, Queen Victoria ‘was advised to direct, by Her Order in Council,’ that the Cape Colony should be a place for the transportation of convicts. This policy was heartily agreed to by the governor of the Cape, Sir Harry Smith, who believed convict labour would be a significant boon to the colony.
Cape Town itself was up to this point a peaceful town with little crime and very little violence. The idea that it would be turned into a penal colony was abhorrent to citizens from the Cape to the Kat River Settlement. It also suggested something else to the people of the Cape who had begun to yearn for their own representative government. Till this point, the Cape had only a legislative Council comprising colonial officials and a few hand-selected locals chosen because of their closeness to the governor.s
The people of Cape Town soon realised that if the Cape were to become a penal colony, wrote Hattersley, ‘an autocratic government’ was ‘a necessary condition.’ The minute one of the 286 prisoners took their first small step on the Cape’s dry land, it would be a giant step backwards for any hope of a representative democracy at the Cape.
The most prominent man to stride onto the platform on that rainy day on 4 July was John Fairbairn. A Lowland Scot whose fighting spirit had some twenty years earlier brought a free press to the Cape, Fairbairn had scant regard for the distinctions of class, rank and race. He had begun to strongly identify with his adopted country and longed for a democratic representative government. He called out to the crowd that what the Cape required were ‘free institutions, self-government, perfect liberty and the open field for virtue, industry and talent’.
Fairbairn was by then already seen as the leader of what became known as the Anti-Convict Association. At this and other meetings, Fairbairn called on the people of the Cape to take a pledge:
We hereby solemnly declare and pledge our faith to each other that we will not employ or knowingly admit into our establishments or houses, work with or for, or associate with any convict felon sent into this Colony under sentence of transportation and that we will discountenance and drop connection with any person who may assist in landing, supporting or employing such convicted felons.
Thousands in the Cape agreed to the pledge which effectively placed a sanction on the Cape government and the British administration. Very few – in fact, hardly any – merchants, tradesmen or farmers broke the pledge, as it meant they would be ‘held in public odium’. Governor Harry Smith was himself threatened by the Anti-Convict Association with ‘starvation’ – it claimed it would attempt to stop people selling him food.
In the days that followed these meetings, crowds began to gather on the streets of Cape Town, hooting and hissing at government officials as they went about their business. And, as fate would have it, during this period the death of one member of the Legislative Council and the resignations ‘due to ill health’ of two more left the body without its decision-making quorum. Three new members were needed for it to function legally. Fairbairn, who had now become the moving spirit of the anti-convict movement, would proclaim: ‘Will any colonist venture to accept the vacant seat? To offer it at this moment to any gentleman would be an insult. To accept it would be eternal degradation.’
The Council scheduled its next meeting for 10 July 1849. After learning of the meeting, the people of Cape Town downed tools and gathered around the Council’s building, some forcing their way in. To their shock, they discovered that three new members had been sworn in. When the large angry crowd outside caught wind of this, they began calling for the three new members’ heads. Let us ‘testify our “respect” for the new members,’ somebody was heard to cry and the crowd began to press towards the doors.
When Smith left the building supported by his aide-de-camp, he was met with stony silence. The same could not be said for two of the new members who followed Smith out of the door, Mr Cloete (a wealthy Stellenbosch farmer) and Mr de Smidt (owner of Groote Schuur). ‘Down with them – shame on them – traitors – let them have it,’ the crowd began to yell, and with this verbal downpour came a shower of rotten eggs and rubbish from the street.
Cloete managed to escape to his brother’s offices nearby, but De Smidt was left to his own devices, which were few and insufficient for defending himself against the angry crowd. In short, he received a swift beating before taking shelter in the offices of the Road Board, where he managed to lock the door behind him.
Mr Jacob Letterstedt, the third new member and owner of the Newlands Brewery, had seemingly been more sensible than Cloete and De Smidt. On seeing the unruly crowd gathered at the doors of the legislature, he waited before leaving. Mistakenly believing the crowd had settled down, he finally strode out. As historian Sir George Cory puts it, he left ‘under the protection of the great man’s wig’, but ‘in this however Mr Letterstedt miscalculated’. Like the others, he was assailed with sticks and stones and harmful words. He managed to find refuge in the South African Club House on Plein Street, however, and there he waited until mounted police came to scatter those still intent on furthering their ‘discussions’ with him.
During the night a large crowd of protestors gathered on the Grand Parade, where they burnt effigies of the three new councillors. They were said to have danced around the fires ‘with savage glee’ while others ‘amused themselves by destroying property belonging to the members of Cape Town’. The crowd was finally broken up by another charge by mounted police.
But they had not finished with Letterstedt. Crowds gathered at his various properties across the city and destroyed one of his general stores as well as his large brewery in Newlands. In the coming weeks, when he tried to have these repaired, he learnt that his ‘great man’s wig’ was no influence against the Anti-Convict Association’s pledge: no tradesman, carpenter or glazer would fix any of the damage done to his property.
Seven days later, with all of this going on and the Colony baying for their blood, ‘Messrs Cloete, Letterstedt and de Smidt found it expedient to resign their seats in the Legislative Council.’ And when the Neptune came to anchor in Simon’s Bay on 19 September, a vigilance committee was set up to closely monitor the ship. This was how it was discovered that Captain Robert Stanford and Mr Letterstedt (rather predictably) had broken the boycott and profited off the Neptune’s presence in the bay by selling produce to the ship’s captain. The vigilance committee did, however, make sure that no convict reached Cape soil.
While the Neptune was docked in a form of purgatory in Simon’s Town, violence began to spread through Cape Town, and Governor Smith declared martial law. As more protests were called, Fairbairn was attacked and beaten in his home in Green Point by a group of ‘coloured inhabitants, but also a few Whites in disguise’. These men were seemingly in somebody’s pay, and rumours abounded of a plot to murder Fairbairn.
Harry Smith was, like the Neptune, now tethered to unwelcoming shores and unable to perform his duties. Eventually, going against the British demands, he refused the Neptune permission to release its cargo into the Colony. Due to pressure from the likes of Fairbairn, Smith had stated that he was ‘profoundly opposed to the Cape of Good Hope being made into a Penal Colony for ordinary felons’. Finally, with the Anti-Convict Association refusing to give up their protest, Earl Grey gave instructions for the Neptune to weigh anchor and head for Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania).
The anti-convict campaign had showed what collective and steadfast protest could achieve. As McCracken puts it, Fairbairn’s crusade ‘had stirred political consciousness as never before and evoked an unprecedented unity.’
(The events of 1849 would lead to the Cape achieving representative government, with men of all races voting for their leaders in the 1854 elections. This remarkable tale is covered in detail in our book Spoilt Ballots.)
