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Newspaper Clippings

Contains newspaper documentation relating to the work of Dr Wilhelm Bleek and further articles about the Bushmen in this era. It also includes Lucy Lloyd’s collection of clippings relating to the Diamond fields’ mining in 1870 (BC151, series H). Additional newspaper clippings collected by Pippa Skotnes and Davison contain articles in reviews for Lucy Lloyd’s work, as well as the loose clippings collected by Dorothea Bleek related to Bushman studies.

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Het Volksblad

Leaders



Comprising approximately seventy-five column articles, each ranging from one to four columns in length, in the style of opinion editorials by WHI Bleek written between 1862 and 1866 (at first more sporadically, becoming increasingly more regular [until featured in virtually every Thursday edition]). Notably, these articles were written before commencing his landmark “Bushman researches” (1866-1875 [in Bleek’s case]) with Lucy Lloyd, but overlapped (and competed) with work on his Comparative Grammar of South African Languages (1862 [Part 1] and 1865 [in its Cape Town-exclusive MS form]/1869 [Part 2]).

The species of “liberal” proto-Afrikaner nationalism championed by Het Volksblad’s core staff and originators in the 1860s makes it difficult to state categorically that all opinions expressed in Bleek’s op-eds convey genuine personal convictions (of equal sincerity). However, the extensive collection of correspondence preserved in the Bleek and Lloyd archive (UCT’s BC 151) supports the theory that his article themes drew significantly from the Bleek-Lloyd family’s personal history and tribulations as well as those of his nearby neighbours during their time at Charlton House most particularly. Unlike other leader-writers in Het Volksblad’s employ – Bleek, a sickly expatriate savant aspiring to subjective metrics of “greatness”, was not a (prospective) politician, power bureaucrat, or lawman able to convert his energetic, reformatory discourse into political capital to achieve political ends like public office – even if such ambitions ever existed for him.

He supposedly thought himself, as time went on, increasingly more adept at their formulation – despite regarding his obligations as a distraction or chore that was extra-vocational. Bleek likely abhorred the dictated subject matter and subtext/ulterior motivations emanating from Het Volksblad’s editorial team and publisher. His often-precarious finances and self-articulated sense of responsibility, complicated by feelings of indebtedness and friendship (in the case of BJ Van de Sandt de Villiers et al.?), bound him to the publication for longer than ideally intended. In his journalistic writing, he arguably reveals himself most in the editorial motifs he returns to out of convenience (informational proximity [executed with ease] and familiarity) and fascination (speculative) – namely Native and Frontier Affairs (i.e. Kafir wars and territorial expansion [often recapitulating Moshoeshoe of the Basuto’s defiance in and around Thaba Bosiu]), Federalism and settler-polity unification (prevailing over long-lived Anglo-Germanic power struggles) vis-à-vis the separation and decentralisation of power, continental European politics (the “German[-Danish] War” and “Prussian-Austrian-Italian War”), Protestant church law and politics, meteorological and agricultural scientific advancements-cum-infrastructure, railway and sanitation matters, markers of ideal leadership and political representation (those worthy of power), political reform (i.r.t. power structures and governance), and the welfare of vulnerable groups vis-à-vis the contrasting marriage and inheritance regimes of Roman-Dutch Law and English Common Law.

Obituaries

Other Publications?

Cape Times

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