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Publications & Reports

Bleek writes that an upcoming parliamentary session on the forced (re-) annexation of British Kaffraria will likely be "the most important one in our [p]arliamentary history" due to the unwanted tax burden it forces on Cape colonists. Despite making colonists pay for "Kafir wars", they do not share in the administration of frontier (and adjoining native) affairs. Bleek finds this unfair. Some fear British Kaffraria's incorporation will validate the Eastern Districts' case for an "augmented share of self-government". He believes the provincial government's purview should concern native and frontier affairs, as leaving this to the central government would give them too much power. The transfer of control should be gradual until prerequisites are satisfied. Provincial departments of Public Education would encourage competition and varied approaches to learning, as they did among the German states, each vying to fill prestigious academic seats. Such changes will create groups of prospective homegrown academics for when a real university emerges in the Cape Colony and will prompt other provinces to follow. He discusses how Saul Solomon's Voluntary bill, proposing Solomon's Voluntary System, intends to divest the Church of all Erastianism (i.e. the connection between the state and the subservient church) by ending government subsidies to churches while also pursuing equal treatment of all beliefs by eliminating government aid to what is essentially a corporate entity unfairly immunised to standard requirements. This exceptionalism, culminating with mortmain (perpetual ownership), is an illiberal feudal vestige. Bleek feels that mortmain prohibition laws are the only solution to divesting the church and curtailing its "evils". He, therefore, does not endorse Solomon's bill.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

20/04/1865

Two cut out columns of newsprint text, positioned vertically parallel, pasted onto a plus-sized A4 unlined sheet with visible warping. No title was subsequently handwritten onto the mount/paper backing.