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Publications & Reports

Bleek discusses Wodehouse's prorogation speech reluctantly acknowledging Responsible Government's inevitability in the current political climate and that institutions cannot be representative until the executive branch is made responsible to the legislature. Wodehouse concedes that "good and efficient government" would be unlikely without it. Opposing the system expedites the necessary change, while uncritical compliance prolongs a suboptimal system often only maintainable under popular leadership. The Cape's loyalty is conditional upon appeasing these selfish demands for independence. The governor must sincerely understand the governed to actualise the colonists' vision. There is a cultural politics of emotion that the governor is external to and remains alienated from. The Act of Imperial Parliament forcibly incorporating British Kaffraria into the Cape Colony undermines representative institutional mandates and trivialises the colony's public will by voiding their agency with no means of appeal. To withhold supplies in defiance would complicate the colony's position. Local interest-led factionalism cheapens deliberation and worsens Wodehouse's standing as his opponents highlight his failure to counteract division.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

12/10/1865

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.