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Publications & Reports

Bleek condemns domestic newspapers that needlessly trade in gossip. The media should be purveyors of public opinion, scrutinising the principles which guide our society while stimulating debate. Instead, they intrude upon the personal. All this idle speculation must make Mr Porter and Judge Cloete averse to local newspapers sensationalising their private decisions. Information in the public domain is unarguably a journalist's remit, but the benignly private is sacrosanct. Using a lengthy analogy, he states that the Cape is living beyond its means and squandering money on extravagances before squaring away necessities. Expenditure must be more austere and far-sighted. Wodehouse would secure great popularity if he could rectify the colony's financial position with a plan which may require comprehensive administrative reform that gradually streamlines superfluous offices across the bureaucracy and various strata of appointed and elected officials. Wodehouse's focus has left taxing measures and incorporation bills but would do well to avoid the narrow-minded policy of the municipal commissioners. Pivoting to the Free State-Basuto war, he crows of his prediction's veracity. The Basuto have long recognised the need to establish peaceful terms with the burghers and will soon be allowed to re-occupy part of their former territory. However, this is unlikely to be the end of trouble between them. The Basuto are unlikely to re-engage the Free Staters in their greatly diminished state and are unlikely to flourish as they did before.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

05/04/1866

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.