Grahamstown Customs' Act

Grahamstown Customs' Act

Publications & Reports

Bleek condemns the Customs Indemnification Bill as detrimental to the Cape Colony's commerce. He problematises Governor Wodehouse's unchecked, arbitrary use of power and the worrying lack of foresight shown by public representatives who support bills uninformedly. Bleek claims that Grahamstown's geographic isolation and lack of "independent public opinion" make its representatives especially out of touch. He believes the colonial legislature belongs in Cape Town because its unique geography facilitates complex diversity integral to vibrant intellectual life and deliberative politics.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

07/05/1864

Two cut out columns of newsprint text, positioned vertically parallel, pasted onto a plus-sized A4 unlined sheet with visible warping. "Graham's Town Customs' Act" is subsequently handwritten onto the mount/paper backing.

An original cutting of a Victorian article (no thematic title included in the cut out) by WHI Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Saturday, May 7th, 1864. Bleek's follow up on his May 5th article covering the same topic. In this article Bleek articulates the basis for what sounds like a sort of Capetonian exceptionalism, which is possibly the sentiment at the core of the Cape Town versus Grahamstown rivalry between the First Settler mixed Germophone elite and the 1820s Settler Anglophone elite. AN ethnolinguistic rivalry over power. The viewpoint perhaps at the root of the rivalry between the Old Cape elite and 1820s settlers and Angliophone enclave in the Eastern Province who feel themselves to be rightfully in the ascendency , power (great and irresponsible) (wielded by our legislators), Socratic openess. More