Untitled

Untitled

Publications & Reports

Bleek remarks on the unruly audience at a recent public meeting convened by municipal commissioners inarticulately proposing unrequested municipal reforms worsened by a bungling of sensitive topics. The public does not respond well to poor or incomplete proposals. A public meeting is the wrong forum for presenting intricate evidence or holding lengthy talks on municipal reforms and extra-mural sepulture (burial outside the central city limits). All but two of the commissioners subsequently resigned, saddling the Municipal Secretary with an unfair burden. Therefore, Cape Town needs a higher executive office vested with superior authority like an archetypally English mayor of Dutch Burgomaster. He then critiques requests to extend Cape Town's overcrowded cemeteries and underscores the Malay burial ground of the Lion's Rump as a public health concern. Bleek takes issue with flashy local funerals and states his preference. He proposes a basic organisational structure for how a new Malay cemetery on the Cape Flats might be managed and structurally secured.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

06/04/1865

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.

An original cutting of a Victorian article (no printed thematic title included in the cut out) by WHI Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Thursday, April 6th, 1865. Bleek appears to subscribe to the belief that well-paid (competent) officials are more likely to behave single-mindedly, as they won't need to pursue other income sources to operate judiciously from a position of financial stability.