South African politician and intellectual
Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr (20 March 1894 – 3 December 1948) was a South African politician and intellectual in the years preceding apartheid. In his lifetime he was regarded as one of the cleverest men in the country, and it was widely expected that he would eventually become Prime Minister of South Africa. He came from a well-known Afrikaner family; his uncle, also Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr but known affectionately as "Onze Jan" among fellow Afrikaners, was a famous figure in the Afrikaans language movement.
Early life.
Hofmeyr was born in Cape Town on 20 March 1894. He was baptised Jan Frederick Hendrik Hofmeyr, but the middle-name Frederick fell into disuse quickly. Later in his life he would be known to many as "Hoffie", this diminutive form of his surname even being used in cartoons of Hofmeyr published in South African newspapers. He was raised by his widowed mother Deborah, a cousin to Christiaan Beyers, after his father Andries Brink Hofmeyr died when Jan was three years old. Deborah had another son who was five years older than Jan, his brother Andries Beyers Hofmeyr. Jan also had two half-sisters from his father's previous marriage. Deborah devoted most of her energies to Jan, and he was the child with whom she had by far the strongest bond. This strong relationship was probably formed when Jan fell ill with hydrocephaly at age two; he soon recovered and according to the medical wisdom of the day it was felt that he would either become a genius or an idiot. As it turned out he would be a genius.
Jan was first educated at the illustrious South African College Schools, which he entered in January 1902. A child prodigy, he progressed rapidly through its grades so that he matriculated four years later in 1906. He went on to study classics at the University of Cape Town (then still known as the South African College) and in 1909 graduated B.A. with first-class Honours at the age of 15. At this time he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. He accepted the award but only made use of it a few years later when he was older. In the meanwhile he took another B.A. in the sciences in 1910 and an M.A. in classics in 1911, when he was just seventeen years old. Apart from his studies, Hofmeyr also became active in the university's Debating Society (succeeding Oliver Schreiner as its president), worked as treasurer in its college magazine, and volunteered in its Students' Christian Association.
In 1911, when he was just seventeen, Hofmeyr was commissioned to write a biography of his uncle, "Onze Jan" Hofmeyr. The project was undertaken with the supervision of former President of the Orange Free State, F. W. Reitz. The project was completed within a year, the younger Hofmeyr having written it in English and then translated it into Dutch.
Oxford.
In September 1913, Hofmeyr sailed from Cape Town and finally went to Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He again studied classics, and in his first year became friends with John Macmurray and debated at the Oxford Union against Harold Laski, Harold Macmillan, and others. The First World War soon emptied the colleges there, but Hofmeyr stayed on, not being obliged to fight on either side. Once he had finished with his studies at Oxford, Hofmeyr considered joining the YMCA as a non-combatant, which would have meant serving the South African troops that were stationed in East Africa. Again Hofmeyr distinguished himself in his academic efforts, coming first in Classical Moderations and Greats. In later years he became an Honorary Fellow of Balliol.
At Oxford he participated in student religious activities once more, and became a member of the Student Christian Union, at one point even becoming an evangelical; but he probably found his greatest happiness in Oxford when he joined the Balliol Boys' Club. He would hold this commitment to voluntary youth service throughout his life, attending Student Christian Association camps back home in South Africa, even when he was the Administrator of the Transvaal Province, at one time even donating to the society a camp site which was located in Anerley, in Natal and is still running to this day. At one of these camps he met the author Alan Paton, and they formed a lasting friendship.
Teaching.
On his return from Oxford in June 1916, Hofmeyr was appointed to lecture Classics at his alma mater, the South African College, Cape Town. He moved on quickly, applied for and got a professorship in Classics at the South African School of Mines. The city of Johannesburg had wanted its own university for some time and had created nine new departments in the arts and sciences. He still lived with his mother, and they took a house together in the Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville.
Thanks to his prodigious intellect and his achievements, Hofmeyr had become quite famous, and was in demand as a public speaker. He spoke mainly about Afrikaner history, specifically the desires of Afrikaner nationalism as opposed to British imperialism. Hofmeyr's own line was that the two need not have been mutually exclusive, that Afrikaners could have a national identity without separating their country from the British Empire as the republicanists were clamouring to do. In this attitude, Hofmeyr was emulating his famous uncle. Onze Jan Hofmeyr believed in bridging the divides between English and Afrikaans South Africans, a divide that had been fuelled by the British annexation of the diamond fields in 1871, the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877, and the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War. It was a political compromise that did not always endear either man to their audiences.
Hofmeyr was not only an intellectual. He also had a prolific capacity for administration. These talents came to the fore when the young professor was appointed to sub-committees of the university senate. But at the end of 1918 he chose to move back to Cape Town, taking up the new Chair of Greek at the newly named University of Cape Town. The School of Mines was disappointed to lose him so soon and their Council decided in March 1919 to offer him the principalship of their fledgling university, after the previous Principal had died. After some misgivings about being suited for the job he accepted.
The principal was given the enormous task of expanding the university which then only had 301 students, a corps that could easily have been 10 times bigger in a city as big as Johannesburg. One of the first steps was to change the name from South African School of Mines into the University of the Witwatersrand. At his inaugural address, Hofmeyr discussed the nature of a university, its desired function in a democracy. One specific topic he addressed was the so-called "Native problem" that was facing South Africa:
They [South African universities] have not, to any great extent, applied themselves to the solution of our South African problems... Biggest of all is the Native problem, most difficult and yet most specially South African of them all – in essence the eternal problem of the reconciliation of justice and apparent expediency – a problem in regard to which our colleges have been almost entirely silent.
Hofmeyr was of the opinion that universities "should know no distinctions of class, wealth, race or creed".
One of his first duties entailed selling the Mine School's original Plein Square site and developing the university's newer Milner Park site. His administrative duties were carried out smoothly, but the young principal was having less ease in earning the respect and co-operation of some staff. The situation reached an impasse when Council and Senate of the university disagreed on Hofmeyr's (apparently unfair) dismissal of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. It dragged on for more than a year and caused a deadlock in the university's administration that was only fully resolved once the trajectory of Hofmeyr's own career took him away from the university and propelled him into politics.
In 1921 he published, in collaboration with Prof. T. J. Haarhoff, a pamphlet entitled "Studies in Ancient Imperialism", an analysis of the later Roman empire. Hofmeyr admired the emperor Augustus in particular. He regarded Augustus, John Bright, and his uncle Onze Jan as models for his own political views.
Administratorship of the Transvaal.
Hofmeyr had flirted with the possibility of pursuing politics as a career for some time. Already in January 1919 the acting Prime Minister F.S. Malan had approached the young Hofmeyr, trying to sway him to join the South African Party as its Chief Organising Secretary. Hofmeyr declined. The offer was repeated the following year, but this time by the party's leader, General Jan Smuts. Again Hofmeyr declined. His hesitation was apparently due to an unwillingness of committing himself to party politics; he wanted to be of service to his country but did not want to "give up for party what was meant for mankind". It was thus that he became administrator of the Transvaal province. Hofmeyr did not have to campaign in an election to get this job, the position of provincial administrator was strictly acquired through appointment by a sitting Prime Minister, who at that time was Jan Smuts. Still reluctant to join a party on either side of the political spectrum, Hofmeyr felt rather that the position of administrator did not entail loyalty to the agenda of a specific party, but an unbiased loyalty to the entire province.
He began working as Transvaal administrator on 1 March 1924 yet, due to contractual obligations, remained on as principal of the University of the Witwatersand for another five months. Hofmeyr stayed on in the University Council after relinquishing the principalship.
There were efforts to unseat Hofmeyr during his five-year-long tenure as provincial administrator; these came from members inside the national caucus of the provincial council who doubted Hofmeyr's professed impartiality. Soon after occupying his seat he was faced with a curious situation – the South African Party was defeated in a national election by the National Party, which meant that a new Prime Minister replaced the man who had appointed Hofmeyr. Constitutionally Hofmeyr was under no obligation to resign and he conveyed his willingness of staying on to the country's new leader, General J.B.M. Hertzog, citing that he did not view his job as party-political in its nature. Hertzog allowed him to stay on, even when Hofmeyr appointed an Englishman as Director of Education in the Transvaal while National Party's politicians were urging him in the strongest terms to appoint an Afrikaner.
It was a time when language policy was shaping the political landscape in South Africa. The National platform was to elevate Afrikaans and Afrikaners as a political force, with the eventual desire of creating a South African republic; while the South African Party wanted to create a "fusion government", which meant unifying English speaking South Africans with Afrikaners who were willing to remain loyal to the British Crown. This was nothing new to Hofmeyr; his uncle Onze Jan had been active in this sphere throughout his career and had always had sympathy with English as language medium, and with the British Empire. On 31 May 1928 – the 18th celebration of Union Day and the first hoisting of a newly designed South African flag – Hofmeyr addressed the nation by radio broadcast, urging for "the coming together of the two larger parties in South Africa, and the formation of a great new party of all those who have the same general outlook". He was choosing sides and would soon enter the arena of party-politics.
Active politician.
Hofmeyr chose to oppose the government of the day and entered parliament in 1929 as the South African Party's member for Johannesburg North. For his maiden speech he chose to speak out against an Immigration Quota Bill that had been tabled by D.F. Malan to restrict Jewish immigration into South Africa. The National Party was already espousing antisemitic policies that would eventually make them sympathetic to Adolf Hitler and to Nazi Germany. Though delivered from memory Hofmeyr's speech was not a success; he was too long-winded and too academic, so that even though he championed the rights of his many Jewish constituents he appeared to be fence-sitting. Hofmeyer was a supporter of Zionism.
During the 1930s the South African parliament spent an enormous effort in legislating various issues surrounding what was called