Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
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Davicl Johnson De Mist, Race and Nation<br />
Before moving on to these questions, however. it is necessaly to set out brietly the<br />
interpretations of De Mist from the apartheid era.<br />
De Mist under apartheid<br />
Born the son of a Reformed minister in Zalt-Rommel in 1749, Jacob Abraham De Mist<br />
went to high school in Kalnpen and to university in Leideti. At Leiden, he was strongly<br />
influenced by the patriotten movement, and also commenced his lifelong associatioll<br />
with fieernasortry. Upon graduating, he returned to Kampen first to work as an attorney<br />
and then to serve as secreta~y to the government in Katnpen. With the revolutionaly<br />
upheavals in the Netherlands in 1795, he rose rapidly, being elected to the National<br />
Assembly in 1797. Fiis political allegiances in office were moderate: he defended the<br />
traditional Dutch legislative bodies and procedures, and in particular supported<br />
autonolny for the provinces. Outflanked in 1798 by a radical caucus in the National<br />
Assembly, De Mist after a short spell in comfortable incarceration moved on to a senior<br />
position in the state bureaucracy. In 1800, he was selected to serve on the Aziatische<br />
Raad, the colonial governing body, and it was this appointment tliat saw his deployment<br />
to the Cape in 1802. After the Cape was returned to the British in 1805, De Mist<br />
remained in the Dutch colonial administration, serving in other parts of the Dutch<br />
Empireuntil his death in 1823.<br />
De Mist was for the most part treated kindly by historians writing during the<br />
apartheid era. By far the most influential interpretation of his three years at the Cape<br />
version has been the one reproduced in school history textbooks?. De Mist and liis<br />
Batavian colleague Governor Jan Willen1 Janssens are described in these textbooks as<br />
Enlightenment figures thwaded by the intractable realities of life at the Cape. A.N.<br />
Royce (l96O:l 1 Sf9 in Legacy oflhe Past Sld VTT notes that '[blot11 men were finn<br />
believers in the principles of the French Revolution-liberty and equalitynevertheless<br />
they were practical 111e1-1 and able administrators', and lie concludes with<br />
the Judgelnent: 'jtlhe commissioner and the governor were anxious to iinprove<br />
conditions in the colony, but their ideas were too advanced for the conservative<br />
burghers'. A.P.J. van Rensburg et a1 (1976:61) in Aclivu Hislory Std VIII, \vhich was<br />
written specifically fbr black scliool syllabuses, make a similar assessment:<br />
I>ibcrals as rhey were, lliey nevertheless believed in strong gover-nment. and<br />
though much attl.acted to the ideas of eq~~aiity and brotl~erhood, they were<br />
slirc~vd and practicai men.<br />
In a later edition ofActive Nistnry,for the new standardfive sy Ilabus, Van Rensburg et a1<br />
(1 989: 197.199) repeat these generous judgements of De Mist. making the remarkable claim that<br />
the ~tcw ilistsicts cstablishcd by Dc Mist 'did not include the land of any Black nations', and<br />
For a suliiniaiy of how Soul11 Afiican liisto~y tevibooks ~~ecorded nineteenill century South<br />
Ali-ican 1l1sto1.y. sec Elizabetl~Deanetcll(1983:52-64).<br />
86<br />
onclude that 'Jacob de Mist did inuch to improve the political and judicial conditions<br />
While the textbooks hover between praising De Mist's European refinement<br />
d condemning his liberal idealism, University of Cape Town philosophy professor<br />
H. Murray is unequivocal in his embrace of De Mist's efforts to find enlightened and<br />
ional solutions to the perplexing challenges of the Cape3. Murray's work on De Mist<br />
roaches hagiography, as he praises De Mist's modernising impulse so sensibly<br />
pered by respect for tradition: 'he preached the freedom of Law and Order; liberty,<br />
ality and fraternity were for him not political institutions but moral duties<br />
umbent on man' (Murray n.d.: 141, though at the same time<br />
[h]e was a political fundamentalist in upholding the old principles and thc<br />
continuity of historical institutions. De Mist was prepared to adapt the old<br />
vessels to the new conditions, but he navigated by the old lights (Murray<br />
n.d.: 18).<br />
Iso exemplary for Murray is De Mist's pluralism, which he describes approvingly as<br />
early form of apartheid:<br />
[De Mist] advocates that a separation should be ~iiaintained strictly between<br />
the native peoples of the Cape settlement and the farmers. thus<br />
acknowledging the treaty rights and the sovereignty of tribes .... In spitc of<br />
his support of free trade and the fact that he had recommended a small<br />
anlount of free trade with tile natives in the Memorandum. there is no<br />
mention here of interpenetration and of mingling of populations for the<br />
purpose of markets and commerce and to spread the light 01- civilisation.<br />
Indeed the policy of separation was so basic to De Mist's plans tliat trade<br />
between sections of the population is directly forbidden in an instruction.<br />
Natives employed in the colony, and particularly native children, were to be<br />
returned to their homeland (Murray n.d.: 11 9).<br />
Mist's resistance to extending the franchise is also applauded by Murray. After<br />
ting a statement by De Mist criticising public politleal meetings, Murray notes that<br />
e Mist's titnes did not allow for indiscriminate universal suffrage!' (Murray<br />
I). In his conclusion, Murray argues enthusiastically for the continuing benign<br />
ce ofDe Mist:<br />
Soutli African political experience marches on after 1806, when the English<br />
take ovel- the Colony at the Cape, but never, in all its vicissitudes, loses sight<br />
ofDe Mist either in principles, institlitions or policy .... De Mist's institutions<br />
Iso sympathetic to DeMist is G.D. Scholtz (1 967:383f). and horn an earlier period J.P. van<br />
-we (1926). Educationalist E.G. Malherhe (1925:79) is even more effusive. describing De<br />
'one of the ablest administrators and educational reformers who ever set foot in Soutli