Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

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