source.22
On 4 August 1892 Graaff delivered his second and final mayor’s minute. He expressed his satisfaction that his first “cornerstone” – an excellent drainage system – was being implemented. The council had approved the plan of the engineer Clement Dunscombe and the work would start shortly. Sewage would in future be pumped from the mouth of the Salt River to a pumping station near the Sout River station and from there to Outspan Farm next to the road to Malmesbury.
Graaff reported that it had been decided to start with a completely new roads programme, “because the present method is an absolute failure”. The main roads looked like dirty chess sets. According to a memorandum of the city engineer added to the mayor’s minute, this chaotic state of affairs would come to an end. Technical reports showed that the layout and surfaces of the major throughways and secondary streets would be improved.
Furthermore, Graaff expressed his satisfaction about the transfer of one of the city’s oldest and top attractions, the Company Gardens, from the colonial authority to the city council on 1 January 1892.
He lauded the city’s police force, about which the police chief, McLeod B. Robinson, had made a report to the city council for the first time.23 With a mere 85 constables, the police force had to be regarded as insufficient, bearing in mind that by that time Cape Town’s population exceeded 50 000. With more than 30 brothels, the city experienced the plague of all harbour cities, and it was calculated that there were two prostitutes to every constable.24
Water supply had been improved, and that was a precondition for the electrification of street lights. Although expenditure of £20 000 would have caused a stir a few years before, an amount of £225 000 was now budgeted for public works: electric lighting, £60 000; water works, £50 000; city council and offices, £50 000; and street paving, £20 000. Graaff estimated the total expenditure at £450 000, an amount made possible due to the passing of the Crown Property Rating Bill after its introduction into the Cape Parliament by Cecil John Rhodes.25
After the mayor’s minute the city council unanimously and with acclamation adopted a motion putting on record its high appreciation for the services rendered by Graaff “… in securing the augmentation of the City Revenue, inaugurating a comprehensive and able scheme of public works, thus laying the foundation of increased comfort to the Citizens; and of the energy and impartiality with which he has discharged the duties of his high office”. A framed tribute was handed to him at a council meeting the following year.26
The Cape Argus also had flattering comments for Graaff’s time in office, which the paper referred to as “a brilliant mayoralty”. “In more than one respect we have entered upon new methods of conducting municipal business. It was an excellent thing for the town that the Mayor should travel, at his own costs and charges, and utilise his journey as he did for the inspection of what is being done in other cities.”27
Graaff’s mayoral term had been the most progressive and innovative in the history of the city until then. Civic pride and the desire to develop the city into a prestigious beacon at the southern tip of Africa to the advantage of its inhabitants – surely this was his major motivation, rather than petty self-interest. This is confirmed, among other things, by the journeys abroad he had undertaken at his own expense, and from which the city and its inhabitants benefited. The renewal and improvements he started in his term, and which were continued while he remained an ordinary councillor, were based on a sound financial policy. That way the support of voters and improved service delivery were ensured. His term of office can undoubtedly serve as an excellent example at municipal level in the “new South Africa”, where corruption, nepotism, tender irregularities, bureaucratic incompetence, squandering of money and greed were rampant early in the 21st century.
When Graaff stepped down as mayor in 1892, he was succeeded by Johan Mocke. Three members of the Afrikaner Bond – Graaff, his predecessor, D.C. de Waal, and his successor, Mocke, served consecutively as mayors of Cape Town.28
The power-supply project was taken further after Graaff’s mayoral term. The first cables for electrification were laid in January 1894 and Siemens & Halske completed the work in 15 months.29 When the network in Cape Town was finally completed in 1895, it was regarded as a triumph for Graaff. At the proposal of the council’s public works committee, the first power exchange was named after him. It was also proposed that a commemorative plaque in honour of Graaff be put up at the building, as it was mostly thanks to him that the city got electric lights.30 The writer Lawrence Green pointed out that Graaff had tried for years to convince the city council to illuminate the streets by means of electricity. Earlier there were gaslights, after the opening of the first gas works in 1845.31
Graaff Electrical Lighting Works was opened on 13 April 1895 by Mayor George Smart. According to a commemorative plaque still attached to the building, now a historic monument next to the Molteno Reservoir in Oranjezicht,32 the same night in the city hall in Greenmarket Square the mayoress switched on the first electric streetlights in Cape Town. A total of 775 poles had been planted throughout the city and Three Anchor Bay for the street lights, which illuminated the city all of a sudden.33
The new power exchange was built at a cost of £75 000. On the opening night Mayor Smart christened it by breaking open a bottle of champagne against one of the turbines, driven by steam or water. One of the guests looking on with a jaundiced eye was the mayor of “dark and distant Durban”.
Afterwards everybody left for the city hall, where the police and firefighters kept the crowds at bay. When the lights were switched on at 7.30, the square was brightly lit, an orchestra played the “Old Hundredth” and on an electric screen on the balcony of the city hall the words “Graaff Electrical Lighting Works” appeared.
Mayor Smart addressed the excited crowd: “One street light is worth three policemen. Electricity has not come one hour earlier than necessary. It will bring about a very great improvement in the moral atmosphere of the city and afford protection to property. Our works are equal to any in the world.” The Cape Argus underlined his view: “Cape Town is ahead of many towns in Britain in adopting this mysterious force, the electric fluid.”34
Smart said neither Graaff nor the city council could lay claim to Graaff’s having come up with the idea first. Others, including councillors Thomas O’Reilly and John Woodhead (after whom the Woodhead Reservoir on Table Mountain was named), had lobbied for it, but after the council had approved it, Graaff worked wholeheartedly to execute it.
Apart from the engineers’ fees, the work had not cost the council anything, since Graaff had borne the cost himself.35 That was what he termed real patriotism, Smart declared.
To loud applause, Graaff got his turn to speak and said he believed Smart was overestimating the work he had done with regard to the electric lights. Without the help of the many councillors who had supported him, electric lights would not have become a reality in Cape Town. Moreover, he had only performed his civic duty and that gave him great pleasure.36
CHAPTER 8
Member of Parliament
When Graaff was sworn in as member of the upper house of the Cape Parliament, the Legislative Council, on 2 June 1892, Cecil John Rhodes was prime minister. Rhodes, the imperial colossus who took over the government in July 1890 after the fall of the Sprigg ministry, was in an enormously powerful position as the wealthiest man in the country and in control of the largest province, the Cape Colony.
By this time the Cape Colony had been granted responsible government, a form of self-rule that came into force in 1872, after it had had a representative government since 1853. Although a few important amendments were made, the constitution of 1853 remained valid in the Cape Colony until 1910, characterised by parliamentary government with ministerial responsibility.
The year 1853 marked the beginning of parliamentary democracy in the Cape Colony – a tradition that was also established at around that time in the other three provinces of what would become the Union of South Africa, namely Natal, Transvaal and the Free State. For once, all three were ruled by republican forms of government: Natalia, the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek and the Orange Free State.
The