Co. got the title deeds for the whole area. Under the terms of an agreement with the Cape government the refrigerator rooms would be used for the storage of fruit, dairy and fish, and other types of food intended for export. The company’s application was supported by the Chamber of Commerce and other interested parties.15
When the Cape Parliament confirmed the agreement two weeks later, on 24 July 1895, the 36-year-old David Graaff acquired one of the most sought-after industrial properties in the Mother City.16
The previous year Combrinck & Co. had already entered into an agreement with the Cape railways, which indicated major expansion plans. In terms of the agreement, all the company’s butchered meat and livestock would be transported on the Cape railway lines for 10 years from 1 January 1895. Combrinck & Co. undertook to have refrigerator rooms and ice machines installed at different places along the lines and to construct suitable refrigerator rooms in Johannesburg. The railway agreed it would not increase its tariffs for the first three years by more than 20 per cent and that the tariffs would then remain unchanged.17 The railways also undertook to provide the necessary rail carriages. However, it did not turn out the way Graaff wanted. A shortage of carriages and red tape resulted in various complaints by Combrinck & Co. over the next few years.
While the business continued to expand, the new premises of Combrinck & Co. on reclaimed land below Dock Road started with the construction of a cofferdam that pushed back the sea. The part that was pumped dry was filled up with all kinds of building rubble brought with horse-carts from construction sites all over the city. Labourers levelled the rubble with pick-axes and spades.
The architect of the new building was Charles Freeman, a colourful English immigrant who also acted as agent for the company Walter MacFarlane & Co., producers of ornamental cast-iron work in Glasgow. The Victorian verandas, trellises and broekie lace popular all over South Africa were largely his doing. Freeman secured the initial contract for the new Parliament building in Cape Town, but was sacked when the authorities realised he had hopelessly underestimated the costs. Other famous buildings in Cape Town he designed include the stately Standard Bank in Adderley Street and the Methodist Church in Greenmarket Square.
Freeman was instructed to design the head office of Combrinck & Co. in a way that would improve the appearance of Table Bay. Architecturally, the building was very fashionable for its time. The spacious multi-storey building in late-Victorian style, with its underground refrigerator rooms and freezing machinery, had turrets and various ornamental decorations. On the roof a cast-iron arch with the company’s name took pride of place.18
While the construction work was still underway, Graaff showed his prowess in public relations. Shortly after the first refrigerator rooms had been installed, he invited the Cape minister of agriculture, Sir Pieter Faure, to the premises in October 1895.19 Imports of wine and fruit would drastically increase after the refrigerator rooms of Combrinck & Co. in Dock Road had been made available.
Such progress was made with the reclamation of the area that Frank Robb, secretary of the Table Bay Harbour Council, paid a treasury bill of £2 300 to Combrinck in Co. early in 1898. That was the contract price for the reclamation of the land.20 Four days later Robb informed the Cape government that the reclamation had been completed and that the transfer to Combrinck & Co. could happen. When the last account was paid on 1 August 1899, the total cost of the project was £12 171 9s. 5d.21
At this time the expansion of Graaff’s business empire was affected by far-reaching political developments. Political tension in South Africa increased during the course of 1895 as the Uitlander (foreign immigrant) issue in Transvaal became more serious. At the Witwatersrand, the country’s pulsating new mining centre, a political storm was raging over to the foreigners’ lobby for franchise and political rights. President Paul Kruger, however, would not budge.
The situation in the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek had obvious consequences for imperialistic ambitions, especially for Rhodes, whose expansion plans would get a significant boost from a regime change in Pretoria and a resulting hold on the gold mines. The Transvaal government under Kruger stood in the way of his policy of enclosure.
Britain also had an interest in the Uitlander revolt under the leadership of the Reformists in Johannesburg opposed to the Kruger government. In these circumstances it mattered who Britain’s envoy in South Africa, and, therefore, also the governor of the Cape Colony, was.
The incumbent British high commissioner, Loch, was replaced early in 1895 amid a lot of intrigue by Sir Hercules Robinson, who had held the same position earlier (1880–1889). There was opposition to Robinson’s appointment as governor in Cape Town, since it was known that Rhodes supported him.
The secretary to the high commissioner, Sir Graham Bower, decided to do something about it in Cape Town. Rhodes and Hofmeyr were out of town, and he discussed the issue with Graaff, whom he described as Hofmeyr’s lieutenant. They walked to the Cape Station together and Bower explained his fears about the Uitlander issue in Johannesburg, the dangers of racial conflict and the need for a high commissioner who refrained from getting involved and would be able to act as arbitrator between the parties. Graaff said it would be possible to get 72 resolutions in favour of Robinson from every branch of the Afrikaner Bond, if that could help in any way, although he feared that those resolutions would harm rather than benefit Sir Hercules. Bower’s reaction was that those resolutions would be welcome. He suspected that Graaff had deliberated with his leader, Hofmeyr. Afterwards meetings of the Afrikaner Bond were arranged in any case and a stream of their resolutions reached the office of the high commissioner. As soon as they landed, they were sent “home” (to London), according to Bower.22
The 72-year-old Robinson was appointed high commissioner and governor of the Cape Colony on 18 February 1895. Later it would emerge that he, like the newly appointed British secretary of state for the colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, was aware of the plotting by Rhodes and Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, administrator of the Charter Company in Rhodesia, to take over the government of President Kruger.
Chamberlain, an imperialist by persuasion, represented the more aggressive spirit of the new British government under Lord Salisbury. The British government took a threatening position against Kruger during the so-called drifts crisis of September and October 1895, when the ZAR closed the drifts on the Transvaal side to Cape transport in order to protect the railway line to Delagoa Bay. As a result of the British reaction Kruger was forced to re-open the drifts.
Rhodes realised that his policy of enclosure regarding Transvaal would not succeed unless the ZAR was taken over as a self-governing British colony and became a part of a federation under the British flag. Therefore, the imperial plot to launch a raid into Transvaal was continued at a high level. Jameson and about 500 men, mainly Charter policemen, assembled at Pitsani in Bechuanaland to back up a revolt of the Uitlanders at the Rand. The Uitlander agitation was led by the Reform Committee under the leadership of some Randlords and Rhodes’s brother Frank.
However, Jameson, a physician with poor military expertise, started off too early on the evening of 29 December 1895, before the planned revolt at the Rand could occur as agreed. His expedition across the Transvaal border turned into a complete fiasco. Kruger’s Boer commandos, who had apparently been informed about the imminent onslaught because the raiders had cut the telegraph lines, defeated the forces of the raiders at Doornkop near Roodepoort. When the white flag was hoisted on 2 January 1896, the commandos arrested a number of the leaders and conspirators. Jameson spent that night in jail in Johannesburg together with other raiders.23
The historian C.W. de Kiewiet summarised the spectacular failure with condemnation:
“The raid is a story woven of such stupidities that it might be dismissed as a farce were it not so tragic in the damage which it wrought. It was inexcusable in its folly and unforgivable in its consequences.”24
Jan Smuts expressed a similarly powerful judgement in 1906, when he said that the Jameson Raid “was the real declaration of war in the big conflict between Boer and Brit… [the] aggressors had strengthened their pact… the defenders, on the other hand, silently and grimly prepared themselves for the unavoidable”.25
In Cape Town the failed incursion resulted in the hardening of anti-imperialistic