shipping company the Castle Line and the man who donated the Currie Cup for South African rugby and cricket competitions, also recognised its possibilities. Besides, his daughter Bessie was married to a progressive fruit farmer, Percy Alport Molteno, son of the first premier of the Cape Colony. He wanted to export Cape fruit to Europe, a hope that was realised on 13 February 1889, when the freighter Grantully Castle sailed from Table Bay harbour with 15 tons of grapes in its cooling chambers. The experiment turned into a disaster, because the whole consignment had turned rotten upon arrival at Covent Garden in London. Much had yet to be learnt about the successful cold storage of fruit.8
Meat frozen rock-hard was a different matter, though; it did not need the same subtle treatment as deciduous fruit. By this time, Graaff was devising plans to import the machinery needed for refrigeration. After his return from his reconnaissance visit abroad he exchanged letters in January 1890 with the Pulsometer Engineering Company regarding the latest refrigeration systems, ammonia compressors and similar.9 Not long afterwards cooling chambers were installed on the premises of Combrinck & Co. and cold storage became firmly established in South Africa.10 As the pioneer of cold storage in South Africa, Graaff took the lead. His role in this regard was still recognised a few decades later, including in an official investigation by the Council of Trade and Industry, which noticed that a company of butchers had taken a leading role in the industry with the cold storage of meat: Combrinck & Co.11
Meanwhile, Combrinck’s participation in Combrinck & Co. gradually decreased until he was elected to the Cape Parliament in 1882, and David Graaff’s career also took a new course: he entered local politics.
CHAPTER 5
Councillor: Clean Party vs Dirty Party
A year after David Graaff gained sole control of Combrinck & Co. he became a member of the Cape Town city council. This was in 1882, when Combrinck secured a seat in the Cape Parliament. Combrinck had long been interested in entering public life. In 1849 he had already played a role in the Anti-Bandit Movement and helped prevent 300 British and Irish bandits disembarking in Cape Town. A boycott was declared against any trader who provided supplies to the bandit vessel Neptune. The Anti-Bandit Association was the first mass movement in South Africa. Cape Town’s main street was named after its leader, Adderley.1
Local politics became more important after the Cape Colony had gained self-government in 1872 and British Governor Sir Henry Barkly had laid the cornerstone of the Cape Parliament (the current Parliament building) in 1875.
After Combrinck had transferred his business to Graaff, he also campaigned for election to the Legislative Council, the upper house of the Cape Parliament. He dealt swiftly with any objections to his candidacy:
“Thirty years ago a butcher was by no means held to be a person of no account. There was Jacob van Reenen, for instance, who was the chosen friend of English Governors, and kept a pack of hounds for their sport. Jacob was one of the best-known men of his day in this country, and I could name others who were looked up to with great respect, and held quite a good position as he did.”2
After his election Combrinck remained a Member of Parliament until his death in 1891. He was regarded as a man of stature – “distinguished for practical good sense and business aptitude, respected by all his fellow members, and honoured by the public at large”.3
When Combrinck resigned from the city council, Graaff, a mere 23 years old, succeeded him as the representative of Papendorp.
Graaff’s entry into municipal politics came at a time when Cape Town was beginning to expand significantly, mainly due to the discovery of diamonds and gold in the interior. Through these discoveries it was established that South Africa was one of the foremost countries in the world as far as mineral wealth was concerned. That, along with the construction of railways, contributed to the expansion of the harbour city as one of the country’s predominant centres of trade. As a result of gold prospecting on the world’s richest goldfields and with the discovery of the largest, most expensive diamond reserves in the world, South Africa changed from an agricultural to an agricultural and mining economy.
The Cape Province colony was able to undertake railway and harbour works, making it possible to borrow money in the London market. Cape Town itself as the capital had extensive harbour facilities, and as the railway terminal of the Western Cape rail system it served as the southern springboard to the interior and Rhodesia. This growing centre of trade attracted, inter alia, the head offices of banks and insurance companies, ensuring a substantial inflow of capital between 1870 and 1900.4
At that stage there was a great demand for leaders with the necessary drive and vision to modernise and improve the city. In the 1870s Cape Town hardly seemed like a shining example of tidiness and hygiene. Dim gaslights only illuminated the main roads; private contractors did not clean the streets properly; open sewers criss-crossed the city; and sewage flowed into the sea. Some writers believed Cape Town deserved its title, City of Stenches.5
By the time Graaff started serving on the city council there was a powerful lobby for cleaning up and modernising the city. Newspapers like the Lantern and the Cape Times were among those insisting that a “Clean Party” should replace the so-called “Dirty Party” in control of the council. The “Dirty Party” mostly comprised the owners of small properties, who displayed neither the ability nor the desire to improve the unhygienic conditions. Like a large number of taxpayers, they were opposed to the higher taxes needed for the cleaning operation.6
Even before the smallpox epidemic of 1882 the Cape Times accused the council of allowing Cape Town to become a “city of slums”. Councillors like M.J. Louw, J.C. Hofmeyr, G.A. Ashley and A. Zoutendyk bore the brunt of the criticism. In the election of August 1880 the Cape Times expressed its support to “reformers” – people like W. Fleming, W.M. Farmer, H. Bolus, J.L. Brown, P.J. Stigant and A.R. McKenzie, all of whom were elected.7
With his election in 1882, Graaff, coming from the meat trade, which contributed to the awful conditions in the city, was initially grouped with the “Dirty Party” by the Cape Times. A contributing factor might have been that the paper regarded him as an Afrikaner who did not belong with the predominantly English-speaking “reformers”, a group mostly comprising successful businessmen and traders. Graaff, described by Merriman as “one of the new breed of pushy urban Afrikaners”,8 and his patron Combrinck both became supporters of the Afrikaner Bond over time. This new political movement, initially formed by Rev. S.J. du Toit, experienced a huge upsurge after the annexation of Transvaal by Shepstone. The subsequent revolt against British rule resulted in the First Boer War, in which the Boers triumphed at the Battle of Majuba on 27 February 1881.
Under the leadership of J.H. (Onze Jan) Hofmeyr, who wanted to co-ordinate the political aspirations of Afrikaners and whom Graaff regarded as his leader, the organisation grew by leaps and bounds. Hofmeyr, editor of De Zuid-Afrikaan, strove for a united South Africa under the motto Afrika voor de Afrikaners. Initially, in his Zuidafrikaanse Boeren Beschermings Vereniging (South African Society for the Protection of Farmers) he united the economic power of agricultural societies and became one of the most important political figures in the Cape Colony after the merger of the Afrikaner Bond and societies for the protection of farmers.9 In time the Afrikaner Bond proceeded to protect more than just the farmers’ interests, as it was joined by successful Afrikaner trade entrepreneurs, like Graaff, D.C. de Waal, G.J. Krige, A.B. de Villiers, C.W.H. Kohler, N.F. de Waal, P.G. Wege, M.M. Venter and others.10
Furthermore, the year 1882 became a milestone for stronger municipal management in Cape Town. That year, the colonial government provided more clarity about shifting the responsibilities between colonial and local government, after councillors had been ineffective for a number of years because of uncertainty about the exact extent of their responsibilities. The Cape Parliament passed legislation clearly stating the rights and duties of the Cape Town city council. In future the provision of water, butcheries, wash-houses and sewerage would be the exclusive responsibility of the city council.11
The smallpox epidemic that hit Cape Town in the same year was the worst of its kind in the city in more than a century. It forced the city fathers to take real action on behalf of the residents. At that stage about 40 000 people