An interview with Edgar Harry Brookes, 1976
In December 1976, I enjoyed the privilege and the pleasure of an interview with one of South Africa's most senior liberal intellectuals, Dr Edgar Brookes.
Edgar Harry Brookes was born in England in 1897 and came to South Africa as a child. Like Jan Hofmeyr, whom he greatly admired, he seemed destined for high office from early adulthood. At the age of 23, he became Lecturer in (and later Professor of) Political Science at the Transvaal University College in Pretoria, while his political aspirations were recognised with his appointment as one of South Africa's delegates to the League of Nations Assembly in 1927. However, his ambitions seemed thwarted when he failed to secure a United Party nomination to contest the 1933 general election. By this time, he had abandoned his earlier belief in a paternalist form of segregation and, in 1929, he became one of the founders of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). He left his academic post to work for the SAIRR and, in 1935, was appointed Principal of Adams College, a missionary institution in Natal dedicated to African education. From 1937 to 1952, Edgar Brookes sat in Parliament as one of the seven Europeans who indirectly represented Africans. These positions were created in 1936 when non-whites were removed from the common electoral rolls in the Cape Province, but Africans across the Union were permitted to choose seven European representatives to speak for them in Parliament, four as "Natives' Senators" and three in the House of Assembly. In 1953, he began a new and prolific phase of his career, teaching in the Department of History and Political Science at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. He published extensively on race relations, and was co-author (with the Colin de B. Webb) of The History of Natal (1965).[1]
On 11 December 1976, I visited Edgar Brookes at his home in Pietermaritzburg, and wrote an account of his comments immediately afterwards. He was by then within a few weeks of his eightieth birthday, emeritus professor who was regarded as the doyen of the city's embattled liberal community.[2] His kindness to a young travelling academic was typical of his courtesy and, although I have poor visual memories, I retain an impression of a warm and above all strong personality. South Africa was not a happy country in December 1976, but somehow Edgar Brookes combined a gruff and amused lack of regard for the Nationalist government with a conviction that eventually all would come well.[3]
I understand that in his last years, Edgar Brookes destroyed many of his personal papers, and I believe there has been no full biography of him.[4] Almost half a century later, I hope this record of his opinions may be of some value, not least because it attempts to convey something of the zest and sympathy for the personalities (although not in all cases) whom he had encountered through his career. It should be noted that the topics discussed reflected to a considerable degree my interests at that time, which were in Commonwealth history and consequently in the politics of twentieth-century white South Africa.
About twenty years after my visit, I received an informal suggestion that I should submit my account of the interview for possible inclusion in a South African publication. I made some minor corrections to my diary entry, retaining my shorthand reference to Dr Brookes as "EHB", and added a few endnotes to clarify allusions. (This will explain why there are no references to more recent works.) However, the submission was rejected as "superficial", which may well have been true, although the meeting certainly made an impact upon me. Edgar Brookes was recalled as a "scintillating" and "convivial" colleague, but also as someone who preserved a private area of himself behind "discussion of matters of general concern". Perhaps this accounts for the verdict that my account of our meeting lacked depth.[5]
In considering whether to add the account to my website, it occurred to me that its contents ought to be compared with the autobiography, A South African Pilgrimage, that Edgar Brookes had published in 1977.[6] Unfortunately, I did not have access to a copy. Emeritus Professor Peter Underwood, former Head of the Department of Information and Library Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), kindly agreed to check the text: if the anecdotes and comments that Edgar Brookes recounted to me were available in his book, there was little point in duplicating them. Not only was I fortunate to receive such a generous offer of help but – by a remarkable stroke of good luck – a scarce copy of A South African Pilgrimage [ASAP] had survived the fire that damaged the UCT Library in April 2021. Information supplied by Professor Underwood is included in the Endnotes in square brackets, and attributed to ASAP by page numbers. I am grateful to Professor Peter Underwood for his vital help: his research also indicated that Dr Brookes had omitted from his memoir several of the comments that he shared with me. This has seemed to justify its inclusion in martinalia.[7]
* * *
I have just spent an hour with Edgar Brookes. He insists Smuts was a great man, but that he was dominated by the British-Boer issue and failed to see the importance of colour. EHB was once on a very old Union Castle liner, whose Scots engineer described it as looking at every wave and worrying whether or not it would get through. That reminded him of Smuts.[8] But Smuts was always helpful to the Native Senators, provided no one knew what he had done. Once he was thanked for anything, it reduced his value.
He thought Paton's biography of Hofmeyr the finest biography he knew.[9] EHB worshipped Hofmeyr and would have followed him had he given a lead, but there was nothing he [Hofmeyr] could do. Had he broken away to form a Liberal party, 8 or 9 MPs might have followed him, but all they would have done would have been to let in the Nats.[10]
Hofmeyr's mother was a tartar who interfered where she should not. Once, when he was Principal of Wits in his 20s, she persuaded him to investigate the over-use of hot water in a women's hall run by Margaret Ballinger (Hodgson) and Margaret Ballinger distrusted him ever after. (She and others spread a rumour in retaliation that the Hofmeyrs had lost their cat, and found it locked a week later in the bathroom.)[11]
He [EHB] liked Margaret Ballinger, but thought her husband "uneducated", and was disappointed with her book.[12]
He had not expected the Nats to win in 1948, but neither had they. He did not think there was ever much chance in 1948-50 of luring Havenga over to the United Party – he [Havenga] once told EHB that on the colour question he would rather be murdered than commit suicide.[13]
He thought the Torch Commando could have done more had the enthusiasm not fallen away.[14]
He became Natives' Senator in 1938 because the king of the Zulu asked him to stand. He had promised to back D.G. Shepstone, but had not realised how deeply the Zulu royal family hated the Shepstones.[15] With hindsight he believes that the four Natives' Senators should have acted like the Irish party and intervened on all questions, but then they saw things differently.[16] They had sat as Independents, although in private life he was then a member of the United Party ("I'm ashamed to admit").[17] Their main achievement was to put off changes for the worse, and to intervene with [government] departments to get assurances that administrative orders (e.g. against cutting wood in State forests) were not too severely enforced.
The first Natives' Affairs minister, Fagan, used to call in the seven representatives for their comments during the drafting of bills. Hofmeyr, as education minister, helped enormously in getting money increased.[18] The last Natives Affairs minister he had to deal with was Verwoerd, who was puzzled when EHB wished him long years in office. EHB explained that each minister had been worse than the one before, and he did not want one worse than Verwoerd.[19]
Senate Hansard grew to 6 or 8 times in length after the introduction of Natives' Senators.[20] The African vote had been important in about 20 Cape seats. He regretted that a Communist had got in [to the House of Assembly] as he [EHB] was an anti-Communist and thought the label did not help the African cause.[21]
There is a building on the campus [of the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg] called the Kremlin with a cat called Brezhnev, and the security police kept it under observation and tried to intercept letters going in. Most of the offices were occupied by clergymen.[22]
Buthelezi had been a student of his at the old Adams College. He was a good politician but he had principles. His Inkatha movement might be the nucleus of an African mass movement. Once the Africans get a movement and a leader, they would be a major force.[23]
White South Africa had a case: they had been here for hundreds of years, and in large numbers, and they had built the roads, railways and ports, introduced scientific farming, opened up the mines (even if they had used African labour) and they had a claim to stay. He had met black African leaders at the United Nations four years ago and they all seemed sincere in wanting white people to remain.[24]
The Geneva talks gave little enthusiasm for majority rule, but it was bound to come and it was better to deal with Africans now.[25] In ten years' time, South Africa would face the position Rhodesia was in now.[26]
The only question for the future was "what is it right to do?" Leo Marquard's widow had inscribed on his tombstone: "He followed truth wherever it led him."[27]
Tailpiece, 2024 It was, no doubt, characteristic of Edgar Brookes that he should end our meeting with an admiring reference to one of his associates in the fight against South African racism. But, looking back on that interview almost half a century later, I prefer to close with two quotations from the man himself, dating from a decade and a half before our encounter. In October 1960, white South Africans narrowly voted to break the link with the British Crown and declare the Union a Republic. In practical terms, the change amounted to little more than changing the country's official headed notepaper: the last ceremonial Governor-General became the first token State President. However, the issue carried enormous emotional baggage, representing for Afrikaners the symbolic reversal of the defeat of the Boer republics in the 1899-1902 South African War. Natal, where three-quarters of the electorate voted "No", was the only province to reject the change: its European population was predominantly English-speaking and deeply attached to the British connection. Douglas Mitchell, the leader of the United Party in Natal – and effectively the province's political boss – made a number of recklessly defiant statements, and there was talk of resistance and secession. The tense atmosphere was fanned by a clandestine broadcasting station called called Freedom Radio, while a cell-based organisation, known as the Horticulturalists, prepared for possible direct action. For most of his career, Edgar Brookes was an observer and commentator on the margins of public life. However, during a brief but fraught period in 1960-1, he played a more central role, helping to steady Natal opinion, and to channel its anger towards longer-term objectives. In the immediate aftermath of the referendum, he insisted that "those who uphold justice and freedom in South Africa must accept the republic as a regrettable fact and dedicate themselves to a lifelong fight against the things the republic stood for". In April 1961, he chaired a stock-taking conference called the Natal Convention. This gathering proved to be an anticlimax, largely because there was no feasible outlet for their discontent, but also because it was boycotted by the United Party, which had done so much to inflame the political temperature. Again, Edgar Brookes sought to broaden the issues, insisting that the Convention was not "a Natal Stand of the old type": indeed, it was a multiracial gathering. He told delegates: "We cannot share the future very effectively if we are at the same time trying to grab more than our fair share of it."[28] Fifteen years later, the campaign against the Republic still hung over Pietermaritzburg: for several liberals from the younger generation, it had been their first experience of politics. As Edgar Brookes had hoped, their resentment at a petty gesture of Afrikaner triumphalism had matured into a more general rejection of white supremacy. Edgar Brookes died in 1979. He did not live to see the crumbling of apartheid, but he knew that it would surely happen.
ENDNOTES
[1] The Transvaal University College became the University of Pretoria in 1930, but preserved its nickname "Tukkies", an acronym derived from its title in Afrikaans. Unlike the University of the Witwatersrand ("Wits") in Johannesburg, it was not an environment that encouraged liberal dissent. Edgar Brookes was President of the SAIRR in 1932 and 1946. Natives' Senators were chosen through a system of indirect election based on tribal institutions. He was twice re-elected, in 1943 by a majority of 348,000, which he believed was a British Commonwealth record. (Tribal elders cast block votes, so his triumph was illusory.) Edgar Brookes was successively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. His formal retirement in 1962 ended neither his connection with the University, nor his output of published work. I have drawn upon the sensitive and insightful obituary by Colin de B. Webb in Natalia, ix (1979), 39-42, which is online at: https://www.natalia.org.za/Files/9/Natalia%20v9%20obituaries%20%20Brookes.pdf.
[2] In 1973, he was ordained in the Church of England. South Africa's income tax form gave men the option of choosing how they wished to be addressed by ticking one of 5 boxes: The Hon., Prof., Dr, Rev. and Mr. To his amusement, Edgar Brookes qualified for all five.
[3] To some extent, my impression conflicts with his own self-criticisms in his autobiography, A South African Pilgrimage (noted below), 148. To the questions: "Have I failed? Have I been wholly ineffective?", he conceded that, from most points of view, "the emphatic, if reluctant" answer had to be "Yes". He attributed his failure "to over-optimism and to over-confidence in the old British traditions and methods of liberalism". However, he preferred to have been "an utter failure in the fight for justice and humanity than to have been a success in any other course". Talking to a young visitor from overseas, his optimism and his confidence in the future reasserted itself.
[4] Edgar Brookes was the subject of a chapter in P. Rich, Hope and Despair: English-speaking Intellectuals and South African Politics, 1896-1976 (London, 1993), which I have been unable to consult.
[5] C. de B. Webb in Natalia, ix (1979), 41. Much that could be said of South Africa's present and past in 1976 was, of course, thunderingly obvious, such as the observation by Dr Brookes that Smuts had focused on British-Boer relations and failed to confront the country's racial issues.
[6] Edgar Harry Brookes (1897-1979), A South African Pilgrimage, Johannesburg: Ravan Press. The text had been substantially written in 1973.
[7] I have followed the recommendation of the [South African] Government Communication and Information System Editorial Style Guide 2013, and used lower case spellings for "black" and "white".
[8] [Not in ASAP.]
[9] Alan Paton, Hofmeyr (Cape Town, 1964). [Edgar Brookes repeatedly emphasised his admiration for Paton's Hofmeyr: ASAP, 87,98, 122-3.]
[10] [In ASAP, 130-1, 133. In discussing his decision to join the Liberal Party in 1961, Edgar Brookes reflected that "it might have been of great benefit to South Africa if I and others had made a clear-cut decision on these lines ten or fifteen or twenty years earlier". As early as 1924, he had ranked himself among "those who would write ourselves down as Liberals, were there a Liberal Party in South Africa". However, when the possibility of a breakaway party was mooted in 1948, Edgar Brookes advised Hofmeyr that he "might have to make a temporary sacrifice of principle to keep the Nationalists out". A. Paton (ed. D.C. Lunt), Hofmeyr (abridged ed., Cape Town, 1971, cf. complete 1st ed., 1964), 82, 357. His comment to me suggests that he maintained that position. It is possible that a breakaway Hofmeyr-led party might have affected the 1948 result in an unexpected way. Two features in the South African electoral system should be noted. First, constituencies were divided into something like watertight compartments, most being either Afrikaans- or English-speaking. Second, rural areas were considerably over-represented, and in these the white population was predominantly Afrikaner. (In 1948, the Nationalist parties led by Malan and Havenga polled around 40% of the popular vote; the United Party (UP), led by Smuts, won 50%, but lost the election.) Had a Liberal party siphoned off, say, 5% of the UP votes across the Union, it would of course have further damaged the chances that Smuts could have retained office. But it is more likely that it would have polled well in a small number of prosperous urban areas, where the UP piled up massive but useless majorities. On the platteland, where Nationalists stoked the fear of a Hofmeyr succession, Liberals would have won few votes and Smuts might have retained the support of what passed for the Afrikaner middle ground. Of course, even without Hofmeyr, "When Smuts Goes" would have remained a thorny question: he turned 78 two days before polling.]
[11] According to Paton, Hofmeyr, ch. 3, Margaret Ballinger and J.D. Rheinallt Jones, both later to be Natives' Senators, broke with Hofmeyr when the young Principal dismissed E.P. Stibbe, Dean of Medicine, for alleged sexual impropriety with a female mamber of staff. Rheinallt Jones told Hofmeyr to his face to put a stop to his mother's interference in the running of the University. The episode of the lost cat is an echo of the passions aroused: the point of the story was the insinuation that Mrs Hofmeyr did not take baths very often. [In ASAP, 90, Edgar Brookes recalled that, although he was on friendly terms with Hofmeyr, "there were barriers which neither of us could quite break down". On one occasion, Hofmeyr had signalled that he "wanted to speak of his dominating mother" by asking Edgar Brookes about his mother. Dr Brookes also had a difficult maternal relationship, and had felt "too shy" to discuss the matter. However, Alan Paton dates the incident to 1947, which was rather late in the day. Paton, ed. Lunt, Hofmeyr, 355.]
[12] Margaret Ballinger represented Africans in the eastern Cape in the House of Assembly. Edgar Brookes presumably referred to Margaret Ballinger, From Union to Apartheid: a Trek into Isolation (New York and London, 1969). Her husband, William Ballinger, served as a Natives' Senator, and was a founder member of the Liberal Party. [ASAP, 77: In praising Margaret Ballinger, Dr Brookes described her husband as "a Scottish trade unionist who always took a keen interest in employment and trade union matters…. They both had zoological interests. On Saturday afternoons Senator Ballinger went to the races and Mrs Ballinger occupied herself in bird-watching." His comment to me was less coded.]
[13] Dr Malan's National Party did not win an outright majority in the 1948 general election, but initially relied on the nine MPs of N.C. Havenga's Afrikaner Party to govern. The addition of six MPs (all Nationalists) from South West Africa in 1949 effectively ended this dependence. Havenga's nine MPs had all been returned thanks to an electoral pact with the Nationalists, and the two parties merged in 1951. Edgar Brookes was surely right to conclude that a Smuts-Havenga deal was always unlikely. For attempts to draw Havenga into an alliance with the United Party, see W.K. Hancock, Smuts: The Fields of Force 1919-1950 (Cambridge, 1969), 512-17.
[14] The War Veterans' Torch Commando was a protest movement formed in April 1951 by ex-servicemen who saw the Nationalist government as a version of the evils they had fought in Europe. It both peaked and fell rapidly, effectively disappearing by 1953. T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa: a Modern History (London, 1977), 260-1. Dr Brookes was specifically responding to my questions on the 1948 period. [ASAP: Edgar Brookes mentioned neither Havenga nor the Torch Commando.]
[15] Dr D.G. Shepstone, grandson of Sir Theophilus, subsequently served as Administrator of Natal, 1948-58. The Senate episode perhaps partly explains the elegant reference to Dr Shepstone in E.H. Brookes and C. de B. Webb, A History of Natal (Pietermaritzburg, 1965), 283. [ASAP, 74-6: Edgar Brookes discussed this episode at some length. Acting Paramount Chief Mshiyeni, regent for his young nephew, invited him to stand for the Senate to block D.G. Shepstone. In reply, he pointed out that Shepstone "was a highly respected lawyer in Durban, and a true friend of the Africans … a man of integrity and ability" and, moreover, a personal friend whom he had agreed to support (although, of course, he did not have a vote). Mshiyeni replied "with some passion that if I would not stand he would get someone else", and that he would oppose any descendant of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, whose machinations were widely regarded as having engineered the downfall of the Zulu nation. The friendship with D.G. Shepstone survived the episode: Edgar Brookes lobbied Smuts and Hofmeyr to secure his nomination to the Senate as a representative of Natal. Later, as Administrator of the Province, Shepstone was "the best Natal ever had".]
[16] The allusion is to the Irish Home Rule Party which intervened vigorously in a wide range of parliamentary business to force attention to Irish grievances in the 1870s, sometimes using tactics of obstruction to block parliamentary business. One of their earliest battlegrounds was Carnarvon's bill to create a South African federation in 1877. It is difficult to see the force of the argument. As representatives of the Black majority, the seven already had a broad mandate. They were too few to have brought the South African parliament to a standstill. While the career of Charles Stewart Parnell would later become one of my principal interests, I am sure that I did not broach the analogy.
[17] Edgar Brookes remained "a 'non-party' liberal" for many years before publicly identifying himself with the Liberal Party, of which he became National Chairman in 1964. Janet Robertson, Liberalism in South Africa 1948-1963 (Oxford, 1971), 223.
[18] [18] H.A. Fagan, later Chief Justice, served in Hertzog's cabinet, which was defeated in the House of Assembly on the outbreak of war in 1939. Jan Hofmeyr then entered the new ministry, formed by Smuts: it helped that he was both Minister of Education and Minister of Finance. [ASAP, 80-1: Edgar Brookes described Fagan as "outstandingly the best Minister of Native affairs that I ever had to do with". However, there was one downside to the consultation process that Fagan encouraged: although amendments suggested by the Natives' Senators were often incorporated into proposed legislation, it was understood that they should not claim credit for them, to avoid challenges in the House of Assembly. Hence Africans had little awareness of the work that was done on their behalf.]
[19] Dr H.F. Verwoerd became Minister of Native Affairs in 1950. He became prime minister in 1958 and carried legislation in 1959 to abolish the Natives' Senators, who ceased to sit in 1960. [ASAP: Edgar Brookes did not mention his ironic welcome to the new Minister.] [Additional note, August 2024: Edgar Brookes probably adapted this witticism from a story related by Thomas Aquinas about Dionysius, the hated tyrant of the Sicilian city of Syracuse, who died in 367 BC: "when everyone in Syracuse desired the death of Dionysius, an elderly woman prayed over and over that he would be unharmed and outlive her. And after the tyrant learned about this, he asked her why she did so. Then the woman said: 'When I was a girl, we had an oppressive tyrant, and I wished for another ruler. And after the tyrant was killed, a harsher one succeeded the latter shortly afterwards, and I thought that it would be a great blessing if the successor's rule would also be terminated. We then had a still harsher ruler, yourself. And so if you were removed, a worse tyrant will replace you.'" Dionysius rewarded the woman for her honesty. Verwoerd was evidently less impressed.]
[20] Hancock, Smuts: the Fields of Force, 476-77 praised the impact of the seven parliamentary representatives, and singled the Senators for special mention: "As a team of critics ... they proved themselves formidable. An immense disproportion existed between their number and the impact they made upon parliamentary discussion. Three at least of the seven possessed outstanding ability. Edgar Brookes, Donald Molteno and Margaret Ballinger stood head and shoulders above the great majority of their fellow parliamentarians." [ASAP, 81: in his autobiography, Edgar Brookes stated that "[t]he length of Hansard trebled as a result of our incursion into the leisurely Upper House". Given that my account was written immediately after the interview, I am reasonably certain that he spoke of "6 or 8 times". He may have been referring to brief periods of intense debate.]
[21] The Communist Sam Kahn was elected to the House of Assembly in 1948, and the party also captured a Native seat on the Cape Provincial Council the following year. The Malan government countered with the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950. Kahn was expelled from the House of Assembly in 1952. G.M. Carter, The Politics of Inequality: South Africa since 1948 (3rd ed., London, 1962), pp. 64-65, 69-70. [ASAP, 78: Edgar Brookes regretted the election of Sam Kahn to the House of Assembly, and also deplored the election of the "near-Communist" H.M. Basner as a Natives' Senator. (A Johannesburg lawyer, Basner had been a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s.) Kahn's election in particular made it difficult for the seven African representatives to work together, and gave the apartheid regime an easy target in denigrating its critics. Not surprisingly, Nelson Mandela, who briefly worked in Basner's law office, had a more positive view of him: N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom… (London, 1995 ed., cf. 1st ed., 1994), 171.]
[22] This story was in wide circulation in Pietermaritzburg in 1976. It mocked the stupidity of the security services. [Not mentioned in ASAP.]
[23] The reference, of course, was to N.G. Buthelezi, head of the Inkatha Freedom Party. Edgar Brookes had served as Principal of Adams College. Following the passage of the Bantu Education Act in 1953, Adams College had been renamed Amanzimtoti Zulu Training School, to emphasise the apartheid approach that a liberal education was inappropriate for Africans. The old name was reinstated in 1990.
[24] Edgar Brookes had attended the League of Nations as part of the South African delegation back in 1927. He was a delegate to UNESCO in 1947. I have not identified the visit to the UN (apparently in 1972) to which he referred. [In ASAP, 150, he recognised that a black victory "under dynamic leadership … may, not necessarily but at the worst, create such a humiliating position for the whites as might lead to wholesale emigration". He insisted that this would not be the outcome for which white liberals had campaigned.
[25] As far back as 1952, Edgar Brookes warned that "growing non-European awareness … was now a permanent phenomenon. If the white people continued to keep them out of the game of political affairs they were heading for disaster. … His attitude was not for preparing against the event of the rise of the non-European … but for preparing for and conceding to that rise." The following year, he predicted that white dominance could not be maintained indefinitely. "It is not a question of whether it will fall, but of when." E.H. Brookes and C. de B. Webb, A History of Natal (Pietermaritzburg, 1965), 279; E.H. Brookes, South Africa in a Changing World, quoted by Robertson, Liberalism in South Africa, p. 115n. [To the questions often posed by overseas visitors (but not by me), "Will you succeed?" and "When will you succeed?", he simply replied "We fight because, God help us, we can do no other." ASAP, 147.]
[26] There had been unsuccessful negotiations at Geneva to resolve the Rhodesian problem in October and November 1976. [ASAP, 2-3: Edgar Brookes regarded the Rhodesian settlers as "anachronisms rather than villains. ... Most of the world in 1910 thought, with no pangs of conscience and no condemnation, as these people think to-day."]
[27] Leo Marquard had died in March 1974. [ASAP, 44: Edgar Brookes wrote that, through all the years he knew them, Leo and Nell Marquard maintained "a singularly consistent liberal attitude, a blend of sanity and enthusiasm".]
[28] The Times (London), 17 October 1960, 18 April 1961; P.S. Thompson, Natalians First … (Pietermaritzburg, 1990), 159-74; G. Dominy, The Man behind the Beard: Deneys Schreiner, a South African Liberal Life (Pietermaritzburg, 2020), 110-12.