provided by the government was very expensive. Graaff pointed out that the country was gripped by livestock diseases that harmed the wool, hide and other trades. Veterinary surgeons were appointed on behalf of the farmers.23 Later, when an amendment to the law was proposed, he stated that all who had the country’s interests at heart would support the act in its existing form, and that farmers who opposed it did not know what was in their best interests. He knew England preferred Australian wool to Cape wool because of sheep scab, and urged members opposed to the act to use their good judgement, since the act was to the farmers’ advantage. The act was not amended.24
In addition to his parliamentary appearances, Graaff also remained involved with another great field of interest: education. On 9 September 1893 he attended a dinner in honour of students of the South African College who had passed their examinations. At the occasion in the Poole’s Hotel in Sea Point he proposed a toast to the South African College Union, to which Advocate W.P. Schreiner replied in suitable fashion.25
CHAPTER 9
Breach with Rhodes
The good relationship Graaff and the Afrikaner Bond had with Rhodes was shortly put to the test when the first great challenge for the Rhodes ministry arose with the Logan crisis of 1893.
It came about from the awarding of a refreshment contract for the colonial railways without tenders having been requested to Jimmy Logan, a personal friend of Sir James Sivewright, commissioner of crown land and public works, under whose office the railways fell.
Sivewright was a member of the Afrikaner Bond. This clever Scottish engineer came to South Africa to organise and develop the telegraphic systems of the republics and the colonies between 1877 and 1881. As a speculator who believed the end justified the means, he acted as mediator between Rhodes and Hofmeyr on the one hand and the Cape Colony and the Boer republics on the other. And when in 1891 he negotiated the Sivewright agreement with the Free State government, he was knighted. The agreement, which provided for the extension of the Cape railway line from Bloemfontein north to the Vaal River and the Transvaal goldfields, gave the Cape Colony a near monopoly for two years.1
With the new contract awarded by Sivewright, Logan, a difficult politician who had dug himself in in the town of Matjiesfontein with its well-known railway station, could distribute his canteens over 2 000 miles of railway lines. The awarding of the contract to one person, not to mention one who could exert considerable political influence, reinforced the anti-monopoly sentiments in the Cape at a time when, moreover, an election was imminent. So when it became apparent, furthermore, that Sivewright had hidden the issue from his colleagues – it had never been submitted to cabinet for discussion – the fat was in the fire.
In the midst of strong public outrage, three ministers, J.W. Sauer, John X. Merriman and Rose-Innes, decided at a cabinet meeting that action was imperative. They cabled Rhodes and Sivewright, who were in England at the time, insisting upon the cancellation of the contract, which would be valid for ten years and could then be renewed for another five.
At the same time pressure was brought to bear on Rhodes from the ranks of the Afrikaner Bond. Not only political interests were at stake. Graaff himself had an interest in the matter, since Combrinck & Co. secured the refreshment contract for canteens along the extension of the Kimberley railway in 1886.2
Hofmeyr and Graaff cabled Sivewright, which indicated how closely Graaff was already co-operating with Hofmeyr at that stage. It read:
“New Logan contract causes great dissatisfaction, weakening Ministry, places friends in false position. Retreat in time. Show Rhodes.”3
The two ministers in England agreed that Logan’s contract should be cancelled. When Logan heard of this, he sued the Cape government for £50 000 for breach of contract. With Rhodes’s return to Cape Town the “Three Mutineers” – Merriman and his colleagues – insisted that he should fire Sivewright. Merriman in particular, who had long been at loggerheads with Sivewright, was outraged: “Surely we have seen the wicked in great power and flourishing like green bay trees with our Sivewrights and our Barnatos,” he wrote in a letter to his mother.4
Rhodes, however, could not come up with a compromise. When his ministry was disbanded, he asked Hofmeyr to form a cabinet. Hofmeyr refused, but advised Rhodes to consult the chief justice, Sir Henry de Villiers. Hofmeyr also recommended that Graaff should serve in the cabinet.5 While Justice De Villiers was still contemplating the matter, Rhodes formed a new cabinet himself without consulting De Villiers. He omitted the Three Mutineers, as well as Sivewright, from the new cabinet, which now also included the former premier, Sir Gordon Sprigg, and did not find room for Graaff.
As for the Logan contract, damages of £5 000 were awarded to Logan, and under the new Rhodes government the contract was awarded to him once again.
In the Cape Parliament a new state of affairs now prevailed. Opposite the second Rhodes ministry in the opposition benches sat three of Rhodes’s former cabinet colleagues, who had not left him for political reasons, but because of a matter of political honesty. On top of that they were more upright politicians who, as members of Rhodes’s cabinet, had been able to control his forcefulness. None of his new cabinet members could exert that influence. Hofmeyr remained the leader of the Afrikaner Bond, in reality the only strong political party in the Cape Colony, because at that stage there was not much of a bipartisan system. However, when Hofmeyr resigned his parliamentary seat in 1895, it meant the end of the last counterbalance that could keep at bay Rhodes’s rush to his own demise.6
While Graaff served as both a Member of Parliament and city councillor, he also remained active as a businessman and entrepreneur. In that capacity he got involved in an extended dispute with the Rhodes government, which wanted to expropriate the property of Combrinck & Co.
The buildings of the old Shambles, including that of Combrinck & Co., stood next to the Cape Town station, which, in turn, lay close to the sea and almost adjacent to the historic castle. The station at the lower end of Adderley Street, from where all passengers departed on the main line to the north, became quite busy from 1890, when suburban trains to Simon’s Town were introduced. The only way to extend the railway was to the location where Combrinck & Co. had been doing business for 60 years. This entailed expropriation. Combrinck & Co. was notified by the general manager of the railways, Charles Bletterman Elliot, that it should find alternative premises and would receive compensation. However, the company, conveniently located close to the harbour, station and market, was not prepared to put up with this. James Keddie Stephenson, a Scot already regarded as the capable manager of Combrinck & Co., entered the battlefield on behalf of the company. Stephenson, who had emigrated to South Africa in 1881, had grown along with Combrinck & Co. since joining Graaff and the rest in 1884. He married May Enslin, daughter of a member of the Free State Volksraad, George Frederick Enslin. He displayed a singular talent for the business world and wrote thousands of letters on behalf of the company over the next few years.7
In a letter dated 10 April 1893 to Charles Elliot, Stephenson contended that the removal would bring about major losses. Before an estimate of compensation could be made, government was required to indicate which alternative premises it had in mind, although it seemed impossible to find such premises, said Stephenson. This was followed by correspondence and meetings between the two parties that continued for several months. Eventually the railways appointed a sworn valuer who appraised the premises and buildings of Combrinck & Co. at the seafront at £8 000, but the Graaff brothers were not prepared to accept a penny less than £77 000. Further correspondence concluded with an ultimatum by the commissioner of crown land, John Laing, to Combrinck & Co. on 1 May 1894: “I hereby give you formal notice that it is the intention of the Government to proceed to… the expropriation according to the usual provision of law.”8
David Graaff was visiting Britain for
