cargo of frozen meat from America to London. The same year the Strathleven, also fitted with a Bell-Coleman machine, departed from Melbourne with a freight of beef, mutton and butter, which arrived in London in a good condition after a voyage of nine weeks and 24 000 kilometres.1
These new developments were of great interest to Combrinck & Co., especially since Australia and New Zealand, with their huge herds, had started exporting mutton in the 1880s. David Graaff was sent abroad, to Europe, the continent and the United States, where he visited the large markets, abattoirs and meat-packing companies.2 In Chicago he gained valuable experience at the large meat-shipping company Armour, and he visited businesses in other American cities.
During his visit to Argentina, a country with huge herds of cattle and sheep, another species attracted Graaff’s attention: the Argentinian Arab horses, which made a major impression on him. He bought Arabs bred by H. Ayersa of Buenos Aires and brought them to Cape Town. He also imported Arabs from Syria, including a registered mare called Malaf.3 Initially, the stud horses were brought to Fernwood, an estate close to Kirstenbosch that he was renting.4 However, the damp climate there was not suited for such horses and, therefore, he bought the Tygerberg property De Grendel in the 1890s, where he had magnificent stables built and used the horses for riding and as carthorses.
Over time he also established his own stud of thoroughbred Friesland cows on the farm, which had been awarded to Booy Booysen in the early days of the Cape.5 The road from Cape Town ran past it because back then it was easier for ox-wagons to go across the Tygerberg than over the sandy plains of Bellville. The Graaff’s farm thus got its Dutch name as the grendel (or “bolt”) between Cape Town and Tygerberg.6
Graaff ran this farm on the slopes of Plattekloof as a gentleman’s estate for which he would become known all over the country. His stud cows and Arab horses would win top prizes at various agricultural exhibitions. In 1911, for example, three of De Grendel’s Arabs won their respective divisions at the Rosebank Fair in Cape Town. Their names were engraved on a silver tray still in the possession of the Graaff family: Sultan, the top stallion, Kalaf, the top mare and Zarina, the best filly.7
Graaff was not the only person with South African connections who understood the enormous advantages of cold storage. A Scotsman, Sir Donald Currie, owner of the 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
