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Capes—Cape Town
(save that a provincial councillor must live in the province in which his constituency is situated). Under this provision in the Cape province natives and other non-white races possess the provincial franchise. At the 1917 registration there were 150,000 white and 30,000 coloured electors. The number of constituencies are also the same as for Parliament.[1] The provincial council has powers of legislation on subjects specifically assigned to it by the Act of Union and on subjects delegated to it by the Union Parliament. These powers include direct taxation within the province in order to raise revenue for provincial purposes and the control of municipalities and other local bodies, and of “elementary education”—which embraces all education other than university. Its enactments are called ordinances, and no ordinance is valid so far as it may be repugnant to an act of the Union Parliament. In short, though a legislative body, the provincial council exercises no authority which Parliament cannot revoke. There is no separate judiciary, or police force, or civil service, nor any separate departments of general government. Moreover, harbours and railways are under the control of the Union Parliament.
The provincial council is presided over by a chairman, elected from its members; and the council also chooses an executive committee of four, who need not be members of the council. The chief executive officer is styled administrator and is chosen by the Union ministry; the administrator is appointed for five years and is irremovable. A provincial auditor is also appointed by the Union ministry and is removable only for reasons which must be submitted to the Union Parliament. The Union ministry likewise appoints an attorney-general as legal adviser.
Revenue.—Under provisions of the Financial Relations Acts of 1913 and 1917 the Union Government pays to the provinces an annual subsidy amounting to one-half of the estimated normal provincial expenditure for the year. This financial dependence of the provinces on the Union Government emphasizes their subordinate position and is a guarantee against any tendency in the provinces to go beyond the scope of local affairs. The subsidies paid to the Cape provincial council varied from £862,000 in 1913–4 to £999,000 in 1917–8; the revenue raised by the province was £405,000 and £426,000 respectively in the years named, but had been as low as £316,000 in 1914–5. Transfer duties and licences (trade, liquor, motor, etc.) were the chief sources of revenue. The chief item of expenditure is on education; thus in 1913–4, out of a total expenditure by the provincial council of £1,142,000, the sum of £853,000 was spent on education. In 1917–8 the figures were:—total expenditure £1,477,000; on education £1,150,000. In 1920–1 the cost of education had risen to £2,163,000, the number of children on the school rolls being 284,000, an increase of about 50,000 since 1913. In primary schools education is free.
History.—Politically the Cape province has had no separate history since the establishment of the Union in 1910. Parties in South Africa are not divided on provincial lines; it may, however, be recorded that the majority of the Cape members of Parliament have favoured the maintenance of the British connexion and the fusion of Dutch and British interests. In the rebellion of 1914 De Wet in his effort to reach German S.W. Africa entered the province and was captured at a place 110 m. W. of Mafeking. In domestic concerns the province showed a progressive attitude, notably in its care for education. Bilingual requirements gave rise to no great difficulty, the provincial council having passed an ordinance in 1921 providing that the medium of instruction up to standard IV. should be the “home language” of the child. Provincial spirit remained keen, but the white inhabitants of the eastern district, who are largely (if not mainly) of British descent, look to the Transvaal and Free State for trade, while with the people of the western part of the province (who, Cape Town apart, are predominantly of Dutch origin) they have practically no commercial intercourse.
Sir N. F. de Waal, who had been colonial secretary in the last ministry of Cape Colony, was the first administrator, and he guided the province through the period of change caused by the establishment of the Union. He served for two successive periods and was reappointed for a third time in 1920. There was no introduction of party politics in the provincial council (as happened in the Transvaal province).
The period 1910–20 witnessed considerable industrial and agricultural development and a significant growth of Ethiopianism and trade unionism among the native and coloured people. These were not features peculiar to the Cape province, though, as the Cape contained a larger proportion of educated natives and there was no colour bar to the exercise of the franchise, the province was the chief centre of native agitation for social and industrial rights. An indication of the activity of the Anglican Church was the creation of two new dioceses, George (1911), and Kimberley and Kuruman (1912).
An event which caused a deep impression on the public mind was the epidemic of influenza in the autumn of 1918. It was estimated that a quarter of the inhabitants suffered and for three or four weeks business in the cities was dislocated, so numerous were the victims. ((F. R. C.)) Capes, Bernard Edward Joseph (1854–1918), British novelist, was born in London Aug. 30 1854 and educated at Beaumont College. He was a nephew of John Moore Capes, a prominent figure in the Oxford Movement, and was brought up a Roman Catholic. Originally intended for the army, he was prevented from taking a commission by a mistake as to the age at which he should have presented himself for examination. He was then put into a tea-broker's office and for some years struggled with uncongenial work, finally abandoning it to study art at the Slade School, London. In 1888 he joined the publishing firm of Eglington & Co. and succeeded Clement Scott as editor of The Theatre. In 1892 the firm came to an end, and he made an unsuccessful experiment in rabbit farming. But in 1896 he won a prize offered by the Chicago Record for a novel of mystery and henceforth devoted his energies to fiction. His novels, 36 in number, were mostly tales of adventure, some of them historical. They include The Lake of Wine (1898); From Door to Door (1900); A Jay of Italy (1905); A Rogue's Tragedy (1906); The Story of Fifine (1914) and Moll Davis (1916). He published also a volume of verse. He died at Winchester Nov. 2 1918.
Cape Town (see 5.252), capital of the Cape province, and seat of the legislature of the Union of South Africa. In 1913 Cape Town municipality was greatly enlarged by the absorption of the suburban municipalities of Green Point and Sea Point, Woodstock, Maitland, Mowbray, Rondebosch, Claremont, Kalk Bay and Muizenberg, with Camps Bay and other adjacent areas. Cape Town thus extends across the Cape Peninsula from Table Bay to False Bay a distance of 17 m.—and covers an area of over 59 sq. miles. Wynberg (between Rondebosch and Muizenberg), though retaining a separate municipality, is a suburb of Cape Town. The pop., including suburbs, 170,083 in 1904 (44,203 whites), was 161,579 in 1911 (85,442 whites and 76,137 coloured). In 1918 the white pop. was 99,693; the coloured (estimate) 82,000.
Business, professional and official life is concentrated in Cape Town and at the docks. The chief feature of the decade 1910–20 was, however, the development of the suburbs, an enterprise in which the municipality took the lead. Cape Town in the season (Oct.–March) is the principal pleasure resort of South Africa.
On the sea front at Table Bay a promenade pier (1,500 ft. long) and esplanade (1,000 yd.) were completed in 1914. The pier replaces the old central jetty and is in a line with Adderley Street and Government Avenue, the principal thoroughfares. To the Houses of Parliament, in Government Avenue, a new wing was added (1910). At the foot of the Avenue is the site of the National Art Gallery. The Max Michaelis collection of Flemish and Dutch masters—including examples of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jan Steen and Vandyck—presented to the Union Government in 1912, is in “the Old Town House,” in Greenmarket Square. The building, a fine example of colonial Dutch 18th-century architecture, was transferred to the Government in 1916.
Rondebosch, 5 m. from the centre of the city, is the chief residential suburb. It contains Groote Schuur, formerly the property of Cecil Rhodes; since 1910 the official residence of the Prime Minister of the Union. In 1918 on the incorporation of the South African College (founded at Cape Town 1829) as the university of Cape Town, a site for new buildings—to replace those in the centre of the
- ↑ The particulars here given of provincial administration are the same in all four provinces (the Cape, Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal) save that the minimum number of members of a provincial council is 25, whereas Natal and the Free State return fewer members to Parliament.
