FAIRBAIRN, JOHN

John Fairbairn (1794-1864), a journalist and a pioneer for a free press in the Cape of Good Hope Colony.

PHOTO CAPTION: Fairbairn John. SOURCE: EA Library

He was born in Roxburghshire, Scotland, in 1794 and studied medicine and the classics at Edinburgh University. In 1823 he came to the Cape to assist the poet Thomas Pringle in running a school. In 1823, George Greig, a printer, asked Fairbairn and Pringle (who was one of the 1820 settlers) to co-edit a bilingual newspaper, The South African Commercial Advertiser.

Greig wanted the paper to report on trade and commerce and to publish literary material as well as advertising. The governor of the Cape of Good Hope, Lord Charles Somerset, had refused permission for Greig to establish the paper. But Greig found out that the law prohibiting publication without prior authority only applied to periodicals, and not to newspapers, so he published the first issue of the paper on January 7, 1824.

Somerset then made a new effort to censor the paper by demanding that all proof sheets be shown to him before each printing. He was particularly angered because the paper published information about court proceedings brought against him concerning corruption in his administration. Greig refused to meet the governor’s request. He announced on the front page of the 18th issue of The Advertiser. “We find it our duty as British subjects, under these circumstances, to discontinue the publication of the said paper for the present in this colony, until we have applied for redress and direction of His Excellency, the Governor, and the British Government.”

Greig left the Cape for Britain where he had powerful friends, including the editor of the Times of London, and was advised to return to South Africa and start publishing The Advertiser again. He did so but, in May 1827, Somerset once again banned The Advertiser on this occasion, because the paper published an article taken from the London Times which was critical of a local official. At this point, citizens of the Cape of Good Hope raised the money for John Fairbairn to go to London, which he did.

 In October 1828 Fairbairn returned to the Cape and The South African Commercial Advertiser resumed publication for the third time. Fairbairn had brought with him the promise from the colonial secretary that a press ordinance based on English law would be introduced in the Cape Colony. Under this 1829 law, if publishers made a financial deposit they were free to publish anything they wished, subject only to the law of libel.

Thus John Fairbairn, together with Thomas Pringle and George Greig, established the idea of press freedom in South Africa.

Fairbairn was much influenced by his father-in-law, the missionary Dr. John Philip. He wrote energetically against slavery, was critical of Cape frontier policy, and was concerned with the plight of the Hottentots. Fairbairn played a direct role in politics at the Cape in 1849 when residents mounted a campaign against the Cape becoming a convict settlement.

Subsequently, he again went to England, this time taking with him a draft representative constitution for the colony, but this was turned down by the Colonial Office. Nevertheless, a representative  constitution was implemented in 1853, after which Fairbairn became the leader of the Lower House of the Cape Parliament. He died in 1864.

PATRICK O’MEARA