HOFMEYR, JAN HENDRIK (“ONZE JAN”)

Jan Hendrik (“Onze Jan”‘ Hofmeyr, (July 4, 1845-October 16, 1909), was a Cape Afrikaner political leader.

PHOTO CAPTION: Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr. SOURCE: EA Library

He was educated in Cape Town at Tot Nuit van’t Algemeen and at the South African College. In December 1861 he became editor of De Volksuriend and took up the cudgels against the liberal theological movement. De Volksuriend eventually absorbed the older De Zuid-Afrikaan, although retaining the name of the latter.
He retired as editor in 1883, but continued to edit Het Zuid-Afrikaansche Tijdschrift, a periodical he had started in 1878 to stimulate interest in the Dutch language, which he preferred to spoken Afrikaans because of its literary heritage. It was a motion of Hofmeyr’s in 1882 that saw Dutch accepted as a language for use in parliamentary debates.
In 1878, to fight the imposition of an excise tax on spirits and to organise the farmers to defend their interests, he established the Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging (B.B.V.). This was a success and in 1879 he was returned to parliament as a member for Stellenbosch. In 1879 S.J. du Toit founded the more radical and anti-British Afrikaner Bond, which rapidly gained support.
He infiltrated the Bond, exercising a strong moderating influence on it, and secured the amalgamation of the Bond and the B.B.V. in 1883. Later, as leader of the Bond, he controlled its internal disciplinary machinery and exercised influence on the selection of candidates to fight elections under the Bond banner.
Although leader of the only organised political party until 1898, he refused to form a ministry preferring to play the role of king-maker. Apart from a few months in 1881, he did not even serve in a cabinet. Because no one could form a ministry without his approval, the Bonds interests were well catered for in Parliament. From 1890 he gave his support to Cecil John Rhodes as prime minister.
The Jameson Raid in December 1895-January 1896, however, destroyed this alliance. Whereas the Transvaalers had regarded him with some suspicion before the Raid, his image thereafter was restored by his pressing for official inquiries into the Raid.
Hofmeyr did his best to deflect the aggressive course of Alfred Milner and to encourage Paul Kruger to make greater concessions to the Uitlanders (aliens, especially those not speaking Dutch or Afrikaans). He was extremely disillusioned when the South African War broke out in 1899. After the war, he encouraged the cultural revival of the Afrikaners and advocated a spirit of reconciliation between Boer and Briton.
He was named a member of the delegation that went to present the Union Bill to the British parliament in August 1909, but after he fell ill in London was unable to participate. In 1880, he married Alida Hendriksz of Somerset West. She died in 1883, and in 1900 he married her sister Johanna. There were no children from either of these marriages. There is a larger-than-life statue of Hofmeyr, by Anton van Wouw, cast in bronze, in the centre of Church Square in Cape Town.

K.W. SMITH