John Xavier Merriman

John Xavier Merriman was born on 15 March 1841 in Street, England. Merriman was the eldest son of Bishop Nathaniel James Merriman and Julia Potter. He married Agnes, daughter of the Cape parliamentarian J. Vintcent, in 1874. They had no children.

Merriman came to the Cape with his family in 1848, when his father became archdeacon of Grahamstown. He was educated at the Diocesan College, Rondebosch, and at Radley College, England. He spent three years in London as a clerk and returned to the Cape at the age of 21. His early environment and schooling gave him his outdoor habits and his love of the classics and of modem literature, which he extended through omnivorous reading. From 1869 his central interest was politics and he remained in outlook a mid-Victorian liberal: opposed to newer imperial trends, devoted to parliamentary freedoms, and a strict Glandstonian in his care for the finances. He was also in many ways a traditionalist for he disliked the modern party spirit ('the tyranny of the caucus'), and supported the 'landed interest' as against 'one vote one value' and manhood suffrage. He upheld the Cape's non-racial franchise, and his South African goal was political union and English-Afrikaner fusion. He was one of the first to develop the concept of a commonwealth instead of an empire. His strong views and his refusal to bow to events made him a storm-centre in Cape politics. He was too much of an individualist to succeed as a party leader. But in the Cape parliament he had no rivals: his force and eloquence as a debater were matched by his grasp of administration, and, by a probity and self-dedication which greatly influenced the Cape parliamentary tradition. Of his personal traits his great height and his gift for epithet are perhaps best remembered. (The most famous nickname he invented was 'the Milner kindergarten'.) His public work included the South African Library, Museum and university councils and the Archives Commission, his pioneer work on the Poor White question, and the personal stimulus he gave to research and the humanities. He was a brilliant letter-writer, and his collected correspondence (now in the South African Library) is second only to the Smuts Papers in importance. In his private life Merriman had many changes of occupation. He was a land-surveyor (1863-70), then a diamond-buyer at Kimberley, where his friendship with Rhodes began; and in 1874, the year of his marriage, he became a wine merchant in Cape Town with crayfish canning as a sideline. He gave up these ventures when he entered the cabinet. He was a newspaper correspondent at the time of Majuba, and in 1886 tried to amalgamate the diamond-mines but his plan was blocked by Rhodes. In 1887 he joined a gold syndicate in the Transvaal but his Barberton and Zoutpansberg mines were fiascos; and in 1889 he was a mine manager at Langlaagte. In 1892 he bought a Stellenbosch farm, Schoongezicht, then almost derelict because of phylloxera, and became one of the first to grow fruit for export and to retrieve the standard of Cape wines. He combined farming and politics until his wife's death (1923), when he suffered a stroke.

Merriman's political career extended over 54 years, from the early diamond discoveries to the 1922 Rand Revolt. He was elected to the Cape parliament in 1869 as an opponent of responsible government, but by 1875 was completely converted; and when Lord Carnarvon launched his plan to federate South Africa by imperial action, Merriman joined J. C. Molteno, the Cape prime minister, in rejecting it as arbitrary, unrealistic and injurious to Cape development. Merriman then entered the ministry (July 1875) as Public Works Commissioner in charge of railway extension and of the first Irrigation Act, 1877. A strong campaign for confederation was in progress and he caused an uproar when he attacked J. A. Froude (Carnarvon's emissary) for promoting an 'Imperial agitation' (Sept. 1875). The movement lost support after the annexation of the Transvaal. But a new crisis developed as a result of the Gaika-Galeka War (Aug. 1877). Merriman, as acting Minister of Defence, took joint charge on the frontier with the Governor, Sir Bartle Frere. In January military friction arose; Molteno refused Frere's order to place colonial levies under imperial control and Frere dismissed the ministry (Feb. 1878). The underlying issue was confederation and, until 1881, when the Transvaal once again became an independent republic, Merriman continued to challenge imperial policy. In the Cape parliament he criticised the Sprigg ministry for its methods of enforcing disarmament and for first provoking and then mismanaging the Basuto rebellion (the 'War of the Guns', 1:880), which caused the separation of Basutoland from the Cape. When the Transvaal demanded its independence, Merriman worked with J. H. Hofmeyr ('Onze Jan') to win Cape opinion in favour of a settlement. He did not, however, accept at this stage the need for language equality and was opposed to the nationalist movement which the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-81) had stimulated. He thus alternated between attacks on jingoism and on Afrikaner sectionalism, whichever he thought was in the ascendant; and this is the key to his subsequent isolation.

His breach with Hofmeyr took place early in the Scanlen ministry, in which he was again Commissioner of Public "Works (May 1881 - May 1884), and which he weakened from the outset. Its other problems were impending bankruptcy (prevented by; rigorous retrenchment) and the Basutoland dead lock. The Hofmeyr and frontier parties were opposed to a Cape withdrawal; but in 1883 the ministry took the decision, and in May Merriman went to Britain to negotiate the resumption of imperial rule in Basutoland (Lesotho). His next effort was to try to forestall the German occupation of South-West Africa, but he was unsuccessful. He likewise urged joint Cape and British action in Bechuanaland (Botswana), to protect guaranteed Native land rights and prevent Transvaal or German expansion. In the midst of these cross- currents the Scanlen ministry fell, and for six years Merriman was in opposition. During this time he was at odds with every pressure group and faction, from the 'brandy interest' to the 'I.D.B. lobby'. His main platform was a liberal Native policy and a South African railway and customs convention. But parochial and sectional rivalries were accentuated by the fluid party situation and Merriman, though a vigilant and effective critic, could not co-ordinate opposition or build up a party.

By 1890 the political initiative had passed to Rhodes. The Afrikaner Bond, angered by Transvaal trade rebuffs, accepted Rhodes's imperial objectives, the Sprigg ministry was defeated, and in July Rhodes became prime minister, with Merriman, J. W. Sauer and J. Rose Innes in his cabinet, and with full Bond support. As Treasurer, Merriman again reformed the finances and put through the important Bank Act of 1891. He took charge of agriculture (1892) and was developing fruit-export projects when the scandalous Logan railway contract disrupted the ministry. J. Sivewright, the responsible minister, refused to resign; Merriman, Sauer and Rose Innes would not continue in the same cabinet, and in May 1893 Rhodes reformed his ministry, omitting all four dissentients and taking in Sprigg, the opposition leader. The second Rhodes ministry crashed with the Jameson Raid, which Merriman at once saw as the precipitant of war.

He called for the abolition of the Charter, but his motion was rejected. He drew up the Cape select committee report on the Raid, a balanced but explicit indictment of Rhodes, and by 1897 had moved into total opposition to the Milner-Chamberlain-Rhodes war policy, and into alliance with the Bond. He was still not acceptable as a party leader; W. P. Schreiner was chosen and in Oct.1898 the 'Peace ministry' took office, with Merriman as Treasurer. He did his best, through his letters and interviews with leaders of the Boer republics, to prevent the descent into war. But the Cape ministers' peace diplomacy was unavailing in the face of the rising British demands. The outbreak of war in 1899 was followed by invasion of the Cape, which sparked off rebellion in the Colony; and the ministry split on the issue of the penalties for rebels. Merriman, following the Canadian precedent, urged an amnesty for all but ringleaders. Joseph Chamberlain demanded a term of disfranchisement; Schreiner and Richard Solomon (the Attorney-General) accepted the imperial directive, the other ministers opposed it, and in June 1900 the cabinet resigned. In 1901 Merriman, then in opposition, went with Sauer on a peace delegation to Britain. When the war was over he fought the movement to suspend the Cape constitution; and, as leader of the South African Party, urged reconciliation and the grant of self-government to the new Crown colonies. While the Progressives were in office in the Cape (1904-08), he resumed his correspondence with J. C. Smuts and M. T. Steyn, and from 1906 onwards began to plan (with the Orange River Colony and Transvaal leaders) the blueprint for a South African constitution. In February 1908 he became prime minister of the Cape Colony, with the dual programme of restoring the finances and effecting closer union. The plans for the National Convention (1908-09) were at once put into action; Merriman was the convener; and, though his role was less preponderant within the Convention than that of Smuts, he was one of the chief architects of the South African constitution. He was mainly responsible for its unitary form and for the compromise, which gave protection, under entrenchment, to the Cape non-racial franchise. Meanwhile he was determined to bring the Cape into the Union solvent, and succeeded, through stringent taxation and retrenchment, despite a near-revolt in his party. In June 1910 he laid down his office as the last prime minister of the Cape. Despite his claims of seniority and experience, he was not selected as first prime minister of South Africa. The choice fell on Louis Botha, the Transvaal prime minister, who had far wider South African support, although the Orange River Colony favoured Merriman. He refused Botha's offer of a place in the cabinet but in his thirteen years in the Union parliament continued to support the South African Party, preferring the role of a 'humble musket-bearer in the ranks', as he termed himself.

Merriman's last phase, as 'candid friend' of the Botha and Smuts governments, as spokesman for 'the underdog', and 'father of the South African Parliament' brought him singular honour and esteem. In the Hertzog split he supported Botha's 'one-stream' policy and his action in the 1914-18 war; but disapproved of his segregation measures (the Mines and Works Act of 1911, the Natives Land Act of 1913 etc.), and was vigilant regarding financial abuses and unauthorised executive action, such as the Smuts deportations (1914). He continued eloquent, witty, idealistic and forthright, and was honoured as 'John X', South Africa's greatest parliamentarian.

References:

• Potgieter, D.J. et al. (eds)(1970). Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa, Cape Town: NASOU.