Hermann Giliomee: Historian. Hermann Giliomee
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the potential of bulbs as a product for the Cape market. He was, after all, a child of Ochsenwerder where his family had produced vegetables for the market for generations.
My grandfather gained some prominence on account of the Dutch tulips he cultivated and his keen interest in the wild flowers of the area. One of the bulbous plants was named after him: Hesperantha buhrii (today better known as Hesperantha cucullata).
He also planted fields of Sparaxis elegans and marketed the bulbs. An article in the magazine Sarie Marais referred to him as the “Blommebuhr van die Bokveld” (flower farmer of the Bokveld). His son Elias inherited his interest in wild plants. He was the first collector of an aloe species that is named after him, Aloe buhrii.6
For me and all the other Buhr grandchildren, Grasberg was a wonderland we could never get enough of. Oupa had created a paradise of flower and vegetable gardens and orchards which he maintained in spite of periodic droughts. Once or twice every year my family would visit Grasberg, where we were always warmly received.
A student prince
Johann Buhr, the eldest child in the Buhr family, was born in 1900.7 I grew up with memories of “Oom Johann”, as the Buhr grandchildren continued to refer to him. It was as if he were still alive, despite the fact that he had died as far back as 1940, two years after my birth. At Grasberg, nearly everyone had an anecdote to tell about him. As my cousin Hermann Spangenberg, later professor in psychology at the University of the Western Cape, put it: “His giftedness and modesty were so overwhelming that he was the favourite son of the area: he personified the innate intelligence and modesty of the people.”
Johann was sent to Stellenbosch to complete his high-school education and in 1918 he enrolled as a student at the University of Stellenbosch, which had acquired university status in that year. He soon became known as someone with a keen intellect and unique sense of humour. In her autobiography My beskeie deel, MER (the writer ME Rothmann) recalled that everyone expected him to have a brilliant career, as he was already considered a leader in his student days.
His studies, however, got off to a slow start. He first took up agriculture, but dropped out of the course after a year or two and enrolled for a BA and later for a law degree. His class attendance was so poor that he was not permitted to write the final examinations for the BA degree. He informed his parents with a laconic three-word telegram: “Exams a fiasco”.
To earn an income, Johann went to work for Die Burger for a few years. This was the beginning of what would become an association of almost twenty years with that newspaper and with the magazine Die Huisgenoot. Even after he had fallen ill with tuberculosis in 1930 and was no longer able to hold a full-time job, he still contributed newspaper reports, articles and short stories. In a preface to a collection of early Afrikaans short stories, Danie Hugo refers to “Johann Buhr’s playfully mischievous style” with which he depicted his world more mercilessly than his predecessors had done.
In 1923 he returned to Stellenbosch and soon gained a reputation as an excellent debater. He was the opener of the university’s team in a debate with the Oxford Union, the oldest debating society in the world. In 1925 he undertook a debating tour through the country together with the 23-year-old Hendrik Verwoerd and LC Steyn, a future chief justice of South Africa.
They debated with each other in front of audiences in thirteen towns in all four provinces. With the exception of Middelburg, Cape, and Springs, the halls were packed. At Kroonstad, 700 people turned up to listen.
In 1924 Johann was elected chairman of the students’ representative council (SRC). In that capacity, he was charged with the task of welcoming Edward, Prince of Wales, the heir to the British throne, on behalf of the students during the Prince’s visit to Stellenbosch on 4 May 1925. Before the SRC approved the students’ programme, there was heated debate about how the Prince should be received.
In the two weeks that preceded the visit, the university authorities, the municipality, and even the prime minister were anxious about the programme and what Johann might say in his speech. In a letter to his father, Johann wrote that the municipal and university authorities insisted on knowing to the last detail “what we are going to do and exactly how we are going to do it”. Just before the visit, the prime minister finally approved the SRC’s programme.
Great excitement prevailed on the day of the royal visit, but one person was absent when the reception started: Johann Buhr. His friends found him fast asleep in his room in Wilgenhof university residence, and rushed him to the venue of the reception. The following day, the Cape Times reported:
The brilliant little speech in which the young student who had been elected to speak on their behalf addressed the Prince was such as to warrant the prediction that South Africa will hear a great deal in future years of Mr. J. Buhr, to whom the task was allotted.
The speech should be read against the backdrop of the near-hysterical way in which the press reported on the Prince’s tour. One sensational event had involved a steeplechase in which the Prince, a keen horseman, took part. He had fallen from his horse and injured his collarbone. (On a press photo, he appears with a bandaged arm next to Oom Johann.) After the Prince’s accident, the government had ordered him to stop participating in “such a dangerous sport”.
In Ralph Deakin’s book Southward Ho!, which was published officially after the tour, this account was given of the reception in Stellenbosch:
A splendid rendering of Die Stem van Zuid Afrika, with words adapted to the occasion, led up to the jocular oration of Mr. Johan [sic] Buhr, the president of the Students’ Council, whose quips made the Prince, his entourage and the grand-stand full of students rock with mirth.
The Prince cabled the speech to his father, and it was included verbatim in the book. The speech, as it was delivered, read as follows:
We have come here to-day because we like to see a man and we cheered because we know a man when we see one. Our presence here is intended as a tribute to your manliness, which the most persistent attempts of the whole world have not been able to spoil. This is, however, not the only reason for our enthusiasm over your visit. Next to a real man there is nothing we love better than a real sportsman, no matter for what side he happens to be playing, and it is a special pleasure to us to welcome here, to-day, one of the finest and most daring sportsmen of the British Isles.
I am afraid your Highness will find that all our most popular heroes are people who have either been in gaol for political crimes or in hospital for fractured bones. I must admit that the fact that your Highness has never been in gaol is a serious disqualification, which I sincerely trust your Highness will manage to get remedied before leaving the country. On the other hand, your Highness has fortunately, on several occasions, managed to get yourself into hospital and I can assure you that on that count alone your visit would give us great pleasure.
As regards our lady students, I would very much have liked to interpret their feelings also, but I am afraid their sentiments on this occasion are far too delicate for masculine interpretation, and for further information on the subject, I shall have to refer your Highness to the way they are looking at you. I trust that the mere fact that they have put me here will abundantly show just how enthusiastic they can be over good-looking young fellows with pleasant smiles.8
Markus Viljoen, famed editor of Die Huisgenoot, wrote about the speech: “After all the formal, lacklustre, rather cloying expressions of loyalty, the young student’s speech was like a fresh spring breeze in a stuffy room, and it was a topic of discussion for weeks afterwards.”
Oom Johann was not very impressed with the Prince, whom he described as follows:
The Prince, between you and me, is a rather hopeless specimen of humanity. He is extremely nervous, looks quite dissipated, and doesn’t command respect in the least. He starts a sentence, and if you look him straight in the eye, he titters and starts a brand-new sentence.
So I soon dropped the etiquette and from that point on he seemed more at ease and we had quite a good chat, about the university and about sport. He has one good trait, which is that he makes an effort to be pleasant … He evidently does his best in very trying circumstances,