Van Riebeeck Society

ปป ACTIVITIES ซซ

AGM and Launches of our 2011 volume

This year we held the AGM and launch at the Slave Lodge at the top of Adderley Street ̶ very suitable, since the then newly founded South African Public Library at which Thomas Pringle was appointed as sub-Librarian in October 1822, was lodged in this building. Howard Phillips, the chairman, welcomed all present and gave his annual report which you will find under AGM Minutes.

Howard Phillips talks about The South African Letters of Thomas Pringle

After a short interval to stretch our legs, Randolph Vigne, the editor of our 2011 volume, The South African Letters of Thomas Pringle, was introduced and spoke about Thomas Pringle and his role in the South Africa of his times. Click on Randolph Vigne's launch speech for his interesting exposition. Afterwards we had the usual wonderful food and drink and got a chance to chat and renew old friendships and to join up some new members too, since Randolph was supported by many of his old friends at this function. He was kept busy signing volumes as well!

Here Randolph Vigne chats to one of his admirers

And look at the queue to get the book signed

Partying after the launch

Indefatigably, Randolph was available at the second "commercial launch", which was held at the Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street on Wednesday 9th November. Nothing daunted, he flew to Grahamstown where, on 11th November, the National English Literary Museum held an Eastern Province launch under the chairmanship of Jeremy Fogg. EP member Alan Kirkaldy managed to sell 13 copies of the book on this occasion. Randolph also spoke to a large schoolboy audience at St Andrews whilst in Grahamstown. Continuing his peregrinations, he said his piece at the Gauteng launch, hosted by the Boekehuis on 17th November under the able chairmanship of new Gauteng external council member, Nick Southey. I believe it was a great success - over seventy people crammed into the rather small and intimate premises, but a good loudspeaker system helped them to hear Randolph speak.

Book Fair 2010

As usual, we were there with a stand near one of the entrances. Twelve brave, bold and beautiful volunteer VRS members had much to do, selling volumes and recruiting new members. They were Nigel Amschwand, Tanya Barben, Margaret Kooy, Arne Schaefer, Sandy Shell, Chris Saunders, Elizabeth van Heyningen, Ian Farlam, Chris van der Merwe, Alan Morris, Howard Phillips and Cora Ovens. On the advice of last year’s volunteers, we double-manned the two afternoon shifts, which was a great success. Public attendance at the Fair was not as good as in previous years, yet our indefatigable team signed up 29 new members and sold 43 volumes. As usual, it was lovely meeting members old and new.
There isn't a Book Fair scheduled for 2011, but we'll be there as usual in 2012!

Live interview

Gillian Godsell interviewed our member Gerald Groenewald (whom some of you may have heard lecturing on our volume 36, Trials of Slavery, which he co-edited with Nigel Worden, in January 2009 at UCT’s Summer School) about the VRS on Radio Today, a Johannesburg radio station, on Tuesday 22nd September 2009. We received a copy of the interview and an edited version lasting about 20 minutes, is now available on our webpage. If you have a sound card, click on interview to listen in! Gillian has promised to interview new external Council member Nick Southey in January 2012 - we hope to have a recording of that for you as well.

Forthcoming attractions

In the pipeline for publication in future years are works in a variety of genres, from 18^th century travellers’ accounts to diaries of long-time residents of the Cape and collected letters by prominent South Africans. In the last category, for instance, are the letters of politicians like M. T. Steyn (president of the Orange Free State from 1896 to 1902) and Dr A.B. Xuma (president of the A.N.C from 1940 to 1949), of novelists like Olive Schreiner (author of The Story of an African Farm), and of doctors like James Barry (about whose sexual identity far more has been written than about his important medico-political work at the Cape between 1816 and 1828).

In the category of travellers’ accounts two forthcoming works stand out, Peter Kolb’s Caput Bonae Spei hodiernum (‘The Cape of Good Hope Today’), originally published in German in 1719, and Ensign August Frederik Beutler’s account of his pioneering expedition to the Eastern Cape in 1752, while in the category of diaries, those of Lady Anne Barnard’s sometime manservant, Samuel Eusebius Hudson, and of the Eastern Cape missionary, the Reverend James Laing (1803-1872), will add richly to our knowledge of emerging Cape society.

Despite their diversity, what all of the above have in common are the fresh perspectives they will offer on South African history from an array of contemporaries, fulfilling the VRS’s goal of enabling its members to listen to the past in its own words.