89th AGM OF VRS, 4 NOVEMBER 2008: CHAIRMAN’S REPORT FOR 2008

Let me start this chairman’s report with a riddle to which there are two answers:

What do Nelson Mandela and the VRS have in common?

Answer 1: Both turned 90 this year.

Answer 2: Both have ‘booked’ their place in history.

But that is where the similarity ends, for unlike Madiba, the VRS is not in its twilight years.

Indeed, it has been a year of growth and innovation for the VRS. Our total membership today stands at 1156, a net gain of 69 over last year’s figure, and this despite deaths and resignations. In the slightly longer view, this means that our membership has grown by 218 in the last 5 years.

To no small degree these gains since 2007 have been the result of a hugely successful display, sell and recruit stall at the CT International Book Fair in June this year (where we signed up 33 new members and sold 75 volumes), of our re-vamped, bilingual website, of our entering into Google’s Book Partner Programme (which makes enticing excerpts of our first 80 volumes available on-line, with an invitation to the reader to buy the whole book from us), of our having a table at the Bicentenary of the 1808 Slave Rising conference last month, of continuing to dangle cut-price membership to students when we present our annual VRS book prizes to university history departments and of enthusiastic word-of-mouth advocacy by our members. To all those volunteers who helped/drove these initiatives, a sincere word of thanks, in particular to:

The book pedlars and new-member recruiters at the CT International Book Fair and the Slave Rising Bicentenary conference – Nigel Amschwand, Tanya Barben, Harriet Clift, Anton Ehlers, Ian Farlam, Bill Nasson, Suzie Newton-King, Cora Ovens, Tracey Randle, Arne Schaefer, Sandy Shell and Elizabeth van Heyningen.

The website re-vampers and translators – Cora Ovens, Elizabeth van Heyningen, Chris vd Merwe and Con de Wet. (If you look at the Afrikaans website you will see what a mighty and fine job they have done, practically producing a VRS volume-length text in the process. This raises a challenge to our isiXhosa-speaking members to do the same and so turn our bilingual website into a trilingual one).

These successful initiatives we plan to carry forward in the coming year, with displays at the Slavery conference in Stellenbosch on 1 December and at the SA Historical Society conference in Pretoria in June 2009. Adding to these will be an innovation in January 2009, when, thanks to a bright idea by Alan Morris and Elizabeth van Heyningen, five editors of past VRS volumes will be presenting a course at UCT’s Summer School, called ‘Lost Voices: South Africa’s history through the words of its people’. Each speaker will lecture on the work that s/he edited or co-edited for the VRS.

If any members have other good suggestions on how to recruit new members and sell volumes, please do share these with us. Also, if you have comments or suggestions on our efforts to date (especially the CT International Book Fair), please do let us know.

In our 90^th year we also sold a number of back volumes by offering a special deal on the four volumes of Merriman letters (remember that Merriman was our founding chairman) and by arranging a visit to an exhibition of Le Vaillant watercolours at the Library of Parliament.

Talking of Le Vaillant, our 2007 volume of his Journey into the Interior of Africa has attracted 3 very favourable reviews to date, which entirely accord with our assessment of its quality and are a source of great satisfaction to us. Copies of these reviews are available for members to peruse. One, in the Cape Times, is fulsome enough to make even the editors blush, while its equivalent in Die Burger speaks equally highly of its

uitgebreide, deeglike inleiding, en fyn nagevorste annotasies van die teks. Só word ’n kosbare stuk Africana weer vir die breë publiek beskikbaar gestel (DB 23.3.2008)

If Le Vaillant presents an outsider’s sympathetic view of the African experience on the Eastern Frontier (or the Western Frontier when looked at from the Xhosa perspective), this year’s volume complements that by presenting an insider’s view of the same experience a century later. In best VRS tradition, each gives voice to the ‘lost voices’ of the Summer School course’s title.

This Eastern Cape focus of our 2007 and 2008 volumes has prompted us to experiment with having a second set of book launches of our 2008 volume, to be held in the Eastern Cape later this month. Accordingly, Dr Nyamende will be launching the volume in Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort (where Wauchope was minister from 1892 to 1907), probably in the week of 24 November. Thanks for organising this go to Sandy Shell. However, Sandy would not be Sandy and the VRS Council not the VRS Council if they had only book launches in mind. The Council sees these launches as wonderful opportunities to sell current and back volumes and to recruit new members, and Sandy will be taking the lead in this while Abner Nyamende softens the audience up with his talk on the Wauchope volume. Next year I will report back to you if this plan for an offensive on two flanks worked or not.

Looking further down the line to our future volumes, in the pipeline are the letters of Alan Paton, the correspondence between Patrick Duncan and Lady Selborne, the writings of Dr AB Xuma (president of the ANC from 1940-1949), the letters of Thomas Pringle, the letters of President MT Steyn of the OFS, the Cape letters of Dr James Barry, the journals of the Rev. James Laing (a missionary in the Eastern Cape in the 1830s and 1840s) and the second volume of Le Vaillant’s Journey into the Interior of Africa. There is a rich array of material coming members’ way over the next decade and I hope that you will spread the word so as to entice friends into becoming members or at least purchasing copies as presents for Christmas or special occasions. Or why not take out membership for a grandchild as gift which will last them a lifetime. Our next milestone is 1200 members, a figure which the VRS last boasted in 1995.

If we achieve this target in 2009, it will in no small measure be thanks to your enthusiasm, to Council’s zeal and to the energy, imagination and efficiency of our office team, the indefatigable and always ready-to-pitch-in Cora Ovens, and her lady Friday, Doreen Ovendale, who every Friday drives in from Simonstown to act as dispatcher-in-chief and clerk-of-works at our office in Queen Victoria Street. To these two stalwarts go the VRS’s profound gratitude. Doreen, you give voluntary work a good name and, as a mark of our sincere appreciation, to match this, we would like to give you this bottle of wine, also with a good name.

To my zealous Council members – who include two new members who were co-opted onto Council this year, Dr Anton Ehlers of Stellenbosch University and Ms Tracey Randle of the Museum van de Kaab at Franschoek – let me express an equal measure of thanks for ideas, enthusiasm and support. It is exhilarating to have ideas bounced back by them with interest (double meaning intended). They represent a creative combination of knowledge, wisdom, bright ideas and solid good sense. They have been eager and willing to take on the tasks I have requested of them. Thank you fellow-Councillors. These attributes are well (but not exclusively) epitomized in my Exco members, Elizabeth van Heyningen, Piet Westra, Ian Farlam, Sandy Shell and Chris vd Merwe. As vice-chair, Elizabeth has been a more than willing source of support and initiative, taking over responsibilities when my plate was overfull; as treasurer Piet has handled our financial affairs shrewdly and lucratively – there is no truth in the rumour that the VRS is planning to deploy him to the Treasury to replace Trevor Manuel.

On that re-assuring note, amidst much in 2008 which has been anything but concerting (opposite of ‘disconcerting’), I conclude my annual report. Getting to 1200 members beckons.

Howard Phillips.

28 October 2008.