John Charles Molteno

Sir John Charles Molteno KCMG (5 June 1814 – 1 September 1886) was a soldier, businessman, champion of responsible government and the first Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.^[1]

Early life

Born in London into a large Anglo-Italian family, Molteno emigrated to the Cape in 1831 at the age of 17, where he found work as an assistant to the public librarian in Cape Town. At the age of 23 he founded his first company, Molteno & Co., a trading company that exported wine, wool and aloes to Mauritius and the West Indies, and opened branches around the Cape. Later, disposing of his mercantile businesses, he bought several farms in the arid Beaufort area and successfully introduced Saxon Merino sheep, creating the extensive Nelspoort Estate.^[2][3] Among his other business ventures, he also founded the region's first bank, Alport & Co. – in Beaufort West.

After his first wife Maria died in childbirth (along with their child), he left for the frontier to fight in the 1846 Amatola War.

Political career

The Cape economy was in a recession in the early 1860s when Molteno remarried, moved back to Cape Town and bought Claremont house (At the time an estate of orchards and vineyards, not the busy suburb that it is today).

Molteno had been elected as member of the Cape Colony's legislative assembly for Beaufort West in 1854 and had been using his position to push for responsible self-government for the Cape. His experiences fighting in the frontier wars had given him a contempt for what he saw as the incompetence of colonial rule in Southern Africa and a lifelong belief in the need for efficient local government. When the new governor, Sir Henry Barkly was sent from London with a mandate to implement self government for the Cape, Molteno saw the bill through parliament and became the Cape Colony's first Prime Minister.^[4]

He was appointed Prime Minister in 1872, and in turn appointed the young John X. Merriman as his commissioner of public works (Merriman himself was later to become the 8th Prime Minister of the Cape and in that capacity continued many of Molteno's policies).

Molteno began his ministry by re-organising the state finances. He used the new revenues from the diamond and ostrich feather industries to pay off the Cape's accumulated debts and to invest heavily in infrastructure, including a telegraph system and an ambitious railway building programme. He also oversaw a revival in the agricultural sector, and began the construction of a vast irrigation system across the country. The economy recovered as exports climbed, resulting in reasonable budget surpluses by the end of his tenure. He led the (now prosperous) Cape colony in the Ninth Frontier War when it broke out in 1877, and he strongly resisted regional factionalism – going to great lengths to heal the rifts between the eastern and western halves of the Cape and blocking attempts by his political opponents to racially segregate the armed forces.
His government also founded the University of the Cape of Good Hope, now one of the world's mega-universities with over 200,000 students, and Victoria College (later to become Stellenbosch University). The Molteno Ministry was characterised by its stout opposition to imperial interference in Cape affairs, for example, quashing a bid to forcefully incorporate Griqualand West and opposing Frere's later deployment of imperial troops against the Xhosa.^[4]

Importantly, the system of responsible government as instituted under Molteno retained the traditional Cape system of non-racial franchise – whereby all races could vote, quite unlike the situation in the rest of Southern Africa.

A change of government in London led to a pro-imperialist lobby headed by Secretary of State, Lord Carnarvon, determined to enforce a confederation on southern Africa. This was resisted by the Cape colony government and relations between the Cape Ministry and the Colonial Office deteriorated. Molteno himself argued that such an initiative ought to come from South African authorities – not from the London Colonial Office – and that it was badly timed. However, the Colonial Office dismissed governor Henry Barkly and appointed Sir Henry Bartle Frere who on 3 February 1878 dissolved the Cape government. Frere was a formidable administrator of the British Empire but had scant experience of Cape government and the confederation scheme soon fell apart leaving a trail of wars across Southern Africa. After the disastrous invasion of Zululand and rising discontent in the Transvaal (that later exploded as the First Boer War), Frere was recalled to London in 1880 to face charges of misconduct.

Molteno was repeatedly asked to take office again, however (by now in his late sixties) he declined and instead retired from public life to spend time with his family. His last office was a brief stint advising the Scanlen Ministry as Colonial Secretary before he retired completely. His legacy was in the system of responsible government and parliamentary accountability that he helped to establish.

He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1882.

Family

Molteno was married three times and had a total of nineteen children, founding a large and influential South African family. His oldest daughter Elizabeth Maria was an ally and friend of Gandhi and Emily Hobhouse, as well as a prominent early activist for women's rights.^[5][6] Three of his sons (Percy Molteno, James Molteno and John Molteno II) later entered parliament, while two became important landowners in Elgin and one was an Admiral who fought in the Battle of Jutland – the largest naval engagement of the First World War.

Although born and raised a Catholic, Molteno was tight-lipped on the subject of his religious beliefs (Unusually so for a man known to be frank and direct). According to his son and biographer, he disliked denominations and was a freethinker.^[7]

The "Lion of Beaufort" died on 1 September 1886 and was interred at St Saviour's in Claremont, Cape Town.

The town of Molteno, in the Stormberg Mountains of South Africa, is named after him.^[8]

See also

• Parliament of South Africa
• Union of South Africa
• Henry Bartle Frere
• Elizabeth Maria Molteno
• Percy Alport Molteno
• Sir James Tennant Molteno
• Donald Barkly Molteno
• Molteno (disambiguation)
• John Gordon Sprigg
• Thomas Charles Scanlen
• John X. Merriman
• History of Cape Colony from 1870 to 1899

References

Further reading

• Dictionary of National Biography
• P. A. Molteno: The life and times of Sir John Charles Molteno, K. C. M. G., First Premier of Cape Colony, Comprising a History of Representative Institutions and Responsible Government at the Cape. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1900
• Phillida Brooke Simons: Apples of the sun : being an account of the lives, vision and achievements of the Molteno brothers. Vlaeberg: Fernwood Press, 1999. ISBN 1-874950-45-8
• R. Kent Rasmussen: Dictionary of African historical biography. University of California Press, 1989. ISBN 0520066111
• Joseph McCabe: A Biographical Dictionary Of Modern Rationalists. London: Watts & Co, 1920. ISBN 1110365993

External links