Sir John Gordon Sprigg GCMG PC (1830–1913) was a British administrator, politician and four-time prime minister of the Cape Colony.
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Sprigg was born in Ipswich, England, into a strongly Puritan family. His father was a pastor and his strictly conservative up-bringing had a life-long effect on Sprigg's values (until the end of his life, one of Sprigg's proudest claims was that his ancestor had been one of Oliver Cromwell's chaplains). He was educated at Ipswich School, as well as a series of other private schools. He started his career in a shipbuilder’s office, and then switched jobs to become a reporter. However, his fragile health caused him to emigrate to the Cape Colony in 1858 to recuperate, and here he decided to settle. He bought a farm in what was known at the time as British Kaffraria (near what is today East London), and began to get involved in local politics.
His newly acquired property lay near the Cape's frontier, and was therefore surrounded by a large population of non-Christian Xhosa people – whom Sprigg regarded with considerable suspicion. This led him to become very concerned about issues of frontier security, and he regularly prioritised such issues in his political career.[1]
In 1873, he became the member of the Cape Parliament for East London.
He notably ran the Commission for Frontier Defense which recommended that the defence of the Cape Colony be separately administered for the Eastern and Western halves of the Colony and (ominously) that the Cape's defences be racially segregated. Both suggestions were rejected outright by the Prime Minister at the time, John Molteno, a strong advocate of racial and regional unity in the Cape.[2]
Sprigg nonetheless joined Molteno's movement for responsible government, and in June 1875 he added his voice to those of other prominent local politicians (such as Saul Solomon, John X. Merriman and Molteno himself) in condemning as impractical Lord Carnarvon's ill-fated scheme to confederate southern Africa. Lord Carnarvon nevertheless pushed ahead and replaced the Cape governor with his own political ally Henry Bartle Frere with the intent of forcing the region into confederation, and Sprigg, along with fellow parliamentarian John Paterson, prudently re-aligned themselves as pro-federalists.[3]
As a close ally of the new governor and the British colonial authorities, Sprigg was appointed as Colonial Secretary and Prime Minister in 1878 when Frere dissolved the elected Cape government and assumed direct control of the Colony. Frere had appointed Sprigg on condition that he supported confederation, so Sprigg dutifully began making arrangements for a "Federal Conference" in June 1880. However, local Cape opposition to it was so strong and widespread that Sprigg had to give up on the idea. Elsewhere in southern Africa, Frere's attempts to enforce confederation were sparking wars with the Xhosa, the Zulu Kingdom, the Pedi and the Transvaal Republic. A consequence of this was that Sprigg was Prime Minister during the disastrous First Boer War (1880–1881). This period also saw massive spending on defence and the accumulation of a large government debt.
When war broke out with the Xhosa in 1877–78, Sprigg and Henry Bartle Frere decided to disarm all Africans in the Cape Colony. Accordingly, Sprigg passed the Peace Preservation Act in 1878 which required that all Black Africans (even Cape citizens) were to be disarmed. Against the advice of many in parliament, Sprigg went ahead with applying the act in Basutoland – at the time administered by the Cape. The resulting Basuto Gun War, together with continued conflict with the Xhosa, saw the Cape government dragged towards bankruptcy. In fact, colonial instigation and mis-management of the Basuto Gun War is one of the main reasons why Lesotho is now an independent country, and not part of modern South Africa.[4]
In spite of his good relationship with the British Colonial Office, Sprigg had little support locally, and when Frere was recalled to London to face charges of misconduct, his government fell. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by locally-born Thomas Charles Scanlen.[5]
Sprigg's subsequent terms as Prime Minister came at a time of increased tension between the colonists of British origin and the Afrikaners, tension that was sharply exacerbated by the Confederation attempt and the subsequent rise of the Afrikaner Bond. These disagreements eventually culminated in the Second Boer War. This era also saw the origin of the South African Customs Union, and a slow but steady erosion of the rights of the Cape's Black citizens.
Sprigg got an opportunity for a second term as Prime Minister when Thomas Upington resigned due to ill-health. His second term was dominated by two major issues: the voting rights of Black African citizens of the Cape, and the issue of railways. The Cape constitution guaranteed equal voting rights for citizens of all races, however Sprigg was concerned about the large and growing African population beginning to form a considerable voting block, especially in the Eastern Cape where he resided. He circumvented this with his Registration Bill in 1887, which excluded communal land-owners from voting and thus effectively disenfranchised a large proportion of the Cape's Black African citizens.
He was much less successful in his railway policy. His attempts to extend the Cape's railways to Natal and the Transvaal Republic failed due to the continued tensions remaining from the earlier confederation scheme and its resultant wars. In addition, his 1889 railway proposals were massively impractical and expensive. The costs came to 7,500,000 pounds and caused his second ministry to fall on 16 July 1890.
A few years later, in 1893, the "Logan scandal" caused the Prime Minister at the time, Cecil John Rhodes, to lose much of his parliamentary support. Sprigg made himself available to Rhodes for a cabinet position and in the power vacuum he successfully re-secured the position of treasurer. Sprigg went on to become one of the most vocal and loyal of Rhodes's supporters. When the Jameson Raid forced Rhodes to resign in 1896, Sprigg was once again the best stop-gap candidate for Premier.
The major theme of his third ministry was his increasing disagreement with the powerful Afrikaner Bond party, caused partly by his continued political assistance to Rhodes. He lost a vote of no confidence that was initiated by William Philip Schreiner in May 1898, but fought to keep his position through the resultant general election, which he lost after an acrimonious campaign; his ministry finally fell to a second motion of no confidence later in the year. Schreiner succeeded him as Premier, just in time to bear the brunt of the crisis of the Second Anglo-Boer War.[6]
Schreiner was forced to resign in June 1900 because of his anti-war stance. and Sprigg, who was seen in London as an acceptably pro-imperialist candidate, unlike Molteno, Schreiner and Merriman, with their perceived pro-Boer sympathies, became prime minister for the fourth and last time
Sprigg's final ministry coincided with the Second Boer War (1899–1902), during which the supplying of the army in the field caused a massive artificial inflation of trade in Southern Africa. This, together with his policy of heavy expenditure, severely damaged the finances of the Cape Colony.[7]
However, in his final term in office, Sprigg distinguished himself more than anything else through his work on the suspension issue. He had begun his fourth term by closely toeing the line of the Colonial Office in London, but this became increasingly difficult, as it brought him into conflict with the largest parties in the Cape parliament. His refusal to launch an inquiry into the harsh sentences passed during martial law lost him further support, which he needed if he was to appease the Colonial Office, but he finally took a stand when Alfred Milner ordered him to suspend the Cape constitution, supposedly as a preparation for a future confederation.
Although initially uncertain on the issue, Sprigg eventually opposed the suspension proposal, speaking against it in London and arguably doing more than anyone else to protect the Cape's constitution and to defeat Milner's proposal. Meanwhile, the delicate balancing act that Sprigg needed to perform in order to survive politically became ever more precarious, until a string of defeats in parliament and in the 1904 election toppled his government for the final time. However, his work against suspension came later to be regarded as his greatest deed as a statesman and his strongest claim to political recognition.[8]
Although Sprigg served as prime minister four times— from 1878 to 1881, 1886 to 1890, 1896 to 1898 and 1900 to 1904—he was always appointed, never elected democratically. He was appointed as a Privy Counsellor of the United Kingdom in 1897.
The Dictionary of South African Biography (Vol.II) described him thus:
"Small, determined and conceited, Sprigg well deserved Merriman's appellation of "The little Master". He coveted power and clung to it tenaciously, being content to change his colleagues, as long as he was left undisturbed in office. Moreover, his tremendous patience and mastery of parliamentary procedure gave him great advantages over more inspired but less diligent politicians. On the whole, he was a man of integrity and has a strong claim to be placed high in the ranks of South African statesmen."[9]
Sprigg retired from politics after 1904, although he reappeared briefly in 1908. In his later life he received an impressive array of awards and honours for his work for the British government, such as KCMG and GCMG, as well as honorary doctorates from Oxford and Edinburgh Universities.
He had married Ellen Fleischer in 1862, and had three daughters and a son. He died at his home in Wynberg, Cape Town on 4 February 1913, and was buried at St. Peter's Cemetery, Mowbray.
Gordonia in the Northern Cape was named in his honour.
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| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir John Molteno |
Prime Minister of Cape Colony 1878–1881 |
Succeeded by Thomas Charles Scanlen |
| Preceded by Thomas Upington |
Prime Minister of Cape Colony 1886–1890 |
Succeeded by Cecil Rhodes |
| Preceded by Cecil Rhodes |
Prime Minister of Cape Colony 1896–1898 |
Succeeded by William Philip Schreiner |
| Preceded by William Philip Schreiner |
Prime Minister of Cape Colony 1900–1904 |
Succeeded by Leander Starr Jameson |