Friendship and Union - Lavin

Number 41 of the second Van Riebeeck series.  2010 first edition hardcover with dust jacket in new condition with 710 pages. R50 postage in SA.

 

This volume, published a century after Union in 1910, tells the story of the first decades of the new state. The narrative unfolds through letters exchanged weekly by two interested commentators: Scottish-born Patrick Duncan, who was initially a member of Milner’s famous ‘Kindergarten’ of young British civil servants, and who became a respected politician in the new Union. His career culminated as South Africa’s first local Governor-General. He corresponded for thirty-seven years with Maud, Lady Selborne, who was married to Milner’s successor. A feisty feminist and a fascinating character from a patrician background, she developed a lifelong friendship with Duncan, round their shared preoccupation with South Africa. The letters support the view that the first constitution was deeply flawed, although in 1910 the ‘new South Africa’ seemed almost miraculous. Bitter enemies agreed to start afresh and painfully negotiated a new constitution, using the finest international models; a political leadership emerged preaching reconciliation; change had to be accepted and worked at every level; new symbols of nationhood were painfully evolved. Almost at once the legitimacy of the state was challenged in the strikes of 1913 and 1922 and the rebellion of 1914. The letters help to show how, by 1943, South Africa had emerged as an independent nation within the Commonwealth alliance