Notes |
- from the book “The Swiss of the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1971” by Adolphe Linder :
Louis Henri MEURANT (1812 - 1893) was born in Cape Town, the first son of a Swiss immigrant father, Louis Balthazar MEURANT (1773 Basle, Switzerland – 1826 Cape Town) who had arrived at the Cape at the end of 1809 as bandmaster of a British Regiment from Chester with his first wife Eliza HUMPHRIES ( b.1792 London ) and daughter Louise Eliza ( 1808 – 1888) .
Father Louis Balthazar MEURANT was one of the first South African composers, he wrote the music for the ballet Het Liefde-nes . He bought a printing press for 300 pounds sterling on the condition that his son Louis Henri should serve apprenticeship with him and be a partner. Only 5 months later Cape Governor Lord Charles Somerset suppressed the Commercial Advertiser edited by Thomas PRINGLE and John FAIRBAIRN and printed by GREIG , thus precipitating the famous struggle for the free press in South Africa.
Young Louis Henri showed enterprise and self assuredness from a very early age and at the mere age of 13 applied to the Cape government for permission to purchase property in Cape Town. This was refused.
Orphaned at 14 Louis Henri was adopted by Mr M.J. SMIT and his family and in 1831 married his eldest stepsister, Charlotte SMIT (1809-1888). He started his career in journalism as an apprentice with the South African Commercial Advertiser, and, after his marriage, he moved to Grahamastown.
In 1820 Robert GODLONTON and Thomas STRINGFELLOW had brought an old wooden printing press to Cape Town. It was confiscated upon arrival by authorities who feared that a press would organise frontier opinion. The press was later sent to Graaff Reinet and used for printing Government notices. It was auctioned off in 1831 and bought by Louis MEURANT and he established the first newspaper in the Cape Colony , the Graham’s Town Journal.
Louis MEURANT was a close friend of Piet Retief . After he had published Piet Retief’s Mainifesto in the Graham’sTown Journal on 2 February 1837 , he accompanied Retief from Grahamstown as far as his farm in the Winterberg.
He gave Retief a large quarto volume of Roman Dutch Law, and Retief gave MEURANT his private papers for safe-keeping. Retief left the Cape Colony with 2 wagons and accompanied by 30 other wagons had left from his farm at Post Retief by the time the authorities arrived with a warrant for his arrest .
Louis MEURANT later also published the Kaapsche Grensblad, the Cradock News en the Cradocksche Nieuwsblad. He published under various nom-de-plumes a series of letters and dialogues as commentary on current affairs. As part of his journalistic and political activities, MEURANT also wrote and published some well-known and influential "Zamenspraake" (dialogues) in The Cradock News in 1860, under the pseudonym Klaas Waarzegger ("Klaas Soothsayer"). Focussed on the split between the Eastern and Western provinces, they were entitled Zamenspraak tusschen Klaas Waarzegger en Jan Twyfelaar over het onderwerp van afscheiding tusschen de Oostelyke en Westelyjke Provincie. Collected in book form and first published in 1861, they were considered to be the first published book in Afrikaans. His nom-de-plume Klaas Waarzegger practically became the symbol of Afrikaans conciousness and played an important role in the first Afrikaans language movement .
Along with another friend, Frederick REX (the son of George REX), he was possibly a co-author (with REX and Andrew Geddes BAIN) of the satirical piece Kaatjie Kekkelbek during his sojourn in Grahamstown. The work is usually considered to be the first example of written Afrikaans certainly one of the earliest in dramatic form.
A strong advocate for the recognition of written Afrikaans, he regularly wrote contributions for his newspapers in Afrikaans . Robert GODLONTON soon joined MEURANT at the Graham’s Town Journal , became a partner in 1843 and bought out MEURANT in 1849.
MEURANT was an activist for freedom of the press, he was the author of the treatise Sixty years ago, or, Reminiscences of the struggle for the freedom of the press in South Africa and the establishment of the first newspaper in the Eastern Province (Cape Town, 1885), which is in addition a most valuable source on 19th century theatre and other cultural matters.
Because of his bilingualism, Louis MEURANT often served as translator , inter alia between the British and Dutch, e.g. at the Sand River Convention, which led to the founding of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (South African Republic) in Transvaal.
From 1853 onwards he was apparently a magistrate of several districts in the Colony, starting at Katrivier, then moving to Cradock, Fort Beaufort (1864 to 1874 ), Clanwilliam and from 1874 till his retirement in 1881, at Riversdale.
From 1884 till his death on 29 March 1893 at Riversdale he was a member of parliament for the Cape Colony.
He was buried in the Meurant Historical Cemetery, alongside his first wife, Charlotte MEURANT, in 1893.
{per Morag Lewer} [1]
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