William Matthew Harries
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William Matthew Harries
William Matthew Harries MLC MLA (17 July 1797 – 10 April 1865) was an influential member of both houses of the Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope. A British settler, Harries was early on involved in politics in the Cape, and he was appointed an unofficial Member of the Legislative Council (at the time a relatively powerless institution) from 1848 until 1849. He was elected to the Cape Parliament in 1858, to represent Port Elizabeth. In the 1860s, he led the "Eastern Cape Separatist League" in parliament, which fought for a separate settler colony in the Eastern Cape. In 1863, he successfully fought one of the early moves by parliamentary leader John Molteno and his allies Saul Solomon and Frank Watermeyer, to institute "responsible government" (i.e. locally elected democratic government). In the same year, Harries fought to have the country's capital and seat of government moved away from Cape Town, to a new location in the centre of the country. References

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Parliament Of The Cape Of Good Hope
The Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope functioned as the legislature of the Cape Colony, from its founding in 1853, until the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, when it was dissolved and the Parliament of South Africa was established. It consisted of the House of Assembly (the lower house) and the legislative council (the upper house). The First Parliament Prior to responsible government, the British government granted the Cape Colony a rudimentary and relatively powerless Legislative Council in 1835. The British attempt to turn the Cape into a penal colony for convicts, similar to Australia, mobilised the local population in the 1840s and threw up a generation of local leaders who believed that far-away Britain was not capable of understanding local interests and issues. This group of politicians, which included the likes of Porter, Solomon, Fairbairn, Molteno, Stockenström and Jarvis, shared not only a common belief in the importance of local self-government, ...
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Cape Parliament
The Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope functioned as the legislature of the Cape Colony, from its founding in 1853, until the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, when it was dissolved and the Parliament of South Africa was established. It consisted of the House of Assembly (the lower house) and the legislative council (the upper house). The First Parliament Prior to responsible government, the British government granted the Cape Colony a rudimentary and relatively powerless Legislative Council in 1835. The British attempt to turn the Cape into a penal colony for convicts, similar to Australia, mobilised the local population in the 1840s and threw up a generation of local leaders who believed that far-away Britain was not capable of understanding local interests and issues. This group of politicians, which included the likes of Porter, Solomon, Fairbairn, Molteno, Stockenström and Jarvis, shared not only a common belief in the importance of local self-gover ...
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Port Elizabeth
Gqeberha (), formerly Port Elizabeth and colloquially often referred to as P.E., is a major seaport and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is the seat of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa's second-largest metropolitan district by area size. It is the sixth-most populous city in South Africa and is the cultural, economic and financial centre of the Eastern Cape. The city was founded as Port Elizabeth in 1820 by Sir Rufane Donkin, who was the governor of the Cape at the time. He named it after his late wife, Elizabeth, who had died in India. The Donkin memorial in the CBD of the city bears testament to this. Port Elizabeth was established by the government of the Cape Colony when 4,000 British colonists settled in Algoa Bay to strengthen the border region between the Cape Colony and the Xhosa. It is nicknamed "The Friendly City" or "The Windy City". In 2019, the Eastern Cape Geographical Names Committee recommended ...
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Eastern Cape Separatist League
The Eastern Province Separatist League was a loose political movement of the 19th century Cape Colony. It fought not for independence, but for a separate colony in the eastern half of the Cape Colony independent from the Cape government, with a more restrictive political system and an expansionist policy eastwards against the remaining independent Xhosa states. It was crushed in the 1870s, and many of its members later moved to the new pro-imperialist, Rhodesian “progressive party”. Background For much of the 19th century, the Cape Colony was divided into two main provinces (sometimes known as “circles”) – the Western Province and the Eastern Province. (These entities did not correspond to the modern Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa). The two regions differed in their demographics and their politics. The two provinces The larger Western Province had a greater number of Afrikaans-speaking (Coloured and Cape Dutch) voters and was dominated by relat ...
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John Molteno
Sir John Charles Molteno (5 June 1814 – 1 September 1886) was a soldier, businessman, champion of responsible government and the first Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. 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. In 1841, he undertook Southern Africa's first experimental export of fruit, loading a ship with a range of fruits (necessarily dried, as no refrigeration existed yet) and sending it to Australia to test foreign markets. The experiment ended in disaster when his ship was wrecked in a storm – pushing Molteno close to bankruptcy. Disposing of the remains of his mercantile businesses, he immediately bought some land in the arid Bea ...
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Saul Solomon
Saul Solomon (25 May 1817 – 16 October 1892) was an influential liberal politician of the Cape Colony, a British colony in what is now South Africa. Solomon was an important member of the movement for responsible government and an opponent of Lord Carnarvon's Confederation scheme. Early life and background Saul Solomon was born on the island of St Helena on 25 May 1817. Although his family were St Helenan, they had close links to Cape Town. Saul spent his first years at a Jewish children's home in England, where he suffered from the malnutrition and rickets that physically affected him for the rest of his life. He then had a rudimentary formal education in South Africa before beginning work as an apprentice in a printing business. He later acquired the business and built it into the largest printing business in the country, founding the ''Cape Argus'' newspaper. He was also one of the founders of Old Mutual, today one of the largest insurance firms in South Africa. As repr ...
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Frank Watermeyer
Fredrick Stephanus Watermeyer (14 April 1828 - 28 August 1864), informally known simply as "Fred" or "Frank", was a journalist, advocate and a prominent Member of the Cape Legislative Assembly. Early life Born in Cape Town into a very educated Cape family, he was the younger brother of the great Ben Watermeyer. He was meticulously schooled as a child so that, although he was Afrikaans speaking, he was soon described as ''"one of such unmistakably English education as an old Kapenaar could possibly have."'' He was already the secretary of a public company when he was still a teenager, and at a similar time was working as an actuary and was a free-lance writer. A free and critical thinker, he also authored anonymous papers critical of the state and the position of his own religious denomination, Lutheranism. Legal career Frank Watermeyer was among the first Cape advocates to be called to the bar after a purely local examination (instead of having to go to Europe). He was a member ...
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Responsible Government
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments (the equivalent of the executive branch) in Westminster democracies are responsible to parliament rather than to the monarch, or, in a colonial context, to the imperial government, and in a republican context, to the president, either in full or in part. If the parliament is bicameral, then the government is responsible first to the parliament's lower house, which is more representative than the upper house, as it usually has more members and they are always directly elected. Responsible government of parliamentary accountability manifests itself in several ways. Ministers account to Parliament for their decisions and for the performance of their departments. This requirement to make announcements and to answer questions in Parliament means that ministers must have the priv ...
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Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest (after Johannesburg). Colloquially named the ''Mother City'', it is the largest city of the Western Cape province, and is managed by the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The other two capitals are Pretoria, the executive capital, located in Gauteng, where the Presidency is based, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital in the Free State, where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located. Cape Town is ranked as a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is home to 66% of the Western Cape's population. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place ...
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Members Of The Legislative Council Of The Cape Colony
Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in a database ** Member variable, a variable that is associated with a specific object * Limb (anatomy), an appendage of the human or animal body ** Euphemism for penis * Structural component of a truss, connected by nodes * User (computing), a person making use of a computing service, especially on the Internet * Member (geology), a component of a geological formation * Member of parliament * The Members, a British punk rock band * Meronymy, a semantic relationship in linguistics * Church membership, belonging to a local Christian congregation, a Christian denomination and the universal Church * Member, a participant in a club or learned society A learned society (; also learned academy, scholarly society, or academic association) is an ...
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Members Of The House Of Assembly Of The Cape Colony
Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in a database ** Member variable, a variable that is associated with a specific object * Limb (anatomy), an appendage of the human or animal body ** Euphemism for penis * Structural component of a truss, connected by nodes * User (computing), a person making use of a computing service, especially on the Internet * Member (geology), a component of a geological formation * Member of parliament * The Members, a British punk rock band * Meronymy, a semantic relationship in linguistics * Church membership, belonging to a local Christian congregation, a Christian denomination and the universal Church * Member, a participant in a club or learned society A learned society (; also learned academy, scholarly society, or academic association) is an ...
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19th-century South African People
The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium. The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolished in much of Europe and the Americas. The First Industrial Revolution, though it began in the late 18th century, expanding beyond its British homeland for the first time during this century, particularly remaking the economies and societies of the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Northern Italy, and the Northeastern United States. A few decades later, the Second Industrial Revolution led to ever more massive urbanization and much higher levels of productivity, profit, and prosperity, a pattern that continued into the 20th century. The Islamic gunpowder empires fell into decline and European imperialism brought much of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and almost all of Africa under colonial rule. It was also marked by the collapse of the large ...
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