Herbert Melville Guest (29 January 1853 – 29 June 1938) was an author, newspaper owner and politician of the

Transvaal Transvaal is a historical geographic term associated with land north of (''i.e.'', beyond) the Vaal River in South Africa. A number of states and administrative divisions have carried the name Transvaal. * South African Republic (1856–1902; af, ...

. He acquired the ''Klerksdorp Mining Record'' in 1889. He wrote several books on the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sout ...

in the area of

Klerksdorp Klerksdorp () is located in the North West Province, South Africa. Klerksdorp, the largest city in the North West Province, is located southeast of Mahikeng, the provincial capital. Klerksdorp was also the first capital of the then Transvaal Repub ...

. In 1903 he became one of the first city council members and was mayor from 1910 to 1911. One of his sons was

Ernest Lucas Guest Sir Ernest Lucas Guest (20 August 1882 – 20 September 1972) was a Rhodesian politician, lawyer and soldier. He held senior ministerial positions in the government, most notably as Minister for Air during the Second World War. Guest wa ...

, the prominent government minister of

Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked self-governing British Crown colony in southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally kn ...

Early life

Herbert Melville Guest was born on 29 January 1853 in

Kidderminster Kidderminster is a large market and historic minster town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, south-west of Birmingham and north of Worcester. Located north of the River Stour and east of the River Severn, in the 2011 census, it had ...

, England, the son of Herbert and Mary Guest."Guest, Mr Herbert Melville (meteorological observation)"
S2A3 Biographical Database of Southern African Science. In 1861, Guest's father moved the family to

Grahamstown Makhanda, also known as Grahamstown, is a town of about 140,000 people in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated about northeast of Port Elizabeth and southwest of East London, Eastern Cape, East London. Makhanda is the lar ...

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when i ...

(in modern South Africa's

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

), where he was appointed manager of the ''Frontier Times''. At the age of 13, Herbert was apprenticed to the ''Grahamstown Journal''. In 1869, diamonds were discovered on a farm belonging to the De Beers brothers in Colesberg Kopje, which was to become Kimberley, sparking off a rush. The following year, Herbert Melville moved to Kimberley with the staff of the new ''Diamond News'', published by the owners of the ''Grahamstown Journal''. After a few years he returned to Grahamstown and joined his father's printing, bookselling and stationer's business.

Career

In 1889, three years after the discovery of the gold fields, Guest moved to

in the

, acquiring ''The Representative'' and renamed it the ''Klerksdorp Mining Record'' in August of the same year. It exists today, after several name changes, as the ''Klerksdorp Rekord''. In Klerksdorp, Guest participated in the local institutions and formed the Chamber of Mines and the Chamber of Commerce. Shortly before the outbreak of the

Anglo Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sout ...

, Guest ceased publication of the newspaper and took his family away from Klerksdorp. He returned in February 1901. During the last two years of the war, he wrote several short volumes about it. He was a member of the Town Guard in charge of a post. His son

Ernest Ernest is a given name derived from Germanic languages, Germanic word ''ernst'', meaning "serious". Notable people and fictional characters with the name include: People *Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553–1595), son of Maximilian II, Holy Roman ...

spoke of a night spent on picket duty with his father, describing how some mounted Boers, appearing at dusk about 1,000 yards away, took off when his father shot at them. At the conclusion of the War in 1902, the Transvaal became a

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...

of the British Empire, under direct British Rule, as set out in the terms of the

Treaty of Vereeniging The Treaty of Vereeniging was a peace treaty, signed on 31 May 1902, that ended the Second Boer War between the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, on the one side, and the United Kingdom on the other. This settlement provided f ...

. Farmers whose property had been damaged by British troops during the War were able to claim compensation and Guest was on the Compensation Committee handling the claims. He became a city councillor in 1903 in the newly formed Klerksdorp city council. He also played a leading role in the Chamber of Commerce, the Transvaal Municipal Association and several other local institutions. In 1910, following the

South Africa Act 1909 The South Africa Act 1909 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which created the Union of South Africa from the British Cape Colony, Colony of Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal Colony. The Act also made provisions for pote ...

of the British Parliament, the Transvaal Colony was amalgamated with the

Orange River Colony The Orange River Colony was the British colony created after Britain first occupied (1900) and then annexed (1902) the independent Orange Free State in the Second Boer War. The colony ceased to exist in 1910, when it was absorbed into the Unio ...

and the

Colony of Natal The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. It was proclaimed a British colony on 4 May 1843 after the British government had annexed the Boer Republic of Natalia, and on 31 May 1910 combined with three other colonies to ...

, into the British

dominion The term ''Dominion'' is used to refer to one of several self-governing nations of the British Empire. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State at the 1926 ...

of the

Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Trans ...

, becoming the

Transvaal Province The Province of the Transvaal ( af, Provinsie van Transvaal), commonly referred to as the Transvaal (; ), was a province of South Africa from 1910 until 1994, when a new constitution subdivided it following the end of apartheid. The name "Trans ...

. Klerksdorp's first mayor was Herbert Guest from 1910 to 1911.

Personal life

On 19 April 1877, Guest and Lucy Charlotte Lucas were married at St.Bartholomew’s Church, by the Lord Bishop of Grahamstown. They had five sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Ivor (1879–1917), served as a lieutenant in the Engineers in the Boer War. He served again in the

Witwatersrand Rifles The Bambatha Rifles (formerly the Witwatersrand Rifles) is a reserve mechanised infantry regiment of the South African Army. History Origin The Witwatersrand Rifles (often familiarly known as the "Wits Rifles or the Wit Rifles") was formed by ...

in the

South-West Africa Campaign The South West Africa campaign was the conquest and occupation of German South West Africa by forces from the Union of South Africa acting on behalf of the British imperial government at the beginning of the First World War. Background The ...

of the First World War. After the regiment was disbanded at the end of the campaign, he was commissioned as a machine gun officer in the Second Cape Corps for service in

East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa: Due to the historical ...

; he was killed in action on 6 November 1917 at the

Battle of Mahiwa The Battle of Mahiwa between German and British Imperial forces was fought during the East African Campaign of World War I, when South African and Nigerian troops under Lieutenant General Jacob van Deventer engaged a column under German General ...

while checking the advance of a vastly superior enemy force. His gun crew had become casualties and he was handling the gun himself when he was killed. Harold Herman (1880–1939) joined his father in the family printing business, and was, like his father, mayor of Klerksdorp, from 1923 to 1926. He wrote a history of Klerskdorp, ''Voortrekkerdorp'', after the Voortrekkers who first settled there in 1837. It was published posthumously in 1939. Ernest Lucas (20 August 1882 – 20 September 1972), saw action in the Second Boer War and the First World War. Between the wars, he became a lawyer and was admitted to the High Court of

(present day Zimbabwe) and moved to

Bulawayo Bulawayo (, ; Ndebele: ''Bulawayo'') is the second largest city in Zimbabwe, and the largest city in the country's Matabeleland region. The city's population is disputed; the 2022 census listed it at 665,940, while the Bulawayo City Council cl ...

and then joined the firm of Coghlan and Welsh in the

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...

office. After WWI, Guest took over the firm's office, which became Coghlan, Welsh and Guest, and also served on the Salisbury Town Council, becoming Deputy Mayor. He was elected in 1928 to represent Charter in the Legislative Assembly for the

Rhodesia Party The Responsible Government Association (RGA), called the Rhodesia Party from 1923, was a political party in Southern Rhodesia. Founded in 1917, it initially advocated responsible government for Southern Rhodesia within the British Empire, as op ...

and was appointed a cabinet minister in 1938 by

Godfrey Huggins Godfrey Martin Huggins, 1st Viscount Malvern (6 July 1883 – 8 May 1971), was a Rhodesian politician and physician. He served as the fourth Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1933 to 1953 and remained in office as the first Prime Minis ...

. During the Second World War, he was Minister of Air, overseeing the Rhodesia Air Training Group. Amongst his children was

Ernest Melville Charles Guest Ernest Melville Charles Guest (May 1920 – 4 October 1943) was a Southern Rhodesian Royal Air Force pilot of the Second World War. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1942 having flown more than 1,000 operational hours. Pos ...

, the distinguished Second World War RAF pilot. Guest's two youngest sons, Cecil Marmaduke (1888–1954), known as Duke, and Oliver Basil (born 1891), served in the

Transvaal Scottish Transvaal is a historical geographic term associated with land north of (''i.e.'', beyond) the Vaal River in South Africa. A number of states and administrative divisions have carried the name Transvaal. * South African Republic (1856–1902; af, ...

in the First World War. The elder of them, Duke, was later commissioned in the South African Scottish and served in France. He was gassed and declared unfit for further service, remaining in England until the end of the war. Duke was married in England in 1918 and lived in Kent. One of his sons is the historian

Ivor Forbes Guest Ivor Forbes Guest DUniv MA FRAD (14 April 1920 – 30 March 2018) was a British historian and writer, best known for his study of ballet. He was chairman of the Royal Academy of Dance for twenty three years (1970–93) and has been a Vice-Pr ...

. Herbert Melville Guest died on 29 June 1938 and is buried in the Klerksdorp Old Cemetery.

Work

Australians and New Zealanders at Klerksdorp 24 March 1901 by Charles Hammond

Guest wrote a number of books about Klerksdorp and the Second Boer War. * * * * * * * * * * (Vol. 2 (1938) by Reginal Steward Guest, one of his brothers) *

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Guest, Herbert 1853 births 1938 deaths British emigrants to the Cape Colony South African people of British descent Mayors of places in South Africa South African writers