The fight for responsible government The
Cape economy was in a recession in the early 1860s when Molteno moved back to Cape Town, remarried and bought
Claremont house (At the time an estate of orchards and vineyards, not the busy suburb that it is today). Molteno had been elected to the Cape Colony's
first parliament in 1854, representing
Beaufort, the first municipality in southern Africa. However, in spite of the elected parliament, executive power remained firmly in the hands of a
British governor appointed by London. Molteno's experiences fighting in the frontier wars had given him a contempt for what he saw as the incompetence and injustice of British imperial rule in Southern Africa, as well as a lifelong belief in the need for efficient and locally-accountable democracy. From his first entry into parliament, he therefore began a long political battle to make the Cape's
Executive democratically accountable (or "responsible" as it was known), and thus to give the country a degree of independence from Britain. Over the years his
Responsible Government movement grew, and eventually dominated parliament and Cape politics. In the 1860s, autocratic British Governor
Philip Wodehouse made repeated attempts to dismantle the few elected bodies the Cape had, and assume direct control over the colony. Molteno led the fight against these measures, using his electoral control to cut off Wodehouse's budget and effectively starve his administration into compliance. After nearly a decade of struggle, the defeated Wodehouse was recalled in 1870, amid great local celebration. Finally in 1872, with the consent of the new Governor
Sir Henry Barkly, Molteno saw the decisive bill through parliament and brought the Cape Colony's government under local control for the first time. After first offering the post to
Saul Solomon and
William Porter, Molteno agreed to become the Cape Colony's first prime minister.
The Molteno Ministry He was appointed prime minister in 1872, and in turn appointed the young
John X. Merriman as his commissioner of public works (Merriman himself was later to become the 8th prime minister of the Cape and in that capacity continued many of Molteno's policies). Molteno began his ministry by re-organising the state finances. One of his government's first acts was to abolish the controversial
house tax (Act 11 of 1872). He used the new revenues from the diamond and
ostrich feather industries to pay off the Cape's accumulated debts and to invest heavily in infrastructure, including a telegraph system and an ambitious railway building programme. He also oversaw a revival in the agricultural sector, and began the construction of a vast irrigation system across the country. The economy recovered, as new ports and shipping services helped the surge in exports, resulting in reasonable budget surpluses by the end of his tenure. He led the (now prosperous) Cape colony in the
Ninth Frontier War when it broke out in 1877, and he strongly resisted regional factionalism – going to great lengths to heal the rifts between the
eastern and
western halves of the Cape and blocking attempts by his political opponents to racially segregate the armed forces. His government also founded the
University of the Cape of Good Hope, now one of the world's
mega-universities with over 200,000 students, and Victoria College (later to become
Stellenbosch University). In 1874 he established a system of government grants to build libraries in towns and villages across the country. Later known as the "
Molteno Regulations", they were an immense success and were later adopted by neighbouring countries. The Molteno Ministry was characterised by its stout opposition to imperial interference in Cape affairs, for example, quashing a bid to forcefully incorporate
Griqualand West and opposing Frere's later deployment of imperial troops against the
Xhosa. Importantly, the system of
responsible government as instituted under Molteno retained the traditional Cape system of
non-racial franchise – whereby all races could vote, quite unlike the situation in the rest of Southern Africa.
Confederation and War A change of government in London led to a pro-imperialist lobby headed by Secretary of State,
Lord Carnarvon, determined to bring all of southern Africa into the
British Empire by enforcing a confederation onto the region. This "new and impatient imperialism" was resisted by the various polities of southern Africa, including the Cape colony government, and relations between the Molteno government and the
Colonial Office deteriorated. Molteno himself argued that
"the proposals for confederation should emanate from the communities to be affected, and not be pressed upon them from outside." – and that the whole scheme was particularly badly timed. Relations between different polities of southern Africa still remained tense after the last bout of British imperial expansion, and he stressed that the forced imposition of a lop-sided confederation would cause immense instability. Molteno's government also transmitted to London its concern that any federation with the illiberal Boer republics would endanger the rights and franchise of the Cape's Black citizens; if there was to be any form of union, the Cape's
non-racialism would need to be imposed on the Boer republics, and could not be compromised. However, the Colonial Office went ahead and dismissed Barkly and appointed
Henry Bartle Frere who on 3 February 1878 dissolved the Cape government. Frere was a formidable colonial administrator but had scant experience of southern Africa and the confederation scheme soon fell apart, resulting in a series of long-running conflicts, including wars with the
Xhosa,
Pedi and
Basotho nations. After the disastrous
first British invasion of Zululand and rising discontent in the
Transvaal (that later resulted in the
First Boer War), Frere was recalled to London to face charges of misconduct in 1880.
Later political career and legacy Molteno was repeatedly asked to form a government again, however (by now in his late sixties) he declined and chose to retire from public life to spend time with his family. He directed the appointment of
Thomas Charles Scanlen instead, and his last office was a brief stint advising the Scanlen Ministry as
Colonial Secretary before he retired completely. His legacy was in the system of responsible government and parliamentary accountability that he established. Molteno did not refer to himself as a
liberal, preferring to see himself simply as a pragmatist. However, as an early proponent of
multi-racial democracy, he was very influential on the later Cape Liberal tradition. He was knighted by
Queen Victoria in 1882. (He had previously refused knighthoods three times earlier in his career.) == Later life and family ==