Betwixt the Oceans: The Chief Immigration Officer in Cape Town, Clarence Wilfred Cousins (1905–1915)

Abstract

Drawing on the personal and official papers of an immigration officer, this article highlights his personality, social life, and the quotidian aspects of his work at the port. By placing the officer at the centre, instead of the usual tendency in South African historiography to focus on ethnic immigration histories, one secures broader insights into the administration of policy, such as the writing test (an exclusionary mechanism) and repatriation, which are often associated with state policies against Indians. While the article draws on examples of arrivals at the port from both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, arguing against a focus on only Indian Ocean traffic, it emphasises how arrivals from India played a role in shaping the immigration bureaucracy. While scholars have recently begun to see Cape Town as an important Indian Ocean port, this article points to settler society’s unease with what sea traffic from Bombay and Durban might bring and how Cape Town sought to establish a disconnect with the East.

Notes

¹ V.D. Sharma, Through Two Systems: Encounters and Experiences of an I.A.S. Officer (New Delhi, Associated Publishing House, 1982), p. 138.

² P. Krishen, A Bureaucrat’s Diary (New Delhi, Vikas Publishing House, 1977), pp. vii, x.

³ See J. Peires, ‘Nostalgia and the Native Commissioners: A Hundred Years in the Old Transkei’, Kronos, 35 (2009), pp. 242–7, for a review of the memoirs of magistrates W.C. Scully and Frank Brownlee and the more contemporary account by Dial Ndimi, a magistrate in the Transkei.

⁴ An exception would be the career of Theophilus Shepstone (see J. Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African Autonomy and Settler Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority (Pietermartizburg, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press, 2013), but he is hardly representative of the middle layer administrators of policy.

⁵ See D. Posel, The Making of Apartheid 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991); K. Breckenridge, ‘Verwoerd’s Bureau of Proof: Total Information in the Making of Apartheid’, History Workshop Journal, 59 (2005), pp. 83–106; I. Evans, Bureaucracy and Race: Native Administration in South Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997); S. Dubow, ‘Holding “A Just Balance Between White and Black”: the Native Affairs Department in South Africa c.1920–1933’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 12, 2 (1986), pp. 217–39; D. Posel, ‘Whiteness and Power in the South African Civil Service: Paradoxes of the Apartheid State’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 25, 1 (March 1999), pp. 99–119. For the Group Areas Act, see U.S. [Dhupelia-]Mesthrie, ‘Tinkering and Tampering: A Decade of the Group Areas Act (1950 to 1960)’, South African Historical Journal, 28 (1993), pp. 177–202; U.S.[Dhupelia-]Mesthrie, ‘“No Place in the World to Go To” – Control by Permit: The First Phase of the Group Areas Act in Cape Town in the 1950s’, in E. van Heyningen (ed.), Studies in the History of Cape Town, Vol. 7 (University of Cape Town, 1994), pp. 184–207. For a focus on the early years of the 20th century and the administrative controls over African labour, see K. Breckenridge, ‘Lord Milner’s Registry: The Origins of South African Exceptionalism’, unpublished seminar paper, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Durban, 2004, available at www.kznhass-history.net/files/seminars/Breckenridge2004.pdf, retrieved 16 March 2016.

⁶ C. Kros, The Seeds of Separate Development: Origins of Bantu Education (Pretoria, Unisa Press, 2010), p. xiv.

⁷ See A. MacDonald, ‘Strangers in a Strange Land: Undesirables and Border-Controls in Colonial Durban, 1897–c.1910, MA dissertation, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, 2007, and his more ambitious work, ‘Colonial Trespassers in the Making of South Africa’s International Borders, 1900 to c. 1950’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012; J. Klaaren, ‘Migrating to Citizenship: Mobility, Law, and Nationality in South Africa, 1897–1937’, PhD thesis, Yale University, 2004; J. Hyslop, ‘Oceanic Mobility and Settler-Colonial Power: Policing the Global Maritime Labour Force in Durban Harbour c.1890–1910’, Journal of Transport History, 36, 2 (2015), pp. 248–67.

⁸ See the article by Preben Kaarsholm in this issue. One of the older studies of the Protector is that by P. Warhurst, ‘Obstructing the Protector (of Indian Immigrants)’, Journal of Natal and Zulu History, 7 (1984), pp. 31–40, but this is more about the Protector’s role as intermediary between employers and employees.

⁹ P.A. Selth, ‘Political Biographies and Administrative Memoirs: Some Concluding Comments’, in T. Arklay, J. Nethercote and J. Wanna (eds), Australian Political Lives: Chronicling Political Careers and Administrative Histories (Canberra, ANU E Press, 2006), p. 111. For a focus on biography, history and careers that crossed several imperial sites, see D. Lambert and A. Lester (eds), Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006).

¹⁰ See R. Amit and N. Kriger, ‘Making Migrants “Ill-legible”: The Policies and Practices of Documentation in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Kronos, 40 (2014), pp. 269–90.

¹¹ These are to be found in the Western Cape Archives and Records Services (Cape Town) and are separated into three series: Principal Immigration Officer (PIO), for whites; Interior Regional Services (IRC 1/1), for Indians; IRC 1/2, for Chinese.

¹² See University of Cape Town Libraries (hereafter UCT), Manuscript Collection, Clarence Wilfred Cousins Papers BC 1154.

¹³ UCT, Cousins Papers BC 1154, E4, Reflections of a Nineteenth Century Immigrant 1896–1950 (Tzaneen, self-published, 1950).

¹⁴ UCT, Cousins Papers BC 1154, A4.1.3, Diary for 1913, 19 March 1913.

¹⁵ J. Evans, ‘Biography and Global History: Reflections on Examining Colonial Governance Through the Life of Edward Eyre’, in D. Deacon, P. Russell and A. Woollacott (eds), Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World (Canberra, ANU E Press, 2008), p. 25.

¹⁶ J. Nethercote, ‘Anonymous in Life, Anonymous in Death: Memoirs and Biographies of Administrators’, in Arklay, Nethercote and Wanna (eds), Australian Political Lives, p. 89.

¹⁷ U. Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘The Passenger Indian as Worker: Indian Immigrants in Cape Town in the Early Twentieth Century’, African Studies, 68,1 (April 2009), pp. 118–19.

¹⁸ M. Chanock, ‘Criminological Science and the Criminal Law on the Colonial Periphery: Perception, Fantasy, and Realities in South Africa, 1900–1930’, Law and Social Inquiry, 20, 4 (1995), p. 918.

¹⁹ See M. Lake, ‘From Mississippi to Melbourne via Natal: The Invention of the Literacy Test as a Technology of Exclusion’, in A. Curthoys and M. Lake (eds), Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective (Canberra, ANU E-Press, 2005), pp. 209–20.

²⁰ Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘The Passenger Indian as Worker’, pp. 118–19.

²¹ J. Martens, ‘A Transnational History of Immigration Restriction: Natal and New Zealand, 1897–99’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 34, 3 (2006), p. 325; also A. McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalisation of Borders (New York, Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 193–7.

²² See McKeown, Melancholy Order, pp. 195–7; S. Bhana and J.B. Brain, Setting Down Roots: Indian Migrants in South Africa, 1860–1911 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1990), p. 131.

²³ See R. Mendelsohn and M. Shain, The Jews in South Africa: An illustrated History (Johannesburg and Cape Town, Jonathan Ball, 2008), pp. 47, 57, 60.

²⁴ See U.S. [Dhupelia-]Mesthrie, ‘Reducing the Indian Population to a “Manageable Compass”: A Study of the South African Assisted Emigration Scheme of 1927’, Natalia, 15 (1985), pp. 36–56.

²⁵ D. Cammack, The Rand at War 1899–1902: The Witwatersrand and the Anglo-Boer War (London, James Currey, 1990), pp. 158, 198.

²⁶ P.S. Joshi, The Tyranny of Colour: A Study of the Indian Problem in South Africa (Durban, self- published, 1942), p. 76.

²⁷ See S. Perbedy, Selecting Immigrants: National Identity and South Africa’s Immigration Policies, 1910–2008 (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2009), pp. 52–3; for the exclusion of African Americans, see R.T. Vinson, The Americans Are Coming: Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2012), pp. 8, 27–8.

²⁸ Chanock, ‘Criminological Science’, pp. 915–16.

²⁹ S.E. Duff, ‘Saving the Child to Save the Nation: Poverty, Whiteness and Childhood in the Cape Colony’, c.1870–1895’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37, 2 (2011), pp. 229–45.

³⁰ He returned to England in 1888 but left again in 1890, and would come back permanently to England only in 1899. This family history is drawn from the family tree of William George Cousins obtained from freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com (thanks to Andrew MacDonald for alerting me to this source). See additionally the ‘Biography of William Edward Cousins’, undated, School of Oriental and African Studies Library, London (hereafter SOAS), Hardyman Papers, pp ms63 j.t., Box 52, File 54.

³¹ SOAS, Constance Cousins Papers, Box 1 Ms 380325/01/5, letters from Mabel to William Cousins, 11 February 1886,17 June 1886, and letters from Ada to William Cousins, 2 May and 11 October 1886; MS 380325/1, ‘The Life and Travels of the late Dr E.C. Cousins’, undated manuscript, Foreword by J.E. Cousins, pp. 2–5.

³² SOAS, Constance Cousins Papers, MS 380325/1, ‘Life and Travels’, p. 5.

³³ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, H4, ‘Dr Malan’s Policy for South Africa’s Mixed Population’, undated.

³⁴ I explore this further in my paper ‘The Social World of Clarence Wilfred Cousins, Chief Immigration Officer in Cape Town, 1905–1915’, paper presented at conference ‘The Private Lives of Empire: Intimate Histories of the Settler Colony, 1800–Present’, University of Sydney, Australia, 16–17 April 2015.

³⁵ Cousins left Oxford without attaining the MA, but acquired MA certification in later years, in accordance with the university policy of issuing such certificates.

³⁶ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E4, Cousins, Reflections of a Nineteenth Century Immigrant, p. 6.

³⁷ UCT, Murray Family Papers, BC 1290, B5, Hilda to Wilf, 17 December 1897.

³⁸ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A2, references from James Murray, undated; Thomas Laing, 27 June 1896, G.N Richardson, 8 May and 15 June 1896.

³⁹ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.2.1, Diary of 1896, entries 6 and 30 September.

⁴⁰ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E4, Reflections of a Nineteenth Century Immigrant, p.7.

⁴¹ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.1, Diary for 1898, 28 February, 3 March.

⁴² Ibid., 14, 15, 16, 18 February.

⁴³ For a history of the Christian Endeavour Movement, see www.worldsceunion.org/history (retrieved 9 March 2016), in particular the sections on its spread in South Africa. The first society in the Cape was started in Wellington in 1887. Society members took the Christian Endeavour pledge, ‘Trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for strength, I promise Him that I will strive to do whatever He would like to have me do’.

⁴⁴ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, B2.1, H. Basil Roper to Cousins, 10 March 1905.

⁴⁵ A.B. Hofmeyr occupied the position between 1904 and 1905 but seemed to have made little impact.

⁴⁶ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC1154, A3, letters of appointment.

⁴⁷ U. Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘False Fathers, False Sons: Immigration Officials in Cape Town, Documents and Verifying Minors from India in the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, Kronos, 40 (2014), p. 104.

⁴⁸ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.2.1, Diary for 1912, 23 January and 28 November; A4.1.3, Diary for 1913, 3 June.

⁴⁹ SOAS, Constance Cousins Papers, Box 2 ms380325/11,Wilfred to Constance, 18 July 1904.

⁵⁰ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912, 10 December.

⁵¹ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.2.1. Diary for 1911, 5 December.

⁵² UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912, 4 December.

⁵³ He reluctantly returned a motorcycle that he had been enjoying in 1912. See UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912, 28 November, 4 December.

⁵⁴ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC1154, B2.2, Cousins to Sir Thomas Watt, 30 June 1916.

⁵⁵ See Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘False Fathers and False Sons’, pp. 105–7. Without these permits, returning Indians and Chinese were liable to be given the education test.

⁵⁶ See UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.3, Diary for 1913, 14, 22 February, 3 June.

⁵⁷ Central Archives Depot, Pretoria (CAD) BNS (Interior), 1/1/595 1/129, Report of the Chief Immigration Officer (Province of the Cape of Good Hope) for the year ending 31 December 1910.

⁵⁸ See V. Safford, Immigration Problems: Personal Experiences of an Official (New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925), pp. 19–29.

⁵⁹ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E5.2, ‘The Gates of Africa: Tragedy and Comedy under the Immigration Laws, Paper read to St Andrews Guild’, 1917.

⁶⁰ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.2.1, Diary for 1909 and 1911.

⁶¹ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E5.1, ‘Tragedy and Comedy at the Gates of Africa’, lecture to the Jewish Guild in Pretoria, c.1925.

⁶² UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E5.2, ‘The Gates of Africa: Tragedy and Comedy under the Immigration Laws, Lecture to St Andrews Guild’, 1917.

⁶³ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.2.1, Diary for 1909 and 1911.

⁶⁴ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912.

⁶⁵ Cammack, The Rand at War, p. 199. She points to more aggressive actions after 1906.

⁶⁶ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E4, Reflections of a Nineteenth Century Immigrant 1896–1950, pp. 14–15.

⁶⁷ See [Dhupelia-]Mesthrie, ‘Control by Permit’ p. 194.

⁶⁸ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, B2.2, Cousins to Sir Thomas Watt, 30 June 1916.

⁶⁹ WCA, PIO 17 2148E, Note by Cousins, 9 May 1911.

⁷⁰ Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912, 1 September 1912.

⁷¹ Ibid., 8 November 1912.

⁷² WCA, PIO 21 2514E, Cousins to Secretary for the Interior, 25 November 1912.

⁷³ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.3, Diary for 1913, 19 March.

⁷⁴ WCA, PIO 15 1948E, Cousins to the CIO Pretoria, 6 October 1910.

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ I am in the process of writing up such an article. For Australia’s test, see J.C. Martens, ‘Pioneering the Dictation Test?: The Creation and Administration of Western Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act, 1897–1901’, Studies in Western Australian History, 28 (2014), pp. 47–68. This involved a dictation from an English text chosen by an officer, and he could also choose from any European language with which the immigrant was not familiar.

⁷⁷ WCA, PIO 21 2495E, File of Jacob Frankel.

⁷⁸ WCA, PIO 17 2151E, File of Harry A. Frangopoulos.

⁷⁹ WCA, PIO 16 2058E, File of David Hawkins.

⁸⁰ WCA, PIO 15 1949E, File of Motel Leib Sneig.

⁸¹ WCA, PIO 12 1658E, File of Petracco Mauro.

⁸² WCA, PIO 15 1911E, File of John Ossalini.

⁸³ WCA, PIO 8 1254E, File of Jacob Freedman.

⁸⁴ WCA, PIO 23 2682E, File of Benjamin and Wigdor Jalwesky.

⁸⁵ One of these was Sadashive Sathe. See WCA, IRC 1/1/255 5761a.

⁸⁶ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E5.1 ‘Tragedy and Comedy at the Gates of Africa’, lecture to the Jewish Guild, c.1925.

⁸⁷ WCA, PIO 24 2656E, File of Hilda Nitzsche, Note by Cousins, 24 October 1913.

⁸⁸ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.3, Diary for 1913, 25 June 1913.

⁸⁹ See, for instance, WCA, PIO 20 2344E, case of John Crawley; WCA, PIO 18 2235E, case of Mrs Ashford and children.

⁹⁰ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E5.1, ‘Tragedy and Comedy at the Gates of Africa’, lecture to the Jewish Guild in Pretoria , c.1925.

⁹¹ WCA, PIO 24 2670E, File of Louis Phillis.

⁹² WCA, PIO 24 2655E.

⁹³ WCA, PIO 23 2621E.

⁹⁴ WCA, PIO 20 2344E.

⁹⁵ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E5.1, ‘Tragedy and Comedy at the Gates of Africa’, lecture to the Jewish Guild in Pretoria , c.1925. His published memoir also devotes little attention to this side of his work. See UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E4, Reflections of a Nineteenth Century Immigrant 1896–1950.

⁹⁶ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912, entry 8 December.

⁹⁷ There were 6,600 Indians in the Cape in 1911, and 833 Chinese in 1910. See Bhana and Brain, Setting Down Roots, p. 194, and CAD, BNS 1/1/595 1/129, Report of the Chief Immigration Officer for the Cape Colony for the Year 1910.

⁹⁸ See UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912, 20 May; A4.1.3, Diary for 1913, 25 April.

⁹⁹ Dubow is quoted and explained in Duff, ‘Saving the Child’, p. 234.

¹⁰⁰ See U. Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘Split-Households: Indian Wives, Cape Town Husbands and Immigration Laws, 1900s to 1940s’, South African Historical Journal, 66, 4 (2014), pp. 642, 647, and U. Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘India–South Africa Mobilities in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: Minors, Immigration Encounters in Cape Town and Becoming South African’, in M. Rodet and E. Razy (eds), African Children’s Migrations; Key Issues and New Perspectives (London, James Currey, 2016 forthcoming).

¹⁰¹ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154 B1.3, Family Letters, 10 December 1914.

¹⁰² UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.3, Diary for 1913, 24 February.

¹⁰³ Perbedy, Selecting Immigrants, pp. 50–51.

¹⁰⁴ In 1904, they were 0.35 per cent of the total population. See G19–1905, Results of a Census of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope as on the Night of Sunday the 17th April 1904, pp. xxi, 68–9.

¹⁰⁵ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, B2.2, Cousins to Thomas Watt, 30 June 1916.

¹⁰⁶ See Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘False Fathers, False Sons’; ‘The Passenger Indian as Worker’; ‘Cat and Mouse Games: The State, Indians in the Cape and the Permit System, 1900s–1920s’, in I. About, J. Brown, G. Lonergan (eds), Identification and Registration in Transnational Perspective: People, Places and Practices (New York and London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 185–202. ‘Split-Households’; ‘Engaging with Immigration Laws and the Bureaucracy: Indian Immigration Agents, Interpreters and Reformers in Cape Town, 1902 to 1916’, unpublished paper presented to International Conference on Poetics of Law, Politics of Self, Plymouth University, UK, 5 September 2013.

¹⁰⁷ CAD, BNS, 1/1/595, 1/129, Report of the Chief Immigration Officer for the year 1910.

¹⁰⁸ See Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘The Passenger Indian as Worker’ and ‘Cat and Mouse Games’.

¹⁰⁹ SC 16-1908, Report of the Select Committee on Asiatic Grievances (Cape Town, Government Printers, 1908), p. 111.

¹¹⁰ This is more fully dealt with by me in ‘False Fathers, False Sons’.

¹¹¹ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, B1.3, Family letters, 20 February.1915.

¹¹² UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912, 7 August.

¹¹³ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.2, Diary for 1912.

¹¹⁴ CAD, BNS 1/1/595, 1/129, Report of the Chief Immigration Officer for 1910. Statistics of deportees could vary – in 1910, for instance, there were as many British as Indians deported and even more from Russia, but each year Indians constituted a significant group.

¹¹⁵ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.1.3, Diary for 1913.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., 7 February.

¹¹⁷ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, A4.2.1, Diary for 1912, 20 May.

¹¹⁸ This has been dealt with by me in ‘Engaging with the Bureaucracy’ and ‘Cat and Mouse Games’, and by A. MacDonald, ‘The Identity Thieves of the Indian Ocean: Forgery, Fraud and the Origins of South African Immigration Control, 1890s–1920s’, in K. Breckenridge and S. Szreter (eds), Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 253–76.

¹¹⁹ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, BC 1154 A4.1.2, Diary for 1912, 28 November; also B1.3, Family letters, 20 May 1916.

¹²⁰ UCT, Cousins Papers, BC 1154, E5.1, ‘Tragedy and Comedy’.

¹²¹ More recently, scholars have sought to refine the idea of connectedness. See F. Becker and J. Cabrita, ‘Introduction: Performing Citizenship and Enacting Exclusion on Africa’s Indian Ocean Littoral’, Journal of African History, 55, 2 (2014), pp. 161–71.

¹²² Andrew MacDonald has also shown that with the tightening up on entry at the South African ports after Union, Delagoa Bay became the new hotspot for illegal entry into the country. See ‘Forging the Frontiers: Travellers and Documents on the South Africa–Mozambique Border, 1890s–1940s’, Kronos, 40, 2014, pp. 154–77.

¹²³ See Nigel Worden’s article in this issue.