24th Alan Paton Lecture 2017
Limitations on Liberalism: A Tale of Three Schreiners, was the title of the 24th Alan Paton Lecture presented by respected author and researcher Dr Graham Dominy on UKZN’s Pietermaritzburg Campus.The Lecture, an annual event organised by the Alan Paton Centre and Struggle Archives (APC) to celebrate Paton’s literary and political legacy, is a platform to discuss topics he was most involved in during his lifetime. These topics include liberalism, the struggle against apartheid, prison reform for juvenile offenders, the South African political situation as well as literary, educational, human rights, and environmental issues.In his lecture, Dominy described liberalism in South Africa, its strengths, its weaknesses and its limitations. He did this by examining specific aspects of the careers of three members of the Schreiner family who played a significant role in the evolution of South African liberalism, its defence against apartheid assaults, and eventually its role in setting foundations for its resurrection in the new South Africa.The three Schreiners are – WP Schreiner, OD Schreiner and GDL Schreiner, (grandfather, father and son). Dominy said ‘for over three generations, the Schreiner family fought both strands of liberalism: structural and human’. William Philip (WP) Schreiner (1857-1919), was the son of a German missionary, Gottlob Schreiner and his English wife, Rebecca Lyndall. There were many siblings, the most prominent of whom was his sister, novelist Olive Schreiner, who wrote The Story of an African Farm. Oliver Deneys (OD) Schreiner (1890-1980) was the son of WP Schreiner and witnessed his father’s political progress to liberalism. OD Schreiner was described by Ellison Kahn as ‘the greatest Chief Justice that South Africa never had’. Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, of the Constitutional Court, when delivering the annual Oliver Schreiner Memorial Lecture in 2008, said he was fascinated by ‘the steadfast stance that Oliver Schreiner took in the Trilogy Cases that gave rise to the constitutional crisis in the mid-1950s’. George Deneys Lyndall (GDL) Schreiner (1923-2008) was the second son and youngest child of OD Schreiner. He was born in Johannesburg in 1923 and matriculated at the age of 15. In 1952, he completed a PhD in Organic Chemistry and moved with his wife Else and two sons to the United States where he took up a visiting professorship at the Pennsylvania State College. He returned to South Africa in 1953 and was one of the founding members of the Liberal Party of South Africa. The public faces of the Liberal Party were parliamentarians such as Margaret Ballinger and Edgar Brookes and, of course Alan Paton himself. According to Dominy, the party was resolutely opposed to apartheid, but faced the same dilemma that the Progressive Party was to face a little later: to stand completely on principle for what was still called one-man-one-vote and risk irrelevance; or to compromise in the hope of attracting wavering white voters.Deneys Schreiner took up a post as professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the then University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg (UNP) in 1959 and almost immediately began his involvement with local liberal politics. He became Vice-Principal of UNP in 1976 and began organising an academic conference on Constitutional Models and Constitutional Change in South Africa.Dominy concluded his lecture by saying that ‘from the 1890s to the 1990s the Schreiners exercised a liberal influence on South Africa.‘We do need to look at the fact that one of the limitations on their liberalism was the elitism inherent in the philosophy. Wonderful though the liberal values in our constitution may be, we need to defend them. The limitation of the constitution is that it does not live on paper, it needs active citizen engagement to defend it. We have the example of three generations of Schreiners and, indeed, the current generation to inspire us.’• Dr Graham Dominy started his career as an Archivist at the Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, completing his MA at the University in Cork, Ireland, and his PhD at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. In 2001 he was appointed National Archivist of South Africa taking on project oversight responsibility for the SA-Mali Project: Timbuktu Manuscripts. He also carried out a survey of archives buildings both here and various other countries. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Helen Suzman Foundation, a Research Fellow in the History Department of UNISA and an Honorary Research Associate at the Public Affairs Research Institute. He is also a member of the Human Rights Working Group of the International Council for Archives. His book, Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontiers: Fort Napier and the British Imperial Garrison was published by University of Illinois Press in 2016. He has also edited the learned journal of the Natal Society, Natalia, and is author of more than 50 academic and professional papers and articles. Currently he is writing a biography of Deneys Schreiner, former Vice Principal of the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg.
