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Jacobus Nicolaas Boshoff (Kogmanskloof, Montagu, Cape Colony 31 January 1808 – Joubertsvlei, Pietermaritzburg, Natal 21 April 1881), also known as Jacobus Nicolaas Boshof, was a South African (Boer) politician and statesman, member of the Voortrekker movement, and the second state president of the Orange Free State, in office from 1855 to 1859.

Family
Boshoff was a member of a Huguenot family from the Cape Colony, originally bearing the surname Bossau. He was the eldest child of five sons and two daughters born to Jacobus Nicolaas Boshoff (1784-1844) and Aletta Helena Joubert (1788-1865). Boshoff's great grandfather was Henri Guillaume Bossau, a locksmith from Bayonne in France. Bossau came to South Africa in the service of the Dutch East India Company in 1741. Soon after his arrival Bossau changed his name to Boshoff, which sounded more Dutch, and this spelling became the official spelling of the name. However, during parts of his life Jacobus Nicolaas Boshoff signed his name as Boshof.

Boshoff married twice, first in Graaff-Reinet on 3 November 1827 to Adriana Petronella Gertruida Van Aswegen (Sneeuberg, 8 July 1811 – Joubertsvlei, 16 December 1878). The couple had three sons and eight daughters. Their eldest son, Jacobus Nicolaas Boshof, became treasurer general of the South African Republic. After the death of his first wife Boshoff remarried in Greytown on 26 May 1880 to Louisa van den Berg née Perry, a widow from Bethulie.

Early career
Boshoff went to school in Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet. In the latter place his teacher was the Scottish educationalist and minister William Robertson. After finishing school at age sixteen, Boshoff was appointed a clerk in the office of the civil commissioner of Graaf-Reinet. Here he would remain for fourteen years, eventually attaining the position of head clerk and justice of the peace. One of his superiors in Graaff-Reinet was Andries Stockenström, landdrost of Graaf-Reinet until 1828.

In 1838, during a period of leave, Boshoff took the opportunity to travel to Natal and visit the Voortrekker settlements there. He made the trip together with his uncle Gideon Joubert, a military officer who was charged to accompany freed slaves from the Voortrekkers on their return to the Cape Colony. At the time, the Voortrekker movement in Natal went through a period of administrative confusion. Their leader, Gerrit Maritz, was seriously ill, and there were few men experienced enough to replace him.

Boshoff, as a young but highly experienced administrator, was immediately recruited to assist in the formation of the state that was to become the Natalia Republic. He drafted a set of instructions for civil officials and acted as chairman of the constituant Volksraad meeting of 12 June 1838. The burghers admired his skills so much that they elected Boshoff president of the Volksraad the next day. However, Boshoff refused the appointment and returned to Graaff-Reinet to take up his position as head clerk again.

Once back in Graaff-Reinet Boshoff ran into trouble with his superior, the lieutenant governor of the Eastern Province, Andries Stockenström, who sacked him. The formal reason for his dismissal was that he had overstayed his leave without permission. However, the fact that Boshoff – as a civil servant – had left the colony without permission, sympathised with the Voortrekkers, and had written positively about them in several articles in the Grahamstown Journal did play a role. An appeal to the governor of the Cape Colony was to no avail, and after fourteen years of loyal service to the State Boshoff had to make a completely new start. In terms of opportunities it was clear that the obvious choice was to join the Voortrekkers in Natal. This decision was made without much hesitation and Boshoff and his family moved to Natal in the beginning of 1839.

Government official and politician in Natal
In defiance to the actions of the Cape Colony government and its position towards the Voortrekkers Boshoff published an authoritative and detailed historical account about the underlying causes and reasons for the Great Trek, in the form of three letters to the editor of the Grahamstown Journal. This publication and his contributions to the establishment of the Natalia Republic made Boshoff a leading figure in the state-building phase of the Voortrekker movement.

Little is known about Boshoff's whereabouts and activities in the next two years. Around the period of his arrival, and in the wake of the Battle of Blood River (16 December 1838), in which a Boer force under commandant Andries Pretorius decisively defeated a Zulu army, the Voortrekkers established the independent Natalia Republic with its capital at Pietermaritzburg. Boshoff played his part in the formation of the state apparatus, but only appeared in the public eye again in January 1841, as member of an official committee of the Volksraad, formed to discuss the political situation in Natal with Sir George Napier, the governor of the Cape Colony.

Immediately afterwards Boshoff became a member of the Volksraad himself, and was appointed Landdrost of Pietermaritzburg, an office he would hold from 1 February 1841 to 1 November 1842. At times he acted as president of the Volksraad as well. In this period relations between the Boers and the British in Natal deteriorated. The British occupied Port Natal refused the Boer claims to independence, threatening to annex Natal completely. Boshoff was then charged to draft a protest manifesto, which was signed at Pietermaritzburg on 21 February 1842 and was later regarded as the "official defense of the Voortrekkers". It made Boshoff, who co-signed the document, the official spokesman of the Voortrekker cause, and established his reputation with the British.

In May and June 1842, Boer and British forces clashed, culminating in the Battle of Congella and the siege of Port Natal, whereby the Boer army, after initial successes, had to admit defeat. In June 1842, Boshoff, as president of the Volksraad, negotiated a peace treaty and accepted the British sovereignty in view of a state of political anarchy and internecine strife among different Boer factions. In the eyes of many of his countrymen it made him a traitor. Boshoff remained in office as landdrost and did his best to keep the peace in the following months. Natal was proclaimed a British Crown Colony on 4 May 1843. Many Natal Boers were still strongly opposed to British rule, and they were supported by their kinsmen from the Boer republics of Winburg and Potchefstroom across the Drakensberg mountains. Plans were made to murder Pretorius, Boshof and other leaders, who were now convinced that the only chance of ending the state of complete anarchy into which the country had fallen was by accepting British sovereignty. On 8 August 1843 the Volksraad of Natal unanimously agreed to the terms of the annexation. Those who did not acknowledge British rule trekked once more over the mountains into the territories that were to become the Orange Free State and the South African Republic. By the end of 1843 Natal counted not more than 500 Boer families.

Boshoff continued his career in Natal, although between 1843 and 1845 he did not hold an official position. In 1845 he became a member of the Volksraad again, in which position he continued to try to reconcile the Voortrekkers with British government. On the strength of these effots, the British appointed him registrar and master of the High Court at Pietermaritzburg, followed by an appointment as resident magistrate in the Klip River District in 1847 and in Pietermaritzburg in 1850. In the same period he was a member of the Municipal Council and the Land Commission of Pietermaritzburg and responsible for drafting the first municipal regulations.

State president of the Orange Free State
His balanced and just approach towards administrative and judicial matters made Boshoff well respected among both Boer and British inhabitants of Natal, even among those Boers who in the course of time still decided to leave Natal and trekked to the Orange River Sovereignty (especially the last large group that left in 1847-1848). When the Orange River Sovereignty gained independence from the British as Orange Free State in 1854, Boshoff was invited to stand in the election for the office of state president. However, he lost the election, receiving only votes, and J.P. Hoffman became the first state president.

Despite this disappointing result, the Volksraad of the Orange Free State decided that one would like to benefit from Boshoff's experience one way or the other. In September 1854 the Volksraad therefore decided to invite Boshoff for the first vacant post of landdrost. Before a vacancy occurred President Hoffman had to resign, however, and the Volksraad unanimously nominated Boshoff as candidate for the presidency. This time he won the election, with a clear-cut result of 1,188 votes against the chairman of the Presidential Executive Commission J.J. Venter (180 votes) and A. Du Toit from Beaufort. In August 1855 Boshoff was inaugurated in Bloemfontein as second state president of the Orange Free State.

Boshoff was faced with an uphill task of securing the survival of a politically shaky and economically weak republic. Less than two years old, the Orange Free State was faced with numerous threats coming from both inside and outside the state. The Bloemfontein Convention of 1854 had secured the independence of the state and its relationship with the British government in Cape Town. The relationship with the Basotho polities on the eastern border was not regulated, and the British had left the defence of that border "firmly" in the hands of the new state. However, the government of the Orange Free State had neither the financial nor the military means to defend its borders effectively. On top of this the population was undecided about the position of the new state vis-a-vis its other neighbours. To the north, the government of the South African Republic pushed for some sort of federation between the two Boer republics, which had an unsettling effect on internal relations. The white population of the Orange Free State was very much divided about the idea of independence. In the north of the state strong sentiments existed for federation with the South African Republic. English speaking burghers, but also some of the Afrikaners, were in favour of inclusion in the Cape Colony. Obviously, the government of the Cape Colony was not enthusiastic about this idea, having left the territory only a few years earlier. Governor sir George Grey made the position of the Cape Colony very clear and in addition assisted the Orange Free State with the acquisition of a Great Seal and funded the foundation of the state's first secondary school, later to become Grey College. Nevertheless, Boshoff was caught in the middle of the political debate and was unable to react effectively.

During his term of office Boshoff laid the foundation stone of Grey College in Bloemfontein on 13 October 1856, named after Sir George Grey, governor of the Cape Colony and high commissioner for South Africa.

Politics in the Orange Free State were still rather volatile and personal in the 1850s and there were conflicts regularly between the Volksraad and the state president. In the process heavy political decisions were often made light-heartedly, and as easily reversed. On 25 February 1858 Boshoff handed in his resignation effective 15 March 1858 over a dispute about the order of the meetings of the Volksraad. The Volksraad accepted the resignation, but also showed its displeasure about it. Eventually Boshoff withdrew his resignation after some discussions, but this in turn effected the resignation of several Volksraad members, among whom the chairman. In town sentiments ran high as well, mainly in support of Boshoff, with people shooting in the air, and throwing "turpentine balls".

Early in 1858 tensions rose on the border with Basotho territory and war seemed inevitable. As the state finances were in dire straits at the time, Boshoff had great difficulty in organising the defense and buying arms. On the purchase of fifty rifles at £6 a piece he had to request an delay in payment of six months. Either assistance from the Transvaal or intervention from the Cape Colony seemd inevitable. The government of the Orange Free State asked Governor Sir Grey to intermediate between the Orange Free State and the Basotho. This expired in August and September 1858, resulting in the Treaty of Aliwal North on 29 September 1858. In it, the Basotho and Orange Free State jurisdictions were for the first time clearly demarcated, as were several legal provisions. In the meantime, a movement had developed that aspired to a union or amalgamation of the Orange Free State with the South African Republic. In November 1858 Boshoff in turn made clear that he wanted to go on leave to Natal for several months. Eventually he would leave Bloemfontein in February 1859, tired of the burden of his high office. The peace treaty with the Basothos did not put an end to the frontier skirmishes. Closer co-operation with the Cape Colony had been ruled out by the British government. And last but not least, the supporters of a union with the South African Republic now forcefully pushed for a personal union with Marthinus Wessel Pretorius as president of both Boer republics. Boshoff did not return from his leave, but handed in his final resignation from Natal in June 1859.

In 1860 Pretorius was elected as his successor and the two Boer republics were then briefly united under one head of state with a dual mandate. The experiment failed quickly however, with Pretorius first resigning the Transvaal presidency and not finishing his term in the Orange Free State. For the new elections in 1863, Boshoff was named as one of four candidates, but eventually J.H. Brand was put forward by the Volksraad as the sole candidate.

Later life and death
After he threw the towel in 1859, and resigned the presidency of the Orange Free State, Boshoff retired to his farm Joubertsvlei near Pietermaritzburg. The resignation did not mean the end of his political career, however. In 1862 he was elected a member of the Legislative Council of the Colony of Natal, a position he would hold until 1873. During his term of office Boshoff continued to address the larger political issues of South Africa. In line with his helicopter views he tabled a proposal in 1868 for federation of the Boer republics and the British colonies, showing a vision that took more than forty years and several colonial wars to materialise.

In 1873 Boshoff retired to his "plaas" (farm) Joubertsvlei near Pietermaritzburg to dedicate himself to farming. The "plaas" and its environment became focal point for the Boshoff family, with several members living in the area well into the twentieth century. After the death of his first wife in 1878 Boshoff remarried in 1880, but died less than a year later, at his farm, seventy-three years old. He was buried in the Voortrekker cemetery in Pietermaritzburg. Upon the news of his death reaching Bloemfontein, the Volksraad passed a resolution honouring Boshoff for his services to the Orange Free State.

Political impact
In South African (Afrikaner) history he long remained a controversial figure, however. Some historians praised his willingness to make sacrifices and patriotism, others emphasised his closed and surly personality, making it hard for his colleagues and the general public to like him. As state president of the Orange Free State he was literally the (civil) servant of the state, not the visionary statesman the people could look up to and emulate, as they could with some other Boer leaders of the period. His lifestyle and personality prevented him becoming a cultural hero.

By training and character Boshoff showed himself a true political administrator and diplomat throughout his life: with an eye for detail, but also for the larger picture, sensitive to geopolitical and power-political relations and conciliatory in disputes and disagreements, but a statesman he was not. Nevertheless his influence on the philosophy and practice of state formation in South Africa should not be underestimated. His work in Natal – negotiating new political relations in as yet uncharted political territory – and in the Orange Free State – creating and developing a model republic with a keen eye for administrative and judicial structure – were of great importance for the creation of Afrikaner political identity in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Literature


Category:Afrikaner people Category:Cape Colony people Category:People from the Free State Province Category:Presidents of the Orange Free State Category:South African politicians Category:South African statesmen Category:South Africans of Huguenot descent Category:1808 births Category:1881 deaths