Sir Christoffel Joseph Brand (21 June 1797

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

– 19 May 1875 Cape Town) was a Cape jurist, politician, statesman and first Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony (), 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. It existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with three ...

Early life and education

Christoffel Brand was born in 1797, during the twilight years of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( ; VOC ), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered company, chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States Ge ...

and the

Dutch Cape Colony The Cape of Good Hope () was a Dutch United East India Company (VOC) supplystation in Southern Africa, centered on the Cape of Good Hope, from where it derived its name. The original supply station and the successive states that the area was ...

. Brand came from a long line of Dutch colonial administrators: both his father and grandfather ( Christoffel Brand) had been officials with the Dutch East India Company. He was the godson of

Joseph Banks Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English Natural history, naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the European and American voyages of scientific exploration, 1766 natural-history ...

, the noted British naturalist, whom his grandfather had worked with. After receiving his initial education in Cape Town, Brand attended the

University of Leiden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange as a Protestant institution, it holds the distinction of being the oldest university in the Neth ...

from 1815, where he obtained a doctorate in law in 1820 with a dissertation on the relationship that colonies have to the mother country – ''Dissertatio politico-juridica de jure coloniarum''. He also earned a doctorate of letters with a thesis ''Quaestiones in Socratis sententiam de Deo''.

Career

He returned to The Cape and in 1821 established a law practice in Cape Town, before beginning to take an active interest in politics. He was one of the founders of the ''Zuid-Afrikaansch Athenaeum'' (South Africa's first university for Dutch-speaking students) in 1828, and was one of the first advocates in the Supreme Court in 1829. A founder member of the newspaper ''

De Zuid-Afrikaan ''De Zuid-Afrikaan'' was a nineteenth-century Dutch language newspaper based in Cape Town that circulated throughout the Cape Colony, published between 1830 and 1930. The paper was founded by the advocate Christoffel Johan Brand on 9 April 1830 ...

'', he was also its editor and championed the Dutch language in his editorials. Brand was bitterly disillusioned by the manner in which he perceived the British government to have marginalized the

Cape Dutch Cape Dutch, also commonly known as Cape Afrikaners, were a historic socioeconomic class of Afrikaners who lived in the Western Cape during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The terms have been evoked to describe an affluent, educated sect ...

community, in particular the way they had supplanted the Dutch legal system in the Cape with an Anglophone

common law Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prece ...

system. Together with John Fairbairn, he campaigned for representative government and supported the Anti-Convict Movement. Together with F. W. Reitz Sr. (father of State President

Francis William Reitz Francis William Reitz Jr. (5 October 1844 – 27 March 1934) was a South African lawyer, politician, statesman, publicist, and poet who was a member of parliament of the Cape Colony, Chief Justice and fifth State President of the Orange Free ...

of the

Orange Free State The Orange Free State ( ; ) was an independent Boer-ruled sovereign republic under British suzerainty in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, which ceased to exist after it was defeated and surrendered to the British Em ...

), Fairbairn and Stockenström, he agitated for an elected Legislative Assembly. When representative government was finally introduced, Brand became the first Speaker of the Cape House of Assembly – a position he held for 20 years. He was knighted in 1860. He was also a prominent supporter of the movement for

responsible government Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments (the equivalent of the executive br ...

, and became the first Speaker of the

Cape parliament The Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope functioned as the legislature of the Cape Colony, from its founding in 1853, until the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, when it was dissolved and the Parliament of South Africa was establish ...

under this new system, when it was instituted by the Molteno Ministry in 1872. Sir Christoffel was a South African Freemason and Deputy Grand Master National of the Grand Orient of the Netherlands (''Het Groot Oosten der Nederlanden'') in The Cape from 1847 to 1874. in the .

Family

Christoffel Brand was married to Catharina Fredrica Küchler. His son was Sir

Johannes Brand Sir Johannes Henricus Brand, (popularly known as Sir Jan Brand and sometimes as Sir John Henry Brand or Jan Henrick Brand; 6 December 1823 – 14 July 1888) was a lawyer and politician who served as the fourth President (government title), ...

who became 4th

State President of the Orange Free State The state president of the Orange Free State had the Executive (government), executive authority in the Orange Free State. By the constitution of 1854, the president was elected by the Burgher (Boer republics), Burghers, from a list of candidat ...

. His second name "Joseph" was after the naturalist Sir

, a close friend of Christoffel's grandfather.

Early life and education

Career

Family

See also

References

Further reading