Temperence Movements in South Africa

The Cape of Good Hope Temperance Society

The Cape of Good Hope Temperance Society was founded at a meeting in Cape Town on 28 January, 1832, with a provincial management as a movement by concerned Methodists, inspired by and responding to the international Temperance movement[1], to fight the abuse of alcohol and the general licentiousness that accompanied it. At one time this also included an anti-theatre lobby.

The first provincial executive of the society consisted of the Reverend Dr John Philip, Doctor J.W. Fairbridge, Doctor S. Baily, the Reverend Dr J. Pears, the Reverend Dr Adamson, and Joseph Dixie, Mr Hutchison and John Fairbairn, with H.E. Rutherfoord and W. Buchanan as secretaries.

In Cape Town the reactions against this movement (as well as the concurrent international abolitionist movement[2]) was great, particularly from the Dutch community, and among many anti-temperance writings, it led to one of the more significant early plays to be written and published in the country, De Nieuwe Ridderorde of De Temperantisten (lit. "The New Knighthood/New Chivalric Order, or the 'Temperantists'/People of the Temperance Movement"), a satirical play in four acts and 26 scenes by Charles Etienne Boniface (1787/8?-1853/4?). In the play a number of the members of the Temperance Society appear as caricatures.