Sir James Molteno (5 January 1865 – 16 September 1936), was an influential barrister and parliamentarian of South Africa.
Rising to prominence as an unconventional anti-imperialist, he was briefly opposition leader, before becoming parliamentary Speaker.
He was the last Speaker for the Parliament of the Cape Colony, and the first Speaker of Parliament of South Africa.
Early life
The son of Prime Minister Sir John Molteno, James was born on 5 January 1865 at his family's Claremont estate. He matriculated with honours from Diocesan College and read law at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was noted not just for his academic diligence but for his unusual strength and physical fitness (An extremely athletic man, he excelled in sports from horseracing and boxing to swimming and shooting).
He was elected first president of the Trinity College Debating Society and was active on the committee of the Union. Otherwise he divided his time at university between frenzied study, and backpacking around Europe attending drunken parties with fellow students. He also acquired a passion for card-playing that remained with him for the rest of his life.
When he graduated with honours he was called to the Inner Temple in London, before returning to Cape Town to become an Advocate of the Supreme Court in 1889.
Political career
Molteno entered the Cape Parliament in 1890, at the age of 25, and became Speaker of Parliament in 1908. He was in fact to be the last speaker before the Cape Parliament dissolved itself on the act of Union.
Early parliamentary career (1890–1899)
He was initially a supporter of Prime Minister Cecil John Rhodes, but after the "Logan Scandal" in 1893 revealed the degree of corruption in Rhodes's business dealings, Molteno left his government and immediately joined the opposition. From then on he became increasingly suspicious of Rhodes for what he considered his unscrupulous craving for power.
When the Jameson Raid took place, Molteno immediately accused Rhodes of engineering it, calling Leander Starr Jameson a "fool". He wrote that the raid was the beginning of the divide between Boer and British that would eventually culminate in the Boer War.
In 1899, he organised and chaired a commission to draw up a petition to Queen Victoria, from anti-War politicians and intellectuals of Southern Africa, stressing the seriousness of the impending conflict. It included key information that was not disclosed to London by the British High Commissioner in South Africa, Sir Alfred Milner, who was intent on taking the Cape to war. Consequently Milner avoided delivering it. Molteno then used his family connections to take the petition – as well as Milner's private statements on his warlike intentions – to the British press and parliament, causing great embarrassment to Milner and the Colonial establishment in South Africa.
Molteno was an exceptionally skilled debater and public speaker. In parliament however, he quickly gained a reputation as a jovial tease, with an uncanny ability to both foment and soothe disagreements in the house – while all the time taking an amused backseat. His friends and colleagues in parliament gave him the nickname "Baby Molteno", as he was the youngest of his extended family to be politically active at the time.
The Boer War and its aftermath (1899–1908)
When War broke out, Molteno chaired the anti-war South Africa Conciliation Committee in Cape Town. Like his brother (and fellow MP) John Molteno Jr., he was a fierce critic of the malpractices that took place in the Cape under British martial law, and regularly smuggled evidence of them out of the country via his family connections, to sympathetic MPs in the British House of Commons. In fact, on many occasions he recklessly flouted martial law, seemingly without fear of repercussions, possibly because of the influence of these same connections.
He even went so far as to act as the legal counsel for the so-called "Cape rebels", successfully defending them from the charge of high treason in a series of high-profile military tribunals set up across the country, over a period of 2 years. He then joined several other powerful politicians in successfully fighting the attempt to suspend the Cape's constitution, managing once again to bypass martial law and travel to the Imperial Conference in London to do so.