[3][4] His mother was Mary Anne Fleischer, sister-in-law to Gordon Sprigg and granddaughter to Robert Hart of Glen Avon, the founder of Somerset East, who had landed at the Cape as a member of the British expeditionary force in 1795.

I have neither Voortrekker nor Huguenot blood in my veins, and 'the South African spirit', as understood by those who extol it, implies a view on the native question which I cannot share.

But I am proud to be a South African, and I claim to stand on the same national footing as if my forebears had landed with Van Riebeeck or followed Piet Retief over the Drakensberg.

His fondest childhood memories were of his days on the veld and of holiday trips by ox-wagon to East London and to Lynedoch, the Pringle family farm near Bedford.

He won a seat in the Cape House of Assembly, partly thanks to support from the region's Xhosa voters, mobilised by his political ally, John Tengo Jabavu.

What the country requires is that the existing laws should be fairly and equitably administered, and that the Natives should cease to be the subjects of rash experiments in the art of 'vigorous' government.

[5] Together with John X. Merriman and J. W. Sauer he formed part of a trio of powerful liberal MPs who were prominent actors for the rest of the Cape Parliament's history, usually in opposition.

[3] In 1894, Rhodes adopted an increasingly caustic attitude to the Boer colonies, becoming, in Innes's words, "the high priest of opportunism";[8] he had "decided on a more forceful policy, which led him to exchange the constitutionalism of the statesman for the lawlessness of the revolutionary".

[3] The nadir was Rhodes's involvement in the Jameson Raid, an event which, Innes said, "no one ... concerned for the true interests of South Africa can recall without regret".

He had gravely betrayed his allies in the Afrikaner Bond; yet, far from showing remorse, he switched allegiances to their enemies, the Progressive Party, emerging more ambitious and jingoistic than ever before.

Summing up Rhodes's legacy, Innes said he had "infected Cape public life with a harmful virus, and to South Africa he brought not peace but a sword.

[3] And Innes never became fully pro-Boer; he was critical of President Kruger's illiberal Uitlander policy and firmly believed, even after the Jameson Raid, that South Africa's best hope was Union within the Empire.

[4] As a brilliant lawyer of great integrity, who had won the support of both Afrikaner and English,[4] he was the natural choice for appointment to the bench in the former Boer colonies after the War.

[11] His lucid expositions of legal concepts continue to be regularly cited, a century later, on topics as diverse and fundamental as: the significance of pleadings,[12] the distinction between appeal and review,[13] directors' fiduciary duties,[14] waiver,[15] the grounds for judicial review,[16] determining insolvency,[17] the fair comment defence in defamation law,[18] contractual interpretation,[19] contractual terms contrary to public policy,[20] accession of property,[21] and the appealability of court orders.

His stated reasons were his fear that his faculties might be slowly declining – though some said he was retiring "at the height of his ability and influence"[23] – and the need, for the sake of his wife's health, to relocate to the coast.

[3] But it was suspected he really wanted to give his great lifelong friend and colleague of seventeen years, Sir William Henry Solomon, the opportunity to be Chief Justice.

[3] At the Association's opening function he said:"In a comparatively short time, we shall have to deal with a great body of Natives whose education has enabled them to appreciate the value of the political status denied them, and has stimulated their determination to obtain it, and they will be embittered by the grievances, economic and administrative which are bound to accumulate when one section of the people is deprived of those voting rights which its fellow citizens enjoy.

And yet we are apt to forget, in dealing with this problem, that you cannot kill the soul of the people; and that the spirit of man will not tamely submit to the loss of rights which materially and spiritually he values.

The government succeeded in stripping black South Africans of the vote, and adopted a policy of apartheid that led to violence, discrimination and repression worse, no doubt, than Innes had foreseen.