William Hume (Cape politician)

Born in Grahamstown in 1837, Hume became a citrus farmer in the Sundays river valley and moved to Port Elizabeth, where he settled.

A merchant who was successful in business, he entered politics and was elected as the MLA for Port Elizabeth from 1874 until only the next year.

When Lord Carnarvon of the London Colonial Office attempted to strengthen imperial control over southern Africa, by drawing all of the region's states into a British "Confederation", the remnants of the separatist league saw in this policy a means of reviving the movement for a separate British Eastern Colony.

He was also notable for remaining unmoved by the speeches and arguments of the imperial agent James Anthony Froude, unlike the majority of his colleagues.

The end result was that he sided with the locally elected Cape government, in opposing the imperial moves to enforce confederation, and was widely reviled by separatist leaders like Jock Paterson as having betrayed his political allies.