The Hoernlé Memorial Lectures

The inaugural Hoernlé lecture was delivered by Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, IRR vice-president and honorary life member, in 1945 on the topic of “Christian principles and race problems”. Other distinguished speakers included IRR co-founder Professor Edgar Brookes on the Institute’s first 21 years in “We come of age” (1950), Archbishop Dennis Hurley on “Apartheid: A crisis of the Christian conscience” (1964), Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi on “White and black nationalism, ethnicity and the future of the homelands” (1974), Dr Alan Paton on “Towards racial justice: Will there be a change of heart?” (1979) and again on “Federation or desolation” (1985) – the only speaker to have delivered two Hoernlé lectures – Professor Jonathan Jansen on “When does a university cease to exist?” (2005) and Professor RW Johnson on “The future of the liberal tradition in South Africa” (2011).

The speakers often tackled thorny questions relating to race, ideology and South Africa’s future. In their explorations, they reflected the most pressing preoccupations of their times, giving us a window into the past that shows contemporary views on issues that often seemed intractable at the time. It is sobering to look back from today’s vantage point and realise how far South Africa has come – and how much still remains to be done to create a free and prosperous South Africa for all.

Reinhold Frederick Alfred Hoernlé, 1880-1943

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls him “perhaps the best known of South African philosophers” and writes: “Hoernlé’s most significant contribution […] was in the application of liberal political thought to the multiethnic environment of South Africa.” It goes on to report a criticism that might sound familiar to liberals in South Africa today: “Although Hoernlé’s liberalism has been criticized for not providing an effective alternative to the then-current race relations in South Africa, in his time he was seen by many as a strong progressive force, and his analysis of pluralism and cultural diversity in the state bears on contemporary discussions of multiculturalism.”¹

AlfredHoernlé became associated with the IRR in 1932 and served as its president for nine years, from 1934 until his death in July 1943. He was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1880, but spent his early childhood in Calcutta, where he became fluent in Hindi before returning to Germany with his parents.² His schooling was German, but his university studies were English. He attended Oxford, graduating in 1905. His academic career took him to the University of St Andrew’s (1905-1908), the South African College (now the University of Cape Town) (1908-1912), Armstrong College (now King’s College) at Newcastle-on-Tyne (1912-1914), Harvard University (1914-1920), Newcastle again (1920-1923), before becoming professor of philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand (1923-1943).³

In his introduction to the inaugural Hoernlé Lecture in 1945, IRR director JD Rheinallt Jones wrote:

During these years of [Hoernlé’s] leadership the membership and activities of the Institute expanded, and its effectiveness increased, whilst his own influence as a thinker and leader in the field of race relations became more and more powerful.

In Hoernlé were combined several outstanding qualities. Gifted with a brilliant analytical mind, he was able to trace more clearly than anyone the single threads in the tangled skein of our racial situations. At the same time, his aptitude for administrative work made him ever willing to tackle practical problems, whether in academic organisation, in racial situations, or in such specialised activities as the educational work for the Union forces which he initiated during the present war. He was an outstandingly good lecturer and public speaker.

As a philosophical thinker his reputation stood high in Europe and America, and there is no doubt that his deep concern for the future of the Union and the welfare of its under-privileged people led him to turn aside from an even more distinguished career as a philosopher.

Alfred Hoernlé's hard thinking and practicality, together with the rare combination of the scientific spirit and humane sympathy his own thoughts and thinking about race relations reflected, set the stage for others in South Africa and the continent to see the possibilities of realising the main objectives of the IRR: “to work for peace, goodwill, and practical co-operation between the races”.

Agnes Winifred Hoernlé (née Tucker), 1885-1960

Dr Agnes Winifred Hoernlé (née Tucker) was a South African anthropologist, widely recognised as the “mother of social anthropology in South Africa”. She served as the president of the SAIRR from 1948 to 1950 and as vice-president for many more years. In an appreciation written in 1960, M. Gluckman and I. Schapera wrote: “Mrs. Hoernlé was a brilliant, inspiring, and warm-hearted teacher, who not only excited in her students an enthusiasm for the subject, but developed close affectionate ties with them.”⁴

Dr Hoernlé was born in 1885 in Kimberley, in the Cape Colony; but she moved with her family first to Johannesburg, then to East London at the outbreak of the Boer War, before matriculating at the Wesleyan High School in Grahamstown in 1902.

After earning an undergraduate degree in philosophy, classics and French from the South African College (now the University of Cape Town) in 1906, she studied anthropology at Newnham College, Cambridge, and attended courses at Leipzig University, the University of Bonn, and the Sorbonne. Professor Loveday, who held the Chair of Philosophy at the South African College, later wrote of her: “She showed a combination of critical and constructive powers unusual at her age. […] I can say without hesitation that of all the students in Philosophy whom I have anywhere taught, she was by far the most capable.”⁵

Upon her return to South Africa in 1912, she undertook field research among the Nama, a Khoikhoi group, in the Cape Colony and South West Africa.⁶ She married Alfred Hoernlé in 1914 and they moved to the United States, where her husband taught at Harvard University. Their only child, Alwin, was born in 1915.

In 1920, they returned to South Africa, where she partnered with Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, an English social anthropologist, to establish social anthropology as an academic discipline. In 1923, she became the first lecturer in social anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). She trained many of the leading South African anthropologists of her era and laid the foundations for the development of social anthropology in the country.

Winifred Hoernlé retired from teaching 1937 and spent the rest of her life focusing on social reforms. In addition to her prominent role in the IRR, for example, she chaired the standing committee for non-European child welfare, was president of the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society, chairman of the executive of the South African Council for Child Welfare, member of the National Welfare Organisations Board, member of the Penal Reform League of South Africa, president of various African school committees, and chairman of the Johannesburg Indian Social Welfare Association. Winifred Hoernlé received numerous accolades for her academic and social work, including an honorary Doctor of Law degree conferred by Wits in 1949.

She opposed apartheid, arguing in reports to the government that all cultures composing South Africa’s society had intrinsic value and that no race was superior. She advocated for liberal values such as equal opportunity regardless of race, freedom of expression and the rule of law. As she wrote in an editorial in 1950, “Never resting, never tiring, it is the duty of liberals to devote their initiative and their energy to the achievement of ‘free minds in free societies’.”⁷