Page 17 - Bulletin 23- 2020

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health education, the attempt to end Poor Whiteism, the spread of Christianity and the
establishment of independent Zionist churches.

But being an accelerator of the vehicle of history was not the Spanish flu’s only significant
th
role. Again as with other epidemics, it also initiated a number of key developments in 20
century South Africa, adding to the society major and distinctive features which were wholly
novel and unanticipated, like a changed demographic structure, bereft and broken families,

several hundred thousand orphans, flu survivors physically, psychiatrically, psychologically

and emotionally scarred for the rest of their lives.

In both these respects, as accelerator and initiator, the impact of the Spanish flu epidemic
resembled that of another Apocalyptic Horseman, war. Or perhaps it was even more pernic-

ious because it made no distinction between soldiers and civilians. As one flu survivor put it
60 years after Black October, “I don’t hope for anything like that flu again…That’s worse

than a war.”
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References

1 ‘So-called’ because the only reason for the label ‘Spanish’ was that, unlike most countries where the epidemic
struck, Spain was not at war in 1918 and so did not censor press reports about the epidemic’s presence there.
1 Daily Dispatch, 28 September 1918.
1 Western Cape Provincial Archives and Records Repository, Cape Town, 1/TSO 11, file 485 (1), Telegram
from Magistrate Tsolo to Chief Magistrate Transkei, 16 October 1918.
1 People’s Weekly, 12 October 1918.
1 Daily Dispatch, 4 November 1918.
1 Christian Express, 2 December 1918, 185.
1 Witwatersrand University Library, Historical and Literary Papers Division, AB 1011 (Bishop J.W. Williams
Papers), Diary 1918–19, entry for 9 November 1918.
1 The Friend, 8 November 1918.
1 Uitenhage Times, 16 October 1918.
1 Debates of the House of Assembly … as Reported in the Cape Times, vol. 4 (1919), 51, col. 3.
1 National Archives Repository, Pretoria, Acc. 172, vol. 2, E.O. Műller, ‘Lewensloop’, 37–8 (translation by
author).
1 Interview by author with Mr P.J. du Plessis, 20 January 1981.
1 South African Medical Record, 14 February 1919, 364.
1 Letter to author from Dr R.L. Forsyth, 2 November 1978.
1 Western Cape Provincial Archives and Records Repository, Cape Town, Kimberley City Council Minute
Book 18, 55, ‘Report to Mayor and City Councillors from Deputy Mayor, Cllr. C.W. Lawrence on
Organisational Work to Combat Epidemic of Spanish Influenza, 7th November, 1918’, 25.
1 W.H. Dawson, South Africa: People, Places and Problems (London, 1925), 252.
1 Library of Parliament, Cape Town, ‘Union of South Africa, Commission on the Influenza Epidemic, Evidence
1918–1919’, vol. 1, file 5, Evidence of A. Stewart, 1.
1 Ibid., ‘Memorandum on Progress of Epidemic in Bloemfontein Submitted by J.P. Logan’, entry for 14 October
1918.
1 Cape Argus, 14 October 1918.
1 De Koningsbode, July 1919, 141 (translation by author).