THE CAPE MALAYS (With Handwritten Letter from Author)

Cape Town: Maskew Miller, c. 1944

Small 8vo, ix + 95pp. Hardcover binding with dark red lettering to spine and front board. With dust jacket. With frontispiece, various full colour and monochrome plates, collated and complete.

With handwritten letter from author, tipped in on front endpaper.

After his studies at the University of Cape Town, Du Plessis was for a time a teacher in Worcester, a journalist on the editorial board of Die Burger and Die Huisgenoot and then lecturer at the Cape Technical College. It was in these years that his interest arose in the social life and cultural products of the Malays. In 1932, he accepted an appointment as a lecturer at the University of Cape Town and in 1935 he was promoted with a thesis on the contribution of the Cape Malay to South African anthem. In 1948, he became head of the Institute of Malay Studies at the Cape Town University and from 1953 to 1963 he served as commissioner and later secretary and adviser for Coloured Affairs, a position that enabled him to advocate a particular vision for people the state labelled as Cape Malay.

Du Plessis was instrumental in ensuring that the Bo-Kaap remained a Cape Malay area during Apartheid (which also resulted in the non-Malay residents being formally removed from the area in terms of the Group Areas Act). He also advocated for the establishment of the University of the Western Cape for so-called Coloured students, and he was the first Chancellor. (wikipedia.com)

Condition: Good. Light rubbing to dust jacket and small chips to edges of jacket. Jacket has been covered with protective Brodart plastic sleeve. Slight bumps to edges of boards and top and tail of spine. Previous owner’s bookplate to front pastedown. Some foxing to edges of textblock, and less to various pages. Some splitting to gutters between a few pages. Book however is still well bound. Text and plates are overall clean. Please also see photos.