FORERUNNERS - Nov'94/Feb19
The Post Offices of the Second South African Republic
Compiled by Alan R. Drysdall, George van den Hurk & Alan MacGregor
The following list of post offices which were open during
the existence of the Second Republic is based on
information culled from Annual Reports and Circulars
issued by the ZAR Postmaster-General, Staatscourant
Notices and other sources, and is supplemented with data
compiled by Ralph Putzel in his four volume Encyclopae
dia of South African Post Offices and Postal Agencies
(Mathew's listing is for the most part incorporated in
Putzel's.) It can only be improved upon if members who
have access to reliable information accept the challenge
and keep us informed of their findings.
Railway offices, i.e., stations, require a separate listing.
From 1891 NZASM stations accepted telegrams, letters
and parcels, but these offices were manned by railway staff
and their responsibility was to NZASM and not the post
office. Such mail, unless it was locally addressed, was
forwarded by train, and then entered the post. No
additional payment was required. Stations did not use
datestamps, but were issued with straight-line handstamps
which carried only the name of the stations in capital
letters. The only railway office staffed by the Post Office
was the travelling post office - RPK - which was under the
administrative control of Johannesburg.
With one or two possible exceptions, all offices were
temporarily closed, at least to civilian traffic, as the ZAR
was occupied by the British in 1900-01. In the majority of
cases the exact date of closure is not known. In the
following table, if an office is known to have been open
Abbreviations: PAK postagentkantoor PK postkantoor PWK postwisselkantoor
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in 1899 and probably remained open until the area was
occupied, the closure date in the following table is
recorded as a dash (-). Other unknown dates of closure
are recorded as a query (?).
Spelling is a problem as there is a remarkable lack of
consistency even in official publications. Datestamps
introduced during the Second Republic usually show the
name of the office spelled as it would be in Dutch, e.g.,
Nijlstroom rather than Nylstroom, but some do not, and
there were many datestamps in use in the early years
which had been introduced during the First British
Occupation (and even the First Republic).
Offices known to have used a datestamp of whatever type
are identified in the following table with an asterisk,
but there were many agencies, some of which existed
for very short period, which almost certainly never had
a date-stamp.
A second problem relates to the practice of according
the same name to more than one office. It is
understandable that the different colonies and republics
of southern Africa would inevitably have a few offices
with the same name, but more than ten different
Rietfonteins can only be regarded as evidence of a lack
of imagination. The ZAR authorities were certainly
guilty. For example, three offices named Nooitgedacht
were opened within five years and co-existed for several
more years.
TK Telegraafkantoor
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