Doctoral Degrees (History)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/623

Browse

Browsing Doctoral Degrees (History) by Author "Ehlers, Anton"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Die geskiedenis van die trustmaatskappye en eksekuteurskamers van Boland Bank Beperk tot 1971
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2002-03) Ehlers, Anton; Venter, C.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences . Dept. of History.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The history of the trust companies and boards of executors of Boland Bank Limited represents a case study of the process through which these rural institutions, as part of the broader trust movement in South Africa, established themselves as an integral and respected part of the local financial and social structure of the communities in which they operated. It also represents a case study of the pressures to which these local rural trust companies were subjected by the changing South African financial environment of the 20th century and of the way they reacted to absorb and counter these pressures. Their reactions and counter-measures were attempts, on the one hand, to hold on to and promote, and on the other hand, to get rid of and discard their pasts. The history of Boland Bank Limited to 1971 represents a case study of the trials and tnbulations; the successes and failures of this process. Paarl African Trust Company Limited (PAT) and African Mutual Trust and Assurance Company Limited (AMT), the two leading role players in the establishment of Boland Bank Limited, was founded in 1900 as a result of the anti- British feelings generated among a section of the Afrikaners in the Cape Colony during the Anglo Boer War. These feelings of nationalism manifested in the Afrikaners' aspiration towards greater economic self-reliance which in the case of PAT and AMT led to the establishment of two Afrikaner-controlled local rural trust companies. These two institutions laid the foundation of a mainly Cape based tradition oflocal rural trust companies with a predominantly Afrikaans character. In the first half of the 20th century these institutions established themselves as dynamic local rural financial institutions serving the financial needs of the predominantly agricultural economies in which they functioned. As an integral part of their local communities, they were respected as stabilizing economic and social agents, -a respect demonstrated by the local inhabitants refering to these institutions as "my Kamer" (my Board). The changed nature of the economic system and climate of the post war (Second World War) period in tandem with the tendency towards stricter state control over the monetary and financial system and institutions, pressurized small local :financial institutions like trust companies and boards of executors to show a profit. In this regard PAT and AMT were no exception and together with other similar trust companies were in danger of becoming outdated financialnational monuments. Against this background PAT and AMT took the lead in the early sixties in a successful amalgamation initiative which eventually culminated in the formation of Boland Bank Limited. This process included 17 institutions of which 16 were local rural trust companies and boards of executors and created the potential for regaining their lost dynamic nature. These dynamics would eventually carry them into the 21st century.