HOFMEYR, JAN HENDRIK (1845-1909), South African politician, was born at Cape Town on the 4th of July 1845. He was educated at the South African College, and at an early age turned his attention to politics, first as a journalist. He was editor of the _Zuid Afrikaan_ till its incorporation with _Ons Land_, and of the _Zuid Afrikaansche Tijdschrift_. By birth, education and sympathies a typical Dutch Afrikander, he set himself to organize the political power of his fellow-countrymen. This he did very effectively, and when in 1879 he entered the Cape parliament as member for Stellenbosch, he became the real leader of the Dutch party. Yet he only held office for six months--as minister without portfolio in the Scanlen ministry from May to November 1881. He held no subsequent official post in the colony, though he shared with Sir Thomas Upington and Sir Charles Mills the honour of representing the Cape at the intercolonial conference of 1887. Here he supported the proposal for entrusting the defence of Simon's Town to Cape Colony, leaving only the armament to be provided by the imperial government, opposed trans-oceanic penny postage, and moved a resolution in favour of an imperial customs union. At the colonial conference of 1894 at Ottawa he was again one of the Cape representatives. In 1888 and in 1889 he was a member of the South African customs conference. His chief importance as a public man was, however, derived from his power over the Dutch in Cape Colony, and his control of the Afrikander Bond. In 1878 he had himself founded the "Farmers' Association," and as the Cape farmers were almost entirely Dutch the Association became a centre of Dutch influence. When the Bond was formed in 1882, with purely political aims, Hofmeyr made haste to obtain control of it, and in 1883 amalgamated the Farmers' Association with it. Under his direction the constitution of the Bond was modified by the elimination of the provisions inconsistent with loyalty to the British crown. But it remained an organization for obtaining the political supremacy of the Cape Dutch. (See CAPE COLONY: _History_.) His control over the Bond enabled him for many years, while free from the responsibilities of office, to make and unmake ministers at his will, and earned for him the name of "Cabinet-maker of South Africa." Although officially the term "Afrikander" was explained by Hofmeyr to include white men of whatever race, yet in practice the influence of the Bond was always exerted in favour of the Dutch, and its power was drawn from the Dutch districts of Cape Colony. The sympathies of the Bond were thus always strongly with the Transvaal, as the chief centre of Dutch influence in South Africa; and Hofmeyr's position might in many respects be compared with that of Parnell at the head of the Irish Nationalist party in Great Britain. In the Bechuanaland difficulty of 1884 Hofmeyr threw all the influence of the Bond into the scale in favour of the Transvaal. But in the course of