with his mother, and they took a house together in the Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville. Thanks to his prodigious intellect and his achievements, Hofmeyr had become quite famous, and was in demand as a public speaker. He spoke mainly about Afrikaner history, specifically the desires of Afrikaner nationalism as opposed to British imperialism. Hofmeyr's own line was that the two need not have been mutually exclusive, that Afrikaners could have a national identity without separating their country from the British Empire as the republicanists were clamouring to do. In this attitude, Hofmeyr was emulating his famous uncle. Onze Jan Hofmeyr believed in bridging the divides between English and Afrikaans South Africans, a divide that had been fuelled by the British annexation of the diamond fields in 1871, the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877, and the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War. It was a political compromise that did not always endear either man to their audiences. Hofmeyr was not only an intellectual. He also had a prolific capacity for administration. These talents came to the fore when the young professor was appointed to sub-committees of the university senate. But at the end of 1918 he chose to move back to Cape Town, taking up the new Chair of Greek at the newly named University of Cape Town. The School of Mines was disappointed to lose him so soon and their Council decided in March 1919 to offer him the principalship of their fledgling university, after the previous Principal had died. After some misgivings about being suited for the job he accepted. The principal was given the enormous task of expanding the university which then only had 301 students, a corps that could easily have been 10 times bigger in a city as big as Johannesburg. One of the first steps was to change the name from South African School of Mines into the University of the Witwatersrand. At his inaugural address, Hofmeyr discussed the nature of a university, its desired function in a democracy. One specific topic he addressed was the so-called "Native problem" that was facing South Africa: They [South African universities] have not, to any great extent, applied themselves to the solution of our South African problems... Biggest of all is the Native problem, most difficult and yet most specially South African of them all – in essence the eternal problem of the reconciliation of justice and