page_title: Thomas Charles Scanlen
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Charles Scanlen / The Scanlen Ministry (1881-1884) / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: A map of Southern Africa in 1878
context_page_description: Sir Thomas Charles Scanlen KCMG was a politician and administrator of the Cape Colony.
  He was briefly Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, from 1881 to 1884, during an especially turbulent period in the Cape's history, dominated by conflicts such as the Basuto Gun War. He was also the Cape's first locally-born Prime Minister.
context_section_description: In 1881, the unpopular and unelected government of Prime Minister John Gordon Sprigg fell, amidst the widespread unrest and frontier wars resulting from the British Colonial Office's disastrous attempt to enforce a confederation system on southern Africa. The British Governor Henry Bartle Frere had just been recalled to London in 1880 to face charges of misconduct and, deprived of its principle backer, the Sprigg ministry collapsed. 
  In the political vacuum, the Cape's first Prime Minister John Molteno was invited to come out of retirement to take over government, however he declined, and instead suggested Scanlen as a sufficiently qualified leader to form a government. Saul Solomon, John X. Merriman and Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr (Onze Jan) were also offered the position, but it was to Scanlen that the invitation was given in the end.
  In the charged atmosphere of the time, powerful political factions were squaring off, however none could command an absolute majority alone. Scanlen was therefore quickly accepted as a "safe" compromise candidate who was politically neutral and could be accepted by all. He was also prudent and astute by nature, and in the context of the ruinous military and economic situation, all factions accepted the need for a technocrat government.
  Consequently, on 9 May 1881, Thomas Scanlen was appointed as the 3rd Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and the first locally-born person to hold this position.
caption: The Cape Colony (dark pink) and neighbouring states, on the eve of the Confederation Wars and before the loss of Basutoland in 1881.
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