Boer History1804 at the Cape of Good Hope: Uitenhage, Tulbagh, and De Mist’s Ordinances
Uitenhage Cut — 7 February 1804
Jacob Abraham de Mist was still in the east when the year opened. He was the commissioner-general sent to take the Cape back for the Batavian Republic, and he had left Capetown on the 9th of October 1803 to see the country districts for himself. His train was large on purpose: his son as private secretary, officers and officials, soldiers, Khoikhoi and slaves, his daughter Augusta with her friend Miss E. M. Versfeld, and the German tutor Heinrich Lichtenstein. Lieutenant-General Jan Willem Janssens, governor since the 1st of March 1803, had been pulled back to the peninsula when war in Europe began on the 12th of May 1803. The special care of the interior was left to De Mist because the soldier-governor now had to look at the sea. [3] [9]
On the 13th of January the expedition left Algoa Bay toward the Xhosa country so that the commissioner-general might meet the chiefs in the interests of peace. Captain Lodewyk Alberti and a company of the Waldeck regiment joined; farmers attached themselves as the cavalcade advanced. Messengers went ahead to Ndlambe and the chiefs with him. An evasive answer came back: the chiefs were away hunting and would not return for days. The party pushed on to the Fish and encamped near the later Carlisle Bridge. Gaika named Hermanus Kraal, then asked another day’s journey, pleading war against the rebel chiefs and talks with the Tembu. De Mist would not put a large camp and a limited store at the service of that quarrel. He turned from the Fish without seeing the chief. That failure is why the east still had no agreed line with Gaika when the new district was cut. Cungwa and Jalusa’s people were met on the road, broken from Ndlambe and bound to join Gaika. Empty farmhouses and destroyed gardens marked the country. The route ran by Bruintjes Hoogte and the Camdeboo to the mean village of Graaff Reinet. [3] [4]
On the 19th of June 1803 the governor had instructed Alberti, then second in command at Fort Frederick, to select a tract on the Gamtoos for Klaas Stuurman. The captain was away hunting buffaloes; his gun burst and shattered one arm, and he died in November. His brother David Stuurman became captain of the clan, and in February 1804 a location was assigned to him on the Gamtoos. Boesak and his followers wandered for a time, molested no one, and settled down peaceably. The triplicate contracts of May 1803 still stood: no court would hear a complaint against a servant engaged in any other manner. The location mattered because the same coast belt that needed a new landdrost was also the ground on which those captains had to be placed if the farms were to be reoccupied. [3]
The halt at Graaff Reinet is why the east changed shape this year. Janssens, on his own tour in 1803, had found the village in the utmost disorder: no landdrost after Bresler’s departure, the district chest empty, the books unintelligible, the public buildings in the last stages of dilapidation — and this the head of a district comprising nearly half the colony. He had named Andries Stockenstrom, secretary of Swellendam, a capable man. De Mist approved the appointment and the other measures of reorganisation. He ordered the wattle-and-daub cottages that had served as court and residence demolished, and a new drostdy house, a prison, and quarters for the secretary and the servant of justice built in their place. 4000 rixdollars were granted from the public treasury, to be repaid in 8 years at 500 a year; the sum was soon found inadequate, and a total of 25000 at 4 per cent was later authorised. The church, used as magazine and barrack in the troubled years, was to be renovated. The original church had burned in 1799 and been replaced at the voluntary expense of needy people. The measure that mattered most rose from the size of Graaff Reinet: one local authority could not run it. [4] [7]
On the 7th of February De Mist, from the village of Graaff Reinet, issued a proclamation cutting off from that district the fieldcornetcies of Zwart Ruggens, Bruintjes Hoogte, Zuurveld, Bushman’s River and Zwartkops River — the most turbulent farms and the chief field of Xhosa depredation. They were formed into a new district, which was to have as landdrost a military officer in command of a body of troops. That is why Alberti, not a civilian secretary, was later named to the chair: peace in those parts had only been kept by arms. Bresler had been recalled. Stockenstrom assumed Graaff Reinet on the 14th of February. After advising the officials, De Mist moved with his cavalcade on the 13th, first north toward the Sneeuwberg, leaving Compass Berg and the Oudeberg on the right, then west. Shortly before leaving, Augusta was taken ill, but insisted on accompanying her father. She suffered much from the hardships of the hot and waterless Karoo; before the end of the journey she recovered. The train followed the Nieuwveld toward the later Beaufort West, then south to the Zwartbergen. Rest came at the farm of fieldcornet De Beer, in the later Prince Albert country, where surrounding farmers had gathered to welcome the commissioner-general. After 3 weeks of toil and thirst they were still in Graaff Reinet; only at the Dwyka, a tributary of the Gouritz, did they cross into Stellenbosch. They descended the Hex into Goudini and the Paarl, and reached the castle on the 23rd of March 1804, after an absence of nearly 6 months. [3] [4] [9]
On the 22nd of April Captain Alberti, in command of the garrison of Fort Frederick, was instructed to act as landdrost of the new district. Three days later Janssens gave it the name Uitenhage, an old family name of the commissioner-general. The publication of the 25th of April charged all inhabitants of the district to show Alberti honour, respect and help in the exercise of his functions, and to be posted where publications were customarily affixed. Alberti was to consult leading burghers, with a land board, on a drostdy site. The cut of February was not complete until it had a name, a soldier in the chair, and a place to sit. What hung on that publication was a second eastern magistracy, so that Graaff Reinet no longer had to police the Zuurveld from a village in the Camdeboo. [3] [4]
Paper Notes — 30 March 1804
When the colony was transferred to the Batavian Republic there were in circulation 1786275 rixdollars, which at 4 English shillings to the rixdollar — its nominal value — represented 357255 pounds. The government now admitted that the paper had depreciated. That admission is why new notes could be stamped without pretending they were still worth a British crown. On the 28th of December 1803 fire had destroyed the mill, the parsonage, 24 private dwelling-houses, and 14 warehouses and stores in the village of Stellenbosch. It was later found that the fire had been set by an enslaved man from Bengal named Patientie; he was punished with death. On the 30th of March De Mist issued fresh notes to the amount of 75000 rixdollars to relieve the sufferers. The treasury had no coin for a burned village. Paper was what it had. [3]
A few months later notes to the amount of 25000 rixdollars were issued to provide a fund for the commission for the improvement of agriculture and stockbreeding, 50000 to erect the necessary buildings at the new drostdies of Uitenhage and Tulbagh, and 150000 to erect granaries, a hall of justice, and a prison in Capetown. The last sum was not used for the purpose originally intended, but as a measure of necessity was placed in the military chest. Defence, not a new hall, was what the war of May 1803 now required. The whole quantity of notes in circulation was thus raised to 2086275 rixdollars, of which 845000 formed the capital of the loan bank. Most of this paper was worn and nearly defaced, and some of it differed in style from other; so it was all called in, and new notes uniform in appearance, though varying in colour according to the amount represented, were issued in exchange. A trifling sum was ascertained to have been lost, so that notes representing only 2086000 rixdollars were stamped. The paper rixdollar was now computed in the government accounts as well as in private transactions at 2 gulden of Holland, or 3 shillings and 4 pence English money, so that the whole amount in circulation was equal to 347666 pounds 13 shillings and 4 pence. Some 300000 rixdollars of the new paper rested partly on the public faith of the Batavian government and partly on the buildings that were to be erected with it. [3] [4]
The funds in the treasury were low. De Mist had brought from Holland 8333 pounds in money and 33333 pounds in bills of exchange, but that was nearly all expended, and, except for the maintenance of the troops, nothing could be expected from Europe after the renewal of the war. The English East India Company’s property under John Pringle — salt provisions and 11351 pounds in money — had been seized on the 29th of September 1803 and had proved serviceable. The yearly average of the colonial revenue from January 1803 was only 369638 rixdollars, equal at the estimated rate of exchange to 61606 pounds. Paper on the general security of public faith was what the two new drostdies, and the batteries, had to live on. [3]
On the 14th of May the whaling schooner Kofe was wrecked near Walfish Bay. The crew got safely to land and tried to make their way along the coast to Capetown. On the 20th they were attacked by a party of Khoikhoi, and all were killed except 2 sailors, badly wounded, who were rescued the following day by an English whaler. The wreck mattered because the same government that was stamping notes for a burned village still could not protect a shipwrecked crew between one watering and the next. [3]
Capetown Coat of Arms — 3 July 1804
Among the measures De Mist devised for the advancement of the colony was the appointment of a commission to carry out improvements in agriculture and stockbreeding, and particularly for the conversion of Cape sheep into merinos. The commission consisted of a president, a vice-president, and 12 members experienced in farming operations, who were appointed in May 1804. No salaries were attached to their duties. The tract of land called Groote Post, at Groenekloof, was allotted to them, and paper money to the amount of 4167 pounds was stamped and assigned as a fund to work with. In extent the farm ran to some 25308 acres. Hopes were entertained in Holland of the colony becoming a great wool-producing country, and some Cape wool was woven into cloth at Amsterdam and sent back to show the farmers what could be done. The commission imported Spanish rams, and within 2 years the number of wool-bearing sheep in the colony was increased to 11000; but slaughter stock was still so scarce and dear that very few breeders could be induced to exchange weight of carcase for quality of fleece. Groote Post’s object was better methods of agriculture and improvement in the breed of cattle; its management was entrusted to an agricultural board. The May appointments mattered because the same paper that paid for burned Stellenbosch was now being asked to turn fat-tailed Cape sheep into merinos while mutton was still too dear to spare. [3] [4]
To try to improve the quality of Cape wine, a man of experience in Rhenish vineyards was engaged and brought out. Experiments were again commenced with the olive. On this occasion the plants were brought from Portugal. Willem Stephanus van Ryneveld set down remarks on the improvement of stock at the Cape, and especially on the conversion of Cape sheep into Spanish or wool-bearing sheep — the same conversion the unpaid commission at Groote Post was to attempt on the ground. [3] [3]
It was the commissioner-general who gave Capetown the coat of arms still used by the authorities of the city. He adapted the devices from the escutcheon of Abraham van Riebeeck, who was born here, and who was governor-general of Netherlands India from 1709 to 1713. Possibly that gentleman’s father, Jan van Riebeeck, may have used a coat of arms with three annulets in it. De Mist thought it likely that he had, but there is no certainty about it, though the probabilities are greater than that the portrait in the town-house, commonly said to be Jan van Riebeeck’s, really is a likeness of the founder of the colony. He presented the city with the arms on the 12th of June. He made the adoption an occasion for festivity on the 3rd of July 1804. There was an entertainment in the town-house, and in the evening the buildings along the principal streets were illuminated. The shield mattered because a restored Batavian town was being given a civic mark taken from a son of the founder, at a moment when the flag on the castle was Dutch again and not expected to remain unchallenged. [3] [9]
Uitenhage, at this embryonic stage, was further distinguished by the acquisition of the De Mist armorial bearings, and thus with respect to the right of assuming a coat of arms Uitenhage takes precedence of all towns in South Africa, Capetown not excepted. It was, in fact, on account of the idea thus originating in connection with Uitenhage that Capetown itself came also to be dignified with the arms of its founder. To complete the measure as far as was possible at that date, the governor suggested that as Capetown now got the arms of its founder, and Uitenhage already had arms as remarkable as they were beautiful — zo eigenaardig als fraai — Stellenbosch should adopt those of Van der Stel, Swellendam those of Swellengrebel, and Graaff Reinet those of Van de Graaff. [4]
Tulbagh — July–August 1804
In the same year another district was created. On the 11th of July 1804 the commissioner-general issued a proclamation cutting off from Stellenbosch a tract of country north of a provisional line, which was laid down as extending from Verloren Vlei north of St Helena Bay along Kruis River, thence east through Pikenier’s Kloof and Eland’s Kloof, along the northern base of the mountains of Cold Bokkeveld, and thence south-east by the Draai at Verkeerde Vlei to the border of Swellendam. On the 15th of July General Janssens gave to the district between this provisional line, the northern boundary of the colony, and the Gamka river or western boundary of Graaff Reinet, the name Tulbagh, in honour of the highly esteemed governor of former days. De Mist had reduced Stellenbosch to more serviceable proportions by that cut, for the same reason he had cut Graaff Reinet in February: one drostdy could not govern a tract that ran from the peninsula farms to the northern grazing. [3] [9]
It was proposed that the drostdy should be at Jan-Dissel’s-Vlei, where a village was later talked of farther north; but as it was doubtful whether a better site could not be found, Hendrik Lodewyk Bletterman, formerly landdrost of Stellenbosch, was appointed a commissioner to inspect the new district, report upon this matter and the provisional boundary, and make arrangements for opening a court. On the 1st of August Hendrik van de Graaff was appointed landdrost. This gentleman was a nephew of the former governor Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff, and had been an officer of the artillery corps when the colony was surrendered to the British forces in 1795. In April 1797 he was appointed a director of the loan bank, in which position he had acquitted himself so well that he was now considered the best man who could be found as landdrost. The chair at the new northern drostdy was given to a man who knew the paper chest, because the district itself would be paid for in paper. [3]
Bletterman sent in a report in which strong objections were urged against Jan-Dissel’s-Vlei being made the seat of magistracy, on account of its being cut off from the eastern part of the district by a very rugged tract of land. He recommended instead the farm Rietvlei, close to Roodezand’s church. This farm belonged to a man named Hercules du Pré, who was willing to sell it for 1111 pounds. The council adopted the report on the 18th of September, and extended the district of Tulbagh southward to the Breede river from its junction with the Hex upwards to the western point of the so-called island, thence the western chain of mountains to Roodezand’s Kloof, thence the Little Berg river through the kloof, and thence the mountains of Twenty-four Rivers and Elephant River to the first-named provisional boundary. Along a gentle slope at Roodezand, where water could easily be led on, a church and parsonage had stood since the 1740s; the little village that grew about them had until 1804 no other name than Roodezand’s Kerk. The new district took the name of an old governor; the seat of magistracy sat down beside the old church. [3] [3]
The colony was thus partitioned into 6 districts instead of 4. Stellenbosch lost the north; Graaff Reinet lost the coast fieldcornetcies; Swellendam would lose Zitzikama and the Kromme. Two new drostdies had to be built from paper. Janssens, during his friend’s absence and after his return, saw that the reforms planned by De Mist were introduced and supervised, while he himself piled the peninsula for defence. [3] [9]
Equal Worship — 25 July 1804
On the 25th of July 1804 an important ordinance was published by the commissioner-general. It declared that all religious societies which for the furtherance of virtue and good morals worshipped an Almighty Being were to enjoy in this colony equal protection from the laws, that no civil privileges were to be attached to any creed, but that no religious association might hold public worship or meet in public assembly without the knowledge and consent of the governor. In matters of religion all were at liberty to follow the dictates of their consciences; the formation of new congregations and the erection of new churches had to be with the governor’s consent, as also the election of the first elders and deacons after they had been nominated by the landdrost; the political commissioner still watched church assemblies. The whole of matters ecclesiastical remained under the surveillance of the government. The time was ripe for freedom of public worship in Capetown, but in the country people were not yet prepared for such liberal measures, and they did not regard with favour an enactment that gave to Jews, Roman Catholics, and Muslims the same civil rights as themselves. As yet the whole rural population of European blood adhered to the Dutch reformed church. In Capetown there were residents professing almost every shade of religious belief. What hung on the ordinance was not a disestablishment. It was a rule that a Jew, a Catholic, or a Muslim in Capetown stood equal before the civil law with a member of the Dutch reformed church — and that the governor still had to know before anyone worshipped in public. [3] [4] [7] [9]
The Dutch reformed remained the established church of the country, however, to the extent that its clergymen were appointed by the government and drew their salaries from the public treasury. Their number in Capetown was reduced to 2, of whom the senior received a salary of 338 pounds 6 shillings and 8 pence, and the junior 300 pounds a year, with no other emoluments whatever. In June 1804 the reverend Mr. Serrurier, after 44 years’ service, retired on a pension, leaving Messrs. Fleck and Von Manger to perform the duties. It was intended that a clergyman should be stationed at each of the drostdies and at Drakenstein and Zwartland, but it was not possible to obtain a sufficient number. During the time that the colony remained a dependency of the Batavian Republic only one new name was added to the list: that of the reverend Jan Augustus Schutz, who had called in a ship in September 1803 and accepted Swellendam, from which Ballot had been removed to Roodezand in May of that year. The churches of Drakenstein and Graaff Reinet remained without clergymen, and no church could be formed at Uitenhage. All the ministers in the country districts received the same salary: 166 pounds 13 shillings and 4 pence a year, with a house and a garden. [3]
Roman Catholicism had always been well represented at the Cape by the soldiers of the garrison. It was estimated that usually a third of the whole number professed that faith, and there was also a fair number among the civilian population. Breaking through the rigid rule of the Calvinistic creed which had prevailed under the Dutch East India Company, De Mist sanctioned a government salary to each of 2 Roman Catholic chaplains in 1804. The salaries are why the July ordinance was not only a paper equality: Catholic soldiers in the castle could be paid a priest from the same treasury that paid Fleck and Von Manger. [4]
The ordinance which granted equal civil rights to persons of every creed also provided for the establishment of schools under control of the government and not belonging to any religious body. This was a measure altogether in advance of the times, and met with such decided opposition from the farmers that nowhere except in Capetown could such schools be founded. Better no education at all from books than instruction not based on religion was the cry from one end of the colony to the other. Without doubt the government must have given way, or have forfeited the confidence of the burghers, had there been time to settle the question. [3] [9]
Another ordinance of the commissioner-general — though it was not published until the 31st of October 1804, after he had laid down his authority — facilitated the celebration of marriages. Prior to this date all persons desiring to be married were required to appear before the matrimonial court in Capetown, to show that there were no legal impediments. From this court a license was obtained, and they could then either be married by a clergyman in Capetown, or return to their own district and be married by the clergyman of the congregation of which they were members. The ordinance provided that after the 1st of January 1805 marriages were to take place before the landdrost and 2 heemraden of the district in which the bride had lived for the previous 3 months. The necessity for a journey to Capetown was thus done away with, and quite as good security was provided against improper unions. Landdrosts were authorised to perform the ceremonies. The change mattered because a frontier bride had no longer to take a waggon to the castle for a license before she could be married at home. [3] [9]
Bethelsdorp Goods — August 1804
Before taking leave of Vanderkemp and returning to his camp, De Mist had offered the missionary a sum of 250 rixdollars for the use of the institution. Instead of taking the money, Vanderkemp asked that its value in useful articles might be supplied from Capetown. He specified the iron work and wheels for a plough, 50 small hand axes, 2 dozen small gimlets, 4 or 5 penknives, some small hand saws, a good number of clasp knives, razors, beads and buttons, but no scissors, also some instructive and amusing school books. In August 1804 these articles to the value of the sum which had been offered were sent. Friction with Alberti grew; Vanderkemp would not send labour from the institute. The colonists complained of the want of servants, since the Khoikhoi were much better pleased with an indolent life in Vanderkemp’s school than in gaining their bread by labour. The land granted was unfavourable to agriculture. De Mist’s own impression, formed in the planting season of the previous summer, had been of wretched huts on a bare plain and no effort to induce industrious habits. The goods mattered because they were what a commissioner who distrusted the station still paid, more to keep the people out of mischief than from any expectation that Bethelsdorp would become useful. [3] [4]
Far north of the colonial line, by 1804, a missionary of the London society had so far succeeded as to induce many people to settle down on a place then called Klaarwater, about a hundred miles to the west of the later Kimberley — Bastards and others who had migrated from the Cape and the south-west, later known as Griquas. The northern farms of Tulbagh and Graaff Reinet still looked at Bushmen and other nomadic people between the indefinite boundary and the Orange; beyond the river there were tribes of a more settled disposition and possessing cattle. Klaarwater mattered to the Cape this year because a settlement of mixed people from the colony was taking shape beyond the river while the new northern drostdy at Tulbagh was only just named. [4] [4]
In Capetown the remnant of Gysbert Karel van Hogendorp’s people still gave trouble. Most of the men brought out by Major Von Buchenroeder had found Capetown wages more lucrative than the Dutch contracts. Von Buchenroeder worried the government with long memorials until the commissioner dealt very abruptly with him. A tract in the valley above Hout Bay was offered to Van Hogendorp’s agents to make a trial with, and the major was sent back to Holland. If one ignores that baron who in 1804 took artisans and others to work off his estate at Hout Bay, there was as yet no emigration movement of any magnitude. There were to be no slaves in the intended settlement. The design that had begun as forests and tillage near Plettenberg’s Bay had shrunk to a Hout Bay trial and a commissioner who would not be memorialised without end. [3] [4]
Widow Scheepers’s Farm — 22 September 1804
Alberti, with Commandant Hendrik van Rensburg and fieldcornet Ignatius Mulder, selected as a suitable site for the drostdy a farm belonging to the widow Elizabeth Scheepers, about 21 miles north-west of Fort Frederick, on the Zwartkops. In his report Alberti stated the reasons: the healthy situation; a plentiful supply of good water; the fertility of the soil; abundance of timber and firewood and also material for brick making; land sufficient to sell or grant a large number of erven; and lastly the site being only 6 hours’ walking distance from Fort Frederick. The homestead stood on land later occupied by works at Uitenhage. It was one of the places which had fared badly at the hands of the combined Xhosa and Khoikhoi in the rising of 1799, when the inmates were compelled to flee for their lives toward the Gamtoos, leaving all their stock in the hands of the invaders and their home in flames. Gerhardus Scheepers was probably one of those murdered at the beginning of the outbreak in July of that year. The farm had not since been occupied. The site was chosen because a burned homestead within a day’s walk of the fort was cheaper, and safer, than a new village in the Zuurveld itself. [3] [4]
The widow offered to sell the farm for 400 pounds, provided the right of free residence during her life was left to her — on one account a piece of land a hundred yards square. On the 22nd of September the council agreed to purchase it on these terms. The drostdy buildings were commenced shortly afterwards, when the site took the same name as the district. It was decided that these should be on the same scale as those sanctioned for Graaff Reinet, and the expenditure of a sum of 25000 rixdollars was authorised. The state of the public treasury did not permit of the advance of this sum, hence recourse was had to the issue of paper money. Of the sum intended for Uitenhage, only part reached Alberti in the year. To encourage a population to settle in the new township, plots of land of 1 morgen in extent were given free on application, the grantees undertaking to erect, on their respective plots, a substantial house within 6 months. The building of the drostdy house was soon commenced, but very little progress was made. There was considerable difficulty in procuring materials and labour on a frontier that had been burned out 5 years before. [3] [4]
The three landdrosts of Swellendam, Graaff Reinet and Uitenhage were directed to confer on increasing the size of the new district. On the 4th of October they recommended that Winterhoek be taken from Graaff Reinet, and Zitzikama, Kromme River and Baviaans’ Kloof from Swellendam, and added to Uitenhage. Each district should then have a landdrost and 6 heemraden. De Mist approved, and the orders were given. The boundary ran from Grenadier’s Cape through the upper end of Kromme River in a straight line through Kougaberg to the lower point of Anthoniesberg, thence along the waggon road through Dasjes Poort, Groote River Poort, Groote River, Swanepoel’s Poort, Hop River, Bui River, Sunday River, Vogel River and Blyde River to Bruintjes Hoogte, along the top of Bruintjes Hoogte to the Boschberg, along the Boschberg to the end of Kagaberg, and thence the Fish to the sea. The October addition is why Uitenhage was not only the five turbulent fieldcornetcies of February, but a coastal magistracy from the Kromme to the Fish. [3]
The first session of the landdrost and heemraden was held on the 16th of November. Peace and order in these parts could only be maintained by arms; hence a military landdrost. Alberti remained commandant at Fort Frederick as well as acting landdrost. The Zuurveld chiefs still sat west of the Fish. Ndlambe’s people had made gardens on the western side of the Bushman’s, though the chief had undertaken not to do so. Cungwa and Jalusa had joined Gaika and failed to dislodge him. The belt of land along the coast east of the Bushman’s was thus kept from being reoccupied by the farmers, but the remaining portion of old Graaff Reinet was in a fair condition of tranquillity — fair enough, at least, for a court to sit on a widow’s farm and call the place Uitenhage. [3] [4]
De Mist Lays Down Authority — 25 September 1804
On the 25th of September 1804 De Mist formally laid down his authority as commissioner-general, so that the governor might be more free to act with vigour. The great question of the time was how to place the colony in a condition for defence, as no one doubted that sooner or later it would be attacked by the English. De Mist did not profess to know anything of military matters, and thought that the governor, upon whom the responsibility would fall, should have sole authority, though they had worked together in perfect concord. Janssens was the more flexible of the two. He was beginning to see that a body of people secluded from intercourse with Europe for more than a century could not be dealt with in the same manner as men who had lived in the whirl of the French revolution. Particularly in the reforms regarding religion and education, De Mist was far ahead of his time. That is why he stepped down in September: the next emergency was a fleet, not an ordinance. [3] [9]
De Mist resided at Stellenburg, close to Wynberg, from August to November 1804, when he removed to Maastricht, at the Tygerberg. Besides the two new districts he had listed a complete overhaul of the judiciary, the agricultural commission, free trade, reorganisation of the civil service, authorisation of landdrosts to perform marriages, religious freedom for all who recognised a Supreme Being, and government schools in addition to the church schools. The burghers had sighed with relief to be in mother’s fold again after the British years; whether they would follow him into equal worship and schools without a church was another matter. R. G. van Polanen, the member of council who had not been present at the installation of 1 March 1803, arrived in March 1804. The high court was meant to be independent of the executive and legislative branches, judges appointed in Holland and removable only there. One seat had been filled locally when a judge failed to appear. The burgher senate, enlarged to 7 at the restoration, was in the following year reduced to 5: a president and 4 members. At the end of every year one retired, when a list of 4 names was furnished to the governor, from which to select a successor; at the same time the governor appointed one of them to act as president during the ensuing twelvemonth. [3] [9]
After the 8th of October 1804 British subjects still in the country were required by proclamation to reside in Stellenbosch, and could only leave that village with a pass from the governor stating the object and time of their absence. Some, however, who were married into colonial families, or who had farming interests that would suffer by their being away, were excepted, and were permitted to remain at their homes on giving a pledge that they would do nothing hostile to the Dutch in the event of the colony being attacked. A proclamation of February had ordered British subjects, mostly traders settled in the English years, to leave in neutral ships within 2 months; it was not enforced. The October order is why that February paper was tightened once De Mist was no longer commissioner-general and Janssens sat alone against an expected attack. [3]
In February the 23rd battalion of infantry — the governor’s best regiment — left South Africa for Batavia, because Holland could furnish no more men and Java needed troops. Janssens made up what he could by increasing the Khoikhoi corps first to 500 and soon afterwards to 600, but to the burghers he looked chiefly if the colony should be attacked. The Khoikhoi infantry regiment, 600 strong, was brought to such an efficient state that it was regarded as a really serviceable corps. Its officers were colonists who understood the character of the men and how to manage them. Frans le Sueur, who was in command, had the title of lieutenant-colonel. In November 1804 the Asiatics in and about Capetown were enrolled as volunteers in a corps termed the Javanese or Malay artillery. They were drilled with field-guns and to work the cannon in the forts, until the governor pronounced them a highly efficient and reliable body of auxiliaries. An attempt was made to lay up a supply of grain at the old Company’s estate Ziekenhuis behind the mountains of Hottentots-Holland, so that if Capetown should fall, the army could retreat and cut off supplies from the invader. Janssens enhanced the fieldcornets in the country districts, piled up supplies, drilled burghers, held reviews on the Grand Parade, and worked day and night to meet the coming emergency as a well-prepared commander-in-chief. Replacements for the 23rd battalion were not to be expected. [3] [9]