Boer History1807 at the Cape of Good Hope: Grey, the Slave-Trade Act, Caledon, Cuyler and Vanderkemp
Grey Takes the Oaths — 17 January 1807
Major-General David Baird was still acting governor when 1807 opened. He sat the castle from the 10th of January 1806, the day the articles of Papendorp were signed and the Batavian flag came down. The field army under Lieutenant-General Jan Willem Janssens surrendered at Hottentots-Holland on the 18th of January 1806; Janssens himself sailed for Holland in the Bellona on the 6th of March with the last Dutch garrison. The second British occupation was a year old. What hung on the opening of 1807 was not another landing. It was who would sit the castle until a peace, and on what commission — a soldier still in acting charge, or a civilian named from London. [3] [9]
When news of the conquest reached England, the ministers decided that until peace the colony should be ruled in the same manner as when Lord Macartney was governor. That form meant a civilian at the head, heads of departments sent out from England, and the salaries paid in 1797. Du Pré Alexander, second earl of Caledon, one of the representative peers of Ireland, was selected as governor. He was 29. He was upright, courteous, and, when firmness was required, resolute; he was also a Tory aristocrat, which is why that ministry would send him. As lieutenant-governor and commander of the forces Lieutenant-General Henry George Grey of the 21st Light Dragoons was appointed. Andrew Barnard was restored to his old office of colonial secretary, and Captain Christopher Bird received the post of deputy secretary. The other offices of importance were filled from England as well; the holders changed so quickly that the names need not be piled here. [3]
London judged it more expedient that a civilian of high rank, rather than a military officer, should head the colonial government. That is why Baird was not left in power. Despatches containing his recall left London on the 26th of July 1806. Besides the preference for a civilian, he had given dissatisfaction by detaching, without permission, a large part of the force at Capetown — and diverting troops on their way to India — to attack the Spanish possessions on the River La Plata. The Cape was a wartime station on the route to India. A general who sent its garrison across the Atlantic without leave was not the man London wanted in the chair until peace. [4] [4]
Grey was the first of the new staff to arrive. His commission authorised him to carry on the administration when the governor was absent, so on the 17th of January 1807 he took the oaths of office. On the following day Baird embarked in the transport Paragon and sailed for England. He had won the esteem of the colonists by his kindly bearing toward them, and respectful addresses were presented by the public bodies on his departure. He left with the rank of lieutenant-general. Grey of the 21st Light Dragoons thus sat four months until Caledon came. What hung on those two January days was the chair itself: from the 17th the Cape was under a lieutenant-governor waiting for the civilian named in London, not under the general who had taken it. [3] [4]
Cuyler and Vanderkemp — April–May 1807
In the east the unfinished drostdy at Uitenhage still needed labour. The district had been cut out of the old east in 1804. Baird, on the 14th of February 1806, had sent Captain Jacob Glen Cuyler of the 59th to replace the Batavian commandant Alberti as commandant of Fort Frederick and acting landdrost. Cuyler spoke Dutch. He was promoted major at the end of 1806. His instructions were to discourage ill-treatment of Khoikhoi and Xhosa, to send the customary messenger with presents to the Xhosa chief Cungwa, and to give every assistance to Johannes Theodorus Vanderkemp and the Christian Khoikhoi at Bethelsdorp — while listening to Vanderkemp’s accounts of Boer cruelty with precaution. The drostdy house, begun under the Batavians with a first instalment of 12500 rixdollars, was by 1807 still unfinished. Alberti had handed over a balance of 300 rixdollars; Cuyler recovered 2314 rixdollars in loan-place rents and put both sums toward the building. Labour, not money, was the new difficulty. [4]
Inhabitants were liable to be called on for public work, either in person or by allowing their slaves and paid Khoikhoi to work. The servants received rations from the government or the district, not pay from those sources — they were still paid by their masters — so the tax fell on the employers, who lost the labour for a time. In April 1807 Cuyler sent to a field-cornet instructing him to visit the farms and procure 6 Khoikhoi to work for one month at Uitenhage, then 6 others to relieve them. The field-cornet reported that very few were available. The greater number had left the farms for Bethelsdorp, enticed — particularly those with cattle — through the arts and insinuations of Vanderkemp, to the great injury of the country inhabitants. With difficulty one farmer was induced to allow two men, Solomon and Campher, to comply. They left the farm, went to Bethelsdorp instead of Uitenhage, and were detained there by Vanderkemp. Cuyler, in official though polite terms, applied to the missionary for those two and four others for a month’s work at the drostdy house. [3] [4]
Vanderkemp refused in angry language. He said the farmer, like all others, never spoke the truth, and that the two Khoikhoi belonged to the Institution. He threatened to lay the case before the governor, who, he was certain, would not approve of the Institution being treated as a district in a field-cornetcy and its members as servants of the Boers. He accused Cuyler of irritating the Khoikhoi and of siding with their oppressors, and ended that should Cuyler continue to countenance tyranny it would be criminal in him to be longer silent. Shortly afterward another field-cornet, Van Rooyen, procured six for the public service. Only three arrived in Uitenhage. One ran away to the “school”; the other two were intercepted by Vanderkemp and told they need not obey. That is why the quarrel mattered: Bethelsdorp claimed to stand outside the district as an institution answerable only to the castle, while the landdrost needed it inside the district as a source of labour for an unfinished seat of government. [4]
Cuyler felt compelled to bring the whole of Vanderkemp’s conduct before government. It was totally impossible, he said, that he could be answerable for the tranquillity of this important part of the colony while so lawless and turbulent a character, who had so much influence with the neighbouring peoples, was suffered to act as he pleased. Writing to the colonial secretary on the 31st of May he stated that he had shown Vanderkemp and the Institution every attention in his power, and had continued to do so long after he discovered a haughty and turbulent disposition which could not brook subjection to any person or any government. He recalled the murder of Nicolaas Grobbelaar in April 1806, when Bethelsdorp had at first refused men for a commando on the ground that such service was inconsistent with the religious character of the Institution. Vanderkemp, on the 20th of May 1807, wrote that he and the other missionaries had always tried to be on friendly terms with Cuyler, but had very soon discovered that there was no sense of justice in his mind regarding the Khoikhoi, and that the Boers had fed the fire of discord. If he had tried to secure young men for military service by false representations, coercion, or intoxication, the major would have applauded his zeal — but Cuyler was “neither a recruiting sergeant nor a slave driver.” [4]
On the 10th of May, from Bethelsdorp, missionary F. G. Ulbricht wrote that, having contracted a marriage with a baptized member of the Institution and of the Khoikhoi nation, he had requested the landdrost to register and proclaim the banns. Cuyler declared that he found himself not authorised to gratify him, on account of Ulbricht being a native of Europe. Vanderkemp had authority to perform marriages among the Khoikhoi of the Institution, but not among white inhabitants or slaves. In the same year James Read married Vanderkemp himself to a Madagascar slave of 16. The missionaries did this to identify themselves with their converts and to avoid any appearance of superiority. The quarrel over drostdy labour and the quarrel over a marriage register were the same quarrel: whether Bethelsdorp stood inside the district as a field-cornetcy, or outside it as an institution answerable only to the castle. [4]
Grey in the West — April 1807
In April the lieutenant-governor learned that collisions over Khoikhoi labour were few in the more favoured west. The east had Bethelsdorp and an unfinished drostdy. The west had physicians of doubtful diploma, a paper currency that had to be burnt and restamped, and a high court whose independence De Mist had secured in the Batavian years and Baird had taken back. Grey’s four months were not a new conquest. They were the Macartney form waiting for the civilian named to sit it. [4]
Having learnt that a considerable number of persons officiated as physicians and surgeons who had never been properly educated and who were by no means sufficiently qualified, Grey instituted a Supreme Medical Council. It consisted in the first place of A. Baillie, M.D., Deputy Inspector of Army Hospitals, A. L. Emerson, M.D., Physician to the Forces, and L. M. Biccard of the Batavian Jagers, by a proclamation of the 24th of April. All persons practising as physicians or surgeons, selling drugs or making up prescriptions, had to appear before this council and show their diplomas or certificates. If they could not, they had to pass an examination. The west could show diplomas. The east could not yet show a qualified practitioner in the whole province. That is why a medical council in Capetown mattered in a year when the east still had no licensed doctor at all. [4]
In the first instance the council licensed 5 physicians, 9 surgeons and 9 apothecaries in Capetown, and 10 various practitioners in the nearer country districts, such as Stellenbosch and the Paarl, but none in the Eastern Province — the licensing recorded by a proclamation of the 14th of August, after Caledon had taken the oaths. The April council was Grey’s; the August list was its first fruit. [4]
Paper-money renewals, which had taken place twice in 1806, took place once in 1807. Damaged notes were examined by the fiscal, the deputy commissary-general, two members of the court of justice and two members of the burgher senate, meeting at the revenue office within the castle at a date appointed by the governor, and were burnt in the courtyard just outside the office. Newly stamped pieces were not ready for circulation until three high officials had signed each denomination — on one surviving note P. J. Truter, A. V. Bergh and G. E. Overbeek. The money when finished was handed to the receiver-general, who exchanged it for a further quantity of damaged notes. Baird in January 1806 had tried to hold the cartoon rixdollar at four English shillings; the paper still had to be burnt and written again. What hung on a single renewal in 1807 was the same empty treasury: the colony’s money was still a stamp in the castle yard, not a coin in the pocket. [4]
Slave-Trade Act — March–May 1807
When the Cape was retaken in 1806 the total number of slaves in the colony was 29861, the total white population 26268 — an excess of 3593 slaves over free people. The Batavian government, on the 11th of April 1803, had provisionally forbidden permission to embark or import cargoes of male or female slaves. Baird, like his British predecessors, treated slavery as inseparable from the colony’s labour and set that prohibition aside in practice. On the 30th of October 1806 he allowed the slaves in a Portuguese ship, the Dido, then in Table Bay, to be landed and sold at public auction; later in that year he gave permission to Alexander Tennant, a Capetown merchant who had been associated with Hogan in earlier slave ventures, to import 500 more from Mozambique. [3] [4]
On the 25th of March 1807 the parliament of Great Britain abolished the slave trade in British ships and by British subjects to or from any part of the coast of Africa, and forbade the importation of slaves into any British port, to take effect from the 1st of May. Nothing was said in the Act about slavers calling at British ports on the slave-trading routes from one foreign port to another. Vessels often arrived at the Cape on their way from Mozambique to Brazil in the last stages of distress for want of water, provisions and repairs. The question was whether these should be refused and the hundreds on board allowed to perish, or whether the necessary assistance should be given and so facilitate the trade it was desired to exterminate. That dilemma would sit on every later governor who watched Table Bay. [3] [4] [4]
With Baird’s permission Tennant had entered into a contract with V. de Souza, captain of a Portuguese vessel, the Neptune African, then in Table Bay, to import 500 slaves from Mozambique. While that ship was on this errand another Portuguese vessel, the General Izedro, arrived with 383 slaves. These Tennant was allowed to have as part of the promised 500. When the Act was communicated to the Cape government he had therefore received 383 out of the 500 which Baird had given him leave to import, but he had contracted for another cargo. [3] [4]
Toward the close of the year de Souza’s vessel returned with 220 slaves. Caledon had by then succeeded, and the Act of the 1st of May was in force. After a little consideration the governor resolved to allow 117 to be landed, in order to complete the promised number; as Tennant had no permission to import a greater number, he refused to let the remaining 103 be put ashore. These 117 were the last that were openly landed and sold in the Cape Colony; it was discovered at a later period that some had been smuggled in. With Caledon’s concurrence Tennant directed the vessel to proceed with the balance of her freight toward South America. The Cape labour market felt the ban at once: the open sale was closed, and farms, the drostdy, and the Khoikhoi corps were competing for the same remaining hands. [3] [4]
The Portuguese ships that still called were commonly of 200 to 300 tons, many much less. A British law of 1788 had decreed that vessels should not carry more than five slaves to every three tons; on these Portuguese ships the number was often over five to one ton, to cover the loss by deaths on the voyage. It was not unusual for the people below deck to be packed in spaces not high enough to sit upright, chained or shackled in threes or fives. About a third, and sometimes a half, of those originally embarked died before the end of the passage. After the 1st of May the Cape could not take them as cargo. The procedure with a foreign slaver that called was to put her into quarantine, place her in the outer anchorage of Table Bay, see to the barest necessaries, and order her to sea with the least possible delay. The letter of the new law gave no middle way: to supply provisions was, on one reading, to aid a forbidden transport. [4]
Caledon Takes the Oaths — 22 May 1807
In the afternoon of the 21st of May the earl of Caledon and Barnard arrived in the ship of war Antelope, and on the following morning the governor took the oaths of office. He was 29, an Irish representative peer, a young man of considerable energy and ability. He arrived knowing little of the colony’s previous history and had to initiate his own plans. The most difficult part of his administration he was not long in discovering: the various phases of the native question on a frontier he had not yet seen. Grey remained lieutenant-governor and commander of the forces. The Macartney form was now seated in a civilian, not in an acting general. [3] [4]
The system under which the colony was henceforth ruled was virtually a despotism pure and simple. The governor could make what laws he chose, unrestrained by a council; but he was responsible to the secretary of state, and in all important matters acted under that minister’s instructions. Of his own will he could fix prices for any produce required for the army, and assess the quantity each farmer was compelled to deliver — a power frequently used. The patronage of the civil service, except the heads of departments sent out from England, was entirely in his hands, and at any time, without even assigning a reason, he could suspend or dismiss any official appointed in the colony, with the sole exception of the president of the high court of justice. He personally directed and controlled the different departments. With the lieutenant-governor he formed a court of appeal in civil cases of over 200 pounds value. That is why the oaths of the 22nd of May mattered more than a change of name: the chair now combined legislation, patronage, army prices, and civil appeal in one man of 29. [3] [7]
In addition to all these powers, Caledon was vested with an office which no former governor had held: that of judge in criminal cases of appeal. The high court of justice carried on its proceedings according to an enactment of Philip II in 1670 by which a final sentence could only be pronounced in criminal cases when the accused confessed his guilt or the evidence against him was direct and overwhelming. In other cases an appeal could be carried to a superior court. Under the East India Company, appeals were made to the high court of justice at Batavia, a copy of the evidence being forwarded. Under the British administration from 1795 to 1803 a number of sentences of death were not carried out, owing to absence of confession of guilt and the want of a final tribunal. Caledon was instructed to appoint one or two assessors, and to act with them as a court of appeal in criminal cases. This was independent of his power of mitigating or suspending sentences passed by the inferior courts. The gap left when Batavia ceased to be the court of last resort was now filled in the castle itself. [3]
The members of the high court — the president only excepted — were now ordinary civil servants, appointed by the governor and holding office during his pleasure. The legislative and executive council had ceased to exist. All legislative authority was in the governor’s hands. The old restrictions as to trade again came in force as they had existed under Macartney. Religious associations had, by De Mist’s ordinance of the 25th of July 1804, been promised equal protection from the laws, with no civil privilege belonging to any creed. A Roman Catholic chaplain of a regiment under the late Dutch government was expelled from the colony. That expulsion sat uneasily beside De Mist’s ordinance and beside the terms of the capitulation. Caledon was the first British governor in the Macartney sense — not an acting general, but a civilian autocrat. His task was not a light one. The colonists had no particular reason to be sympathetically disposed toward the representative of an unpopular government placed in power as an autocrat. [7]
The Cape Regiment, the Lodge, and Smallpox — June–July 1807
On the 16th of June a Khoikhoi in the prison in Capetown was found to be suffering from smallpox. He had recently come round by sea from Algoa Bay, and it was supposed that he had brought the seeds of the disease from the country north of the Orange river, where it was known to be prevalent in a mild form. The sick man and two Khoikhoi who were his associates in the prison were at once conveyed to Paarden Island and were kept there in complete isolation. They were all smitten with true smallpox, but all recovered. Owing to the precautions taken, the disease did not spread, and no other case was discovered. Three mild cases, and the year closed without a town epidemic. Isolation at Paarden Island was the castle’s answer to a disease that had emptied Khoikhoi kraals in earlier generations. [3]
With the change in command came also another change in the uniform of the Khoikhoi corps that Baird had formed from the men who would enlist after Hottentots-Holland. It was thought prudent to eliminate all attachment to and remembrance of the Batavian government by discarding the red and blue worn in that service and replacing it by green with black facings, after the style of the English rifle companies. The head-gear was a round felt hat with a green tuft. The existence of this corps had ever been a matter of great offence to the Dutch inhabitants, especially those of the interior, who considered it a great insult that natives should be kept in readiness to act against them. What was of really greater moment was the withdrawal of so many Khoikhoi from the possibility of working on the farms. This was felt all the more keenly in 1807, for in that year the labour market was affected by the abolition of the slave trade. A green coat on the frontier was a farm hand lost in the west. [4]
When Caledon became governor he did not look upon this corps with such favour as his predecessors had done. He contended that Khoikhoi were useless in the ordinary garrison duties of the Cape, though they might be of service in the warfare peculiar to the interior and the frontier; but for this latter purpose a much smaller number than then constituted the corps would suffice. A further disadvantage was that, as it was an irregular regiment, it could not be regarded as an establishment of the regular army, and therefore the expense of its equipment and maintenance fell upon the colonial treasury. For these reasons Caledon asked the home government to sanction its reduction to its original number, namely 350. This does not seem to have been acted upon. The reduction was quite in unison with the general desire of the colonists. [4]
Landdrost Andries Stockenstrom writing to the colonial secretary on the 17th of July said that, having been informed on his way up to Capetown that another enlistment of Khoikhoi had taken place which might possibly extend itself as far as Graaff-Reinet, he could not but entreat that this might be avoided as much as possible in that drostdy. The disadvantage advanced was that it would overthrow a salutary regulation relative to the registration of names of Khoikhoi in the service of the inhabitants, whereby servants were secured to them for a fixed period and these were sure of their pay. The east wanted labour on the farms. The castle wanted a green-coated corps. The Act of the 1st of May had made both wants sharper. [4]
In July Caledon proposed to the secretary of state that the government slaves should be sold, and the lodge be converted into public offices. Under the Batavian administration the establishment had been greatly reduced, and at this time it consisted of only 189 men, 73 women, and 23 children. Some of the men and women were so old and infirm as to be unfit for severe labour, and the cost of their maintenance was greater than the benefit derived from them. All the public offices were in the castle, where room was required for the military staff, so that a double purpose would be served by getting rid of the slaves. His Excellency was of opinion that it would be more advisable to sell them than to set them free, as in the latter case they would almost certainly become idle paupers. The law, he wrote, afforded the slaves ample redress against the ill-usage of their masters, nor did the bad treatment of them often require its intervention. The proposal was the castle’s answer to a ban that had closed the open market: fewer government slaves, more room for the staff that Macartney’s form had sent out. [3]
Cungwa, Groenekloof, and Bethelsdorp — September–December 1807
In September Cungwa, heedless of the authority of field-cornet and landdrost, left the Bushman’s River district and, migrating beyond Algoa Bay, established 11 or 12 kraals on the lands along the Van Staaden’s River. Ndlambe’s people were gradually ousting the remaining Zuurveld farmers and adding to their own increasing herds all cattle not carefully watched. In one instance a burgher named Oosthuisen was driven from a loan place on which he had expended 300 rixdollars, and on which 5000 head of Xhosa cattle were soon grazing. Armed parties were reported to be roving about in tens and twenties, begging for food and stating that if the people did not give victuals they must make themselves masters of their table. The west had a medical council and a paper note burnt in the castle yard. The east had kraals on the Van Staaden’s and a drostdy that still could not get six men for a month. [4]
The Moravian institution at Genadendal had proved of the greatest utility to the Khoikhoi there. The missionaries, working quietly and avoiding interference with political questions, were esteemed alike by the government, passing strangers, and the colonists; while the results of their labours were visible not only on their own grounds, but in the appearance and conduct of the people under their care who went out to work among the farmers. The only objection to their system was made by missionaries of other denominations, who thought the Moravians kept their pupils under tutelage. That was the feature most admired by observers who held that people emerging from a pastoral life required constant guidance. Caledon was so impressed with the good work done by the Moravians at Genadendal that he urged them to form another station. He wanted in the west what Bethelsdorp, in his view, had failed to be in the east: a quiet station whose people went out to work. [3]
In the large tract of land called Groenekloof there had been from the early days of the settlement a location reserved for the remnant of the Khoikhoi clans that under the names of Cochoquas, Goringhaiquas and Gorachouquas were found in possession of the whole Cape district when white men first settled in South Africa. Smallpox and brandy had nearly exterminated those people, but still a few remained, with whose blood that of Europeans and of negro slaves had been mixed sufficiently to give them some stamina. When Groenekloof was set apart as pasture ground for the butcher who contracted to supply the government with meat, it was stipulated in the contract that he should not deprive the Khoikhoi of any land which they required for their own use. After the terrible loss of life occasioned by the first outbreak of smallpox, the government thought it better to reserve a special tract, and this had ever since been in their possession. It was not surveyed, nor was a title-deed issued, but white people were prevented from encroaching upon it, and it was as well defined as the ordinary loan farms. In 1804 a burgher whose sheep the Khoikhoi had stolen made an attempt to drive them from that part of it which was called Louwskloof, but Janssens and the council protected them in their rights. Their reserve adjoined the government farm called Kleine Post, upon which there was a good dwelling house and some outbuildings. [3]
In December 1807 Caledon invited the Moravians to establish a mission there, and offered them the Kleine Post property for the purpose. The offer was accepted. The house stood ready; the station was not yet named. What hung on the December invitation was a second Moravian post on an old Khoikhoi reserve, under a governor who preferred Genadendal’s quiet labour to Bethelsdorp’s quarrel with the landdrost. [3]
The London society’s station of Bethelsdorp was not regarded with favour by the authorities. Outside of the missionary circle an opinion was unanimously held that no good was being done there, that the Khoikhoi were encouraged in idleness, and that the place was a retreat for bad characters. The land was not large enough for the population which nominally belonged to it, and the very poor supply of water permitted of agriculture only on the smallest scale. It was a matter of surprise that the numerous cattle belonging to the people of the place were able to find sufficient food in the scanty pasturage of the barren surroundings. Attempts had more than once been made to find a more favoured spot to which the Institution should be removed, but nothing satisfactory to Vanderkemp could be proposed. [3] [4]
Caledon thought that if the station were moved to more fertile ground in the neighbourhood of Plettenberg’s Bay it might answer better, and in December he directed Faure, landdrost of Swellendam, to meet Vanderkemp at the house of George Rex, an English gentleman residing on the farm Melkhoutkraal at the Knysna, and select a suitable place. Faure and Rex reported that nothing could be done or proposed satisfactory to Vanderkemp. The governor then declared his resolution to remove two-thirds of the Khoikhoi to some better place, and to prohibit Xhosa from settling at Bethelsdorp; but he did not carry this intention into effect in the year that closed. The east kept its Institution. The west was offered Kleine Post. The civilian of 29 had named a government; he had not yet named a peace. [3] [4]