Boer History1812 at the Cape of Good Hope: Zuurveld Cleared, Grahamstown, and the Black Circuit
Addo Bush — 3 January 1812
John Graham wrote from Jokamma on the 2nd of January that the Xhosa still inside the colonial line were under Ndlambe’s absolute control and meant to make an obstinate resistance. Graham was the officer Sir John Cradock had named on the 8th of October 1811 to drive those clans back over the Fish. Landdrost Andries Stockenstrom and 8 farmers were stabbed on the Zuurberg on the 29th of December. The letter from Jokamma mattered because it told Capetown that talking was over: the thickets south of the range would have to be entered on foot. [3] [4]
Combined, the left and centre divisions marched south on New Year’s Day and joined the right in the Addo bush. Four companies of the Cape regiment, with the artillery and 20 dragoons, formed with the burghers a corps of some 800 effective men. The wood in which the Xhosa lay was close. They had not been attacked on foot in forest before, and in woods the assagai needed room that the thicket would not give. Graham ordered 500 men to enter on the morning of the 3rd, divided into 6 companies, to remain while a fighting man remained, and to bring off the cattle — which, when the clans chose to quit the colony, should be restored. The burghers, he wrote, were orderly, willing, and obedient, and went upon any enterprise. [4]
On the 3rd of January 6 parties, each of 60 farmers and 20 of the Cape regiment, entered the broken forest south of the Addo Heights against the Gunukwebe. The work went on 5 days. About 12 Xhosa were killed, among them the chief Cungwa, who could do little to help himself out of the wood. On the colonial side only Fieldcornet Nortje lost his life. 2500 head of cattle were taken. As soon as the first patrols came out, others were sent in again; the Gunukwebe avoided a combat and tried to double upon their pursuers. Graham reported that the farmers were orderly and obedient and undertook with cheerfulness and alacrity the fatiguing duties allotted to them. [3] [4]
On the 8th of January Graham wrote to Lieutenant-Colonel Reynell that the country now to be worked, and the waggons, ammunition, and captured cattle to be guarded, made 200 more men from Capetown imperative. After Stockenstrom’s death his son Andries, barely 20, was put in command of the Graaff Reinet burghers. With those and the contingent from Tulbagh he was ordered to the Upper Bushman’s, to scour as far down as Rautenbach’s Drift. That was done. At the drift the moving force met. Jacob Glen Cuyler took the western bank of the Bushman’s; Captain Fraser the eastern; Stockenstrom went on into the jungles of the Kareiga, the Kasouga, and the Kowie. None came to action. Graham pursued Ndlambe as far as the Kowie and found the chief well ahead. [4]
On the 14th and 15th of January Ndlambe crossed the Fish with his people. The Gunukwebe followed under Pato, who took the chieftainship on his father’s death. It appeared afterwards as if Cungwa’s clan had only kept the Europeans engaged while Ndlambe made good his escape. Xhosa occupying as far west as the Sundays were put at about 20000. A large burgher commando was in the field in January, with the Khoikhoi regiment under Cuyler driving east and clearing every thicket and river basin, and Graham bringing up the rear as a reserve. On the 31st of January Graham was able to report that the whole of the coast country between the Sundays and the Fish was cleared of those who had for so many years been a scourge there. The report mattered because it was the first time since the clans moved west that the government could claim the Zuurveld as empty of fighting men — empty, that is, of those who had held it, not yet of those still in the mountains. [3] [4] [7]
Zuurberg Cleared — February–March 1812
Habana and a number of the other petty captains remained in the recesses of the mountains. It was believed that David Stuurman, who had escaped from confinement some time before, was aiding Habana with a band of Khoikhoi marksmen, and that an attack upon them would cost heavily. Stuurman was not a stray raider. His Gamtoos location had been broken up after he defied the landdrost; if he was in the Zuurberg with Habana, the mountain fight would be against men who could shoot, not only against assagais in a thicket. [3]
On the 13th of February 2 divisions of burghers and Khoikhoi soldiers entered the broken country of the Zuurberg and Rietbergen, one from the north, one from the south. They met on the bank of the Sundays, then formed small parties and scoured west to east, while mounted patrols guarded the outlets on their flanks. Contrary to expectation, Stuurman and his gang were not there. During 12 days of excessive fatigue the kloofs and thickets were cleared. The Xhosa fled toward their own country. About 30 were killed or wounded. Over 100 women and children were made prisoners, and 600 head of cattle were captured. On the 24th of February the burghers returned to camp, having destroyed all the gardens and left hardly a trace of the Xhosa west of the Fish. The women and children were restored to their friends, and sufficient corn for seed was given with them. Restoring the prisoners was not mercy for its own sake. It was the government’s way of showing that the war was to empty the Zuurveld, not to hold hostages. [3]
In March the war was over. A chain of posts was formed in the regained territory, garrisoned partly by Khoikhoi levies and partly by burghers, extending inland toward the Winterberg. The principal of those posts would be Graham’s Town and Boschberg on the Little Fish. The chain mattered because a cleared thicket without posts was only a pause. The Fish could be forded at almost all places; unless men sat on the fords, Ndlambe’s people could walk back. [3] [7]
On the 20th of March Graham issued a circular to the landdrosts instructing them to induce the refugees to return to their farms, and wrote to government suggesting that all arrears of rent should be remitted. The inhabitants were assured that such a system of defence would be established in the regained territory as would protect life and property. Those who, on receiving the intimation, neglected to take immediate possession of their former places were to have their leases cancelled and their lands given to others. All this was scarcely necessary. Before the people could have been aware of the colonel’s intentions, the greater number of the loan places from the Bushman’s to the north of the Zuurberg and as far east as Noutoe were already reoccupied. Farmers who had fled west during the occupation needed a written promise that the posts would stay, or they would not risk stock and families on empty ground. [4]
In thus calling the loan places back into use, Graham was ignorant of steps already occupying Cradock — and Caledon before him — toward abolishing that tenure altogether. A loan place was a grazing run held at a flat rent, renewed by custom when the rent was paid; the government could reclaim it on a year’s notice, but almost never did. It was with some surprise that Graham learnt the governor disapproved of the circular and had issued a countermand. The view taken was that, the inhabitants having been driven forth, the ground had become lost to them, and that, recovered by the king’s arms, government was competent to begin afresh: no title founded on former possession was to be recognised; grants in future were not to be on loan, but smaller and as near as possible to the military posts. Graham’s letter and the prompt return of the people somewhat upset those calculations. Reluctant to reverse the colonel’s measures in appearance, Cradock permitted those who had gone back on the circular to remain, and promised that the greatest attention should be paid to their cases when grants under a new tenure were arranged. From Newlands on the 2nd of April he wrote privately to Graham in explanation, hoping that Henry Alexander’s public letter had sufficiently set out the general wishes for the settlement of the frontier. The quarrel over the circular is why the Zuurveld, once cleared, did not simply revert to the old farms as if nothing had happened. Capetown meant to use the war to change how land was held. [4]
From Uitenhage on the 30th of March Graham signed regulations for the posts. Double sentries were to be posted at night and never to go far from the kraals or houses, and to be frequently changed. The enemy was never to be pursued at night except in moonlight and in open country. All bushes in the immediate vicinity of a post were to be cleared away. Frequent patrols were to go out, silent, concealing themselves, making no fire where Xhosa were likely to pass. Spoors of men and beasts were to be studied by all. Notice of fresh Xhosa spoor was to be given instantly to the officer commanding and followed until it passed out of the neighbourhood. Traces going westward were to be signalled to the posts best placed to intercept. Men going without shoes were to make a cross here and there on their tracks, the sign to be changed as required. The families and property of the inhabitants were under the protection of the troops; if necessary a guard was to help with the flocks at night, particularly along the Great Fish. All Xhosa and their followers seen within the limits were to be dealt with as enemies, except those bearing communications from their chiefs. The only crossing place named was William van Aardt’s ford on the Fish. Prisoners were to be well secured and forwarded to Uitenhage. Khoikhoi and slaves without passes, found at a distance from a dwelling and not giving a satisfactory answer, were to be dealt with as Xhosa. The regulations show what Graham thought a cleared Zuurveld actually required: not a treaty, but sentries, spoors, and a single legal ford. [4]
Smallpox — 5 March 1812
In 1807 and again in 1812 smallpox appeared in the colony. On the 16th of June in the former year a Khoikhoi in the prison in Capetown was found suffering from it. He had recently come round by sea from Algoa Bay, and it was supposed he had brought the seeds from the country north of the Orange, where the disease was known to be prevalent in a mild form. The sick man and 2 Khoikhoi who were his associates were at once conveyed to Paarden Island and kept in complete isolation. They were all smitten with true smallpox, but all recovered. Owing to the precautions taken, the disease did not spread on that occasion, and no other case was discovered. That 1807 isolation is why the 1812 outbreak was a shock: the same town knew the disease could be stopped if the first case was caught. [3]
On the 5th of March 1812 a slave from a condemned Portuguese ship was found to be suffering from smallpox, though he had appeared perfectly well when he landed a short time previously. He was at once isolated, but soon other cases were discovered in houses where he had been, and the disease rapidly spread. The government issued instructions that every one in the town should be inoculated; but the Muslims, from a religious scruple, found means to avoid compliance with the order. Inoculation then meant giving a mild case of the disease itself, not the later cowpox vaccine. A community that refused it left a path for the infection through the town. [3]
Capetown was now shunned by the country people, and communication with the interior almost ceased. The schools and places of worship were closed, general business was suspended, and unnecessary intercourse was forbidden. As soon as the disease appeared in a house, a white flag was hung out, and every one coming from such a house was required to wear a strip of white calico round his arm. The anxiety of the people was very great; but there were only a few hundred cases, and most of those attacked recovered. By September the disease entirely disappeared, and the 11th of October was observed as a day of thanksgiving to God for its cessation. The flags and arm-bands mattered because they were the only public mark a traveller had that a house was unsafe. Without them the town could not reopen churches or let country wagons in. [3]
Apprenticeship and Schools — April 1812
Caledon’s proclamation of the 1st of November 1809 abolished chieftainship among the Khoikhoi in the colony, put them under colonial law, required a fixed place of abode, and bound every person going about the country to carry a pass. In 1812 Cradock expressed his opinion that the enforcement of those regulations had been attended by the most beneficial results. The experience of over 2 years indicated that with a few additions and modifications still further good might ensue. Caledon’s code is why Cradock could act in April without inventing a new system. He was tightening a law already in force, not opening a new subject. [3] [4] [7]
Accordingly, on the 23rd of April 1812, Cradock issued what may be considered a supplementary proclamation. The chief feature was the enactment that children, whether male or female, born of Khoikhoi parents while in the employ of a farmer or inhabitant, and maintained until the eighth year by such inhabitant, should, as compensation for the cost incurred, be apprenticed to the employer of the parents for a period of 10 years — provided that the employer was a humane person and one upon whom strict reliance for the good treatment of the apprentice might be placed. The same rule was made applicable to children of slaves by free Khoikhoi women. The object stated was to prevent the children becoming vagrants. Between 1809 and the years that followed, the Caledon enactments, strengthened in 1812 by this law, remained in force. The indenture mattered because it bound a child to a farm for a decade after the years of keep. A Khoikhoi family that left an employer lost not only wages but the children the farmer had fed to age 8. [4] [7]
The question of education was one of the first public matters toward which Cradock turned his attention. The information gathered by the circuit judges deeply impressed him. In their report for 1812 they stated that in the district of Graaff Reinet alone there were 3400 children of whom not more than 100 had any opportunity of instruction, while the parents of at least 2000 of these were well able to afford the necessary expense. Except at the few drostdies in the colony and the houses of a few opulent individuals, no sort of instruction for young people was procurable. Those figures are why a governor who had just cleared the Zuurveld still spent April on schools. A district that could put burghers in the field could not, on the judges’ count, put its own children in a classroom. [4]
In 1812, under the authority of government, a committee was formed in Capetown known as the Bible and School Commission, the objects of which were to propagate a knowledge of the Bible and to control education in the Cape Peninsula. It was composed of the clergymen of the different denominations in Capetown together with some of the government officials, and was supported by voluntary contributions. The Lutheran minister Frederick Hesse was secretary; Robert Jones was an active member. Very shortly after its formation it received support from and extended its operations to the whole of the colony. In April a circular went out on the subject. Schools for coloured children were established in Capetown, Stellenbosch, and Tulbagh by missionaries of the London and South African societies, and were aided as much as possible by the governor. The ordinary schools in Capetown and at the various drostdies likewise received his attention. [3] [4]
Grahamstown — 14 August 1812
Headquarters of the frontier troops were on a farm once occupied by Lucas Meyer — De Rietfontein — close to the source of the Kowie, on a spur of the Zuurberg, about 25 miles from the sea and nearly 2000 feet above the ocean. Its advantage as a military position was due to its being the centre of an irregular semicircle described by the Fish from north-west round to south-east, nearly every part of the curve being within a day’s march. The spot selected for barracks was on an elevated tongue of land formed by the Kowie and another stream which joined it below; both streams could be led over almost every part of the ground, so that some 20 or 30 acres might be irrigated, and 40 or 50 more on the opposite banks. Officers who had built houses on lots there were confirmed in them as their own property, which they might dispose of as they thought fit — though they were not to consider the places as permanent quarters, being liable to removal nearer to barracks in contemplation, or to any other situation at the pleasure of government. The site mattered because a post that could not water gardens would not hold a garrison through a dry season, and a post off the Fish curve would be a day’s march too late at the fords. [3] [4]
Very shortly after Graham had settled upon De Rietfontein as the Zuurveld military headquarters, Cradock decided that the same place should also become a civil establishment, and that the civil should be the predominant feature. It was constituted an appendage of Uitenhage, controlled by an official subordinate to the landdrost, known as the deputy landdrost. The gentleman first appointed to this office was Major George Sackville Fraser of the Cape regiment. He was one of the officers who had moved from Noutoe with the regiment, and one of the first who obtained permission to appropriate a piece of land in the present Church Square, on which he built a small house. His appointment dates from the 10th of July 1812. In November of that year Fraser, in conjunction with Colonel Lyster, was instructed to select suitable spots on which to erect the necessary public buildings, preferably at some distance from the military quarters: a house for the deputy landdrost, a prison, and accommodation for a messenger, a constable, and the rest of a small civil staff. A deputy landdrost on Meyer’s farm meant the Zuurveld was no longer to be held only by patrols. Capetown meant a court, a prison, and a name. [4]
To the embryo town thus formed a name was officially sanctioned on the 14th of August 1812 by government advertisement from the Castle of Good Hope: His Excellency the Governor and Commander in Chief was pleased to notify and direct that the present Head-quarter Cantonment of the Cape Regiment, situated in the Zuurveld, which was also to be the future residence of the deputy landdrost of Uitenhage, should be henceforward designated, and only acknowledged, by the name of Graham’s Town, in testimony of His Excellency’s respect for the services of Lieutenant-Colonel Graham, through whose able exertions the Xhosa tribes had been expelled from that valuable district. The advertisement is why a loan farm at the Kowie source became the civil centre of the regained country, and why later maps would print Grahamstown rather than De Rietfontein. [3] [4] [7]
On the same 14th of August Willem Stephanus van Ryneveld, fiscal and vice-president of the high court — chief justice as that officer now began to be termed — died. He had been named to accompany the second circuit. Jan Andries Truter then became chief justice. On the Little Fish, Boschberg was named Cradock by a government advertisement. It was one of the principal posts of the new chain. Van Ryneveld’s death on the naming day of Grahamstown is why the second circuit left without the man who had sat as president of the first. [3] [7]
When, for the better administration of the large district of Uitenhage, a deputy landdrost was stationed at Grahamstown, a similar measure was adopted in the still larger district of Graaff Reinet by the appointment, on the 10th of June 1812, of Ensign Andries Stockenstrom as deputy landdrost of that district. On the 10th of July J. H. Fischer was appointed landdrost of Graaff Reinet, an office made vacant by the murder of the elder Stockenstrom. On the 7th of August following he was succeeded as deputy landdrost of Tulbagh by Olof Marthini Bergh. On the 1st of July Van der Riet, landdrost of Stellenbosch, retired on account of old age, and was succeeded by Watse Sibius van Andringa. The year that named Graham’s Town thus also filled the drostdy left empty on the Zuurberg in December, and put the murdered landdrost’s son into a deputy’s seat in the same district. [3] [4]
The Circuit of September 1812
During recent years several governors had contemplated a circuit court; Caledon had been permitted to carry the design into effect. On the 16th of May 1811 he issued a proclamation that a commission of two or more members of the high court should from time to time make a circuit through the colony, to try important cases, ascertain that the landdrosts performed their duties correctly, inspect the district chests and buildings, and report upon the condition of the people. A travelling court mattered on the frontier because a farmer accused at Uitenhage had until then faced a journey to Capetown, and a Khoikhoi accuser had faced the same landdrost who was also commandant. [3]
On the 14th of October 1811 three judges left Capetown on the first circuit: Van Ryneveld, Pieter Diemel, and Francis Willem Fagel, with Daniel Johannes van Ryneveld as secretary. They proceeded to the various drostdies and tried in all 21 criminal cases, of which 8 were charges brought by coloured people against colonists. The proceedings were conducted with open doors, and no distinction was made between persons of different races or colour as accusers, accused, or witnesses. The judges reached Capetown again on the 1st of February 1812, and shortly afterwards drew up and presented to the governor a long report upon the condition of the country. Throughout South Africa there was nothing but satisfaction expressed with the establishment of a circuit court after this manner, and everywhere the judges were received with the utmost respect. That first return in February is why the second circuit of September looked, at the outset, like a continuation of a popular reform rather than a prosecution of the frontier. [3]
But before the termination of that first circuit Cradock received a despatch from the secretary of state, dated the 9th of August 1811, enclosing a copy of a letter from James Read of Bethelsdorp to the directors of the London missionary society, published in England. In that letter the missionary complained that the Khoikhoi were subject to cruel and inhuman treatment from white people, and that Caledon and Landdrost Cuyler were alike deaf to their cry for justice. He asserted that upwards of 100 murders had been brought to the knowledge of Johannes Theodorus Vanderkemp and himself in the district of Uitenhage alone. The secretary of state instructed the governor to have these charges thoroughly investigated, and to see that stringent punishment was inflicted upon perpetrators of outrages. Vanderkemp died in Capetown on the 15th of December 1811, but Read was aided by other members of the society to get as many cases as he could for the next circuit. He, too, was on his mettle. All the stories of the years of discord and war between the colonists and the Khoikhoi were brought forward, and the court was furnished with a fearful roll of charges. The despatch is why the second circuit was not the same as the first. London had read Read’s letter in print, and had ordered a trial. [3] [7]
Cuyler considered his honour at stake, and was most anxious that even petty assaults should be looked into, in order that the assertions of the missionary might be proved false. He belonged to one of the best families of Dutch descent in the state of New York; in the revolutionary war his father had taken part with the king, and in course of time he had become an officer in the British army. He was very indignant on being accused of injustice, as he prided himself on his integrity and knew that the charge against him was undeserved. At that time it was part of the duty of the landdrosts to act as public prosecutors when charges of crime committed within their districts came before a superior court. On this circuit an advocate was directed to accompany the judges and prosecute in the cases brought forward by the missionaries, leaving the landdrosts to prosecute in all other cases. The advocate charged with this duty was Gerard Beelaerts van Blokland, a man of unblemished integrity, who had been attorney-general under the Batavian government and was now secretary of the high court. This departure from the usual course was made at Cuyler’s urgent request, and in order that everything possible should be done to secure a thorough investigation. An independent prosecutor at Uitenhage meant Cuyler would not try, as landdrost, the charges that named him as deaf to Khoikhoi complaints. [3] [4]
On the 23rd of September 1812 the judges Strubberg and Pieter Laurens Cloete left Capetown on what was afterwards usually termed the black circuit. 2 other judges were sent on circuit to Swellendam and Tulbagh, leaving to Strubberg and Cloete only the districts of George, Uitenhage, and Graaff Reinet. They proceeded in the first instance to Graaff Reinet, where they arrived on the 13th of October. Having closed the court there on the 21st, they journeyed over Bruintjes Hoogte, Grahamstown, the Zuurveld, and the Addo, and on the 3rd of November arrived at the drostdy at Uitenhage, where the session was opened on the 5th. The cases of alleged cruelty to the Khoikhoi and slaves were arranged in 2 lists. List No. 1 contained cases of wilful murder and other cruelties said to have taken place under the present English government: in spite of Read’s utmost exertions to scrape together everything which could add support to his upwards of 100 recent murders in Uitenhage, the list contained only 16 cases of all kinds. List No. 2 contained those said either to have happened previous to the last surrender or of uncertain date: in this list there were 46 cases. The two lists are why the circuit took the name it did. A court that arrived to try Read’s 100 found, on paper, 16 recent cases and a longer roll of older or undated ones. [3] [4]
More than one-third of the male inhabitants of the frontier districts who were capable of bearing arms were in garrison in the stockaded posts constructed to prevent the return of the Xhosa to the Zuurveld. Over 50 members of their families — male and female — were required to appear before the circuit court, and over 1000 witnesses — European, black, and Khoikhoi — were summoned to give evidence. The whole country was in a state of commotion. The first case brought before the court was that of Barbara Janse van Rensburg, wife of Marthinus Oosthuisen, on a charge of gross ill-usage of a female slave said to have ended in death — a charge resting on a deposition of Vanderkemp’s from March 1808, when a girl named Rosina of about 15 had run to Bethelsdorp. Another charge that went the rounds was of an old woman on a frontier farm accused of torturing a Khoikhoi lad with boiling water: when it was enquired into, the lad had been found in the veld after snow, almost perishing, and had been bathed and warmed, one foot accidentally scalded. 15 white men and 2 white women were severally charged with murder, and 13 white men and 2 white women with crimes of violence toward Khoikhoi or slaves. Of the murder charges that the 1812 sittings took up, the lists showed nothing like Read’s 100, and not a single one of those murder cases could be proved as the court sat. One or two of the accused were found guilty of assault. The large numbers proved innocent were indignant — as were their friends — not only with the missionaries for lending credence to every narrative that could be construed into cruelty, but with a government in England which did not understand the situation. From that time the missionaries of the London society were held by the frontier colonists to be slanderers and public enemies. The black circuit, and the methods of procedure connected with it, were among the first great causes of such serious discontent with British rule as to make a reconciliation between the rulers and the people impossible. The sittings did not close in 1812. What the year did was to put 1000 witnesses on the road while a third of the armed men still sat in the posts, and to teach the frontier that a letter printed in England could empty a drostdy. [3] [4] [7]
Posts, Defence Tax, and the Year’s Close — 1812
On the 9th of October Cradock issued a proclamation annulling the law of 1770 by which slaves confirmed in the Christian religion were not thereafter to be sold, and leaving to baptized slaves no greater privileges than to others. The old Dutch laws had given freedom to slaves who professed the Christian religion, but local regulations had greatly checked manumission; by the middle of the eighteenth century baptized negroes were frequently detained in slavery. The Indian enactment of 1770, meant to promote Christianity, had placed the interest of the owner as an obstacle to the instruction of the slave, or at least to his open admission into the Christian church. That was the reason given for striking it out. An owner who stood to lose the right of sale if a slave were baptized had every reason to keep the slave out of church. Cradock’s order removed that brake — and also removed the last legal privilege baptism had given a slave. [3]
Cradock found himself in a difficult position in 1812 when he was confronted with about 3000 applications for land on the popular loan tenure, and when he had determined that loan places — that “profane waste of land” — should be wholly discontinued. Considerable impatience had already been manifested by the applicants in consequence of the delay. 5 sixths of all the holdings in the colony were still loan places. On the 16th of October 1812 he issued a proclamation enforcing the prohibition of the extension of loan places which had been promulgated in 1732, and, to discover the extent of the lands legally held on loan, ordered the holders to erect conspicuous beacons at the angles and thus make it possible to represent the grants by diagrams and to register them. The fiscal Van Ryneveld, writing on the 24th of January to the colonial secretary, had already set out how opstals of a hut worth 25 or 30 dollars were selling for 20000 or 25000 gulden, with government receiving the duties, so that the whole place was virtually disposed of with complete sanction. Beacons and diagrams were the first step toward the quitrent that would be proclaimed the next year. Without them Capetown could not even say how much land it was giving away at 24 rixdollars a year. [4]
The landdrosts of the more distant districts, interpreting the feeling of the inhabitants under their control, suggested to the governor the expediency of dispensing with the personal services of the people in the west and taxing them for the support of those who lived nearer the danger. Cradock approved, and issued on the 4th of December 1812 a proclamation ordaining that the following districts should contribute, as an annual demand so long as necessity should justify it: Capetown, 15000 rixdollars; Cape district, 10000; Stellenbosch, 12000; Swellendam, 10000; Tulbagh, 10000; and George, 4000. Uitenhage and Graaff Reinet were exempted, as the personal services of their inhabitants could not be dispensed with. All the male inhabitants of those 2 districts capable of bearing arms were divided into 3 watches. Each watch, while defensive operations only were necessary, had to be 2 months on duty and 4 months at home. These, with the Cape regiment, formed the organisation which endeavoured to keep raiding parties at bay. The tax is why a Stellenbosch farmer who never saw the Fish still paid for the posts Graham had planted, and why an Uitenhage burgher still sat 2 months in a stockade. [4]
In the comparative calm after the campaign, attention could be turned to the embryo towns. Occupation by white inhabitants of the Zuurveld east of the Sundays — the territory which shortly before had been the resort of Ndlambe and Cungwa — was one of the first objects Cradock had in view. Lands were offered to the first 50 applicants free of all rent for 10 years, and thereafter at a perpetual quitrent not exceeding half a skilling per morgen. As there were no regularly appointed land surveyors, the farms were pointed out by the landdrost or his deputy in the best way possible, with the understanding that the whole would undergo revision and proper measurement as soon as practicable. The village of Uitenhage was more fortunate than Grahamstown in its development: the prison, the building which seems to have been considered the first necessity in these eastern towns, was completed in October 1812. In December the reverend T. Herold, who had just arrived from Europe, was appointed clergyman of a new congregation at the drostdy of George. There was as yet no clergyman at Uitenhage. Within the colony, in 1812, a missionary was stationed at Zuurbraak, a Khoikhoi reserve in the district of Swellendam, occupied by the remnant of the Attaqua. The Moravians had as yet only Genadendal and Mamre. [3] [4]
On Graham’s departure from the frontier at the end of 1812, the task of maintaining and developing what had been accomplished fell to Colonel Vicars, whom Cradock appointed civil and military commissioner for the eastern districts. He recommended as the surest means of preventing a recurrence of the evils from which the country had recently been delivered, the complete cessation of all intercourse between the colonists and the Xhosa. He acknowledged that from accumulated experience no faith whatever could be placed in treaties. He recommended the Boers to Vicars’ care as a body of people who, with good dispositions, were yet unused to severe control and were even to be taught in a mild manner the operation of the law. Bethelsdorp was to receive that support due to missionary institutions generally; but he did not scruple to avow that the exercise and sole display of religion alone, without aiding in the general task of labour and industry, must be prejudicial to any country, and especially to this colony, where from the want of sufficient population no man could be idle without positive injury. Cradock believed at that time that the results of the late war and the system of defence which followed it had established such a condition of general safety that prosperity had at last been secured to the frontier. [4]
Those hopes were not realised. In spite of outposts and continued patrols it was nearly impossible to prevent return. The Fish could be forded at almost all places. Toward the end of 1812 Xhosa were gradually finding their way back to the old haunts in the Zuurveld, and the quarterly depredation returns indicated a revival of the old state of affairs. For the 3 months ending the 31st of December, 42 cattle and 13 horses were stolen. Yet there were also indications of what prosperity might be under more propitious circumstances. About this time an export trade in produce was commenced, chiefly with Mauritius. A firm of beef contractors, Pohl & Co., was established at Algoa Bay, from which place all the produce was shipped. At the end of 1812, 250 sheep and no less than 32129 pounds of butter were sent to Mauritius. Clearance of ships taking imports to Algoa Bay still had to be made at Capetown. [4]