Boer History1828 at the Cape of Good Hope: Bourke, Ordinance Fifty, Cole, and the Fetcani
The Supreme Court and the Heemraden Gone — 1 January 1828
Major-General Richard Bourke was still only lieutenant-governor. He had reached Table Bay in the ship-of-war Rainbow on the 8th of February 1826 and had taken the oaths on the 5th of March, the day Lord Charles Henry Somerset sailed in the Atlas. Somerset resigned in April 1827 and would not come back. The charter of justice, which received the king’s signature on the 24th of August 1827, was written to take effect on the first morning of this year. From 1806 until then the judges at the Cape had been appointed by the governor and were removable at his pleasure; the court of appeal was the governor himself. The sitting mattered because an independent bench would, for the first time since the second British occupation, hear cases the castle could not pack or dismiss, and because the boards of landdrost and heemraden that had judged the country districts since the Company would go the same day. [3] [4]
On the appointed day, the 1st of January, the new system of administration commenced. The supreme court entered upon its duties. Sir John Wylde sat as chief justice at 2500 pounds a year, with William Menzies, William Westbrooke Burton, and George Kekewich as puisne judges, each at 1500 pounds. Mr. Anthony Oliphant was attorney-general at 1500 pounds, Mr. Pieter Gerhard Brink sheriff, Mr. Clerke Burton master, and Mr. Thomas Henry Bowles registrar after J. F. Jurgens had held the place a few weeks. The whole of the lower courts were swept away, and with them such popular representation as had previously existed. For the landdrosts and heemraden, resident magistrates were substituted to perform the judicial duties, and civil commissioners to perform all other. The names mattered because the charter of 1827 had written a list and salaries; this morning that list sat, and the drostdy boards did not. [3] [4]
The colony was divided into two provinces, termed the western and the eastern — not as two governments with two councils, which Downing Street had abandoned on the 14th of June 1827 as too expensive, but as a map for 7 civil commissioners each at 400 pounds a year. The west took the Cape, Simonstown, Stellenbosch, Swellendam, and Worcester; the east Beaufort, Graaff-Reinet, Somerset, Albany, Uitenhage, and George. William Macdonald Mackay took the Cape and Simonstown, Daniel Johannes van Ryneveld Stellenbosch, Harry Rivers Swellendam, Charles Trappes Worcester, Willem Cornelis van Ryneveld Beaufort and Graaff-Reinet, William Bolden Dundas Somerset and Albany, and J. W. van der Riet Uitenhage and George. For the east Captain Andries Stockenstrom sat as commissioner-general at Uitenhage at 800 pounds, an appointment which gave satisfaction to both British and Dutch, and he was promoted to a seat on the council. He was to control inferior officers when a reference to Capetown would be too slow, and under the governor’s directions to watch the border. The map mattered because the eastern-province government designed in 1825 had been dropped, yet the east still needed a man at Uitenhage who could act before a letter reached Table Bay. [3] [4]
Resident magistrates were named at 300 pounds a year, except Stellenbosch and Grahamstown at 500: J. P. Serrurier to Simonstown, Abraham Faure to Stellenbosch, Christiaan Michiel Lind to Swellendam, Jacobus Johannes le Sueur to Worcester, Jan van Ryneveld to Clanwilliam, William Walter Harding to Beaufort West, Egbertus Bergh to Graaff-Reinet, J. J. Meintjes to Somerset, Thomas Lawson to Grahamstown, Jan Gustaf Aspeling to Uitenhage, Hougham Hudson to Port Elizabeth, and Willem Adriaan Wentzel to George. They could try civil cases not exceeding 10 pounds, with appeal to the circuit court above 2 pounds, and in criminal cases could sentence to a fine of 5 pounds, a month’s imprisonment, or flogging within the jail. They were to hold a court twice a week, in English. The office at Port Frances was closed. In Capetown Petrus Borchardus Borcherds took the new title of judge of police at 800 pounds, with power to decide civil cases under 20 pounds. District revenues were transferred to the colonial treasury, and the government took upon itself all the obligations of the boards of landdrost and heemraden. Even the burgher senate, in existence since 1796, was abolished, its revenues diverted to the treasury, and the government thereafter carried out municipal duties in Capetown. Capetown’s local taxes were paid into the colonial treasury from this 1st of January. Mr. David Polley Francis commenced as port captain at Port Elizabeth at 400 pounds on the same morning. The magistrates mattered because a farmer who had taken a dispute to a board of neighbours now went to a paid officer sitting in English, and because the town’s own senate no longer held the rates. [3] [3] [4]
Of those who had played prominent parts and now withdrew, Dr. D. Denyssen the fiscal was simply dismissed without a pension, though after petitioning Viscount Goderich a small one was sanctioned, and Colonel Cuyler, landdrost of Uitenhage for twenty-two years, was at first refused a pension on the ground that he had become possessed of 32060 acres, thought a sufficient acknowledgment; Bourke held that he had only been favoured in common with others but had openly kept his land, and in the end he was allowed 150 pounds a year. Sir John Truter, who retired on pension when Wylde arrived with the great seal, received a seat on the council of advice with Stockenstrom, both confirmed by the secretary of state. Goderich had deprived two official members of their seats and directed the acting governor to nominate two colonists in their stead. The council then consisted of Wylde, the military officer next in rank to the commander-in-chief, Joachim Willem Stoll at 1000 pounds, Lieutenant-Colonel John Bell at 2000 pounds, Truter, and Stockenstrom. A few months later the secretary of state deprived the chief justice of his seat, and thereafter the council consisted of five. The offices of auditor-general and clerk of the council were combined in Dudley Montagu Perceval at 1000 pounds. The only other compensation for the popular boards was justice of the peace upon a few colonists, with very little power attached. The council mattered because two colonists sat where officials had sat, yet the boards that had given the districts a share in their own government were gone, and a justice of the peace was not a heemraad. [3] [4]
English in the Papers and the Worcester Jury — January 1828
These sweeping changes were received by the colonists almost in silence. Everyone admitted that an independent supreme court was preferable to such a court as had previously existed; but the abolition of the boards of heemraden and of the burgher senate, and above all the substitution of the English for the Dutch language in judicial proceedings, gave very great offence. Attachment to the old order could not be annihilated by a mandate from a secretary of state. The loss of the burgher senate and of the boards took from the people a share in local government which was greatly valued. The independence of the high court of justice, of the courts of landdrost and heemraden, and of the burgher senate had been among the terms the colony had thought secure; their abolition this year, and the substitution of English for Dutch in judicial proceedings, were counted among the arbitrary alterations of British absolutism. Hence the old colonists received the changes almost in silence, for they believed that complaint would be useless. The silence mattered because it was not consent: it was the judgment that a memorial in the new tongue would not be heard. [3] [4] [7]
On the 24th of January a notice was issued that all memorials or other papers addressed to the government must be written in English or be accompanied by a translation, otherwise they would be returned to those who sent them. A little later Burton removed the criminal cases from the circuit court at Worcester to Capetown for trial, on the ground that a jury, all of whom understood the English language, was not obtainable at Worcester, though the prisoners and the witnesses spoke Dutch only, and every word that they said had to be translated to the court. Wylde and Kekewich were of opinion that it was not necessary for jurymen to understand English, unless others impannelled with them could not speak Dutch; but Burton and Menzies maintained that ignorance of English was a disqualification under the terms of the charter, and acted upon that principle. The burghers, who regarded their exclusion from the jury-box as an insult, were deeply incensed. Memorials, however, were not sent in, because the colonists would not be driven to have them written in English, and there was little hope of success had they even done so. And now was heard the first murmuring of a cry that a few years later resounded through the colony, and men and women began to talk of the regions devastated by the Zulu wars, if it might not be possible to find there a refuge from British authority. The notice mattered because a farmer who would not petition in English had no paper the castle would keep, and because a Dutch-speaking jury at Worcester was treated as no jury at all. [3] [7]
The English Church in the colony remained under the control of the government. In 1826 the country consistories had been permitted to transact their business without political commissioners, and this year the same liberty was extended to the consistory in Capetown. That extension mattered because the Dutch Reformed Church in the capital, like the country congregations two years earlier, could now sit without a government officer at the table, even as every memorial to the castle still had to come in English. [3] [4]
Wellington, Newlands, and Camp’s Bay — January–July 1828
In January the duke of Wellington succeeded Goderich as premier, but Mr. Huskisson remained at the colonial office until May, when he was replaced by Sir George Murray. Goderich decided upon reducing the salaries of the governor and several of the heads of departments. Thereafter the governor was to receive 7000 pounds a year, with the official residence in Capetown and an allowance of 500 pounds a year to provide himself with a country house. The collector of customs was to have 1000 pounds, the controller of customs 700, and the surveyor-general 700. The office of surveyor-general was united with that of civil engineer and superintendent of works. Major Charles Cornwallis Michell was appointed to it, but he did not reach South Africa until 1829. The change of seals mattered because the Cape was still governed by a lieutenant-governor, the Beaufort who held the title would not return, and the colonial office that set salaries was no longer Goderich’s after May. [3]
Instructions had previously been issued that the estate Groote Post should be disposed of, and in October 1827 that property had been divided into seven farms leased by auction for seventeen years. Orders were now sent out that the estates at Newlands and Camp’s Bay should be disposed of for the benefit of the colonial treasury. The Newlands estate was sold by auction on the 15th of March. It was sixty-four morgen in extent, and a house upon which at least 30000 pounds had been expended was standing upon it, though the main wing was in ruins. It was purchased by Mr. Willem Izaak Louw for 3025 pounds. In July, in pursuance of the same instructions, the marine villa at Camp’s Bay was sold by auction. The sales mattered because the treasury was not taking another farm at Groote Post this year, but two houses of a Beaufort who had resigned: Newlands in March at a little over three thousand pounds, and the marine villa in July, both written for the colonial chest. [3]
In the matters of court and board Bourke merely acted upon instructions from England; there had been but little call for his own initiative. On the frontier his own hand was felt. His forty-ninth ordinance of this year repealed former laws prohibiting intercourse with the Xhosa and permitted them, nominally with passes, to enter the colony for trade and taking service with the colonists. They flocked in with and without passes. From November 1827 the Cape Corps cavalry was gone, with no regiment from England in its place, the intended relief having been required for Portugal. That threw more military duty on the burghers, who besides their rations received no pay and provided their own horses and guns. The ordinance mattered because a lieutenant-governor who had not yet seen a commando home opened the Fish to labour and trade just as the mounted companies that had watched that river were disbanded. [4]
In February some of Gaika’s people secured 192 cattle and horses and murdered a Khoikhoi herd, and shortly afterwards a trader’s waggon on its way from Fort Willshire to Grahamstown was attacked and robbed. Dundas and Colonel Henry Somerset, with the missionary Thompson, got an interview with Gaika in the Chumie mountains. He put the blame upon Eno. Brought face to face, the two chiefs taxed each other with lying. Gaika became so impatient that he spoke of petitioning the king for lands in England where he would be free from such annoyance. Maqoma sat quiet in the Kat country he had usurped, while Xhosa congregated in numbers Somerset thought it necessary to watch. Want of co-operation between Somerset and Dundas had run since Dundas became civil commissioner: Somerset asked for parties of farmers and was refused. All this ended on the 1st of July, when Dundas resigned and Captain Duncan Campbell took Albany and Somerset. The resignation mattered because the civil commissioner who would not supply farmers to the commandant was free, from that 1st of July, to ride as a soldier when the Fetcani scare hardened into a march. [4]
Ordinance Fifty — 3 April–17 July 1828
The condition of the Khoikhoi and other free coloured inhabitants had been for some time a subject of discussion in South Africa and England. Caledon’s proclamation of 1809 had abolished chieftainship and required passes. Cradock’s of April 1812 had bound children born in service, and maintained eight years by the employers, as apprentices for ten years. Between 1809 and this year those enactments remained in force. A Khoikhoi once in employ could be kept there, and a claim raised for his children; he could be arrested for travelling without a pass from an employer or a district official. Many connected with the government desired that Khoikhoi and other free coloured people should be placed on a political equality with the European colonists. To remedy that thraldom was one of the first problems Stockenstrom set himself after January, once he sat as commissioner-general. The proclamations mattered because they were still the law on the morning the heemraden went, and because Stockenstrom’s new office put the eastern districts’ coloured people on his table. [3] [4] [7]
By instruction of the acting governor, on the 3rd of April Stockenstrom submitted to him a memorandum on this subject. He considered that the distinctions made between the several classes of free inhabitants were calculated to retard the improvement of those looked upon as belonging to the lower orders. Referring in particular to the Khoikhoi, who “being natives of the Colony, and consequently, in my opinion, born to the right of citizenship, stand naturally on a level with the Burghers, save the drawbacks entailed upon them by the laws which I propose to remove,” he named the prohibition to carry firearms, liability to perform duties to which the whites could not condescend, and the obligation to show passes to any person of the latter colour. He did not hesitate to recommend the enactment of a law placing every free inhabitant in the colony on a level, in the eye of the law, as to the enjoyment of personal liberty and the security of his property. The paper was dated Capetown, the 3rd of April. The sentiments met with Bourke’s entire approval, and he commenced to act upon them. He requested Burton to draft an ordinance in its spirit. The draft — since known as the fiftieth ordinance — was then laid before the council, and having received the approval of that body, was issued on the 17th of July. The memorandum mattered because a commissioner-general who had been landdrost of Graaff-Reinet was telling the acting governor that Khoikhoi born in the colony were burghers in all but the pass law, and because Bourke chose to write that opinion into an ordinance before a new governor arrived. [3] [4]
It relieved the Khoikhoi, San, and other free people of colour from the operation of the laws concerning passes and the apprenticeship of children, and placed them in all respects politically on a level with Europeans. There are twenty-five sections, of which the greater number deal with the regulations under which Khoikhoi were to enter and remain in service. The second and third sections were the innovations. Section II enacted that from after the passing of the ordinance, no Khoikhoi or other free person of colour lawfully residing in the colony should be subject to any compulsory service to which other of His Majesty’s subjects therein were not liable, nor to any hindrance, molestation, fine, or imprisonment under the pretence that such person had been guilty of vagrancy or any other offence, unless after trial in due course of law. Section III declared that all grants, purchases, and transfers of land or other property heretofore made to or by any Khoikhoi or other free person of colour were of full force, and that it should be lawful for any such person born or having obtained deeds of burghership to obtain and possess land or property by grant, purchase, or other lawful means. While this measure was being carried out by the local government, the imperial authorities had come to a similar decision. The sections mattered because they did not grant a farm to every Khoikhoi household: they repealed Caledon and Cradock as those proclamations had stood since 1809 and 1812 — no pass as a condition of moving, no apprenticeship of children under the old proclamation, competence to hold land, and no imprisonment for vagrancy except after trial. [3] [4] [7]
To this they had been moved by the reverend Dr. John Philip, who early in 1826 had gone to England, and in April of this year published a work in two volumes entitled Researches in South Africa, with the object of showing that Khoikhoi and other coloured people in the colony were ordinarily subject to most unjust treatment. The book was received with great favour in England and for many years was regarded as authoritative; in the colony it was received as a highly overdrawn statement, from which many explanatory particulars known to its author were omitted. On the 15th of July — two days before the ordinance issued at the Cape — Mr. Fowell Buxton brought the matter before the house of commons. He recommended to their notice a recent publication — Philip’s Researches — and moved that His Majesty be humbly solicited to cause such instructions to be sent to the Cape as should most effectually secure to all the natives of South Africa the same freedom and protection as are enjoyed by other free people of that colony, whether English or Dutch, and that the special reports of the commissioners relative to the condition of the Khoikhoi and San, together with the papers given in by Philip and the memorials of the London society, be laid before the house. At this time Wellington was prime minister, Huskisson having given way to Murray in May. With Murray, Philip had acquired great influence in matters concerning South Africa. Murray therefore concurred in Buxton’s motion, which received general support and was carried. On the 2nd of August the resolution was forwarded to the acting governor, the secretary of state at the same time conveying His Majesty’s special commands recommending the original natives of the Cape to his attention. Before those instructions reached the Cape, the ordinance published here on the 17th of July was received in England. Nothing could have met the case more exactly. The Commons vote mattered because London and Capetown reached the same conclusion in the same fortnight, and because a missionary superintendent’s two volumes were on the table of the house two days before Bourke’s ordinance issued. [3] [4]
Agents of the London society, and most of the other missionaries in South Africa, continued, as they had done previous to this year, to emphasise the civil equality of black and white. Manumissions of slaves, which had numbered 245 in 1827 against 90 in 1826 and 29 in 1825, numbered 117 in this year — still a stream, though not last year’s flood under Ordinance Nineteen. The count mattered because Ordinance Fifty unbound free people of colour, not slaves: the slave who took papers this year did so under the older manumission rules, and there were 117 of them. [4] [7]
Chaka’s Embassy and the Fetcani at the Umtata — May–August 1828
On the 4th of May a small schooner was seen making its way from the east to the anchorage at Port Elizabeth. Francis, now port captain, went off and brought passengers and crew to land. Among them were eight Zulus in skins and head rings; two white men in garments of their own manufacture, feet bare, caps of wild-cat skins; one lady; and two men more decently dressed. They were some of the first white inhabitants of Natal and a Zulu embassy on behalf of Tshaka — Chaka in the Cape letters. The schooner Elizabeth and Susan had been built in Natal from the wreckage of the Mary, lost on the bar three years previously, by Mr. Hatton. The head of the party was Lieutenant King, with Lieutenant G. S. Farewell and Mrs. Farewell, who had been in Natal only three months, Mr. N. Isaacs, and Hatton. The little vessel had arrived safely in Algoa Bay in April; the object of the embassy could not at first be ascertained, for the indunas asserted that they were ignorant of their chief’s intentions, and the government declined to receive King in the character of Tshaka’s plenipotentiary. The landing mattered because a Zulu king who had broken the tribes between Natal and Pondoland was asking, through a Natal adventurer, whether Britain would accept that work as far as the Fish. [3] [4]
The Zulu chiefs, with King as guide, went to Uitenhage to van der Riet. Tshaka was desirous that Sotobe should proceed to England to assure the king of Tshaka’s friendly disposition, and to ascertain whether his annihilation of the tribes between Pondoland and the Great Fish would be consonant with British views. Of the tribes between his own country and the St. John’s he intended to deal without reference to England, but having cut his way as far as that river he was prepared to wait two moons until he received news from the colony. The minor chief Umbosombozo was to return as soon as possible to report their safe arrival and thus to release Mr. Fynn, held as hostage. Van der Riet ordered Hudson to provide accommodation at government expense and to prohibit the chiefs from visiting Grahamstown or the frontier. Bourke desired that the whole party should proceed to Capetown, but King would not leave Port Elizabeth, fearful of detaining Umbosombozo against Tshaka’s orders, and further refused a British register for the Elizabeth and Susan on the ground that, built in Natal, she was a foreign vessel, liable to seizure by every flag. Affairs remained in this state for several weeks. After a stay of nearly three months the indunas were sent back to Natal in a man-of-war, and King followed in the schooner. The deadlock mattered because Tshaka’s two moons ran out while Sotobe sat at Algoa Bay, and because a schooner built from a wreck was left without a British flag. [3] [4]
Tshaka did not wait two moons. On the 4th of June the reverend W. J. Shrewsbury wrote from Butterworth to Dundas that Tshaka had crossed the Umzimvubu, distant from that station about 150 miles, approaching with a very numerous body divided into eight companies, each supposed two or three thousand, the whole population before him in motion, the chief Maxabisa routed, the avowed object to reach Hintsa as early as possible. Bourke brought the matter before the council, which resolved that it was expedient to retain the Xhosa within their actual limits and that this intention should be announced to Tshaka with a view of averting his intended invasion — and if that were not possible, to encourage the Xhosa to resistance by informing them that in a case of absolute necessity they might expect assistance from the colonial government. Somerset concentrated his forces. Dundas warned the whole of the burgher force to be in readiness. The Zulu chiefs at Port Elizabeth were interviewed on behalf of the government by Major Cloete, assisted by van der Riet and Captain Evatt. King was not permitted to be present. On the 4th of July Umbosombozo, detained two months, escaped with one follower; they were captured and threatened with confinement in Fort Frederick. A further letter from Shrewsbury dated the 2nd of July reported that on Sunday the 29th of June the Fetcani had completely routed Faku, who had retired as far as the Umtata toward Hintsa; Tshaka now demanded the heads of Hintsa and Vusani and the horses of the white people. The letters mattered because Capetown still thought the destroyer on the Umtata was Tshaka’s Zulu army, and because the council’s answer was to hold the Xhosa where they were and to promise help only in extremity. [4]
As Dundas had become relieved from his civil duties he was free to act in a military capacity. On the 5th of July he set out with forty-nine men — thirty-seven Dutch farmers from the Winterberg and a few British settlers, the only occasion except a time of actual war on which any of the settlers took the field against native tribes — each man his own horse and gun, the only support from government some beads and buttons for barter. They assembled at Xhosa Drift on the Fish, rode to Wesleyville, Mount Coke, Komgha, and the Kei, and reached Butterworth toward dusk of the third day. After a day there, reinforced by a large number of Hintsa’s warriors, they moved to the Bashee and replenished their larders with hippopotamus meat. Dundas with a few Albany followers, including the Bowker brothers, rode on into Pondoland to Faku’s great place: ruins and smouldering remains of huts and cattle kraals in all directions. About midnight they were awakened by the war-cry of the enemy passing at no great distance; at daylight they rode back to the Bashee. A march into Tembuland showed worse devastation — dead bodies of men, women, and children still on the ground. Vusani collected 4000 and Fobo 2000. This body moved toward the Umtata, and on the night of the 25th of July came in sight of the enemy’s camp fires. The ride mattered because forty-nine burghers, not a regiment, were the first colonial force across the Kei this year, and because what they found at Faku’s place was not a Zulu camp but a ruin. [4]
At daylight Vusani and Fobo addressed their warriors. When the forces were about a hundred yards apart there seemed to be fear of beginning on both sides — which did not look as if the enemy were Tshaka’s people. Vusani asked Dundas to fire; Dundas would not, telling him to fight his own battles, the enemy only about 1500 while his forces including Hintsa’s were over 6000. Nothing happened until Vusani again imploring, orders were given that half the men should fire; the whole of them fired. The Fetcani immediately retired, rallied at a nek, and a hand-to-hand encounter lasted barely a quarter of an hour. The enemy retreated leaving the Tembu possessors of 25000 head of cattle. The attacking party lost one man, the Fetcani between sixty and seventy. The farmers were away from their homes seven weeks. The captured cattle did not long remain with Vusani and Hintsa, for the Fetcani came down again and drove them off. These people were Matiwane’s Amangwane — not Tshaka’s Zulus — a remnant scattered by Tshaka who had marched until they came to Mbolompo at the sources of the Umtata. The action mattered because the colony fired on a refugee people it had mistaken for Tshaka, and because 25000 cattle taken on the 26th of July were gone again before the month was out. [4]
Shortly before that engagement Dundas sent despatches to Somerset at Fort Beaufort asking assistance. With the greater part of the 55th Regiment and burghers from Graaff-Reinet, Somerset, Uitenhage, and Albany — no British settlers — numbering 531, Somerset was encamped on the Kei on the 31st of July. On the 10th of July he had interviewed the Xhosa chiefs at Fort Beaufort and received promises of support; after this they played an equivocal game. Gaika was twice sent for and refused to meet him. Depredations under the forty-ninth ordinance ran ruinous while the forces were at a distance; two soldiers of the 55th left to protect the frontier were waylaid and murdered. On the Kei the troops remained about three weeks in cold, rain, and scarcity. On the 18th of August urgent requests came from Vusani and Hintsa. On the 22nd Somerset arrived at the Bashee. He ordered about 16000 to move at dusk on the 26th of August, marched until one in the morning, and halted above the Umtata. At daylight Captain Aitchison with an interpreter and twenty went over the ridge to speak. No heed: an attempt to surround them, the interpreter’s belt and tunic cut away, Aitchison compelled to fire. Somerset sent his men forward. The so-called friendly army did nothing, remaining on the crest until they could mutilate the wounded. After fire from six o’clock to about half past one the enemy was driven from all points. There were no casualties on the colonial side. Somerset collected forty-seven women and seventy children from Vusani’s and Hintsa’s followers; Field-Commandant Durand made a list for the civil commissioner of Albany and Somerset. One of the women showed that the enemy was Matiwane’s people and not Tshaka’s. Tshaka, after his raid upon the Pondo, had retired to the Umzimkulu. In July he had sent an army unopposed to the Bashee; Fynn, representing that the colony would protect the Tembu and Xhosa, induced him to recall it until King’s mission could be known. The second action mattered because a column of 531 and thousands of Tembu and Gcaleka drove Matiwane from the Umtata on the 27th of August, and because the woman taken there named the enemy correctly at last. [3] [4]
To get Sotobe and his company safely back to Natal without giving official recognition to the Elizabeth and Susan, H.M.S. Helicon went round to Algoa Bay and on the 9th of August set sail with a few sheets of copper, a piece of scarlet broad-cloth, a few trinkets, and medicines for Tshaka. The government would give no register to the schooner; 10 pounds’ worth of goods was considered quite sufficient as a present. King differed; he said Tshaka had treated with contempt presents of the value of 800 pounds. The great chief does not seem to have been very satisfied with the results, or to have had much confidence in either King or Farewell. The Helicon mattered because Sotobe went home in a king’s ship, not in the schooner, and because the present sent with him was 10 pounds against the 800 King said Tshaka would scorn. [4]
Cole in the Tweed and the Advertiser Again — July–September 1828
In July Mr. John Fairbairn was enabled to leave England with the assurance that henceforth the press in the colony should be free from the control of the governor and council. Goderich had been moved in 1827 but had so soon vacated the office that the matter was delayed about a year. In October the South African Commercial Advertiser was commenced for the third time, and the struggle for the freedom of the press was at an end. The sheet mattered because it had been dark since the 10th of May 1827, and because it printed again not by a lieutenant-governor’s licence but by an assurance carried home from London that the governor and council would no longer sit on the paper. [4]
On the 7th of September Lieutenant-General Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole arrived in Simon’s Bay in the ship-of-war Tweed with his lady, three sons, and three daughters. Two days later, on the 9th, he took the oaths of office. He was coming from the government of Mauritius. Second son of Willoughby Cole, first Earl of Enniskillen, born in Dublin on the 1st of May 1772, he had earned his chief laurels in the Peninsular war as leader of the fourth division under Wellington, and from 1823 had governed Mauritius until sent to the Cape. Bourke handed over the administration on the 9th of September and sailed for England on the following 7th of November, leaving as a legacy the forty-ninth and fiftieth ordinances. The oaths mattered because the colony had been under a lieutenant-governor since Somerset sailed on the 5th of March 1826, and because the soldier who now held the title in chief inherited an open Fish, a Khoikhoi statute two months old, and a frontier still in the field. [3] [4]
Cole arrived at a most critical time. Somerset with the military and burgher force was then on the Bashee driving back the Fetcani; the Xhosa in their rear, taking advantage of their absence as well as of the indulgences of the forty-ninth ordinance and the open frontier, were robbing the farmers to an almost unprecedented extent; the Khoikhoi were in the first enjoyment of the privileges granted them by the fiftieth ordinance scarcely two months previously; and on the northern borders the Griquas, Koranas, and San were giving trouble quite sufficient in themselves to tax any new governor. Almost within a week after his arrival Cole turned his attention to the Khoikhoi. He conceived the idea of inducing these people to abandon vagrant habits by affording them opportunities of establishing themselves on lands within reach of moral and religious instruction and under the protection of magistracy — not so much missionary institutions as locations attached to towns and villages where each family was to be granted one morgen at a perpetual quit-rent of one shilling and sixpence, together with certain commonage grazing rights, the people supposed willing to work for the farmers and thus maintain themselves. This measure was submitted to Stockenstrom in a letter dated the 28th of September. In the same month the inhabitants of the field-cornetcies of Brak River, Tarka, and Agter Sneeuwberg addressed the new governor setting forth the hardships and severe losses they had been exposed to in consequence of the frequent demands for their services on armed commandos, and prayed for relief. Cole assured them that he was not less sensible of their great privations and losses than of the loyal spirit and promptitude with which they had always answered the calls, and that it had been his desire, as it had been Bourke’s, to limit as much as possible the demands for similar services in the future. The letter of the 28th mattered because Ordinance Fifty had unbound people without giving them ground, and because Cole’s first answer was one morgen at eighteen pence beside a town, not another mission station. [4]
Tshaka’s Death and the Schooner Seized — September–December 1828
Early in September King died at Natal — a natural death, rather a rare occurrence there in those days — and within a few months was followed by Hatton, the builder of the little vessel. Tshaka therefore sent another embassy to the colony under the charge of Mr. John Cane, one of the Natal adventurers who had previously been a workman at the Somerset farm under Dr. Mackrill. The party travelled overland and reached Grahamstown on the 8th of October. As soon as Cole heard of their arrival he appointed Aitchison to take charge of the envoys. They were conducted to Capetown, where they arrived on the 7th of November. The messages were that Tshaka desired an accredited agent to inform him of the government’s intentions toward the border tribes; that he wished to know whether King had delivered the fifty elephant tusks sent as a present for King George — King had delivered only two; and that he asked for a seal with his name, sealing-wax, tartar emetic and salts, oxtails and large dogs, and some Macassar oil to prevent his hair turning grey. Cole sent assurances of friendly relations, but also of the determination to maintain the border tribes in their territories. Aitchison was instructed to conduct the messengers overland as far as Tshaka’s kraal and to observe those distant regions. At Fort Beaufort, where Somerset was to provide an escort of twenty mounted men, news arrived that Tshaka had been assassinated by his brother. Aitchison’s mission was cancelled, and the envoys remained at Fort Beaufort until they could join a trader’s return. The second embassy mattered because Cole would not recognise a Natal adventurer as Tshaka’s plenipotentiary any more than Bourke had, and because the escort stopped when the king who had sent it was already dead. [3] [4]
On the 23rd of September Tshaka was assassinated at Tukusa, a military kraal on the Umvoti, about fifty miles from the port. The mother of the chief had died a few months before, and so many were butchered for not participating in his grief that even the most bloodstained of the Zulus were appalled. The army, after returning from the Bashee, was sent against Sotshangana at Delagoa Bay, met great reverses, and was retreating in distress from dysentery and hunger. At this juncture Dingane and Umthlangana, two of Tshaka’s half-brothers, and Umbopa (Umeopa), his most trusted attendant, entered into a conspiracy. Tshaka was sitting conversing with attendants when they attacked him. Dingane struck the first blow; the servant gave the death wound. The body was left uncovered; on the following day it was buried, the residents struck with dread when they saw that the hyenas had not devoured it. Shortly afterwards Dingane with his own hand murdered Umthlangana. The new king gave at first promise of a more humane policy than his brother had done. The death mattered because the Zulu power that had broken the Natal tribes, and whose embassy still sat at Fort Beaufort, passed in a morning to a half-brother who then killed his fellow conspirator. [3] [4]
At the beginning of December Isaacs and Farewell with some others left Natal in the Elizabeth and Susan for Algoa Bay, in order to take the tidings of the changed circumstances to the colony as well as to settle King’s affairs. On the arrival of the vessel at Port Elizabeth, Francis seized it and sold it. Thus after the labour, care, and anxiety with which this schooner had been built, the owners lost her and, so it seems, did not even get a share of the proceeds of the sale. The Europeans at the port were invited by Dingane to remain there under his protection for commercial purposes, and they were well treated at first. The seizure mattered because the schooner built from the Mary had never obtained a British register, and because the port captain who took her had himself taken his oaths on the same 1st of January that the heemraden went. [3] [4]