Boer History1829 at the Cape of Good Hope: Cole, Maqoma, the Kat River, and the College
Cole Restores the Patrols — February 1829
Lieutenant-General Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole had taken the oaths on the 9th of September 1828, after a passage from Mauritius in HMS Tweed. He was still only in his first Cape summer. Major-General Richard Bourke, who had governed the whole colony as lieutenant-governor after Lord Charles Somerset resigned, sailed on the 7th of November 1828 and would not come back. The frontier Cole inherited was not a new war on the Fish. It was Bourke’s standing order of the 11th of April 1826: patrols were not to cross the border unless stolen cattle were actually in sight. On the line they were to stop and send word to the nearest chief, who was expected to take up the spoor. The order mattered because the recovery of stock, and the peace of the farms west of the Fish, now hung on whether those chiefs would, or could, punish their own kraals. [3] [4]
In a few instances the chiefs so called upon complied, and then fell into quarrels with the kraals to which they traced the cattle. The result was a series of fights among the border clans and the recovery of about one head in every ten stolen. Those instructions remained in force until February of this year. Cole had not been many weeks in the colony before the damage was obvious. In January the number of depredations rose, and the audacity with which they were committed, seemed to show that the Xhosa thought either that they would not be punished or that the government valued them above the farmers they despoiled. The restriction mattered because a patrol that stopped at the line left the thief a few hours’ start, and because the chiefs who did follow the spoor paid for it among their own people. [3] [4]
In February, as an act of justice to the king’s subjects, and not only on the representations of the civil and military officers but at the express desire of Gaika and of well-disposed chiefs such as Pato, Cole reverted to the reprisal system Somerset had instituted in 1817. Patrols were thereafter to follow the spoor as far as they could, and to retake stolen cattle wherever they found them, but they were not to seize Xhosa cattle as compensation. Commandos, when needed, could act as in Somerset’s time, except that only cattle with colonial brand-marks could be kept after seizure and inspection. The change mattered because it put the king’s subjects back on the trail without turning every theft into a licence to lift a chief’s herd, and because Gaika himself had asked for it. For a time the frontier was markedly quieter. [3] [4]
On the 15th of January Ordinance Fifty of the 17th of July 1828 was ratified in the form that forbade its alteration, repeal, or amendment without the previous consent of the King in Council. That lock mattered because the ordinance had placed Khoikhoi on a political level with Europeans, and because a Cape council could no longer take the equality back. In the same month the ward Voor Piketberg was taken from Worcester and added to the Cape, and the ward Palmiet and Bot rivers was taken from Swellendam and added to Stellenbosch, so as to extend Stellenbosch to Langhoogte. Zwartlands Kerk, the church place of the wheat country, received the name Malmesbury. Major Charles Cornwallis Michell arrived to take the united office of surveyor-general and civil engineer. In March Harry Smith became deputy-quartermaster-general. The western offices thus filled while the east still waited on a governor who had not yet been a year in the oaths. [3] [3] [3] [4]
At this time — February — a large part of the ceded territory was in Xhosa hands. The arrangements made with Gaika in 1819 and 1820, by which the Tyumie and Keiskama were to form the boundary and neither black nor white was to occupy the Neutral, afterwards called Ceded, Territory, had long been a dead letter in the valleys. Maqoma occupied the valleys at the sources of the Kat river. His half-brother Tyali had taken the valley of the Mankazana, a stream that flows into the Kat, and remained there without leave, though without being required to withdraw. The Imidange captain Botumane, seeing others move in without being disturbed, sent most of his clan across the boundary and took the western bank of the Tyumie from its junction with the Keiskama nearly up to the present village of Alice. Eno, head of the principal Amambala clan, had taken the land along the western bank of the Keiskama, from the Gwanga nearly up to Fort Willshire. From the Gwanga to the sea, as far westward as the Beka, the Gunukwebes had obtained possession, mainly through the agency of the reverend William Shaw. Once permitted to cross the Keiskama to tend their cattle, they had quickly moved in and built kraals, and in this year Cole found that they could not be dispossessed without bloodshed. The occupation mattered because the empty belt of 1819 was the ground on which patrols now had to follow the spoor, and because Maqoma sat on the Kat sources that Somerset had only allowed him during good behaviour. [3] [4] [7]
Maqoma, the Thembu, and the Kat Valleys — January–May 1829
Towards the end of January there was another sudden rush of the Thembu into the colony. On first receipt of the news, the frontier officers feared a further advance of the Fetcani or of the Zulus. A little investigation made it clear that a much nearer neighbour was the cause — Maqoma, Gaika’s right-hand son, who held the Kat sources on sufferance. In spite of the treaty of 1819, several chiefs had crept back into the forbidden land. When Somerset came to know of it, he had allowed them to remain on condition that they behaved themselves. That indulgence had long been forfeited, but it had been impossible to bring anything definite against any particular chief. Maqoma now went so far that there could be no other course than his complete expulsion from the ceded territory. [4]
At daylight on the morning of the 24th of January, with a large band of his warriors, Maqoma arrived at a Thembu village about forty miles north-east of the Kat river and made a furious onslaught on the unsuspecting inhabitants. The invaders were divided into bands so that each part of the village might be attacked at once and all the cattle seized before the first alarm subsided. Very many of the Thembu, including women and children, were murdered and 3000 head of cattle captured. The survivors fled towards the colony but were pursued until they were twenty miles inside the colonial border — somewhere in the region of the present town of Tarkastad — and were then attacked again with great loss of life. Maqoma with the captured cattle then returned to his kraals at the Kat river. A small clan under a captain named Mtyalela had recently moved from the neighbourhood of the Umtata into the country north of the Winterberg, which was thinly occupied by the emigrant Thembu under Bawana. They were kinsmen of Bawana’s people, but there was jealousy between the new-comers and those who had been some years in the territory. After a while a quarrel broke out between them and Maqoma’s clan on the lower side of the Winterberg. Bawana did nothing to protect his kinsmen, and was even suspected by them of sharing their property with Maqoma. The raid mattered because it was not only a strike on a weaker tribe: it was a pursuit and a killing on colonial farms along the Tarka, inside the line the government claimed to protect. [3] [4]
Colonel Henry Somerset visited Maqoma and learnt from him that the attack was made at the instigation and request of Bawana himself. According to this account, Bawana had been joined by a sub-chief from the main body of the Thembu then living at the sources of the Umtata, who had defied him, and as Bawana was not strong enough to punish his subordinate, he appealed to Maqoma for assistance. The other side of the story was obtained by Captain Duncan Campbell, civil commissioner of Albany, who visited Bawana, then in the colony in a starving condition. Bawana denied ever having sought Maqoma’s assistance. He believed the cause of enmity was that he had formed some kraals at the source of the Koonap, that Maqoma for no other reason than avarice had attacked these and robbed them of 300 cattle, and that he had reported this to the field-cornet Steenkamp and begged for protection within the colony. Field-cornet Christian Muller of the Tarka corroborated Bawana’s statements, and both Bawana’s and the new-comers’ people and cattle had been indiscriminately attacked. Maqoma had sent about 100 head of the Thembu cattle — all he was able to recover, he said — to Fort Beaufort to be returned to the owners, after Somerset’s remonstrances just after the attack. The two stories mattered because Cole had to decide whether this was a Thembu civil quarrel or an invasion of the colony by a chief already sitting in forbidden ground. [4]
The results of the inquiry were forwarded to Capetown. Not only had an insult been offered to the avowed protectors of the Thembu, but the colony had been invaded and murders committed within its confines. On the 6th of February the colonial secretary wrote to Somerset stating that the atrocity and insolence of Maqoma’s proceedings, the duplicity of his conduct in absenting himself from the meeting of the chiefs at Fort Willshire under a false pretence, and the well-grounded conviction that he had long forfeited any claim to the favourable consideration of government, had determined Cole to rid the colony of this most troublesome chief. Unless he restored the remainder of the cattle of which he had deprived the Thembu, and removed entirely from the ceded territory by the end of March at latest, the most effectual means would be used to expel him by force of arms. The governor directed Somerset to call upon Maqoma to restore to the Thembu their cattle, 3000 in number, and to retire from the ceded territory, but allowed him two months to gather his crops, which were then ripening. The letter mattered because it turned a raid on the Tarka into a deadline: restore the herd and leave the Kat, or be driven out. [3] [4]
The time expired without that chief showing any signs of complying. The stolen Thembu cattle had not been restored, and there had been no noticeable improvement in the general behaviour of the Kat river Xhosa. Cole sought the advice of Captain Andries Stockenstrom, then in Capetown, and upon this he decided to put his threat into execution. Stockenstrom was the man who knew the east: landdrost of Graaff-Reinet before the charter, commissioner-general for the eastern districts from the 1st of January 1828 at Uitenhage, with a seat on the council of advice. On the 8th of April the colonial secretary wrote to him officially informing him that the governor had authorised him to go to the frontier in order to superintend the expulsion of Maqoma. The peaceable chiefs were first to be visited and made aware of the motives; he was then to co-operate with Somerset in calling out such a number of burghers as should leave no doubt as to the issue, and then marching to Maqoma’s place, to insist upon the restoration of the Thembu cattle and his own removal beyond the Keiskama. Armed with this authority, the commissioner-general proceeded to the frontier by sea and arrived in Grahamstown about the middle of April. Immediate steps were taken to acquaint the field-cornets with the intentions of government, and to order them to call out their respective burghers on commando. These Boers were summoned from their homes not to regain any cattle of their own, but to avenge the wrongs of a weaker native tribe against a stronger. They returned from this expedition without bringing a single head of cattle with them. [4]
Stockenstrom visited the different chiefs, encouraging some to continue in their good behaviour, exhorting others to exercise more control over their followers, and assuring all of the good disposition of government towards them while they conducted themselves well. Meantime Gaika and the minor chiefs had been assured that there was no intention of disturbing them, and they did not interfere. On the 1st of May one division assembled at the Koonap Post while another met at the Kat river near Fort Beaufort. The whole combining under Somerset, the march was made to Maqoma’s place, which was reached the next morning, the 2nd. The Xhosa evidently knew what was pending, for the burghers found nothing but empty huts and the whole place abandoned. From the missionary Ross, who lived about a mile distant, it was ascertained that the people with vast herds of cattle had fled, but that Maqoma with some of his followers was still lurking in the vicinity and hiding in the bush. With some difficulty he was discovered and persuaded to meet the commissioner-general. Having shaken hands with him, Stockenstrom expressed his regret that they did not meet as friends and then detailed the circumstances. Until the Thembu cattle were restored and he himself was out of the ceded territory the government could not view him in any other light than as an enemy. Maqoma protested his innocence and urged Bawana’s appeal for assistance as his excuse. As to the 3000 head, he assured Stockenstrom that he had no more. “I know you have them not here,” replied the commissioner. “You have distributed them all over the country, and we are not going to war with all the chiefs because you sent cattle into their country. You took them and from you we ask them.” It was afterwards ascertained that he had placed them under care of Eno. The conference resulted in nothing. [3] [4]
In the afternoon it was seen that the Xhosa still persisted in driving the cattle into the deepest parts of the forests. They were followed by the commando and dispossessed of as many as could possibly be reached. There it was that assegais were thrown at the burghers, and these firing in their own defence killed one Xhosa and wounded two others. During the night one or more crept in among the captured cattle, killed six and wounded several. Three horses which got loose and strayed out of the camp were also killed. On the next morning, the 4th of May, the burghers set fire to the numerous huts and cattle kraals and as far as possible destroyed every trace of Maqoma’s settlement. The force, with the cattle which had been captured, then marched to Fort Beaufort, which was reached the same day, and, having handed over the cattle to some Thembu who were there to receive them, they were dismissed and returned to their homes. Maqoma and his people moved to the east and, for a time, settled on a branch of the Kabusi at no great distance from the place they had vacated, and he fixed his residence near the mission station of Knappshope, between the lower Tyumie and the Keiskama. A military post was established in the vacated district to prevent their return. They were not further molested, because they did not resist and retired before the troops. The burning mattered because the Kat valleys were now empty of Maqoma, and because the ground so cleared was the ground Stockenstrom already meant for someone else. [3] [4]
The Kat River Settlement — April–December 1829
Within a few weeks after Cole’s arrival in the colony he had proposed to the commissioner-general to form locations of Khoikhoi on vacant lands near some of the villages, and also on several farms that had been reserved for the use of the landdrosts in olden times. Thousands of these people, released from all restraint by the fiftieth ordinance, were wandering about the country in a condition of vagrancy, and were regarded as a pest by owners of property. Ordinance Fifty had written them level with Europeans; it had not given them ground. Stockenstrom disapproved of the governor’s plan, as locations near villages could be of no use to the Khoikhoi: he was of opinion that they had not sufficient check upon themselves to withstand the temptations of strong drink which such proximity to towns would place in their way. He preferred the occupation of the whole of the ceded territory indiscriminately by Khoikhoi and other colonists on the same kind of tenure as then obtained in the colony. That, however, was a very large question and could be sanctioned only by the Home Office, for it would have meant first removing the Xhosa clans already in possession beyond the Keiskama. The disagreement mattered because Cole wanted cheap village plots for a people the ordinance had unbound, and because Stockenstrom would not put them next to canteens. [3] [4]
Speculations as to the best mode of disposing of the lands from which Maqoma was to be driven occupied the commissioner-general on his voyage round to Algoa Bay. There then dawned upon him a solution of the difficulties which had been raised by the enactment of the fiftieth ordinance. A fertile region was to be available which possessed not only the advantage of being far removed from towns, but all the features necessary for discovering how far the Khoikhoi were capable of acquiring habits of industry when left to themselves and of becoming land-holders equally with the white man. Moreover, adjoining Xhosa country as it did, it would also be possible to prove to what extent those people would be of use in assisting in the defence of the colony and in this manner to become a barrier. That latter had been the object which Sir Rufane Shawe Donkin had in view when he reserved these same lands for the Highland party of 1820 settlers under Colonel Grant, which object was frustrated by the non-arrival of that party. While at Uitenhage Stockenstrom sent to the governor, on the 17th of April, a memorandum of his suggestions. By the time the expulsion of Maqoma was accomplished, Cole had had time to consider them and then communicated his approval and authority to carry them into execution. The memorandum mattered because the Kat was not a leftover after a raid: it was chosen, while Maqoma was still being given two months for his crops, as the place where Ordinance Fifty would be tested as freehold. [3] [4] [7]
Several small streams unite to form the Kat river, and in their valleys the land is easily irrigated and is of great fertility. The plan adopted was to form a number of locations, each divided into plots of from four to six acres in extent, upon which a family was to be placed. Ground not adapted for cultivation was to remain as a commonage, each family having a right to graze cattle on it. The settlers were to remain 5 years on probation, at the expiration of which period those who had built cottages and brought the ground under cultivation were to receive grants in freehold, but all garden ground not improved within that time was to revert to the government. Each location was to be about 3000 morgen in extent, according to natural circumstances arising from the proximity to the Kat Berg range and the quantity of arable and pasture lands. The allotments of individuals were to be laid out so as to constitute regular villages or hamlets. A head of a party was deemed to be a Khoikhoi capable of mustering at least ten able-bodied and armed men who should regard themselves as continually on military duty. The cottages specified were to be 33 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 8 feet high under the beams, the walls of stone or burnt brick, containing a hall, a kitchen, and a bedroom, in each room a window of four panes of glass, the house decently thatched, plastered, and whitewashed, and its position chosen with some regard to the formation of a street. The terms mattered because freehold was not a gift on the first morning: it was 5 years of a cottage and a garden, or the plot went back to the crown. [3] [4]
Little time was lost. The region having been cleared by the 4th of May, the first contingent of Khoikhoi took possession of some of the lands in the beginning of June. They consisted, for the most part, of the better class of people of Bethelsdorp and Theopolis together with some of the discharged soldiers of the Cape Hottentot Corps and others who had accumulated a little property in the service of the farmers. The principle of the organisation was that of the British settlement in Albany, namely the formation of locations under heads of parties. Unlike the British settlers, however, with the exception of an expenditure of £22 1s. for seed corn, sanctioned by the government on the 4th of December, no provision was made for rationing the people or giving them support of any kind while they were struggling with the difficulties and privations inseparable from a first settlement. Everything was to be done as cheaply as possible. No magistrate was to be appointed. It was expected that each head of a party would control his own people and that the appointment of one as field-cornet for the whole settlement would meet all requirements. Judicial matters either of a criminal or civil nature would be subject to the jurisdiction of the rest of the colony. The cheapness mattered because Albany in 1820 had been rationed and officered; the Kat was to prove whether Khoikhoi could hold land without either. [3] [4]
Drought and an epidemic of horse-sickness added further to the unpropitious commencement. In spite of all this, signs of industry and progress soon manifested themselves. From the official returns dated December the first establishment consisted of 243 men (of whom 127 possessed muskets, while 99 had those belonging to government), 187 women, and 451 children. They were in possession of 369 horses, 2614 cattle, 8227 sheep and goats, 58 waggons, and 22 ploughs. The people were disposed under eighteen heads of parties and thus formed a number of tiny villages situated at distances of a few miles from each other. These were named chiefly in honour of people connected with the London Missionary Society, hence Vanderkempton, Philipton, Readsdale, Buxton, Balfour, Hertzog, and others. Christian Jacobus Groepe was appointed field-cornet for the settlement and was to act as the intermediary between the people and government. Captain Cobus Boesak became field-commandant; his duty was, in the event of hostilities, to take command of the whole of the people until the arrival of Somerset or other military authority. Booy Windvogel was appointed overseer of roads with authority to call out one man in every ten to assist in making and repairing the roads leading to the different parts of the settlement. The waters of the Kat were distributed to the arable lands by a system of small canals or furrows. Cole himself visited the settlement towards the end of the year. To enable the people to defend themselves, the government supplied them with muskets and ammunition, greatly to the alarm of the frontier colonists, who feared that these weapons might be used as in the troubles at the beginning of the century. But no disturbance of the peace took place in this year. The returns mattered because they showed a people already stocked and armed on Maqoma’s old ground, under their own field-cornet, without a magistrate of their own. [3] [4]
Ordinance Forty-Nine Suspended — 25 August 1829
In July 1828, with the concurrence of the imperial authorities, an ordinance had been issued by the acting governor in council, permitting Xhosa seeking service to enter the colony, but requiring them to obtain passes from the field-cornet or justice of the peace nearest the border. Hereupon numerous Xhosa came over the boundary, professing to seek employment, but in most instances to wander about begging and looking for opportunities to steal. After a while depredations became so frequent that the frontier colonists were brought into a state of panic. It was abundantly evident that Bourke’s system, whereby Xhosa were permitted to come into the colony with passes from the missionaries for the purpose of seeking employment, was a failure; it was this which gave them all the opportunities they could desire for learning the whereabouts of the farmers’ horses and cattle. There were then hundreds of Xhosa in the colony with these passes, and no one knew how many without, but, as was stated by the civil commissioner of Albany, there were not a dozen in the employ of the colonists. According to returns furnished to government by Campbell, 754 passes had been issued to Xhosa by missionaries in the previous period counted. From November 1828 to September of this year, 5560 cattle and upwards of 300 horses were driven off, not by any general inroad but by 350 separate acts of petty depredation by parties of eight or ten men. The numbers mattered because Ordinance Forty-Nine had been sold as a labour law, and the frontier counted thefts, not hired hands. [3] [4]
On the 25th of August Cole suspended the ordinance for the admission of Xhosa servants, and instructed the officials to apprehend all who were wandering about without proper passes. Missionaries were prohibited from issuing any further passes, and any Xhosa found in the colony not in any honest employment were to be arrested, disarmed, and conducted to the nearest military post, when they were to be sent into their own country. He then hastened to the frontier. Upon investigation he ascertained that upwards of 5000 head of cattle had been stolen from colonists within five months, that only 1500 head had been recovered by patrols, and that many individuals had been reduced to actual want. He expressed regret at the error that had been committed of allowing Xhosa to occupy part of the ceded territory again, thus bringing them within easy reach of the jungles along the Fish river. The suspension mattered because the pass that had been a missionary’s paper was now a warrant for arrest, and because Cole went east in person to say so to the chiefs. [3] [4]
With the chiefs of the clans in that district he had a conference, when he informed them that he was determined not to tolerate robberies any longer, and warned them that if they did not prevent their followers from stealing he would act with them as he had acted with Maqoma. They protested that they were doing all they could to suppress thefts, but said that among their people were evil-disposed men who would not obey them. The governor, however, had made himself acquainted with their customs, and was aware that if they were really in earnest not an ox could be brought into the territory without their knowing all about it. He did not attempt to argue with them, therefore, but replied that he had said sufficient, and would merely repeat for the last time that cattle-stealing must be suppressed or the clans would be expelled without further notice. The chiefs saw that the governor was not to be trifled with, and found such means to restrain robbery that for several months it nearly ceased. About this time, August, the attitude of the Xhosa gave rise to the wildest rumours and alarms of an intended invasion of the colony. Gaika’s people were said to have been assembling; Gaika himself was already ill, and in September he could not meet the governor at Fort Beaufort. The conference mattered because Cole’s threat was Maqoma’s expulsion repeated, and because for some months after the Fish almost ceased to lose oxen. [3] [4]
The Press Ordinance, the Scotch Church, and the College — January–October 1829
The South African Commercial Advertiser had appeared again on the 3rd of October 1828, after Mr. John Fairbairn had obtained from Sir George Murray leave to resume the issue, with a promise that the press should be freed from the control of the governor and council. In January of this year the secretary of state transmitted to Cole a draft ordinance for the regulation of the press, with instructions to have it published in the name of the governor in council. This was done on the 30th of April. The ordinance provided that the names of editors, printers, publishers, and proprietors, with their places of abode and other particulars, must be recorded on oath at the office of the secretary to government, under penalty of a fine of £100 for every paper sold or delivered without such registration; that a copy of each paper must be furnished to the secretary to government; that the publisher must bind himself in the sum of £300, and furnish other security to the same amount, to pay any fines inflicted upon him by a court of justice for blasphemous or seditious libel; and that conviction for a libel tending to bring the government of the colony into contempt should debar any person from editing, printing, or publishing a newspaper in the colony again. This law now appears stringent, but in those days it was regarded as sufficiently liberal to meet all reasonable requirements. It removed from the government the power of interfering with the press, and referred to the judges of the supreme court the decision whether matter was libellous or not. Shortly after the ordinance was issued, quite a number of newspapers and other periodicals sprang into existence, but most of them were short-lived. The ordinance mattered because the Advertiser had twice been stopped by a governor’s licence, and because libel now sat with the judges who had taken their seats on the 1st of January 1828, not with the castle. [3]
On the 24th of October 1827 the foundation stone of the Scotch church on St. Andrew’s square had been laid by Bourke, and on the 24th of May of this year the building was opened for divine worship. A very pleasing occurrence after the first service was the presentation of £75 towards the building fund by a deputation from the Dutch reformed church. The reverend Dr. James Adamson was the first pastor. He had arrived from Scotland on the 11th of November 1827, when the Lutheran congregation kindly gave the use of their church to hold service in until the building then just commenced should be completed. On the 26th of October the foundation stone of the Wesleyan chapel in Burg-street was laid. The opening mattered because Capetown’s Scots no longer borrowed the Lutheran nave, and because the Dutch reformed church marked the day with seventy-five pounds. [3]
The members of the English episcopal communion still made use of the Dutch reformed church. In 1824 they had proposed to erect a building for themselves, and a committee had been appointed to ascertain how many persons would engage to rent pews, their plan being to raise money on loan. That scheme had not met with sufficient support. In October 1827 the bishop of Calcutta had called at the Cape, when Bourke granted about an acre of ground in the lower part of the government garden, which the bishop consecrated. A subscription list was then opened, but only a trifle over £2000 being promised, the design was again abandoned. The secretary of state having promised pecuniary aid, in August of this year it was resolved at a meeting of the members to try to raise a portion of the capital in shares, to be repaid from pew rents, and 250 shares of £25 each being taken, on the 1st of September an ordinance of the governor in council was issued, giving legal sanction to the plan, and granting £5000 from the colonial treasury towards the building fund. The stone itself waited until the next year; what this year wrote was the shares, the ordinance, and the 5000 pounds. The ordinance mattered because the English congregation had twice failed to raise a church on loans and subscriptions, and because the colonial treasury now put 5000 pounds against 250 pew-rent shares. [3]
A mark of advancement in another direction was the establishment of the South African college. On the 14th of October 1828 there had been a meeting of heads of families in the vestry room of the Dutch reformed church in Capetown, when a discussion took place upon the advisability of providing better means for the education of lads than the government free schools offered. No decision as to the method of meeting the want was arrived at, but a committee was appointed to frame a design and ascertain if sufficient funds could be raised. The gentlemen who formed this committee were Sir John Truter, late chief justice, the reverend Messrs. A. Faure, G. Hough, J. Kloek van Staveren, and Dr. Adamson, of the Dutch reformed, English episcopal, Lutheran, and Scotch churches, Mr. W. F. Hertzog, assistant surveyor-general, and Mr. F. L. Mabille, a merchant in Capetown. Advocate Jacobus de Wet and Mr. D. Hertzog acted as secretaries. The committee mattered because the four town churches sat together on it, and because the want they named was not another free school but a college for lads whose fathers would pay shares. [3]
After much deliberation and inquiry the committee resolved to endeavour to obtain a capital of £2500 in shares of £10 each, which should entitle the owners to have their sons educated at a lower charge than others, and to employ the interest of this capital and fees for tuition in paying the salaries of professors and teachers. A prospectus was issued on the 23rd of March, and the required amount having been subscribed, on the 4th of June a meeting of the shareholders was held, when fifteen of their number were elected to form a board of directors. The guardians of the orphan asylum, having more accommodation than they needed, offered a portion of their building free of rent for six years. A contribution of £50 a year was promised from the masonic education fund. On the 1st of October the college was opened with about 100 students. The first professors were the reverend Messrs. Faure, Judge, and Adamson, who gave instruction in Dutch and English literature, classics, and mathematics. There was also a teacher of French, Mr. Swaving by name, and a gentleman named Woodward assisted in teaching general subjects. The college received no aid from the colonial treasury in this year. The opening mattered because about 100 lads now sat in an orphan asylum’s spare rooms, taught Dutch and English, classics, mathematics, and French, on shares of ten pounds and a masonic fifty a year, without a penny from the treasury. [3]
On the colonial register on the 31st of October there stood 35934 slaves: Cape and district 11929, Stellenbosch 8619, Worcester 3937, Swellendam 2924, Graaff-Reinet 2115, George 2105, Somerset 1505, Uitenhage 1181, Clanwilliam 791, Beaufort 515, Simonstown 197, Albany 116 — 20917 males and 15017 females. By far the largest number was in Capetown and the district, while the smallest number was in Albany. The British settlers of 1820 were not allowed to work their lands with slaves, but there was nothing to prevent them owning non-predial slaves. Manumissions in this year numbered 153, against 117 in 1828 and 245 in 1827. The register mattered because the same town that opened a college on private shares still counted nearly 36000 people as property, and because Albany, the settler district, held only 116 of them. [4]
Cowie, Green, and Farewell at Natal — 1829
Early in the year Dingane was visited by Dr. Cowie, district surgeon of Albany, and Mr. Benjamin Green, who were on an exploring expedition from the Cape Colony. Dingane had been king of the Zulus since the 23rd of September 1828, when he struck the first blow at Tukusa and Tshaka died. The two travellers left their waggon and most of their Khoikhoi servants at his residence, and proceeded on horseback to Delagoa Bay, where they found fever raging so severely that the European inhabitants of Lourenço Marques had been reduced from 40 to 6 in number. Their horses died, and the explorers were compelled to leave on foot. On the 4th of April Cowie died, and was followed a few hours afterwards by one of the Khoikhoi servants. Four days later Green died, after giving the journal of the expedition to the interpreter, who brought it to the colony. In this journal the explorers stated that after crossing the Umzimvubu they entered a nearly depopulated country, through which they were 35 days in making their way to Fynn’s kraal near Port Natal. During this time they saw no natives. At Dingane’s residence they met about 40 half-breed Portuguese traders from Delagoa Bay, whose principal article of traffic was a coarse kind of bead. The journal mattered because it showed what Tshaka’s wars had left between the Umzimvubu and the port: thirty-five days without a living kraal, and a new king who still received traders. [3]
The Europeans at the port had been invited by Dingane to remain there under his protection for commercial purposes, and they were well pleased to do so. On the 1st of December 1828 Farewell and Isaacs had sailed from Natal in the Elizabeth and Susan, with a view of procuring goods in the colony. All that were left of the crew of the Mary went with them, so that there remained at Natal only the two Fynns, John Cane, Henry Ogle, and Thomas Holstead. Upon the arrival of the schooner at Algoa Bay she had been seized and detained by the authorities, and of all who had embarked in her, only Isaacs would see Natal again. Farewell a second time interested a good many people in his scheme of colonising Natal, and in September of this year was returning overland with a party of young Englishmen and some waggons laden with merchandise when his career was terminated. The overland return mattered because the schooner built from the Mary had never obtained a British register, and because the man who had first sat down at the bay was now taking waggons to a king who had killed Tshaka. [3] [4]
He and two companions named Walker and Thackwray left the waggons one afternoon, and rode on horseback to visit Keto, with whom he had been acquainted in Zululand. They were received with apparent friendship, but Keto did not conceal his annoyance at their intention of proceeding to trade with his enemy Dingane. A hut was given them to sleep in, and at a late hour they laid down to rest. Just before dawn next morning a band of Amakwabi fell upon them, murdered the three Europeans and five of their black servants, and then proceeded to plunder the goods. The members of the party who remained with the waggons managed to escape, but left everything behind in their flight. After Farewell’s death, Cane and Ogle divided his people between them. The killing mattered because Natal’s first English resident died in a hut on the road to Dingane, at the hands of a prince who would not have him trade with the new king, and because the following he left was split between two adventurers still sitting at the bay. [3]
Moffat, the French Missionaries, and Gaika’s Death — 1829
About the close of the year the reverend Robert Moffat, of Kuruman, visited Moselekatse, who was then living some 100 miles east of Mosega, and acquired great influence over that dreaded conqueror. The stories told of Moffat led inland people to believe that he possessed a knowledge of some exceedingly powerful medicine of this kind. Two traders who visited Moselekatse in this year computed the tribe at 80000 souls, in which the proportion of children was of course very small. The visit mattered because the Batlhaping at Kuruman were spared in the Matabele wars that followed, and because chiefs further south began to ask for a missionary who could work the same effect. [3] [3]
The first missionaries of the Paris evangelical society arrived in South Africa in this year. They were three in number. One of them, the reverend Mr. Bisseux, took up his residence at Wellington, in the Cape Colony; and the other two, the reverend Messrs. Samuel Rolland and Prosper Lemue, proceeded to the Batswana country, and endeavoured to found a station at Mosega, which was then occupied by the Bahurutsi tribe under the chief Mokatla. On their way they were joined by the reverend Jean Pierre Pellissier, who had followed them from France. Their stay at Mosega was brief. The advance of Moselekatse and the destruction of the Batswana compelled them to abandon that part of the country, and they then founded a station at Motito, not far from Kuruman, where they collected together a number of fugitives from the north. Mokatla with a remnant of his people fled away to Taung, on the Hart river. In May, on the Umtata, a Wesleyan station named Morley was founded with a clan of mixed European and Mpondo origin. The arrivals mattered because France now sat at Wellington and among the Bahurutsi fugitives, and because Mosega, 100 miles west of Moselekatse, could not be held in the same year Moffat first reached that chief. [3]
In this year death removed from the eastern arena one whose whole life had been intimately connected with the border troubles. Gaika had been ill for some time and, as was mentioned, could not meet the governor at Fort Beaufort in September. He gradually got worse and died on the 14th of November, aged about fifty, at his kraal on the Keiskama, near the Glasgow mission station Burnshill. Previously to his death, so the missionary Chalmers told, he lamented the indifference he had shown to practical and religious education and counselled his children to avoid his example and to profit by the opportunities afforded by the mission stations. He was especially solicitous for his great son Sandile, then a boy of eight years of age, who was to succeed him as the paramount chief of the amaNgqika. Though no one believed Gaika to be the boy’s father, this youth was regarded as the legitimate heir to the chieftainship, and Maqoma was appointed regent during his minority. The death mattered because the chief with whom Somerset had made the ceded-territory arrangement of 1819 was gone, because his heir was eight years old, and because Maqoma, already expelled from the Kat, became from his new ground toward the Tyumie and the Kabusi the most powerful chief on the border. [3] [4]