Boer History1857 in South Africa: Grey, Umhlakaza, Pretorius, the Rhenoster, and Natal’s Council
Pretorius of the 5th of January, Schoeman of the 29th, and Lombard of the 18th of February — South African Republic 1857
North of the Vaal the farmers still lived under the Sand River convention of the 17th of January 1852, which had recognised their right to govern themselves. Their ablest leader, Andries Pretorius, had died on the 23rd of July 1853. After that the government was so weak that it barely collected a land tax, and there was no police. A committee that included Marthinus Wessel Pretorius and Paul Kruger had drafted a written constitution. An educated Hollander, Jacobus Stuart, put the resolutions into order. Pretorius then took the draft through Potchefstroom, Rustenburg, and Pretoria. It was well received, so a representative assembly of 24 members — one for each fieldcornetcy — was elected for one purpose only: to adopt the draft, amend it if needed, and name the executive. That assembly met at Potchefstroom on the 16th of December 1856 and sat nearly 3 weeks. As finally adopted, the country was to be called the South African Republic, dropping the words “north of the Vaal river” which the volksraad had added on the 21st of November 1853 when the Orange River Sovereignty was still British. The limiting words were cut because Pretorius hoped the Orange Free State would join, and a name that stopped at the Vaal would have made that union harder to argue. [3]
The legislative power was to sit in a volksraad elected for 2 years. Members had to be over 30, electors of 3 years’ standing, members of the Dutch Reformed church, landowners, of European blood, and never convicted of crime. Father and son, or brothers, could not sit together. 12 made a quorum. Ordinary sessions were to open on the first Friday of September. The president was to be chosen by the people for 5 years, advised by an executive council, and could not trade or leave the republic without the volksraad’s leave. There was to be one commandant-general, a military officer only, elected by burghers liable to service. Revenue was to come from a government monopoly of ammunition, licences, transfer dues, fines, a tax of 1 shilling a year on every 50 head of horned cattle, and land tax of 7 shillings 6 pence to 30 shillings on each farm. Absentees were to pay double. Potchefstroom was the seat of government. The constitution named the Dutch Reformed teaching of Dordrecht 1618–19 as the people’s religion, recognised no other church courts than its consistories, and stated that no equality of coloured people with white inhabitants would be tolerated in church or state. The press was declared free. Slavery was prohibited. Those clauses mattered because, until this January, the country north of the Vaal had no single written rule for who could sit, who could command, or what the state was called. [3]
On the 5th of January the assembly, by 21 votes against 3, chose Pretorius as president; Jan Hendrik Visagie as state secretary and ex officio member of the executive council; H. S. Lombard and M. A. Goetz as the other members of that council; D. Botha as landdrost of Potchefstroom; and Stephanus Schoeman as commandant-general. Schoeman’s name was put on the list on purpose, to conciliate Zoutpansberg. The assembly appointed a committee of 12 to instal the officers and issue writs for a volksraad under the new constitution. It chose a new flag: the Batavian tricolour — red, white, and blue horizontal bars — with a green vertical stripe at the inner end. On the 6th of January the president, the executive council, and the landdrost took the oaths. The flag was raised and saluted after a blessing by the reverend Dirk van der Hoff. The president’s salary was set at £300 a year, to rise to £400 when the revenue allowed it; the commandant-general was to have £200, the state secretary and the landdrost of Potchefstroom £150 each. The installation mattered because a written constitution is only a draft until men take oaths under it, and because the green stripe on the Batavian flag was now the public mark of Pretorius’s state. [3] [3]
When the news reached Zoutpansberg and Lydenburg the indignation was immediate. At a public meeting at Zoutpansberg on the 29th of January the Potchefstroom acts were almost unanimously repudiated. Schoeman declined to serve under Pretorius. A manifesto signed by Schoeman, A. C. Duvenhage, Commandant J. H. Jacobs, and 7 others disowned the constitution and everything connected with it. When no members from the other districts appeared on the 17th of December 1856, Lydenburg declared itself a sovereign republic. In March its volksraad issued a manifesto repeating that declaration and inviting Europeans of all nationalities to settle, with full political privileges and land for nothing. The ecclesiastical quarrel that had opened at Rustenburg on the 8th of August 1853 — whether the church north of the Vaal should sit under the Cape synod — still cut the same way as the political split: one side wanted a single government and a church free of Cape control; the other wanted district councils allied only for defence, and a church tied to the Cape. That is why Schoeman’s refusal and Lydenburg’s manifesto were not local sulks. They were the same quarrel in two registers. [3]
On the 17th of February the Potchefstroom committee instructed Pretorius and Goetz to go to Bloemfontein. President Jacobus Nicolaas Boshof had published a draft bill on burgher rights, and the Transvaal men professed to think it would hurt them. The real object was union of the two republics. Pretorius, as Andries Pretorius’s son, still hoped the farmers south of the Vaal would greet him as heir and majority. While he was away, Lombard acted as president. On the 18th of February, with the executive council and the committee, he issued a proclamation deposing Schoeman, declaring Zoutpansberg in a state of blockade, and forbidding traders to supply “the rebels” with ammunition or anything else. The deposition mattered because the man named commandant-general on the 5th to keep Zoutpansberg inside the constitution was, a fortnight later, proclaimed a rebel for staying outside it. [3]
On the 1st of July 6 deputies from each side met at Rietfontein near the new village of Pretoria and agreed that the dispute with Zoutpansberg should go to a court of 12 at Rustenburg on the 9th of November. That court did not sit; Schoeman wrote that the date must be postponed. On the 4th of September a volksraad of 15 members met at Potchefstroom, ratified the constitution and the presidency, confirmed the later treaty with the Free State, and on the 11th resolved to send a deputation to Rustenburg. There had been no printing press north of the Vaal; provision was now made for a Gazette. Some time before this Setyeli had asked Pretorius for a missionary and for ammunition to kill game. On the 9th of April Pretorius wrote to the nearest Moravian director. No Moravian was free, but a Lutheran of the Hanoverian mission went to live with the Bakwena. The volksraad allowed hunting ammunition for Setyeli and opened the republic to Hanoverian agents. On the 29th of September the president issued a proclamation reminding the country that the sale or barter of black children was forbidden by the new constitution, and prohibiting transfers of apprenticeships except before landdrosts. The proclamation mattered because rumours of transferred indentures were already a charge that could be used against the republic from the Cape and from Natal. [3] [3]
Inside the Republic of Lydenburg lived the Bapedi under Sekwati, who had submitted to Hendrik Potgieter in 1846 but had beaten off a disarming attempt in 1852. Lydenburg sent C. T. van Niekerk and F. C. Combrink to settle the reserve in which he might rule, and on the 17th of November it was agreed that he should hold the country between the Olifants and Steelpoort rivers. He promised to restore stolen cattle brought into that reserve and to punish thieves. P. J. Coetzer and the Lydenburg executive confirmed the writing on the 9th of December. The arrangement mattered because Lydenburg, having broken from Potchefstroom, still had to live beside a chief who could field warriors, and because a written reserve was cheaper than another commando. [3] [3]
The 18th of February, Taylor of 28,892, and the Census of July — Annexed Territory 1857
East of the Kei the year opened on a prophecy already 8 months old. Nongqause, daughter of a counsellor of Kreli, had in May 1856 told her uncle Umhlakaza that she had seen strange men by a stream. He named them spirits of the dead, come from battlefields beyond the sea to drive the English out. The command that followed was to kill cattle, leave gardens unplanted, and empty the granaries. New herds, ripe millet, and the ancient heroes would then rise; a hurricane would sweep unbelievers and white people into the sea. Sir George Grey had warned Kreli that he might do as he pleased in his own country, but not instigate British subjects west of the Kei. Charles Brownlee had kept Sandile from slaughtering as fast as Kreli wished. That delay is why, in January of this year, one part of the Xhosa and Tembu was already starving while another was still destroying its food. [3]
Great kraals were being built for cattle that were to appear like stars. Skin sacks were sewn for milk that was to run like water. Huts were thatched against the hurricane. Umhlakaza said the resurrection was postponed in mercy to the Gaika, because Sandile and Anta had not finished killing. After several postponements he fixed a moon that corresponded with Wednesday the 18th of February as the day. He had first said two blood-red suns would rise; he now said the ordinary sun would wander and set in the east, after which the hurricane would come. That last detail was not sent to the Rarabe clans in time. Grey strengthened every post and moved every available soldier forward. Once defence was provided for, he piled food at King William’s Town and Dohne, because a raid in arms was not the only danger: a starving people would come as suppliants, and a high commissioner who let them die on the line would have a frontier he could not hold. [3]
The last steamer of the German legion had reached Table Bay on the 9th of February. The seven transports together landed 106 officers, 38 officers’ wives, 2,245 men, 343 women, and 178 children, who were sent on to East London and placed in villages given German names — Breidbach, Berlin, Potsdam — and at the post thereafter called Stutterheim. Before they came, the annexed territory had only 949 Europeans other than soldiers. Grey’s plan was to put a European population into the annexed territory so that the next Xhosa war, if it came, would not find empty ground. The last ship and Umhlakaza’s day stood 9 days apart. That is why the frontier this February was both a settlement scheme and a watch for a hurricane that did not come. [3]
On the morning of the 18th of February the Gcaleka and some others shut themselves in their huts so as not to be blown away. Most of the Rarabe and the allied Tembu watched all night for two blood-red suns. The sun rose as usual. They asked, for the first time, what would become of them if Umhlakaza was wrong. Noon passed; the shadows lengthened; the sun set in the west. The fighting men had not been assembled at a point from which they could burst into the colony. A further postponement was tried, but excitement had given way to despair. The only chance of life left to many was to reach the colony as beggars, not as a host. [3]
What followed can only be told in part. Brother fought with brother, father with son, for shreds of the milk sacks sewn when hope was high. The aged and the sick were abandoned. Wild plants and tree roots were eaten. Those near the sea lived on shellfish and then died of dysentery. Whole families sat down under a tree and died together; later 15 to 20 skeletons were often found in one place. A stream of emaciated young men and women, sometimes parents with half-dying children, poured into the colony and sat before farmhouses asking for food. They did not ask in vain. Charred bones in pots showed how far the most desperate had gone. Between the first and last days of this year Sandile’s clan fell from 31,000 to 3,700; the clans under Makoma, Pato, and Stokwe were reduced to under 1,000 in all; Umhala had 6,500 left of nearly 23,000; even Kama, who had refused the order, lost 3,600 of 13,000. [3]
The official census of the annexed territory shows a fall in the Bantu population between the 1st of January and the 31st of July from 104,721 to 37,229 of both sexes and all ages. That was in the territory next to the colony, with King William’s Town at its centre, where the magistrate, Captain Richard Taylor, issued food to 28,892 people, who were then sent into the colony once they could walk and allotted to farmers as rough servants. Several hundred men were kept for public work in the province. Beyond the Kei there was no such storehouse. The lowest computation of those who died on both sides of the river is 25,000; ordinary calculations give double that number. Umhlakaza himself died of hunger. Nongqause saved her life by crossing the Bashee. In this year alone 1,413 people arrested when trying to steal were sent by sea to Capetown. The figures mattered because they turned a prophecy into a labour supply for colonial farms, and because they left the Xhosa chiefs without the people who had made them a military power. [3] [4]
Vadana of August, Makoma of the 27th, and Griffith of the 19th of September — Annexed Territory 1857
Some of the boldest who still had horses formed robber bands and fell on countrymen who had not killed their cattle. They said those unbelievers had stopped the spirits from coming. For several months the border was disturbed until the police could break the bands. The cost of feeding the famished, and of shipping those caught stealing, had not been voted in advance, so no estimate had gone to the secretary of state. That unpaid bill would later be held against Grey. It mattered this year because the annexed territory had no revenue of its own large enough to feed tens of thousands. [3]
When the famine set in, the Tembu chief Vadana, who still had 900 mounted men, became a robber and struck anyone who still had cattle and corn. Because he menaced the colonial frontier, in August Queenstown farmers joined a strong body of the frontier armed and mounted police under Commandant Walter Currie and came up with the band. About 50 of the robbers were killed, and the old chief Kwesha was taken. Vadana fled east. He was followed by police under Inspector Charles Duncan Griffith, who surprised him at dawn on the 19th of September on the bank of the Bashee and made him prisoner. He and Kwesha were sent to Capetown, where they arrived on the 17th of December with Makoma as their companion in exile. With that band broken, armed opposition on the border was over. Individual theft continued; the police could now keep an order the frontier had not known. [3]
Makoma, the most capable of the Rarabe chiefs as a guerrilla leader, though given to drink, wandered into the colony and was arrested on the 27th of August for being there without a pass. He was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. Kreli, who had led the killing, found himself with very few followers. Sandile had not slaughtered every beast, but he was poor and had lost most of his people. He was allowed to keep part of the location Sir George Cathcart had assigned him, but his magistrate, once a mere assessor, was now supreme in court. The Fingo, from whom trouble had been feared, took no part in the destruction of cattle and corn. The vacant land that Cathcart had given to Makoma, Botumane, Umhala, and Pato was confiscated and opened to Europeans, who were covered by police holding the empty country from the Kei to the Bashee. The political argument for separating the eastern province, or moving the seat of government to Grahamstown, lost its force once the Xhosa could no longer put an army on the line. That is why a famine east of the Kei changed Cape party questions as well as Xhosa power. [3]
Bloemfontein of the 22nd of February, the Vaal of April, and the Treaty of the 2nd of June — Orange Free State 1857
The Orange Free State had been independent since the Bloemfontein convention of the 23rd of February 1854. Boshof, a Cape judge by training, had been president since the 27th of August 1855. His hardest neighbour was Moshesh, who still claimed ground west of the Warden line and whose captains lifted stock. Early in this year he delivered to the landdrost of Smithfield 1,359 of the most wretched cattle in his country, but only 36 horses, because the tribe would not part with animals needed in war. The volksraad refused to take horned cattle in place of horses, deducted the number due, and sent the rest back. The delivery mattered because it showed Moshesh would pay in beasts he did not need, and would not pay in the horses a Free State commando would have to face. [3]
Pretorius and Goetz, with 10 Transvaal farmers and 40 Free State citizens who joined them on the road, reached Bloemfontein on the 22nd of February. The next day was the third anniversary of independence. The volksraad, then in session, had ordered a procession to the fort to hoist, for the first time, the flag designed by King William III of the Netherlands and adopted on the 28th of February 1856: four white and three orange horizontal stripes, with the Batavian tricolour in the upper corner next the staff. Pretorius and Goetz had sent no official notice, but they were invited to walk with the procession. Pretorius refused, because to salute that flag would have been to admit a state he meant to absorb. On the 24th there was a sharp altercation. It came out that he had invited Moshesh to a conference at Bloemfontein, and that, as Andries Pretorius’s heir, he claimed an authority the Free State could not grant. On the 25th the volksraad repudiated him and gave him and Goetz 24 hours to leave. They went on to Natal. Union men south of the Vaal kept up the agitation; some were charged with sedition. [3]
On the 7th of March the Potchefstroom committee, calling itself a commissie volksraad, met and approved Pretorius’s proceedings. Lombard’s deposition of Schoeman was ratified, and J. F. Dreyer was named commandant-general in his place. On the 15th of April Dreyer and the council of war wrote to Bloemfontein that if the sedition charges were pressed they would march in arms. The Free State had detained 544 kilogrammes of lead in transit; that was called a hostile act. Eight days later an armed but not large force crossed the Vaal into Winburg and was joined by union men led by Carel Frederik Geere and Hendrik Erasmus. Pretorius put himself at the head. Boshof proclaimed martial law and called out the burghers. Men gathered at Kroonstad, a new village on the Vals river. Schoeman of Zoutpansberg offered an alliance against Pretorius and said he could muster 800 to 1,000 men; he believed Lydenburg would join him. [3]
From Kroonstad the Free State marched to a camp near the Vaal. Under Commandant-General Frederik Senekal stood 4 commandants, 24 fieldcornets, and 685 burghers, with 21 armed and 163 unarmed blacks. Pretorius camped 250 to 300 men on two hills south of the Vaal. The Free State partisans he had counted on did not come in such numbers, and Geere with 5 others were already prisoners in Boshof’s camp. Schoeman and Joubert of Lydenburg were ready to join the Free State against him. On the 25th of May the two commandos faced each other across the Rhenoster for 3 hours. There were brothers and cousins under both flags. The northern army could not win, so Pretorius sent Kruger with a flag of truce. Twelve deputies were named on each side. On the 27th Pretorius recrossed the Vaal. On the 2nd of June a treaty was signed. Each side acknowledged the other as free and independent within its bounds; the Transvaal deputies admitted they could find no claim to Free State land or government. The executive councils confirmed the articles on the 1st of June — Pretorius and Lombard on the north bank, Boshof, J. J. Venter, and H. J. Joubert on the south. On the 4th of June the Free State burghers were disbanded at Kroonstad. Geere was sentenced to death; under clause 6 of the treaty that sentence was reduced to a fine of £150. Others were fined from £25 to £150. In September Kruger and J. C. Steyn went to Bloemfontein and obtained further mitigation. In August Boshof had the volksraad station a resident justice of the peace at Kroonstad and at Boshof — Louis G. Rosa at the first, F. Nauhaus at the second. The treaty mattered because two Dutch republics, after facing on a river named for rhinoceros, agreed in writing not to be one state. [3] [3]
Scott of the 23rd of March, Sidoyi of the 18th of April, and Matyana — Natal 1857
Natal had been raised to a separate colony by a charter issued at Westminster on the 15th of July 1856. John Scott had taken office on the 5th of November of that year. The charter gave a legislative council of 16: 4 officials and 12 elected, sitting at least once a year, with a reserved civil list that put the governor at £1,200 and set £5,000 a year for the benefit of the Bantu. Electoral boundaries were proclaimed on the 14th of November 1856. On the 23rd of March the council met for the first time in the government schoolroom at Maritzburg. The four crown members were the colonial secretary, William C. Sargeaunt, the treasurer Philip Allen, the attorney-general Walter Harding, and the secretary for native affairs Theophilus Shepstone. The twelve elected were James Arbuthnot and John Moreland for the county of Maritzburg; Humphrey Evans Knight and James Jenkins Gregory for Klip River; Jonas Bergtheil and Joseph Henderson for the borough of Maritzburg; John Millar and Donald Moodie for the borough of Durban; Walter Macfarlane for Weenen; Eric Landsberg for Umvoti; James Kinghurst for the county of Durban; and Charles Johnston for Victoria. Donald Moodie, who had left the secretaryship on the 1st of October 1852, was chosen speaker. Natal had the population of an English village. The sitting mattered because the district was no longer a dependency administered from Capetown, and because a council that could pass acts — subject to a two-year veto in England — was now the public face of that change. [3]
On the 29th of April Scott offered the vacant crown lands in farms of 300 to 3,000 acres, at a quitrent from one farthing to 2 pence halfpenny an acre, with a fine of four times the quitrent if the ground was not occupied. In this year Natal was estimated to hold, in round numbers, 150,000 Bantu inhabitants, swollen by refugees from Zululand and Pondoland. None of the Indian field hands toward which the cane planters were already looking were introduced before the year closed. Across the Tugela, Cetewayo was the real ruler of the Zulu, though Panda remained the nominal head. The land offer mattered because a handful of elected settlers could not occupy Natal by themselves, and because the hut-tax population already outnumbered them many times over. [3]
Early in the year a petty chief named Sidoyi, on the southern bank of the Umkomanzi, broke the peace. He had taken over from a regent in 1850 and added the trade of witchfinder to the chieftainship. After a wedding fight in which one of Umshukungubo’s men was killed, Sidoyi’s people plundered the weaker kraal. Three days later Sidoyi himself, with 500 men, attacked Umshukungubo, who stood with 80 warriors until he and 20 retainers were dead. Next morning Sidoyi cut off the dead chief’s right hand and took out the tongue and right eye, believing he would add that power to his own. Magistrate Hawkins ordered everyone to keep quiet and then to come to Maritzburg. Sidoyi would not appear. Scott used the jealousy among the clans: 800 or 900 men were called out in two bands under John Shepstone and Benjamin Moodie. On the 18th of April they advanced from different sides, while Theophilus Shepstone with Cape mounted riflemen made a southern detour to stop help. Orders were to seize cattle, horses, and guns, and to take the chief; no huts were to be burned, no women or children harmed, no assegai used except against armed resistance. Twelve horses and 7 guns were taken. One of the attacking party died by accident; 4 of Sidoyi’s men were slain. Sidoyi fled over the Umzimkulu and was outlawed. Shepstone restored 1,600 head to the clan, left 1,200 with Hawkins for winter distress, gave 700 as a reward to the loyal force, and sold rather more than 3,000 to pay the cost. A new chief, Zatshuke, not of the ruling family, was set over the people. The expedition mattered because every black eye in Natal was on whether Scott would let a chief ignore the summons, and because communal responsibility — the clan paying for the chief — was the rule the government itself then used. [3]
A few months later Matyana, in the Klip River county, was summoned for the death of a man named Sigatiya. A witchfinder had charged Sigatiya with causing the illness of Ntwetwe; when Ntwetwe died, three young relatives were allowed to torture Sigatiya to death. Matyana had been fined before, 500 head for killing his uncle Vela and Vela’s two sons as sorcerers, an act the government held forbidden by the order in council of the 8th of March 1848. He would not come to Maritzburg. Langalibalele’s Hlubis and other clans under John Shepstone marched; after a slight fight in which 2 Hlubis and 13 of Matyana’s men were killed, the chief fled to a jungle and left 7,000 cattle, which were seized. At a later conference, after weapons had supposedly been laid down, a shot was fired in confusion and 25 of Matyana’s men were killed before the assegais left by the path could be reached. The evidence of how the shot came to be fired was conflicting then and later. The episode mattered because Natal’s new council sat in a district where a lieutenant-governor still had to punish chiefs with other chiefs’ impis, and because a conference that ended in dead men would be remembered against Shepstone for years. [3]
Parliament of the 7th of April, the Railway to Wellington, and Vetch’s Piers — Colony 1857
Grey was in his third year as governor of the Cape and Natal and high commissioner for South Africa. The constitution of 1853 had given the Cape a parliament, but the principal officials were still named in England. Responsible government had been lost in the assembly in April 1856. This year’s session ran from the 7th of April to the 29th of June. The great want was labour. Public works, and any extension of farming, needed men used to manual work. On Grey’s recommendation an immigration act was passed and put in force at once. It provided for gardeners, shepherds, farm servants, and mechanics from Great Britain, of good character, free of disease, never on parish aid, never convicted. Parliament resolved that only Europeans should be introduced. A few labourers were obtained from St Helena: 64 adults and 11 children, their passages paid by the employers with a little help from government. Her Majesty’s ship Geyser brought 45 people from Tristan da Cunha and they were settled in the colony. The act mattered because the Cape was trying to grow its European working population at the same moment that thousands of starving Xhosa were being sent onto farms as rough servants. [3]
In the same session parliament resolved to begin railways. Grey proposed two lines: one from Capetown through the Paarl to Wellington, with branches to Wynberg, Stellenbosch, and Malmesbury — 92.5 miles, or 149 kilometres — and one from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown by Uitenhage, 135 miles, or 217 kilometres. The east could not agree. Some wanted Port Elizabeth joined to Graaff-Reinet instead; others, who still hoped to make Port Frances at the Kowie a real harbour, did not want the frontier tied to Port Elizabeth. The eastern line dropped out. The Malmesbury and Wynberg branches were cut. The western main line was to run from Capetown through Stellenbosch and the Paarl to Wellington, 63.5 miles, or 102 kilometres. A company, not the government, was to build and work it. After working costs, a dividend of 6 per cent a year on construction, provided the cost did not exceed £500,000, was guaranteed for 50 years, and the districts on the line were to meet half of any deficiency. The rails were to be 56.5 inches, or 143.5 centimetres, apart. The Cape had no navigable river and no canal. In drought a long journey by ox-waggon was slow and dear. That is why a line of 63.5 miles to Wellington was treated as the start of a change in how the interior could sell wool and grain. [3]
Captain James Vetch’s plan for Table Bay, forwarded on the 2nd of November 1856 and approved by the admiralty, came before this session. Winter gales had wrecked ships in the open bay; summer winds often made landing impossible for days. Vetch proposed a pier 5,100 feet from the Chavonnes battery, with an elbow of 500 feet toward Fort Knokke, and from Fort Knokke another pier of 4,600 feet, leaving an entrance of 1,600 feet. The cost was put at £1,000,000 if 1,000 convicts were used. A committee of the assembly adopted a report by 23 votes to 8. The members would not have convicts. They offered to repay an interest-free imperial advance at not less than £25,000 a year. London declined. At the Kowie, William Manning began embankments in April to deepen the bar, using Fingo labour at low wages. For a time success was expected. Revenue this year stood at £404,240 against £318,477 in 1856. Wool was £1,160,499; hides and skins £225,903; wine £157,309; copper ore £102,055. Exports as a whole were £1,833,700 against £1,240,616 the year before. The figures mattered because they are why parliament could talk of a million-pound harbour and a guaranteed railway in the same sitting that voted food and passages for labourers. [3]
On Saturday the 21st of February the municipal commissioners, fieldcornets, and other officials of Aliwal North met in the court house. J. Burnet, in the name of J. C. Chase — then at Uitenhage — presented the armorial bearings of the Founders’ Company, emblazoned on vellum, glazed and framed, and had them fixed to the wall. Chase, a freeman of that London company, had obtained the use of its arms and motto for the town named for Sir Harry Smith’s victory at Aliwal. Three new colonial divisions were voted this year, with funds for civil commissioners; the appointments themselves followed in 1858 at Bedford, Hopetown, and Knysna. Periodical courts, opened in 1856 far from the ordinary magistracies, continued in use. The Aliwal ceremony mattered because a frontier village on the Orange was still tying itself to a London livery company in the same month that Umhlakaza’s day emptied the country east of the Kei. [3] [4]
Megaera of the 12th of June, the Union of the 12th of September, and the Stone of the 17th of November — Colony 1857
On the 12th of June her Majesty’s steamship Megaera arrived in Table Bay from Mauritius with news of the disaffection of the 19th regiment of native infantry at Barhampur on the 27th of February — the beginning of the mutiny in India. She brought no despatches, and the account was vague. Grey still prepared to help, so that when the Peninsular and Oriental steamer Madras on the 6th of August brought letters from Lord Elphinstone, governor of Bombay, he could act at once. Elphinstone described the mutiny at Meerut on the 10th of May, the seizure of Delhi and the murder of English residents on the 12th, and asked for aid. The Xhosa self-destruction had removed the danger of a frontier war, though robber bands still moved. There were 10 strong British battalions in South Africa. That coincidence — empty Xhosa kraals and a full Cape garrison — is why a Cape governor could strip the frontier for Hindostan. [3]
Part of the 89th was in garrison in Capetown. The city volunteers offered to guard the forts, and within a week those troops were at sea. The rest of the regiment embarked at Algoa Bay for Bombay. A wing of the first battalion of the 13th marched to Algoa Bay; the officers and 400 rank and file left in the Madras for Calcutta on the 30th of August, with two batteries of artillery, stores, 56 horses, and a considerable sum from the Cape treasury. Ships from Bombay came later for horses; Grey sent those in his own stables, and colonists followed. On the 6th of August the Cleopatra put into Table Bay from Portsmouth for Singapore with part of the 23rd fusiliers for Lord Elgin’s China expedition. Grey changed her destination; on the 9th she left for Calcutta. The Belleisle put in on the 9th with companies of the 93rd highlanders bound for China, and sailed for Calcutta on the 12th. The Mauritius put in on the 11th with the rest of the 93rd and left on the 16th. On the 13th the Polmaise from Dublin, bound for New Zealand with part of the 95th, was turned; she sailed on the 17th. On the 6th of September the Beechworth arrived with the rest of the 95th and left for India on the 13th instead of New Zealand. That aid let the government in India move before reinforcements from England arrived. [3]
As transports were found, more followed. In November the 80th left for Calcutta; in December the first battalion of the 6th and the remaining wing of the first battalion of the 13th went to the same place. Horses were urgently needed, so Grey partly dismounted the Cape regiment. There remained in South Africa only the first battalion of the 2nd, the united battalions of the 45th, and the 85th, one wing of which was in Natal. Grey added to the frontier armed and mounted police; parliament later approved. The reduction mattered because the same police who were hunting Vadana’s band were now, in Grey’s calculation, the substitute for the battalions at sea. [3]
The Dundas mail contract of the 6th of August 1856 lasted only a year. On the 12th of September the admiralty contracted with the Union Steamship Company for a monthly mail each way between Devonport and Capetown. Ships were to be not under 530 tons, except at the start of the service, and were to make the passage in 42 days, forfeiting £25 for a passage of 43 days and £50 for each day over that, with a premium of £50 for every day under 42. The yearly subsidy was £33,000, or £1,375 a passage, for 5 years. The company’s ocean steamers this year were the Athens, 740 tons; the Norman, 516; the Dane, 447; the Gelt, 440; and the Phoebe, 416. Between Cape ports and Natal it had the Madagascar, 321 tons; the Waldensian, 285; and the Zulu, 189. This was the start of the Union Company’s South African service. The contract mattered because despatches, passengers, and commercial letters had been waiting on sailing ships, and because a monthly steamer was the Cape’s tie to the admiralty and to India in a year when Grey was sending battalions east. [3]
By an act of this year’s parliament the South African Museum was placed under a board of 3 trustees named in perpetuity by the governor: Rawson W. Rawson, Thomas Maclear, and Ludovic Pappe, M.D. Grey obtained money for a large building at the foot of the gardens, one wing for the South African Public Library, the other for the museum, taxidermist’s rooms, and the curator’s house. The first stone was laid on the 17th of November. On the 22nd of October Grey commissioned Advocate E. B. Watermeyer, then acting as a judge of the supreme court, James Rose Innes, and Langham Dale of the South African college, to plan a board of examiners empowered to grant certificates of merit. They reported on the 8th of December; Grey approved, and an act on that plan was left for the session of 1858. The stone and the commission mattered because a colony that had just sent its battalions to India was still laying down a library, a museum, and the board that would become its university — the civil face of the same year as Umhlakaza’s empty granaries and Pretorius’s green-striped flag. [3]