Boer History1873 in South Africa: Barkly, Maqoma, Lebenya, and the Pondomise
Ichaboe of the 26th of June, Maqoma of the 9th of September, and the Grahamstown Drostdy — Colony 1873
Sir Henry Barkly governed the Cape Colony and held Her Majesty’s high commission when the year opened. He had taken the oaths at Capetown on the 31st of December 1870. The year’s colonial business was not a change of governor. It was whether rocks Wodehouse had proclaimed colonial in 1866 would at last be confirmed by an act assented to on the Queen’s behalf; whether Maqoma, held on Robben Island since November 1871, would die in detention or be allowed to return a third time; and whether the empty Drostdy at Grahamstown, abandoned by the War Office in July 1870, would be put to a civil use before it fell into ruin. [3]
Ichaboe itself had not been annexed to the British dominions, except by the unauthorised act of Captain Wade, until the 21st of June 1861, when it was taken in possession for the crown of England by authority of the government. The islet is a rock off the Namaqualand coast, less than a mile in circumference, once covered with guano. On the 5th of May 1866 the islets named Holland’s Bird, Mercury, Long Island, Seal Island, Penguin Island, Halifax, Possession, Albatross Rock, Pomona, Plumpudding, and Roastbeef or Sinclair’s Island were declared part of the British dominions in the same manner. On the 16th of July 1866 Governor Sir Philip Wodehouse proclaimed them all annexed to the Cape Colony. That proclamation waited 7 years for an act of the colonial legislature. The act was assented to on behalf of the Queen on the 26th of June 1873. From that date the islets have been leased to individuals by auction, the rental going to the treasury. The 26th of June did not take new rocks in the Atlantic. It confirmed, on the Queen’s behalf, a colonial title Wodehouse had proclaimed, so that Capetown could collect rent from guano that merchants had been lifting whenever the birds were not breeding. [3]
Maqoma did not sit the island through the year. He was the most capable of the Rarabe chiefs in the field, a guerrilla leader of real skill, and a son of Ngqika. After the cattle-killing of 1856 and 1857 he wandered into the colony and was arrested on the 27th of August 1857 for being there without a pass. He was sentenced to imprisonment for a year, then convicted of having been accessory to the murder of a petty chief who refused to destroy his cattle at the bidding of Umhlakaza, and sentenced to transportation for 21 years. He was removed to Robben Island and treated more as a prisoner of state than as a convict, being allowed the company of his favourite wife and as many other indulgences as could be granted under the circumstances. In May 1869, under a promise of good behaviour, he was permitted to return to the country of his birth. He began to foment disturbances. In November 1871 he was once more removed to the island. There he died at an advanced age on the 9th of September 1873. Throughout his life he was always an attentive listener to the exhortations of missionaries, but never embraced Christianity. The island that had held him as a prisoner of state from November 1871 held him no longer after the 9th of September. [3]
East of the Fish the Drostdy buildings at Grahamstown, empty of troops since the War Office had provisionally abandoned them in July 1870, were put to a civil use this year. They had been in military occupation until 1864, when King William’s Town became the headquarters and all the troops were moved thither. They remained empty until 1866, when military occupation was resumed and continued until July of 1870. Lying untenanted and commencing to fall into ruin, they were permitted to be used for non-military purposes. In 1873 the Drostdy House, adjacent barracks, and hospital became the public school. The change mattered because a seat of magistracy that had been rebuilt as a garrison after 1836 now taught children in the same stone, while the imperial posts along the Fish stood empty or were turning into farm buildings, police camps, or convict stations. [4]
Lebenya of Nomansland, Griffith at Maseru, and the Basuto Laws — Lesuto 1873
The Lesuto had been annexed to the Cape Colony by the Act of August 1871, ratified by the Queen in council on the 3rd of November, but had not been subjected to colonial law: the duty of legislating for the territory had been left with the governor. C. D. Griffith had assumed on the 2nd of August 1871 as chief magistrate and governor’s agent at Maseru. He was still the agent when this year opened. The Caledon remained the fixed boundary. Colonial law was still withheld from the territory. The governor was still the legislator there. That arrangement mattered in 1873 because a Basuto clan that had left the Caledon country during the Free State war now asked to be taken as British subjects on the far side of the Drakensberg, and because Capetown printed, this year, a compilation of Basuto laws and customs on which such an administration had to work. [3]
Lebenya’s clan had gone into Nomansland from the Wittebergen reserve after Vechtkop was stormed in 1865. Makwai, after the loss of his stronghold in 1867, had given up the contest and with his clan had moved over the Drakensberg into the same country. He made peace with Adam Kok and in nominal vassalage to him settled in the district which now forms the magistracy of Matatiele. Lebenya settled on the land between the Kenigha and Tina rivers, which is now included in the magistracy of Mount Fletcher. From that date they took no further part in hostilities against the Free State. In March 1869 Wodehouse visited Nomansland and confirmed them in possession of the ground on which they were residing. They were no longer Free State enemies, and they were not yet British subjects. That is why this year’s request existed. [3]
In 1873 Lebenya and his people, at their urgent request, were admitted as British subjects. Makwai was not taken over in this calendar. The taking of Lebenya did not make the Lesuto a colonial district, and it did not annex Nomansland as a whole. Griffith still sat the agency at Maseru. The governor still legislated for the mountain country west of the Drakensberg. What changed was the roll east of the berg: a clan that had asked to be taken, on the Kenigha and the Tina, was taken. Kimberley’s instruction of the 24th of January 1871 still bound Barkly not to be a party to the annexation of any territory the Cape could not govern and defend unaided. Lebenya’s admission was taken as a request from people already confirmed on the ground, not as a new annexation bill of the kind the Cape houses had refused for Griqualand West in 1872. [3]
A report and evidence of the commission on native laws and customs of the Basuto, 68 pages, was printed at Capetown this year. It sat among the bluebooks on which the administration of such subjects had to work, beside a Grahamstown commission of 1865 of 500 pages. Griffith still collected the hut-tax and the trading licences. The Queen’s ratification of the 3rd of November 1871 still stood. What the Lesuto had by this year’s print was not a new statute of colonial law, but a short book of Basuto custom for officers who still governed by the governor’s regulations, and, beyond the Drakensberg, Lebenya’s people on the colonial roll as British subjects while Makwai’s clan still sat in nominal vassalage to Kok. [3] [3]
Umhlonhlo, Umditshwa, and the Pondomise Request — Pondomise 1873
Five generations earlier the Pondomise — Amampondomsi in the older spelling, Pondomisis as termed by Europeans in recent times — had divided into two sections, which from that date had been almost constantly at war with each other and with all their neighbours. They occupied country between Natal and the Cape frontier, next to the Pondos. By 1873 those sections were remnants. The chiefs Umhlonhlo and Umditshwa, then the heads of the remnants of the two sections, requested to be taken under the protection of the Cape Colony, as they were in danger of being destroyed by the Pondos. Their request was acceded to. What this year opened on the Pondomise side was not a colonial war. It was a petition from two remnant chiefs who could no longer hold their ground against the Pondos without the Colony’s name. [3]
Magistrates were stationed with them, though their own laws and customs were not interfered with, and they were required to pay only a very light hut tax. The two sections had not made peace with one another by asking together. They had been at war with each other and with their neighbours for five generations; the danger from the Pondos was what brought both remnants to the same petition. The Colony that had taken the Lesuto as a charge in 1871 and had refused Griqualand West in 1872 now took, at the chiefs’ request, a protection that stationed magistrates without rewriting Pondomise law. What was not taken from them was their own custom. What was taken was the duty of shielding remnants the Pondos were in a position to destroy. [3]
The request sat beside Lebenya’s on the same colonial roll of peoples who asked to be taken. Lebenya had asked from the Kenigha and the Tina after Wodehouse’s confirmation of March 1869. Umhlonhlo and Umditshwa asked from remnant ground the Pondos threatened. Both requests were acceded to in this calendar. Magistrates with the Pondomise, an admission of Lebenya as British subjects, and Griffith still at Maseru, were three different holdings of the same high commissioner who still sat the castle and still sat Griqualand West as a separate government. Kimberley’s instruction of the 24th of January 1871 still bound him not to be a party to the annexation of any territory the Cape could not govern and defend unaided. The Pondomise protection was taken as a light hut-tax charge with laws left standing, not as a new annexation bill. [3] [3]
The two chiefs still sat as heads of two sections. The Pondos were still the danger named in the request. The remnants had not recovered the strength of the undivided tribe of five generations earlier. Protection under the Colony’s name, magistrates stationed with both remnants, their own laws still sitting, and a light hut tax: that was the bargain of 1873. Whether that protection would hold, and whether the remnants, having a colonial magistrate at hand, would keep the peace they had not kept with one another, was not settled by the request itself. [3]
Jan Bloem at Klip Drift, and Griqualand West still separate — Diamond Fields 1873
Griqualand West remained a separate government from the 8th of December 1871, when a commission had appointed Barkly its governor. The Cape Parliament in 1872 had refused to adopt the annexation bill he introduced. The high commissioner still governed the diamond territory. The Cape still would not take it as a colonial charge. Mining operations on the severed fields continued. What had not yet been held was any court for the settlement of disputed claims to land. What had not yet been offered was any compensation to the Free State. What had not yet been done was any incorporation of the territory with the Cape Colony. That refusal still stood when this year opened, and it is why a justice of the peace at old Klip Drift sat under Barkly’s commission and not under a Cape statute and not under Bloemfontein. [3]
Two mines remained a long distance east of the line from Ramah to Platberg, inside the Free State: Jagersfontein and Koffyfontein. The principal fields, Kimberley among them, remained under Barkly’s separate commission. The Campbell grounds west of the Vaal, claimed by the Orange Free State by virtue of a purchase in 1861 from the general agent of the Griqua chief Adam Kok, still sat under the proclamation of the 27th of October 1871. The volksraad’s protest of December 1871 still stood against the establishment of British supremacy over that territory and against all the proceedings of the high commissioner. Brand still sat Bloemfontein. The dispute was not closed by another year of separate government. [3]
At Klip Drift this year a statement was taken that reached back behind the camps. Jan Bloem, formerly captain of the Korannas, made a statement in 1873 before J. Thompson, justice of the peace for Klip Drift. He resided at Nooitgedacht farm near old Klipdrift. He was the son of Captain Jan Bloem, after whom Bloemfontein is probably named, and had been born in the Onderveld about the year 1790. He had arrived in the country with his father as a lad of about 8. He signed with his mark. The statement sat in the same year the fields still sat under Barkly’s separate government, on ground where Koranna captains, Griqua captains, and diamond camps had successively claimed to speak. [4]
Bloem remembered the Korannas electing his father as captain at Letaklow, and Taaibosch as captain over a portion near Tauns. After his father’s death he was taken back to the Onderveld, returned as a young man, married in the church at Griquatown, and was appointed field-cornet by Captain Barends. He told how Andreas Waterboer was elected captain during Barends’s absence, how he himself left for Goeymansberg with about 200 men, and how he later fought Waterboer at Griquatown, captured cattle and waggons, and burnt the village. He occupied both sides of the Vaal up to 1857, when he appointed his son Barend Bloem provisional captain of the Korannas. During his trek, he said, the country was occupied by Korannas; he never saw any of the inland tribes except Motheko near Tauns. The mark on that paper mattered because the camps of 1873 still sat on ground whose older occupation was exactly what Waterboer, Kok, Brand, and Barkly had disputed, and because the justice who took it sat at old Klipdrift under a government the Cape would not annex. [4]
Burgers and the Volksraad of Four Years — South African Republic 1873
Thomas François Burgers still sat Pretoria from the 1st of July 1872. He was a Dutch Reformed clergyman from Hanover in the Cape Colony. 3352 votes had been given, 2964 for him; W. Robinson had been the only other candidate put forward. The constitution as amended in November 1871 had made that oath possible: the president 5 years, Protestant, above 30, 100 voters; it was not necessary that he be a burgher at election. His creed was not in unison with 19 twentieths of the people, and had been overlooked in the anxiety for a clever president who might meet the British authorities on a footing of equality in controversy. This year did not record a new meeting on that footing. What it recorded was the lengthening of the volksraad’s seat while Burgers still sat Pretoria. [3]
The volksraad was the supreme authority of the state. It consisted of three members for each of the districts of Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Rustenburg, Zoutpansberg, Pretoria, Wakkerstroom, Utrecht, Middelburg, Heidelberg, Waterberg, Marico, and Bloemhof, and one member for each of the towns of Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Rustenburg, and Pretoria. The members had to be of European blood, over 30 years of age, possessed of landed property, members of a Protestant church, never convicted of crime, and voters in the Republic of at least 3 years’ standing. No member could be elected by fewer than 40 votes in his favour. Father and son could not have seats in the volksraad at the same time. 12 members formed a quorum. The president and members of the executive council had the right of debating, but not of voting, in the volksraad. The raad met once a year in ordinary session, but might be called together in extraordinary session by the executive if need should arise. [3]
Before 1873 the members were elected for 2 years, but since that time for 4 years. Half the members retire every second year. The change of term was the year’s alteration north of the Vaal. Burgers still sat the oaths of the 1st of July. The executive still debated without votes. 12 still made a quorum. Father and son still could not sit together. What changed was the length of the seat: 2 years before this calendar, 4 years from it, with half the members going out every second year so that the raad would not turn over all at once. That mattered because a house that had sat 2-year terms through Pretorius’s resignation and Erasmus’s acting presidency now locked half its members in for a 4-year stretch under a clergyman president whose own term ran to 5. [3]
Middelburg, proclaimed a district on the 24th of February 1872 by acting president Daniel Jacobus Erasmus, already sent three members under that rule. It had previously been part of Lydenburg. Marico, with Zeerust as the seat, already sent three, though one of its old field-cornetcies still lay almost entirely cut off by the award Keate had signed at Maritzburg on the 17th of October 1871. Bloemhof still sent three while a landdrost still held a court there on ground the award had not enforced. The Keate line still sat on paper west of Bloemhof. The two Republics still sat under two presidents. Brand had declined over a thousand signatures for the Pretoria chair; Burgers had taken it instead. [3]
Makana’s Mats buried — 1873
On Robben Island Maqoma died on the 9th of September. The same island had held Makana as a prisoner after the war in which he had spoken for Ndlambe. Makana was also called Nxele, the left-handed. He was sent a prisoner to Robben Island, where political offenders as well as persons convicted of crime were then kept in detention. After a confinement of less than a year he endeavoured to escape. There was a whaling establishment belonging to Mr Murray on the island. During the night of the 9th of August 1820 he, at the head of 30 prisoners, overpowered the guard, seized the whaling boats, and tried to get to the mainland. His companions succeeded in reaching the shore. He was drowned in the surf. [3] [3]
The generation to which he belonged passed away before his countrymen would acknowledge that he was dead, for many of them firmly believed that he was immortal. Through the three succeeding wars they looked confidently for his appearance to lead them to victory. That hope is why his personal property was not put in the ground when the surf took him. His mats and ornaments were carefully preserved during all that period. Umjuza, his son, was still keeping them when, in 1858, he hunted down and arrested Umhala for the colonial government — a fact that sat beside the belief, not against it. The island that drowned Makana in 1820 still held Xhosa chiefs as state prisoners when Maqoma died on it in 1873. [3] [3]
It was only in 1873 that those mats and ornaments were buried, and every expectation of his returning to his own country was lost. The long deferred and finally abandoned hope of his reappearance has given rise to a proverb: kukuza kuka Nxele — the coming of Nxele. The burial mattered because it closed, in the same calendar as Maqoma’s death on the same island, a hope that had outlived three wars and the generation that had watched Makana speak for Ndlambe. What was put in the ground was not a new prisoner. It was the last public form of a return that had been looked for since the 9th of August 1820. [3]