Boer History1874 in South Africa: Barkly, Makwai, Kokstad, and Oba
Oba of the Keiskama, and the Huguenot Seminary — Colony 1874
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 Oba, still drawing Sir George Grey’s allowance in the Gaika location east of the Fish, would stay there or buy ground of his own; and whether a seminary would open at Wellington on the old Huguenot farms, to give farmers’ daughters a Christian and practical education. [3]
Oba was a Gaika chief — a head of one of the Rarabe houses west of the Kei, under the line of Ngqika. He suffered less than any other Gaika chief from the cattle-killing that Umhlakaza had preached in 1856 and 1857. He had shown such courage in the preceding war that his people gave him a new name, Ngonyama — the lion — by which he was afterwards generally known. Good natured, witty, and generous, he remained in the Gaika location until this calendar, drawing the allowance of 7 pounds a month which Grey had given him. That location was the ground assigned to Ngqika’s people after the frontier wars, east of the Fish and short of the Keiskama. He was still there when 1874 opened, a chief on an allowance, not a landowner on the western bank. [3]
In 1874 he purchased 2 large farms on the western bank of the Keiskama, and moved to them with a considerable following. The Keiskama was the river that had long bound the Gaika side. What the location lost was not a clan destroyed, but a chief who bought ground of his own and took a following west of that river. What the Colony had on that bank was Oba no longer sitting the location on Grey’s 7 pounds, but sitting farms he had paid for. The purchase mattered because a Gaika house that had come through the cattle-killing with less ruin than its neighbours now held title on the colonial side of the river, under the same governor who still sat Capetown and still held the high commission. [3]
West of the Berg the old Huguenot ground still carried names the refugees had given: Dauphine, la Cotte, Cabrière, la Motte, Champagne, Rhone, and Languedoc among them. The early grants had placed the French along the Berg, occupying the present areas of French Hoek — at first Oliphant’s Hoek — Groot Drakenstein, Dal Josaphat, the township of Paarl, and the surrounding country of Wellington. From the Paarl Rock a view ran from Wellington to the entrance of the Drakenstein valley. The whole portion had been known as the Drakenstein Colony, distinguished from the Stellenbosch Colony, but under the landdrost of the latter. On that Wellington ground Andrew Murray, junior, who had been appointed minister of Bloemfontein and consulent of the other congregations on the 12th of March 1849, founded in 1874 the Huguenot seminary at Wellington. Farmers’ daughters were to receive there a thoroughly Christian and practical education. The seminary took the Huguenot name and sat it on the old grants. It was not a new congregation of French speech. It was a school for the daughters of the farms that had grown from those grants, opened in the same year Oba paid for ground west of the Keiskama. [3] [8]
Makwai of Matatiele taken as a British subject — Nomansland 1874
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 1874 because a Basuto clan that had left the mountain country during the Free State war, and had sat a year longer than Lebenya without being taken, was now taken over on the far side of the Drakensberg. [3]
Makwai, after the loss of his stronghold, had given up the contest and with his clan had moved over the Drakensberg into Nomansland. He made peace with Adam Kok and in nominal vassalage to him settled in the district which now forms the magistracy of Matatiele. Lebenya’s clan had already gone there from the Wittebergen reserve after Vechtkop was stormed in 1865, and had 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 Sir Philip 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. In 1873 Lebenya and his people, at their urgent request, were admitted as British subjects. Makwai was not taken over in that calendar. That is why this year’s taking existed. [3]
In the following year — 1874 — Makwai was also taken over. The taking of Makwai 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 sat a year longer than Lebenya in nominal vassalage to Kok, on the Matatiele ground Wodehouse had confirmed, was taken as Lebenya’s people had been 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. Makwai’s admission was taken as the taking of 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]
Matatiele was no longer a clan in nominal vassalage to Kok. It was a people taken under the Colony’s name, as the people between the Kenigha and the Tina had been taken the year before. Lebenya already sat as British subjects on the Mount Fletcher ground. Makwai now sat the same roll at Matatiele. Both holdings still lay east of the berg, on ground Wodehouse had confirmed in March 1869, not west of the Caledon under Griffith’s hut-tax. The Queen’s ratification of the 3rd of November 1871 still stood for the Lesuto. What Nomansland had this year, on the two holdings so confirmed, was both clans under the Colony’s name. [3]
Kokstad, Umzimkulu, and the Griquas under the Cape — Nomansland 1874
The Griquas who sat Kokstad and Umzimkulu this year had not always sat there. Ever since 1854 individual Griqua proprietors in the district between the Riet and the Orange had been selling farms to Europeans. The new occupants, mostly emigrants from the Cape Colony, came immediately under the landdrost of Fauresmith, and after 6 months’ residence became burghers of the Free State. Adam Kok retained exclusive control over the Griquas in the district, and his government kept possession of all the unappropriated land. Farms of 6000 or 7000 acres were passing for a couple of hundred golden sovereigns or a lot of showy merchandise. The time was approaching when the Griquas would have little left if they remained where they were. That is why a new country was offered, and why 1874 found them not on the Riet but under the Drakensberg. [3]
It had been found impossible to maintain the native states created by the Napier and Maitland treaties. Adam Kok had on more than one occasion fought side by side with English troops. He had done nothing to deserve abandonment. The cancellation by Sir George Clerk of the treaties with him had been a violent act. Sir George Grey felt that he was morally bound to do something for Kok and his Griquas. He therefore offered them a large and fertile tract of country along the head waters of the Umzimhlava and Umzimvubu. This was part of the territory placed under the Pondo chief Faku by the Maitland treaty of 1844, but Faku had no other claim to it than that which the treaty gave. No clan of his tribe had ever resided in any portion of it. The upper portion of the Pondo treaty state had come to be called Nomansland. Early in 1861 Grey set out to visit the district in person; at King William’s Town he fell ill, and Sir Walter Currie, commandant of the frontier armed and mounted police, went in his stead. Faku offered to cede the land between the Drakensberg and a line from the Umtata to the Umzimkulu, upon condition of the Cape Colony exercising rule over it — the south-eastern boundary of the present territory of Griqualand East, excluding Mount Ayliff. The Imperial authorities were opposed to any enlargement of the Cape Colony, and Faku’s condition could not be carried out. The Maitland treaty was henceforth regarded as applying only to the country between the sea and the line the Pondo chief named. [3]
The Griquas sent a party to inspect the district Grey offered, and upon a favourable report prepared to move. There was no lack of purchasers for the farms left between the Riet and the Orange. After all the ground in possession of private individuals was sold, the Griqua clan, numbering about 3000 souls, including a good many blacks of different tribes who had recently joined them, moved off in a body toward their new home; but it was not until January 1863 that they arrived at Mount Currie, close to the present village of Kokstad. The interval was spent on the border of the Lesuto, where overtures were made to Kok to occupy the new country as a vassal of Moshesh. When he rejected these advances, Poshuli’s followers began to plunder him. All through 1863 and 1864 the quarrel continued. In 1864 Lehana, with some of his followers, moved into Nomansland from the Wittebergen reserve and joined Kok. In March 1865 the Griquas made a supreme effort and drove the robber bands of Nehemiah and Poshuli from their fastnesses. The marauders were later routed, most of their followers made prisoners, and compelled to abandon the country below the mountains. [3] [4]
The Griquas then settled in the present districts of Kokstad and Umzimkulu, where each head of a family had a cattle-run of the usual size allotted to him. On the 26th of December 1861 Adam Kok and his council, through their agent Henry Harvey, signed a document whereby all the unappropriated land, together with the sovereign rights over the whole of their possessions north of the Orange, were ceded to the Free State, in consideration of a payment of 4000 pounds sterling. That cession gave the Free State Philippolis. It did not take the new home under the berg. Kokstad sat as a new Griquatown on the ground Grey had offered and Currie had walked. For 11 years after the arrival at Mount Currie the clan sat there without coming under the Cape’s government. In 1874 they came under the government of the Cape Colony. What Nomansland had this year, on the cattle-runs of Kokstad and Umzimkulu, was no longer a Griqua government left to itself after the cession of the 26th of December, but a people taken as the Colony’s charge. [3] [4]
The taking sat beside Makwai’s on the same colonial roll of Nomansland peoples who passed this year under the Cape’s name. Makwai had sat Matatiele in nominal vassalage to Kok; this year he was taken over. The Griquas had sat Kokstad and Umzimkulu on cattle-runs allotted after the routing of Nehemiah; this year they came under the Cape. Lebenya already sat as British subjects from 1873. 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. The taking of the Griquas of Kokstad and Umzimkulu, like the taking of Makwai, was the fulfilment of a charge Grey had opened when he offered the uplands, not a new annexation bill of the kind the Cape had refused for Griqualand West. Griqualand West remained a separate government from the 8th of December 1871. The taking east of the berg did not take the camps west of the Vaal. [3]
Nazareth named Middelburg — South African Republic 1874
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 renaming of a village on the eastern watershed while Burgers still sat Pretoria. [3]
In October 1859 the volksraad resolved to found a village on the watershed between Klipspruit and the highest eastern branch of the Olifants river. The resolution was carried into effect shortly afterwards. The village was called Nazareth until 1874, when the name was changed to Middelburg, by which it has since been known. 15 years of the old name sat on that watershed. The change of name was the year’s alteration north of the Vaal. It was not a new town. It was a new name on the village the raad had resolved in October 1859. [3]
The district of that name was older than the renaming of the village. Daniel Jacobus Erasmus had proclaimed Middelburg a district on the 24th of February 1872. It had previously been part of Lydenburg. It already sent 3 members to the volksraad. Marico, with Zeerust as the seat, already sent 3, 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 3 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. What the eastern side had this year was not a new district — that had been proclaimed 2 years before — but a new name on the village. [3]
Before 1873 the volksraad members were elected for 2 years, but since that time for 4 years, half retiring every second year. That rule still sat when Nazareth became Middelburg. The raad was the supreme authority of the state: 3 members for each of the districts of Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Rustenburg, Zoutpansberg, Pretoria, Wakkerstroom, Utrecht, Middelburg, Heidelberg, Waterberg, Marico, and Bloemhof, and 1 member for each of the towns of Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Rustenburg, and Pretoria. Members had to be of European blood, over 30, possessed of landed property, members of a Protestant church, never convicted of crime, and voters of at least 3 years’ standing. No member could be elected by fewer than 40 votes. Father and son could not sit together. 12 formed a quorum. The president and the executive might debate, but not vote. The two Republics still sat under two presidents. Brand had declined over a thousand signatures for the Pretoria chair; Burgers had taken it instead. The village on the watershed sat Middelburg from this calendar, no longer Nazareth, while those 4-year terms still ran and Burgers still sat the oaths of the 1st of July. [3]