Boer History1878 in South Africa: Sandile, Tini, Jojo, and Cetewayo
Sandile killed in the field — Gaika location 1878
Sandile was still the principal chief of the Gaikas when the war that had opened in 1877 ran into this year. He ranked next to Kreli in the Xhosa tribe. The year before he had taken the Gcaleka paramount’s part. This year’s fact on the Gaika location was not another joining. It was that Sandile was killed in an engagement with the colonial forces. The man who sat the reduced location under a magistrate, drawing a monthly allowance, died in the field, not on the allowance list. [3]
Who he was matters because the colony did not kill a petty raider. Sandile was Ngqika’s son, the western house that stood second only to Kreli. After the cattle-killing of 1856–57 he had been allowed to keep part of the location Sir George Cathcart had assigned him. His magistrate, once a mere assessor, already heard the cases. He still drew the monthly allowance. A chief on that footing could have stayed out of Kreli’s war. He did not. The engagement that killed him was the price of the choice he had made when the Gcaleka paramount took the field. [3]
Kreli himself was again driven into Bomvanaland in the war of 1877–8. That second expulsion is the Transkeian frame for Sandile’s death. The Gcaleka paramount lost the coastal strip he had been allowed to occupy from 1865. The principal Gaika chief, who had joined him from west of the Kei, did not live to see another location term. What hung on the engagement was not a fine, and it was not a month’s allowance stopped. It was whether the Gaika house that ranked next to Kreli still had a living head when the war closed. It did not. [3]
Sandile’s intellect had been feeble, and one of his legs was withered. He had 10 wives, 7 sons, and 7 daughters. The clan had grown rapidly under British rule, which is why he had been strong enough to take the field at all. His principal counsellor, Tyala, had done his utmost to keep him out of this war, as he had tried to keep him out of the cattle-killing 20 years earlier. Tyala failed twice. The year’s killing in the field was therefore not a surprise sprung on a house that had never been warned. It was the end of a chief who had been told, by the man closest to him, not to go. [3]
The location confiscated — Gaika 1878
After Sandile was killed, his location was confiscated. That sentence is the year’s fact on the ground he had kept since Cathcart. The location was not left as a Gaika reserve under a new chief. It was divided into farms and sold to Europeans. His people were removed beyond the Kei. The western house that had sat a reduced location under a magistrate was, after the engagement, a people without that location. [3]
Removal beyond the Kei mattered because it was not a march of a few miles inside the old location. The Kei was the river that had long marked Gcaleka country from the colonial and Gaika side. People who had lived west of it, on Cathcart’s ground, were sent east of it. Farms sold to Europeans took the place of the kraals. What the confiscation recorded was the end of Sandile’s location as a Gaika place, not a new magistrate posted to the same beacons. [3]
Tyala died of grief at the death of his chief and the final breaking up of the clan. He was the grand old man who had stood against the cattle-killing and against this war. The clan he had tried to save was the clan that was now moved and sold out. His death belongs on this page because the confiscation was not only a surveyor’s work. It was the breaking up of the house Tyala had counselled, and he did not outlive that breaking. [3]
Gonya, whom Sandile’s great wife Nopasi had adopted as heir, was not the man to whom the location passed. The clan had never acknowledged him, because he was never circumcised. He had been educated at Zonnebloem, baptized Edmund, and employed as interpreter and clerk in a magistrate’s office. The confiscation did not wait for a circumcised brother to take the stool. It sold the ground. What 1878 recorded after the engagement was therefore not a Gaika succession. It was the conversion of Sandile’s location into European farms, and the moving of his people across the Kei. [3]
Tini captured and banished — Waterkloof 1878
Tini was Maqoma’s son. Maqoma had died a state prisoner on Robben Island on the 9th of September 1873. Some years later Tini bought a farm in the Waterkloof, the same broken country his father had held so tenaciously in 1851 and 1852, and gathered the remnant of the clan there. With increasing strength he became increasingly hostile to the government. In the war of 1877–8 he threw in his lot with Kreli and Sandile. That is who sat the kloof when this year opened: not the old guerrilla himself, but the son on a purchased farm. [3]
This year’s fact at the Waterkloof was his capture. He was banished to Capetown as a convict. The farm on the kloof did not save him. The remnant he had gathered did not hold the ground once he was taken. What hung on the capture was the corporate life of Maqoma’s house. A clan that had been rebuilt on purchased land, on the scene of 1851, ended when the son was sent to the town as a prisoner. [3]
His members were dispersed. As a corporate body the clan ceased to exist. That is a harder sentence than a fine of cattle. The Waterkloof remnant was not moved as a people under a new head, as some locations were. It was broken. Maqoma’s intelligence and guerrilla skill had not passed to a house that could survive the war his son joined. What 1878 recorded for Tini was the end of that clan’s history as a body, not a new farm title in another valley. [3]
The contrast with Sandile’s people is why Tini is a separate fact. Sandile’s following was removed beyond the Kei after the location was sold. Tini’s following was dispersed, and the clan as a body was finished. Both men had joined Kreli. Both lost. The Waterkloof farm, bought on the father’s old hold, did not become a second Gaika location. It became the place from which Maqoma’s son was taken to Capetown. [3]
Anta’s ground lost — Colony 1878
Anta had sunk into almost utter insignificance after the cattle-killing. He was allowed to remain in the Gaika location. By 1877 his clan had gathered some little strength again. Then it joined Sandile. That joining is last year’s fact. This year’s fact is the result: the clan lost its ground and was removed beyond the Kei. [3]
Anta was not Sandile, and he was not Tini. He had no Waterkloof farm, and he was not the principal Gaika chief. He was the man who had almost disappeared, and who had just enough people by 1877 to make a choice. He chose Sandile’s side. The ground he lost was the ground he had been allowed to keep in the Gaika location when he was negligible. Recovery of a little strength, then, did not restore a chieftainship. It gave him enough following to share Sandile’s ruin. [3]
Removal beyond the Kei put Anta’s people on the same road as Sandile’s. Two Gaika houses — the principal chief’s and the house that had almost vanished — left the location together, in the sense that neither kept it. The confiscation after Sandile’s death was not confined to Sandile’s own following. Anta’s ground went with it. What hung on that result was the last of the small recovery of 1877. A clan that had just become visible again was moved east of the river. [3]
The colony therefore closed the war of 1877–8 on the Gaika side with three different endings. Sandile dead in the field, location sold, people beyond the Kei. Tini a convict at Capetown, clan dispersed. Anta’s people without their ground, also beyond the Kei. Those are not one story told three times. They are the three houses that had joined Kreli, each finished in its own way in 1878. [3]
When the war was over — Oba in Victoria East 1878
Oba was the other Gaika fact of the year, because he had not joined Sandile. He was the son of Tyali and the grandson of Ngqika. In 1874 he had purchased 2 large farms on the western bank of the Keiskama and moved there with a considerable following. He still drew the allowance of 7 pounds a month which Sir George Grey had given him. Drought and cattle sickness had made the clan so poor that the last instalments of the purchase price could not be met. That is the condition in which the war found him, and it is the condition in which the war left him. [3]
When the war of 1877–8 was over, the mortgagees pressed their claims and got possession of the farms. That is this year’s fact on the Keiskama bank. The 2 farms of 1874 did not stay with Ngonyama because he had kept out of the war. They went to the men who held the bonds. Good conduct in the field did not pay the instalments the drought had left unpaid. What hung on the peace was therefore not a confirmation of Oba’s titles. It was a foreclosure. [3]
The government recognised his good conduct in placing himself and his people entirely at the disposal of the colonial officer who had sat with the clan. It gave him the use of another tract of land in Victoria East, where he afterwards lived with his principal men. The remainder of his clan were provided for in the district of Kentani. That grant is why Oba still had a place when Sandile’s location was sold and Tini’s clan was broken. It was not the Keiskama farms. It was a tract in Victoria East for the chief and his principal men, and Kentani for the rest. [3]
Until his death he drew Grey’s 7 pounds a month, but it was spent in purchasing brandy. He believed in — or rather did not dispute — the existence of one great God, and he never showed any disposition to embrace Christianity. Those details belong here because the year’s settlement was not a conversion, and it was not a restoration of the 2 farms. It was a chief who had stayed out of Kreli’s war, stripped of the ground he had bought, placed in Victoria East on a government tract, with the old allowance still paid and still drunk. What 1878 recorded for Oba, when the war was over, was that staying out saved the person and the following, and did not save the purchase. [3]
The Xesibes taken under British protection — 1878
South of the Umkomanzi some small clans that had been dispersed in the wars of Tshaka had taken refuge in the broken country along the Umzimvubu. They wanted either to remove to Natal or to have British authority extended to the land on which they were living. Among them were the Xesibes, then under a chief named Jojo. He complained of constant attacks by the Pondo chief Faku. That is who still sat that broken country when 1878 opened: a small house, not a Natal location, still fighting the Pondos. [3]
The Xesibes had for several generations occupied a tract south of the Umtamvuna, but during the great convulsions they had been driven from it and had taken possession of territory on which Pondo kraals had once stood. Faku dwelt on that fact, and on the Maitland treaty, when he tried to compel them to become his subjects. The Xesibes claimed to be as independent as their ancestors had always been. They maintained that the Pondos had lost their right to the land in the same way that they had lost theirs. No clan whatever, they said, was then on the same ground that it had occupied before the Zulu wars. That contention was the cause of constant strife and bloodshed. [3]
In 1847 Jojo sent messengers to Maritzburg to entreat that he might be protected by the Natal government. He had only 600 fighting men left, he stated, and he feared they would be annihilated unless he received assistance. The government had too much on its hands already to add to the burden, and the request could not be entertained. Contrary to all expectation, the Xesibes managed to hold out, though engaged in constant strife, until 1878. That hold-out is why this year, and not 1847, is the Xesibe fact. A chief with 600 men, refused by Natal, was still there 31 years later. [3]
In 1878 they were taken under British protection. That sentence is the year’s fact for Jojo’s people. It was not annexation to the Cape in this calendar — that came later, and it is not this year’s business. It was protection, after a generation of Pondo war that Natal had declined to enter in 1847. What hung on the taking was the independence the Xesibes had claimed against Faku. A clan that had refused to become Pondo subjects, and had not been allowed to become Natal subjects in 1847, passed in this year under the British name they had asked for 31 years earlier. [3]
Investigation into the Utrecht line — Zululand 1878
The part of the South African Republic that bordered on Zululand was the district of Utrecht. That district had never been occupied by a Zulu army, but as it was below the Drakensberg it was at one time as much Zulu territory as the adjoining country in Natal. On the 8th of September 1854 a deed of cession to the farmers was signed by Panda, who accepted as an acknowledgement 100 head of cattle. In that deed the boundaries were laid down, but not very clearly. The line thereafter recognised for several years was the Blood river from its junction with the Buffalo up to where the old hunting path crossed it, and thence the hunting path to the Pongolo. That is the line whose disputes were investigated in 1878. [3]
In June 1860 J. H. Grobbelaar, acting president of the South African Republic, appointed a commission to arrange with the Zulus for the erection of beacons along the boundary, and to acknowledge Cetewayo as heir to the chieftainship. The commission was also to endeavour to obtain a cession of land around St. Lucia Bay, and of a roadway to that port. The object is not mentioned in the official correspondence, nor in the documents concerning the investigation into boundary disputes in 1878; but it was well known at the time, and was commented upon by the newspapers. A seaport had always been ardently desired by the people of the Republic. The 1878 papers therefore sat on the beaconed line, not on the bay. What they did not contain is itself a fact of the investigation: St. Lucia was not in the dossier. [3]
The commission consisted of Nicholas Smuts, landdrost of Utrecht, Andries Spies, Cornelis van Rooyen, Pieter Lavras Uys, and W. H. Uys. It took no immediate action in the matters named, but it continued for some time to be the recognised authority on the border for dealing with the Zulus. That is why an investigation in 1878 still had to go back to Grobbelaar’s year. The men who were to have put up beacons, and who were to have asked for St. Lucia, were the first named authority on that line. The dispute the 1878 documents concerned was not a new river invented in this calendar. It was the old Utrecht border, unclear in 1854, still unsettled. [3]
By 1865 Cetewayo had resolved to recover the whole territory between the new line and the old Utrecht border, because the compensation he had received — the surrender of fugitives — had been lost when Umtonga fled a second time, into Natal. A Zulu army appeared on the Utrecht border in February 1865 and removed the beacons so recently set up. Panda asked for another line. In July 1866 a commission went to him again. In December 1866 43 farms had been inspected and allotted between the old and new boundaries. None of that closed the file. The investigation into boundary disputes in 1878 sat on a quarrel that had already seen beacons put up and pulled down. What this year recorded on the Utrecht side was that the line was at last a matter of formal investigation, not only of commissions riding to Panda’s kraal. [3]
Cetewayo’s messages published — Natal 1878
Cetewayo’s attitude toward his white neighbours was professedly friendly, but they were fully aware that he was not to be trusted. Before the publication in 1878 of his messages to the Natal government, they did not know how skilfully he was playing Natal against the South African Republic. They knew that he was gifted with great intelligence, and that he was crafty and cruel in a very high degree. They knew the full extent of his power. What they did not have, until this year’s print, was the wording of the game he had played with the two white governments at once. That publication is the year’s fact at Natal, and it is why this heading is not last year’s argument about a Zulu invasion of Pretoria. It is the year the messages came out. [3]
He had represented to the secretary for native affairs in Natal that the people of Utrecht were encroaching upon Zululand, and he had even offered to cede to Great Britain the ground which he was trying to recover. The lieutenant-governor of Natal, believing that hostilities were imminent, tendered his services as an arbitrator. On the 30th of October 1869 President Pretorius replied that the government of the South African Republic accepted with thanks, provided that the losing party should pay all costs. Various obstacles intervened, and nothing further was done in the matter for several years. The 1878 messages are what made that older correspondence readable as a single play: a Zulu chief offering the same ground to Britain that he was trying to take back from Utrecht. [3]
They were aware that all the mountain tribes in South Africa combined — all the people of Moshesh, of Magadu and his associates, and of Sekukuni, who in 1860 had succeeded his father Sekwati as head of the Bapedi — could not stand in fair fight in open field against half of Cetewayo’s trained regiments. Yet the farmers of the republic feared an encounter with him less than with any one of those. The conditions of warfare would be reversed. The mountain tribes, fighting behind stone walls in almost inaccessible positions, swooping down upon lonely farm-houses, could wear out a burgher commando. The Zulu army would be met in a few desperate engagements, when the farmers would take care to be well entrenched, and the issue would not be doubtful. That estimate is why the 1878 publication mattered on the republican side as well as at Natal. The messages showed the skill. They did not, in the farmers’ own view, show that Cetewayo could wipe them out. [3]
To each government he professed warm attachment, and in both cases with an entire absence of sincerity. By representatives of each he was formally installed as great chief of the Zulus, but he and his people attached not the slightest value to either ceremony. The 1878 print is what made that double profession visible in his own messages, not only in what farmers had long believed. Natal had been told one story about Utrecht. Pretoria had been told another about friendship. What this year put into public reading was that both stories had been sent by the same hand. The investigation of the Utrecht line and the publication of the Natal messages belong together in 1878 because they are the same quarrel, seen from the papers at last. [3]