Boer History1880 in South Africa: Table Mountain, Matatiele, and Lydenburg
Rocks fall from Table Mountain — 6 June 1880
Capetown had heard rock come off Table Mountain before. The last fall of any consequence had been on the 8th of December 1801, at ten in the morning, when an enormous mass came down in the gorge on the face of the mountain. No damage was done that day. The fissure for a great distance was strewn with fragments, and its appearance was changed considerably. That is why a rumble in 1880 was not a new kind of noise in Table Valley. It was the mountain doing again what the town had learned to name. [3]
It was not the first instance in historical times of heavy masses becoming detached at the top. In a great storm on the 10th of July 1695 stones of enormous size rolled down. On the 16th of September 1699 there was a fall of rock accompanied with a great noise. On the 27th of May 1700, during a violent storm, many rocks rolled far into Table Valley. Huge stones lodged in the gardens of Jacob van Reenen and the widow Eksteen on the Rondebosch side. Those three dates are why a Capetown household in 1880 could still treat a rumble from the mountain as a known danger, not a mystery. [3]
After 1801 there was no fall of any consequence until the 6th of June 1880. That interval is the point of this heading. Seventy-nine years of quiet did not make the gorge safe. They made the next fall a calendar fact of this year, not a footnote to Dundas’s occupation. [3]
About half an hour before noon on that day the people of Capetown were startled by a heavy rumbling noise. At first it was believed to be caused by an earthquake. They rushed out of their houses in great alarm. The noise was then found to proceed from the descent of immense rocks from the face of the mountain. What hung on the half hour before noon was not a new survey of the gorge. It was that the town left its rooms because it thought the ground itself had moved, and then learned that Table Mountain had dropped rock again, as it had on the 8th of December 1801. [3]
The 1695 and 1700 falls had come in storms. The 1801 fall had come on a December morning. This year’s fall came on a June morning, with the same first reading — earthquake — and the same second reading — the face of the mountain. Capetown did not need a new name for the sound. It needed the date. The date is the 6th of June 1880. [3]
Hay named a colonial division — 1880
North of the Orange, at Prieska Drift, lay a belt of country that the Cape had inspected in 1805 and did not then name as a division. Landdrost Van de Graaff of Tulbagh and Dr. Henry Lichtenstein, surgeon of the Hottentot corps, had left Tulbagh in May of that year because reports had reached Capetown that a community hostile to the colony was growing up at the London missionary settlements beyond the river. The government wanted accurate information, not another rumour. That inspection is why this year’s fact has a ground to sit on. [3]
On the northern bank they met the missionaries Vanderlingen and Jan Kock coming from the Batlapin country toward the Cape. That same day they reached Lauw-waters-kloof. Half-breeds and Koranas were living there. Two more missionaries, Koster and Janssen, were met returning from the Batlapin country, having abandoned the work. Lauw-waters-kloof was one of six mission villages, inhabited by half-breeds and Koranas, with several Namaquas and a few blacks and Hottentots from the Cape Colony. The other five were Rietfontein, Witwater, Taaiboschfontein, Leeuwenkuil, and Ongeluksfontein. In those villages nearly 1000 people were living. Many of the half-breeds had been wandering along the southern bank of the Orange for fifteen or twenty years before the missionaries induced them to settle down to receive instruction. Among them were also several who had grown up in the families of colonists, had always worn European clothing, and were baptized professors of Christianity before the missionaries arrived. [3]
The district in which those villages sat had from time immemorial been occupied by Koranas and Bushmen, who were at bitter feud with each other. The half-breeds, Namaquas, and colonial Hottentots were recent immigrants, who had come in with the missionaries. Smallpox in a mild form was prevalent among the people, and was said to have been brought from the north. It had been unknown in the Cape Colony since 1769, and most likely had spread overland from Delagoa Bay. At Leeuwenkuil the missionary Anderson was then residing. He and Kramer were later found to be the only white men living in the district. Anderson regarded himself as subject to the colonial government. The half-breeds lived chiefly by hunting, and were so dependent on Europeans for ammunition that hostilities from that settlement were out of the question. The commission of 1805 closed the file as no danger to the colony. [3]
What 1880 did was to put a colonial name on that ground. The district in which the six villages had sat became, from this year, the colonial division of Hay. A division is not a mission village. It is a unit on the Cape roll. Lauw-waters-kloof, Rietfontein, Witwater, Taaiboschfontein, Leeuwenkuil, and Ongeluksfontein had been six places under teachers. Hay was the name under which that belt sat as colonial ground. [3]
The Orange at Prieska Drift did not move. The Korana and Bushman feud of the old occupation did not become the business of this heading. What changed was the title. Ground that an 1805 commission had walked as missionary settlements, and had judged no danger, sat from this year as a division of the colony. That is why Hay belongs to 1880 and not to Van de Graaff’s May. A rumble from Table Mountain on the 6th of June was the town’s dated shock. Hay was the year’s quiet administrative fact beyond the river. [3]
The Pondomise join the Basuto — 1880
The Pondomise were not a new people on the colonial map in 1880. They were the inland neighbours of the Pondos, living east of the Umtata, some 40 or 50 miles from the sea. Five generations earlier the tribe had split into two sections. From that date those sections had been almost constantly at war with each other and with all their neighbours. That split is why two remnant chiefs had come to the Cape in 1873, and why Tsolo and Qumbu had been annexed in 1879. This year’s fact is not another petition, and it is not another annexation. It is that the remnants, having recovered a little strength, tried to throw the Colony’s authority off. [3] [3]
In 1873 the chiefs Umhlonhlo and Umditshwa, then the heads of the remnants of the two sections, asked to be taken under the protection of the Cape Colony. They were in danger of being destroyed by the Pondos. The request was granted. Magistrates were stationed with them. Their own laws and customs were not rewritten. They were required to pay only a very light hut tax. Protection of that kind is a magistrate sitting with a remnant, the hut tax light, the custom left standing, and the Colony’s name between those remnants and the Pondo house that had been their ordinary enemy for five generations. [3]
What 1879 did was to turn that protection into colonial ground. Tsolo and Qumbu were annexed to the Cape Colony. The majority of the Pondomise thereafter resided in those two districts. A few were scattered about other colonial territory. Some clans remained in Pondoland. A magistrate and a light hut tax had left the remnants under their own law. A district name put them on the Cape roll. Pondoland itself was not taken. The Pondos remained the only independent tribe south of Natal. [3]
In 1880, having recovered a little strength, the Pondomise joined the Basuto and some others in an attempt to throw off the authority of the white man. They were beaten in the struggle. That sentence is this year’s Pondomise fact. Recovery is why the heading is not 1873 or 1879 written again. A remnant that had asked protection against the Pondos now stood with the Basuto against the Colony whose magistrates had sat with them for seven years, and whose district names had sat on Tsolo and Qumbu for one. [3]
The two sections had not made peace with one another by asking together in 1873, and they did not become one people by being mapped as two districts in 1879. They also did not become independent by joining the Basuto in 1880. They were beaten. What hung on the beating was the title under which they sat after the attempt. The majority still sat in Tsolo and Qumbu. A few still sat in other colonial territory. Some clans still sat in Pondoland, inside an independent neighbour, not as people of those two Cape districts. The inland remnants had asked for the Cape name against the Pondos. This year they tried to throw that name off, with the Basuto, and failed. [3]
Makwai and Lebenya driven back to the Lesuto — 1880
Makwai was not a Pondomise chief, and Matatiele was not Tsolo. He was a Basuto chief, the individual highest in hereditary rank of the house of Moshesh. After the loss of his stronghold he 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 later formed the magistracy of Matatiele. That crossing is why this year’s rebellion has a Nomansland address, not a Caledon one. [3]
Lebenya’s clan had gone there first. They had left the Wittebergen reserve after Vechtkop was stormed in 1865, and had settled on the land between the Kenigha and Tina rivers, later 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. In the following year — 1874 — Makwai was also taken over. Two clans sat the colonial roll east of the berg, on ground Wodehouse had confirmed, not west of the Caledon under a hut-tax in the Lesuto. [3]
The mountain Makwai had lost was not a Nomansland hill. On the 25th of September in the Free State war it had been taken by Chief-Commandant Pansegrouw’s division. Sixty European volunteers and 100 Fingos under Commandant Ward went to the east end, two hundred burghers under Commandant Jooste to the north, two hundred under Pansegrouw himself to the south. Jooste’s men stormed the sconces on the northern rocks. The Basuto fled. Large stores of wheat and millet, three hundred and fifty head of horned cattle, over five thousand sheep, and sixty-eight horses fell to the captors. At least sixty-seven Basuto were killed. One life was lost among the captors, though a considerable number were wounded. After that loss Makwai gave up the contest and crossed the berg. The capture, in all probability, also kept Molapo from joining his father against the Free State. That is why Matatiele existed as a holding at all. [3]
In 1880 the whole of Makwai’s clan and part of Lebenya’s went into rebellion. They were driven by the colonial forces from Matatiele and Mount Fletcher back into the Lesuto. That sentence is this year’s fact on the Nomansland side of the berg. Admission as British subjects in 1873 and 1874 had not made those clans colonial troops. Confirmation of the ground in 1869 had not made the ground inalienable once they rose. The colonial forces drove them off the holdings Wodehouse had confirmed, and sent them back into the mountain country they had left after the Free State war. [3]
The Pondomise rising of this year and this Nomansland rising sit on the same calendar, and they do not sit on the same ground. Umhlonhlo’s section and Umditshwa’s section had asked Cape protection against the Pondos, and then joined the Basuto. Makwai’s clan and part of Lebenya’s were Basuto who had left the mountain country, sat Matatiele and Mount Fletcher under the Colony’s name, and then went into rebellion. What hung on the driving was the address. Matatiele and Mount Fletcher were not left as rebel magistracies. The clans were put back into the Lesuto. Lebenya’s whole people did not go. Part of them did, with the whole of Makwai’s. The rest of Lebenya’s holding is not this year’s sentence. The sentence is the drive from Nomansland back across the berg. [3]
The war of independence — Lydenburg and Potchefstroom 1880
On the 12th of April 1877 the South African Republic had been proclaimed British territory. That proclamation is why this year’s war has British forts to sit against. It took the state whose capital was Pretoria and named it British ground. Three years later the war of independence of 1880–1881 was fought to take that name off. This heading is not the whole of that war. It is the named men and the named gun that the printed record of these books attaches to this calendar. [7]
Jeremia Trichard was a son of Carel Trichard, and grandson of the old Voortrekker of Delagoa. That house is why a wound at Lydenburg belongs on this page and not only on a casualty list. Louis Trichard had given his life trying to find a way to the Indian Ocean for his people. His grave sat by that shore. Carel, the son, had stood by those graves, had discovered Zoutpansberg, and had been one of the founders of the Republic. The surviving sons — Carel, Louis, and Pieter — had remained in Natal until after the war with England in 1842, then crossed the mountains with Pretorius, sharing want with the others who were determined to be free and to build a new republic with a flag and a government of its own. In later years, in many a war on the frontier, those Trichards and their sons were among those who stormed the mountain strongholds. [7]
In the war of independence 1880–1881 Jeremia took part in the siege of the British fort at Lydenburg, and was wounded. Another son of Carel, Stefanus, fought with the storming party on Majuba, and thus took a prominent part in helping to re-establish the Republic. The wound at Lydenburg is this year’s named cost in that house. Majuba is the same war’s later field, and the restoration of the republic is what the storming was for. A British fort at Lydenburg existed because the proclamation of the 12th of April 1877 had made Pretoria’s state British ground. The siege existed because that house, and others like it, would not leave the flag there. [7]
The war had an old gun as well as a young Trichard. In December 1838 the Win-commando under Andries Pretorius had concentrated 407 white men and 59 coloured servants, waggon-drivers, and herdsmen, with stores in 57 waggons. The farmers were armed with elephant guns. The commando also took three small pieces of ordnance: a small brass cannon which belonged to Pretorius, and two three-pounders which had seen service in the defence of the laager on the Bushman’s River. One of those three-pounders was, at the time of the war of independence in 1880–1881, known as ou Grietjie. It was used with effect against the British camp at Potchefstroom by the Free State artillerist Pelser. [7]
A three-pounder from the Bushman’s River laager of 1838 firing on a British camp at Potchefstroom is not a curiosity added to an old ordnance list. It is why the gun belongs to this calendar. The Win-commando had broken Dingaan with that metal in the waggons. Forty-two years later the same piece sat against a British camp in a town of the republic that Shepstone’s proclamation had named British ground. A Free State artillerist served it. What hung on ou Grietjie, and on Jeremia’s wound at Lydenburg, was the same question the 12th of April 1877 had opened: whether Pretoria’s state would remain British territory, or whether the house that had crossed from Natal with Pretorius, and the gun that had come up from the Bushman’s River, would put the republic back. Lydenburg was the siege. Potchefstroom was the camp the old gun reached. Majuba was the storming that helped to re-establish the state. [7] [7]