Boer History1883 in South Africa: Military Posts, Native Laws, and Basutoland Records
The imperial posts of 27 June — 1883
On the 27th of June 1883 the imperial government relinquished possession of all military posts, reserves, and buildings in the Cape Colony in favour of the colonial government. That transfer is this year’s fact on the frontier. The condition was plain. If at any future period the Queen’s troops were sent to the colony at the request of the governor, or in furtherance of colonial interests, then the colonial government would have to provide those troops with barrack accommodation or lodging to the satisfaction of the imperial government. What hung on that June day was not a new fort. It was who owned the old ones, and who would have to find beds if British soldiers came back. [4]
The buildings that changed hands had a Grahamstown centre. After the war of 1835, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, then governor, treated the Drostdy House and the land around it as the best ground for a fortified barrack establishment. He had examined the town and its ravines before marching east in March 1835, and again on his return. No other ground, he wrote, would answer in any comparative degree. He turned the house into officers’ quarters. That seizure settled, in his mind, a fight about whether the drostdy should hold public offices. George Gilbert, the builder who had been contracted to alter the house, charged the government with breach of contract. Timber cut in the Kroome forest — beams and scantlings — had been used by the troops as firewood. The matter was settled by arbitration, without years in the courts. Gilbert was paid 190 pounds 2 shillings 6 pence. That sum is why the 1883 transfer is not a footnote to an empty plot. It is later title to a site that had been fought over as a contract and as a headquarters. [4]
The Drostdy House itself was older than D’Urban’s war. On the 19th of March 1822 the landdrost asked for a drostdy on the plot at the end of Grahamstown set aside for it. On the 6th of July 1822 a contract was signed with Pieter Retief to erect the building for 23000 rixdollars — about 1875 pounds — and to have it finished in 14 months. Retief was then a Grahamstown contractor, not yet a name on the Natal road. The house took years. In 1832, a decade after it was begun, Sir Lowry Cole still had to ask what to do with it. Townspeople objected to moving public offices there because it sat outside the commercial centre and market. Cole said public expedience decided the question, and that he would have authorised the change at once if he had not first needed the secretary of state’s sanction for the spend. London sanctioned it. In December 1834 Gilbert was contracted for the alterations. D’Urban’s military seizure came on top of that unfinished civil plan. [4]
From 1838 to 1842 the site grew into a military town: two large two-storied stone buildings in the drostdy grounds, artillery barracks at the rear, a powder magazine, the Prevost or military prison with its round tower, a hospital forming three sides of a quadrangle, and the Drostdy archway. Along the Fish River strong forts with room for large numbers of men and horses went up: Fort Brown, Double Drift Fort, Trompetter’s Drift Fort, and others. Those are the posts whose title passed in 1883. They were not tents. They were stone, and they had been paid for as imperial works. [4]
The occupation was not continuous to June 1883. The buildings were in military use until 1864, when King Williamstown became the headquarters and the troops were moved there. They stood empty until 1866. Occupation resumed that year and ran until July 1870, when the War Office provisionally abandoned them. They lay untenanted, beginning to fall into ruin, and were then allowed for non-military use. In 1873 the Drostdy House, the adjacent barracks, and the hospital became the public school. Fort England Barracks — the old East Barracks, about a mile and a half from the village, where European troops and Khoikhoi soldiers had once been quartered — were turned into a lunatic asylum. The Cape Corps Barracks became a chronic sick hospital. Some of the distant forts became farm buildings or fell into total decay — Trompetter’s Drift Fort and Double Drift Fort among them. Others became police camps or convict stations: Forts Brown, White, and Glamorgan. That is the estate the colonial government received on the 27th of June: schools, asylums, police camps, ruins, and a clause about future barracks. [4]
What hung on the condition was a bill, not a garrison. Britain kept the right to send troops. The Cape kept the buildings. If the troops came back at the governor’s request, or for colonial interests, the Cape would have to lodge them to London’s satisfaction. The transfer of 1883 is therefore a change of landlord, with a reservation written into the deed. [4]
The commission on native laws and customs — Cape Town 1883
In 1883 Cape Town printed the report and proceedings, with appendices, of the government commission on native laws and customs. The volume ran to more than 1000 pages. That printing is this year’s fact in the native affairs office. A commission of that size was not a pamphlet. It was the Cape government putting African law and custom on paper, with evidence and appendices, so that magistrates and ministers would not have to guess. What hung on those thousand pages was not a new statute in one sitting. It was whether the colony would govern people whose own law it had finally taken down at length. [3]
It was not the first such bluebook. In 1865 Grahamstown printed the proceedings of, and evidence taken by, the commission on native affairs appointed by the governor — 500 pages. In 1873 Cape Town printed the report and evidence of the commission on native laws and customs of the Basuto — 68 pages. The 1883 book is the third in that shelf, and the largest. Five hundred pages at Grahamstown, 68 on the Basuto, then more than 1000 for the whole subject. That sequence is why 1883 is not a first inquiry. It is the year the Cape printed the long report. [3]
The subject was not folklore. Under African law as it was then described in the Lesuto, murder and arson by ordinary people were usually punished by a fine of 10 head of cattle. Culpable homicide drew 4 or 5. The degree depended on the rank of the offender and of the victim. Death was inflicted for treason against the chief, and for being pronounced by a witchfinder guilty of having caused a great calamity. A man caught stealing cattle at night could be killed with impunity. A notorious thief whose conduct was likely to get his people into difficulty was usually put to death by order of his chief. Imprisonment was a method unknown to that law; it required prisons. Those figures are why a Cape commission on native laws was not an antiquarian exercise. Magistrates who fined in pounds and locked men in gaol were dealing with a system that fined in cattle and did not build cells. [3]
Witchcraft sat at the centre of the collision. British officers on the eastern frontier had long said that what was good in native laws and customs should be retained, and that witchcraft and certain practices should be abolished. After the wars of the 1840s that was the standing formula: keep the chiefs’ courts for what they did well; cut out the witchfinder. Agents were to assist the chiefs in the administration of justice and the settlement of disputes. A formula is not a code. The 1865 evidence, the 1873 Basuto report, and the 1883 volume were the colony’s attempt to write down what the formula was supposed to preserve. [4]
What hung on Cape Town’s thousand pages in 1883 was therefore a working text. The Grahamstown commission of 1865 had taken evidence for the governor. The Basuto commission of 1873 had put 68 pages on one people’s law. This year’s book put more than 1000 pages, with appendices, on native laws and customs as a government subject. A clerk in a frontier magistracy could now open a printed report instead of relying on a neighbour’s memory. That is the dated fact of the year on the legal side. [3]
The Basutoland records — Cape Town 1883
In 1883 Cape Town published 3 royal octavo volumes of Basutoland records: copies of official documents of various kinds, accounts of travellers, with maps and sketches of boundary lines. Together they ran to 2142 pages and covered 1833 to 1868. That publication is this year’s fact on the Basuto shelf. The work was collected and arranged by order of J. W. Sauer, secretary for native affairs, by the first clerk in the native affairs department of the Cape Colony. What hung on those three volumes was not a new annexation. It was whether the paper of 35 years of Basuto business would sit in bundles or in print. [3]
Sauer was the Cape minister responsible for African administration. The first clerk who arranged the copies worked in that department. The printed set was meant to hold everything in the archives of the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, and the Paris evangelical missionary society relating to Basutoland from 1833 to 1868, besides many extracts from newspapers and accounts of travellers. That list is why the book is not a private memoir. It is the Cape, the Free State, and the French mission’s paper, ordered by the native affairs office and issued in Cape Town. [3]
The dates on the spine matter. 1833 to 1868 is the span from the first missionary and official contact that the compilers chose to print, through the years of boundary sketches, to the close of the records they had in hand. Maps and sketches of boundary lines were not decoration. Basutoland’s fights with the Orange Free State had been, again and again, fights about a line. A volume that prints the line is a government act. The 2142 pages are the bulk of that act. [3]
Enough material for another volume was ready for the printer when the Cape Colony was relieved of the administration of Basutoland, and a continuation was not needed. That sentence is the limit of the set. The Cape had been administering the country. When that administration ended, the department stopped the press. The three volumes of 1883 remain the printed archive for 1833 to 1868. What hung on stopping was not a lost war in this year. It was a decision that the Cape no longer needed a fourth volume because it no longer ran the territory. [3]
What hung on 1883 in those three volumes was a public archive, not a clerk’s cupboard. Sauer ordered the copies. The native affairs clerk arranged them. Cape Town printed 2142 pages from 1833 to 1868, with the maps of the boundary and the files of three governments and a mission. When the Cape was relieved of Basutoland, the next volume was not wanted. That is the dated fact of the year on the Basuto side. [3]