1886 in South Africa: Mount Ayliff, the Xesibes, and Jojo

Mount Ayliff annexed to the Cape — 25 October 1886

On the 25th of October 1886 the territory of the Xesibes was annexed to the Cape Colony under the name of the district of Mount Ayliff. That sentence is this year’s fact on the broken country between Natal and Pondoland. It is not the first British dealing with Jojo’s people. In 1878 they had been taken under British protection after a generation of Pondo war. What hung on 1886 was the title under which they sat. Protection had put a British name over a clan that still lived on its own ground. Annexation put that ground on the Cape roll as a district. [3]

The people so named were the Amaxesibe. They occupied a small district on one of the eastern tributaries of the Umzimvubu. They were a branch of a tribe living much farther north, but they had been settled for several generations where they then lived, and had become politically independent. Along the coast they sat in a known order: Amakosa on the old colonial edge, Abatembu next, Amampondomisi inland of the Pondos, Amampondo on the lower river, and then the Xesibes on that eastern tributary before the Natal tribes began. A reader who only knows Pondoland still needs that placing. Mount Ayliff is not a Pondo district under a new name. It is the small independent house next door. [3]

Their chief in the years that made this annexation possible was Jojo. He complained of constant attacks by the Pondo chief Faku. The Xesibes had for several generations occupied a tract south of the Umtamvuna, but during the great convulsions of Tshaka’s wars they had been driven from it and had taken possession of territory on which Pondo kraals had once stood. That is why Faku could point to old Pondo sites and call Jojo a subject. It is also why the Xesibes answered that no clan whatever was then on the same ground that it had occupied before the Zulu wars. [3]

Faku did not rest on memory alone. He dwelt on the Maitland treaty of 1844 when he tried to compel the Xesibes to become his subjects. That treaty, prepared and signed by Sir Peregrine Maitland at Fort Beaufort on the 7th of October 1844, acknowledged Faku as paramount over the whole country between the Umtata and the Umzimkulu, from the Kathlamba mountains to the sea. Theophilus Shepstone and William Fynn carried it. The reverend Thomas Jenkins explained the clauses. On the 23rd of November the marks of Faku and his son Ndamasi were affixed. Maitland knew that other tribes lived inside those lines, that they fought the Pondos, and that Faku exercised no jurisdiction over them. A clause left the rights of petty chiefs and tribes unaltered, and allowed them to live as before the Zulu wars. In practice Faku put forward claims to supremacy which the other chiefs resisted. War with the Pondomisis and the Xesibes remained the normal condition. That is the paper Jojo was fighting when 1886 wrote his country as a Cape district. [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. Natal had too much on its hands already. The request was not entertained. Contrary to all expectation the Xesibes held out, in constant strife, until 1878, when they were taken under British protection. 8 years of that protection is the ground on which 1886 stands. The clan that Natal would not take in 1847, and that Faku could not absorb, was in this year written onto the Cape list. What hung on the 25th of October was therefore not a new people on a map. It was whether Jojo’s ground was now a Cape district named Mount Ayliff, instead of a protected neighbour beyond the roll. [3]

The annexation did not begin on the October day the governor proclaimed it. On the 7th of May 1886 the secretary of state announced the queen’s consent to steps being taken for the annexation to the Cape Colony of the district occupied by the Xesibes, as proposed by the high commissioner. That is the first dated act of this year on Jojo’s file. Consent is not yet a district. It is London telling Capetown that the queen will allow the Cape to take the ground it has been protecting since 1878. What hung on the May despatch was whether the high commissioner’s proposal would stay a minute, or become the opening of an annexation. [3]

The high commissioner sat as the Crown’s man over more than one South African government. The Cape had its own ministers and parliament. Natal was a separate colony on the other side of Jojo’s hills. The Xesibes had asked Natal in 1847 and had been refused. They had taken British protection in 1878 without becoming a Natal location. The proposal of 1886 is why that protection now pointed at Capetown rather than Maritzburg. A clan on an Umzimvubu tributary, south of the Umtamvuna, was to be a Cape district, not a southward extension of Natal. The May consent is the imperial yes to that direction. [3]

On the 23rd of August the governor was authorised by letters patent to issue a proclamation to that effect. Letters patent are the Crown’s written authority, not a Cape statute. Until they arrived, the governor could not close the measure in the queen’s name. The August instrument is why October could be proclaimed at all. It turned the May consent into a power to speak. What hung on those letters was the governor’s right to put Mount Ayliff on paper. [3]

Between May and August the file is therefore imperial, not yet parliamentary. The queen had consented. The high commissioner had proposed. The governor had been armed with letters patent. Jojo’s people were still, in Cape law, the protected Xesibe district, not Mount Ayliff. A reader who jumps from 1878 to the 25th of October misses those 2 dates. Without the 7th of May there is no consent. Without the 23rd of August there is no proclamation in the governor’s hand. The rest of the year had still to bring the Cape parliament into the same act. [3]

The Cape act and the Kei-to-Natal roll — September–October 1886

On the 24th of September 1886, by an order in council, the queen assented to an annexation act passed by the Cape parliament. That is the colonial half of the measure. Letters patent had authorised a proclamation. They had not, by themselves, made the Xesibe country a Cape statute. Parliament had to pass an annexation act. The queen, sitting in council, had to assent to that act. Until the 24th of September the Cape’s own houses had not been tied into the May consent. What hung on the order was whether Capetown’s act and London’s consent were one instrument. [3]

On the 25th of October the governor proclaimed the completion of the measure. The 4 dates then stood in order: 7 May, consent; 23 August, letters patent; 24 September, the Cape act assented to; 25 October, the proclamation. Mount Ayliff is the name that proclamation used. The Xesibes did not become a location inside an older Cape district. They became a district of their own, on the Cape side of the Natal border, inland of the Pondos who still held the lower Umzimvubu. That is why a reader who knows only Pondoland, or only Natal, still needs the October wording. [3]

The footnote on that proclamation is the year’s larger map. This was merely one of the different acts by which the various sections of the territory from the Kei to the border of Natal, and from the Kathlamba mountains to the sea, were successively annexed to the Cape Colony. Tembuland had gone onto that roll in 1885 as a chief magistracy. Tsolo and Qumbu had been annexed in 1879. The Pondos, under Umqikela, were still the only independent tribe south of Natal, occupying the country between the Umtamvuna and the Umtata, from the sea to the boundary of Griqualand East. So 1886 did not close the whole belt. It took the Xesibe slice while Pondoland remained outside. [3] [3]

The Natal contrast sits on the same rivers and shows why Mount Ayliff is a Cape name. Another chief, Ukane of the Amaxolo, had sent a similar request. Nothing was done for him until 1866, when the southern boundary of Natal was extended to the Umtamvuna and he became a British subject that way — after he made his peace with Faku. Jojo’s people did not take that Natal door. They held the Umzimvubu tributary, took protection in 1878, and in this year became a Cape district. 2 small houses, 2 colonies, 2 dates. The Amaxolo story is not 1886. It is why the Xesibe annexation of this year points west to Capetown, not north to Maritzburg. [3]

What hung on September and October was therefore a completed Cape act, not a new war. The queen had assented. The governor had proclaimed. From the Kei to Natal the Cape was still taking the belt in pieces. Pondoland still sat between the Umtata and the Umtamvuna as an independent house. On the 25th of October 1886 the piece that changed hands was Jojo’s: the Amaxesibe district on the eastern Umzimvubu, written as Mount Ayliff. [3]