by Peires, Jeff
But the bait of individual title was by no means a sufficient inducement to persuade the Xhosa to resettle themselves in villages. Even before the imposition of the village system, it had been colonial policy to settle blacks – even loyal blacks such as the Mfengu – on lands that were ‘unsuitable for European occupation’, that is, lands which were agriculturally inferior.26 Most of the Xhosa areas were deficient in wood, soil or water, and sometimes in all three. In Commissioner Brownlee’s district, for example, the arable land was located in narrow strips along the valley bottoms, so that the formation of villages would compel certain Xhosa to walk 12-15 kilometres to get from their village to their gardens. Even where this was not the case, moving into villages would necessitate breaking up new ground, which usually meant giving up all hope of crops in the first season.27 Quite apart from these material objections, the Xhosa resented losing the freedom to change the locations of their dwellings and their gardens as and when they thought best, and they feared the social tensions that were bound to arise when formerly autonomous homesteads were closely concentrated together. ‘We have lived together during wars,’ they said, ‘and have always experienced a great deal of evil; our corn is not safe; our wives and cattle are not safe.’28
Commissioner Brownlee moved his people into villages without much difficulty. It was not that the Ngqika Xhosa liked the idea of villages, but that they were ‘broken down and reduced, consequently more easily managed’.29 The collaborating chiefs, such as Siwani and Toyise, lacked the will to oppose the government in anything, and no villages were planned in the Cattle-Killing strongholds of Maqoma and Phatho, which were earmarked for white settlement. The strongest resistance to the village system came from the unbelieving chiefs Anta and Kama, whose alliance with government had hitherto been based on principle rather than expediency.
Anta, Sandile’s brother, was ‘a haughty man [with] a good mind and … [a] noble appearance’.30 His influence was all the greater in as much as he was neither a Christian nor a collaborator, but one of the most prominent adherents of Mlanjeni. From the beginning, he had taken a strong stand against the Cattle-Killing and his steadfast opposition had greatly encouraged and sustained the unbelievers throughout the Ngqika Xhosa area. Hundreds of refugees had found shelter in his country with their cattle and, in consequence, Anta’s chiefdom was better stocked, better populated and in every way better equipped to return to normality than any other chiefdom in Xhosaland.
Magistrate Robertson explained the village scheme to Anta and his councillors throughout most of February. A great meeting was called in early March to lay the scheme before the people, but Anta abruptly disappeared, and he continued to evade all Robertson’s efforts to pin him down on the village issue. In the middle of May, the councillors addressed a protest to Maclean:
We do not comprehend the object of these villages … We are willing to serve the Government as far as it is in our power to do so, and do not think that forming ourselves into villages will enable us to do so better. Some of the English live in towns, others live on farms; we are like the farmers. We sow our lands and keep our cattle. The English farmers could not attend to their lands and cattle should they be formed into villages.31
Maclean was furious. He promptly disabused Anta and his people of any idea that their opinions were of the least importance, and threatened them all with transportation if they did not immediately move into villages.
Acquaint Anta he must without further delay or evasion direct and superintend the formation of the several villages … that I will hear of no excuse … and that all pay to head men and others will cease if the slightest objection is offered, and to speak in plain terms they must and shall be at once concentrated in villages – that any person found squatting after due notice of removal will be liable to be apprehended and punished, and if necessary sent out of the country.
Tell Anta not to oblige me to carry out the Governor’s orders with any forced measure – but do it I will and if necessary will see it carried out myself … Tell Anta that the Governor is the best judge of what is right; and it is for him [Antaj to obey or stand the consequences.32
Anta and his councillors heard this message in virtual silence. The chief indicated that the orders would be obeyed, but within the next few days he and his close neighbour, Chief Oba, disappeared beyond the borders of British Kaffraria. Magistrate Robertson passed the time by burning the dwelling of Siziba, the councillor Oba had left in charge of his people. The chiefs returned the following month, having had time to consider their alternatives. Having witnessed the arrests of their fellow chiefs and the expulsion of Sarhili, they realised that they had no choice but to submit.33
The fall of Chief Kama was harder still because Kama had further to fall. Regarded by the settlers as the only sincerely Christian Xhosa, he had long been thought of as someone special, the darling of the missionaries and the prized friend of the Colony. He had broken with his brother Phatho in the name of Christianity and civilisation, and had established an independent chieftainship. He had played a heroic role in the defence of Whittlesea during the War of Mlanjeni, and had been rewarded with a prime slice of Ngqika territory. Finally, Kama had welcomed his magistrate, opposed the Cattle-Killing and acquiesced in all Grey’s new administrative measures. He must have been waiting for another reward. But times had changed. Now that the power of the Xhosa was irrevocably broken, Kama was downgraded from a valuable ally to just another Kaffir. This was brought home to him sharply and in the most unpleasantly personal manner by that Hercules of the border, Commandant Walter Currie.34
Kama often played host to white farmers, and he was accustomed to make use of his privileged status to visit these farmers at their homes. After the drama of the Cattle-Killing was over, he decided to go on a month’s holiday, visiting his white friends. He was enjoying the hospitality of a farmer on the Koonap River, when Currie arrived and demanded to know what right Kama had to travel in the Colony. Kama knew Currie and assumed he was joking, but the Commandant was not. He showed Currie his pass, but the Commandant found all sorts of fault with it. The pass did not name all the farmers Kama was visiting. It did not say that Kama was entitled to receive presents of goats. Currie told the chief that he would have thrown him into jail, except that he felt sorry for him. He confiscated Kama’s goats and marched him to the waggon road, threatening him with prison if he ever returned. Kama was utterly humiliated. He had intended to be away for a full month.
In March 1858 Captain Reeve, Kama’s magistrate, rejoined his regiment. Reeve was a tough man in the Gawler mould and he had pushed Kama hard, as well as starving thousands of Xhosa into taking labour contracts, but at least he had shown some appreciation for the Christian chief. His successor showed none. Maclean had asked for a strong replacement, who would deal with Kama’s reprehensible ‘sympathy’ for his brother Phatho’s people, and he got one in the person of a certain Joseph Miller.35 Miller was, for a time, confused by Kama’s apparent acceptance of the village system, but eventually he realised that the chief’s attitude was only a front to cover up passive obstruction. He called on Maclean to support him in the use of outright force.
Do give me more police (efficient) or don’t hereafter blame me – it’s quite out of the question to get on without ‘Carte Blanche’ to do as I find necessary in this respect … Sans more troops and more police my own private opinion is that there will be great need of both.
The ‘Carte Blanche’ seems to have done the trick, for Miller was soon able to write:
Old Kama and his people are in a nice funk. I am pitching into them nicely.36
So nicely did Miller pitch into Kama’s people that in October 1858, the month that he implemented the village system, 1 446 registered for labour in the Colony.
These methods brought protests from Kama and his sons that Miller was burning dwellings indiscriminately, insulting Kama’s authority and acting without any reference
to the chief. Miller was quite unapologetic. He had simply told Kama that ‘if he [Kama] did not carry out the views and orders of Government I [Miller] should’. Kama was playing ‘a very deceitful game’. He was ‘quite childish’ and ‘frequently drunk’. ‘His influence for good with his people is nil.’ By the end of 1858, Miller was speaking of ‘destroying the power of the chief, which I think we can dispense with: at all events, in this location’.37
Grey hoped to diminish the black population of British Kaffraria still further by settling Smith Mhala, Ndayi, Mjuza and the other Ndlambe unbelievers on a portion of the lands seized from Sarhili. Most of these unbelievers had served in the transKei with Gawler’s police and some had even picked out places for themselves, but none of them except Smith were prepared to settle there permanently.38 They had no wish to commit themselves to a new life in a strange place as the pawns of the colonial government. Their adherence to Gawler had been, in a sense, coincidental, the product of the difficult position in which their unbelief had placed them. Now that the Cattle-Killing was over, they simply wanted to return as quickly as possible to their old way of life. They distrusted Smith Mhala as a drunkard and a sneak, and they were secretly committed to raising a young son of Mhala to be chief over them in the future. After the application of much pressure, Sigidi agreed to cross the Kei, and he soon became the leading chief of the new Idutywa settlement, outstripping Smith and recruiting his strength from expelled Gcaleka Xhosa whom he claimed as his own followers. The other unbelievers, led by Ndayi and Mjuza, refused to settle in Idutywa, and all Maclean’s promises (no hut tax in the transKei) and all his threats (they were stripped of their salaries as headmen) could not induce them to change their minds.39
As a result, Maclean decided to bring the erstwhile Ndlambe unbelievers ‘into discipline under the village system’. And so he did. Ndayi and the others had rid themselves of Mhala but in his place they found themselves exposed to the corrupt administration of Max Kayser, who extorted more cattle from them than Mhala had ever done and gave them nothing in return.40
Dunned for taxes, confined to villages and forced to break up new and infertile ground, the unbelievers may well have wondered how much they had gained by preserving their cattle. Nature herself turned against them during the summer of 1858, the first sowing season after the Cattle-Killing. The weather turned dry in January 1859, destroying the early crops and rendering further planting impossible. Anta’s people, making the best of their villages, cultivated extensively, but frost was followed by drought and blight completed the wreckage of their hopes. Both Sandile’s and Kama’s chiefdoms suffered complete crop failures. The missionary at Newlands reported a similar situation among the Ndlambe Xhosa unbelievers in the following year.
The heat and drought were very great, the hot winds dried up the gardens and the poor natives who had not yet recovered from the famine lost their little all. Our river dried up, the water became stagnant, the hot winds and dust brought on ophthalmia, low fever and dysentry. Within a very short time more than 50 of the station people died.41
The number of cattle in the Ngqika district actually decreased in the year after the Cattle-Killing. The unbelievers, having no other source of food to see them through the year, slaughtered the beasts they had fought so hard to preserve. In the Ndlambe district, many more were carried off through a renewed outbreak of lungsickness. Prospects for the coming season were further dimmed by a shortage of seed, and Commissioner Brownlee reported that far from being able to pay their taxes, the people were finding it difficult even to live.42
The government dropped its demand for a stock tax, but the hut tax was non-negotiable and so was the village system. The unbelievers were left with no alternatives. Between September and November 1858, 3 239 of them followed the footsteps of their erstwhile enemies, the Nongqawuse believers, and bound themselves to labour contracts deep within the Cape Colony. Nearly one third of the Xhosa who had survived the Cattle-Killing of 1857 failed to survive the new Kaffraria of 1858.43
1 Rutherford (1961), p.315; MIC 172/2, Reel 2, Cory Library, H Cotterill-H Bullock, 15 Sept. 1857; Imperial Blue Book 2352 of 1857-8, Grey’s address to the Cape Parliament, p.91.
2 Steinbart (1975), p.88. The standard work on the German settlers, Schnell (1954), is badly in need of revision.
3 Steinbart (1975), p.89; BK 14 Schedule 47, 10 July 1857.
4 A. Kropf-BMS, 12 July 1857, Berlin Missionary Archives, East Berlin.
5 GH 8/50 H Vigne-J Maclean, 1 Feb. 1857; GH 8/33 Schedule 509,12 Oct.1857; GH 28/73 Enclosure to Dispatch 47.
6 GH 8/32 L Traherne-J Maclean, 4, 8 May 1857; GH 8/32 N Lamont-J Maclean, 9 May 1857; GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 9 Feb. 1857.
7 BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 16 March 1857.
8 BK 4 G Grey-J Maclean, 14 July 1858.
9 BK 2 G Grey-J Maclean, 14 July 1858; Bergh and Visagie (1985), p.56.
10 Population statistic obtained by comparing figures for 1 Jan. and 31 Dec. 1857 in British Kaffraria Census Returns. GH 8/34 H Vigne-J Maclean, 1 Jan. 1858.
11 GH 20/2/1 J Maclean-G Grey, 18 March 1858; BK 83 H Vigne-J Maclean, 24 March 1858.
12 BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 26 May 1858; GH 8/35 M Kayser-J Maclean, 20 July 1858. Namba and Bhotomane both wanted to go to Kama’s country near the lands from which they were expelled after the War of Mlanjeni, but Maclean would not permit this. Bhotomane was sent to join Dyani Tshatshu while Namba was placed under Toyise. For Max Kayser, see Chapter 2, Note 50.
13 BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 24 Aug. 1858.
14 GH 8/32 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 11 June 1857; BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 20 July, 24 Aug. 1858.
15 Diary of RJ Mullins, Cory Library, 3 June 1857.
16 GH 8/32 Schedule 476, 29 July 1857, marginal note by Maclean.
17 GH 8/36 Schedule 140, 4 Nov. 1858. For more on land distribution in British Kaffraria, see Chapter 11.
18 GH 19/8 W Impey-H Smith, 23 Oct. 1850. Impey renewed these proposals after the Cattle-Killing. GH 8/50 W Impey-J Maclean, 18 April 1857.
19 See, for example, R Birt-J Maclean, 6 July 1854; Cape Argus, 21 Nov. 1857.
20 King William’s Town Gazette, 3 July 1865.
21 GH 23/27 G Grey-H Labouchere, 20 March 1858.
22 BK 24 J Maclean-W Liddle, 17 July 1856.
23 GH 30/4 G Grey-J Maclean, 5 Feb. 1858. This memorandum also made provision for taxes on stock, but these were never implemented.
24 BK 2 G Grey-J Maclean, 14 July 1856; BK 114 Circular to Special Magistrates, 9 Feb. 1859; BK 85 G Thompson-J Maclean, 25 March 1859; Brownlee Papers, Killie Campbell Library, J Brownlee-[n.a.], 8 Jan. 1858. No Xhosa who had taken refuge in Thembuland or any other independent black state was allowed to return to British Kaffraria. See GH 8/41 J Maclean-Magistrates, l May 1860.
25 GH 30/4 G Grey-J Maclean, 14 Feb. 1858. It should be pointed out that because of the expense and difficulty of finding surveyors, Grey’s plans on this point were not fully executed.
26 Maclean’s own memorandum entitled ‘Occupation of the Crown Reserve’ in BK 22 is a good example of this.
27 BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 8 March, 5 June 1858; GH 8/37 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 30 Aug. 1858; BK 85 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 6 June 1858.
28 BK 85 Memo by J Kayser, enclosed in RE Robertson-J Maclean, 14 May 1858.
29 BK 85 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 6 June 1858.
30 Maclean (1858), p.137. The full history of Anta’s experiences during the the Cattle-Killing is to be found in BK 85.
31 BK 85 RE Robertson-J Maclean, 14, 19 May 1858.
32 BK 85 J Maclean-RE Robertson, 16 May 1858.
33 BK 85 RE Robertson-J Maclean, 28 May, 3 June 1858; GH 8/35 J Maclean-F Travers, 14 June 1858.
34 BK 86 F Reeve-J Maclean, 5 June 1857.
35 GH 8/35 Schedule 61, 12 April 1858.
36 BK 86 J Miller-J Maclean, 13, 14 Oct. 1858; GH 8/36, Schedule 143, 18 Nov. 1858.
37 BK 86 J Miller-J Maclean, 2 Dec. 1858; GH 8/36 J Miller-J Maclean, 1 Nov. 1858.
38 GH 23/27 G Grey-EB Lytton, 17 July 1858.
39 BK 78 Interview of the Chief Commissioner with headmen of Umhala’s location, 19 June 1858; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 29 May, 2 June 1858; GH 8/36 G Colley-J Maclean, 14 Dec. 1858. GH 8/35 Schedule 85, 3 June 1858. Mjuza, who had said from the beginning that he would not move, was allowed to keep his stipend. The others were deprived of their pay for breaking their word.
40 BK 81 M Kayser-J Maclean, 11 Feb., 4, 22 July, 31 Aug., 7 Oct. 1859.
41 GH 8/36 J Miller-J Maclean, 1 Nov. 1858; GH 8/36 G Thompson-J Maclean, 1 Nov. 1858; MIC 172/2, Cory Library, USPG Archives, Reel 8, CR Lange-USPG, March 1860.
42 BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 26 May, 7 July, 1 Sept. 1858; BK 81 M Kayser-J Maclean, 11 Feb. 1859.
43 GH 8/36 Schedule 134, 21 Oct. 1858; ibid., Schedule 143, 18 Nov. 1858; ibid., Schedule 156, 20 Dec. 1858; GH 8/38 Population Returns, 31 Dec. 1858. The Xhosa population of British Kaffraria (excluding the Crown Reserve, East London and King William’s Town), which had numbered 37 697 at the end of 1857, fell to 25 916 by the end of 1858. The figure of 3 239 does not include Xhosa from the Ndlambe district, several hundreds of whom quit Kaffraria for Smith Mhala’s settlement in the transKei during the same period.
