The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  As a measure of the Cape’s progress, the British government in 1853 authorised a new constitution, giving the Colony a limited form of self-government – ‘representative government’, as it was called. Power was divided between an executive branch subordinate to the British government and a legislative branch elected locally. Representative government was seen as a principal step towards ‘responsible government’ which provided for an executive cabinet drawn from the local legislature. What was especially significant about the 1853 constitution was that Britain envisaged establishing the Cape Colony as a non-racial democracy. The franchise for the two houses of parliament was open to any man of any race who occupied property worth £25 or who earned £50 a year.

  But despite the sense of stability that the Cape Colony enjoyed, it was still plagued by insecurity on the eastern frontier. After eleven years of tenuous peace, held together by a treaty system between Xhosa chiefs and colonial officials, war broke out again in 1846. Once again, colonial forces prevailed, destroying homes, crops and grain reserves and seizing cattle; and once again, the Xhosa lost more land. In 1847, after summoning Xhosa chiefs to a meeting, the British governor, Sir Harry Smith, read out a proclamation annexing the land between the Keiskamma and the Kei rivers as a separate colony called British Kaffraria, and announced plans to install white magistrates there as the principal government authority, diminishing the role of chiefs. The smouldering resentment this caused ignited yet another round of warfare in 1850. A Xhosa military commander, Maqoma, led a guerrilla force based in the Amatola mountains that held at bay a colonial army for months on end, inflicting one defeat after another. It took two years for the colonial government to gain control. In the aftermath, large tracts of British Kaffraria were thrown open to white settlement and handed out to ‘loyal’ African auxiliaries who had fought on the government side.

  After eight frontier wars, Xhosa resistance against white colonial rule was nearly at an end. Often divided among themselves, the Xhosa had lost much of their ancestral land. But their plight was to become even worse. An outbreak of a lethal cattle disease, bovine pleuropneumonia, decimated their herds. Already humiliated by white conquest and now struck by the loss of much of their cattle wealth, they desperately sought a way out of calamity. In a mood of growing hysteria, they fell victim to the prophecy of a sixteen-year-old Gcaleka girl named Nongqawuse that if they sacrificed their remaining herds and destroyed their crops, their ancestral spirits would rise from the dead, drive the whites into the sea and restore their fortunes. When the Gcaleka chief, Sarhili, decided the prophecy was authentic and called on his people to comply, other Xhosa chiefs followed suit. A mass slaughter of some 400,000 cattle ensued; grain stocks were destroyed. The frenzy reached a peak at the new moon on 18 February 1857 when the prophecy was supposed to have been fulfilled.

  The result was a devastating famine in which at least 40,000 Xhosa died; another 33,000 fled into the Cape Colony hoping to find work. The Xhosa population of British Kaffraria fell from 105,000 to 27,000. The colonial authorities provided emergency relief but also took advantage of the drop in population to make more land available for white settlement. In 1866, British Kaffraria was incorporated into the Cape Colony. Its new frontier was the Kei River.

  The borders of Britain’s other colony, Natal, were already well defined. To the north, the Tugela River marked its boundary with Mpande’s Zulu kingdom; to the south, the Umzimkulu River marked its boundary with Faku’s Mpondo kingdom. But otherwise Natal’s position was far more precarious than that of the Cape Colony.

  The small white population was vastly outnumbered by the Nguni population. By 1854, white numbers had risen to about 6,000, boosted by the arrival of immigrants from England and Scotland between 1849 and 1851 under a settlement scheme. Nguni numbers were estimated at 120,000; but thousands more flooded into the colony in the 1850s as a result of war between two of Mpande’s sons, Cetshwayo and Mbuyasi. Spread out over a vast area, the white population lived in constant fear of the possibility of an uprising of local Nguni or an invasion from Zululand on the other side of the Tugela River.

  They were nevertheless greedy for land. When a government land commission recommended that some two million acres should be set aside as protected zones for black occupation – ‘locations’, as they were called, where whites were not allowed to own land – white colonists protested that the area was far too large. The eventual outcome was that two million acres were given protected status, spread across forty-two ‘locations’. But the remaining area of land – some ten million acres – became the private property of individual whites or white companies or remained in the public domain as ‘Crown lands’. Only about half of the Nguni population lived in the ‘locations’; the other half lived in Crown lands or on land owned by whites to whom they paid rent.

  A separate system of government was devised to control Natal’s African reserves. Under the supervision of white administrators, Nguni chiefs and headmen were given responsibility for enforcing law and order in the locations. Separate legal systems were also used. Nguni chiefs were allowed to apply customary law in civil disputes among Africans. But criminal cases and disputes with whites remained the preserve of white magistrates.

  Natal’s white colonists were also determined to maintain their grip on political power. When annexing Natal in 1843, the British authorities had made a firm commitment about prohibiting racial discrimination of any kind, vowing: ‘That there shall not be in the eye of the law any distinction of colour, origin, race or creed; but that the protection of the law, in letter and in substance, shall be extended impartially to all alike.’ But the idea was denounced by a commission of colonists reporting in 1854 on ‘native policy’, which declared that since ‘Natal is a white settlement’, the prohibition of racial discrimination was ‘utterly inapplicable’. Two years later, the tiny white population of Natal was allowed to elect a majority of members to a new legislative assembly set up by the British authorities. They duly proceeded to pass laws making it virtually impossible for Africans to acquire the franchise. In theory, franchise qualifications contained no colour bar. In practice, only a handful of Africans ever managed to become voters.

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  The two highveld republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal were states in little more than name. The small trekker communities there claimed vast areas of land for themselves but were greatly outnumbered by the indigenous black population that occupied most of it. The administrations they set up were weak and disorganised. Money was scarce. Unable to raise taxes, the republics were perpetually short of funds. Officials were often paid for their services in land grants instead of cash. Communications were rudimentary. Roads were mere tracks across the veld. Mail deliveries were entrusted to itinerant traders or African runners. The two capitals, Bloemfontein and Pretoria, were little more than villages. Compounding all their difficulties, the two white republics were frequently racked by disputes and dissension.

  The quest for more land continued relentlessly. In the Orange Free State, white farmers took over Griqua lands around Philippolis and Rolong lands around Thaba ‘Nchu. The trekkers’ aim was to gain a white monopoly of land ownership. But they faced formidable opposition from the BaSotho chief Moshoeshoe.

  Surrounded by an array of adversaries, Moshoeshoe had adapted swiftly to modern methods and ideas to ensure the survival of his kingdom. Hearing that European missionaries were men of peace who possessed magical powers, he invited a group of French Protestant missionaries to establish a base at Thaba Bosiu and at other sites in the Caledon valley during the 1830s, regarding them as allies whose presence would help deter attacks on his territory. He arranged for the import of ploughs for use in his fields and planted wheat as well as sorghum and maize. He was also quick to realise the importance of obtaining horses and firearms. By the 1840s, Moshoeshoe had at his disposal some 10,000 armed horsemen.

  When the British decided to abandon their short-lived experiment with the Orange River
Sovereignty in 1854, handing over control to the burghers of the Orange Free State, they left without having established a clear boundary with Moshoeshoe’s Sotho kingdom in the Caledon valley. The border area was soon engulfed in raid and counter-raid as Boers and Sotho jostled over land rights. In 1858, open warfare broke out. Boer commandos invaded from the north and the south, capturing cattle and ravaging villages and mission stations. But as they advanced on Moshoeshoe’s mountain fortress at Thaba Bosiu, they met the full force of his army and retreated in disarray.

  In 1865, war broke out again. This time, the Boer assault on Sotho villages and crops was so relentless that several Sotho chiefs agreed to treaties that stripped them of nearly all their arable land. Boer commandos failed to capture Thaba Bosiu but, facing disaster, Moshoeshoe appealed to the British authorities for protection, imploring that his people might be considered ‘fleas in the Queen’s blanket’. In 1868, the British government decided to intervene, annexing Moshoeshoe’s kingdom as a separate British colony called Basutoland (modern Lesotho). Without consulting the Sotho, British and Boer officials proceeded to establish a boundary line that gave the Orange Free State all land north of the Caledon River and a large area in the triangle between the lower Caledon River and its junction with the Orange River. Basutoland consisted mainly of mountains, with only a narrow strip of arable land on the southern side of the Caledon River.

  Despite the land gains it had made, the position of the Orange Free State, with a population of 25,000 whites, remained precarious. Twelve years after its founding, the Bloemfontein journal De Tijd remarked in an edition in 1866: ‘Simple people find themselves in a vast land, surrounded in all quarters by enemies, without judges, without soldiers, without money, divided through ignorance and derided by a Colony adjacent to it [the Cape].’

  Even more precarious was the position of the Transvaal republic. Rival emigrant groups continued their squabbles for year after year. It was not until 1860 that they managed to agree on a constitution. In its final form, the constitution was a rambling document containing 232 articles, incoherent and ambiguous in many places. But on one point it was absolutely clear: ‘The people are not prepared to allow any equality of the non-white with the white inhabitants, either in Church or State.’

  The economy of the Transvaal republic was too weak to sustain any proper administration. The white population, numbering about 20,000, was dependent almost entirely on subsistence agriculture. Most burghers were hard put to pay taxes; they also tended to ignore call-ups for commando duty. The republic’s main asset was land. But the allocation of land was chaotic. Whites were entitled to free land, while blacks were precluded from owning land. All that a white citizen had to do to acquire land was to find an area that was hitherto unoccupied by white owners and register it with the local landdrost, describing its locality by referring to natural landmarks such as a tree or an anthill. In the scramble for land that followed, some whites managed to acquire large landholdings. Land speculation became rife. Absentee landowners and companies ended up accumulating about half the land available in the republic. Most land was not used productively. Landlords tended not to develop land but to rent it out to the resident black population in exchange for livestock, labour services or cash. The overall result was a shortage of land for new white farmers. Within two decades, the Transvaal republic had squandered its most valuable asset.

  The only other asset immediately available was ivory. Elephant herds abounded in many parts of the Transvaal republic, attracting not only trekboer hunters but a new breed of sports hunter from England, who used ivory as a means to pay for their expeditions and to profit from them. A British army officer, Captain William Cornwallis Harris, was the first to embark on this new style of hunting safari. Setting out from Graaff-Reinet on the Cape frontier in 1836, he had to wait until he reached the Magaliesberg hills, 500 miles to the north, for his first sight of elephants. Following a trail along the Sant River (near modern Pretoria), he came to a rocky valley where ‘a grand and magnificent panorama’ opened before him: ‘The whole face of the landscape was actually covered with wild elephants. There could not have been fewer than three hundred within the scope of our vision. Every height and green knoll was dotted over with groups of them, whilst the bottom of the glen exhibited a dense and sable living mass . . . a picture at once soul-stirring and sublime.’ Harris lost no time in getting to work.

  The demand for ivory soared during the nineteenth century. As Europe and the United States entered an era of industrial revolution, bringing increased prosperity, the burgeoning middle classes acquired a passion for manufactured ivory products. Among the most popular products were combs, cutlery handles and ornaments of every kind, all items that had found favour with wealthy elites down the centuries. But two new products brought about a massive increase in the use of ivory: piano keys and billiard balls. Britain, a leading market for ivory, imported an average of 66 tons of ivory a year between 1770 and 1800; during the 1830s, the amount rose to 260 tons a year. Between the 1780s and the 1830s, the price of ivory increased tenfold.

  The trekboers of the Transvaal took full advantage of this bonanza. The slaughter of elephant herds was relentless. By 1870, elephants in the Transvaal were virtually extinct.

  In place of ‘white ivory’, the trekboers turned to trading in ‘black ivory’ – black children. To satisfy the demand for labour, Boer commandos raided neighbouring African chiefdoms to capture male children for use as indentured servants, describing them as ‘apprentices’ – inboekelings – to avoid accusations of overt slavery. The practice was sanctioned by an Apprentice Act passed by the Transvaal’s governing body, the Volksraad. In the 1860s missionaries considered inboekelings provided the main source of labour in the eastern Transvaal. A German missionary at Makapanspoort reported that wagonloads of children were regularly brought to the settlement. They were given new names and were taught Dutch or Afrikaans. They were supposed to be released after the age of twenty-five but many remained in service for life.

  In their endless pursuit for more land, the Transvaal’s Boers encountered determined resistance from several African regional powers. In the eastern highveld, a Pedi alliance of northern Sotho chiefdoms formed a stronghold in the Leolu mountains, checking their advance. In the northern highveld, Venda groups forced the evacuation of white settlements in the Soutpansberg and Waterberg. In the western highveld, white missionaries encouraged fractious Tswana chiefdoms to withstand Boer encroachment and hold firm to their independence, adding yet another dimension to the Transvaal’s endemic conflicts.

  Pioneer missionaries had opened a road to the north long before trekboers began to migrate across the Orange River drifts. In 1821, after establishing a mission station at Griquatown, the London Missionary Society sent the young Scottish missionary Robert Moffat northwards to set up a mission station among the Tlhaping at Kuruman on the fringe of the Kalahari desert. Moffat’s efforts ‘to teach poor heathen to know the Saviour’ achieved only limited success. It took him eight years to make his first convert; after twenty years he had gained only forty communicants and a congregation of about 350. But the small village at Kuruman nevertheless became not only a missionary outpost but also a base for exploration and a centre of learning. Moffat was the first to reduce the Tswana language to written form; he then translated the Bible into seTswana and produced copies from his own printing press. A market-gardener by training, he planted orchards and willow trees, taught the use of the plough and introduced irrigation projects.

  Though disdainful of African customs and traditions, such as polygamy, Moffat befriended leading Tswana chiefs and opened a second mission station further north among the Kwena at Molepolole. He also struck up a friendship with Mzilikazi in his new domain in the Magaliesberg area, establishing a bond of trust that had lasting consequences. When Mzilikazi, after clashing with Boer commandos, moved northwards in 1837 and established a new capital across the Limpopo, Moffat visited him there in 1854 and again in 1857 t
o ask permission to set up a mission station. Though Mzilikazi himself was never converted to Christianity, he gave Moffat his approval. The mission station that Moffat founded at Inyati on the banks of the Nkwinkwizi River was the first white settlement in the area north of the Limpopo then known as Zambesia.

  Among the missionary recruits whom the London Missionary Society sent to Kuruman was David Livingstone. He arrived there in 1841 at the age of twenty-eight as a newly qualified doctor and ordained minister, serving as an apprentice to Moffat and later, while convalescing from a lion attack, marrying his daughter Mary. A dour, obdurate and ambitious Scotsman, he soon aspired to set up his own mission station and found the Bakgatla at the village of Mabotsa ready to welcome him. He was under no illusion about their motives, writing to the London Missionary Society in October 1843: ‘They wish the residence of white men, not from any desire to know the Gospel, but merely, as some of them in conversation afterwards expressed it, “That by our presence and prayers they may get plenty of rain, beads, guns &c. &c.” ’ Two years later, having made no converts, he moved on to a new site at Chouane, forty miles north of Mabotsa, boasting proudly in letters to friends that he was the most remotely situated missionary in southern Africa. Restless at the lack of success there, less than two years later he moved further north still to the Kwena town of Kolobeng. He spent only two years at Kolobeng before deciding to accompany a wealthy white elephant hunter, William Oswell, on an expedition further into the interior.