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White Settlers Arrive in South Africa

The conflict between black Africans and white people in South Africa finds its origin in the seventeenth century. White men from the Netherlands established a permanent harbour at the Cape of Good Hope to replenish food and water, and conduct repairs for the trading fleet of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Jan van Riebeck arrived in the Cape in 1652 with a party of eighty men with instructions from the Company to build a fort and develop a vegetable garden to provision the ships on their voyages to and from the east.

1652 Jan van Riebeck arrives at the Cape

Painting by Charles Davidson Bell

The history of South Africa from 1652 onwards was written by the white historians. The history from the perspective of the black people was handed down orally. As is the way with history, each party paints a picture favourable to themselves, and each naturally accepts their version as ‘the truth’.

The first tribe encountered by the Dutch settlers were the cattle herders called the Khoikhoi. The initial contact with the Khoikhoi was based on barter; however the groups had differing philosophies of ownership, especially when it came to livestock. This led to animosity and accusations of theft from the side of the white farmers, whereas the Khoikhoi subscribed to the concept that cattle did not ‘belong’ to anyone.

The Slave Period

After serving their five-year contracts with the VOC, nine men were released from their contractual obligations and given their own land to farm. They were called vryburgers (free burghers). In 1658 the first slaves were brought to South Africa from other parts of Africa, and later Madagascar, India, and East Asia. Most were labourers and servants but many of them were skilled carpenters and bricklayers. The VOC owned most of the slaves in South Africa’s Cape colony. They were confined to living quarters in a huge slave lodge (later converted into the old Supreme Court and more recently the South African Cultural History Museum) while other slaves were owned and housed by the vryburgers.

Four years later, when van Riebeck returned to Holland in 1662, there were about 250 settlers in what was clearly now a permanent colony. Further expansion saw independent farmers emigrate to South Africa and in the early 1700s the so-called ‘trekboers’ or pioneer farmers started to push outwards towards the north and east. The geographic location of the black African tribes at the time determined that the Xhosa would be the first black tribe to encounter the white farmers. With the Xhosa continuing their migration westwards along the southern coast and the white farmers searching for new opportunities to the east, confrontation was inevitable.

The Wars between the Xhosa and the White Settlers

The conflicts between the Xhosa people and the white farmers were called ‘The Kaffir Wars’. The term ‘Kaffir’ originated from the Arabic-Islamic term Kafir meaning ‘a non-believer’. The word is considered racially offensive in the present day. The use of the ‘K’-word has been actionable under South African law since 1976. There were nine conflicts between the Xhosas and the white settlers, now known as the Xhosa Wars.

The first Xhosa War is recorded as having begun in 1779. Wars followed in 1789, 1799, and 1811, but protracted skirmishes were virtually continuous. Outcomes were indecisive. The sides were evenly matched. The white settlers were heavily outnumbered but they had the better weaponry.

Meanwhile in Europe the newly established Republic of France conquered the Netherlands in 1795. The Netherlands was re-named the Batavian Republic and Prince William of Orange fled to England. Once there the prince asked England to prevent France taking possession of the Dutch colonies. At the behest of Prince William, Britain occupied the Cape colony in 1795, later occupying it permanently from 1806 and ruling it as a crown colony.

The British were in a better position to bring force to bear in South Africa. They commanded military resources in India as well as Britain and were determined to put an end to the frontier problem. In 1820 an emigration scheme brought 5,000 white British settlers to the frontier districts. This move only served to increase the competition for land between the racial groups.

The remaining wars of the nineteenth century were devastating for the Xhosa. Warriors, armed only with spears and clubs, fought against guns. The loss of life was great. The British maintained a military force to protect the white colonists, but the farmers were still harassed and subject to theft of their livestock. Land was seized progressively by the settlers in each successive war and the pressures on the Xhosa intensified with each defeat. The Xhosa, divided into a number of chieftaincies, was unable to coalesce into a cohesive fighting force.

In a tragic turn of events in 1857, the Xhosa were persuaded by their witch doctors that they would succeed against the white man if they destroyed all their own cattle. This disastrous self-inflicted catastrophe resulted in 400,000 head of cattle being killed and 40,000 Xhosa dying of starvation, which so weakened the Xhosa that military action was not pursued for a generation. In 1877 further pressure from the white colonists brought a final and hopeless military response from the Xhosa. The Cape Colony annexed all remaining Xhosa lands effectively ending the independence of the Xhosa.

The Coloured (Mixed Race) People

In the Cape Colony itself, the remnants of Khoikhoi that had not moved away mingled with the slaves from elsewhere in Africa. They interbred with white people and with a new category of slaves from the East, particularly Malaysia, producing the mixed race group which was later given the designation of ‘Coloured’. The slaves from East Asia brought Islam into the Calvinistic settler establishment. The vryburgers employed the slaves to help with domestic chores and the cultivation of wine, vegetables, and wheat. A few slaves were freed on their owners’ death and earned a living by catching fish and selling vegetables.

It would not be until 1833, following the Slavery Abolition Act in Britain that a law was passed in South Africa freeing all slaves – thirty-two years prior to the ending of slavery in the US. The law allowed for a four-year apprenticeship after which slaves were free to leave their owners but which left many slave owners bankrupt because there was no one left to perform the labour.