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2The Kowie River

The Kowie is an ancient river; it flows through land where dinosaurs once roamed and where cycads still grow. At one time this land was covered by the sea with marine deposits fifty million years old. It is a wild, tidal river, dynamic, forever changing and diverse. This diversity lies not only in the different types of country through which it flows, but also in the changing seasons, the differences between wet and dry years, between high and low tides, and the rich variety of the forms of life it sustains. The Kowie River has not received scholarly attention from historians, nor has its beauty been acknowledged by poets or writers, except for one noteworthy exception. In his poem ‘The Rivers’ (1982), Chris Mann celebrates this diversity:

The rivers of the Eastern Cape are full of hidden life:

quiet cob, greenyblackcrab,

turtle and tadpole flimmer and flee;

The rivers of the Eastern Cape are walked by recent ghosts:

waterbuck, lithebuck leopard doe;

The rivers of the Eastern Cape run with holy waters:

ochred priest and prophet refract

the shimmershades in pools.¹

The term ‘holy waters’ refers to the enduring and sacred importance of the Kowie River to many Xhosa people today.

* * *

One of my most magical river moments was at dawn one morning in 2005 as I was crouching in the lush vegetation lining the beautiful deep green pool that marks the confluence of the Kowie and Lushington rivers. A friend and I were waiting to see the otters whose holt I had discovered in this particular pool. After sitting motionless for a long time, we saw the whiskered head of an otter break the surface and then turn, swimming on her back with a crab in her front paws, followed by three otter cubs. My friend and I didn’t move or speak, but after a while the golden silence was broken by the sound of rhythmic chanting and the beat of a drum. Five figures, all clothed in white, their faces painted with white clay and their heads covered in white cloth turbans, suddenly appeared. They were led by a diviner in a white robe and red turban carrying a flywhisk in one hand and a spear in the other. We watched in fascination as they removed their shoes and chanted to the rhythm of a cowhide drum, calling in sonorous tones on ‘the People of the River’, the source of the created world. The experience felt like the ‘shining adventure’ which the conservationist Aldo Leopold described while canoeing through the ‘milk and honey wilderness’ of the Colorado River delta in the 1920s.

I later learned that this was a pool where certain water divinities reside. We had been privileged to witness one of the rituals (intlwayalelo) associated with the induction of a traditional diviner-healer. According to Xhosa cosmology, the sighting of otters makes for an especially auspicious occasion because otters are messengers (izithunywa) from the ancestors. Seeing otters swimming, fish jumping, birds calling, ducks quacking or leguaans splashing in the water or near a riverbank is regarded as a positive sign in the intlwayalelo ritual. I learned this, and much else, years later from the research by the social anthropologist Penny Bernard, who had visited this particular place for her study of water divinities.

In Xhosa cosmology the Kowie, along with all rivers, is regarded as spiritually significant. It has several sacred pool sites, the deep pools favoured by water divinities or river spirits. These are the ‘People of the River’ (Abantu Bomlambo in isiXhosa). They are sometimes described as mermaids (half fish, half human beings) and are associated with pools situated deep in forests. All the Kowie River pools I have explored are very deep, remote and difficult to access, surrounded by dense vegetation and often by precipitous cliffs, as in the case of the Lushington pool, the site of my ‘shining adventure’. Pools where the water divinities are thought to reside are classified as sacred because they are regarded as ‘sites that have an intensified presence of the ancestors and the divine forces’.²

The People of the River play a pivotal role in the calling, initiation and final induction of Xhosa diviner-healers (amagqirha). Called to their work by the ancestors, they possess supernatural powers which enable them to determine the causes of misfortune or illness and the required form of propitiation. Following a calling from the ancestors to the river, a trainee undergoes a lengthy period of apprenticeship to an established diviner.

This training involves three traditional rituals. Firstly, there is the intlwayalelo, a term derived from the verb meaning ‘to sow seeds’. These rites involve various offerings: white clay, medicinal roots, white beads, pumpkin seeds, grains of sorghum and maize, tobacco and the body dirt (intsila) of the candidate (umkwetha) undergoing induction. To connect the novice diviner-healer and his living kin to their ancestors, the offerings are best made at dawn at a river pool. Bernard reports seeing small baskets or tin lids containing a mixture of seeds floating near reedbeds at a number of recognised sacred pool sites in the area. I have seen them frequently but have only learned recently of these rituals’ multifaceted significance; for example, the drumming my friend and I heard is meant to keep the ancestors awake.

The poet Chris Mann compares the diviners to the oracles of ancient Greece and Rome, and writes, ‘prayers, songs and imprecations follow, all the more affecting since they are made by the people of a culture which, despite the advent of democracy in South Africa, is still struggling with the effects of conquest, dispossession, poverty and migrant labour’.³ Mann goes on to note that ‘it is a deeply humanizing experience in this context to reread Odysseus’ account of his visit to the underworld in the Iliad’. I was reminded of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem ‘The Riverman’ (1965), an intense account of an Amazonian villager being called below the water by a powerful river spirit:

I got up in the night

for the Dolphin spoke to me …

Godfathers and cousins,

your canoes are over my head;

I hear your voices talking.

You can peer down and down

or dredge the river bottom

but never, never catch me …

The Dolphin singled me out …⁴

In southern Africa as a whole there are many references to diviner-healers who claim to have been taken underwater to receive skills, wisdom and medicine in order to return and heal the living. Physical submersion signifies a higher level of skill for the diviner, but ‘most diviners and their initiates merely dreamed about being submerged in the river’.⁵

In the early 1940s a man with the name of Tyota was called to the Kowie River by his ancestors. In his case the message was brought by two Nile Monitors (Varanus niloticus, or uxam in isiXhosa), also known as leguaans, who followed him like pet dogs when he was walking in the veld, a sign of his impending calling to the river. ‘The Nile Monitor is reputedly the herdsman of the river people, driving their cattle out of the river under the cover of mist at dawn to graze in the grasslands and herding them back under the river at sunset.’⁶ Tyota spoke of a bright light emanating from the Kowie River that put him into a trance and of meeting an old woman ‘half human and half fish’.

Being called by a leguaan is not uncommon. Leguaans are one of the river creatures, along with crabs and otters, who are messengers from the ancestors. Near the Lushington pool I have often seen them, the largest of the African lizards, growing up to 200 cm in length. They have an intimidating prehistoric appearance, with a stout body, strong claws and a long tail.

The anthropological literature seems confusing on the relationship between the water divinities and the ancestors. According to Tony Dold (based on research in the Eastern Cape), these water divinities are regarded as ancestors, whereas according to Penny Bernard they are intermediaries and both they and the ancestors live in the sacred pools and work in close association. The ancestors and the river people cooperate; they work together, especially in the calling of diviner-healers.

According to one Xhosa source from the Kowie area, the People of the River are highly temperamental and easily angered. ‘Abantu Bomlambo are our ancestors, we do not know their names but we know them. They live in the river and in the sea. They visit us in the ubuhlanti [animal pen] at night and take care of us. If we disturb them in the river they become angry with us. We need to be on good terms. Sometimes children playing near the river throw stones in the river and the people of the river are disturbed and become angry.’⁷

There are many reports that these traditional diviners and healers have survived the advent of modernity and can be found not only in every rural settlement but in every urban township. The pool sites they frequent have an ecological as well as a spiritual significance for many indigenous people. The spirit world is regarded as the ultimate source of life-sustaining resources. But ‘sacred pool sites of key significance for healers are being systematically threatened by development projects, mining and modern agricultural practices. The privatisation of land has led to many of the sacred pools being inaccessible to healers.’⁸ Furthermore, channelling water from rivers can upset the water shades. Traditional taboos exist regarding natural resources, such as not collecting firewood near rivers, to avoid disturbing the water divinities. The Lushington pool has been fenced by the local farmer and the water is piped to irrigate his fields. The throb of the irrigation pump is an affront to the deep silence of the place. In these ways the meanings embedded in indigenous culture are disregarded.

The river rituals of the Xhosa are still widely practised. In fact, one of the strongest lines of continuity in this river story is the respect the river still inspires among many in the Xhosa population. Obviously it would be wrong to essentialise or generalise about such a large category of people, but for many of the Xhosa still living near the Kowie the area is more than an important source of food, fuel, medicine and building material. Behind such utilitarian use lies a deep traditional appreciation of nature. As Dold and Cocks write in their book, Voices from the Forest, which celebrates the link between people and nature or, as they frame it, between cultural and biological diversity (sometimes called ‘biocultural diversity’), both rural and urban South Africans still find great cultural and spiritual value in nature. ‘The isiXhosa language portrays nature (indalo) in idioms, proverbs, traditional riddles, songs and the names and descriptions of times of the day, months of the year and seasons of the year. The poetry of these is self-evident.’⁹ This is wonderfully clear in Xhosa birdlore, where the names and idioms reflect closely observed and deep ornithological knowledge and appreciation. An example is the Hamerkop (uqhimngqofe), which symbolises vanity from its habit of remaining for hours at the water’s edge, where it is supposed to be admiring its reflection, or the Narina Trogon, whose stationary habits indicate laziness.¹⁰

Many indigenous societies have such a non-dualistic view of nature and culture, with traditions of resource use that include spiritual attachment and knowledge that involves a conservation ethic. Among the Xhosa the link between the ‘natural’ and the ‘cultural’ is maintained by respect for the ancestors, and several informants believed that environmental damage is disrespectful to the ancestors. Many traditional cultural practices of the Xhosa make regular and highly controlled use of wild plants and animals. Research in one area reports that activities that brought them into ‘regular contact’ with nature, such as collecting firewood, hunting and being secluded in initiation schools, were important opportunities for spending time with nature.¹¹ The forest was especially valued ‘as a place that bestows spiritual health and well-being (impila)’. One informant said, ‘sometimes I walk with my dog or hunt in the forest, or I just sit in a quiet place to forget my worries.’¹²

This appreciation contrasts with much of local people’s experience of environmental conservation authorities and practices intent on the exclusion of people and on the strict, legalistic control of natural resources. The outcome of this ‘fences and fines’ approach has been that – especially under apartheid and colonial rule – environmentalism was somewhat questioned, as it was concerned only with the protection of threatened plants, animals and wilderness areas, to the neglect of human needs. Furthermore, the dispossession of rural people to create protected areas illustrates the brutality involved. As Cocks writes, ‘approaches to conserving biodiversity that are based on cultural and religious values are often more sustainable than those based only on legislation or regulation’.¹³

Two Rockys

The water divinities are not the only magical creatures associated with the Kowie River. Unlike other parts of southern Africa, the river does not sustain owls that fish, but there are kingfishers, which are insectivorous, and air-breathing fish.

One of the first air-breathing fish to be described scientifically, Sandelia bainsii, the Eastern Cape Rocky, was from the Kowie River. These fish have accessory breathing organs so that they can breathe atmospheric air as we do, for where they lie there is often not enough oxygen in the water to use only their gills. According to Jim Cambray, the former Albany Museum director, in the last twenty years the numbers of this species have dwindled dramatically, and it is ‘almost extinct’.¹⁴ It is a true Eastern Cape resident. The genus was named after King Sandile (1820–78), who was the son of Ngqika, king of the Rharhabe section of the Xhosa nation in the Eastern Cape. The species name also honours the geologist Andrew Geddes Bain (1797–1864), who built many roads in the Eastern Cape and found some important fossils. The fish is endemic to several rivers in the Eastern Cape but was first described from the Kowie River. It likes quiet rocky habitats where it wedges itself between rocks or submerged logs and waits for prey items like crabs or small fishes to float or swim past. The fish features in a poster by Maggie Newman sponsored by the Albany Museum showing forty animal species, local vegetation and underwater life, so as to depict the interrelationships between animals and plants in the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems of the Kowie catchment area. The poster setting is a pool in the Blaauwkrantz Nature Reserve, an area set aside for the conservation of the Eastern Cape Rocky. Unfortunately, the aquatic weed Azolla now completely covers the pool’s surface, making it difficult for people to place gifts for the ancestors in the water. The pool is commonly known as kwatiki, after the small ‘tickey’ coin. According to Tony Dold, there was once a toll over the Blaauwkrantz bridge which charged a tickey to cross.

1. The source of the Kowie River is 70 km inland among the densely forested ravines in the hills surrounding Grahamstown. There is a capillary of streams and water points including the famous spring (umthombo) that flows constantly with sweet water (Photograph: Kate Rowntree).

2. The sacred pool at the confluence of the Kowie and Lushington rivers where tributes such as white beads or pumpkin seeds are sometimes floated in small reed baskets for the Abantu Bomlambo (People of the River) (Photograph: Candace Feit).

3. Initiates at the Lushington pool. The Abantu Bomlambo play a pivotal role in the calling, initiation and induction of Xhosa diviner-healers (amagqirha) (Photograph: Helen Bradford).

4. The Blaauwkrantz pool, at the foot of the Blaauwkrantz Gorge, is another spiritual place to connect with the water divinities, the Abantu Bomlambo, and access the ancestors. Unfortunately the pool’s surface is now covered by the aquatic weed Azolla (Photograph: Candace Feit).

5. Portrait believed to be of the Xhosa warrior, prophet and philosopher Makhanda/Makana/Nxele, who led his troops against the British army in the Battle of Grahamstown in 1819 (Painting by Frederick Timpson I’Ons, 1835. Albany Museum/Africa Media Online).

6. The Kowie River follows a ‘horseshoe bend’ between Port Alfred and Bathurst in the Waters Meeting Nature Reserve (so called because that is where the salt water from the Kowie River mouth meets the upstream fresh water) (Photograph: AAI).

7. Before human intervention, the estuary of the Kowie River consisted of a number of channels and sandbanks which were exposed by the retreating tide (Artist unknown, 1822. Cory Library/Africa Media Online).

8. In 1820 British officer Lieutenant John Biddulph sketched the Kowie River mouth while investigating the possibility of establishing a port there as part of the British colonial agenda. The mouth was partially closed by two sandbars, which meant extreme variations in the level of the water as the tides changed. He established that at the river mouth tides rose sufficiently to admit vessels of up to about 120 tons (Cory Library/ Rhodes University).

9. William Cock (1793–1876), the author’s great-great-grandfather seen here in 1864, was principally responsible for the development of the harbour at the mouth of the Kowie River, beginning in 1838 (Cock Family Archive).

10. William Cock was appointed to the Cape Legislative Council in 1847, where he worked to promote the expansion of the colony, which involved the dispossession of the Xhosa, and to secure the governor’s support for the harbour project. He is seen here (back right) with other members of the Council in 1864 (Cock Family Archive).

11. Under Cock’s direction a new mouth was cut for the river through the sand hills of the west bank. The river was canalised and the channel straightened and diverted to the western side of the estuary, producing a navigable stretch of about three-quarters of a mile inland (Date of photograph unknown. Western Cape Archives, AG 1443).

12. Sedimentation was a problem, so to keep the river mouth deep enough, two piers were built in the 1850s extending into the sea. The estuary was regularly dredged to allow the velocity of the tide to flush the mouth and keep the harbour free of sand (Date of photograph unknown. Cory Library/Africa Media Online).

13. Throughout the 1840s the harbour was used by sailing ships, usually small schooners and cutters. Their cargoes were partially offloaded into small boats before they attempted to enter the river. Locally built lighters were used to unload larger vessels anchored out at sea (Date of photograph unknown. Cory Library/Africa Media Online).

14. The Albany Steam Navigation Company, owned by William Cock, operated the Sir John St Aubyn, an iron steamship for cargo and passengers that made its first journey from Cape Town to Port Frances (later Port Alfred) in record time (3½ days) in July 1842 (Painting by Edith Cock, 1840s. Cock Family Archive).

15. Steamship moored in the Kowie River. The harbour development increased trade between the port, Cape Town, England and Mauritius. Ships took cargoes of sheep, butter, beans, grain, hide and tallow to Mauritius and brought back sugar. The harbour was busiest in the 1870s with 101 ships entering in 1876 (Date of photograph unknown. Western Cape Archives, AG 4651).

16. View of the Kowie River by Thomas Bowler, from the flagpole in front of William Cock’s house, according to a family member. The view shows the dredger at work in the river (Hand-coloured engraving from original artwork by Thomas Bowler, 1864. Cory Library/Africa Media Online).

17. An artist (probably Thomas Bowler) sits on the East Bank and sketches boats in the harbour. William Cock’s residence, Richmond House, is visible on the top of the hill in the distance (Artist and date unknown. Western Cape Archives, L 1545).

18. Letitia Harriet Cock (1852–1951) as a young woman. She was William Cock’s eldest granddaughter and the author’s great-aunt. She recalled being given the honour, at the age of 8, of christening the town of Port Alfred when its name was changed from Port Frances in 1860 (Date of photograph unknown. Cock Family Archive).

19. Letitia Harriet Cock in later life. Her reminiscences of frontier life and memories of her grandfather William Cock were a valuable source of oral testimony for the author (Date of photograph unknown. Cock Family Archive).

20. Letitia Harriet Cock with the author. Despite the 90-year age gap, Harriet and the author had an extraordinarily close relationship (1940s) (Cock Family Archive).

21. Early photograph looking across the Kowie River to the East Bank and the Indian Ocean beyond. The area is now covered by the Royal Alfred Marina (Date of photograph unknown. Cory Library/Africa Media Online).

22. The mouth of the Kowie River and the East Bank (left) as they looked in the 1960s before the wetland was destroyed by the marina development in 1989 (Postcard by Protea Colour Prints (Pty) Ltd).

23. The Kowie River mouth showing the canalisation of the river between two piers stretching out into the ocean (Photograph: David Stott).

24. The dunes on the East Bank. To the left of the picture is where silt from the dredging of the marina canals and the estuary is dumped. This affects the natural wave action and migration of the sand dunes (Photograph: David Larsen/Africa Media Online).

25. River view looking upstream, with both banks covered by indigenous vegetation (Date of photograph unknown, possibly early 20th century. Western Cape Archives, E2773).

26. The same view as figure 25 above, in 2017, showing the upmarket housing development, Riverview Waterfront Estate, which destroyed the natural vegetation and blocked public access along the river bank (Photograph: David Stott).

27. Aerial photograph of the town of Port Alfred in the 1960s before the marina development (Postcard by Art Publishers (Pty) Ltd, Umbilo, Durban. Photograph: B. K. Bjornsen).

28. There are currently plans for the construction of another ‘high density waterfront marina’, Centenary Park, at the bend of the river, on the far right. This will damage the river irreparably (Photograph: David Stott).

29. Overview of the Royal Alfred Marina developed at the mouth of the Kowie River in 1989 by a private developer (Photograph: David Stott).

30. Looking across towards the East Bank. The marina destroyed a wetland, privatised a public asset, and causes ongoing silting in the Kowie River (Photograph: Joanna Rice).

31. The marina consists of 355 upmarket houses each with its own waterfront. They are mostly holiday homes for wealthy upcountry visitors (Photograph: David Stott).

32. Nemato township, Port Alfred. An 8 km walk to the town centre, this is home to thousands of Africans living with high rates of poverty, unemployment, hunger, and uneven and irregular provision of municipal services (Photograph: David Larsen/Africa Media Online).

A rare white line

Before human intervention, the lower Kowie estuary consisted of a number of channels and sandbanks that migrated across the floodplain. In such estuaries the interaction between sea and river creates unique and dynamic ecosystems. Estuaries are a type of wetland, the planet’s most productive ecosystems. Wetlands and other estuary-associated habitats perform important services. Water draining the catchment area carries sediments and pollutants, which are filtered out or trapped by marginal vegetation and salt marshes. Coastal plants (like salt marshes) represent a significant contribution to carbon sequestration, popularly known as blue carbon.¹⁵

Estuaries ‘support critical habitats such as salt marshes, intertidal mud and sandbanks, and eel grass beds which are used by many species for foraging and as nursery areas’.¹⁶ Not only fish, but also many species of mammal, bird, fish, crustaceans, insects and other wildlife forms depend on estuaries to survive, eat, reproduce, migrate and live permanently. They are especially important nursery areas for many fish species, such as White Steenbras, Dusky Kob and Spotted Grunter. According to Professor Alan Whitfield, a total of 155 fish species are dependent on South African estuaries: 42 species breed in estuaries, 61 species use estuaries as nurseries, and 103 species are partially or completely dependent on estuaries.

There are only some 250 functioning estuaries in South Africa, and the Kowie estuary is classified as a medium-to-large, permanently open estuary. Nevertheless, the Kowie, as with estuaries in general, has ‘been subject to increasing pressure, especially as a result of reductions in river water inflow and increasing development along river banks’.¹⁷

Human impact since the 1830s has involved the extensive canalisation of the lower reaches of the river: the main channel was straightened and confined within stone walls, and the mouth moved westwards. Today the mouth is an estuary, a narrow, 21 km long stretch of tidal river. The river itself is significantly larger, some 70 km in length. The lower part of the Kowie estuary now consists of an artificial channel, approximately 80 m wide, with loose stone-packed berms.

Two piers have been built at the river mouth, with the west pier much longer than the east. At times at the mouth the river loses itself in the vast space of the ocean, but at high tide with a west wind blowing there is a dramatic meeting. A large sandbar dominates the mouth region, which varies seasonally depending on prevailing winds and swell direction. Locals report that a legendary local fisherman, Ronnie Samuel – who reputedly saved forty people from drowning over the years – once walked across the bar at a spring low tide. Crossing it was, and still is, dangerous and a number of fishermen have experienced ‘crossing the bar’ as death, rather than metaphor, when their boats overturned.

At times a flooding tide creates a white line of foam in the middle of the river near the mouth. This is often marked by terns diving to feed off the plankton caught up in the circulation. According to the marine biologist Dr Nadine Strydom, ‘the white line is caused by a convergence zone created by the meeting of water of different densities in a confined channel. The confined channel is the result of the artificial walling by William Cock when the two piers were constructed. In two other Eastern Cape rivers, the Sundays and the Gamtoos, this occurs naturally whereas in the Kowie it is the result of this artificial walling.’¹⁸

The Kowie catchment area

Rivers derive much of their character from the catchments through which they flow. The Kowie catchment is the area of land between 576 and 769 km² drained by the river, and the major part of it is made up of privately owned farms. The main agricultural activities of the region involve the production of pineapples, chicory, citrus, fodder crops, beef cattle and goats. The Kowie River is perennial, rising in a patch of dense indigenous forest on the sloping hills surrounding Grahamstown, and flowing steadily through the centre of what used to be called the Zuurveld towards the sea. The 70 km length the river travels from source to sea occurs along a gently sloping coastal plain, a diverse landscape of undulating hills, dense indigenous forest and cultivated farmland. The landscape is best appreciated from the toposcope situated at one of the highest points in Featherstone Kloof outside Grahamstown. From here one has a view of the landscape framed by the Indian Ocean in the south with Port Alfred 43 km away as the crow flies, and the mountains of the Winterberg and the Amatolas in the north. The catchment area contains many small streams which feed into the river and its main tributary, the Blaauwkrantz.

The helpful geographer who directed me to the river’s source was somewhat dismissive of my obsession with finding the starting point of the Kowie River. ‘It can be a bit difficult to say exactly where the source is, because the source is actually the hill slopes, then the water seeps out somewhere into the channel.’ She stressed that one ‘should think in terms of the watershed rather than a single source’.¹⁹ These hills contain a capillary of streams and water points including the famous spring (umthombo in isiXhosa) which gushes from the hillside next to the main road from Grahamstown to Port Alfred. It flows constantly with wonderfully sweet water. Along with the streams that flow off the north slopes of Signal Hill, it supplied the British soldiers stationed at Fort England with water from as early as 1816. What is now Grahamstown was chosen as the site for a military base because of these hillside streams which drained the north-facing flanks of the Rietberge (later known as Mountain Drive). The earliest water sources of the garrison town were the courses that run into the town from the hills to the south. Small dams diverted the water into furrows. Those that now empty into Grey Dam poured into a wooden trough crossing the Waterkloof 2 (Douglas Dam) stream. From the Drostdy Arch, stone canals led the water down High Street, and each household drew its share from the canals according to a timetable. The storage tank next to the Drostdy Arch, installed in 1818 and restored in 1979, permitted an extension to the system.²⁰

The stream, known as the Kowie Ditch, which flows through Grahamstown, is cemented, canalised and heavily polluted in places as it dribbles through the little town. This is the Blaauwkrantz, which rises near the old golf course, close to the road to the army base, and flows past Fort England. The Blaauwkrantz is the largest of the Kowie River’s tributaries. Others are the Lushington (also known as the Torrens) and the Mansfield and Bathurst streams.

There are also a number of smaller, unnamed streams entering the river along its course. There are several deep pools, such as Cambray’s pool at the foot of the Blaauwkrantz Pass, and that marking the confluence of the Lushington and Kowie rivers at the place I call ‘the green cathedral’. In places the Lushington is densely lined with palm trees (Phoenix reclinata), close relatives of the North African date palm. These plants are the southernmost naturally occurring palms in the world. Where the Kowie River passes through the Tyson pineapple farm halfway to Grahamstown, it is locally known by Xhosa people as ‘the deep place’.

The Kowie is no longer a working river, though a century ago it was a harbour for ocean-going boats and served to drive the mills on its banks grinding wheat into flour and, in the case of Bradshaw’s Mill, built in 1823 on the small tributary of the Bathurst stream, weaving wool into rough cloth. Today the Kowie supplies local farmers with water for irrigation and the domestic water needs of the little town of Port Alfred from the Sarel Hayward Dam. For a long time, the river was crossed by ferry until a pontoon was erected in 1876 and the present bridge in 2007.

The river is tidal as far as Ebb and Flow, which is the place where salt and fresh waters meet 21 km upstream from the mouth. The river is navigable by small boats almost up to this point. Paddling a canoe down the last 2 km, one can see kingfishers diving or perched at the openings of their lengthy tunnel nests in the earth banks. The banks are thickly forested and there are bushbuck or waterbuck grazing on the grassy meadows adjoining the river, and one may perhaps encounter a leguaan or caracal (lynx) or even (in the early morning or evening) an otter.

This area is part of the Waters Meeting Nature Reserve, originally established as a forest reserve in 1897 to protect it from exploitation by farmers and boat builders. Various sections were later proclaimed as nature reserves in 1952 and 1985, and it now covers 4,247 hectares. But the best way to experience the river is by following the Kowie Canoe Trail, passing the Old Wreck, Windy Reach, Rabbit Rocks, Kob Hole, Black Rock, the Old Mill, the Reef, Fairy Glen and White Rock on the way to the four-room wooden chalet at Horseshoe Bend. This is a lovely spot, deeply shaded with white milkwood trees and containing a 12 km circular hiking route through the nature reserve, where one can encounter the creatures of the riverine forest. This is the best place to hear some of the sounds and glimpse a few of these wild creatures or their signs. Camping at the overnight shelter in the forest huts built for hikers and canoeists may be a frightening but also an exhilarating experience. Monkeys frequent the area and leopard tracks have been seen. There are still shy and secretive creatures around, like waterbuck, caracals, several mongoose species, bushpigs and porcupines, and one may hear the warning shouts of the chacma baboon, the cough-like bark of the bushbuck and the weird grunting, followed by a long-drawn-out creaking scream, of the tree hyrax (dassie), probably the most memorable of the bush night sounds.

* * *

The intermediate climatic position of the Kowie catchment area between the areas of western winter and eastern summer rainfall has created a rich floral region. The predominant vegetation of the area is what botanists call Albany Thicket, relatively impenetrable, woody, semi-succulent, thorny vegetation. It hosts a remarkable diversity of plants, especially succulents, bulbs and climbers, many endemic to the region, and has the widest range of plant forms found in any of South Africa’s vegetation types.²¹ Albany Thicket is more than 50 million years old and existed before grassland, savannah, karoo and perhaps even fynbos. Experts estimate that there are approximately 6,500 plant species in Albany Thicket, as well as an impressive number of animals, including 5 species of tortoise, 48 large mammals, 25 ungulates and 421 birds.²²

There are wild fig trees and magnificent coral trees, which the British settlers used for roof shingles. In the forested valleys there are white ironwood, white stinkwood and yellowwood trees from which solid wheels were cut by the settlers. They are often draped with the long, grey lichen known as ‘old man’s beard’. There are wild olive trees, and at the bottom of the Waters Meeting Nature Reserve one can sit in the deep shade of the septee trees. White milkwood trees are common. One of the three white milkwood trees, umqwashu in isiXhosa, that have been declared national monuments is not too far away. This place, Emqwashini, is situated on the road to Alice from Peddie, and here in May 1835 the Mfengu affirmed their loyalty to the British king after being granted land in the area by the Cape governor, Sir Benjamin D’Urban. Once large enough to shelter thousands, today, having been struck by lightning and damaged in political protest, this milkwood is a sad, straggly reminder of its former size.

The riparian vegetation along the riverbanks contains representative examples of valley bushveld, including subtropical plants like the wild date palm, the leaves of which the British settlers used for making hats. There are Western Cape proteas and geraniums, tall candelabra-shaped euphorbias, bright aloes, cabbage trees, Cape chestnut trees covered with pink blossoms in spring, orange Cape honeysuckle attracting brilliant sunbirds, blue plumbagos, arum lilies, and species of prehistoric cycads. It is beautiful country which I associate with the colour orange, the colour of the bright orange and blue Strelitzia reginae crane flowers growing in the indigenous vegetation on the steep slopes of the riverbanks, the colour of aloes in flower, the blooms of the coral trees, as well as the traditional blankets and cosmetic paste on the faces of recently circumcised young Xhosa men.

The vegetation in the Kowie catchment area includes a cactus species which yields itolofiya, or prickly pears, small fruits with yellow-green skins. These are delicious to eat and were used by the many inhabitants of the area – Xhosa, Dutch and British – to make jam, chutney, syrup and a potent drink known as iqhilika by the Xhosa or witblits by the Afrikaners.²³ Portulacaria afra, a hardy plant with fleshy leaves and small pink flowers known locally as spekboom, grows widely and was the favourite food of the elephants that used to roam the area. The elephants have disappeared but the ancient order of cycads remains.

Millions of years ago the climate was warmer and wetter and the land covered in marshes and forests. Remains of the dinosaur Paranthodon were found nearby beside the Bushmans River in 1845. This was one of the earliest recognised dinosaur discoveries in the world and was certainly the first in South Africa.²⁴ One can still see the leguaan or water monitor lizard, which is reminiscent of these extraordinary creatures. Long ago there were sabre-toothed cats, bear-dogs, giant pigs, short-necked giraffes, and several different kinds of primeval elephants.

Before colonisation the Zuurveld was home to colourful birds and exotic wildlife including all Africa’s big game – lion, rhinoceros and large herds of elephant and buffalo. There were zebra and many types of buck – steenbok, hartebeest, eland, springbok and oribi. Hippos swam in the waters of the Kowie River valley and wild boar and leopard were common. Early in the nineteenth century a visitor recorded that the ‘close jungle on the banks … of the Kowie abounds with elephants and buffalos and wood-antelopes [presumably bushbuck]’.²⁵ In 1813 the Rev. John Campbell wrote of ‘a large elephant at the mouth of the Kowie River’.²⁶ He reported that in 1821 ‘elephants were very numerous and lions plentiful’ in the river valley. In 1846 Captain Butler reported that ‘the bush along the Kowie is full of game, not being yet deserted even by elephant and buffalo’.²⁷ Another visitor to the area in 1891 recorded frequent accounts of leopards being killed, herds of quagga running into hundreds, hippos, ostriches, bushpigs, red hares, Cape wild dogs and buffalo. All that is left are a few elephant remains, such as found at Salt Vlei in Port Alfred, and some tusks that were unearthed during the construction of the marina on the river.

All these animals were hunted by the Europeans, the Khoikhoi and the Xhosa, who surrounded their prey using assegais. John Campbell writes of the killing of a buffalo at the mouth of the Kowie River when he was there in 1815.²⁸ One authority maintains that the Bathurst district carried many ‘of the usual plains game, mainly springboks, true quaggas, red hartebeest and elands which the 1820 settlers were to wipe out in the comparatively short time of about 20 years’.²⁹ Writing in 1835, Thomas Pringle observed that ‘the forest-jungle which clothes the ravines that border the rivers of Albany, was at the time of this visit, still inhabited by some herds of buffaloes, and some species of the antelope and the hyena but the elephant had retreated since the arrival of the settlers’.³⁰

It is said that the large pool lined with palms on Lushington farm was frequented by elephants and hippos, and although heavily hunted by all, hippos survived in the Kowie River for some years. There are reports of lions as late as 1846 when, on 28 February, one visited the residential part of Port Frances.³¹ A small herd of buffaloes was reported in the Kowie bush on the outskirts of Bathurst in 1891.³² An 80-year-old resident of Port Alfred remembers that his father, Gerald Stocks, used to ‘hunt buffalo up the Kowie River’. The spotted hyena was once common but is now extinct in the Eastern Cape, as are lion, hunting dog, reedbuck, eland, red hartebeest, buffalo, warthog, elephant, hippopotamus, black rhinoceros and quagga.

This catalogue illustrates how, intent on the dominance and control of nature, we have pushed thousands of species to extinction. As Robert Macfarlane writes, ‘the loss, after it is theirs, is ours. Wild animals, like wild places, are invaluable to us precisely because they are not us. They are uncompromisingly different. The paths they follow, the impulses that guide them, are of other orders … seeing them you are made aware briefly of a world at work around and beside our own, a world operating in patterns and purposes that we do not share. These are creatures, you realise, that live by voices inaudible to you.’³³ The dominant concern today is the control and management of rivers, ignoring most of the wild species that depend on them. But we have much to learn from these wild creatures of the river. This includes the otter, intensely curious, tracing scent maps, moving easily between the water and the earth; the fish navigating back to their birth grounds, guided by memory and the stars; or the eagles riding the high thermals and scanning the earth below.

The iconic Cape Clawless Otter (intini) is my favourite river creature, one of the family immortalised in Ted Hughes’s poem ‘An Otter’, which describes it as ‘four-legged yet water-gifted’.³⁴ Our otters are mysterious, shy, but also curious and playful, with whiskered dog-like faces. ‘She Comes Swimming’ is a marvellous poem about sea otters by Isobel Dixon.³⁵ Otters are crepuscular, active in the early mornings and evenings, and I have spent many hours tracking them or sitting motionless on the riverbank hidden from view. Miriam Darlington writes of ‘the carefully folded demeanour that otter-watching requires’.³⁶ In my own experience more is needed, not only absolute stillness, but pressing oneself into the smallest possible space, hidden from view in the reeds on the riverbank. Seeing otters is difficult as they are mud-coloured and their brown fur seems to merge with the shade of their background. The best way to discover their presence is to look carefully for their scat (droppings or spraint), which they leave as scent marks. These are usually full of fragments of crab shells or white mussels (their main diet) and are found in special toilet areas. I have seen one such place marked by thousands of white mussel shells hidden in the dense riverine vegetation.

Otters are very resourceful. They have been seen using rocks to break open crab and mussel shells. They are powerful swimmers, leaving a rippling wake, and this might be the first sign of an otter’s presence. Or it could be the characteristic trail of bubbles the otter leaves as it swims beneath the surface. Jim Cambray described once seeing two otter pups riding on the back of their mother swimming in Blaauwkrantz pool.

* * *

There are still vervet monkeys, baboons, jackals, ratels (honey badgers), genets with their intricately patterned tails, and even leopards in the Kowie River bush. Very recently the pineapple farmer Fred Tyson saw a leopard on the banks of the Kowie where it winds through a very wild and hilly landscape. He said that otters were once more plentiful on his Langholm farm, but they ‘used to steal chickens and so the workers killed them’.³⁷ In many places there are signs of bushpigs rooting quite deeply, and warthogs digging through the rich earth. The marks of bushbuck and kudu are everywhere, and the delicate footprints of the secretive blue duiker are unmistakable.

All of these animals are also found in nearby river valleys like the Kariega, the Kasouga, the Fish, the Bushmans and the Kap. The name Kasouga for the river between Port Alfred and Kenton-on-Sea is of Gonaqua Khoikhoi origin and is believed to mean ‘full of leopards’. Leopards are secretive and nocturnal so they are very seldom seen. They are now protected, but a large one weighing 76 kg was ‘accidentally’ shot along the Kowie River in 1996. Mike Powell, the manager of the Waters Meeting Nature Reserve, wrote of a leopard he named Rocky who ‘has been leaving spoor all over the reserve and often in neighbouring farms. He/she is thought to have probably been responsible for at least three sheep kills.’³⁸ A keen conservationist, Powell liked to think of Rocky the leopard as well as the Eastern Cape Rocky (the freshwater fish threatened with extinction that is found in the Kowie River) as two key indicator species. He established a fund in the name of Rocky to save this leopard and others, and to provide compensation to farmers whose stock has been killed by them.

There used to be a total of 36 different fish species in the Kowie estuary. Recreational rather than subsistence fishing is still widely practised, though. In 2004 the annual yield of fish from the estuary was relatively low, being only some 16,240 fish or 5.99 tons. Recreational anglers caught 69 per cent of the catch, mainly three species, Cape Stumpnose, Spotted Grunter and Dusky Kob. Estuary-dependent marine migrant species dominate most of the catch from the Kowie estuary. These are species which breed at sea and enter the estuary as juveniles to feed and grow. The protection of critical habitats on the estuary has often been recommended. According to a marine scientist, ‘in terms of catch numbers Cape Stumpnose is the most important fish species on the estuary and to protect them the conservation of zostera (Cape sea grass) beds should be given priority. Serious threats to the zostera beds include siltation of the estuary.’³⁹

Today there are only five indigenous freshwater fish species in the river systems between the Bushmans and the Great Fish rivers, according to Jim Cambray. He mentioned the Chubbyhead Barb as well as the Goldie Barb as occurring in the Kowie River. The part of the river running through Langholm farm contains many freshwater mullet, locally called ‘springers’. According to both Jim Cambray and local resident Ronnie Slaughter, a local form of fishing for mullet has been developed using a Spanish reed for a rod, a porcupine quill for a float, and termites (white ants) as bait.

Some years ago the ecological community recorded on the Kowie estuary included 11 species of frogs, 24 species of reptiles, 93 species of birds and 31 species of mammals. There are also terrapins or turtles and eels which breed in the ocean off Madagascar. The young, leaf-like eels (known as leptocephali) float on the currents along the African coast. They turn into small eels, which you can see through, and so are known as ‘glass eels’. They enter the rivers mainly on summer nights on high spring tides when the river is flowing strongly. These anguillid eels use the estuaries as a conduit between the sea and the river. They swim upstream during migration and return along the same path on their way to the marine environment where spawning occurs. Their journey inspired two different ecologists writing at different times, at opposite ends of the world and unknown to each other, Rachel Carson and Jim Cambray.

The Kowie catchment area is exceptionally rich in birdlife, with more than 400 species having been recorded since 1960 in the Eastern Cape, 5 km inland from the shoreline as well as on the shore itself. According to Biff Todd, between 1973 and 1982, 93 species of water-associated birds were recorded in the Kowie and Bathurst districts, including 35 species of waders, which frequent the mud flats of the estuary exposed at low tide.⁴⁰ In the forested riverbanks one may glimpse the dramatic black-and-yellow plumage of the Forest Weaver, and hear the liquid notes of the Black-headed Oriole, as well as the plaintive voice of the Grey-headed Bush Shrike and the tantalising hoot of the shy and exquisite Narina Trogon. Black-headed Herons stand patiently fishing in the shallows, only revealing their massive wings in ponderous flight. While the cry of the African Fish Eagle used to be more common than it is now, one may still experience a dramatic river sighting as, with distinctive shining white breast, curved beak and big wingspan, one drops, crashing feet first into the water, throwing up a curtain of spray, and then flying off with a silver fish in its talons.

The Kowie River also hosts several migrant waders from the northern hemisphere, like the Greenshank. Other winter visitors include small groups of Black Storks and occasionally Ospreys. Cape and White-breasted Cormorants are common, as are various kinds of terns. All five varieties of kingfisher have been seen on the river, with the Pied, the most common, hovering in perfect balance, the Giant watchful from a branch overhanging the water, and the Half-collared and Malachite providing flashes of turquoise. The Brown-hooded Kingfisher is a striking-looking bird with its spear-like scarlet beak and azure coloration of its tail. It is a dryland kingfisher, and large grasshoppers and locusts are among its favourite food items.

In the early morning the forested banks of the Kowie are alive with birdsong. There are occasional glimpses of the shy African Finfoot gliding along low in the water and sunbirds feeding on the aloes during the winter months. Yellow Weavers breed in the reedbeds of the upper reaches and flocks of Egyptian Geese feed in the lands adjacent to the riverbanks.

The thick river vegetation shelters more retiring species such as the Black-headed Night Heron and Black Ducks. Martial Eagles still occur in the area, and for years the large, untidy nest of a Crowned Eagle was visible from the viewing site at the top of the horseshoe in the Kowie Forest Reserve. Crowned Eagles practise what has been termed ‘the Cain and Abel syndrome’ whereby firstborn chicks kill their younger siblings. We are not sure why, especially as African Fish Eagles rear two or three chicks in harmony. On the banks of the Lushington River, near its confluence with the Kowie, there used to be a large, domed nest of the ‘lightning bird’ or Hamerkop, which is said, in Xhosa tradition, to bring good luck. The Giant Eagle Owl has also been seen and the exquisite little Barred Owl, long thought to be extinct in the area, was recently sighted. Little Egrets, Grey Herons and Water Thick-knees (dikkop) loiter in the shallows and the large sandbanks provide nesting for swifts, while Cape, Reed and White-breasted Cormorants are visible on perches along the riverbanks soaking up the sun and preening. The salt marshes are frequented by spoonbills, plovers and Yellow-billed Ducks. At the river mouth African Black Oystercatchers pick their way among the mussel beds at low tide, with the turnstones and plovers. Several varieties of tern frequent this spot, including the Arctic Tern, which covers the globe in its migratory patterns, and far out to sea one may see Cape Gannets plunge-diving.

Near the river mouth there used to be a salt marsh, a type of wetland known locally as the ‘flats’, fringing the estuarine water surface. These mud flats, or salt marshes, looked like those on the west bank of the Fish and Keiskamma rivers, rich-smelling with beautiful shades of pink and green fleshy plants. The whole area contained a diverse population of worms, prawns, crabs and fish as well as wading birds – particularly the Palaearctic migrants – during low tides. The adjacent lagoon contained large kob and in the evening one could watch Spotted Grunter feeding with their tails waving vertically in the air, breaking the still, grey surface.

This wetland was sometimes described as a ‘dead swamp’ by locals. Its loss during the construction of the marina is part of a larger pattern of destruction. It is estimated that by 1996 more than half of all South Africa’s wetlands had already been destroyed or otherwise lost. The main threats are not only artificial breaching for marina developments, but water abstraction and dam construction, which obviously reduce the amount and seasonal patterns of fresh water flowing into an estuary, as well as eutrophication caused by the run-off of nutrients from agriculture, septic tanks, malfunctioning sewage treatment plants and habitat loss. The crucial question is whether the Kowie is enough of what T.S. Eliot called a ‘strong brown god’⁴¹ to withstand these threats.

The social history of the river

Historians now generally define the catchment area of the Kowie River as the Zuurveld, bounded by the Zuurberg and Fish River mountain chains in the north, the Fish River in the east, the Sundays River in the west, and the Indian Ocean to the south. However, during the period 1770–1812 ‘contemporaries also referred to the Zuurveld in the more restricted sense as the area between the Boesmans and the Fish Rivers’.⁴² In 1778 Governor Van Plettenberg persuaded some imiDange chiefs to recognise the boundary of the colony as the upper reaches of the Great Fish River and the Boesmans River Mountains. Jeff Peires points out that ‘it was not a solemn treaty with all the Xhosa chiefs along the Great Fish River’.⁴³ Two years later the Council of Policy proclaimed the Fish River along its entire length as the boundary.

The Dutch word zuurveld, the name for the catchment area of the Kowie, refers to the prevalent grass type in the area, meaning ‘the land of sour grasses’. Being of high acidity, the soil produces grass which is harmful, even fatal, to cattle in autumn and winter. The main characteristic of ‘sourveld’ is that its ‘nutritive value and palatability decreases as it matures. In the spring and early summer its food value is high and the grass is of great importance to the herdsmen. But it can only be fully utilised for about four months in the year before its food value becomes depleted and it loses its palatability. “Sweetveld” is therefore of particular importance as winter grazing if cattle are to maintain condition.’⁴⁴ Consequently the Zuurveld was only suitable as pasture during the summer months, though the sweetveld of the river valleys provided good grazing throughout the year. All the early inhabitants of the area, Khoikhoi, Dutch and Xhosa, needed therefore to move their herds of cattle between seasonal pastures, alternating summer grazing on the sourveld with winter grazing on the sweetveld.

* * *

The original inhabitants of the Zuurveld were Khoikhoi pastoralists, who moved about the area seasonally in search of water and grazing. Their prior inhabitation has been shown conclusively by the written accounts of all the early European travellers who passed through the region in the eighteenth century. When Ensign Beutler visited the Eastern Cape in 1752 he found the Kowie area was inhabited by Khoikhoi people identified as the Gonaqua. They were already in the process of intermarrying with and being absorbed by the neighbouring Xhosa into what would become known as the Gqunukhwebe chiefdom. Beutler observed that ‘the clothing and way of life’ of the Xhosa and the Gonaqua ‘are similar and they intermarry without differentiation’. As has been observed, ‘the longevity of their interaction is illustrated by the wholehearted adoption of Khoisan clicks into isiXhosa’.⁴⁵ In this way the Zuurveld became a site of intense social interaction and ‘ethnic ambiguity’.⁴⁶

Khoikhoi was a very fluid social and political category: groups constantly broke up and amalgamated over time. Between about 1752 and 1772 the dominant political figure in the Zuurveld was the Hoengiqua chief known to the Dutch as Ruyter. He was not a chief by birth but gathered together numbers of followers and was respected by the Xhosa as well as by the Dutch. According to the traveller Colonel Robert Gordon, who came across the clan in the vicinity of what is now Kenton, Ruyter’s people claimed sovereignty over the Zuurveld between the Sundays and the Fish rivers.⁴⁷

Much of the land the Khoikhoi occupied was taken from them by incoming trekboers. From about 1770 these semi-nomadic Dutch farmers, whom the English missionary Stephen Kay referred to disparagingly as ‘white barbarians’, began to settle in the Zuurveld, drawn to its well-watered grazing lands and fertile soil. ‘In defiance of the colonial regulations, they had taken possession of the choicest spots they could find beyond the nominal boundary – then the Gamtoos river.’⁴⁸ They raided the livestock of the Khoikhoi, burnt down their dwellings and drove them off the land. Khoikhoi were also attacked by the Xhosa under Rharhabe, who had moved westwards over the Kei River.

By the end of the century the Khoikhoi had lost most of their land to European colonists, large numbers had died of newly introduced diseases such as smallpox, and many were forced into the service of the colonists either as labourers or as soldiers. The missionary John Philip wrote, ‘The Hottentots are acknowledged to be a free people but labour is every day becoming scarcer, and the colonists are resolved to indemnify themselves for the loss of the slave trade by reducing the Hottentots to a condition of slavery the more shocking and oppressive.’⁴⁹ One of the ironies of history is that Khoikhoi soldiers played a decisive role in the defeat of the Xhosa in the Battle of Grahamstown in 1819 and in the expulsion of the Xhosa from the Zuurveld in 1811–12. Their vulnerability had turned them into collaborators with the colonists.

* * *

Land and water are crucial to understanding the history of the area. The Kowie River was at the centre of the Xhosa world for the thousands living in the Zuurveld on the eastern frontier of the colony. The Xhosa lived in dispersed settlements, with each chiefdom occupying a particular river valley. According to Jeff Peires, ‘It was the water not the land which determined the pattern of human settlement. Ideally each chiefdom had its own river and each sub-chiefdom had its own tributary … there was no latitude for doubt in the matter of access to water. Only the people of the community and their cattle had the right to drink the water of their own particular stream. Thus nearly all Xhosa place-names are the names of rivers.’⁵⁰

It seems fairly certain that, at least by 1778, the Gqunukhwebe under Chief Tshaka occupied the Kowie River valley and the area as far west as the Bushmans River. They had lived longer in the Zuurveld than the other Xhosa groups and had long intermarried with the Khoikhoi. When Colonel Gordon visited the Zuurveld in 1778 he met with several Xhosa chiefs who had crossed the Keiskamma after 1752. A number were living west of the Bushmans River and one as far as the Zwartkops River. In 1798 the British official John Barrow described encountering ‘a prodigious number of Kaffers with their cattle, belonging, as they told us, to a powerful chief named Congo [Chungwa, the son of Tshaka]’.⁵¹ ‘Two officials sent in 1797 to visit the Zuurveld and report on conditions, met with a number of Xhosa chiefs living near the coast, close to the Bushmans and Kariega rivers.’⁵² These encounters completely refute the colonial myth that white and black arrived in the empty land of the Zuurveld simultaneously in the late eighteenth century.

At this time the Kowie River catchment area was dotted with Xhosa homesteads containing clusters of beehive-shaped dwellings with clay walls and thatched roofs, thorn-fenced enclosures of cattle with elaborately shaped horns, and gardens of maize, sorghum, pumpkins and melons. These horned cattle were the fulcrum of Xhosa social and spiritual life, and their meat and milk were the principal means of subsistence. The Xhosa had twenty-five names to describe different cattle-skin patterns and colours, and seven different names for the shapes of their horns. ‘The Xhosa lived in an intensely personal environment. He was part of it and he felt at home in it.’⁵³

But by 1779 armed clashes began between the Dutch and Xhosa chiefdoms such as the Gqunukhwebe and Ndlambe in the area between the Sundays and Fish rivers. Fundamentally, these were struggles for access to and control of pasture and water. The tension was exacerbated by conflicting views about both land and identity. The colonists thought of occupation as conferring an exclusive right on individuals, whereas the Xhosa saw land as communal property, the boundaries of which were very loosely defined. Conflict was also informed by different understandings of society and identity. ‘Xhosa society was basically an open one which, through intermarriage and other means, incorporated and eventually integrated non-Nguni speakers. There is evidence that Xhosa were inclined to incorporate the colonists in the same way.’⁵⁴ In sharp contrast to this egalitarian inclusivity, the colonisers claimed a dominant and exclusive identity.

* * *

The armed clashes which marked the years of conflict were intermittent and involved episodic cattle raids and skirmishes rather than dramatic confrontations between armed protagonists. But the stakes were high and many lives were lost. It was a conflict which extended in a Hundred Years War from 1779 (the outbreak of the first war) to 1878 (the conclusion of the ninth and last). These are usually described as ‘frontier wars’ or, more recently, as ‘wars of dispossession’. The first two clashes took place between the Dutch and the Xhosa, but during later clashes the British colonial forces gradually forced the Xhosa back across the Kowie, then the Fish, and finally across the Keiskamma and the Kei, almost to the site of what is now Mthatha.

The historian Julie Wells argues that the Xhosa tactics over this period ‘are best described as a form of harassment, rather than “warfare”’.⁵⁵ It was fundamentally a sustained guerrilla struggle. To the Xhosa the Zuurveld was theirs by birthright, conquest or purchase long before whites appeared in the area. The Gqunukhwebe Xhosa, in particular, insisted that they had bought the land along the coast between the Kowie and the Fish rivers from the Hoengiqua chief Ruyter for 800 head of cattle, and refused to renounce their claim.⁵⁶

The Kowie was the scene of some of the earliest armed encounters. After the first of these clashes, Commandant Adriaan van Jaarsveld wrote in his diary on 17 July 1781 that he attacked the Xhosa ‘lying at the Thouhie on this side of Great Fish River, but from the number of forests could kill very few, but we also captured part of their cattle to the number of 2,000 and returned’. The second (1793) and third (1799–1803) wars were actually won by the Xhosa, who pushed as far west as Plettenberg Bay.⁵⁷

Throughout the late 1780s and 1790s increasing numbers of Xhosa moved west into the Zuurveld, largely following the attempts by the Xhosa chiefs Ndlambe and Ngqika to extend their power in the region. In 1799 the first major confrontation between Xhosa and Dutch occurred, when Ndlambe moved with large numbers of his followers into the Zuurveld, joining his brother who was already living there. As Sir Andries Stockenström later recalled, ‘the Colonists were driven out of the Zuurveld, their houses burnt, many lives lost, and the Kaffirs settled down between the Bushman and Sundays rivers, and even to the westward of the latter’. A meeting between Ndlambe and the colonial official Jacob Cuyler in 1808 ‘revealed that the amaNdlambe were in full occupation and control of the Zuurveld, right up to Algoa Bay in the west, and extending northward into the interior mountains’.⁵⁸