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CHAPTER 1

THE PREHISTORY OF GORDONIA

The Orange River valley must have acted as a magnet, drawing people to its banks from the earliest times. Its first occupants were hunter-gatherers (presumably ancestors of the Bushmen), who were supplemented from about 500 AD by (Khoi) pastoralists who dispersed east and west along the Orange River – from where many migrated to what are now the Western and Eastern Cape provinces some five hundred years later.¹ Those pastoralists that remained along the Orange included those becoming Nama (on the lower reaches towards the coast – where the Great Nama eventually turned north and the Little Nama south) and those becoming Einiqua (on the middle reaches around the later settlement of Upington). In the late 18th century, at least, 100 kilometres of river upstream from the later settlement of Pella, land inhabited only by Bushmen, separated Nama from Einiqua. To the north-east of these middle reaches, towards the better watered Highveld, could be found Sotho-Tswana peoples. Southernmost among them was the Barolong kingdom which grew strong after 1600, trading as far as Delagoa Bay.² Skeletal remains of graves on the Orange River show ‘evidence of gene flows between local Khoesan and the neighbouring black African peoples… a dynamic population trading and mixing generally with the Tswana peoples beyond the Orange River’.³

Around the 1690s some of the Khoi who had gone to the western Cape region (the ‘Great Korana’), now called the Gorachoqua, returned to the Orange as the Left-Hand Korana, and, it is said, destroyed the cordiality which had existed between the Orange River Khoi and the Bushmen. In a series of wars they established themselves eastward up to the surrounds of the present-day Kimberley.⁴ Fifty years later other Gorachoqua, who became known as the Right-Hand Korana or Kora, led by the Taaibosch chiefdom, also returned to the Orange (via an intermediate period of settlement in the Sneeuwberg) and settled at the later Griquatown, provoking the wrath of the Barolong king Tau. They brought with them trade links with the western Cape.⁵

With the return of these Korana from the western Cape, some of the Orange River Khoi of the eastern and the middle river became intermingled with or renamed themselves ‘Korana’, also known as ‘Little Korana’. Around the same time, towards the end of the 18th century, the ‘Batlhaping’ – the name was originally a term of Barolong disparagement applied indiscriminately to fish-eaters – acquired a common identity under the unifying rule of a member of a Barolong sub-dynasty, Molehabangwe, who married a Korana woman.⁶ In defence against the Barolong, a close alliance developed between the Tlhaping and the Right-Hand (Taaibosch) Korana. Tau, the Barolong king, was killed in battle and the combined Korana and Tlhaping settled at Nokaneng, at the south end of the Langeberg.⁷

This took place at about the time of the first European visits to the middle Orange that provided written accounts, by H.H. Wikar in 1778–9 and Robert Gordon in 1779. They were guided by brown people. According to Wikar and Gordon, the most westerly of the sub-divisions of the ‘Einaqua’ were the ‘Namnykoa’, divided into three homesteads, living just above the Aughrabies Falls, with 40 huts. Higher up were the Kaukoa (also known as Kauk Eijs, Cutting Kraal, or Snijersvolk) on the (later) Skanskop and other islands west of present-day Keimoes, with 20 huts. Three hours eastward were the Aukokoa (Narrow Cheeks or Nouwangen) on (the later) Cannon Island and other islands east of Keimoes, in 23 huts. Another seven-and-a-half hours’ journey east – around the site of present-day Upington – were the Gyzikoa (Twin Kraal) people, a mixture of Korana and Tlhaping, with two homesteads comprising 37 huts.

Near Kheis (opposite the present Groblershoop) were the Kouringeis (Little Korana, Hoogstanders or Proud People). They had three homesteads, one of them with some 49 huts. Like the Gyzikoa, some were of part-Tswana descent. The first of the Korana proper lived higher on the river: the Hoeking Eis (Scorpion Kraal), a branch of the Great Korana, at present-day Koegasbrug below Prieska, with about 20 huts. Above them were the Nokukeis. Most were trading with Tswana peoples. Further Korana groups, Wikar and Gordon were told, lived to the east, both north and south of the Orange, perhaps as far as the Zeekoei River. This included the Taaibosch chiefdom, together with Tlhaping, at Nokaneng, and the Left-Hand Korana near present-day Pniel and Barkly West.⁸

Over the ensuing decades, there was a dramatic transformation in the lifestyles and occupancy of this area. As a result of pressures from the south, the relative peace and stability were replaced by an era of violent insecurity.

Oorlams, Basters and whites

Nigel Penn’s book, The forgotten frontier: colonist and Khoisan on the Cape’s northern frontier in the 18th century, tells the story of colonial expansion northward through the 18th century, which reduced most of the indigenous population to serfs for white landowners when they were not simply exterminated.⁹ From after 1739, he shows, colonial frontierspeople moved northward and eastward to encompass ten times the area by 1770.¹⁰ The expansion continued thereafter. The colonial boundaries declared in 1798, 1805 and 1824 dipped sharply from the coast to the middle Roggeveld, reflecting, if imperfectly, the limits of colonial settlement at these points in time. In 1808 the northern part of Stellenbosch district was declared the new magistracy of Tulbagh, and in 1822 the seat of the magistracy was moved to Worcester; in 1837 Clanwilliam was split off as a separate magistracy. In 1818 the magistracy of Beaufort (later Beaufort West) was declared to the east of the Tulbagh/Worcester/Clanwilliam area. The territory east of Namaqualand and north-east of the 1798/1824 boundaries – from the Hantam, Roggeveld and Nieuweveld in the south, up to the Orange River in the north – became known as ‘Bushmanland’.

There were some of the indigenous population who escaped the fate of enserfdom or extermination. Moreover in the north the initially predominant independent frontierspeople were brown – identifying themselves as Basters or Oorlams (or, later, Griqua). In comparison, white colonisation of the north was sparse. For example, the white population of Stellenbosch district, stretching northward from the western Cape, was 7 256 in 1798, most of them concentrated around the town itself.¹¹ White occupancy of Namaqualand started from the 1740s though the first loan farms were only registered from 1750 – by which time most white settlement had been diverted eastward.¹² White occupation of the Hantam (around present-day Calvinia) took place first in 1750 and by the early 1780s some of the richest agricultural families in the Cape had loan farms in this area.¹³ By 1777 farms were registered to white owners north of the Koperberge and by 1776 on the Orange River around the later Pella.¹⁴

Though Basters, the progeny of colonist-Khoi intercourse, had their origin in the 17th century the term only appears to have become common in the mid-18th century.¹⁵ Eighteenth-century Cape society, based on enslavement of blacks, was not a society of equals but of gradations of status along lines of wealth, gender, links with Europe, religion and ethnicity/colour.¹⁶ A ‘Baster’ was different from a ‘Dutchman’ and the distinction became more pronounced through the century. The best life-chance for Basters, of course, was to become regarded as colonists themselves, registered landowners, members of the Christian church – to ‘pass as white’ in the words of more recent times. Many succeeded in this – a better fate than most people of colour were enduring.

By the mid-18th century Basters were well established in the Hantam and in Namaqualand, with families moving to these areas from further south.¹⁷ In Namaqualand in the 1770s Gordon remarked how the majority of white farmers settled along the Groene River ‘have a Hottentot woman or two to whom, so I have heard, they are married in their fashion’.¹⁸ The offspring of such marriages were likely, at the least, to become trusted servants and overseers, and also aspire to stock-farming in their own right. As Lichtenstein wrote, ‘At the death of one of these heads of [colonist] families, his servant [in whose veins Christian blood often flowed] would often assume his name and not infrequently sought himself to some little spot, to which he retired with all belonging to him, and gained a subsistence for himself and his family by the breeding of cattle.’¹⁹ However the term Baster became increasingly fluid. In 1866, of the inhabitants of De Tuin (in the middle of Bushmanland) it was said that ‘the common name given to them is Bastards, although they may be Hottentots… the Hottentots and Kafirs are all called Bastards there’. Even Bushmen ‘themselves become Bastards in a few years’.²⁰ In 1880 the Basters were described as

a separate class, intermarrying among themselves. They vary from the thoroughly respectable, slightly coloured farmer, hardly distinguishable in anything from the Dutch Boer down to the poor shiftless, almost Hottentot, living principally on game, and hardly understanding Dutch. The great majority, however, are fairly civilised, can read and write a little, and are professing Christians. They possess generally a wagon, a tent, and sufficient stock to live on, eating principally meat and milk.²¹

Among early Baster areas of settlement on the frontier were Loeriesfontein (just inside the colonial boundary of 1798),²² the Hantam area,²³ the Zak River (at what in 1845 was to become Amandelboom),²⁴ and Namaqualand. As it was put later, ‘[the] Bastards in Gordonia came originally from the Roggeveld and Nieuwveldt’.²⁵ De Tuin, to become a settlement site in Bushmanland in the 1860s, was claimed to have been occupied by Basters as trekveld ‘from time immemorial’. There was ‘not constant occupation of one spot, but within the limits of that tract where they have always moved about… they have always lived in the grass veld at Bushmanland but they have sometimes gone nearer to the direction of Hantam and Bokkeveld’.²⁶

The discourse of the day recognised other categories of brown people. ‘Bastard-Hottentots’ were strictly the progeny of slave-Khoi intercourse – though there was some blurring with the term ‘Bastard’. ‘Oorlams’, a term originating with the colonised, were ‘Hottentots who come from the upper country and are born and bred with the farmers, most of whom understand and speak the low Dutch language’.²⁷ In other words, Oorlams were Khoi who while in service with colonial masters acquired not merely Dutch but Western clothes, and skills in firearms, horse-riding, etc. – and who were now seeking an existence outside colonial society. Penn locates the origin of Oorlams (proto-Oorlams, or Creole people as he puts it) in the Drakenstein mountains in the early 18th century.²⁸

The pressures on brown frontierspeople were twofold. On the one hand, there was the aspiration to upward mobility and acceptance by colonial society. On the other hand, as the reality of colour differentiation increased, including legislative measures, there was a quest for independence which pushed them into closer relations with less acculturated indigenous resisters. As a missionary put it in 1866, when asked why Basters lived in the dry lands of the interior, ‘[they] would not know where to go to: they have always lived on the frontier of the [white] farmers’.²⁹

The Oorlam and Griqua revolutions, 1780–1840

From the latter part of the 18th century the area north and south of the Orange River along almost its whole length became a frontier zone – a zone of mutual acculturation in which there was no single source of legitimate authority.³⁰ While these conditions may have prevailed also in earlier times, the distinctive feature of this frontier zone was that it was generated by colonisation. In this context ‘acculturation’ involved the commoditisation of social relations, as trade with Europeans supplemented subsistence existence. It also involved, from 1800, the arrival of European missionaries, who established themselves with communities in an attempt to convert them to ‘civilised’ values and modes of existence, usually with the emphasis on settled agriculture, trade in European goods, and Christianity.³¹

In 1774, as the result of increasing Bushman attacks on the frontier, the Cape government decided to send out a ‘general expedition’ of three commandos against them along the southern boundary of the country’s inland plateau (the Great Escarpment) which killed or captured some 700 Bushmen. It was a prelude to confrontation – a chain reaction of violence – that would occur in the next decades, which included genocidal war against the Bushmen.³² Between 1780 and 1840, in fact, the situation in the vicinity of the Orange River was transformed along its whole course. The change was catalysed in the west in 1786 by the Hantam veldwagmeester (equivalent to a field-cornet, a local official of the state) Adriaan van Zyl who – having gained government permission for an attack on the Bushmen of Bushmanland – instead led a commando into Great Namaqualand and up the Orange River as far as its junction with the Vaal, raiding cattle and acting with brutality.³³ Previous European and Baster activity in the area had largely been confined to hunting for ivory north of the Orange and even up the river as far as the Korana. Now it often involved attacking Bushmen as a pretext in an attempt to secure government approval. Much of it took place in Great Namaqualand. However there is also evidence of attacks eastward up the Orange on Tswana groups.³⁴

The Bushmen were compelled to defend the escarpment, which was the line of transition from winter to summer rainfall. ‘Beyond this point [to the north] there was no further region that could serve as a focal point for a cycle of transhumance… for the Khoikhoin or the San only retention of the escarpment could preserve them… Without access to the resources on both sides of the escarpment and the water of the escarpment itself the Khoisan were doomed, hence the desperate fighting of the 1770s, 1780s and 1790s.’³⁵ In addition to its aridity, this Bushman resistance helped to protect Bushmanland from invasion by forces from the south. It was 240 kilometres south to north of

a vast tract of land which was almost continually stricken by drought. Water was [generally] obtainable only from water-holes… anywhere from twenty to sixty miles apart. After the summer rains water remained in open pans for only a few weeks before evaporating. Vegetation, pasturage and forage were also scarce resources… In addition, the area was subject to periodic attacks of locusts and horse-sickness which was fatal prevailed in the summer, particularly near the [Orange] river.³⁶

However there remained two routes from the south to the Orange: one through Namaqualand and the other from the Hantam through Bushmanland along river beds. From the Hantam to the Orange River

[there] was only one sure path across the flats, which was taken by raiders moving in both directions. This lay up the valley of the Zak and Hartebeest rivers, which flow occasionally – from the Hantam and the Kareeberg to the Orange River near Kakamas. Generally they are dry, but their sand beds hold water which can be reached by digging, and their banks are thickly wooded, so that a force is to some extent concealed. Thus, when a raiding party could achieve surprise, it could travel at great pace deep into its adversaries’ territory without difficulty.³⁷

By the 1770s prominent Baster families had moved to Namaqualand from further south. Adam Kok, the likely son of escaped slave Claas Kok by a Griqua mother, left his Piketberg farm in 1771 and with his sons Cornelius and Salomon acquired farms in Namaqualand.³⁸ By the late 1770s Klaas Berends, a ‘Goeyeman Hottentot’, that is, a Goringhaiqua from the western Cape, had a farm at the junction of the Hartebeest and the Orange, and also became overseer of the Hantam farms of the owner of the colonial meat contract by 1784.³⁹ In the 1770s also Klaas Afrikaner (father of Jager and Titus), the son of ‘Oude Ram’ who was convicted in 1761 for the attempted murder of Adam Kok, moved to the Hantam. Here he became the servant of Peter Pienaar, a colonist born in 1750, who had a farm there.⁴⁰ By 1786 Jan Bloem, a German sailor who had deserted in 1780, was overseer of a loan farm of Peter Pienaar’s at the Hartebeest-Orange junction. By 1790 there were indications that raided cattle from Great Namaqualand were reaching the Hantam.⁴¹

Towards the coast, and north of the Orange, Brigitte Lau has outlined what she characterises as an Oorlam revolution between 1780 and 1840, spearheaded by the aforementioned Afrikaner family, which, after severing relations with Pienaar in 1796,⁴² moved first to islands on the middle Orange, then north of the Orange, then north-west, from where they began to transform what is now Namibia (see chapter 6). Jonker Afrikaner, son of Jager and grandson of Klaas, established a ‘powerful if rudimentary state… in the border area between Namaland and Hereroland by the mid-1820s’, from where it dominated what is today central-southern Namibia for two decades. Invited by the Nama Red Nation to prevent the southward movement of Herero, Jonker Afrikaner built up a strong alliance with other Nama/Oorlam groups in the area.⁴³ According to Lau, an 18th-century political economy of self-sufficient nomadic pastoralism, organised on the basis of kinship relations, was displaced by one based on commodity exchange with the Cape Colony, organised politically around the commando system (with militarised leadership) and the presence of Christian missionaries. In addition to new groups, some, such as the Nama Bondelswarts (a community living north of the lower Orange) became Oorlamicised and, in fact, signed a treaty with the colonial government in 1830.⁴⁴ Despite criticism by Dedering, Lau’s argument broadly holds up.⁴⁵ Sporadic war between Nama groups and the Herero took place. In the 1860s, however, the intervention in this fighting of Europeans hostile to the Afrikaner family hegemony resulted in the Afrikaner-created state losing its dominance in central Namibia.⁴⁶

From the start of the 19th century the islands of the middle Orange were ‘the refuge for a motley collection of rabble and outcasts from the colony [including white colonists]’.⁴⁷ From 1796 Jan Bloem intensified his trading and raiding activities along the Orange River and gathered a following of Korana and Bushmen around him. He eventually moved as far as the later Bloemfontein and recruited Bushmen and Korana, and was then elected as chief of a Taaibosch clan called the Springbokke. He raided Tswana communities and died soon after 1799.⁴⁸ His son, Jan Jr, succeeded him and continued raiding through Transorangia. A complex period of population movements and widespread banditry ensued. By 1840 there were 17 separate groups of Korana.⁴⁹ ‘In many ways Bloem’s activities in the area east of the confluence of the Hartebeest and Orange River’, writes Nigel Penn, ‘were a mirror image of Afrikaner’s activities to the west. Like Afrikaner he established a group which survived the death of its founding father, presided over by his personal descendants. Like Afrikaner, too, he spread the “firearm zone” far to the north of the Orange River, destroying some groups and encouraging the coalition of others.’⁵⁰

In similar fashion, in western Transorangia, a ‘Griqua revolution’ took place, with the Kok and Berends families leading other Basters (and Khoisan) from Namaqualand up the Orange River to establish themselves by 1802 in petty states at Klaarwater (Griquatown) and subsequently at Campbell, Boetsap, Philippolis and other settlements. These states were initially ruled by prominent families (the Koks and the Berends); the election of the Bushman Andries Waterboer as kaptyn (captain) at Griquatown in 1820 represented a similar transition to that characterised by Lau in Namibia. Though not so militarised, these states depended on the commando system, and also had resident Christian missionaries. By the 1810s, argues Parsons, Griqua power had displaced Taaibosch Kora power in the area – and the Taaibosches had moved into the orbit of Tlhaping power.⁵¹ The Griqua states were beset in the 1820s by ‘Bergenaar’ and ‘Hartenaar’ raiders, multi-ethnic armed groupings. The course of events here was further complicated by developments such as the Difaqane, the arrival of Mzilikazi on the Highveld from 1825, the Great Trek from 1836, and the later establishment and retrocession of the British Orange River sovereignty between 1848 and 1854, after which Griqua power receded.⁵²

An added ingredient to the ethnic mixture along the Orange River before the end of the 18th century were Xhosa – offshoots from the Xhosa chiefdoms of the eastern frontier – leading multi-ethnic groups of raiders. A Xhosa named ‘Danster’ who had served in the Colony, and also been for a while a follower of Afrikaner, had been on the Orange since 1797 and by 1805 was leading a group which included two nephews of the Xhosa chief Ndlambe. By that time, at least, there was another Xhosa group living at the ‘sources of the Chamka’ (the Kareebergen) under a chief, Hendrick, who emerged later at Schietfontein. By 1805 these people already had firearms and were to acquire more. In that year perhaps 300–500 of them crossed the Orange, and from then until 1815 there are frequent mentions of them in contemporary sources, raiding or threatening to raid the Korana, Sotho-Tswana groups, and even the Griqua. Danster, the most effective leader, returned to the Colony in c.1805–6 and was deported by the government to Xhosa territory. From here he returned to Transorangia, perhaps as early as 1811, though certainly by late 1814. In 1816 and 1817 he was threatening the London Missionary Society (LMS) Bushman missions on the upper Orange.⁵³

A Xhosa presence around the fringes of Bushmanland-Pramberg, the Zak River, and the Kareebergen was well established by the first decade of the 19th century, where they became interspersed with Baster and Boer graziers using these summer rainfall areas as trekveld. Some Xhosa were also settled on the Orange, around the later Prieska.⁵⁴ Danster remained a key figure. We read of him exchanging ivory and cattle for firearms and ammunition between Boers and rebels at Griquatown, no doubt by means of the ‘Hartebeest-Zak’ passage across Bushmanland. He was also assisting Basters to flee the Colony to the banks of the Orange. The Xhosa, besides trading and raiding north of the Orange, were in conflict with the Bushmen and with colonists. The activities of these Xhosa were among the main causes of the establishment of the Beaufort district in 1818 and the extension of the border northward in 1824. The colonial authorities were sufficiently strengthened to disperse the most ‘unruly’ of the Zak River Xhosa. While these Xhosa were dispersed, Pramberg continued as a key trade entrepôt with trans-Orange settlements. It had some 400 residents between 1824 and 1855. Meanwhile Danster moved north-east to the valley of the Caledon where, by 1835, he had ‘about 200 or 300 Caffers under him and lives as an independent chief upon the territory of Moschush [Moshweshwe]’.⁵⁵

In 1830 there was a new departure. Colonial officials decided to ‘give’ the land around the spring at Schietfontein – beyond the colonial border and on the southern fringe of Bushmanland – to those Xhosa dispersed around the colonial borders ‘as a permanent Residency with a view that as the Kaffers being then placed between the Bushmen and the Colonists they might be a check upon the conduct of the former and ultimately put a stop to their depredations upon the colony’.⁵⁶ A captain, the aforementioned Claas Hendrick, was appointed subject to government control. The model, as Anderson suggests, was the Khoisan-based Kat River Settlement ‘buffer’ against the Xhosa on the eastern frontier. Once established, the settlement expanded rapidly: there were 620 inhabitants by 1847. Here also the Xhosa intermarried not only with Bushmen but with Basters. By about 1850 Pramberg and Schietfontein between them were occupied by 900 people, with 200 horses, 5 000 cattle, and 50 000 sheep and goats.⁵⁷

From the 1840s, however, there were continuously intensified pressures towards dispossession of these two settlements. The ‘live and let live’ of the ‘Treaty system’ period of the colonial government was replaced, as on the eastern frontier, by intensified aggression. As on the eastern frontier, the driving force behind this in the north, as Anderson vividly documents, was the expansion of wool-farming. This displaced an economy in which – whether among Boers, Basters, or Xhosa – pastoralism was merely a subsistence base for sustaining the main activities of trading/hunting/raiding: the exchange of guns, ammunition, alcohol, and horses for cattle and ivory.⁵⁸

Mid-century social relations

In 1847 Sir Harry Smith extended the colonial boundary to the Orange River, adding about 805 000 square kilometres to the Colony. Initially, the Clanwilliam and Beaufort districts were extended northward, and Bushmanland was included in the Colony – which brought the Xhosa at Pramberg and Prieska, Xhosa/ Basters at Schietfontein and the Basters at Zak River (Amandelboom) under colonial rule. In 1855 new magistracies of Calvinia, Fraserburg and Victoria (West) were established, with respective populations of 1 256 coloured and 1 173 white; 1 250 coloured and 1 250 white; 1 530 coloured and 1 470 white (Figure 1.1).⁵⁹

Later (in 1880) a colonial official described the northern parts of this area,

from Prieska in the east to Pella in the west, a distance of about 250 miles. This tract is inhabited by Dutch farmers, Kafirs, Bastards and Bushmen… Until quite recently… large tracts have lain vacant as waste Crown lands thus being available for squatters of all nationalities. The Dutch farmers, as a rule, are nomadic there is hardly a house in the district. Wagons and tents easily moved about are used as residences… The climate is hot. Open permanent waters are very few. Wells of from twenty to fifty feet deep are numerous… After rain water lies for some time in vlies [sic] and kolks, and to these open waters the inhabitants flock to escape the intolerable irksomeness of having to draw daily from wells the water necessary for their stock…⁶⁰

Figure 1.1: The Cape Colony with 1798, 1824 and 1848 boundaries.

The whole of the territory annexed by Smith became Crown Land, which could be disposed of by sale in freehold at public auction. The maximum permitted landholding was however only 6 000 acres (about 2 400 hectares) – in conditions where a viable pastoral farm required 20 000 acres (8 000 hectares) minimum. Manipulation of the law, and control of local government and of credit thenceforth allowed whites to get the upper hand in land acquisition, at the expense of poorer whites as well as Xhosa and Basters.⁶¹ As the special magistrate to the northern border put it later, ‘In this District they [Bastards] have always been the pioneers. Almost all the water places were discovered and opened up by them, but they have been pushed out and onwards by the advance of Dutch farmers until now there are not many farming on their own account, except quite near to the Orange River.’⁶²

Rhenish missionaries settled at Amandelboom in 1845 and at Schietfontein in 1847, among Basters and Xhosa.⁶³ In 1849, also, a Rhenish missionary established himself at Pella on the Orange.⁶⁴ In 1855 700–1 100 Basters ‘scattered over a wide area’ were attending services at Amandelboom and Schietfontein. There were some 439 residents at Amandelboom and 500 Basters and some 810 Xhosa at Schietfontein.⁶⁵ In addition a ‘ticket of occupation’ was granted by the colonial government to Basters at Loeriesfontein in 1860, where 58 Baster families were living on 10 000 morgen⁶⁶ – though probably 14 years earlier Basters led by Dirk Vilander (‘Philander’, Figure 1.2) had departed from the area to north of the Orange River (discussed later in this chapter).

Pressures on Xhosa land intensified, particularly during the 1846–7 and post-1850 eastern Cape frontier war period, leading to a drift of Schietfontein Xhosa away to the Prieska area at the same time that Basters from Amandelboom, under pressure from white colonists, were moving to Schietfontein. Emergent wool farmers – prominent among them J.C. Molteno (who would become the first Cape Prime Minister in 1872) – secured new positions of power in consequence of representative government in 1853. Their pressures on poorer stock farmers led in turn to fiercer pressures on the Xhosa.⁶⁷ In the 1850s the Pramberg Xhosa were evicted to Schietfontein (which was enlarged) on the decision of J.B. Auret, clerk to the chief commissioner of Beaufort (West). A thicket of competing land claims in Amandelboom was also adjudged by him and Basters lost out substantially. In 1874 the Rhenish mission abandoned the station, which contributed to its further decline.⁶⁸

With the demise of Amandelboom, pressures began to intensify on Schietfontein. Baster land claims there – originally ‘ceded’ by the colonial authorities to the Xhosa – were ignored.⁶⁹ In 1860 Schietfontein was renamed Harmsfontein and then, in 1874, Carnarvon (becoming the centre of the northernmost magistracy in the Cape Colony). The result, argues Anderson, was that within ten years the centre had become ‘a predominantly white village’.⁷⁰ Increasingly stark choices were posed for the Xhosa and Baster inhabitants. Dispossession intensified pressures of proletarianisation: an urban ‘location’, for example, was established in Victoria West in 1857/1861.⁷¹

Between the censuses of 1856 and 1865 the white population of Clanwilliam, Namaqualand and Calvinia more than doubled, while the coloured population trebled. In Fraserburg, Victoria West and Beaufort the white population almost doubled and the coloured population nearly quadrupled.⁷² By the late 1850s coloureds from Amandelboom and Schietfontein were moving north to Pella and De Tuin, and Xhosa were moving to the Prieska area.⁷³ Xhosa and Baster could also choose to occupy Bushmanland. In the Victoria West district alone, there were two million morgen of Crown land as yet unsurveyed. Moreover, as (now) ‘colonial citizens’‚ Xhosa had formally as much ‘equal rights’ as Baster or Boer to ‘squat’ on this land.⁷⁴ The result was an intensified and more bloody struggle for occupation, directed against the Bushmen in the first instance – but also between Basters, Xhosa, Boers moving northward and Korana and others in the Orange River valley claiming land to the south.⁷⁵ Moreover, behind this, the real claims to the land were also being fought out ‘in law’ to the benefit of wool farmers. Increasingly, as a petition of co1oureds expressed it in 1862, the lands of Victoria West were ‘simply sheep runs for the benefit of the few’.⁷⁶

Some information on habitation of the area between these mission stations in the Kareebergen and the Orange River was obtained by Robert Moffat Jr, government surveyor, who in 1854–5 was the first white to travel from Colesberg to Steinkopf along a route about 30 kilometres north of the old colonial boundary. This westward route, he reported, was ‘so as to keep the line of the outermost squatters’.⁷⁷ In 1856 he returned from Gams to Kuruman along the Orange River – thus skirting the centre regions of ‘Bushmanland’ because of the dangers of attack by Bushmen.⁷⁸ At Jackal Water he found ‘five or six [Baster] huts and as many waggons. One of the Bastards seemed comparatively wealthy and the rest hungry relatives and attendants.’ At Jonker Water, a saltpan, he reported, ‘[two] Bastards appear to be doing their best to cultivate the place and seemed anxious for information regarding the future disposal of Crown lands, as they had fears of the Boers claiming this or applying for it’. The nearest white farm was 48 kilometres to the south-east. At Vries Kol, some 64 kilometres north of Schietfontein, a Baster named Witboy was living. At Ganna Pan, north of the ‘outer Dutch farms’ there was shallow water where there were a few Basters and a Swede named Petersen.⁷⁹ At Krom Vley was a Boer named Steenkamp with a Baster wife, living in a semi-spherical hut. Moffat was told of 20 or more Europeans in similar circumstances along the border. At Visters Kloof were some Basters with 2 000–3 000 sheep or goats, also living in such huts. At Zout Rivier, 72 kilometres north-north-east of Amandelboom, Basters had dug a watercourse and hoped to purchase the ground from the government. ‘Many lay places and corn farms of groups of Bastards’ existed between here and Amandelboom.⁸⁰ At Twee Rivier, the junction of the Fish and Zak Rivers, Moffat ‘found several Bastards in charge of numerous flocks and herds, and troops of horses belonging to Boers of the Roggeveld’. Melkboschfontein was the home of a Dutch farmer named Jous, with a Baster wife, whom he believed ‘has been here some years’. Some 56 kilometres north of the Hantam he found some Boers with wagons and semi-spherical huts. At Kaptyn’s Kraal there were a few Basters from Loeriesfontein, cultivating gardens. Lospers Plaats was ‘a considerable lay place of the Bastards’ with a fountain, from where a road led to Pella and the Kamiesberg. Alwyn Fontein and Gamiep were further lay places for Boers and Basters. A Hollander named Hollenbach had been at Gams for 15 years, and a Baster named Losper for 18 years (that is, since 1836). Finally, at Pella Moffat encountered the missionary the Reverend Schroeder, together with a Frenchman named Gabriel, and Basters.⁸¹

The genocidal extermination which took place in Bushmanland in the 1850s and 1860s after the extension of the colonial boundary to the Orange River was first exposed by Louis Anthing, resident magistrate of the recently created magistracy of Namaqualand. In 1862 he reported to government that ‘the systematic destruction of a race of men’ was taking place ‘as if it were a necessary transaction in the business of colonial life’. The initial evidence pointed to Baster culpability, but it emerged that the main perpetrators were white farmers from the Bokkeveld, Hantam, and Roggeveld areas.⁸² There was strong resistance from the Bushmen, with the theft of colonists’ cattle because their means of subsistence were being destroyed. Though Anthing brought Bushmen to Cape Town to report on the situation, the government did nothing. Indeed the press dismissed Anthing’s mission as a ‘wild goose chase’. Anthing was transferred to Cradock and resigned from colonial service in 1866.⁸³ (For the subsequent fate of Bushmen in Gordonia and Bushmanland see chapter 4.)

The population of the Orange River valley was being augmented at this time by the return of Korana from the Orange Free State. Thus in 1859–62 the Springbokke were driven downstream from the Orange Free State.⁸⁴ Equally white farmers, with resistance well-nigh eliminated, were arriving from the south. In 1859 ‘trekboers began to advance on the Hartebeest, but only in times of drought, after which time they returned to Calvinia and Hantam. By 1863 there were a fair number of Khoi/Coloureds, Xhosa and San residing in that [Hartebeest] area and by 1866 there were more than two hundred families living there’.⁸⁵ By 1862 white colonists, it was said, ‘were congregating on the banks of the Orange in considerable numbers’.⁸⁶ Yet in 1869 it was reported that ‘[the] northern frontier or boundary of the disturbed districts, taken from Prieska to Pella is in extent, if not quite, 400 miles, and the belt of country adjoining it for a 150 miles southward… is entirely uninhabited except by a few wandering half-starved Bushmen, and occasionally by Korana squatters and a few traders’.⁸⁷ By ten years later the land within the district of Calvinia ‘on and about’ the colonial boundary ‘extending from Onseep to Rhenosterkop’ had been surveyed into farms, with all of them along the river bank, and there were plans to survey other parts of the area, then leased to both whites and Basters.⁸⁸

As a missionary put it, ‘[the] Boers followed the Bastards into Bushmanland’. They ‘drove their cattle into the free grazing land in order to spare the grass on the lands they had leased, sat down at the springs which the Bastards had opened up, brought their sick cattle among those of the Bastards, followed them with their immense herds whithersoever they might retreat, in short pestered them in every conceivable manner in order to drive them forth from the neighbourhood’.⁸⁹ As the later special magistrate on the northern border put it, ‘[there] is no doubt that some of the Dutch farmers, who as a class cannot bear to see a coloured man in any other capacity than that of a servant, tried by every means in their power to get the law so applied as to oust these people [the Basters] and thus to obtain individual enjoyment of the pasturage which the coloured people’s wells had made available’.⁹⁰

At this time De Tuin (in Bushmanland), 290 kilometres north-east of Loeriesfontein and some 100 kilometres south of the Orange River, was permanently occupied by Basters, together with Xhosa, Korana and Bushmen. A missionary had arrived in 1863. In 1866 200 families (1 200–1 500 people) lived there – 50–70 families on the station itself with 50 000 sheep and goats and 2 000 head of cattle. A wealthy six families had as many as 60 head of cattle and 1 200 sheep. But most had only 10–20 sheep. Most were poor, living ‘[by] hunting and then they have some cows and goats milk; they have plenty of springboks there’. There were about 50 families ‘of European blood’, some also poor. By 1866, however, white colonists had begun seriously to encroach on these grazing lands. The inhabitants asked government for a tract of about 10 250 square kilometres for which they were prepared to pay £200 a year. Their missionary reported that they couldn’t get work among the Boers, who preferred cheaper Bushmen and objected to feeding large families of Basters. The government refused, upon which 90 heads of families, mainly Basters‚ left for north of the Orange River where they eventually settled in Rehoboth in present-day Namibia.⁹¹

The Korana wars of 1868–9 and 1879–80

In the 1860s Olyvenhout’s Drift (to become Upington) – the principal crossing-point of the middle Orange) – was the headquarters of the Katse Korana, whose chief was Klaas Lucas (or ‘Kouriep’). He was the only Korana chief to give protection to white colonists settled within his jurisdiction. Immediately down-river from him were a number of other Korana groupings, extending to that led by Cupido Pofadder at Kakamas, who was, like Lucas, considered an ‘ally’ of the colonial government. The pressures here were intensifying. White encroachment, pushing brown and black northward, added to overpopulation of the middle Orange and heightened Korana sensibilities at encroachment on their pasture-lands to the south.⁹² In addition the assertion of Herero-European strength in Namibia from 1864 had reduced opportunities for cattle-raiding in that region.⁹³ In 1867–8 the newcomer Springbokke attacked and scattered the Katse Korana. This allowed the Korana chiefs Jan Kivido and Piet Rooy to come to the fore in raiding white colonists’ cattle.⁹⁴ With the Bushmen virtually exterminated in Bushmanland, direct confrontation took place between the Korana and whites with the Korana taking up from the Bushmen the baton of resistance to colonial incursion. ‘The Koranna depradations increased as a decade of crippling drought started, and even bands of Damara [Herero] from Namibia were forced southward and settled at Pella, from where they joined in the general rustling of stock. Stock farming on the northern border had become completely unviable.’⁹⁵

In 1867, to try to end the cattle-raiding, a colonial commando was despatched against Piet Rooy who was captured and imprisoned for three months but upon his release resumed raiding. Bushmanland, Fraserburg and Somerset East districts came virtually under the control of the Korana and Bushmen. The Colony was threatened as far south as Calvinia.⁹⁶

In consequence the government passed the Northern Border Protection Act in 1868 and appointed as special magistrate M.J. Jackson, who was stationed at Kenhardt, in Bushmanland, with 50 men of the Frontier Armed Mounted Police.⁹⁷ It was the prelude to a war, mounted with reluctant burgher commandos, and won only because the Korana, who had fought a skilful guerrilla strategy, were divided. Significantly, the first Korana attacks of the war were on Amandelboom and De Tuin – where they succeeded in capturing weapons, horses and other instruments of war from colonial forces. The Bushmen and the Korana are said to have aimed at ‘retaking that part of the Colony which extends from the Bokkeveld to the Orange River’ (in other words, Bushmanland). Concerted action by colonial forces and those of Cupido Pofadder resulted in the capture of the leaders (by means of a ruse) and an end to hostilities by February 1870.⁹⁸ The leaders, Piet Rooi, Carl Ruiters, Ian Cupido and David Diederichs, were despatched to prison on Robben Island (see also chapter 6).⁹⁹

To prevent the Korana from occupying the area south of the river Jackson suggested the creation of a buffer zone of farms along the Orange from Prieska to Pella, but white colonists did not take this up. The northern bank from the Aughrabies Falls to Griqualand West (excluding the islands) was instead left in the hands of Cupido Pofadder and Klaas Lukas in recognition of their assistance in helping the Colony and on condition that they defended the Colony against incursions from the north. What the colonial government now called ‘Korannaland’ was divided at the later Currie’s Camp, with Lukas on the river above it and Pofadder below.¹⁰⁰ In 1871 Reverend Schroeder of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) established a mission at Olyvenhout’s Drift, headquarters of Klaas Lukas’s Katse Korana.¹⁰¹ The following year Jackson proposed that Schroeder be appointed superintendent of Koranaland but the government rejected this.¹⁰² Basters (including some from De Tuin) began to move into the area – and were recognised as ‘burghers’ by Klaas Lukas – as well as white traders, who encouraged alcohol and indebtedness.¹⁰³

In 1878–9 there was renewed conflict. This was part of a final fling of armed resistance against the colonisation threat which engulfed the whole eastern and northern frontier of the Cape. However it was not defence of an aboriginal way of life, but of a way of life shaped by the circumstances of the previous century, particularly the impact of the Cape Colony. These were not ‘primary resisters’ but social bandits. War on the eastern frontier between the Cape Colony and Sarili’s Gcaleka began in August 1877, drawing in Sandile’s Ngqika. After defeat in open battle in February 1878 Sandile retreated to the Amatola mountains to continue a guerrilla fight-back for several months. It was in this period, in April 1878, that rebellion broke out in Griqualand West with a conscious decision by its leaders to ‘make a stand while the government had its hands full fighting on the eastern frontier’.¹⁰⁴ Their grievances were deprivation of land – ultimately a result of the Cape government’s annexation of the Kimberley diamond fields in 1870. As the new special magistrate of the northern border, J.H. Scott wrote, ‘the war here may be traced distinctly to the influence of the Gcaleka and Griqualand disturbances’.¹⁰⁵ It was, writes Strauss, ‘not a solely Korana war but an uprising of all the groups living along the Orange, with the exception of the Bondelswarts’. Suppressed in Griqualand by colonial forces, the rebels retreated into Koranaland and found ready support for extending the revolt. Its leaders now included Cupido Pofadder and Klaas Lukas as well as a Xhosa named Donker Malgas, a disaffected Griqua from Griqualand West, and a member of the Afrikaner family (see chapter 4).¹⁰⁶ By July 1878 the Griqualand rebels and Lukas’s people were entrenched on the islands of the Orange.¹⁰⁷

Baster settlers north of the river as well as Schroeder retreated in panic to the Colony – some, along with other Basters, joining the colonial forces.¹⁰⁸ The war – in Strauss’s account – was conducted with incredible incompetence on the colonial side, leading to mutiny and desertion by burgher forces, and to Pofadder, also once a loyal colonial ally, joining the revolt until Thomas Upington, Cape Attorney-General, took personal control in March 1979.¹⁰⁹ The main colonial offensive took place from April, and succeeded by July in crushing the uprising, with characteristic colonial brutalities, including the killing of women and children (see also chapter 6).¹¹⁰ The so-called Koegas atrocities, which aroused concern even in Britain, involved the ‘iniquitous acquittal’ of persons who had murdered unarmed prisoners, including women and children.¹¹¹ Many of the Korana and African rebels were reduced to farmworkers or illegal squatters on their own land.¹¹² The chiefs, including Pofadder, were sent to Robben Island, where Klaas Lukas died in January 1880. The remaining chiefs were released from Robben Island in 1883–4, when their attempts to re-establish themselves proved futile (see chapter 6).¹¹³

Origins of the Vilander state

The first Baster state to be formed north of the Orange River was that of the Vilanders. Since the timing of the origins of this state is subject to different versions, and because it was the first, and probably the first to have a constitution, a separate treatment of it is required.

About the year 1846, one Dirk Philander, a Colonial Bastard, trekked from the Colony into this country with a band of companions. He asked and obtained permission from the Africanders, to occupy a tract of country to the north of ‘Blydeverwacht’. After some years, the Africanders attacked him; but he succeeded in repulsing the attack, and has since remained in undisturbed possession of the country occupied by him and has, for many years, had his headquarters at ‘Mier’. He has succeeded in establishing a practical ownership to the country occupied by his people, and a chieftainship over the latter.¹¹⁴

In 1880 the Tlharo told colonial officials that they regarded Mier as part of their territory, and had given it to Vilander about 15–20 years earlier to settle on, in other words, in about 1865.¹¹⁵

Figure 1.2: Dirk Vilander.

An earlier version of these events by Sir Thomas Upington, perhaps the first recorded, states:

Philander originally left this Colony as Captain or Headman of some Colonial Bastards, who by permission of Jacobus Africander, father of the present chief, settled under his chieftainship at or near Haas. After a short time Philander and the late Jacobus Africander quarrelled, the result being that in 1869 Philander and his people either were driven or fled from Africander’s country. Philander appears to have thereupon proceeded to Bechuanaland where it is said he became a subject of Bareke, the so-called paramount chief of the Batlaro tribe, by whom it is further alleged he was suffered to reside at Mier in Bareke’s country. Philander however denies any such subjection, and claims the country by right of occupation under a treaty with the British Government. I have not been able to ascertain whether such a treaty was ever made...¹¹⁶

The date of 1869, however, seems rather late for the quarrel between Vilander and Afrikaner; moreover ‘Haas’ and ‘Mier’ are virtually the same place. In 1871 the traveller and trader Anderson recorded that ‘[in] 1871 Meer had become quite a tidy village, of about twenty-five houses, some of them built of red brick. The Chief was Dirk Falander, who held a magistrate’s court and tried prisoners; it is a little republic upon a small scale, not more than 100 all told, except the Bushmen slaves’ – there was a ‘considerable traffic and trade’ with the Cape.’¹¹⁷

A later (and fuller) version reads: ‘At about this period [1863] there was a considerable migration of Bastards northward across the Orange River... At Loeriesfontein, Amandelboom and De Tuin there were large and prosperous Bastard settlements, with their missionaries.’ With encroachment by European farmers the Basters

were content to seek fresh fields and so crossed the Orange River. With the permission of the Hottentots they settled down in the South-East portion of Great Namaqualand, in the territory of the ‘Afrikander’ Hottentots... The Vilander family appears to have been an influential one, for its head, Dirk, became a sort of ‘under Captain’ to Afrikander, presumably to represent the new element. Vilander’s father was a white man and his mother a slave and the farm Loeriesfontein, in the Calvinia district, is said to have been granted him by the Colonial Government. In the course of their stay at Blydeverwacht, the Bastards hunted northwards to this [Mier, or Rietfontein] and, finding the game plentiful and the country adapted for stock-raising, they settled down here about the year 1865.¹¹⁸ Only about a dozen families formed the first settlement here, but in small numbers it constantly received additions. A few years after Vilander had arrived here he received an urgent appeal from Afrikander to come to his assistance, as the Bondelzwarts Hottentots were meditating an attack on him. Vilander, however, sent wagons to fetch Afrikander and his followers and they too settled down here [i.e. at Rietfontein/Mier – or Haas, as the account by Upington has it]. Jacobus Africander still considered himself the Captain, but he had a feeling that his influence was waning as the prosperity of the Bastards increased and that he was being patronised. Rivalries and jealousies in the hunting veldt soon led to an open breach between himself and Vilander, whom he accused of plotting to supplant him.

Vilander was ordered to leave, and the next morning the Basters surprised and routed Afrikaner’s people.

Vilander, suspecting that Afrikander would seek for reinforcements from Namaqualand, with his people trekked east to the Bechuana chief Bareke, and settled down for a year at Heunings Vlei. Later he returned to Rietfontein. They found Afrikander and a few Hottentots living hereabouts, but no notice was taken of them... Afrikander... subsequently settled down at Narougas... Steps were taken on the return from Heuning Vlei to form some sort of Government, and a Raad or Council was nominated by the Captain to assist him.¹¹⁹

They implemented what they remembered of colonial law; burghers were expected to pay tribute according to their means; ‘true socialistic principles’ were followed; they sunk wells; European traders began to come, at first from Kuruman.

In 1874 Vilander asked for a missionary to be sent here, and the following year the Rev Mr Weber came to visit him... He found 50 souls at this place, and mentions visiting Vilander at Mier [i.e. Rietfontein] and other people at Schepkolk, but did not record the number he found there... it was not till 1885 that a missionary, Mr Pabst, of the Rhenish Mission Society was appointed. Divine service was, however, always conducted by the Captain or one of the older men.¹²⁰

By 1885, Vilander’s territory ‘extended South as far as the farm Abeam, thence to the Bak River... from there North as far as the Nosop River and Eastwards as far as the Molopo River’.¹²¹

Supportive evidence that Vilander came from Loeriesfontein, and in the late 1840s, is found in evidence given in 1892 to an enquiry into the history of land rights there. Several witnesses stated that Loeriesfontein was originally a kraal of the Khoi tribal leader Ruyter Vilander, whose son was Dirk Vilander. Ruyter, it is said, gave over his rights to other Khoi and Basters intermarried with them when he and his following left for the Orange River.¹²²

Another variant of the origin of the Vilanders (in an anonymous pamphlet in the UCT African Studies Library) states that

[under] the leadership of kaptyn Frederick Bok a group of followers left the Cape Peninsula in 1830 because they were unhappy with the Cape regime. Frederick Bok died on the road at Bak River, between Loeriesfontein and Kenhardt and leadership was assumed by Dirk Vilander. Dirk Vilander – part Malayan and part British – was born in Stellenbosch in 1807… They trekked slowly through Bushmanland and reached Kakamas… Further and further they travelled and reached the Molopo river… It went without saying that they looked for a place to settle that was full of wild game like the Nossop [river]. The area to the west of Twee Panne was decided on. That was in the year 1865.¹²³

In 1840 – probably before Vilander could have left Loeriesfontein – the missionary Tindall visited the Afrikaners at Jerusalem and found Basters there. In 1853 he reported that ‘several families of Bastards, who had left the Afrikaners some years ago, had now again taken up their abode with them’.¹²⁴ The Afrikaners, according to Tindall in 1855, ‘number about four hundred, including a number of Colonial Bastards or half castes, who have joined them’.¹²⁵ So Vilander was not the first of the Basters to settle north of the Orange River, but the first to establish an autonomous state.

Notes

1N. Parsons, ‘Notes on the history of the Korana and their relationship with the Batlhaping’, in S. Swanepoel (ed.), Resistance in the northern Cape in the nineteenth century: history and commemoration (Kimberley: McGregor Museum, 2012), pp. 45–6.

2See generally, M. Legassick, ‘The Sotho-Tswana before 1800 AD’, in L. Thompson (ed.), African societies in Southern Africa (London: Heinemann, 1969); M. Legassick, The politics of a South African frontier: the Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the missionaries, 1780–1840 (Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2010), ch. 1.

3A. Morris, Missing and murdered: a personal adventure in forensic anthropology (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2011), pp. 180–1. See also A. Morris, ‘The Einiqua: an analysis of the Kakamas skeletons’, in A.B. Smith (ed.), Einiqualand: studies of the Orange River frontier (Cape Town: UCT Press, 1995).

4Parsons, ‘Notes on the history’, p. 48. On Korana origins see also R. Moffat, CPP G1-1858 p. 6.

5Parsons, ‘Notes on the history’, pp. 48–51.

6Ibid., pp. 48, 50.

7Ibid., pp. 50–2.

8Parsons, ‘Notes on the history’, p. 49; Penn, ‘Orange River frontier zone’, pp. 38–42; Penn, Forgotten frontier, pp. 160–4.

9See also V. Allen, S. Mngqolo and S. Swanepoel, The struggle for liberation and freedom in the northern Cape (Kimberley: McGregor Museum, 2012), p. 17.

10Penn, Forgotten frontier, p. 81.

11Ibid., p. 3.

12Penn, ‘Orange River frontier zone’, pp. 29–31; Penn, Forgotten frontier, p. 85.

13Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, p. 104.

14Penn, ‘Orange River frontier zone’, pp. 33, 46–7, 110.

15Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, p. 47.

16R. Elphick and H. Giliomee (eds), The shaping of South African society, 1652–1820 (Cape Town: Longman, 1989), pp. 159–60, 202–3, 457–9.

17See Penn, The forgotten frontier, pp. 167–8; Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, pp. 52–7.

18P.E. Raper and M. Boucher (eds), Robert Jacob Gordon: Cape travels, 1777–1786 ( Johannesburg: Brenthurst Press, 1988), Vol. 2, p. 295.

19Quoted in Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, p. 47.

20C. Schroeder in CPP A8-1866, Report of the Select Committee appointed to consider and report on a petition from Bastards and others at the Rhenish Missionary Station, pp. 8, 14–5. There were also five Englishmen living at De Tuin, some with ‘coloured wives’.

21Scott, ‘Report of the Special Magistrate, Northern Border’ in CPP G13-1880, Bluebook for Native Affairs, p. 169.

22See G.S.J. Moller, Loeriesfontein, 1860–1897 (Loeriesfontein: n.p., 1988); CPP A8-1866, pp. 17, 21.

23In the course of research for the Commission on Land Restitution I have collected biographies of original Baster inhabitants of Gordonia in the 1880s. Of 40 of these, 21 were born in the Calvinia district (i.e. the Hantam): one in 1806, one in 1811 and one in 1814, eight in the 1820s or 1830s, six in the 1840s, four in the 1850s to 1870s. In other words their parents’ occupation of the region pre-dated these dates.

24See UG41-1926, Report of the Rehoboth Commission, p. 27. Of the Gordonia Basters, six were born in Williston, the later name for Amandelboom, in 1841, 1849, 1854, 1861, 1864, and 1865 respectively.

25CA SGBB27, Undated piece of paper.

26J. Schroeder, evidence 24/11/1866, in CPP A8-1866, p. 4.

27London Missionary Society (LMS) Journals 1/6, Albrecht and Siedenfaden, entry October 12, 1805 in LMS Journals, 1/6, quoted in Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, p. 48.

28Penn, Forgotten frontier, p. 13.

29J. Schroeder, evidence 24/11/1866, in CPP A8-1866, p. 6.

30See Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, pp. 6ff.

31There is a vast literature on this subject, but see for example Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, passim; M. Legassick, The struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800–1854: subjugation and the roots of South African democracy ( Johannesburg: KMM Review, 2011), passim.

32S. Newton-King, Masters and servants on the Cape eastern frontier, 1760–1803 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 74ff.

33Penn, ‘Orange River frontier zone’, pp. 52–7; Penn, Forgotten frontier, pp. 172–8.

34Penn, Forgotten frontier, pp. 178ff.

35N. Penn, Pastoralists and pastoralism in the northern Cape frontier zone during the eighteenth century (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, UCT, 1986), p. 9.

36T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 19–20. See also Newton-King, Masters and servants, pp. 70ff for qualification of Penn’s argument.

37Ross, ‘!Kora wars’, p. 563. For a description of the route in about 1870 see Anon, ‘In the Achterveld’, in A. Schaefer (ed.), Life and travels in the north-west, 1850–1899: Namaqualand, Bushmanland and the West Coast (Cape Town: Yoshi, 2008), pp. 154–7.

38Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, pp. 52, 55; Penn, ‘Orange River frontier zone’, pp. 33–4.

39Penn, ‘Orange River frontier zone’, pp. 33–4, 44, 54; Penn, Forgotten frontier, p. 168; Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, p. 55.

40Penn, Forgotten frontier, p. 168.

41Penn, ‘Orange River frontier zone’, pp. 51, 55–6; Penn, Forgotten frontier, p. 175.

42See Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, pp. 70–1.

43B. Lau, Southern and central Namibia in Jonker Afrikaner’s time (Windhoek: National Archives, 1987), pp. 28–40.

44See Smith’s report, in GH 19/4, published in W.F. Lye, Andrew Smith’s journal of his expedition into the interior of South Africa, 1834–36: an authentic narrative of travels and discoveries, the manners and customs of the native tribes, and the physical nature of the country (Cape Town: Balkema, 1975); also T. Dedering, ‘Southern Namibia c.1700–c.1840: Khoikhoi, missionaries and the advancing frontier’ (PhD, UCT, 1989), pp. 24, 250–7, 262–6. Knowledge of the earlier history of the Bondelswarts is scant: see V.L. Tonchi, W.A. Lindeke and J.J. Grotpeter (eds), Historical dictionary of Namibia (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2012). In terms of the treaty, the Bondelswarts chief got yearly supplies of ammunition and commodities from the Cape government, in return for submitting reports to it. See, for example, D’Urban to Abraham, chief of the Bondelswarts, 26/3/1834, British Parliamentary Papers (henceforth BPP) Cd560, pp. 113–5; Cook and A. Christian to Sir B. D’Urban, 30/9/1837, CA GH19/4, cited in Dedering, ‘Southern Namibia’, pp. 25, 265–6, 275, 281–2; Abraham Bondelswarts to Governor, 8/8/1838, 26/8/1845, CA GH14/1, cited in Lau, Southern and central Namibia, pp. 39–40. The treaty is referred to by H. Tindall, ‘Two lectures on Great Namaqualand and its inhabitants delivered before the Mechanics’ Institute, Cape Town’ (Cape Town, 1856), p. 34 as existing in 1856. The next reference I have traced is in 1860, when the magistrate in Namaqualand (a magistracy was established in 1855) asks whether he has been rightly informed that the Bondelswarts chief draws an allowance from the government (Regional magistrate [RM] to Colonial Secretary, 12/7/1860, CA 1/SBK 5/1/1). See also RM to Reverend John Priestley, Nisbet Bath [Warmbad], 19/10/1860, CA 1/SBK 5/1/1; Anthing to Col. Sec., 1/4/1862, CA CO4414; Message from His Excellency…, p. 2, CPP A39-1863; Message from His Excellency the Governor… relative to affairs in the North Western districts of the Colony; RM, Report, 4/7/1862, CA 1/SBK 5/1/2; RM to Reverend J. Priestley, Nisbet Bath, 11/7/1864, CA 1/SBK 5/1/3; Col. Sec. to RM, Namaqualand, 17/9/1866; RM, Namaqualand to Col. Sec. 24/4/1867, BPP C3110. In 1869, when Abraham died, to be replaced by Willem Christian, the Namaqualand magistrate wrote to ask for continuation of payment of the allowance of £9/5/10 provided for in the treaty: RM, Namaqualand to Col. Sec. 21/6/1869; Col. Sec. to RM Namaqualand, 30/11/1869, CPP G61-1879, Report on and papers connected with affairs on the northern border, p. xii. The allowance is subsequently recorded as £50. Sir Thomas Upington refers to a treaty of 31/1/1870 with William Christian in a letter of 17/9/1884 enclosed in Bramston to Pauncefote, 25/10/1884 (FO Confidential Print, 5060, p. 135).

45Dedering, ‘Southern Namibia’ passim. Lau’s picture of an ‘Oorlam invasion’ of southern Namibia, of parasitic acculturated Khoi commando groups serving the interests of colonial merchant capital, and underdeveloping Namibian society, has been challenged and qualified by Dedering, ‘Southern Namibia’. He points out (a) that the Oorlam groups did not invade but rather were formed in southern Namibia, with a strong missionary influence; (b) that initially they aimed to withdraw from colonial society rather than act as its ‘agents’; (c) that it was only after mid-century that all the Oorlam groups became parasitic and militaristic; (d) that ‘[merchant] capital did not come to play its domineering role before Nama/Oorlam groups and Herero cattle-breeders entered into a complex network that was regulated by conflicts and alliances alike’ (p. 217); (e) that ‘Oorlam’ groups did not become fully ‘Europeanised’, but that there was coexistence of European and indigenous cultural practices among them.

46See Lau, Southern and central Namibia, ch. 7.

47T. Strauss, War along the Orange, p. 21.

48Penn, Forgotten frontier, pp. 198–9; Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, pp. 66–79.

49Parsons, ‘Notes on the history’, p. 55.

50Penn, ‘Orange River frontier zone’, p. 74.

51Parsons, ‘Notes on the history’, p. 54.

52Legassick, Politics of a South African frontier, chs 4–12.

53Ibid., pp. 122–3. See also E.D. Anderson, ‘A history of the Xhosa of the northern Cape, 1795–1879’ (PhD, UCT, 1985), pp. 35–6, 45.

54E.D. Anderson, ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, pp. 8, 11–4, 20–4.

55Ibid., pp. 40–1. Also ibid., pp. 24–5, 29–36.

56Ibid., ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, p. 38.

57Ibid., pp. 36–9, 40–1, 45–6, 78–9.

58Ibid., pp. 47–8.

59D.A. Findlay, ‘The San of the Cape Thirstland and L. Anthing’s special mission’ (BA Honours, UCT, 1977), p. 62. See also Findlay, ibid., pp. 28–9 and CPP G12-1855, Abstract of returns relating to villages recommended as seats of new magistracies.

60J. Scott, Special Commissioner, Kenhardt, 5/1/1880, CPP G13-1880, p. 168. He wrote also, ‘The country is occupied by Dutch farmers having one or three year leases from Government of large unsurveyed holdings, varying in extent from 30,000 to 150,000 acres. Several families generally live at the permanent water places, and after rain they move away to the vleys.’ In J. Scott, Special Commissioner, 20/2/1881, CPP G20-1881, pp. 84–5.

61E.D. Anderson, ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, pp. 50–4, 55–7, 58–62, 102–3, 106–9.

62J. Scott, Special Commissioner, 15/1/1885, CPP G2-1885, Bluebook on Native Affairs, p. 43.

63E. Strassberger, The Rhenish Mission Society in South Africa, 1830–1950 (Cape Town: Struik, 1969), p. 79; E.D. Anderson, ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, p. 69; J. Marais, The Cape coloured people, 1652–1937 (London: Longmans Green, 1939), pp. 85–6. There were freed slaves at both institutions.

64Marais, Cape coloured people, pp. 84, 88.

65UG41-1926, Report of the Rehoboth Commission, p. 27; Marais, Cape coloured people p. 86.

66Marais, Cape coloured people, p. 90. The Loeriesfontein ticket of occupation was withdrawn in 1892, and the area was divided up. See also CPP A55-1860, Return… on granting of Looriesfontein to the Bastards; CPP A8-1866; CPP G10-1893, Selection from correspondence relating to the settlement of Loeriesfonten in the division of Calvinia. One morgen is approximately 0.9 hectares.

67E.D. Anderson, ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, pp. 67, 69–73, 88, 101–2, 109, 138. The missionary Alheit had a plan in 1850 for moving the Xhosa of both Pramberg and Schietfontein away from these pressures to a ‘mission reserve’ in the Prieska area where they could engage in agriculture based on irrigation from the Orange, and from where the other inhabitants of the river valley – Baster, Korana, Bushmen – could be proselytised. But the government did not approve: see E.D. Anderson, ibid., pp. 78–85.

68Ibid., pp. 83–100; Marais, Cape coloured people, pp. 86–7.

69E.D. Anderson, ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, pp. 114–22. Again Alheit thought of evacuation to the Orange, but a Xhosa search party rejected a site at the Hartebeest junction (near the later Kakamas) as too dry for settlement.

70Ibid., p. 124; Strassberger, Rhenish Mission, pp. 82–3. Also E.D. Anderson, ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, pp. 156–7, 159–60.

71E.D. Anderson, ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, pp. 104, 136–7. In 1856 Moffat, meeting Korana on the Orange River, noted that ‘those on the south [bank] are more or less mixed with colonial Bastards and Kafirs belonging to the Schietfontein location’: CPP G1-1858, p. 5.

72Findlay, ‘San of the Cape thirstland’, p. 29.

73T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 23–4. See also Schroeder, 1879, cited in J.A.J. Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending langs die Benede-Oranje, met besondere verwysing na die werk van die NG Kerk in Koranaland (teenswoordige Upington en omgewing) – ’n historiese oorsig’ (MTheol, Stellenbosch University, 1953), pp. 75–7.

74E.D. Anderson, ‘Xhosa of the northern Cape’, pp. 126, 131–3.

75On the last point, see ibid., pp. 139–41.

76Quoted in ibid., p. 136.

77R. Moffat, ‘Journey from Colesberg to Steinkopf in 1854–5’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 28, 1858, p. 159.

78Moffat, ‘Journey from Colesberg’ pp. 153–78; R. Moffat, ‘Journey from Little Namaqualand Eastward along the Orange River, the Northern Frontier of the Colony, &c &c, in August, 1856’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 28, 1858, pp. 184-7. (The first of these two pieces is reprinted in Schaefer (ed.), Life and travels, pp. 39–67). See also R. Moffat, CPP G1-1858, pp. 7, 15: Basters in the Prieska area, some of them occasionally living in Namaqualand, trekked along the north bank of the Orange for fear of Bushmen.

79Moffat, ‘Journey from Colesberg’, p. 163.

80Ibid., p. 164.

81Ibid., pp. 12–4,16–7.

82Findlay, ‘San of the Cape Thirstland’, pp. 31, 34–7; J.M. de Prada-Samper, ‘Landscape as memorial: building on the legacy of Louis Anthing’, in S. Swanepoel (ed.), Resistance in the northern Cape in the nineteenth century: history and commemoration (Kimberley: McGregor Museum, 2012), pp. 91–3. Findlay, ibid., p. 52 notes however that the bulk of Anthing’s report dealt with clashes between Basters and Bushmen.

83Findlay, ‘San of the Cape Thirstland’, pp. 43–4; Prada-Samper, ‘Louis Anthing’, p. 95.

84Parsons, ‘Notes on the history’, p. 55. See also R. Moffat, CPP G1-1858, pp. 5–6: ‘It is from Eis to the Waterfall, on both banks, that we have the Korannas in a more undisturbed and homogeneous state, and their numbers are being daily increased by accessions from the east… The cupidity of speculators in the new territory [the Orange Free State] who bought up lands along the river occupied by small groups of these people, and the demands of farmers who afterwards purchased and wished to take possession, led to their further expulsion from the south bank of the river [Vaal].’ Equally, added Moffat, in the Transvaal.

85Findlay, ‘San of the Cape Thirstland’, pp. 29–30.

86T. Strauss, War along the Orange, p. 23.

87Jackson to Colonial Secretary, 11/1/1869, CPP G61-1879, p. xxiii.

88Upington, ‘Report on Northern Border Affairs’, CPP G61-1879, p. iv.

89C. Schroeder in CPP A8-1866, pp. 1, 4–6, 8–9. See also Marais, Cape coloured people, p. 88.

90J. Scott, Special Commissioner, 15/1/1885, CPP G2-1885, p. 43.

91Marais, Cape coloured people, pp. 88–9. See also R.G. Britz, H. Lang and C. Limpricht, A concise history of the Rehoboth Basters until 1990 (Windhoek: Hess, 1999). Rehoboth had been occupied by the (Nama) Swartboois but they had left it in 1864.

92T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 23–7, 117–8.

93Ross, ‘!Kora wars’, pp. 568–9; Lau, Southern and central Namibia, ch. 7.

94Parsons, ‘Notes on the history’, p. 55. See also Smith, Einiqualand, p. 305; T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 7–10; Ross, ‘!Kora wars’, pp. 569–70. The Bovenstanders were also upstream from the Katse. For the fate of the Taaibosch, living at Mamusa (subsequently Schweizer-Reneke) in the Transvaal sphere of influence, see Parsons, ‘Notes on the history’, pp. 56–8.

95A. Schaefer, ‘The Koranna Wars: 1868–9 and 1878–9’, in Schaefer (ed.), Life and travels, pp. 208–9.

96T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 28–39; Ross, ‘The !Kora wars’, pp. 570–1; Smith, Einiqualand, p. 305.

97Jackson was replaced by Hook in 1875, who was replaced by Nesbitt in 1878, with Jackson returning from December 1878 to May 1879.

98T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 40–54; Ross, ‘!Kora wars’, pp. 571–3; Findlay, ‘San of the Cape Thirstland’, p. 57 from CPP A54-1868, Memorial from Divisional Council of Calvinia on the subject of depasturing licence act and Korana depradations; R. Moffat, Report of a survey, CPP G1-1858, pp. 3–4.

99See Scott to Scanlen, 20/2/1883, CA NBC15; Scott and de Smidt to SNA, 15/11/1883, CA NA168. See also CPP A45-1880, Return showing names of all prisoners of war; CPP A74-1880, Memorandum re proposed detention of certain persons as prisoners of war.

100T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 55–64. For the treaties (dated 26 January 1870) see CPP G61-1879, pp. xxi–ii.

101The most comprehensive account of this mission is Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’.

102T. Strauss, War along the Orange, p. 65. See also the agreements of 27/9/1875 and 17/1/1876, CPP A30-1880, p. 13.

103T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 62–9; Ross, ‘!Kora wars’, p. 574.

104T. Strauss, War along the Orange, p. 73. On these wars see, for example, T. Davenport, South Africa: a modern history (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 124: it was also the time of the Transvaal-Pedi war, the Sotho ‘Gun war’ and the Anglo-Zulu war, ‘by far the greatest trial of strength between the blacks and the whites to have happened in South Africa’. More Africans were killed on the eastern frontier than in the wars of 1835, 1846–7, and 1850–3 put together. See also I.B. Sutton, ‘The 1878 rebellion in Griqualand West and adjacent territories’ (PhD, University of London, 1975).

105T. Strauss, War along the Orange, p. 70, quoting Scott to SNA, 8/1/1880, CPP G13-1880.

106T. Strauss, War along the Orange, p. 70. It included Xhosa formerly settled around Prieska.

107Ibid., pp. 76–82.

108Schroeder left Olyvenhout’s Drift on 11 July 1878 and by April 1879 had been asked by the DRC to work at Witzieshoek. He returned to Gordonia only in June 1883; see Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 68–71, 77.

109T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 76–99.

110Ibid., pp. 99–106.

111Ibid., pp. 107–14.

112See, on the fate of Korana and Bushmen, Telegram to Scott from Under Col. Sec. enclosed in Civil Commissioner, Victoria West, to Scott, 20/9/1879; RM, Carnarvon to Scott, 22/9/1879; RM, Calvinia to Scott, 7/10/1879; RM, Namaqualand to Scott, 7/10/1879 enclosed in CO, NBF to Scott, 19/10/1879; G. Foster to Scott, 6/10/1879; CO, NBF to Scott, 2/11/1879; CO, NBF to Scott, 9/11/1879; CO, NBF to Scott, 12/11/1879; CO, NBF to Scott, 18/11/1879; CO, NBF to Scott, 25/11/1879; RM, Calvinia to Scott, 9/12/1879; CO, NBF to Scott, 23/12/1879; CO, NBF to Foster, 5/1/1880, CA NBC2; Scott to Sub-inspector NBF, 9/6/1880, CA NBC13.

113T. Strauss, War along the Orange, pp. 115–7. See also P. de Smidt to Under SNA, 18/10/1883; P. de Smidt to Under Col. Sec., 19/6/1883, CA NA168, for an account of the Korana prisoners on Robben Island; Scott, ‘Report from Northern Border’, CPP G2-1885, p. 44.

114Scott, ‘Memo’, 22/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, Reports on and correspondence relating to affairs on the northern border of the Colony, pp. 9–11. For more on the ‘Africanders’ (Afrikaners), see chapter 6.

115UNSA to Scott, 20/8/1880, CA NBC4.

116Sir T. Upington, Report, 2/7/79, CPP G61-1879, p. ii. See also similar versions in Scott, ‘Historical Account’, 20/2/1881, CPP G20-1881, p. 87; Scott, ‘Re: Pofadders Ground’, 10/3/1882, CA NBC14/NA 169.

117A.A. Anderson, Twenty-five years in a wagon in the gold regions of Africa (London: Chapman and Hall, 1887), pp. 203–4; see also p. 230. For a description in 1885 see G. Farini, Through the Kalahari Desert: a narrative of a journey with gun, camera, and notebook to Lake N’Gami and back (London: Sampson Low, 1886; reprinted Cape Town: Struik, 1973), pp. 275ff; also Moorrees to Administrator, British Bech., 13/1/1892, CA SGBB27.

118It is unclear whether 1863/5 refers to the date of their crossing the Orange River, or to their first settlement at Mier. If the former, it seems too late; conceivably it is the latter – with their having crossed the Orange and settled at Blydeverwacht in the 1840s.

119On the Vilander constitution see P. Carstens, ‘Opting out of colonial rule: the brown Voortrekkers of South Africa and their constitutions’, Part 1, African Studies, 42, 2, 1983, pp. 135–52; Part 2, African Studies, 43, 1, 1984, pp. 19–30.

120J. Herbst, Report on the Rietfontein area, CPP G53-1908, pp. 7–8.

121Ibid., p. 9 referring to when the Rhenish missionary Mr Pabst arrived, in 1885. See also ibid., p. 8 for a description of the government of Dirk Vilander, probably in the 1860s.

122CPP G10-1893: Mei Basson (p. 70), Paul Karsten (pp. 71–2), Lena Kotzee (p. 77), Jacobus Fixter (p. 117), Piet Beukes (p. 127) and Fairbridge and Arderne to the Commissioner for Crown Lands, 23/9/1891, who mention the date of 1856–7 for Vilander’s departure. This is probably too late, as one would then expect some mention of the recent departure in CPP A55-1860, another enquiry into Loeriesfontein. See also Moller, Loeriesfontein, 1860–1987, pp. 3–4.

123Anon, ‘Mier – die geskiedenis’, one-page pamphlet, UCT African Studies Library, n.d. Translation.

124B.A. Tindall (ed.), The journal of Joseph Tindall: missionary in South West Africa, 1839–55 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 40, 1959), pp. 18, 175.

125H. Tindall, ‘Two lectures’, p. 35.