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CHAPTER 2

THE BASTER SETTLEMENT OF GORDONIA AND ITS DECLINE

In 1880 a Baster settlement was established north of the Orange River in Koranaland – which became Gordonia.¹ The attempt to stabilise the northern Cape border between the Aughrabies Falls and Griqualand West by means of treaties with (missionised) Korana chiefs had failed with the renewed colonial-rebel war in 1878–9. So far as the colonial government was concerned, here was a vacuum which needed to be filled.²

The establishment of the Baster settlement

In early July, Thomas Upington made the first government proposals for a post-war settlement. He was against annexing territory north of the Orange, regarding the river as the most convenient northern border. However he was for declaration of a 16-kilometre strip north of the river between Griqualand West and the Bondelswarts boundary as ‘neutral ground’ policed by a border force barracked at Olyvenhout’s Drift, and recommended moving the seat of magistracy there from Kenhardt. He was also for granting ‘the Koranna and Africander country to the respective chiefs’ on condition that they took an oath of allegiance to the Queen, and accepted the right of the Colony to annex at any time.³

Before that, in May, the Reverend Schroeder had proposed annexation of Koranaland and the establishment of a Baster settlement, under ‘[a] Government officer, under whatever name, with a few constables. The Bastards or inhabitants of Koranaland for the future subject to military service. The land on the Orange River in Korannaland to be distributed as a Bastard “location”… The Government must feel it necessary that the Bastards, as a coloured race, should be supported in their weakness against the whites, so that they not be driven away altogether.’ He also pleaded that unless the Basters were allowed to settle mission work in the area ‘would be impossible’, and he (perhaps contradictorily) opposed the establishment of a police station: ‘A mission station cannot be a police station.’⁴

The problem now passed into the hands of the newly appointed special magistrate J.H. Scott, who arrived in the area with Upington in March 1879 and took over when Upington left.⁵ Scott was then almost 36 years old. He had begun his career in ‘native affairs’ as provisional magistrate with Bacala in Tembuland from August 1876 to October 1878. While in this position he had acted as captain of Tembu levies under Major Elliott during the war against the Gcaleka between September 1877 and April 1878.⁶ Elliott stated that Scott had discharged his duties ‘with marked zeal and ability… with that marked resourcefulness for which he is noted, [he] requisitioned arms, ammunition and supplies of groceries from the few scattered trading stations in the Territories’. Thereafter Scott became acting chief magistrate of Tembuland between April and July 1878 and was appointed chief clerk of the Native Affairs Department (NAD) in Cape Town in October.⁷

Following Upington’s prescription of no annexure, Scott’s first suggestion, in July, was ‘to hand Korannaland’ to Dirk Vilander, chief at Mier (see chapter 1): ‘Set Philander to fill up the country with such Bastards and well disposed natives as we permit to join him. He dis-arming all Kooranas [sic] and being responsible for the good behavior.’ There would be a resident special magistrate.⁸ This proposal was rejected by Vilander, who wanted the boundaries of his territory fixed and guaranteed first. Subsequently he angered Scott by claiming his territory was his ‘by right of conquest’, and that he preferred to remain independent.⁹

Scott now did a U-turn and rejected Vilander’s claim to chieftainship altogether: ‘men like Dirk Vilander are not chiefs in any sense of the word. He is merely the leader of a hunting party who left the Colony and settled in partially occupied territory… I cannot see how we can so far recognize his chieftainship as to help define a territory of which he claims to be chief.’¹⁰ Two years later, in a revealing letter, his contempt for Vilander had increased: ‘the less he has to do with this settlement [Gordonia] the better. His people are thoroughly leavened with democratic principles… and nonsense about being “vrij burgers” and we don’t want that spirit increased in this settlement.’¹¹

Scott’s proposal was also rejected, following Schroeder’s prescription, by the DRC. The area should be given to the Basters permanently, the DRC argued, because they had been driven out further south by white colonists and had nowhere else to go, and because they had been upright citizens as well as the ‘vrugbaarste deel’ (most productive part) of the community in Koranaland in the 1870s, and had volunteered for service in the recent war. However they should have ‘woonregte’ (residence rights) but not full ownership rights, because the availability of land had not taught them to value land and they would sell it ‘vir ’n appel en ’n ei’ (for an apple and an onion) to white colonists. They should be ‘’n self-regerende gemeenskap’ (self-governing community) with a representative of the regime supported by a local management committee chosen by the residents. The authorities would have to ensure that only people who could sustain themselves were admitted as residents so that no loafers’ location was created. As for Dirk Vilander, he was ‘onbekende’ (unknown) to the Basters of the region and was actually only a servant of white traders.¹²

In September 1879 Scott met with leading Basters at Kenhardt, proposing the purposes of the settlement, the obligations of residents, and the need to appoint a resident government official. Persons admitted must have means sufficient to support them, but ‘in all internal matters the wishes of the residents expressed through some form of constitutional assembly will as far as possible be consulted… No farms for the present to be granted to particular individuals but the right of occupation of particular households to be decided by lot.’ Destitute Korana or Bushmen must take service or leave the area. Locations should be established for the ‘good many natives scattered about the country’.¹³ The following month DRC representatives met with leading Basters in Amandelboom, namely David van Rooi, Albert Louw, Marthinus Jansen and Jakobus Kotzee, who had been chosen by 150 Baster men meeting at Olyvenhout’s Drift in September. The DRC representatives assured the delegation of their intention to continue mission work, and received a promise that the ‘Raad’ chosen by the Basters would forbid trade in drink in the area.¹⁴

In December Scott visited Cape Town to finalise matters and, after ‘personal intercourse with the Cabinet’,¹⁵ on 7 January 1880 received official instructions spelling out precisely the terms of establishment of the settlement. The area ‘lies between the North West boundary of Griqualand West and the Eastern boundary of the Bondelswaart Territory’¹⁶ and could be settled ‘as far north as water places exist’.

In order to prevent the re-occupation by the Korannas or other barbarous Tribes of the vacant country North of the River, that country should be filled up by such Bastard Farmers, now living on the Southern side, as are willing to cross the river for that purpose and by any other reliable persons of whom you may approve… The Bastards are to be located in the country upon the distinct condition that they will defend themselves and prevent the ingress of any Native Tribes.

At this stage, moreover, ‘[no] title to the land or sovereign right of possession is to be given to the Bastards. They are now and will continue, subjects of her Majesty the Queen.’ In addition, ‘[if] they should so desire, you [Scott] should administer justice amongst them, but it is desirable that they should, as far as possible provide for the maintenance of law and order by themselves appointing some of their number as Field Cornets’. The main task of the Northern Border Police under Scott’s command was to prevent reoccupation of the Orange River islands, but Scott was also authorised to use them ‘in patrolling the country north of the river, or in assisting the Bastards in an emergency’.¹⁷

The Basters agreed to a resident official. Scott wrote to the government that

they feared that if left to themselves they would soon be in a state of anarchy; that they had seen enough of one coloured man trying to govern other coloured men. At a meeting held at Olivendrift, attended by almost all the Emigrant Bastards, one and all declined to take upon themselves the entire responsibility of governing themselves, and begged that an official might be appointed by Government to reside among them to guide and advise them, and to show them how to manage their affairs.¹⁸

A further, wildly improbable, element in the Cape government’s plan for defence of the northern frontier was to establish Mfengu locations in the area and to that end a delegation of Mfengu headmen toured the area early in 1880.¹⁹ However, unsurprisingly given its ecology, the headmen, reported Scott, were ‘one and all most heartily of the opinion that the country was quite unfit for decent Fingoes to live in and they were quite disgusted with what they had seen of it’.²⁰

The response to the government’s agreement to settlement north of the river was ‘chiefly by a respectable class of Bastards, many of them possessed of considerable property, and by a few white persons, connected with them by marriage and otherwise’.²¹ By May 1880 some 200 families had obtained permission, and by the end of the year there were 300 families across the Orange, who had produced ‘a good deal of wheat and garden produce’.²² While the inhabitants of the settlement were mainly Basters and a few whites, there were also remnants of Kora, Bushmen, and some Xhosa. The congregation of the DRC mission ranged in this period, in the words of Schroeder, ‘from wholly white to wholly black’.²³

At first Scott denied whites permission to settle. He wrote to one that that right was ‘at present only granted to Bastards’: ‘your application must remain in abeyance pending further enquiry’.²⁴ Exceptions were however made, mainly for whites married to Baster women. Perhaps the most contentious of these involved W.H. Spangenberg. He was one of the whites who in 1880 had signed a petition requesting to settle in Koranaland.²⁵ Born in Malmesbury in 1829, he became a trader in the Kalahari in the early 1860s, establishing himself with Vilander at Mier before 1872.²⁶ When Spangenberg had originally applied, Scott explained later, he had ‘demurred’ on the grounds that ‘from his reputation I feared he would not get on with the Bastards’. When Spangenberg insisted that ‘he was quite content to leave the matter to be decided by them [the Basters] as he knew he was a very popular man with them’, Scott gave him permission to settle for a year, to be reconsidered when the Committee of Management was appointed. The committee, however, in December 1881 refused to ratify Spangenberg’s settlement: despite this he was married to the Baster Anna Britz.²⁷ Once settled, he was soon complaining of ‘squatters’ on his land.²⁸

Others granted permission included George Panizza, married to the Baster Johanna Diergaard;²⁹ Robert Frier, married to the Baster Catharina van der Westhuizen;³⁰ Gustav de Juy, married to the Baster Sara Maasdorp;³¹ D. Turner, married to the Baster J. Hendricks;³² and possibly G. Pearson.³³

By mid-year plans were under way for Scott to erect government buildings and police accommodation at Olyvenhout’s Drift, which he insisted must be built on the northern bank.³⁴ In August DRC minister Gerrit Schonken arrived to replace Schroeder.³⁵ During the year three field-cornets were elected.³⁶ On 16 May 1881, in the course of a meeting ‘attended by almost every adult male in the country’, a Committee of Management was established with personnel proposed by Scott, and with Scott as its chairman. Those appointed were Martin Jansen, Albert Louw, Gert Maasdorp, J. Swart, David van Rooi and Gert van Wyk.³⁷ From 1881 to 1889 the settlement was administered by Baster field-cornets, together with the Baster-dominated Committee of Management, chaired by the special magistrate. This committee regulated admission to the settlement, allocated land, and performed other such duties (Figure 2.1).

Almost the first act of the committee (in June) was to petition for security of land tenure. When the Basters had asked to cultivate the land during 1880, Scott had emphasised to them that ‘such cultivation gives no claim whatever to the land cultivated but only to the crops of the present year’.³⁸ Now, in cautious terms, the committee pleaded that ‘for our success as a settled community – and that we may have a chance of becoming prosperous and contented – we feel that each man must have some security that he will reap the fount of his labours provided he does not by his misconduct forfeit that right’. In their anomalous ‘independent’ position, they could not ask for title to land: ‘we do not now ask government to give us any promises that we shall be secured in our possession here against tribes or peoples not under the rule of government’. But they wanted a written document from government which gave assurances that rights of occupation would not be granted to ‘any other people so long as the community we represent behave themselves and answer the purpose for which we understand that we are placed here to prevent the settlement of undesirable characters in the neighbourhood of the Orange River’. In such a document they also wanted a pledge that should the Colony annex the territory, the rights to land and improvements made should be respected, as, they argued, had been the case in Griqualand East: ‘the request we make is not because we distrust the government but because we feel that in the future disputes may arise if there is no plain [levelling?] to prevent misunderstanding on both sides’.³⁹

Scott endorsed the petition, requesting an ‘authoritative declaration’ that ‘so long as the Bastards do well that the Government would not permit its subjects to dispossess them of the country and a definite promise that in the event of this country being annexed or taken possession of by the Imperial Government that private rights will be respected, more especially such property in land as may have been bonafide received’. He stated that about 60 farms could be laid out facing the Orange River, about 30 more further north at wells already opened, and ‘doubtless many more waters may be discovered and dams made’. He added that

proper care will be taken that no land rights unrepresented by land will be granted, that the land be made to carry such taxation as the power administering the country for the time being may decide, that liability to military service shall attach to the right of holding land, that such holding shall be only during good behaviour and only transferable with the approval of the officer representing the government on the Northern Border.⁴⁰

In fact around the same time as Olyvenhout’s Drift was renamed Upington (in March 1882)⁴¹ – and in some cases perhaps even earlier – 81 farms were allocated in the settlement, almost exclusively to Basters, 58 along the river from Kheis to the Aughrabies Falls of sizes varying from 4 000 to 10 000 morgen, and 23 in the interior of sizes ranging from 10 000 to 30 000 morgen.⁴² There is evidence that quitrent for the farms was fixed at £2/10/- per annum on 11 April 1882, that there was an auction of land on 23 May, and that Scott was asked to have Land Certificates printed on 12 September.⁴³ The farms put up for auction (at upset prices ranging from £5/10/-) were in the interior of the settlement.⁴⁴ The sizing of the river farms was done on the basis of a half-hour horse-ride along the Orange River, and three hours vertically away from the river to the north.⁴⁵ ‘[Is] myn wensch dat Olyvendrift of Upington niet een dorp, maar een Zending Statie mogt blyven,’ wrote Reverend Schroeder in 1884 (It is my wish that Olyven’s Drift or Upington must remain not a town, but a mission station).⁴⁶ His wish was not to be granted. Probably in 1883 or 1884, Upington was laid out as a village, with streets about 30 metres wide, and township erven of 929 square metres sold in it.⁴⁷ A grid of private property began to be laid down in an area which had never known it before.

Figure 2.1: Land title issued by Committee of Management, 1886.

The auction provoked a complaint from a number of whites who were present but ‘excluded from competing for the said ground’.⁴⁸An unsigned letter in Het Volksblad enclosing this complaint pointed out the contradiction between the instructions issued to Scott (‘No titles’) and the issuing of titles by the Committee of Management. How they could ‘grant ground to the exclusion of other subjects of Her Majesty, Upington or Korannaland is a conundrum that requires solving’. It complained that the Colonial government ‘favoured bastards, who came from the inland districts, and who had either fled or taken no part in the protection of the border, to the disadvantage of the forerunner of South African progress and prosperity, the too often despised and underestimated Dutch African Boer… Where is now the “Boerebeskermingvereeniging” [Boer protection society] that is founded upon such laudable principles, that it does not take notice of their boer brethren on the Northern border?’ The author wanted to see this ‘protective system broken up’ and the country ‘thrown open to boer, English or bastard, and give equal rights to subjects of one Sovereign’.⁴⁹

The author of this letter was probably Spangenberg, also probably the author ‘Ballengeich’ of an earlier letter complaining of the ineffectiveness of the Northern Border Police in countering the ‘Damara threat’.⁵⁰ In September 1884 Scott wrote of Spangenberg as ‘one of a few white men in the settlement who have taken [up] the role of political agitators and newspaper correspondents, and was recently appointed chairman of a branch of the Afrikaner Bond’.⁵¹ Van der Merwe writes of Spangenberg that he was ‘unusually energetic and with a great deal of enterprise. Wherever he came, he was in difficulties. He talked a lot and wanted to kindle revolution everywhere.’ Later, during the South African War, the British put a price of £500 on Spangenberg’s head. He was captured by the Germans at the start of the First World War in 1914. He died in 1934 at the age of 105.⁵²

The first indication that Koranaland had been renamed Gordonia comes in a letter from the Colonial Office to Scott in late 1883.⁵³ Earlier in the same year Scott noted that, during 1882, ‘[two] long water furrows have been led out of the Orange River, bringing some hundreds of acres of as rich soil as there is in the world within reach of irrigation’.⁵⁴ One of these was the pioneering canal constructed by Abraham September from his farm at Ouap, east of Upington (see chapter 3). The other was the (equally pioneering) canal at Keimoes constructed under the leadership of Niklaas (Klaas) Bok – to become known as the A-canal.⁵⁵ As was later recalled, ‘[the] first water-furrow at Keimoes was constructed by comparatively few people’ :⁵⁶

At that time Klaas Titus was in the employ of a certain Klaas Bok who was endeavouring to find a suitable spot for leading the water out of a spruit of the Orange River at Keimoes and he was often accompanied by Niklaas Titus, who on a subsequent occasion and while driving cattle through the spruit unexpectedly came upon a place which he at once saw would serve the purpose… Klaas Bok satisfied himself that the spot indicated was a good one to commence operations and he invited a certain Cloete and Jan Zwart and Jan Jansen to assist him… Klaas Titus requested Klaas Bok to allow him to join in, so that he also would be entitled to a piece of ground and as Klaas Titus had none of his own, Klaas Bok supplied the necessary tools and food.⁵⁷

As Scott wrote, the Basters ‘have made more improvements in the short time they have been here than have been made on the South bank of the river [by ‘Colonial farmers’] in twenty-five years’.⁵⁸

In June 1883 Schroeder returned to Upington to replace Schonken, with whom the Basters were unhappy. He was soon involved in plans to extend Abraham September’s canal – for which he was for a long time afterwards credited as the pioneer!⁵⁹ Within two months Schroeder reported that the first sods had been turned in a canal from Ouap to Upington: it would be ‘een groot, zwaar, en aan groote uitgeven verbonden werk’ (a big, difficult and expensive undertaking).⁶⁰ Towards the end of the year Scott reported that ‘[about] 2 miles of the furrow and over the most difficult part of its course were completed’ at a cost of £200: the ‘greater part of this is represented by the labour put into the work by erfholders’. He recommend a loan of £500 from the government. He added that ‘the scheme was first floated at a public meeting held at Upington’.⁶¹ In January Scott said of the work, ‘[the] point where the water is taken out of the river is most suitable for the purpose, there being a natural stone dam in the bed of one of the main streams of the river’, 22.5 kilometres from Upington. ‘Two new watercourses bringing a considerable extent of ground under irrigation have been completed. A furrow about 14 miles long and 9 feet wide is in course of construction to irrigate the lands lying along the Orange River bank.’⁶² By August 1884, about 18 kilometres had been completed.⁶³ As the canal was completed, ‘water erven’ next to it were assigned for irrigation, and dry erven for building nearby them.⁶⁴ At the same time Scott alluded to tensions between white farm-owners on the south bank and Basters on the north over possession of some of the islands, which the Basters had irrigated and improved, owing to uncertainty about the line of the colonial boundary.⁶⁵

The government responded initially favourably to a loan.⁶⁶ In May 1884 however, the Scanlen government at the Cape fell, to be replaced by one headed by Sir Thomas Upington that was more colonist-oriented. The Afrikaner Bond had withdrawn support from Scanlen essentially over his encouragement of the British government to take control of Basutoland, the Transkei and Bechuanaland in 1883–4.⁶⁷ Sauer was replaced as Secretary for Native Affairs by J.A. de Wet. Almost immediately, the repercussions made themselves felt in the Gordonia settlement. The loan was not granted.⁶⁸ On 27 May Rose-Innes wrote to Scott that a ‘deputation has recently waited on the Secretary for Native Affairs and represented that Europeans or South African farmers are not allowed the same privileges extended to Bastards in the territory under your charge’. He referred to that section of Scott’s instructions of January 1880 which gave him discretion to permit settlement by ‘any other reliable persons of whom you may approve’, and asked for a report.⁶⁹

Scott wrote a vociferous reply. He referred to the Het Volksblad article of June 1882, to his written replies to the claim that ‘white farmers “were not allowed to hold land here”’, and to government sanction of these replies in a letter of 5 August 1882. ‘The settlement has since been managed on the same lines and all the land facing the river and land in the neighbourhood of existing waterplaces has been by the committee of management granted to private holders.’ He referred to a letter from the NAD of 29 November 1883 sanctioning the issue of title to these grants by the Committee of Management and countersigning of them by himself. ‘This letter has been communicated to the people and titles for issue are in course of preparation.’ He recapitulated the motivation of the settlement: how to dispose of ‘absolutely vacant and derelict country’ so as to make the recurrence of a Northern Border war improbable and at the same time to increase colonial liabilities as little as possible. He continued:

As far as I could judge, there seemed at the time no probability that Colonial white farmers would occupy the country in sufficient numbers to make a useful settlement… I was also, and am still, of opinion that the border Colonial white farmer is not exactly the material of which to form a settlement which was to govern itself under advice, and which specially was to be kept from spreading its borders towards the interior… The material, superior in many respects to that used, as it is, has too much independence and push about it to answer the end in view. At the same time there were a considerable number of Bastard farmers or squatters on the Border who had in some way to be provided for. For years they had been pioneers and by opening up waters and stocking the country had rendered it habitable for the white farmer, who by his superior intelligence, knowledge and ability succeeded by help of the land laws of the Colony in working out these pioneers and reaping the profit of their enterprise.

Scott added that government officials ‘made express promises’ of land to Basters who had assisted the Colony in the 1878–9 war.

These Bastards also, with all their faults, are a people who are easily managed. So that altogether it seemed that the filling up of vacant Korannaland by them if not an absolutely good thing was about the best course open... In considering the instruction ‘and by any other reliable person of whom you may approve’, I came to the conclusion that it was the intention of Government that the country should be filled up by Colonial Bastard farmers and I could not approve of the settlement in that country of persons who… would from the very facts of Colonial human nature be an element antagonistic to the majority of the settlers.

At present there is no drink traffic in the settlement, and the absence of this trade is in my opinion essential in such a settlement as this. But what South African white community would be content to live in a country where there are no drink [stores]?... Now every application to be admitted as a settler is laid before the committee of management, whether it comes from white or coloured. No man is refused simply because he is a white man but on the ground that… he is an undesirable settler, and numbers of coloured applicants have been refused on the same grounds… This is not the only reserve where persons of European descent do not hold land. The policy of forming such reserves is not a new one, and with all that may be advanced against it, has not proved itself an altogether unsuccessful one. In this settlement there are several white settlers but they are of a sort who are not incompatible with the coloured people.⁷⁰

In reply, the NAD essentially revoked its permission for Scott to issue land titles in Gordonia until further notice, and asked for a list of applications for settlement there that had been made and how these had been disposed of.⁷¹ Scott responded by pointing out the contradiction between this letter and that of 29 November 1883, made after Scott had given Sauer ‘both in writing and by verbal communication the very fullest information on the matter in my power’. Were government to reverse its decision, he warned, ‘it will be difficult to convince the people that they have not been broken faith with’; a ‘feeling of unrest and disheartenment’ would replace the existing ‘confidence in Government and hopefulness as to their future which now animates the place’.⁷²

In October the Committee of Management added its voice of protest. Referring also to their pleasure at the letter of 29 November 1883, which provided ‘some fixity of tenure’, members of the committee expressed concern at the new attitude. ‘Many of the people have worked hard to improve their ground and now owing to the great delay that has taken place in the issue of some sort of title and to the loud talk of irresponsible persons a feeling of insecurity among the people is very general.’⁷³ Scott added his support. He was

quite sure it was the intention of Government to provide some rights of fixity of tenure for the inhabitants... For the committee after all that has taken place to do so without the consent of or against the expressed wish of the Government would in my opinion be a bad thing… The objections I can see are that the holders of the land are coloured people and that the land revenue is so small that in the event of annexation the District would not pay for its administration.

Of course in the event of annexation restrictions as to the sort of people who hold land would have to disappear and the coloured people would have to hold their own under a strong government or go to the wall.

However he did not think that annexation was desirable ‘for some time to come’.⁷⁴

In January 1885 Scott wrote again, saying that he did not think it was judicious for the Committee of Management to meet until government had replied. Moreover, it was impossible to ask people to pay quit-rent ‘in the present unsatisfactory state of the titles question’. He again recommended government to endorse the letter of 29 November 1883. He added that there existed an ‘unsettled and dissatisfied spirit, attributable in my opinion solely to what looks to the people like a disinclination on the part of the present Government to endorse the written authority of its predecessors... There are also not wanting persons who avail themselves of the difficulty that has arisen... to talk nonsense about the Germans which nonsense as it is gets believed and does harm’ (i.e. favouring German annexation of the area).⁷⁵ On the same day Scott wrote, in a report for publication, that the people of the settlement

are to some extent disquieted by events taking place in Bechuanaland, in the matter of land titles. But it is hoped that any difficulty that has stood in the way of such steps being taken as will make them feel secure in the occupation of their ground will be removed. In this event the settlement will become fairly prosperous, and will answer a very useful purpose until some wider policy of dealing with the country north of the Orange River than has hitherto been practicable, is proposed.⁷⁶

Indeed, events well beyond the settlement – Germans in South West Africa, Transvaalers in Bechuanaland – were closing in on Gordonia. Significantly, on the same day as the letter just quoted was written, Scott sent to the NAD a 13-page memorandum on the question of the annexation of ‘Transgariep’.⁷⁷ For reasons wholly unrelated to developments in the area itself, Gordonia became in fact, almost accidentally, a part of British Bechuanaland. The first step in this process was the British declaration, on 27 January 1885, of a protectorate over the area west of the South African Republic and north of the Cape ‘east of the 20th meridian of east longitude and south of the 22nd parallel of south latitude; and not within the jurisdiction of any civilized power’.⁷⁸

British annexation of Gordonia

In early 1880, when the Gordonia settlement was founded, the area north of the Orange was still looked on as part of the natural hinterland of the Cape Colony. Present-day Namibia – and much of the Kalahari – was at the time a ‘commercial dependency’ of the Cape.⁷⁹ Griqualand West, taken over by the Cape Colony from the British in November 1880, was regarded as the start of the ‘road to the north’. In 1875 the Cape parliament had resolved to take over the coast up to Walvis Bay and as much of the interior as was ‘necessary’, and sent a commissioner, William Coates Palgrave, to investigate the possibilities.⁸⁰ In endorsing this, Governor Barkly wrote to the British Colonial Office, ‘Great Namaqualand indeed and the rest of the desert country on the other side of the Orange River intervening between Griqualand West and the sea have for years been subject to the influence of this Government... and the labours of Missionaries connected with the Colony among the Damaras, Ovambos and others have long since paved the way for their reception of Magistrates invested with civil powers’ (my emphasis).⁸¹

In 1877, shortly before the annexation of the Transvaal, Governor Frere, on the basis of Palgrave’s report, wanted to declare a protectorate over the whole interior as far east as the Transvaal and as far north as the Kunene.⁸² With the hubristic belief that this area was rightfully British, however, both the British government and the Cape, wary of the costs of administration, and to some extent ‘passing the parcel’ to each other, stood back from further annexation north of the Orange – particularly with the restoration of independence to the Transvaal in 1881. Frere’s request was turned down by the British government for fear of stimulating unrest among the indigenous inhabitants – save for the annexation of Walvis Bay.⁸³

This situation was altered by the German thrust into South West Africa, together with the support of the Transvaal for the ‘freebooter’ republics of Stellaland and Goshen, encroaching on Tswana territory, and threatening the ‘road to the north’. Yet even then matters were affected by curious hiccups in communication between the British and Cape governments. As Anthony Sillery puts it, the German thrust was ‘in a region that Great Britain or the Cape Colony could have had for the asking at any time up to 1884. With characteristic short-sightedness, combined with a measure of sheer inattention on the part of British statesmen, the opportunity was allowed to slip, and in August 1884 a German protectorate was proclaimed in south-west Africa.’⁸⁴ It was as an almost accidental result of the subsequent British (and Cape) responses to the German and Transvaal thrusts that Gordonia found itself eventually incorporated into British Bechuanaland.

In proclaiming the protectorate, however, the German government reserved ‘for a subsequent period a more definite demarcation of the landward frontier as the development of the settlements and of the colonial traffic may support’ and the British accepted this. The hinterland of German ‘South West Africa’, in other words, remained for the moment undefined.⁸⁵ The Upington government took advantage of this to try to claim the area. On 17 September 1884 it asked the British government to sanction ‘annexation to this Colony of Damaraland [Herero territory], Namaqualand and Kalahari from the German boundary, if German jurisdiction cannot yet be resisted, to the border of the British Protectorate in Bechuanaland’. (In justifying this, the Upington government included a passage referring, undoubtedly, to the question of land titles in Gordonia: ‘In Namaqualand and the Kalahari, many bastards and others, who are undoubtedly British subjects, have settled. These people have always looked to Her Majesty the Queen as their ruler, and, in some places, they even beg to have their land titles countersigned by some colonial officer, as nothing can convince them that by settling north of the Orange river they have separated themselves from the Colony.’⁸⁶)

In this communication concerns over the German thrust began to intersect with concerns regarding the south-western borderlands of the Transvaal. A British ‘protectorate’ over this area, ‘Bechuanaland’, had effectively existed between 1878 and 1881 following the Griqualand West rebellion, but was abandoned with the retrocession of the Transvaal. British protection over Bechuanaland was reasserted in the London Convention of February 1884 with the Transvaal in response to the westward pressure exerted by the white freebooter ‘republics’ of Stellaland and Goshen.⁸⁷ The ‘humanitarian imperialist’ John Mackenzie was appointed as resident commissioner in this area in February, to be replaced by the ‘pro-colonial’ Cecil Rhodes in July.⁸⁸ The British government wanted the Cape to take responsibility for Bechuanaland, to which the Upington government was initially favourable, including in its communication of 17 September.⁸⁹

The borders of Bechuanaland were at this time vague, but certainly did not include the Gordonia settlement. They were undefined in the 1884 London Convention: the assumption was that they embraced the territory of the southern Tswana tribes.⁹⁰ In a proclamation of 1 August 1884 John Mackenzie defined the territory as ‘bounded on the north by the limits of the Barolong territory north of [the] Molopo River; on the west in the Kalahari Desert by the limits of the territory occupied or used by the Barolong and other Bechuana tribes; on the east by the boundary line of the South African Republic, and on the south by the Cape Colony’ (my emphasis).⁹¹ This western boundary, it should be noted, did not run as far west as the 20th degree east longitude – nor include within it Gordonia. But it ran too far west for the British government, which had already reprimanded Mackenzie for signing treaties with Tswana ‘vassals in the Kalahari desert, who border on the Bastards and Namaquas’. The Colonial Secretary telegrammed on 8 August: ‘Her Majesty’s Government cannot entertain extension of British Protectorate, Kalahari Desert and westward: Bechuanaland Protectorate created as barrier against Boer encroachment, not for such purposes as contemplated by Mackenzie… If Cape Colony desires to protect Kalahari, that might be considered.’⁹²

For the British government at this time, Bechuanaland was narrowly delimited – though with a hint that a promise of Cape annexation might induce reconsideration of its western limits. For example, on 25 October the Colonial Office transmitted the Cape government’s request for annexation of 17 September to the Foreign Office. They wrote of the ‘strong feeling in the Cape Colony that measures should be undertaken to prevent the Colony being hemmed in to the northwards by any further foreign annexations, which would seriously interfere with its trade among the natives of the interior’. While they did not think

it desirable to entertain any proposals which would have the appearance of a design to cut off the Germans from the country immediately inland of the protected coast, there would seem to be no reason against considering the wish of the Colonial government to have the control of the Kalahari country for a considerable distance westward from the Bechuanaland Protectorate... The present German Protectorate extends 20 miles inland, and the German Government has reserved its right to go further inland. The Kalahari Desert is believed to end westward somewhere between the 20th and 21st degrees of east longitude, thus leaving in Damara and Namaqualand over 200,000 square miles of territory.

They proposed replying to the Cape government to this effect, and asking the Cape government for ‘more definite explanations as to the country which they would wish included’.⁹³

In active pursuit of its annexationist aims, the Upington government despatched representatives in late 1884 to sign treaties with polities in ‘Damaraland’ and (Great) Namaqualand, including the Bondelswarts and Chief Maherero. To its chagrin, it was soon forced to disavow them by the British government.⁹⁴ On 11 November the British Colonial Secretary replied to the Cape’s request of 17 September. He completely rejected their claims on Damaraland and Namaqualand, stating that ‘it would not be in accordance with international comity to annex the territory immediately adjacent to the existing German limit’. But he added that if the Cape government ‘still desire the establishment of British jurisdiction through officers of the Colonial Government over the Kalahari country and the country of those Bechuana chiefs whom… I do not regard as being within the existing Bechuanaland Protectorate, Her Majesty’s Government would be willing to consider to what extent and in what manner the wish of the Cape Government could be acceded to’.

He asked for a precise definition of the territory to be included, especially its northern and western boundaries.⁹⁵ Here again was a hint – this time in reference to the German rather than the Transvaal question – that the area in which Gordonia was situated was negotiable for annexation, though there is no indication that the British government was aware of the existence of Gordonia.

The British response to the German thrust drove further east than that of the Cape. A military expedition of 8 000 troops led by General Warren was despatched to settle the struggle in Bechuanaland between the Transvaal and the Tswana – and drive a territorial buffer between South West Africa and the Transvaal.⁹⁶ (Rhodes, seeking as commissioner to negotiate annexation of Bechuanaland to the Cape, had been finally forced to appeal for imperial intervention⁹⁷– though late in the year Upington himself visited the area in an unsuccessful attempt to secure a colonially based settlement.) Warren arrived in the Cape in December and was in Bechuanaland in February. On 10 December 1884 the British Foreign Secretary had disingenuously asserted to the German ambassador that the expedition’s aims were confined to removing the ‘freebooters’ who had invaded Bechuanaland and were not connected ‘in the slightest degree with the German colonial movement’.⁹⁸ But there can be little doubt that an (though not the sole) aim of the expedition was to drive a buffer between South West Africa and the Transvaal. As Mackenzie, appointed to join Warren, related,

what was undertaken professedly on behalf of two native allies, turned out to be a movement indispensable to the continued supremacy of England in South Africa. There can be no doubt that the movement of Her Majesty’s Government in Bechuanaland interfered with certain projects in Berlin...

The telegram which announced the settlement between the English and the German Governments reached us in Bechuanaland in the following terms:

March 14 1885

German Empire has been informed by Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Berlin that Bechuanaland and Kalahari, as limited by first section of Order in Council of 27th January, are under British protection.⁹⁹

The ‘credit of the great movement westward and northward undoubtedly rests with the Ministers who advised and announced this extension of the Protectorate’, added Mackenzie.¹⁰⁰ He referred to the fact that the Order in Council of 27 January enlarged the previous definition of ‘Bechuanaland’ to ‘Bechuanaland and Kalahari’– extending to 22 degrees south latitude and 20 degrees east longitude.¹⁰¹ Mackenzie was more concerned with the northward extension, but it was the westward extension which included Gordonia in the new protectorate of Bechuanaland. Both, as Mackenzie suggests, were clearly a response by the British to the German moves in South West Africa.

Why was 20 degrees east longitude the boundary agreed between Britain and Germany? The information in the records is sketchy on this. The first indication I have located of this definition by the British of an eastward boundary to German claims comes in a letter dated 10 December 1884 from the Foreign Secretary, reporting a discussion with the German ambassador in Britain. German concern was whether the Warren expedition might assume control ‘over all the districts that may eventually enlace Angra Pequena’, and the ambassador referred to the Cape government’s request of 17 September for annexations in the south-west African interior. The Foreign Secretary replied by repudiating any intention of annexing Damaraland or Namaqualand, but added:

The country, however, which lies immediately north of the Cape Colony to the eastward of the 20th meridian of east longitude is of special importance to the Cape Colony, which has reasonably stipulated that under no circumstances should it be ‘hemmed in’ to the northward; and Her Majesty’s Government have consented to entertain the wish of the Cape government to have the control of the Kalahari country.

There is therefore no conflict of interest or of policy between Her Majesty’s Government and the Government of South Africa in respect of these territories, and, in fact, Her Majesty’s Government see no reason why Germany should not now extend the Angra Pequena Coast Protectorate over as much of Damaraland and Namaqualand as the German Government may think it convenient to have under their control; and would have no objection to see the inland limit of that Protectorate advanced even as far as to the 20th meridian of longitude.¹⁰² (my emphasis)

The British government thus placed the responsibility for declaring a boundary at 20 degrees east on the ‘wish’ of the Cape government – though there is no indication in its communications to the British that the Cape government had mentioned this as a potential boundary, nor that it was particularly interested in the ‘Kalahari’.¹⁰³ The thinking on the spot at the time is rather reflected in the comments of the magistrate in Namaqualand, who, in a vigorous response on 17 December to the withdrawal of instructions to seek treaties with local polities, suggested the Fish River (running north from the Orange west of present-day Keetmanshoop at roughly 17.30 degrees east) as a boundary, ‘if the Government intend to recognize any further purchase beyond the 20 geographical miles of waste land purchased by Lüderitz’.¹⁰⁴

Gordonia: from Baster settlement to magisterial district

On 2 May 1885 a church service was held to celebrate the completion of the canal, followed by a parade of horsemen and carts to its source. Schroeder preached to the text ‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and for thy truth’s sake’ (Psalms, 115, 1). Wrote Scott, ‘considering the financial position of the people and the magnitude of the work, it is marvellous that it should have been accomplished’.¹⁰⁵ There had been built ‘a watercourse six feet wide, about two feet deep and fourteen miles long, by means of which four thousand acres of land, as fertile as any in the world, have been rendered irrigable. About five hundred acres are now [1887] cleared and under irrigation. Some hundreds of fruit trees and thousands of vines have been planted and promise to do well.’¹⁰⁶ Its eventual cost had been somewhat over £2 200, including dynamite and plant.¹⁰⁷ By 1887 the value of the scheme had become clear. Nine hundred muids (98 000 litres) of grain and all the oats needed by the police at Upington had been produced. People would have starved, reported Scott, ‘but for the food… as a result of irrigation’.¹⁰⁸ With the canal completed, development work was pursued further. Scott had installed a pump and windmill at the residency, and asked for funds from government to install a windmill at the police barracks. ‘I believe that good windmill pumps would enable the Orange River Farmers on this border to grow considerable crops.’ He also wanted a loan for the Committee of Management to reimburse them for a ‘good milling plant’ they had bought to grind the corn.¹⁰⁹

But enthusiasm for development began to dissipate among the Basters because of the erosion of Gordonia as a Baster settlement. Its annexation as a part of British Bechuanaland contributed heavily to this. On 7 April 1885 the Gordonia Committee of Management wrote to the Secretary for Native Affairs saying that as the settlement ‘has now been proclaimed as under British protection’ but ‘was formed under the direction and auspices of the Cape government’, it seemed desirable that Scott should visit Cape Town ‘for the purpose of personally arranging with the Government as to our future position and for the recognition of their existing rights here’. They hoped, as well, for a satisfactory response to their memorandum on land titles of 7 October 1884. Scott, making clear that the initiative was not his, forwarded the proposal.¹¹⁰

On 16 May the Under Colonial Secretary replied that ‘[the] final decision as to land matters in Gordonia will be greatly if not entirely influenced by the settlement of land tenure in Bechuanaland under a recognised system of administration’ and until then

the issue of titles by the Committee of Management had better remain in abeyance… The inhabitants of Gordonia may rest assured that any rights to land acquired under the sanction of the Committee of Management and the Regulations they have adopted for administering the affairs of the settlement, will not be disturbed, but will be respected, and there need not, therefore, be hesitation about the creation of permanent buildings on their holdings.¹¹¹

There can be little doubt that this concessionary response was influenced by the discussion still taking place between the Cape government and the British over disposition of Bechuanaland, where the issue of land rights for the indigenous inhabitants was a major point of contention. The difficulty for the Cape government in agreeing to take over Bechuanaland stemmed from their suspicion of the aims of the special commissioner, Major General Charles Warren (with his ‘negrophile’ adviser John Mackenzie), sent there to assert British sovereignty in the face of encroachments from Germany and the Transvaal, and to suppress the Boer freebooter states of Stellaland and Goshen. On 2 June the Cape government wrote to Governor Robinson saying they were wholly without official information on the arrangements made by Warren in the area, ‘more especially, in respect of compacts arrived at with native Tribes and in respect of land settlements generally’.¹¹²

From March 1885 Warren had in fact been signing treaties with polities north of the Molopo, and in June, to the dismay of both the British and Cape governments, he submitted plans for a huge British colony stretching as far north as the Zambezi, from which settlers of ‘Dutch extraction’ would be excluded. The Cape government in response proposed a division of Bechuanaland, and submitted its conditions for annexing ‘that portion of the territory extending northward to the limit of the protectorate as it is stated to have stood on July 26th 1884 and westward of the 20th meridian of east longitude’. This part was separated from the country ‘to the Northward towards the Zambezi’ which was to be protected ‘in a manner hereafter to be agreed upon by Her Majesty’s Government with the advice of the Colonial Government’.¹¹³

The Cape government, in other words, showed its readiness to take responsibility for the westward, though not the northward, extension of Bechuanaland following from the 27 January 1885 Order in Council. Though he dismissed the Cape’s proposed conditions for annexure as ‘almost impudent’, Governor Robinson accepted this separation of Bechuanaland into two parts, suggesting to the British an initial government like that of Tembuland in the south, in the hope of future annexation of this part by the Cape.¹¹⁴ Then, with the Cape still recalcitrant, the territory south of the Molopo was proclaimed the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland on 30 September – with that to the north remaining a British protectorate. The Crown Colony included the Gordonia settlement – although its western boundary had been redefined from longitude 20 degrees east to ‘the Molopo river’, where it entered the Orange below the Aughrabies Falls. Moreover the area of Gordonia was not included in the magistracies into which British Bechuanaland was divided.¹¹⁵ On 12 November Scott wrote from Gordonia to the Secretary of Native Affairs, pointing out this last anomaly, and adding:

If the proclamation applies to this settlement, then the existing machinery for the maintenance of law and order can only, if it still continues to work, do so in defiance of the provisions of the proclamation… I would suggest that if possible some arrangement may be come to with the imperial authorities by which continuity may be given to existing authorities (with such modifications as may be found necessary) and a proper legal basis be provided for them.¹¹⁶

However it was not to be until April 1889 that the contradictory status of Gordonia was resolved through its incorporation into British Bechuanaland. Until then a Cape special magistrate remained as resident, and the Committee of Management continued to function. This must have been an uncertain and unsettling period for its inhabitants.

Scott had left Gordonia in 1887 and been succeeded as special magistrate by C. Bam. He had spent nearly ten years on the northern border of the Colony. He wrote later, ‘I do not think any other official has been able to endure the life there for half that period.’¹¹⁷ It affected his personal life, since he did not think it fair for his wife to live with him, and kept up two establishments which led him into debt.¹¹⁸

With the incorporation of Gordonia into British Bechuanaland, Bam was appointed as resident magistrate on 21 March 1889, and a Village Management Board was elected on 11 September, consisting of Reverend Schroeder, J.H. Lutz, Job Jansen, M. Jansen Senior, Johannes Zwart and Samuel Dick.¹¹⁹ By 1885, with the completion of the Upington canal, the area was becoming increasingly attractive to white settlers. A Cape official in 1887 commented:

In 1880 the country wherein the Bastards were invited to settle, was regarded as a worthless desert, and no one envied the people to whom it had been allotted. But all this is now changed... Last season a patch of cleared ground not quite 100 yards by 300 yielded sixty-six muids [7 392 litres] of exceptionally fine wheat... This would give a yield of 37 bushels [1 245 litres] the acre (English)... there are persons who now regard the Bastard settlers with jealousy, and look with envy upon the land their industry has made so rich.¹²⁰

In 1889 the harvest in Gordonia was estimated at 4 000 bags of wheat (1 800 in Upington) and 2 000 bags of mealies, with irrigation producing an eight- to tenfold yield. There was also prospecting going on, with the anticipation of mineral discoveries.¹²¹

In 1887 the population of the Gordonia district was estimated as 1 200, almost certainly largely Basters. In 1891 the first census was taken, and counted 735 whites, 1 429 ‘aboriginal natives’ and 3 121 ‘other coloured persons’.¹²² In 1904 Gordonia (by now including Mier) had 1 712 ‘European’ inhabitants, 2 374 ‘Hottentot’, 9 ‘Fingo’, 1 245 ‘Kafir and Bechuana’, and 3 888 ‘Mixed and other’. The population of Upington, the main urban concentration, was 554 ‘European’, 523 ‘Hottentot’, 9 ‘Fingo’, 241 ‘Kafir and Bechuana’ and 1 181 ‘Mixed and other’.¹²³

In 1889 the Crown Prosecutor of British Bechuanaland could write, ‘The fact that two of the Bastards have been appointed special justices of the peace, and that a village management board, with extensive powers, has been established, are sure proofs of the confidence reposed in them.’¹²⁴ But the Baster field-cornets (or justices of the peace) were gradually displaced by whites.¹²⁵ From four Baster members out of six in 1889, the Upington Village Management Board still had three in 1895, but by 1897 it was wholly white.¹²⁶ In 1897 the Keimoes Village Management Board still had three Baster members out of six, though this is likely to have changed by the turn of the century. ¹²⁷

A divisional council was established in 1907, all white. Socially, segregation began in school and church. In 1891 the magistrate wrote, in forwarding an application for a government grant for a ‘European school’, that ‘[it] appears desirable that European and native children should not be mixed up in one school’.¹²⁸ In 1893 the whites in Upington formed a separate Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (i.e. DRC) congregation from the Baster ‘mission church’, the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Sending Kerk: this was ‘necessary’, wrote Schroeder.¹²⁹ By 1896 at the latest there was a separate ‘native cemetery’.¹³⁰

A land survey was commissioned in the last years of the Gordonia settlement by the Committee of Management.¹³¹ However it was not acceptable to the new administration, and a further survey was carried out between 1892 and 1895. This included not only the large farms and land, but the ‘water-erven’ and the ‘dry erven’ associated with them. In addition, the village of Upington, with township erven, was (re)surveyed in 1892 and a village laid out in Keimoes in 1893.¹³² By 1887 Upington consisted of ‘a fairly well built church, large enough to seat four hundred people... four shops, a water-mill, police barracks, and about fifty dwellings of various sorts, several of them being substantial brick houses, of which the Special Commissioner’s residence is the largest and best, while others of a more temporary nature are constructed of reeds and mud’. The population was some 1 200 (300 families).¹³³ The church dated to the 1870s and Scott’s residence to 1882. But the shops and the ‘fifty dwellings’ were the nucleus of an urban settlement. The shopkeepers included William Wells, Daniel Turner and J.H. Lutz.¹³⁴ There was, however, only one lawyer (R.J. Tilney) though another was expected soon.¹³⁵ In 1893 Schroeder bewailed the fact that ‘Upington is however no more a mission station, but a town with six shops, a hotel and two canteens’.¹³⁶

The town was still however isolated, as it was ‘200 miles from the railway and kept in touch with the outer world by a weekly post only’.¹³⁷ Moreover it was cut off from its interior: ‘The district of Gordonia is such an extensive one and the means of communication with Field Cornets and others so limited that one feels quite out of touch, located as you are on the bank of the Orange River with the great tract of country stretching there from Northwards as far as the banks of the Molopo river.’¹³⁸ By 1898 there were however rudimentary roads from Upington to Kakamas, Zwartmodder, and Mier.¹³⁹

In this period, as a young minister recorded, Bushmanland was ‘surveyed into farms, which are shortly to be sold. The man who can buy two or three permanent watering holes has the upper hand.’¹⁴⁰ In the same period at Kenhardt there was ‘a small church, two shops, four whitewashed houses, a good lock-up or gaol and about forty mud houses’.¹⁴¹ In contrast ‘[no] buildings have yet been erected at Keimoes or other crown lands, the traders use tents pending instructions from government on the subject’.¹⁴²

In 1898 the Kakamas Labour Colony for ‘poor whites’ (largely Afrikaners) was established south of the Orange River opposite western Gordonia. In that year, the magistrate wrote of the district,

the [white] farmers are at last awakening to the fact that in order to progress it is necessary for them to turn their minds to irrigation and agriculture and not to be wholly dependent upon their livestock… The late losses from rinderpest have served in a great measure to bring this forcibly before them... All along the Orange River where the furrow has been [laid?]¹⁴³ and land brought under irrigation [the prospects are?] bright… At Keimoes... a Private Syndicate has made a furrow at the small cost of £700 bringing under cultivation about 300 morgen of ground capable of wheat in addition to what that place already produces.¹⁴⁴ At Kakamas the Poor White Labour Colony intend making a furrow on the South side of the River in this District and bringing under cultivation about 6,000 morgen of cereal producing soil.¹⁴⁵

Kakamas soon had a large concentration of white population (806 in 1903, and 3 000 by 1915). Significantly Schroeder, against the opposition of the Basters, became its first superintendent.¹⁴⁶

The Committee of Management, through its approval of burgher rights and control of land transfers, had succeeded until 1889 in largely ‘reserving’ land for Basters. But from April 1889 the new British Bechuanaland administration, while confirming earlier land grants, freed the market in land: ‘the conditions of tenure under which the land was formerly held have been, to a certain extent, relaxed. For instance, the farms as originally granted were not executable for debt, and transfer without the sanction of local government was forbidden. The change introduced, which permits free transfer, is a benefit to the district.’¹⁴⁷ The land-covetousness of whites was a recipe for their loss of land. Within a short space of time it was reported that, due to the drought further south, there was a rush of white farmers to buy farms.¹⁴⁸

Loss of land by Basters in Gordonia

In his 1937 survey of the Cape coloured people, J.S. Marais commented on Gordonia:

And yet even in this Elim of their own creation the Bastards failed to maintain themselves... Thriftless and inclined to extravagance, the Bastards readily spent more than they made especially when ‘plied with brandy’ by European traders. Debts issued in bonds on landed property and, when the interest on these could not be met, foreclosures. Once a number of Europeans had obtained a footing among the Bastards, the character of their community was destroyed and decay rapidly went forward... The vast majority have become labourers on farms or in the villages.¹⁴⁹

In these conclusions, the ‘liberal’ Marais echoed those of other, more racist, writers.¹⁵⁰ In 1995, at least on farms along the Orange, only three Baster landowners survived: the Jansen family, the Loxtons, and the Spangenbergs.¹⁵¹ In one sense this is not surprising. The capitalisation of 20th-century South African agriculture depended in large part on state inputs to a new class of ‘progressive’ white farmers, and many poorer white Afrikaners also did not survive as landowners in this transition.¹⁵² At the Kakamas ‘labour colony’, indeed, impoverished white Afrikaners congregated to become, eventually, prosperous farmers. Marais himself however, in contrasting the fate of the Gordonia settlement with the ‘success’ of Kakamas, pointed out that at the latter

(a) a careful study was made of labour colonies especially in Germany; (b) there was strict, continuous and detailed supervision over the settlers (by men who understood their business), who (c) were never allowed to own their land but had to hire it from the Church; (d) up to 1918 the Church had spent over £140,000 on the colony. Not one of these conditions was ever realised in a Bastard settlement with the possible exception of Pella [from 1881 a Roman Catholic mission site on the Orange River].¹⁵³

There are contemporary assertions (by whites) not only regarding the debts accumulated by Basters (and the role of drink in this), but also of their ‘nomadic mentality’ (trekgeest). This unawareness of the closing of the frontiers of available land was attributed, of course, by contemporary commentators to whites also. The previous history of Baster men had been one of transhumant pastoralism and hunting (like white men in Bushmanland also). They were also ‘used’, since the 18th century, to being ousted by whites from land, and having to push further onwards. In January 1888, in his last report from the Gordonia settlement, with incorporation into British Bechuanaland impending, Scott wrote that, despite the employment of a surveyor by the Committee of Management,

[there] are not wanting, however, symptoms that the Bastards, who are good pioneers, but apparently unable to form of themselves a permanent settled community, will on the first favourable opportunity dispose of their ground and trek to some country where there will be no taxes, however light, no boundary lines to farms, but on the contrary scope for unrestricted trekking and hunting, and no shops where they can run into debt and impoverish themselves by improvidence.¹⁵⁴

Two months before, Schroeder had expressed the same sentiments:

What makes the future dark, is the fear of their trekking in a northwesterly direction... My fear is that they [the Basters] will in time sell their property to whites, as some have already done, and trek further northwestwards to a freer life. I do my best to spur the Baster congregation to preserve with thankfulness the privileges which they enjoy at present in Gordonia.¹⁵⁵

To some extent this is contradicted, however, by the struggle of the Basters in the 1880s to get secure and inalienable title to the land in Gordonia.

What of alcohol? In 1881 Scott had written of the Basters that ‘[they] are rather inclined to be extravagant, and involved themselves in pecuniary difficulty, especially when traders push their trade by plying their customers with brandy’.¹⁵⁶ In the endeavour to thwart the effects of alcohol, the Gordonia settlement had banned its sale.¹⁵⁷ In 1890 the magistrate at Upington claimed that ‘the great majority of the inhabitants will be opposed to the granting of a liquor license in any part of this district’.¹⁵⁸ British Bechuanaland Proclamation 113 of 1891 extended a ban on sale of alcohol to ‘natives’ to include ‘persons of mixed race in Gordonia’ – with the specific intent, as the magistrate wrote, of preventing them from being ‘relieved of their farms’.¹⁵⁹ But, with the transition, problems with control of the sale of alcohol intensified, contributing to the conditions for dispossession.¹⁶⁰

The liquor traders – and land grabbers – found their way around this by establishing stores outside the boundaries. From the late 1880s a liquor store run by one Leopold Abt existed at Grootdrink, south of the river and thus outside eastern Gordonia.¹⁶¹ In 1890 the acting magistrate commented that ‘people living on the Commonage of Upington have sent up there for the liquor and consumed it here’. He added, ‘The Bastards at present are a very sober race but if once liquor should obtain a hold on them, the result will be that a very worthy class of people will be utterly ruined and the mixing of spirits with the HoneyBeer which the Namaqua drink will not tend to improve them.’¹⁶² A similar store was established by Harris Bros on the western margins of the settlement, at Zwartmodder (Harrisdale), outside its pre-1891 boundaries, after they had been refused a liquor licence inside it.¹⁶³ By 1894 the pressure of ‘investors in land and cattle buyers’ wanting accommodation had induced the Upington magistrate to recommend a liquor licence there.¹⁶⁴ A hotel was opened in Upington itself in March 1892, and was soon alleged to be illegally selling liquor to ‘natives and bastards’.¹⁶⁵ By 1893 there were two liquor stores in Keimoes also.

In 1893 inhabitants of Gordonia petitioned, unavailingly, for the withdrawal of liquor licences at Grootdrink, Olyvenhout’s Drift, and Kakamas.¹⁶⁶ In 1895, when the Cape Colony took over British Bechuanaland, the magistrate reported considerable illegal sales by ‘lower-class Europeans’ and recommended that possession of liquor be made an offence ‘though some resentment might be looked for on the part of the better class of Bastards who... are landowners of position in the district’.¹⁶⁷ There is no indication that anything came of this recommendation. In 1910 the magistrate at Upington reported that, while ‘several persons of the older generations’ of Basters were ‘still living on their own land’, the younger generation ‘have not followed in the footsteps of their fathers and have much degenerated. The main cause has been probably the introduction of liquor. The great majority of farms formerly held by them has passed as the price for their downfall into the hands of Europeans.’¹⁶⁸

Schroeder wrote also, ‘Where whites trek into a country formerly occupied by coloureds, there the coloureds go backwards very quickly. Most of them do not keep their fixed property safe, they take money, make debts, are offered large sums and lose their fixed property. Some trek northwards, others roam around, or must take service.’¹⁶⁹ Schroeder’s letters from this time are also replete with comments on the ‘spiritual backsliding’ of the Baster congregation, including drunkenness.¹⁷⁰ Together with the contemporary redefinition by prominent churchmen and politicians of poor whites as the ‘poor white problem’, the ground was being prepared for him effectively to turn his back on the Basters and take up the post of Superintendent of Kakamas.¹⁷¹

Whatever the causes, the facts of loss of land by Basters to whites in this period are indisputable. ‘At Keimoes most of the garden-erfs are already in the ownership of white men. At Upington there are 30 white and 40 coloured owners,’ wrote Schroeder in 1893.¹⁷² The following year he stated that ‘[of] 77 garden-erf owners at Upington there are now only 33 coloured and 44 whites. At Keimoes it is more serious.’¹⁷³ Schroeder’s examples relate to the water-erven, where crops could be grown through irrigation – of which he was in charge, as chairman of the Waterworks Company.¹⁷⁴ The earliest traceable record of ownership of water-erven at Keimoes is May 1890, and at Upington June 1890: there is thus no record of transfers prior to that time.¹⁷⁵ In that year the overwhelming majority of water-erven at Keimoes were still in the hands of Basters, and at Upington some 38–43 out of 65.¹⁷⁶ But after 1890 water-erven, particularly at Keimoes, were transferred from Baster to white hands.¹⁷⁷ By 1908 these water-erven were estimated by the Standard Bank as worth about £100 per morgen – a high land price in the area.¹⁷⁸ In 1910 the Upington magistrate commented that 106 water-erven existed, comprising 526 morgen, and valued as a whole at £30 351.

The average value of the land is reckoned at £50 per morgen. These 106 lots are owned by 89 individuals of whom 15 or 20 are not entirely dependent on the produce. The largest holding is valued at £1945 and the smallest at £30, the average being 4 morgen at £200 value... it would seem that such a system approximating to that of peasant proprietorship should give excellent results... Unfortunately the benefits are far from existing. The majority of the erfholders are in a state bordering on pauperism. Unfortunately too, the reason lies with the people themselves. The majority of them are ignorant, lazy and indifferent. The usual crops are wheat succeeded by mealies and no variation is ever considered, much less attempted. Ploughing is done in an extremely slipshod manner and other cultivation of the soil practically unknown. The soil is very good and if it received proper treatment would fully repay the extra cost and trouble. It is estimated, for example, that a 4 morgen plot at its best will produce 70 bags of corn valued at £70, and 35 bags of mealies valued at £26/10/0... Fruit and vegetable growing and dairy-farming are industries for which, if conducted with knowledge and enterprise, there are good openings. The erfholders are however at present in the hands of the storekeepers.¹⁷⁹

Figure 2.2: Land occupation in Gordonia in 1889, 1910 and 1920.

White ownership alone, it can be seen, was by no means a guarantee of agricultural advance.

White demand for land appears to have been initially most intense for the water-erven and for farms along the Orange. Two public sales in 1894 and 1895, the first of township erven in Upington and the second of new interior farms, for example, had disappointing results.¹⁸⁰ However whites were also acquiring Baster farms allocated in the 1880s along the Orange and in the interior. Ownership of these farms can be traced from three separate records: a list in 1889, a land register of 1894–5, and a later land register.¹⁸¹ What is clear from these is the extent of Baster ownership in 1889: whites owned only 20 of 81 farms, and then mainly interior ones.¹⁸² By 1894 there were some new white owners. But the main transfers into white hands came after 1894 – to some extent by 1908 and more particularly after that (Figure 2.2).

Significantly, a whole swathe of farms in eastern Gordonia, around an axis centred on Grootdrink, passed into the hands of Leo Abt, the shopkeeper there, and A. Mosenthal (a wholesaler from Port Elizabeth) and subsequently (23 in all) to one W. Stern and the Gariep Estates and Development Company. Stern also acquired other land in Gordonia. Undoubtedly debt, and probably in part debt for drink, played their part in this. These farms were far from markets, and were probably bought initially for speculative purposes, with an eye to mineral discoveries.¹⁸³ In western Gordonia, nine farms were acquired from 1898 by the Kakamas Labour Colony. Between these regions along the river – from Uizip above Upington to Zwartbooi’s Berg below Keimoes – and in the interior, Basters lost land to individual white farmers – mainly, though by no means exclusively, Afrikaners.¹⁸⁴ In 1907, however there were still comparatively wealthy Baster landowners. Those with accounts at the Standard Bank included Marthinus Jansen (worth c. £2 800), W.J.N. van Wyk (worth £3 000), David van Rooi (worth over £1 000), Johannes Zwart (worth £1 990), and Carolina van Wyk, a widow, worth £6 000.¹⁸⁵

But indebtedness (and drink) were only a part of the story of land loss. Less often mentioned is the deliberate trickery and unfair dealing by manipulative whites. In evidence to the Rehoboth Commission, reporting in 1926, a Baster named Maasdorp said:

Personally I gained experience in Gordonia, Rietfontein, and here. The white men are too clever for us coloured people. Just as many honest people as there are among them, so many dishonest ones there are also among them. I have seen in Gordonia, that our Basters received land as a present from Queen Victoria. My father and other Basters. At that time no white man was allowed to farm on the other side of Grootriver... Afterwards the white men came in. They bought the fertile farms, one for a wagon, the other for a wagon containing pumpkins and a team of oxen. Another drank a few dop-brandys so that he did not even know what he received, but his property was sold... Today there are very few who still own a small piece of land.¹⁸⁶

In 1923 a report in the Cape Argus commented how, after the annexation of Gordonia to the Cape,

[the] burghers were not long in succumbing to the wiles of unscrupulous whites. Storekeepers pushed credit upon them, law agents got them involved in loans and litigation, and the brandy sellers further assisted their ruin. Downright fraud, such as getting a burgher’s signature to a deed of sale, represented to him as merely an option to buy his farm (which happened in one case whereof the present writer was informed) was probably not often practised. These coloured folk were in most cases easily persuaded to dissipate their substance. But we know by sad examples how often the white landowner himself can be successfully seduced. This is especially the case when the country simplicity, albeit not lacking in its own forms of cuteness, has to match itself against the sharp practice of the towns.¹⁸⁷

‘Dishonest’ and ‘too clever’ whites, states Maasdorp.¹⁸⁸ ‘Downright fraud’ by ‘unscrupulous whites’, hints the Cape Argus. Oral testimony today supports these arguments.

But when the white man came, he began his system of taxes... on property, many of the people began to get behind with their farms. And they pawned much of their land… Look, if I had a farm then it was divided up among the ten sons. And I [a son] sell to a white man. And now he comes and he fences the first part off and he doesn’t give me rights to cross his land. The result is that I don’t have a means of exit to a town. And I get all sorts of unsavouriness, and must later trade my land... the white man then took the land for himself… at Kurrees, the people asked him for a contract of hire and he actually signed a contract of sale... and the Basters could have boozed. And then they were not taught to write their names.¹⁸⁹

After the land surveyor left the lawyers came of which Van Koppenhagen was one... the whites were already living in little pockets amongst us... Eventually the Baster would be taxed on his farm... there are even today plots standing which these lawyers gave to the whites, which the white people paid the taxes of. The Basters were stupid, since they would move... away and establish themselves again, they would leave their original farm... eventually the Basters would sign papers, written up by the white person... they didn’t have any other debt, the only debt was taxes which the lawyers made out to them... the lawyers took away all these farms from the people.¹⁹⁰

Here is much land in Gordonia which was not sold. It was not legally sold. It was in a dishonest manner that the land was taken. Some say people sold it. I’ve seen in certain writings by many whites, ‘the land was given away for an apple and an onion’. It was not sold. Now comes the man and says he will hire the land, but it is all the time a letter of sale. And all those things as far as I’ve been through it, took place in the time of Coppenhagen. It was the great death of our people here.¹⁹¹

Where the whites came in... [land] was sold. I mean hired for five years. Forms were changed round. Here if you sign, the old man must now come and sign, it is a five-year contract for hire. Then it was just changed around, then it was a contract of sale which has been made. But it wasn’t a title deed, it was just a contract of sale. And I believe that here in the Northern Cape no whites have got title deeds. If they have them, it is false.¹⁹²

[They] [her grandfather Niklaas Bok’s family] had a small debt, at the shop in Keimoes... Then the lawyers came… What they promised the lawyers, I don’t know. But in any case... the lawyers let them sign papers that they would pay the money... for the transfer of the land, naturally... But they did not know it was actually for the transfer of the land... when they discovered it, they had sold the farm. Then they had to vacate the farm. ¹⁹³

I made enquiries and then they gave me the number of the old fellow’s will and then I made enquiries at the department. There was something wrong. The old fellow’s will had instructed that of he and his wife, whoever died first, the one who remained must not sell... but it was sold.¹⁹⁴

Stories of becoming indebted for very little money, signing a piece of paper, and finding one had sold the land. Stories of hiring out land, and finding one had signed a paper to sell the land. Sale of the land in violation of terms of the will. These lurk in the consciousness of descendants of the Basters like distant but incessant chords of music.

Often associated with these stories are lawyers: one in particular, Jan Willem van Coppenhagen, in his youth articled clerk to the lawyer Ernst Schroeder (who was himself in Upington by 1894). By the turn of the century they were partners. Ernst Schroeder was the first mayor of Upington in 1899, and Van Coppenhagen was mayor continuously from 1910 to 1935!¹⁹⁵ Their role is curiously similar to that of an eastern Cape lawyer, Fenner Solomon, a contemporary of theirs. By oral ‘legend’ at least, he is credited with sharp practice in doing the inhabitants of Kat River out of their remaining land, largely through foreclosures on debt.¹⁹⁶ The power of lawyers, as Peires comments, lies in their ‘mastery of legal forms and written documents’.¹⁹⁷ They have the ability not only to coerce the illiterate, but to dress up dubious transactions in a form acceptable to officialdom. As a contemporary magistrate commented, there were certainly such ‘sea-lawyers’ around in Gordonia.¹⁹⁸

But there was a deeper reason for the loss of land by the Basters. As another Gordonia magistrate, new to the area, wrote in 1895:

The native inhabitants of the district are the so-called Bastards. Under the former regime a number of these men acquired farms and other landed property, and are now practically independent. This fact has an unwholesome influence on the rest of the community, who, as relatives, friends, or hangers on of landed proprietors, are disinclined to work, and are apt to take a somewhat false view of their position. Good servants are therefore extremely difficult to obtain in this district.¹⁹⁹

In 1903, after the South African War, which had had a severe effect on the Upington economy (see chapter 8) the magistrate proposed that Basters should be employed as farm labour in the Cape ‘western province’ and the DRC minister wrote that Basters’ ‘means of living are gone and they must now be treated as men who are expected to work for a living’ – which he ascribed to ‘a wise Providence’.²⁰⁰

In a post-mineral revolution society where blacks were increasingly relegated to the position of cheap labour, the existence of black land ownership in Gordonia was an ‘unwholesome influence’. In the eyes of racist whites, the Basters did not ‘deserve’ ownership of the land. In the eyes of many descendants of Basters in Gordonia, conversely, their land was being taken from them, through ‘the law’, but as if by conquest.²⁰¹ By 1899 it could be reported that ‘[the] Bastards who originally owned all the landed property in the district are going backward year by year, and ere long they will have disposed of all the landed property they now possess and again have become the servant of the white man’.²⁰² The paradox here is this: the Basters themselves took that land (from the Korana) as the result of ‘conquest’ by Cape colonial forces of which they were a part.

Further developments

There were three further developments of importance in this period. One was the incorporation into Gordonia on 3 December 1891 of the environs of Mier, land previously under the rule of the independent chief David Vilander, successor to Dirk Vilander who died in 1888 (see chapter 1).²⁰³ ‘Keenly alive to the dangers of a white invasion’, Dirk Vilander ‘would never on any account permit the sale to them of any land’, wrote the assistant magistrate of Rietfontein in 1908.²⁰⁴ David on the other hand, according to the same source,

was unable to resist the influence gradually acquired over him by the whites. He appointed a white man [A.J. Rautenbach] his secretary to keep records and, presumably, to give advice²⁰⁵… Acting no doubt on the advice of his European friends, Vilander, with the idea impressed upon him that unless each Bastard was granted full title to the several farms already laid out the communal land would, upon annexation, fall to Government, now divided the territory into farms of 10,000 morgen and issued certificates of ownership. Every male Bastard of age received a farm.²⁰⁶

This meant that by 1892 (by which time the area had been annexed to British Bechuanaland) some 79 farms had been granted by Vilander, eight of them to Europeans.²⁰⁷

It was this activity by David Vilander, together with his reassertion of his father’s claims over ‘Africander country’, which was one motive for British annexation.²⁰⁸ In November 1890 Bam wrote that ‘[the] boers are now taking advantage of the delay on the part of Government to annex the farms beyond the Molopo and of the claim of Filander, to declare that portion free ground, to be exempt from taxes as long as possible’.²⁰⁹ Another was developments among the Bondelswarts. Already in the 1880s Willem Christian had begun to alienate land to whites.²¹⁰ It may well have been the fact of annexation by Germany in 1885, when the Bondelswarts had always previously looked to the Cape, that accelerated their demoralisation.²¹¹ In 1887 Scott wrote of ‘a few colonial farmers’ trying to settle among the Namaqua, and regretted that ‘owing to the action of unprincipled white traders, the Bondelzwarts... the best disposed of all the Hottentot tribes, are being fast demoralised by wholesale brandy selling’.²¹²

When it became clear that Christian and Vilander were granting not only land but mineral concessions in this area, the pressure for British annexation became inexorable.²¹³ Moorrees, the Surveyor-General for British Bechuanaland, noted in 1891 that ‘[the] claim to this district, that is, between the 20th meridian and western boundary of the Gordonia farms... is disputed by white concessionaries on behalf of William Christian and David Philander... The danger therefore of delay in annexation is that the British Government would be called upon to face a controversy as to mineral rights in the ensuing settlement between the concessionaries of William Christian and David Philander.’²¹⁴ On 5 May 1891, therefore, the territory between the Molopo and the 20th parallel, and northward as far as the ‘Nosop or Oup River’ from its intersection by the 20th parallel to its junction with the Molopo was annexed to British Bechuanaland.²¹⁵ As the Colonial Secretary in Britain wrote in 1892, to the High Commissioner at the Cape, the ‘absence of any effective jurisdiction’ in the country lying between Vilander’s and the Orange River, and claimed by the Bondelswarts, together with ‘the grant of land and mineral concessions by William Christian were the principal motives which decided the extension of the Bechuanaland boundary’.²¹⁶

By 1895, according to Drechsler, William Christian had sold almost all the Bondelswarts land to the Kharas Khoma syndicate (later called SA Territories Ltd), and was on the point of being deposed as the result of opposition from below.²¹⁷ By the same time, according to Werner, ‘practically the whole territory occupied by pastoralist communities had been acquired by eight concession companies’.²¹⁸

In a meeting in 1892 with David Vilander and his council at Rietfontein, Moorrees was informed about the land question and the claimed boundaries of Vilander’s territory, and subsequently recommended establishment of a commission to investigate all claims.²¹⁹ Despite Vilander’s requests that he be allowed to continue to administer ‘internal affairs’ in the area, particularly enforcing inalienability of land, the British government extended the ‘free market’ in land to the territory.²²⁰

A Concession Court met subsequently, in 1893, and confirmed all titles granted by Vilander in what was to become British territory.²²¹ There were then 64 farms, 11 of them owned by Europeans.²²² In addition the farm of Rietfontein (also called Naas) was set apart as a mission station for the Rhenish, who had sent the Reverend Pabst to the area in 1885.²²³ In addition mineral concessions were granted to a Port Elizabeth syndicate on payment of £500 a year to Vilander.²²⁴

In 1895 it was reported that ‘the country which is still marked on the most recent maps as the Kalahari desert is coming as rapidly as possible into occupation… squatters, trekkers, traders, Bastards and natives are gradually spreading over it as far as Rietfontein in Mier… and northward to Lokototu and the Lake’.²²⁵ In 1896, however, there were only two European families at Rietfontein; later in the year a petition applied for a 60 000-morgen location for Basters in the area on land ‘extending northwards along the Molopo River from Saltpansputs to the junction of the Molopo and Nosop… Any Bastards who may already reside upon the land should be informed that the government cannot permit such occupation and that they must vacate the land without unnecessary delay’ (for later developments in the area see chapter 10).²²⁶

In the mid-1890s there were two other developments. The first was the incorporation of Gordonia as a magistracy into the Cape Colony on 16 November 1895 – by far the largest magistracy in terms of area in the Cape at the time or since.²²⁷ The second was the extension of the Upington canal ‘westward to the border of the commonage’,²²⁸ and the construction of a new canal in Keimoes.²²⁹ Both these developments strengthened the hold of white colonists over Gordonia.

•

Thus by the turn of the century Gordonia, for millennia the home of various Khoisan communities, taken over by Basters in the 1880s, had been truly colonised by whites. The following chapters trace further aspects of this dispossession of brown and black people by whites in the 19th and 20th centuries, together with some (though by no means all) of the resistance to it.

Notes

1Parts of this chapter were first published in M. Legassick, ‘The will of Abraham and Elizabeth September: the struggle for land in Gordonia, 1898–1995’, Journal of African History, 37, 3, 1996, pp. 371–418.

2W.J. de Kock, ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke van die Kaapse regering (1872–1885): met besondere verwysing na die Transgariep en Betsjoeanaland’, Archives Year Book, 1948, Vol. 1, pp. 27–8, 62–70. In addition the aim was keeping peace (together with the influence of the Cape magistrate at Springbok over the Bondelswarts) against fighting among communities in South West Africa which had broken out again after a ten-year peace. However these measures could not and did not suppress the arms trade via Walvis Bay and Port Nolloth to Warmbad, Mier etc.: ibid., pp. 76–88.

3Upington, ‘Report on Northern Border Affairs’, CPP G61-1879, pp. ix–xi.

4Schroeder, Carnarvon, to Rev. J.H. Neethling and Rev. William Murray, 30/5/1879, CPP A30-1880, pp. 4–5; see also Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, p. 76.

5See Scott to SNA, 14/2/1886, CA NBC17. For his appointment see Scott to Col. Sec., 30/6/1879, CA CO1100, Special Commissioner, Northern border.

6See Memorandum, Native Affairs Office, 8/9/1907, CA NA504, A148.

7H.G. Elliott, Testimonial to Scott, 12/6/1902, CA NA504, A148.

8Scott to Col. Sec., 23/7/1879, CA NBC12.

9Scott to SNA, ‘Re Pofadder’s ground: promise of for services rendered in Korannaland’, n.d. (7/3/1882?), CA NBC14. See also Scott to Colonial Secretary, 15/9/1883, CA NBC15; Scott, ‘Memo on recent occurrences in Great Namaqualand’, 22/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, pp. 9–11.

10Scott to SNA, 18/3/1880, CA NBC13.

11Scott to SNA, n.d., ‘Re Pofadder’s ground’, CA NBC14. See also letters from Scott in CPP A30-1880, pp. 24–31, 32.

12Quoted in Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 68–71, 75–7.

13Scott to SNA, 6/10/1879, CPP A30-1880, pp. 14–6. See also Under Colonial Secretary to Scott, telegram enclosed in Civil Commissioner Victoria West to Scott, 20/9/1879, CA NBC2; Scott to Ayliff, 3/10/1879, CPP A30-1880, pp. 16–7 recommending that land south of the river ‘should be reserved for the poorer class of Dutch and English’ to prevent them being squeezed out by the rich and forced into competition with ‘native neighbours’. See also Officer of Commissioner of Crown Lands and Public Works to Scott, 14/11/1879, CA NBC2.

14De Kock, ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke’, p. 69 and Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 71–2 citing NGK S5: 171/2 (Upington), ‘Notule van vergadering…’; S2: 164/2 Document signed by Basters and DRC; S5: 28/1 (Carnarvon), W.P. de Villiers to J.H. Neethling, 19/12/1879; also NGK S5: 164/2 Schroeder to Scott, 31/7/1879; Schroeder to Neethling, 31/7/1879; ‘Zamenspreking… Amandelboom’, 11/10/1879.

15See Scott to SNA, 12/6/1884, CA NBC16.

16On dealings with the Bondelswarts at this time see Scott, to Eustace, 2/6/1879, CA NA166; Bright to Scott, 9/8/1879, CA NA846 1/397; SNA to Scott, 12/1/1880, CA NBC3; Scott to SNA, 3/3/1880, CA NBC13; Enclosure in Eustace to Col. Sec., 14/6/1879, CPP G61-1879, p. 159; Scott to Col. Office, 3/7/1879, Bright to Scott, 9/10/1879, Scott to SNA, 10/11/1879, Bright to Col. Office, 30/12/1879, Scott to SNA, 3/3/1880, Bright to Scott, 4/6/1880, CPP A30-1880, pp. 8, 9–11, 13, 21–4, 37–40. The government insisted that the Bondelswarts kept possession of their territory ‘subject only to the authority of the government’.

17Bright to Scott, 7/1/1880, CA NBC3 (also in CPP A30-1880, pp. 19–20 and CA NA846); Nightingale to Under Colonial Secretary, 25/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, pp.5–9. See also Scott, ‘Memorandum on measures to be adopted for the protection of the Northern Border’, 26/12/1879; Scott to SNA, 13/5/1880 with enclosures, CPP A30-1880, pp. 34–7. The Northern Border Police were formed in November 1879: see CO’s office to Scott, 3/11/1879; Civil Commissioner, Victoria West to Scott, 12/1/1880; Maclean to Scott, 18/1/1880, CA NBC2; Scott to CO, Kakamas, 3/6/1879, CA NA166; Col. Sec. to Scott, 17/1/1880, CA NBC3; Foster to OC, Kakamas [ January 1880] enclosing Acting Col. Sec. to Scott, n.d., CA NBC13.

18Scott, ‘Historical account of the northern border’, CPP G20-1881, p. 86. This was probably a meeting in May 1880: see SNA to Scott, 7/6/1880, CA NBC3; Scott’s draft of 7/3/1882 in response to allegations in a letter signed ‘Ballingeich’ in Het Volksblad, 18/2/1882, CA NBC14.

19Bright to Scott, 7/1/1880; Bright to SM, 13/4/1880, CA NBC3. See also Bright to Scott, 19/3/1880, CA NA846; Foster to ?, 2/2/1880; Scott to RM, Carnarvon, 6/3/1880, CA NBC13.

20Scott to SNA, 1/4/1880, CA NBC13.

21Nightingale to Under Colonial Secretary, 25/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, p. 7.

22Scott to SNA, 13/5/1880, CPP A30-1880, p. 35; Scott, ‘Report of the special magistrate, northern border’, CPP G20-1881, p. 82. Applications had been made continuously since August 1879: Scott to SNA, 14/7/1884, CA NBC16.

23C.H.W. Schroeder, Godsdiensverslag, 31 Aug. 1886, Nederduits Gereformeerde Sending Kerk Archive (henceforth NGK) S5/2/164. Later he wrote of ‘different nationalities’ – ‘very different, Whites have Baster wives, White Basters, other coloured and kaffers’: Godsdiensverslag, 25 Sept. 1894. Translation.

24Scott to H. Hoffman, 26/1/1880, CA NBC13. See also Scott to J. Freeman, 26/5/1880, CA NBC13 and Petition by white and Baster farmers wanting to cross to north bank, 9/1/1880, CA NBC2.

25CO, NBF, to Scott, 9/1/1880, CA NBC2.

26P. van der Merwe, Pioniers van die Dorsland (Cape Town: Nasionale Pers, 1941), pp. 104–7.

27NGK Upington, Doopregister, 1881.

28See W.H.H. Spangenberg to Scott, 4/4/1881, CA NBC5; Spangenberg to Scott, 17/10/1881, CA NBC6; Scott to Spangenberg, 11/11/81; Scott to Spangenberg, 31/5/1882; Scott, Memo, 1/6/1882, CA NA169.

29Panizza to Scott, 22/6/1880, CA NBC3; Scott to Panizza, 29/6/1880, CA NBC13; NGK Upington, Doopregister, 1885.

30Robert C. Frier to Scott, 6/6/1880, CA NBC3. See Farini, Kalahari Desert, pp. 430–3 for a description of Frier (called ‘Fryer’) and the land he cultivated in 1885.

31NGK Upington, Doopregister, 1880.

32NGK Upington, Doopregister, 1883.

33However Rouse and Harrison to Scott, 25/6/1880, CA NBC3 refers to him as a Baster. See also ‘Deposition of Johannes Cats’, subject of Klaas Lukas, against his master G. Pearson, 19/1/1880, CA NBC2; J.H. Pearson, married to J.J. Roode, NGK Upington, Doopregister, 1884.

34See Scott to SNA, 2/1/1880, CA NBC13; Bright to Scott, 23/7/1880; USNA to Scott, 16/11/1880, CA NBC4; NAD to Scott, 14/12/1880, CA NA847; Civil Commissioner, Carnarvon, 14/3/1881 forwarding telegram to Scott, CA NBC5; Scott to SNA, 18/3/1881; 14/4/1881, CA NA167; USNAS to Scott, 8/4/1881, CA NA847; Scott, ‘Report’, CPP G20-1881, p. 87. For the police barracks see Scott to SNA, 13/1/1881, CA NBC13; NA to Scott, 27/1/1881, CA NA847; NAD to Scott, 21/6/1881.

35Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, p. 77.

36Nightingale to Under Colonial Secretary, 25/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, p. 7. See also Scott to David Van Rooi, Field Cornet, 14/5/1880, CA NBC13; Gert van Wyk, Veldcornet, Zwemkuil to Scott, 5/6/1882, CA NBC6; Bam to Jan Jansen, Field cornet, 26/4/1888, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1.

37Scott to SNA, 26/8/1881; ‘Petition from Committee of Korannaland Bastards, Olivenhout’s Drift’, 28/6/1881, CA NBC13.

38Scott to David Rooi, Olivenhoutsdrift, 24/3/1880, CA NBC13.

39‘Petition from Committee of Korannaland Bastards’, 28/6/1881, CA NBC13.

40Scott to SNA, 28/6/1881, CA NBC13.

41See Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 6/3/1882, CA NBC6/NA848.

42The first list of these farms is in CA 1/UPT 5/1/1, ‘List of payments made by owners of farms in the district of Gordonia on account of survey’ (n.d., c. July 1889).

43F.S. Watermeyer, Minute B428, 13/9/1894, CA SGBB31. See also Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 29/11/1883, CA NBC8: ‘there is no objection to titles being issued by the Committee of Management, on the conditions suggested by you, nor to your countersigning these documents in the terms set forth in the last paragraph of your letter… it is undesirable that speculators in land, and others not of the same class as the Bastards now in occupation should acquire rights there’. The Under Colonial Secretary was replying to an untraceable letter and memorandum from Scott dated 20/11/1883.

44Enclosure 1, 23/5/1882 in letter from Upington, Het Volksblad, 15/6/1882, Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 21/6/1882, CA NBC6.

45Die Burger, 8/5/1974. See also Magistrate’s Report, Upington, 1910, State Archives, Pretoria (henceforth PA), JUS49, 25199/10; W. Macdonald, The conquest of the desert (London: T. Werner Laune, 1913), pp. 13–4. A later resolution of the Committee of Management provided that ‘any burgher was allowed to register a place where he intended to dig for water, and if successful in finding water within twelve months… a farm would be granted to him. If not successful the right would be renewed on application’: see Bam to Surveyor-General, Vryburg, 27/2/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2. Another resolution stated that all vleis capable of holding water for three months were considered as free or trek places which no farm should encroach on: see Bam to SG, Vryburg, 27/4/1892, CA SGBB20.

46Schroeder, 1884, quoted in A.K. Cornelissen, Langs Groot Rivier (n.p., n.d.), p. l8.

47See Scott to Commissioner of CL and PW, 17/1/1884, NBC15; C. Bam to Surveyor-General, Vryburg, 1/8/1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1. Erven were offered for sale at 20/- each and an annual quitrent of 5/-: see Cornelissen, Langs Groot Rivier, p. 18.

48Enclosure 2 in letter from Upington, Het Volksb1ad, 15/6/1882, Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 21/6/1882, CA NBC6, signed by F.J. Brand, J.J.M. Strauss, F.L. Strauss, J.A. Strauss, W. Wills, W.H.H. Spangenberg, A. Halliburton, J.J. Rittmann, 23/5/1882. A number were subsequently to become landowners in the area.

49Letter from Upington, 4/6/1882 in Het Volksblad, 15/6/1882 in Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 21/6/1882, CA NBC6. Scott wrote replies to these allegations, important letters, which have not been traced. For reference to Scott’s replies to SNA on 3/7/1882 and 9/7/1882, see SNA to Scott, 5/8/1882, CA NA848. CA NA1031, Index of schedules records these as among letters of Scott’s transmitted to the Prime Minister on 30/7/1884, and returned on 18/9/1884. CA NA1069, Index to letters received, 1882 records these letters as sent to the Prime Minister on 30/7/1884 and again on 18/10/1884. They are not to be found in the records of the Prime Minister’s office, which is sparse on correspondence before l887.

50For the article, in Het Volksblad, 18/2/1882, see enclosure in Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 13/2/1882, CA NBC6; also Scott’s draft response in Scott to SNA, 7/3/1882, CA NBC14.

51Scott to SNA, 30/9/1884, CA NBC1. See also Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 17/9/1884, CA NA169. For Spangenberg’s dealing with the Committee of Management see Aurel and Sons, Victoria West, to Committee of Management, 9/4/1883, CA NBC7; Committee of Management to G. Horak de Villiers, 13/7/1883, CA NBC15; G. Horak de Villiers to Scott, 2/8/1883; I. Horak de Villiers to Scott, 13/9/1883, CA NBC8; Scott to Spangenberg, 17/3/1884, CA NBC15; Scott to Spangenberg, 21/10/1884; Scott to Spangenberg, 30/9/1884, CA NBC16; Dirk Filander to Scott, 23/10/1886; Karl Hendricks to Scott, 4/6/1887; Spangenberg to Scott, 28/6/1887, CA NBC11; Scott, CPP G60-1888, pp. 10ff; letter of 8/12/1888, CA PM287; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 17/10/1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

52Van der Merwe, Pioniers van die Dorsland, pp. 104–7.

53Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 29/11/1883, CA NBC8.

54Scott, ‘Report of the Northern Border district’, n.d. (early 1883), CPP G8-1883, Bluebook on Native Affairs, p. 124. In early 1881 Scott had reported that a ‘scheme for pumping out the water of that river so as to enable cultivation to be largely carried out is under consideration’: Scott, ‘Report…’, CPP G20-1881, p. 82. In early 1882 Scott reported how again a considerable quantity of ‘very good wheat’ had been raised by the Basters, and commented that the way they had ‘this year fought with the birds who did their best to destroy the crop has astonished me. More than one European abandoned his crops in despair.’ Scott, ‘Report …’, 10/1/1882, CPP G33-1882, Bluebook on Native Affairs, p. 179.

55The Bok family had been on the Orange River for a long time. As early as 1858 Robert Moffat Jr, travelling along the river, stated that ‘it may safely be asserted that between Pella and its outposts, and the Hartebeest River, the only permanent inhabitants are about five or six families of Bastards, called the Bokse, residing at “Noussi”. The Boks had “occupied” Noussi for many years, and been accustomed to make occasional use of the vacant tracts around them, in common with the Pellanaars, as they are called. They (the Bokse) formerly resided with Boers in the Bokkeveld. I had often heard of them, and from my own observations can say that they are the most enterprising and industrious men of the class I have met with. They are in pretty good circumstances, and co-operate admirably. Annually, they resort to the Kalagare [Kalahari] on hunting expeditions, and return with from fifty to a hundred skins of elands, which they convey to the Bokkeveld for corn. They have been making some efforts to purchase land beyond the [Orange] river, in the Afrikaner territory; but I do think it will be to the interest of the Colonial Government to encourage such individuals to remain within the boundary. More suitable men for the occupation of outer farms will seldom be met with.’: Moffat, CPP G1-1858, p. 5.

56Bam to SG, Vryburg, 22/3/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3.

57Bam to SG, Vryburg, 18/1/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3. Klaas Bok owned Kousas and T’Kabies, river farms just downstream from Keimoes, and the interior farm Boksputs. Keimoes Island was apparently originally called Bokeiland. For Klaas Bok see also M. de Beer, Keimoes en omgewing: ’n kultuurhistoriese verkenning (Cape Town: n.p., 1992), pp. 10, 20–1 who reproduces part of the title deed for T’Kabies dated 24/4/1894 and wonders why he got the ground ‘for nothing’, ignoring his earlier presence in the area; Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, p. 86 and Cornelissen, Langs Groot Rivier, p. 19 citing Schroeder, 26/9/1883 and ibid., pp. 29, 54 who both wrongly attribute the origins of the Keimoes canal to Schroeder.

58Scott to SNA, 14/7/1883, CA NBC15.

59Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 77–9, 81–2.

60Schroeder to NGK committee, 17/8/1883, NGK S5/2/164 quoted in Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 81–2.

61Scott to SNA, 20/11/1883, CA NA168. See also Nightingale to Under Col. Sec., 25/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, pp. 7–8.

62Scott, ‘The Northern Border, Upington’, 11/1/1884, CA NA168; also CPP G3-1884, Bluebook on Native Affairs, p. 45 and Scott, 11/1/1884, CA NBC15.

63Scott to Commissioner of Lands and Public Works, 28/8/1884, CA NBC16. See also Committee of Management to SNA, 7/10/1884, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Scott, ‘Memo of correspondence re water furrow’, 26/11/1885, CA NBC17. In August 1883 a Waterworks Company was formed: see Proclamation 69 (14/8/1889), British Bechuanaland in D. Ward (ed.), Proclamations (numbers 1 to 185) together with appendixes containing certain Acts of the Cape Parliament and the more important government notices... 1885–1893 (Grahamstown, 1893), pp. 157–64; Bam to Duncan, 12/1/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1. The Waterworks Company then issued water-erven to shareholders ‘for their respective shares in the construction of the furrow’: Bam to Duncan, 7/1/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1. It was supposed to be transformed into a joint stock company after 1889: Chalmers to Schroeder, 8/12/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

64The automatic grant of a ‘dry erf ’ to owners of water-erven seems to have fallen away after annexation of Gordonia by British Bechuanaland: see, for example, Goodyer to Surveyor General, Vryburg, 17/2/1892; Bam to Surveyor General, Vryburg, 9/3/1892; Bam to Surveyor General, 6/4/1892; Bam to Surveyor General, 12/4/1892; A.J. van Wyk to Surveyor General, 4/5/1892, CA SGBB20.

65Scott to SNA, 14/7/1883, Scott to SNA, 6/2/1884, CA NBC15. The state of the south bank was described in 1887: ‘The whole country from Hope Town to Pella is, more or less, occupied either by farmers who live in houses on their own land, or by those who occupy tents and wagons on lease lands, and also by others who hold grazing licence rights. Many of these people are Colonial Boers, and some are Bastards; but all seem to be fairly well off in flocks and herds, whilst several possess considerable wealth…’: Percy Nightingale to Under Col. Sec., 8/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, p. 7.

66SNA to Scott, 18/12/1883, CA NBC8. See also Scott to SNA, 10/10/1884; Scott to Commissioner of Crown Lands and Public Works, 26/2/1885, CA NBC16.

67Davenport, South Africa, p. 94.

68Scott, ‘Memo of correspondence re water furrow’, 26/11/1885, CA NBC17; Marquard to Scott, 28/7/1886, CA NBC10.

69Rose-Innes to Scott, 27/5/1884, CA NA169.

70Scott to SNA, 12/6/1884, CA NBC16. A passage from this is quoted – against the Volksblad article of June 1882 – in Afrikaner historian C.J.S. Strydom, ‘Die verdediging van die noord westelike grens van die Kolonie’ (MA, Unisa, 1929), p. 44 as evidence of Scott’s ‘negrophilism’.

71J. Rose-Innes to Scott, 30/6/l884, CA NA169.

72Scott to SNA, 14/7/1884, CA NBC1.

73Committee of Management to SNA, 7/ 10/1884, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1. Signed by Robert Frier, Martin Jansen, Johannes [Joost/Zwart?], Job Jansen, Gert van Wyk, David van Rooi (mark instead of signature) and C. Schroeder.

74Scott to SNA, 10/10/1884, CA NBC16. He qualified his position on annexation: ‘except on the grounds that when convenient it is not always practicable to annex and therefore if ever there is likely to arise a necessity for annexation it is well to effect it on the first occasion when practicable’. It was presumably in relation to these letters that Scott’s of 3/7/1882, 9/7/1882 and 20/11/1883 were ‘sent to the Premier’ on 18/10/1884 (see note 49).

75Scott to SNA, 15/1/1885, CA NBC16.

76Scott, ‘Northern Border’, 15/1/1885, CPP G2-1885, pp. 44–5.

77Scott to SNA, 15/1/1885, CA NA168.

78‘Order of the Queen in Council for the establishment of Civil and Criminal jurisdiction in Bechuanaland’, 27/1/1885, BPP C4432, pp. l–2.

79The phrase was used by J.X. Merriman in a memorandum urging British sovereignty in October 1883: see P. Lewsen, John X. Merriman: paradoxical South African statesman ( Johannesburg: Donker, 1982), p. 112. De Kock, ruling out other factors, attributes Cape expansionism to the extent of Cape trade across the Orange: ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke’, pp. 36–8. On the Kalahari, Eustace, magistrate in Namaqualand, commented, ‘From these districts [Great Namaqualand and Damaraland], at certain seasons, traders, accompanied by native hunters, etc etc, penetrate into the Kalahari desert, where they find a diminishing number of ostriches, and near Lake N’gami elephants.’: Eustace to USNA, 21/1/1885, CPP A5-1885, Papers, Minutes and Correspondence relating to the Territories of Great Namaqualand and Damaraland, pp. 12–5.

80See E.L.P. Stals (ed.), The commissions of W.C. Palgrave (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1991).

81Quoted in De Kock, ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke’, pp. 35–6. Eustace, magistrate in Namaqualand, was later to comment that when he was appointed by Barkly in 1876 he was instructed to act as magistrate to British subjects within an area ‘occupied by Native tribes, bounded on the North by the 25th degree of South latitude, East by the Transvaal Republic, South-east by the Free State, South by the Cape Colony and West by the Atlantic Ocean’: Eustace to USNA, 25/9/1884, CA NA200 – a vast area encompassing, inter alia, Gordonia.

82Sir Bartle Frere to Carnarvon, 12/11/1877, GH 27/2, quoted in De Kock, ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke’, pp. 48–50.

83Carnarvon to Frere, 23/1/1878, GH 4/2, cited in De Kock, ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke’, pp. 48–50.

84Sillery, John Mackenzie, p. 81.

85German Embassy to Foreign Office, 8/10/1884, BPP C4262, pp. 50–1. On the lack of definition of the hinterland see also Derby to Robinson, 11/11/1884, BPP C4252, p. 37; Derby to Robinson, 4/12/1884, BPP C4265, pp. 6–7.

86Ministers to Robinson, 17/9/1884 enclosed in Robinson to Derby, 17/9/1884, BPP C4252, pp. 6ff, in reply to a coded telegram from Derby dated 29 August saying that if the Cape Colony desired to protect the Kalahari, its claims could be considered.

87Sillery, John Mackenzie, p. 81 implies that the protectorate was created in February 1884 as a buffer against the German thrust: this is surely too early.

88For an interesting account of Mackenzie’s and Rhodes’s interests see Shillington, Colonisation of the Southern Tswana, ch. 6.

89On 15 July Upington moved in parliament to open negotiations with the British with a view to submitting, in 1885, a measure for the annexation to the Cape ‘of the territory on the south-west border of the South African Republic, now under the protection of Great Britain’: Sillery, John Mackenzie, p. 104; BPP C4194, pp. 98–100. In their communication of 17 September the Cape government pointed out that, if this was annexed as well as the rest of the territory they asked for, then the whole country from the German coastline to the South African Republic would fall under the jurisdiction of the Cape Colony.

90The London Convention merely stated (Article 2): ‘Her Majesty’s Government will, if necessary, appoint Commissioners in the native territories outside the eastern and western borders of the South African Republic to maintain order and prevent encroachments.’: BPP C3914, 1884.

91J. Mackenzie, Austral Africa, losing it or ruling it: being incidents and experiences in Bechuanaland, Cape Colony and England (London: Sampson Low etc., 1887), Vol. 1, p. 314; BPP C4213, p. 33.

92See Derby to Robinson, Telegram, 28/8/1884, BPP C4213 p. 26; Robinson to Derby, 9/7/1884, enclosing Mackenzie to Robinson, 21/6/1884, BPP C4194, p. 58.

93FO Confidential print 5060, February 1885, No. 190, Bramston to Pauncefote, 25/10/1884, p. 134. I am grateful to Shaun Milton for this reference.

94See De Kock, ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke’, pp. 277–87; J.H. Esterhuyse, South West Africa, 1880–1894: the establishment of German authority in South West Africa (Cape Town: Struik, 1968), pp. 71–83. In a footnote on p. 282 De Kock describes the Bondelswarts territory as ‘[naastenby] die gebied van die Visrivier tot die 20ste graad oosterligte en van Keetmanshoop tot aan die Oranje’ (my emphasis). This could indicate that the boundary to South West Africa set by the British at 20 degrees east was at the eastward limit of Bondelswarts territory. However where De Kock gets this information from is unclear: it is not contained in any of the sources which he cites (e.g. CPP A5-1885; CA NA200, Letters from Resident Magistrate, Namaqualand, 1884).

95Derby to Robinson, 11/11/1884, BPP C4252, p. 37.

96There is difference of opinion as to whether the Germans had any intention of claiming territory as far as the Transvaal. See, for example, R.I. Lovell, The struggle for South Africa, 1875–1899 (London: Macmillan, 1934) p. 101; Mackenzie, Austral Africa, Vol. 2, p. 209, for different interpretations of German boundary aims. See also De Kock, ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke’, p. 277, who says that Gerhard Rohlfs cabled Bismarck from Cape Town asking that the eastward boundary of German territory be set at 24 degrees east longitude, i.e. between Vryburg and Kuruman (Rohlfs to Bismarck, 16/12/1884).

97For the evidence on this, missed by some accounts, see Agar-Hamilton, Road to the north, pp. 356–8. Shillington, Colonisation of the Southern Tswana, p.161, makes clear that it was the continued success of Montshiwa’s Rolong resistance to white incursions, prompting the threat of full Transvaal intervention, which prompted Rhodes to make this turn.

98Granville to Malet, 10/12/1884, BPP C4310, pp. 1–2.

99BPP C4432, p. 48.

100Mackenzie, Austral Africa, Vol. 2, pp. 209–10. See also Mackenzie to Thompson, 2/6/1885: ‘We are clearly in other lines now than those of last year. I suppose Germany is the cause of that. Sir C. Warren found after his arrival in Bechuanaland that the Protectorate had been much enlarged by the Imperial Government.’; Mackenzie to Chesson, 5/6/1885: ‘if Germany and the Transvaal had a little plan and a surprise for England and for Europe as to South African politics, it cannot now come off; for we have got up right between them, very awkwardly for anti-English politicians’, A.J. Dachs (ed.) Papers of John Mackenzie ( Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1975), pp. 201–2. Compare Lovell, Struggle for South Africa, pp. 101–2, who writes that it was ‘very probable’ that British fear of German ‘extension eastwards towards Bechuanaland and the Transvaal’ contributed to the cabinet’s decision to send out General Warren in October; and to ‘their claim, put forward in January 1885, that British jurisdiction extended as far west as 20 degrees East, a claim which Germany recognised the following May’.

101The Protectorate was declared in these terms in the Cape Government Gazette, 23/3/1885. Robinson addressed three telegrams to Derby on the same day, 23/3/1885, implicitly indicating his unhappiness with the enlargement. He (a) wanted to know whether, now that the main objects of the Warren expedition were accomplished, Bechuanaland should be annexed to the Cape or stay under imperial control; (b) complained that Warren was intending, unnecessarily, to go to Shoshong (to get the sanction of the chiefs to the northward extension of the protectorate); (c) wanted to know whether to approve Warren’s plans for the administration of Bechuanaland under the Order in Council (BPP C4432, p. 59).

102Granville to Malet, 10/12/1884, BPP C4310, pp. 1–2. On 4 December, six days earlier, Colonial Secretary Derby had written to Robinson, ‘I am awaiting a definite declaration as to the ultimate limits of the [German] protectorate inland’ (BPP C4265, pp. 6–7).

103See CPP A5-1885; CA PMO, 286 and 287, Minutes from Prime Minister to Governor and High Commissioner, 1882–1885, 1885–1890 where there is no mention of this boundary in the period up to the end of 1884, and even thereafter.

104Eustace to USNA, 17/12/1884, CPP A5-1885. See also his response to Derby’s request to the Cape of 11 November to define the northern and western boundaries of the ‘Kalahari country’ it would like annexed: ‘Of course this would not be so easy at once to arrive at, if the wishes of all Native chiefs have to be consulted, but as far as the future welfare of the Colony is concerned, it would include Great Namaqualand and Damaraland’: Eustace to USNA 2/1/1885 enclosed in Minute of Ministers, 19/1/1885, CPP A5-1885, pp. 12–5. Curiously Esterhuyse, South West Africa, has absolutely no discussion of the establishment of the eastern boundary of South West Africa.

105Scott, ‘Northern Border’, 15/1/1886, CPP G5-1886, Bluebook on Native Affairs, pp. 40–1.

106Nightingale to Under Col. Sec., 25/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, p. 8. See also Scott to SNA, 24/4/1885, CA NBC16; Scott, ‘Northern Border, Upington’, 15/1/1886, CPP G5-1886; Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 83–4; Cornelissen, Langs Groot Rivier, pp. 19–20, 51–2.

107See Scott, 28/8/1884, CA NBC16; Scott to Col. Sec., 13/8/1885; Scott to Comm. Crown Lands and Public Works, 20/11/1885, CA NBC17.

108Scott, ‘Northern Border’, 7/1/1887, CPP G12-1887, Bluebook on Native Affairs, p. 39.

109Scott to Comm. of Crown Lands and Public Works, 20/11/1885, CA NBC17. See also Scott to Commissioner, 13/8/1885; Scott to Colonial Secretary, 13/8/1885, CA NBC17; Scott to ?, 4/6/1885, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Under Col. Sec. to Scott, 13/1/1887, CA NBC10; Scott, ‘Northern Border, Upington’, 15/1/1886, CPP G5-1886, p. 41; Scott, ‘Northern Border’, 7/1/1887, CPP G12-1887 p. 39.

110Committee of Management to SNA, 7/4/1885; Scott to SNA, 7/4/1885, CA NBC16.

111J. Rose-Innes to Scott, 16/5/1885, CA NBC9.

112Minute of Ministers to Governor, 2/6/l885, CA PMO287, 72G.

113Minute of Ministers to Governor, 6/7/1885, CA PMO287, 72G.

114See J. Agar-Hamilton, The road to the north; South Africa 1852–1886 (London: Longmans Green, 1937), pp. 420–5; K. Shillington, The colonisation of the Southern Tswana, 1870–1900 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1985), pp.171–3; De Kock, ‘Ekstraterritoriale vraagstukke’, pp. 261–6; A. Sillery, John Mackenzie of Bechuanaland: a study in humanitarian imperialism, 1835–1899 (Cape Town: Balkema, 1971), pp. l30–4.

115See Stanley to Robinson, 13/8/1885, BPP C4432, p. 118; Stanley to Robinson, 28/9/1885, p. 58; Robinson to Stanley, 30/9/1885, BPP C6643, pp. 92ff.

116Scott to SNA, 12/11/l885, CA NA168. See also Under Secretary NAD to Scott, 12/10/1887; Under Secretary NAD to Bam, 3/5/1888, CA NBC11; 7/3/1888; 14/3/1888, CA PMO287; Under Secretary NAD to Scott, 2/5/1888; Sprigg to Governor, 7/5/1888, CPP G60-1888, pp. 16–8; Bam to Gert van Wyk, 24/5/1888, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1.

117Scott to Sec. NAD, 16/6/1902, CA NA504 A148.

118Stanford to J. Frost, Minister of Native Affairs, 20/6/1902, CA NA504 A148.

119Bam to ?, Vryburg, 19/9/1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1.

120CPP G60-1888, pp. 7–8.

121BPP C5897, pp. 52–3.

122The census was taken on 5 April 1891. The figures are from Public Record Office (PRO) C04 17/61/16480, F.J. Newton to Secretary Vryburg, 18/7/1891, enclosure 1 in Despatch 255E, 20/7/1891. My thanks to Sean Milton for this reference. See the reference to it in BPP C6829, 1892, p. 17; C6857, 1894, pp. 8, 24–34. The figure is taken from Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 91–2 and S. Malan, Geskiedenis van Upington en Distrik Gordonia (Typescript, Oorhandig aan Poskoets te Upington op Donderdag 28 Februarie 1952, Western Cape Archives and Records Service), p. 5. See also CPP G19-1905, Census of the Cape Colony, p. xxiv which refers to the partial census in 1891 in British Bechuanaland, excluding the ‘native reserves’, which counted 5 211 ‘Whites’ and 67 525 ‘Coloured’.

123CPP G19-1905. In 1896 the population of Keimoes, the second-largest urban concentration, was estimated at 400, of whom 100 were white: Scholtz to Secretary, Law Department, 29/1/1896; Scholtz to Colonial Secretary, 10/3/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/1/5.

124BPP C5897, p. 26.

125See C. Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 21/4/1891, recommending three white and one Baster field cornet, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; Ashburnham to Secretary, Vryburg, 4/2/1895, 1/UPT 5/14; Scholtz to DC(?) Vryburg, 19/9/1895; Scholtz to Secretary, Law Department, Cape Town, 28/11/1895; Scholtz to Colonial Secretary, 15/1/1896, 1/UPT 5/1/5; Scholtz to Colonial Secretary, 9/4/1897 (wholly white field-cornets), 1/UPT 5/2/2.

126C. Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 19/9/1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Ashburnham, ‘Return of Local Boards…’, 22/8/1894; ‘Report for 1894–5’, 17/4/1895, CA 1/UPT 5/1/4; Scholtz, Notice, 7/7/1897, CA 1/UPT 5/3/1.

127Ashburnham, ‘Return of Local Boards...’, 22/8/1894; ‘Report for 1894–5’, 17/4/1895, CA 1/UPT 5/1/4; Scholtz, Notice, 28/7/1897, CA 1/UPT 5/2/2; De Beer, Keimoes en omgewing, pp. 25–7, 92–3.

128Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 24/3/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2. See also Bam, ‘Report on Gordonia’, 10/10/1891; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 1/9/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; Report of resident magistrate, Gordonia, 29/3/1892, BPP C6829, 1892, British Bechuanaland, Report for 1890–1892, pp. 40–1; ‘Report of resident magistrate, Gordonia’, 5/4/1893, BPP C6857, 1894, British Bechuanaland, Report for 1892–3, pp. 52–3; BPP C7629, 1895, p. 42; Ashburnham to Surveyor General, 16/8/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/4; Scholtz to Superintendent General of Education, 10/1/1896, 24/1/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/1/5; Scholtz to Secretary of Agriculture, 23/9/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/2/1; Scholtz to J. Strauss, 23/2/1897; to Undersecretary for Agriculture, 12/3/1897; to Strauss, 26/4/1897; Schierhout to Secretary, Public School Committee, 27/8/1897, CA 1/UPT 5/3/1; S. Malan, Geskiedenis van Upington, p. 8. The school appears to have begun in 1897.

129Schroeder to BZC, 24/3/1893, NGK S5/2/164. See also Bam to Surveyor-General, Vryburg, 11/1/1893; Bam to Colonial Secretary, Vryburg, 7/3/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3; Bam to D. Turner and E. Koch, 5/5/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, p. 92.

130Scholtz to Under Col. Secretary, 8/5/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/2/1; Scholtz to District Surgeon, 21/8/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/3/1.

131On this survey see, for example, CPP G60-1888, p. 5; CPP G6-1888, Bluebook on Native Affairs, p. 21; Bam to Surveyor General, Vryburg, 28/6/1889; Bam to Crewes, 28/6/1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Bam to Surveyor General, Vryburg, 13/11/1889; 31/1/1890; 12/3/1890; 2/9/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

132See Goodyer to Surveyor General, 22/2/1892, CA SGBB20; BPP C6829, 1892, pp. 21–4; BPP C6857, 1894, pp. 21–34; BPP C7629, 1895, pp. 14–19; BPP C7944, 1896, pp. 13–6.

133Nightingale to Under Colonial Secretary, 25/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, p. 5. For a contemporary description of magistrate Scott and the Upington canal, see Farini, Kalahari Desert, pp. 434–7. At an NGK Avondmaal around early 1882 there were 58 men and 105 women present; 40 children had been baptised in the previous year: see Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, p. 78 (confirmed from 1882 NGK Doopregister, Upington). The Church Council members were Johannes Zwart, Louis Kotzee, Job Jansen, Willem Mouton, Jan Diergaard, Jacobus Basson, Daniel Mouton, and Albert Louw: see ibid., p. 93. In 1883 the church had 219 members, employed its first schoolteacher, and had its income exceed £200 for the first time: see ibid., pp. 88, 96, 102–3, 154.

134See Scott to D. Turner, 12/10/1884; Scott to L. Stock, 12/10/1884; Public notice of 12/10/1884 saying no further shop licence would be issued because there were already five shops; Scott to L. Stock, 18/4/1886; Scott to W. Wells, 10/7/1886; Scott to J.H. Lutz, Brussel and Voskule, P.P. Rittmann, D. Turner, undated; Scott to Stock, 18/4/1886; Bam to Stock, 9/6/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Bam to Koch and Niemoller, 21/7/1890; Bam to Surveyor-General, Vryburg, 20/12/1890; Bam to Magistrate, Vryburg, 20/1/1891; Gordonia Licensing Court, 4/11/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; Bam to Master, Vryburg, 4/1/1893 re estate of William Wells; Bam to Ward, 17/4/1893; Bam to Government Surveyor, 8/6/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3; Scholtz to Controller of licences and stamps, 17/12/1895 [contains a list of trading licences], CA 1/UPT 5/1/5. See also Magistrate, Carnarvon to Scott 27/6/1881, approving a shop licence for F.W.C. Loxton at Olyvenhout’s Drift, presumably south of the river, CA NBC5.

135Bam to J.B. Auret, Victoria West, 11/8/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2. By 1898 there were three lawyers, Tilney, Ernest Schroeder and J.H.N. Will: Smellekamp to High Sheriff, 3/3/1898, CA 1/UPT 5/2/2.

136‘Schroeder to BZC, 2/3/1893, NGK S5/2/164.

137J. Ashburnham, CPP G5-1896, Bluebook on Native Affairs, pp. 69–70.

138Herbst to Registrar of Births and Deaths, 5/2/1898, CA 1/UPT 5/2/2. By then the environs of Mier had been added to Gordonia: see below.

139O’Connell to Assistant District Inspector of Public Works, Vryburg, 6/10/1898, CA 1/UPT 5/3/2.

140W.J. Conradie, ‘A young minister in Namaqualand’, in Schaefer (ed.), Life and travels. He was in Namaqualand between 1880 and 1895.

141Nightingale to Under Col. Sec., 25/7/1887, CPP G60-1888, p. 8. In 1883 Kenhardt consisted ‘of two shops, a family of English squatters, the widow of the late gaoler (a coloured woman) the present gaoler (married to a coloured woman), a detachment (seven men and a non-commissioned officer) of the Northern Border Police and a number of disreputable native squatters who under the pressure being put upon them are gradually moving away. There is a thinly scattered Boer population, about 20 families in a radius of 50 miles, in the neighbourhood’: Scott to ?, 21/1/1883, CA NBC15.

142Bam to Surveyor-General, Vryburg, 27/2/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2. See also Jay to Niemoller, 15/5/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3. Keimoes village was laid out in 1893, and by 1895 there were 60 large houses, a church and a school: Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 26/4/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3; ‘Surveyor-general’s report’, BPP C6857, 1894, British Bechuanaland, Report for 1892–3, pp. 24–34; Scholtz to Secretary, Law Department, 29/1/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/1/5.

143The Upington canal had been extended further westward in 1894.

144This was the B-canal, following the earlier A-canal built by Basters led by Klaas Bok in 1882–3.

145O’Connell, ‘Report’, 7/10/1898, CA 1/UPT 5/3/2.

146For population figures see P.J. Rossouw, ‘Die Arbeidskolonie Kakamas’, Archives Yearbook for South African History, 2, 4, 1951, pp. 370, 441. For Baster opposition to Schroeder’s appointment, see Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 100–1, 111–2.

147A.H.F. Duncan, Surveyor General’s Report, 14/9/1889, BPP C5897, 1890, 31. See also Bam to Crewes, 28/6/1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; F.S. Watermeyer, Minute No. B428, 19/9/1894, CA SGBB31. Marais, Cape coloured people, p. 95, writes of the Gordonia settlement, ‘The Government made no attempt to prevent Bastards selling their agricultural land, which they held on individual tenure, to Europeans.’ He here conflates the pre-1889 and post-1889 situations.

148Bam to Surveyor-General, Vryburg, 6/3/1890; Bam to Surveyor-General, Vryburg, 12/3/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

149Marais, Cape coloured people, pp. 95–6.

150For example E. Fischer (author of Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen (Cape Town, 1913)), quoted in UG41-1926, p. 65; Strydom, ‘Verdediging van die Noordwestelike Grens’, pp. 46ff; C.J.S. Strydom, ‘Die Kaap Kolonie, 1899–1902: skadevergoeding en die rebelle in ere herstel’ (PhD, UCT, 1932), p. 226.

151Personal observation. See also Anon, ‘Verklaring Eeufees 1892–1992 Uitkomst’ (typescript, my possession), a history of the farm owned by the Jansen family.

152See the revisionist historiography on South African agriculture, especially T. Keegan, Rural transformations in industrializing South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986) and ‘The making of the rural economy: from 1850 to the present’, in Z.A. Konczacki, J.L. Parpart and T.M. Shaw (eds), Studies in the economic history of Southern Africa, Vol. 2 (London: Frank Cass 1991); W. Beinart, P. Delius and S. Trapido (eds), Putting a plough to the ground: accumulation and dispossession in rural South Africa, 1850–1930 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986); C. Murray, Black mountain: class and power in the eastern Orange Free State, 1889–1980s (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1992).

153Marais, Cape coloured people, p. 96. On Kakamas see F.J. Loots, ‘Die arbeidskolonie Kakamas’ (MA, UCT, 1949); Rossouw, ‘Die Arbeidskolonie Kakamas’. There were protests from the inhabitants at not owning their land from after the First World War, and they eventually acquired it after the Second World War: see D.J. Potgieter (ed.), ‘Kakamas’, in Standard encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (Cape Town: Nasou, 1970–6). There is evidence that Schroeder intended to establish a similar settlement for Basters on the farms Rooiberg and Keikaries, on the north bank of the river opposite Kakamas, but this was never achieved: see Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 131–3. In the 1920s Ecksteenskuil became a settlement for coloureds on the islands near Keimoes, and a state settlement for coloureds after the Second World War (see chapter 9). In the 1930s, through the efforts of its minister, Saul Damon, the Congregational Church established settlements for coloureds on farms along the river upstream from Keimoes: see Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 162–4; De Beer, Keimoes en omgewing, pp. 206–10; Anon, 100ste verjaardag van Saul Damon (n.d., c.1990); S. Damon, ‘Memoranda oor aankoop van grond vir lede van die Congregational Kerk’ (Saul Damon papers, held by Jessie Strauss, Keimoes, n.d.). None of these received the financial support that Kakamas had enjoyed.

154CPP G6-1888, p. 21. See also Bam to Lewis Kotze, 9/1/1888, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1, writing ‘[that] the Committee [of Management] is doing its best to protect the Basters against the white people; but that some among the Burghers are making difficulties for the Commission, by continually making applications to be able to sell land to whites’. Translation.

155Schroeder to BZC, 17/11/1887, NGK S5/2/164. See also Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 87, 91, 98. In ‘Great Namaqualand’ of course, was the Rehoboth Baster settlement, established in 1872 by kin of the Gordonia Basters, with a common origin in Bushmanland.

156J.H. Scott, ‘Historical account of the Northern Border’, CPP G20-1881, p. 86. This is cited by Marais, Cape coloured people, p. 95, n., from its reproduction in UG41-1926, p. 29.

157This was one of the conditions agreed between the Basters and the NGK for the reestablishment of the mission in Gordonia: see ‘Zamenspreking... Amandelboom’, 11/10/1879, NGK S5/2/164. See also Bam to Magistrate, Kenhardt, 16/8/1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Bam to W. Frank, Keimoes, 1/9/1881, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

158Bam to Secretary, 28/3/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

159Proclamation 113 (30/6/1891) in Ward (ed.), Proclamations, p. 247 – extending the provisions of Proclamation 64 (9/5/1889), ibid., pp. 142–4. See also BPP C6829, 1892, p. 10; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 15/4/1891, not wanting to grant a hotel licence until the Basters were prohibited from buying drink; Bam to W. Frank, Keimoes, 1/9/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

160See for example Bam to Surveyor-General, Vryburg, 22/5/1890; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 15/4/1891; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 7/7/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; Bam to Preuss, 24/8/1893; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 24/8/1893; Bam to Registrar, Magistrate’s Court, Vryburg, 7/12/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3; J. Ashburnham, CPP G5-1896, pp. 69–70.

161Scott to Colonial Secretary, 23/2/1884 (describing the situation regarding liquor licences), CA NBC16; Scott to Distributor of Stamps, Carnarvon, 2/7/1885; Scott to Chairman, Licensing Board, Carnarvon, 30/7/1885, CA NBC17; Bam to Merrington, 18/11/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 28/3/1890; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 1/4/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

162Chalmers to RM, Kenhardt, 9/10/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2. The licence was not renewed by the Kenhardt magistracy in April 1891, but regranted, with Bam’s approval, in December because the Basters had been ‘protected as far as possible’ by Proclamation 113: see Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 1/4/1891; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 2/12/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

163Cf. Bam to Coghlan and Coghlan, Kimberley, 31/10/1889; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 22/5/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

164C. Jay to Registrar, Chief Magistrate’s Court, Vryburg, 6/6/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3.

165Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 1/3/1892, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Bam re Gordonia Licensing Court, 4/11/1891; Bam, Report on Licensing Board, 2/12/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; Bam to Preuss, 24/8/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3.

166Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 24/8/1893; Bam to RM, Kenhardt, 24/8/1893; Bam to Registrar, Chief Magistrate’s Court, Vryburg, 7/12/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3. In 1889 W. Frank was granted a lease on the outspan at Olyvenhout’s Drift on condition that he did not sell liquor: Bam to RM, Kenhardt, 16/8/1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1.

167BPP C7944, 1896, pp. 45–6; CPP G5-1896, pp. 69–70.

168Magistrate’s Report, Upington, 1910, PA JUS49, 25199/10.

169Schroeder to BZC, 2/3/1893, NGK S5/2/164. See also his anticipation of this, to Neethling, 11/2/1884. Translation.

170See, for example, Schroeder, Godsdiensverslag, 26/3/1892, 24/3/1893; 15/3/1894; 25/9/1894; 27/3/1895; 5/8/1897, NGK S5/2/164.

171On the redefinition, see C. Bundy, ‘Vagabond Hollanders and runaway Englishmen: white poverty in the Cape before Poor Whiteism’, in Beinart et al., Putting a plough to the ground, pp. 119–23. On Schroeder and Kakamas see Loots, ‘Arbeidskolonie’; Rossouw, ‘Die Arbeidskolonie Kakamas’; Schroeder to Murray, 4/4/1895, NGK S5/2/164. Schroeder was already under criticism from ‘enemies of the Mission’ in Gordonia for placing land under church ownership and other matters: see Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 100–1; Schroeder to Neethling, 22/7/1892; 15/3/1894, NGK S5/2/164.

172Schroeder to BZC, 24/3/1893, NGK S5/2/164. Translation.

173Schroeder, Godsdiensverslag, 25/9/1894, NGK S5/2/164. Translation.

174On the Waterworks Company see British Bechuanaland Proclamation 69, 14/8/1889 in Ward (ed.), Proclamations, 157–63; Chalmers to Schroeder, 8/12/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; Bam to Surveyor General, Vryburg, 7/1/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1. See also Schroeder, Godsdiensverslag, 24/3/1893, NGK S5/2/164: ‘I must, to prevent conflict or friction between white and coloured, remain as superintendent of our canal’ (translation). There are indications that the water-erven had initially been distributed to poorer Basters: Schroeder, Godsdiensverslag, 31/8/1886. For documents on the crisis which developed over allocation of erven and votes see CA PAS2/690 L36/C/7, particularly M.C. Vos, Chief Local Government Inspector, to the Administrator, Cape Province, ‘Report on the Upington Waterworks Company’, 22/10/1915 in ibid.

175‘List of water-erven at Upington’, 12/6/1890; ‘List of owners of water-erven at Keimoes in Block A and Block B’, 22/5/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2. See Bam to Surveyor General, Vryburg, 7/1/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1: ‘as, however, it was simply impossible for me to show on that list [of Upington water-erven sent last June] all the different transfers that had taken place from the original grantees, I made up a list of the present legal owners, the validity of whose claims I am positive will not be disputed.’ He also commented that some transfers were made improperly and some not registered. For an example of the complex transfers pre-annexation of a water-erf, see Bam to Surveyor General, 16/10/1893 CA 1/UPT 5/1/3.

176Names have been compared with NGK material. The undoubtedly white owners at Keimoes at this time are F. Bowers, G. de Juy, two Van Rensburgs, Rose, Moller, and W. Frank, owning 14 erven out of 83 among them. Among the white owners at Upington are Van Niekerk, Strauss, Pearson, Burger, Murphy, Bam, Lutz, Dyason, Schroeder, Brussel and Voskule, and De Villiers.

177Regarding the record-keeping in Gordonia, an incoming magistrate wrote to the Surveyor-General, ‘I find some difficulty in gathering from available records proper information as to land questions connected with this district.’ The land register ‘consists of a list of farms and erven written in a cash book in the midst of statements of Revenue and Expenditure, Burger lists, Licenses, Fines, etc. The register does not appear complete (e.g. I can nowhere find a list of more than 65 water-erven whereas you have forwarded titles in favour of the Upington Water Works Company to over 70 erven), important information has been jotted down in pencil and is almost obliterated and – even with the assistance of various scraps of paper and a book purporting to contain lists of Upington and Keimoes erven... with voters lists and various VMB matters – I find it difficult to get a correct idea of the somewhat complicated land questions connected with this district’: Ashburnham to Surveyor General, 17/7/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3. See also Ashburnham to Receiver General, 24/1/1895 (there was no complete list of ownership of dry erven until he compiled one); to Surveyor General, 29/1/1895 (lack of records on dry erven), CA 1/UPT 5/1/4. More concentrated research on the land register and records in the archives of the Vryburg Deeds Office might give a fuller picture of the Baster-white alienation of water-erven, the dry erven associated with them, and the Upington (and later Keimoes) township erven. The water-erven were held in freehold and do not therefore appear in quitrent land registers.

178Standard Bank Inspection Report, 17/8/1908. (Thanks to Norma Craven for her assistance with research on these reports.) These water-erven of 45 morgen were originally (in 1883–5) valued at £100 each. At Upington one was valued at about £150 in 1894; see Ashburnham to Secretary, Vryburg, 24/8/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/4; Scholtz to Under Secretary for Agriculture, 23/9/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/2/1. In 1894 Keimoes water-erven were valued at from £3/10/0 to £15, Ashburnham to Surveyor General, 18/12/1894; 17/6/1895, CA 1/UPT 5/1/4.

179Magistrate’s Report, Upington, 1910, PA JUS49 25199/10.

180See Bam to Surveyor General, 11/1/1894; Jay to Surveyor General, 4/5/1894; Jay to Receiver General, 15/6/1894; Jay to Surveyor General, 5/7/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3; Ashburnham to Raasenhagen, 1/11/1894; Ashburnham to Surveyor General, 24/1/1895; Ashburnham to Surveyor General, 15/3/1895; Ashburnham to Kotze, 23/3/1895, CA 1/UPT 5/1/4. Compare, for optimistic prognoses, Bam to Surveyor General, Vryburg 6/3/1890; Bam to Registrar General, 1/6/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

181‘List of payments made by owners of farms in the district Gordonia on account of survey’, n.d. c.July 1889, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Land Register 1894, CA 1/UPT 7/3/1; Land Register, 1894–1932 (from internal evidence, first compiled around 1913/1917), CA 1/UPT. See also Land Register (c.1894–8); QuitRent register, 91, CA 1/UPT 7/4/1. Between 1889 and 1902 there were a further 104 farms defined and allocated, almost exclusively to whites, in many cases land companies (Standard Bank Inspection Report, 9/12/1912). See also the map in Macdonald, Conquest of the desert, p. 197.

182Among the white owners were F. Loxton, R. Frier, G. Panizza, G. de Juy, G. Pearson, F. ter Blanc (all married to Baster women), H.M. Steyn (nee Frier), D. Turner, J.H. Lutz, L. Stock (traders), C. Schroeder (missionary), and F. Harper, J. Foster, J. Moller, Andries Burger and W. le Roux (later arrivals).

183As early as 1890 L. Abt had a right of ‘refusal’ on a number of these farms: Bam to Surveyor General, Vryburg, 12/3/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2. See also Leopold Abt Co., Carnarvon, to Surveyor General, 2/7/1894, CA SGBB; Chalmers to L. Abt, 20/1/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; Jay to Surveyor General, 13/7/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3.

184For example the Jewish A. Nurick became an important landowner, and trader, in the area: see also De Beer, Keimoes en omgewing, pp. 76, 130.

185Standard Bank Inspection Report, 17/10/1907.

186UG41-1926, p. 46. He added, ‘Things went on in this manner till all the old people who had done this had died, then the young children discovered that the old people had no right to sell the ground. Then they complained to the Government.’ The first collective reaction I have traced to land alienation is a petition, signed by 259 Basters, presented to parliament in May 1921: PA LDE3953 File 11106 – see chapter 9.

187Cape Argus, 9/3/1923.

188See also Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 91, 204–6 for details of the purchase by J.H. Lutz from the Baster John Ross of Cnydas East, nearly 30 000 morgen, for £135 payable in stock.

189Interview with Andrew Orange, aged 45, 22/7/1993, Upington. Translation.

190Interview with Piet Beukes, aged 86, 22/7/1993, Upington.

191Interview with Jonas Daries, aged 65, 22/7/1995, Upington. Translation.

192Interview with Andrew Brand, aged 68, 22/7/1995, Upington. Translation.

193Interview with Sara Kotzee, aged 73, 22/7/1995, Upington. Translation.

194Interview with Piet Daries, aged 64, 24/7/1993, Upington. Translation.

195See S. Malan, Geskiedenis van Upington, p. 17; Bam to E. Schroeder, 17/1/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3.

196J. Peires, ‘The legend of Fenner Solomon’, in B. Bozzoli (ed.), Class, community and conflict: South African perspectives (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1987), pp. 65–92.

197Ibid., p. 67.

198He was replying to the Surveyor-General of British Bechuanaland, who had advised him to ‘keep quiet’ on the fact that farms issued by the Gordonia Committee of Management were outside the (then) declared territory of British Bechuanaland: ‘I may state that there are so many “sea-lawyers” in these parts, that it is very difficult if not impossible to keep quiet on any matter. People formerly enjoying the “protection (such as it was)” of the committee of management were now “left to the mercy of designing persons”’: Bam to Duncan, 12/3/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

199J. Ashburnham, BPP C7944, 1896, pp. 45–6. Also in CPP G5-1896, pp. 69–70.

200Under Secretary for Agriculture to CC, Gordonia, November 1903; R. Blake to CC, Gordonia, 6/11/1903 enclosed in RM, Gordonia to Under Colonial Secretary, 13/11/1903; extract from letter of 16/10/1903 by RM, Gordonia enclosed in Under Colonial Secretary to Under Secretary for Agriculture, 20/11/1903, CA AGR46 378.

201One interviewee asked me, ‘I am talking about the Cape... I am asking... about Bushman drawings which are found there on Table Mountain... did Bushmen live there? ... where is the white man’s land?’ (Interview with William Alexander, aged 75, 10/9/1993, Upington)

202J. O’Connell, ‘Report’, 15/2/1899, CPP G31-1899, Bluebook on Native Affairs, p. 59.

203For the constitution of the Vilander statelet in 1887–1891 see Carstens, ‘Opting out of colonial rule’, pp. 19–22. For the annexation see Proclamations 106 (5/5/1891), 120 (7/8/1891), 123 (3/12/1891) in Ward (ed.), Proclamations, pp. 241, 254–5, 264–5. See also A.H.F. Duncan, ‘Surveyor-General’s report’, 14/9/1889, BPP C5897, 1890, British Bechuanaland, Report of the Administrator, p. 31; Bam to Duncan, 7/1/1891; Bam to Duncan, 12/1/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/1; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 20/1/1891; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 23/3/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2; A. Moorees, ‘Surveyor General’s report’, 5/4/1892, BPP C6829, 1892, British Bechuanaland, Report for 1890–1892, pp. 21–4; ‘Surveyor General’s report’, BPP C6857, 1894, British Bechuanaland, Report for 1892–3, pp. 24–34; Bam to A.J. van Zyl, 16/6/1893; Bam to Secretary, Vryburg, 7/12/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3.

204Herbst, Report, CPP G53-1908, p. 9. He continued, ‘one exception was made after days of deliberation with the Raad when a farm was transferred to a trader in payment of the debts of the community.’

205However Farini, Kalahari Desert, pp. 284–5 reports that Dirk Vilander also had a white secretary, named Haliburton.

206Herbst, Report, CPP G53-1908, p. 9. For the laws enacted at this time see Moorrees to Administrator, British Bechualand, 13/1/1892, CA SGBB27.

207‘Minutes of a meeting held at Naas on 9/10/1891’, CA SGBB27. It is unclear from this whether an additional nine farms were sold, eight to Europeans and one to a Baster.

208In this he may have been encouraged by the mineral concessionary George Lennox.

209Bam to Sec., V 5/11/1890, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2. See also Bam, ‘Instructions to Mr Chalmers’ (n.d., 23/10/1890); Bam to WC, 3/11/1890; Bam to Sec., 23/3/1891 (Committee chaired by J. van Wyk sends petition asking if concessions from native chiefs will be recognised by government when the country is annexed); Bam to SG, 8/4/1891, CA 1/UPT 5/1/2.

210‘Report’, Scott, 7/1/1887, CPP G12-1887, p. 39. He added that the ‘consequences will very likely in the not too distant future be felt on the borders of the Colony and the Gordonia settlement’.

211See H. Drechsler, Let us die fighting: the struggle of the Herero and Nama against German imperialism (1884–1915) (Berlin: Akadamie-Verlag, 1966), p. 28. The Bondelswarts signed a treaty with the Germans on 21/8/1890: H. Vedder, South West Africa in early times (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 504. In 1885 Scott, while recommending annexation of Gordonia, did not recommend it for the Bondelswarts: ‘Memorandum on annexation to the Cape Colony of territory north of the Orange River, 15/1/1885’, CA NA168. Vedder, South West Africa, claims the Bondelswarts began alienating land in the 1870s.

212‘Report’, Scott, 7/1/1887, CPP G12-1887, p. 39.

213Christian is reported to have given mineral concessions to Theophilus Hahn.

214Moorrees, Memorandum, n.d. [1891?], CA SGBB27.

215BB Proclamation 106, 5/5/1891, in Ward (ed.), Proclamations (1893), p. 241.

216Knutsford to Loch, 25/3/1892, enclosed in Loch to Shippard, 20/4/1892, CA SGBB27.

217Drechsler, Let us die, pp. 48, 82–3. The syndicate had acquired rights to 512 farms of 10 000 acres each over 15 years.

218W. Werner, ‘A brief history of land dispossession in Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19, 1, 1993, pp. 135–46.

219Surveyor General, Minute No. 2047, 20/7/1892, CA SGBB27.

220This was after some consideration to allowing Vilander to continue to administer the land laws. See Shippard to Loch, 27/1/1892; Loch to Shippard, 20/4/1892; RM, Upington to Crown Prosecutor, Vryburg, 30/4/1892; Shippard, 18/5/1892, CA SGBB27.

221For the establishment of the court see Proclamation 169 (1/2/1893) in Ward (ed.), Proclamations, pp. 351–61. CA BBCC1-3 contains the proceedings of the court.

222Evidence etc. to British Bechuanaland Concession Court; Herbst, ‘Report...’, p. 9, CA BBCC1-3.

223Herbst, ‘Report...’, pp. 8–9; ‘Minutes’, CA SGBB27.

224Herbst, Report...’, p. 9, CA SGBB27. These were paid until David’s death in 1902, after which the Supreme Court and Privy Council apparently ruled the rights had lapsed.

225BPP C7944, 1896, British Bechuanaland, Annual report for 1894–5, p. 11.

226Bam to Vilander, 26/8/1893, CA 1/UPT 5/1/3; F. Watermeyer, ‘Surveyor General’s report’, 25/4/1894, BPP C7629, 1895, British Bechuanaland, Report for 1893–4, pp. 14–9; Scholtz to Secretary, Law Department, 30/6/1896; Scholtz to Under Col. Sec., 11/9/1896; Scholtz to Surveyor General, 10/10/1896; Scholtz to Pabst, 7/12/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/2/1.

227By Act No. 41 of 1895 of the Cape parliament. See CA 1/UPT 5/1/5 passim.

228Steenkamp, ‘Die Christelike sending’, pp. 84–5; Ashburnham to Schroeder, 23/8/1884; Ashburnham to Surveyor General, c.23/8/1894; Ashburnham to Colonial Secretary, 14/2/1895, CA 1/UPT 5/1/4; Ashburnham ‘Report’, CPP G5-1896, pp. 69–70.

229Ashburnham to Surveyor General, 24/9/1894; Ashburnham to Surveyor General, 25/10/1894, CA 1/UPT 5/1/4; Ashburnham to Surveyor General, 28/8/1895, CA 1/UPT 5/1/5; Scholtz to Secretary for Agriculture, 6/3/1896; Scholtz to Under Secretary for Agriculture, 17/4/1896, CA 1/UPT 5/2/1; O’Connell to Frank, 17/5/1898; Herbst to Will, 8/2/1899; O’Connell to Frank, 16/8/1898; O’Connell, Report, 7/10/1898, CA 1/UPT 5/3/2.