by Peires, Jeff
16 GH 8/33 J Crouch-J Maclean, 19 Oct. 1857.
17 GH 8/34 Statement by Possi, a Gcaleka, before Commissioner Maclean, 2 Feb. 1858. Since Possi’s statement was used by Grey in his dispatches and memorandum justifying his invasion of the transKei, it seems to warrant a little discussion. The precise statement to which Grey referred goes as follows: ‘Kreli has not abandoned plans for war. In his house, he states that at present there can be no war on account of the destitution, but he still looks forward to a time when the people will have plenty and be in a position to renew hostilities against the English.’ I shall restrict myself to three comments: (1) There is nothing in this to justify Grey writing to the Colonial Secretary that ‘Kreili was openly proclaiming … that … he looked forward to a speedy time [of the renewal of hostilities]’ or that, as Grey’s memo to the Cape Parliament had it, the matter was one of ‘life and death to the Colony’. Possi had allegedly said that the supposed statements were made in Sarhili’s house, and that there could be no war at present. (2) Possi was supposed to be a formal ambassador from Sarhili. The main thrust of his message was that Sarhili would not attack the Thembu without Maclean’s permission, even though they had killed his brother. The embassy was thus clearly intended to effect a reconciliation. Any ambassador who allegedly makes statements so totally subversive of the main purpose of his embassy either has been misquoted or is totally untrustworthy. (3) The timing of the alleged statement (2 Feb. 1858) is suspiciously close to the time when Grey publicly launched the transKeian offensive. In any case, his official declaration of war (via Agent Warner, 1 Feb., see Note 41) actually precedes Possi’s so-called information and cannot therefore be a reaction to it.
18 GH 20/2/1 H Waters-G Grey, 4 Sept. 1857.
19 See Peires (1985) for a full analysis of Grey’s remarkable document in GH 20/2/1, ‘Kreili’s conduct’, prepared for the Cape Parliament. To give but two examples, extensive use is made of the statement taken from a ‘trustworthy native’ on 8 Dec. 1856, which Maclean himself had dismissed when he first heard it (Chapter 7/1) and of Possi’s alleged comments (Note 31 above).
20 GH 20/2/1 ‘Kreili’s conduct’.
21 GH 23/27 G Grey-H Labouchere, 13 Feb. 1858.
22 GH 8/33 J Crouch-J Maclean, 9 Nov. 1856.
23 CO 2951 J Warner-R Southey, 29 Sept. 1857; W Currie, quoted in Rutherford (1961), p.385.
24 Rutherford (1961), p.431.
25 Address to the Cape Parliament, April 1857, Imperial Blue Book 2352 of 1857-8, p.91.
26 Rutherford (1961), Chapters 26-28.
27 GH 30/12 G Grey-J Warner, 1 Feb. 1858; GH 30/12 G Grey-Joyi, 12 Feb. 1858.
28 GH 8/50 J Gawler-J Maclean, 26 Feb., 17 March 1858; GH 20/2/1 W Currie-G Grey, 12 March 1858; BK 78 W Currie-R Southey, 1 March 1858.
29 GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 19 April 1858.
30 Eastern Province Herald, 19 March 1858. There is another account in the Cradock News, 30 March 1858, but the author seems to have seen only three occupied homesteads. He does not say what happened to the occupants of these.
31 Fairbairn Papers, University of the Witwatersrand, James Alexander Fairbairn-John Fairbairn, 15 May 1858.
32 GH 20/2/1 W Currie-G Grey, 12 March 1858; BK 78 J Gawler-J Maclean, 7 March 1858; GH 8/50 J Gawler-J Maclean, 26 March 1858; Cory Interviews, Cory Library, Interview 119, WRD Fynn, 16 April 1913; CO 48/388, Public Record Office, London, J Gawler-J Maclean, 26 Feb. 1858.
33 BK 78 Statement received from a man who has come direct from Kreili, I April 1858; Anon [SEK Mghayi], ‘USarhili’ in WG Bennie (ed.), Stewart Xhosa Readers, Grade VI, (Lovedale: Lovedale Press, n.d.), p.102.
3. THE REWARD OF VIRTUE
Ever since his arrival in southern Africa, Grey had wanted a vast increase in the white population of British Kaffraria. ‘We should fill it up with a considerable number of Europeans of a class fitted to increase our strength in that country,’ he told the Cape Parliament in March 1855.1 He realised that most of the Xhosa who had left under duress of transportation or forced labour would wish to come home as soon as they had completed their prison sentences and their labour contracts, and he therefore pressed ahead with his plans to revolutionise the face of British Kaffraria before they returned. Finding settlers quickly was of paramount importance.
It becomes of the utmost consequence for the final settlement of the [Xhosa] question, and of the difficulties which have so long harassed this Frontier, to increase as speedily as possible, the number of Europeans in this Country.
Grey’s first experiment with white settlers had hardly been encouraging. The 2 300 men of the disbanded German Legion who had arrived in Kaffraria shortly before the Great Disappointment were not exactly the sort of immigrants calculated to spread European civilisation among the Xhosa. Most of the Germans were decent enough fellows, perfectly willing to employ the odd servant, buy a Xhosa an occasional drink, or toss the intestines of a slaughtered beast to starving women and children. But there was a sizeable minority which ‘accustomed to war from their youth [were] driven to the most horrific deeds by their warlike characters and their insatiable thirst for blood’.2 Some of these were in the habit of wandering around blind drunk, weapons in hand, looking for a fight, and even their fellow Legionaries admitted that ‘within all the German settlements, we have had several cases where unarmed [Xhosa] have been cruelly murdered by these evil-doers’.3 The Belgians amongst them were referred to by the Xhosa as ‘throat-slitters’ on account of the long knives they habitually carried and their habit of biting each other like dogs while fighting.4 The Xhosa accused the Germans of carrying long sticks to abduct Xhosa women, and sexual abuse by the Germans (2 000 of whom were unmarried) seems to have occurred.5 Racial tensions in East London, where aggressive Germans confronted thieving Xhosa across the Buffalo River, exploded in at least two major riots within six months of the Germans’ arrival.6 Small wonder that the Ndlambe Xhosa appealed, ‘If Gawler does have a post here for goodness’ sake, don’t let them be Germans.’7 The situation eased only in September 1858, when Grey was able to ship off the unrulier elements of the Legion to fight in the Indian Mutiny.
Never one to learn from his mistakes, Grey continued to maintain that a European settlement in British Kaffraria would be of benefit to all. It was his intention, he informed Maclean in July 1858, that ‘a society of the most harmonious elements may be formed, in which the two races live together in a state of happiness and contentment, forming loyal subjects and a productive and well-organised society’. But he added an important qualification to this praiseworthy objective. Such a society, he wrote, could ‘only be brought about by establishing something like an approach to equality in numbers, or at least influence between the two races’.8
In 1855, when the Xhosa of British Kaffraria outnumbered the white inhabitants by close on a hundred to one, it would have been ridiculous to talk about the black and white population ‘approaching equality’. But by the middle of 1858, this was no longer beyond the bounds of possibility. Already the black population had dropped by nearly two thirds, from 105 000 to 37 500, and it was Grey’s priority to reduce the residual Xhosa population even further while at the same time giving out their lands to white settlers, ‘for it is impossible to keep such fertile lands bare of inhabitants’, and if they were not given out soon, they would soon become ‘irregularly occupied … by a population of dangerous inhabitants’.9
Apart from the Crown Reserve, from which Sandile’s Ngqika Xhosa had been driven after the War of Mlanjeni in 1853, there were three districts of British Kaffraria virtually emptied of their starving inhabitants by the Cattle-Killing: those of Phatho, Maqoma and Mhala. A glance at Map 5 (p.338) will show that these three districts, contiguous to each other, make up most of what is today the hinterland
of modern East London. Over 90 per cent of Phatho’s people had left by the beginning of 1858, and the few who still survived there were in a very precarious position.
Property in Pato’s tribe is decreasing fast. Even those who had horses have sold or been dispossessed of them – no cattle or goats are seen. Most have planted but very little … there will be too little to support even the remnants of this tribe. People are stealing pumpkins etc from each other as soon as they become edible. There is a desire to possess goats, but no means except theft …10
In March 1858, Maclean ordered these remnants out. ‘Some have moved, others will be made to move,’ he informed Grey. Magistrate Vigne was not without some misgivings concerning certain old men who ‘if removed from their homes will starve’, but he nevertheless patrolled the district registering for labour every ‘squatter’ he found there.11 It fell to Commissioner Brownlee to tell the 125 families under old Chief Bhotomane and Maqoma’s Great Son Namba to leave their district. ‘I informed the chiefs that I had been ordered to remove them and not to consult their wishes and inclinations,’ he wrote, but he asked to be relieved of the job of actually forcing them out. Max Kayser, the rascally interpreter, was not so squeamish, and the people were harried out by the middle of July. ‘There is not a single native left in either Namba’s or Botman’s locations,’ he reported with satisfaction.12 With all of Mhala’s district already vacated, except for Gawler’s unbelievers who were due to move to Sarhili’s country, this gave Grey and Maclean something approaching 2 000 square miles to distribute to white settlers in British Kaffraria. But even this was not enough. For the full realisation of Grey’s Kaffrarian dreams, it was still necessary to humble the unbelievers.
For the unbelievers, and for those officials like Brownlee who wholeheartedly sympathised with them, the spring of 1857 was filled with hope and promise. All the old restraints which had hampered their desires to invest and accumulate and reap the rewards of their efforts had vanished. The believers who had tormented and threatened them were gone off to labour in distant places, and the chiefs who had extorted dues and tributes from anyone who seemed too rich were crushed and powerless. Sandile himself, mindful of the fate of his fellow chiefs, had meekly requested Brownlee to take him on as a ‘policeman under Government’.13 Now that the storm was over and the spring was nigh, the thoughts of unbelievers such as Tyhala and Soga turned to innovation and economic improvement. Brownlee saw these 300 or 400 energetic and self-confident men as the vanguard of a veritable agricultural revolution that would transform the face of Xhosaland.
They are anxious to have their oxen trained, to obtain ploughs and to cultivate wheat and beans and potatos. We might even try woolled sheep. I would like to begin cutting a watercourse …14
So enthusiastic were the unbelievers that they could not wait for the rains to plant maize, and eagerly experimented with winter crops such as the wheat, peas and lentils offered to them by Brownlee. ‘We can have no better opportunity than the present for the introduction of any innovation,’ wrote the Commissioner. He expected that he would soon be seeing three or four of his men ploughing with their own ploughs and their own oxen.
But there were not many officials in British Kaffraria who shared Brownlee’s enthusiasm for the unbelievers. We have already seen how little support they had received from the administration when they needed it most, and many officials probably rejoiced in their hearts at the unbelievers’ plight. As one young missionary put it, ‘I wish their [the unbelievers’] cattle were done, so that they must all go into the Colony.’15 Maclean, too, made no secret of his dislike of the number of unbelievers still clustered around Brownlee. ‘The Gaikas have not yet availed themselves to the extent of other tribes of entering service,’ he grumbled. ‘Half of Sandile’s tribe being still in his location.’16
Grey was by nature dismissive of the ideas and endeavours of others, claiming them as his own if they suited his purpose and denigrating and destroying them if they did not. The unbelievers who, by their own efforts and without Grey’s aid, had clung stubbornly to their homesteads throughout the Cattle-Killing and now occupied their lands in their own right and not by any gift of the Governor, were not, in Grey’s view, heroes to be rewarded, but untidy and inconvenient marks on the otherwise clean slate of British Kaffraria. Few as the remaining believers were, there were still too many of them for Grey’s stated aim of equalising the proportion of black and white in British Kaffraria. By 1858, it was already clear that the Governor’s original plan of a relatively dense population of white smallholders was untenable, and that if whites were going to be persuaded to settle in British Kaffraria at all, they were going to require the large farms of over 1 500 acres apiece that the agricultural practices of the Cape Colony led them to expect. The large tracts of land already confiscated from the Xhosa did not amount to more than 200 such farms altogether.17
There was another, even more pressing reason for squeezing the unbelievers. The population of Sandile’s country may have shrunk from 31 000 to 3 718, but its boundaries remained the same, and the principle of communal land tenure ensured that when the transportees and contract labourers returned, they would all get their land back. Clearly this could not be allowed to happen. Communal tenure had to give way to some form of individual tenure which would enable the authorities to monitor and control population influx and access to land. That such a scheme was in accordance with Grey’s long-standing intention of promoting the individual at the expense of the chief was an added bonus rather than a substantive cause of the new policy, as can be seen from the fact that the system eventually adopted broke the chiefdoms without benefiting the unbelievers.
The solution to Grey’s problem of administering the Xhosa areas of British Kaffraria was already to hand. It had long been argued by missionaries and others that the dispersed pattern of Xhosa settlement, that is of scattered, self-sufficient homesteads, obstructed the adoption of Christianity and civilisation. In 1850 the whole of Xhosaland, according to Reverend Impey, superintendent of the Wesleyan missions, was ‘one vast commonage where every man lives where he likes’. Impey was inspired by the example of Governor Raffles in Malaysia to argue that the ‘shortest and best way’ of civilising non-European peoples was by conquest. The ‘strong arm of power’ was necessary; the conquerors ‘must think and act for them [the indigenous people] in matters concerning their welfare when too ignorant to come to right conclusions themselves’. In a noteworthy passage, Impey celebrated the virtues of centralisation as an aid to physical and moral control.
There are multitudes of localities where at present within a radius of 2 miles, or even less, there are numerous kraals consisting of from six to eight houses each; the whole of which could be collected to a central position from which the cattle might graze over the very same pasturage, the people obtain the same supply of water, and cultivate the same lands as they do at present, whilst they would be living in a village or Township of 100 families, get-atable for the purposes of instruction, and placed under the immediate government of a headman or local magistrate, who would be responsible to the Commissioner of the District.
The hold which the Government would thus, from the concentration of persons and property, have over the population would be vastly increased; the way for the introduction of municipal and fiscal regulations would be opened up.18
Many liberals initially supported the village system because they associated it with the granting of title to land, and all that that implied in terms of security of tenure and the encouragement of economic individualism.19 In the Cape context, however, individual title was very much the sugaring on the pill, and in any case it was never implemented in British Kaffraria outside the Crown Reserve.20 What mattered most was that the Xhosa should be, in Impey’s memorable phrase, ‘get-atable’ for the purposes of political management and the collection of taxes. This last factor became critical after June 1858 when the news came from London that Parliament
had halved its subsidy to the government of British Kaffraria. It was now the urgent task of Grey and Maclean to make the surviving unbelievers pay the costs of their own oppression.21
Efforts had already been made to introduce villages among the Mfengu settlements in the Crown Reserve, where it was felt that the Mfengu were beginning to encroach on land set aside for white settlement.22 When Grey visited the frontier early in 1858 to organise the expedition against Sarhili, he took the opportunity to order that all Xhosa remaining in British Kaffraria should be resettled in villages.23 Magistrates were ordered to select sites suitable for villages of up to 200 ‘huts’, and to move the people into them as soon as their crops were gathered. All their horses, cattle and small stock were to be registered and taxed, and they were to pay hut tax of 10s per ‘hut’ (that is, per family) per year. Grey hoped that this combination of villages and taxation would effectively discourage many Xhosa from returning to British Kaffraria after their labour contracts were completed. Those Xhosa who did return were required to register with the magistrate before receiving permission to occupy a village site, a regulation which enabled the authorities to restrict the movements of the returning labourers to their own satisfaction.24
It was Grey’s intention that the village lots should eventually be surveyed and granted to their possessors on quitrent title, thereby completing the economic liberation of the individual from the communal authority of the chief. Each chief was to receive a private farm of 3 000 acres as compensation for the loss of his power to allocate land, just as he had previously received a salary in compensation for the loss of his power to levy judicial fines.25