The Africanders

by Le Roy Hooker

SECOND CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON—NORTH OF THE ORANGE RIVER.

The Africanders who had trekked into the spreading uplands lying between the Orange River and the Limpopo, west of Natal, were not exempt from the tribulations experienced by their brethren who had turned eastward to the coast. Like them they were forced to wage incessant war with the natives; but the enemies they had to encounter were less formidable than the Zulus. One tribe, however, and their historic chief, Moshesh, were foemen worthy of their steel. In the nineteenth century there were three men of the Kaffir race who were vastly superior to any of their own people, and measured up evenly with the ablest white opponents they met in diplomacy and war. These men were Tshaka the Zulu, Khama of the Bechuanos, and Moshesh the Basuto. It was the fortune of the Orange River emigrants to meet this Moshesh and the Basutos in many a hard-fought battle for the possession of the country. [[99]]Moshesh differed from other Kaffir leaders in that he was merciful to his wounded and captive enemies and ruled his own people with mildness and equity. As early as 1832 he opened the way for, and even invited, missionaries to teach the Basutos a better way of life, and they exerted a powerful formative influence on the Basuto nation. The missionaries were all European—some of them were British—which latter fact was made apparent in the result of their work. When the unavoidable conflict between the Basutos and the whites came, the Basutos, guided by their missionaries, were careful to avoid any fatal breach with the British government. Several times Moshesh engaged in war with the Orange River emigrants, but only once with the English.

In 1843 the Africanders of this region were widely scattered over a vast spread of country measuring seven hundred miles in length and three hundred in width. To the southeast it was bounded by the Quathlamba mountains, but on the north and west there were no natural features to delimitate it from the plain which extends to the Zambesi on the north and to the Atlantic Ocean on the west. Within this territory the Africander population, in 1843, was not much more than 15,000. This seems a small [[100]]number in view of the fact that the pioneer emigrants of 1836 to 1838 had been largely re-enforced from the Cape colony. But it must be remembered their life was precarious in the extreme; many had died—some from disease, some in conflict with wild beasts, and a still greater number in their frequent wars with the natives. The white population was further recruited between 1843 and 1847 by a second Africander trek from Natal—which will be described in another chapter.

So small a body of people, of whom not more than 4,000 were adult males, occupying so vast a territory, experienced serious difficulties in establishing an efficient government. The difficulties growing out of that cause were enhanced by the very qualities in the Africanders which had led to their emigration from the old colony, and which had made them successful in their wars of conquest in the interior. To an excessive degree they were possessed by a spirit of individual poise and independence. They desired isolation—even from one another. They chafed and grew restive under control of any kind, so much so that they were indisposed to obey even the authorities created by themselves. For warlike expeditions, which yielded them a pleasant excitement, enlarged their territory by [[101]]conquest, and enriched them with captured cattle and other spoil, they readily united under their military leaders and rendered them obedience, but any other form of control they found irksome. This predilection towards solitary independence was constantly strengthened by the circumstances in which they lived. The soil, being dry and parched in most places, did not invite agriculture to any considerable extent. Most of the people turned to stock-farming, and the nomadic life it necessitated in seeking change of pasture for the flocks and herds confirmed the disposition to live separate from other people.

Out of these causes grew the determination to make their civil government absolutely popular, and conditioned, entirely, on the will of the governed. But unity of some kind must be had, for their very existence depended on acting together against the natives, and against the repeated claims of the British government to exercise sovereignty over the region they occupied. The first steps towards instituting civil government were taken in the organizing of several small republican communities, the design being that each should manage its own affairs by a general meeting of all the citizens. It was found, however, as the population spread over the country, that such independent neighborhood governments [[102]]failed to secure the necessary unity of the whole people in any matter requiring the aggregate strength of the whole people. To remedy this element of weakness and danger, the Africanders instituted a kind of federal bond between the little republican communities, in an elective assembly called the Volksraad—a Council of the People composed of delegates from all the sectional governments. This federative tie was of the weakest—its authority resting upon an unwritten understanding and common consent rather than upon formal articles of confederation, and its meaning being always subject to such interpretation as might be suggested by the error or the passion of the passing moment.

The territory beyond the Vaal River, to the far northeast from Cape Colony, was left undisturbed by the British government. The Africanders living there were hundreds of miles from the nearest British outpost. Their wars with the natives projected no disturbing influence upon the tribes with whom the colonial government was in touch and for whose peace and prosperity it felt responsible. Moreover, the British authorities at the Cape were under instructions from the Colonial Office of the home government to rather contract than expand the scope of British influence in South Africa. For these [[103]]reasons the Cape government cared nothing for what took place in the outlying regions beyond the Vaal, unless, indeed, it was some event calculated to disturb the natives dwelling next the colonial borders.

Altogether different, in the esteem of the Cape authorities and of the Colonial office, were the affairs of the region extending southwestward from the Vaal River to the borders of Cape Colony. Within that territory there had been frequent dissensions between Africander communities. And there had been a rapid increase of dangerous elements in the native population. The Basutos had grown powerful. Intermixed with the whites were the Griquas, a half-breed hunting people, sprung from Africander fathers and Hottentot mothers, and partially civilized. The possibility of serious native wars growing out of quarrels between the white emigrants themselves and between them and the mixed colored population was a constant distress to both colonial governors and the home authorities.

At this time the Cape was regarded the least prosperous of all the British colonies, and there was a growing indisposition to annex any more territory in South Africa. The soil was mostly arid. The Africander population was alien. The [[104]]Kaffir wars threatened to be endless and very costly in men and in money. This reluctance to enlarge had been overcome in the case of Natal; but Natal was the garden of South Africa and the possession of it gave the British command of the east coast almost to Delagoa Bay. But to the north there seemed to be nothing sufficiently inviting to justify the taking up of new responsibility and expense.

The problem of how to safeguard the peace of the old Cape Colony without undertaking the burdens involved in governing and holding the whole Africander territory to the northeast, including the region beyond the Vaal River, was thought to have been solved by Doctor Philip, an English missionary, who had some influence with the government. The scheme recommended by Doctor Philip was that the government should create a line of native states under British control along the northeast border of Cape Colony. These would act, he claimed, as a barrier to break the influence of the more turbulent Africanders in the regions north of that line on those of their blood who were yet citizens of the old colony, and they would, in like manner, separate between the native tribes in the colony and those in the interior.

Doctor Philip’s plan was adopted with much [[105]]enthusiasm. A treaty suitable to the purpose contemplated had already been made with a northern Griqua leader named Waterboer. In 1843 two other treaties were made, one with Moshesh of the Basutos and the other with Adam Kok, a leader of the Orange River Griquas. It was fondly believed that these three states, recognized by and in treaty with Great Britain, would isolate the colony from the disturbing and dangerous people to the north of them.