Eastern Cape Frontier Research Articles

Medical Legacy of Gandhi: Demystifying Human Diseases.

Medical Legacy of Gandhi: Demystifying Human Diseases.

Social Responsibility and Power II: J.T. van der Kemp ’s Interventions for and on behalf of the Khoikhoi on the Eastern Cape Frontier (1 801 – 18 06 )

Social Responsibility and Power II: J.T. van der Kemp ’s Interventions for and on behalf of the Khoikhoi on the Eastern Cape Frontier (1 801 – 18 06 )

Military writers and their readers: the transnational circulation of campaign narratives of the Eastern Cape Frontier Wars between 1834 and 1853

This article provides a discussion of selected campaign narratives associated with the Frontier Wars in the Eastern Cape between 1834 and 1853. Its intention is to insert these British military publications into their contemporary publishing landscape and consequently to make a contribution to the field of book history. It will be argued that the narrative accounts in the books and journal articles were indicative of both the geographical dispersion and of the interconnectedness of colonial “knowledge.” From this perspective, some of the publications portrayed a transnational, “horizontal” movement between colonies. But there were other routes: many publications demonstrated a more predictable north-south, vertical course which was evident in the campaign narratives printed in the influential metropolitan centre of London. The readership, that is the Warnerian “audience,” spanned both the colonies and the metropole, as the discussion on the commentary proffered by professional journal reviewers demonstrates. In an attempt to give substance to these textual confluences, the article provides a limited discussion of Harriet Ward’s and Edward Elers Napier’s narratives concerning the Cape and the 7th Frontier War. Their texts demonstrate how the global mesh of texts rematerialized and reconfigured itself in an array of publications during the 1840s and 1850s. Furthermore, it will be suggested that the integration of texts within the nineteenth-century knowledge and power nexus helped to shape metropolitan notions of the Xhosa and to delineate colonial relations with the Xhosa.Keywords: Nineteenth century, British campaign narratives, Xhosa, Eastern Cape, transnational, publishing spheres, audience

Johnny Fingo: war as work on the Eastern Cape Frontier

Johnny Fingo: war as work on the Eastern Cape Frontier

Decentring Shepstone: The Eastern Cape Frontier and the Establishment of Native Administration in Natal, 1842–1849

In spite of historians' sophisticated understanding of how Africans shaped colonial administration in Natal, in many accounts the European side of native administration remains highly personalised. In this article I challenge the widely held assumption that Theophilus Shepstone was the central colonial figure responsible for the establishment of indirect rule in Natal. I advance two interrelated arguments. The first is that Shepstone was just one of half a dozen imperial officials, located variously in Natal, the Cape and London, who together made key decisions that laid down the basic framework of native administration in the 1840s. This basic framework I take to be the establishment of Natal's first locations and the official recognition of chiefly rule and native law, all of which had been formalised by 1849. The second argument is that these officials specifically drew from their close experience of the eastern Cape frontier – and in particular the administrative policies trialled in Queen Adelaide Province from 1835 to 1836 and British Kaffraria in 1847 – in devising a model for governing Natal's Africans in the 1840s. I suggest that it is the Queen Adelaide Province experiment, along with the early government of British Kaffraria the following decade, that provided colonial officials with a distinct template for native administration in Natal.

Counter-Insurgency in the Cape Colony, 1872 - 1882

The acceptance of responsible government in 1872 entailed that the Cape Colony had to provide its own security arrangements. The two British regiments that were still deployed at the Cape were reserved solely for imperial purposes. Moreover, the Cape Government now had to assist the High Commissioner with the maintenance of law and order in the adjacent tribal territories of the Transkei and Basotholand. Unrest and internal conflict were almost endemic in the Cape Colony's area of interest during the period 1872 to 1882. Besides a number of conflict situations of a smaller nature, the colonial forces were involved in five major insurgencies, namely the Cape-Xhosa or Ninth Eastern Frontier War (1877-1878), The Northern Frontier War (1878-1879), the Baphuhti Rebellion (1879), the Transkeian Rebellion (1880-1881) and the Rebellion in Basotholand (1880-1882). This paper traces the development of policy and doctrine, administrative and military, by the Cape Government to pacify the Eastern Cape frontier region. Special attention is given to security and defence policy, the policy of direct control of the adjacent tribal territories as well as the disarmament policy. Furthermore the reactions of the indigenous communities to these policies as well as the demands placed on the colonial military system are investigated. It is concluded that the policies of the successive Cape governments were either impracticable or resulted in the erosion of the traditional power structures among the black communities to the extent that from 1877 onwards, internal conflict became the order of the day. Perceived to be "mere instruments of political will", the colonial forces were synonymous with the reprehensible colonial control and found it impossible to deter public violence or prevent the escalation of the conflicts. The colonial government expected unrealistic strategic results from the colonial armed forces. Military reforms were mostly reactive and too little was done too late. The Molteno as well as the Sprigg ministry eventually paid the highest political price for the failure of their respective defence schemes not least of which was the failure of their counter-insurgency strategies.

The Xhosa Cattle‐Killing Movement in History and Literature

AbstractIn South Africa’s Eastern Cape frontier zone, a millenarian movement known as the Xhosa Cattle‐Killing (1856–1857) devastated local populations and stunned observers. How could the messages of its prophetess, Nongqawuse, and the exhortations of her uncle, Mhlakaza, lead to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of cattle, to the death of tens of thousands of people, and to the subjugation of the Xhosa? Historians and authors of literary works have attempted to answer this question, and their explanations have followed the contours of South African history through three general phases. The first (1857–1947) characterized the movement as a failed revolt against British expansion and a necessary step in social and religious Darwinism. The second period (1948–1988) saw the continuation of these interpretations, and, with National Party rule and the rise of the Black Consciousness Movement, an increasingly radical group of historians brought about politicized and alternative interpretations embedded in Xhosa oral history. The third phase (1989–) began with the publication of Jeff Peires’The Dead Will Arise, which renewed interest in the history and has inspired a new wave of historical critique.

The forgotten frontier: colonist and Khoisan on the cape's northern frontier in the 18th century

In South African history, the Eastern Cape frontier has been traditionally regarded as the pre-eminent zone of contact between colonists and indigenes. But there was an earlier frontier in the history of the country where the conflict between Dutch colonists and indigenous herders and hunters, the Khoi and San (Hottentots and Bushmen), was in many ways more decisive in its outcome, more brutal and violent in its manner, and just as significant in its effects on later South African history. This was the frontier north of Cape Town, which from the earliest days of Dutch settlement began advancing through fits and starts into the interior. By the end of the 18th century, the frontier had reached the Orange (Gariep) River and the indigenous Khoisan people, after initial resistance, had been defeated and absorbed as an underclass into the colonial world or else expelled beyond it, to regions where new creole communities emerged. Filled with extraordinary personalities and memorable episodes, and set in the often harsh landscape of the western and northern Cape, this title will appeal both to the general reader and to the student of history.

MISSION LIFE AND SOURCES IN THE EASTERN CAPE Moravians in the Eastern Cape, 1828–1928: Four Accounts of Moravian Mission Work on the Eastern Cape Frontier. Translated by F. R. BAUDET and edited by TIMOTHY KEEGAN. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society for the publication of South African Historical Documents, 2004. Pp. xlii+308. Rand 120 within South Africa, 285 outside (ISBN 0-9584522-2-9).

MISSION LIFE AND SOURCES IN THE EASTERN CAPE Moravians in the Eastern Cape, 1828–1928: Four Accounts of Moravian Mission Work on the Eastern Cape Frontier. Translated by F. R. BAUDET and edited by TIMOTHY KEEGAN. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society for the publication of South African Historical Documents, 2004. Pp. xlii+308. Rand 120 within South Africa, 285 outside (ISBN 0-9584522-2-9). - Volume 47 Issue 1

Rethinking resistance: revolt and violence in African history

This collective volume reinterprets the genre of resistance studies, introduces recent conceptual perspectives and considers examples of African (civil) wars and insurgent movements. Contributions: Rethinking resistance in African history, an introduction, by Klaas van Walraven and Jon Abbink. Part I (Historical perspectives): Resistance to Fulbe hegemony in nineteenth-century West Africa, by Mirjam de Bruijn and Han van Dijk; Colonial conquest in central Madagascar: who resisted what?, by Stephen Ellis; Revisiting resistance in Italian-occupied Ethiopia: the Patriots' Movement (1936-1941) and the redefinition of post-war Ethiopia, by Aregawi Berhe. Part 2 (Social inequalities and colonial hierarchies): Ambiguities of resistance and collaboration on the Eastern Cape Frontier: the Kat River Settlement 1829-1856, by Robert Ross; African mutinies in the Netherlands East Indies: a nineteenth-century colonial paradox, by Ineke van Kessel; Absence of evidence is no proof: slave resistance under German colonial rule in East Africa, by Jan-Georg Deutsch. Part 3 (Violence, meaning and ideology in resistance): The Kawousan War reconsidered, by Kimba Idrissa; 'Sawaba''s rebellion in Niger (1964-1965): narrative and meaning, by Klaas van Walraven; The vagaries of violence and power in post-colonial Mozambique, by Gerhard Seibert. Part 4 (Resistance as heritage and memory): Herero genocide in the twentieth century: politics and memory, by Jan-Bart Gewald; 'Namibia, land of the brave': selective memories on war and violence within nation building, by Henning Melber; Dervishes, 'moryaan' and freedom fighters: cycles of rebellion and the fragmentation of Somali society, 1900-2000, by Jon Abbink

The Grammar of Domination and the Subjection of Agency: Colonial Texts and Modes of Evidence

This article focuses on colonial accounts of the killing of the Xhosa chief, Hintsa, in 1835 at the hands of British forces along what came to be known as the eastern Cape frontier. It explores the evidentiary procedures and protocols through which the event came to be narrated in colonial frames of intelligibility. In proposing a strategy for reading the colonial archive, the paper strategically interrupts the flow from an apartheid historiography to what is commonly referred to as ‘alternative history.’ The aim in effecting this interruption is to call attention to the enabling possibilities of critical history. This is achieved not by way of declaration but rather through a practice whereby the foundational category of evidence is problematized. The paper alludes to the limits of alternative history and its approaches to evidence on the one hand, and the conditions of complicity within which evidence is produced on the other. Whereas alternative history identifies its task as one of rewriting South African history, critical history, it issuggested, offers the opportunity to reconstitute the field of history by addressing the sites of its production and also its practices. In exploring the production of the colonial record on the killing of Hintsa, the paper seeks to complicate alternative history's slippage in and out of the evidentiary rules established by colonial domination even as it constitutes the category ofevidence as an object for a politics of history of the present.

The margins of order: strategies of segregation on the eastern Cape frontier, 1806‐c. 1850

This paper draws attention to the inconsistent development of segregationist strategies on the eastern Cape frontier during the nineteenth century. It argues that the primary thrust of official segregationist strategy shifted throughout the century in response to Xhosa resistance, the material demands of colonists and competing discourses surrounding ‘the Xhosa’. A periodisation is developed around three broad phases. In the first, the colonial state attempted the complete economic and cultural exclusion of Xhosas from the colonial margins. In the second, spanning the period in which overt Rarabe Xhosa resistance was finally crushed, attempts to maintain spatial separation between colonists and Xhosa were tempered by efforts to modify Xhosa culture in order to render Xhosas more amenable to the colonial presence. Spatial exclusion was accompanied by degrees of attempted cultural inclusion. The intensity and scope of these efforts, however, shifted in accordance with changing frontier conditions. In a third phase towards the end of the nineteenth century, the eastern Cape became enmeshed in a wider, industrial form of segregation premised upon both spatial and cultural exclusion, but with the fundamental addition of more efficient mechanisms for controlled labour absorption. However, constructions of the Xhosa generated during earlier phases provided legitimation for this subsequent system of industrial segregation.

Artfulness in the early South African oral‐style story: Ernest Glanville's ‘Abe Pike’ tales

The focus of this article is Ernest Glanville's collection of stories Tales from the Veld (1897) and its place in the South African oral‐style story tradition. Glanville's tales are set on the Eastern Cape Frontier in the last part of the nineteenth century and employ a narrator, the loquacious but wily backwoodsman ‘Uncle Abe Pike’. This style of story reached its apogee with the ‘Oom Schalk Lourens’ tales of Herman Charles Bosman. Little, however, is known about earlier users of the oral‐style story and the contribution they made to the form. It will be argued that, like Bosman's Oom Schalk, Glanville's Uncle Abe is a complex figure who speaks in several voices. The ideology he articulates is complex and ambiguous: he is simultaneously racist and humane, condescending to the ‘Kaffir’ and sympathetic to Xhosa culture, loyal to the Queen and contemptuous of the colonial administration. For all of these reasons, Glanville's ‘Abe Pike’ tales are worthy of more attention than they have been accorded.

The formative region: the eastern Cape frontier revisited

The formative region: the eastern Cape frontier revisited

'A vague vision of a legion of Mephistopheles': The attitudes of four women to class and race on the Eastern Cape Frontier, 1843-1878

This article evaluates the class and racial attitudes of four European women who lived on the Eastern Cape frontier between 1843 and 1878. Their cultural baggage included a rigid sense of class structures which defined relationships between people and especially that of master and servant. The women came from the middle class and there is no indication that they were prepared to accept the more egalitarian conditions which they experienced on the frontier. Their racial prejudices were bound up with their class ideologies and religious beliefs. Hence they retained a sense of European superiority and bias against the "heathen", but their contact with the indigenous people did modify their views slightly.

William Somerville's Narrative of His Journeys to the Eastern Cape Frontier and to Lattakoe 1799-1802

William Somerville's Narrative of His Journeys to the Eastern Cape Frontier and to Lattakoe 1799-1802