Colonial expansion after 1750

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Britain takes control of the Cape
Overview
In the early 1800s Britain became the world’s first industrial power and turned the Cape
into a producer of goods or raw materials for its factories and expanding commercial
empire. It encouraged British emigration, commercial farming of products for trade and
free trade with independent African farmers and hunters. Slavery was abolished and wage
labour introduced.
Before 1830 slaves did most of the labour. Many of the slave-owning Dutch-speaking
settlers chose to leave the Colony. They established independent republics to the north of
the Cape. They took over land from smaller African communities, but they could not easily
defeat the larger kingdoms, such as the Sotho, Pedi and Zulu and so made alliances with
them.
Through trade and by sending young men to work in the Colony, these larger African
communities acquired guns, which increased their power to incorporate land and
communities into their kingdoms. Many African rulers also tried to avoid conflict with the
Boers and sought their help against their enemies.
British settlers on the Eastern frontier of the Cape asked Britain for support in their
conflicts with the Xhosa. Generally, the British helped them but until the 1870s they did
not want to destroy Xhosa independence because they wanted to encourage the Xhosa to
produce cattle skins, sheep and ivory for the market.
Britain takes over the Cape
By 1800 Britain was the most advanced industrial nation in the world. British merchant
trading companies owned the largest fleet of merchant ships on earth, and Britain
controlled much of the world’s trade – especially with India and China.
In 1795, the new military ruler of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded Holland
overthrowing the Dutch King. Britain, fearing that France would also now take over the
Cape from the DEIC and disrupt British trade with the East, sent a fleet of warships to take
the Cape over from the DEIC.
In 1802 the British temporarily withdrew from the Cape but returned in 1806 when war
broke out between Britain and France. This time they stayed and set about transforming
the Cape Colony into an important source of new cash crops, especially wine, animal skins,
ivory and wool for the rapidly industrialising British economy.
British rule was very different from the old, conservative monopolist DEIC. As the richest
trading nation on earth and the world’s first industrial nation, Britain had huge advantages
over all other countries. They did not need trading monopolies to protect them. Instead,
they needed free trade where they could offer cheaper, better products than other
European traders. Britain was opposed to the trade monopolies of the great old merchant
companies such as the DEIC.

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Industries rely on free wage labour, and so Britain began to demand an end to slavery and
all other forms of forced labour. This new political and economic philosophy came to be
known as liberalism.

Changes in colonial economy and society

At first, the Cape colonial government concentrated on developing the export of wine and
ivory and skins through Cape Town by a small group of rich Cape merchants. The
government introduced a postal service and built new roads to encourage trade. Shipping
from Cape Town increased. In 1822 the Cape merchants formed a merchant organisation
called the Commercial Exchange and built a stylish new building to house their offices. By
1860, there were five private banks and 13 large private finance and trading companies
in Cape Town. In a move to encourage agricultural production, the British brought in 1 004
new British settlers in 1820 and more than 5 000 followed. The British government wanted
them to become commercial farmers producing food and agricultural products for the
expanding colonial commercial economy.
However, the scheme did not go according to plan. Most of the British settlers were not
farmers, and it soon became clear to them that there were far better economic
opportunities than trying to scrape a living on the small pieces of infertile land that they
had been given by the government. Many were skilled artisans who moved to the towns
where they could practise their skills. Others saw commercial opportunities to trade with
Afrikaner and Xhosa hunters and farmers in the interior. The British settlers brought a
commercial, urban and more democratic culture to the Cape Colony. They resented the
control of the Governor in Cape Town. They demanded and won many rights and freedoms
including an independent judicial system and Supreme Court, a more efficient civil service,
laws that opened up more land for private ownership, a free market in land, the right to a
free press and the ending of all trade restrictions with the Xhosa.
Those who remained on the land turned to farming imported Merino sheep. The wool
industry soon became the most profitable economic activity of all in the colony. By the
1840s, Port Elizabeth had become a thriving port town exporting more goods than Cape
Town. The Eastern Cape traders and sheep farmers became a powerful and wealthy group
in colonial society.
Wool production required vast grazing lands, which could only be acquired by taking more
land from the Xhosa. With money to be made on land in the Eastern Cape Colony, the
banks and land companies in Cape Town bought up Large areas of land hoping to sell it at
a profit to settler farmers.

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The banks, land companies and the settlers pressed for more military support from the
government to seize land from the Xhosa in the East and the Griqua and other African
communities across the northern frontier. They exaggerated reports of Xhosa cattle raids
to try and persuade the government to attack them and colonise more land. But wars are
expensive, and before the 1850s the British government in London instructed the
government of the Colony to avoid expensive wars with indigenous societies. The
government in London tried various ways of keeping settler and Xhosa communities
separate. However, the pressure from settlers and local land companies in the Colony
provoked a number of wars between 1811 and 1856. In each of these wars, the Cape
government intervened on the side of settlers. The Cape government took over more land
which they sold to land companies and settlers and pushed the Xhosa further eastwards.

What happened to the indigenous population?

What happened to the Khoisan people in the Cape colony? As you saw in Topic 2, war,
slavery and European diseases such as smallpox had destroyed most independent Khoi
and San communities. The survivors were forced to become servants and herdsmen of the
settlers and lived isolated lives as poor unskilled labourers. By the 1800s most had lost
their traditional culture and identity. However, in Cape Town and other larger towns, a
diverse urban culture developed among freed slaves, Khoisan and African immigrants.
There was a revival of Islam which gave many people a strong cultural identity and dignity
and laid the foundations of South Africa’s Islamic community. Others found strength in new
Christian churches.
Only those Khoisan who lived in remote desert areas far beyond the colonial frontier were
able to retain a traditional way of life. A few San communities have survived up to the 20th
century in the Kgalagadi desert of Botswana and Namibia. But even here, many became
impoverished servants of Tswana and Herero cattle herders. Within the colony, the colonial
government passed a number of laws designed to integrate Khoi people into the colonial
economy as poorly paid servants on settler-owned farms. In 1809 it passed an anti-
squatting law to prevent blacks from farming on empty land within the Colony, and in 1811
introduced a pass law to control the movement of workers in the colony and make it more
difficult for workers to leave their employers.

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Griqua and Kora leave the colony
Some descendants of Khoi servants, slaves and Dutch settlers found they had no place in
the racial social order of the Cape and moved away from the centre of the colony. Some
settled around mission stations where they formed stable farming communities.
The Griqua and the Kora were two such groups who moved out of the colony completely
and settled along the Orange River. Another Khoi community was allowed to settle in the
Eastern Cape along the Kat River on land taken from Xhosa by the British. These
communities spoke Dutch and had guns and horses and so were able to dominate smaller
Nama, Tswana and Xhosa chiefdoms that lived around them. Some made their living by
raiding for slaves and cattle from interior societies to sell in the markets of the colony. This
contributed to the instability and conflict in the interior. The Cape government until the
1850s tried to maintain stability on the frontiers of the colony, and signed treaties
recognising the independence of these Khoi and Griqua communities. However, by the
1860s colonial policy had changed. The British ignored their treaties and allowed settlers
to take over Khoi and Griqua land.

Changing labour patterns

The most important change brought about by the British was the end of slavery. As soon
as the British were in control of the Cape, they faced calls from humanitarians and
missionaries to end slavery there. The leading spokesman for the humanitarians was the
Rev. John Philip of the London Missionary Society. But there were other reasons as well. A
government Commission in 1828 described slavery as “a great obstacle to the
improvement of the Colony”. The old Dutch method of farming using unfree labour or slave
labour was inefficient. It meant that the more progressive commercial farmers became
short of labour because black workers were tied up on the old-fashioned Boer farms.
Merchants and commercial farmers wanted to transform the colony into a modern,
commercial and capitalist society with free trade, a free flow of labour, and a free market
in land and property. These policies benefited settler-owned companies and commercial
farmers the most. The wealthy settlers and trading companies supported the

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humanitarians when they called for greater equality before the law for black and white
South Africans as long as it led to the end of slavery. However, they continued to believe
in a racially ordered society in which blacks and coloureds worked for white employers.
They also continued to demand the invasion and seizing of Xhosa land.
Most wealthy Dutch and British farmers in the Western Cape benefited from the change to
wage labour. Smaller Boer farmers lost their servants and labourers as they could not
afford to pay wages.
In 1828, the Cape government passed the law known as ‘Ordinance 50’. This law gave
black servants equality before the law and freed them from having to do forced labour. A
system of circuit courts was set up to enforce these laws (which included protecting black
servants from violence).
However, despite all these new anti-slavery laws, most former slaves found that the end
of slavery did not bring much freedom. Slavery as a form of control was replaced by a body
of new laws to control workers. The Masters and Servants Act gave employers great control
over workers. A new vagrancy law was passed in 1834. Even though the law did not
distinguish between races, it reflected the stereotyped settler view that black people were
lazy and easily turned to crime, and its effect was to make it very difficult for Khoi servants
and ex-slaves to escape a life of servility. Anyone who could not explain how they made a
living could be arrested.
In 1841 a new Masters and Servants law was passed that specified severe punishments
for breaking employment contracts and other ‘crimes’ such as disobedience. This law too
did not explicitly refer to race but effectively gave mostly white employers great power
over their mostly coloured work force. It also reinforced the dominance of men over women
in working class families. It prevented blacks in the colony from making an independent
living for themselves and forced them to seek wage labour to survive.
However, some former slaves inside the colony were able to take advantage of the ‘non-
racial’ nature of colonial laws. A few were able to rent land owned by mission stations
where they became independent farmers. Wealthier blacks with property and education
were given the vote. Missionaries were encouraged to extend Christian education so that
educated blacks would have British attitudes and values. But this always remained a very
small elite class in colonial society. And their interests would later be sacrificed, because
they were black, in the rigidly racial society of the Union of South Africa that Britain created
at the end of the century.
Why was slavery abolished
There are many different reasons why Britain decided to bring slavery to an end. Historians
disagree over which was most important. Was Britain driven by humanitarian feelings of
concern or was it mostly a matter of self-interest? During the nineteenth century, European
missionaries, humanitarians and abolitionists spoke of abolition as a great moral crusade.
They argued that Britain could not tolerate slavery because it was fundamentally wrong
and that all people should be treated equally and enjoy the same human rights. They
believed that Britain had a moral duty to demand that everyone else in the world agree
with their superior moral values. This purely humanitarian reason for abolishing slavery
was challenged by economic historians early in the twentieth century who argued that

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humanitarian considerations were only a thin disguise for what were really hard economic
motives. Slavery, they said, had become inefficient and expensive. Slaves and servants
were tied to the land of their owners and masters where they usually performed unskilled
manual work.
They argued that Britain’s industrial economy needed a different kind of workforce – one
in which people were freed from the land and could work wherever they were needed.
Workers who could learn new skills and become more productive were needed. The British
economy needed people who did not have access to their own land and so would be forced
to seek wage labour in order to survive. They also argued that slavery was limiting other
forms of commerce. For example, British factories needed large quantities of vegetable
oils from West Africa to use in making soap, candles and lubricants. There was also a
growing demand for beeswax, rubber and ivory. Wars and slave raids made it difficult to
carry on these other forms of trade.
Yet another reason was that slave resistance was beginning to threaten profits in slave
plantations. In 1791 a slave uprising took place in Haiti. Smaller uprisings took place
elsewhere too. Even though there were no large slave uprisings in South Africa, slave
owners were sometimes attacked and even killed by aggrieved slaves. Between 1807 and
1833, the British passed a number of laws, which made slavery illegal throughout the
British Empire. Former slaves were then free to move to employers who paid wages.
The Boer response to British control
Many Afrikaner farmers adapted to these changes and became successful commercial
farmers in the colony. However, for some, especially the frontier farmers, the changes the
British made in the Cape undermined their whole way of life, economy and beliefs.
Some remained in the Cape and prospered. Others chose to move out of the colony. Many
servants and free blacks also chose or were forced to move with their Boer masters.
The Afrikaner leaders gave many reasons for leaving the colony: Piet Retief, who led the
first large group to leave the colony, wrote a manifesto (which he published in the
Graham’s Town Journal on 2 February 1937) in which he listed many reasons including
“to preserve the proper relationship between master and servant”, resentment at having
to pay rent for government land that they had used and claimed as their own before, and
“that there is no longer any justice for burghers, but only for blacks”.
A few Boers left before the abolition of slavery, but the migration really began in the ten
years between 1834 and 1845 when 15 000 Afrikaner settlers left the colony in small
groups. Individual families attached themselves to a leader and trekked northwards in
their ox wagons. They had many different motives. Some, like Piet Retief, were ambitious
men who saw the possibility of making fortunes by seizing new areas of land which they
could divide up and sell at a profit. Others simply wanted land to restore their old
independent farming way of life.

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Loose migration or ‘Great Trek’?
For many years before 1990, Afrikaner nationalist historians referred to this movement of
Afrikaners out of the Colony as ‘the Great Trek’. They have presented it as a single great
movement of Afrikaners from oppression to the promised land, just like the Bible story of
the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to the ‘promised land’. They saw the ‘Great Trek’
as the first great struggle by the ‘Afrikaner nation’ to liberate themselves from the yoke of
British imperialism. From the opposite perspective, other historians oft en paint a picture
of the Great Trek as an organised military invasion with the sole purpose of destroying
African independence.
In reality, the movement of Boers into the interior was not a united mass movement of an
Afrikaner nation. Most Afrikaners chose to remain in the colony, and those that did leave,
did so in many different small groups for different reasons. For the first 20 years, many
Boer leaders formed alliances with African chiefs.

Relationships with African societies

Relationships with African societies were complex. Most emigrants were strongly in favour
of rigid master-servant relationships in the colony and were willing to plunder weaker
African communities. Yet they were also happy to see themselves as the equals of the
stronger independent African kingdoms outside the colony. One of the first trekker leaders,
Louis Trichardt, was given a large area of land in the east by the Xhosa chief Hintsa and
he considered settling there in an anti-British alliance with the Xhosa king.

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Hendrik Potgieter – another trekker leader – wrote to the Griqua chief, Adam Kok in 1844:
“We are emigrants together with you... who together with you, dwell in the same strange
land, and we desire to be seen as no more nor less than ... inhabitants of the country,
enjoying the same privileges with you.”(Quoted in a letter by Thomson to Philip, 25
December 1844, published in R Ross, Adam Kok’s Griquas.)Many of the Boer leaders had
a deep hatred of British Imperialism. In the 1840s Andries Pretorius, who would later
become president of the South African Republic, had settled in a part of the country ruled
by Moshoeshoe, and tried to persuade Moshoeshoe to form an alliance to resist British
expansion.
There were many groups of trekkers with many different leaders. Conflict within and
between the groups was common and they would often split up and reform into new
groups. At the time the personalities of the leaders were often more important than any
idea of Afrikaner nationhood. The migration continued on and off from 1834 for about forty
years.
In the early years, it was by intervening in wars between African communities that the
Afrikaners were able to get land and cattle for themselves. In the first Boer republic of
Natalia in the northeast, the Boers supported Mpande in the internal power struggle then
taking place in the Zulu state. When Mpande became the Zulu king, the Boers demanded
large areas of land. When the British annexed Natal in 1843, most Boers trekked north
again to the highveld. Here the Boer republic of Potchefstroom under Hendrik Potgieter,
together with Griqua and Tswana allies, were able to drive the Ndebele out of the land.
Further north, Boers established the small fragile republics of Zoutpansberg and
Lydenburg. They depended on peaceful relations with their African neighbours and, in
many areas, paid tribute to more powerful African states. In the 1860s, the Pedi and Venda
successfully resisted the Boer attempts to take their land and take control of ivory hunting
and so the northern Boer republic of Zoutpansberg was forced to abandon its settlements
and retreat southwards again. But slowly, the Boer military leaders and landowners were
able to unite the separate Boer republics. In 1848 the Boers between the Orange and the
Vaal rivers formed the Orange Free State (OFS). With no opposition from the British, they
were able to take over most of the best farmland from the Basotho. The Orange Free State
Boers maintained close economic and cultural relations with the colony.
By 1859, the Boer settlements north of the Vaal River came together to form the South
African Republic (ZAR) with its capital at Pretoria. The ZAR was much more militaristic and
fiercely independent of the Cape colony. The ZAR became the strongest raiding state on
the Highveld. It collected rent, tribute and forced labour from smaller fragmented African
societies.

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Life in the Afrikaner republics
The republics which the Boers tried to establish in the interior differed in many ways from
the colonial society of the Cape colony. Until the 1850s, they were small scattered
settlements bound loosely together. They needed the support of local African rulers.
Wealth was held in land and cattle, and the Boers continued to use old forms of slavery or
contract labour. They depended on merchants from the Cape and Natal for manufactured
goods such as cloth, pots, tools, guns and ammunition. Religion became very important in
holding the communities together and helped reinforce a traditional, conservative, cultural
identity. In many ways, the new Boer republics were very similar to the African societies
which surrounded them.
However, unlike the African states, the Boer republics had a system of private ownership
of land with written title deeds. Soon a wealthy landowner class of Boer notables grew up
within the republics. Government officials and military commanders were paid in land as
the republican governments had no developed cash economy to draw on. Large
landowners collected rents from both Africans and poor white tenant farmers. The poorer
white tenants were used to clear land for farming and to fight in Boer commandoes.
Africans in the southern highveld had at first welcomed the Boers to help drive out the
Ndebele. Many chiefs willingly supplied tribute labour. But as the Boers consolidated their
power and control over land, their labour demands became more severe and violent. One
Tswana chief said: “Mosilikatze [Mzilikazi] was cruel to his enemies, and kind to those he
conquered; but the Boers destroyed their enemies and made slaves of their friends.”
While Britain was worried about the growth of Boer power, they did not want to intervene
in any military conflicts. They recognised the independence of the Boer republics in 1852,
and generally stood by and allowed the Boers to seize more and more land, labour and
cattle.

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Relations with African states outside the colony
From the 1830s to the 1850s, the Cape Colonial government tried to preserve some
stability on the Eastern frontier. They followed a ‘civilising policy’ towards the Xhosa
communities on the frontiers of the colony. They dropped all restrictions on trade with
independent societies hoping that this would encourage Africans as well as settlers to
produce the export goods that British traders needed. Many frontier towns such as
Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth and the new port of Port Natal (now Durban) became
important centres for trade in ivory and game products from the interior.
Mostly, they got these trade goods from strong independent African chiefdoms in the
interior. In the north, the Griqua, Kora and Barolong continued to raid communities further
inland for cattle and slaves which they sold to poor Boer cattle farmers on the edge of the
colony who still used slave labour. Delagoa Bay on the east coast became an important
slave trading port after the British prevented Brazilian and American ships from buying
slaves in West Africa. Here Boer, Portuguese and African slave-traders exported large
numbers of slaves up to the 1860s.Chiefs of the interior African kingdoms controlled the
labour of young men in their societies. They could call on them to go hunting, to work in
the fields or villages or they could send them to work in the Cape colony to earn money to
buy guns and other goods for the chief. Missionaries, for example, estimated that in the
1870s, the Pedi acquired up to 1 000 guns a year from young men going to work on the
diamond fields.
It is important to understand that at this time most migrant labour was voluntary. Africans
worked for short periods to get the money to return to their independent societies with
cattle, guns and other goods. Wages had to be relatively high in order to attract workers
from outside the colony.
Impact on traditional lives of Africans
Traditional lifestyles were changing rapidly as a result of the growth of African farming and
ivory hunting. Trade and migrant labour gave individual farmers and hunters the
opportunity to break away from the control of chiefs.
Missionaries
Missionaries established themselves in many areas. Soon mission stations were
surrounded by African families who had left their traditional homes and lifestyles in search
of security (from raids) or new economic opportunities. Most became farmers producing
for colonial markets. Missionaries also provided a European education for the people who
settled around them and converted to Christianity. Similarly, in Xhosa societies on the
border of the colony, trade and contact with European missionaries weakened the
authority of traditional leaders and undermined the unity of many Xhosa communities.
People challenged the authority of the chiefs. The greatest problem facing Xhosa chiefs
was how to manage their increasingly divided communities. Chiefs adopted different
strategies to protect themselves and their communities.
However, in spite of these dividing tendencies, most of the larger African kingdoms
remained strong united communities with a traditional character and identity. There was
a resurgence of African power in the interior from the 1850s as African states began to
recover from the warfare of the 1820s and 1830s and adapted to the new environment.

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African states were able to limit the expansion of Boer and British settlement. Some states,
such as the Basotho, Swazi and Pedi, were even able to make the frontier Boers pay tribute
to them for a while.
The modern ‘ethnic’ identities of Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, Tswana, Pedi, Venda and Swazi took
shape in this period. They were relatively new creations and were often strongly influenced
by chiefs together with missionaries and colonial rulers who wanted to reinforce the
authority of particular ruling families.

Xhosa responses: Co-operation and conflict, including the Cattle Killing

As we have seen, throughout this period, Xhosa societies responded dynamically to the
opportunities presented by the colonial economy. However, settlers within the colony were
also responding to the new opportunities. Often illegally, they occupied more and more
land from Xhosa communities on the eastern frontier. This led to increasing conflict. By the
1800s there were two main branches of the Xhosa: the Gcaleka who were the senior
branch of the Xhosa and who lived east of the Great Kei River; and the Rharhabe who lived
west of the Kei. Most Xhosa communities tried to avoid war, knowing how destructive it
would be if the Cape government intervened in support of the settlers. And official British
policy too was to try to avoid the expensive conflict that border wars would entail.
But ultimately the pressure from settlers was too strong, and when conflict did occur
between settlers and Xhosa, the colonial government always intervened on behalf of the
settlers. There were wars in 1811, 1819, 1835 and 1846. These wars weakened but did
not destroy Xhosa independence. However, after each war, the colonial boundary was
pushed further east and more land and cattle were captured for settlers. In 1847 the
British took control of the Rharhabe lands and named the area British Kaffraria. The chiefs
were still allowed some independence.
The greatest war of resistance on the eastern frontier took place from 1851–1853. There
was a severe drought in 1850, which contributed to growing unrest among the Xhosa in
British Kaffraria. By the end of 1850 war had broken out. Xhosa and Khoekhoe united in
a sustained guerrilla war against the British, which lasted three years. However, they could
not defeat the British and at the end of the war more land in British Kaffraria was given to
colonial farmers and to Mfengu chiefs who had supported the British. The Gcaleka Xhosa
on the other side of the Great Kei River had not been involved in the war in a major way
but had supported the Rharhabe. As a result, colonial troops raided their territory as well,
destroying crops and capturing cattle.

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In 1854 Sir George Grey became Governor of the Cape Colony. He was determined to find
a permanent solution to the conflict on the eastern frontier. In 1856 a highly infectious
disease, called lung-sickness, swept through the cattle belonging to the Xhosa. It spread
rapidly into the colonial herds. No one knew how to prevent it from spreading or how to
cure it. In the same year, heavy rains destroyed the Xhosa’s newly planted crops and the
Xhosa were faced with starvation. In British Kaffraria, Sir George Grey began a process of
removing power from the Chiefs, resettling the Xhosa in villages, extending Christian
missions in their territory and setting up industrial schools where he hoped to teach Xhosa
youth to become good labourers and domestic servants.
It was during the height of the drought and lung-sickness that, one day, a young initiate
traditional healer, Nongqawuse, was in a field next to the Gxarha River. Two strangers
stood among the reeds in the water. They called her and told her that they had a message
for the Xhosa people from the ancestors and that she was to bring her uncle Mhlakaza, to
them. Mhlakaza was a diviner and religious leader. When he accompanied Nongqawuse
back to these strangers they told him that if the Xhosa slaughtered all their remaining
cattle and destroyed those crops that had survived the drought, their ancestors would rise
up to drive the whites into the sea. On that day, the sun would rise and set again in the
east. New, healthy cattle and food would be supplied in abundance and the Xhosa would
be able to regain their independence.
Mhlakaza repeated the prophecy to King Sarhili. Sarhili ordered his followers to obey the
prophecy, causing the cattle-killing movement to spread to an unstoppable point. The
cattle-killing frenzy affected not only the Gcaleka, Sarhili’s clan, but many other Xhosa
chiefdoms as well. Historians estimate that the Gcaleka killed between 300 000 and 400
000 head of cattle.
The prophecy divided Xhosa society into those who believed in it and those who didn’t.
Thousands of people did as Nongqawuse’s prophets had commanded. The day that the
prophecy was to be fulfilled arrived, thousands waited with longing for the miraculous
event that would give them back their independence and freedom. The result of the failure
of the prophecy was a disastrous famine in which tens of thousands died and thousands
more were forced to seek work on settler farms to survive. Xhosa resistance was finally
broken. White settlers expanded into Xhosa land. After 1857, the Xhosa were unable to
seriously resist continued British expansion into their lands. However, unlike the Khoisan,
the Xhosa did not disappear. They lost their lands but remained in South Africa, and their
population grew.
Some Xhosa like the Mfengu, who had converted to Christianity and co-operated with the
British, became prosperous farmers of wheat and wool, especially after the 1850s. As
other Xhosa farmers slowly recovered from the disaster (using money and animals earned
from migrant labour), they too began to produce for the Cape market. Many more Xhosa
became Christians, but others remained staunchly traditional in their beliefs and way of
life. Migrant labour to the colony increased as people wanted cash to buy sheep, cattle,
guns and other imported goods.
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After 1875: The Zulu kingdom and the colony of Natal
Overview
Diamonds were discovered in the 1850s in what is now Kimberley, and Britain invested
large amounts of capital in the mines and later in sugar plantations and coalmines in Natal.
They needed people who wanted to be wage earners to come and work for them. For this
reason, the British tried to reorganise southern Africa by creating a new form of cheap
migrant wage labour earners. They created protectorates of the Sotho, Swazi and Tswana
states. The protectorates relied on African chiefs to collect taxes for themselves and for
the colony and to keep the people obedient and loyal to Britain. The British invested very
little in the development of the protectorates. Instead, Britain kept these protectorates
poor so that people were forced to become migrant workers because they could no longer
live off the land and needed cash. In this way, Britain used the protectorates as a secure
pool of cheap migrant labour.
Before 1870, the government of the British colony of Natal maintained peaceful relations
with the weakened and divided Zulu kingdom. British traders continued to engage in a
small but profitable trade in ivory and game products through Port Natal. After 1875, the
plantations of sugar cane, the discovery of coal and the growth of the railway system
changed the nature of the colonial economy and society in Natal, which had a huge impact
on the Zulu kingdom.
Plantations, coalmines of Natal and the railways
In 1843 the British colonised the rich, well-watered and fertile southern Natal. The African
communities on the coast were weak and disrupted after many years of Zulu raids. The
Zulu state itself was too weakened by internal power struggles and Boer interference to
resist the British. British settlers and companies established large sugar plantations in the
low-lying coastal regions in the 1870s. British settlers also discovered large coal deposits.
Indian labour
Plantations and coalmines require large capital investments and a steady supply of cheap
wage labour. Because wages were so low, very few Zulus or Zulu tenant farmers were
willing to leave their homes to work on the plantations and mines. In desperation, the
government imported thousands of indentured workers from India. The first of these
arrived in 1860.

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Labour for mines and railways
To assist in transport, since Durban was becoming an important port, the Natal Railway
Company was formed in January 1859 for the construction of a three-kilometre railway line
in Durban. The railway’s first steam locomotive started operations on 26 June 1860. Up
until that time the railway had been operated using ox-drawn wagons. To expand this
railway cheap labour was needed, which motivated Britain’s desire to subjugate the local
population.
The inaugural run was across a 3.2 km stretch from Market Square in Durban to the newly
built Point station at Durban harbour.
From their inception the Natal collieries experienced great difficulty in attracting
indigenous blacks in numbers sufficient to meet their labour requirements. The various
collieries recruited labour, as best they could, independently of each other from
neighbouring pockets of settled black population where these existed, and through agents
(many of them country storekeepers) in Swaziland, Zululand, Mpondoland, Transkei,
Lesotho, East and West Griqualand and the Transvaal.
However, when the large-scale commercial exploitation of northern Natal’s coal deposits
was initiated by the formation in January 1889 of the Dundee (Natal) Coal Company under
the chairmanship of the highly successful Durban businessman and civic leader, Benjamin
Greenacre, the need for a stable and abundant supply of cheap labour became imperative.
This need gave further impetus for a controlled labour force, thus fuelling the British desire
to subjugate the indigenous people of Natal.
Inland, although huge areas had been taken over by settlers or large land companies,
these people did not farm the land themselves. Instead they collected rent from the African
farmers who lived there. Africans produced most of the other agricultural goods in the
colony. Africans preferred to be tenant farmers and would not come and work on the
plantations, mines or railways and the commercial companies complained bitterly about
this.

The Anglo-Zulu wars and the destruction of Zulu independence

The long-term solution for Britain in acquiring labour for the mines and the construction of
railways, as well as to assist the indentured Indian labour on the sugar plantations, lay in
the destruction of Zulu independence and the creation of a large migrant labour force of

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young men who would be forced by poverty to work on the mines and plantations of the
colony for very low wages. The plantation and mine owners of Natal joined the calls of the
Kimberley mining companies, who also needed more labour, for the invasion of the Zulu
state.
The Zulu kingdom under Cetshwayo was the first African Kingdom to be invaded. Sir
Theophilus Shepstone, an official of the colonial government in Natal, expressed the views
of British settlers, traders and mine-owners when he said in 1878: “Had Cetshwayo’s thirty
thousand warriors been in time changed to labourers working for wages, Zululand would
have been a prosperous peaceful country instead of what it is now, a source of perpetual
danger to itself and its neighbours.”
But nothing that Cetshwayo could say would stop the invasion. The British brought large
numbers of troops to the borders of Zululand. In January 1879 Cetshwayo decided to
attack first. In a famous victory, the Zulu armies defeated a large British force at the battle
of Isandlwana.
Cetshwayo could have gone on to wipe out the entire settler community in Natal, but he
did not. Hoping that peace with Britain was still possible, he even allowed some British
troops that were trapped in Zululand a safe passage back to the colony.
Six months later, at a time when most Zulu soldiers were in their homesteads harvesting
grain, the British attacked with a much stronger army. The Zulu did not resist. The British
burned down Cetshwayo’s capital at Ulundi and sent the king into captivity in the Castle in
Cape Town. The British appointed its own chiefs to rule over the Zulu and gave them control
over Cetshwayo’s land and cattle. In 1883 they allowed Cetshwayo to return to his broken
kingdom.
Some chiefs had not been defeated in battle and remained loyal to Cetshwayo. They were
known as Usuthu. The Usuthu, with help from the Boers, now fought against the new
puppet chiefs. Both Boers and British stood to gain from the Zulu civil war and did nothing
to stop it. The civil war lasted eight years and caused great destruction. At one point during
the civil war Cetshwayo made this statement:
“Count my headmen who have been killed ... ask the King. Easier far to count those who have
escaped – the few who are still left to me – left with me to hold our mouths in wonder at the way
our own Zulu [nation] is being split.”

In the end, Zululand was divided between the Boers who had helped the Usuthu, and the
British settlers of Natal. The settlers took the best land, and left the Zulu with a small
fraction of their original land, living under chiefs that were loyal to the British government.
Thousands of Zulu homesteads lost land and cattle and the men were forced to work on
mines and plantations in order to survive. The Usuthu protested against this settlement,
but there was nothing they could do.

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Effect of the civil war
The effect of the civil war on Zulu life was devastating. Thousands of men were forced to
become migrant workers. The same year, a combined British and Boer army invaded and
destroyed the Pedi state under Sekhukuni. They took the best Pedi land and turned the
rest into an overcrowded ‘reserve’. During the 1880s, one by one, British forces, supported
by African and Boer allies, defeated all the African kingdoms south of the Limpopo River.
Most of their land was taken into the Boer republics, but British capital invested in mines
and plantations was assured of its labour supply.
Other African kingdoms
Only three kingdoms were able to escape military defeat: the Tswana confederacy led by
Chief Kgama of the Bamangwato, the Swazi kingdom and the kingdom of the Basotho. By
1880, the Tswana, Swazi and Basotho kingdoms had already lost most of their best land
to the Boers. They were faced with a stark choice: either accept British rule as
protectorates(the British called it ‘protection’) or face certain destruction by Boer and
British settlers.
A protectorate is a form of colony that is formally under British rule, but the colonial
government remains very small and relies on traditional African chiefs to maintain loyalty
and to collect taxes for themselves and for the colony. The British invested very little in the
development of the protectorates, using them as a secure pool of cheap migrant labour.
In the late 1870s Britain annexed all of the land between the Cape colony and Natal. After
three more years of resistance, the last Xhosa chiefdoms surrendered in 1881.Wherever
the British took over the administration of African land, they made the people pay taxes as
a further means of forcing them to earn cash wages on the mines. The invasion and
annexation of the last remaining African land marked the end of voluntary migrant labour
in South Africa. Increasingly African men were forced to seek waged employment.
In spite of this, wherever they could, many Africans continued to find ways of avoiding wage
labour. But this continuing resistance is a subject for next year’s study.
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Co-operation and conflict on the Highveld
Boers move into the interior
By 1840 some 5 000 Trekkers had moved across the Orange River settling in the region
south of the Vaal. They became involved in complex alliances and conflict over land with
local chiefdoms and communities. The Rolong formed an alliance with the Trekkers against
the Ndebele in 1837. Further east the trekkers rented land from the Griqua; and over a
number of years they came into conflict with Moshoeshoe and the Basotho over the fertile
lands between the Caledon and Orange rivers.

Encounters between Moshoeshoe and the Boers

Moshoeshoe was the most powerful ruler in the southern Highveld when the Trekkers
moved across the Orange River. He had created the Basotho kingdom during the conflict
of the 1820s. Most of his subjects were Basotho, but he had also incorporated Nguni, San,
Kora and Griqua groups into his kingdom. For most of his life, a major concern was to keep
these different groups loyal to him. He did this by keeping personal control over the core
of the Basotho state, and delegating power to his relations in the outlying regions. He also
gave a lot of power to the chiefs of the communities that had chosen to join the Basotho.
He relied on advisers, especially his councillors, close relatives and missionaries, but
remained the ultimate decision maker in his kingdom. When the Trekkers first moved into
Moshoeshoe’s territory, he saw their presence as a possible counter to the threats he was
experiencing from the Ndebele, Tlokwa and other hostile chiefdoms in the region. This
relationship did not last long as fierce competition for control over the most fertile land of
the region began to develop. A key point of conflict was the concept of land ownership.
When Moshoeshoe and other chiefs gave Trekkers permission to use an area of land, they
saw this as a temporary right only. The Trekkers, however, claimed that they had been
given permanent title to the land.
When it became clear that the conflict with the Trekkers would not be resolved easily,
Moshoeshoe began to look to the British for help. In 1843 Moshoeshoe and the Cape

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Governor, Sir George Napier, signed a treaty of friendship. The treaty also defined the
boundaries of Moshoeshoe’s territory. This treaty not only failed to settle the land disputes
with the Boers, but it also dissatisfied other chiefdoms in the region. In 1844 Moshoeshoe
declared all land exchanges between his people and the Trekkers null and void.
The conflict between Moshoeshoe and the Trekkers was far from over. A new agreement
in 1845 allowed the Trekkers to rent land between the Caledon and Orange Rivers. In
1851 the British themselves turned against Moshoeshoe. In 1848 the British had annexed
the territory between the Orange and Vaal Rivers and the Drakensberg, naming it the
Orange River Sovereignty. The British representative, Major Warden, led a military force of
British troops, Boers, Griqua, Kora and Rolong against the Taung as the first phase in an
attack on Moshoeshoe. Moshoeshoe intervened and the Basotho defeated Major Warden
at the Battle of Viervoet. Moshoeshoe again defeated the British in 1852. Two years later,
Britain abandoned the Orange River Sovereignty, which became the Orange Free State.
The land disputes had still not been settled, and the Boers and Basotho were left to
compete for control over the Caledon valley and the grasslands stretching northwards
toward the Vaal River.
By 1858 the ongoing conflict and claims of stock theft by the Boers against the Basotho
escalated into war. However, the Boers were unwilling to attack Thaba Bosiu, so retreated,
demoralised and in disarray. They returned to the Free State to fi nd that Basotho raiding
parties had attacked Boer farms, seized livestock and set fi re to homesteads. In the
settlement, even though the Basotho had defeated the Boers, the disputed territory was
divided between them.
By now Moshoeshoe was over 70 years old and it seems that he was beginning to lose
authority within his state. The Free State Boers were also internally divided and
demoralised. Their economy had suffered a major setback because of an economic
depression and severe drought. Both drifted into a second war in May 1865. Thaba Bosiu
withstood two assaults by the Boers; but gradually the Boers gained the upper hand. Boer
commandoes destroyed Basotho villages and captured large quantities of stock and in
1866 Moshoeshoe and other chiefs were forced to accept a peace treaty, which gave the
Free State Boers much of the land that they had so badly wanted.

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Moshoeshoe turns to the British
It became clear to Moshoeshoe that the Basotho might lose their independence
altogether. He asked for British imperial intervention and protection. The British hoped
that Basotho territory could be annexed to Natal, but in 1868 the High Commissioner, Sir
Philip Wodehouse proclaimed the annexation of Basutoland to Britain. The Basotho had
indeed lost their independence – though not to the Boers – and would only regain it in
1966.
How Moshoeshoe is remembered
Moshoeshoe was a shrewd diplomat and played enemies and potential enemies against
each other. Today, Moshoeshoe is celebrated in praise poetry as a military strategist,
diplomat, negotiator, reconciler and nation builder, as illustrated in this extract from a
praise poem that was composed by a great-grandson of Moshoeshoe in 1968.
You who are fond of praising the ancestors,
Your praises are poor when you leave out the warrior,
When you leave out Thesele,
the son of Mokhachane;
For it’s he who’s the warrior of the wars,
Thesele is brave and strong,
That is Moshoeshoe-Moshaila.
When Moshoeshoe started to govern the Sotho
He started at Botha-Bothe.
Thesele, the cloud departed from the east,
It left a trail and alighted in the west,
At Thaba Bosiu, at the hut that’s a court ...Great ancestor, child of Napo Motomelo,
Protective charm of the Beoana’s land,
The cave of the poor and the chiefs,
Peete’s descendent, the brave warrior,
He’s loved when the shields have been grasped,
When the young men’s sticks have been grasped.

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