History of the Cape Colony from 1806 to 1870
At that time, the colony extended to the mountains in front of the vast central plateau, then called "Bushmansland", and had an area of about 194,000 square kilometres and a population of some 60,000, of whom 27,000 were white, 17,000 free Khoikhoi, and the rest slaves.
In order to expel them from the Zuurveld, Colonel John Graham took the area with a mixed-race army in December 1811, and eventually the Xhosa were forced to fall back beyond the Fish River.
These separatist tensions did not completely die down until the 1870s, when Prime Minister John Molteno restructured the Cape administration to meet the major concerns of the eastern colonists and, in the Constitutional Amendment Bill of 1873, abolished the last formal distinctions.
This caused a miniature rebellion, and in its suppression five ringleaders were publicly hanged by the British at Slagter's Nek where they had originally sworn to expel "the English tyrants".
Moreover, the inadequate compensation awarded to slave-owners, and the suspicions engendered by the method of payment, caused much resentment, and in 1835 the trend where farmers trekked into unknown country in order to escape from a disliked government recommenced.
Lord Glenelg's dispatch of 26 December stated: "The Kaffirs had an ample justification for war; they had to resent, and endeavoured justly, though impotently, to avenge a series of encroachments."
The trekkers (Boers), numbering around 7,000, founded communities with a republican form of government beyond the Orange and Vaal rivers, and in Natal, where they had been preceded, however, by British emigrants.
On the advice of the missionaries, who exercised great influence on all non-Dutch people, a number of the "native states" were recognised and subsidised by the Cape government with the objective of creating peace on the northern frontier.
An efficient education system, owing its inception to Sir John Herschel, an astronomer who lived in Cape Colony from 1834 to 1838, was adopted.
In December 1847, or what was to be the last month of the War of the Axe, Sir Harry Smith reached Cape Town by boat to become the new governor of the colony.
A few days later, at a meeting of the Xhosa chiefs on 23 December 1847, Sir Harry announced the annexation of the land between the Keiskamma and the Kei Rivers to the British crown, thus re-absorbing the territory that had been given up by Lord Glenelg.
Sir Harry Smith was very much aware of his unpopularity in the Colonial Office due to his unilateral and expensive colonisation of neighbouring territories.
Confronted with public resistance, he agreed not to allow the convicts to land when the Neptune arrived in Simon's Bay on 19 September 1849, but to keep them on board the ship until he received orders to send them elsewhere.
When the home government became aware of the state of affairs, orders were sent directing the Neptune to proceed to Tasmania, and it did so after staying in Simon’s Bay for five months.
The Xhosa bitterly resented Sir Harry Smith's recent annexation of their lands, and had secretly been preparing to renew their struggle ever since the last war.
Sir Harry Smith, informed of the increasing Xhosa mobilisation, went to the border region and summoned Sandile and the other chiefs for a meeting.
Colonel George Mackinnon, who had been sent out with a small army with the goal of arresting the chief, was attacked in a narrow gorge on 24 December 1850 by a large number of Xhosa gunmen.
Emboldened by their initial success, a large and powerful contingent of Xhosa troops surrounded and attacked Fort Cox, where the governor was stationed with a small number of soldiers.
Eventually, at the head of 150 mounted riflemen, accompanied by Colonel Mackinnon, he fought his way out of the fort, and rode to King William’s Town through heavy Xhosa fire – a distance of 12 miles (19 km).
After the confusion caused by the surprise attack had subsided, Sir Harry Smith and his force turned the tide of war against the Xhosa.
In April 1852, Sir Harry Smith was recalled by Earl Grey, who accused him – unjustly, in the opinion of the Duke of Wellington – of a want of energy and judgement in conducting the war; he was succeeded by Lieutenant-General Cathcart.
Nongqawuse, standing in the river where the spirits had first appeared, heard unearthly noises, interpreted by her uncle as orders to kill more and more cattle.
If that were done, on a given date, myriads of cattle more beautiful than those destroyed would issue from the earth, while great fields of corn, ripe and ready for harvest, would instantly appear.
Governor Grey and his administration believed in a conspiracy called the 'Chief’s Plot' where they claimed the chiefs deliberately starved their people to instill desperation so that the Xhosa would be recruited for war and attack the settlers.
[8] Peires emphasized the role of Governor Grey, who both encouraged the movement then capitalized on its failure via the confiscation of land, imprisonment of chiefs, and exploitative labor contracts of the newly famished Xhosa.
[7] Another scholar summarizes the event as achieving "clear domination for the British over a powerful African kingdom when eight costly frontier wars had been unable to".
Sir George kept open a British road through Bechuanaland to the far interior, gaining the support of the missionaries Robert Moffat and David Livingstone.
The opening, in November 1863, of the railway from Cape Town to Wellington, and the construction in 1860 of the great breakwater in Table Bay, long needed on that perilous coast, marked the beginning in the colony of public works on a large scale.
The province of British Kaffraria was incorporated into the colony in 1865, under the title of the Electoral Divisions of King William’s Town and East London.
The transfer was marked by the removal of the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages to the natives, and the free trade in intoxicants which followed had most deplorable results among the Xhosa tribes.
