Colonial warlords of the frontier seem to be ranked streets ahead of our great Xhosa generals
Each time I go home to the Eastern Cape I am overwhelmed by the way we continue to honour the British governors and military commanders who committed unspeakable atrocities against the Xhosa and the Khoisan during the frontier wars of the 19th century. It is perhaps more politically evocative to speak of the “wars of dispossession” or the “wars of resistance”. The historian Chris Saunders signalled the continuous nature of the wars by referring to them collectively as the Hundred Years War of 1779-1879.
I retain the term “frontier” because it provides a more granular description of the ways in which the Dutch and the British continually pushed the Xhosa and the Khoisan across the colonial boundary at the Great Fish River. To the west of the river would be the white Cape colony, and to the east would be what they called Kaffirland. Thus were laid the foundations of racial segregation and apartheid.
The brutality of colonial violence can be traced to the character of the Cape governors. Most of these men were veterans of the Peninsular War, where Arthur Wellesley — later the Duke of Wellington — perfected the “scorched earth” approach to war. The doctrine was based on depriving the enemy of all access to food. Women and children were considered legitimate targets. The Peninsular veterans brought that brutality to their campaigns against the Xhosa.
The first act of mass removal was carried out by Peninsular War veteran John Cradock and his military commander, John Graham, in the Fourth War of 1811. After killing Gqunukhwebe chief Chungwa and expelling more than 20,000 Xhosa from the colony, Cradock wrote that “there had not been shed more blood than would seem to be necessary to impress on the minds of these savages a proper degree of terror and respect”.
Graham promised “to attack the savages in a way which I confidently hope will leave a lasting impression on their memories”. Posterity would honour these two warlords with towns in their names.
In the Fifth War of 1818 the British repelled an attack by Makana Nxele just outside Makana (Grahamstown). More than a thousand Xhosa were killed and Nxele was imprisoned on Robben Island. The new governor, Charles Somerset, used Nxele’s attack as a pretext for pushing the Xhosa even further from the colonial boundary. He declared the area between the Fish and Keiskamma rivers the ceded territory, as if the Xhosa had voluntarily given it up. Somerset had two towns named after him, Somerset East and Somerset West.
In the Sixth War of 1834/35 Benjamin D’Urban, another Peninsular War veteran, set out to remove all the Xhosa to the Transkei. His military commander, Harry Smith, chased down King Hintsa and instructed one of his men, George Southey, to kill the Xhosa king in cold blood. Posterity would also look kindly on D’Urban and Smith by establishing towns and streets in their names.
The Seventh War of 1846/47 has been trivialised by being called the War of the Axe, as if a Xhosa man stealing an axe was its real cause. Col Hare, the man who precipitated the whole thing by planting a military station smack in the middle of Xhosa country, has a university named after him in Alice, a town named after one of Queen Victoria’s daughters.
Hare’s boss, also a veteran of the Peninsular War, Peregrine Maitland, has a street named after him in my home town of King William’s Town.
Running parallel to Maitland Street is Wodehouse Street. Philip Wodehouse was the governor who devised the ingenious but disingenuous scheme of removing the people of western Thembuland from Glen Grey to the Transkei, and gave their lands to white farmers.
The one case that really roils is that of Cathcart. George Cathcart terrorised Maphasa’s Tshatshu people, ended their chieftaincy and confiscated their lands.
His successor George Grey imprisoned the greatest generals of the resistance — Siyolo for 17 years and Maqoma and his wife, Katyi, for 12 years — on Robben Island.
On his release the indefatigable Maqoma resumed the struggle. He was re-arrested and sent back to Robben Island where he died in 1873. Jeff Peires’s description of Maqoma’s tragic end got me all choked up: “This most brilliant of Xhosa warriors cried bitterly before he passed away ‘of old age and dejection, at being here alone — no wife, no child, or attendant’.”
And no country, I might add.
The last time I checked there was neither town nor statue nor street nor small alley named for Maqoma.
For two decades I have been calling in vain for a museum to properly memorialise this history. Alas, our philistine culture would rather glorify Cathcart than Maqoma, 25 years into democracy.
I have been calling in vain for a museum to properly memorialise this history. Alas, our philistine culture would rather glorify Cathcart than Maqoma