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‘An unprecedented but significant
atrocity’: A Window into the War of the
Axe, 1846–1847
a
Susan I. Blackbeard
a
University of Cape Town
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South African Historical Journal, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2015.1058851
‘An unprecedented but significant atrocity’: A Window into the War of the
Axe, 1846–1847
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD*
University of Cape Town
Downloaded by [Susan I. Blackbeard] at 07:52 26 July 2015
Abstract
In March 1846, on the Cape Colony’s eastern frontier, during a daring rescue of a
Xhosa prisoner, the Khoikhoi man shackled to him was killed when the prisoner’s
rescuers hacked off his hand. On the Xhosa chiefs’ refusal to surrender the ‘mur‐
derers’, war was declared. This article examines the etiology of the incident and the
ensuing war, taking into account the frontier’s micropolitics, with its web of relations
between Xhosa chiefs, diplomatic agents, governors and the military, suggesting that,
inter alia, dispossession and the fear of genocide drove the incident and the war.
Key words: Xhosa chiefs; prisoner; rescue; diplomatic agents; dispossession; genocide
Figure 1.
*Email: [email protected]
ISSN: Print 0258-2473/Online 1726-1686
© 2015 Southern African Historical Society
http://www.tandfonline.com
Fort Beaufort.
2
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
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The rescue of Tsili
In the act of stealing an axe from a trader1 in Fort Beaufort,2 Tsili (also known as
‘Kleintjie’), a young Xhosa man of the Mdange clan, was arrested. His chief, Tola,
demanded that Civil Commissioner M. Borcherds release him. Borcherds refused, ordering
that Tsili be sent to Grahamstown for trial.3 According to Agent General Major T.C.
Smith, Tsili was guarded en route by a civil escort comprising four armed ‘Hottentots’
[Khoikhoi], who were also guarding another prisoner.
On the eastern frontier, owing to a paucity of magistrates’ courts, prisoners were
conveyed4 or made to walk long distances to trial in Grahamstown, where the bi-annual
Circuit Courts were held. Routes were frequently through hostile or broken country, and
prisoners were accompanied only by a small police unit or armed civil guard. To prevent
escape, prisoners were roped, chained, or handcuffed in pairs. If there were insufficient
prisoners to make pairs, civilians could be co-opted for the purpose.5
Tsili’s escort left Fort Beaufort at 6am. Around 11am, about seven miles from Fort Beaufort,6
40 amaXhosa intercepted the party near Mildenhall’s farm in the Daantjies Hoogte area,7 in a
spot ‘peculiarly adapted for a Kaffir ambush’8 – a bushy defile on the military/‘Queen’s Road’
between Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort. In order to release Tsili from the ‘gyves’ (handcuffs),9
his rescuers severed the wrist of the Khoikhoi manacled to him, in what Sir Peregrine Maitland
described as ‘an outrage of unprecedented but significant atrocity’.10 The Khoikhoi victim’s
body was subsequently tossed into the river. Captain Charles Lennox Stretch,11 diplomatic agent
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
The trader’s name is given variously as Holliday or Halliday. For the store’s location, see Figure 1, Fort
Beaufort. Lieut-Col E.E. Napier maintains that Tsili was caught attempting to steal an axe and made to
return it. Soon afterwards he stole a hatchet from the commissariat store and was apprehended for this and
sent to Grahamstown: E.E. Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, Including a History of the Cape Colony
(London: W. Shoberl, 1850), vol. 2, 85.
The principal defensive post on the eastern frontier.
On the Borcherds family, see Guy Butler, ed., When Boys Were Men (Cape Town: Oxford University Press,
1969), 2–10.
Sometimes prisoners were conveyed in carts or wagons, as in the case of Cape Corps defectors: see U. Long,
ed., The Chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain: Albany Settler of 1820, 1838–1858 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck
Society, 1949), 2, 27–32; and C. Coetzee, Forts of the Eastern Cape: Securing a Frontier, 1799–1878 (Fort
Hare University Press, 1995), 478.
As in the case of a British settler in Albany, who was manacled to ‘Cameron’, a notorious housebreaker and
defector from the 27th Regiment. Whilst passing a wood between Bathurst and Grahamstown, Cameron
demanded to be unshackled in order to relieve himself. Suspecting a ruse, his guards refused, foiling his
escape plan: Long, The Chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain, 2, 30–31.
Given the time that it took them to reach this spot and, as there is no mention of horses, carts or ox wagon,
they probably walked.
Sometimes spelt ‘Dance’: British Parliamentary Papers, Irish University Press (henceforth, BPP) 21,
Maitland to Gladstone, no. 3c, C. Lennox Stretch, JP, Diplomatic Agent, Tyhumie [sic] 18 March 1846, 90
(504). See also Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 2a, T.C. Smith to Hougham Hudson, Fort
Beaufort, 20 March 1846, 85 (499).
Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 2, 85.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 2a, Smith to Hudson, 20 March 1846, 85 (499).
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 8, To the Inhabitants of the Colony, 103–104 (517–18).
Irish-born Charles Lennox Stretch arrived at the Cape in 1819 as an ensign in the 38th Regiment. He
participated in the defence of Grahamstown, and was appointed Assistant Royal Engineer under Major W.
C. Holloway. He married Ann Hart in 1820, and went on half-pay. Although he was granted a farm on the
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‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
Figure 2.
3
Probable site of rescue of Tsili
Baviaans River (ironically named ‘Botmansgat’ [Bhotomane’s pool/cave]), he never took to farming. From
1823 to 1827 he conducted military surveys of the Colony, and from 1828 to 1834 farm surveys in the
Graaff-Reinet district, where he built two passes. Baptised in the Anglican Church, Stretch was influenced
by the Dutch Reformed Graaff-Reinet clergy, Reverends Alexander Smith and Andrew Murray: witness
the prayers in his Journal of 1834–1835 (see B.A. Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch,
Grahamstown Series [Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1988], 70, 78, 35). After serving as a captain
in the 1834 frontier war, he was appointed as diplomatic agent to the Ngqika. He was dismissed in 1846,
without an enquiry. He served as a government surveyor (1846–1847 and 1854–1873) and representative on
the Colony’s Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council.
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4
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
with the Ngqika Xhosa, noted that the victim was a provisional constable.12 One of Tsili’s
rescuers – his brother – was shot dead before the Xhosa party absconded with Tsili. A Xhosa
policeman tracked their ‘spoor’ (footprints) to four kraals, two miles distant, occupied by Tola’s
people.13 Tola, a chief of the imiDange, and notorious for horse and cattle thefts, was colonially
perceived to answer to Bhotomane, who was older and more capable than Tola. The Dange clan,
fragmented during the first frontier war (1779–81), had been absorbed into the Ngqika/Rharhabe
Xhosa,14 of whom Sandile was the new young chief.
Bhotomane, originally a colonial ally, had every reason to dislike the colonial government.
In 1826, in a cattle-recovering commando, Captain Henry Somerset had fired, allegedly
mistakenly, at dawn on Bhotomane’s kraal, massacring several innocent men, women and
children. An apology was tended and the cattle returned. Yet, despite the outcry of frontier
humanitarians Thomas Pringle, Hugh Huntley, and Andries Stockenstrom, the English
dismissed the massacre as ‘Somerset’s blundering commando’.15 Furthermore, in the 1835
post-war settlement, whereas Maqoma and Tyhale received land – Maqoma got more than
he had previously – Bhotomane and Nqeno (of the amaMbalu) received nothing.16 The
grievance of one chief was felt by all. Bhotomane and Tola shared the same Xhosa ancestor,
Ngconde, as Ngqika’s sons; inter alia, Maqoma, Tyhale, Anta, and Sandile.17 Mutual
outrage was expressed if one were dispossessed; thus, the distant cousin, Bhotomane, averring
that ‘Maqoma’s heart was very sore about the land [upper Kat River], the subject always
set him on fire; he fought in hopes of getting it back’.18 The same applied to the dispossession
of Tyhale and his other brothers, who had been allowed to occupy the Tyhume valley. To
their detriment, the British often underestimated reports of Xhosa solidarity, as when
Lieutenant Governor Colonel E. Hare dismissed, on 23 February 1846, as a false alarm the
news that Sandile was building a Xhosa alliance.19 When war broke out soon afterwards,
every Xhosa chieftain west of the Kei joined Sandile against the British.20
Comparative accounts of Tsili’s rescue
T.C. Smith’s account of the axe–rescue differs from the records of the 91st Argyllshire
Highlanders21 and E. Elers Napier’s reminiscences, Excursions in Southern Africa (1850).
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
Sometimes referred to as a ‘civil constable’.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 2a, Smith to Hougham Hudson, 20 March 1846, 85 (499).
Jeff Peires, personal communication (email to the author), 20 April 2015.
For an analysis of this massacre, see Susan I. Blackbeard, ‘Acts of Severity: Colonial Settler Massacre of
amaXhosa and abaThembu on the Eastern Frontier of the Cape Colony, C.1826–1847’, Journal of
Genocide Research, 2015, vol. 17 no. 2 (June 2015), 107–132.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, Grahamstown Series (Cape Town: Maskew Miller and
Longman, 1988), 139.
Jeff Peires, personal communication (email to the author), 20 April 2015.
Quoted by Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 17.
Hare’s discounting of the rumour may have been wishful thinking, as he was due to leave South Africa at
the end of March: N. Mostert, Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa
People (London: Pimlico, 1992), 867.
J. Peires, The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of their Independence
(Johannesburg and & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 1988), 135–6.
Historical records of the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders, now the 1st Battalion Princess Louise’s Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders, containing an account of the Regiment in 1794, and of its subsequent services to 1881,
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‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
Figure 3.
5
Khoikhoi victim’s grave. Photo by the author.
Napier, who commanded the ‘native levies’ of the first division of the 91st Regiment, was
told the story by his Khoikhoi guide, ‘Mr Jacob’, as they rode over Dan’s Heights, shortly
after the event. Napier’s version is repeated verbatim in the 91st Records, with one or two
omissions, suggesting that the latter drew from Napier. In both it is mentioned that, not only
was the Khoikhoi ‘linked’ to Tsili, but a ‘Fingoe’ [Mfengu] prisoner was chained to an
English soldier – whereas in Smith’s report both the guard and all the prisoners, barring Tsili,
were ‘Hottentot’[Khoikhoi]. In all accounts the attack occurred in the Dan’s Heights area,
near the Kat River.22 Napier and the 91st Records add that, after the Khoikhoi’s handcuffed
wrist was severed from his body, ‘he was deliberately pierced to death with assegais’. They
22.
Ch. 9, ’Another Account of the Incident Leading to the ‘War of the Axe’, 124, http://archive.org/stream/
historicalrecord00goffuoft/historicalrecord00goffuoft_djvu.txt 1, accessed 24 May 2014.
See Figure 2, Probable site of rescue of Tsili.
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6
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
also mention a white prisoner chained to an Mfengu, hiding on the river bank and almost
drowning, owing to their fettered condition.23 It is not mentioned that the Khoikhoi was
buried near the river bank, where his grave, now graced with an early/mid-twentieth-century
tombstone,24 can still be seen. Locally, the victim is known as ‘Kaptein [Captain] Platjies’.25
Two hours after the prisoner escort had left Fort Beaufort for Grahamstown, Tsili’s
chief, Tola, arrived at Major T.C. Smith’s office in Fort Beaufort. He claimed that he had
a note from the officer commanding Fort Victoria [Colonel Henry Somerset]. Tola,
in Smith’s words, was ‘very importunate, the prisoner being one of his people, should
be released’, and being told he was already on his way to Graham’s Town, requested that
‘he might be brought back’. When Smith told him that he had ‘neither the power nor the
inclination to release’ Tsili, Tola left, soon after 9am. The rescue occurred around 11am.
Smith maintained that Tola was ‘no doubt cognizant of the parties who committed it’, and
the policeman present at the attack confirmed that the rescuers were Tola’s people.26
Somerset’s account (written the same day, 16 March 1846, at 2pm) mentions Tola’s earlier
visit to him. Tola averred that on his way home he heard from some amaXhosa at Undula
[Umdala]27 that an attempted rescue had occurred near Mildenhall’s farm and that ‘blood
has been shed [but] the matter was not premeditated’ or ‘done with a feeling for war’.28 Thus,
although confirming knowledge of the rescue, Tola denied complicity, premeditation, and
bellicose intentions.
When Stretch demanded that Tola and Bhotomane surrender the Khoikhoi’s ‘murderers’,
they refused. Bhotomane’s reply to the governor (via Stretch) was succinct:
The Kafir and Hottentot who have been killed in the rescue of Kleintjie […] have been paid for by
each other’s blood. My people went into the Colony to ask why Kleintjie was taken to prison
without the knowledge of the chiefs […] I cannot give the murderers or Kleintjie up; they are not to
be found […] The Governor weeps over the Hottentot, and we weep over Kleintjie.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
Historical records of the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders, 124.
Probably erected by Toc H, an international Christian movement dedicated to service, with the emphasis on
reconciliation and (in South Africa) preserving local history. Toc H erected a very similar tombstone to
Lieutenant Charles Bailie and men of the Hottentot Battalion who were killed by the amaXhosa at
Mngqesha, during the sixth frontier war. Baillie’s tombstone was erected near the intersection of the Pirie
and Keiskamahoek Roads, Mngqesha in 1931. It is, therefore, possible that the Khoikhoi’s tombstone was
also erected around that time: see A.W. Burton, The Highlands of Kaffraria: A View of Outstanding Events
in Kafirland and British Kaffraria Leading Up to Rise of King William’s Town, Keiskamahoek and East
London, with Special Reference to the History and Situation of Fort Stokes (Cape Town: Struik, 1969), 16.
Thus three of my local informants. ‘Pla(a)tjies’ was a common Khoikhoi name (or colonial corruption of
it), and one of Ngqika’s counsellors shared the name. The Khoikhoi could well have been a provisional
constable; hence, his colloquial title, ‘Kaptein’. He may also have been a Kat River settler, as ‘Platjies/
Plaatjies’ occurs frequently in Surveyor Hertzog’s 1831 lists of Kat River applicants and grantees. See CA
(Cape Archives) A (Accessions) 707(18) Kat River Settlement, Applicants for Land in the Kat River
Settlement classified in Parties with their Heads […] 1831–1839, and CA Accessions 707(19). Piet Platjies is
mentioned as living at Balfour, ‘without permission’. It is unlikely that a squatter would have been made a
provisional constable. The author’s efforts to trace the victim to Platjies descendants in Fort Beaufort
proved fruitless.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 2a; Smith to Hudson, Fort Beaufort, 16 March 1846,
84 (498).
See Figure 2, Probable site of rescue of Tsili.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 3a, Somerset to Smith, Post Victoria, 16 March 1846,
84 (498).
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‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
7
Whereas the quid pro quo argument is common to all the chiefs’ replies, Bhotomane implies
that the chiefs were primarily offended by not being told of Tsili/Kleintjie’s being sent to
Grahamstown.
In Tola’s reply to the governor (18 March), he denies complicity in the rescue.
He explains that, on hearing of Tsili’s arrest on 16 March, he took a letter from Somerset to
Smith, who denied knowledge of the matter. Smith then gave him a note for Borcherds.
Unable to find him, Tola returned to Smith, who told him he ‘had neither the power nor the
inclination’ to assist him further. Tola set off for home. On the way ‘he heard a shot but
took no notice of it; and when he arrived at his kraal, the affair [the rescue] was reported
to him.’.
Whereas Smith’s response to Tola was not only obstructive but provocative, the Ngqika
diplomatic agent, Charles Lennox Stretch’s, was more objective. Furthermore, in his
Tyhume diary, Stretch transcribes Tola’s comment, that Tsili had been ‘hurried off [to
Grahamstown] without enquiry’, without taking issue with it.29 Like Bhotomane, did he also
believe that the chiefs ought to have been informed of Tsili’s being sent to Grahamstown?
Why did he not tell them – or was there not time to do so?
Arguably, ‘the only man on the eastern frontier in close and trusted relationships with
the Ngqika chiefs’,30 Stretch’s journal of 1834–1835 reveals a deep-seated respect for the
amaXhosa and their sovereignty.31 Appointed as agent to the Ngqika toward the close of
the 1835 war, and as one of the post-war settlement commissioners, Stretch fought for
the fairest deals for them.32 Contrary to the norm, Stretch deplored British ‘outrages’ against
and ‘oppression’ of the amaXhosa – mostly unfair seizure of their cattle.33 That Maqoma
trusted Stretch is shown by his alleged gratitude to the latter for sending him more than one
‘private message’ on how to deal with D’Urban’s chief of staff, the troublesome Harry
Smith.34 Throughout his term of office as diplomatic agent, Stretch continually opposed
dispossession of the amaXhosa—the Ndlambe from the Zuurveld and, most especially, the
dispossession of Ngqika’s sons from the Tyhume and Mancazana Valleys and the upper Kat
River – regarding these dispossessions, cattle rounding-up commandos such as Colonel
Brereton’s,35 and abuse of the patrol/reprisal system as major causes of Xhosa hostility.36
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no 3c, Stretch, Transcript of a Diary kept at Tyume [sic]
Residence, 18 March 1846, 90 (504).
Mostert, Frontiers, 856.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 137.
Ibid., 140–141.
Such as when Major Cox took 140 head of Xhosa cattle in return for his own which had strayed, owing to
careless herdsmen. Although he returned the cattle, he offered no apology. See Le Cordeur, The Journal of
Charles Lennox Stretch, 3 September 1835, 133; 15 September 1835, 136–138.
After entertaining Maqoma, Tyhale, and Sandile’s mother, Sutu, to dinner in his tent, Stretch sent Maqoma
a secret message urging him ‘to allow [Harry Smith] to talk [and] to remain quiet until he had conveyed the
Governor’s terms’, to agree to obey his commands, and ask for British protection. Le Cordeur, The Journal
of Charles Lennox Stretch, 4 September, 1835, 131–134; and 24 September, 140–141. Maqoma complied,
although his answers were characteristically ironic.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 12–13.
In 1819, Lord Charles Somerset established the reprisal system as a means of recovering allegedly stolen
colonial stock. Sir Richard Bourke (1826–1828) rescinded it. Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole (1828–1833) tried to
reinstate it but Lord Stanley opposed it: J. Galbraith, Reluctant Empire: British Policy on the South African
Frontier (Berkeley and & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), 101. Buxton’s Select
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8
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
It was an insult for a black man – let alone a chief – to be expelled from his territory or have
his cattle interfered with by another man,37 and such acts were seldom forgiven. Hence,
the outrage when Somerset’s patrol under Lieutenant William Sutton not only evicted
Tyhale from the Mancazana Valley but seized his cattle. To add injury to insult, the minor
chief, Xhoxho, Tyhale’s half-brother, was wounded – the third Xhosa chief to be shot in a
decade, and the only one to survive.38 Stretch deplored Maqoma’s and Tyhale’s serial
dispossessions (and contradictory government policies allowing for their return and
subsequent re-expulsion),39 mentioning Cox’s praise of Tyhale, who ‘cheerfully’ removed
from the Mancazana and Gaga Valleys when ordered to do so, although the government
orders were ‘cruel and unjust’.40 Stretch continued to defend Maqoma to the end, despite
colonial ridicule of the latter as a drunk. Stretch was also one of few government agents who
mourned the demise of the Xhosa-friendly Stockenstrom treaties, which he had ably
administered. On hearing of Stockenstrom’s departure in 1838, the Ngqika allegedly became
alarmed, and requested that Stretch be retained as their agent. Hare cautioned that this
demonstration of loyalty to Stretch may have been engineered, claiming that Stretch was
a ‘humbug’.41 Hare’s dislike of Stretch is not surprising: Stretch was an open critic of
D’Urban’s undermining of Xhosa chiefs’ authority over their people,42 and Stretch did not
always agree with Hare and T.C. Smith’s modus operandi.
Sandile, who also refused to surrender the ‘murderer(s)’ of the Khoikhoi, went a step
further, by criticising Borcherds. Lawyerlike, he pleads misunderstanding of the law and
requests the governor to parley, and to delay sending forces:
I did not understand that the treaties required that Kafirs who stole any small thing, such as an axe
or beads, were to be sent to Graham’s Town. I understand that the treaties required only that thieves
who stole horses or cattle were to be sent to Graham’s Town; and that a short imprisonment at
Beaufort would suffice for petty thefts. Tell Stretch that the magistrate at Beaufort has not done right
in this case. The Kafir was caught, the axe taken from him, and dismissed; and on the following day
he was apprehended. The Governor must not be in haste, with forces, in this case. Let us first speak
about it, that we may understand it.43
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
Committee on Aborigines banned the reprisal system in 1836. For Stretch’s condemnation of Ensign
Sparks’ confiscation of 40 Xhosa cattle from Nqeno’s kraal, see Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox
Stretch, 18; and on Xhosa dispossession, see 9–13.
See J. Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 157.
See Mostert, Frontiers, 653. Amongst the Xhosa chiefs shot dead were Cungwa, Sigcau (‘Zeko’) and
Hintsa. The Mbalu chief, Nqeno’s, daughter drew colonial fire when his kraal was attacked and she was
shot (and injured) in lieu of her father.
For example, Lord Charles Somerset allowed Maqoma and Tyhale to reside in the Kat River if they ‘kept
the peace’. They were evicted in 1828/9, and Khoikhoi were settled there. (Maqoma was allowed to graze
his cattle in the ‘neutral belt’ west of the Keiskama River, and Tyhale along the Mancazana River.) In 1833
Tyhale was expelled from the Mancazana and Maqoma, who had been allowed to re-build his kraal near
Fort Willshire, was expelled to the Keiskama-Tyhume-Gaga border. Two months later, Tyhale was evicted
east of the Mgwali. In February 1834 Henry Somerset persuaded D’Urban to allow Maqoma and Tyhale to
remain west of the Tyhume. Ignorant of this, Civil Commissioner Duncan Campbell expelled them east of
the border. See Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 14–15.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 10 September, 1835, 133–134.
Quoted by Peires, The House of Phalo, 144.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 141–142.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 9a, ‘Sandilli’s [sic] Reply’, 20 March, 1846, 86–87 (500).
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‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
9
As Xhosa chiefs never embraced anything new or went to war without discussing it
with their amaphakhathi (counsellors) and other chiefs, this request for ‘speaking about it’
to the governor was reasonable. In the context though, this appeal, and the caution not to
‘be in haste’, could be seen as delaying tactics.
Both Tola and Sandile write confidently. Sandile maintained that the theft of an axe
was ‘a small thing’. It was not the accusation of the theft that angered him – something
that could be perceived as tantamount to slander44 – but the paltriness of the object. Yet, an
axe was not considered a ‘small thing’, and Sandile’s assertion that it was borders on
sophistry. When Maqoma fined Hermanus Matroos/Ngxukumeshe – who was residing
in Kat River but subordinate to Maqoma – the fine included seven head of cattle, four
goats and an axe.45
Equally, assured of himself, Tola insists that he was ‘not in the wrong’, and blames
Borcherds for sending Tsili to Grahamstown ‘without Major Smith’s authority’ – which all
white authorities denied. Tola then accuses the constables of ignoring the Xhosa attackers’
requests not to shoot Tsili’s rescuer-brother and, like Bhotomane, argues that the killing
of the Khoikhoi was quid pro quo. He concludes with the warning, ‘The best thing the
Government can do is to leave the affair as it stands.’46
Tola’s tone is in keeping with the Xhosa asssuransie (assurance) that so irked early
eastern-frontier boers.47 This, together with Xhosa determination to defend at any cost
their authority over their subjects, their refusing to give up the murderer(s) – as Phatho
refused to surrender the murderer(s) of the German missionary, the Reverend Ernest
Scholtz48 – and their advocacy of rough justice over British common law, stood little chance
of being countenanced by the British. It is, however, noteworthy that Tola tried to negotiate
with T.C. Smith and Somerset before the rescue-attack was launched. War may have been
averted had they been allowed to do so.
It is likely, though, that Tola not only knew of the rescue but Smith’s unsympathetic
response goaded him to give the signal to his men to effect it. A whistle or peremptory
command to his retainers – who could have been concealed outside Smith’s office – would
have marshalled others, and in no time sufficient men could have been assembled for an
ambuscade. Conversely, Tola could have told his men to follow the armed escort, attack
it from the rear, and free Tsili – and he could have set off for home later. Either way,
Tola tried the correct channels first. His request for parleying had been brushed aside.
Stretch, it appeared, was no longer on their side. Although, at the end of January 1846,
Hare averred that he did not want a war,49 a few weeks later it appears that both he and
Maitland wanted an excuse not only to start a war, but to protract it.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
Iliffe, Honour, 156.
R. Ross, The Borders of Race in Colonial South Africa: The Kat River Settlement, 1829–1856 (Cambridge &
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 149.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 12a, ‘Tola’s reply to Captain Stretch’s Message’,
87 (501).
Marais, Maynier and the First Boer Republic, (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1962), 23–25.
For the context of Xhosa unrest and ‘depredations’, see BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 15 March 1846, A,
no. 6, Hare to Maitland, 15 March 1846. 98 (512); and B, no. 6, Petition of Frontier Inhabitants, 99–100
(513–514).
BPP 21, 183601847, Hare to Maitland, 31 January 1846, 39 (453).
10
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
Protraction of the war
In his resume of the Tsili rescue in Excursions, Napier tantalisingly hints at British plans
to protract the War of the Axe:
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Such was the event which at last caused the final out-break of the long-smouldering Kaffir War
of 1846–47. On Sandilla’s [Sandile’s] refusal to deliver up the perpetrators of this daring and
unprovoked outrage, hostile operations were immediately undertaken on our part, and it was
decreed that this ‘war of the axe’ should be protracted during the space of nearly two years – we will
not inquire how or wherefore – and at enormous expense to the British public, until the appearance
of Sir Harry Smith put an end to the squabble.50
Tellingly, in the 91st Records the aside, ‘we will not inquire how or wherefore’ is excised,51
suggesting that Napier was (gloatingly) privy to the reasons. The question is: why did
the British want to protract the war for two years when the military coffers were under
severe strain?
In 1854 Andries Stockenstrom first drew attention to merchant and settler profiteering
in frontier wars.52 In an unpublished conference paper, Jeff Peires53 argues, however, that
the greed of imperial officials far outstripped that of eastern-frontier war profiteers and land
speculators, and this escalated public debt and prolonged frontier wars. The arch-fiend,
according to Peires, was Colonial Secretary Sir John Montagu, who drained the
Commissariat Chest (intended for military expenditure) for advances or ‘imprests’ to
Cape civil servants; and, through the Appropriation Ordinance of 1848, founded the
Central Roads Board which he used as his ‘private piggy bank’. In turn, Harry Smith
depended on Montagu for what Peires calls his ‘extravagant projects’: roads, prisons, and
the creation of Victoria, Queen Adelaide Province, and the Orange River Sovereignty.54
Earl Grey’s determination to maintain British occupation of the Cape ensured ongoing
funds for the war, although Britain had to ‘export actual specie, gold and silver, to the
Cape, £350,000 in 1851 and £250,000 in 1852’.55 E.E. Napier could well have been a
beneficiary of Harry Smith’s wheeling-and-dealing: in a sycophantic gesture, he dedicated
his Excursions in Southern Africa to Smith, with an engraving of the swashbuckling
dedicatee as a frontispiece.56
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 2, 86–87.
Historical records of the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders, 124.
A. Stockenstrom, Light and Shade, As Shown in the Character of the Hottentots of the Kat River Settlement
and in the Conduct of the Colonial Government Towards Them: Being the Substance of a Speech by the
Hon’ble Sir Andries Stockenstrom, in the Legislative Council of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town: Saul
Solomon, 1854), 1.
J. Peires, ‘“The Expenditure of a Million of British Sovereigns in this Otherwise Miserable Place”; Frontier
Wars, Public Debt and the Cape’s Non-Racial Constitution’, conference paper presented at the university
of Johannesburg, January 2012.
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 3–10.
E.E. Napier compares Harry Smith’s pleasing ‘audacity’ to Sir Charles Napier of Scinde’s, contrasting both
with Maitland, who lacks ‘that stern, inflexible stuff to enable him to deal successfully […] with these
atrocious thieves and murderers – who, as they behave like wild beasts, deserve to be treated as such’:
Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 2, 72. Napier also endorsed Colonel Graham’s actions (49), and
Colonel Willshire’s invasion of Xhosa territory and his ‘reduction’ of the amaXhosa ‘to extremity’ (61).
‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
11
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Block Drift and genocidal intent?
Prior to the axe-theft there had been a major conflagration between the amaXhosa and the
British over the latter’s attempt to establish a post at Block Drift – the spark to tinder that
had been accumulating since the 1830s. The amaXhosa were unsettled by the departure
of Andries Stockenstrom – overseer of the 1836 Stockenstrom/Glenelg treaties, which
recognised Xhosa autonomy. Governor Sir George Napier fuelled their fears by requesting
troop reinforcements, ostensibly to stem cattle theft, and by entering Xhosaland with a
hundred-man bodyguard. Frontiersmen had been flouting Stockenstrom’s treaties, and
chiefs had been unable to keep up with settler demands of stock that could not legitimately
be claimed under the system. The chiefs admitted that their people stole oxen and cows,
but argued that the government stole ‘with the pen’.57
Ngqika unrest and ‘depredations’ (mainly theft of settler stock)58 increased during
Napier’s administration. Hare made an example of Tola and his cattle-reiving band by
expelling them from their territory59 and offering it to Nqeno, the Mbalu chief, and his
son, Stokwe. Nqeno refused it, and Hare offered it to Bhotomane, ironically, a
confederate of Tola. The British were thus beaten at their own game. Hare’s response
to the unrest was not to look for legitimate reasons for it but to increase the number of
troops at Fort Willshire and to create a new post, Fort Victoria.60 Napier was of the
opinion that ‘treaties […] with savages or barbarians could never work’,61 and his
administration of Stockenstrom’s treaties had been ‘desultory’. His successor, Sir
Peregrine Maitland, re-allowed the hated patrols and the stationing of British troops in
Xhosa territory.62 Stretch warned Maitland and Hare that the amaXhosa regarded
the construction of posts in Xhosa territory as the first step of dispossession and the
undermining of chiefly authority.63 Post Victoria, established in Tola’s territory, set
the ball rolling. By continuing to ignore Stretch’s advice, the intransigent British invited
the debacle at Block Drift.
Although Maitland averred that Sandile had given his verbal consent to a post at Block Drift –
on the east bank of the Keiskama River (in Xhosa territory) – no terms had been drawn up and
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
Quoted by E.A. Walker, A History of South Africa (London: Longmans, Green and & Co., 1928, reprinted
1947), 220-2–221.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, no. 165, 17 November 1845, no. 32c, Proceedings of Public Meeting at the
farm of Mr I.H. Delport, 3 March, 1836, and no. 33, 19 March, 1846; 65–77 (487–490).
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, no. 1a, Hare to Maitland, 21 March 1846, 83 (497), and Maitland to
Gladstone, no. 2c, J. Maclean to Hudson, Fort Peddie, 20 March 1846, 90.
The troops were soon withdrawn from Fort Willshire. Owing to difficult access to water, Post Victoria
never became a military stronghold: Galbraith, Reluctant Empire, 162–3.
Peires, ‘The Expenditure of a Million’, 15. Compare E. Elers Napier (Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 1,
280.): ‘We had always found them [the amaXhosa] to be a most perfidious and faithless set of savages, ever
disregarding all compacts, never hesitating to plunder the Colony when a favourable opportunity offered of
so doing. Napier, Excursions, 1: 280.
Peires, The House of Phalo, 135–136.
See Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 10–11, 13, 18, 27, 86, and evidence from Sandile,
Anta and Bhotomane in Stretch’s report on Blockdrift, 29 January 1846, BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, no.
12c, 44 (458).
12
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
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agreed on by both parties.64 When five Royal Engineers, including an officer, arrived
unannounced at Block Drift in mid-January 1846 to conduct a survey for the post – an action
that even E.E. Napier deprecated,65 or pretended to deprecate – all hell broke loose.
Prior to this, Stretch had sent his messenger, Jack, to Sandile, requesting that the latter restore
some allegedly stolen oxen from the Khoikhoi servant, Klaas Damon, at the Revd Döhne’s
mission station, and compensate for allegedly assaulting and robbing the trader, McLachlin.
At these allegations, Sandile exploded into fiery anti-colonial invective, challenging the governor
to come himself and get his ‘payment’. Sandile’s soldiers were ‘ready for him’, and ‘if the
governor talks about traders and their things, he must come and plunder […] and […] seize cattle
at Block Drift’ (two arch complaints against the amaXhosa). Sandile continues:
The traders and their things are under my foot, and I will do with them as I like. We thought the
white men could not be killed, but we see they are only like us, they can also be killed. Stretch is a
rascal, and the governor is a rascal. We thought Stretch was our friend, but he has blinded the Kafirs;
we see him […] And that man ‘Klaas Damon’, I will put a riem around his neck and kill him […]
I am tired of the Government and their reports; and if you, Jack come here again, I will order you to
be killed. My people are used, and they give power to the enemy […]
This word Stretch must send to the Governor before he sleeps to night [sic]. But that tent which there
is [sic] at Blockdrift, must be off tomorrow. Sheshago [Post Victoria], also must leave.66
Chiefs regarded accusations of theft as an indictment of their honour,67 and it infuriated
them when whites who stole their horses/cattle escaped with impunity. As Stretch noted
earlier, a boer’s theft of Maqoma’s horse went unpunished.68 Nothing daunted, Tyhale
fined a ‘European’ thief for horse-stealing.69 And to be accused by a ‘Hottentot’ (Damon)
of cattle theft was anathema. Traders also stole from the amaXhosa, in more subtle ways,
and by having them falsely fined.70 Now, gleeful after slapping the trader, Sandile declares
all traders and missionaries to be ‘under his foot’.
Missionaries were not only disliked for ‘robbing’ the amaXhosa of their customs, but for
sheltering the Khoikhoi and, probably unwittingly, thieves. Thus, when Damon accused
Maqoma twice of stealing his cattle, Sandile was incensed.71 To show his contempt of Damon
and the missionary, Sandile threatens to kill Damon in the tribal way, by initially putting a
riem [leather thong] around his neck. Sandile’s threat can also be read as a protest against
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
Maitland averred that there was an oral agreement that had not been ‘completed’, in which Sandile had
agreed to a post on his territory: BPP 21, Maitland to Gladstone, 21 March 1846, 24–5 (438–9). Compare
Mostert, Frontiers, 862–865.
Describing this as ‘most injudicious conduct on our part’, Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 2, 85.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 15 March 1846, 22 (436). See also Mostert, Frontiers, 864.
See Iliffe, Honour, 154, who cites the case of a chief being accused of stealing a colonial horse to illustrate
his point. Sandile’s threat to kill Damon may also be an attempt to elicit what Iliffe calls ‘vertical honour’
(respect from his inferiors, in this case, the British). Ibid.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 23 September 1835, 140.
Walker, A History of South Africa, 220.
Stretch is scathing about the traders – the ‘lowest orders’ of the 1820 British settlers, ‘sweepings of the
London streets’ – who not only sold guns illegally to the amaXhosa but took advantage of ‘native
ignorance’: Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 9–19.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, 12 c, Stretch, Minute on the Conference between Hare and
Sandile, Blockdrift, 29 January 1846, 44 (458).
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‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
13
British common law, the scourge of which Tsili was about to feel – clauses which Tola told
Stretch he found incomprehensible: ‘I did not understand that the treaties required that Kafirs
who stole any small thing, such as an axe or beads, were to be sent to Graham’s Town.’72 Prior
to this, Ngqika chiefs had been allowed to punish their own subjects, although Christian
converts were exempt from Xhosa law73 – this increasing Xhosa hostility to missionaries.
More insidiously, whites were ‘using’ Xhosa individuals to give ‘power to the enemy’ – a
complaint that Maqoma would make later to the Revd Laing.74 Most striking, though, is
Sandile’s sneer that ‘white men are only like us, they can also be killed’.
The Xhosa desire for power, amandla, is shown in their traditional doctoring of their
warriors, hunters and hunting dogs, and their everyday use of charms and other means to ward
off sickness, infertility, accidents, lightning, or witchcraft.75 The arrival of missionary J.T. van
der Kemp,76 and his doctrine of Christ’s miraculous powers, offered the Xhosa the means of
tapping into a new supernatural power.77 From here, it was an easy step to link the perceived
mystical power of whites to that of the ‘fair-skinned’ spirits living below the water.78 Sandile
proceeds publicly to repudiate this belief. White men can be killed, he retains the chiefly power
of life and death over those who displease him, and he won’t hesitate to use it. In the midst of his
tirade, Sandile turns on Stretch, accusing him, unfairly, of being a traitor. Ironically, he ends
with an appeal to Stretch to send his message to the governor.
Sandile’s ‘insolence’ was answered by troops being despatched from Fort Beaufort – but
the ‘tent’ – metonymy for the surveyors – was not removed. Accompanied by 200 redcoats
and a field piece, Hare arrived at Block Drift. En route, he was met by messengers with
apologies from Sandile – who blamed his rash young counsellors for influencing him – and
apologies from Sandile’s mother Sutu. The troops, however, continued to take up their
positions at Block Drift, where they were countered by 2,000–3,000 armed Xhosa warriors.
Sandile denied calling Stretch and the governor ‘rascals’, and defended his treatment of the
trader, McLachlin, who had allegedly shut his door on Sandile’s approach. He then
proceeded to expose Damon’s duplicity as a plunderer himself. During the conference with
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, 9a, ‘Sandilli’s [sic] Reply’, 20 March, 1846, 86–87 (500).
Compare the Zulu Lazarus Mxaba: ‘You make a law; we obey it […] Over and over again your promulgate
fresh laws and we abide by them cheerfully, and this sort of thing has continued until we have become greyheaded, and not even know, advanced in years as we are, do we know the meaning of your policy’: James
Stuart archive, Vol. 1, 243, quoted by Iliffe, Honour, 203.
Galbraith, Reluctant Empire, 166.
Timothy Stapleton, Maqoma: Xhosa resistance to colonial advance (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball,
1994), 130.
See Janet Hodgson, ‘Ntsikana: History and Symbol, Studies in a Process of Religious Change among
Xhosa-speaking People’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, August 1985), 272, for the doctoring of
hunters and dogs. For the rest, see Monica Hunter, Reaction to Conquest: Effects of contact with Europeans
on the Pondo of South Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 215–319.
On van der Kemp and his influence on the amaXhosa, see Hodgson, ‘Ntsikana’, 70–96.
This mostly inspired by his image of Christ as conqueror: Janet Hodgson, ‘A Battle for Sacred Power:
Christian Beginnings Among the Xhosa’, in, Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social, and Cultural
History eds., R Elphick and R. Davenport (Cape Town: David Philip), vol. 2, 70.
Because the white men had come from across the ocean, their origin was presumed to be in the spirit-world
below the sea, and they were associated with the fair-skinned spirits known as ‘people from the water […]
and his [van der Kemp’s] book [the Bible] was thought to contain the secret of his great wisdom’: Hodgson,
‘Ntsikana’, 98, 101–102.
14
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
Hare, Sandile’s warriors staged warning manoeuvres, firing shots over British heads –
actions that Stretch warned were tantamount to a declaration of war.79 Sandile’s defiance
shattered colonial perceptions of him as a weak and vacillating chief – witness the detail
with which his insults and threats were transcribed. Sandile was – to use Ngqika’s
expression when colonists accused him of robbery – ‘not going to be messed on by dogs’.80
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The chiefs’ response to Block Drift
Maqoma took a dim view of Sandile’s proceedings, telling Stretch gloomily that he
‘thought it would come to this’. He laments Sandile’s threats to kill Stretch’s messengers,
and his destruction of the ‘wall’ of mutual protection/respect/trust between the amaXhosa
and the whites. This is an interesting perception, and, all the more so, as he not only
commends Stockenstrom but Tyhale (not much beloved by the British) for their part in
building it. Then, unequivocally, he distances himself from Ngqika bellicosity:
[Sandile] has broken down the wall between the white and the black man […] he has broke [sic] down
all that I, and Tyhali [sic] and Stockenstrom did. Tyhale is dead, Stockenstrom is gone; and I will
seek a place of rest in the Colony; my name in this work, in this war shall not be mentioned.81
At the Block Drift conference (29 January) with Hare, Sandile, explained more
specifically the reason behind his anger:
I now request there may be no military left in my country: this place, I say, cannot be a place for a
post, and Sheshago (Victoria) must also leave. There must be no post in Caffraria, my people will not
consent to it.
Bhotomane denied Hare’s assertion that the Ngqika had ‘called for’ the post at Block Drift,
maintaining that ‘Stockenstrom sent all the posts out, and we cannot admit another one in our
country’. Similarly, Sandile and his brother, Anta, denied that Stockenstrom had allowed
for posts in the Ceded Territory,82 declaring that ‘Victoria must be sent out […] for they did
not wish to have any post among their people, it destroyed their authority’.83
If posts provided such provocation to the amaXhosa, ‘colonial belligerence’ implicit in
the arrival of the troops – as observed by Scottish missionary James Laing, who resided at
Burnshill, near Sandile’s Great Place – was perceived by the amaXhosa as manifesting
‘genocidal intent, for which the Block Drift survey had been the opening move’.84 That
colonial genocide could take various forms, inter alia, the reprisal/patrol system, had been
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
Mostert, Frontiers, 865.
W. Fehr, trans. and ed., Ludwig Alberti’s Account of the Tribal Life and Customs of the Xhosa in 1807, from
the original manuscript in German of ‘The kaffirs of the South Coast of Africa’ (Cape Town: Balkema,
1968), 117.
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 10c, Stretch, Tyhume diary, 26 January 1846, 40 (454).
The so-called Ceded/Neutral Territory between the Fish and Keiskama Rivers was created in 1819 by Lord
Charles Somerset. It was returned to the amaXhosa in 1836.
See Stretch’s report on Blockdrift to Maitland, 29 January 1846, BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, no. 12c, 44
(458). The British abandoned and burnt Post Victoria in late April 1846: Napier, Excursions in Southern
Africa, vol. 2, 220.
Mostert, Frontiers, 865–866.
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‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
15
observed by the amaXhosa and humanitarians such as Stockenstrom, Dr John Philip, and
Fowell Buxton and his Select Committee on Aborigines (1835–1837). Although, arguably,
not intended as an instrument of genocide, abuse of the system led to many ‘genocidal
moments’ or small-scale massacres of the amaXhosa when patrols/commandos opened fire
indiscriminately on kraals, as I have argued elsewhere.85
The stationing of trigger-happy troops in Xhosa territories was a more overt genocide
threat. Soldiers often panicked and shot innocent people, an early example being when
a ‘foolish young British officer’ opened fire on Dange men and women who were
allegedly impeding his way on the ‘Addo bush road’ in 1811. The killing of these people
led to the massacre of Anders Stockenstrom (father of Andries) and his peace party who
were parleying with the imiDange at Doorn/Doring Nek. Notably, Stretch saw this
incident as ‘the cause of the wars which followed the expulsion and revenge taken on the
unfortunate natives by the commando under Colonel Graham and Brereton’.86 Furthermore, the ruling that Xhosa offenders in the Colony – even minor ones such as Tsili –
were ‘amenable to British law’87 and could be convicted and sentenced as the judge
deemed fit, could also be seen as part of the wider colonial genocide plan. It is testimony
to his statesmanship, rather than to cowardice, that Sandile tendered his apologies so
promptly.
Stretch’s response to Block Drift, the official reaction, and the aftermath
How did Stretch react to Sandile’s anger? Although, originally, Stretch had called for a
troop of cavalry to be sent to Sandile’s kraal as a calming show of force, on Sandile’s
apologising, Stretch advised Hare and T.C. Smith on the immediate withdrawal of the
surveyors. Smith, however, on being asked by the surveying officer, Lieutenant Stokes, for
instructions, told him not to ‘remove his tent’ – that is, to continue his survey – as, by
backing down, the British would appear weak, and boost Xhosa confidence. Accordingly,
the surveyors were only withdrawn 48 hours later, which infuriated Stretch, who
understood the explosiveness of the situation. Yet, on 1 February Maitland was still
speaking of ‘over-awing and humbling’ the amaXhosa.88
Block Drift became an official embarrassment, with various justifications and contradictions passing between Maitland and Hare (Maitland denied having sent the surveyors).
At length, Maitland settled it by pathetically insisting that he and Hare had always been in
agreement in what was ‘a confessedly awkward situation’ – and admitted that ‘we had no
right in sending the surveyors’.89 With ‘the tent’ remaining as long as it did, it is again
testimony to Sandile’s forbearance that he did not allow his 2,000–3, 000 warriors to spill
British blood.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
See Susan I Blackbeard, ‘Act of Severity’, Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 17, no. 2 (June 2015),
107–109.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 11.
Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 2, 85.
BPP 21, Smith to Hudson, 27 January 1846, 41 (455), and Maitland to Hare, 1 February 1846, 38 (452).
BPP 21, Maitland to Hare 23 February, 62-3 (476-7) and Maitland to Hare, 7 March 1846, 69–70
(483–484).
16
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
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Yet, if Stretch were sympathetic to the Ngqika, why did he demand the ‘murderers’ of
the Khoikhoi? It would appear that he had no option but to act in compliance with British
common law procedure. And, perhaps the patience of Stretch, whose journal demonstrates
a stronger bond with Maqoma than Sandile, was already wearing thin with the latter.
Tola’s earlier request to Stretch implies that he hoped that he would bend the rules and
prevent Tsili from being sent to Grahamstown. This, however, was not to be.
Although traders and missionaries were jittery, the Block Drift debacle was followed
by a short time of ‘quietness’. Then Xhosa resistance resurfaced: colonial cattle were found
in Xhosaland,90 the amaXhosa stocked up on knives, bridles, flints and blankets, and
donned their veld shoes – a sign that they were preparing for a journey or war – and Tsili
was involved in another theft or attempted theft.91
Xhosa jealousy of the Khoikhoi as a contributing factor to the axe murder?
The passage in 1828 of Ordinance 50 in the Cape Colony, which abolished, inter alia, the
necessity of the Khoikhoi having passes, and allowed them to own land on an equal
footing with whites, was conspicuous in continuing to deny these rights to the amaXhosa.92
While Cape liberals and the Khoikhoi rejoiced in the latter’s ‘emancipation’,93 Ordinance
50 drove a further wedge between the amaXhosa and the Khoikhoi. The Khoikhoi, having
become British subjects, were also entitled to British protection: as T.C. Smith was quick
to point out in the Tsili debate: ‘as the murdered man was a British subject […] the chief
should be compelled to give up the murderers.’94 Furthermore, the Kat River Settlement,
where many Khoikhoi were given land and were flourishing, had been taken from
Maqoma.95 It was obvious to the amaXhosa that the Khoikhoi were the government’s
favourites,96 as Colonel Wade pointed out to Buxton’s Select Committee on Aborigines.97
Around the same time (1834), in a letter to Dr John Philip, Stretch refers to Ngqika’s
expulsion from the Gaga River, adding meaningfully that ‘Boyce’s Hottentot agitators,
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
Stretch, Tyume [sic] diary, 18 March 1846, no. 3c in Maitland to Stanley, 90 (504).
See BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 15 March 1846, 22 (436), Maitland to Gladstone, A, no. 6, Hare to
Maitland, 15 March 1846, 98 (512), B, no. 6, Petition of frontier inhabitants, 99–100 (513–514), and
Maitland to Stanley, 15 March 1846, 27 (441). See also Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 2, 85.
For further details of the 50th Ordinance and its effects, see Stanley Trapido, ‘The Emergence of Liberalism
and the Making of Hottentot Nationalism 1815–1834’, Collected Seminar Papers, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 42 (1992), 34–60.
T. Keegan, ‘Liberal Reform and Humanitarianism in Colonial South Africa’, in Origins of Racial Order,
Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order (Cape Town: David Philip, 1996), 105. See also
Ross, The Borders of Race, The Kat River Settlement, 1829–1856, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014, 31, 81, 88–90.
BPP 21, T.C. Smith to Hougham Hudson, 16 March 1846, 84 (498).
Maqoma, who was regent to the young chief Sandile until he came of age, was the Ngqika general for 18
years, until his banishment to Robben Island.
Who seem to have had a ‘natural antipathy’ for the amaXhosa on account of account of ‘aggressions by
their ancestors’: Martin Legassick, The struggle for the eastern Cape: 1800–1854 (Sandton: KMM Review
Publishing Company, 2014), 68.
See BPP (IUP), Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines in British Settlements (hereafter, SCA),
Session 4 February–20 August 1836, 375.
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‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
Figure 4.
17
Thomas Baines, ‘Canteen at Fort Cox with Sandilli Drinking’. Courtesy of MuseumAfrica, MA 286.
if they existed, would have had a good chance.’98 By the 1840s, as former missionary and
government agent, the Revd Henry Calderwood, remarked, ‘it was then the fashion with
the Hottentots to despise the Caffre, and the Caffre in turn looked upon the Hottentot with
the most sovereign contempt’.99 Sandile’s contempt of Döhne’s Khoikhoi servant, Damon,
is a case in point.
Always astute, the amaXhosa exploited the colonial preference for the Khoikhoi, with
Xhosa spies trying to pass themselves off as Khoikhoi (and, sometimes, Mfengu) by
riding horses100 and speaking Afrikaans, which most Khoikhoi spoke at the time.101 In
light of the above discrimination, few amaXhosa would have bothered to save the life of
a Khoikhoi, especially if it impeded their chances of escape: rather, he could have been
their target, as there was no stopping ‘young [Xhosa] radicals from destabilising the
Colony’.102 To what extent, though, the murder of the Khoikhoi was driven by jealousy,
is debatable.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 16.
Legassick, Struggle, 59.
The only cavalry on the eastern frontier at this time (the Cape Corps) comprised mostly Khoikhoi. SCA,
Evidence of Andries Stockenstrom, 1 March, 1836, 242.
Peires (citing J. Alexander and T. Bowker), The House of Phalo, 168, n.101.
Stapleton, Maqoma, 135.
18
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
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Humiliation of Xhosa leaders
The ingenuity of British governors such as D’Urban and Harry Smith in undermining the
authority of Xhosa chiefs was remarkable.103 Probably the crassest form it took was their ridicule
of Maqoma and Sandile as drunks or ‘drunken beasts’,104 and using them as scapegoats, as
Governor Sir George Arthur used the alleged lawlessness of the ‘drunken, murderous’ Aboriginal
resistance leader Musquito (he was eventually hanged) as an excuse to proclaim martial law
in Tasmania in 1828.105 As in Australia and Tasmania, colonists, the military and sometimes
their wives106 and visitors perpetuated the drunken chief/resistance-leader stereotype in the
Cape Colony, with the official eighth frontier war artist, Thomas Baines, satirically depicting
Sandile carousing with his wives before the officers in the Fort Cox canteen.107
E.E. Napier, who shared Smith’s view of the depraved nature of the amaXhosa, ‘who
behaved like wild beasts and deserved to be treated as such’,108 also lost no opportunity to
deride Maqoma’s alleged weakness for alcohol,109 maintaining that Tsili took advantage
of [Maqoma’s] ‘constant intoxication’ to stage his famous thieving spree, while he and
his ‘wives and concubines, frequented as usual the canteen of Fort Beaufort’.110 Later,
Napier caricatures Maqoma and Sandile further: the former as an effete sot – ‘weary of
fighting, and longing for his accustomed carousals at Fort Beaufort’ – and the latter as wily
and dishonest, obtaining ‘a further cessation of hostilities, under pretence of considering
the terms of peace proposed to him’.111
Neither Maqoma nor Sandile, who suffered, together with their people, the effects of
Maitland’s martial law (proclaimed in April 1846),112 were ignorant of British/colonial
stereotypes of them. Maitland’s letter to the chiefs after Block Drift was not only patronising
but demeaning in its criticism of Sandile.113 The tribute the amaXhosa exacted for this,
and other humiliations,114 resulted in some of the worst British reverses from the War of the
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
See e.g., Peires, The House of Phalo, 128.
Smith’s phrase. His humiliation of Maqoma, by placing his booted foot on his neck, proclaiming himself
‘chief and master’, and threatening this as the future treatment for the Queen of England’s enemies, hardly
needs rehearsing. Even Smith’s editor admits that ‘[a]fter-events may make us doubt the wisdom of this
public humiliation of the chief’: G.C. Moore Smith (ed.), The Autobiography of Lieutenant-General Sir
Harry Smith, Baronet of Aliwal and the Sutlej, G.C.B. (London: Murray, 1903), 586.
See N. Parry, ‘Hanging No Good for Blackfellow: Looking Into the Life of Musquito/Mousqueda’, http://
epress.anu.edu.au/aborig_history/transgressions/mobile_devices/ch07.html, accessed 9 July 2013.
Such as Private Buck Adams and Harriet Ward, respectively. See Stapleton on Adams’ denigration of
Maqoma: Stapleton, Maqoma, 127.
See Figure 3, Thomas Baines, ‘Canteen at Fort Cox with Sandilli Drinking’, courtesy of MuseumAfrica.
Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 2, 70.
Mostert, Frontiers, 614, blames whites for ‘thrusting’ liquor on Maqoma. On Stapleton’s defence of
Maqoma, see Maqoma, 77, 104, 111, 113. Although dismayed at Maqoma’s drinking, Stretch neither
denigrated nor abandoned him: Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 140.
Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, vol. 2, 85.
Ibid., 107–108.
Maitland took over from Hare as commander of the forces: Mostert, Frontiers, 887.
Calling him ‘foolish and wrongminded’: BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 12 March 1846, 36b, The Governor
to the Chiefs […] of the Gaika Tribe, 78–79 (493–494).
Such as Sandile’s being locked in a shed with an iron bedstead and a straw mattress in Grahamstown when,
in a bid to make terms with the British, he left his stronghold in the Amathole and walked into the British
camp: see Mostert, Frontiers, 927.
‘AN UNPRECEDENTED BUT SIGNIFICANT ATROCITY’
19
Axe (the seventh war) to the ninth war, with the ‘infliction of huge suffering on British
wounded’ in the eighth war.115
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Conclusion
In summation, what seems to have been the overriding reasons for the killing of the Khoikhoi
and thus jump-starting the war? The hand-hacking and stabbing of the man may have
stemmed from Tsili’s rescuers’ panic or frustration at not being able to free him in any
other way, or it may have been a reaction to the shooting of Tsili’s brother. It may also have
been revenge for T.C. Smith and Borcherds’ lack of cooperation in reconsidering the fate of
Tsili, and anger at the indignity of a Xhosa being shackled to a Khoikhoi. These, however,
were only the superstructure.
The foundation of Ngqika grievances, as shown, appears to have been serial
dispossession, together with the undermining of chiefs’ authority, and the threat of
genocide. Stretch had warned against these evils, though little heed was taken of it. In his
etiological appraisal of the ‘native wars’, he argued that dispossession of the amaXhosa and
the introduction of British settlers to the Zuurveld, had ‘led to the ruin of the aborigines of
eastern Caffraria’.116 Although Stretch does not appear to have used the term ‘genocide’, it
is implicit in his critique of colonial policies. Maitland is more explicit in his exterminatory
threats:
Sandilla [sic] says they have discovered that English blood can be shed as well as Kafir blood; but let
them not think that they can cope with our resources […] England could and would easily send an
army sufficient to eat up the whole Kafir nation without trouble.117
The reinstatement of the patrol system, the extension of British common law over Xhosa in
the Colony, and, most importantly, the erection of posts and the stationing of British troops
in Xhosa territory, were insidious tools of genocide that could, in 1846, largely escape
humanitarian action. With Buxton having lost his seat in the election of July 1837 and
Glenelg resigning in 1839, Philip and Stockenstrom lost their voices in London, and the
British public interest in the Cape’s eastern affairs. Stretch – witness his sudden dismissal –
and other local humanitarians espousing the Xhosa cause could be ignored or silenced with
impunity.
Perhaps the War of the Axe could have been prevented if the British had agreed to
Tola’s request to ‘speak about’ Tsili’s being sent to Grahamstown.118 It is ironic that the
more ‘civilised’ nation – the English – spurned the idea of ‘dialogue’. However, as events
unfolded, it became more obvious that war was inevitable, as both parties – at least by the
time of the axe incident and rescue – were bent on it. Finally, it may have appeared to
further British ends to protract the war but the amaXhosa ultimately outplayed them by
115.
116.
117.
118.
Legassick, Struggle, 72.
Le Cordeur, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, 11.
BPP 21, Maitland to Hare, 9 February 1846, 46 (460).
BPP 21, Maitland to Stanley, 31 March 1846, no. 9a, ‘Sandilli’s [sic] Reply’, 20 March, 1846, 86–87 (500).
20
SUSAN I. BLACKBEARD
neither accepting terms nor fighting – an assertion of honour in defeat, although they had
to starve for it.119 Yet, despite economic and human losses, the British celebrated.
Stockenstrom made no bones about telling Earl Grey that he saw through British policy. If
costly colonial defeats – presented as victories – did not work, there were other ways of
getting rid of the amaXhosa:
A […] starving chief has surrendered and we are as elated as if the battle of Waterloo has been
fought and won again. We expend vast quantities of ammunition and the newspapers manufacture victories
for us […] If they [the amaXhosa] can’t starve and be quiet, England can exterminate them.120
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Notes on contributor
Susan I. Blackbeard has a PhD from the University of Cape Town, where she has taught in
the departments of English and Historical Studies. She has published in the South African
Military Journal, the South African Historical Journal, the Journal of Genocide Research,
and the Oral History Review. Currently she is working on a book on Kat River.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Jeff Peires, Beverley Ball, Christopher Brodrick, Keith James, Des Kopke,
Laureen Rushby and Gert van der Westhuizen for various assistance and André Rudman
for the maps. I am also grateful to Diana Wall of MuseumAfrica for the use of Thomas
Baines’s painting, ‘Canteen at Fort Cox with Sandilli Drinking’, MA286, and to my editor
and anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.
119.
120.
Though a different kind of ‘honour in defeat’ from that described by Iliffe, Honour, 201–226. A severe
drought exacerbated Xhosa suffering in the war.
Quoted by Basil Le Cordeur and Christopher Saunders, (eds.), The War of the Axe (Johannesburg:
Brenthurst Press, 1981), 267.