1

Breaking down the maize stalks

The Elizabeth and Susan, a 30-ton timber-built schooner with one mast fore and another aft, tacked on 4 May 1828 into the wide, exposed sweep of Algoa Bay on the southern coast of Africa. Four days before, the little vessel had set sail from Port Natal, a tiny, scruffy settlement of British traders and hunters established in May 1824 on the shore of the Zulu kingdom, 383 nautical miles away to the north-east. The schooner's commander was James King, a discharged midshipman of the Royal Navy who liked to pose as an ex-lieutenant.1 He was accompanied by several other hunter-traders (some bare-footed and partially dressed in animal skins) along with a consignment of hippopotamus ivory to sell. On board there were also several Zulu dignitaries, envoys despatched by Shaka kaSenzangakhona, the Zulu king. It was primarily on their account that the Elizabeth and Susan was making the voyage, for King Shaka desired to establish friendly relations with the British authorities governing the Cape Colony.2

Shaka had entrusted his embassy with fifty tusks of elephant ivory to cover expenses and to be disbursed as gifts. The senior ambassador was Sothobe kaMpangalala, one of the king's most distinguished and trusted councillors, an extremely arrogant, deep-chested giant of a man, celebrated for regularly eating a whole goat by himself.3 As a sign of his especial favour, Shaka had permitted Sothobe to bring along two of his many wives. Sothobe was subsequently celebrated in his izibongo (the praises declaimed during a person's lifetime and after his death in celebration of his deeds) for his heroism in sailing out to sea in a ship:

Splasher of water with an oxtail,

Great ship of the ocean,

The uncrossable sea,

Which is crossed only by swallows and white people .4

The amaZulu on board the Elizabeth and Susan had been anticipating unimaginable wonders in the white men's country, but they were swiftly disabused. The only contrivance that seems to have made a lasting impression was a pump that marvellously drew water 'out of a hole'.5 Port Elizabeth, the Zulu embassy's destination, was still in an embryonic state. It had been founded in 1820 on the western shore of Algoa Bay by the acting governor of Cape Colony, Sir Rufane Donkin, who named it to commemorate his deeply mourned wife who had died in India. Until the middle of the 19th century the port had no proper jetties, no lighthouse or breakwater. From ships anchored in the bay, passengers and cargo were brought through the angry surf on lighters, and were then transferred to the shoulders of African porters who carried them to shore. Once deposited on dry land, the Zulu ambassadors would have found Port Elizabeth (in the words of English contemporaries) an 'ugly, dirty, ill-scented, ill-built hamlet, resembling some of the worst fishing villages on the English coast', a disreputable place with a well-earned reputation for disorderly 'drunkenness and immorality'.6

Yet, for all its undeniable drawbacks, Port Elizabeth was vital for the economic development of the eastern districts of the Cape Colony. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), had established a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, strategically situated on the sea route to its commercial empire in the East Indies.7 It was not long before De Kaap (as the Dutch called their fortified base) developed into a colony of settlement producing beef, wheat, wine, and other foodstuffs for the passing ships. Its population steadily grew with the arrival of Dutch, French, and German settlers from Europe (all of whom took on Dutch identity) and slaves from East Africa, Madagascar, and the East Indies. Inevitably, the expansion of De Kaap was at the expense of the indigenous peoples of the Cape, the Khoikhoin and San, who already occupied the grazing lands and hunting grounds of a vast area stretching north to the Orange River 600 miles away, and 500 miles east along the coast to the Keiskamma River. In a series of skirmishes and more protracted wars over the next hundred years, the colonists pushed the boundaries of De Kaap ever further east and north. The dispossessed Khoikhoin and San were either driven away northwards over the Orange River into the interior of the sub-continent, or were subjugated as labourers or menials on the settlers' farms and in their villages.

Towards the end of the 18th century, the advancing Dutch settlers encountered another people just west of Algoa Bay. These were the amaXhosa, Nguni-speaking pastoralists closely related linguistically and culturally to other African peoples settled for 800 miles up the eastern coastal lands of southern Africa, notably (from south to north) the abaThembu, amaMpondomise, amaMpondo, amaZulu and amaSwazi. Tentative contact between the Dutch and the amaXhosa soon turned violent as both sides attempted to secure control of desirable grazing and agricultural land. During the course of nine Cape Frontier Wars of ever-increasing ferocity that began in 1779 and would only end in 1878 with the complete conquest of the amaXhosa, the colonists steadily drove them eastwards as they appropriated their territory.

In 1780 the Dutch East India Company fixed the eastern boundary of Kaapkolonie (as the Dutch now referred to their South African colonial possession) east of Algoa Bay, along the Great Fish and Baviaans Rivers. Soon thereafter the Dutch were caught up in the world-wide French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars which broke out in 1792 and continued until 1815. Early in the conflict, the British grasped the strategic significance of the Cape as a naval station on their own route to their empire in India, and seized it from the Dutch in 1795. As a condition of the Treaty of Amiens (a temporary truce that Britain signed with France in 1802) the Cape was restored to Dutch rule. But after the war resumed the following year, Britain once again conquered the Cape from the Dutch in 1806, and British possession of Cape Colony (as they called it) was confirmed by the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, signed on 9 June 1815 between all the great powers.

With British rule came the assertion of English cultural supremacy at the Cape, whether it be its language, emblems, dress, architecture, food or social conventions.8 The Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, was more than happy to do his best to 'civilise' the colony, but found the Dutch-speaking colonists determined to preserve their own language and cultural distinctiveness, especially when it came to their strict Calvinist religion. The further from the urban centres of the Western Cape, the less the Boers (literally, 'farmers' or boere) of the countryside were ready to accept or adopt the new British ways. For the British, who regarded the Cape as primarily a strategic naval possession, the distant but expanding, porous and unstable eastern and northern frontiers of white settlement were an annoying problem, especially since the Boers living there were acutely resentful of the new British order. So, although obliged to protect the fractious frontier farmers, the British government remained unwilling to commit sufficient troops to exercise absolute military control over the frontier zone. That meant that the amaXhosa in the east and the few still independent Khoisan in the north were not deterred from continuing to resist further settler encroachment and from trying to win back what they had lost.9

Following the Fourth and Fifth Cape Frontier Wars, in 1829 the British set the Colony's eastern frontier along the Keiskamma, Tyhume, and Klipplaat Rivers, thereby annexing 3 000 square miles of Xhosa territory. Meanwhile, the British government had approved an assisted emigration scheme to stabilise the frontier by creating a rural buffer of farmers against Xhosa incursions. Since the new settlers were of British extraction, the government hoped that their presence would dilute the regional influence of the chronically disaffected frontier Boers. Between December 1819 and March 1820, 21 crowded chartered emigrant ships left England and Ireland for the Cape carrying about 1 000 men and 3 000 women and children. The settlers took up their farms in what was named the Albany District between the Bushmans and Great Fish Rivers. Grahamstown, Albany's administrative and military centre, rapidly developed into a brisk commercial hub peopled with a politically aware mercantile community that erected churches and increasingly elegant houses. The Albany settlers' economic future depended on having a suitable port for trade and export, and Port Elizabeth addressed that need.

Many of the Albany settlers were officially encouraged to trade deep into the interior beyond the boundaries of the Colony, bartering goods such as cloth, iron utensils, beads, and buttons with Africans for valuable commodities like cattle hides, ivory, and gum.10 Earlier, Boer settlers in the Eastern Cape had sought land for their pastoralist, essentially subsistence economy, that differed little from that of the amaXhosa. Now, the Grahamstown merchants were beginning to flourish on the so-called 'Inland Kaffir Trade' up the east coast of southern Africa and north across the Orange River onto the highveld, the great inland plateau. To sustain this trade, they set about instituting the essential elements of a capitalist...