The Pre History of the Area
The early history of the Makana Region is shrouded in mystery with only archaeological evidence and oral traditions to tell us of the earliest inhabitants to inhabit this area.
The earliest evidence of anatomically modern human beings are to found in the Southern Cape and the Tsitsikhamma areas of the Eastern Cape. The earliest evidence of human cultural activity is also to be found in the same areas. These people were probably the Early Bushmen or San, a deeply spiritual group of hunter gatherers, who roamed the countryside, living in small groups, and living off the land. These people lived in the area for tens of thousand of years, their most lasting legacy being the exquisite rock art that adorns the walls of so many South African caves, overhangs and cliffs which are now protected by law. They spoke in a language punctuated by clicks, the legacy of which remains in the isiXhosa tongue which is the first language for the vast majority of the Makana inhabitants. The existence of several middle Stone Age archaeological sites show that these groups inhabited the area which, due to the enormous carrying capacity of the various vegetation types in the Makana area, was not short of prey.
About two thousand years ago, the arrival of another group changed the demographic balance. These were herders who led a nomadic existence with their cattle and native sheep. These herders called themselves the Khoi-Khoi, (men of men) and referred to the earlier groups as the “San”, a pejorative term. These days these groups are referred by the common term “Khoi-San”. We do not know what conflicts, if any, erupted at the meeting of these groups but like all people, over time they learnt to live with each other.
One thousand years ago another group of people, moving from central Africa in one of the great migrations of human people began to move into the area. These were agriculturalists as well as herders. Their wealth was cattle, and their whole society revolved around the cattle. Their society was more centralised than that of the Kho-San. Occasionally they would raid their neighbours cattle, and on equal occasions the neighbours would reply in kind. This led to Khoi-San to call them the “AmaXhosa” which meant “the angry men”.
The Xhosa would make forays in to the Makana but thus far no evidence has been unearthed of permanent settlements as there were further north, as evidenced by the grain pits that they used to store their harvest. They also knew how to work metal, which the Khoi-San did not. Neither grain pits nor metal working sites have been found in the Makana Region, probably because of the unsettled climate of the Makana area. Makana is where the major weather systems of Southern Africa meet, and the uncertain and unpredictable weather meant that the growing of crops was an uncertain proposition. Further the grazing was not as predictable as further north, the grass was sweet and nutritious in spring but rapidly turned into something unpalatable for the cattle as the seasons turned. Thus the Xhosa would graze their cattle in the spring and summer before herding them again to the north east.
Many centuries later another warlike group of herders arrived in the area. They too noticed the way their cattle loved the grass in spring and summer but lost interest thereafter. They therefore called the area the “Zuurveld”, (sour fields).They referred to themselves as “Boers”.
The Clash of Cultures
In the late 15th Century there was a rash of exploration by largely Portuguese mariners at the behest of Prince Henry the navigator. In 1487 Bartholomew Diaz erected a padrao or cross at Kwaaihoek, not far from today’s Kenton on Sea. On his return he sailed past a rather picturesque cape which he called the “Cape of Storms” but which Henry the Navigator referred to as the “Cape of Good Hope”.
The early attempts at Portuguese settlement around the southernmost point of Africa were not very successful. In the one attempt the leader of a Portuguese squadron landed at the Cape and attempted to catch a Khoi-Khoi child to take back to Portugal as a pet or an exhibit. In the ensuing mêlée, the commander of the squadron, the Admiral D’ Almeida and scores of his men were killed. The child survived and never went to Portugal. After that European mariners tended to give the Cape a wide berth for 150 years.
However, as the amount of trade between Europe and the East Indies increased, the need for a refreshment station along the route became apparent, as in the days of sail such trips could take the best part of a year and the threat of scurvy, a disease caused by Vitamin C deficiency was a very real hazard. The English East India Company had such a station on the island of St Helena; the Portuguese had established colonies further along the African Coast. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company established a refreshment station at the Cape and called it Kaapstad, (Cape Town).
Initially the refreshment station was meant to be the area around Table Mountain. However, many Dutch settlers soon tired of living under the restrictions of the Dutch East India Company and began to drift off into the vastness beyond the confines of the settlement and the Dutch East India Company were hard pressed to keep up with their subjects and the taxes they could impart. These people rapidly became attuned to the rhythms of the African veld and stopped thinking of themselves as Dutch, and began to think of themselves as “Boers”. Their progress was greatly helped by an earlier outbreak of smallpox which had devastated the indigenous populations, The Trek Boers soon adopted a lifestyle that resembled that of the earlier inhabitants, leading a nomadic existence, herding their cattle and hunting for the pot. The major difference being that they used firearms for their hunting and needed to purchase gunpowder, they moved about with wagons and so their material culture, although very basic by modern standards was more pronounced than those of the Khoi-San, and they needed churches to celebrate rites of passage. To their amusement, the Dutch authorities felt that they were also subjects who needed governing and followed the Trek Boers establishing Drosdties, (Magistrates Courts), at various centres as their movements progressed. The first such settlement was Stellenbosch outside Cape Town, by 1786 the town of Graaf-Reinet had been established, the first such centre of authority in the Eastern Cape.
Despite their aversion to authority, the Boers were quick to demand the services of the Government when they felt the need, and the need normally came from what they felt were the depredations of the Bushmen who, not unnaturally, resented this incursion onto their lands and for whom the concept of owning animals was utterly alien, the animals belonged to everybody in their world view and the cattle and other stock were fair game, like all other game. To deal with this problem the Boers introduced a new concept into the South African scene, that of armed and mounted horsemen going to war, they called these groups the Commandos.
Slowly they wore the indigenous people down and forced them into the mountains of the interior, they took on many of the Khoi-San as servants and continued their progression eastward. There they were warned by the Khoi-San that other people, of a different group, lived not too far to the east, which the Khoi-San referred to as the AmaXhosa, the angry men. As the Boers moved into the Zuurveld , they came across the AmaXhosa settlements.
The initial contacts between the Xhosa and the Boers had actually taken place earlier to the west, where the pioneering parties made initial contact. They had the measure of each other, the Xhosa having had reports of the Boers from the Khoi-San. They were aware of the military prowess of both sides and as their cattle based economies were broadly similar; there was no need for conflict – as long as there was ample grazing.
Alas, the Eastern Cape, being not only the meeting place of cultures, was also the meeting place of South Africa’s weather systems and the area can suffer prolonged drought. As more Boers arrived and the amount of cattle increased, it was only a matter of time before tensions flared, over grazing especially the sweet grass of the spring, and the AmaXhosa enjoyed raiding their neighbour’s cattle every now and then, and the Boers were simply a new set of neighbours. The Boers response to this tradition would be to set forth the Commandos, in their fashion. The scene was set for a conflict that would last 100 years, the longest armed resistance by an African people to colonial expansion on the continent.
Hostilities broke out in 1779. They lasted until 1881, when an uneasy peace broke out, the result being a stalemate. Many Boers had fled their farms and moved into the Cape, Xhosa groups had also advanced far into the colony. Hostilities broke out again in 1792, after some skirmishing peace once again broke out.
Unbeknownst to most of the antagonists, great things were happening far away in Europe, a place which the Boers dimly remembered and of which the Xhosa were dimly aware. It was an age of revolutions and wars, and the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe would have a direct bearing on the events in the Eastern Cape. The British were determined that at all costs, Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces would not threaten the sea route to the East Indies and so in 1795 they occupied the Cape, a place they had thus far expressed little interest in. However, they had not only secured the sea route to India, they also inherited the problems of the eastern areas of the colony, a less welcome aspect of the conquest. In 1799 the simmering tensions in the Zuurveld once again broke out and British troops were put into action against the Xhosa. For the Xhosa this was a revelation, previously they had fought Boer Commandos and other irregulars, now they were up against well trained soldiers. Nevertheless they had the advantage of local knowledge and an ability to fight at close quarters, so although the war was officially a British victory, it was in fact as inconclusive as the previous wars.
In 1803 the Peace of Amiens was signed and the British rather thankfully handed the Cape back to the Dutch, this time under the control of the Batavian Republic who had nationalised the Dutch East India Company in 1796. The Cape was a drain on finances with little export revenue, and the festering tensions in the Eastern Frontier. During the time of Batavian rule, the Governor, Jannssens toured the Eastern Frontier, and met with the King of the Rarabe Xhosa, Ngika, and together they agreed that the Great Fish River would be the border between the Colony and the amaXhosa.
What the Governor did not know and could not comprehend, was that Ngika had very little authority over the people of which he was the titular head. Furthermore he was in a furious and bitter quarrel with his uncle, Ndlambe, and a great deal of the Rarabe amaXhosa owed allegiance to Ndlambe who was actually in a stronger position than Ngika. It was Ndlambe’s people who lived in the Zuurveld. Ngika probably thought that the Dutch troops would be a useful ally to his old rival. The amaXhosa did not recognise the agreement and they remained in the Zuurveld, the tensions which Jannssens had hoped to eradicate were instead exacerbated.
The founding of Grahamstown
The Treaty of Amiens had been only a temporary respite in the Napoleonic Wars, and in 1806 the British got wind of a French plan to seize the Cape, and to thwart this plan, they sent an expeditionary force of their own. After the Battle of Blouberg, the Dutch surrendered the Cape. The British were back and this time they intended to stay. They accepted the Batavian agreement that the Great Fish River be the border of the Cape of Good Hope, and still had the fact that tensions on the Eastern Frontier were high. The Eastern Frontier was a problem they did not need. They were mainly concerned with the Cape and apart from the fact that Algoa Bay provided the only semi secure anchorage along the southern coast, and in 1799 had built Fort Frederick there to deter the French from using it as a base. The British were determined to end the conflicts in the unwanted eastern areas, and at the behest of the Landrosdt of the area, Colonel Glen Cuyler, launched an offensive in the Zuurveld under the command of a Scottish officer of noble birth, Colonel John Graham and the deputy landrosdt of the area, Andries Stockenstroom. The object was to “clear the Zuurveld” of the AmaXhosa. In 1812, the Colonial Office in Whitehall received a dispatch informing them that Graham had succeeded in his task by using “a proper degree of terror”.
The war of 1811-1812 was in fact a very nasty and bloody conflict, unlike the earlier skirmishes. Stockenstroom was killed and Graham was lucky to escape with his life. Before the action in which Stockenstroom died he and Graham were scouring the countryside and looking for a place where they could establish a military base. They came across an overgrown and abandoned Boer farm called the Rietfontein which seemed to be a most ideal spot, and the military base began to grow. The tree which they sat under is now marked by a plinth in High Street. Cuyler named it in Graham’s honour and called it Grahamstown.
Grahamstown had been established, and Graham moved to Cape Town; however the War of 1811 did nothing to relieve tensions. Ndlambe having been forced from the Zuurveld moved into Ngika’s territory. There his quarrel with his nephew grew more intense and came to a head at the Battle of Amalinde in 1818, outside Debe Nek near King William’s Town, Ngika’s forces were routed, and he withdrew to the Amathole Mountains, sustained only by his agreement with the Colonial Forces.
The Rarabe Xhosa had come to a crisis, they had just been expelled from the areas to the west of the Great Fish River, and a family squabble had turned very bloody indeed, something against their oldest traditions. Into this confusion stepped a most remarkable man, Makana, or as some called him, Nxele, the left-handed one.
Makana rallied the Xhosa behind him and prepared to attack Grahamstown which was correctly seen as the centre of colonial rule in the area. On April 22nd 1819 Makana and his forces attacked Grahamstown in what is today known as the Battle of Egazini, (Egazini meaning The Place of Blood in isiXhosa). Makana gathered his forces in full view of the British Garrison under the command of Colonel Tom Willshire, in the morning allowing them to prepare their defences. There are many stories about Egazini. One of the myths is that Makana told his men not to worry about the bullets, “as they would be turned into water”, a recurring theme in African anti-colonial struggle, as shown in the Maji-Maji revolt in German controlled Tanganyika in 1912. What Makana probably said was that he would wait for the rain that would dampen the gunpowder. When it was obvious that it would not rain he unleashed his forces on the garrison.
It was “a close run thing”. The garrison now had artillery and the amaXhosa had their first experience of grapeshot that ripped through their ranks. Grahamstown in those days had a small civilian population that lived about a mile from the military base which was known as Fort England. This too was attacked by a smaller force, but managed to hold on. Word came through from Fort England that the base was running low on gunpowder. Mrs Elizabeth Salt, the wife of a sergeant at the base, put a small barrel of powder in her bodice to give the impression that she was pregnant, and knowing that the Xhosa would never harm a woman or a child, walked through their ranks to Fort England.
Towards evening, the surviving Xhosa retreated back beyond the Great Fish, leaving thousands dead and wounded. Egazini, which many historians consider to be “the most significant battle in South Africa’s history”, was over. Makana surrendered to Willshire put instead of being treated like a prisoner of war he was sent to Robben Island, the first political prisoner to be incarcerated on that now famous place. He later drowned trying to escape, his body was never recovered.
The 1820 Settlers
Egazini was a severe shock to the colonial authorities. Although their losses had been light, the battle could have very easily been a humiliation. The Frontier was by no means secure and it would take much more resources which in the post Napoleonic War slump they were reluctant to commit.
The isiXhosa also learnt of the power and horror of artillery, they would rarely confront cannon again. From henceforth they would fight a guerrilla war using the bush that they knew so well for their advantage.
To try to secure the frontier the authorities in Whitehall decided on a scheme to settle people from across the British Isles in the Zuurveld. Cuyler was soon to rename the Zuurveld after his birthplace, Albany, the capital of the state of New York. The authorities felt that British Settlers would act as a buffer against the amaXhosa and the Cape, and at the same time relive the economic difficulties at home which was resulting in incidences such as Peterloo.
The prospective settlers were not told that they would be moving into disputed territory, an area prone to droughts, they were informed that countryside resembled English park land and in years of good rainfall that was true.
The 1820 Settlers began arriving almost a year after Egazini, the first massed settlement of English speaking people in Africa’s history.The 1820 settlers were unique in the history of English speaking settlement around the world, in that it was a government assisted emigration policy of as yet un-convicted persons from across the length and breadth of the British Isles. The emigrants were mostly craftsmen and skilled labourers although some members of the lumpenproleteriat and younger members of the landed gentry were among their ranks. Normally they would not have associated with each other, in the then distant and isolated Eastern Cape, they formed a society that broke down the barriers of their country of origin. This sense of community stood them in good stead when it became apparent that they had emigrated on a false promise.
They were advised to take up the agricultural profession, a skill that baffled most of the craftsmen. They knew that they had to sow their crops in spring but did not realise that the southern hemispheric spring was opposite to that of the northern hemisphere. They were unprepared for the unpredictable rainfall patterns of the Eastern Cape, they arrived at the end of a good rainy season when everything was verdant, only to have to deal with the onset of a drought, and to have to deal with rust in their wheat and other pests that devastated those crops that actually sprouted. The first intimation that they had that the land in which they had settled was not the peaceable place they had been told about was the instruction that it would be unwise for them to go ploughing without their firearms. Many of them gave up the unequal struggle of trying to make a living on their 100 acres of drought stricken land and moved to Grahamstown which became the biggest town in the Cape after Cape Town. In Grahamstown they applied their former crafts and professions.
However the 1820 settlers introduced a new dynamic into the Southern African scene that went beyond their agricultural struggles. The imperious Governor of the Cape at that time, Lord Charles Somerset, the second son of the Duke of Beaufort, was astonished when one of the settlers, the Scottish poet Thomas Pringle, informed him that although he was not as well born as the noble lord, he, Pringle, did have rights and he was going to exercise them. It was possibly the first time that the concept had been so articulated. Pringle went on to establish the first newspaper in South Africa.
Not long after their arrival the Settlers started agitating for parliamentary representation, another unforeseen consequence of the scheme. The first newspaper in Grahamstown, The Grahamstown Journal was first published in 1831. Schools would follow, and formal education begun.
The other change brought about by the Settlers was their attitude to cattle. All other groups viewed cattle with an almost religious fervour. The British settlers viewed cattle as simply another commodity to be bought or sold. After their failure at crops, the settlers began to look at the native sheep with increased interest. In the 1840s Richard Daniell imported merino sheep. The area was ideal for sheep and the economy of the entire Cape was transformed as wool exports began to grow. The introduction of Angora Goats started the mohair industry which continues to this day. The fledgling town of Port Elizabeth, which had been founded to accommodate the arrival of the settlers, suddenly found itself to be an increasingly important export harbour, and soon overtook Cape Town as the busiest port in South Africa. The Cape had always been a drain on the resources of the Governing Authority, less than twenty years after the arrival of the 1820 Settlers it was paying for itself.
During this time Grahamstown began to take form. The town was laid out from the wall of the first structure in town, the yellow house which still stands in high street. Before long a second street was needed and because it was new the second oldest street in town is still known as “New Street”
Amongst the Settlers were a group of remarkable Methodist priests, among them The Reverends William Shaw and John Ayliff who tended to the spiritual needs of the settlers. As a result the Albany area became a methodist stronghold and the place where the Methodist missionary endeavour in Southern Africa was launched. The first place of worship, the first Wesleyan Chapel, was erected in what is now Chapel Street in 1822, where the remains are preserved as a ruin. The first Anglican Church, St Georges Church was built on Church Square in 1824. Over the next 130 years the modest little box like church was enlarged and expanded to become the current Cathedral of St Michaels and St George. The first public buildings, the court and the gaol were erected at about the same time.
The War of Hintsa
In 1834 the relative quietness that had prevailed since Egazini was interrupted when the amaXhosa, led by Ngika’s son, Jongusobomvu Maqoma invaded the colony. To the settlers this was an “unprovoked eruption”; in fact the amaXhosa grievances were huge. Confusion reigned in the district and there was a very real fear that Grahamstown would be overrun. The settlers, who had no experience of this sort of thing, hastily formed themselves into a militia to defend the town. A resident, Thomas Stubbs in his reminisces recalled how he looked at the militia trying to drill and felt a distinct foreboding. His neighbour, a lady who stood watching the same scene turned to Stubbs and said, “Oh! They are a lot of fools, come in and have some grog.” This is an attitude that has seen the residents of the town through some interesting times. The Boer farmers with more experience simply abandoned their farms and moved their families and chattel into the interior and formed Commandos.
In early 1835 a military officer, lieutenant-colonel Harry Smith rode into the town to take control of the armed forces. He had set out from Cape Town, 1000 kilometres to the west five days earlier, a most remarkable ride over some very difficult terrain. His first reaction on arriving in town was to suppress a guffaw at the attempts of the militia. With remarkable speed, and without even attempting to rest after his epic ride, he reorganised the military and invaded the Xhosa territory as far as the Mbashe River, over 250 kms in the North Eath. There the titular King of the amaXhosa, Hintsa, who had real authority over the amaGcaleka people but could only advise the other groups, was captured, even though he and his people had stayed out of the fray. On the 12th of February 1835 he was shot under suspicious circumstances, a move that had the effect of uniting the amaXhosa against the colonists.
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