Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- List of sources
- Terminology
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART ONE The incorporation of the Khoesan into the colonial body politic
- Chapter 1 From the earlier history
- Chapter 2 In the aftermath of Ordinance
- Chapter 3 The beginnings of the Kat River Settlement
- Chapter 4 The politics of vagrancy
- Chapter 5 Stoffels in London
- Chapter 6 The Interbellum
- Chapter 7 The War of the Axe
- Chapter 8 The business of life
- Chapter 9 The Kat River Settlement under strain
- Chapter 10 Madolo and his people
- Chapter 11 Freeman and the church
- PART TWO Colonial crisis and the establishment of a new order, 1848–1853
- PART THREE Post-rebellion politics
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - From the earlier history
from PART ONE - The incorporation of the Khoesan into the colonial body politic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- List of sources
- Terminology
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART ONE The incorporation of the Khoesan into the colonial body politic
- Chapter 1 From the earlier history
- Chapter 2 In the aftermath of Ordinance
- Chapter 3 The beginnings of the Kat River Settlement
- Chapter 4 The politics of vagrancy
- Chapter 5 Stoffels in London
- Chapter 6 The Interbellum
- Chapter 7 The War of the Axe
- Chapter 8 The business of life
- Chapter 9 The Kat River Settlement under strain
- Chapter 10 Madolo and his people
- Chapter 11 Freeman and the church
- PART TWO Colonial crisis and the establishment of a new order, 1848–1853
- PART THREE Post-rebellion politics
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Document 1: Koerikei and Van der Merwe
Robert Gordon was a Dutch soldier who eventually became commander of the garrison at the Cape of Good Hope. He travelled extensively in the interior of South Africa, leaving behind a large number of diaries, a folio of paintings, of landscapes, natural history and ethnography, which are unsurpassed, and also a set of maps of southern Africa which are of great interest. This extract comes from his journal, recording discussions with a frontier farmer in the Camdeboo, to the south of Graaff- Reinet, on 13 November 1777, referring to events rather further east.
Found everything at peace here with regard to the Bushmen. But further towards the west, it was said, they had stolen sheep from a certain De Villiers and had killed the herdsman. These so called Bushmen or Chinese have a famous chief called Koerikei, or ‘Bullet-dodger’. This Koerikei, while standing out of range on the top of a cliff, shouted at the Veldwagtmeester Van der Merwe after an action which he had commanded, so he told me: ‘What are you doing in my territory? You take all the places where the eland and other game are. Why did you not stay where the sun goes down, where you were at first?’ Van der Merwe asked why he did not live in peace as before, and why he did not go hunting with them and live with them (he had been living with the farmers) and whether he did not have enough country as it was? He replied that he did not want to leave the country of his birth and that he would kill their herdsmen, and that he would chase all of them away, saying, as he went further away that it would be seen who would win.
Document 2: Van der Kemp
This encounter between a Khoesan man called Couragie and Dr J.T. van der Kemp,3 the head of the first group of London Missionary Society agents at the Cape, occurred in 1799 near the Bushmans River, during the early days of missionary contact with the Eastern Cape Khoi. It was recorded in Van der Kemp's diary, and then published in an LMS periodical.
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- Information
- These Oppressions Won't CeaseAn Anthology of the Political Thought of the Cape Khoesan, 1777–1879, pp. 3 - 5Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2017