Document 49: On vagrancy and the representative assembly: a petition to the Aborigines

Protection Society, London

Kat River, 8 March 1849

Gentlemen

We heard long ago that your humane society exists but little thought we should be soon necessitated to avail ourselves of its protective shield against the unsatiable thirst of Colonial oppression.

The writings of several English travellers, the Commissioners of Inquiry, the Minutes of the parliamentary Committee which sat in 1836, the remarks of the Rev. Dr. Philip, and the statements of Missionaries, will have shewn you the state to which our forefathers were reduced by the oppression of the Whites; and that, though nominally free, we are in a worse state than the poor slaves who were bought with money; and that in the land of our fathers, an area of country larger than England, we have scarcely an inch of land on which to set our feet, the Kat River and the sterile spots at the Missionary Institutions excepted.

You are aware of what efforts were used to obtain our civil emancipation and to get the Charter of our liberties, the 50th Ordinance, passed. For a long time (since 1834 at least) the spirit of oppression seemed to have been silent; but lately it appears to have received new impulses and the Colonists are proceeding with accelerated speed and fixed determination, and are bent on bringing the Coloured population under the influence of vagrant acts. The question is now before the Legislative Council, in which we have no voice whatever, and there is every likelihood of its passing. We also see in the Papers that the Colonists have resolved to send an accredited Agent home, Dr. Atherstone of Graham's Town to support the prayer of the Colonists to have a Representative Assembly for this Colony.

The object of our writing you is to request you to pray the Colonial Minister to disallow the passing of a Vagrant Law, as well as granting a Representative Assembly for this Colony, both of which will be used as engines of oppression against the Coloured races of this Colony.

This we can prove by recent speeches and writings of the Colonists.