During the last days of 1850, war broke out again between the amaXhosa and the Cape Colony. In previous wars, the Khoekhoe had almost all sided with the colonial forces, despite attempts by the Xhosa chiefs to woo them, and despite the erroneous belief on the part of some colonial officials that the Khoekhoe could not be trusted. But in what came to be known as Mlangeni's War, after the Xhosa war prophet who did much to bring about the war, a substantial proportion of the colonial Khoekhoe fought on the side of the amaXhosa, so that what became known as the Kat River Rebellion developed alongside Xhosa attempts to dislodge the colonists from what they saw as their land.

To some extent the label ‘Kat River Rebellion’ was inappropriate, on two counts. Many of those who participated in the rebellion came from outside the Kat River Settlement, and a majority of the inhabitants of the valley remained loyal to the British. Nevertheless, it was within the valley, and among its inhabitants, that the most serious debates took place. Here it became a civil war. As James Read wrote: ‘A rebellion is quite different from foreign warfare. In the latter you know your enemy. Not so in the former, in which there are currents and counter-currents—sympathies and counter sympathies. Distrust is the only general feeling, and that enervates every power and foils every attempt. I would rather be in twenty wars than in one rebellion.’

In this atmosphere, though, the most essential values and opinions of the Eastern Cape Khoekhoe came to the surface.

Document 59: Hermanus Matroos's revolt

The first major incidents in the rebellion were instigated by Hermanus Matroos, or Ngxukumeshe, the son of a runaway slave and his Xhosa wife, who had been building up what amounted to a Xhosa chieftainship in the Blinkwater valley, on the basis of the work he had done as interpreter for the British over many years. By late 1850, he had become disillusioned with the British, essentially because they did not remunerate him for his work during the War of the Axe.