Rivers epitomise the connection between social and environmental justice. Recording the story of the Kowie River involves acknowledging the legacy and continuation of deep injustice: the violent conquest of the indigenous population whose descendants continue to live in poverty and deprivation, on the one hand, and the silting and pollution of a river and the destruction of a wetland, on the other.

‘Genocide’ and ‘ecocide’ may seem melodramatic terms to describe these processes. However, the experience of many indigenous people around the world testifies to the strong link between genocide and colonialism. This involves more than the expansion of territory. In the South African case, the burning of crops that were about to be harvested and the destruction of the subsistence base of Xhosa society in the 1811–12 clearance of the Zuurveld do fit into Damian Short's description of ‘ecologically induced genocide’. So too would the way in which this scorched earth policy was applied regularly by the British colonisers to defeat Xhosa guerrilla forms of resistance. As Martin Legassick writes, ‘The attack on the roots of the Xhosa economy became a feature of all subsequent frontier wars.’ It was even suggested on one occasion that destroying crops should involve targeting the people responsible for cultivation – Xhosa women. For example, ‘in November 1851 the Colonial Secretary Lord Grey proposed that all Xhosa women should be rounded up and sent to the Cape as prisoners’. The link between genocide and ecocide, in the sense of ‘destroying ecological cycles’, is evident in this colonial strategy. Ecocide is also clear in the environmental damage involved in both the harbour and marina initiatives at Port Alfred.

There are many continuities over the 150 years separating the two major assaults on the integrity of the Kowie River: the harbour and the marina. One feature is the reality of continued injustice in the dispossession of the majority of the population. Running through the Zuurveld, the Kowie River was at the centre of this process. During the hundred years of the frontier wars the Xhosa people were dispossessed of their land and livelihoods, defeated and absorbed into the colonial economy as a source of cheap labour.