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An interesting group of 8 antique engravings on two pages, published in The Graphic magazine of April 27, 1878 and entitled as follows:
"The Kaffir War - Sketches in Cape Colony, The Transvaal, and on the Zulu Border"
Scenes include the Port Elizabeth Market, Unshipping at Algoa Bay, as well as Zulu Border homes and families
Good condition - see scans. Related and unrelated text to the reverse . Page size 16 x 11 inches
Note: International mailing in a tube is expensive ($18). The quoted international rate assumes the pages are lightly folded and mailed in a reinforced envelope
Ninth war (1877–1879)[edit]
Background[edit]
The ninth and final frontier war – also known as the "Fengu-Gcaleka War" or "Ngcayechibi's War", the latter being the name of the headman at whose feast the initial bar fight occurred – involved several competing powers: the Cape Colony Government and its Fengu allies, the British Empire, and the Xhosa armies (Gcaleka and Ngqika). The Cape Colony addressed local needs through their own devices, creating a period of peace and prosperity, and achieved partial independence from Britain with "Responsible Government"; it had relatively little interest in territorial expansion. The frontier was policed lightly using small, highly mobile, mounted mixed-race commandos that were recruited locally from Boer, Fengu, Khoi and settler frontier peoples. The multi-racial franchise, and legal recognition for indigenous systems of land tenure, had also gone some way to easing frontier tensions. Any further intrusion of the British government in Cape affairs to disrupt this state was thought unnecessary and ill-advised.
The British Government sought to increase control in southern Africa by uniting all the states of the region into a Confederation under the overall rule of the British Empire, the same policy that was successfully applied to Canada. This Confederation scheme required that the remaining independent Black States be annexed; a frontier war was seen as an ideal opportunity for such a conquest. Both the Cape Colony and Xhosa shared the view that actions to achieve such a scheme at that time would create instability.
The integration of the Black African population of the frontier into the life patterns and practices of the Cape Colony had developed unevenly. The Fengu had rapidly adapted to and accepted the changes coming to southern Africa by taking to urban trade. The Gcaleka Xhosa resided predominately in the independent Gcaleka land to the east and had suffered greatly from the effects of war, alcoholism and Nongqawuse's cattle killing. They bitterly resented the material success of the Fengu, although some Gcaleka lived within the Cape's borders.
A series of devastating droughts across the Transkei threatened the relative peace which had prevailed for the previous few decades. In the memorable summary of the historian De Kiewiet: "In South Africa, the heat of drought easily becomes the fever of war."[29] The drought had started in 1875 in Gcalekaland and had spread to other parts of the Transkei and Basutoland, as well as to the Cape Colony controlled Ciskei. By 1877, it had become the most severe drought ever recorded.[30] In 1877, political tensions among Xhosa e began to emerge, particularly between the Mfengu, the Thembu and the Gcaleka.[31][32][33]A wedding celebration in September 1877 was the scene of a bar fight when the tensions emerged after Gcaleka harassed the Fengu in attendance. Later in the same day, Gcaleka attacked a Cape Colony police outpost, which was manned predominantly by a Fengu ethnic police force.
Outbreak[edit]
In September 1877 the Cape Colony government rejected the second attempt to implement the Confederation scheme, this time put forth by Governor Henry Bartle Frere. The attack by the Gcaleka on the predominantly Fengu ethnic police force at a Cape Colony police outpost was thought by the Cape Colony government as tribal violence best left for local police management. Frere used the incident as a pretext for launching an invasion of the independent neighbouring state of Gcalekaland. Sarhili, the paramount-chief of Gcalekaland, was summoned by Frere, but declined the invitation in fear of arrest and coercion. Frere wrote to him to declare him deposed and at war.[34] Frere contacted radical settler groups who desired further intervention on the Cape frontier, and did not quell rumours of an impending Xhosa invasion.
The Cape Colony's War[edit]
Chief Sarhili faced intense pressure from belligerent factions within his own government and mobilised his armies for their movement to the frontier. The Cape Government reiterated its insistence that the matter was best left to local resolution and did not constitute an international war for imperial military intervention. High-pressure negotiations by Cape Prime Minister John Charles Molteno extracted a promise from Britain that imperial troops would stay put and on no account cross the frontier. Gcaleka forces of 8000 attacked a Cape police outpost near the frontier at Ibeka; a fierce shoot-out followed but the Gcaleka forces were dispersed. Soon, several other outposts and stations along the frontier were coming under attack. The Cape Government now had to use all available diplomatic leverage it had to prevent British imperial forces from crossing the frontier.
The Cape's local paramilitaries (mounted commandos of mainly Boer, Thembu and Fengu origin) were deployed by Molteno under the leadership of Commander Veldman Bikitsha and Chief Magistrate Charles Griffith. The commandos swiftly engaged and defeated an army of Gcaleka gunmen. They then crossed the frontier and pushed into Gcalekaland. Dividing into three lightly equipped, fast-moving columns, the commandos devastated the Gcaleka armies, which dispersed and fled eastwards. The Cape units tracked the fleeing remnants right through Gcalekaland, stopping only when they reached neutral Bomvanaland on the far side. The war was over in three weeks. Sarhili had also recently applied for peace. With few incentives to conquer or occupy the land, and with the violence subsiding, the Cape Government recalled their commandos, who returned home and disbanded.[35]
Bartle Frere's War Council[edit]
During the Cape's lightning quick campaign, Governor Frere had established a "war-council" at nearby King William's Town to direct the war against Gcalekaland. Frere and his Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Cunynghame were to represent the British Empire on this council, while two of Molteno's ministers, John X. Merriman and Charles Brownlee, were appointed to represent local Cape interests.
The council was torn apart by argument from the beginning, as Frere refused Gcaleka appeals and worked towards full British occupation of Gcalekaland for white settlement and his future confederation. Frere also increasingly insisted on having complete imperial control of the war.
The Cape government on the other hand was reluctant to see its local Commandos brought under British imperial command, in what it considered to be essentially a local conflict, not an imperial war of conquest. The Cape had only recently attained local democracy and was extremely suspicious of Imperial infringements upon it. It also considered the slow-moving British troop columns to be absurdly unsuitable for frontier warfare – immobile, ineffective and vastly more expensive than local Cape forces. This last point of contention was chiefly exacerbated by Frere's insistence that the Cape's government pay for his imported British imperial troops, as well as its own local forces. The Cape Government wanted to fund and use only its own local forces. It did not desire British troops to operate in the Cape Colony in the first place, and especially objected to being forced to fund them.
Merriman, who Molteno had appointed to oversee the Cape's war effort, initially worked hard to cooperate with Frere, but increasingly came to share Molteno's views on the ineptitude and injustice of British imperial policy in southern Africa.[36][37]
The Imperial War[edit]
The second stage of the war began when Frere ordered the disarmament of all Black peoples of the Cape. There was confusion and uproar from the Cape's many black soldiers and a furious protest from the Cape Government. Militia deserted and protests erupted, in the face of which Cunynghame panicked and overreacted by unilaterally deploying the imperial troops to thinly encircle the whole of British Kaffraria. Faced with growing discontent, the Cape demanded that the British Government fire Cunynghame, abandon its racial disarmament policy, and allow the Cape to deploy its (predominantly black) paramilitaries to establish order. However Frere refused and brought in Imperial troops to enforce the disarmament, and then to invade Gcalekaland once again. This time to annex it and occupy it for the purpose of white settlement.
The British initially attempted to repeat the successful strategy of the Cape's previous campaign. After similarly dividing into three columns, the slow-moving foreign troops soon became disorientated and exhausted. They were unable to engage or even to find the dispersed Gcaleka, who were swiftly moving and regrouping. As the British scoured Gcalekaland, the regrouped Gcaleka army easily slipped past them and crossed the border into the Cape Colony. Here they were joined by Sandile who led his Ngqika nation into rebellion.
The combined Xhosa armies laid waste to the frontier region. Fengu towns and other frontier settlements were sacked, supply lines were cut and outposts were evacuated as the British fell back.
Up until now, Molteno had been heavily engaged in a high-level diplomatic battle with Britain to preserve the Cape Colony's constitutional independence. However, with the Cape's frontier collapsing in chaos, he now made for the frontier in person, where he confronted the British Governor with a heavy condemnation for bad intentions and incompetence. He demanded the free command of the Cape's indigenous forces to operate and contain the violence, making it clear that he was content to sacrifice his job rather than tolerate further British interference.
Frere's next move was to appeal to the authority of the British Colonial Office to formally dissolve the elected Cape government, which was now stubbornly standing in the way of the British Empire, and assume direct imperial control over the entire country.[38]
Increasing numbers of Xhosa armies now poured across the frontier. Towns and farms throughout the region were now burning, and the remaining frontier forts filled with refugees fleeing the invasion. British troops remained thin on the ground as much of them still remained idle in Gcalekaland, where they had been sent for the purpose of occupation.
However Frere was lucky in that he still had access to the frontier militia and Fengu regiments of the Cape Government he had just overthrown. These forces, again under their legendary commander Veldman Bikitsha, managed to engage and finally defeat the Gcaleka on 13 January (near Nyumaxa).
The imperial troops assisted, but were tired, short of rations and unable to follow up on the victory. A subsequent attack was barely repelled on 7 February (Battle of Kentani or "Centane") with considerable more help from the Fengu and the local Frontier Light Horse militia.[39]
The exhausted Gcaleka finally pulled out from the conflict, but Sandile's rebel Ngqika armies fought on. The rebels eluded the Imperial troops once again and moved into the Amatola mountain range, beginning a final stage of guerrilla warfare. Cunynghame was meanwhile removed from his authority by London, and his replacement, Lieutenant General Thesiger took over command.[40][41]
The Guerrilla War[edit]
The Amatola Range had served as a mountain stronghold for Xhosa insurgents many times before, with its vast, dark, creeper-entwined forests.
In March 1878, British troops entered the mountain ranges to pursue Sandile's rebels but were hopelessly outmaneuvered. They were eluded, led astray and ambushed time and time again, as the rebels easily slipped past their slow-moving troop columns. Flag signalling, path systems and other techniques were tried, but to no effect. The British were very inexperienced with the environment and plagued by mismanagement, stretched supply lines, sickness and other hardships. Meanwhile, the local Cape commandos (Boer and Fengu) held back, reluctant to get involved.
Finally the British adopted the strategy which the locals had been recommending from the beginning. This involved dividing the vast territory into 11 military provinces and stationing a mounted garrison in each. If a rebel regiment was encountered it was chased, until it entered the next military province, where the next garrison (fresh and close to supplies) would take over the pursuit. The valley exits from the range were then fortified. Under this uninterrupted pressure the rebel forces quickly splintered and began to surrender, Sandile himself fled down into the valley of the Fish River where he was intercepted by a Fengu commando. In the final shoot out he was accidentally killed by a stray bullet. The surviving rebels were granted an amnesty.[42]
Conclusion[edit]
The war had lasted a year and was a final blow for the last independent Xhosa state, Gcalekaland, which was now administered as a British territory.[43]
Initially, however, the conflict had shown no signs of being anything more than a petty intertribal quarrel. Neither the Cape Government nor the Xhosa had desired a war. Had Bartle Frere not moved to the frontier and drawn the conflict into Britain's greater Confederation scheme, it would almost definitely have remained as only a brief patch of localised ethnic strife.[43]
Once the broader conflict had been ignited, however, the result was the annexation of all remaining Xhosa territory under British control. The war also led Britain to overthrow the Cape Colony's elected government.[44]