Just Imagine

JUST IMAGINE The story of Mike Msizi, the Tsitsikamma Mfengu and the Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm

JOH N YOUN G

Introduction

n

taba Kop is a wonderful place. From ntaba Kop the Kareedouw mountains frame the horizon to the north. to the south is the great blue of the Indian Ocean and all around is bright green, the land fertile, well-watered and welcoming.

The msizi family lived in a collection of houses on this grassy hill in the tsitsikamma district of the eastern Cape, and it was the memories of strong winds passing over ntaba Kop that inspired michael mcebisi msizi to dream of a wind farm on the land of the tsitsikamma mfengu. ntaba is a Xhosa word meaning ‘mountain’ and Kop is afrikaans for ‘head’, so there is no neat english translation. ntaba Kop is certainly no peak – it is more of a raised part of the landscape or a ridge – but the phrase neatly illustrates how this community of Xhosa-speakers of the tsitsikamma to which the msizi family belonged and the farmers of the area who have afrikaans as their home language have made their mark on the landscape, and on one another.

The tsitsikamma mfengu gained the right to live where they do about 180 years ago through an interesting episode in history. Then, in the late 1970s they were dispossessed of their birthright through inhuman forced removals which came as a cruel shock to hundreds of families. The view from ntaba Kop, captured so evocatively by stefanie de Beer on the title page, makes clear why the community never gave up the fight to return to their land.

This book tells three stories. The life and career of michael mcebisi msizi is the central narrative. It tells the history of the people collectively described as the ‘mfengu’, and in particular the story of how the

6 // Just ImagIne

tsitsikamma mfengu came to live on land so deep inside what was then the Cape Colony. Finally, the book focuses on a modern-day venture encompassing renewable energy, economic development and community participation, the tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm.

From the time of his birth in 1962, mike msizi’s life and career followed a varied and action-packed trajectory: from the Wittekleibosch farmland where ntaba Kop is located to Kareedouw in the Langkloof over the mountain, Keiskammahoek in the Ciskei homeland and Port elizabeth, the city where his strong convictions and political activism brought him into conflict with the security police of the apartheid state. and then into exile in Lusaka and Copenhagen for saCtu before the joyous return to south africa and a multitude of duties for the anC, COsatu, sanCO and the city of Port elizabeth. The wind farm project brought him back to the land of his forefathers in the tsitsikamma.

Part One gives the tsitsikamma mfengu history. Part two describes this long journey by mike or mcebisi, if one is using his given Xhosa name. The wind farm dream was well on the way to becoming reality when mike tragically died in a car accident in 2012.

He is survived by his widow Florence, who followed him into exile and married him in Lusaka, their son Litha, and two children (Petrus and Pauline) by Liisa taskinen, whom he met in Finland while he was working in scandinavia. The young relative whom mike and Florence brought up as their son, mandla Kolwapi, is working on the wind farm.

The account of how the tsitsikamma mfengu were thrown off their land and regained it after long years of struggle is integrated

Š Stefanie de Beer Line of Sight - 2015

A remarkable partnership.

Tommy Garner and Mike Msizi brought extraordinary energy and commitment to the Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm project.

into mike’s story here because these things happened in mike’s lifetime; indeed, they were important events in shaping him as a man and as a fighter for justice.

The third and final part of the book focuses on the tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm. This again is part of the mike msizi story because he was, with his friend mark scheepers, the reason that the wind farm came into existence. mike and mark started a company called Watt energy in 2008.

With the support of first Judy savage and then the Danish embassy, the initial idea of a small wind farm near Port elizabeth soon grew much more ambitious. They set about testing for wind potential and meeting with the landowners, the tsitsikamma mfengu. With credible testing and the support of the landowners, they then persuaded exxaro, a large mining company, to come on board to develop a 95 megawatt wind farm, a huge enterprise.

The vision of mike and mark was met by the practical far-sightedness of tommy garner, who was then working in exxaro’s energy growth unit. a former miner himself, tommy had come to see that harnessing the sustainable forces of nature for energy generation made sense, both ethically and from a business point of view.

In march 2012 exxaro teamed up with Indian power company, tata Power, to create a company focused entirely on clean energy, Cennergi. Cennergi is now the lead partner in the tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm joint venture.

Tsitsikamma Mfengu although the story of the tsitsikamma mfengu is set out in the chapters that follow, a brief outline is given here to provide a framework for the narrative that follows.

In the distant past, four kingdoms existed in what we today know as the eastern Cape: Xhosa, Thembu, mpondo and mpondomise.

Before the time of shaka, king of the Zulus in the north-east, they

8 // Just ImagIne

were joined by the Bomvana and the Xesibe/Qwathi. During the wars in the time of shaka other groups moved in, including the Bhaca, ngwane, Hlubi, Bhele and Zizi. These groups dispersed, many people became refugees, and the collective term ‘mfengu’ was used to describe them. I am indebted to Jeff Peires for this insight.

Jeff notes that ‘europeans began to call all africans originating in KwaZulu-natal “mfengu” whether they were refugees or not’.1 all of the people described above speak the Xhosa language. author noël mostert has usefully linked some prominent south africans to the main groups: the mpondo (Winnie mandela), the Thembu (nelson mandela) and the Xhosa (steve Biko).2 In the same spirit, prominent mfengu personalities of the 20th century include govan and Thabo mbeki, and archbishop Desmond tutu.

The decision of the mfengu to side with the British in conflicts with Xhosa and Xhosa-speaking formations on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony will be given a full airing in the pages that follow: suffice to say at this point that the so-called ‘loyal Fingoes’ were given land as a result. In may 1835 nearly 20 000 mfengu moved to the Cape Colony and in 1837 a much smaller group settled in the tsitsikamma. a moravian mission was established shortly afterwards, at what became Clarkson, about 40km west of Humansdorp. The tsitsikamma mfengu were forcibly removed from their land in 1977 by the apartheid government. Bitter exile in the Ciskei finally came to an end in the 1990s.

Historically there were four mfengu settlements in the tsitsikamma, from west to east: Palmietrivier (also known as nuwe Plaas), Doriskraal, snyklip and Wittekleibosch. elected trustees from each of these areas serve on the tsitsikamma Development trust (tDt) to represent the interests of the tsitsikamma mfengu.

There is a new settlement called ekuphumleni (or guava Juice).

The wind turbines are being erected at Wittekleibosch.

The land saga of the mfengu is not over. several farms and forestry plantations are subject to land claims.

to Plettenberg Bay

Kro mm eR ive r

kareedouw

storms river

kruisfontein

n2 t

cLarkson

ms or St

to humansdorp

n2

eersterivier

e rst Ee

r Po

h

et

ab

iz El

jeffery’s bay wittekleibosch

r vie sri e i as Kl

ma am k i its Ts

st francis bay

Kli pd rift

oyster bay

Ind

Oc Ian

thyspunt cape st francis

Style choices Because I have great respect for the Xhosa language I decided not to try to squeeze Xhosa language conventions into the English that I am using to tell the story. to use only some prefixes and not others does not seem logical to me. I am told that ‘amaXhosa’ ought not to be used as an adjective and that ‘umXhosa’ refers to a single person: because the Xhosa language’s grammar system of noun classes and prefixes is wholly different to English, there are hundreds of other things like this of which I am totally ignorant. For that reason I use English language constructions in the book, for example Mfengu and Xhosa.

Mike Mcebisi Msizi appears for the most part in the book as ‘Mike’ simply because most of the people I spoke to used ‘Mike’. I know many people knew him as Mcebisi – and in denmark he was ‘Patrick’ – but I have gone for ‘Mike’. Where Msizi family members are mentioned, they are referred to the first time in full (nompumezo Msizi) and thereafter by their first name. other characters in the book are similarly introduced in full, but then the surname is generally used after that.

Just imagine Mike Msizi had vision and he was passionate about his ideas. In describing Mike’s vision of a solar-panel facility he thought could

be built on the slopes of the mountain between Kareedouw and the tsitsikamma, Mike’s brother Mandla conjured up a vision of his older brother leaning forward, engrossed by what he could see in the future. “Just imagine!” I could see him saying. “Just imagine!”

In the weeks and months of interviews that followed my meeting with Mandla at his offices in Zwide, I talked with people in cape town, Johannesburg, Midrand, Kareedouw, Wittekleibosch, uitenhage and elsewhere in Port Elizabeth. Every time I shared that image of Mike persuading Mandla of the great value of his latest scheme, those who knew Mike would light up in recognition. “That was Mike,” they would say. “Just imagine!” That is how the title of the book came about.

The idea that a r2,9-billion project can be brought into existence – actually created – from a man remembering the wind blowing through his grandfather’s house and linking that to the wind turbines that he saw in denmark when he was in exile, and then taking actions sufficient to bring this reality about … it really is quite incredible. Just imagine!

Mike’s journey was a remarkable one and it is a story I feel privileged to tell.

The Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm is on the Wittekleibosch settlement west of Humansdorp, just beyond the Kromme River.

John Young Klaarstroom, November 2015.

I n t ro d u c t I o n // 9

Ea

n

Chapter 1

Danger from the East

II

n the last days of august 1828 an army comprising British colonial officers, white settlers from the eastern parts of the Cape Colony, Khoikhoi riflemen and combatants from the gcaleka Xhosa, the mpondo and the Thembu joined forces to rout the ngwane at the Battle of mbolompo. each of these allied forces had reason to suspect the other members of the alliance, and each had at some time been in conflict with another. But they came together to tackle the common enemy which had already clashed with some Thembu and was suspected of being part of the army of shaka, the feared Zulu leader.

The prospect of a Zulu invasion was a terrifying prospect for white colonists and black kingdoms alike. The creation of a unified Zulu kingdom between the tugela and Pongola rivers was one of the most significant events that lead to what noël mostert calls the ‘bloody upheaval’ of the mfecane, or ‘The Crushing’, which began in the last years of the 18th century and affected the whole of southern africa. mostert writes, “nothing else in southern african history can match these convulsions in revolutionary scope.”1 Raids and counter-raids became routine, pillage and plunder was common, whole populations were uprooted and vast areas of land left abandoned. The ndebele people in modern-day Zimbabwe and the state of Lesotho are just two of the geo-political consequences of the mfecane that we can still see today. Large numbers of people lost their

12 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

homes and their lands. some of these wanderers – including some of the ngwane who faced the coalition at mbolompo of British, settler, Thembu, mpondo and gcaleka forces – came to be known by the collective term ‘mfengu’ and would eventually settle on a coastal strip of land south of the tsitsikamma mountains, deep inside the Cape Colony. For those who travelled from north of the tugela River, they were now more than 1 000 kilometres away from their originals homes. to get to that point, and to earn the right to be called British citizens, the mfengu allied themselves with the British Crown. unfortunately for the mfengu, their decision came at precisely the time when relations on the frontier changed very dramatically for the worse. This fateful decision came to be seen as a great betrayal and was the cause of tension between mfengu and Xhosa for many years, all the way into the 20th century.

For many years, south africans were fed a very simplistic version of frontier history, which suited the apartheid government very well. In this telling, the frontier was a solid line, with black people on one side and whites on the other, with barely any contact between them. Wars only started because of ‘cattle-raids’, mostly initiated by unruly ‘natives’.

In fact, the frontier was anything but rigid. The line moved constantly, relations between black and white, and black and brown, and brown and white, and black and black were highly complex.

The Battle of mbolompo is just one example of that reality.

John Roskilly

The Ngwane and their leader Matiwane were fleeing from Shaka, having moved westward from their northern Natal homeland before crossing south over the Orange River and troubling the Thembu.

The mfecane caused huge consternation in the Cape Colony.

A British settler wrote anxiously in 1823 about a ‘warlike’ tribe on the move ‘with an intent to penetrate towards us’.2 For the black kingdoms, calling for help meant allowing colonial forces to march many miles east of a frontier they had been contesting for more than a century. It was a case of sworn enemies teaming up against a dangerous intruder from the east. There was no racial solidarity.

Mbolmpo lies just north-west of modern-day Mthatha at the foot of a wooded escarpment and along the part of the Mthatha River where it runs west to east. The site lies at the intersection of the lands of the Mpondomise, the Mpondo and the Thembu. The Great Place of the Thembu king, Mqhekzweni, is not far away over the Mbashe River.

An army was dispatched under the leadership of the Commandant of the Frontier, Henry Somerset. When a scouting party came across a group of Ngwane they attacked it successfully, thinking that a blow had been struck against a Zulu impi. The irate Ngwane then struck back at the Thembu, recouping cattle they had lost to the colonial party.

The Thembu quickly informed Somerset that the ‘Zulus’ had returned.3 The battle itself did not last long. At daybreak the Ngwane were surprised when Somerset’s troops attacked ‘with great guns, and small guns, and sabres and assegaais, and made such indiscriminate havoc before the savages … knew what had come upon them …’.4 Women, children and cattle were distributed among the Mpondo, Thembu and Gcaleka Xhosa. Matiwane fled back north across the Umzimkulu River.

Within a month, Shaka himself was dead. The man responsible, his half-brother Dingane, disposed of Matiwane soon afterwards.

So as far as the Xhosa-speaking kings and their colonial neighbours were concerned, that was the end of the military impact of the mfecane, but the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees would have a very long-lasting impact indeed.

Putting an end to instability on the eastern edge of Xhosaland did not bring peace to the region. The frontier with the Cape Colony continued to be a source of bloody conflict, notwithstanding the co-operation of Colony and Xhosa in 1828. Five frontier wars occurred before the Battle of Mbolompo; the ninth and final conflict followed 60 years later.

Within Xhosaland, tensions between the various groups continued to flare up, a situation exacerbated by the arrival of a large group of British settlers on the frontier in 1820. The access of Xhosa herdsmen to the excellent grazing of the Zuurveld was blocked, the frontier was closing.

A broad coalition of British, colonial and African forces surprised and defeated the Ngwane at the Battle of Mbolompo in 1828. The Ngwane were seen as invaders but were in fact trying to get away from the disruption caused by Shaka’s Zulu armies. The site is on the upper reaches of the Mthatha River at the foot of a steep escarpment which leads to the Ncembu Plateau. The modern-day Langeni sawmills can be seen to the left of the photograph.

Chapter 2

Twice betrayed As day broke, misty, and with occasional showers of cold rain, a living column one and a half miles in width and eight miles long began the slow earnest descent into the Kei river, led by Henry Somerset, who had been detailed to escort them into the colony. Behind him, seated in a tilted wagon with his family, was their self-declared shepherd, John Ayliff.

A long train of other tented wagons wound behind Ayliff’s. Then came some 17,000 Mfengu, and 22,000 cattle, as well as thousands of goats. The heavy mist that lay over the river at dawn swallowed each section as it entered the water, but as the sun rose the entire spectacle was revealed, the men driving the cattle, boys the goats, women and girls laden with household possessions, all feeling their way across the bed of the stream with long staves, and singing an improvised song, ‘Siya Emlungweni’, ‘We are going to the land of the right people’, reflecting their belief that they were about to re-establish their independence as it had existed in Natal before the upheavals of the mfecane.

– Noël MosTerT, FronTiErS. 1

Tt

he promises that sustained the mfengu as they set out on their journey would prove as reliable and longlasting as the mist that drifted over them and their precious cattle, many of them newly-acquired, on the morning of 9 may 1835.

Charles michell reported in his journal that the line of people stretched ‘as far as the eye could reach’, giving him ample time to

22 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

complete the engraving that records the event. as the mfengu caravan trekked westwards towards Peddie near the Fish River, governor D’urban announced that the new boundary for the Cape Colony would be the Kei River. D’urban declared this with great pomp and ceremony in the presence of Hintsa and his sons.2 every group that opposed the Cape Colony was to be driven over the Kei and forced into the territory of the gcaleka Xhosa. Only the

gqunukhwebe (near the coast) and the mfengu would be allowed between the fish and kei rivers, the new ‘Province of Queen adelaide’.

Quite apart from the huge expense to which D’urban was committing the imperial treasury – quite off his own bat – the territorial arrangement was a recipe for further conflict. The governor had been in the job for less than 18 months. a soldier in the Peninsular War, D’urban had been a colonial administrator in antigua and guyana in south america before his move to the Cape.

The War of Dispossession moved quickly to a fatal conclusion. On 12 may, two days after the governor had extended the territory of the Cape Colony and three days after the departure of the mfengu, the gcaleka king was killed. harry smith insisted that hintsa should lead a search party for cattle to be sent back to the Colony. at one point, hintsa spurred his horse and made a break for freedom. smith chased after hintsa and threw him from his mount. a settler by the name of george southey shot hintsa twice but the gcaleka chief stumbled into a river where he ‘several times’ shouted out the Xhosa word for ‘mercy’. southey was a fluent Xhosa-speaker but he shot him dead.3 The killing of hintsa has long been a controversial topic, not least because of attempts by the colonial authorities to cover up the fact that the shooting was done in cold blood and that relics of hintsa’s person and belongings were grabbed by colonial troops.

The verdict of Xhosa scholar Jeff Peires on the final act of the savage episode is damning. The king of Xhosa was dead ‘for trusting the honour of a British governor’. Peires expresses incredulity at the irony that it was D’urban who referred to hintsa as a ‘treacherous, ungrateful and cunning savage, whom no obligations could bind’.4 The war dragged on because the British could not penetrate or control the amathole mountains but the Xhosa combatants were exhausted. Peace was signed on 17 september 1835 but colonial hopes that white farmers could till the land between the fish and kei rivers were quickly dashed. Resident agents were inserted into Xhosa communities to replace chiefs but this did not work.

D’urban’s grand and crazy scheme did not survive even to Christmas. The ‘capital’ of king William’s Town lived on as an important town but the secretary of state for the Colonies, Lord glenelg, re-drew the colonial boundary again, this time on the keiskamma River, about 175km west of D’urban’s fantastical point. although the policies of D’urban and smith were quickly reversed, the damage that they and the colonial forces had inflicted on Xhosaland in the course of this War of Dispossession (sixth frontier War 1834-35) was on a grand scale. Relations between the mfengu and the tribes of Xhosaland were fractured beyond repair. in previous conflicts alliances could shift and relations could be repaired at a later stage when things calmed down. not this time. grievous damage had been done – Tshawe’s descendant murdered, thousands of cattle taken, vast tracts of land lost – and there was no remedy in sight. This is how things stood at the end of 1835, and things were set to get much worse.

Departure of the Fingoes. Charles Michell. The Cape Colony’s first Surveyor-General was an eyewitness to the great movement of the Mfengu over the Kei River.

They were promised land and freedom but they were betrayed.

Charles Michell drew detailed maps, planned roads and designed lighthouses and churches. Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town is named after him.

T h e T s i T s i k a m m a m f e n g u // 2 3

When the great body of mfengu travellers was almost within sight of Peddie, they stopped and took a collective oath at the site of a milkwood tree at Breakfast Vlei. With Reverend ayliff in attendance on 14 may 1835 the mfengu pledged: … to accept Christianity, obey the Queen and educate their children.5

Above A Loyal Fingo, 1851.

Thomas Baines. oPPoSITe Eastern Frontier of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. Charles Michell.

24 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

The location of Peddie is important because it shows the real motives of the colonial authorities in granting citizenship to the mfengu. ayliff and D’urban led them to believe that they would be free, that they could return to their lands in the north, that they could again be independent. Instead they were corralled into a border town and expected to keep the Xhosa at bay.

Whatever changes had been made to the colonial border, the Fish River had become a fixed point ever since Colonel John graham had cleared the hotly contested ‘Zuurveld’ in the war of 1811-1812.

This allowed for the fiction that the 1820 settlers were settling on unoccupied land. The Zuurveld, between the Bushman’s River and the Fish River, had good grass but Xhosa herds had grazed for many years on a seasonal basis in the gamtoos River Valley, a long way to the west. graham’s campaign has been remembered as a particularly brutal campaign – in that it created ‘open spaces’ for white settlers, it can be seen as a precursor to the forced removals of the apartheid era 150 years later. grahamstown got its name from the colonel. (Ben maclennan’s book on John graham’s time on the eastern frontier, A Proper Degree of Terror, is a superbly contextualised account of the first great defeat suffered by the Xhosa.)

With the Fish as the non-negotiable line, the area to the east and up to the next river, the Keiskamma, was vital to the colony’s defence.

This area of thick bush and relatively poor agricultural land is where the mfengu were settled. governor D’urban’s communication dated

3 may 1835 made it clear that he expected them to be a buffer, and added that this large group of black allies would ‘besides afford to the Colonists a supply of excellent hired servants’.6 When colonial officials spoke of land ‘unsuitable for european occupation’, what they really meant was that the land was bad for agriculture, and this is the land the newest (very unequal) citizens of the British empire received.7 so much for the dreams of independence restored on the banks of the tugela River!

The pledge at the milkwood tree naturally came to play a large part in the creation of the foundation myths of the colonial mfengu as a group, and a sense of their own identity, remembering that the mfengu were drawn from many strands of people dislocated by the mfecane.

In time, it formed the centrepiece of an annual event, which in itself sparked new controversy. The first official Fingo emancipation Day was held in 1908, prompting an immediate Xhosa response.

The Xhosa response was to hold their own day and the first ntsikana Remembrance Day was held in 1909 in King William’s town. ntsikana was an independently minded prophet who blended Christianity with Xhosa custom. (The last emancipation Day was held in 1978 when the government of the Bantustan ‘republic’ of Ciskei announced that it wanted to promote reconciliation.)

With their own traditional leaders (political and spiritual) absent, the mfengu were drawn into the ambit of missionary influence and into the colonial economy. Colin Bundy argues persuasively that far from being hapless victims, the mfengu coped really well: several commentators have remarked that the mfengu responded efficiently, even spectacularly, to the opportunities and incentives of the market economy.8 The wool trade was growing and the mfengu were quick to learn new agricultural techniques. There was trade in tobacco, firewood,

‘A Loyal Fingo’, © Iziko Museums of South Africa, William Fehr Collection, CA1, Thomas Baines, 1851.

Mfengu pledge

cattle, milk and grain. Bundy records that there was a great willingness to experiment and diversify among the ‘more enterprising’ Mfengu and Thembu and that the plough was not the only new technology or system applied in search of better returns.9 Bishop Key thought that because they were no longer afraid of the ‘jealousy of the chief or of the deadly weapon … the witchdoctor’, the Mfengu were free to experiment and accumulate wealth.10 In his biography of Thabo Mbeki, Mark Gevisser relates that the Mfengu came to be known by white traders as ‘the Jews of Kaffirland’ because they were ‘educated, aggressive, and unhampered by feudal restrictions imposed by traditional hierarchies’. “Their children,” writes Gevisser, “educated and Christianised, became the region’s first African teachers and journalists, preachers and clerks.” Other marks of success in this new world included four-walled houses, horse-riding, commercial farming – and the vote.11 The right to vote and the political mobilisation of the Mfengu in the last decades of the 19th century will be discussed later. The focus shifts now to the group who carried on moving beyond Peddie, the people who became the Tsitsikamma Mfengu.

Many Mfengu stayed east of the Fish River but our concern is with the forbears of the families that now reside at Palmietrivier (Nuwe Plaas) Ekumphumleni, Doriskraal, Snyklip, Wittekleibosch, Clarkson and other areas where the modern Mfengu live in the shade of the Kareedouwberg and the Tsitsikamma mountains.

To the Tsitsikamma – another betrayal Mfengu migrations, writes Bundy, were continuous ‘either as individuals or as communities’. He quotes an 1887 observer who writes that ‘these people are always on the move, and will go anywhere that they can get a place to set their ploughs going’.12 Exactly 50 years before this observation, there was one very good reason for the Mfengu of the area just north of Fort Beaufort and Alice

to want to move: they feared for their lives. Lieutenant-Governor Andries Stockenström, who was in charge of the frontier region in 1837, was concerned that the Mfengu were an ‘irritation to the Xhosa’. He wanted them moved to the Colony. The fertile land that the Mfengu were cultivating was highly contested land, encompassing the site of the controversial Kat River Settlement and the lands that Maqoma and Tyhali, the sons of Ngqika, regarded as their own.13 Stockenström thought that the Mfengu could return to live among the Xhosa, ‘if the Xhosa would have them back’.14 The idea that in 1837 – just two years after Hintsa’s brutal death – the Xhosa would calmly accept the Mfengu back was preposterous.

Stockenström allowed the Mfengu to harvest their crops at Tyhume, Gaga, Blinkwater, Mancazana (one of ‘his few overtly

26 / / J U S T I M A G I N E

Katberg

Mts

Wi n d vo g e l b e r g M t s

Elands Post

a an ts az la M c ato m an er A M iv R Tyhume Uniondale Blinkwater Ngqika’s Grave K r o o m e Fort Beaufort Lovedale Fort Cox Mts Gaga Fort Hare Alice

T Ri yum ve ie r

iver Kat R

Lieutenant-Governor Andries Stockenström wrote to the Uitenhage Commissioner instructing him to find land for a group of Mfengu.

sympathetic acts towards the Mfengu’, in Moyer’s judgement).

As soon as the harvest was in, the Mfengu were expected to move to Peddie, where they could theoretically be better protected. In bitter reality, Mfengu chief Mhlambiso was stabbed in the side when the forces of Ndlambe’s grandson attacked Fort Peddie.

Stockenström had the ammunition he needed. He wrote on 31 August 1837 to the Commissioner of the Uitenhage District, instructing him to find land for the Mfengu.

Stockenström sold the idea of the move to new land as an opportunity for a better life: what he achieved was one less problem for himself on the troubled frontier. The Mfengu were betrayed again.

A group of about 2 000 Mfengu accompanied by about 8 000 head of cattle, soon made the move to the picturesque Tsitsikamma and settled in about 100 homesteads under five ‘captains’.

The land is normally very well-watered by the run-off from the Kareedouw and Tsitsikamma mountains but the soil in 1837 was not remotely suitable for cattle. No fertiliser had ever been applied to it and no clearing had ever been attempted. The authorities knew this.

August Fredrik Beutler passed through the Tsitsikamma in 1752 and he reported ‘little and poor grazing … generally overgrown with bushes and reeds’.15 Peires comments that the Mfengu were moved from land that was ‘worse than useless’ near Peddie to the ‘even more unhealthy district of the Tsitsikamma forest, where many of their cattle died’.16 The letters’ column of the Graham’s Town Journal could normally be relied on to reflect the very conservative views of the white settler population. (The newspaper’s owner, Robert Godlonton, thought Stockenström far too liberal in his frontier solutions and was in favour of seizing Xhosa land at every opportunity.) A reader who signed himself ‘J.H.’ contributed a letter to the final edition of the year 1837 in which he tries to balance concern for the ‘Fingoes in the Tsitsikamma country’ with fear of what will happen if the Mfengu are unable to sustain themselves. (‘Quarrel and bloodshed will be the

Great Fish River

Kei Riveskamm a r

Peddie

The people who moved to the Tsitsikamma came from Tyhume, Gaga, Blinkwater, Mancazana and Peddie.

consequence and it will be as bad here as on the immediate frontier.’)

Inspired to write by ‘passing a number of Fingoes on their way to their future residences’, J.H. attacks Stockenström’s decision as a dangerous absurdity and quotes the angry outburst of his Dutchspeaking travelling companion (‘a venerable patriach’): if cattle are kept longer than six months ‘consumption and inevitable death’ will follow; agriculture and gardening are almost impossible; game is scarce; the ‘future esquires’ won’t eat fish. He concludes: What are they to do? How are they to subsist? We cannot support them all. A hard working wood cutter with wagon and oxen can but just live. The Fingoes must starve or steal.

– Graham’s Town Journal, 12 December 1837, p. 3.

The ‘insanity’ of government policy would ‘ultimately cause us all to trek’, said the old man, before bursting into tears.

In the new year, the Journal published another letter along the same lines:

At least if the Mfengu had land they would be less inclined to wander around, or at least that is what the authorities hoped. The mobility of the Tsitsikamma Mfengu would confound the authorities.

They didn’t steal or starve: they travelled and found work.

In 1837 the Tsitsikamma could only be approached from the east or via the Kareedouw Pass because the river gorges to the west were too steep for travellers. Most travellers from the Cape would simply carry on down the Langkloof towards the plains of the Gamtoos River and the frontier beyond. One traveller who took the zigzag route was the Quaker missionary and botanist James Backhouse.

He wrote books about his travels in Australia, South Africa and Mauritius and had a genus of plant named after him.

On 27 November 1838 Backhouse and his party descended into the Tsitsikamma region from the north: Chapter IX 27th. We emerged from the Lange Kloof by a steep descent, to the upper part of the Krom Rivier, Crooked River. When we stopped at noon, several young people of Dutch extraction applied to us for book and tracts; on being supplied with such as we had, which were chiefly Dutch New Testaments and tracts from the South African Tract Society, they presented us with a large loaf of bread, a gift which is always acceptable in the wilds of Africa. The habitations in this part of the country are few. The vale of the Krom Rivier is narrow. In some places the bed of the river extends from the hills on one side to those on the other side, and is choked with Palmit.

The quantity of water was so small as only just to be traced in a flowing state, in a few places. The hills, both here and in the adjacent part of the Lange Kloof, were besprinkled with a glaucous-leaved Protea, forming a small tree. In a stony place, on one of the hills, the noble Cyrtanthus obliquus, was in flower; the stem is as thick as a man’s thumb, a foot high,

Graham’s Town Journal, 4 January 1838, p. 3.

T H E T S I T S I K A M M A M F E N G U // 2 7

and crested with pendulous, glossy, red, tubular blossoms, tipped with yellow. groups of Fingoes continued to pass along the road. many of these people were after this period settled under the care of the moravian missionaries, at a station formed in the Zitzikamma, to the south of the Krom River and called Clarkson, after Thomas Clarkson the untiring champion of the freedom of the sons of africa.

28th. Three Fingo women stopped where we outspanned at noon. One of them offered a large spherical basket in exchange for something to eat; this we declined taking, but gave them some biscuit. They were eating also the root of a species of Cussonia, an arborescent shrub belonging the same natural order as the Ivy: the leaves are palmate, and the root is about as thick as a man’s arm, tender and white.

The Coloured people eat likewise the roots of the Blue-Waterlily, Nymphæa capensis, which abounds in some of the pools of the Krom Rivier, along with Villarsia indica, a smaller plant with yellow, fringed blossoms. The magnificent flowers of the Blue-Water-lily exhale an odour resembling that of the violet. Fine specimens of a small tree with fragrant, pink, pea-like flowers, were growing Virgilia capensis near some streamlets. The Blue african Lily, Agapanthus umbellatus, was in flower in most places. an aloe with a trunk rising to 8 feet high, though not in flower, formed a striking feature among the bushes on the adjacent hills.

The weather was so warm as to render thin drill comfortable clothing; the cold a few days past was so intense as to render stout clothing necessary. In the vale of the Krom Rivier, many steep, stony hills have to be traversed. The farms upon it are fewer than in the Lange Kloof: we only passed three in about twenty-four miles.17

28 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

The sighting of ‘groups of Fingoes’ confirms that the mfengu were by then settled in the area, and the women offering to buy food suggests that, as predicted by the Graham’s Town Journal correspondents, living on this new land was a tough proposition.

The references to the small number of dwellings help us understand why the scheme was such a flop at first. even by the self-serving labour goals of the Cape Colony the resettlement plan was indeed ‘folly’.

Forestry had not yet developed to the point where it could employ large numbers. There was no other industry. as it happens, on the very day that Backhouse passed over the Kareedouw pass, the Lieutenant governor of the Cape was writing a letter to the new governor of the Cape, sir george napier. On the basis of what he had been told (cattle were dying, people were starving and the white farmers were hard pressed to keep the mfengu alive), Lieutenant governor John Hare’s first thought to recommend a move back to Peddie, but he listens to the leader of a mfengu delegation: It is true we had lost many of our cattle and every day we lost more, but where is the difference if we go to Fort Peddie, we shall lose them by the Kafirs, if we stay we shall lose them by bad grass, at Fort Peddie when all are gone we shall not be able to live by our labour and must starve, but in the colony those who are inclined to work will be sure to find employment and food.18 The pattern of employment for the tsitsikamma mfengu was set.

Work seekers would have to travel. The nature of the existing transport network and the prospect of work soon drew many mfengu to the coastal city of Port elizabeth.

The arrival of the mfengu coincided with the emancipation of slaves.

Part of the colonial plan for dealing with these potentially subversive free agents was to promote the establishment of mission stations. as the Backhouse account confirms, there would soon be a mission station among the mfengu.

Š Stefanie de Beer - Line of Sight - 2015

James Backhouse marvelled at the botanical diversity on display as he crossed over the Kareedouw Mountains in 1838.

A great awakening John Philip of the London missionary society set up a mission station on the banks of the gamtoos River at Hankey in 1822. It was here that James Backhouse joined the celebrations that accompanied the emancipation of slaves on 1 December 1838. slavery itself had been outlawed four years previously across the British empire, but now the period of apprenticeship was over and the slaves were really free. georg schmidt made the first attempt to start a moravian mission in the Cape Colony in 1737 but he ran into resistance from the Dutch Reformed Church. They claimed he was not ordained and so he left the Cape in 1744. It would be 50 years before the next moravian missionaries visited genadendal in the shadow of the Riviersonderend mountains in the Western Cape. They discovered a pear tree that schmidt had planted and a very old woman called magdelena who produced a new testament that schmidt had given her. a moravian mission called shiloh was established at Wittelsea in the heart of the hotly-contested eastern frontier in 1828. In 1839, a year after his visit to the tsitsikamma, the botanical observer James Backhouse reached shiloh and found mfengu living there, together with Thembu, san, Khoikhoi and Xhosa. shiloh had an outstation at goshen, which is where at least one missionary worked before he came to Clarkson.19 The mfengu would thus have been familiar with Christian missionaries, and a large group of the mfengu moved there from the tsitsikamma in later years. Further proof of mobility comes from an entry in the general Register of native Pupils and apprentices, Lovedale missionary Institution. One Joseph Botha is recorded as having been born in the tsitsikamma at Clarkson and educated at gaga (one of the areas from which the mfengu were moved by stockenström, i.e., ‘home’) before signing up at Lovedale in 1860.20 Botha’s family could have been one of those families which left the tsitsikamma, as happened quite regularly in the decades after 1837.

Other missionaries active in Xhosaland included the scottish

30 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

Presbyterians and the methodists who achieved growth among the african population which De Cruchy describes as ‘remarkable’.21 With the colonial authorities anxious to have mission stations inside the colony to provide a stable and controlled environment for freed slaves (and the colony’s newest citizens), the Commissioner of uitenhage and Reverend teutsch set out to identify land. They chose the farm Kokbosch which was then surrounded by a ‘hundred or so mfengu kraals’.22 november 1838 was a busy month for correspondence relating to the tsitsikamma. On the 14th the secretary to the government, John Bell, wrote on behalf of the governor to Reverend Halbeck to say the mission station could go ahead. eleven conditions were outlined, the most important of which related to water rights, the admittance of labourers, churches and schools and land: 500 morgen would be set aside and land adjacent would be ‘reserved for the use of the Fingoes principally and for such other natives of colour as shall be duly authorized to reside in the neighbourhood of, and shall be in acknowledged connection with the institution’. That the colony was anxious to get some control over recently freed slaves is evident from clause 11: The missionaries shall be at liberty to extend their labour to other natives of colour, besides Fingoes, or even to any other colour of the neighbouring population, who may be desirous of availing themselves of the benefits of missionary institution. a church historian recorded the first steps: agreeably to the request of the civil authorities, Hatler and Küster and neuhaus in 1839 made their way to the Zitzikamma. speedy returns justified the project. Within half a year a little village clustered around the mission,

and young and old swarmed to the services from the local kraals. A great awakening marked the spring of 1840.

Governor Napier, who was deeply interested in the new station, selected for it the name Clarkson, in honour of the distinguished advocate of freedom.23

The Deed of Grant, 15 December 1841.

Thomas Clarkson was among a group of British philanthropists who gave Napier a sum of £200 for the Mfengu. So the mission station was named for the prominent emancipationist, ‘despite the Moravians’ discomfort at having their new station named after so political a figure’.24 A first open-air service was held on 14 October 1838 but the mission itself got going in 1839.25 The missionaries arrived with some converts from the mission station of Enon so there was a small core of believers on site. (Enon is close to the modern village of Kirkwood.) Services were held for this group in Dutch and for the Mfengu in Xhosa, with an interpreter employed to assist.

One of the interpreters enthusiastically repeated the gist of sermons to his neighbours. Freed slaves and Khoisan people combined with converted Mfengu to make up the new community. Many of the original Enon group moved on to Shiloh and elsewhere.26 The mission leaders were very proud that ‘our young captain Mangoba (Plaatje) has already learnt the letters, and it is a great pleasure to him to assist me in teaching a part of the children’.27 In 1839 four adults with distinctly Xhosa-sounding names were baptised: Zinde, Ciswazi, Zwelibanzi and Balabile. The ‘great awakening’ of 1840 included 66 baptisms in February and 67 in December, one of whom was Manqoba.

By 1844 the Clarkson Mission was receiving wheat from the Langkloof to be milled at its new water mill. The Moravians had every reason to believe that their mission among the Mfengu was destined to go from strength to strength.

T H E T S I T S I K A M M A M F E N G U // 3 1

The land

The Inventory project gives dates for the establishment of ‘outstations of Clarkson’ on these dates: Wittekleibosch, 1866.

Eersterivier, 1891 (formerly Kafferbosch).

Woodlands, 1892 (formerly Palmietrivier and an outstation of Wittekleibosch).

Snyklip, 1892.

Doriskraal, 1892.

Keiskamahoek, 1892.

Blueliliesbusch, 1874 as an outstation, 1935 as a main station.

The processes of giving permission, surveying and registering of land have taken place at odd intervals, so the scholars and lawyers keeping track of this contested patch of land between the sea and the mountains have to have their wits about them.

The first grant of land was made in 1837, at Snyklip, for the ‘Fingoes of the tribe of Umblatze and those who are descendants from him’. Crystal Jannecke’s doctoral thesis on communal identity and historical claims to land gives the minute detail behind all of the early land grants at and around Clarkson.28 Altogether 6 224 hectares of land would be put into trust for the Mfengu between 1837 and 1858, either in the name of the Clarkson Moravian Mission or the Civil Commissioner of Uitenhage.29 This chart is a based on information in Jannecke’s thesis: Grant

Registered

Approx. size (ha)

For the tribes of … and their descendents.

Snyklip

1837

1858

1 285

Umblatze.

Doriskraal

1837

1858

420

Uzweebe.

Palmiet River

1837

1858

565

Uthloa [Uthola?], also known as Platje Geduld.

Wittekleibosch

1837

1858

1 542

Makupula Matomela.

All of the land was to ‘be held by the Civil Commissioner of Uitenhage in trust for the Fingoes’ and the Mfengu would hold the land ‘by ticket of occupation’. 30 Jannecke calls these land grants the ‘founding fact for this community’. Chief Manqoba (or Mangoba) did not have a formal grant of land but he and his group was living on the Kokbosch farm when the missionaries arrived. He welcomed them and a Moravian church history states that he asked for the missionaries to be at his settlement.31 This creates the interesting ambiguity outlined by Jannecke: On the one hand Moravian missionaries were granted land for mission purposes on the Kokbosch farm in the Tsitsikamma by the colonial authorities. On the other hand the local “Fingo” chief granted them permission for the same purpose.32 Further ambiguity came in the form of official documents. Jannecke notes these differences between the Bell letter of 1838 and the Deed of Grant of 1841. The Bell letter sets aside only a portion of the Clarkson land for missionary purposes with the remainder to be used by the Mfengu who got there before the missionaries. But in the grant issued three years later ‘the duality in the land grant was, however, not confirmed’ because the Clarkson Deed of Grant gave the entire farm to the Moravian Missionary Society to be held on behalf and in trust for the ‘Fingoes’; now the Mfengu land was adjacent or outside. Jannecke states that ‘this realignment of what constituted the adjacent Mfengu land in relation to Clarkson added to the ambiguity and historical and political complexities surrounding claims of entitlement made to the Clarkson land’.

In 2000 the Surplus People Project and the Legal Resource Centre published An Inventory and Description of the Historical Acquisition of Moravian Church Land. The information about outstations on the left of this page and the tables on the next page is taken from that document.

In the 162 years before the publication of this report, the land around Clarkson was at the centre of much emotional and legal turmoil. The most traumatic event was undoubtedly the forced removal of the Mfengu from their land by the National Party in 1977. A lot of land was returned to its rightful owners in 1991 but there are still land claims outstanding.

Palmietrivier

clarkson

Wittekleibosch

LAND At cLArksoN Name Charlottenberg

Name Moravian Mission Farm

Name Clarkson (formerly Kokbosch)

Farm No. 375

Farm No. 631

Farm No. 654

First permission to use 1841 survey

First permission to use 1875 survey and lease

First permission to use 1838 letter

Deed acquisition 15.11.1851

Deed acquisition 8.6.1888

Deed acquisition 15.12.1841

Legal cause Grant – in form of donation

Legal cause Purchase Quitrent redeemed in 1908

Legal cause Grant – in form of donation

Price Nil

Price Nil

Extent: on acquisition and in year 2000 462,6842ha (540 morgen)

Extent: on acquisition and in year 2000 889,1433ha (1038 morgen)

conditions Granted ‘in trust for and on behalf of the Fingoes’ (not included in the 1959 holding deed)

Price £13 annual quitrent (The inhabitants of Clarkson said they paid about two thirds of the purchase price, which is why it became known as ‘Koopgrond’)

conditions Granted ‘in trust for and on behalf of the Fingoes’ (not included in the 1959 holding deed)

Extent: on acquisition and in year 2000 647,642ha (756 morgen) conditions None

The imagination runs riot. English artist Samuel Daniell showed the drama, the lush vegetation and the ubiquity of water in the Tsitsikamma in his wonderful painting from 1801, but he took a few liberties with the wildlife, playfully inserting flamingos and elephants from Asia, neither of which have anything to do with the area.

From that jungle, which smelt of hot, wet leaves, I climbed to a higher road, and away to my left the Tzitzikama Mountains were lying blue and smooth against the sky. Tzitzikama … What a word it is! A man at Knysna told me it is a Hottentot word which describes the sound of sparkling waters.

I passed through glorious and powerful scenery where dark pines and black firs were standing in great ridges and marching over mountains like the lances of Charlemagne. And when the road straightened, there was mile upon mile of bright pink Watsonia, just sheets of it, laughing in the sun. So I went through Humansdorp to Jeffrey’s Bay and its vast sandy beach which slopes to the sea.

– H.V. Morton, In Search of South Africa.

It is easy to see why the Tsitsikamma is a travel writer’s delight. Even so, to capture in six sentences the essence of the place is quite an achievement – the intriguing and uplifting name; the rivers that reflect the sunshine so joyfully; the dense forests; and the carpets of colour on the plain. Henry Morton was a popular and prolific writer who settled in South Africa from Britain after World War II.1 Happily, what Morton saw in the 1940s is still there. The Tsitsikamma region lies south of the Tsitsikamma and Kareedouw Mountains, both extensions of the Outeniqua range to the west, north of George and Knysna.

The Tsitsikamma has two distinct parts, and Morton accurately describes the difference as he travels from the dense indigenous forests of the western part, over the Storms River to the mixture of forestry plantations and more open land of the eastern section. This book is concerned with the eastern or Lower Tsitsikamma which runs from the Storms River to the Kromme River. The historical Mfengu settlements lie between the N2 highway and the Indian Ocean. The villages of Thornham and Clarkson and the town of Humansdorp are the biggest settlements.

Crops have been cultivated in the eastern part for a long time although cattle and wool on a larger scale only came to the region in the 20th century.2 Dairy farming on a commercial scale was introduced after the Mfengu communities were forcibly removed from the area in 1977.

The Tsitsikamma section of the Garden Route National Park is full of majestic yellowwoods and stinkwoods, and encompasses a large coastal reserve. The Huisklip Reserve is at the mouth of the Tsitsikamma River.

Immediately to the west of Huisklip is the Klasies River complex of caves. This has been described as ‘one of the most significant

Elephants in Tsitsikamma forest, © Iziko Museums of South Africa, William Fehr Collection, D8, Samuel Daniell, 1805.

BLUE AND SMOOTH AGAINST THE SKY

Photograph of Tstsikamma by Mike Holmes.

archaeological cave complexes in the world, and home to the oldest anatomically modern human skeletal remains’.3 The archaeological deposits date from as far back as 120 000 years. People using the caves started using large quartzite stone tools about 4 500 years ago. About 2 000 years ago, Khoi pastoralists moved to the area and ‘introduced domesticated animals (sheep, goats and cattle) and ceramic vessels to the region’.4 The Cradle of Mankind Khoisan Cultural Village at Bloukrans Bridge tells the story of the Khoisan people of the area. The grave and memorial site of Sarah Baartman is located just beyond the Tsitsikamma region on a hilltop overlooking the village of Hankey.

Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman of the Gamtoos Valley who was treated in Europe as an exhibition item, came to be regarded as a symbol of the struggle against colonialism. Her body was repatriated from France in 2002. The grave of Griqua leader Andrew Abraham Stockenström le Fleur lies just outside the western edge of the region, at Kranshoek on the Robberg at Plettenberg Bay. The word Tsitsikamma is taken from Baartman’s language. The meaning given by the New Dictionary of South African Place Names

is ‘waters begin’: tsoa-tsoa (begin) plus kamma (water), a reference to the large number of rivers and high rainfall.5 There are almost as many spellings for Tsitsikamma as there are letters in the word. The 18th century travellers Thurnberg, Spaarman and Le Vaillant offered Sitsikamma, Sitsicamma, Sitsicama6, a farmer letter-writer in 1837 used ‘Zeitzekamma’ and Morton in the 20th century settled on Tsitsikama. Serfontein tells a fun story about the irascible forester who would not reply to letters to Witelsbos (which spelling is now accepted for the forest station in the eastern Tsitsikamma): Conservator Henry Georges Fourcade would only reply if the envelope was sent to ‘Witte Els Bosch’.

The shadows of the forests and the majesty of the mountains of the Tsitsikamma combine in mysterious ways. They have been inspiring artists from the time of the Khoisan cave-dwellers. Even Europeans who only travelled in their mind still managed to conjure up wonderful scenes, like Samuel Daniell who famously put Asian elephants into his fanciful scene. (He was much better with the animals he actually saw in the area around the Orange River.)

The people who live there and the people who visit there agree, the Tsitsikamma is an inspiring place.

LEFT Foresty (or bosbou) was at the heart of the Tsitsikamma’s economy for many years.

BELOW The view from the top of the Tsitsikamma Mountain Range, looking south towards the sea. The lands of the Tsitsikamma Mfengu and dairy farmers are interspersed with dams. The N2 is marked by a line of trees and the start of the Kareedouw Pass can be seen at the bottom of the photograph.

Chapter 3

Staying or leaving?

The first years of the Mfengu settlement at Tsitsikamma You’ll become a one-armed convert!

Tt

he letter from missionary Küster addressed to a colleague in may 1839 was filled with enthusiasm, ‘it was indeed encouraging to see on the sabbath days how it becomes to be lively upon the tsitsikammas great plain’.1 as 1840 became 1841 the missionaries at the Clarkson moravian mission had reasons for optimism. They were settled on the land allocated to them by the colonial government, the local chiefs were welcoming, school had started and the number of conversions through baptism was rising. although the mission station itself would continue to grow, the tsitsikamma mfengu would for the most part stay outside and independent.

This chapter looks at why that happened. The next chapter will tell of the Wittekleibosch community chasing a missionary off their land, and link that event to the establishment of independent african churches and the mobilisation of african political forces.

The focus here is on the tsitsikamma mfengu and the pressures that caused them to be such a mobile community: what were the

36 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

push and pull factors that made them stay or made them go? events to the east of the Fish River are referred to from now on only when they affect the tsitsikamma mfengu.

First among the push factors was the tension that arose between the mfengu and the missionaries over traditional practices. Then there was the poor land that required very hard work for successful farming. natural disasters such as droughts also played a role.

The relative freedom of movement enjoyed by the mfengu meant that they could travel within the Cape Colony for work. This was a strong pull factor towards the big towns like Cape town and Port elizabeth. Odendaal has identified the mfengu as the ‘first large group of free africans to settle in Cape town’.2 By 1839 the London missionary society thought there were enough mfengu labourers in Port elizabeth to establish a school for them.3 and then there was the greatest pull factor of all – the promise of land in Xhosaland. Between 1846 and 1879 the chiefdoms in Xhosaland would suffer three more calamities, piling more agony on

the already fractured nations living on impoverished land and worn out by decades of warfare. The Cape Colony and British Empire expanded control over large swathes of territory, giving the Empire’s newest citizens several chances to acquire new land. Some of the Mfengu families living in the Tsitsikamma took that opportunity.

A one-armed convert When Christian mission stations opened among African communities, there was great potential for misunderstanding and conflict, even if the missionaries were good-hearted and sincere.

The ‘Moravian Ethic’ was a kind of social discipline that defined good conduct and loyalty. This was explicitly not achieved by ‘violence or coercive’ power but rather by controlling the gestures and behaviour

of potential converts, according to Jannecke. The mission school was critical. Here was taught ‘the dignity of labour, the importance of being industrious, and the pre-requisites of good conduct’ so there would be ‘conformity to missionary order and discipline’.4 The Moravian missionary Nauhaus thought that by 1841 great progress had been made towards that goal. The mission station had a building code and a subsidy was offered to Mfengu families to give up their dwellings with ‘neither windows nor chimneys, the only opening being the entrance, which is so low that you must enter creeping’. Jannecke comments that ‘neatly spaced square-shaped, three-roomed houses with windows’ acted as a form of control, ‘legitimating the order and regularity of the organised mission space’.5 The identity of the Christian mission was asserting itself through architecture.

Soon after moving to the Tsitsikamma, it became obvious to the Mfengu that there were very few work opportunities in the area. Mfengu men became expert beach labourers in Port Elizabeth and earned good wages. They showed a strong sense of independence and conducted the first recorded strike in South African history, in 1846.

interfering in their practices, making their children rebellious and undermining the chief ’s authority.7 malgas Kunene also left the tsitsikamma because of religion, but his circumstances could not have been more different. The obituary for Kunene which appeared in Imvo Zabatsundu in 1886 explains why he had to go. Young malgas was an early convert to the word of god as preached by the moravians but his father did not approve:

The Clarkson Mission Station strove to convert as many members of the surrounding communities as it could. The mission school played an important role in imparting the ethos of the mission.

38 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

De Cruchy notes that many traditional practices were closely related to power relations in african society, so even if some traditional leadership structures were absent, it was still no light matter to discard things like ‘the role of ancestors, initiation rites, lobola or bride price, and polygamy’.6 missionaries differed. some took a hard-line approach that all african customs were ‘heathen’ and therefore ‘evil’. Others understood that the spiritual world was a complicated place where it was possible to support both belief systems.

The key issue that led to Chief manqoba and his councillors deciding to leave Clarkson was social control. manqoba led his people back to Peddie in 1841 because the missionaries were

His father was a seasoned traditionalist, and one day he grabbed the deceased and nearly broke his arm, saying ‘You’ll become a one-armed convert.’ The deceased saw that his only recourse was to escape to a place where there was the Word of the Lord. so he came to Port elizabeth in 1844 and worked here with people like Hlela, mdingi, mahexe the son of mtshizana, and others. Here through great effort he began to refine his education, mastering Xhosa then english and afrikaans. Here in Port elizabeth he married the eldest daughter of Jojo Lusu of tsitsikamma in about 1847. This young woman had also come to Port elizabeth in search of the Word of god together with other young women who chose to be orphans in Port elizabeth rather than to be separated from their maker. He was married by mr Robson on the same day as mahexe mtshizana.

– Opland and nyamende, Isaac Williams Wauchope, Selected Writings 1874-1916.8 This story adds a nice layer of complexity: people left the tsitsikamma because there was too much Christianity, and people left because they could not get enough Christianity!

Clearly the response of the tsitsikamma mfengu to the mission station’s efforts was mixed. underlying all the responses, however, is a strong commitment to keeping their independence, and that normally meant staying on their own land and not moving to Clarkson.

as kunene’s family was among the first to settle at Tsitsikamma, it is worth noting some of his history: born in emboland (north-east of mthatha) before the ‘scattering of nations’ (mfecane); son of ‘Jita of the Rheledwane clan of masoka village’; his mother was from the maduna clan; his ‘other name’ was mbeki.

The reference to kunene’s love for education confirms that some mfengu took the pledge taken under the milkwood tree very seriously. The obituarist, isaac Wauchope, was a noted religious, educational and political leader.9 The obituary interestingly refers to mfengu as a language, ‘he knew all languages, english, afrikaans, sotho, and when he spoke deep mfengu you would think he was born in the east. he could even speak the old hottentot language.’

Port Elizabeth’s other attraction god was not the only attraction that Port elizabeth had to offer. There was the chance of paid work. To this day, the Tsitsikamma mfengu have a strong connection with Port elizabeth: they work, live and attend church there. members of the extended msizi family typically have homes in both places.

The reference to an mfengu school in Port elizabeth in 1839 suggests that some of the young men left the Tsitsikamma settlement almost immediately after arriving there in 1837. This is in line with the practice that continues to this day: people leave to work and the connection to the land is retained through the family who remain.10 By 1840, the mfengu ‘entirely superseded the khoi’ as beach labourers in Port elizabeth. most of this section is drawn from e.J. inngs’s intriguing article ‘mfengu beach labour and the development of Port elizabeth harbour development, 1835-1870’.11 By the second half of the 19th century some 70% of the exports of the Cape Colony were going through Port elizabeth, with wool making up 75% of exports by 1860. a million kilograms were exported in 1847, five million in 1856 and 10 million in 1863.12

given those economic facts, it is amazing to discover that the building of the infrastructure that would give Port elizabeth a really good harbour only started in 1922. Various breakwater and jetty schemes before that were dismal failures. as a result, ships had to lie out in the bay, and smaller vessels would ferry cargo and passengers to shore. The vital role played by beach labourers gave them considerable bargaining power in wage negotiations. mr C.g.h. skead saw the system in operation as a young boy: Cargo was discharged into flat-bottomed lighters carrying about 40 tons, which sailed to buoys floating beyond the breaking surf. They would pick up the buoy, which was fastened to an anchor further out to sea. from the anchor a warp was fixed well up the beach, somewhere between the site of the north Jetty and the Baakens river mouth.

The Moravian Church established a church at the outstation of Wittekleibosch, which became an important focus of religious and educational activities.

T h e T s i T s i k a m m a m f e n g u // 3 9

PE Museum

Landing cargo at Port Elizabeth beach.

The lighter picked up the warp, which was then slung fore and aft on rollers, and the lighter then gradually worked shorewards with the scend* of the sea, until it grounded on the beach. From there natives carried the cargo on their heads to the stores built above high water mark.13 * A nautical term meaning to pitch into the trough of the sea.

Inngs argues that jetty builders hoped to force down the ‘relatively high wages’ that the Mfengu commanded. The wage of a beach labourer in 1840 was almost the same as an artisan and twice as much as a farm labourer: three shillings a day. As the Tsitsikamma Mfengu probably maintained their ties with their land, they were in a very strong position indeed.

A correspondent in the Graham’s Town Journal in 1840 complained that although the Mfengu were sober, the ‘high wages’ had made them ‘so independent … that it is always difficult to obtain their services’.

Not only did the Mfengu save their money to buy cattle, they also stayed tuned to events as they happened to the east of Port Elizabeth.

At least 120 Tsitsikamma Mfengu men were drafted to fight for the Colony in the War of the Axe (1846-47)14 and the overall contribution of the Mfengu was important to the outcome of the war. Tragically for any hope of peace on the frontier, Harry Smith returned to the Cape in December 1847, this time as governor. He again tried to force his will on the land between the Keiskamma and Kei rivers, this time calling it the Crown Colony of British Kaffraria.

The Mfengu were encouraged to settle there, as were Khoi living on Moravian missions in the Western Cape. Some Mfengu received land between the Fish and the Keiskamma as well. Labour brokers rubbed their hands in glee at the devastation of war.

The displaced Xhosa did not affect the Mfengu beach labourers’ strong position in Port Elizabeth and things came to a head on 9 November 1846. The beach labourers were ready to flex their collective bargaining power. With 25 ships in the bay it was not possible to find enough labour to unload even one! Inngs points out that this event pre-dates

a Table Bay boatman strike of 1854, which was thought to have been South Africa’s first-ever strike. Port Elizabeth’s position as a place where black people would not be easily trampled on was established. There was precedent for the school boycotters, the PEYCO militants and the Ford auto workers of the 1980s. The second strike – in June 1852 – took place during yet another frontier war but the issue this time was not wages: rather, it was working conditions; the workers objected to a rule requiring them to wear clothes. Their working hours were spent where wave action was at its strongest so the protest was entirely practical.

Although the beach labourers apparently lost that battle and the modesty of the women passengers carried through the waves would in future be protected, there is evidence that the workers (sometimes, at least) worked naked more than 20 years later. Robert Ballantyne wrote a book about his Six Months at the Cape that came out in 1879. He describes the men who unloaded the surfboats: They were quite naked, fresh from the lands of their nativity, and apparently fit for anything. Shade of Othello!--to say nothing of Apollo--what magnificent forms the fellows had, and what indescribably hideous faces! They were tall, muscular, broad-shouldered, small waisted and ankled, round-muscled, black-polished--in a word, elegantly powerful. Many of them might have stood as models for Hercules. Like superfine cloth, they were of various shades; some were brown-black, some almost blue-black, and many coal-black.15 The work was still very demanding, as Ballantyne makes clear: At first I was greatly puzzled to account for the fact that all their heads and throats were wrapped up, or swathed, in dirty cloth. It seemed as if every man of them was under treatment for a bad cold. This I soon found was meant to serve as a protection to their naked skins from the sharp

Fingo chief, 1846. Mfengu soldiers were allied to the Colonial cause in the War of the Axe.

T H E T S I T S I K A M M A M F E N G U // 4 1

and rugged edges and corners of the casks and cases they had to carry.

The labour is rather severe, but is well paid, so that hundreds of Kafirs annually come down from their homes in the wilderness to work for a short time. They do not, I believe, make a profession of it. Fresh relays come every year. Each young fellow’s object is to make enough money to purchase a gun and cattle, and a wife – or wives.

Mfengu women found work in Port Elizabeth, which meant that families could settle in the town.

42 / / J U S T I M A G I N E

The reference to ‘Kafirs’, jarring as it is to the modern ear, illustrates the fact that by 1876 beach labour was no longer the preserve of the Mfengu. At this time colonial writers (and visitors from England) distinguished between the ‘Fingoes’ (Mfengu) and the ‘Kafirs’ (all other Xhosa-speakers).

Multiple disasters in the east would eventually force tens of thousands of destitute men and women into the colony. Inngs reports that the last strike of the 19th century by the beach labourers took place in 1877 (with five Mfengu men to the fore). The jetties that the authorities hoped would take away the need for labourers did not succeed, but the ‘flood of Xhosa on to the Cape wage-labour market’ did lead to lower incomes.16 Labour was not confined to men. Ballantyne comments on the ‘wildness’ of the housemaid who serves dinner at the home of a family he visits, but he reports that ‘she certainly was intelligent’.

His general comment on ‘labour’ rings true for the anxious colonists who were used to getting their own way, it ‘being dear and uncomfortably independent’.17 The Mfengu lived in four areas when they first came to Port Elizabeth: at the beach, at Hyman’s Kloof (north of Russell Road) and ‘in two villages at opposite ends of the town about fifteen minutes’ walk from its centre’.18 When the famous artist Thomas Baines visited Port Elizabeth in 1848 it was the custom of the Mfengu beach labourers to take threehour lunch breaks to look after their vegetable gardens. Work also

did not happen in bad weather, further evidence of the Mfengu’s independent mind-set.

The Stranger’s Location was established in 1855 to cater for black people passing through the city. ‘In due course,’ writes Margaret Harradine, ‘the Stranger’s Location community became a settled one and permanent buildings, including schools and churches were put up.’

Harradine, a leading authority on Port Elizabeth’s history, has identified the location’s boundaries in modern terms as Campbell, Stanley, Bain and Edwards Streets. This is the heart of the trendiest part of modern Port Elizabeth. Richmond Hill, today the home of a vibey café culture, is where the Mfengu used to live and tend their cabbages and pumpkins.19 Edwards Street is also two blocks from where Mike Mcebisi Msizi ran one of his first businesses when he returned from exile.

Xhosa migrants to Port Elizabeth lived on land that T.W. Gubb used to own, which is now the smart suburb of Mill Park.

Just as in Cape Town, the arrival of the bubonic plague in 1901 gave the city authorities the excuse to destroy these inner-city locations and shift growing black populations miles out of the city.

Dock workers were the first to be affected by the plague, which was carried by the rats in the hay that was imported to feed the British army’s horses. New Brighton was touted as a ‘model village’ and many people went there, but Harradine notes that ‘some opted for more freedom and rented plots at Korsten, which was then all privately owned and outside the Municipal boundaries’.

Fighting for land At some point in 1846 Chief Manqoba returned to Clarkson.

He was ill and died soon afterwards.20 Some of his followers presumably remained at the mission while others moved on to Mfengu land. An Mfengu worker returning from Port Elizabeth’s beaches or a soldier returning from the front in 1851 would have

been buoyed by the news that the farm Charlottenberg had been added to the land grants of the Tsitsikamma mfengu.

But the loyalty of the mfengu as allies in the War of the axe (1846-47) and mlanjeni’s War (1850-53) counted for nothing when the Civil Commissioner of uitenhage got jittery about the presence of black people living on their own land in war time. he announced to the superintendent of the Clarkson mission that some of the mfengu land was to be sold. Brother küster wrote

back on behalf of the mfengu and received a positive response that the land would not be sold. This was sealed with the registration of the land in October 1858.21 The year 1853 unleashed another terrible threat to every cattleowning community in southern africa – lung sickness. in september of that year, sickly friesland bulls were unloaded at mossel Bay, a small port near george. By march 1854 the disease had spread to uitenhage from where an mfengu man travelled with

Mfengu families lived in the Strangers’ Location at the top of what is today Russell Road until they were forced to move north out of the city. Many tended gardens and were relatively independent, especially if they were connected to land in the Tsitsikamma.

T h e T s i T s i k a m m a m f e n g u // 4 3

The Battle of Fort Hare, 1851.

44 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

his cattle to Fort Beaufort. Death spread very quickly. Chief Phatho lost all but 100 of his herd of 2 500.22 It seemed nature itself was conspiring against the Xhosa. at the end of 1854 a new threat to Xhosa independence arrived at the Cape, governor george grey. He was different to all previous governors.

Highly intelligent and very well-read, he was nothing like the ‘clappedout ex-soldiers who had previously governed the Cape’.23 unlike most of his predecessors, he believed that black people could be ‘civilised’, so in that sense he believed less slavishly in stereotypes. He even said ‘human nature was not confined to the whites’ but the fact that this quotation appears in a chapter called ‘Crooked like a snake’ gives an indication of the ambiguity of the man’s character and the racist mores of the time.24 Despite all of the war and misery that had been inflicted on the Xhosa they were still, as Peires states, ‘an identifiably distinct nation, socially, economically and politically distinct from the Cape Colony and in no way subsumed by it.’25 grey planned to change that. His grand plan involved integrating the Xhosa into the Cape Colony in every way, going way beyond what

even sir Harry smith had proposed. schools and hospitals would show the benefits of Western civilisation, the sons of chiefs would be educated in Cape town, the power of chiefs would be broken.

In this atmosphere of fear prophets prospered. a young girl by the name of nongqawuse predicted that if the Xhosa would only kill their cattle and not cultivate their fields, all their dead cattle would come back to them and their grain pits would be filled. encouraged

by King sarhili of the gcaleka Xhosa, from the middle of 1856 the slaughter of the surviving herds began. governor grey ruthlessly exploited the massive hardship that followed: the project to build a new breakwater in Cape town was a beneficiary.

Peires gives 35 000 as a conservative estimate for the number of people who died in British Kaffraria, and among the gcaleka Xhosa and Thembus who believed the prophecy.

The position of the Xhosa in 1866 was dire. Peires concludes that: grey had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in turning them into ‘useful servants, consumers of our goods,

contributors to our revenue’, and it was as an oppressed class within Cape society that they took up the continuing struggle for liberation. Independent Xhosaland was dead: Nongqawuse and Sir George Grey had irrevocably transformed the Xhosa nation into South Africans.26 The Right Hand Son of Ngqika, Maqoma, still had three years to run of a prison sentence that condemned him to Robben Island for 12 years. In 1865 Fingoland was created and 30 000 Mfengu got a large chunk of land east of the Kei, the land that had always been unobtainable for the Colony because that was the land of the Gcaleka: the Gcaleka were now squeezed into two small coastal districts.

Good harvests, but not of the metaphorical kind Some of the Tsitsikamma Mfengu were surely among the new occupants of Fingoland. In about 1860 a large group comprising four Mfengu families left Clarkson for the new Moravian mission at Engotini, near Shiloh.

The trend of Mfengu moving off the mission station at Clarkson was accelerating, whether to Xhosaland far away or to nearby Mfengu land.

A missionary reports in 1864 that ‘there are very few Fingoes living in the settlement at Clarkson, but many dwell at different places in the Zitsikamma district’.27 In the same year, Clarkson is said to be in need for aid; the settlement had just three wagons and fewer than 30 head of cattle. The land at Snyklip was more fertile than it was at Clarkson. At Doriskraal ‘some of the Fingoos are in good circumstances, one of them, a fine old man, whom we found working in his fields, has sixty head of cattle’. At Wittekleibosch there were large fields of wheat and maize doing well. ‘Some of these natives,’ wrote the missionary, ‘are rich, possessing 40-60 heads of cattle, besides 3-400 sheep and goats. Their hearts seem to find their sole delight in these outward possessions.’

The farmers in the Tsitsikamma have proved adept at cultivating crops and breeding livestock.

MINISTER ZWELIBANZI Johannes Zwelibanzi, who took that Christian name when he was baptised at the age of 14 in 1846, was born at Burnshill near Lovedale.

He was the first Mfengu to be sent by the Moravian Church for training at Genadendal in the Western Cape. He was promoted from ‘acolyte’ to assistant minister and taught at Snyklip between 1853 and 1866. He relocated his school to Wittekleibosch and was teaching and preaching there when he was ordained as a Minister, in 1883. He was among the first Africans to be appointed to that rank.

He held the position of principal and minister until 1892 when he moved to Bontrug and created a new mission station, eThembeni (Place of Hope). He retired in 1896 and died at Doriskraal in 1901.

46 / / J U S T I M A G I N E

Twelve miles away from Clarkson (presumably at Palmietrivier), another missionary found a community in 1858 with ‘a large number of sheep and cattle’ where ‘the circular habitations of these people are placed in two rows, forming a street. Behind the houses there are beautiful gardens’.28 Monthly crops cultivated at Clarkson included potatoes, cabbages, carrots, beetroot, tomatoes, onions and pumpkin, while mielies and sweet potatoes were the six-monthly crops.29 One assumes that the adjacent land tended by the Mfengu carried similar crops.

The Mfengu had clearly worked hard in the 20 years since their arrival. Where had they learnt to be such good farmers? In particular, where had they learnt to till the soil, something normally done by women? Presumably the women taught them how to do it, which supports the idea that they were willing to learn and break with tradition. Bundy suggests that the time spent working in the fields for the Gcaleka Xhosa gave these Mfengu men that experience, so when they had their own land it was ‘less an innovation than a continuation of the flexibility already exercised’.30 Bundy also explains why the Mfengu adapted so well to the colonial economy. In The Rise & Fall of the South African Peasantry he lists factors put forward by other writers: the Mfengu were more adaptable because their traditional ways had been upset by the mfecane and their association with missionaries (Omer-Cooper); their singleness of purpose came from their status as ‘refugees in a relatively hostile land’ and the cattle they brought with them gave them an advantage (Moyer). Bundy adds that individual Mfengu started to accumulate wealth because they no longer had chiefs who frowned on such activity. There was the strong influence of the Methodist church which supported peasant agriculture and, finally, there was the ‘cumulative advantage’ of being allied to the British.31 The missionaries at Clarkson often criticised the Mfengu for not using fertiliser on their soil. Jannecke suggests that the missionaries

made a link to their status outside the church: it was because of their heathen status that the Mfengu did not use modern methods; the saved converts, who did use modern methods, were more likely to have good crops. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out quite so neatly. There were occasions when ‘want still rests with a heavy hand over our congregation’ at Clarkson at the same time as good harvests were reported from the Mfengu settlements.32 Despite these agricultural setbacks, the mission station achieved a series of milestones in the next decade: the church was expanded (1871); a church bell was hung (1872); Bazia Street was laid out and the first house built on it (1874); and the Moravian Mission Farm was surveyed and leased to the church (with no conditions), adding 647 hectares to the mission station in 1875.33 Outstations for the Moravian Church were established at Wittekleibosch in 1866 and Blueliliesbusch in 1874, then in quick succession in the early 1890s at Eersterivier, Snyklip, Woodlands and Doriskraal.

Droughts came often to the Tsitsikamma and the converts at Clarkson and the independent-minded Mfengu suffered alike. One such drought was followed in 1869 by a fire of such stupendous size and ferocity that ‘more than one thought the final day of God’s just retribution had arrived’. The fire swept everything before it in a swathe of destruction that reached from Swellendam in the west to Uitenhage in the east, a distance of about 400km. The Graham’s Town Journal’s correspondent reported that ‘Great destitution and misery prevail’.

Money and silver forks and spoons melted away. More than 30 people died and thousands of head of livestock were lost. At Tsitsikamma: We also learn that the Fingo Church at Witte Klei Bosch, near to Clarkson, is entirely destroyed. The thermometer stood on Tuesday, we are told 154° in the sun.34 The effects of the fire could be seen on the landscape well into the 20th century.

Final war The final war in the 100 years of conflict on the eastern edges of the colony started between the Gcaleka and the Mfengu, expanded into a war with the Cape Colony, which by this time had a measure of independence, and finally became a war the British Empire was determined to win. The trouble started at a wedding when a fight broke out and a chief was killed.35 The Governor of the Cape at this time was Sir Bartle Frere; his mission was to put all the states of southern Africa into one Confederation. A battle to the death with the Gcaleka would suit that objective but the Cape Colony hoped to avoid a big conflagration.

When Sarhili’s Gcaleka forces attacked a police post (comprising mostly Mfengu policemen), the Colony dispatched its commando forces. These were led by Chief Magistrate Charles Griffith and the Mfengu leader, Commander Veldtman Bikitsha. The commandos were made up of Mfengu, Thembu and Boers from the Cape Colony.

They won quick victories and went home, thinking the war was over.

Frere had other ideas.

His Peace Preservation Act of 1878, which decreed that all black people should hand in their guns including the ‘loyal Fingoes’, was met with outrage. When members of the militias started deserting, a British officer called out the imperial troops which upset the Cape government. Frere backed his man and went further: with another invasion of Gcaleka land. Frere intended to settle the area permanently with white farmers.

In February 1878 Frere also persuaded the imperial authorities to turf out the Cape government and install a puppet regime.

The cumbersome imperial army made slow progress and had to be rescued more than once by the commandos Frere had tried to disarm. Under the command of the highly respected Bikitsha, a major victory was won over the Gcaleka at Nyumaxa. The Ngqika fought on in their Amatola redoubt until Sandile was shot in a skirmish with Mfengu soldiers on 29 May 1878. He had repeatedly, over a period of three decades, led his people in resistance to constant British encroachment on their land. He died a few days later.36 Six months later, Sir Bartle Frere’s confederation plan was advanced by troops crossing the Tugela River, intent on crushing the Zulu nation. Although the British suffered appalling losses at Isandlwana, the Zulu army was beaten in July 1879. This was followed by the defeat of the Pedi in December of the same year and the attempt to take over the independent Boer republic of the Transvaal in 1880. Bechuanaland (modern Botswana) was annexed in 1885.

The confederation plan was dropped and Frere had to return to Britain to face charges for acting recklessly. Despite Frere’s humiliation back home, Britain kept adding land to its southern African portfolio, especially after the discovery of diamonds and gold. The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) led to Britain finally controlling all of southern Africa. The Union of South Africa came into existence in 1910.

LEFT Songs of Christian praise have long been a feature of the community life of the Tsitsikamma Mfengu.

Sandile, the eldest son of Ngqika, died in battle in 1878.

T H E T S I T S I K A M M A M F E N G U // 4 7

Chapter 4

The threat of successful farmers We drove out the tide but it is slowly coming back and may flood us out some day. The worst is that what is a danger to us Europeans from the Native point of view represents an effort to raise themselves to a higher plane than that of mere communal tenure, and marks a distinct advance in civilisation – two opposite tendencies which will be hard to reconcile without however dealing with matters of high policy which touch the very heart of our existence.

– Prime minisTer John X. merriman, 1908.1

At the start of the 20th century, traders and farmers of every description could still gather on Port Elizabeth’s Market Square, catch the eye of the market manager in his little stall, and buy or sell produce.

The prosperity of black farmers would later come to be seen as a threat to South Africa’s white elite. The City Hall is on the left and the Post Office building, completed in 1900, can be seen behind the stall.

48 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

Tt

he presence of black traders and farmers on market day in Port elizabeth’s market square is proof positive of just how well black people were adapting to the Cape economy in the last years of the 19th century. The man on the far left has order papers stuffed into the top pocket of his jacket.

His easy posture and pipe-smoking suggest that he is very much at home in the world of buying and selling produce. This man is no servant; he is trading in front of the City Hall on his own terms.

Is he an mfengu farmer from Wittekleibosch, Doriskraal, Palmietrivier or snkylip? Or a Xhosa agriculturalist from the gamtoos River Valley? Is the pipe-smoking farmer mike msizi’s mfengu ancestor from Wittkleibosch? Is the man to his right with the wide-brimmed hat mkhuseli Jack’s Xhosa forefather from the gamtoos? Jack’s family farmed in the gamtoos until they were

forced out in the 1960s. msizi and Jack became schoolboy activists in Port elizabeth and went on to be powerful men in the politics of the region. mike would serve as a councillor in the City Hall featured in this photograph.2 The farmers bringing their animals and vegetables to market might well have been the same men whom the Clarkson missionaries reported having ‘sixty head of cattle’, ‘large fields of wheat and maize doing well’ and several thousand sheep and goats.

There were many parts of the country where african farmers were doing equally well – and expanding. In the Peddie district in 1906, africans bought 16 500 acres of land. This trend is what frightened the Prime minister.3 merriman gets to the heart of the contradiction of white authority: they wanted africans to adopt european ways (including private land tenure and capitalism) but they don’t want

Ivor Markman Collection

New construction methods meant that gorges could be crossed that had previously kept coastal districts isolated. This picture of the Gouritz Bridge was taken in January 1892.

52 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

more than a 100 years later, when mike msizi and mark scheepers started asking members of the current tsitsikamma mfengu community about the possibility of building a wind farm on their land, the biggest and most important issue was always, “Will we still control our land?”

When the moravian mission appointed missionary Zimmermann and his family as permanent residents at Wittekleibosch, a battle of wills began that ended in an unpleasant rupture. Zimmermann was appointed in 1895 and held meetings in 1896 where he outlined his plans which included creating a village. Residents of Wittekleibosch lived in a very scattered pattern at that time and resisted the idea of being centralised. nothing about a ‘closed mission station’ appealed to them.11

The Humansdorp magistrate in 1897 appointed Zimmermann as the headman and tax collector for the mfengu of Wittekleibosch, in place of one of the community’s own leaders. The Wittekleibosch residents were furious. a petition was sent to the church authorities at Clarkson and buildings were vandalised. Residents tried to open an ethiopian Church school on the premises of the moravain school. Zimmermann had to leave and the ethiopian Church was established at Wittekleibosch.

The moravians re-established themselves at Wittekleibosch in time, and the school there became an important part of the community. today there are many denominations present at Wittekleibosch. an evangelical church called assembly of god is run by the current chairman of the tsitsikamma Development trust, Zilindile Blouw.

He says, “The moravian Church is not that strong any more. In Clarkson it is still strong, many of the coloureds are in the moravian Church. We have the Presbyterians, a very few are anglican and then there is the methodists.” He says that many of the Xhosa people are Presbyterians and methodists.

Throughout the Cape Colony, african Christians were beginning to assert their independence. For example, in 1898 Reverend mzimba broke away from Lovedale to form the Presbyterian Church of africa and it was this independent church that Yakala Kolwapi would later join. By 1910, this independent church had 52 352 followers.12 together with other leaders of independent churches, mzimba served on the executive of the south african native Congress.13 The link between independent churches and dreams of political emancipation could not be clearer.

One way for africans to avoid the worst aspects of being a dispossessed people within their own country was to live on a mission station. But the price of living on a mission station was that every aspect of the convert’s life was controlled.

The tsitsikamma mfengu did not have that dilemma: their position was unique. Their success as farmers at snyklip, Doriskraal,

Palmietrivier and Wittekleibosch and their access to land gave them power. They exerted it in 1897.

A remarkable aspect of the Zimmermann Affair where the Wittekleibosch residents asserted their independence is how little time had passed since the establishment of the Ethiopian Church.

The residents of Wittekleibosch were claiming an ‘Ethiopian’ identity just five years after Reverend Mokone set out his ‘Ethiopian’ store in Marabastad, in far-away Pretoria.

The people of southern Africa were starting to be connected in ways that would transform the sub-continent. The main road through the Tsitsikamma opened in 1879 and was upgraded in 1885, the steel bridge over the Gouritz River many miles to the west was built in 1892, the same year that construction began on the big Gamtoos River Bridge project. The latter would finish in 1895, and 12 years after that the railway would open up the Langkloof.

The steep kloofs that carry the rivers of the Tsitsikamma region to the sea had always ensured a measure of isolation. New bridges, roads and railways were connecting the Tsitsikamma more closely to the drama of the last years of the 19th century and to the creation of South Africa in the first years of the 20th.

The other thing that helped to promote connectivity, and perhaps helps to explain how Ethiopianism got to Wittekleibosch so quickly, was the birth of newspapers. Isigidimi sama-Xosa (The Xhosa Messenger) was started at Lovedale mission in 1870, Imvo Zabantsundu (Native Opinion) first appeared in 1884 and Izwi Labantu (The Voice of the People) started publishing in 1897.

In the 20th century Afrikaans newspapers such as Die Burger and Die Transvaler would play a similar role in connecting communities and promoting nationalism.

Fighting for rights The central economic fact of the last years of the 19th century was

that mines needed cheap labour. Allowing black people to own their own land worked against that goal. For that reason, the position of the Tsitsikamma Mfengu was always an anomaly, one that the apartheid government finally dealt with in 1977.

From the time that slaves were freed, laws were passed trying to control the movements and rights of labourers in the Cape. New passes were introduced from the 1850s, although the Mfengu pass was portrayed as a certificate of citizenship. The Peace Preservation Act of 1878 was an early signal to the Mfengu people that their special status was under threat – according to this law, no African could carry a gun. The Peace Preservation Act also introduced the term ‘native’, wiping out the distinction between ‘Fingo’ and ‘Xhosa’ for the purposes of the law. Jannecke points to the extreme irony of this happening at the very moment, Ngcayechibi’s War, that the Mfengu were locked in battle with the Xhosa on behalf of the Cape.14 In 1879 the passing of the Prevention of Vagrancy and Squatting Act and the Native Locations, Lands and Commonage Act further restricted the rights of African and Khoi workers.

Convivial, but slow! Just how slow the process was of crossing the Gamtoos River can be gauged from the fact that a hotel operated at the site of the Gamtoos River Ferry. Bridges and railways revolutionised access to the Tsitsikamma region.

The church at Clarkson is at the centre of community activities.

The community hall and school are the other main public buildings. The mission station was used as a voting station in 1884.

Imbumba versus Ingqungqutela The leading light at the great meeting called in October 1887 to protest against the glen grey act was John tengo Jabavu. The organisation that was created was called Imbumba eliliso Lomzi Ontsundu (union of native Vigilance associations). For a decade africans had been organising in different ways: this was a coming together of them all. The main focus was electoral politics and the franchise, but the hope was that Imbumba would become a strong national voice for africans.29 It did not happen that way. another organisation came into existence that would one day extinguish Imbumba, what Odendaal calls Ingqungqutela [the Congress].

The triumph of October 1887 was in many ways a victory for the dynamic John tengo Jabavu. He was born in Healdtown, close to where many of the mfengu who travelled to the tsitsikamma were from.

His parents were both mfengu and Jabavu attended the mission school. at 17 years of age he was a teacher and by 19 he was agitating for african rights in the letters column of newspapers. He used his spare time to work for somerset east’s newspaper, Somerset Courant. He edited the Lovedale based newspaper Isigidimi sama-Xosa from 1881 and founded and ran his own newspaper, Imvo Zabantsundu from 1884. He became an immensely influential character in african political life.

Odendaal sums up where Jabavu stood at the time of the founding of Imbumba eliliso Lomzi Ontsundu: In the decade after 1887 Jabavu enjoyed his greatest influence in both colonial and african politics. He became a national figure, probably the most famous missioneducated african since tiyo soga. His views were noted and discussed in the Cape press and parliament and he was influential in colonial politics, in particular as a thorn in Rhodes’ side when the Prime minister sought to implement the glen grey act and annex Pondoland in the

56 / / J u s t I m a g I n e

mid-1890s. Jabavu was a potent friend or else opponent of frontier parliamentary candidates, whose record in respect of africans he closely scrutinised in Imvo. Without any doubt, he influenced Cape elections, being instrumental for example in the nomination and return of J.C. molteno in the tembuland constituency in 1894.30 as the secretary-general of Imbumba, Jabavu was entitled to call meetings of the Imbumba when he wanted. mostly, he did not and this gave his rivals a chance to organise.

The reason for the break between Jabavu and the men who would lead the Congress can be found in the split that tore white politics apart. as long as the alliance between Cecil John Rhodes and the afrikaner Bond held, it was easy to support the ‘liberals’ or ‘friends of the natives’ who opposed that alliance: men like James Rose-Innes and John X. merriman. When Rhodes’ ally Jameson tried to invade the transvaal Republic the Rhodes-Bond pact fell apart. Rose-Innes decided to link up with Rhodes (Progressive Party) while merriman went with the Bond (later the south african Party). The trouble was that african rights was not the only issue. People like merriman were strongly opposed to the way that Rhodes wanted to expand the British empire and that consideration outweighed his concern for africans.

Jabavu had received funding for his newspaper from the family and friends of Rose-Innes after he acted as his election agent. Now, the Africans who thought that Jabavu had chosen the wrong side turned to the continent’s richest man for similar support – and they got it.

The South African Native Congress was formed in 1891 but it was only after a sympathetic newspaper was formed that the congress really grew. Early leaders of the congress movement included Nathaniel Umhalla, Jonathan Tunyiswa and James Pelem. Pelem wrote to Cecil John Rhodes in 1895 asking for money. Congress officials raised money independently and came close to their target of £500 but the ‘remainder of the capital needed to start up the newspaper seems to have been provided by Rhodes’.31 These words are written in 2015, just a few months after the statue of Cecil John Rhodes was torn off its pedestal at the University of Cape Town by students proclaiming that ‘Rhodes must fall’, and for the ‘de-colonisation’ of South Africa’s universities. South African history has a way of throwing up ironies that would test the most fantastical imagination of a fiction writer: Rhodes, the reviled capitalist, in fact funded the newspaper that promoted the organisation that became the African National Congress. As Xolela Mangcu reminds us in his biography of Steve Biko, citing Frantz Fanon, ‘we should be careful not to overlook the contradictions when it comes to fighting modernity’.32

Cecil John Rhodes was a hero to the white community, fêted after expeditions to the north which brought him great wealth. His British South Africa Company effectively colonised Matabeleland and Mashonaland which were renamed after him. Rhodes, with a white flower in his buttonhole, is bare-headed and is one of the few dignitaries without a beard.

Mowbray’s exuberant Victorian celebration includes a special appearance by the Fire Brigade in shiny helmets, the police force and the creation of a temporary stand by parking a double-decker omnibus opposite the podium (right).

There is one source that places Bikitsha at Tsitsikamma at some point in his life, although the writing is highly charged and emotional. Peires calls the obituary that S.E.K. Mqhayi penned for Bikitsha a ‘savage ironic attack’.41 The ‘few lines of remembrance and lamentation’ that Mqhayi offers concentrate on Bikitsha’s collaboration with white authority and his lack of real credentials as a chief. The obituary reflects the bitterness felt by some towards the place of the Mfengu in frontier history.

Two stanzas from the poem show that Bikitsha was perhaps at Tsitsikamma for a time, and vividly illustrate the author’s critical tone towards the Mfengu leader: The northeastern people are sad today, those from Tugela weep today.

Gone is the father who stole for them.

He attracted attention at Tsitsikamma, stood tall on Debe flats.

Groan in grief, nations: the great man’s gone.

Mabhidlili’s son has gone, fulfilling all the prophecies; he went past Hintsa to Tsitsikama, where he was blocked and turned back eastwards, due next day to reach the Drakensberg.

Groan in grief, nations, the great man’s gone.

– Stanza three and 11 of 14, ‘The late Captain Veldtman’, S.E.K. Mqhayi, in Opland [ed], Abantu besizwe, pp. 53-60.

Veldtman Bikitsha with the staff presented to him by Queen Victoria when he visited her in London. With him are his son-inlaw Theodore Ndwandwa and his son Charles. The photograph is from the Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

60 / / J U S T I M A G I N E

The obituary appeared in Imvo on 23 August 1910. Debe Flats is the site of a battle in 1851. Sandile died in the Debe Forest in 1887.

It is not known whether the ‘he’ is a reference to Bikitsha himself going to Tsitsikamma or whether it is a metaphorical reference to the Mfengu people. It is interesting at least to imagine that Bikitsha was once a resident of Tsitsikamma.

Union National politics came to the Tsitsikamma on 15 September 1897 when the Governor Sir Alfred Milner paid Clarkson a visit.42 The new governor was two months into a 10-month tour of southern Africa that included Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Rhodesia. Milner was a radical imperialist who wanted total British control of the region. If Milner met any ‘loyal Fingoes’ in the course of his Tsitsikamma visit, it is not difficult to imagine what he thought of black people living independently in the Cape Colony. Perhaps being exposed to group of independent black people influenced his thinking, and made him fearful. In the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War Milner quickly moved to create one ‘native policy’ for the whole of southern Africa, based on forcing African people into reserves.43 The letter that Milner wrote in 1897 to Henry Asquith was written after his visit to the Tsitsikamma.44 In it, Milner told the future British prime minister that if it wasn’t for British ‘fair play’ the solution to southern Africa’s big political question would be simple: You have only to sacrifice ‘the nigger’ absolutely and the game is easy.45 Black South Africans got a taste of that fair play after the AngloBoer War: African rights were completely sacrificed.

By the end of 19th century the ‘native policies’ of the various colonies and republics were paying off. As a united entity, the restrictive native policy became even more effective. A Clarkson missionary reported in 1903 that ‘the main employment for men is roadmaking’ and the academic who studied the Clarkson mission writes that by 1910 ‘the proletarianisation of the Clarkson mission community was largely complete’.46 The white politicians and mining magnates who set out to create a cheap labour pool for their diamond and gold mines had succeeded.

The Union of South Africa came into existence on 31 May 1910.

African leaders mobilised nationally in response. Pixley ka Isaka Seme, newly returned from his studies in the United States and at Oxford, called in a letter to Imvo Zabantsundu in 1911 for leaders to arrange for delegates to attend a conference: the first meeting of the

South African Native National Congress, was held in Bloemfontein on 12 January 1912. The African National Congress was born.47 The letter says that the request to meet came from ‘Leaders and Chiefs’ indicating that the SANNC wanted to appeal to modern and traditional constituencies. The congress would be a ‘voice in the wilderness bidding all the dark races of this sub-continent to come together’ and there was a special mention of the evils of tribalism: The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xhosa-Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tongas, between the Basutos and every other Native must be buried and forgotten; it has shed us sufficient blood!

We are one people.

So black unity was achieved, but at great cost and only in the face of an implacable foe determined to reduce black rights to nothing.

The faces looking out at us from in front of the City Hall in Port Elizabeth in the 1890s were part of the Cape Colony at a time when it had a liberal constitution; if they believed that the right to vote could be earned then they were part of that liberal dream. Not only would that right be taken away, for most black South Africans the right even to work for oneself was stripped away. Lost land meant being forced into labour.

Noël Mostert’s great book on the creation of the South Africa, Frontiers, closes with these sad words: The Cape Colony was unique, an example for the United States itself at that time, and its value as the quintessential example and an ideal for an emerging Africa at mid-century, and for most of the rest of the world for that matter (apart from its necessary function of saving recalcitrant white South Africa from itself), would have been inestimable. It represents one of the greatest lost ideals within human society.48

In 1900 these farmers could not have known what mighty battles lay ahead for the simple right to harvest their land.

T H E T S I T S I K A M M A M F E N G U // 6 1

Picture credits Published by Cennergi Telephone: +27 (0) 12 675 6655 E-mail: comms@cennergi.com Physical Address: Block A, Ground Floor, Lakefield Office Park, 272 West Avenue, (West Avenue and Lenchen Road), Centurion 0157 First published 2016 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Publication © 2016 Cennergi Text © John Young AUTHOR AND PROJECT MANAGER

John Young DESIGNER Sean Robertson PROJECT PHOTOGRAPHER

Stefanie de Beer COVER DESIGNER Stefanie de Beer PROOFREADER Mandy Freeman INDEXER Sanet le Roux

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

Printed and bound by CTP Printers Cape Town www.ctpprinters.co.za ISBN 9780620691093

20 8 / / J U S T I M A G I N E

Abbreviations: LT=left top; RT=right top; LB=left bottom; RB=right bottom.

Key: (Danish) Workers’ Museum and The Labour Movement’s Library and Archives = Arbejdersmuseet; Moravian Archives Hernnhut, Germany LBS = Moravian Archives; National Library of South Africa, Cape Town = NLSA; Port Elizabeth Museum Photograph and Document Collection, Cultural History Section = PE Museum; UWC-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives = UWC-Mayibuye; Western Cape Archive and Records Service = WCARS; © Stefanie de Beer - Line of Sight - 2015 = Line of Sight.

Cover Line of Sight Endpapers Rough Sketch of Zitzitkamma, WCARS SG 1/1/3/21, 9 April 1856 Title page Line of Sight Contents pages Line of Sight 4 Line of Sight 5 Line of Sight 7 Line of Sight 8 Photography by Malcolm, 11 Paul Weinberg/South Photographs/AMO 13 John Roskilly 14B Wikipedia Commons, iStockphoto.com 15 T Portrait of a Fingo woman with typical headdress, © Iziko Museums of South Africa, William Fehr Collection, CG23, Wilhelm Langschmidt, 1851 15B Wikipedia Commons, iStockphoto.com 16 Governor Janssens greets Ngqika, Museum Africa, M320, Major Johann Alberti 17 WCARS AG9795 18 NLSA A.968.7 NAP 19 War Dance of the Port Elizabeth Fingoes at Rietfontein, Museum Africa, MA851, Thomas Baines 20 Apic/Getty Images 21 Fingo Village, Fort Beaufort, Museum Africa MA6322, Thomas Baines, 1848 23 Departure of the Fingoes, Museum Africa M59, Charles Michell 24 A Loyal Fingo, © Iziko Museums of South Africa, William Fehr Collection, CA1, Thomas Baines, 1851 25 NLSA Imperial Blue Book, 1847 26L WCARS AG16266 27 NLSA newspaper collection 29 Line of Sight 31 Clarkson Deed of Grant: Uitenhage Freehold 9:7, Surveyor-General 32 Line of Sight 33L Land of Uthloa, WCARS SG 1/1/2/52, 9 April 1856 33M Mission Station at Clarkson, WCARS Colonial Office CO833, 1865 33R Detail of Rough Sketch of Zitzitkamma showing Witte Kley Bosch, WCARS, SG 1/1/3/21, 9 April 1856 34 Elephants in Tsitsikamma forest, © Iziko Museums of South Africa, William Fehr Collection, D8, Samuel Daniell, 1805

35L WCARS E7605 35R Mike Holmes, 37 PE Museum, 38 NLSA Leighton, S, MSB308 39 Moravian Archives 09749 40 PE Museum M33 41 NLSA Midgley Album MSB321 INIL9665 42 NLSA ARA 38, INIL6180, George Duff 43 NLSA Dregé Album 24, INIL1461 44 Reconstruction by Mr Porte, WCARS M862 45 Line of Sight 46 Moravian Archives, Foto 54 47L Moravian Archives 09767 47R NLSA PHB1135 49 Newsboy, Ivor Markman Collection 50 Line of Sight 51 Moravian Archives 09750 52 WCARS AG2170 53 NLSA Dregé Album 24 INIL1470 54 NLSA Dregé Album 24, INIL1450 55 NLSA Album 167, INIL14210 56 Line of Sight 57 NLSA PHB1764 58 NLSA A.920JAB 59 NLSA A.920JAB 60 Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, RCIN2907474 61 Detail from Newsboy, Ivor Markman Collection 63 Moravian Archives 07070 64 Line of Sight 65 Moravian Archives T: 09748 BL: 07104 BR: 09752 66 Ivor Markman Collection 67 Moravian Archives 09689 68 Line of Sight 69 WCARS AG2727, 71 UWCMayibuye A008-6-6 photographer M. W. Ngxiki 73 Ivor Markman 74 Mike Holmes 75 Assegaaibosch Country Lodge 77 Lars Sørensen, thanks to John Hansen 79 Approaching Heights, Dick Manton 80 Line of Sight both 81T John Young 81B Length gang near Ongelegen, Charles Lewis 82 Line of Sight 83 John Young 84 Line of Sight 85 Sean Robertson graphic 86 Line of Sight 87 Moravian Archives 1223 88 WCARS E7603 89 NLSA Album 167 INIL14144 91 Ben Maclennan 93 Gallo Images/Daily Dispatch, 94L Gallo Images/ Die Burger/Herman Geustyn 94R Ben Maclennan 95 Ben Maclennan both 96T Line of Sight all 96B UWC-Mayibuye Barry Streek Collection, MCH73-349-1-1 97 Ben Maclennan 99 The Birth of Site and Service, George Pemba, © George Pemba Trust, all rights reserved, DALRO 2012, 100 Ben Maclennan 101L Msizi Family Collection 101R Line of Sight 102 Gallo Images/Getty Images/Die Burger/Media 24 104 Ben Maclennan 105 Ivor Markman 106 Ivor Markman both 107 Msizi Family Collection 108 Ben Maclennan 109 Tony Grogan cartoon 110 Ivor Markman 111 Line of Sight 113 UWC-Mayibuye, A030-4-6 114 Msizi Family Collection 115 Msizi Family Collection

116 Funeral New Brighton, Christopher Qwazi, Beyond the Barricades Collection, UCT Libraries Special Collections 117L NLSA CTN49471 117R Grieving Father, New Brighton, Steven Hilton-Barber, Beyond the Barricades Collection, UCT Libraries Special Collections 118 Msizi Family Collection 119 Msizi Family Collection 121 Gert Jansen/Arbejdermuseet 122 Msizi Family Collection 123 Msizi Family Collection 124 Michele Schubert 125 Siesbye Kapsch (Realtors) 126L Michele Schubert 126R courtesy Barry Levinrad 127T courtesy Michele Schubert 127B Msizi Family Collection 129 Paul Weinberg/South Photographs/AMO 130 Msizi Family Collection 131 Pace magazine 1992, UWC-Mayibuye Barry Streak Collection MCH73-349-7-7b 132 The Herald 133 Line of Sight 134 Pretoria News 16 July 1991, UWC-Mayibuye, Barry Streek Collection MCH73-349-7-3 136 Paul Weinberg/ South Photographs/AMO 137 Line of Sight 138 Murray & Roberts Corporate Library 139 WCARS E8096 140L Mike Holmes 140R WCARS AG9298 141 Gamtoos River Bridge, Allan Buttrum 143 Msizi Family Collection 144 Salie Manie 145 Michele Schubert 146 UWC-Mayibuye A035-1-5 147 Ivor Markman 148 John Young 149 Sam Majela 150 Msizi Family Collection 151 Msizi Family Collection 153 The Herald 154 John Young 155 Msizi Family Collection 156 Line of Sight 157 Mark Beale 158 Msizi Family Collection 159 Line of Sight 161 Line of Sight 162 Line of Sight 163 Willie van Niekerk 164 Photography by Malcolm 165 Line of Sight 166 John Young 167 Photography by Malcolm 168 State of Green 169L State of Green 169R John Young 171 Celeste Booth Albany Museum 172 Line of Sight both 173 Line of Sight 174 Line of Sight 175 Ugeshree Thakurpersad 176 Flemming Schlier all 177 Line of Sight 179 Photography by Malcolm 181 Line of Sight 182 Photography by Malcolm 183 Line of Sight 184 Line of Sight 185 Line of Sight both 187 Line of Sight 188 Msizi Family Collection 189 Line of Sight 190 Line of Sight both 191 Line of Sight both 192 Line of Sight 193 Line of Sight both 194 Line of Sight both 195 Line of Sight all 196 Mark Beale 197 Line of Sight.