Cape Archives - One Hundred and Twenty

Redhouse on the Frontier

This episode starts in the year 1700, two hundred years after the Portuguese turned up their noses at the Cape, one hundred years after the Dutch and English began to show interest and a mere 48 years after Jan van Riebeeck landed.

Van Riebeeck asked the locals what they were called, and they said Quena. The Dutch called them Hottentots, modern-day scientists invented the term Khoi-Khoi, so we are going with the original name.

I have always wondered who lived where in those days. After much sleuthing, I have figured out the general location of the Quena and AmaXhosa tribes. In the interests of a flowing narrative, you will find the detail in Appendix A.

All you need to know right now is that a couple of thousand whites and an equal number of slaves of diverse origins lived in Cape Town. Between Cape Town and the Swartkops River various Quena tribes were located. Beyond them, the AmaGqunukhwebe, a mixed Quena-Xhosa bunch, inhabited the Zuurveld, between the Swartkops and the Fish Rivers. Across the Fish River lay the various kingdoms of the AmaXhosa. Intermingled with all these tribes roamed bands of Kung (the name the Bushmen called themselves), much hated by the Quena, the AmaXhosa and the Dutch, for stealing their cattle.

Only the Quena in the west were familiar with the colonists. Not many of the inland AmaXhosa had ever seen a white man, a horse, or a gun.

The African people on the coast, all the way from the Fish River to Mozambique, had over the preceding two hundred years helped shipwrecked Portuguese, Dutch and English sailors trudging along the endless coastline towards De La Goa Bay. They often took them in permanently.

Survivors who chose to head west along the beach did not live long enough to regret their decision. The Kung invariably murdered them. Best to build a boat and take your chances on the sea route to Cape Town.

The AmaXhosa males were trained from boyhood in stick-fighting. Two sticks were used, one for attack and the other for defence. One English wreck survivor was invited to try his hand at stick fighting but lost his cool when he was repeatedly beaten about the head. He flattened his opponent with good right hook. This was not considered good form.

I know of no connection between the AmaXhosa and the Irish, but the latter have their own form of stick-fighting. It is called hurling. Fifteen men a side play on a rugby field. They are armed with “hurls”, wooden battle-axes, with which they smash the ball and each other. The object is said to be to hit the ball through the goal posts with the battle-axe. On the way, you can kick and handle the ball. Not to mention the opposition. Rugby on steroids.

When I say battle-axe, I am not kidding. I have several in my garage, left behind by a tribe of Irish who invaded Redhouse several years ago when one of them carried off my youngest daughter to live in the wilds of County Cork, amidst much happy carousing.

Hurling has been a major sport in Ireland since about 1200 BC. I am sure they have entire hospital trauma wards devoted to the game. It took until 2010 before the authorities reluctantly consented to players wearing protective helmets. Over 3000 years of constant brain damage finally made an impression. Ireland is a conservative society.

I wonder if we couldn’t recruit a team from the deepest Transkei and enter them in the All-Ireland Hurling Championship. They would soon learn the rules (if there are any) and their stick-fighting skills would be a great asset.

Speaking of the Irish, not only are they great rugby players, they have a game called Gaelic Football. It draws immense crowds of over 80 000 at the finals. The first legal reference to the game occurred in 1308, when John McCrocan, a spectator, was charged with accidentally stabbing a player named William Bernard. Accidentally?

Gaelic Football is sometimes incorrectly associated with Australian Football, or Aussie Rules. This game is played on an oval cricket pitch, eighteen players a side, and the highlight of the game is when someone scores a goal, an umpire wearing a white coat like a butcher, runs to the goal line and extends his arms, elbows to his sides, index fingers outstretched, and yells at the top of his voice, “How long is my dick”! Or so I am told.

Back to 1700, most of the world was more or less at peace, including the Eastern Cape. But it couldn’t last. The very next year, John Churchill, Sir Winston’s famous ancestor, better known as the Duke of Marlborough, arguably Britain’s best general ever, took on Louis XIV of France, who came second by a long shot. Marlborough never lost a battle and only fell from grace because his extremely bossy wife squabbled with Queen Anne. Women!

Down south, the Cape government made a decision which started the total disruption of indigenous society. Trekboers were permitted to travel freely beyond the Colony’s borders.

In 1702 a Dutch hunting party clashed with AmaXhosa along the Fish River. Their attempt at stock theft having failed, they retreated, plundering cattle from the Quena on the way back. Meanwhile, the exodus of trekboers from the immediate vicinity of the Cape began to take off.

In 1713, a passing ship introduced smallpox. Twenty-five per cent of the white population died, but the effect on the Quena in the colony and in the south-western districts was absolutely disastrous. Ninety per cent of them succumbed due to lack of immunity to this strange disease.

Entire tribes were annihilated. The few survivors could not reconstruct their clans as they had lost their chiefs. The empty land was soon occupied by farmers from the Cape.

Amidst this chaos, a group of slaves escaped and attempted to set up a new life up the west coast. They were recaptured. The leader, Tromp van Madagascar, was sentenced to death by impalement but understandably chose to commit suicide in gaol. One guy was hanged, and the rest either had their Achilles tendons severed or their feet broken on the wheel.

Fifteen years later, the Dutch began to take over Quena land and cattle through direct attack. It became the done thing to kill the men and to force the women and children into domestic labour.

In 1734 the Groot Brak River was declared the eastern boundary of the Cape. Five years later, the Quena in the area took up arms in their last stand against the Dutch. They lost, and those still alive were absorbed as unskilled farm labour.

Meanwhile, the Kung began an unending campaign of cattle theft and murder against the trekboers in defence of their rapidly shrinking ancestral lands, which resulted in commandos being assembled to hunt them down.

While the millennia-long way of life of the original inhabitants was being destroyed in a matter of a few decades, all was not well across the Fish River.

In 1730 Phalo became king of the AmaXhosa. He reigned for forty-five years. Two of his sons, Gcaleka and Rharhabe, started a power struggle which lead to a major schism in the kingdom, at a time when the Dutch encroaching from the west required unity of purpose.

There was dissent amongst the whites in the Colony as well. One Etienne Barbier lead a group of unhappy farmers in rebellion against the authorities. For his pains, he was drawn and quartered (entrails extracted, and limbs severed) and his legs and arms exhibited on the main roads as a warning. No wonder Cape Town is such a hotbed of violence.

In 1752 Ensign Friedrich Beutler led an eight-month long expedition as far east as the Butterworth region. On the way they erected a beacon at the mouth of the Swartkops River. When he returned, he reported that the land of the AmaXhosa was way more suitable for farming than the Karoo. An ominous sign for the future. He was most impressed by the Kung rock art in the Fish River valley.

In 1756 the Seven Years War, said to be the first ever “world war”, led to brawling in Europe, the Americas and India. The Brits and the Prussians beat the French and their numerous allies. The British Empire expanded.

The trek from the west was gathering momentum. The Cape government was always a few steps behind the trekboers. Nevertheless, they declared the eastern frontier to be established on the Gamtoos River in 1767. In the same year trekboers reached the Swartkops River, and the first serious clashes between them and the AmaXhosa were recorded. By 1772 there were a number of farmers settled in the Algoa Bay area.

There were several intelligent explorers in the area at this time. Carl Peter Thunberg, a Swedish naturalist, on his second trip to the Eastern Cape in 1773, crossed the Gamtoos River. He recorded two villages inhabited by the Gonaqua Quena, probably in the area of the present-day Woodridge College, plenty of wild animals including buffalo, elephant, rhinos, lions, hyenas, and different kinds of buck. He also describes the salt pans near the Swartkops.

In 1775, King Phalo died and the AmaXhosa split into the AmaGcaleka led by Nqgika, and the AmaRharhabe. Civil war broke out. In 1778 the Cape Colony’s border was extended to the Bushman’s River. In 1780 they made it the Fish River.

Over the ocean, the British managed to lose their American colonies through the sheer ineptitude of politicians, generals and admirals, and major naval and military intervention by the French.

By now, the AmaXhosa were well aware of the trouble they faced from the encroaching white farmers. Attitudes towards whites changed. Whereas in 1686 the survivors of the wrecked Stavenisse were looked after well by the coastal people, the crew and passengers of the Grosvenor had no such luck in 1782. Wrecked on the coast on Pondoland, the 108 survivors had a dreadful time as they headed west. Six sailors were found 118 days after the disaster by a farmer near the future Port Elizabeth.

It wasn’t only human life that was impacted by this descent into misery. In 1770 the area around Algoa Bay abounded in wildlife. By 1820 most of the big game had disappeared, leaving small pockets of elephant in the Addo and Alexandria districts. It is hard to imagine how so few people could have caused so much ecological damage. In the 1930s my father could ride from the farm at Greenbushes to Redhouse on horseback through bushveld. The only human habitation on the way were the tiny villages of Bethelsdorp and Veeplaas.

In about 1970 troops of baboons still roamed the escarpment opposite Redhouse along with large numbers of buck. In 1984 they started construction of the Motherwell township. Very little remains of that wildlife.

In Europe, France was going bankrupt and scene was set for big trouble. So bad that they actually summonsed the first parliament since 1614. Madame Guillotine was to shorten the lives (excuse the pun) of lots of French citizens, including the King and Queen. The last victim lost his head in 1977.

The scene was set for another world war, which would last 25 years and come to a gory end at Waterloo in 1815. All this had a decided influence on affairs at the Cape.

Back to 1779. The scene was set for the first of nine Frontier Wars which would provide much grief and drama before the last one ended 100 years later. Five of these wars took place before the 1820 settlers landed.

When one reads the history of these conflicts, it reminds one of the Middle East. Everybody fights everybody else. Without boring the pants off you, you will be interested to know that in the fifty years between 1770 and 1820, and in no particular order, the following fisticuffs took place:

The trekboers fought the AmaXhosa and the Quena.
The Quena fought the AmaXhosa and the trekboers.
The British fought the Dutch in 1795 and took over the Cape and gave it back as soon as possible in 1802.
The AmaRharhabe fought the AmaGcaleka. In fact, the battle of Amalinda between these two tribes cost at least 500 lives in the bloodiest clash in AmaXhosa history.
The British fought the Dutch again in 1806, and this time kept the Cape.
The British fought the trekboers and hanged them from time to time.
The British fought the AmaXhosa.
The British fought the French in a small naval battle in Algoa Bay.
The Kung fought everybody.

Let’s conclude this sad tale in 1799. The Third Frontier War saw the AmaXhosa and the Quena ravage the land as far as Oudtshoorn. The British built an earthen fort on the farm Papenkuilsfontein at Algoa Bay, probably in the area lying between the present day Korsten and Algoa Park.

Large numbers of Quena and Xhosa warriors attacked the fort in broad daylight on the 10^th August 1799, driving off cattle and sheep pastured close by. They headed for Kleinskool with their booty. Meanwhile, a troop of Dragoons had found their horses and charged after them, accompanied by two light field guns. They surprised the enemy enjoying a braai. Forty were killed and the rest fled into the bush.

Remember iClick, buried in Carden Street? Could he possibly have been a casualty?

Just a few days later, on 20^th September, the French frigate Preneuse engaged the transport HMS Camel and the sloop HMS Rattlesnake in combat which continued through the night before she broke off the action at 03h30 and fled the scene.

Algoa Bay’s only naval battle. Although if they persist with the proposed fish farm, we might have another one.

Appendix A – who lived where

Around the Cape, there lived the Goringhaicona (Strandlopers), the Goringaiqua (the guys with the war-oxen who killed the Portuguese Francesco D’Almeida), and the Gorachoqua. Across the Berg River the Cochoqua numbered as many as 18000 when Van Riebeeck arrived. Further north the Namaquas held sway, and way beyond them lived the Briquas, probably across the Gariep River.

Over the Hottentots-Hollands mountains lived the Chainoqua, then the Hassequa and Guriqua around about Riversdale. Then came the Attaqua and Houteniqua, near George. Over the Swartberg mountains a large tribe called the Inqua held sway.

Further east lived the Ganumqua, the Nambunqua, the Gonaqua and the tribe closest to the AmaXhosa, the Damaqua, who probably camped between the Gamtoos and Swartkops Rivers. The Damaqua bought dagga from the AmaXhosa and sold it down the supply chain until it reached the Inqua up in the Karoo.

Between the Swartkops and the Fish Rivers the AmaGqunukhwebe, a mixture of Quena refugees and some AmaXhosa, occupied the Zuurberg.

To the east of the Fish lived the AmaXhosa, AbeThembu and the AmaMpondo, stretching all the way to Natal.

Small bands of Kung roamed about across the entire area.

Redhouse and the VOC

Fast forward to 2020! Entrepreneurial spirits took advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown to extricate five hundred metres of copper cable from the ground, leaving most of Redhouse cut off from the outside world for a week.

Unluckily for them, the copper price has crashed of late and when the scrap merchants open up, the robbers are in for a sad shock.

The gentle reader might be forgiven for assuming that the VOC title refers to the rivers of Very Old Cognac consumed over the years in Redhouse. But no, we have advanced to the age of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie aka the Dutch East India Company.

After Vasco da Gama made it to India, the Portuguese had a hundred years of free travel around the Cape to the East Indies without any let or hindrance from pesky foreigners.

It’s true that Sir Frances Drake rounded the “fairest cape of them all” in 1580 during the first English circumnavigation of the planet, and some French ships had been to have a look, but in general the Portuguese enjoyed the monopoly granted them by the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494 whereby they were allocated the eastern route and the Spanish got the west i.e. the Americas.

Further north, two contenders for sea power were stirring. The Dutch fought an eighty-year war to rid themselves of Spanish rule, and they did it mainly by building up a force of piratical sailors called the Sea Beggars who crippled Spanish trade to northern Europe.

Their fellow Protestants, the English, cared not a hoot for Iberian treaties and sent their own pirates to prey upon the new Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and the Americas.

These two emerging maritime nations occasionally came to blows. Mostly they were united against France and Spain, but sometimes politics intruded. They fought four wars over a period of about 130 years. The second war saw the introduction of the Line of Battle where ships sailed in disciplined rows a few hundred feet apart and cannonaded the hell out of each other.

The Four Day Battle occurred in the first week of June 1666. Eighty English ships versus one hundred Dutch. The Dutch decided to call it quits before day five began, but the cost to the Royal Navy in lives lost was not exceeded until the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

In due course, the Dutch and the English realised that there were enormous profits to be made out East, so they began to intrude on Portugal’s preserve.

They formed companies to fund each voyage. Normally, a small fleet of ships would be sent out and if and when they got back, the cargoes would be sold for up to fifteen times as much as they cost. The profit would be paid out to the shareholders and the company dissolved.

This high-risk adventuring evolved into the formation of the English Honourable East India Company in 1600 and the VOC two years later. These chartered companies held a monopoly in their own countries, thus ensuring great profits at much reduced risk.

The VOC was so well organised that it is recognised as the forerunner of modern multi-national corporates and its history is taught in business schools to this day. By 1669, it was the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a dividend payment of 40% on the original investment.

Both companies did famously for a very long time but eventually lost the plot. From 1720 onwards the VOC began to decline and was dissolved in 1799, all its assets on land and sea being taken over by the Dutch government.

The English company grew into a massive organization. At the height of its power in 1803, its private army numbered 260,000, double the size of the British army. It ruled vast swathes of India. It was brought down by the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the following year the British Government took control. It was finally dissolved in 1874.

Both these companies brought way more wealth to their respective homelands than did the Spanish and Portuguese royal monopolies. The reason should be blindingly obvious to the modern South African government. The Dutch and English model was based on free enterprise. The Iberian equivalents were state-owned enterprises. Whatever profits the latter made were squandered by the government.

That’s the inherent problem with tax. Those who spend the tax don’t have any idea how hard it is to generate it in the first place.

While the Portuguese were not interested in the Cape at all, the Dutch and the English recognised that it would serve as an ideal halfway house on the long and horrible voyages to the East, a place where fresh water and vegetables could restore to health crews devastated by scurvy.

There appears to be no cure for stupidity. It was recognised before 1600 that scurvy could easily be prevented by administering lemon juice to the ship’s crew and passengers once the fresh vegetables ran out. Certain skippers did this and kept the mortality rate down to reasonable figures.

But it took until 1795 before the Royal Navy made it mandatory to include lemon juice along with the daily grog issue.

Meanwhile, going to sea in an East Indiaman was a highly dangerous choice of lifestyle. It was normal to lose between one third and one half of the people. In one six-year period, of 5,228 soldiers who embarked at Lisbon, only 2,495 arrived in India.

It could take five months for an East Indiaman to reach the Cape. Some ships arrived there in such a disastrous state that the few remaining sailors couldn’t bring them to anchor, and relief crews had to row out from the shore to rescue them.

It is hard to imagine in this sanitised age what the tween-decks situation must have looked and smelt like after five months at sea with scurvy and dysentery raging. What did they do when the call of nature was urgent?

The captain had his own private loo. The crew shared the “heads” – so-called because the facility was situated in the bows or the head of the ship, which would normally be pointed more or less downwind.

Once upon a time I visited a replica of the Dutch East Indiaman “Amsterdam”, at the Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, Sydney. I checked out the heads, out of interest, not necessity. I wondered how the lads wiped their hairy bums. Ropes extended down to the water, with the ends “fluffed out”. I gather you pulled up the rope when done and cleaned up. At least they didn’t have to horde loo paper. Imagine timing your bowel movement in sync with the waves crashing over the bow! Eish!

Jolly Jack Tar, a veteran sailor with a wooden pegleg, has the runs and desperately needs to get forward. It’s one bell in the middle watch – 30 minutes past midnight for you landlubbers – the wind is pumping 30 knots and the ship is close-hauled on the starboard tack – meaning the wind and consequently the sea is coming across the starboard bow, and the rain is driving sideways.

Observe the picture at the top of page one. Note the holes in the deck on the way to the seat of ease, designed to drain the water coming across the bows.

Jack stumbles forward in desperate haste, feeling his way in the pitch-black night, guts heaving, hold it in, hold it in, almost there, he gets a shock of spray full in the face and with that his pegleg goes down a drain hole! Now that’s kak luck!

There was no way for sick people to get to the heads, even in fine weather, let alone in rough seas. They lived and often expired in their own mess.

So now we know why the Dutch and the English wanted to secure the Cape as a place of refuge and replenishment. In 1615, the English conscripted a party of convicts headed by one Captain James Crosse, a notorious highwayman. They were given the choice between the gallows or the Cape.

They were landed on shore with some weapons, a few provisions and some turnip seed and told to make friends with one Goree, a Khoi chief who had previously been taken to India and taught English. Oh yes, and please establish a settlement while you’re at it. Captain Smythe summed up their chances and asked for a ship’s boat.

Once the fleet had departed, he rowed his band of baddies across to Robben Island which received the first of many consignments of prisoners onto its inhospitable shores, covered with guano and seabirds and apparently large numbers of mole snakes which grow to be two metres long. How did the snakes get there? Probable cut off from the mainland when the sea levels rose thousands of years ago, as they have evolved differently to the mainland variety.

Finally, Jan van Riebeeck started the Cape Colony in 1652, as we all well know. This didn’t bother the Brits as even in wartime the Dutch allowed them to land and recover. Scurvy and the sea were the common enemies, so it was live and let live and pass that excellent Cape brandy.

The Dutch and later arrivals such as the French Huguenots eventually expanded out of the original bounds of the Cape Colony. The further away from Cape Town they travelled, the more they morphed into the “trekboeren”. They lost most of the vestiges of civilization and travelled ever eastwards in their ox wagons, living off the large herds of buck available in those days. They grew into a tough and independent race. All they really needed from Cape Town was ammunition.

In 1702 a well organised party travelled to the Fish River where they encountered the AmaXhosa. This is recorded as the first encounter between the races, but someone knew the way. Plenty of shipwrecked sailors had walked the shores over the centuries. Quite a few had been absorbed into local tribes.

The AbeLungu clan has proven to be descended from white forbears via DNA testing. Even more fascinating are the AmaMolo. Oral history claims they arrived in strange ships, dressed in long white robes, a long time before any whites came along. Their DNA points to an Indian origin. All they could say was “Molo”, the Xhosa greeting, and the name stuck. Both clans live along the Wild Coast.

Getting closer to home, who lived along the Swartkops River at the beginning of the 1700s?

The AmaGqunukhwebe – try saying that without hurting you tongue, mlungu! – is a tribe created by King Tshiwo, paramount Chief of the Ama Xhosa from 1670–1702 from the remnants of Khoikhoi tribes such as the Gonaqua, Hoengeniqua, Inqua and others retreating before the trekboers advancing from the west. They inhabited the land between the Qonce (Buffalo) and Qhagqiwa (Swartkops) rivers, but there is no evidence that they took up residence in our future Village.

When the Village Hall still served as a primary school, many decades ago, I remember that behind the hall there was a crude hut inhabited by an old crone we called Witchy. We were suitably scared of her. What her origins were I know not, but she looked old enough to have been around for a couple of centuries.

Now that you are bored stupid by all this history, let me tell you that we are on the brink of exciting times, where history comes to Redhouse! Hang in there, lockdown is nearly over!