Also mentioned is the lack of communication between the Cape and British governments which allowed South West Africa to fall into German hands in 1885 (until its recapture by South Africa during the First World War). Attention is drawn to the presence of missionaries in the area from the mid-19th century, although this topic is not developed because this has been done elsewhere.
A further theme present across the essays is the establishment and utilisation of borders. Unlike the natural border of the Orange River, the 20th parallel border between German South West Africa and the Cape Colony was an arbitrarily imposed one. The book shows how this border was shaped not by a line on a map but by the practice of enforcing it – or ignoring it. The Afrikaners in 1897 used the border to plead for surrender to the British though earlier they had resisted its implications (the declaration of a cattle-free zone). Marengo ignored the border in his military activity but used it to establish secure rear bases on British territory, thus where necessary utilising the ambiguities and contradictions in British and German policy. At first the British tolerated this, but in the end they succumbed to German demands. In killing Marengo, German-British military cooperation dissolved the border temporarily.
In these stories of dispossession and resistance one persistent issue that raises itself is the question of identity. Later under apartheid, this crystallised into ‘white’, ‘Indian’ (though there were few if any in Gordonia), ‘coloured’, and ‘native’ (later ‘Bantu’) partly imposed identities. However in earliest times there appears to have been extreme ethnic fluidity, with intermarriage and other forms of social mixing among Bushmen, Khoi and even Sotho-Tswana. The Tlhaping, first a derogatory name applied by others, emerged for example as a mixed Xhosa-Khoi chiefdom. At the same time there are identifiable ethnic (for example Nama) or narrower ‘tribal’ (for example Wikar and Gordon’s listing of ‘Namynkoa’, ‘Kaukoa’, and other)14 identities – in which language or dialect formed a main theme – engaged in occasional conflict (chapter 1). In the 19th century, ‘Oorlamisation’ went along with a further merging and mixing of identities into multi-ethnic communities as well as disappearance of identities (the Einiqua) – though perhaps their identity merely continued hidden (chapters 1, 6). As whites trickled in, so they added at first to the fluid mixture.
With colonisation in the later 19th century, first by Basters and then by whites, matters changed. Some fluidity persisted: in 1866 ‘Hottentots’ and ‘Kafirs’ could be called ‘Bastards’, and Xhosa, Bushmen, and Basters intermarried (chapter 1). Resisters joined forces across ethnicity – as in the 1879–80 war on the Orange of Kora, Griqua, Xhosa, Nama, Damara and Bushmen, ultimately stimulated by Xhosa resistance in the eastern Cape (chapters 1, 6). There grew recognisable differentiation into classes, with Bushmen, and poorer Kora and Basters, turned into servants (chapters 1, 2). But with white urban settlement, the church in Upington, whose membership had ranged, in the Reverend Schroeder’s words, ‘from wholly white to wholly black’ in the 1880s, became racially segregated in the 1890s, as did the schools (chapter 2).
With final conquest came imposed racial classification. Urban locations (though of mixed Khoi and Xhosa) were established and later officially proclaimed – though initially there was indecision over whether these should be separated along class lines (servants and other labourers), or along racial ones. Their crude conditions are brought out in chapter 10. The 1891 census divided the population of Gordonia among ‘whites’, ‘aboriginal natives’ and ‘other coloured persons’, and in 1904 the divisions were ‘European’, ‘Hottentot’, ‘Fingo’, ‘Kafir and Bechuana’, and ‘Mixed and other’ (chapter 2). With the official imposition of segregation in Gordonia in the 1920s categories were more clearly defined, and there was compression of categories. Thus in 1923 the Acting Secretary for Native Affairs wrote to the Department of Lands arguing that ‘it would seem unnecessary to have two separate reserves for the accommodation of coloured persons on the one hand and Hottentots and Damaras, to whom the bastard population are doubtless closely akin, on the other’ (chapter 9). The inhabitants of Riemvasmaak, hitherto regarded as ‘natives’, were redefined by Herbst in 1926 as ‘coloureds’ – and took advantage of the fluidity to continue pressing their case for a ‘reserve’ (chapter 9). Basters, as Piet Beukes commented, were officially turned into ‘coloureds’ – though unofficially they retained their sense of identity, including some superiority to other coloureds (chapter 9).
Under apartheid identity imposition was strengthened – along segregationist lines suggested by the supposedly anti-segregationist war-time Smuts government. This applied to the Upington locations, where ‘native’ legislation as well as the Group Areas Act was used to impose apartheid. In addition, on their eviction in 1974, some Riemvasmakers were moved, as ‘Damaras’, to Khorigas in the then South West Africa, others as ‘Xhosa’ to Welcomewood in the then Ciskei; others (‘coloureds’) settled elsewhere in the northern and western Cape (chapter 6). The class/race hierarchy of apartheid is well illustrated in Alfred Gubula’s recollections (chapter 11).
Today, Xhosa and coloured identities are clearly defined and internally accepted. A Xhosa identity existed from the time of Danster in the late 18th century to the habitation of Paballelo, and its resistance in the 1980s. ‘Coloured’, though a contrived identity arising from colonisation, is now also accepted by many. There is an aversion to intermarriage, partly due to propinquity but reinforced by ‘racial’ prejudices.
There are many translations into English from Afrikaans sources drawn on in the book, with the original text excluded. Except where indicated otherwise, these are my own work. It should be mentioned that names in the original source documents often have a variety of different spellings. In the text the most generally accepted spelling has been used; variants sometimes occur in quotations from these documents, and in citation details.
As always, one acquires many debts in writing a book. I am grateful to the staff of the Western Cape Archives and Records Service in Roeland Street, Cape Town, particularly Erica le Roux but also all the other staff members, unfailingly courteous and helpful. I am equally grateful to the staff of the African Studies Library at the University of Cape Town – to Sue, Allegra, Boesie, Bev – also ever ready to assist. Suzie Newton-King, too, has shown ever-willingness when asked to assist. Thanks to all my former colleagues at UWC, especially Ciraj Rassool and Premesh Lalu for their encouragement. I am particularly grateful to Aubrey Beukes for guiding my enquiries at the beginning and to his wife Dina and family for their hospitality and continued friendship; also to Jesse Strauss for providing me with key knowledge and for his family’s hospitality. Alfred Gubula has continued to be a friend and an acute observer of the local and national scene. Working with Mikey Abrahams on the Keidebees and Blikkies evictions was a stimulating experience. Work for the Northern Cape Land Commission has allowed me to deepen my knowledge of the area and I am particularly grateful to Virgil Gabarone for this. Thanks to Roshan Cader of Wits University Press and particularly to Karen Press, with whom working on editing and shortening the book has been