In 1774, as the result of increasing Bushman attacks on the frontier, the Cape government decided to send out a ‘general expedition’ of three commandos against them along the southern boundary of the country’s inland plateau (the Great Escarpment) which killed or captured some 700 Bushmen. It was a prelude to confrontation – a chain reaction of violence – that would occur in the next decades, which included genocidal war against the Bushmen.32 Between 1780 and 1840, in fact, the situation in the vicinity of the Orange River was transformed along its whole course. The change was catalysed in the west in 1786 by the Hantam veldwagmeester (equivalent to a field-cornet, a local official of the state) Adriaan van Zyl who – having gained government permission for an attack on the Bushmen of Bushmanland – instead led a commando into Great Namaqualand and up the Orange River as far as its junction with the Vaal, raiding cattle and acting with brutality.33 Previous European and Baster activity in the area had largely been confined to hunting for ivory north of the Orange and even up the river as far as the Korana. Now it often involved attacking Bushmen as a pretext in an attempt to secure government approval. Much of it took place in Great Namaqualand. However there is also evidence of attacks eastward up the Orange on Tswana groups.34
The Bushmen were compelled to defend the escarpment, which was the line of transition from winter to summer rainfall. ‘Beyond this point [to the north] there was no further region that could serve as a focal point for a cycle of transhumance… for the Khoikhoin or the San only retention of the escarpment could preserve them… Without access to the resources on both sides of the escarpment and the water of the escarpment itself the Khoisan were doomed, hence the desperate fighting of the 1770s, 1780s and 1790s.’35 In addition to its aridity, this Bushman resistance helped to protect Bushmanland from invasion by forces from the south. It was 240 kilometres south to north of
a vast tract of land which was almost continually stricken by drought. Water was [generally] obtainable only from water-holes… anywhere from twenty to sixty miles apart. After the summer rains water remained in open pans for only a few weeks before evaporating. Vegetation, pasturage and forage were also scarce resources… In addition, the area was subject to periodic attacks of locusts and horse-sickness which was fatal prevailed in the summer, particularly near the [Orange] river.36
However there remained two routes from the south to the Orange: one through Namaqualand and the other from the Hantam through Bushmanland along river beds. From the Hantam to the Orange River
[there] was only one sure path across the flats, which was taken by raiders moving in both directions. This lay up the valley of the Zak and Hartebeest rivers, which flow occasionally – from the Hantam and the Kareeberg to the Orange River near Kakamas. Generally they are dry, but their sand beds hold water which can be reached by digging, and their banks are thickly wooded, so that a force is to some extent concealed. Thus, when a raiding party could achieve surprise, it could travel at great pace deep into its adversaries’ territory without difficulty.37
By the 1770s prominent Baster families had moved to Namaqualand from further south. Adam Kok, the likely son of escaped slave Claas Kok by a Griqua mother, left his Piketberg farm in 1771 and with his sons Cornelius and Salomon acquired farms in Namaqualand.38 By the late 1770s Klaas Berends, a ‘Goeyeman Hottentot’, that is, a Goringhaiqua from the western Cape, had a farm at the junction of the Hartebeest and the Orange, and also became overseer of the Hantam farms of the owner of the colonial meat contract by 1784.39 In the 1770s also Klaas Afrikaner (father of Jager and Titus), the son of ‘Oude Ram’ who was convicted in 1761 for the attempted murder of Adam Kok, moved to the Hantam. Here he became the servant of Peter Pienaar, a colonist born in 1750, who had a farm there.40 By 1786 Jan Bloem, a German sailor who had deserted in 1780, was overseer of a loan farm of Peter Pienaar’s at the Hartebeest-Orange junction. By 1790 there were indications that raided cattle from Great Namaqualand were reaching the Hantam.41
Towards the coast, and north of the Orange, Brigitte Lau has outlined what she characterises as an Oorlam revolution between 1780 and 1840, spearheaded by the aforementioned Afrikaner family, which, after severing relations with Pienaar in 1796,42 moved first to islands on the middle Orange, then north of the Orange, then north-west, from where they began to transform what is now Namibia (see chapter 6). Jonker Afrikaner, son of Jager and grandson of Klaas, established a ‘powerful if rudimentary state… in the border area between Namaland and Hereroland by the mid-1820s’, from where it dominated what is today central-southern Namibia for two decades. Invited by the Nama Red Nation to prevent the southward movement of Herero, Jonker Afrikaner built up a strong alliance with other Nama/Oorlam groups in the area.43 According to Lau, an 18th-century political economy of self-sufficient nomadic pastoralism, organised on the basis of kinship relations, was displaced by one based on commodity exchange with the Cape Colony, organised politically around the commando system (with militarised leadership) and the presence of Christian missionaries. In addition to new groups, some, such as the Nama Bondelswarts (a community living north of the lower Orange) became Oorlamicised and, in fact, signed a treaty with the colonial government in 1830.44 Despite criticism by Dedering, Lau’s argument broadly holds up.45 Sporadic war between Nama groups and the Herero took place. In the 1860s, however, the intervention in this fighting of Europeans hostile to the Afrikaner family hegemony resulted in the Afrikaner-created state losing its dominance in central Namibia.46
From the start of the 19th century the islands of the middle Orange were ‘the refuge for a motley collection of rabble and outcasts from the colony [including white colonists]’.47 From 1796 Jan Bloem intensified his trading and raiding activities along the Orange River and gathered a following of Korana and Bushmen around him. He eventually moved as far as the later Bloemfontein and recruited Bushmen and Korana, and was then elected as chief of a Taaibosch clan called the Springbokke. He raided Tswana communities and died soon after 1799.48 His son, Jan Jr, succeeded him and continued raiding through Transorangia. A complex period of population movements and widespread banditry ensued. By 1840 there were 17 separate groups of Korana.49 ‘In many ways Bloem’s activities in the area east of the confluence of the Hartebeest and Orange River’, writes Nigel Penn, ‘were a mirror image of Afrikaner’s activities to the west. Like Afrikaner he established a group which survived the death of its founding father, presided over by his personal descendants. Like Afrikaner, too, he spread the “firearm zone” far to the north of the Orange River, destroying some groups and encouraging the coalition of others.’50
In similar fashion, in western Transorangia, a ‘Griqua revolution’ took place, with the Kok and Berends families leading other Basters (and Khoisan) from Namaqualand up the Orange River to establish themselves by 1802 in petty states at Klaarwater (Griquatown) and subsequently at Campbell, Boetsap, Philippolis and other settlements. These states were initially ruled by prominent families (the Koks and the Berends); the election of the Bushman Andries Waterboer as kaptyn (captain) at Griquatown in 1820 represented a similar transition to that characterised by Lau in Namibia. Though not so militarised, these states depended on the commando system, and also had resident Christian missionaries. By the 1810s, argues Parsons, Griqua power had displaced Taaibosch Kora power in the area – and the Taaibosches had moved into the orbit of Tlhaping power.51 The Griqua states were beset in the 1820s by ‘Bergenaar’ and ‘Hartenaar’ raiders, multi-ethnic armed groupings. The course of events here was further complicated by developments such as the Difaqane, the arrival of Mzilikazi on the Highveld from 1825, the Great Trek from 1836, and the later establishment and retrocession of the British Orange River sovereignty between 1848 and 1854, after which Griqua power receded.52
An added ingredient to the ethnic mixture along the Orange River before the end of the 18th century were Xhosa – offshoots from the Xhosa chiefdoms of the eastern frontier – leading multi-ethnic groups of raiders. A Xhosa named ‘Danster’ who had served in the Colony, and also been for a while a follower of Afrikaner, had been on the Orange since 1797 and by 1805 was leading a group which included two nephews of the Xhosa chief Ndlambe. By that time, at least, there was another Xhosa group living at the ‘sources