Biko: A Biography. Xolela Mangcu

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Название Biko: A Biography
Автор произведения Xolela Mangcu
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Серия
Издательство Биографии и Мемуары
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780624058168



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amaNtinde have had a significant degree of integration with Khoisan groups”.[24] The missionary station of Bethelsdorp was “a thriving centre of Khoisan life”, and there were many visitors from Xhosaland because of “the preponderance of Khoisan kinship ties among the Xhosa”.[25] Indeed, the amaGqunukhwebe, which to all intents and purposes is a Xhosa clan, has its origin in intermarriage between the Khoisan and the Xhosa. Martin Legassick describes the Kat River settlement as “an area of intermingling of all the peoples of the Eastern Cape (save whites), including Maqoma”.[26] In his biography of Tiyo Soga, Donovan Williams describes the same settlement as follows:

      Between the Amatole and the Great Fish River lay an area which, by the early nineteenth century, was the last cushion for absorbing the increasing European thrust from the Cape colony. Therefore it was worth fighting for. It was also rich in cultural diversity: amaXhosa and Mfengu mingled with European missionaries, traders and travellers, administrators and military. To the northwest of the Amatole lay the Kat River valley. After Maqoma had been expelled from it in 1829 it was filled with Hottentot (Khoi) and Coloured farmers, a sprinkling of European missionaries, and after 1851, white farmers.

      Dutch Rule and the Khoisan Resistance: 1657-1806

      Unlike the Khoi-Khoi, the San could not be brought under the control of the free burghers because they were of no economic value to the Dutch pastoralists – they could not be forced to labour as pastoralists. When they had cattle, it was with the intention of eating instead of herding them. Central to colonial pastoral farming was what was arguably its most important institution – the commando system, whereby a group of armed men would violently put under their control those whose land and cattle they raided. The San were not easily conquerable by the commando system because they could not be put to use. And so the free burghers approached them with a shoot-to-kill policy. The San also seemed to come from a mystical world that was completely foreign to one of the fundamental aspects of Christian societies – the idea of a settled, sedentary life. The differences between the Khoi-Khoi and the San did not, however, prevent the emergence of a strong Khoisan resistance, leading to pleas by various commandos for government assistance as the loss of livestock was becoming intolerable – the San ate the livestock, making its recovery by the pastoralists a moot point. In 1774 the colonial government decided to put all of the commandos under one general command – the General Commando. The San became the target of the most genocidal campaigns precisely because they could not be caught with the cattle or be captured and put in service of the pastoralists. What frustrated the burghers most was that they could not easily win against the San:

      Penn further notes that:

      It is to the entry of the British into the Cape and their encounter with the Xhosa people that I now turn. Here we see the antecedents of what Steve Biko would later achieve when he forged an identity of Blackness that included Africans, Coloureds and Indians. To be sure, there were wars between the Xhosa and the Khoi and San people. War between pastoralists and hunter-gatherers is inevitable because the latter want to eat what the former want to preserve. Equally, though, there were also efforts by warriors from both sides to bridge the gap and stand together against the trekboere. This unity was to be of crucial importance in the ensuing resistance to the British who, unlike the Dutch pastoralists, now sought to entrench a more elaborate administrative system over the colony. Their aim was to anglicise what was still a Dutch-dominated colony by bringing their language and culture to bear on the entire landscape. According to Mostert,

      British Colonial Rule and the Xhosa Resistance: 1779-1909