Transformation in late colonial Ngqika society : a political, economic and social history of African communities in the district of Stutterheim (Eastern Cape), c.1870-1910

This study analyses the methods and policies of the colonial government which shaped Stutterheim's African communities between c.1870 and 1910. In 1870 the Stutterheim magisterial district had not yet been officially established. However, creation of the British Kaffrarian administration (1847-1865) had already ensured the entrenchment of colonial rule over the humiliated Xhosa chiefdoms west of the Kei. This work studies transformations in late colonial Ngqika society and the development of Stutterheim as a magisterial district. It analyses the entrenchment of colonial bureaucracy and changes in indigenous social, economic and political structures. In the period c.1860-1877, direct administration of the Ngqika was first attempted. While recovering from the 1856-57 cattle killing, the Ngqika were brought under colonial administration by the annexation of British Kaffraria to the Cape Colony in 1865. The thesis also examines the process and implications of the breakup and resettlement of the Ngqika location after the 1877-1878 war and the mechanisms and complications in forming a new postwar settlement. The focus then narrows to Stutterheim magisterial district (finalised in 1880), where, after the removal of the main Ngqika population to the Transkei formal structures of quitrent settlement were established around mission stations. A new form of social behaviour underpinned by principles of individualism evolved under missionary influence. Urged on by legislation that sought to intensify implementation of individual tenure, this social behaviour predominated under the new administration. Attention is also given to the allocation of farm land in the district. On part of what had once been communally owned land, an immigrant farming community originally intended strictly for whites emerged. Numerous Africans later managed to hold property in this area. An urban area with a mixed African and white population resulted where allotments initially allocated to the German Legion were later auctioned. On crown lands, leasing and purchasing was initiated. By the early twentieth century, settlement patterns were in chaos: on the mission settlements, quitrenters disobeyed settlement regulations, farms were overpopulated by tenants and interracial urban settlements faced imminent segregationist policies. By 1910 local administration was in difficulties and the Africans were becoming politically mobilised against local and colonial policies