3. Calls for Representative Government
1840s;
White settlers eager to tighten control of non-white labour (Masters &
Servants Ordinance, 1841, for example);
The Cape‟s Legislative Council became increasingly
unpopular;
Calls for an elected assembly;
The metropolitan government also wanted to grant
greater power to local governments in all of its settler
colonies;
Debates over the Cape Constitution;
Questions over the franchise;
Proposal: non-racial, qualified franchise;
All adult males owning property valued at £25 or more (had owned
the property for more than a year);
4. Anti-Convict Agitation, 1848-49
The Colonial Office in London proposed landing Irish
convicts at the Cape;
The Cape had not been a penal colony before;
Australia the preferred penal destination for Britain;
Sparked anti-convict protests across the Cape Colony;
Participants: Afrikaners, English, merchants, farmers, missionaries
and the Khoisan and ex-slaves, especially those living at missions
and in the Kat River Settlement;
Cross-class movement;
Argued that convicts represented a threat to
respectability;
Bourgeois sentiment;
Poor Coloured workers concerned over finding work
during an economic depression.
5. The Kat River Rebellion, 1851
Coincided with the Eighth Frontier War (Mlanjeni‟s War);
Early days of the war – many Kat River inhabitants tried to
remain neutral;
Professed loyalty to the Government and Queen Victoria;
Wanted to defend their properties;
Disgruntled that they had not received their full pay from the previous
war;
The white-burgher forced also refused to fight;
Saw the conflict as a British war;
The Kat River Khoisan were, however, accused of being
complicit with the Xhosa;
Their loyalty was questioned;
Neutrality was not an option for them;
The Colony had long feared a Khoisan/Xhosa alliance;
Had occurred during the Third Frontier War (1799-1802).
6. About a third of the Kat River Khoisan joined the
rebellion;
25% of landowners in the settlement rebelled;
Yet, the rebellion afforded the Cape‟s settlers an
opportunity to call into question the entire humanitarian
project;
The mission/humanitarian venture had already been in decline;
The rebels were supposed to be “Christianised”, literate and a model
community;
Motives for joining the rebellion:
Hostility of the English settlers;
Fear over the pending new constitution and elected assembly;
Loss of property and wealth during the previous frontier wars;
Want of more land;
Millenarianism .
7. The Squatter‟s Agitation, 1851
Fears that the rebellion in the Eastern Cape could
spread to the Western Cape as well;
End of 1850;
Legislative Council proposed the introduction of a bill to
prevent “squatting” on Crown land;
Khoisan and ex-slaves interpreted this as a renewed attempt to
introduce vagrancy legislation;
Rumours of a general insurrection began to
circulate;
Compounded by the events unfolding on the eastern frontier.
8. Ethnicity & Christianity
Ethnicity and Christianity were used in service of the
rebellion;
Kat River rebel leaders, along with their followers, mobilised
„Hottentot‟ ethnicity for political ends;
Elbourne: “a defensive reinvention of ethnicity”;
Some rebel leaders appealed to the Griquas to join them;
Alliances also struck with several Xhosa chiefs;
All this constituted the mobilisation of the concept of
“blackness” by those caught up in the conflict;
Common cause against colonialism;
By 1853, most of the rebels had surrendered.
9. Representative Government
1853;
The Cape Colony was granted representative government;
Adopted a non-racial, qualified franchise;
£25 property ownership, or £50 annual income, and had to be a
taxpayer;
Very low qualification when compared to other qualified suffrages
in other parts of the world at the time;
United States – until 1870, only white, property owning men could
vote;
United Kingdom – had a higher property qualification until the
1880s;
A small percentage of Coloured men qualified to vote;
Never large enough to sway the election result.
10. William Porter – Attorney General
“Why should you fear the exercise of franchise?
This is a delicate question but it must be touched upon.
I do not hesitate to say that I would rather meet the Hottentot at the
hustings, voting for his representative, than in the wilds with his gun
upon his shoulder.
Is it not better to disarm them by granting them the privileges of the
constitution?
If you now blast all their hopes and tell them they shall not fight their
battles constitutionally, do not you yourselves apply to them the
stimulus to fight their battles unconstitutionally?”
11. Themes in the History of the Cape‟s Subalterns
Agency;
Context and contingency;
Fluidity of identities;
Constructed nature of identities;
Resonance/relevance?
