killing of Piet Potgieter's party, and in 1854 Makapan and his
people were starved to death w hen they took refuge in a cave (37).
All the same, in hunting as in other fields of interracial
interaction, the retributive capacity of the Boers declined
over time. In the Zoutpansberg, which initially had great
coercive powers, because its hunters and traders were in a sense
(35) S.A.A.R. Transvaal I , 45-7, Minutes of Volksraad, 20 April, 1846.
(36) Agar-Hamilton, Native P o l i c y , 163-4.
(37) I bid; Winter, 'Sekwati', 332; Berliner M i s s i o n s b e r i c h t e ,1862, 'Beitrage', 339-40.
'i
133
permanently under arms, one sees a weakening taking place as a
result of the factors just mentioned, as well as through
divisions inside the community itself. Somewhat earlier, an
allusion was made to the way in which a reliance on African
support fostered intra-communal divisions, and nowhere is this
clearer than in the Zoutpansberg case. There, rival factions
vied with each other for African followings to act as hunters
or mercenaries, or in the collection of taxes. There too,
African communities responded by exploiting these tensions,
and intensifying the hostility between rival white groups (38).
The Zoutpansberg is admittedly an extreme case to select, but
elsewhere in the Trans-vaal one sees a similar pattern of Boer
communities competing among themselves for African support, and
African factions manipulating those divisions for their own
sectional ends (39).
Viewed against this background the few shreds of information we
have about L y d e n b u r g 1s decision to harbour Somcuba begin to
make a little more sense. Most of M s w a t i ’s reign had, hitherto,
been spent on the defensive, and there are clear signs in this
period of a crumbling of his power. On all of his frontiers his
jurisdiction was narrowing, and this was compounded in 1848 by
defections from his ranks (40). Faced with a weakened Swazi
(38) See for example De Vaal, ’R o l ’, 75-8.
(39) Above, 89-95, 100.
(40) The one was Somcuba, the other Mgazi, S.A.A.R. Transvaal I , 103, Volksraad minutes, 19 Sept. 1849, Art. 18.
king, and growing shortages of manpower, it must have seemed
w orth running the risk of giving refuge to Somcuba. He was,
after all, accompanied by something like five hundred male
supporters, who would constitute an invaluable addition to
L y d e n b u r g ’s fighting strength (41). At the same time they were
useful as guides and for the gathering of intelligence, besides
constituting a valuable reservoir of labour supplies (42).
Finally, it is likely that certain sections of the community
benefited disproportionately to others, and m a y have welcomed
his presence to serve factional ends. If that is so this m a y
explain the petition to replace W.F. Joubert, and J o u b e r t fs
riposte in the shape of the treaty with Somcuba.
As a result, relations wit h the Swazi remained in a critical
state. In July 1854 the Krygsraad was convoked to hear complaints
from Mswati, but pronounced them once again largely inadmissable(43).
Almost immediately afterwards, it expressed its forebodings
about the future in a letter to Utrecht. nFor our part", it
wrote, "we still have Ta so-called peace* with Mswati, but we
cannot determine with any certainty whether or not to expect a
(41) S.N. 1A No. N 105/79, Report by Roth, n.d.; Fourie, A m a n d e b e l e , 34, for example cites the use of Somcuba's forces against Maboko, chief of the Transvaaal Ndebele, and this is confirmed by Roth, S.S. 487, R 4978, Encl.
R 4809, Roth (Landdrost, Lydenburg) to Colonial Secretary, 15 Nov. 1880.
(42) S.C. Plct. 6, No. 2, 285-6, Treaty between Krygsraad and Sincoeba, 6 Nov. 1853; S.A.A.R. Transvaal 3 , 88, Kommissie- r a a d ’s meeting 4 July 1855, Art. 12; Van der Merwe,
'Naturelle1, 97. Van der Merwe refers to an agreement that Somcuba should supply labour for building a canal near Lydenburg, but I have not been able to track down the reference.
(43) S.S. 9, 104-5, R 217/54 Vergadering va n Krygsraad, 7 July 1854, Lydenburg.
135
speedy war with him because we cannot and will not give up
Sincoeba whom we have no w taken in already for 5 years." (44)
Rumours even began to circulate of a n e w alliance between
Mpande and Mswati, directed against the Republic (45), but
these, while carrying some weight in Republican councils, are
likely to have had their origin nearer home than Swaziland or
Zululand, most probably at Eludlambedwini, the chief homestead
of Somcuba.
By n o w Lydenburg's authorities were becoming increasingly uneasy,
and they shortly afterwards memorialised the Volksraad about,
the dangers they w ere facing and "the absence of peace on a
single side"(46). The remedy they suggested was that a Commission
be despatched to conclude a treaty with Mswati, and that a
commando be summoned to lend authority to their demands.
Eventually, nearly two months later, a Kommissie Raad sat to
consider this petition, and between the 6th and 10th of November
it passed resolutions to the effect that the Republic should
completely overhaul its relations with the surrounding chiefdoms,
with a v iew to placing them on a more satisfactory footing.
All written peace treaties previously concluded with Africans
were to be considered null and void, and n ew ones, more
conducive to the "general welfare" of the Republic, were to be
submitted in their place. Once again the Swazi figured
(44) S.A.A.R. Transvaal 3 , (Cape Town, 1951), 606, W.F. Joubert to J.C. Steyn, 8 July 1854.
(45) I bid.
(46) S.S. 9, 111-12, R 24/54 Memorial signed by W.J. Joubert to Volksraad, 16 Sept. 1854. A solution to the dispute between Mswati and Somcuba was high on their list of priorities. It was in point of fact the only dispute
specifically mentioned.
prominently in these plans, not only in connection with the feud
with Somcuba, but also as an agent of the Republic in implement
ing these policies, as it was also resolved that the assistance
of Mswati should be obtained, "in accordance with an agreement
earlier made with him" (47) to reduce the Republic's rebellious
African subjects. The quid pro q u o , it would seem, was the
removal of Somcuba to a less provocative distance from the
borders of Swaziland (48).
These resolutions underline the bankruptcy of Lydenburg's
foreign policy at this time. The original resolutions of the
petition of 16 September 1854 had been based on the assumption that
a show of force, in conjunction with Commandant-Generals
Pretorius and Potgieter, was the only satisfactory way of
re-establishing the Republic's authority over neighbouring
African peoples, but the Kommissie Raad's resolutions of November
1854 make it clear that such a project was hopelessly unrealistic.
Far from raising re-inforcements from neighbouring communities,
Lydenburg's military authorities had not even been able to
persuade a sufficient number of burghers from their own
Republic to take part in an ordinary negotiating mission to the
Swazi (49). Unless the Republic had already come to some secret
(47) As the Commission which the Petition of 16 Sept. 1854 resolved should go to Mswati never in fact left, owing to lack of cooperation by Commandant P.J. Coetzee and others (see S.A.A.R. Transvaal 3 , 25-6, Kommissie Raad's meeting 18 Nov. 1854, Afd. 18-20) it seems that this must refer to the 1846 agreement. President Burgers later claimed that the Swazi at the time of this transaction had offered to "clean the land" which they had ceded, of other Africans.
(48) S.A.A.R. Transvaal 3 , 22-5, Sitting of Kommissie Raads, 6 Nov. 1854, Afds 3-15; but see also below, 191.
(49) Above, note 47.
137
understanding with Mswati (50), its proposals were a hollow and
meaningless sham. The entire strategy which they had formulated
depended on obtaining the support of Mswati, and this would
quite patently not be forthcoming.without either the threat of
coercion, or a meaningful concession on Somcuba.
Whether a Commission ever set out for Swaziland to implement
the above resolutions, and if so whether it achieved anything
are not recorded (51). The absence of any further mention of
its activities in the Volksraad or Executive Council minutes
suggests that it probably never departed at all, and the most
likely explanation for this is to be found in the reports which
reached Lydenburg in the middle of November, that a force of
Mswati's was waiting on the other side of the Vaal River, with
the intention of attacking the Boer settlements in the Republic
as soon as the flood water subsided (52). Shortly afterwards,
in mid-December, there followed still more airy rumours that
Mswati's force was by now on the Boer side of the Crocodile
River, and this was apparently enough to dissuade the Commission
from setting out at all (53).
(50) The heavy penalties threatened to anyone revealing informa
tion about the Raad's resolutions, and the omission of Afd. 7 from the Public Notice of these resolutions (this was the one making reference to the use of Mswati's forces
-S.S. 9, 154), together with the provision for the removal