Episode 51 – The Third Frontier War ends and missionaries trek into a snake’s nest at Ngqika’s Great Place
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Show notes
So this war was set off by the blunt British instrument called Packenham Vandeleur as we heard in Episode 50. The Zuurveld farmers were now in a defenceless state since their supply of powder and lead had been stopped by the British who were trying to stymie the Graaff-Reinet trekboer rebels. Some Khoe and Bastaard were also fighting with the amaXhosa who had been confronted by Vandeleur on the Sunday’s River.
To use a more modern and yet English phrase, everything had gone pear shaped.
By now 29 settlers had been killed by the amaxhosa and Khoe uprising, the survivors were on the run towards the Gamtoos River where Jeffrey’s Bay is today. As for Vandeleur, he had lost the initiative and was pinned down with 200 troops in his camp near the Swartkops River just north of Port Elizabeth stroke Gqbetha. He’d built a large starshaped earthwork to repel the amaXhosa attacks and his men were running short of provisions. The ships in Algoa Bay had left, so he was stranded.
Then the war ended - and no-one except Chungwa of the amaGqunukhwebe got what they wanted in the Zuurveld.
So he naturally responded by co-operating with the British colonial authorities in trying to police the region against cattle thieves whether Khoe or amaXhosa. Or he collaborated to use a loaded 20th Century phrase much loved by the bourgeois guerrilla chic.
Meanwhile the LMS missionaries had arrived at Ngqika’s Great Place close to the Thyume and Keiskamma Rivers in September 1799. That would be South of Hogsback and East of Fort Beaufort today.
However their reception was not a good one.
