Topic 7: The Conflicts between Africans and Europeans
Before the 19th century, Africans controlled almost all the territory in the eastern half of Southern
Africa where there was sufficient rainfall and favourable environment for mixed farming. The
dominant position of Africans changed during the 19th century when European settlements
spread from the south into the interior. This major change in the relationship between the
Africans and Europeans came along with series of conflicts between these two groups of people.
This expansion was the result of two important developments in Southern Africa:
1. The Frontier Wars which led to loss of land by the indigenous groups
2. The Great Trek which led to the creation of the Boer Republics
The Great Trek has been discussed earlier, the other series of conflicts which would be discussed
here are the Frontier Wars between the Hottentots and the Boers on the one hand and between
the Bantu and the Boers on the other hand.
The Frontier Wars were fought initially between the Boers and the Hottentot herdsmen and later
between the Boers and the Southern Nguni Bantu known as the Xhosa. Basically the wars were
caused by land hunger resulting from population pressure. The Africans and Europeans who
lived in the frontier areas clashed over the control of grazing land for their sheep and cattle.
However, specific wars had specific causes. One major Frontier War was fought between 1847
and 1847. This war was also called the War of the Axe because it was caused by a Xhosa attack
on a police escort that had arrested a Xhosa boy in the Cape alleged to have stolen an axe. By the
end of 1847, the Xhosa were forced by the Governor at the Cape, Sir Harry Smith to accept a
settlement. Part of the settlement was the annexation of Southern Nguniland up to the Kei River,
an area later known as British Kaffraria. This arrangement brought the Xhosa into the Cape
Colony where they were forced to live in reservations while the Europeans occupied the most
fertile and well-watered areas. Some of the landless Xhosa worked on white farms while some
moved to live beyond the Kei River.
The Xhosa were beaten, but they did not give up. Between 1850 and 1853, the longest and the
most devastating frontier war was fought in which the Xhosa lost heavily in men and cattle. To
compound the problems of the Xhosa, an unfulfilled ‘prophecy’ regarding the frontier war, given
by a young female diviner, led to serious economic disaster in which several thousands of the
Xhosa died of starvation. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Frontier or Xhosa Wars were also
called Wars of Dispossession because each succeeding war dispossessed the Xhosa of their land.
Consequently, by the end of the nineteenth century, the whole of Southern Nguni Territory was
under European administration as part of the Cape Colony, where many of them worked for the
Europeans.