To extend firmer control over the frontier zone, the British administration did two things. The one step was a failure, the other a success.
In an attempt to regulate the employment and movement of the Khoikhoi, the Hottentot Proclamation of 1809 was issued. It decreed that written work contracts had to be drawn up, and instructed all Khoikhoi to a ‘fixed place of abode’ without which they could not travel without a pass. It meant that a worker who left an unjust master before his time expired was in violation of the law. Intended to protect the Khoikhoi, the proclamation placed them at the mercy of the powerful.
A more successful reform was the introduction of an annual circuit court, with judges from Cape Town touring the interior to hear cases. The 1812 circuit became known as the Black Circuit, because of the many charges of maltreatment of Khoikhoi labourers raised by the missionaries Van der Kemp and Read from their mission station in Bethels dorp. The effect of the Black Circuit was great, and for the first time frontier burghers appeared before a high court in their districts to answer charges brought against them by their servants.
The government also stationed Khoikhoi troops at the border posts to assist the landdrosts. It did away with the loan farm system, which it considered to be a cause of frontier lawlessness. The new system of perpetual quitrent title required that farms be surveyed and that beacons mark their borders. The government’s inability to process the new system created insecurity, which fed into the inclination of the more lawless frontiersmen to challenge government.
