A shortage of land had long been acute on the frontier, and the situation had steadily worsened between 1812 and the mid-1830s. During the eighteenth century the farmers, or their sons or sons-in-law, moved on to new land after pastures had been exhausted. But that depended on ‘free’ land – that is, land that could be taken without any cost and converted into a loan farm.
Early in the nineteenth century this way of life came to an end. In 1813 the British abolished the familiar loan farm system, and introduced a system of perpetual quitrent tenure. There was a long delay in the issue of title deeds, farms were wrongly surveyed and in some cases corrupt surveyors pocketed the money.
From the early 1830s the government returned land applications with a note that it could no longer issue land. The market price of established farms rose sharply. People left the colony because they wished to obtain new land to practise subsistence farming along traditional lines.
There seemed to be abundant free land beyond the colonial borders. By the mid- 1820s migrant farmers, called trekboers in the north and northeast, were already expanding beyond the border, and severe droughts spurred them on. Initially they made humble requests to cross the border only as a temporary relief measure. But, by the end of the 1820s, these trekboers were no longer asking permission, and simply informing the authorities in Graaff-Reinet that they were crossing the boundary. Many trekboers sold their farms and moved to the other side of the border.
