The independence of the Khoikhoi disintegrated as the trekboers swept across the coastal plain, while the Xhosa to their east absorbed them. Large numbers of Khoikhoi were incorporated by Xhosa chiefdoms, particularly the Gqu nu khwebe and the Ntinde. They did not enter as equals. This was because they were poor, not because they were deemed racially inferior. Since biological mixing with the Xhosa occurred freely they did not form a separate caste; their descendants became Xhosa. At the same time Khoikhoi submission was not entirely voluntary. Some resisted the Xhosa and sought the service of the Boers instead of the Xhosa.
Initially many farmers did not treat a Khoikhoi as mere labourers but allowed them to retain their stock and links with their kinsmen. This was possible in the early stages when land was still plentiful.
The demands the colonists imposed on the Khoikhoi were most exacting. They provided invaluable knowledge about maintaining pastoral production in an arid environment, but they had to yield their land and sometimes their cattle as well. As herdsmen they were targets for the raiders. As members of the commando they fought at the front.
Some frontiersmen forced the Khoikhoi to work for them, they beat them and threatened to shoot them, and mercilessly whipped those who had fled and were recaptured. Such Khoikhoi were little more than serfs or slaves.
Khoisan children were indentured on farms up to the age of 18, or 25 years with the government’s permission. This is a list of the names of such inboekselingen.
But force could be counterproductive. The allegiance of the Khoikhoi sent out on commandos could not be won by beatings. Many burghers worked out a more stable relationship; one that historians have called ‘clientship’. In the clientship tradition a poor and insecure Khoikhoi would seek the protection of a burgher as patron, and work for him. In exchange the patron helped him build up his livestock on a frontier. It was when the farm no longer could carry all the people and cattle that conflict erupted. Many masters told their clients to reduce their stock and, instead of offering incentives, compelled them to work. Masters also prevented the Khoikhoi from leaving under the pretence that their children were still ‘indentured’ or they claimed ‘damages’ because of the worker’s negligence.
Many Khoikhoi were becoming part of a captive labour force. Not only the Khoikhoi ‘serfs’, who had been bludgeoned into submission, but also many Khoikhoi clients, began to find their situation intolerable. When they resisted, their masters resorted to violent punishment. The clientship relationship had broken down.
To prevent their labourers from leaving, some farmers introduced mechanisms developed in the slave society of the Western Cape, particularly passes and indentureship. In the final decades of the eighteenth century the district authorities in Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam introduced pass regulations, with masters issuing passes. If a labourer left a farm without a pass, a commando would hunt him down. Along with passes, indentureship was imported from Western Cape farms, where liaisons between slave men and Khoikhoi women were common. Farmers indentured the children of such liaisons until the age of eighteen or 21 or 25. This custom was formally introduced in 1775, but there is good reason to believe that it had been practised earlier. On farms in the interior the system started in the same way, but it was soon expanded to cases where both parents were Khoikhoi.
A cartoon denouncing the indenture system. See the notices on the wall. It is not clear why the farmer and his accomplice are shown as Romans – perhaps to refer to Roman slavery.
Masters used this device to prevent labourers from leaving, justifying it with the same paternalistic ideology as they justified slavery. In 1809 a balanced report by a British officer, Colonel Richard Collins, noted: ‘A [Khoikhoi] can now seldom get away at the expiration of his term. If he should happen to be in debt to his master . . . he is not allowed to take his children, or he is detained under some frivolous pretence, such as that of cattle having died through his neglect, and he is not permitted to satisfy any demands of this nature otherwise than by personal service.’
There are indications that, in the final two decades of the century, some Graaff-Reinet farms were the scenes of acts of great cruelty.
List of indentured Khoisan children
Honoratus Maynier, secretary of the district from 1789 and landdrost from 1792, encouraged the Khoikhoi to file complaints against masters who maltreated them. The resulting reports contain evidence of severe punishments, and of masters’ refusal to let their servants go. There were increasing reports of Khoikhoi seeking refuge among the Xhosa, taking with them both guns and horses, which had given the frontier burghers such a great advantage over their own adversaries. Fugitive Khoikhoi captured or destroyed stock, burned crops and razed homes.
