This painting by S. Daniell shows a Bastaard boy from the Fish River area.
On white-owned farms Bastaards, or Basters, did more skilled jobs than hired or domestic labour – working, for instance, as craftsmen and transport riders – and they took these skills with them later into the interior. They originally referred to themselves as ‘Bastaards’, not to denote illegitimacy, but their status as a people with a greater ‘civilisation’ and an attachment to Christianity than the Khoikhoi or slaves. They could speak Afrikaans.
In the second half of the eighteenth century small Baster communities had been formed in the fringe areas of the northwest – Namaqualand, Cederberg, Bokkeveld, Hantam and the Roggeveld – and on the eastern frontier. In the 1798 census of Graaff- Reinet district, some 5–10% of the district’s farming population were listed separately as ‘baptised Bastaards’. They had European names and their children were baptised in the church (although increasingly, apparently, in separate ceremonies). They were called upon to do commando service.
Basters were, nevertheless, increasingly squeezed out from the land they held. On contested claims, burghers invariably had the stronger claim and better access to the field-cornets who reported on any such claims. Heinrich Lichtenstein, a German traveller who traversed the colony in the first years of the nineteenth century, commented: ‘[The] white children of the colonists did not hesitate to make use of the right of the strongest to drive their half yellow relations out of the places where they had fixed abodes. These bastard [Khoikhoi] were then obliged to seek an asylum in more remote parts…’ Basters and other people of mixed racial origin moved first to the outer limits of the colony and then beyond its borders.
Adam Kok, a freed slave, founded the Griqua community. According to tradition, he married the daughter of the chief of the Chariguriqua (which provided the root of the name Griqua).
Adam Kok, a freed slave who managed to obtain burgher rights and a farm near the present Piketberg, founded the most vigorous
mixed community. According to one tradition he married the daughter of the chief of a Khoikhoi clan, the Chariguriqua (the root of the name ‘Griqua’), during the 1750s. Kok attracted a following as he moved up from Piketberg to Little Namaqualand. By the 1790s a son of Adam Kok, Cornelis Kok, moved out of the colony to the Orange River and then eastwards along the bank to what is now known as Griqualand West. He had gathered with him a large number of Basters, some Khoikhoi, and escaped slaves.
On the urging of the missionary John Campbell, they came up with the name Griqua. They established a rudimentary system of government based on leaders called kaptyns and magistrates drawn from individuals within the leading families. Prominent among them were the Kok and Barends families, and the Waterboer family complex. These families assumed stability by eschewing a life of pure raiding and establishing trade links with their neighbours. Andries Waterboer allegedly had no white parentage and was a dependant of Adam Kok. However, he later allied himself to the church, acting as an interpreter, and rose to influence after 1820 when he was appointed kaptyn. In an attempt to achieve a greater measure of political autonomy the Griqua invited the missionaries to join them. In 1804–05 they founded a settlement called Klaarwater, later Griquatown. Chronicinternal divisions and environmental uncertainty bedevilled the different Griqua communities.
The essential tension was between wanting to be within the colonial fold, with the security and economic opportunities it presented, and yet to be independent from it. The missionaries had their own aims in Christianising the Griqua, which basically were to transform them into a settled agricultural and pastoral group. In 1813 Campbell drew up a constitution for them, which effectively stripped the kaptyns of much of their power. This created tension, but the missionaries did offer some protection and accord the Griqua a degree of respectability.
Relations between Waterboer and the Kok/Barends family complex were poor. Adam Kok II and Barend Barends moved away from Griquatown with their followers to Campbell and Danielskuil, respectively. Later Kok moved to Philippolis, and Barends to Boetsap. This strengthened the hand of Andries Waterboer, who became the dominant figure in Griquatown itself, and the protégé of the missionaries.
The Griqua were the first people from the Cape who settled beyond the Orange River – an area known as Transorangia. Some Griqua raided the Tlhaping, a Setswanaspeaking African community; others obtained cattle from them, which they then traded with the Cape Colony for firearms, horses and wagons. They also acted as middlemen in a lucrative ivory trade between the Batswana and the Colony, while some engaged in hunting for ivory themselves.
