The frontier conflict was not simply a struggle between white and black farmers over land, labour and cattle. There was a third party: British military officers and, aligned to them, British merchants and speculators based mainly in Grahamstown. Their mouthpiece, the Grahamstown Journal, propagated colonial expansion into Xhosa territory and the complete subordination of the Xhosa with a large military presence, as well as increased military expenditure. To merchants, this held out the prospect of much greater profits in a lucrative trade in the smuggling of arms and in land speculation. The expansionist lobby constantly exaggerated the aggressive nature of the Xhosa and their culp ability in the frontier unrest. In 1837, Governor Napier referred to the Grahamstown Journal and the merchant lobby in the town as those ‘most clamorous against the [ Xhosa] nation’.
The principal figure among the British military on the frontier was the tempestuous and aggressive Colonel Henry Somerset, the governor’s son. In 1823 he became officer in charge of the Khoikhoi-manned Cape Regiment stationed on the frontier. He headed many of the frequent patrols and commandos against the Xhosa who had seeped back into the Ceded Territory. He also attacked Xhosa chiefdoms far away from the frontier. These expeditions carried off large numbers of cattle, and distributed them to colonists who had suffered losses.
By the early 1830s Stockenstrom had lost all faith in the patrols and commandos that kept the Xhosa in a constant state of alarm, marching at night and attacking at dawn, and firing at random. Sometimes patrols and commandos went out every week. At a homestead they burned the huts, seized cattle and drove off the inhabitants. Most Xhosa living there, innocent or guilty, fled. Tyhali once asked: ‘Shall I never have peace in my
own country? Am I to be treated in this way, day after day?’
