Labour had long been a critical issue. The farms were large and homesteads were six or seven kilometres apart, with no fences to keep cattle in. Particularly after Ordinance 50 there was a severe shortage of cattle herders. Farmers did not pay their servants well. Dr Philip believed that the farmers would attract labour if they offered good cash wages, but Afrikaner colonists were much slower than their British counterparts to switch to commercial farming and cash wages. Those farmers with sufficient land hoped to retain labourers by displaying a benign paternalism, particularly by allowing servants to keep some stock. However, the growing pressure on the land meant that few farmers could provide the Khoikhoi with enough land for their own stock.
Ordinance 50 of 1828 freed the Khoikhoi from all curbs on their movement. Large numbers moved to the mission stations. These Khoikhoi huts were scattered around the Kamiesberg mission.
Ordinance 50 of 1828 freed the Khoikhoi from all curbs on their movement, and they began moving away in large numbers from the farms. An observer who described the scene on the frontier, wrote: ‘I have myself known farms which had been completely abandoned by the last remaining [Khoikhoi] having given up service or retired to the missionary schools, taking with them the flocks or herds which they have earned in their employer’s service and rejecting every offer or bribe to continue any longer in such service.’
The Khoisan who left settled either on missionary stations, or squatted on crown land or on the outskirts of towns. In 1842 a senior British officer commented: ‘It is idle to say why do the farmers not properly guard their cattle, the thing I say is impossible in this country where servants are not to be had.’
Some Voortrekker leaders were slave-holders but they could not have rallied support for the trek
A photograph of an unknown Voortrekker.
simply by denouncing emancipation. Louis Tregardt, a leader, owned ten slaves but the other 29 families in his trek had only five slaves among them. Only onefifth of the colony’s slaves were in the districts from which the greatest number of Voortrekkers came.
Still, the loss of patriarchal authority over slaves or servants was an important reason why many trekkers left. Ordinance 50 proscribed the punishment of Khoisan labourers by masters. On 1 December 1834 the right to punish slaves, now called apprentices, was also abolished. Labourers, particularly slave apprentices after 1834, felt free to take their masters or mistresses to court. Several Voortrekker leaders had had brushes with the law about punishing their slaves or servants.
