Lack of land, labour and security were serious sources of discontent. Yet by themselves they are not enough to explain why not only landless people left the colony but also fairly wealthy farmers, who sold their farms cheaply. To understand this, their grievances about a lack of representation must be taken into account.
Sir Benjamin D’Urban, governor of the Cape Colony from 1834–1838. His annexation of the territory between the Keiskamma and the Kei after the Sixth Frontier War and his depiction of the Xhosa as ‘irreclaimable savages’ caused an uproar in philanthropic circles in London. His extension of the colonial territory was overruled by the imperial government.
This was keenly felt because labouring classes were now on an equal footing with them. These feelings were rooted in the status distinctions of the VOC that were not formally racial. There was no developed theory of racism among the frontier farmers, or among Afrikaners in general, during the nineteenth century. Stockenstrom remarked: ‘The theory which makes the blacks irreclaimable savages, fit only to be exterminated, like the wolves, was not of Boer origin.’ He had no doubt that such racism was of British origins. Indeed Sir Benjamin D’Urban, the governor of the Cape Colony, had coined the very term ‘irreclaimable savages’ for the Xhosa.
A lack of representative bodies where they could voice their complaints was one of the important reasons why so many believed it was impossible to remain in the colony.
The abolition of the colleges of landdrost and heemraden in 1828 was part of the progressive overhaul of the system of administration. While this reform was an important stage in the modernisation of the government, its defect was that it removed all those institutions that the frontier burghers trusted at a time that they had to come to grips with a major political and social transformation. In effect they had been left with virtually no form of representation. Historian Eric Walker wrote that the effect of the reforms was to give the colony a greater efficiency at the price of almost all proper sharing in the functioning of government.
Stockenstrom supported the reforms in principle as part of thoroughgoing modernisation. Still, he considered it of the greatest importance to win broad acceptance for the far-reaching reforms among the burghers. He would later call it a great mistake to abolish the colleges of landdrost and heemraden, the means through which government could influence the whole community. From this point on, he wrote: ‘[All] confidence between the Government and the masses ceased, and many of the evils which have retarded our advancement and disturbed our peace may be traced to misunderstandings which the executive had not the means nor the channels of clearing up.’
Responding to Stockenstrom’s remark that they intended to leave the colony in order to lead a lawless existence, some of the prospective Voortrekkers in the northeastern divisions replied: ‘It is the contrary, we leave the Colony because we know of neither Government nor Law – of the Government we know nothing except when we have money to pay and the law never reaches us except to fine or otherwise punish, often for acts we did not know to be wrong. Our Field Cornets can give us no assistance, as they are as much in the darkness as ourselves. We are like lost sheep.’
The burghers felt that they had been marginalised and disempowered where they lived. An official tried to give words to their feelings: ‘Now we have a Civil Commissioner to receive our money for Government and for Land Surveyors, a Magistrate to punish us, a clerk of Peace to prosecute us and get us in the Tronk [prison], but no Heemraad to tell us whether things are right or wrong.’
