Porters with ivory on the beach. The ivory trade was lucrative; after the abandonment of Schoemansdal by the Boers in 1867, the Venda and Tsonga took over trade in ivory.
After the abandonment of Schoemansdal by the Boers in 1867, the Venda swart skuts together with the Tsonga, took control of the ivory trade in this region. By the 1880s, however, the Boers were in much firmer control of the Transvaal following the Pretoria Convention signed between British and Boer leaders in 1881. This recognised the Transvaal as an independent state and gave the Boers the confidence to deal with recalcitrant African communities more decisively. In 1884 the London Convention lent further muscle to the Boer state by giving it control over native policy. Thus the Transvaal could bring unwilling African communities under its jurisdiction and control.
As the Boers began to reoccupy the Zoutpansberg area in the 1880s, they carried out military campaigns against the Venda in order to bring them under Boer government control. In the mid-1890s, Makhado’s successor, Mphephu, defended Venda independence and refused to submit to Boer rule. But in 1898 a Boer force of some 4 000 men invaded and defeated the Venda. Chief Mphephu and many thousands of his followers fled across the Limpopo River into Shona country in present-day Zimbabwe. Thus ended the freedom of the last independent African chiefdom in South Africa.
