Griqua people

The Xhosa and white settlers first encounter one another around Somerset East in the early eighteenth century.

The Xhosa and related groups are the westernmost of the Nguni-speaking societies between the southern Highveld and the coast.

Well established by the time of the Dutch arrival in the mid-seventeenth century, the Xhosa occupy much of eastern South Africa from around the Port Elizabeth area to lands inhabited by Zulu-speakers south of the modern city of Durban. 

Rivalries among Xhosa chiefs are common, however, and their society will be weakened by repeated clashes with Europeans, especially over land between the Sundays River and the Great Fish River.

The Griqua, most of whom speak Dutch as their first language and had adopted Christianity, are one of several Khoisan-European populations in the interior in the eighteenth century.

A unique Griqua culture emerges, based on hunting, herding, and trade with both Africans and Europeans along the Orange River.

Afrikaner trekboers migrating outwards from Cape Town in the late eighteenth century had come into conflict with Xhosa pastoralists around the Great Fish River region of the Eastern Cape.

The Xhosas, after more than twenty years of intermittent conflict, are forced east by British colonial forces in the Fourth Xhosa War from 1811 to 1812.

The first groups of Voortrekkers move into the southern Highveld, skirting the powerful Lesotho kingdom of Moshoeshoe to the east, and pasture their herds on lands between the Orange River and the Vaal River.

A large group moves farther north to the grasslands beyond the Vaal River into territory where Mzilikazi had recently established a powerful Ndebele state.

Competing for the same resources—pasturelands, water, and game—the Voortrekkers and the Ndebele soon come into conflict.

In 1836 the Voortrekkers fight off an Ndebele attempt to expel them from the Highveld.

In the following year, the northern Voortrekkers ally with the Rolong and the Griqua, who are known for their fighting skills.

This time the northern Voortrekkers succeed n defeating Mzilikazi and forcing him and most of his followers to flee north into present-day Zimbabwe, where he conquers the Shona and establishes a new state.

The present Lesotho, originally called Basutoland, had emerged as a single polity under King Moshoeshoe I in 1822.

Moshoeshoe, a son of Mokhachane, a minor chief of the Bakoteli lineage, had formed his own clan and became a chief around 1804.

Between 1821 and 1823, he and his followers had settled at the Butha-Buthe Mountain, joining with former adversaries in resistance against the Lifaqane associated with the reign of Shaka Zulu from 1818 to 1828.

Subsequent evolution of the state hinges on conflicts between British and Dutch colonists leaving the Cape Colony following its seizure from the French-allied Dutch by the British in 1795, and subsequently associated with the Orange River Sovereignty and subsequent Orange Free State.

Missionaries invited by Moshoeshoe I, Thomas Arbousset, Eugène Casalis and Constant Gosselin from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, placed at Morija, develop orthography and print works in the Sesotho language between 1837 and 1855.

Casalis, acting as translator and providing advice on foreign affairs, helps to set up diplomatic channels and acquire guns for use against the encroaching Europeans and the Griqua people.

Trekboers from the Cape Colony had shown up on the western borders of Basutoland and claimed land rights, beginning with Jan de Winnaar, who had settled in the Matlakeng area in May–June 1838.

As more Boers were moving into the area they tried to colonize the land between the two rivers, even north of the Caledon, claiming that it had been abandoned by the Sotho people.

Moshoeshoe subsequently signs a treaty with the British Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Thomas Napier, that annexes the Orange River Sovereignty that many Boers had settled.

These outraged Boers are suppressed in a brief skirmish in 1848.

In 1851 a British force as defeated by the Basotho army at Kolonyama, touching off an embarrassing war for the British.

The first diamond had been discovered in South Africa in 1866, when Erasmus Jacobs found a small brilliant pebble on the banks of the Orange River, on the farm De Kalk, leased from local Griquas, near Hopetown, which is his father's farm.

He had showed the pebble to his father, who had sold it Schalk van Niekerk, who later resold it.

It has proved to be a 21.25 carat (4.25 gram) diamond, and becomes known as the Eureka.

Three years later Schalk van Niekerk had sold another diamond also found in the De Kalk vicinity, the Star of South Africa, for £11,200.

The second diamond had been promptly resold in the London market for £25,000.

In 1871, an even larger 83.50 carat (16.7 gram) diamond is found on the slopes of Colesberg Kopje on the farm Vooruitzigt, belonging to the De Beers brothers.

Henry Richard Giddy recounts how Esau Damoense (or Damon), the cook for prospector Fleetwood Rawstone's "Red Cap Party", had made the discovery on Colesberg Kopje after he had been sent there to dig as punishment.

Rawstorne had taken the news to the nearby diggings of the De Beer brothers—his arrival there sparking off the famous "New Rush" which, as historian Brian Roberts puts it, was practically a stampede.

Within a month, eight hundred claims had been cut into the hillock, which are worked frenetically by two to three thousand men.

As the land is lowered, the hillock becomes a mine—in time, the world renowned Kimberley Mine. (Kimberley, turbulent city by Brian Roberts, pp.45-49 (1976, published by David Phillip & Historical Society of Kimberley and the Northern Cape))

The Cape Colony, Transvaal, Orange Free State and the Griqua leader Nikolaas Waterboer all lay claim to the diamond fields.

The Free State Boers in particular want the area, as it lies inside the natural borders created by the Orange and Vaal Rivers.

Following mediation, overseen by the governor of Natal, the Keate Award goes in favor of Waterboer, who immediately places himself under British protection.

Consequently, the territory known as Griqualand West is proclaimed on October 27, 1871.

Colonial Commissioners arrive in New Rush on November 17 to exercise authority over the territory on behalf of the Cape Governor.

Kimberley is the second largest town in South Africa by 1873, with an approximate population of forty thousand.

Digger objections and minor riots had led to Governor Barkly's visit to New Rush in September 1872, when he revealed a plan instead to have Griqualand West proclaimed a Crown Colony.

Richard Southey had arrived as Lieutenant-Governor of the intended Crown Colony in January 1873.

Months had passed, however, without any sign of the proclamation or of the promised new constitution and provision for representative government.

The delay was in London, where Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Kimberley, insistsed that before electoral divisions could be defined, the places had to receive "decent and intelligible names. His Lordship has declined to be in any way connected with such a vulgarism as New Rush and as for the Dutch name, Vooruitzigt … he could neither spell nor pronounce it." (Kimberley, turbulent city by Brian Roberts, p. 115 (1976, published by David Phillip & Historical Society of Kimberley and the Northern Cape))]

The matter had been passed to Southey who had given it to his Colonial Secretary J.B. Currey.

Roberts writes that "when it came to renaming New Rush, [Currey] proved himself a worthy diplomat. He made quite sure that Lord Kimberley would be able both to spell and pronounce the name of the main electoral division by, as he says, calling it 'after His Lordship'."

New Rush becomes Kimberley, by Proclamation dated 5 July 1873.

Digger sentiment is expressed in an editorial in the Diamond Field newspaper when it states, "we went to sleep in New Rush and waked up in Kimberley, and so our dream was gone." (Roberts, Brian. 1976. Kimberley, turbulent city. Cape Town: David Philip, p 115)

Griqualand West is annexed to the Cape Colony in 1877 following agreement by the British government on compensation to the Orange Free State for its competing land claims.

The Cape Prime Minister John Molteno had had serious initial doubts about annexing the heavily indebted region, but, after striking a deal with the Home Government and receiving assurances that the local population would be consulted in the process, he passes the Griqualand West Annexation Act on July 27, 1877.

Stellaland and Goshen unite to form the United States of Stellaland on August 6, 1883.

The area east of the Vaal River and north of the Hart River is under the control of competing Griqua and Tswana groups, while the United Kingdom lays claim to it as part of the emerging protectorate of British Bechuanaland.

Two of the indigenous groups are under the leadership of chiefs Mankoroane and Montsioa, whom the British regard as "friendly," and another two under the leadership of chiefs Moshette and Massouw.

When a feud had started between Mankoroane and another chief, each side resorted to recruiting volunteers, promising them land in return for their assistance.

After a settlement was negotiated with mediation from the Transvaal Republic, large portions of Mankoroane's land with four hundred and sixteen farms of three thousand morgen (two thousand five hundred and sixty-three hectares) each had been given to Boer mercenaries who had fought on his adversary's side, and the new inhabitants decides to declare independence.

The Republic of Stellaland had been formally created on July 26, 1882, under the leadership of its elected president Gerrit Jacobus van Niekerk, a farmer from Transvaal, and is given the name Stellaland (Star Land) in reference to a comet that is visible in the skies at the time.

The town of Vryburg had been founded and declared its capital.

At its founding, the new country covered an area of fifteen thousand five hundred square kilometers (five thousand nine hundred and eight-five square mile square miles) and was home to an estimated population of twenty five-thousand individuals, three thousand of whom are of European ancestry.

The State of Goshen, named after the biblical Land of Goshen, had been founded by Nicolaas Claudius Gey van Pittius in October 1882 in the neighboring area called Rooigrond with the approval of chief Moshette.

Goshen has an estimated population of seventeen thousand, of whom approximately two thousand are of European origin, and covers an area of ten thousand four hundred square kilometers (four thousand and fifteen square miles).