THEWHITEINVADERS
farm although
they had completed their contracts,
Landdrost
Cuyler
seized Stuurman by deceit and had him condemned to work in irons on
Robben Island for the rest of his life. Stuurman's settlement was broken up
and Cuyler obtained the land as his personal possession.s-'
That was a precedent for what happened on a larger scale after 1828. In
1829, Andries Stockenstrom,
who had been promoted
to the rank of
commissioner-general of the eastern part of the colony, set aside about four
hundred square miles of fertile land that had formerly been occupied by
Xhosa, on the upper reaches of the Kat River as a settlement for Khoikhoi.
At first things went well. By 1833, there were 2,114 settlers-Khoikhoi
and people 'of mixed descent. They owned 2,444 head of cattle, 4,996
sheep, and i 50 horses and produced wheat, barley, and fruit. They had dug
fifty-five irrigation channels and built a dozen stone houses as well as
wattle-and-daub
cottages. 64
However, Xhosa farmers raided their livestock from across the border
and filtered back into the area with or without their permission, and they
were joined by groups of Mfengu-Africans
who had fled southward from
the expanding
Zulu empire. The settlement also bore the brunt of the
frontier wars of 1834-35,
1846-47,
and 1850-53.