AFRICANWARSANP WHITEINVADERS
African control similar to what the British would later apply in colonial
tropical Africa and call indirect rule. The key was the use of African chiefs
as subordinate officials, made responsible, in the last resort, not to their
own people but to the colonial government. Shepstone recognized the
existing chiefs in communities that had survived the turmoil of the Mfe-
cane; in other cases, he appointed men as chiefs. He also imposed a dual
legal system: customary African law, as codified by him, prevailed among
Africans; but the colonial Roman Dutch law, taken over from the Cape
Colony, applied among Whites and in relations between Africans and
Whites. 63
Shepstone had ideas of "civilizing"· the Africans with a program of
Western education and economic development, but financial constraints
prevented him from carrying that out. From the beginning, the senior
officials appointed by the British government to administer the colony
relied on the support of the white population, and the white population,
searching for security and prosperity in an isolated and alien milieu, be-
came unequivocally racist. The bars to empathy were potent, for the set-
tlers were ignorant of the history, the language, the social institutions, and