Nevertheless, the white settlers showed their power in 1873, when they
raised such an outcry after a chief named Langalibalele had resisted arrest
on a trumped-up charge that he was deposed and banished and his people's
land confiscated. After 1893, when the settlers gained control over the
executive branch of the Natal government, they placed increasingly severe
demands on the Africans. Bythe end of the century, the African population
had grown to a stage where it was running short of fertile land, while
Whites were becoming increasingly involved in commercial farming. This
conjuncture, in combination with the rinderpest and taxation, paved the
way for a rebellious outburst in 1906, which was ruthlessly suppressed by
the Natal forces.P
The southernmost Tswana societies had the misfortune to occupy land
in the vicinity of Kimberley,where they bore the brunt of the forces gener-
ated by the diamond-mining industry, as well as experiencing pressures
both from merchants using long-established trade routes from the Cape to
the north and from Afrikaner farmers expanding in a westerly direction
from the original settlements in the Transvaal republic. Step by step, they
were subjected and impoverished. Much of their land lay inside the bound-