THEWHITEINVADERS
dominated by the white population. Handicapped by poverty and by white
control of the press and of the machinery to register voters and conduct
elections, people who were not white never amounted to more than 15
percent of the colonial electorate and never produced a member of the
colonial parliament. Their impotence was soon demonstrated. In 1856, the
Cape parliament passed the Masters and Servants Act, which made breach
of contract a criminal offenseand obliged magistrates to impose imprison-
ment without the option of a fine on workers who refused to work or used
insulting language to employers.??
The British government raised no questions about this act. By 1856, the
tide of philanthropism had receded in Britain. Indeed, in responding to the
evangelical pressures during the previous decades, the British government
had never contemplated transforming the underlying structure of colonial
society.Slaverywas to end and the Khoikhoi were to be freed from the most
blatant abuses, but the white colonists were to continue to have the use of
their labor. The most advanced evangelicals of the day, including John
Philip, did not look much further. Philip, like other Europeans of his time,
did not believethat Khoikhoi would everbe the economic and social equals