for extensive agriculture as well as stock farming. This desirable land was
already part of the long-disputed
frontier zone between indigenous pas-
toralists and Bantu-speaking
mixed farmers, described in chapter
I. A
period of intense competition
for control ensued, marked by shifting al-
liances, cattle raids, and wars. None of the .ethnic comrnunities-Khoik-
hoi, Xhosa, or White-was
able to establish hegemony, and the colonial
government in distant Cape Town was also incapable of doing so.
People were not actuated exclusively by ethnic bonds. They had diver-
gent identifications
and conflicting concerns. Trekboers in the northern
part of the district of Graaff- Reinet had a major interest in concentrating
colonial resources against the aboriginal hunter-gatherers
who were at-
tacking them from their bases in the Sneeuwberg, while those in the south-
ern part of the district were primarily concerned to secure the land they
were appropriating
against Xhosa attack. Xhosa chiefs were pursuing their
own rivalries with one another as well as trying to cope with the intrusion
of the colonists. Khoikhoi were torn between obeying their trekboer pa-
trons and deserting them to join up with the Xhosa, which was an attrac-