AFRICANWARSAND WHITEINVADERS
Ndebele fled, however, Sotho and Tswana people whom they had recently
displaced percolated back to their home areas, and Sotho and Tswana
polities that the emigrants had confined to the periphery of the highveld
began to expand. Mobilized and concentrated, the emigrants, with their
guns, horses, and wagons, had been more than a match for the Ndebele;
but when they then dispersed to reestablish themselves as pastoral farmers,
they encountered conditions like those in Natal. They lacked the means to
control the growing African population in their midst, let alone the African
polities that surrounded them.
The entire highveld region became a scene of divided loyalties and
endemic conflict. The area between the Vaal and the Orange rivers was
particularly confused. Besides the scattered emigrants, there were people of
mixed descent,known
as Griquas, who had been pushed out of the Cape
Colony, a number of white farmers still loyal to the colonial government,
and, by far the most numerous, Tswana and Sotho peoples regrouping
from the disasters of the Difaqane.v-'
To compound matters, each population suffered internal cleavages. The
Potgieters and the Pretoriuses were at odds with one another and with other