Sir Harry Smith's
political bungling

Soon after his arrival in Cape Town in December 1847, Sir Harry Smith set out for a rapid tour of the frontier. In quick succession, he moved the northern boundary of the Cape Colony to the Orange River, then declared the Keiskamma River to be its eastern boundary.

His major action, of course, was the proclamation of the new Crown Colony of British Kaffraria - the very thing that Sir Henry Pottinger had failed to achieve. In one amazing stroke, however, Sir Harry managed to overturn the entire carefully conceived plan.

The problem was that, when he set sail from England, his instructions for the creation of British Kaffraria - or what were known as the "Letters Patent" - had not yet reached him. He therefore sailed without them.

Rather than await their later arrival, Sir Harry decided to settle the frontier in terms of the perceived authority vested in him as High Commissioner, an authority which was mostly the figment of his own fertile imagination.

By using this authority to establish British Kaffraria, Sir Harry created a precedent because the system he proclaimed was not actually grounded in law. The form of rule he adopted was then effectively a revival of Sir Benjamin D'Urban's policy of September 1835, of which Sir Harry himself had been the chief administrator.

In practice, therefore, Sir Harry had distinctly altered the whole of the Colonial Office's plans. Indeed, instead of the loose control that had been envisaged, the Governor had now created another semi-magisterial system.

Once he had established his authority in British Kaffraria, Sir Harry turned his attention to the port which was already evolving at the mouth of the Buffalo River - a port which he chose to call East London.

The Governor realised that, until the Letters Patent arrived to enable him to establish a civil government in the new Crown Colony, the territory would have to be ruled by the army. Soldiers, however, were not equipped to collect customs duties.

The merchants throughout South Africa were quick to realise this loophole in the law. Many began immediately to import their goods via East London and smuggle them across the unsupervised boundaries into Natal, the Orange River Sovereignty, and even into the Cape Colony via Graham's Town.

This smuggling trade had to be ended quickly. Sir Harry decided therefore to annex the port into the Cape Colony. The Cape's customs officers would then be used to collect the revenue there. In one quick scribble of his pen, therefore, the new Crown Colony lost its port and the Cape Colony gained one.

The period of peace lasted only until December 1850. Sir Harry's system of government in British Kaffraria was humiliating for the Chiefs who had gained no real compensation for the degrading status to which the High Commissioner was subjecting them.

The last straw was the deposition and arrest of the influential Sandile. Indeed, this action became the signal for a general uprising. And so the Mlanjeni War erupted.

Although Sir Harry believed that the large presence of the army in British Kaffraria would make this campaign different to the previous conflicts, the Mlanjeni War was nevertheless a disaster.

The unforeseen duration of the conflict was caused partly by the reduction in the number of imperial troops just prior to the outbreak of hostilities, and compounded by defections from the ranks of what were termed the "Kaffir Police" and Cape Mounted Rifles. The Khoi Rebellion in the Kat River Settlement further exacerbated matters.

The war then spread beyond the boundaries of British Kaffraria, overflowing into the trans-Keian territories and the Orange River Sovereignty - where Moshweshwe used Sir Harry's discomfort to press home some points of his own.

In June 1851 Major Warden was embarrassingly defeated by the Basuto at Viervoet, thus bringing the image of the British Empire into disrepute. Sir Harry lost the confidence of the Colonial Office and was recalled in January 1852.

Return to the Homepage