Good Afternoon everyone Please find below the second section of this very interesting part of our history The local elite of relatively wealthy farmers of the south-western districts, who dominated the hierarchy of heemraden, church officials and officers in the militia, established a working alliance with the other major sections of Cape society: the farmers of the other regions, the emerging mercantile elite, and the central government of the colony. From the earliest days of British rule, too, the local Afrikaner notables were courted and wooed, a process in which the charming Lady Anne Barnard, whose husband was secretary to the Military Governor of the Cape, Earl Macartney, played an active role. The Governor's wife did not accompany her husband to the Cape, and Lady Anne acted as his official hostess, entertaining the colonial elite at the Castle. Although she endeared her self personally to the colonists by the warmth of her personality and her genuine interest in their way of life, these efforts at conciliation were not conspicuously successful, for the Afrikaner population was sharply divided between those who were prepared to collaborate (the Anglo mannen) and those who rejected the overtures with contempt (the so-called Jacobijnen). The main task confronting the British on their arrival was the restoration of peace on the eastern frontier of the colony, since the naval base, Cape Town, was dependent for its meat supply upon the hinterland, especially upon Graaff-Reinet. By the late eighteenth century, the settlement of the Gqunukhwebe and other peoples in the area between the Fish and the Bushmans rivers in the Zuurveld had begun to be challenged by the whites. Exasperated at the failure of the colonial authorities to protect them against the Xhosa and their refusal even to allow them to defend themselves, the colonists of Graaff-Reinet expelled the unpopular landdrost, Maynier, set up a republican government and renounced their allegiance to the VOC in the very week in which the British fleet arrived to occupy the Cape. Swellendam followed suit. Craig reacted decisively to this threat. He cut off all supplies of goods, including ammunition, to Graaff-Reinet, and when a Batavian fleet which had sailed from Europe to attempt to re cover the Cape, was forced to surrender, the Graaff-Reinet farmers submitted to the new regime. Yet in their very submission lay hints of further trouble. They requested permission to be allowed to occupy land beyond the Fish River, which had been the official boundary of the colony since the days of Van Plettenberg. The British, like their Dutch predecessors, lacked the means to embark upon a policy for adequate control of relations between colonists and Xhosa; they therefore fell back upon at tempting to maintain a rigid boundary between black and white, and to insist on a policy of non- intercourse. Craig sternly warned against acts of hostility against the Xhosa or against any at tempt to dispossess them of their land. 'With what face,' he demanded indignantly, 'can you ask of me to allow you to occupy lands which belong to other people? What right can I have to give you the property of others?. Reflect for a moment on what would be your own sensations were you to hear that I was even debating on a proposal. . . to turn you out of your farms, and to give them to others.' kind regards Heather Heather's South African Genealogy Help List www.genealogy.co.za The 1902 Municipal Voters Roll of Cape Town - Districts 1 to 6 The 1878 Voters Roll for the Cape is now available with tens of thousands on names !!! 1805, 1829, 1835 and 1849 Cape Almanacs now on CD The Juta's Directory of 1900 which lists residents of Cape Town from the City Bowl until Simonstown. To view our catalogue go to www.genealogy.co.za/scribes.html Cape Town Family History Society www.genealogy.co.za/society.html