created new economic opportunities for native Africans
both in agriculture and trade.
The Xhosa, in the Ciskei and Transkei, reacted quickly to
these economic opportunities, as the historian Colin Bundy
documented. As early as 1832, even before the mining
boom, a Moravian missionary in the Transkei observed the
new economic dynamism in these areas and noted the
demand from the Africans for the new consumer goods that
the spread of Europeans had begun to reveal to them. He
wrote, “To obtain these objects, they look … to get money
by the labour of their hands, and purchase clothes, spades,
ploughs, wagons and other useful articles.”
The civil commissioner John Hemming’s description of
his visit to Fingoland in the Ciskei in 1876 is equally
revealing. He wrote that he was
struck with the very great advancement made
by the Fingoes in a few years … Wherever I
went I found substantial huts and brick or
stone tenements. In many cases, substantial
brick houses had been erected … and fruit
trees had been planted; wherever a stream of
water could be made available it had been
led out and the soil cultivated as far as it
could be irrigated; the slopes of the hills and
even the summits of the mountains were
cultivated wherever a plough could be
introduced. The extent of the land turned over
surprised me; I have not seen such a large
area of cultivated land for years.
As in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the use of the
plow was new in agriculture, but when given the opportunity,
African farmers seemed to have been quite ready to adopt
the technology. They were also prepared to invest in
wagons and irrigation works.
As the agricultural economy developed, the rigid tribal
institutions started to give way. There is a great deal of
evidence that changes in property rights to land took place.
In 1879 the magistrate in Umzimkulu of Griqualand East, in
the Transkei, noted “the growing desire of the part of
natives to become proprietors of land—they have