ABSTRACT
The defeat of the Xhosa as a significant polity, the incorporation of grazing land into the Cape Colony, and their proletarianisation and impoverishment, provides of the major frontier narratives of colonialism in South Africa. A domino-effect of Xhosa and Baster dispossession followed the 1860 land grants. Land enclosure and private ownership – colonial governmentality – had the effect of shifting economic relationships and squeezing out those without means. Land loss implied loss of voice and communal rights for the original landholders. With the 1926 Carnarvon Commonage Act which ended communal landholding, the Management Committee was dissolved. The introduction of fencing afforded free ranging of stock within camps, and ownership of land was consolidated into fewer, larger farms. The spatial reconfiguration of the trekvelden lands also brought a shift in legal and administrative control of the space – a shift to colonial governmentality.
