Note 533 — Chapter II · GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVERY.

The Ama-Xosa are described by Fritsch. War is seldom sanguinary, its main object being cattle-stealing; but if the attacked defend their cattle energetically, a general slaughter ensues; women and children are killed without discrimination. Fugitive enemies are mercilessly slaughtered. When a chief has great renown, he gets many followers, who crowd towards him from all sides and contribute to the enlargement of his power; for it is a custom among the Caffres never to deliver up a fugitive whatever the reason of his fleeing from his native country. The chiefs punish insurgents by taking away their cattle; then they are poor men without any influence in the tribe. These particulars make the existence of slavery improbable: no prisoners are taken, fugitives and insurgents are not enslaved. In one place, however, Fritsch speaks of slaves. The Fengu, remnants of destroyed tribes, fell into the hands of the Ama-Xosa, who spared the lives of these fugitives, but kept them in wretched bondage. “In 1835, after this slave-state had lasted for more than ten years, when the Caffres were at war with the colony, the Fengu begged the Governor Sir Benjamin d’Urban to liberate them. The Governor, complying with the request, sent troops to enable them to depart, and so at once 16800 men, women and children with what little cattle and other property they had, established themselves in the colony”533. It is clear that these Fengu were not slaves. That they could depart in such large numbers from the country of the Ama-Xosa, proves that they lived more or less separate. They were weaker tribes subjected by a stronger one; we shall see that this occurs very often in South Africa. The tribes were subjected as tribes, not the individuals as such; therefore they were not slaves. Kropf, who lived among the Ama-Xosa as a missionary for 42 years, describes them as they were some 70 years ago. In his detailed account he does not speak of slaves. Male prisoners were killed, women and children were sometimes left alive. We are not told what was the fate of these women and children. There were no social classes, the whole people, from the chief down to the last of his subjects, regarding themselves as one family534. From all this we may safely infer that slavery did not exist among the Ama-Xosa.