Incwadi Yami; or, twenty years' personal experience in South AfricaMatthews, J. W. (Josiah Wright)
History
Incwadi Yami; or, twenty years' personal experience in South Africa
Matthews, J. W. (Josiah Wright)
Diamond mines and mining -- South Africa; South Africa -- Description and travel
When the first diamond was found in 1869, and attention consequently
drawn to the discovery, as I have before stated, the banks of the Vaal
became peopled with diggers and prospectors, and Waterboer, at once
seeing his necessity to deal with this large and increasing influx,
ceded all the land to which he laid claim, some 17,000 square miles, to
the English, the allowance of £150 per annum, which the English
government had paid to Adam Kok, Cornelius Kok, and then to Andreas, the
father of Nicholas Waterboer, being increased to £250, and afterward, in
1877, to £1,000, with £500 a year to his widow after his death. The
Orange Free State now asserted its rights, based upon its former demands
of having purchased Adam Kok’s rights with the land in question. The
misunderstanding resulting between the English government and the Orange
Free State, ending in the former giving the latter a compensation of
£90,000, I shall more fully explain further on, but I may say here that
Nicholas Waterboer is a living example of the care (?) bestowed by the
English government, as a rule, upon those aborigines it may take under
its fostering care. Nicholas Waterboer, formerly the undisturbed
possessor of this valuable tract of country, now ekes out a miserable
existence at Griqua Town, having parted with his country, the farms
allotted to him mortgaged, his pension swallowed up by hungry creditors,
ruined both in body and estate, a drunkard and virtually a pauper! I
endeavored both in the Griqualand West legislature and in the Cape house
of assembly to obtain some information respecting this poor chief and
the ultimate destination of his pension, but without success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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