The Kat River Rebellion in colonial press (Cape Colony, South Africa, 1850s-1860)

Abstract

The article focuses on the problematization of the perceptions of the “Kat River Rebellion” (1850-1851), on the borders of the Cape Colony (present-day South Africa), based on newspapers and colonial historiography, with emphasis on The Graham's Town Journal’s editorials, published in Grahamstown (now Makhanda), and the historical compendium History of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope (1869), by John Centlivres Chase and Alexander Wilmot. Kat River, a settlement established by the colonial government in 1829, was the epicenter of a collective movement in defense of land rights, promoted, among other groups, by Khoekhoen Gonaqua leaders who lived in the region and who were threatened by the advance of colonialist agendas. defended by white settlers. The analyzed documentation, although produced by a colonial elite and white settlers that aimed to occupy lands belonging to Khoekhoen communities, makes it possible to map fragmentary traces of Khoekhoen's resistance and struggles, as well as the different social and political relationships established in that context.