In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Cape Colony underwent a major political transformation, as three separate but significantly connected processes played out their course. These were, firstly, the lengthy debates about the establishment of a representative assembly in the colony, as an initial step towards some form of parliamentary government; secondly, the colonial reaction to the attempts by the government in London to use the Cape Colony as a place to which convicts could be transported; and, thirdly, the long and bloody war between the Cape Colony and the amaXhosa, known as Mlanjeni's War, during which a significant proportion of the Eastern Cape Khoekhoe, in the Kat River Settlement and outside it, abandoned their previous alliance with the British and went into rebellion.

In all these processes the voice of the Khoekhoe was heard, and at times they played a major role in deciding the outcome. This is obvious with regard to the war and the rebellion. Khoekhoe were among the major participants on both sides of the dividing line between the colony and its enemies. It is less self-evident in the other two cases. With regard to the convict crisis, the Khoekhoe merely added their voice to those of many others in the colony, in opposing the transformation of the Cape into a convict station. In this they were no different from most of the inhabitants of the colony outside Cape Town, where the struggle was very largely located. In the matter of the franchise, by contrast, the Khoekhoe were of central importance, both as the objects of discussion and as actors in their own right. The argument was thus not just a question of whether the electoral system was to be so organised that substantial numbers of Khoekhoe would be able to influence the makeup of the Parliament, or, conversely, whether the level of wealth required to become a voter would be set so high that few if any Khoekhoe would be able to vote. This was indeed the question on which the debates in the colony turned. The Khoekhoe not only participated in these debates, but by their actions they also forced the colonial rulers to take seriously their concern that the representative assembly might be dominated by their enemies, from among the British settlers of the Eastern Cape in particular.