Document 23: Address to Sir Andries Stockenström

This address to Andries Stockenström, as the new lieutenant-governor of the Eastern Province, though apparently conventional, should be seen in the context of the great hostility which his appointment and he himself met among the British settlers of Grahamstown and its surrounds. This was occasioned by Stockenström's testimony before the Select Committee on Aborigines, which was regarded both as a slander on the character of the settlers and as the reason for the Glenelg Dispatch, by which Queen Adelaide Province (roughly the area between the Keiskamma and the Kei rivers) was returned to the amaXhosa, thus annulling its acquisition through conquest during Hintsa's War. As a result, many white settlers lost the lands which they had been expecting to acquire in the province. Stockenström was received in Grahamstown with considerable hostility, and eventually forced to resign as lieutenant-governor on account of settler opposition. The Kat River people's endorsement of Stockenström and of his policies was thus in no way a neutral act.

To His Honor Andries Stockenström Esq., Lieut-Governor of the Eastern Province of the Cape of Good Hope, &c. &c.

We the undersigned Inhabitants of the Kat River Settlement, beg to express the unfeigned pleasure we feel at the safe return of your Honor and family to this colony, but more especially at the appointment of your Honor to that high station which His Majesty, our gracious King, has been pleased to assign to you, knowing as we do your qualifications for that office. After the independent manner in which evidence has been given before the Committee of the House of Commons, on the subject of colonial affairs, and from the intimate knowledge which you possess of native character and feelings, we place implicit confidence in the justice of your proceedings, being assured that they will be of a conciliatory nature towards the Caffers, and will tend to the peace and prosperity of the Settlement and of the colony at large.