Officials were now convinced that the Israelites had no intention of leaving. Each time they visited, they could see for themselves that the Israelites were building more houses. So when the Israelites asked to stay longer, the officials decided that the time had finally come when decisive steps had to be taken to remove them.

However, the options for dealing with the situation were limited. Some officials wanted to remove Enoch from his followers by arresting him, but others argued that this would cause a violent reaction. Another idea was to starve the Israelites by cutting off their food supplies, but that too was difficult to achieve. A third idea was to send out an armed force to confront the Israelites. This is what the government finally decided to do, but it could not be done quickly.

In 1920 there were few white police in the Queenstown area, so if the government wanted to send a force to Ntabelanga, it had to bring in police from a number of places. However, at the time, some police were out on a patrol in Transkei, and many others had been sent to Port Elizabeth because of labour protest organised by the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICWU). Officials in the capital, Pretoria, thus had to wait until December before they could raise an adequate force. European control was sometimes based on a bluff and the Israelite challenge exposed their lack of power to enforce their laws and policies immediately.

When a force of 100 men finally went to Ntabelanga, the Israelites were in a militant mood. On 23 October, Port Elizabeth police had panicked and shot and killed at least two dozen protestors who had gathered outside the jail to call for the release of a trade union leader. Officials, who wanted to avoid a repetition of this violence, offered the Israelites food and train tickets if they would leave. When the police arrived on 7 December, they pitched their tents about 500 metres from the Israelite village.

The next day Israelite leaders and police officers met from early morning to mid- afternoon, but the discussions in isiXhosa were fruitless. Neither side was prepared to compromise.