On 9 May 1834, the Cape government published the draft of an ordinance ‘for the better suppression of Vagrancy in this Colony’. This would have allowed ‘every field commandant, field-cornet and provisional field-cornet’—in other words, the leaders of local farming society—to arrest anyone found in their jurisdiction who was suspected of having no ‘honest means of subsistence’ or unable to give a ‘satisfactory account of themselves’. The magistrate could then sentence such individuals to work on the public roads, until ‘some respectable person shall agree to take them into their service’.

This measure had two goals. The first was to turn back Ordinance 50, since white society had seen, or thought to have seen, so many Khoekhoe on the roads, and instinctively believed they were up to no good. The second was to prepare the ground for the emancipation of slaves, and to put in place legislation which would minimise the effects of that measure when it finally came into force.

The consequence was a storm of protest, to some extent orchestrated by Dr Philip, but nevertheless clearly representing the views of those who signed the petitions. A few of the Kat River settlers, who were managing to accumulate a bit of property and were afraid that this might be lost, were prepared to sign a petition in favour of the Vagrancy Act. In this they were put under pressure by the justice of the peace in the settlement, Captain Armstrong, and probably also by the Dutch Reformed minister, W.R. Thomson. However, these men did not compose the petition, as is evidenced by the non-standard nature of the Dutch in which it was written. The others, from the mission stations of Bethelsdorp, Theopolis, Zuurbraak (then known as the Caledon Institution) and Pacaltsdorp, from the Khoekhoe living in Grahamstown and from a majority of the Kat River settlers, are all replete with anxiety about a return to the situation before Ordinance 50, and with stories of what it had been like for the Khoekhoe in those times, and how much better their situation had become.