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71 5 Guns, Diplomacy, and Discourse The Gun War Even before the end of Moorosi’s rebellion the BaSotho chiefs were preparing for their own fight against the Cape Colony in what became known as the Gun War of 1880–81. Ostensibly fought over the right of the BaSotho to bear arms, this was a war over issues of land, sovereignty, and the establishment of colonial rule by the Cape Colony . In April 1880 the Cape government extended the Peace Preservation Act, which had already been imposed in the Cape Colony, to Basutoland and ordered the surrender of all guns to local magistrates in exchange for monetary compensation. About half of the adult male population of Basutoland owned a gun, and the majority had paid ten pounds for their guns, with many guns valued at twenty-five pounds.1 Guns had determined the outcomes of battles over land, cattle, and people in southern Africa for fifty years; the BaSotho insistence on the retention of their arms derived not from the hours of labor and the capital they had invested to obtain them but from the desire to protect their land, property, and freedom. From the beginning it was clear that those who would comply with the order to turn in their guns were in the minority, and by July 1880 those who refused were attacking these so-called loyals and confiscating their land and property. By August the rebel leader, Chief Masopha, was well ensconced in his refortified stronghold at Thaba Bosiu, and last-minute attempts by the Cape Colony to forestall the inevitable rebellion only highlighted its powerlessness . A colonial contingent of Cape Mounted Rifles rode into the country on 13 September 1880, and the first battle of the war was engaged. The BaSotho were fighting for much more than the right to bear arms. In spite of the fact that they had maintained the appearance of loyalty and served the Cape Colony during Moorosi’s rebellion, the Cape Colony subsequently planned to double the hut tax, appropriate£12,500 from Basutoland to pay for the expenses of the colony, and, most important, confiscate the fertile Quthing District so that the land could be sold to white farmers. While disarmament was an important grievance and precipitated the rebellion, the planned confiscation of the Quthing District for white settlement was perceived by the BaSotho as having much more serious ramifications because of the precedent it would set for future land expropriation. This was the intention of the Cape government, which explicitly stated that it did not accept that Basutoland would be maintained as a “reserve” for the use of BaSotho only. The stage was set for another colonial war, this time bigger and with a different outcome. Griffith’s dilemma was that the Cape government, driven by colonial politics and politicians, refused to recognize that its policies of disarmament and land dispossession were fated to have disastrous results. Griffith’s letters of early 1880 are filled with his apprehensions of rebellion by the BaSotho and explanations and pleas about the folly of colonial policy. The colonial enterprise was driven by diverse factors, and colonial discourse encompassed dramatic disagreements over the wisdom of land expropriation for the benefit of white settlers, as is evident in Griffith’s letters to the Secretary for Native Affairs in Cape Town. From the beginning Griffith was firmly opposed to any land expropriation from the BaSotho and was not afraid to say so, citing historic agreements and the possible ramifications: “They will naturally conclude that this is only the thin end of the wedge, and that, upon one pretext or another , they will eventually be deprived of all their country.”2 Griffith’s letters quickly moved away from historical rationales to realistic warnings. He carefully employed the jargon of a colonial subordinate , framing his advisory warning in terms of “honour” and “respect ,” prefatory to challenging the wisdom of his superiors. In the same vein he employed the colonial trope of “loyalty,” that of the BaSotho, knowing that no colonial official could argue against the ideal and wisdom of winning and sustaining such loyalty. Referring to the punitive measures of land expropriation, the financial indemnity, and the doubling of the hut tax, Griffith told the Cape Colony officials: I cannot but feel that I have been placed in an equivocal position, one which must naturally create a wide gap in that good feeling 72 Guns, Diplomacy, and Discourse [18.227.48.131] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...

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