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World events has once again conspired to interrupt the flow of events in southern Africa by the early 1800s.
\nThe British were going to withdraw from the Cape of Good Hope and their move began far away in Ireland. As part of the price for Irish agreement to parliamentary union with Britain in 1800, Prime Minister William Pitt had promised to liberate Roman Catholics from the restrictions of their civil liberties imposed since the 16th Century .
\nThree hundred years of English yoke through Protestantism was seen through a very religious and nationalist lens in Ireland. The future of the Cape was in great doubt. Lord Nelson was one of those voicing his opinion that the Peninsular was of no real use.
\nBack in sunny Southern Africa circa 1800, great powers were beginning to emerge across the landscape. And extremely sunny it was in 1800 because parts of southern Africa were gripped by a terrible drought. Across the northern regions of the Cape, the Namaqualand and along the Orange River, the Afrikaander gang led by Khoesan leader Jonker Afrikaander was going village to village, homestead to homestead, and plundering as they went.
\nThe severe dought meant that the Boer commando\u2019s couldn\u2019t operate effectively so it increased banditry across the frontiers. But it also meant that the groups of Khoe and Khoesan who\u2019d been trying to disentangle themselves from both the trekboers and the British, and even the local Tswana people, were forced to operate along the great river.
\nThe expedition also found it very difficult to locate water. What they did find record was signs of anarchy caused by both the drought and the Afrikaander groups who\u2019d descended on the Griqua and Tswana \u2013 wiping out villages as they went. I have the diary of William Somerville who jointly led the expedition with chief commissioner PJ Truter \u2013 and an interesting 200 or so pages it is.