‘A Bad Lot’: Local Politics and the Survey of Oxkraal and Kamastone, 1853-1923

Abstract

The large Fingo reserve areas of Oxkraal and Kamastone in the Queenstown Division were the site of significant social change and colonial efforts at spatial engineering in order to guide the area from communities under chiefs and hereditary headmen into landscapes with blocks of yeoman farmers and surplus labourers. From the 1850s onward, the area was a target for such efforts, which centred on the survey and titling of finite parcels to individual households. However, local communities, extant Fingo authorities, and various individuals sought to modify the project before it could be carried out, and they worked to circumvent its more onerous aspects afterwards. The relationship between the state and the Oxkraal and Kamastone communities shows both the fixations of the former and the resilient adaptability of the latter, a combination that exposes the limits of each in controlling the changing context of colonial interventions.