Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884, Volume 1 (1919).djvu/108

 88 History of the Cape Colony. [^878 At this time the murder of a man, though a very humble one, took place, which deserves some mention. It has been stated that the reverend Dr. Vanderkemp, the leader of the first mission party of the London society in South Africa, purchased a slave girl and married her. By her he had a son, who received as good an education as was then possible to obtain in this country. The boy, however, was without his father's ability, and preferred a wandering life to a settled occupation. As a man he was perfectly harmless, and gained an honest living as a schoolmaster among Dutch speaking farmers, with whom, though he was coloured, he was a general favourite. In course of time he acquired a small herd of cattle, with which he wandered about, the owners of land giving him pasture, and when the war broke out in 1877 he was staying temporarily on a farm in the district of East London. Old Kootje, as he was usually called by Europeans, did not fear molestation by the Gaikas, who knew him as the son of Jankana, the first missionary to the Xosas, so he was in no hurry to remove. On the 15th of January 1878 he was surprised by a party who drove off his cattle and murdered the poor old man. The enemies of the colony were now increased by a section of the Tembu tribe, that was not under the immediate control of Gangelizwe, joining them. The first chief of note v,'ho took part in the disturbance was Gongubela, head of the Tshatshu clan, which since 1846 had been closely allied with the Gaikas, and whose kraals adjoined the upper end of the Gaika location, but he was soon followed by others. Volunteers and burghers from different parts of the country were gathering in considerable numbers, however, so that the means to deal with rebellion were much greater than they had been a few weeks earlier. At this period of the war disagreement commenced between the governor and the members of the ministry