Insidious Dispossession and Defence of Land Ownership – Tsolo Farms, 1880–1917.

After the Mpondomise Rebellion of 1880–1881 in the Tsolo district in the Transkei, a number of black citizens were rewarded with grants of farms for their loyalty to local Cape officials. Within a generation, half of these farms were lost by the grantees and their descendants. This was because of indebtedness and manipulation by a magistrate and by an attorney who was a member of the main local trading family. This occurred at a time when black franchise rights in the Cape were under attack and economic and professional opportunities for the emerging black propertied class were being eliminated. Dispossession and the wider onslaught on black advancement determined defensive attitudes involving land segregation and led to bitter controversy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]