Colonial Conquest and the Tambookie Frontier: The Story of Maphasa, .1830–1853

Tambookie, the San name for abaThembu, was adopted by the British for the area north of the eastern Cape colonial boundary in the 1820s. By the 1830s, all those who lived in this liminal zone had become snared in the trap of conquest – none perhaps as inexorably as Maphasa, chief of the amaTshatshu, a Thembu clan. Unstable colonial policy and successive failed attempts to control the Tambookie frontier between 1830 and 1850 buffeted Maphasa. After the eighth frontier war, the British singled out his people serving on them a proclamation that sought to destroy their political power and group identity. In an effort to understand the position of Maphasa and the destruction of his people, this article explores the making of the Tambookie frontier and discusses the chief's vulnerability in his relations with the Moravian missionaries, the Thembu paramount and the British. The story of Maphasa amplifies the history of the north eastern frontier and raises questions for the crisis in African authority in the mid-nineteenth century.