The aboriginal peoples of southern Africa, collectively known as San, suffered widespread genocidal violence as a result of colonial invasion from the eighteenth century onwards. Being hunter-gatherers and racially stereotyped as among the lowest forms of humanity, they were targeted for mass violence by colonial states and civilian militias. The first case study in this chapter analyses exterminatory Dutch and British violence against San in the Cape Colony during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The second examines the obliteration of San society in Transorangia by indigenous Griqua polities during the early nineteenth century, cautioning against the over-simple, racialised binaries that often inform studies of frontier strife. Thirdly, from the mid-1840s onwards after the British annexation of Natal, conflict with San communities in the midlands resulted in their eradication by 1870. The fourth case study outlines how South African forces halted the German genocide of Namibian San when they invaded German South West Africa in 1914. The final case reveals a different pattern. It explores how late-nineteenth-century white pastoralists established peaceful relations with San in western Bechuanaland.

The former Attorney General of New South Wales, Saxe Bannister, on whom this chapter focuses, travelled to the Cape Colony after being forced from his position in Australia. In the late 1820s, he argued for the need to apply British justice impartially in a frontier context, leaving an important record of colonial violence. He revealed abuses in colonial courts in two cases of settler violence against Khoekhoe people in the eastern Cape, despite putative British legal reform; highlighted Xhosa wrongs in the face of dispossession; and accused the colonial government of countenancing an illegal slave trade in San children. Khoekhoe people tried to use Bannister’s legal expertise to interact with the colonial government through petitions, while Xhosa chiefs funnelled statements of grievance through him, albeit to little immediate effect. I also suggest that Bannister thought of the Khoekhoe as analogous to the Haudenosaunee, in part because of their roles as military allies of the British, and may have shared political strategies with them. Bannister simultaneously believed that he, through his association with the trader Francis Farewell, had inherited a treaty with the Zulu leader Shaka giving the pair territory in Zululand. Despite being disappointed in his effort to monetize this ‘treaty’, Bannister later vigorously promoted the creation of the British colony of Natal. The chapter explores paradoxes of imperial liberalism and its difficult relationship to anti-colonial resistance.

This chapter examines the use of martial law powers during four frontier wars against the Xhosa people, in 1835, 1846, 1850 and 1877, and two rebellions by mixed-race ‘Hottentot’ and Griqua people, and discusses the debates over the nature of martial law which followed. During the first two wars, martial law powers were largely used to facilitate the raising of troops, but questions were raised about whether martial law could be used to govern newly acquired areas. As the debates over the status of the territory east of the Keiskamma river showed, martial law could not be used to govern land incorporated into the colony, but it could be used to administer conquered lands. Martial law powers were also used to conduct trials and imprison rebels in 1851 and 1878, which led to debates between law officers in London and Cape Town regarding the nature of these powers. In these debates, the law officers endorsed the English common lawyers’ view which had emerged after 1865. A strong commitment to the rule of law was also expressed by the Cape Supreme Court when dealing with the case of Griqua prisoners, detained without trial at Cape Town after the rebellion of 1878.