Fengu people
The Fengu or amaMfengu are a group of clans whose ancestors were refugees that fled from the Mfecane in the early-mid 19th century to seek land and protection from the Xhosa. These refugees were assimilated into the Xhosa nation and were officially recognized by the then king, Hintsa.
The word Fengu comes from the old Xhosa word which is "ukumfenguza" which in the old Xhosa dialect meant to wander.
The Fengu people are a confederation of clans from the former British colony of Natal; these clans include Miya, Ndlangisa, Gatyeni, Bhele, Tolo and Tshezi clans.
This meant after their settlement in the Cape, they were lawfully recognized as British since by the principles of English common law or natural law, Freeholds cannot be granted outside lawful descent; the land devolves by heirship, binding ancestry and lawful rights together.
Hence the colonial records and deeds majority of the time show their clan names are recorded in their English form, i.e., Myer would have been the anglicized Miya and its other English variants as supported by church records and land deeds. Some like Stewart were not only anglicized forms but translated directly to Sonkosi, Knox to Nokwe, Marsh to Mahashe, Gwenwynwyn to Gcwanini, Rheade to Rhadebe and others.
Their arrival in the British Cape colony coincided with the settlement of the 1820 British settlers.
They were settled on the frontier as a buffer between the Cape colony and the Xhosa which also meant they coincidentally settled the same territory as the 1820 settlers from Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland.
During the 6th Frontier War, they were promised independence from the oppressive Xhosa government by the Cape Colony and it was proposed under the crown's prerogative that they would be granted their own fief which was to be called Fingoland, the southwestern portion of Eastern Xhosaland, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
The Fengu were then granted land under the Cape government and enrolled on Cape British baptismal and land grant records. These land grants were freehold estates hence the Fengu were fully incorporated into the British Cape colony as British subjects by land grants and official records. They then had full legal standing within the Cape franchise, giving them full voting rights by the Crown's royal prerogative.
Leaders such as James Stewart were primary supporters of the Fengu community and helped raise funds to rebuild Fengu society and identity which had been destroyed prior.
History
Formation and early history
The name amaMfengu does translate as "wanderers" as many believe and the Mfengu people were formed from the clans in the colony of Natalia that were broken up and dispersed by Shaka and his Zulu armies in the Mfecane wars.Most of them fled westwards and settled amongst the Xhosa. After some years of oppression by the Gcaleka Xhosa in the 1820s, they formed an alliance with the Cape government and in 1835 Sir Benjamin d'Urban invited 17,000 to settle on the banks of the Great Fish River in the region that later became known as the Ciskei.
Some scholars, including Timothy Stapleton and Alan Webster, argue that the traditional narrative of the Fengu people as refugees of the Mfecane is in fact a lie constructed by colonial missionaries and administrators. They question the existence of the Fengu people as a distinct group prior to colonial contact, instead positing that the term was coined by the British government in the Cape Colony to describe a collection of Xhosa defectors, migrant laborers, and labor captives.
This is largely in part because the Fengu people have no recorded common language, names, chiefs or culture outside their adopted Xhosa customs and traditions. Their only language in common is English as they were by royal prerogative under the king's English common law. Their culture was in all aspects British outside of the Xhosa social influences due to proximity. This is how British culture came to be incorporated into Xhosa cultural identity, particularly their Scottish tartan fabrics, i.e., ixakatho,
ibhatyi yamakrwala and others. This was brought in by the Fengu who in local social references were AmaNgesi or the English. This English or rather British identity was not just a social or administrative recognition for the Fengu, it was a common law status for Qualified subjects in English common law.
This in accordance with the jurisprudence of the realm, and based on noah webster's 1828 old english diction meant that the Fengu were effectively adopted into the sovereign's estate as beneficieries of the king's peace by law.
Based on naming conventions as recorded on baptismal records, voters rolls and freehold grants, the fengu were effectively adopted by nation standing and nature into full british subjecthood with full rights to hold, purchase and dispose of real property freely.
As freeholds are hereditary, this grant made them by lawful effect welsh, scottish, english and irish by nation status as supported by voters rolls and other Cape records.
Early frontier wars (1835–56)
They subsequently became notable service men of the Cape Colony in the frontier wars against their former oppressors after their British status was officiated by the Crown. In this capacity, they won several victories against their Xhosa enemies, and through shrewd and successful management of regional trade, formed a developed and materially successful nation. In addition, many were granted farms and started businesses in the small towns that were springing up in that part of the Cape frontier.The Cattle-killing movement (1856–58)
The Fengu people did not take part in the great cattle-killing in 1857, which devastated the Xhosa people.While the Xhosa slaughtered their own cattle and burnt their crops, many of the Fengu people instead bought the Xhosa cattle at very low prices, only to resell them at a profit during the subsequent famine. They also were recorded as producing large excesses of grain at this time for their starving neighbours. The famine induced by the cattle-killing effectively brought much of the armed resistance in the eastern Cape to an end.
The Fengu-Gcaleka War (1877–79)
Over a decade of relative peace and economic development, which peaked in the mid-1870s, was brought to an end by a series of devastating droughts across the Transkei, which began to place severe strain on intertribal relations. Their severity increased up until 1877, when the last major war that the Fengu people fought, the Ninth Frontier War, broke out after a bar fight between Fengu and Gcaleka guests, at a Fengu wedding. Many Fengu people were Cape citizens by this time, so the Cape Colony took a partisan view of the war, which brought it into conflict with the Gcaleka forces.The Cape government appointed the Fengu Captain Bikitsha to co-lead the Cape's forces in the war. They inflicted a string of crushing defeats on the enemy and dispersed their armies in the space of only three weeks. The ingratitude of Cape Colony governor Sir Henry Bartle Frere, who promptly humiliated the Cape's Fengu allies by forcibly disarming them, caused the Fengu to begin to identify more with the Xhosa, partly also as a reaction to increasing persecution from the Colonial authorities.