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“In 1826 a few temporary licenses were issued for those wishing to trade beyond the Kei River. The pickings were so rich that within a very short time there were at least 20 traders operating beyond the frontier. In 1830 the border was thrown open and trade beyond the Kei was legalised. For the first time people living on the Wild Coast were able legally to exchange their hides, cattle, ivory and later tobacco, grain and wool, for blankets, beads, agricultural implements, knives, horses and firearms, and the settler traders found a ready market and eager customers.” – Hazel Crampton, The Sunburnt Queen

Travelling the gravel roads of the old Transkei in a Volkswagen Beetle, visiting the various trading stations to take orders and supply goods, was Michael Thompson, who has just released a new book on the traders and their stations of this region.

Traders and Trading Stations of the Central and Southern Transkei is a comprehensive work with anecdotes, maps, history, gravel paths, missionaries and communities and all that makes up this area where time stood still when the rest of South Africa developed at a rapid pace.

Thompson has deep family roots in the Transkei. His great-grandfather, Richard Calverley, is recorded as the first citizen of Umtata, having been granted land by Chief Gangalizwe on the Umtata River. Born and school in Umtata and working for Dyker and Dyer Wholesalers, Spargs Wholesale and a representative of Lever Brothers, Thompson travelled from Umtata, through to Butterworth and far-off places such as Tsolo, Cala, Mlengana  and Engcobo, crossing the Umzimvubu and Tina Rivers in the east and the Great Kei River in the west.

Celebrating a 100-year period in South African history which ended between 1965 and 1980, Traders and Trading Stations tells of European traders who came and set up trading stations amongst the Xhosa-speaking residents. It’s a social history of those traders, concerned with details of their trading activities, families and social life.
It was recorded that in 1932 there were approximately 600 trading stations owned by Europeans. Licenses to trade were obtained from the chiefs, then, after annexation, from the government. Trading sites were five morgen and no new site or license to trade in a location was granted within five miles of an existing station.

Blankets and beads

With them the traders brought, besides beads and blankets, medicine, agricultural tools, and clothing. As they worked together with the missionaries, many a school was erected throughout the region, and missionary work was done in all earnest.

Trading was at first done by ox wagons, crossing deep and dark rivers on gravel roads leading into a mostly unknown hinterland. The oxen had to swim and the wagons floated, but crossings were mostly safely accomplished. Two teams of sixteen oxen each were often used for one wagon, and many rivers had to be negotiated while they were in full flood, or parties had to camp for days on end before able to cross. 

Thompson, tracing the footsteps of the old traders in his Beetle, walked back on his roads once travelled, and talks about old families, such as the Buchans, Misselhorns, McDonalds, Turners Clarkes. On his travels he often met with the descendants of these old traders, such as Ivor Daniels. “Isinuka (the place that smells) near Port St Johns was one of the earliest trading sites in Port St Johns, where the route from Umtata to Pondoland crossed the drift at Fort Harrison. My uncle, Frank Daniel, bought the station in the mid 1930’s, as a home for my grandparents Samuel and Magdalene Daniel,” related Daniels.

Homes and trading stations were first built mostly from sods, and traders and their families were forced to live in tent wagons. Shops were first erected, and buildings were later replaced by brick buildings.   

One of the more remote trading sites was way down on the Tina River, at Mjilana. “Beautiful, rugged country, where the boerboon flowers – making it worth the trip just to see them flower,” says Thompson.

An interesting section of the book deals with "Kreb’s tokens", a method of payment used by a Mr Krebs, who had a trading store in the Mqanduli district. An extract from a document by Milner Snell, Tokens of the Transkei, tells of the tokens that were known as "barber shop" tokens. “There were several manufacturers in England, but these particular ones, with the brand name Ogee on them, were manufactured by Osborne Garrell & Co in London, who were suppliers of implements and other accessories for barbershops.”

Tokens

“The tokens were distributed worldwide, and ranged from 1d to 3/6d [from 1 penny to three shillings and sixpence]. Mr Krebs holed and numbered the tokens. The tokens were used as ‘good fors’. The customer being handed the appropriate token, which in turn was given to the man who ground the mealies.”

The Coinage Act of 1922 put a sudden end to the use of tokens.

Trading stations and the travelling back and forth later resulted in the need for blacksmith shops and overnight inns. The Prince of Wales Hotel near Umngazi was one such inn, where the proprietor, a fellow of many shifting moods, had “striking powers … with a revolver”. In spite of the distinguished-sounding name, no stop was made here because of its owner, and people hurried by hoping to be out of firing range before the owner was aware of their presence.

Today, most of these roads are tarred, and bridges cross the muddy waters of rivers such as the Umzimvubu at Port St Johns. The old traders are no more, and the trading stations were handed down to a number of owners, with many no more in existence. The scenery, however, has changed very little, and nostalgia hangs over the old farms where fruit and vegetables used to blanket the valleys and hills. “The roads had tremendous scenery. I once rounded a bend and was confronted by a field of yellow irises, fringing a valley of green. Such were the perks of travelling the Transkei roads – the natural beauty made up for the poor road conditions. In fact, the bad roads gave one time to look and see,” says Thompson.

Traders and Trading Stations is a series of personal reminiscences about events, people and places that Thompson was fortunate to know, and a system which now sadly has passed. His book is a tribute to those people and times.

For more information about the book, or to order, contact ECToday on (046) 624 1207 or e-mail dennison2@telkomsa.net.