This article examines the opportunities which opened up to ‘Hottentots and other free persons of colour’ as a result of the Cape’s Ordinance 50 of 1828. Prior to 1828 three elements – Christian profession, citizenship (burgher status) and property rights – had been linked. In order to have land, the non-European had to be a squatter or a member of a mission station. The Ordinance of 1828 stipulated that it was lawful for any Hottentot or other free person of colour to purchase and possess land. The article examines petitions for grants of land by groups of Hottentots (the Bethelsdorp petition) and by individual Hottentots (Paul Keteldas). It also examines efforts to settle Khoesan (Hottentots) on privatized mission lands, on vacant government lands situated in the vicinity of towns and villages, and in the ‘ceded territory’, a strip of land which the colony had wished to clear of Xhosa ever since the 1819 frontier war. It is plain that the ordinance encouraged Khoesan to undertake appeals for land. Lack of effective clout, little support from the mission and the central government and straight oppostion from colonists, however, made it difficult for Khoesan to implement their rights. Ref.
