JONNY STEINBERG: Minorities become what they fear when confronted with anger
Most focused series of killings last July was by members of a racial group believing they were under attack
In May 1878, in the British crown colony of Griqualand West, a group of two dozen Tlhaping men stormed a shop belonging to a white man named Burgess and beat him to death. Burgess was the master of the local cattle pound; he was murdered in revenge for the property he had confiscated over the preceding year. Three months later another white man, Francis Thompson, was also attacked and killed. He had been taking vast amounts of firewood from the properties of his black neighbours despite a court order for him to desist.
In response to the two murders the administrator of Griqualand West, Owen Lanyon, declared the Tlhaping to be in a state of rebellion, assembled a heavily armed force of white civilians and either killed or captured every leading Tlhaping aristocrat, a swift and brutal decapitation of an entire society. The victors of this encounter wrote the history books, so to this day it is still remembered as the Griqualand West Rebellion, despite the fact that in its entir...
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