Frontiers

The story of the nine 'Kaffir' wars, fought in the 18th and 19th centuries between the whites and the Xhosa nation, form the heart of this astonishing book. In a comparatively small area of land, eastwards from the Cape, on territory demarcated by the Great Fish and the Great Kai Rivers. It was here that the crucial frontier was variously to be found - the volatile border where colonial expansion met local intransigence and brutal warfare proved the only solution to the impasse.

Noel Mostert vivdly recounts this momentous story and its appalling aftermath - the self-immolation of the Xhosa. His starting point is the arrival of the first visitors to the Cape, the Portugeuse, in 1492. In an epilogue he observes that the end of the wars did not mean the end of the agony, but rather a legacy of pain and anger that to this day shapes South African society.