Estcourt - The Nineteenth Century

The Nineteenth Century

The earliest identifiable inhabitants of the Estcourt area were the bushmen, a hunter-gather people, though rock engravings dating from four different iron age periods have been found on the farm Hattingsvlakte. The bushmen had been displaced by the Bantu people, a pastoral people and in particular the Zulu, a tribe that traced its origins as a separate nation to the early eighteenth century. The bushmen had sought sanctuary in the foothills of the Drakensberg. In the early nineteenth century the Zulu king Shaka used the weapon of Mfecane (genocide) to build his empire. Thus, when the white settlers first arrived in the Estcourt area, the land appeared to be almost uninhabited.