1760 - 1803

Khoena (Khoi) chief, Leader in the Third Frontier War of Resistance, Ally of the Xhosa

Klaas Stuurman led the 'Gamtoos Nation' in a coalition for liberation opposing European attempts to make his people vagrants in their own land.

Klaas and his younger brother David were born on Van Reenen's farm in the Gamtoos valley in the Eastern Cape on independent Khoena (Khoi) territory around the middle of the eighteenth century. Their peaceful existence was challenged towards the end of the 1700s when they faced a devastating assault on their communitys independence.

European colonialists seized the Khoena (Khoi's) land, enslaved its people and tried to annihilate all vestiges of Khoena (Khoi) culture and economy. They used the Khoena (Khoi) as shock troops and cannon fodder in their militias and brutally put down any resistance.

The Stuurman brothers battled to halt this process.

As the elder brother and perhaps because of his fearless outspokenness, oratory talents and skills with a gun, Klaas Stuurman found himself leading a rebel Khoena (Khoi) confederacy that became an adept military force in the region.

In 1799 he formed an alliance between the 'Gamtoos Nation' amaXhosa Gqunukhwebe, led by Chief Chunga. When their demands for justice, land and respect failed, Stuurman made a second alliance with amaXhosa Chief Ndlambe to fight for Khoena (Khoi) independence in the Third Frontier War of Resistance (1801-1803), referred to by colonialist historians as The Hottentot Rebellion.

Despite winning the war, their victory was short-lived. Stuurman died during a buffalo hunting expedition before taking formal occupancy of the land granted by the peace terms, creating an opportunity for the white authorities to renege on their agreements with the now deceased chief.

His younger brother David however, soon turned the land into a sanctuary, and went on to prove himself an equal if not more determined fighter for the Khoena (Khoi) cause.