This article is concerned with the loss of their land to the whites by the September family and their struggle to regain it. Abraham (‘Holbors’) September, an exslave, was a member of the Baster community of the Gordonia settlement (1880–89) where he was the first person to lead water from the Orange River to irrigate land. The article traces the estabishment of the Gordonia settlement and the granting of land in it, and its government as part of British Bechuanaland (1889–95) and the Cape Colony (1895–). It discusses the historiography of the loss of land by Basters to whites, testing explanations of land loss by subsequent historians against written records and oral tradition, with attention to the role of ‘land lawyers’. Abraham September died in 1898. The remainder of the article focuses on the September family as a case-study of land loss. It deals with the administration of his estate – in the course of which his land was ‘sold’ to whites – from the different points of view of the official record and of oral tradition. It then outlines correspondence in the archives from 1920 through to the 1960s protesting against this land alienation as a failure to implement the will of Abraham September and his wife Elizabeth. It concludes with some comments on sources. Is the official record or oral tradition a more accurate reflection of what happened to the land of the September family?
