<P> Although no formally surveyed boundaries existed, Griqua leader Nicolaas Waterboer claimed the diamond fields were situated on land belonging to the Griquas . The Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State also vied for ownership of the land, but Britain, being the preeminent force in the region, won control over the disputed territory . In 1878, Waterboer led an unsuccessful rebellion against the colonial authorities, for which he was arrested and briefly exiled . </P> <P> In early South Africa, European notions of national boundaries and land ownership had no counterparts in African political culture . To the local African chieftains, customary tribute in the form of horses and cattle represented acceptance by the reigning chief of land use under his authority . To both the Boer and the British settlers, the same form of tribute was believed to constitute purchase and permanent ownership of the land under independent authority . As British and Boer settlers started establishing permanent farms after trekking across the country in search of prime agricultural land, they encountered resistance from the local Bantu people who had originally migrated southwards from central Africa hundreds of years earlier . The consequent frontier wars were officially referred to by the British colonial authorities as the "Kaffir" wars . It has been suggested by at least one historian that the early tribal societies of what is today South Africa were defeated not only by the superior weapons of the settlers, "but also by their own backwardness and disunity ." </P> <P> Too, the increasing economic involvement of the British in southern Africa from the 1820s, and especially following the discovery of first diamonds at Kimberley and gold in the Transvaal, resulted in pressure for land and African labour, and led to increasingly tense relations with African states . </P> <P> In the southeastern part of the country, the Boers and the Xhosa clashed along the Great Fish River, and in 1779 the first of nine frontier wars erupted . For nearly 100 years subsequently, the Xhosa fought the settlers sporadically, first the Boers or Afrikaners and later the British . In the Fourth Frontier War, which lasted from 1811 to 1812, the British forced the Xhosa back across the Great Fish River and established forts along this boundary . </P>

When did white settlers came to south africa