John Clark Collection
Sir Michael H. Gallwey (1826-1912) First attorney-general and later chief justice of Natal, emigrated to the colony from Ireland in December 1853. Only 27 years old, he was to create for himself a brilliant career ending in a knighthood. Perhaps the most important decision in his legal life came when he was appointed chairman of the Boundary Commission for the delimitation of the boundaries between the Transvaal and Zululand. Since 1860 the encroachment by the Transvalers had been a sore point with the Zulu kings, Mpande and Cetshwayo. Against general expectation, Gallwey's Commission reported in favour of the Zulu claims and proposed a boundary line that inevitably left a number of Transvalers on the Zulu side. Unfortunately, Sir Bartle Frere bypassed the Commission's recommendations and favored the intruding Transvaal farmers by leaving them with all private rights to the land acquired under the Transvaal government. This fatal decision of Frere's was certainly one of the causes of the 1879 Zulu War and was specifically referred to by Bishop J.W. Colenso in his famous Iandlwana sermon. Throughout the painful events that followed in the war, Gallwey's only consolation was that he had been right in his decision.