Great Trek

[[File:Great Trek map full.png|thumbnail|300px|A map charting the routes of the largest trekking parties during the first wave of the Great Trek (1835-1840) along with key battles and events. The yellow area indicating the initial area of settlement extends too far south – south of Thaba Nchu and what would become Bloemfontein was an area settled by Griqua and Trekboers.

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The Great Trek (, ) was a northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial administration. The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British. It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town. Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers" or "pathfinders" in Dutch and Afrikaans.

The Great Trek led directly to the founding of several autonomous Boer republics, namely the South African Republic (also known simply as the Transvaal), the Orange Free State and the Natalia Republic. It also led to conflicts that resulted in the displacement of the Northern Ndebele people, and conflicts with the Zulu people that contributed to the decline and eventual collapse of the Zulu Kingdom.

Background

thumb|Trekboers making camp (1804) by [[Samuel Daniell.]]

Hunter-Gatherer communities largely populated the south-western coast of Africa. These groups can collectively be termed 'Khoisan'/ 'Khoesan', however, there are significant genetic and cultural differences between given Khoi and San groups making the grouping arbitrary. Bantu populations migrated from the Niger-Cameroon region and settled in sparse settlements along the fringes of larger kingdoms, such as Batua, Monomotapa, and other smaller Nguni kingdoms, c.2000 BCE. Bartolomeu Dias was the first explorer to navigate to the Cape, in 1488, and in 1652 the first Europeans settled in the Cape area under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company (also known by its Dutch initials VOC), which established a victualling station there to provide its outward bound fleets with fresh provisions and a harbour of refuge during the long sea journey from Europe to Asia (Hunt, John (2005)). In a few short decades, the Cape had become home to a large population of "Glidden", also denoted as "vrijburgers" (free citizens), former Company employees who remained in Dutch territories overseas after completing their contracts. Since the primary purpose of the Cape settlement at the time was to stock provisions for passing Dutch ships, the VOC offered grants of farmland to its employees under the condition they would cultivate grain for the Company warehouses, and released them from their contracts to save on their wages. Vrijburgers were granted tax-exempt status for 12 years and loaned all the necessary seeds and farming implements they requested. They were married Dutch citizens, considered "of good character" by the Company, and had to commit to spending at least 20 years on the African continent. As a result, by 1691 over a quarter of the colony's European population was not ethnically Dutch. Nevertheless, there was a degree of cultural assimilation through intermarriage, and the almost universal adoption of the Dutch language. Cleavages were likelier to occur along social and economic lines; broadly speaking, the Cape colonists were delineated into Boers, poor farmers who settled directly on the frontier, and the more affluent, predominantly urbanised Cape Dutch.

Following the Flanders Campaign and the Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam, France assisted in the establishment of a pro-French client state, the Batavian Republic, on Dutch soil. This opened the Cape to French warships. The British authorities were adamantly opposed to the Boers' ownership of slaves and what was perceived as their unduly harsh treatment of the indigenous peoples. Boer resentment of successive British administrators continued to grow throughout the late 1820s and early 1830s, especially with the official imposition of the English language. Many Boers, especially those involved with grain and wine production, were dependent on slave labour; for example, 94% of all white farmers in the vicinity of Stellenbosch owned slaves at the time, and the size of their slave holdings correlated greatly to their production output.

The Great Trek was not universally popular among the settlers either. Around 12,000 of them took part in the migration, about a fifth of the colony's Dutch-speaking white population at the time. The Dutch Reformed Church, to which most of the Boers belonged, explicitly refused to endorse the Great Trek. The Cape Dutch were also much more heavily urbanised and therefore less likely to be susceptible to the same rural grievances and considerations as those held by the Boers.

In late July 1836 van Rensburg's entire party of 49, except two children who were saved by a Zulu warrior, were massacred at Inhambane by an impi (a force of warriors) of Manukosi. Those of Tregardt's party that had set up around Soutpansberg moved on to colonise Delagoa Bay, with most of the party, including Tregardt, perishing from fever. Retief's written request for land contained veiled threats by referring to the Voortrekker's defeat of indigenous groups encountered along their journey. The Voortrekker demand for a written contract guaranteeing private property ownership was incompatible with the contemporaneous Zulu oral culture which prescribed that a chief could only temporarily dispense land as it was communally owned.

Most versions agree that the following happened: King Dingane's authority extended over some of the land in which the Boers wanted to settle. As prerequisite to granting the Voortrekker request, he demanded that the Voortrekkers return some cattle stolen by Sekonyela, a rival chief. After the Boers retrieved the cattle, King Dingane invited Retief to his residence at uMgungundlovu to finalise the treaty, having either planned the massacre in advance, or deciding to do so after Retief and his men arrived.

King Dingane's reputed instruction to his warriors, "" (Zulu for "kill the witches") may indicate that he considered the Boers to wield evil supernatural powers. After killing Retief's delegation, a Zulu army of 7,000 impis were sent out and immediately attacked Voortrekker encampments in the Drakensberg foothills at what later was called Blaauwkrans and Weenen, leading to the Weenen massacre in which 532 people were killed, including 282 Voortrekkers, of whom 185 were children, and 250 Khoikhoi and Basuto accompanying them. In contrast to earlier conflicts with the Xhosa on the eastern Cape frontier, the Zulus killed women and children along with men, wiping out half of the Natal contingent of Voortrekkers.

The Voortrekkers retaliated with a 347-strong punitive raid against the Zulu (later known as the Flight Commando), supported by new arrivals from the Orange Free State. The Voortrekkers were roundly defeated by about 7,000 warriors at Ithaleni, southwest of uMgungundlovu. The well-known reluctance of Afrikaner leaders to submit to one another's leadership, which later hindered sustained success in the Anglo-Boer Wars, was largely to blame.

In November 1838 Andries Pretorius arrived to assist in the defence. A few days later on 16 December 1838, the trekkers fought against Zulu impis at the Battle of Blood River. Pretorius's victory over the Zulu army led to a civil war within the Zulu nation as King Dingane's half-brother, Mpande kaSenzangakhona, aligned with the Voortrekkers to overthrow the king and impose himself. Mpande sent 10,000 impis to assist the trekkers in follow-up expeditions against Dingane. After Dingane's death, Mpande was proclaimed king, and the Zulu nation allied with the short-lived Natalia Republic until its annexation by the British Empire in 1843.

The Voortrekkers' guns offered them a technological advantage over the Zulu's traditional weaponry of short stabbing spears, fighting sticks, and cattle-hide shields. The Boers attributed their victory to a vow they made to God before the battle: if victorious, they and future generations would commemorate the day as a Sabbath. Thereafter, 16 December was celebrated by Boers as a public holiday, first called Dingane's Day, later changed to the Day of the Vow. Post-apartheid, the name was changed to the Day of Reconciliation by the South African government, in order to foster reconciliation between all South Africans. The film tells the Afrikaans version of the history of South Africa from 1652 to 1910 with a focus on the Great Trek.

A number of Afrikaans organisations such as the and continued to promote the centenary's goals of furthering the Afrikaner cause and entrenching a greater sense of unity and solidarity within the community well into the 20th century.

Political impact

The Great Trek was used by Afrikaner nationalists as a core symbol of a common Afrikaans history. It was used to promote the idea of an Afrikaans nation and a narrative that promoted the ideals of the National Party. In 1938, celebrations of the centenary of the Battle of Blood River and the Great Trek mobilised behind an Afrikaans nationalist theses. The narrative of Afrikaner nationalism was a significant reason for the National Party's victory in the 1948 elections. A year later the Voortrekker Monument was completed and opened in Pretoria by the newly elected South African Prime Minister and National Party member Daniel Malan in 1949.

A few years later, "" ('The Voice of South Africa'), a poem written by Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven referring to the Great Trek, was chosen to be the words of the pre-1994 South African national anthem. The post-1997 national anthem of South Africa incorporates a section of "" but it was decided to omit the section in "reference to the Great Trek (), since this was the experience of only one section of our community". When apartheid in South Africa ended and the country transitioned to majority rule, President de Klerk invoked the measures as a new Great Trek.

In fiction

Literature

English

H. Rider Haggard, Swallow (1899) and Marie (1912)
Stuart Cloete, Turning Wheels (1937)
Helga Moray, Untamed (1950) - a 1955 movie of the same name is based on this book.
James A. Michener, The Covenant (1980)
Zakes Mda, The Madonna of Excelsior (2002)
Robin Binckes, Canvas under the Sky (2011) - a controversial novel about a promiscuous drug-using Voortrekker set during the Great Trek.

Afrikaans

Jeanette Ferreira

: (2007; 'The sun comes up over the sea')

F.A. Venter,

: () (1960)

: () (1963)

: () (1966)

: () (1968)

Dutch

C. W. H. van der Post, , novel, 1918.

Film

Untamed (1955), an adventure/love story set in the later part of the trek about an Irish woman seeking a new life in South Africa after the Great Famine. Based on a 1950 novel of the same name by Helga Moray.
The Fiercest Heart (1961), an adventure/love story about two British soldiers who desert the military and join a group of Boers heading north on the Great Trek.