Before he left, he published a manifesto in the Grahamstown Journal in which he explained his reasons to join the Great Trek in South Africa. He left the Cape in March , together with people. When he joined the Voortrekkers in the Free State, they numbered more or less 5 Retief was elected governor and military leader at a convention held at Winburg.
At the same convention Maritz was elected chairman of the Political Council. Piet Uys, Piet Uys and his followers were the last to leave the Cape as part of a big organised trek.
These odd men, women and children departed from the district of Uitenhage in April They arrived in the Free State in August of the same year. The Voortrekkers in Zululand and Natal, Potgieter felt it best to remain in Transvaal, since Britain might annex Natal, which would mean that the Voortrekkers would once again be under British rule.
Maritz, Cilliers and Retief did not share his fears and decided to move to Natal. Piet Uys was not quite sure where his trek should be heading.
When the Voortrekkers arrived in Natal, one of the favourite destinations during the Great trek in South Africa, the greater part of Natal was under the control of Dingane.
Retief attempted to buy land from Dingane who promised to sell it if the Voortrekkers agreed to recover the cattle which had been stolen by Sikonyela. When Retief and his people brought back the stolen cattle, they signed a contract with Dingane. The Zulus also drove off the bulk of the Voortrekkers' cattle.
They were defeated by the Zulus at Italeni. The Zulus attacked again on 13 August and in December , the last remaining Voortrekker leader, Maritz, died. As the Voortrekkers needed a new leader, they sent for Andries Pretorius. Dingane fled, after setting fire to his kraal. At Kwa Maritane, the skeletons of Retief and his men were found, together with a satchel containing the treaty between Dingane and the Voortrekkers.
The Voortrekkers were now the owners of the land between the Drakensberg Mountains, from the Tugela River to the Umzimvubu River and the sea. Dingane was finally defeated by Mpande who became the new paramount chief of the Zulus. They formed a government and Pietermaritzburg was chosen as the new capital. A struggle followed, during which the British suffered a number of casualties and lost two of their cannon.
Dick King a legend in the history of the Great Trek in South Africa escaped on horseback, and astonishingly, it took him only six days to reach Grahamstown. The British sent reinforcements and the Voortrekkers were forced to retreat to Pietermaritzburg. The Voortrekkers in the Transvaal, In two attacks against Mzilikazi, one a counter-attack and the second a precautionary attack, the Matabele were defeated and Potgieter and his followers thought it safe to remain in Transvaal.
Soon after, Potgieter gave in to pressure and moved to Natal, but soon returned to the Transvaal where he founded the town of Potchefstroom. He proclaimed the district as the Republic of Winburg-Potchefstroom.
From here, the Voortrekkers moved to Marico and Rustenburg. Potgieter and his people wanted to move as far away from the Cape as possible and in the process, other towns such as Ohrigstad and Lydenburg were founded. Conflict arose between Potgieter and another group and Potgieter moved even further north and founded the town of Schoemansdal.
In order to do this, the land on which the town of Utrecht was founded, had to be bought from Zulu king Mpande. Britain did not recognise the independence of Transvaal, but made no attempt at annexation. The reason for its inactivity was the hostile attitude of certain black tribes towards Britain and also the fact that war was looming in Europe. It was the first time that Britain had acknowledged the independence of a Voortrekker Republic.
The Voortrekkers in the Orange Free State, At the start of the 19th century there were already different groups present in the area. Their campaigns against slavery and exploitation of indigenous peoples were brought very dramatically against Trekboer techniques by the missionaries.
The only way to save this ethos and its associated way of life was to escape from the British sphere in the Cape Colony. Clearly, the desire to preserve their view of the world and their way of life was a big incentive for many who joined the Great Trek. It was certainly mentioned in a number of ways. Liberals hoped that in the decades following, the liberal approach would gradually take over in the Union. However, the reverse happened. Certainly, preserving the Trekboer ethos and way of life was important also.
We should not adopt a monocausal or single cause approach. British attempts to create a stable frontier and border - the strategy of defining a clear boundary as a means of avoiding hostilities and warfare with the indigenous people had, as we noted earlier, began soon after the settling at the Cape. Although VOC officials had tried to draw boundaries, it had never worked, especially after the emergence of trekboers. However, the Khoikhoi had not posed such a serious military threat as the Xhosa did.
This was all the more so because it soon proved that wars with the Xhosa were expensive. The first attempt involved making a treaty with the Ngqika, who was paramount chief of the Rharhabe clans west of the Kei River. The problem was that Ngqika had no control over his uncle Ndlambe and other chiefs; he hoped that the treaty would bring them back under his control with help from the British.
The British failed to understand the real situation; although he was genealogically paramount, it did not mean that he had any real authority or control. Later, the British decided that Ngqika was being two-faced when he did not force the chiefs to abide by the terms of the treaty that he had signed. In spite of repeated failures, the British kept trying to use treaties. Thus, after forcing the Xhosa back in a war, they signed treaties with the chiefs that their people would stay out.
African chiefs could not enforce such an order upon African people who regarded the land as theirs. On the other side, there was also much unhappiness among whites who had hoped and expected that any land taken from the Xhosa would be given or, at least, sold to them. It was hoped that this settlement would accomplish 2 things: the British settlers would act as a buffer between the trekboer farmers and the Xhosa. Secondly, a major part of the problem was deemed to be the extensive agriculture and pastoralism practised by the Afrikaner farmers which created the unsatiable demand for land.
The British farmers were supposed to be an example of the intensive agriculture as practised in Britain. If Afrikaners could be converted to this, there would be adequate land for a long time. This too failed because the Xhosa still regarded it as their land and the climate was totally unsuitable for intensive farming. Most of the setters soon abandoned the land for towns most had not been farmers anyway and those who remained on the land had to adopt many of the same practices as the Afrikaners.
Now the British government were worse off because they now had to protect British settlers who had much greater claims for protection on the government. This was opposed by most missionaries who felt that not only was this unjust to the Xhosa, but it was catering to the white settlers who would have incentives to foment further troubles whenever they wanted more land.
This latter suspicion occurred to imperial officials in London also. Besides, if this process was started, where would the annexations end?
He had earlier used this idea to explain British expansion in India; this book applied the idea to South Africa. Strong central governments are required on both sides of the border in order that unruly elements can be controlled.
Otherwise, border incidents occur and escalate into war which then leads to expansion of the winning state. If there is too big a power differential between the states, there is a partial vacuum on the side of the border of the weaker state and the more powerful state tends to get pulled into expansion.
He uses this same theory to explain why, in spite of great reluctance and even strong steps to avoid it, the British nevertheless made annexations and expanded their control in South Africa. There in October, in a short and fierce battle which lasted half an hour, 40 trekkers succeeded in beating off an attack by Ndebele warriors.
Both sides suffered heavy losses - Ndebele were killed, and the trekkers lost thousands of sheep and cattle as well as their trek oxen. But a few days later, Moroka and the missionary Archbell rescued them with food and oxen.
Gert Maritz and his party joined these trekkers in Transorangia later the Orange Free State and in January , with the help of a small force of Griqua, Kora, Rolong and Tlokwa, they captured Mzilikazi 's stronghold at Mosega and drove the Ndebele further north. The trekkers then concluded treaties of friendship with Moroka and Sekonyela chief of the Tlokwa. When Piet Retief and his followers split away and moved eastwards to Natal, both Potgieter and Piet Uys remained determined to break the Ndebele.
At the end of , trekkers besieged Mzilikazi 's forces in the Marico valley, and Mzilikazi fled across the Limpopo River to present-day Zimbabwe. He died there, to be succeeded by Lobengula, who led a rather precarious life in the area until he was eventually defeated by the forces of the British South Africa Company in the s.
Meanwhile, Retief and his followers continued marching towards Port Natal later Durban. After Retief's fateful encounter with Dingane, chief of the Zulu, and the ensuing Battle of Blood River, the trekkers declared the short-lived Republic of Natalia They formed a simple system of goveming, with Pretorius as President, assisted by a volksraad people's assembly of 24 members, and local government officials based on the traditional landdrost and heemraden system.
In , an adjunct council was established at Potchefstroom, with Potgieter as Chief-Commandant. The trekkers believed that at last they had found a place in the sun But the British would not recognise their independence. In December , the Governor, Sir George Napier, a determined military man who had not allowed the loss of his right arm in battle to ruin his career, sent his military secretary, Major Samuel Charters, to occupy Port Natal, which effectively controlled Voortrekker use of the harbour.
Three years later, when the Natal Volksraad resolved to drive all Africans not working for the whites southwards beyond the Mtamvuna River later the border between Natal and the Transkei , Napier again intervened.
He was concerned that this would threaten the eastern frontier of the Cape, and so instructed Captain Thomas Charlton Smith to march to Port Natal with men. Smith, who had joined the Royal Navy at the age of nine and was a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, tried to negotiate with Pretorius, but to no avail.
On the moonlit night of 23 May , Smith attacked the Boer camp at Congella but Pretorius, who had been alerted, fought back. The trekkers proceeded to besiege the British camp. One of their number, Dick King. On 15 July the volksraad at Pietermaritzburg signed the conditions of submission.
Although most trekkers had travelled into Natal or into the far north with the main expeditions, some had remained on the fertile land above the junction of the Caledon and Orange rivers, and gradually began to move north-eastward. The trekkers' pioneer in this area was Jan de Winnaar, who settled in the Matlakeng area in May-June As more farmers were moving into the area they tried to colonise the land between the two rivers, even north of the Caledon, claiming that it had been abandoned by the Sotho people.
But although some of the independent communities who had lived there had been scattered, others remained in the kloofs and on the hillsides. Moshoeshoe, paramount chief of the Sotho, when hearing of the trekker settlement above the junction, stated that ' The trekkers proceeded to build huts of clay instead of reed , and began planting their own food crops no longer trading with the Sotho. This indicated their resolve to settle down permanently.
A French missionary, Eugene Casalis, later remarked that the trekkers had humbly asked for temporary rights while they were still few in number, but that when they felt 'strong enough to throw off the mask' they went back on their initial intention. In October Jan Mocke, a fiery republican, and his followers erected a beacon at Alleman's drift on the banks of the Orange River and proclaimed a republic.
Officials were appointed to preside over the whole area between the Caledon and Vaal rivers. Riding back from the drift, they informed Chief Lephoi, an independent chief at Bethulie, that the land was now Boer property and that he and his people were subject to Boer laws. They further decided that the crops which had been sown for the season would be reaped by the Boers, and they even uprooted one of the peach trees in the garden of a mission station as indication of their ownership.
In the north-east, they began to drive Moshoeshoe's people away from the springs, their only source of water. Moshoeshoe appealed for protection to the Queen of England, but he soon discovered that he would have to organise his own resistance. Land seizure and dispossession were also prevalent in the eastern Transvaal where Potgieter had founded the towns of Andries-Ohrigstad in and Soutpansberg which was later renamed Schoemansdal in A power struggle erupted between Potgieter and Pretorius, who had arrived with a new trekker party from Natal and seemed to have a better understanding of the political dynamics of southern Africa.
Potgieter, still anxious to legitimise his settlement, concluded a vredenstraktaat peace treaty in with Sekwati, chief of the Pedi, who he claimed had ceded all rights to an undefined stretch of land. The precise terms of the treaty are unknown, but it seems certain that Sekwati never actually sold land to the Boers.
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