THE VOORTREKKER CENTENARY .
Commonwealth anti Foreign
By G. H. CALPIN (Editor, "The Natal Witness") IT is impossible even in this centenary year of celebration to place the Great Trek of the late thirties of last century in its right perspective among the transcontinental movements of peoples. The historian has occasionally compared the waves of migration that developed in the Cape to the western march that marked the development of North America, but though there are some points of similarity the real significance of the Voortrekker epic is to be found in its uniqueness. Both its causes and course are peculiar to a people who, more than any other in the world, might be looked upon as the nineteenth- century counterparts of an Old Testament tribe ; and there is no doubt that this projection was demonstrated in a biblical way of life and mode of thought, that, indeed, the pastoral Dutch frontiersman was impelled throughout the nineteenth n:ury by a simple and abiding faith in the God of Isaac and Jacob.
The Great Trek is "the central theme of South African history," not only in the sense that by and through it the vast sub-continent was opened up for white occupation, but in the far deeper sense that the law and custom and psycho- logical structure of the nation is erected upon it. It is no historical event, then, that is being celebrated this year, but a continuous movement towards nationhood which is today only half-way to its destiny. There are many of the Afrikaner peoples to whom the manifesto of Piet Retief, the outstanding leader of the Voortrekkers, is a political Bible, and to whom the Trek has become, in later days, a spiritual movement indicative of Afrikaner social and political progress and independence.
In the Trek itself and the impelling factors that gave it birth are to be found practically every aspect of the political ideology of the Afrikaner nation; nor is this to be wondered at by the student who has delved into the well-filled archives now in the keeping of Voortrekker descendants. Numbers give but little indication of the significance of the exodus. The Eastern Cape supplied the majority of those who took part in the waves of migration. Dissatisfaction with a distant Government, particularly over the lack of protection and of security offered against invading native tribes ; a sense of impermanence ; a brooding atmosphere of alien domination and injustice, the inevitable result of ignorance of the locale on the part of the authorities ; and on the part of some a deeply ingrained spirit of independence or wanderlust ; the influence of the missionary upon the Hottentots—all these between them brought to a head in a score of years the impulse which had already taken odd companies and families north and east.
In 1834, then, exploration expeditions set out, of which the most important, the Comrnissie Trek, headed by Petrus Uys, travelled clumsily through Pondoland, reaching and crossing the Tugela in Natal, where they met and were received favourably by the Zulu king, Dingaan, who was later to massacre Piet Retief and his men in one of the bloodiest episodes of all history. Families were already on their way north and north-east before Retief, a man of Huguenot blood, fifty-four years old at this time, and described by the Anglican missionary, Owen, at Dingaan's Stad, as "all mildness," in collaboration with two other great Voortrekkers, Gert Maritz and Andries Pretorius, published the Voortrekker Manifesto, "one of the greatest public documents of all time." Its preamble set out their desire "to stand high in the estimation of our countrymen" and an anxiety that "they and the world at large should believe us incapable of severing that sacred tie which binds a Christian to his native soil without the most sufficient reasons."
Among its declarations these may be taken as representative : r. "We are resolved, wherever we go, that we will uphold the just principles of liberty ; but, whilst we will take care that no one shall be held in a state of slavery, it is our determination to maintain such regulations as may suppress crime and preserve proper relations between master and servant.
2. "We solemnly declare that we quit this country with a desire to enjoy a quieter life than we have heretofore done. We will not molest any people, nor deprive them of
11. the smallest property ; but, if attacked, we shall consider ourselves fully justified in defending our persons and effects, to the utmost of our ability, against any enemy.
3. "We are now quitting the fruitful land of our birth, in which we have suffered enormous losses and continual vexation, and are entering a wild and dangerous territory ; but we go With a firm reliance on an all-seeing, just, and merciful Being, whom it will be our endeavour to fear and humbly to obey."
These three clauses, out of the ten published, indicate somc. thing of the aspirations of all those who whether before or after gave up their farms, inspanned their oxen, gathered together their goods and chattels to set out into the unknown. Retief's party was but one, the most sharply defined in- its disaster and ultimate success. The number of the migrants is not accurately known. It is probably in the region of 3,500, and it is esti- mated that the number of lives lost by massacre and battle reached i,000. The mileage covered cannot have been less than 2,500 miles for the main company that reached Natal.
No brief word picture can paint the hardships, the struggle against native tribes, disease in cattle and amongst themselves, the slow pace of the Voortrekker waggon, the hurriedly formed laager, the wild terrain of veld, rushing torrent o: dried river- bed, the forbidding upthrust of the Drakensburg, to crocod,ile- infested stream, the clear cold of the veld night o:' the fever of the swamp. Women gave birth in the wilderness and• rejoiced in the psalm ; men outspanned and celled the place Bethlehem ; or believing they had come to the Nile, when they met crocodiles at the Orange River, called it Nylstroom ; the remnants of both after they had buried their massacred com- rades fled and called the spot Weenen, "the place of weeping."
The promised land of Natal, the Garden Colony that was to be, gave them short respite, for they now came into conflict with the English authorities at Port Natal (Durban). Pieter- maritzburg, named after Piet Retief and Gert Maritz, gradually took shape as their chosen resting place. Dingaan, the slayer of Retief and his party, still harassed the trekkers, and it was not until Andries Pretorius, who gave his name .later to the city of Pretoria, led his people to victory against the Zulu impis at the battle of Blood River that the site of Bushmansrand became the town of Pietermaritzburg and the Voortrekker Church, the thanksgiving for deliverance, became the centre of activity. Ten years later the same factors which drove the Boers to leave the Eastern Cape emerged to create dissatisfaction in Natal. The British authorities looked on the trekker Boers as British subjects, and the Volksraad, the trekkers' council, irked by that absence of liberty and inde- pendence for which they had fled the Cape, advised a further trek into the independent republic of the Transvaal and Orangia.
• Scattered then throughout the sub-continent from high- veld to the sea coast, the small companies of Boer families sought the liberty denied them. It must not be imagined that at this stage of their relations with the British any deep sense of racialistic feeling had developed. Individually and collec- tively there existed amicable relations and co-operation against the common foe, but politically the trekking Boer had no use for a central government in London or for the presence of the missionaries, who in their opinion were responsible for a foolish native policy. There is a disposition to believe that the Boers treated the natives harshly. If it were true it is difficult to understand how so many hundreds of their free natives and coloured servants chose to share their trials throughout the Trek.
In no continent has an exodus of such magnitude been taken by numbers so few with so great an influence upon subsequent political progress. The Afrikaans-speaking peoples of the present retain much of the Old Testament ruggedness of their forbears. There is the same fierce pride in political inde- pendence, and in the remoter parts a simple faith in the justice of the Old Testament prophets. Even as, a century ago, Europe seemed to be tottering to its fall and to the Boer the expanse of Tranavaal Orangia and Natal gave hope of security, so today there are those who turn their gaze from a shaking Continent to 'the heritage of the Voortrekker epic.
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