THE VOORTREKKERS | THE TREK | TREKKER COMMUNITIES & TECHNOLOGY | DISPOSSESSION & LAND SEIZURE

Dispossession and land seizure

The trekkers' first major confrontation was with Mzilikazi, founder and king of the Ndebele. After leaving the Cape the trekkers made their first base near Thaba Nchu, the home of Moroka, the Rolong chief. In 1836 the Ndebele were in the path of a trekker expedition heading northwards and led by Andries Hendrik Potgieter. The Ndebele were attacked by a Boer commando led by Potgieter, but Mzilikazi retaliated and the Boers retreated to their main laager at Vegkop.

In October, in a short and fierce battle which lasted half an hour, 40 trekkers succeeded in beating off an attack by 6 000 Ndebele warriors. Both sides suffered heavy losses. 430 Ndebele were killed, and the trekkers lost thousands of sheep and cattle as well as their trek oxen. 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 1837, 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 1837 135 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 1890's.

Meanwhile, Retief and his followers continued marching towards Port Natal, later Durban . After Retief and his group of Voortrekker representatives' murder by Dingane, chief of the Zulu, and the ensuing Battle of Blood River, the trekkers declared the short-lived Republic of Natalia in 1838. They formed a simple system of governing, with Pretorius as President, assisted by a volksraad or people's assembly of 24 members, and local government officials based on the traditional landdrost and heemraden system. In 1841 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.

Tthe British refused to recognise their independence. In December 1838 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. This effectively controlled Voortrekker use of the harbour. Three years later, when the Natal Volksraad resolved to drive all Black South Africans not employed by 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 250 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 was unsuccessful.

On the night of 23 May 1842 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, who became known as the 'saviour of Natal ', evaded the siege and rode about 1 000 kilometres on horseback to seek reinforcements in Grahamstown. In June a British relief force under Lieutenant-Colonel Abraham Cloete arrived on the scene and Boer resistance was crushed. 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. They gradually began to move north-eastward.

The trekkers' pioneer in this area was Jan de Winnaar, who settled in the Matlakeng area in May and June 1838. 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 Basotho people. Although some of the independent communities who had lived there had been scattered, others remained in the valleys and on the hillsides. Moshoeshoe, paramount chief of the Basotho, when hearing of the trekker settlement above the junction, stated that '... the ground on which they were belonged to me, but I had no objections to their flocks grazing there until such time as they were able to proceed further; on condition, however, that they remained in peace with my people and recognised my authority'.

The trekkers proceeded to build huts of clay instead of reed, and began planting their own food crops. They stopped trading with the Basotho. 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 1842 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 that 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 1845 and Soutpansberg, which was later renamed Schoemansdal, in 1848. 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 or peace treaty in 1845 with Sekwati, chief of the Pedi, whom he claimed had ceded all rights to an undefined stretch of land. The precise terms of the treaty are unknown.

Often in order to ensure their own safety, chiefs would sign arbitrary treaties giving away sections of land to which they in fact had no right. Such was the case with Mswati, chief of the Swazi, who, intent on seeking support against the Zulu, in July 1846 granted all the land bounded by the Oliphants, Crocodile and Elands rivers to the Boers. This angered the Pedi, who pointed out that the land had not been his to hand over.

There was no uniform legal system or concept of ownership to which all parties interested in the land subscribed. Private land ownership did not exist in these local societies, and for the most part the land that chiefs ceded to the Boers was communally owned.

Large tracts of land were purchased for next to nothing. For example, the northern half of Transorangia went to Andries Potgieter in early 1836 for a few cattle and a promise to protect the Taung chief, Makwana, from the Ndebele. The area between the Vet and Vaal rivers extended about 60 000 square kilometres. The 'right of conquest' was extended over areas much larger than those that chiefs actually had authority over. After Mzilikazi 's flight north in November 1837, the trekkers immediately took over all the land between the Vet and Limpopo rivers, although Mzilikazi's area of control covered only the western Transvaal .

It was only after the Sand River Convention in 1852 and the Bloemfontein Convention in 1854 that independent Boer republics were formally established north of the Vaal and Orange rivers respectively.

THE VOORTREKKERS | THE TREK | TREKKER COMMUNITIES & TECHNOLOGY | DISPOSSESSION & LAND SEIZURE