There are some folks who often erroneously presume that the Great
Trek of the 19th cent was from Cape Town [ as noted by the author cited
in source # 17 of: The Cape Rebels Were Not Cape Dutch. ] when in fact
the Great Trek was virtually entirely from the Cape frontier where the Boer
population had developed at least 150 years prior. This confusion likely arises from the fact
that the centennial celebration of the Great Trek was organized to start
at Cape Town but that did not reflect the true history concerning the
matter. One of the main reasons for recreating the Great Trek as starting at Cape Town during
the centennial celebrations was no doubt to
foster a monolithic Afrikaner identity so as to cover up the distinct
Boer identity of the participants of the Great Trek. The Boer people of the frontier
were much more prone to trek [ & in fact had a long history of trekking ] due to their long standing anti-colonial
outlook & desire for independence & freedom on the
African continent. This outlook was not shared by the Cape Town & Cape Dutch population.
May 15, 2012
The Afrikaners Did Not Go On The Great Trek.
The principle participants during the era of the Great Trek were the Boer people of the Cape frontier. The Boers emerged on the Cape frontier starting during the late 17th cent [ just a few decades after the initial arrival of the Dutch East India Company ] & trekked further inland throughout the 1700s. The Boers are the descendents of the Trekboers who settled into the Cape frontier region. The folks who would appropriate the term Afrikaner in a political context [ circa late 19th cent ] where then still known as the Cape Dutch during the era of the Great Trek & remained where they were during the Great Trek.
The RSA Was Not a True Republic.
The Republic of South Africa declared on May 31 1961 was only
ever a republic in name alone thus a nominal republic as it maintained
the British Westminster system & turned the post of Governor-General into a
ceremonial State President.
[ The Constitution of the Republic differed remarkably little from the Union Constitution. The object of the exercise was to bring about a single political loyalty for all White South Africans, not a new system. Nationalists hoped that the English speakers would abandon their dual loyalty once they could no longer look to Britain as a fatherland. ] From: Page 494. The Afrikaners: biography of a people. By Hermann Buhr Giliomee.
The notable Boer Patriot Robert van Tonder left the National Party in 1961 over that party's betrayal of the Boer Republics [ & noted that the RSA was a threat to Boer identity ] & started advocating for the restoration of the Boer Republics as the only measure to ensure the survival of the Boer people / nation.
[ The Constitution of the Republic differed remarkably little from the Union Constitution. The object of the exercise was to bring about a single political loyalty for all White South Africans, not a new system. Nationalists hoped that the English speakers would abandon their dual loyalty once they could no longer look to Britain as a fatherland. ] From: Page 494. The Afrikaners: biography of a people. By Hermann Buhr Giliomee.
The notable Boer Patriot Robert van Tonder left the National Party in 1961 over that party's betrayal of the Boer Republics [ & noted that the RSA was a threat to Boer identity ] & started advocating for the restoration of the Boer Republics as the only measure to ensure the survival of the Boer people / nation.
December 31, 2011
The Cape Rebels Were Not Cape Dutch.
During the discourse on pointing out & exploring the distinct identity of the Boers from the Cape Dutch & thus from the bulk of the nomenclatured Afrikaner population: certain uninformed folks have ignorantly used the Cape Rebels as an erroneous example of a pro-Boer sentiment among the bulk of the Cape Dutch or to even go so far as to erroneously assert that there is "no difference" between the Boers & the Cape Dutch [ thereby betraying their total ignorance or agenda on the topic even further ] while totally forgetting that the vast majority of the Cape Rebels were from the Boer communities of the northeastern Cape frontier & that very few actual Cape Dutch ever joined up with the Cape Rebels as the Cape Dutch as a whole were much more aligned with the British Colonial Power.
While spending years looking into the history of the Boer people as well as the Cape Dutch & Afrikaner people in general by reading numerous books & articles: I have picked up on intricacies & events that were often not taught to people after the Afrikaner Broederbond began to rewrite the history of the Boers & co-opt them into a synthetic & artificial pan Afrikaans political movement which was aimed [ as part of its goal ] at securing control of the macro State of South Africa as created by the British with a British act of legislation.
Part of this agenda labeled all White Afrikaans speakers as "Afrikaners" & turned Boers retroactively into Afrikaners thereby denying the Boers the right to their own history & heritage & conditioned them to share it with a people who were not part of it & often opposed the aspirations of the Boers during the time frame in question. As the Boers were now arbitrarily within the political sphere made to be part of larger Cape Dutch population [ whose intellectuals began to propagate the term Afrikaner to describe themselves in the late 19th cent at a time when the Boers were mainly independent within their Boer Republics ]: the Afrikaner establishment was able to control the destiny of the smaller Boer people by simply implying that the Boers were now part of them instead of the distinct nation that the Boers had been since circa 1700 during the bifurcation period which led to the existence of the Trekboers on the expanding Cape frontier.
The following sourced article that I have composed demonstrates that the Cape Rebels were in fact mainly Boers & not Cape Dutch simply because the vast majority of those who became Cape Rebels were from the Boer people of the Cape frontier.
The Cape Rebels were mainly Boers from the northeastern Cape frontier who fought on the side of the Boer Republics which were located across the Orange River. As inhabitants of the Cape Colony they were British subjects therefore often paid a huge price for siding with their cousins of the republics. Those who were caught were often tried in court & executed as they were viewed as rebels to the Cape government. There is a glaring misconception promoted by some who assert that the Boers were part of the Cape Dutch population - but that is a gross distortion. The Cape Dutch population was larger than the Boer population but the Cape Dutch were the folks who inhabited the south western Cape region who coalesced into a community at a time [ circa 1700 ] when the Boers were becoming a distinct people on the Cape frontier which shaped them into a distinct people even further.
During the late 17th cent: the most impoverished folks who could not cope in Colonial society & who chaffed the most under VOC rule & who had the least tolerance for its autocratic rule [ 1 ] were compelled to trek inland into Africa & away from the western Cape region & consequently away from the population which the trekkers began to refer to as the Cape Dutch. [ 2 ] The trekkers who were moving away were in turn called Trekboers. [ 3 ] By the mid 1700s there arose two distinct White Afrikaans [ whom its speakers referred to as Dutch / die taal / Boeretaal etc. ] speaking groups in Southern Africa. [ 3 ] The largest group was centered in & around Cape Town up to Paarl & Stellenbosh & were often known as the Cape Dutch who were pro Colonial & had no desire for independence as they saw no reason to break with the Colonial power. The smaller group was nomadic & was very anti-colonial & had spread out over the expanding Cape frontier from Swellendam right up to the Sundays River & were initially known as Trekboers a term which was later shortened to Boer. [ 3 ] It was overwhelmingly from the Boer communities of the Cape frontier that the participants of the Great Trek were from [ 4 ] due to their long standing anti-colonial nature. Those folks were renown as Boers & those who left the Cape & trekked northwards were known as Trekkers. [ 5 ]
The fact of the matter is that it was not until the 1930s when Afrikaner Broederbond historians began re-writing [ 6 ] the history that the Boers of the era were called Voortrekkers in retrospect as that act was part of the Afrikaner's attempt at co-opting the history of the Boers in order to promote a State based teleocratic agenda which was inimical to Boer self determination. The insinuation behind the deft promotion of the term Voortrekker was to imply that those Boers who trekked were "pioneers" for a macro mythological "Afrikaner" group when in reality it was mainly Boers who trekked [ who were 500 miles separated from the Cape Dutch & rarely interacted with them ] as the Cape Dutch did not share the Boer outlook of wanting independence. Those Trekkers [ later called Voortrekkers ] soon established various Boer Republics north of the Orange River two of which were internationally recognized. [ 7 ]
Therefore by the time of the second Anglo-Boer War there had LONG since been established two distinct Caucasian Afrikaans speaking groups. Indeed even since a century to 150 years before the Great Trek. Even the term "Afrikaans speaking" is presumptive because it was Cape Dutch intellectuals who coined the term Afrikaans to describe the macro language which developed at the Cape since the 17th cent. [ 8 ] The Boers were not the ones who coined the term Afrikaans as they simply referred to their dialect as die taal [ 9 ] or Boeretaal. The Boer dialect was distinct from the Cape Dutch dialect & historians have classified the Boers' dialect as Eastern Border Afrikaans [ 10 ] after the region where they & their dialect were formed.
Therefore those who refer to the Cape Boers as being part of the Cape Dutch are either ignorant of history or are perpetuating a fraud in order to marginalize the existence of the Boer people. [ 11 ] Claiming that the Boers are part of the Cape Dutch is tantamount to claiming that the Acadians are part of the Quebecois or that the Canadians are part of the Americans or that the Moldovans are part of the Romanians or that the Serbs are part of the Croatians. The Boers struggled to survive on the harsh Cape frontier in the face of danger [ 12 ] & paid for their distinct identity which they carved out on the Cape frontier in blood & sacrifice therefore erroneously & ignorantly accusing them of being part of the Cape Dutch is an insult & shows callous disregard to why the Boers ever arose in the first place. [ 13 ] The Cape Dutch looked down on the Boers & never understood why the Boers wanted freedom [ 14 ] in Africa as they could not understand why anyone would want to be independent from the Colonial power.
The Cape Rebels were overwhelmingly from the Cape frontier [ 15 ] & even often from the same towns [http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/great-trek/great-trek1.htm ] that the Voortreekers were from [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysn6UGFxBmc&feature=related ] thereby demonstrating that the Cape Rebels were Boers not Cape Dutch. There was a lot of Cape Rebel activity at Colesberg near the border with the OVS Republic. Authors have noted how the Boers failed in trying to get the Cape Dutch inhabitants of the western Cape to rise up against Britain during the second Anglo-Boer War. That was because as authors like Mordechai Tamarkin have noted [ within the book: Cecil Rhodes and the Cape Afrikaners ] the Cape Dutch were generally content with British rule. While much smaller numbers of Cape Dutch did join up with the Cape Rebels - the fact of the matter is that a lot of Cape Dutch were on the side of the British & were fighting AGAINST the Boers. [ 16 ] Therefore the erroneous contention that the Cape Boers were part of the Cape Dutch simply adds insult to injury. This misunderstanding is compounded further when some folks erroneously assert that the Great Trek was from Cape Town [ 17 ] [ probably confusing the centennial commemoration of the Great Trek which did start at Cape Town which at that point had been co-opted & run by Afrikaners & led by a Cape Dutch Afrikaner politician named D F Malan ] instead of the Cape frontier [ or then known as the eastern provinces of the Cape ] as some folks appear to be totally ignorant of the towns & communities of the Cape frontier which was settled & populated by the Boer people - not by the Cape Dutch.
Notes.
1. Quote: [ The rise of an expanding settler society fueled tensions between free burghers and the VOC. Free burghers criticized the autocratic powers of the local VOC administration, in which the governor had full control and the settlers had no rights of representation. They denounced the economic policies of the VOC that fixed the prices at which settlers could sell their agricultural products. They called attention to the corrupt practices of VOC officers, who granted themselves prime land and then sold their own crops at higher prices to the company. Above all, they complained about the VOC's failure--at least in their eyes--to police the frontier boundaries and to protect the settlers' crops and herds from Khoikhoi and San raiders. ]
From: Library of Congress Country Studies.
Found at: [ lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+za0017) ]
2. Quote: [ When the White population at the Cape split over the colonial issue - as detailed above, those who wanted to escape colonial rule migrated away from the Cape, while those who had no nationalistic zeal and who wished to keep their links with Europe stayed behind. These people who stayed behind were all Dutch citizens, and when the British occupied the Cape, were perfectly happy to become loyal British citizens.
Those who stayed behind in the Cape became known amongst the independence minded Boers as the "Cape Dutch" - symbolizing their attachment to Europe. This group loyally supported any European colonial government, and vehemently opposed all attempts by the fledgling Boer population to break ties with the colonial governments. This group stood in strong opposition to the fledgling Boer population and differed with them on all levels - starting with their approach to colonialism and extending all the way through even to language. It is not widely known for example that there are for example marked accent and pronunciation differences between the Boers and the "Cape Dutch".
The vehemence with which the Cape Dutch opposed the Boer population was underlined when the Boers were excommunicated from the Cape Dutch Reformed Church when they moved away form the Cape.
This group of Cape Dutch settlers therefore always opposed the Boers' drive for independence and anti-colonialism, and, along with the British settlers, were the true colonial masters of Southern Africa, while the Boers always tried to get away from this mentality and state of affairs. ]
From: The Boers of Southern Africa. Arthur Kemp.
Found at: [ web.archive.org/web/20060717091306/http://www.arthurkemp.com/whoaretheboers.htm ]
3. Quote: [ These early Dutch farmers were joined by other Europeans and their populations grew. The Dutch East India Company imported slaves from Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar and other parts of the Dutch Empire to work on large plantations close to Cape Town. The seminomadic Dutch farmers expanded their settlement further from the Cape and came into conflict over land with local African populations. Their contact with the local Dutch government became more and more tenuous and most of them lived hard rural lives, moving farmsteads frequently, and quite independent of government and education. By 1745 they were known as Trekboers, which means "wandering farmers," a term which was later shortened to Boers. They were unaware of the changing politics in Europe. ]
From Bowdoin College.
Found at: [ http://www.bowdoin.edu/cbbaway/CapetownSA/CTGeneralinformation.html ]
4. The Boers who left the Cape during the era of the Great Trek came from towns like: Grahamstown / Uitenhage / Swellendam / Graaff-Reinet / Somerset East & Cradock.
5. Noted throughout the article: History of South Afrfica of History World at: [ http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=orl ]
6. Quote: [ When the Afrikaner Broederbond 's National Party won the elections, and took over the governance of South Africa from 1948 and launched the system of apartheid, the first thing they did was to completely rewrite the Boers' history. Suddenly, all the accomplishments of the Boers became 'Afrikaner' accomplishments.
The Boer Women's Monument in Bloemfontein, erected in memory of the murdered Boer women and children who died in the British concentration camps written about so eloquently by British pro-Boer campaigner Emily Hobhouse, even became the Afrikaner Women's Monument - a truly vile insult to their memory. The Voortrekker Monument is described in terms which honour the memory of Afrikaners -- not the Boers who had actually undertaken the Great Trek. ]
From: Boer, Afrikaner Or White - Which Are You? By Adriana Stuijt.
Found at: [ http://www.rense.com/general56/boerafrikanerorwhite.htm ]
7. Quote: [ The Republic was now in possession of a Convention, which from the nature of its provisions seemed to promise a peaceful future. In addition to Great Britain it was recognized in Holland, France, Germany, Belgium, and especially in the United States of America. The American Secretary of State at Washington, writing to President Pretorius on the 19th November, 1870, said: " That his Government, while heartily acknowledging the Sovereignty of the Transvaal Republic, would be ready to take any steps which might be deemed necessary for that purpose. " ]
C W van der Hoogt. The Story of the Boers. Page 96. [ www.outspan.com/books/boers/boers04.htm ]
8. [ http://www.rsa-overseas.com/historical-sites/afrikaans-language-monument-afrikaanse-taalmonument-and-museum.htm ] The reverend S J Du Toit his brother D F Du Toit & Gideon Malherbe of the Western Cape started the Society of True Afrikaners in 1875: an Afrikaans language rights movement which started to get Afrikaans recognized.
9. Professor Wallace Mills.
Quote: [ - Afrikaans (at the time almost always referred to as ‘die Taal’—the Language) was a spoken, not a written language. ]
Found at: [ stmarys.ca/~wmills/course322/11Afrikaner_natm.html ]
10. Afrikaans Language Museum. Eastern Border Afrikaans.
Quote: [ Eastern Border Afrikaans has its roots in the farming community that moved further and further from the Cape. A large number of residents in the Cape were Dutch [Note: High Dutch ] speaking and they made up part of the farmers that moved away from the Cape. At the end of the 18th century this group settled on the East Border and they lived a very secluded life and spoke their own type of Afrikaans until well into the 19th cent. ]
Found at: [ www.museums.org.za/afrtaal/English/o3.htm ]
11. The Boers have only ever been a minority of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
12. Quote: [ The Boers' self confidence in their military prowess in the first half of the 19th century stemmed from the robust, often dangerous lives they led daily on the frontiers of civilization. ]
From: Micheal Barthorp. The Anglo-Boer Wars. Page 9.
13. The Boers arose as a people due to the impoverished folks who left the western Cape region starting in the late 17th cent.& began trekking inland & were originally known as Trekboers. Thus the Boer people would never have arose were it not for those impoverished forebears who wanted to get away from Colonial society & Dutch rule.
Quote: [ Impoverished whites living at the fringes of colonial society also had few options, but these included the real possibility of dropping out of its grindingly class-conscious constraints. Many just packed up their wagons and rolled out into the interior, where they lived by the gun, either hunting game or taking cattle from the Khoi by force. Beyond the control of the Dutch East India Company, these nomadic trekboers began to assume a pastoral niche previously occupied by the Khoi. By the turn of the nineteenth century, trekboers had penetrated well into the Eastern Cape, pushing back the Khoi and San in the process. Not that the indigenous people gave up without a fight. As their lives became disrupted and living by traditional means became impossible, the Khoisan began to prey on the cattle and sheep of the trekboers. ]
From: [ http://www.hostelbookers.com/guides/south_africa/106447 ]
14. Kemp notes: [ This group of Cape Dutch settlers therefore always opposed the Boers' drive for independence and anti-colonialism, and, along with the British settlers, were the true colonial masters of Southern Africa, while the Boers always tried to get away from this mentality and state of affairs. ]
From: The Boers of Southern Africa. Arthur Kemp.
Found at: [ web.archive.org/web/20060717091306/http://www.arthurkemp.com/whoaretheboers.htm ]
15. The Anglo-Boer War Museum web site notes on its Cape Rebel page the following: [ These were Afrikaans speaking Colonials from the Cape Colony who joined the Boer Forces because of familial and cultural ties. They came from all over the Cape Colony e.g from Cradock, Graaff-Reinet, Somerset East and Middelburg. ] Found at: [ http://www.anglo-boer.co.za/pow/cape-rebels.php ] Note that the towns mentioned are all within the Cape frontier & even the same towns where the Voortrekkers were from during the era of the Great Trek.
16. Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio noted this himself during the first interview that he did with an American shortwave radio program called The Right Perspective found at: [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6yo6adPSQY ]
17. Noted by authors like Thomas W. Hazlett within an article found at: [ http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Apartheid.html ] who not only does not realize that the Great Trek was from the Cape frontier - not Cape Town - but even tragically confuses & conflates the Boers with the Afrikaners & does not realize that most Boers of the frontiers did not own slaves as pointed out by Professor Wallace Mills & the Encyclopedia Britannica. The Afrikaner Broederbond created mythology is so pervasive that even Westerners often parrot the erroneous conflation of Boers with the Cape Dutch as both groups were later arbitrarily lumped under the ambiguous Afrikaner designation.
While spending years looking into the history of the Boer people as well as the Cape Dutch & Afrikaner people in general by reading numerous books & articles: I have picked up on intricacies & events that were often not taught to people after the Afrikaner Broederbond began to rewrite the history of the Boers & co-opt them into a synthetic & artificial pan Afrikaans political movement which was aimed [ as part of its goal ] at securing control of the macro State of South Africa as created by the British with a British act of legislation.
Part of this agenda labeled all White Afrikaans speakers as "Afrikaners" & turned Boers retroactively into Afrikaners thereby denying the Boers the right to their own history & heritage & conditioned them to share it with a people who were not part of it & often opposed the aspirations of the Boers during the time frame in question. As the Boers were now arbitrarily within the political sphere made to be part of larger Cape Dutch population [ whose intellectuals began to propagate the term Afrikaner to describe themselves in the late 19th cent at a time when the Boers were mainly independent within their Boer Republics ]: the Afrikaner establishment was able to control the destiny of the smaller Boer people by simply implying that the Boers were now part of them instead of the distinct nation that the Boers had been since circa 1700 during the bifurcation period which led to the existence of the Trekboers on the expanding Cape frontier.
The following sourced article that I have composed demonstrates that the Cape Rebels were in fact mainly Boers & not Cape Dutch simply because the vast majority of those who became Cape Rebels were from the Boer people of the Cape frontier.
The Cape Rebels were mainly Boers from the northeastern Cape frontier who fought on the side of the Boer Republics which were located across the Orange River. As inhabitants of the Cape Colony they were British subjects therefore often paid a huge price for siding with their cousins of the republics. Those who were caught were often tried in court & executed as they were viewed as rebels to the Cape government. There is a glaring misconception promoted by some who assert that the Boers were part of the Cape Dutch population - but that is a gross distortion. The Cape Dutch population was larger than the Boer population but the Cape Dutch were the folks who inhabited the south western Cape region who coalesced into a community at a time [ circa 1700 ] when the Boers were becoming a distinct people on the Cape frontier which shaped them into a distinct people even further.
During the late 17th cent: the most impoverished folks who could not cope in Colonial society & who chaffed the most under VOC rule & who had the least tolerance for its autocratic rule [ 1 ] were compelled to trek inland into Africa & away from the western Cape region & consequently away from the population which the trekkers began to refer to as the Cape Dutch. [ 2 ] The trekkers who were moving away were in turn called Trekboers. [ 3 ] By the mid 1700s there arose two distinct White Afrikaans [ whom its speakers referred to as Dutch / die taal / Boeretaal etc. ] speaking groups in Southern Africa. [ 3 ] The largest group was centered in & around Cape Town up to Paarl & Stellenbosh & were often known as the Cape Dutch who were pro Colonial & had no desire for independence as they saw no reason to break with the Colonial power. The smaller group was nomadic & was very anti-colonial & had spread out over the expanding Cape frontier from Swellendam right up to the Sundays River & were initially known as Trekboers a term which was later shortened to Boer. [ 3 ] It was overwhelmingly from the Boer communities of the Cape frontier that the participants of the Great Trek were from [ 4 ] due to their long standing anti-colonial nature. Those folks were renown as Boers & those who left the Cape & trekked northwards were known as Trekkers. [ 5 ]
The fact of the matter is that it was not until the 1930s when Afrikaner Broederbond historians began re-writing [ 6 ] the history that the Boers of the era were called Voortrekkers in retrospect as that act was part of the Afrikaner's attempt at co-opting the history of the Boers in order to promote a State based teleocratic agenda which was inimical to Boer self determination. The insinuation behind the deft promotion of the term Voortrekker was to imply that those Boers who trekked were "pioneers" for a macro mythological "Afrikaner" group when in reality it was mainly Boers who trekked [ who were 500 miles separated from the Cape Dutch & rarely interacted with them ] as the Cape Dutch did not share the Boer outlook of wanting independence. Those Trekkers [ later called Voortrekkers ] soon established various Boer Republics north of the Orange River two of which were internationally recognized. [ 7 ]
Therefore by the time of the second Anglo-Boer War there had LONG since been established two distinct Caucasian Afrikaans speaking groups. Indeed even since a century to 150 years before the Great Trek. Even the term "Afrikaans speaking" is presumptive because it was Cape Dutch intellectuals who coined the term Afrikaans to describe the macro language which developed at the Cape since the 17th cent. [ 8 ] The Boers were not the ones who coined the term Afrikaans as they simply referred to their dialect as die taal [ 9 ] or Boeretaal. The Boer dialect was distinct from the Cape Dutch dialect & historians have classified the Boers' dialect as Eastern Border Afrikaans [ 10 ] after the region where they & their dialect were formed.
Therefore those who refer to the Cape Boers as being part of the Cape Dutch are either ignorant of history or are perpetuating a fraud in order to marginalize the existence of the Boer people. [ 11 ] Claiming that the Boers are part of the Cape Dutch is tantamount to claiming that the Acadians are part of the Quebecois or that the Canadians are part of the Americans or that the Moldovans are part of the Romanians or that the Serbs are part of the Croatians. The Boers struggled to survive on the harsh Cape frontier in the face of danger [ 12 ] & paid for their distinct identity which they carved out on the Cape frontier in blood & sacrifice therefore erroneously & ignorantly accusing them of being part of the Cape Dutch is an insult & shows callous disregard to why the Boers ever arose in the first place. [ 13 ] The Cape Dutch looked down on the Boers & never understood why the Boers wanted freedom [ 14 ] in Africa as they could not understand why anyone would want to be independent from the Colonial power.
The Cape Rebels were overwhelmingly from the Cape frontier [ 15 ] & even often from the same towns [http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/great-trek/great-trek1.htm ] that the Voortreekers were from [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysn6UGFxBmc&feature=related ] thereby demonstrating that the Cape Rebels were Boers not Cape Dutch. There was a lot of Cape Rebel activity at Colesberg near the border with the OVS Republic. Authors have noted how the Boers failed in trying to get the Cape Dutch inhabitants of the western Cape to rise up against Britain during the second Anglo-Boer War. That was because as authors like Mordechai Tamarkin have noted [ within the book: Cecil Rhodes and the Cape Afrikaners ] the Cape Dutch were generally content with British rule. While much smaller numbers of Cape Dutch did join up with the Cape Rebels - the fact of the matter is that a lot of Cape Dutch were on the side of the British & were fighting AGAINST the Boers. [ 16 ] Therefore the erroneous contention that the Cape Boers were part of the Cape Dutch simply adds insult to injury. This misunderstanding is compounded further when some folks erroneously assert that the Great Trek was from Cape Town [ 17 ] [ probably confusing the centennial commemoration of the Great Trek which did start at Cape Town which at that point had been co-opted & run by Afrikaners & led by a Cape Dutch Afrikaner politician named D F Malan ] instead of the Cape frontier [ or then known as the eastern provinces of the Cape ] as some folks appear to be totally ignorant of the towns & communities of the Cape frontier which was settled & populated by the Boer people - not by the Cape Dutch.
Notes.
1. Quote: [ The rise of an expanding settler society fueled tensions between free burghers and the VOC. Free burghers criticized the autocratic powers of the local VOC administration, in which the governor had full control and the settlers had no rights of representation. They denounced the economic policies of the VOC that fixed the prices at which settlers could sell their agricultural products. They called attention to the corrupt practices of VOC officers, who granted themselves prime land and then sold their own crops at higher prices to the company. Above all, they complained about the VOC's failure--at least in their eyes--to police the frontier boundaries and to protect the settlers' crops and herds from Khoikhoi and San raiders. ]
From: Library of Congress Country Studies.
Found at: [ lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+za0017) ]
2. Quote: [ When the White population at the Cape split over the colonial issue - as detailed above, those who wanted to escape colonial rule migrated away from the Cape, while those who had no nationalistic zeal and who wished to keep their links with Europe stayed behind. These people who stayed behind were all Dutch citizens, and when the British occupied the Cape, were perfectly happy to become loyal British citizens.
Those who stayed behind in the Cape became known amongst the independence minded Boers as the "Cape Dutch" - symbolizing their attachment to Europe. This group loyally supported any European colonial government, and vehemently opposed all attempts by the fledgling Boer population to break ties with the colonial governments. This group stood in strong opposition to the fledgling Boer population and differed with them on all levels - starting with their approach to colonialism and extending all the way through even to language. It is not widely known for example that there are for example marked accent and pronunciation differences between the Boers and the "Cape Dutch".
The vehemence with which the Cape Dutch opposed the Boer population was underlined when the Boers were excommunicated from the Cape Dutch Reformed Church when they moved away form the Cape.
This group of Cape Dutch settlers therefore always opposed the Boers' drive for independence and anti-colonialism, and, along with the British settlers, were the true colonial masters of Southern Africa, while the Boers always tried to get away from this mentality and state of affairs. ]
From: The Boers of Southern Africa. Arthur Kemp.
Found at: [ web.archive.org/web/20060717091306/http://www.arthurkemp.com/whoaretheboers.htm ]
3. Quote: [ These early Dutch farmers were joined by other Europeans and their populations grew. The Dutch East India Company imported slaves from Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar and other parts of the Dutch Empire to work on large plantations close to Cape Town. The seminomadic Dutch farmers expanded their settlement further from the Cape and came into conflict over land with local African populations. Their contact with the local Dutch government became more and more tenuous and most of them lived hard rural lives, moving farmsteads frequently, and quite independent of government and education. By 1745 they were known as Trekboers, which means "wandering farmers," a term which was later shortened to Boers. They were unaware of the changing politics in Europe. ]
From Bowdoin College.
Found at: [ http://www.bowdoin.edu/cbbaway/CapetownSA/CTGeneralinformation.html ]
4. The Boers who left the Cape during the era of the Great Trek came from towns like: Grahamstown / Uitenhage / Swellendam / Graaff-Reinet / Somerset East & Cradock.
5. Noted throughout the article: History of South Afrfica of History World at: [ http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=orl ]
6. Quote: [ When the Afrikaner Broederbond 's National Party won the elections, and took over the governance of South Africa from 1948 and launched the system of apartheid, the first thing they did was to completely rewrite the Boers' history. Suddenly, all the accomplishments of the Boers became 'Afrikaner' accomplishments.
The Boer Women's Monument in Bloemfontein, erected in memory of the murdered Boer women and children who died in the British concentration camps written about so eloquently by British pro-Boer campaigner Emily Hobhouse, even became the Afrikaner Women's Monument - a truly vile insult to their memory. The Voortrekker Monument is described in terms which honour the memory of Afrikaners -- not the Boers who had actually undertaken the Great Trek. ]
From: Boer, Afrikaner Or White - Which Are You? By Adriana Stuijt.
Found at: [ http://www.rense.com/general56/boerafrikanerorwhite.htm ]
7. Quote: [ The Republic was now in possession of a Convention, which from the nature of its provisions seemed to promise a peaceful future. In addition to Great Britain it was recognized in Holland, France, Germany, Belgium, and especially in the United States of America. The American Secretary of State at Washington, writing to President Pretorius on the 19th November, 1870, said: " That his Government, while heartily acknowledging the Sovereignty of the Transvaal Republic, would be ready to take any steps which might be deemed necessary for that purpose. " ]
C W van der Hoogt. The Story of the Boers. Page 96. [ www.outspan.com/books/boers/boers04.htm ]
8. [ http://www.rsa-overseas.com/historical-sites/afrikaans-language-monument-afrikaanse-taalmonument-and-museum.htm ] The reverend S J Du Toit his brother D F Du Toit & Gideon Malherbe of the Western Cape started the Society of True Afrikaners in 1875: an Afrikaans language rights movement which started to get Afrikaans recognized.
9. Professor Wallace Mills.
Quote: [ - Afrikaans (at the time almost always referred to as ‘die Taal’—the Language) was a spoken, not a written language. ]
Found at: [ stmarys.ca/~wmills/course322/11Afrikaner_natm.html ]
10. Afrikaans Language Museum. Eastern Border Afrikaans.
Quote: [ Eastern Border Afrikaans has its roots in the farming community that moved further and further from the Cape. A large number of residents in the Cape were Dutch [Note: High Dutch ] speaking and they made up part of the farmers that moved away from the Cape. At the end of the 18th century this group settled on the East Border and they lived a very secluded life and spoke their own type of Afrikaans until well into the 19th cent. ]
Found at: [ www.museums.org.za/afrtaal/English/o3.htm ]
11. The Boers have only ever been a minority of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.
12. Quote: [ The Boers' self confidence in their military prowess in the first half of the 19th century stemmed from the robust, often dangerous lives they led daily on the frontiers of civilization. ]
From: Micheal Barthorp. The Anglo-Boer Wars. Page 9.
13. The Boers arose as a people due to the impoverished folks who left the western Cape region starting in the late 17th cent.& began trekking inland & were originally known as Trekboers. Thus the Boer people would never have arose were it not for those impoverished forebears who wanted to get away from Colonial society & Dutch rule.
Quote: [ Impoverished whites living at the fringes of colonial society also had few options, but these included the real possibility of dropping out of its grindingly class-conscious constraints. Many just packed up their wagons and rolled out into the interior, where they lived by the gun, either hunting game or taking cattle from the Khoi by force. Beyond the control of the Dutch East India Company, these nomadic trekboers began to assume a pastoral niche previously occupied by the Khoi. By the turn of the nineteenth century, trekboers had penetrated well into the Eastern Cape, pushing back the Khoi and San in the process. Not that the indigenous people gave up without a fight. As their lives became disrupted and living by traditional means became impossible, the Khoisan began to prey on the cattle and sheep of the trekboers. ]
From: [ http://www.hostelbookers.com/guides/south_africa/106447 ]
14. Kemp notes: [ This group of Cape Dutch settlers therefore always opposed the Boers' drive for independence and anti-colonialism, and, along with the British settlers, were the true colonial masters of Southern Africa, while the Boers always tried to get away from this mentality and state of affairs. ]
From: The Boers of Southern Africa. Arthur Kemp.
Found at: [ web.archive.org/web/20060717091306/http://www.arthurkemp.com/whoaretheboers.htm ]
15. The Anglo-Boer War Museum web site notes on its Cape Rebel page the following: [ These were Afrikaans speaking Colonials from the Cape Colony who joined the Boer Forces because of familial and cultural ties. They came from all over the Cape Colony e.g from Cradock, Graaff-Reinet, Somerset East and Middelburg. ] Found at: [ http://www.anglo-boer.co.za/pow/cape-rebels.php ] Note that the towns mentioned are all within the Cape frontier & even the same towns where the Voortrekkers were from during the era of the Great Trek.
16. Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio noted this himself during the first interview that he did with an American shortwave radio program called The Right Perspective found at: [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6yo6adPSQY ]
17. Noted by authors like Thomas W. Hazlett within an article found at: [ http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Apartheid.html ] who not only does not realize that the Great Trek was from the Cape frontier - not Cape Town - but even tragically confuses & conflates the Boers with the Afrikaners & does not realize that most Boers of the frontiers did not own slaves as pointed out by Professor Wallace Mills & the Encyclopedia Britannica. The Afrikaner Broederbond created mythology is so pervasive that even Westerners often parrot the erroneous conflation of Boers with the Cape Dutch as both groups were later arbitrarily lumped under the ambiguous Afrikaner designation.
November 5, 2010
The Boers are not of Dutch Descent.
There is a common misconception that the Boer people are Dutch descendents when in reality there are comparatively few actual Dutch roots as they are an amalgamation of German / Frisian / Danish & French Huguenot origin. Uniformed folks will often point to the numerous Dutch surnames as supposed proof of the Dutch roots of the Boers while forgetting that the VOC respelled most surnames to conform to a Dutch spelling. This even affected numerous French surnames as well ie: Villion was changed to Viljoen / Jourdan was changed to Jordaan / Pinard was changed to Pienaar / Cronier was changed to Cronjé / Gauch was changed to Gouws etc. Though quite a lot of French names did retain their original spelling. For example: Joubert / Du Toit / Roux / Du Plessis / Marais / Naudé / Vivier. etc. The Boer people are not descended from any single ethnic group which was brought out to the Cape as they are a composite & amalgamation of the various groups which merged into distinct Afrikaans speaking successive groups. The impoverished folks who began to trek into the Cape frontier [ about 35 years after the VOC first arrived at the Cape ] were the ancestors of the Boer people / nation. This occurred long before the arrival of the British Colonial power.
The Boers Are Distinct From the Afrikaners.
The distinct nature of the Boer people from the bulk of the Cape Dutch descended Afrikaners is recognized among honest academic circles.
Quote: [ The majority of the original white settlers, known as Cape Dutch, or in frontier regions Boers, maintained a nominal loyalty to the Dutch Reformed Church. ] From: Christianity in Southern Central Africa Prior to 1910.
The frontier Boers themselves recognized themselves as distinct from the Cape Dutch.
Quote: [ Trekboers certainly recognised the differences in language, religion, etc. between themselves and the British; they had certainly developed a way-of-life and a set of values that were distinctive, but they were also significantly different from people of Dutch descent in the western province areas of the Cape. The latter regarded the Trekboers as rather wild, semi-barbarous frontiersmen and the sense of common identity was limited and incomplete. The westerners followed the Trek with interest and probably with a good deal of sympathy, but they certainly did not see the trekkers as the saviours of some mystical Afrikaner ‘nation’. ] From: Professor Wallace Mills. The Great Trek.
Though it turns out that there was not a lot of "sympathy" for the Great Trek by the Cape Dutch as they could not understand why the Boers would want to trek "away from civilization" but they must have realized that the conditions were especially rough for the frontier Boers who were facing the brunt of the constant "frontier wars" & the arbitrary policies of the British Colonial power.
Quote: [ The majority of the original white settlers, known as Cape Dutch, or in frontier regions Boers, maintained a nominal loyalty to the Dutch Reformed Church. ] From: Christianity in Southern Central Africa Prior to 1910.
The frontier Boers themselves recognized themselves as distinct from the Cape Dutch.
Quote: [ Trekboers certainly recognised the differences in language, religion, etc. between themselves and the British; they had certainly developed a way-of-life and a set of values that were distinctive, but they were also significantly different from people of Dutch descent in the western province areas of the Cape. The latter regarded the Trekboers as rather wild, semi-barbarous frontiersmen and the sense of common identity was limited and incomplete. The westerners followed the Trek with interest and probably with a good deal of sympathy, but they certainly did not see the trekkers as the saviours of some mystical Afrikaner ‘nation’. ] From: Professor Wallace Mills. The Great Trek.
Though it turns out that there was not a lot of "sympathy" for the Great Trek by the Cape Dutch as they could not understand why the Boers would want to trek "away from civilization" but they must have realized that the conditions were especially rough for the frontier Boers who were facing the brunt of the constant "frontier wars" & the arbitrary policies of the British Colonial power.
The RSA was Result of Foreign Legislation.
The macro State known as South Africa [ composed out of two British Colonies & two former Boer Republics ] did not exist prior to the 20th cent as it was created by an act of British legislation which was passed in the British Parliament.
Quote: [ The South Africa Act passed by the British Parliament in 1909 merged the self-governing British colonies of the Cape, Natal, Orange River and the Transvaal into the Union of South Africa, a dominion within the British Commonwealth. The Act, which served as the Union's constitution until 1961, established a parliamentary regime along the lines of the Westminster model, composed of a directly elected House of Assembly and an indirectly elected Senate. ] The Republic of South Africa Electoral System.
This foreign legislation effectively created an artificial macro State in Southern Africa which joined the conquered Boer Republics with the British ruled Cape & Natal Colonies which had earlier annexed Xhosaland & Zululand in the 19th cent. & wherein most of the non-Boer descended Afrikaner population was living in the Western Cape region. Therefore what this foreign imposed legislation did was to cobble together an artificial mega State structure which lumped the various diverse peoples under a single administration for the first time ever. In other words the creation of this state reversed the natural independent status of various peoples & it imposed a blocking mechanism against the self determination which was expressed by many of its peoples prior. The natural tendency of its peoples [ & peoples in general ] is to gravitate towards independence & self determination which was stunted & reversed when the British imposed an artificial macro State based on an imperial model & then recruited members of the local White population to administer it with their government as a surrogate Colonial ruler on behalf of the British power.
This act was the direct result of the friction which later followed [ the State rulers prevented both Boer self determination / Boer Republics restoration & Bantu political petitions for control of macro State ] as the newly empowered White regimes were reluctant to give up control of the macro State [ with later modifications as per the Bantu homeland independence policies ] they were recruited to administer as their general White constituent population were often concerned about inherently becoming an oppressed demographic minority within a universal suffrage based macro State. The British power elite appeared to have used this unfolding political machination to great success as it later gave them the opportunity to reclaim South Africa under the covert guise of the post Apartheid regimes who are financed & propped up by them. After all the British went to great lengths to set up & impose the macro State of South Africa - even to the point of killing off 50 % of the Boer child population in concentration camps during the British war to conquer the Boer Republics.
Therefore it stands to reason that the British would not just simply walk away from the region [ as the Republic of South Africa has only ever existed in name alone ] nor cede true executive control over to any local peoples of the region. This was confirmed with the basic premise of the South African Act of 1909 being incorporated & thus perpetuated into the various Constitutions of South Africa thereby perpetuating the very state apparatus executive control mechanism [ which perpetuated Apartheid in the past & the neo Apartheid of the present ] which works against the various peoples' desire for ethnic group or nation based self determination. Thus the various Constitutions have retained the centralization of power.
Quote: [ The South Africa Act passed by the British Parliament in 1909 merged the self-governing British colonies of the Cape, Natal, Orange River and the Transvaal into the Union of South Africa, a dominion within the British Commonwealth. The Act, which served as the Union's constitution until 1961, established a parliamentary regime along the lines of the Westminster model, composed of a directly elected House of Assembly and an indirectly elected Senate. ] The Republic of South Africa Electoral System.
This foreign legislation effectively created an artificial macro State in Southern Africa which joined the conquered Boer Republics with the British ruled Cape & Natal Colonies which had earlier annexed Xhosaland & Zululand in the 19th cent. & wherein most of the non-Boer descended Afrikaner population was living in the Western Cape region. Therefore what this foreign imposed legislation did was to cobble together an artificial mega State structure which lumped the various diverse peoples under a single administration for the first time ever. In other words the creation of this state reversed the natural independent status of various peoples & it imposed a blocking mechanism against the self determination which was expressed by many of its peoples prior. The natural tendency of its peoples [ & peoples in general ] is to gravitate towards independence & self determination which was stunted & reversed when the British imposed an artificial macro State based on an imperial model & then recruited members of the local White population to administer it with their government as a surrogate Colonial ruler on behalf of the British power.
This act was the direct result of the friction which later followed [ the State rulers prevented both Boer self determination / Boer Republics restoration & Bantu political petitions for control of macro State ] as the newly empowered White regimes were reluctant to give up control of the macro State [ with later modifications as per the Bantu homeland independence policies ] they were recruited to administer as their general White constituent population were often concerned about inherently becoming an oppressed demographic minority within a universal suffrage based macro State. The British power elite appeared to have used this unfolding political machination to great success as it later gave them the opportunity to reclaim South Africa under the covert guise of the post Apartheid regimes who are financed & propped up by them. After all the British went to great lengths to set up & impose the macro State of South Africa - even to the point of killing off 50 % of the Boer child population in concentration camps during the British war to conquer the Boer Republics.
Therefore it stands to reason that the British would not just simply walk away from the region [ as the Republic of South Africa has only ever existed in name alone ] nor cede true executive control over to any local peoples of the region. This was confirmed with the basic premise of the South African Act of 1909 being incorporated & thus perpetuated into the various Constitutions of South Africa thereby perpetuating the very state apparatus executive control mechanism [ which perpetuated Apartheid in the past & the neo Apartheid of the present ] which works against the various peoples' desire for ethnic group or nation based self determination. Thus the various Constitutions have retained the centralization of power.
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