The Boer people emerged from the Trekboers of the Cape frontier from the late 1600s & throughout the 1700s yet there appears to be a common misconception / erroneous assertion or pronouncement that the Boers got started during the Great Trek of the early to mid 19th cent. This assertion appears to be made by those who have a vested interest in denying the distinct ethnicity of the Boer people from the bulk of the so called Afrikaners. During the era of the Great Trek there was in fact not one monolithic Caucasian Afrikaans speaking group within the Cape. There was a bifurcation which occurred just a few decades after the initial establishment of the settlement by the VOC at the Cape when the poorest members of the society were forced to trek away after constant exasperation with the corrupt VOC administration. This nomadic Trekboer colony was the true origin of the Boer Nation. Not the Great Trek.
The folks in the western Cape region were often known as the Cape Dutch [ named by trekking Trekboers who were moving inland ] & whose heartland was in & around Cape Town but found up to Paarl & Stellenbosch. The Cape Dutch were pro Colonial with strong links to Europe who were loyal to the Colonial power & could not understand or relate to the Boers' desire for independence & self determination.
The proto Afrikaans speaking folks of the northern & eastern Cape frontier were originally called Trekboers [ named after their trekking & nomadic lifestyle as pastoralists throughout the 1700s ] - a term that was soon shortened to Boer: were anti-colonial as well as fiercely independent & had cut all ties to Europe becoming self sufficient living as nomads in the harsh environment of the Cape frontier. Thus by the time the Great Trek had commenced: the Boer people had existed as a distinct contiguous people on the Cape frontier [ away from the Cape Dutch of the western Cape region ] for at least 150 years with their own customs & dialect. The Boers had already had their first overt freedom struggle in 1795 when they declared their first Boer Republics on the Cape frontier at Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet during a revolt against the VOC. During the 1700s when numerous other new German immigrants came to the Cape: many of them settled directly onto the Cape frontier thus further shaping a distinct origin of the fledgling Boer population to that of the Cape Dutch population.
June 17, 2013
The Afrikaner Broederbond Control.
The Afrikaner Broederbond was a semi-secret organization of Afrikaans speakers during the 20th cent which was modeled on Free Masonry that controlled just about anything of importance in South Africa. This organization played a strong role in subverting the long running struggle of Boer self determination & preventing the Boer Republics from being restored. The following are some excerpts further outlining the control they exerted.
Quote: [ The Broederbond ("Band of Brothers"), which is supposed to have been founded as an anti-British instrument in World War I, probably numbers about 4 000 members --- nobody knows for sure. Broderbonders include an astonishing percentage of teachers and Dutch Reformed ministers, almost certainly a majority of the present cabinet, and most particularly Dr. Verwoerd, who became Prime Minister 18 months ago after Strijdom's death. ]
From: Page 37. Life magazine April 1960.
[ books.google.ca/books?id=Kk8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq ]
Quote: [ You certainly know that our organization, a mixture of Afrikaner nationalism and free masonry, was in danger of petering out in the early 1920s... ]
The above quote / admission is from former Afrikaner Broederbond Chairman [ from the early 1930s ] L J Du Plessis within his notable 1960 letter of resignation.
Found at: [ http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S0018-229X2010000200008&script=sci_arttext ]
Prime Minister J B M Hertzog stated in November 1935 that: there was no doubt that the secret Broederbond was nothing more than the HNP / the Purified National Party of D F Malan operating secretly underground, and the HNP is nothing more than the secret Afrikaner Broederbond operating in public.
Found at: [ http://www.africanhistory.about.com/od/glossarya2/a/def_AfrikanerBroederbond.htm ]
Quote: [ Afrikaans society and South Africa in general was dominated by a secret Afrikaans organization called the "Afrikaner Broederbond " (AB) or in English the "Brother Bond" since 1948, when the NP first came to power right up until the ANC came to power in 1994.
This secret organization which was founded by a group of die hard Afrikaners in 1918, worked much like the Freemasons "help each other" system and has over the years shaped and planned the destiny of South Africa long before these plans became public. The Broederbond ensured that its members, which at its height only totaled just over 12 000, were strategically placed in the civil service (virtually ever prime minister and cabinet member were AB men) and in the private sector so that any decisions it took would always translate into public policy. It was thus a very powerful organization, but with the advent of ANC rule it has of course shrunk in power dramatically.
With the split in the NP in 1982, a fierce battle was waged for control of the Broederbond between the pro-reformists and the anti-reformists. By carefully staging the final showdown in the Cape, PW Botha managed to clinch the struggle when Treurnicht could not get down to the meeting in time to argue his case. The Broederbond remained supportive of the NP. ]
From: Victory or Violence: The Story of the AWB of South Africa. Arthur Kemp. Chapter 3.
[ http://www.arthurkemp.com/awb/chap03.htm ]
The Afrikaner Broederbond exerted tremendous control.
Quote: [ The Broederbond ("Band of Brothers"), which is supposed to have been founded as an anti-British instrument in World War I, probably numbers about 4 000 members --- nobody knows for sure. Broderbonders include an astonishing percentage of teachers and Dutch Reformed ministers, almost certainly a majority of the present cabinet, and most particularly Dr. Verwoerd, who became Prime Minister 18 months ago after Strijdom's death. ]
From: Page 37. Life magazine April 1960.
[ books.google.ca/books?id=Kk8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq ]
Quote: [ You certainly know that our organization, a mixture of Afrikaner nationalism and free masonry, was in danger of petering out in the early 1920s... ]
The above quote / admission is from former Afrikaner Broederbond Chairman [ from the early 1930s ] L J Du Plessis within his notable 1960 letter of resignation.
Found at: [ http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S0018-229X2010000200008&script=sci_arttext ]
Prime Minister J B M Hertzog stated in November 1935 that: there was no doubt that the secret Broederbond was nothing more than the HNP / the Purified National Party of D F Malan operating secretly underground, and the HNP is nothing more than the secret Afrikaner Broederbond operating in public.
Found at: [ http://www.africanhistory.about.com/od/glossarya2/a/def_AfrikanerBroederbond.htm ]
Quote: [ Afrikaans society and South Africa in general was dominated by a secret Afrikaans organization called the "Afrikaner Broederbond " (AB) or in English the "Brother Bond" since 1948, when the NP first came to power right up until the ANC came to power in 1994.
This secret organization which was founded by a group of die hard Afrikaners in 1918, worked much like the Freemasons "help each other" system and has over the years shaped and planned the destiny of South Africa long before these plans became public. The Broederbond ensured that its members, which at its height only totaled just over 12 000, were strategically placed in the civil service (virtually ever prime minister and cabinet member were AB men) and in the private sector so that any decisions it took would always translate into public policy. It was thus a very powerful organization, but with the advent of ANC rule it has of course shrunk in power dramatically.
With the split in the NP in 1982, a fierce battle was waged for control of the Broederbond between the pro-reformists and the anti-reformists. By carefully staging the final showdown in the Cape, PW Botha managed to clinch the struggle when Treurnicht could not get down to the meeting in time to argue his case. The Broederbond remained supportive of the NP. ]
From: Victory or Violence: The Story of the AWB of South Africa. Arthur Kemp. Chapter 3.
[ http://www.arthurkemp.com/awb/chap03.htm ]
The Afrikaner Broederbond exerted tremendous control.
The Dialect of the Boer Nation.
The dialect of the Boers was classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans by historians as that was the location where their particular dialect had developed during the 1700s... on the northern & eastern Cape frontier where the Boer people emerged from the nomadic Trekboers. This dialect was later taken to the region where the various Boer Republics were established [ & beyond ] during the era of the Great Trek. Also later taken to areas now known as Angola & Namibia during the Thirstland Trek. The following are quoted excerpts noting this distinct dialect.
The Afrikaans dialect of the Boers is in fact different to the Afrikaans dialect of the Capetonians thus is distinct to that as spoken by the Cape Dutch population.
Quote: [ Mr. van Tonder also distinguished the Cape Afrikaans from what he called Boeraans. ]
Translated from: Boere vs. die Res.
Quote: [ Our language is Boeraans (a German speaks German, a Dutchman, speaks Dutch French speaks French and so on. How to talk a Boer then Afrikaans ??????? an Afrikaner speaks Afrikaans as the colored nation in the Cape. ]
Translated from the Boere Weerstands Beweging website at: [ http://www.boereweerstandsbeweging.co.za/index_files/Page316.htm]
Quote: [ From this, three main dialects emerged, Cape Afrikaans, Orange River Afrikaans and Eastern Border Afrikaans. The Cape dialect is mostly infused with the language spoken by the Malay slaves who worked in the Cape and spoke a form of broken Portuguese, the Orange River dialect developed with the influence of Koi languages and dialects developed in the Namakwaland and Griqualand West regions and the Eastern Border Afrikaans evolved from the settlers who moved East towards Natal from the Cape. ]
From: History Of The Afrikaans Language In South Africa at: [ nc.essortment.com/historyafrikaan_rqrs.htm ]
Quote: [ Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, a political party known as the Afrikaner Bond had been started in the Western Cape. Its publication Die Afrikaner Patriot made a small and shaky beginning, read mainly by the less well-to-do rural readers whose home language was not Dutch but Afrikaans, sneeringly referred to as the patterjots by Dutch speakers.
Afrikaans was not a systematic language. Dialects differed widely — at the beginning of the century, for example, six dialects existed in the Cape province alone. Furthermore, Afrikaans had an unfavourable image for wealthy Boers. It was associated with both colour and class; the middle class regarded it as a kombuistaal — a ‘kitchen language’ to be used when addressing servants or farm labourers. Generally, the poorer the community, the more its Afrikaans differed from the ‘purer’ version spoken in the Western Cape. For example, the language spoken by the poorer peasants in Namaqualand caused concern:
In (this area) one finds the weakest Afrikaans. Ignored by Church and State, these people have been in constant contact with Griquas and Hottentots, who speak a low semi-barbaric form of Afrikaans. We must make a distinction between civilized Afrikaans and the language of the street, playground and servants.
Afrikaner intellectuals worked very hard to ‘clean up’ Afrikaans —they appropriated the language developed by the ‘coloured’ lower classes and claimed it as their own, ‘white’ language. They removed black and Malay as well as English influences; for example, many southern Nguni words, which had entered the dialect in the Eastern Cape, were replaced by Dutch words in the new dictionaries devised by teachers and academics, to reinforce the idea that Afrikaans was respectable and ‘white’.
On the Rand, where the dominant language of an industrial society was English, working-class Afrikaans was riddled with English-based words. For example, the Afrikaans Garment Workers Union magazine Klerewerker (which promoted the use of Afrikaans) adapted many words derived from English — they used words like ‘werkendeklas’, instead of ‘arbeidersklas’. They also included creative new uses of words, like brandsiek, which was used to describe a ‘scab’, a person who broke a strike by working. But these were lost as they arose out of working-class experiences, and were excluded from official recognition by the middle-class compilers of Afrikaans dictionaries, and magazine and book editors. ] End of quote.
From: Afrikaner Nationalism Captures the State. Found at: [ http://www.home.intekom.com/southafricanhistoryonline/pages/specialprojects/Luli/Place-in-the-city/Unit4/unit4.htm ]
The excerpt notes some detail concerning the difference between the dialects as spoken in the Western Cape [ Cape Dutch dialect ] & in the Eastern Cape [ Boer dialect ] but also notes that some of those differences were lost to the standardization process of the early 20th cent when the Cape Dutch in effect began to impose a standardized version.
Quote: [ Mr. Kruger is a speech-maker of no mean ability. His addresses in the Volksraad are filled with good reasoning, homely similes, biblical quotations, and convincing argument. He speaks without preparation, indulges in no flights of oratory, but uses the simple, plain language that is easily understood by the burgher as well as the statesman. All his speeches are delivered in the Boer "taal," a dialect which bears the same relation to the Dutch language as "low" German does to "high" German. Generally the dialect is used by the Boers in speaking only, the pure Dutch being used in correspondence and official state papers. ]
From: Oom Paul's People. Found at: [ http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=hillegas&book=people&story=kruger&PHPSESSID=4b5bc75aadf1d59a6207f6fb8e12d9b3 ]
Quote: [ 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". ]
From : The Boers of Southern Africa. Arthur Kemp.
The Boers that emerged on African soil abandoned the various languages their ancestors spoke [ ie: High Dutch / Low German / French / Frankonish / Provencal / German / Portuguese etc. ] & adopted as well as helped create the emerging Afrikaans language that developed on African soil to the point of creating their own dialect.
 |
| Taken from the Afrikaans Language Museum website. |
The Afrikaans dialect of the Boers is in fact different to the Afrikaans dialect of the Capetonians thus is distinct to that as spoken by the Cape Dutch population.
Quote: [ Mr. van Tonder also distinguished the Cape Afrikaans from what he called Boeraans. ]
Translated from: Boere vs. die Res.
Quote: [ Our language is Boeraans (a German speaks German, a Dutchman, speaks Dutch French speaks French and so on. How to talk a Boer then Afrikaans ??????? an Afrikaner speaks Afrikaans as the colored nation in the Cape. ]
Translated from the Boere Weerstands Beweging website at: [ http://www.boereweerstandsbeweging.co.za/index_files/Page316.htm]
Quote: [ From this, three main dialects emerged, Cape Afrikaans, Orange River Afrikaans and Eastern Border Afrikaans. The Cape dialect is mostly infused with the language spoken by the Malay slaves who worked in the Cape and spoke a form of broken Portuguese, the Orange River dialect developed with the influence of Koi languages and dialects developed in the Namakwaland and Griqualand West regions and the Eastern Border Afrikaans evolved from the settlers who moved East towards Natal from the Cape. ]
From: History Of The Afrikaans Language In South Africa at: [ nc.essortment.com/historyafrikaan_rqrs.htm ]
Quote: [ Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, a political party known as the Afrikaner Bond had been started in the Western Cape. Its publication Die Afrikaner Patriot made a small and shaky beginning, read mainly by the less well-to-do rural readers whose home language was not Dutch but Afrikaans, sneeringly referred to as the patterjots by Dutch speakers.
Afrikaans was not a systematic language. Dialects differed widely — at the beginning of the century, for example, six dialects existed in the Cape province alone. Furthermore, Afrikaans had an unfavourable image for wealthy Boers. It was associated with both colour and class; the middle class regarded it as a kombuistaal — a ‘kitchen language’ to be used when addressing servants or farm labourers. Generally, the poorer the community, the more its Afrikaans differed from the ‘purer’ version spoken in the Western Cape. For example, the language spoken by the poorer peasants in Namaqualand caused concern:
In (this area) one finds the weakest Afrikaans. Ignored by Church and State, these people have been in constant contact with Griquas and Hottentots, who speak a low semi-barbaric form of Afrikaans. We must make a distinction between civilized Afrikaans and the language of the street, playground and servants.
Afrikaner intellectuals worked very hard to ‘clean up’ Afrikaans —they appropriated the language developed by the ‘coloured’ lower classes and claimed it as their own, ‘white’ language. They removed black and Malay as well as English influences; for example, many southern Nguni words, which had entered the dialect in the Eastern Cape, were replaced by Dutch words in the new dictionaries devised by teachers and academics, to reinforce the idea that Afrikaans was respectable and ‘white’.
On the Rand, where the dominant language of an industrial society was English, working-class Afrikaans was riddled with English-based words. For example, the Afrikaans Garment Workers Union magazine Klerewerker (which promoted the use of Afrikaans) adapted many words derived from English — they used words like ‘werkendeklas’, instead of ‘arbeidersklas’. They also included creative new uses of words, like brandsiek, which was used to describe a ‘scab’, a person who broke a strike by working. But these were lost as they arose out of working-class experiences, and were excluded from official recognition by the middle-class compilers of Afrikaans dictionaries, and magazine and book editors. ] End of quote.
From: Afrikaner Nationalism Captures the State. Found at: [ http://www.home.intekom.com/southafricanhistoryonline/pages/specialprojects/Luli/Place-in-the-city/Unit4/unit4.htm ]
The excerpt notes some detail concerning the difference between the dialects as spoken in the Western Cape [ Cape Dutch dialect ] & in the Eastern Cape [ Boer dialect ] but also notes that some of those differences were lost to the standardization process of the early 20th cent when the Cape Dutch in effect began to impose a standardized version.
Quote: [ Mr. Kruger is a speech-maker of no mean ability. His addresses in the Volksraad are filled with good reasoning, homely similes, biblical quotations, and convincing argument. He speaks without preparation, indulges in no flights of oratory, but uses the simple, plain language that is easily understood by the burgher as well as the statesman. All his speeches are delivered in the Boer "taal," a dialect which bears the same relation to the Dutch language as "low" German does to "high" German. Generally the dialect is used by the Boers in speaking only, the pure Dutch being used in correspondence and official state papers. ]
From: Oom Paul's People. Found at: [ http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=hillegas&book=people&story=kruger&PHPSESSID=4b5bc75aadf1d59a6207f6fb8e12d9b3 ]
Quote: [ 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". ]
From : The Boers of Southern Africa. Arthur Kemp.
The Boers that emerged on African soil abandoned the various languages their ancestors spoke [ ie: High Dutch / Low German / French / Frankonish / Provencal / German / Portuguese etc. ] & adopted as well as helped create the emerging Afrikaans language that developed on African soil to the point of creating their own dialect.
May 15, 2012
Great Trek Was Not From Cape Town.
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.
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.
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