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out of what was originally intended
to be a provisioning stop for the
ships bound around Africa to India
and the Far East.
Thus people of European stock
have been in Africa almost as long
as Whites ha ve been in America.
To the pioneering Dutch were
later added Germans and immi–
grants of French Huguenot stock
who fted Catholicism in France. The
bloodstream of the "average" Af–
rikaner today would yield 37%
Dutch cells, 35% German and 14%
French. Over the years there has
been some intermarriage with the
English who first arrived as per–
manent settlers in 1820- 168 years
after Jan van Riebeeck's party
landed. (Most of the Engl ish. how–
ever, a long with later additions,
have remained a dis ti nct cultural
group of their own.)
Within a short while these people
were calling themselves "Afrika–
ners" - meaning "Africans" in their
own Janguage- which language it–
self was subtly undergoing a linguis–
tic metamorphosis from 17th –
century Dutch to today's
Afrikaans.
The Afrikaners in their early days
showed a fierce desire
for freedom and inde–
pendence. After the
English took control
of the Cape in 1806
and over the next
three decades firmly
established them–
selves in authority,
some of the Afrikaner
families, also known
as "Boers"-Dutch for
"farmers"-set out on
their " Great Trek"
into South Africa ' s u
unpopulated
ru·gged
~
high interior- in much
y
the same fashion as
~
America's pioneers
i
tered Black Bantu tribes moving
south
in
migrating waves out of cen–
tral Africa
(see map on next page).
Afrikaner Psyche
The tales of these
Voortrekker
pio–
neers, their covered wagons, their
clashes with the warring Bantus,
comprise sorne of the most inter–
esting history of the 19th century.
Deeply imprinted on the
Af~ikaner
psyche today is the victo"ry over
Zulu warriors at Blood River in
1838. Before the battle began the
Voortrekkers promised God they
would always éelebrate that day in
His honor if He gave them victory.
The " Day of the Covenant," as it is
caUed, remains South Africa's most
importan! holiday.
The following 64 years are rich in
South Africa's h istory as well: the
establishment of two Boer republics
(the Transvaal , or South African
Republ ic, and the Orange Free
State); the inrush of the English in
quest of newly discovered diamonds
and gold
in
the interior; a series of
wars with the British culminating in
the epic Anglo-Boer War ( 1899-
1902) in which no more than 30,000
Boer commandos at any given time
withstood the might of the British
army, which had 500.000 men
in
the
fiel d.
Forced to capitulate under the su–
perior weight of men and arms, the
Afrikaners, in a sense, still came out
em
top. The two Boer repubtics were
joined to the British-controlled
Cape Colony and Natal to forro the
Union of South Africa in 1910. As
an independent member of the Brit–
ish Commonwe:a lth, it was tied to
London until 1961 when a republic
was declared.
The more numerous Afrikaners
have nearly always dominated the
potitica l scene. whiJe the English–
.speaking population, with its experi–
ence in commerce and industry, has
dominated the economic life of the
country. This division has roughly
persisted to this day, though in the
past two decades Afrikaans-speak–
ing Whites have shown great strides
in
the business world as well.
First Anticolonialists
Afrikaners today stress to outsiders
that they were the first people in
Africa to throw off the yoke of colo–
headed west. Along
~ U~!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
the way they encoun-
~
nialism. In fact, Af–
rikaner natiooalism
was the first coherent
nationalist movement
on the continent. As
former British Prime
Minister Harold Mac–
millan told the South
African Parliament in
February 1960: "You
are sprung from Eu–
rope . . . and here in
Africa you have your–
selves created a free
nation. a new nation.
lndeed. in the history
of our times, yours
will be recorded as the
first of the African na–
tionalisms."
The dilemma which
A NATION
/S
BORN - PEACEFULL Y.
South African Prime Minister John Vorster, seated left, and
prime minister of the Transkei, Chief Kaiser Matanzima, sign papers
granting independence to former homeland
area.
7