Holiday of White Conquest Persists in South Africa
Worshipers waited for sunshine to alight on an empty tomb below, signaling for many that it was God’s will that the land be theirs. See Photos
Afrikaners, the descendants of white settlers, celebrated the Day of the Vow, a covenant said to be made between their ancestors and God in 1838 that led to the slaughter of 3,000 Zulus. Blacks commemorated the same day on the calendar, marking the start of armed struggle against the apartheid regime by the African National Congress in 1961.
With the arrival of multiracial democracy in 1994, lawmakers considered it wise to maintain Dec. 16 as a holiday, proclaiming it a Day of Reconciliation, a time for all races to come together in the spirit of national unity.
But 15 years later, that happily-ever-after ending is a long way off, and the ideal of a rainbow nation now seems little more than a deft turn of phrase. According to a poll released last week by the highly regarded Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 31 percent of South Africans believe that race relations have not improved since the end of apartheid, and 16 percent actually think they have gotten worse. (About 50 percent said relations had improved.)
As for the holiday itself, most Afrikaners have found it hard to set aside one of their most sacred occasions, and on Wednesday, thousands of them gathered, as they do every year, inside the marble chamber of a mammoth granite monument near Pretoria. The structure is a shrine to the Great Trek, when white pioneers migrated north with their ox-drawn wagons and ramrod-loading muskets, completing a conquest they saw as the fulfillment of a divine mission.
“The Day of Reconciliation may be a good idea, but for Afrikaners, the Day of the Vow is still what’s in our hearts,” said Johan de Beer, 46, a teacher waiting on the steps for the gates of the monument to open in the early morning. “This is a religious holiday that is based on our people’s history.”
In his inauguration address, Nelson Mandela spoke of a covenant of his own, longing for “a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.” Viewers of the new American movie “Invictus” might be tempted to conclude that such racial harmony prevailed in the aftermath of a long-shot upset in a rugby game.
The recent survey results would probably stun someone who went to sleep during apartheid and awakened in the present. After all, blacks not only control the government, they mingle in the finest restaurants and swankiest malls. The so-called black diamonds include liberation struggle heroes who have been welcomed into the boardrooms of the nation’s largest corporations.
But while South Africa is the continent’s wealthiest country, income inequality here remains among the worst in the world. About 29 percent of blacks are unemployed, compared with 5 percent of whites, according to recent figures. When statistics include discouraged workers — dropouts from the labor force — the jobless rate climbs to nearly 50 percent. Most of the unemployed have never held a single job, according to a study by a panel of international economists.
The recent poll results also showed that nearly one in four South Africans never speaks to people of other races in a typical day. “In the upper income groups there is a lot of integration, but very little among the poor,” said Fanie du Toit, the executive director of the institute that released the poll. “About 40 to 50 percent of blacks are slum dwellers or rural people who never come in contact with whites.”
At the Voortrekker Monument, among those celebrating the Day of the Vow, barely a black person was in sight but for the men in blue uniforms picking up the trash. “I don’t know anything about their holiday,” said one of those workers, Elias Selema.
The earliest attendees took seats beneath the monument’s dome in the main hall, a huge room encircled by friezes made from Italian marble that depict the epic migration. Others sat a level below, surrounding the cenotaph, the empty tomb that is the symbolic resting place of those who died during the trek. Still more took seats on the surrounding lawns and in the gardens.
“This is my day of thanksgiving,” said Callie van Merwe, an 89-year-old woman dressed in the loose frock and white cotton bonnet of a settler. She added: “Today is a happy time, but I feel bad about the future. This country is changing, changing too much.”
There are several versions of the Day of the Vow and the Battle of Blood River that followed. The historical record is one-sided, and no doubt the retellings lend themselves to myth. One historian, Leonard Thompson, has said the mythology came to serve a political purpose, used to justify the racial oppression of apartheid as God’s will.
In the story’s most common rendition, a brigade of 468 voortrekkers, or pioneers, and about 60 of their slaves set out to avenge hundreds of deaths at the hands of the Zulus. Their leader, Andries Pretorius, cleverly selected a place to camp that was protected by a steep ravine and the Ncome River, which broadened at that spot into a deep hippopotamus pool.
Preceding the Zulu attack that was sure to come, the trekkers came together to recite a vow. In part it read, “If he will protect us and give our enemy into our hand, we shall keep this day and date every year as a day of thanksgiving like a Sabbath, and that we shall erect a church in his honor.”
The Afrikaners chained their covered wagons together, placing barbed shrubs beneath them. Wave after wave of Zulus charged, trying to use their short spears in close combat, but instead dying in heaps as smoke rose from muskets and cannons. As the story goes, 3,000 Zulus died while the trekkers suffered only three injuries. So many warriors fell dead in the Ncome it then became known as Blood River.
“We believe it was God’s will to have Christians lead the way in this land,” said Lukas de Kock, one of the leaders of Wednesday’s worship. “On that day, the Day of the Vow, God made a clear statement that this was his will for South Africa.”
The reading of the vow is one of the two most solemn moments of the prayer service. The other comes precisely at midday as families lean over the parapets that overlook the cenotaph.
Careful calculations were made by the monument’s designers, and exactly at noon on each Dec. 16, the sun shines through a small opening in the dome, alighting on the empty tomb 138 feet below and yet again signaling for many that it was the Lord’s will that the land be theirs.
“We believe it was God’s will to have Christians lead the way in this land,” said Lukas de Kock, one of the leaders of Wednesday’s worship. “On that day, the Day of the Vow, God made a clear statement that this was his will for South Africa.”
Interesting, very interesting…
Curious that a leading paper of that great pioneering nation, who left countless red-skinned ‘Indians’ dead in their conquest, and still today evidence a great deal of apartheid towards that ‘conquered’ people, the US of f@8*#&^% A, would report in such a way about the Voortrekkers.
While I do not agree with what the Voortrekkers did in every respect, I also do not agree with what the (to my mind, also colonizing) indigenous tribes like the Mpondo’s, Zulus, Matabele’s, BaPedis and Shangaanis did. In fact, to my mind, regardless of whose narative of the Groot Trek is to be believed, both sides would at the time have been guilty of contravening the laws and customs of war as we know them today – but, at the time, there were no such laws and customs that were being observed by any of the nations referred to. From Biblical times, so it would seem, it was a “free for all” kind of deal, until aprox WW I-II, when the world started to see that there should be such things as laws and customs that regulate war. But, even though there are such laws, such atroicities continue until this day. (In fact, during the struggle against institutionalized apartheid, both sides were also guilty of contravening such laws, but nothing came of it.)
However, those that took the vow, and their families and followers who later on renewed that vow, for whatever reason (political or otherwise) are bound by that covenant with God. (The same can be said about those responsible for the 9/11 attacks; etc.; etc.) The vow is to honour the day as a Sabbath, and to honour God for the wonderous (indeed it must have been an evening of miriacle and wonder) relief that He caused – not to keep doing what He did on that night. Therefore, De Kock is clearly wrong to say that, on that day, God made a clear statement of what His will for South Africa is.
However, incidentally, on the same so-called day of ‘reconciliation’, Jacob Zuma and others brought homage to those who fought the struggle (is that the struggle from Blood River onwards to 1994?; or only the struggle from 1910-1994) at the same time that observers of the vow chose to pay homage to their God. What makes that so much different? What makes the American celebration of Freedom Day (and “God bless America!”) so different? What makes the UK’s “God save the [Victorious] Queen!” so different? We should all stop being so bloody hypocritical, and perhaps, one day, there will be true reconciliation. Or, is that just a far-fetched dream?
What I forgot to add in the last paragraph above before saying that we should cease being hypocritical, the following: “What makes singing ‘Nkosi Sikilel’e iAfrika’ (both pre- and post-1994) in the spirit of the struggle so different? What makes singing (pre-1994) ‘Ons sal lewe, ons sal sterwe, ons vir jou Suid Afrika so different?”
Why does this post not show as a regular thread, but only in the Seminar Room?
Thanks Mouse for putting it back into it’s orriginal context, anyone can take something that happened in the past and add their modern sanctions as they would have liked it to end versions to it, like that new movie from Quentin Tarentino “Inglorious Bastards” kind of accurate happenings the Nazi inspector, finding Jews hiding in France with the correct names of the historical players, but then telling his story with Hitler and all the bad people dying in the same place at the same time. If somebody, who hadn’t study the history, watched this movie then they may have been deceived by this untruthfull version, because that’s how they would have liked it to end, who knows maybe one day when today is also much further into history, different catagories of people could all tell their own stories with their own heroes receiving the honour for whichever cause was won.
@ Mouse
Maybe it is because it was not written by Prof but by someone else and Prof has not added anything thereto.
Ja these American assholes always have alot to say about others, but how did they treat people in the early days? Damn hypocrits. I swear if I wasnt married to a American lady I would have left this dump long ago. ASGATLAAGTE.
The first problem with this article of course is the obvious perpetuation of the Afrikaner appropriation of Boer history as this vow & entire event is part of Boer history while the yet to be named Afrikaners of the Western Cape ridiculed the Boers of the frontier for wanting to “leave civilization behind” & thought that their trekking migrations into the interior [ later called the Great Trek by Afrikaner historians who used this event as part of a regiment to appropriate & co-opt the conquered Boer people ] would amount to nothing or would all end up dead. The Boer people are an anthropologically distinct ethno cultural group / entity from the bulk of the macro Afrikaner population. This is because the Boers are the direct descendents of the Trekboers who began to trek inland starting during the late 1600s & all throughout the 1700s. [ 1 ] While the vast majority of the macro group called Afrikaners was descended from the Afrikaans speakers who developed in the south western Cape region & were often known as the Cape Dutch. [ 2 ] Afrikaans author Brian Du Toit [ French surname as the Afrikaans peoples are significantly descended from French Huguenots ] notes on page 1 of his book: [ 3 ] The Boers in East Africa: Ethnicity and Identity that quote: [ The Boers had a tradition of trekking. Boer society was born on the frontiers of white settlement and on the outskirts of civilization. As members of a frontier society they always had a hinterland, open spaces to conquer, territory to occupy. Their ancestors had moved away from the limiting confines of Cape society to settle the eastern frontier. In time this location became too restricted, and individuals and families moved north across the Orange River. ] The term Boer [ which was shortened from Trekboer ] [ 4 ] was used to describe the pastoral Afrikaans speakers who occupied the eastern Cape frontier during the era of VOC administration at the Cape. While Boers might also occasionally have referred to themselves as “Afrikaners” this was meant as “Africans” as the Boers considered themselves Africans quite early on & cut all ties to Europe back in the late 17th cent [ 5 ] when their Trekboer ancestors trekked away from Colonial society & out of the Western Cape region. The problem is that during the late 19th cent the Cape Dutch began to start calling themselves Afrikaners [ after a language rights movement some of them started in Paarl on the Cape Dutch frontier & the documented capital of Afrikanerdom [ 6 ] at a time when the capital of Boerdom would have been at Pretoria ] & attempting to seek political alliances with the Boers: most of whom were independent in their internationally recognized Boer Republics [ 7 ] thereby seeking to place the Boers under Cape Dutch Afrikaner domination.
This attempt was later successful during the brutal aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War in which 50 % of the Boer child population had died in the British concentration camps & many Boers were chased off their farms forced to look for work in the cities where they often encountered Afrikaners. [ 8 ] The program of forcing the Boers to be linked to the Cape Dutch [ what the Afrikaner Nationalists called "uniting" the Afrikaans speakers ] ended up marginalizing the Boers in the process as the Boers are the smaller segment [ 9 ] of the Afrikaans speaking group under such a designation.
Therefore to keep this tenuous Afrikaans coalition together the Cape Dutch leadership [ which ran the Broederbond ] had to appropriate some key events of Boer history like the Great Trek [ which they named ] & reformulate it to conform to the Afrikaner Nationalist agenda to secure the British created macro State of South Africa while omitting or minimalizing other key events such as their Trekboer origins & the significance of the Boer adoption of the red / white & blue horizontal tri colour at their first Boer Republics in 1795 while the Cape Dutch dominated Afrikaner Nationalists adopted the orange / white & blue horizontal tri colour.
The Boers were not on a “divine mission” to conquer & this ignorant assessment shows the author as a lazy researcher because the cause of the Great Trek was over British Colonial oppression & the constant Xhosa attacks & killing on Boer farms. The Boers debated what to do & initially decided to trek north until realizing the the dessert conditions were too inhospitable then later decided to trek north east into the depopulated [ due to the Difaqane of Shaka ] regions north of the Orange River.
This day is in fact a “day of thanksgiving” to those of Boer & Voortrekker [ another term the Afrikaner Nationalists coined as part of a program to appropriate Boer hist ] descent. The Boers would be commemorating it even if they had defeated Germans or British as the race of those who were attempting to wipe them out was not a factor.
Furthermore: the Boers reconciled with the Zulu when they exchanged rocks of peace in 1840 & gathered again later in 1866 to stack rocks on the Nacome River in a gesture of reconciliation. [ 10 ] It is a crying shame that the Afrikaners had to hijack this sacred Boer event in order to promote their agenda because they have left the false impression to the rest of the world that it was about conquest & that there was no reconciliation. The whole point of this day was about the remembrance of the vow the Boers took to God [ some abstained fearing the consequences [ 11 ] should their descendents break the Vow ] not even about the later battle they won against overwhelming odds.
This article attempts to portray a false impression with racial income disparity as well. It should be pointed out that the Rapport newspaper noted that 1 million White Afrikaans speakers live under the poverty line now & that this affects the Boer descendents much more as they have traditionally been part of the working class.
The Boer people are a homegrown ethno cultural people who speak a language historians classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans [ named after the Cape frontier where they developed ] Therefore the Boers are not only under South African occupation but as a result of past Afrikaner colonization are also under Afrikaner domination.
Notes.
1. South African History at History World.
Quote: [ By the 1770s the Dutch nomads have penetrated as far as Graaff-Reinet, some 400 miles northeast of Cape Town. They become known as Trekboers (Dutch for 'wandering farmers'), a word subsequently often shortened to Boers. ]
2. Christianity in Central Southern Africa Prior to 1910.
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. ]
3. The Boers in East Africa: Ethnicity and Identity. Brian M. Du Toit. Page 1.
4. Noted also on the Bowdoin College Page.
5. The Devil’s Annexe. A Continent in Agony by Sidney & Shirley Robbins.
6. Cecil Rhodes & the Cape Afrikaners by Mordechai Tamarkin. Page 57.
7. The Story of the Boers by C W van der Hoogt. Page 96.
8. Boer / Afrikaner or White: Which are you? by Adriana Stuijt.
9. New Coffins, Old Flags, Microorganisms And The Future of the Boer.
10. This was also noted by Pieter Mulder in an address to Parliament in 2005.
11. The Great Trek. Oliver Ransford.
Post Script. The history of the Boers is rarely ever told from the perspective of the actual Boer folk.
Ron, thank you for an insightful piece on Afrikaner and boer history. As an Afrikaner (and boer, I now realise) I am proud to relaise that some factual history is out there confirming my suspisions that we have always and still are succking the hind tit when it comes to receiving recognition for reconciliation and receiving as little as an apology from the pompous English for wiping out half our nation. As far as blacks are concerned, I know that for generations my family treated them with respect within the confines of what the British colonialists and subsequently the apartheid government allowed. I hope and pray that it may one day be politically correct to give the boers and Afrikaners their rightful recognition and place in this country, before it goes to ruin.
The only difference between South Africa and America or Australia is that in America and Australia there was enough white immigration to assimilate the territory while in South Africa immigration was small and only the present provinces of Western and Northern Cape were assimilated and a European language, culture and population (white and mixed) prevail…while the rest of South Africa is every day more bantu.
In South America there is also a clear difference between Argentina, which was assimilated by Europeans, and Bolviia, which still boasts a Native majority and a great part of the population speak in native languages.
Also it is interesting pointing out that descendants of Dutcht settlers, who arrived to Africa at the same time as the English to America, were the first ones to call themselves “AFRICANS” (Afrikaners) the same way as descendants of English settlers were the first to call themselves “AMERICANS” as both “Africa” and “America” are European concepts alien to the Native population: sioux, cheyenne, cherokee, zulues, xhosa, tswans…all the native tribes never used the term “African” or “American”. Only white settlers used that term.