Republican Trekker Volk.

The Cape Rebels Were Not Cape Dutch.

2011-12-31T00:29:00.001-08:00

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. 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 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.

The Boers are not of Dutch Descent.

2010-11-05T22:37:00.001-07:00

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.

2010-11-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

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.

The RSA was Result of Foreign Legislation.

2010-11-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Not an Apartheid Era Flag.

2010-05-17T21:55:00.001-07:00

The following is how the CBC web site describes the Vyfkleur flag. [ More on the Vyfkleur flag here. ] An unmistakable Boer pre Apartheid era flag dating from the second Anglo-Boer War. A man [ no doubt a proud Boer ] holds up the Vyfkleur in the following photo taken recently outside of court & posted on the web page in question but the CBC then engages in bad journalism by calling the flag he holds "an Apartheid era flag" thus totally distorting the true meaning of the flag & long struggle for Boer self determination. Notice the caption under the photo in question.

This is just proof positive that the Western media are lazy journalists at best or are propagandizing distorters at worst. Perhaps a combination of both. I guess no one should be surprised that none other than the CBC: the Canadian public broadcaster has labeled the Vyfkleur quote: "an Apartheid era flag". I doubt they even know that the flag in the photo in question is even called a Vyfkleur [ five colour ] yet alone that it was adopted long before the establishment of Apartheid. For those who might not know [ that's you CBC! ] the Vyfkleur is not & can not possibly be "an Apartheid era flag" because it was a flag adopted during the second Anglo-Boer War by Boer Commandos who were fighting against Colonialism [ ie: the forces which later adopted Apartheid ] & for their freedom & self determination within their half century old internationally recognized independent Boer Republics. The Vyfkleur flag was a distinct & clever combination of the national flags of the then two Boer Republics [ remove the the vertical bar within the left portion of the flag & you have the upper left portion of the Orange Free State Vierkleur flag ] remove the horizontal orange bar & you have the Transvaal Vierkleur flag ] which were fighting for their survival against Britain. This era of course was long before the Apartheid era. The Vyfkleur flag was also later adopted by the BWB in the past & its members often wore the flag on the upper region of their right shirt sleeves but it was originally designed as a war flag by the fighting Boer Commandos during the second Anglo-Boer War.

Link to full hit piece article here.

Neither is it surprising that the CBC totally distorts & distracts from the topic.

Population of the Boer Nation.

2009-11-30T22:09:00.001-08:00

The Boer population is estimated at around 1.5 million out of a total White Afrikaans or Afrikaner population of about 3.5 million. This article from about 5 years ago lists this number. The fact that the Boer population is the smaller segment of the White Afrikaans population demonstrates that the Boers are marginalized under any umbrella macro designation [ like Afrikaner ] referring to White Afrikaans speakers in general & as such any attempts the actual Boer people make from time to time to find self determination is often erroneously even maliciously labeled as an "extremist" segment of a non existent monolithic population which was a technique started with the Maritz Rebellion of 1914 [ ie: it was a Boer movement not an Afrikaner one ] & continued up to the present. Just imagine the obvious absurdity of asserting that Canadians are "extremist" for exercising [ or even seeking to pursue ] self determination outside of the context of the bulk of the North American population.

The Cape Frontier: birth place of the Boer Nation.

2009-07-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

The Boer people are often presumed to be "Europeans" & are also often conflated with the Cape Dutch Afrikaners but in fact the Boer people were not born in Europe nor were they born among the Cape Dutch but in fact the Boer people were born on the Cape frontier. When a number of the poorest members of the Caucasian folks at the Cape began to trek northward & eastward during the late 1600s & all throughout the 1700s they became the earliest migrating pastoralists who left the towns of Cape Town / Stellenbosch / Franschhoek & Paarl & were soon called Trekboers named after their nomadic & pastoral lifestyle they adopted in order to survive on the harsh Cape frontier. The Cape frontier consisted of everything to the north & Paarl & to east of Stellenbosch right up to the Brak & Sundays Rivers. The Boers developed their own language on the frontier which historians have classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans or Cape Frontier Afrikaans. Further evidence of where the Boer people germinated. The Cape frontier was the crucible which created the Boer Nation. The town of Swellendam which was established in 1745 was the first town the Dutch East India Co. set up within the Cape frontier in an attempt at controlling the Boers & this town would be one of the first Boer Republics established in 1795 when a number of the frontier Boers declared republics & rebelled against the Dutch power.

Generals but not Boer Generals.

2009-03-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

During the discourse on South African history it is often asserted [ erroneously ] that Boer Generals ran South Africa from the time it was created until the late 1940s but this is a total canard because those asserting such have simply just not looked into the background of the so called "Boer" Generals. Louis Botha was a Boer but both JBM Hertzog & Jan Smuts were not Boers as they were not from the Boer communities but were from the Cape Dutch community of the Western Cape long before they moved into the then Boer Republics & later fought as Generals on the Boer side. A lot of different nationalities from around the world fought on the side of the Boer Republics but this does not then mean that they were "Boer" combatants. This is an important point because as they were both part of the Cape Dutch people: they brought THEIR worldview to the table when in power & not that of the conquered & subjugated Boers. Louis Botha was the only actual Boer General who ever ran South Africa - though he too did so on behalf of the British & Cape Dutch power.

Verwoerd was not a Friend of the Boer Nation.

2009-03-07T06:04:00.001-08:00

The following is the video version of the previous post.

During an interview with the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio noted that the Dutch born architect of the Separate Development phase of the Apartheid laws: Hendrik Verwoerd was not a friend of the Boer Nation as he was interested in amalgamating the region under an economic sphere & scuppered the restoration of the Boer Republics.

The Boers Were Not Racial Imperialists.

2009-03-07T05:43:00.000-08:00

During the course of the 20th cent a number of mythologies were promoted recasting the humble insular Boers as neo-imperialists driven by a racial based worldview when in fact the Boers were always anti-imperial [ hence the root of their republicanism ] & were often in alliances with other local tribes or groups. While many Boers of the era could be considered to have had paternalistic racial views they were far from the racial chauvinists in the western sense as sometimes depicted. The following is a relevant excerpt from Colonial South Africa & the Origins of the Racial Order.

Throughout the subsequent decades, it was (very anti-humanitarian) British settlers, and not Boers, who developed a rhetoric of racial and cultural superiority to justify ongoing imperial subversion of the Xhosa. Boers increasingly resented this imperial militarization of the frontier districts, proved unwilling military conscripts, and even on occasion showed some fellow feelings towards the African Chiefdoms. Certainly when new frontiers of imperial aggression were opened up north of the Orange during the brief period of British rule there at mid century, Boer and Sotho were to throw in their lot together quite openly at crucial junctures against the British presence. But the Trek cannot be said to have been motivated by a desire to conquer and subjugate. If anything, as that prominent (Boer) frontiersman born and bred, Andries Stockenström, pointed out, Boers were indifferent, if not hostile, to the acquisitive machinations of British settlers and rogue governors bent on military expansion. As Stockenström wrote, ' The theory which makes the black irreclaimable savages, fir only to be exterminated, like the wolves, was not of Boer origin' - implying ( correctly ) that explicitly racist notions about the Xhosa and other African peoples were a British innovation. The predominant ideology of the colonial frontier was thus decidedly predicated on the ideal of racial exclusiveness. But this did not imply that subjugation of the great mass of African farming peoples encountered beyond the Khoisan frontiers was either a practical possibility or even a desired ideal. This is were the earlier liberal interpretation breaks down. The power, the desire, the need to impose racial supremacy on a sub continental scale at the level of the state and its institutions was an impulse that had other origins at other historical junctures. White supremacy as a total system of hegemony and subjugation grew from the centers of power - meaning (in the main) centers of imperial power - outwards, and not the other way round. It was not on isolated frontiers that such an ideal took root.

From the author Timothy Keegan. Chapter: Dutch Beginnings: pages 35 & 36.

This salient fact contradicts the erroneous assertion often made that the Boers were somehow responsible for the institutionalization of racial policies which later emerged under the British controlled macro State of South Africa which in fact marginalized the actual Boer people in the process as they were now just a minority section of the general macro White population.

Racism of Boers was Paternalistic not Chauvinistic.

2009-03-07T05:34:00.000-08:00

Westerners have often erroneously presumed that the Boers are racial chauvinists [ due mainly from the decades long propaganda of their British & other enemies ] when in fact they are not. This was even pointed out by non other than a left leaning Afrikaans blogger named Wessels at his Mhambi blog of which one of his articles on the topic is re-posted below. The paternalistic racism of some Boers is not in the same league as the harsh chauvinistic form of Western racism which often gets overlooked in the West.

December 23, 2006. Myths and misunderstandings: South African white racism. Mhambi is regularly struck at how the British (and probably most Westerners) misunderstand South Africa racism. I just started a new job, and over a boozy Chistmas lunch, a new colleague told me of his lovely visit to South African shores. He had a lovely time but was gob smacked when he visited Sun City, playing a round of Golf on the famous course. It was not the fact that there are real crocodiles in the water hazards that shocked him. It was a sign "No caddies past this point" - on the border of a crocodile infested pit. For a start he did not use a caddie, that smacking too much of white-michief-type colonialism. In South Africa caddies are almost exclusively black. But the sign left him incredulous. "How could this racist sign still be up there, a few years after apartheid ended??" he asked me, clearly exasperated. Mhambi gave a well practised sheepish laugh. What to say? First off, I was not sure he and I saw it the same way. I certainly was not shocked. I deduced that he must think that white golf players send their caddies into crocodile infested pits to fetch their racist bwanas balls - hence the sign. And then he said as much. "How racist is that?!!" he asked rhetorically. I laughed even more, now my embarrassment was tinged with sadness. To me one could detect signs of racism in the sign, but of a different ilk to the one that had just been spotted and caused such disgust. The sign was directed at caddies, and not players who commanded them. The caddies were not mere automatons with no power to decide where they could go. In fact, the caddies probably scour the golf course on their own for abandoned balls, to sell them at a discount to players. They have a reckless disregard for the dangers of this particular course - hence the sign. That's how I saw it, and I'm pretty sure I'm right. But I kept this to myself. But my colleague can just not imagine that a caddie would want to try and get a ball in such a dangerous place. The Sun City golf course management and myself could. But for him, it was easy to imagine whitey golfers sending powerless caddies to their deaths. Does this misunderstanding tell us anything more profound? Yes. White South African racism, and in particular Afrikaans racism is of a paternalistic kind: It's a - our blacks that we can't trust to look after themselves - kind of racism. That is the racism this signs speaks of, and it is often mistaken for another more BNP / National Front / Klu Klux Clan - Western kind of racism. Does it matter? Of course. Any lawyer will tell you that the intention of an offender is essential in determining the severity of the crime.

Article found at this link. From: the Mhambi blog.

The Dialect of the Boers was Removed.

2009-03-07T05:25:00.000-08:00

The dialect of Afrikaans as developed by the Boers has not been in official use since the early part of the 20th cent due to the fact that it was removed from the public sphere around 1921 including from the Parliament. Theuns Cloete of Boerevolk Radio noted this during an interview with The Right Perspective shortwave / internet radio program in December of 2007. Historians have classified the dialect spoken by the Boers as Eastern Border Afrikaans which was named after the eastern Cape region where the Boers & this dialect of Afrikaans developed. It is also interesting to note that the Boers did not give the name Afrikaans to the general / macro lingua franca language of the general southern western African region as the term Afrikaans was originally given to this language [ of which there are numerous dialects & spoken by numerous groups ] by the Cape Dutch intellectuals [ who started the propagation of the term Afrikaner stemming from the laguage ] of 1875 who started a language rights movement in order to get the language official recognition as a distinct language at a time when most of the Boers were independent in their internationally recognized Boer Republics & only ever referred to their Afrikaans dialect as "die taal" [ the language ] or Boeretaal.

This further demonstrates a difference in dialect with that as spoken by the Cape Dutch of the Western Cape. This article from the Times on the Boer Diaspora living in Argentina - who have been there since 1903 descendets of Bitterenders who did not want to live under British domination - notes that the Boers there speak an "older form of Afrikaans" when in fact the correct interpretation is that they speak the unadulterated Boer version as their language was unaffected by the political changes taking place in the then new macro State of South Africa which was inherited by the more numerous Cape Dutch & the consequent predominance of their Afrikaans dialect.

Westerners often have a one dimensional view of Afrikaans & often even view it as a colonial export when in fact the language is a homegrown product of many diverse influences which took shape entirely on African soil when the various people brought there by the VOC from Europe & Asia [ who were brought as slaves ] developed a lingua franca out of necessity in order to communicate among themselves. While Afrikaans did develop from the High Dutch dialect [ not form Netherlands Dutch ] spoken by the Germanic peoples of northern Europe [ mainly in modern day Germany & Denmark ] who were sent to the Cape as servants of the VOC: strong influences from Malay / Portuguese / French / German & Khoi have shaped it into a distinct language of its own with a number of various dialects some of which have died out. There are 3 main dialects of Afrikaans. West Cape Afrikaans spoken in the Western Cape / Northern Cape Afrikaans - of which Orange River Afrikaans is a part of - spoken by the Griquas & the remaining Khoisan people / Eastern Cape Afrikaans spoken by the Boers of the eastern Cape frontier & their descendents. The Boer dialect of Afrikaans has not quite disappeared but was overshadowed by the Cape Dutch originated dialect.

The Boers Are Not Afrikaners.

2009-01-05T23:53:00.000-08:00

This gets complicated but the Boer people are in fact a distinct cultural group who are not part of the bulk of those who were labeled Afrikaners despite the fact that the Boers were among the first to be considered African before the descendents of the Cape Dutch took the term Afrikaner for themselves then later forced the Boers into this term to the detriment of their unique identity which was formed on the Cape frontiers away from the Cape Dutch / Afrikaners. While a number of modern Boers also often refer to themselves as Afrikaners & often justify it by noting that its definition is: African - the problem with this term is that it marginalizes the Boers & puts them under the domination of the more dominant Cape Dutch descended Afrikaners. The term Afrikaner obscures the fact that the Boerevolk are a distinct & independent nation which gets marginalized when lumping them in with those who are not part of their particular nation.

The Adoption of the OVS Vierkleur Flag.

2009-01-05T23:44:00.000-08:00

The Orange Free State Vierkleur flag was adopted on Feb 23 1857 on the third anniversary of the Orange Free State Republic. The flag was designed in 1856 but was not adopted until 1857 due to conflicting proposals for the coat of arms. This flag served as the national flag of the Orange Free State until the conclusion of the second Anglo-Boer War. The red / white & blue horizontal tri colour flag in the canton recalls the tri colour which was used for the first Boer Republics at Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet in 1795 on the Cape frontier. The overall design of the OVS Vierkleur flag is loosely based on the national flag of the United States of America as the Constitutions of the two major Boer Republics were based on those of the United States & France. The Orange Free State Republic flag is notable within the popular De La Rey video noting the Bitterender phase of the second Anglo-Boer War.

The Adoption of the Natalia Republic Flag.

2009-01-05T23:33:00.000-08:00

The Natalia Republic flag was adopted on December 24 1839. The Natalia Republic was a short lived Boer Republic established close to a year after the Battle at Ncome River. The Republic was later annexed by Britain in 1843 & most of the Boers there then trekked into the Transvaal & Transorangia where other Boers were establishing themselves. The first few minutes of the following video mentions this flag including a number of other 19th cent Boer Republican flags which are located in the Cenotaph Hall under the Heroes Hall at the Voortrekker Monument.

The above picture shows the Natalia Tri Colour at the Right.

The Adoption of the Vierkleur Flag.

2009-01-05T23:19:00.001-08:00

The renown Transvaal Vierkleur flag of the old Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek - also called the Transvaal Republic - was adopted on this date Jan 6 1857. The same date as the birth of the ZAR itself which was then just composed out of the former Potchefstroom Republic joined with the Rustenburg district as the Zoutpansberg Republic & the Lydenburg Republic [ despite a prior agreement] were yet to join. Note: The Lydenburg Republic joined the ZAR in 1860 & the Zoutpansberg Republic joined the ZAR in 1863. Marthinus Pretorius [ the son of the famous Andries Pretorius & for which the later capital of the ZAR was named ] was sworn in as the first President of the ZAR on this date as well.

The Transvaal Vierkleur [ four colour ] flag was designed by a Dutch Reverend named Dirk van der Hoff & its red / white & blue horizontal tri colour motif recalls the first Boer Republican flag used at Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet in 1795 - during the time of the first Boer Republics - as well as the flag of van der Hoff's homeland of Holland. The ZAR Vierkleur flag was first raised at Potchefstroom. The Vierkleur was temporarily discontinued as the national flag of the ZAR from October 1874 until May of 1875 when Thomas Francois Burgers was President due to his dislike of the Vierkleur. The flag of the old Potchefstroom Republic was used instead during this brief time frame - but the Vierkleur was restored as the national flag of the ZAR by the Volksraad when President Burgers was abroad.

The Potchefstroom Republic flag was based on the Saltire flag used by the Voortrekkers who followed Hendrik Potgieter & was also used at the Winburg Republic as well as the later Zoutpansberg Republic. The main difference being that the Potchefstroom Republic flag [ as well as the one briefly used by the ZAR ] had a white border around the red saltire on the dark blue background thus adhering more to heraldic customs. This flag though was retained as the Presidential flag.

The Vierkleur flag was once again discontinued when Britain annexed the Transvaal Republic in 1877 but made a comeback again in 1880 when the local Boers rebelled against British rule thus starting the first Anglo-Boer War of which the Boers won & regained the independence of the ZAR in 1881 with the Pretoria Convention. Though Britain retained control of its foreign policy but that too later changed when the ZAR regained its full independence in 1884 with the signing of the London Convention.

The Transvaal Vierkleur [ as well as the OVS Vierkleur pictured at right ] became a very
important symbol to the Boerevolk during the second Anglo-Boer War as a symbol of resistance to British Colonial oppression in which close to 50 % of the Boer child population died in the concentration camps. Due to those circumstances the flag has taken on added significance other than just an old Boer Republican flag & is still flown by many today representing a nation which was almost wiped out but flies as proof of the continued existence of the Boer Nation.

The Commemoration of the Vow in Perspective.

2009-01-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

There are a few misconceptions in the West about the Day of the Vow & the battle which occurred at Ncome River. First one must remember that this battle did not occur in a vacuum as the Zulus of Dingaan first massacred the Boers including young children at Bloukrans & Saailaager after Dingaan killed Piet Retief & his delegation earlier. [1] The battle at Ncome River of December 16 is sometimes called a "massacre" but this is a rather odd term to employ when considering the fact that the local Boers were under attack therefore: what occurred was an act of war & if the Boers sat back & did nothing to defend themselves then they would have certainly been massacred themselves.

Those who commemorate this day are not commemorating the battle itself as much as they are commemorating the Vow they took prior for protection. When about 15 000 Zulus under Dingaan decided to attack the Boers numbering less than 500 camped [2] in Natal: there was no choice left to the Boers but to defend themselves.

This battle was even avoidable because Pretorius sent back some captured Zulus & told Dingaan that he was prepared to enter into negotiations [3] for peace with Dingaan if he were to restore the vacant land south of the Tugela River that he had intially offered to Piet Retief before killing him & his delegation then later the civilians at Bloukrans & Saailaager. The King's response was in the form of the now famous attack on December 16 at Ncome River.

The Great Boer Trek. From: Stephen Crane.

Quote: [ The church in Pietermaritzburg and the annual celebration of Dingaan's bear witness that they kept their pledge. They were not fighting for revenge. On three occasions the scouts brought in some captured Zulus, and Pretorius sent them back to Dingaan to say that if he would restore the land he had granted Retief he would enter into negotiations for peace. ]

Therefore: the battle at Ncome River MUST be viewed in proper context.

The point of the battle was not about "massacring" or "defeating" or conquering the proud Zulu nation. Because the Boers would have defended themselves in exactly the same way if they were being attacked by the British / German or Spanish power. Furthermore: the Boers allowed the Zulus to govern themselves in Zululand after the battle & entered into an alliance with the new Zulu King Mpande for quite some time afterwards. The Zulus were not conquered until the British came & conquered them in 1879. Long after the establishment of the major Boer Republics.

Remember also that the Boers & Zulus had reconciled & in 1840 exchanged rocks of peace in commemoration of this reconciliation. The Boers & the Zulus also later stacked rocks as a symbol of peace in 1866 at Ncome River.

Pieter Mulder noted this fact as well in an Address in Parliament. On Feb 16 2005.

Quote: [ Go and read about the relationship between the [ Boers ] and the Zulus in Natal. How, after the battle of Blood river in 1840 they handed rocks of peace to each other and in 1866 came together at Blood river and stacked rocks as a symbol of peace. How Cetswayo gave land to the Boers after they helped and protected him. The Republic of Vryheid dates from that period. ]

The Boers might have been settlers to this specific region [ in Natal ] but they were not settlers to Africa as the Boers are a homegrown / indigenous people who were formed on the Cape frontier [4] & who are a distinct entity even from the Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape. [5] The Boers did not have an "unfair advantage" because of their weapons as they were greatly outnumbered by the Zulu warriors. It was indeed a miracle that they survived even with the crude rifles they had because one must remember that they were no where near as effective as modern day rifles. The Zulus chose to attack at a most bizarre time of day & as such miscalculated thereby giving the Boers a slight fair advantage. Fair because they still had to fight for their survival against staggering odds.

The Apartheid regime did not start the holiday of commemorating the Vow as the South African regime only STOLE / usurped & co-opted this date because the ZAR [ Transvaal Republic ] declared it a holiday back in 1865. Long before the rise of the Apartheid regime. After a time of waning commemoration of the date: the later future President Paul Kruger - as part of a Triumvirate government - restarted the commemoration of this date in 1880 when the Boers were fighting to regain their independence from Britain & when the ZAR was re-declared as an independent Boer Republic leading to the first Anglo-Boer War.

The date of the battle at Ncome River was always commemorated by the descendents of those who participated in the battle then later adopted as a public holiday in the ZAR but it was not politicized until the 20th cent when the Cape Dutch were using it as a tool to co-opt the Boers into their agenda as a British appointed surrogate ruling power of the macro State the British created with an act of legislation in the British Parliament [6] which robbed the Boers of their republics & forced them into an artificial macro State which lumped all of the region's diverse national groups under a single administration for the first time ever.

I should also point out that this was a battle which involved the Boers camped in Natal & not "Afrikaners" as the bulk of the yet to be named Afrikaners of the Western Cape had previously taunted the Boers with impending doom of their trek & with exactly the sort of scenario that they ultimately faced at Ncome River -only the Cape Dutch thought that the Boers would all die off. It is also interesting to note that not all Boers made the vow [7] for fear of the consequences should their descendents break the promise. It appears that a few Boers had some insight into what could happen if one were to later take lightly a vow made to God. Which in fact is what one did see among many about 150 years later.

While the Zulus did at times appear as a military threat again: it is important to remember that the Boers were on friendly terms with the Zulus of the Northern Natal & King Dinizulu gave a large part of northern Natal to the Boers as payment for services the Boers offered the King upon his request when he was facing trouble from a British backed Zulu segment creating disorder in his region. The Vryheid Republic of 1884 was later established there in a portion of northern Natal until its south eastern half was annexed by the British & its north western portion was absorbed into the ZAR. or Transvaal Republic. None other than Louis Botha - one of the founders of the Vryheid Republic & Boer General & Statesman & later British puppet Prime Minster - was life long friends with King Dinizulu & released him from prison after the latter was found guilty of participating in the Bambtha Rebellion.

Notes.

1. The Bloukrans Massacre.

Quote: [ At about midnight on 16-17 February 1838 the Zulus began their assault on the Trekker encampments over a 9 km front along the Bloukrans River. The Zulus fell upon the sleeping Liebenbergs, Besters and de Beers near the confluence of the Umlaas River (also called the Little Murder Spruit) and the Bloukrantz Rivers. ]

2. The Battle of Blood River.

Quote: [ On the morning of the 16th December 1838, some fifteen thousand Zulu warriors charged the 460 Voortrekkers, and charged again, and again for a third time but were repulsed. ]

3. The Great Boer Trek. From: Stephen Crane.

Quote: [ The church in Pietermaritzburg and the annual celebration of Dingaan's bear witness that they kept their pledge. They were not fighting for revenge. On three occasions the scouts brought in some captured Zulus, and Pretorius sent them back to Dingaan to say that if he would restore the land he had granted Retief he would enter into negotiations for peace. ]

4. The Boers in East Africa: Ethnicity and Identity. Brian M. Du Toit. Page 1.

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. ]

5. The Great Trek. Wallace Mills.

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. ]

6. The Republic of South Africa Electoral System.

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. ]

7. The Great Trek. Oliver Ransford. Chapter 9.

Quote: [ It is interesting to note that Alexander Biggar and the other Englishmen in the commando joined in making the vow, but that five Boers abstained for fear of God's vengeance on their descendants if in years to come they broke the promise. ]

Post Script. Due to the fact that this event is often not well understood in the West: it is often distorted & used to infer that the Boers were conquerors when in fact under Piet Retief: they had initially negotiated a peace treaty with Dingaan for the use of vacant land which he had already promised to the British prior.

Correct Term: Boer Nationalist Not Right Winger.

2008-12-30T23:44:00.000-08:00

The Boer Republicans / Boer Nationalists / Boer Irredentists & other modern era Boers who are working towards & struggling to regain the self determination which was stripped from them after the Anglo-Boer War & were further marginalized after 1994 are often recklessly & erroneously labeled as Right Wingers despite the fact that the Boer Nation is a volk / people & not an organization therefore as such is not a political element of a contrived one dimensional political spectrum or a special interest group.

Please note that the correct term is "Boer nationalists" and not "rightwingers". We are not an (extremist) element on the spectrum of the South African professional party-political comedy. We wish to be no part of this "rainbow spectrum". We do not consider ourselves bound in conscience by a constitution, laws, rules and statutes made on our behalf without any form of consultation with us or consent by us. If and when we do obey these oppressive laws, we do it out of a higher conscience, and out of respect for the semblance of the order of things. We have a right to resist an oppressive constitution and oppressive laws. Actions borne from coercion can never be interpreted as the giving of consent.

From an open letter Professor Tobias Louw addressed to the Institute for Security Studies dated September 16 2003.

After their arrest and conviction for illegal armed occupation, their khaki-clad leader, Willem Ratte, wrote furiously from gaol to contest his English press depiction as some right wing anachronism. what outweighed this was a First Anglo-Boer War antecedent. In his torrential and powerful manifesto, Ratte insisted: Were the Boers of 1880 called right-wingers, for resisting the imperialist British occupation? Then, as now, you had an alien regime lording it in Pretoria over our people, whose gutless president had betrayed and handed over his sovereign state. Then, as now, the new (neo) colonialist administration pretended to be God's gift to the supposedly "dirty and dumb dutchmen", and tried its beast to smear the pro-independence party as only a few backward "Don Quixote's tilting at windmills". Our struggle has nothing to do with right or left ... this being incidental, like religion in the Irish-British conflict, but everything to do with a nation having an inherent right to be free.

From: The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration. Page: 121.

Chapter 3. The South African War / Anglo-Boer War 1899 - 1902. and political memory in South Africa. Bill Nasson.

The one dimensional / nebulous & reckless term Right Wing therefore does not accurately describe nor does justice to the centuries old just struggle of Boer self determination as the mass use of the term even pre dates the first Boer freedom struggle & was not even used to describe to the Boer Commandos of the Anglo-Boer War.

Verwoerd Was Not a Friend of the Boer Nation.

2008-12-23T23:53:00.000-08:00

During an interview with the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio noted that the Dutch born architect of the Separate Development phase of the Apartheid laws: Hendrik Verwoerd was not a friend of the Boer Nation as he was interested in amalgamating the region under an economic sphere & scuppered the restoration of the Boer Republics.

Hendrik Verwoerd was a traitor to the Boerevolk. He was not a friend of the Boer Nation. He was there to amalgamate everything in one under an economic sphere. Hendrik Verwoerd did great damage to the Boer Nation. He gave a false pretense that here is a republic so that the Boers could feel okay. It's the same with Malan. Malan was a traitor to the Boer Nation. The Boers stood up [ at ] 500 000 when they had the OB. The Ossewa Brandwag. Or the Oxwagen band of people - Guard in the 1940s to 48. When Malan came to power. Him & Jan Smuts organized & they broke this down to nothing. Where the Boers would have had the Boer Republics soon after that because the Boers were shouting - all these people were shouting: "back to the republics - back to the republics". What republics were they talking about? If you talk to people today who are politically motivated or are involved in politics: they've got no idea what you're talking about. They think about Hendrik Verwoerd's republic. Hendrik Verwoerd's republic came fifteen years later - or twelve years later. After - the only person - the was only one person ever: J G Strijdom - he was pro Boer - he was a Boer himself. We believe strongly that he was killed. Because when he started talking- when he became Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa & they found out that he was starting to say: "let's reinstate the Boer Republics: it's the only solution to the southern tip's problems" we're sure that that is when he was poisoned. Because he suddenly became ill - but one day forensics will find out no matter when. Unless they destroy his remains. But we hope not. So we have a problem Frank we have a tremendous problem. A lot of people blame us & say there's is so much infighting. There's no infighting amongst the Boers. The infighting is between the Boer & Afrikaner.

The above is an excerpt from the interview Theuns Cloete did on December 7 2007 & can be heard here starting at 59 minutes. Few Westerners appear to understand the political intricacies which went on often conflating the Boers with the Afrikaners & Afrikaner Nationalism which in fact worked against the interest of the Boers as Afrikaner Nationalism was in many ways just an extension of British Imperialism but with a Cape Afrikaans face aiming at controlling the macro State which subjugated the Boers in the process due to their smaller numbers in the face of the larger Afrikaner population.

The Boers Are Not Europeans.

2008-12-17T21:51:00.001-08:00

From time to time the Boers are sometimes referred to as Europeans when in fact the European connection is a distant one as they were formed in Africa as a distinct group having cut their ties to Europe quite early on & have been there ever since. The Boers have ancestors which go back 355 years in Africa & most of them have never even been to Europe. Just as it is not accurate to call White people in Europe "Asian" & Amerindians in America "Asian" just because their ancestors originally came from Asia: so too it is not accurate to call Boers European just because most of their distant ancestors were originally from the European continent.

A given culture can only be part of the continent on which they were formed as it makes little sense to label them as being part of a distant continent in which their distant ancestors were from long ago before forming a new people & culture on the continent they are now found.

The following are excerpts noting this fact.

Naturally, order amongst the different nations, forced together into one unnatural state, had to be maintained by unnatural measures - apartheid! Had the English not interfered, had the English not created this unnatural state, had the English not disregarded the ethnic identity of every previously free and self-governing people in Southern Africa, and had the English not erected signs saying "Europeans" and "Non-Europeans" the various nations of Southern Africa could have been spared ethnic friction and its resulting misery!

From: Fritz Meyer.

Open Letter to the Office of the British High Commissioner Pretoria.

The British system of apartheid, which they applied all over the world (for instance also in India, Australia and New-Zealand), had to be imported to control the mixed population. The first manifestation of this were signs reading "Europeans" and "Non-Europeans". No Boer ever regarded himself as a "European". Apartheid invoked racial friction and even racial hatred which has in no means abated to this very day, and the bitter irony is that the Boerevolk, who had not been in power since 1902 and who also suffered severely under apartheid in the sense that apartheid robbed them of their land and their work-ethics, are being blamed for apartheid.

From: Hennie Barnard.

The Concentration Camps.

Is George W Bush of Irish descent(?) not an American in the same vein as Chief Sitting Bull in Arizona? Why then are Whites in South Africa not referred to as Africans!!! The Whites, and then the Afrikaans-speaking Whites are nothing other than a people (= Volk) similar to the Venda, Xhosa and Griqua peoples. The difference being language and ethnicity.

From: C J Kruger.

From the Transvaal Agricultural Union site.

The trend among some to inaccurately label which continent the Boers are associated with has the effect of implying that the Boers are not part of the continent they were formed on & have been associated with for well over 3 centuries now.

The Boers Were Not Colonials.

2008-11-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

Westerners who are new to researching Southern Africa often have the initial erroneous presumption that the Boers were Colonials due to their Caucasian / ethnic European appearance but the fact of the matter is that they never were as the Boers are the result of a homegrown culture which sprang up on African soil out of the diverse groups the VOC brought to the Cape starting in the mid 1650s. The original White arrivals were brought out from northern Europe as servants of the Dutch East India Co. / the VOC - a semi private company which set up a victualing station at the Cape for passing ships & founded Cape Town. Those first arrivals were by & large of German & Frisian ethnic origin -most of whom were flooded out of their homes by the VOC & later forced to accompany Jan Van Riebeeck to the Cape- as well as smaller numbers of Dutch. Then about 35 years later large numbers of French Huguenot refugees escaping political & religious persecution in France were sent to the Cape were they would within the next generation amalgamate with the other arrivals & shape the emerging homegrown language which would later be called Afrikaans. Though the Boers often called - & still often do call - their dialect the taal or the language which was a different dialect even from the dialect spoken by the White proto Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape who would go on later to label the language Afrikaans.

Starting in the late 1600s & throughout the 1700s significant numbers of the poorer proto Afrikaans speaking members of the Cape began to trek out of the Western Cape & inland becoming pastoralists in an attempt at escaping the autocratic rule of the VOC & to find better grazing land. The term Trekboer was used to describe these nomadic frontier folk as they were essentially migrating or trekking farmers who began occupying the northern & eastern Cape frontiers & were already quite distinct from the urbane inhabitants of the Western Cape who were often referred to as the Cape Dutch. Over time the term Trekboer was shortened to Boer to describe the frontier folk who were markedly independence oriented & would later have their first freedom struggle against the Dutch power in 1795.

The Boer people & culture therefore did not develop in Europe then suddenly transplant itself later in the Cape as the Boers developed in Africa & are a combination of many diverse origins. While most of their ancestors did in fact arrive from Europe: it is important to remember that they did not come as Colonists on behalf of a European power but in fact as servants of the Dutch East India Co. Later many were let go & became free citizens in an attempt by the VOC to cut costs. When about 300 French Huguenots arrived in the Cape as refugees -escaping religious persecution in France- from 1671 until 1707 (one family as late as 1726): the basis of the Boer nation was formed as these French Huguenot refugees viewed Africa as their new home & shaped the emerging Afrikaans language. Numerous other German Protestants also came as political & religious refugees as well. The basis of the Boer people / nation therefore was the amalgamation of the Dutch & Frisian settlers with the French Huguenot refugees & German Protestant refugees.

Further dispelling the erroneous colonial notion of their origins: The Boers have even been referred as the " White tribe of Africa" in the past & some Bantu groups did in fact recognize them as a tribe during the era of the Great Trek.

The nascent Boer nation broke their ties to Europe early on most notably during the late 1600s & throughout the 1700s when they began trekking eastward & inland in order to escape the authoritarian rule of the Dutch East India Co. Therefore: when uninformed or ill-informed Westerners assert that the Boers are " White colonials" they betray their total lack of knowledge on the matter. While many of those who remained in the Western Cape could certainly be considered colonials to a certain extent -the Trekboers & by extension the Boers can not honestly be considered as such since they promptly broke away from European domination & viewed themselves as being African & developed their own dialect which was classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans after the expanding border regions of the eastern Cape frontier where the Boers developed.

The Voortrekkers -who would later go on to found the more successful & various other Boer Republics- were of Trekboer descent. Furthermore: the Boers developed into a nation / people long before their first encounter with a Black (Bantu) group. Their first encounter with a Bantu group was with the Xhosas during around 1777. 125 years after the first arrivals of their European ancestors at the Cape. This is a very significant point as it moots any ignorant notion opposing their presence in their own land of birth. While their ancestors did encounter indigenous people in the Western Cape: they were the Khoisan peoples (a yellow-brown skinned people with Oriental looking features) who were once native to & hence the aboriginals of much of the southern & eastern half of Africa before being displaced & annihilated by migrating darker skinned Bantu groups. The Khoisan groups are now only found in the Northern Cape & Namibia (mainly the San / Bushmen) while the remaining Khoi were absorbed into the emerging Cape Coloured population.

The Voortrekker leaders were a unique blend of European style General & African Chief & the Voortrekkers trekked / migrated in clans following a specific elected leader & were descended from a long line of semi nomadic people who had a rather long historical record of trekking.

The Boers Were Not Interested In Gold.

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The Boers were in fact not interested in & were even against the extraction of the gold in the region as they knew that the foreign interest & influx this would generate would spell the end of their independence & of course this is precisely what did happen later.

The actual discovery of gold in the Transvaal territory is credited to a German named Mauch, who travelled through that part of the country early in the century. He returned to Berlin with wonderful reports of the gold he had found, and attempted to enlist capital to work the mines. Whether his reports were not credited, or whether the Germans feared the natives, is not recorded, but Mauch is not heard of again in connection with the later history of the country. In 1854 a Dutchman named Jan Marais, who had a short time before returned from the Australian gold fields, prospected in the Transvaal, and found many evidences of gold. The Boers, fearing that their land would be overrun with gold-seekers, paid five hundred pounds to Marais, and sent him home after extracting a promise that he would not reveal his secret to any one.

From: Chapter 3. The Johannesburg Gold Fields. Oom Paul's People. Howard C Hillegas.

It is a strange anomaly that the Boers, a pastoral people exclusively, should have settled in a section of the earth where Nature has two of her richest storehouses. Both the Kimberley diamond mines and the Witwatersrandt gold mines, each the richest deposit of its kind discovered thus far, were found where the Boers were accustomed to graze their herds and flocks. It would seem as if Nature had influenced the Boers to settle above her treasures, and protect them from the attacks of nations and men who are not satisfied with the products of the earth's surface, but must delve below.

From: Chapter 1. South Africa of the Present Time. Oom Paul's People. Howard C Hillegas. Published: 1900.

Small traces of gold had been found in the Transvaal before Burgers took over but, far from exploiting this discovery to relieve their state's near penury, the Transvaalers, believing that no good could come of it, did their best to hush it up.

From: The Anglo-Boer Wars by Micheal Barthorp. Page 12.

The discovery and exploitation of mineral wealth (diamonds and gold) is undoubtedly the biggest factor in the creation of modern South Africa, but Trekboers had little role in that; in fact, they often wanted to impede that development.From: The Great Trek. by Canadian Professor Wallace Mills.

Therefore contrary to what some uniformed folks might claim: the Boers were not fighting for the gold because they never even wanted it to be extracted in the first place - valuing their hard won independence much more & also realizing the severe consequences of mining it. Those concerns proved valid later as the discovery of gold was one of the main reasons for the British drive to war against the republics. The other compelling reason being that the British did not want to have powerful Boer Republics scuppering their Colonial agenda in the region.

The Concentration Camps Were Death Camps.

2008-10-30T21:47:00.000-07:00

The concentration camps the British used to round up Boer civilians during the second Anglo-Boer War in fact soon turned into death camps resulting in the death of 27 000 of which 24 000 were children under the age of sixteen which represented the death of close to 50 % of the total Boer child population.

The establishment of these camps is often glossed over in modern times without realizing the horrors which occurred within them nor the understanding of how significant an event this was to the Boerevolk whose numbers were greatly reduced as a result.

The following is an excerpt from Hennie Barnard entitled: The Concentration Camps.

The English claim of decent actions towards the Boer women and children are further contradicted by the location of the concentration camps. The military authorities, who often had to plan and erect camps for their soldiers, would certainly have been well aware of the essential requirements for such camps. Yet the concentration camps were established in the most unsuitable locations possible. At Standerton the camp was erected on both banks of the Vaal River. It was on the Highveld, which ensured that it was extremely cold in winter and infested with mosquitoes in summer. The fact that Standerton had turf soil and a high rainfall, ensured that the camp was one big mud bath in summer, even inside the tents. The same circumstances were experienced in camps such as Brandfort, Springfontein and Orange River. At Pretoria, the Irene Camp was located at the chilly southern side of the town, while the northern side had a much more favourable climate. Balmoral, Middelburg and other camps were also located on the south-eastern hangs of the hills to ensure that the inhabitants were exposed to the icy south easterly winds. Merebank camp was located in a swamp where there was an abundance of various kinds of insects. Water oozed out of the ground, ensuring that everything was constantly wet and slimy. By October 1900 there were already 58 883 people in concentration camps in Transvaal and 45 306 in the Free State. The amenities in the camps were clearly planned to kill as many of the women and children as possible. They were accommodated in tattered reject tents which offered no protection against the elements. Emily Hobhouse, the Cornish lady who campaigned for better conditions for the Boer women, wrote: "Throughout the night there was a downpour. Puddles of water were everywhere. They tried to get themselves and their possessions dry on the soaked ground." (Hobhouse: Brunt of the War, page 169.) Dr Kendal Franks reports on the Irene Camp: "In one of the tents there were three families; parents and children, a total of 14 people and all were suffering from measles." In Springfontein camp, 19 to 20 people where crammed into one tent. There were neither beds nor mattresses and nearly the whole camp population had to sleep on the bare ground, which was damp most of the time. One person wrote the following plea for aid to the New York Herald: "In the name of small children who have to sleep in open tents without fire, with barely any clothes, I plea for help." 3.4. Let them die of hunger. According to a British journalist, WT Stead, the concentration camps were nothing more than a cruel torture machine. He writes: "Every one of these children who died as a result of the halving of their rations, thereby exerting pressure onto their family still on the battle-field, was purposefully murdered. The system of half rations stands exposed and stark and unshamefully as a cold-blooded deed of state policy employed with the purpose of ensuring the surrender of people whom we were not able to defeat on the battlefield." The detainees received no fruit or vegetables; not even milk for the babies. The meat and flour issued were crawling with maggots. Emily Hobhouse writes: "I have in my possession coffee and sugar which were described as follows by a London analyst: In the case of the first, 66% imitation, and in the case of the second, sweepings from a warehouse." In her book, Met die Boere in die Veld (With the Boers in the field), Sara Raal states that "there were poisonous sulphate of copper, grounded glass, fishhooks, and razor blades in the rations." The evidence given on this fact is so overwhelming that it must be regarded as a historical fact. 3.5. No hygiene. The outbreak of disease and epidemics in the camps were further promoted by, inter alia, the lack of sanitary conveniences. Bloemfontein camp had only 13 toilets for more than 3 500 people. Aliwal North camp had one toilet for every 170 people. A British physician, Dr Henry Becker, writes: "First, they chose an ill-suited site for the camp. Then they supplied so little water that the people could neither wash themselves nor their clothes. Furthermore, they made no provision for sufficient waste removal. And lastly, they did not provide enough toilets for the overpopulation they had crammed into the camps." A report on a Ladies' Committee's visit to Bloemfontein camp stated: "They saw how the women tried to wash clothes in small puddles of water and sometimes had to use the water more than once." 3.6. Hospitals of homicide. Ill and healthy people were crammed together into unventilated areas conducive to the spreading of disease and epidemics. At first there were no medical amenities whatsoever in the camps. Later doctors were appointed, but too few. In Johannesburg there was one doctor for every 4 000 afflicted patients. A report on the Irene camp states that, out of a population of 1325 detainees, 154 were ill and 20 had died during the previous week. Still this camp had only one doctor and no hospital. In some camps matters were even worse. The large Bloemfontein camp did not have a single doctor; only one nurse who could not possibly cope with the conditions. During a visit to Norvalspont camp Emily Hobhouse could not even find a trained nurse. The later appointment of medical personnel did not improve the conditions. They were appointed for their loyalty towards the British invasion; not for their medical capability. They maltreated the Boere. Emily Hobhouse tells the story of the young Lizzie van Zyl who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp: "She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the 'undesirables' due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labelled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling: Mother! Mother! I want to go to my mother! One Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance." Shortly afterwards, Lizzie van Zyl died. Treu, a medical assistant in the Johannesburg concentration camp, stated that patients were bullied and even lashed with a strap. Ill people who were taken to the camp hospitals were as good as dead. One woman declared: "We fear the hospitals more than death." The following two reports should give an idea of the inefficiency of the camp hospitals: "Often people suffering from a minor ailment were violently removed from the tents of protesting mothers or family members to be taken to hospital. After a few days they were more often than not carried to the grave." "Should a child leave the hospital alive, it was simply a miracle." (Both quotations from Stemme uit die Verlede - a collection of sworn statements by women who were detained in the concentration camps during the Second War of Independence.) 3.7. The highest sacrifice. In total 27 000 women and children made the highest sacrifice in the British hell camps during the struggle for the freedom of the Boerevolk. Mrs Helen Harris, who paid a visit to the Potchefstroom concentration camp, stated: "Imagine a one year old baby who receives no milk; who has to drink water or coffee - there is no doubt that this is the cause of the poor health of the children." Should one take note of the fact that it were the English who killed the Boers' cattle with bayonets, thereby depriving the children of their food sources, then the high fatality rate does not seem to be incidental. Despite shocking fatality figures in the concentration camps, the English did nothing to improve the situation, and the English public remained deaf to the lamentations in the concentration camps as thousands of people, especially children, were carried to their graves. The Welshman, Lloyd George, stated: "The fatality rate of our soldiers on the battlefields, who were exposed to all the risks of war, was 52 per thousand per year, while the fatalities of women and children in the camps were 450 per thousand per year. We have no right to put women and children into such a position." An Irishman, Dillon, said: "I can produce and endless succession of confirmations that the conditions in most of the camps are appalling and brutal. To my opinion the fatality rate is nothing less than cold-blooded murder." One European had the following comment on England's conduct with the concentration camps: "Great Britain cannot win her battles without resorting to the despicable cowardice of the most loathsome cure on earth - the act of striking at a brave man's heart through his wife's honour and his child's life." The barbarousness of the English is strongly evidenced by the way in which they unceremoniously threw the corpses of children in heaps on mule carts to be transported to the cemeteries. The mourning mothers had to follow on foot. Due to illness or fatigue many of them could not follow fast enough and had to miss the funerals of their children. According to PF Bruwer, author of Vir Volk en Vryheid, all the facts point out that the concentration camps, also known as the hell camps, were a calculated and deliberate effort by England to commit a holocaust on the Boerevolk.

The above was an excerpt from The Concentration Camps from Hennie Barnard.

Click on the link to read the full report.

The Great Trek Was Not Over Abolition.

2008-10-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

Certain historians have erroneously asserted the the Great Trek was motivated over the issue of the abolition of slavery but the fact of the matter is that historians have noted that most of the Boers of the frontiers did not own slaves as most of the slave owners were among the Cape Dutch of the Western Cape of whom very few went on the Great Trek.

The fact of the matter is that most of the Boers of the frontier did not own slaves. Canadian professor Wallace Mills noted this in his course on the Great Trek & the Encyclopedia Britannica BOTH note that most of the Boers did not own slaves. The Great Trek was motivated over the constant frontier wars with the Xhosas who were killing so many Boers that they decided that the best thing for them to do was to trek away from the area as their ancestors had done from the VOC power back almost one century & a half earlier.

The British Imperialism in the region was simply the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. There were other pressing matters such as the constant border wars & growing land shortages. The notable consequence relating to the abolition of slavery which might have in fact played a role in causing the Great Trek was that the former slaves were now wandering all over often attacking local residents. Piet Retief only mentioned the abolition of slavery in his Manifesto in a vain attempt at getting the tacit support or understanding of the slave owning Cape Dutch. Who in fact often looked down at the Boers & ridiculed them for wanting to trek.

The following is an excerpt from the course by the Canadian Professor Wallace Mills.

Quote:

[ Landless poor whites. - recent interpretations tend to stress more mundane factors and motivations for the movement. The migratory habits to acquire more land, which were firmly established by trekboers throughout the 18th C, had been bottled up for 40-50 years and there were growing numbers of landless white males. In trekboer society, this was a terrible situation and fate. Their only course was to become a ‘bywoner’ to some relative or other farmer with land. As such, they would provide services (usually as an overseer) and be allowed to use some land for a few cattle or agricultural purposes. This meant that their status was only a bit better than non-white servants. - this interpretation sees the ‘Great Trek’ as merely the bursting of the dam that had bottled such migrations up for over 2 generations. Piet Retief’s Manifesto. - Retief was one of the most influential of the Great Trek leaders. Among those who joined the Great Trek, he was a bit unusual in a couple of respects. He was much better off than most trekkers; at one time he owned over 20 lots in Grahamstown as well as farm properties. As can be seen from his letter (it was translated for publication in the Grahamstown Journal), he was better educated than most who were illiterate or just barely literate. - Retief’s so-called manifesto has too often been accepted uncritically and without analysis of context. Not all the assertions can be accepted at face value. It must be analysed carefully and critically. - for example, the complaint about the abolition of slavery and the process of compensation for a long time went unexamined and was repeated innumerable times as a factor in the trek (by both friends and critics). -however, investigation revealed that slavery was not common in the eastern frontier areas from which almost all the Voortrekkers came. Besides, no new slaves could be imported after 1807 and the prices of the existing slaves had risen markedly. Very few (if any) Voortrekkers had ever owned slaves. Retief’s only known connection was that at one time he had borrowed money from an ex-slave woman! Shutting down of migration after 1780s. - the earlier expansion had left some land not taken up behind the leading edges and the pushing back of the Xhosa in the early wars in the 19th C had made some land available (however, the 1820 settlers had also been assigned much of that); nevertheless, the voracious appetite for land among trekboers meant that by the 1830s, landlessness had grown. In effect, the on-going migration that had characterised the 18th C had been dammed up for almost 50 years. Thus, the Great Trek can be viewed as the bursting of the dam. Thus, the Great Trek can be seen as merely the resumption of the earlier process. - this interpretation is supported by the fact that late in the 19th C when the problem of landlessness again reemerged in the South African Republic (Transvaal), a couple of attempts were made to organize new treks farther into the interior (into Zimbabwe or Angola). These efforts were blocked by Rhodes who wanted to ensure that it was the British Empire that got these areas. ]

End of quote.

From: The Great Trek. Wallace Mills.

The following is from American author Stephen Crane.

[ As far back as 1809, Hottentots were prohibited from wandering about the country without passes, and from 1812, Hottentot children who had been maintained for eight years by the employers of their parents, were bound as apprenticed for ten years longer. The missionaries were dissatisfied with these restrictions; both of them were removed by an ordinance passed July, 1828, when vagrant Hottentots began to wander over the country at will. Farming became almost impossible; the farm-laborers became vagabonds and petty thefts took place constantly. Early in 1834, Sir Benjamin D'Urban, called "the Good," was appointed Governor. A legislative council was then granted the colony, but its powers were not great. The Boers had never been greatly in favor (many opposed it strongly) of slavery, but they had yielded to the general custom and over three million pounds was invested in slaves throughout the colony in 1834. Sir Benjamin D'Urban proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves, who had been set free throughout the British Empire, in August, 1833. This freeing was to take effect in Cape Colony on the 1st of December, 1834. The news of the emancipation was felt to be a relief, but the terms on which it was conducted were productive of unending trouble. The slave-owners of Cape Colony were awarded less than a million and a quarter for their slaves -- and the imperial government refused to send the money to South Africa; each claim was to be proved before commissioners in London, when the amount would be paid in stock. To make a journey of one hundred days to London was, of course, impossible to the farmers; they were at the mercy of agents who made their way down to the colony and purchased the claims, so that the colonist received sometimes a fifth, sometimes a sixth, or less, of the value of his slaves. The colonists had hoped that a vagrant act would have been passed by the Council when the slaves were freed, to keep them from being still further overrun by this large released black population, but this was not done. ]

End of quote.

From: The Great Boer Trek.

The slave owners were the Cape Dutch in the Western Cape most of whom did not go on the series of mass migrations later called the Great Trek. Therefore if slavery was a motivating factor then why did MOST of the slave owners not go on the trek? The only grievance anyone had about the abolition of slavery was the fact that the compensation was impossible to collect.

[ The discontent, so often, and to his detriment, ascribed to the Boer was exaggerated and misrepresented, as, for instance, in the matter of the freeing of the slaves, when he was described as being inhumanly against their liberation. No! Your Majesty, it was not the Christian Boers' repugnance to the emancipation, but his opposition to the means employed in effecting same under the blessed British rule. Is Your Majesty perhaps aware how the Boers became possessed of those slaves? They, the Boers, had no ships to convey the slaves from Mozambique and elsewhere, as none other than English vessels were allowed to bring slaves to the Cape market; therefore, it was from English slave-ships that the Boers first bought their slaves, and in this manner enjoyed a short season of prosperity; for, assisted by their dearly bought slaves, they could have their lands ploughed and sown with grain, which, under the blessings of Britannia's laws, could be sold for not more than 18d. per bag. It was thereafter shipped abroad by English merchants and sold at immense profits. And then,Your Majesty, the Boer was suddenly told: "Your slaves are free, and you will receive compensation to such and such an amount for them, which you will have to go and get in England." Your Majesty, how could the Boer be expected with his ox-wagon or horses to go and fetch same? To have undertaken, at that time, a voyage so dangerous and lengthy (a hundred days or so being the time required to accomplish same) would have cost more than the small amount of the indemnity he was to receive for his dearly bought slaves. What could the Boer do? The only means left him was to engage the English dealer, from whom he had purchased the slaves at exorbitant prices, to go and fetch the money for him, or to sell his chance for what he could get. ]

The above excerpt was from: General Petrus Joubert. Vice President of the Transvaal Republic during the tenure of President Paul Kruger whom he ran against 3 times. This excerpt is noted in the Story of the Boers: a book compiled by a Dutch diplomat named C W van der Hoogt who met President Paul Kruger & was published in 1900. The role of the abolition of slavery was certainly minimal in nature when taking the above facts into consideration.

The Boers Recognized With 5 Conventions.

2008-10-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

The Boers have been recognized through conventions at least 5 times. The Sand River Convention of 1852 - which lead to the independence of the Boer Republics within the Transvaal region / the Orange River Convention of 1854 - which lead to the independence of the Orange Free State within the Transorangia region / the London Convention of 1881 - which lead to the re-established independence of the ZAR in the Transvaal region / the London Convention of 1884 - which lead to the full independence of the ZAR in the Transvaal region / the Vereeniging Treaty of 1902 which concluded the second Anglo-Boer War.

The Boer Republics Were Recognized.

2008-10-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

The two major Boer Republics: the Transvaal Republic & the Orange Free State which fought against Britain during the Anglo-Boer War were recognized around the world prior to the outbreak of the war.

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."

From: The Story of the Boers. C W van der Hoogt. Published in 1900. Page 97.

The independence of the Boers north of the Orange River was recognized internationally first with the Sand River Convention which granted independence to the Boers north of the Vaal River up to the Limpopo River in 1852 then with the Orange River Convention of 1854 which recognized the independence of the Boers north of the Orange River which extended up to the Vaal River wherein the Orange Free State was declared existing right up to the conclusion of the second Anglo-Boer War.

The Noted Distinction of Boers From Afrikaners.

2008-09-23T21:37:00.000-07:00

What is often overlooked is the fact that most Afrikaners are not descended from the Boers hence the distinction between Boer & Afrikaner is a valid / poignant & relevant distinction. The Afrikaners -as a macro group- were not the successors of the Boers contrary to common interpretation as the Boers were & are a minority within the Afrikaner designation - a designation which relates mainly to the descendents of the Afrikaans speakers from the Western Cape who were formerly known as the Cape Dutch - but due to the Afrikaner appropriation of the Boers' history- many people erroneously think that the Afrikaners were a product of the Boers but Boer self determination & traditions were supplanted & discarded by the rise of the Cape based Afrikaners & their political outlook. The Boer people did not consent to the their usurpation as the Boers were left impoverished after the Anglo-Boer War whereupon they were left looking for work in the cities & were susceptible to the Cape based Afrikaner intellectuals who began to co-opt them within a political framework most notably under the rubric of Afrikaner Nationalism in which Boer aspirations were hijacked & had to submit to the political agenda as directed by the Cape based Afrikaners & particularly their Broederbond which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism & the National Party which later won power.

There were notable distinctions in the past. The Boers were often not formally educated while the Cape Dutch often were. The Boers were pastoral while the Cape Dutch were often urbane. The Boers were anti Colonial & valued independence while the Cape Dutch were often indifferent or pro Colonial. The Boers developed their own dialect of Afrikaans which historians classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans after the Cape frontier where the Boers developed.

The Boers developed into a culture / people long before the Cape Dutch descended Cape based Afrikaners came along a decided that they were a people called Afrikaners who would later co-opt the Boers to a certain extent within a political context. The Boers have been overshadowed by the Afrikaners for the past 100 years due to the fact that the Cape Dutch descended Afrikaners inherited the macro State of South Africa as created by the British marginalizing the Boer people in the process due to their smaller numbers. The Boers are obscured by the fact that they are often represented by Afrikaners & their agendas therefore the Boers are often not represented by Boers or as Boer people due to the erroneous Afrikaner claim over all of the White Afrikaans speaking peoples culminating in the Afrikaner appropriation of Boer heritage which stemmed from political developments during the 1930s. Afrikaner organizations even attempt to prevent Boers from congregating at or inheriting their own cultural monuments. The Boers therefore have not only been colonized by the British in the past but are in fact colonized also by the Afrikaners as well.

There were a number of Boers who resisted the Afrikaner agenda mainly in the form of opting for secession & or the restoration of the old Boer Republics but they were often labeled as or overshadowed by the purported Right Wing.

The Boers have not had a significant voice in public policy as a political entity ever since the early 20th cent when they were outmaneuvered by the Afrikaner Nationalist movement which hijacked their aspirations & tethered them to the larger non-Boer descended White Afrikaans population.

This post will present articles & excerpted text noting & documenting this recognition as made by an eclectic range of personalities from journalists / authors to professors.

The following are noted documented differences between the Afrikaner & the Boer.

Bang bang – you’re dead. Yolandi Groenewald counts the casualties at last week’s Boerevolk reenactment of the battle of Amajuba Can all the English please die?" the Boer general asks as the English prepare to hike up the mountain from their camp. A lone Union Jack waves solemnly over the camp while a sea of Vierkleure (the old ZAR flag) decorates the hilltop. The British are outnumbered and the English commander just smiles and nods his head as a rendition of the famous De la Rey tune, sung by a Boere knaap, thunders over speakers. Watching over the surrealistic scene is a bunch of British tourists -- and members of the Boerevolk. The scene takes place at Amajuba mountain, just 10km outside Volkrust on the border of Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. A little more than 127 years ago, the battle of Amajuba was forever written into the history books by a small Boer army overcoming the might of the Victorian army. From generation to generation, proud Afrikaners have told their children how they defeated the English that day and won the first Anglo-Boer War, killing 92 Englishmen and only suffering one casualty themselves. Now, every year in February, a few hundred people gather at Amajuba mountain to celebrate the battle. This year the Dundee Die Hards, South Africa’s only permanent battle reenactment team staged a battle with Boer troops, made up with commando members from Lydenburg and Pretoria. But, since 2000, the cultural celebration has become more than just the remembrance of a battle. Bit by bit, it has acquired a political taste as the people who gathered distanced themselves more and more from Afrikaners and reclaimed what they deemed a forgotten identity. They are the Boerevolk. Over the past week, the Boer commandos trekked all the way from the north of Mpumalanga to the Amajuba camp on horseback, carrying the Vierkleur and other Boerevolk flags in their wake and sleeping on farms. First, the Victorian army soldiers, dressed in their blood-red uniforms, marched up the hill to the sound of Scottish music. Then the Boer soldiers started creeping up the mountain, their khaki uniforms blending in perfectly with the veld. Just like their foolish ancestors, the Die Hards fired in unison at the Boere. In contrast, the Boere fired when needed and slowly picked off the English in their sitting-duck uniforms. As the last English soldier was shot, the Boer general raised the flag and shouted in Afrikaans: “South Africa for the white man, and the British can come too, because we are all in this together.” The British tourists, of course, did not understand a word. Almost immediately, die Volk sang the ZAR national anthem Kent gij dat volk vol heldemoed, followed by the Die lied van jong Suid Afrika. One of the Boere-leaders is medical doctor Lets Pretorius, an accused in the Boeremag trial. Pretorius is quick to point out that he is not an Afrikaner, but a Boer. “The fire of the Boerevolk burns within me. You might be poor, but if you feel the fire of being a Boer patriot, you will have wealth no one can take away from you,” he says fiercely. “It is the feeling of when you listen to De la Rey, something stirs inside that says this is my destiny.” Pretorius, who is also the founder of new right-wing organisation or “Boer party” the Boerevolk Freedom Foundation, believes the Afrikaner oppressed the Boer nation as well and robbed them of their proud heritage. “The Boerevolk never oppressed anyone,” he says. “We might have benefited from apartheid, but we were never the people who governed this country and made all those mistakes. Those were the Afrikaners. “When diamonds and gold were discovered in the old ZAR republic, lots of these Afrikaners from the Cape, who never participated in the war, came up to the old republic to find their fortune. But what they didn’t bargain on was being called up for military service. Sadly, these people were the first to be turncoats, Hanskakies, verraaiers [traitors]. They absconded at the first opportunity.” When the war ended, Pretorius says, these turncoats also shared in its spoils. They weren’t impoverished while the Boer soldiers who returned home had nothing left. “These people were so impoverished, they were unable to participate in the politics of the day successfully and when the union of South Africa was formed in 1910, the Afrikaners from the Cape received most of the power.” In 1914, when Boere rebels turned against the Jan Smuts government and refused to fight in World War I, they were mistakenly labelled as Afrikaner rebels, Pretorius says. He says the Boerevolk was further sidelined during the Hertzog administration. But, in 1938, the big Groot Trek celebrations took place at the Voortrekker Monument and Boer patriotism took hold of the volk. “But Afrikaners like DF Malan hijacked the Boer patriotism and used it to establish Afrikaner nationalism. With one shot, the Boerevolk was robbed of their identity.” Pretorius says the Ossewa Brandwag that was established shortly afterward, just before World War II broke out, was again Boerevolk identity coming to the fore. But after Malan took control in 1948, it was nationalist ideals all the way. But, he says, since the Eighties, Boere have been rediscovering their identity and their sense of where they belong in the country -- even more so since 1994. Just as the last pegs of the Die Hards’ English tents were packed away, the Boerevolk gathered. Boere-sport was scheduled for the afternoon, but the real sports took place in the meeting hall where heated discussions about the future of the Boerevolk overshadowed any game of tug of war. In the corner, an amused Boer smiled before sharing a joke during a break in proceedings: “You know what they said about two Boers who landed on an island. They started two churches and three political parties. But that is our little volk for you.”

From: Mail & Guardian Online.

this came to be the major assertion of Afrikaner nationalists in later generations. F. van Jaarsveld challenged this idea in the 1960s in The Awakening of Afrikaner Nationalism; he was roundly denounced for this heresy and there were demands that he be fired from his job in the Univ. of Potchefstroom for Christian National Education.

- he argued that a sense of ‘national identity’ was very little or not at all developed; 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 ‘nation’.

From: Canadian Professor Wallace Mills.

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 Central Southern Africa Prior to 1910.

Having been falsley accused by media of unbecoming conduct, intollerance and many other unflattering traits for many years, we Boer people have develloped a fair degree of aversion towards the general media. The Boervolk has been unfairley associated with the worst that political partys, political organisations and the Afrikaner, which is totaly a different species, can offer.

From: Buks Barnard. Response to Pretoria News article of October 19 1999.

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 semi nomadic 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.

TRP host Frank: Now can you tell our audience please the difference between a Boer & an Afrikaner. Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Let me put it to you this way: In the 1800s there were 3 groups of White people basically in the southern tip of Africa. And all historians all over the world & even people in the Cape British administrators etc. were writing & you can go & look & they were writing & they wrote about the Cape Dutch who were staying mainly in the southern part of the Cape. And then they were talking about the British those British & the British settlers that came in after 1820. And then they were talking about the Boers the Boer Nation. And the Boers sort of moved from the north east Cape into the Boer Republics. So throughout history there was talk of 3 different nations. The Cape Dutch / the British / & the Boers. Now today a lot of people are saying no there is no such thing as a Boer. We have radio stations right wing radio stations in South Africa that are saying not saying right wing but so called - I would rather say so called conservative radio stations that are propagating the idea of the Afrikaner & using the term - the terminology Boer now & then to sort of pacify or to draw more people on the right towards them so that they can sort of gather votes or people & funds & what have you. And so it's actually a farce because today when you ask people what happened to the Cape Dutch. Where are they? Where have they gone? Did they become like the dinosaurs? Just wiped out. Did some meteorite hit the Cape province & destroy them? Where did these Afrikaners come from? You know. What happened to the Boers? They cant answer you. You know because the Boers are there. The Cape Dutch have disappeared. Although they say the Afrikaners are there. Which means the Boers have disappeared and the Cape Dutch have disappeared. So somehow the two became "one". They never became one as a nation. Never at all. They became one as a myth of the politicians to form a new nation. As Milner said: to destroy the Boers there is only one way. Do not ever try to go to war with them again. Britain will lose. Because Britain was nearly bankrupted at the end of the Anglo-Boer War. It was the most expensive war they ever fought. And Milner said "the only way to destroy the Boers is to destroy their identity". And that's exactly what they did the politicians. They removed our identity from our souls from our nation. And they started calling us Afrikaners in our schools / education systems in our churches and you name it. People started calling themselves Afrikaners. And today a lot of them still don't realize that they're actually Boers because of the propaganda. So that is the main thing. All the farms in the Transvaal. On these farms. All these farmers that are being killed. They are not all Boers. Sorry they are not all Boers. Some of them are our worst enemies. They hate us they deny us our independence. They do not like us. They never liked us. They always voted yes for this no for that. They have always voted against us. The Cape Dutch or the Afrikaner in the Cape. They have never ever had a struggle for freedom for independence. Never. It was the Boers that had it. And the Boers came & started the Boer Republics. They lived there peacefully. When the war came - the Anglo-Boer War. Thousands of people in the Cape - the Cape Dutch helped the British against the Boers. So they were our enemy. We can not stand with our enemy & call them together. They are our enemy tomorrow. They say: "you can't really fight this you can't really do that." you know. We got to make up our minds & decide we want to do this we want to go & do that we want our country back. We can not let them negotiate you know. We can't let them negotiate for us because we will loose. We will loose everything. It's a very difficult situation. To take back South Africa is totally ludicrous in today's world. If a third world war breaks out then by all means nobody will have a chance against the Boers because nobody in Europe or America will lift a finger of whatever we do down here because they will be fighting each other shooting with atomic weapons & you name it. They will not have a minute - they will not have a second to worry about what's happening in the rest of Africa. But at the moment everybody talking about retaking the whole of South Africa they are nuts. Like the HNP. The Herstigte National Party. They're nuts. There's a saying going around amongst some of the right wing people in Southern Africa. The only time the Boer Nation really will be saved is when those that are trying or those leaders - or those who believe they are leaders who are trying to save us today are actually dead. Only then will we be able to be saved. We will get rid of all of these old ideas & old stigmas then the Boer Nation will sit up say wow let's rethink everything. That's where I am coming from. Now I today say that it is pay back time for the Cape Dutch. Because the Cape Dutch are the people who helped the British kill half of our children up to 1902. The Cape Dutch assisted the British in all of their atrocities or most of the atrocities during the war right through the 3 years war of the Boer War. They are the people that are getting payback. We are also suffering from it. But we are not suffering as much as what they are suffering. Because they can not handle it. It is not a good thing. But we can handle it a lot better. We are not liberal like them we know were we are heading. We got to stand together. We will loose some people. But only until the Boer Nation stands up. No other nation with us as a new nation.

From: Theuns Cloete third interview with the Right Perspective Program.

When I founded the Boerestaat Party in 1986, few people thought of the idea. Today, the majority of the Boervolk support this claim. Even the Afrikaners are now supporting the idea of a geographical area of some sort.

From: Fred Rundle interview of Robert van Tonder.

There has always been a vast difference between the "trek-Boers", "Voortrekkers", "grensboere" and the so called Afrikaners - who were the elitist collaborators with the British at the Cape, and who also collaborated on the British side to help defeat the independent Boer Republics. After the feat of the Boer Republics, its voters - who had always been known as Boers everywhere in the world - suddenly lost their identity because the elitist Afrikaners who started running things on behalf of the British, insisted that everybody be called "Afrikaner" and that everybody should be "reconciled." Strangely back then, people who looked down on the defeated Boers were referred to in the news media such as The Star of Johannesburg as "racists" who should make an "effort at reconciliation". However most of the "reconciliation" came from the side of the defeated Boers who had to find a livelihood as working-class workers in the mines and factories of the cities. They were forced to relinquish their identity indeed as the Afrikaners of today are now being forced to start referring to themselves as "Afrikaanses" - people who speak Afrikaans, a term which was thought up by Mrs Elna Boesak. See how history repeats itself? From: Journalist Adriana Stuijt at Stop Boer Genocide forum.

I have tried to explore this subject on Censorbugbear. msn.groups.com/censorbugbear These people have had so many different handles over the past 350 years that it's hard to keep track - and now they are being given another name, namely "Afrikaanses". That particular latest handle was thought up by Mrs Elna Boesak and other like-minded people - and refers to all the people in South Africa who speak Afrikaans i.e. also Afrikaans-speaking people of colour. President Mbeki meanwhile prefers to refer to everybody with a paler skin than his own with the racist nomer of "whites" - which he often uses as an insult during parliamentary debates. Small wonder these people are confused about their own identity! A "trekBoer", a "grensBoer", a "Voortrekker" and a "Boer" all refer to exactly the same people who had founded and supported the Independent Boer Republics of Natalia, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (ZAR) and who were independent citizens in their own democratic republics for about fifty years before the British destroyed them in their ethnic-cleansing campaign. History records that the British, the Dutch, the Germans, the French, the Americans and indeed many other foreign governments during those years invariably referred to the voters of these republics as "Boers." After they were defeated, they suddenly weren't allowed to call themselves Boers any longer by the British victors -- and the elitists Afrikaans-speaking collaborators who had worked with the British to defeat them and who had always referred to themselves as "Afrikaners" - after the language they spoke -- then started calling the former, defeated voters of the Boer Republics "Afrikaners." One can generally still identify people who call themselves Boers these days as those Afrikaans-speaking paler-skinned people in South Africa who are mainly descended from working-class Afrikaans-speakers; many of those were mineworkers and technical workers at the former State-owned companies such as Telkom, Sasol etc. It's actually amazing how many of these people still privately refer to themselves as Boers even though they are being derided and sneered at from all sides. From: Journalist Adriana Stuijt at Stop Boer Genocide Forum.

Date Posted: Sunday 07-Oct-2007.

Pertaining to Afrikaan. This word is used in DUTCH to denote someone from Afrika. The very earliest Cape of Good Hope residents after 1652 who started using the Afrikaans language in books and newspapers referred to themselves as "Afrikaanders' and this referred to both whites and mixed-race people. They did this to differentiate themselves from the higher-classes who spoke and wrote only what was referred to as 'high-Dutch" and looked down their noses at people who spoke Afrikaans. The word Afrikaander in fact was 'invented' by these very first Afrikaans-language writers who were muslim slave-descendants and who translated texts from the Q'uran in Afrikaans. The very first book ever published in Afrikaans therefore was the Q'uran. These people themselves referred to themselves as "Afrikaanders". This later became "Afrikaners" and does still refer to Afrikaans-speakers to this day - and does not indicate their race. However the Boers who trekked away into the hinterland, never referred to themselves as "Afrikaners" even though they accepted that the spoke "Afrikaans", they continued to read the Bible in high-Dutch at church services. It's all rather confusing but it has to do with the fact that the Afrikaanders at the Cape and the Boers have different histories because one group moved away and founded several independent Republics while another group remained in the Cape while also fighting for their language-rights - and this language they shared was Afrikaans. For a while people in the Transvaal and Orange-Free State Republics were independent and referred to themselves as "Boers' even though many weren't farmers. Many also referred to their language as die Taal or Boertaal. The Boers have always viewed themselves as different from the Afrikaners at the Cape. After they were defeated by the British, the Boers suddenly were no longer allowed to refer to themselves as Boers, but were forced to join the ethnic-identity of the Afrikaners of whom many had fought with the British and many of whom were given farms as a reward. These Afrikaners generally dominated in the Afrikaner-Broederbond and were very insistent on always suppressing the Boer identity and also the Boers' history.

From: Journalist Adriana Stuijt at African Crisis forum.

Date Posted: Saturday 27-Oct-2007 One should of course first ask the HNP -- just a teensie-weensie group of geriatric pensioned-off apartheid-era government officials in Pretoria, really -- exactly who they mean when they refer to the 'Afrikaner people'. Do they also include the entire Boer Nation in this statement -- people they have indeed NEVER represented and always actively shunned? From: Journalist Adriana Stuijt at African Crisis forum.

Apart from the ambiguous term 'Afrikaner' or 'Afrikander', there also existed the notion of a 'Boer' people. Dutch-Afrikaners generally acknowledged that they were of Boer descent, but it was usually the pastoral farmers in the interior who applied the term to themselves. Finally, there was the term 'Cape Dutch', but this was an English description rather than a self-concept. English-speakers tended to distinguish between the better educated and more 'civilized' Cape Dutch of the Western Cape or interior towns and the Boer people whom they considered ignorant, illiterate and almost beyond the pale. From: The Beginnings of Afrikaner Ethnic Consciousness. Hermann Giliomee.

Trekboers in the 18th Century. The population of whites did not reach 1000 until about 100 years after the arrival of the first settlers. A small number of burghers began to drift away from the close control of the company and into Africa. These were the first so called trekboers who were completely independent of all official control, self-sufficient and very isolated. They persued a semi-nomadic pastoralist lifestyle, not very different to the way the Khoikhoi lived. As they became more settled mud cottages were built, but it could weeks of travel to the next tiny European settlement. The lifestyle and isolation resulted in a courageous group, but also very backward people whose only source of information was the bible. The trekboers were completely cut off from the developments in Europe like the French Revolution. From: Aab Tourism.

Dutch farmers expand north and east from Cape Town after the 1680s. The Dutch East India Company, which ran Cape Town as a resupply base for their ships on the long voyages to the spice islands in southeast Asia, was not interested in expansion in Africa. These settlers, called trekboers ("nomad-farmers"), lived under no government control, much like the Portuguese bandeitantes of Brazil or the American frontiersmen like Daniel Boone. The trekboers lived in small villages or isolated farms, raising large herds of cattle--in this way their way of life had many similarities with the Bantu peoples of South Africa. Edunet.

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. From: The Boers in East Africa: Ethnicity and Identity. Brian M. Du Toit. Page 1.

Definitions of Boer, Afrikaner, South African Colonists, Settlers and Coloureds: The authoritative Canadian journalist-author Noel Mostert, (who is a descendant of Afrikaners Huguenots who in 1947 had emigrated to Canada; and now lives in Morocco), draws a very clear distinction especially between Afrikaners and Boers, writing on page 1292 in " Frontiers", his comprehensive history of the Xhosa nation: Afrikaner: "The word 'Afrikaner' has a long history among Dutch-speaking colonists, but its modern nationalistic associations are comparatively recent, starting around the 1870s but principally early in this century. Boer: "The word Boer is used to describe Dutch-speaking colonists both early and later in the nineteenth century, for the Cape Colony as well as Natal, the Orange Free State and Transvaal;. Trekboer, Voortrekker: "Trekboer" is used to describe the semi-nomadic Boers who moved outwards from the Cape of Good Hope into the interior between the end of the seventeenth century and around the end of the eighteenth. " Voortrekker or " Trekker" is applied to those who moved in more or less mass emigration from the Cape frontier to the north at the end of the 1830s. Colonist: "The word ' colonist ' has been used to describe all white colonials, but I have found it necessary to make some distinction between the (two varieties of Afrikaans-)Dutch speakers in South Africa, as well as English speakers. The term ' settler ' (in the South African connotation) therefore has been applied exclusively to English-speakers (in Mostert's book). Coloured: A catch-all apartheid-era term used to officially register South Africa's large variety of creole peoples, including the Khoi-San descendants living in the Western and Eastern Cape; the millions of Afrikaans-speakers of Afrikaner-Malay-Khoi-San descent (such as the Boesaks); also English-speakers of Zulu-Scottish descent (the Dunns of KwaZulu-Natal); From post at Crime Busters of South Africa.

IN RECENT YEARS, historians have commented that Afrikaners were far from being one people. It is misleading, they say, to speak of ‘the Afrikaner’ or the ‘volk’ as if white, Afrikaans-speaking people were one, uniform mass. For at least 150 years, Dutch-speaking South Africans were divided, scattered and unaware of national unity. It was only when a systematic effort was made that national consciousness became widespread. In the nineteenth century, for example, settled Boers and townspeople in the Western Cape, differed greatly from the Voortrekkers (who themselves were not a united movement — many parties had split up to trek in different directions). Even in the Boer republics there were divisions between rich and poor, landowners and bywoners. From: Afrikaner Nationalism Captures the State.

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. When they go on raids, to rustle the cattle of the tribes, the Trekboers form themselves into armed bands of mounted gunmen known as commandos. At first the commandos make short work of tribal opposition. Between 1785 and 1795 they kill some 2500 San men and women and take another 700, mainly children, into slavery. But by this time the Boers, approaching more fertile territory near the Great Fish River, are meeting stronger opposition from Bantu-speaking Xhosa tribes. A series of frontier wars between Boers and Xhosa begins in 1779. The Boers appeal to Cape Town but get little help. In their frustration, in 1795, they declare Graaff-Reinet an independent Boer republic. The Boers are by now, both in their own estimation and in reality, a people different from the Dutch at the Cape. They call themselves Afrikaners [1], proudly emphasizing their birth in Africa. Their language, Afrikaans, already differs from Dutch. Their fierce independence is accompanied by an equally uncompromising variety of Calvinism. But in the very first year of their new republic a wider conflict intervenes. In 1795 the British seize Cape Town. From: History World. 1. As in considering themselves African. The term Afrikaner was yet to be propagated in a political context started by the Cape Dutch.

But splits have always existed. The myth of the monolithic rock of Afrikaaner nationalism is just that: a myth. Descendents of the early sixteenth century Dutch settlers mixed with Huguenot, German and - let's be frank - the blood of dark skinned people - are as divided as any other group. The Cape Afrikaaners by virtue of their deep-dug roots in the gracious wine valleys of the Cape, have long enjoyed more wealth, culture and comfort than their poorer, rougher brothers descended from the Trekboers of the last century. Though they sided with the Trekboers against the British in the Boer War [1] and though Cape Afrikaaners have created hardy institutions to help the Poor Whites of the north-east, on the whole people of the Cape tend to look down on the Ferreira and the van der Merwer families of the Trekboers. From: White vs White. 1. This is not quite correct as numerous Western Cape Afrikaners in fact fought with the British & against the Boers.

Paul Kruger did not like people from the Cape - he felt they were subjugated by the British, so he encouraged people from the Netherlands to work in the Transvaal as a way to strengthen Boer independence. From: Clare Wyllie interviews Professor Gerrit Schutte.

Another point of grotesque confusion that we need to clear up, is that Boers are not "Afrikaners". None of your co-workers seem to have any understanding of this. All Boers are aware of the systematic subterfuge and distortion of "identity" that has been the result of the makings of the Broederbond and the National Party, based upon the then image of the British imperialist gentleman. This artificial identity was meant to wean away the Boers from their strong identify, from their history, from their nationalism, and thus weaken them. The ISS should take note that the Boers never wanted a singular state with a single government ruling all the peoples of the sub-continent. The Boer Republics were taken from them with violent force. Even the terms of the peace treaty of Vereeniging in 1902 stated unambiguously to see to the restoration of Boer independence as a people before any political rights be bestowed upon the African peoples. But we Boers are not colonialists or imperialists. The Boers never engaged in any "Christianizing" mission work to convert the heathens as did the American, Scottish and German missionaries. Our forebears wisely thought it best not to interfere with those values and views that other people cherish and hold sacred. The Boers made no bones about the fact that they were not great supporters of the capitalist system, as it was seen to be nothing else than another form of Imperialism. No wonder then that the Irish, the Russians, and so many others from Europe joined in the defense of our freedom. The Boers never sought to "civilize" and "develop" other racial and cultural groups from a position of cultural superiority. The Afrikaners tried it for many ears, and failed dismally in more than one way. Take note that the Boers today have good reason to be immensely frustrated and angered. We have not only lost all forms of the partial self-determination we previously enjoyed, through the treacherous dealings of Afrikaner politicians, but have lost virtually all rights to make a decent living and bringing up our children with good values and good learning. All indications are that the marginalizing of the Boer will only get worse under the present regime, which is regarded by us as illegitimate. Even Afrikaners hostile to the Boer aspirations, like the well-known historian Prof. H. Gilliomee, has stated that De Klerk shamelessly broke his promises and public commitment to counsel with his people about changes to be introduced into South Africa and it is openly admitted that during the vote of 1994 the count of the vote was stopped midway and the ANC declared the winner, and that De Klerk's National Party was given extra percentage of the vote for allowing the ANC to be declared the winner. From: Professor Tobias Louw: a Boer patriot. From an open letter he wrote to the ISS dated September 2003.

I am not an Afrikaner. I do not like the Afrikaners they have downtrodden us (Boers) - they came & stole our inheritance by various different means. From: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio. During an interview with the Right Perspective radio program on Jan 6 2007.

The word "Afrikaanse" is pedantic and a bit of word play with punch so as to make a point. Basically it means Afrikaans-speaking -- A Hollander would say it's really an Afrikaans thing, and therefore difficult to explain. The "e" adds that little something and hints at their close friends, the Cape coloureds who invariably use this extra "e" in their speech. For instance they regularly say "onse mense" for "our people", and it would appear that they are in fact being taught this strange form of Afrikaans in their schools -- something that is now being brought into more established "White" schools to my, and others', distress. The two of us (Oom Robert and myself) had many discussions on this topic, on which we saw eye to eye. He used to use the term "Cape Dutch" for the Cape variety of White Afrikaans-speakers, a term most accurately describing them, and historically sound, being a term which the British themselves coined and used for all Afrikaans-speaking White People, especially in the Cape. I normally say that they are Afrikaans-speaking Englishmen (or women, as the case may be), but as I've previously mentioned, or hinted at, this sickness has spread to beyond the Vaal River. Too many people -- particularly so-called "rightwing" politicians -- have tried (and failed) to combine all White Afrikaans-speaking South Africans into a homogenous group forgetting that the gulf is far too wide and deep to accomplish this sort of social engineering in a short space of time. We have to remember that the Anglo war against the Boer Nation happened only 100 years ago and lots of suffering occurred in those hundred years. And where it counts -- in the hearts of the true-blue Boer -- this suffering will be remembered for quite a while longer. As for Nationhood, we have to acknowledge that language does not make a Nation, but rather soil, a shared history, and blood. The "Afrikaner" never developed into a nation, never had a land of his own, never had to defend himself in a war, never had a flag of his own, and actually has no history to speak of. When it suits him, he tends to ride high on the history and experiences of the Boer Nation. I am of the considered opinion that whereas the Boer Nation can (even still today) do without the "Afrikaanse", the "Afrikaanse" cannot do without the Boer Nation and his land, minerals, economic activity, his energy and drive, etc., etc. Decades ago when I used to debate on the subject of secession from the greater South Africa and re-establishing the Boer Republics, the politically dimwitted would ask me how Transvaal (never say THE Transvaal!) could "go it alone" without seaports. Of course, they forget that Johannesburg is officially considered a port, and the SA Navy has its HQ in Pretoria. Also, these dimwits have never heard of aircraft, and the rest of the White Man's magic, that would make it child's play to not have a sea port. Also, who said anything about there being no co-operation between the Boer Republics and Cape Colony and Kwa Zulu (Natal), and, of course, Mozambique, They also forget that many other flourishing nations have land-locked countries -- for instance the Swiss, who have very little in the way of minerals and other commodities. But they do have White Man's brains! So, as I used to say to them, it is rather a case of whether the Cape Colony and Kwa Zulu (Natal) would remain viable for long if Transvaal and Orange Free State were to be re-established as sovereign countries; especially if no trade were to take place between these entities. The Cape Province with its wine, fruit and wheat culture; Kwa Zulu (Natal) with its sugar cane and a few bananas -- even with their ports, both would have to expand the rotten thing called tourism so as to survive. Transvaal alone has much more of everything than all the others combined! And you have to see the maize (corn to Americans) farms of Orange Free State -- it makes Oklahoma corn look like a child's sand pit. Having said all this, though, I have to repeat again that language is not everything. Race is everything! However, I would never be entirely trusting of the so-called "Afrikaanse". They are too easily swayed, and the little history they do have speaks to me more of deceitfulness than pride and honour and dependence. As a nation, the Boer Nation is admittedly complicated, but that is not a problem at all. It would only become a problem if and when there are no more Boers left to understand the complications. From: an Oscar at a discussion forum.

As the first anti-colonialist drive began under the Dutch colony in the Cape, so did the most zealous "Boers" (the word originally means a farmer) begin to move away from the Cape in search of freedom and independence. These people were continually moving further and further away from the Cape and eventually met the first great Nguni migrations - the Xhosa people - who were moving South at the same time. This meeting took place in what is today known as the Eastern Cape. As the two great migrations - Boer and Xhosa - met at the Fish River in the Eastern Cape, so did these two migrations stop for a while. In the interim however, the British Empire occupied the Cape Colony, and the Boers, who had sacrificed so much to escape their White colonial Dutch masters, once again found themselves under White British rule. It was from the Eastern Cape that the first of what has become known as the Great Trek movements started. This Great Trek was in fact the migration of the Boer people away from the British Empire - proof yet again that the first anti-colonial movement in Africa was a Boer movement - an indigenous people trying to escape colonization by a European power. The main cause of the Great Trek was the British colonial masters trying to colonize the Boers of the Cape frontiers. There were other smaller factors, but it can be said in summation that it was the Boers' desire to be free and independent of colonial rule which caused the Great Trek. It is of crucial importance to note that whenever reference is made to the Great Trek, it is always said that the "Boers" took part in the Great Trek. There was no "Afrikaner" Great Trek, and there were no "Afrikaner" Great Trek Leaders, just Boer Great Trek Leaders. This is an indication that at this stage already the Boers had developed an identify of their own, as distinct from the Cape Dutch and English settlers of the Cape. The independence minded Boers packed up their belongings and headed north - into what today is known as the Orange Free State, Transvaal and into Natal. Although there were scattered Nguni speaking peoples living in these territories, particularly in Natal where the Zulus held sway, large parts of these territories were vacant, having been decimated by the Difaquane, or inter tribal wars said to have originated with the Zulu King Shaka. The first Boer movement into Natal attempted to negotiate land from the Zulu King, Dingaan. These attempts to trade land with the Zulu ended in failure and the Boer leaders were murdered. The Zulu army was however defeated at a Battle which became known as the Battle of Blood River in 1838, and the first Boer Republic was established in Natal shortly thereafter. The Battle of Blood River is regarded by Boers as the symbolic birth of their nationhood, although of course in reality the Boers had established an own identity long before this event. The reason why the Boers however regard the battle as being the symbolic birth of their nation was that they felt that their victory against overwhelming odds was divinely inspired. The Boer Trekkers had taken an oath to the Christian God that if they were given the victory that day they would hold the day as holy - and the Boers have held this tradition ever since. The Boers then renewed negotiations with the Zulus, and their new King, Mpande, agreed to let the Boers have territory in Natal. It can be seen that from this early period then, the Boers were recognized by other peoples in Southern Africa as an independent nation and not part of the colonial governments - in other words already then they were recognized as indigenous, rather as merely an extension of the European colonies, then the Zulus for example would not have settled with them but rather with the European powers directly. However, the British Empire still wished to colonize the Boers, and in 1843 annexed Natal. After a few skirmishes with the British, the Boers once again packed up their belongings and left Natal, leaving behind only a small number in Northern Natal. The Boers in Natal then went and joined their fellow Boers in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, which had in the meantime been put on the road to nationhood as well. Although there were other indigenous peoples living in parts of these territories, the Boers were accepted by them as another indigenous people and it is worthwhile to note that very few major clashes took place between the Boers and the Black peoples of this time. When such clashes did take place, they were usually over matters such as stock or grazing - at a time very normal matters for indigenous peoples to argue over. Finally in 1852 the British Empire itself was forced to recognize Boer independence at the Sand River Convention. This year marks the firm establishment of the Boers as an indigenous people in international law. At this early stage not one, but two independent Boer Republics were recognized by the whole world, and were granted contractual capacity as with any other independent indigenous nation. The mere fact that the British colonial masters accepted this state of affairs shows that even the European powers recognized that this independent and free nation had sprung from Africa and not from some colonial experiment. The Boers had in the interim developed their own culture and language - in fact the language spoken by the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics is one of the newest languages on earth. It is a language unlike any European language, and many of its words have origins in Africa - and not in any European language. Linguistically then, the language of the Boers was created in Africa - yet another indication that the Boers and their culture are indigenous to Africa, and not a colonial import. It is also of crucial importance to note that when any mention is made of the independent republics, they are always called "Boer Republics" - and never "Afrikaner Republics". This is of course confirmation that the Boers had a separate identity from the Cape Dutch settlers. This separate identity was confirmed in International Law by the Sand River Convention of 1852. Although the Boers thought they had at last found freedom from colonialism, they were wrong. The British Empire launched two more attempts to recolonize them - the second time being successful. The first attempt to colonize the Boers came with the occupation of the Transvaal by a small British contingent in 1877. This event led directly to the First Anglo-Boer War (note again that it is called an "Anglo-Boer War" and not an "Anglo-Afrikaner War") and by 1881 the British forces had been defeated by the Boers to such an extent that the British were forced to once again recognize the independence of the Boer Republics. This recognition was given formal effect by the London Convention of 1884 - the second time that the Boers had been recognized as an independent and indigenous people in international law. It is a sobering thought for people in the 1990's to realize that the very first liberation war against colonial masters was in fact fought by the White Boers against the White British colonialist - preceding any Black liberation war by many decades. It can be argued that only an indigenous people can wage a liberation war, and that this therefore shows once again that the Boers had by this stage firmly established themselves as an indigenous people of Africa. The second attempt by the British to colonize the Boers resulted in the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1889 - 1902 (once again note that it is called the Anglo-Boer war and not the Anglo-Afrikaner war). This war resulted in the development by the Boers of the guerrilla warfare method, since used by many liberation movements in all parts of the world. Although the Boers fought bravely against overwhelming odds, the British used a cruel & until then unheard measure of fighting - they rounded up as many Boer women and children as they could find and put them into concentration camps scattered around South Africa. In these camps, as a result of judicial executions, starvation, disease and ill treatment, some 27 000 Boer women and children died - some 20% of the total Boer population of the time. Against such inhumane methods the Boers could not fight, and eventually the British succeeded in their dream of colonizing the entire Southern Africa in 1902, when the treaty of Vereeniging, ending the Second Anglo Boer War, was signed. Even in defeat, the Boers were recognized under international law. The position of the Cape Dutch and English settlers during this conflict also goes to show that these people did not associate themselves with the Boers. Although a few Cape Dutch did take up arms and fight on the side of the Boers, (they became known as the "Cape rebels" for this reason - and they were severely punished if caught) the vast majority of the Cape Dutch and English settlers in the Cape and Natal supported the British colonization of Southern Africa, which then also included today's Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and territories even further north. The treaty of Vereeniging therefore marks the subjugation of the Boers by White European colonial masters - a fate shared by countless other indigenous peoples while the British and other European empires still regarded Africa and other parts of the world as their personal possession. The Boers were however unique in that they were the only White indigenous people to be subjected in this way - a nation called the "White Tribe of Africa" by the British Broadcasting Corporation. From: The Boers of Southern Africa. Arthur Kemp.

This town of 600, situated close to the geographic center of South Africa, was established in 1991, as a place where the soon-to-be outvoted Afrikaners, could rebuild a homeland or Boer volkstaat. Thirteen years on, despite bad press and the brunt of endless editorial cartoons, the town has endured.

Earlier in the week, I met with prominent Boer nationalist Danie Theron in the South African capital Pretoria. I had contacted Danie curious to find out how the Boer were faring, ten years after apartheid had ended.

Theron immediately took the opportunity to stress differences between Boer and Afrikaner, two words, which are often used interchangeably. In the world-view of the Boer, they alone made the Great Trek from the Cape in the 1830’s to establish independent Boer republics inland, whilst the Afrikaners stayed with the British and got rich. Then the Afrikaners supported the British; the Boer fought them during the Anglo-Boer war of 1899. And in 1994, the Afrikaner leaders betrayed the Boer by giving their land to black South Africans. Theron explained the Boer are deeply, conservatively religious and to survive, believe they need self-determination on land they can call their own.

From: New Coffins, Old Flags, Microorganisms And The Future of the Boer. Jan Stürmann.

5. Effects. Today, the numbers of the Boerevolk are at least 3 million less that it would have been, had the English not committed genocide on the Boerevolk. This robs our people of our right to self-determination in the new so-called democratic system. (In truth, democracy means government by the people and not government by the rabble as is presently the case in South Africa.")

The holocaust, together with treason committed by Afrikaners (take note: not Boere) such as Jan Smuts and Louis Botha, forced the Boerevolk to sign the peace accord of Vereeniging which deprived our volk of its freedom.

The alien and inferior British culture was forced onto our people. The various indigenous peoples of South Africa were insensitively bundled into one Union without giving a thought to their respective identities and right to self-determination.

As in the case of the Boerevolk, the local black nations were effectively robbed of their freedom, which gave rise to the establishment of the ANC in 1912 (two years after the foundation of the Union) to struggle for black nationalism.

England's pretence for the invasion was the rights of the foreign miners. Yet after the war, these very same miners were treated so badly by their English and Jewish bosses that they had to resort to general strikes in 1913 and 1922 (3 and 12 years after the establishment of the British ruled Union), during which many mine-workers were shot dead in the streets of Johannesburg by the British disposed Union government. So much for the rights of the foreign miners under English rule.

The efficient and equitable republican system of government of the Boer Republics was replaced with the unworkable Westminster system of government, which led to endless misery and conflict.

The Concentration Camps. Hennie Barnard.

Van Tonder broke away from the National Party in 1961 because of what he described as its betrayal of the old Boer republics. Robert van Tonder Dies.

Like many Boer Afrikaners (Boer is the name taken by the Voortrekkers and their descendants). From: White Roots: Seeds of Grievance. Time Magazine.

It's a little-known part of history which started shortly after the end of the Anglo-Boer war in 1902, when the Boers were a defeated, poverty-stricken people who had been chased off their farms and whose towns had been destroyed by the British. They were dirt-poor and plunged into an unprecedented famine. Many had to flee to the cities to survive - places which were totally alien to them, places were only English was being spoken, places where their churches were being run by people who referred to themselves as Afrikaners. Up to that point, the Boers had had a rich history and people still find old history books referring to this nation. Recently a kind lady from Louisiana mailed me a copy of the "History of the Boers in South Africa," written in 1887 by a Canadian missionary with no political axe to grind: namely George McCall Theal. It contains a map showing the territories which were being farmed by the Boers: from the Olifants/Limpopo rivers in the north to below the Orange River in the South (Colesburg). It shows the names of the towns they had started wihich carried names such as Lydenburg, ( Place of Suffering) Vryheid, ( Place of Freedom) Pietermaritzburg, (named after the famous Voortrekker leader) Pilippolis and Bethulie, (named after their beloved Bible) and Potchefstroom, Rustenburg, Winburg and Bloemfontein... as they Trekked, the Boers named the map of South Africa, and many of its vegetation and wildlife as well. All these Boer names are now being wiped off the map of South Africa in one fell swoop by the ANC-regime -- even though the Boers' official history had ended in 1902, long before the elitist-Afrikaners who ran the secret Afrikaner Broederbond cabal had started apartheid in 1948. Yet this is not the first time that the Boers are facing such an ethnic cleansing campaign by a nation which is hell-bent to remove their very rights to exist in South Africa - this is actually already the third time in Boer history. The first time the British tried to eradicate them from the map of South Africa with their vicious war and their even more vicious concentration camps where many tens of thousands of Boer women, children and elderly starved to death within just a few months. After this first genocide to target the Boer nation, their descendants still managed to cling to their identity for at least another generation - until the secret cabal of wealthy Afrikaners called the Afrikaner Broederbond gaine hegemony -- and then took away their identity from about 1933 onwards. 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. Paul Kruger, their last president who was so sadly exiled to the shores of a lake in Switserland, became an "Afrikaner" president in the history book -- when he himself never referred to himself in any of his correspondence as anything except a Boer. Thus all the history books were rewritten and Boers with too-long memories such as Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party and Eugene Terre'Blanche (of the incorrectly-named) Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging were persecuted publicly by the regime, aided and abetted by the Afrikaans-language news media. Eugene's heart is in the right place: he bears the flag of the old Boer Republic and he refers to himself as a Boer. But his organisation's name bears witness to his ethnic confusion, caused by the Afrikaner Broederbond's rewriting of his own history. And now the ANC is completing this vile task which was started by the Afrikaner Broederbond, and has even changed the names of their towns - and even of the historically--important "Voortrekker" streets which indicate the routes which the old Voortrekker Leaders such as Bezuidenhout had taken while battling their way to the north to get away from British hegemony in the Cape. The old Voortrekker Streets all over South Africa are now being renamed to Chris Hani and Nelson Mandela streets and other names of people who, unlike the old Voortrekkers, actually have contributed absolutely nothing to the development of those streets whatsoever. Thus the ANC is proving itself to be just as fascist in its nature as the old Afrikaner Broederbond they had replaced. Both organisations are still hell-bent to wipe out all evidence of the Boer history. They even continue to persecute and jail anyone who wants to rekindle Boer history such as Eugene Terre'Blanche and the Boeremag-15, undergoing their hyped-up, trumped-up treason trial in Pretoria High Court. It's no coincidence that the public prosecutor of the Boeremag-21 just happens to be a well-known former Afrikaner Broederbonder, Paul Fick, who even admitted to being a Broederbonder when I interviewed him for the Sunday Times during the apartheid-era, when his organisation had launched plans for a new flag and wanted to test public opinion... And if Robert van Tonder, riddled with cancer and suffering terribly, hadn't committed suicide a few years ago, they would have also had him in jail by now under trumped-up charges. He and other Boers still proudly spoke the Taal, the language of their forebears - the language which now is being wiped off the map of South Africa. Today, people no longer know who these Boers were - nobody knows about those dirt-poor Boer women who founded the garment workers' union, those famished women who had left their beloved farms and had gone to the cities to try and survive after their defeat in 1902. From: Boer Afrikaner or White: Which Are You?

This site is dedicated to the Boers of Southern Africa and their heritage.

Editors: Malcolm and Debbie Wren email: devorah_1961@btopenworld.com

God se Oog is vandag oor jou, Sy Hand is onder jou, Sy Gees en Vrede is binne jou, Sy Liefde en Engele is rondom jou - Wie aan jou raak, raak aan Sy oog-appel!

God is watching over you today, His hand is under you, His Spirit and Peace are inside of you, His love and Angels are around you - Whoever touches you, touches the Apple of His Eye!

boer or Boer

In a nutshell the ²Dutch East India Company (VOC) colonized the Cape Province from 1652 onwards. They later provided free passage to the French Huguenots who were farmers. The VOC needed them to farm the land in South Africa for provisions for the sea route to India. This combination of Dutch and French farmers (boers) later trekked inland and the two Boer states were formed. The Boers then, are these farmers (boers) which became a nation, known throughout the world as Boers.

see Who were the Boers? or Die Anderkant van die storie

Definition: the word boer means farmer in Dutch.

² Please note that the Dutch GOVERNMENT did NOT colonise the Cape. This was done by a private company, the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which imported these indentured poor farmers from all of Northern Europe to the Cape, often against their will, were not ruled by the Dutch government. They were the first multinational company in the world and deemed themselves above government law. The Netherlands only had some 1-million residents in those days and the VOC ruled pretty much all of northern Europe through the wealth their trade had brought. It’s an important distinction – because this was a different colonial history from that of the British, whose GOVERNMENT indeed did start many colonies all over the world. The Dutch VOC-settlers did not have the protection of the State, whereas the British settlers did…

Ever since colonialism they have been oppressed by many nations and are akin to the Jews in this regard. They have suffered genocide at the hands of the English and now they suffer it yet again with the ANC.

The Boers are not colourist nor racist, because they are descendant from several nations and cultures in Europe and Africa and became a nation during the 1700s long before the famous 'Great Trek' of the 1800s.

They have been branded unclean barbarians by the England, racist by the Western world, oppressors by the Black tribes of South Africa and nobody's by the Afrikaner and English speaking South Africans.

The Boers are very proud of their heritage. They never liked the English and hated their Colonial laws, the birthing of Apartheid. When they called for the Great Trek it was to escape the oppressive English. However many settlers willingly remained under British rule and this is where the split came between the Afrikaners of the Cape Province and the TrekBoers.

Many people today look at the white peoples of South Africa and think they are Afrikaners. However it is more complex than that. There are English speaking South Africans, Afrikaners and Boers. see 'Boers aggrieved'.

Boers are passionately proud of who they are. Just like the Scotsman who you dare not call an Englishman! Boers are not Afrikaners nor are they English speaking.

This website is dedicated to their heritage and their history, because they are targeted for genocide by the African National Congress, the Communistic One Ruling Party Government of South Africa. If you look at the 8 stages of genocide at www.genocidewatch.org/8stages.htm written by Dr Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch - an international organisation raised up by the United Nations to monitor genocide around the world, you will see that the Boers are in the 5th stage of genocide, entering the 6th stage. See also http://www.genocidewatch.org/BoersSlain01.htm

The ANC use the Boers as scapegoats for the previous mistakes of the archaic Apartheid regime and blame them for everything that goes awry within the governing of South Africa. If the ANC are criticised by the Western world's governments, they cry 'the Boers are to blame' or 'look at what we have inherited from these Wittes' or such like. The ANC are no better than the previous Dinosauric White ruling parties.

And there is also another Mbeki inflicted genocide happening in South Africa simultaneously, namely AIDS. When the Boers are attacked on their farms they are raped and tortured incessantly with no recourse to medical attention or police intervention. They have few friends within the Black tribes because the ANC -through the Azapo/Apla and PAC groupings who run the Landless People's Campaigns - have succeeded through hate speech and hate rallies and hate radio to ostracize these peace loving people. [The ANC through "traditional healers" train the killers at so-called tribal schools for boys, just like the Muslim clerics who teach boys to become suicide killers.] And because the Boers are living in remote areas, they are a soft target for these military style murders. And those that do survive are subject to the deabilatating effects of AIDS as well!

This website is a diary of the catastrophic events that have taken place within the Boer community of yester-year and into the 21st century. I hope I will do justice to these people whom God loves.

For further information on other minorities who are also targeted within South Africa, go to www.icssag.com

Stop Boer Genocide.com.

I heard a statement today which reminded me of what classifies the distinction between Boers and Afrikaners. ‘The Afrikaners are not Boers and never will be, as they are from the group who went against the Boers when they (the Boers) wanted nothing to do with accepting the British rule at the time’, 1835-7. And this conflict was because of the imperial interference and how the British ill-treated the Black Africans. Afrikaners were pro-English and the Boers or trekboers were not. The Boers recognised the sell-out to the English and wanted nothing to do with it. This group of Afrikaners unfortunately married themselves to the English, who undoubtedly were the original perpetrators in the grotesque Apartheid system. From: Deborah Wren of Stopboergenocide.com. At the core of any nationalism lies the question of identity — how large groups of people from different social and regional backgrounds come to believe that they all belong to a common community. What was it, for example, that in the 1950s led most white, male Afrikaans-speaking workers, define themselves as Afrikaners first, as white South Africans second, and as workers only third — and act accordingly in political terms? Such was not always the case. From the 1910s through to the mid-1940s many, if not most, such individuals acted politically in terms of a self-definition which clearly saw themselves first as men, secondly as workers, thirdly as white South Africans and only fourthly as Afrikaners. Some may even have defined themselves as Transvalers or as Kaapenaars (Cape Dutch) before they saw themselves as Afrikaners. Département de science politique Université du Québec à Montréal.

Note I have deliberately been using this dual name for the descendants of the original Dutch settlers. At the present time, the use of the name Boer (i.e. 'farmer') is regaining popularity among secessionist minded Northerners. The Boer/Afrikaner people is actually an increasingly unstable coalition of two closely related peoples, similar to Judah-Benjamin and Israel, living in the North and the South of the country. From: Mark R. Kreitzer. South African Tragedy Restored? Contra Mundum. No. 5 Fall 1992. Inside the group calling themselves Afrikaans a smaller group calls themselves Afrikaners and inside that an even smaller group who see themselves as Boere. These are not necessarily people with Right Wing political sentiments wearing khaki clothes and who want to shoot wildy at people who look different from him. They are people who share a common historic identity. Johann Botha during doc on De La Rey song / video.

The current cultural difference between the Afrikaner & Boer can best be summarized with the following: the Afrikaner is neo colonial & tends to view all White Afrikaans speakers as being all part of the same group regardless of cultural distinctions while the Boers were & are anti-colonial / republican / independent oriented & view themselves as a distinct & separate entity from the greater White Afrikaans population as they are descended from the republican Boers & the Voortrekkers who were themselves descended from the frontier pastoralists & Trekboers who trekked away from the Western Cape centuries ago where the ancestors of those who would control the later emerging Afrikaner designation remained. This is an essential component to understanding the different outlooks within the greater White Afrikaans speaking population.

The Long Struggle For Self Determination.

2008-07-31T22:23:00.000-07:00

The Boers have had a long struggle to acquire self determination. A struggle which dates back to 1795 on the eastern Cape frontier when the first Boer Republics at Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet were established in rebellion to Dutch rule. The Boers would later achieve a high level of self determination after the Great Trek when numerous other Boer Republics were founded north of the Orange River. The main republics were the Transvaal Republic also known as the ZAR / the Vryheid Republic & the Orange Free State Republic. When the two major republics of the ZAR & the OVS were conquered by the British after the second Anglo-Boer War -the struggle for self determination resumed first during the Maritz Rebellion in 1914 which was triggered when the South African government sided with the British less than 15 years after the devastation of the British concentration camps which killed close to 50 % of the Boer child population. The Rebellion leaders were jailed & prevented from participating in politics. The movement to restore the Boer Republics resumed again during the 1940s but was crushed by the Afrikaner establishment & the government. Then in 1961 Robert van Tonder left the National Party to pursue the restoration of the Boer Republics full time. Later still during the 1970s this movement began to grow but was later curtailed again as well. The movement to restore the Boer Republics or to acquire some form of Boer self determination continues but is still facing strong obstacles & is often not represented in a fair nor accurate manner in the West.

The First Boer Republican Tri Colour.

2008-07-31T22:19:00.000-07:00

The Orange White & Blue horizontal tri colour flag was not a Boer flag as it was the flag adopted by the National Party government in 1927 which represented the macro state as created by the British & in which the Boers were marginalized & outnumbered within the White population. The orange white & blue tri colour was initially the flag of the united Netherlands & was used in the Cape by the Dutch East India Co. The Dutch elites who ran the Dutch East India Co. took the ancestors of the Boers & the macro White Afrikaans people out of Europe during the mid 1600s who were mostly of German or Frisian ethnic origin with very little actual Dutch roots. Numerous French Huguenots refugees escaping political & religious persecution from France were later sent to the Cape from 1671 to 1726 who amalgamated with the other groups creating home grown Afrikaans speaking cultures of which French first names & surnames are still quite common. Therefore contrary to popular Western presumption: the White Afrikaans speaking peoples - particularly the Boer people- are not of Dutch descent - but are in fact a combination & amalgamation of German / Frisian / Danish & French origins. The Orange White & Blue tri colour therefore originally represented the flag of the oppressors of the Boer people. While this flag could be considered to represent those White Afrikaans speaking people who coalesced into a group in the south western Cape - this flag can not be considered to represent the Boer people who were formed on the frontier as their ancestors began to trek away from the Western Cape beginning in the late 1600s & all throughout the 1700s due in large part to the autocratic rule of the Dutch East India Co. & the fact that they were too poor to cope within Colonial society & would -by virtue of trekking inland- shape a new homegrown identity on the Cape frontier.

The Boers adopted their first flag when they declared their first Boer Republics at Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet in 1795 whereupon they adopted the Red White & Blue horizontal tri colour which was then being used as the flag of the Batavian Republic. This red white & blue horizontal tri colour motif was later used in numerous other Boer Republic flags such as: the Natalia Republic flag / the Lydenburg Republic flag / the Orange Free State Republic flag / the Transvaal Republic (ZAR) flag / & the Utrecht Republic flag. The red white & blue colour motif was also used for the Saltire flags of the Potchefstroom Republic / the Winburg Republic / & the Zoutpansberg Republic.

The Orange White & Blue horizontal tri colour flag made a comeback in 1927 when the Cape based Afrikaners inherited the macro state of South Africa - but not as a Boer flag as the Boers were conquered & marginalized due to being lumped in with the macro White population & being outnumbered by the Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape. The flag was adopted by the Cape Dutch / Afrikaner JBM Hertzog & the National Party after a unanimous vote in Parliament. The flag was modified with a small British flag & small ZAR & OVS flags in the center of the White band. Future Prime Minister D F Malan - a Cape Dutch / Afrikaner - wanted to adopt the Orange White & Blue tri Colour as is without the 3 flag replicas at the center of the flag. Afrikaner Nationalists during the 1960s tried once again to adopt the plain Orange White & Blue horizontal tri Colour without the flag replicas at the center.

The Boers Did Not Create Apartheid.

2008-07-31T22:06:00.000-07:00

There is a troubling trend among ignorant persons of attributing the creation of Apartheid to the Boers & the even more troubling rhetoric of that all of the Boers should have been killed by Britain during the Anglo-Boer War -in which Britain did kill an estimated 27 000 Boer civilians in concentration camps. Some of these bigoted racists are even calling for the genocide of the Boers who survived the genocide against them in the past from the British & are facing a current growing genocide against them now. These uniformed & hateful anti-Boer bigots erroneously claim that the total genocide of the Boers would have somehow prevented Apartheid. Nothing could be further from the truth. This shows both hatred & ignorance on the part of those racist anti-Boer bigoted fools since those who hatefully & arrogantly presume that killing off all the Boers "would have prevented Apartheid" demonstrate their ignorance on the matter since even if the British did kill off every single Boer: Apartheid would still have occurred!!!!! For the simple reason that the Boers did not devise nor pass Apartheid as it was invented by the British then later expanded upon during the 1950s mainly by the non-Boer descended Cape based Afrikaners who were often on the side of the British during the Anglo-Boer War. The main architects of Apartheid were: Cecil Rhodes: British Imperialist - financier - politician - Premier of the Cape. / Theophilus Shepstone: the British Secretary of Native Affairs in Natal. / D F Malan: Cape Dutch descended Afrikaner cleric - politician from the Western Cape. - Prime Minister. / Hendrik Verwoerd: Holland born naturalized Afrikaner politician who was educated abroad. Minister of Native Affairs & later: Prime Minister. This means that even if every single Boer was killed off in the concentration camps: it would still not have prevented Apartheid from occurring since Apartheid was not formulated by the Boer people. While there were some Boer descendents who assisted in the passage of Apartheid: one must remember that they did so as part of the Cape Dutch dominated Afrikaner coalition. The following is an excerpt of some relevant text from the American libertarian author Joseph Stromberg concerning this question.

Although Rhodes did not live to see his work consummated, it is worth getting his “take” on the native question. Running for office in 1887, he said, “there must be Pass Laws and Peace Preservation Acts. . . . We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works so well in India, in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa.” Already in the policies adopted by the Chamber of Mines, the Rhodes-dominated mining interest group, we can discern the outlines of the state-capitalist pattern with which Apartheid ran wild. Political regulation of natives would keep labor below its free-market price; large-scale bureaucratic fiddling would replace the direct patriarchal style of management of the Boers.

The Journal of Libertarian Studies.

Those ignorant bigoted persons who erroneously presume that the total genocide of the humble Boers during Anglo-Boer War would have prevented Apartheid should take particular & close note of that final & important line in the excerpted paragraph. The Apartheid system as devised by the British & the Cape based Afrikaners replaced the Boers' direct patriarchal style of management. How then can the Boers be to blame for a system that replaced their own form of management? How could the Boers have had any significant clout in the devising of Apartheid when most had been left impoverished after the war competing for jobs in the cities? The fact of the matter is that the Apartheid establishment had to actually work to get the Boers on board which began most notably after the Rand Rebellion when they tailored the "Colour bar" job reservation laws in an effort at preventing impoverished Boers from being a political obstacle to the plans of the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists who were working at co-opting the Boers into their camp.

I find it most alarming how anyone could call for the genocide of an entire people -especially when they do not even take the time to learn about the very people they condemn. This hateful rhetoric is even ironic considering where it often comes from: British neo-Imperialists. Further rich irony is noted when one considers the fact that Hitler actually admired the British Empire & its excesses inspired him.

The most brutal aspects of Apartheid were the oppressive top-down features that were devised by the British. When the Afrikaner Nationalist government later came to power & expanded these British segregationist laws: they even used the same names for the laws that the British gave them. As a matter of fact the main difference between the Afrikaner Nationalists version of Apartheid compared to the original British version was that the Afrikaner Nationalists created the option of granting outright independence to the various reserves [ built around the traditional settlements ] or the option of joining a confederation. While the British created segment of Apartheid on the other hand was total domination. The editor of the Johannesburg Star newspaper even stated in the 1960s that the Apartheid laws -as reformed by the Afrikaner Nationalists- were "an improvement" over the previous British created Apartheid laws. The Sharpeville Massacre was a prime example of the oppressive top-down nature of British created segment of Apartheid in action as the protesters were protesting the Pass book laws which the British brought into being with their pass laws.

There is also the nature of cause & effect. Without the brutality of the Boer civilian deaths in the concentration camps: there would have been little fuel for the later rise of Afrikaner Nationalism which was mainly used by the Cape based Afrikaners -who were not numerically affected by the camp deaths as the Boers were as they were not interned & were often on the side of the British- to first co-opt the Boers in order to prevent Boer secession (as was attempted by notable Boer Generals in 1914) & then to propagate Afrikaner hegemony over the new British created artificial macro State which lumped numerous nations & tribes under a single administration for the first time ever in the region.

Therefore those who hatefully & ridiculously assert that the British should have killed off all of the Boers do not seem to realize that not only would this not have prevented Apartheid -but that it would have made the situation even worse since the Afrikaner Nationalists would have had even more fuel on which to rise to power on the platform of ethnic domination. A program of domination which they effectively stole from the British since it was the original idea of the British to ethnically dominate South Africa with English speakers -but when that plan failed -they simply turned to the newly radicalized Cape based Afrikaners as collaborators to fill this role as the surrogate colonial power for the new macro State devised by the British.

The main reason the Afrikaner Nationalists even rose to power in the new British created macro state at all was due to the excesses of British brutality in the concentration camps which lead to the deaths of 24 000 Boer children - which was close to 50 % of the Boer child population - of which the Afrikaner Nationalists were able to effectively marshal a political response to in the mobilization of the greater White Afrikaans speaking population even though this also lead to the marginalization of the actual Boer people in question since the loose political association of the White Afrikaans speaking groups made the Boer people a minority under the control of the Cape based Afrikaners who only used the Boers' history in order to justify their control of the new macro State imposed by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 onto the region.

Furthermore: the Boers fought two wars of independence against Britain & against the formation of the macro State of South Africa which made Apartheid the expansive centralized system that it was. The architects of Apartheid were formally educated -often abroad- while most Boers were often not formally educated -neither at home nor abroad. The architects of Apartheid did not even invent anything new as they simply went abroad to see how other countries were doing it & basically adopted the ideas & formulas of other countries. The Apartheid laws of South Africa were based largely on the Jim Crow laws of the American South / the strict separation along confessional lines of Holland & the Canadian Indian Affairs Act. With the addition of attempting & often granting independence to reserves turning them into independent states. The Apartheid establishment even poured money into them & built them up. Which makes it all the more ridiculous & inappropriate to call for the genocide of a people who often worked to develop other peoples. Though it would be inappropriate to call for the genocide of any people regardless of their past.

The Afrikaner Domination of the Boers.

2008-06-21T21:37:00.000-07:00

The Afrikaner Domination of the Boers & how it was constructed.

The following I hope will be an informative explanation contrasting & outlining the difference between the once notable historical differences between the two main White Afrikaans speaking groups as I have discerned from spending time examining the history of the groups & region in question.

The term Afrikaner & the term Boer once denoted two distinct groups in the not so distant past. While it is easy for many people of Boer descent to not realize the difference due to the fact that they were often brought up to think of themselves as Afrikaners: the fact of the matter is that there is indeed a valid & poignant difference between the two terms since it relates to two distinct cultural groups. The Afrikaners conditioned the Boers to view themselves as Afrikaners as well in the wake of the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War when most Boers were destitute & looking for work in the cities. This left them rather vulnerable to the Cape based Afrikaners political maneuvering which ultimately would co-opt the Boers in a political context.

The Boers are the descendants of those semi nomadic early migrating farmers who were known as the Trekboers who first trekked / moved away from the Western Cape & colonial society in general during the late 1600s & 1700s due to their poorer status & the fact that they found the autocratic VOC regulations intolerable. This act alone would be the essence of the difference between the Boers & Afrikaners who had remained in the Western Cape as it was the beginning of a cultural gulf which stretches back to Europe before they were brought to the Cape. The Afrikaans historian Brian Du Toit states on page 1 of his book on the Boer diaspora which went to East Africa following the Anglo-Boer War that the Boers were formed on the frontiers of White settlement & on the outskirts of civilization. [1] While the Afrikaners in the Western Cape on the other hand were not. This is the crux of why the Western Cape Afrikaners were pro colonial & the Boers were anti colonial. This was a trait which would later play a significant role during the second Anglo-Boer War. When a significant number of the Trekboers settled down on the eastern Cape frontier by the late 1700s they became known as Grensboere or Border Farmers. It was from the Grensboere & a number of still Trekboers that the vast majority of the Voortrekkers would later came from after the local Boers were tired of British Imperialist Colonial oppression / Xhosa attacks / constant frontier wars & growing land shortages during what was later called the Great Trek.

While all this was happening among the Boer communities on the frontier most the the White community at the Cape had remained in the Western Cape & were often known as the Cape Dutch & were loyal to the colonial powers & often ridiculed the frontier Boers whom they had little affinity for viewing them as semi-barbaric [2] ruffians. The Cape Dutch (the forerunners to the Afrikaners) often attempted to exert nominal control over the Trekboers notably with the establishment of the frontier towns of Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet. [3] It was in these two towns that the Boers declared their first republics in 1795 whereupon they adopted the red white & blue horizontal tri colour flag taken from the Batavian Republic flag. [4] This motif would later be found in numerous other Boer republic flags. While the orange white & blue horizontal tri colour flag of the Cape Dutch run VOC Cape would later find its way into the South African flag in 1927 under the Prime Ministership of the Western Cape born -ie Cape Dutch- Afrikaner JBM Hertzog.

The first freedom struggle the Boers ever had was against the administration of the Cape Dutch ie: the proto Afrikaners. Or rather the people who would later coin the term Afrikaner & used it in a political context. This is most significant since it demonstrates that the Cape Dutch / Afrikaners have never wanted freedom - in contrast to the Boers who have always wanted freedom in Africa- & often fought or worked against the freedom of the Boers. Just as they would again later do during the second Anglo-Boer War when numerous Western Cape Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British. [5]

Now there might even be some Boers who think that all this is in the past & that they are now all one big "Afrikaner" group [6] but this is wrong on a number of fronts. First let's consider where the term Afrikaner came from & what purpose it served. The term Afrikaner was first loosely used in 1707 when Hendrik Biebouw a member of the local White proto Afrikaans speaking community at the Cape- was in court & declared that he was an "Afrikaner" meaning that he was an African & was no longer from Europe. During this time all of the White settlers & mixed race persons in Africa were referred to Afrikanders & later Afrikaners -but this was simply a GEOGRAPHICAL label as it was applied to White people in general who were born in Africa regardless of which cultural group they were apart of. How it came to be used to denote a specific cultural group (s) & become politicized occurred much later in 1875 when a group of Cape Dutch intellectuals in the Western Cape decided to start a language rights group [7] aimed at getting official recognition for their language which they began to call Afrikaans after the African continent. Remember that at this exact same time the Boers were independent in their own republics in the north & spoke their OWN dialect of this language which they called "die Taal" or Boer Taal which historians have classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans [8] since the Boers' dialect of Afrikaans developed on the northern & eastern frontier AWAY FROM the Western Cape Afrikaners & their dialect.

The term Afrikaner was first used in a political context by these Western Cape people who began to call themselves Afrikaners after the language they spoke -all at a time when the Boer people HAD LONG SINCE BEEN ESTABLISHED & were mainly living in their own independent world recognized republics in the north. Therefore in the late 19th cent & into the 20th cent -& as early as the 1700s when the Boers ancestors trekked out of the Western Cape- there were two distinct & identifiable White Afrikaans speaking (different dialects) groups [9] in Southern Africa: one in the Western Cape (& some who moved northwards after the gold rush) who called themselves Afrikaners & were the descendants of the pro colonial Cape Dutch / & the other group: the anti colonial / republican / independent oriented Boers living in the northern & eastern Cape frontier & within their own independent republics in the north -descendants of the Trekboers / Grensboere & the Voortrekkers.

President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic -who referred to himself as a Boer- was wary of the Cape Afrikaners & did not want them coming to his republic as he viewed them as being too pro British. [10] He would often recruit people from Holland to fill certain government positions as he felt that they would be more loyal to the Transvaal Republic than the Afrikaners. The Cape Afrikaners were often influenced by the British colonial power.

After the Boers were conquered by the British & incorporated into the British created macro state of South Africa: a number of these Boers even attempted to restore their former Republics by force of arms in 1914 when General De Wet & some other notable Boer Generals (including it is believed General De La Rey) staged a rebellion to the South Africa government during World War 1. [11] This rebellion was triggered when Prime Minister Louis Botha's government decided to enter on the side of the British during the war. The lead to an outrage among many Boers since it was less than 15 years after the British killed close to 50 % of the total Boer child population in the concentration camps. The rebellion was put down by force & its leaders were jailed & banned from participating in politics.

So how in the world did the Boers become conditioned to also later view themselves as Afrikaners too you might be asking? In a short 3 word response: war / propaganda & politics. After the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War -of which a number of Afrikaners fought against the Boers on the side of the British- when many Boers had to move to the cities to find work they often encountered Afrikaners [12] who would exert their political influence over the poorer Boers -but many Boers still remained culturally intact & even had their own organizations. This is where the disastrous effects of Afrikaner Nationalism comes in.

During the 1930s the Broederbond & the Afrikaner Nationalists -which were one & the same [13] - worked hard to incorporate the Boers into the Afrikaner fold [14] as the Afrikaner Nationalists viewed the Boers as a political threat to their planned hegemony in South Africa. After the Boer led Rand Rebellion was put down by violent force (even complete with the South African Party government bombing Johannesburg) [15] in 1922: the Afrikaner Nationalists worked overtime to politically incorporate the Boers under the Afrikaner banner of which the Cape based Afrikaners would control. One of the first things they did was to create the Colour bar laws [16] which reserved certain jobs for White people as the main grievance of the Boer mine workers was that they did not like having their wages being under cut with the importation of cheap Bantu labour. This effectively started to acclimatize the Boers to the Afrikaner Nationalists by getting them hooked onto a dimension of the Apartheid platform. Though it should be noted that Apartheid was started by the British Colonial administrations [17] -particularly the horizontal oppressive features- & was only expanded upon by the Afrikaner Nationalists in which they also envisioned & attempted to turn the Bantu reserves into independent states. [18] Four were in fact granted outright independence [19] but were only ever recognized by South Africa & each other but not by the world. Another more effective method the Afrikaners used to co-opt the Boers was by invoking Boer history most notably the Great Trek. Notice how the Western Cape born Cape Dutch / Afrikaner D F Malan: the National Party Prime Minister was able to do this to great effect -notably during the Great Trek reenactment ceremonies & at the Voortrekker Monument inauguration. This single event alone was definitely one of the convenient tools that the Afrikaner Nationalists used to co-opt the republican Boers which in turn let the Boers' guard down thinking (erroneously as it would turn out) that their (Boers) interests were looked after by teaming up with the Cape based Afrikaners under the banner of Afrikaner Nationalism. Which was an extension of British Imperialism in many ways as the macro State set up by the British with the South Africa Act of 1909 was now being run by a Cape based Afrikaans speaking regime which was recruited as a surrogate Colonial power.

D F Malan was nothing more than a political opportunist (interesting how Jacob Zuma -a political opportunist himself- is attempting to do a similar thing in modern times by attempting to appeal to the Boers & Afrikaners just as Malan was able to successfully do) who used the centennial of the Great Trek to promote his political agenda & the establishment of Afrikaner Nationalism which sought -as part of its goal- to expropriate & subjugate the Boer Nation under the tutelage of the anti-republican Cape based Afrikaners. Malan was even opposed to the republican aspirations of the Boers even attempting to prevent the Boer descended Hans Strijdom from succeeding him as Prime Minister as he favoured N C Havenga [20] the former leader of the Afrikaner Party which joined the National Party in 1951. According to one of the past guests of the Hello Afrika segment of the Right Perspective radio program: Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio: Strijdom was even talking about restoring the Boer Republics as there was considerable support among the Boers [21] during the 1940s & 1950s for this. Strijdom interestingly later died in office under mysterious circumstances & was followed by none other than Hendrik Verwoerd: the Dutch born architect of Grand Apartheid & who would later turn South Africa into a nominal republic which would further offset & blunt Boer aspirations for independence within their own republics.

Therefore by the 1950s most White Afrikaans speaking people were conditioned to view themselves as Afrikaners even though this is technically wrong since for Boers to do so they are basically giving up their own unique identity & allowing themselves to be represented & dominated by the numerically larger Afrikaners [22] who have often historically worked against the interests of the Boers. This is the main reason why it is wrong for Boers to think of themselves as Afrikaners. Consider the following related examples. In Canada there are Quebecois & Acadians: both are French speaking Canadians but no one would ever call the Acadians: French Canadians since this is a term which is applied to the French speakers in Quebec & Ontario. Similarly there are distinctions between the Croats & the Serbs in Europe even though both groups speak the same language -though different dialects of Serbo-Croatian: Croats speaking a dialect called Croatian & Serbs speaking a dialect called Serbian - just as the Boers & Afrikaners speak (or at least used to to a larger extent) different dialects of what came to be called Afrikaans. The difference between the Romanian & Moldovan is another example of different cultural / ethnic groups speaking different dialects of a similar or closely related language. The problem among the White Afrikaans speakers is that the Afrikaners were able to effectively dominate & overshadow the Boers. Perhaps not too unlike how the Serbs once did in the former Yugoslavia -but it appears that the Afrikaners were much better at conditioning Boer identity out of the public sphere -only to be used as a convenient political prop to bolster & advance the agenda of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists.

This is why many Boers do not want to be viewed as Afrikaners since this makes them a minority within the Afrikaner designation. It makes the Cape based Afrikaners the center of power. The Afrikaners of Cape Dutch descent outnumber the Afrikaners of Boer descent. Making any union between Afrikaner & Boer always coming to the detriment of the Boers. This means that anti-Boer Afrikaners could (& often do) represent the entire Afrikaner group making decisions which could be inimical to the Boers. Rather like what often happened in Apartheid era South Africa when Boers were outvoted by the Afrikaners. Sort of like how liberal leaning states often make decisions inimical to the local conservatives because the given state's left of center leadership makes the political decisions affecting the entire population of the state marginalizing persons with right of center inclinations.

The Western Cape based Broederbond -which was the driving force behind Afrikaner Nationalism / The National Party / Apartheid rewrote the history of the Boers turning them into "Afrikaners" [23] retroactively as part of a rhetorical device in order to co-opt the Boers / their history & inheritance. Therefore the history they wrote would often refer to Afrikaners instead of Boers -which is a common error still copied by contemporary authors -without realizing that they are promoting the Afrikaner Nationalists propaganda & skewed version of the past. The well known Afrikaans historian Hermann Giliomee was one of those who played an integral part in the continued perpetuation of this myth by covering up or derisively down playing the distinct & separate history of the Boer nation.

The late Boer patriot Robert van Tonder of the Boerestaat Party was one of those who was most insistent that the Boers are a different nation to the Cape based Afrikaners & was calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics as early as 1961 [24] the same year that Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a republic.

Furthermore: TRP caller Henry Pinkham is exactly right when he points out that the Boers can only achieve freedom as a nation since if they try to do it while still attached to the Cape based Afrikaners the Boers will (obviously) get nowhere. The Cape based Afrikaners -particularly its leadership- still to this day like nothing better than to keep the Boers on their Afrikaner reservation.

Also: the world remembers the neo colonial role that the Afrikaners played (at the behest of the British who put them in control in the first place) & their disastrous (though often exaggerated) legacy while the Boers played only a marginal role as they had hardly anything to do with the implementation of Apartheid & were not as high in the ranks of the political order. Therefore going forward as Boers will only help their cause even more particularly among the rest of the world since the Boers were recognized the world over during the Anglo-Boer War. The Boer Republics themselves were recognized by the European governments & American government [25] & the cause of Boer independence was supported the world over.

Now it would be one thing if the difference between Afrikaner & Boer was just semantics (as one guest erroneously & ignorantly put it) being different terms referring to the same people. This could even be true to an extent vis a vis those Boers or Boer descendants who also refer to themselves as Afrikaners -due to conditioning- but the fact of the matter is that most Afrikaners are of Cape Dutch descent since people of Boer descent compromise only about not much more than a third of the total White Afrikaans speaking population.

Furthermore the term Afrikaner originally referred to those colonial Cape Dutch people who often worked against Boer interests & as such these two terms in fact refer to two different & distinct peoples. One poster on a forum once said that the Cape based Afrikaners -ie: the former Cape Dutch- are nothing more than Afrikaans speaking English people. Rather poignant observation since the Cape based Afrikaners have virtually the same cosmopolitan neo colonial liberal outlook as most of the English speakers have which is in sharp contrast to the more rustic / rural / anti colonial & conservative outlook of the Boers.

Therefore even if the Boers & Afrikaners were to achieve independence in a common state (as they had in Apartheid era South Africa along with the English speakers) -which the notion of dismissing the differences between Afrikaner & Boer would lead to- the Boer people will still not have the full self determination that they most seek as they would STILL be under the political control & suzerainty of the Cape based Afrikaners WHO OFTEN do not share their political outlook / culture nor even the same history ie: the trekking themed past / the various freedom struggles nor the frontier origins which shaped & defined the Boer nation.

Notes.

1. The Boers in East Africa: Ethnicity and Identity. Brian M. Du Toit. Page 1.

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. ]

2. Wallace Mills. Trekboers & migrations. The Great Trek.

Quote: [ Trekboers... 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. ]

3. Oliver Ransford. Chapter 1: Trekboers. The Great Trek.

Quote: [ The officials there, attempting to reassert their authority in the distant districts, appointed magistrates to Swellendam and Graaff Reinet, but this only increased the tension between the frontiersmen and the Company's servants at the capital. ]

4. Noted at Boer data page Perspektief in the Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet Republics section.

5. Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio noted this during an inteview with the Right Perspective radio program on Jan 6 2007.

6. The confusion among the Boer descendents is noted in: Who Were The Boers of The Anglo-Boer War. From: H Labuschagne.

Quote: [ Perhaps most of the confusion comes from the fact that the term "Boer" is rather confusing in itself. ]

7. 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.

8. 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. ]

9. General Butler of Britain noted during the second Anglo-Boer War that there were 3 main White groups in Southern Africa. The British or English speakers / the Cape Dutch / & the Boers. He also noted that these groups can never live together.

10. Clare Wyllie interviews Professor Gerrit Schutte.

Quote: [ Paul Kruger did not like people from the Cape - he felt they were subjugated by the British, so he encouraged people from the Netherlands to work in the Transvaal as a way to strengthen Boer independence. ]

11. The Maritz Rebellion of 1914 of which its main goal was the restoration of the conquered Boer Republics.

12. Adriana Stuijt. Boer, Afrikaner or White: Which Are You?

Quote: [ The (Boers) were dirt-poor and plunged into an unprecedented famine. Many had to flee to the cities to survive - places which were totally alien to them, places were only English was being spoken, places where their churches were being run by people who referred to themselves as Afrikaners. ]

13. About.com. Afrikaner Broederbond.

Quote: [ The South African prime minister, JBM Hertzog, declared in November 1935 that "there is no doubt that the secret Broederbond is nothing more than the HNP operating secretly underground, and the HNP is nothing more than the secret Afrikaner Broederbond operating in public. ]

14. The Construction of Eugène Marais as an Afrikaner Hero.

Quote: [ The “Boer worker" was the focus of the culture-brokers’ attentions in the next decade as the urban labour market became an arena in which Afrikaner intellectuals sought to capture the cultural allegiance of the urbanizing Afrikaans-speaker. ]

15. South African History Online. The Rand Rebellion of 1922.

Quote: [ Aeroplanes strafed rebels and bombed the Workers' Hall at Benoni. ]

16. The National Party of JBM Hertzog extended the Works & Mines Act in 1926. Noted in the Country Studies Series by Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress.

Quote: [ In addition, the Mines and Works Amendment Act of 1926 reinforced the color bar in the mining industry. Together, these laws became the cornerstone of what Hertzog termed his "civilized labour" policies. ]

17. The British initiated the Apartheid system with the Pass Laws & other discriminatory laws in the Cape & Natal during the late 19th cent. Noted also in the article Apartheid Revisited from Gavan Tredoux.

Quote: [ Apartheid was not invented in 1948 by Afrikaner Nationalists. The Nationalists were always eager to lay claim to apartheid, but this was a misleading element of their propaganda. Political parties are given to claims that they disagree with those who insist that they really agree. Apartheid was actually pioneered by the British colonial governments of Natal and the Cape Province. ]

18. The Separate Development aspect of the Grand Apartheid of the Afrikaner Nationalists attempted to create independent states for the various ethnic groups in what was also called a constellation of states.

Quote: [ When Botha outlined his concept of a constellation of states in Southern Africa, mining & media baron Harry Oppenheimer, the chief financial backer of the opposition PFP described it as having both imagination & charm. ] From: Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth. Terry Bell, Dumisa Buhle Ntsebeza. Page 75.

19. The homelands of the Transkei / the Ciskei / Bophuthatswana & Venda were granted outright independence.

20. Noted in the Wikipedia article on D F Malan.

Quote: [ Malan retired in 1954 at the age of 80, but in the succession-battle that accompanied his retirement, his anointed heirs, N.C. Havenga and E. Donges were defeated and Malan was thus succeeded by J.G. Strijdom. ]

21. Theuns Cloete noted this during an appearnace on The Right Perspective shortwave / internet radio program from December 2007.

22. There are about 1.5 million Boers out of a total White Afrikaans speaking population of 3.5 million most of whom identify themselves as Afrikaners.

23. Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio mentioned this during an interview on an American shortwave / internet radio program & fromer journalist Adriana Stuijt has noted this in Boer, Afrikaner or White: Which Are You? among other places in the past.

24. Arthur Kemp. Victory or Violence: The Stroy of the AWB. Chapter 9 The Volkstaat.

Quote: [ Van Tonder, the founder of the town of Randburg and a self made millionaire, had long been running what was virtually a one man show calling for the restoration of the Boer republics divided from the rest of the country. He had in fact left the National Party as early as 1961 in order to pursue this idea. ]

25. C W van der Hoogt. The Story of the Boers. Page 96.

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." ]

This dissertation might be added to later.