Dorsland Trek
After the Great Trek a community arose that comprised a few Voortrekkers spread in different groups across a large geographical area in the Transvaal.
The primary reasons for the Thirstland Trek were religious ones and expostulation against President Thomas Burgers’ progressive policy, specifically his new education legislation, the unpleasant circumstances in the Gereformeerde Kerk (Reformed Church) and the search for a New Jerusalem.
In a few instances the mental state of the Jerusalemgangers (a group of Voortrekkers in the Transvaal who wanted to trek overland to Jerusalem in Palestine) affected the Trekkers.
This group of 10 families, altogether 60 persons besides the “mak volk” travelling with them, trekked with relatively little loss of cattle and people through the Thirstland and in September 1875 reached the Ngami lake.
After the trekkers of the first trek group tried unsuccessfully for two years to obtain land in Namaland and Hereroland, they had to abandon this idea.
Shortly after this they would merge with the trekkers of the second and third treks and continue their difficult sojourn through the unknown regions of southern Africa for a further three years.
[citation needed] By April 1876 the first cases of malaria broke out among them and in July 1876 the first of more than 160 persons who would perish of this disease, passed away.
A delegation from Khama, comprising the missionary Hepburn, the trader Alfred Musson as interpreter, and seven council members tried in vain to convince them not to take on this dangerous journey.
[8] After the Transvaal was annexed by Great Britain on 12 April 1877, a third group of trekkers, consisting of eight families of 40 people in addition to the “mak volk”, left that very same month, departing from the district of Rustenburg.
It was here that the Thirstland trek must have experienced its all-time low, since most deaths because of malaria and loss of livestock occurred during this time.
[citation needed] Of the group of ten families under Gert du Preez, comprising 65 individuals (the “mak volk” included), all of the men died and only three women and 19 children survived.
Up until then, nothing had come of the trekker’s main goal of finding a new and “better land to live in”, and on top of that, the trek had impoverished them even more.
The Ovambo tribes further along the route were a threat to them, and so the trekkers were forced to deviate from the path and trek to a neutral area south of the Etosha Pan.
[11] After an exploratory expedition identified a “resting place” in a largely uninhabited area – Kaokoland – the trekkers in May 1879 moved to Rusplaas (Otjitundua), Kaoko Otavi and a number of other scattered springs.
At this location they built temporary houses, laid out gardens and lands for cultivation and hunted in the surrounding area.
While they were staying there, the first clash with an Ovambo tribe on Portuguese territory took place when seven men who were camped beside the Kunene were attacked by the OvaMbandja.
[citation needed] Reports about the disastrous trek and the trekkers’ predicaments eventually reached their compatriots in southern Africa and the Cape authorities.
Following this, a number of relief committees were formed in the Cape Colony and the Orange Free State to collect money and supplies for the “destitute trekboers”.
[12] After negotiations, a Boer delegation and colonel Sebastião Nunes da Matta, the governor of Moçâmedes, concluded an agreement on 18 September 1880, in which the conditions were outlined under which the trekkers would be permitted to settle in Angola.
In light of the reputation of the Boers as good combatants, the Portuguese authorities believed that the trekkers could support them in fending off the double threat they faced: the indigenous tribes and the possible intervention of the British.
The number of Boers in the settlement increased with the further arrival of individuals and small groups who were no longer able to make a satisfactory living in Damaraland after the outbreak of the Second Nama-Herero War.
[13] Eventually approximately 700 individuals (aside from an unknown number of black labourers) had left the Transvaal between 1874 and 1877 in three separate trek parties.
[citation needed] The Jerusalemgangers or Enselin party were a group of Boers originating in Transvaal that held a set of beliefs that were a mix between politics and religion which were considered eccentric and fanatical by outsiders.
Some of their more characteristic beliefs were: The idea of trekking by land all the way to Jerusalem, (an idea based on their belief that Jerusalem was about as far from Transvaal as the Kaap) and settling there, an extreme aversion to the cape church (because of their links to the British), their view of Britain as one of the horns of the beast in the Biblical Book of Revelation, and their general aversion to the British, even coming as far as to call them the antichrist.
They moved from the vicinity of present-day Tarkastad to Natal in 1837 to the Free State and finally the Transvaal after the British annexation in 1844.
Because they identified themselves with the chosen Israel on the journey to Jerusalem, they were given the name "Jerusalemites," but many scholars are convinced that the distinctive feature of the Enslin group was not religious in nature, but that it rather was their radical dislike of everything English.
[15] The first "Great trek from Angola" child born on the South West African side was Dirk Hendrik Ackerman (11 December 1928) The Boers were not well received everywhere.
As early as 1874, Herero chiefs Maharero, Kambazembi, and Christian Wilhelm Zeraua requested the Cape authorities to intervene with their settlement in Damaraland.
[16] In the area around Gobabis, Kaiǀkhauan Kaptein Andreas Lambert on behalf of all leaders of Damaraland threatened to harm them if they did not leave.
