Great Trek
The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British.
It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town.
Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers" or "pathfinders" (literally "fore-trekkers") in Dutch and Afrikaans.
In a few short decades, the Cape had become home to a large population of "Glidden", also denoted as "burgers" (free citizens), former Company employees who remained in Dutch territories overseas after completing their contracts.
Since the primary purpose of the Cape settlement at the time was to stock provisions for passing Dutch ships, the VOC offered grants of farmland to its employees under the condition they would cultivate grain for the Company warehouses, and released them from their contracts to save on their wages.
[4] Reflecting the multi-national character of the VOC's workforce, some German soldiers and sailors were also considered for vrijburger status as well,[4] and in 1688 the Dutch government sponsored the resettlement of over a hundred French Huguenot refugees at the Cape.
[10] From 1806 to 1814, the Cape was governed as a British military dependency, whose sole importance to the Royal Navy was its strategic relation to Indian maritime traffic.
[10] At the onset of the British rule, the Cape Colony encompassed 100,000 square miles (260,000 km2) and was populated by about 26,720 people of European descent, a relative majority of whom were of Dutch origin.
[11] The British authorities were adamantly opposed to the Boers' ownership of slaves and what was perceived as their unduly harsh treatment of the indigenous peoples.
[2] In 1815, the controversial death of a white farmer, who was shot after resisting arrest for abusing his native servant, resulted in the abortive Slachter's Nek Rebellion.
[10] In 1828, the Cape governor declared that all native inhabitants but slaves were to have the rights of "citizens", in respect of security and property ownership, on parity with the settlers.
[2] Others, especially trekboers, a class of Boers who pursued semi-nomadic pastoral activities, were frustrated by the apparent unwillingness or inability of the British government to extend the borders of the Cape Colony eastward and provide them with access to more prime pasture and economic opportunities.
[9] The British government initially suggested that conflict in the far interior of Southern Africa between the migrating Boers and the Bantu peoples they encountered would require an expensive military intervention.
[9] However, authorities at the Cape also judged that the human and material cost of pursuing the settlers and attempting to re-impose an unpopular system of governance on those who had deliberately spurned it was not worth the immediate risk.
Moving through the Eastern Cape, they were welcomed by the Xhosa who were in dispute with the neighbouring Zulu King Dingane ka Senzangakhona, and they passed unharmed into Natal.
Eventually, after weeks of extraordinary toil, the small party arrived at Port Natal, crossing the Congela River and weaving their way through the coastal forest into the bay area.
There, the trek was soon welcomed with open arms by the few British hunters and ivory traders there such as James Collis, including Reverend Allen Francis Gardiner, an ex-commander of the Royal Navy ship Clinker, who had decided to start a mission station there.
The Boers set up their laager ('wagon fort') camp in the area of the present-day Greyville Racecourse in Durban, chosen because it had suitable grazing for the oxen and horses and was far from the foraging hippos in the bay.
[14]: 162, 163 In August 1836, despite pre-existing peace agreements with local black leaders, a Ndebele (Matebele) patrol attacked the Liebenberg family part of Potgieter's party, killing six men, two women and six children.
[19] Retief's written request for land contained veiled threats by referring to the Voortrekker's defeat of indigenous groups encountered along their journey.
The Voortrekker demand for a written contract guaranteeing private property ownership was incompatible with the contemporaneous Zulu oral culture which prescribed that a chief could only temporarily dispense land as it was communally owned.
[21] In contrast to earlier conflicts with the Xhosa on the eastern Cape frontier, the Zulus killed women and children along with men, wiping out half of the Natal contingent of Voortrekkers.
[22] After Dingane's death, Mpande was proclaimed king, and the Zulu nation allied with the short-lived Natalia Republic until its annexation by the British Empire in 1843.
[14]: 164 [23] The Voortrekkers' guns offered them a technological advantage over the Zulu's traditional weaponry of short stabbing spears, fighting sticks, and cattle-hide shields.
[23] Conflict amongst the Voortrekkers was a problem because the trek levelled out the pre-existing class hierarchy which had previously enforced discipline, and thus social cohesion broke down.
[14]: 433 The centenary celebrations began with a re-enactment of the trek beginning on 8 August 1938 with nine ox wagons at the statue of Jan van Riebeeck in Cape Town and ended at the newly completed Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria and attended by over 100,000 people.
[14]: 432 The commemoration sparked mass enthusiasm amongst Afrikaners as the re-enactment trek passed through the small towns and cities of South Africa.
[14]: 432 An Afrikaans language epic called Building a Nation (Die Bou van 'n Nasie) was made in 1938 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Great Trek.
A year later the Voortrekker Monument was completed and opened in Pretoria by the newly elected South African Prime Minister and National Party member Daniel Malan in 1949.
[27] When apartheid in South Africa ended and the country transitioned to majority rule, President F. W. de Klerk invoked the measures as a new Great Trek.
