The Africanders

by Le Roy Hooker

The distinctive Africander type of character began to appear at the time when the settlers began to move from the coast into the interior of the country. There was everything to favor the rapid development of a new type of humanity. [[17]]For the most part the Dutch and the Germans belonged to the humbler classes; the situation was isolated; the home ties were few; the voyage to Europe was so long that communication was difficult and expensive; and so they maintained little connection with—and soon lost all feeling for—the fatherlands. As for the Huguenots, they had no home country to look to. France had banished them, and they were not of Holland—neither in blood nor in speech. Thus it came to pass that the whites of South Africa who went into the interior as pioneers went consenting to the feeling that every bond between Europe and themselves was severed—that they were a new people whose true home and destiny, to the latest generations, were to be in Africa.

Many of them became stockmen, roaming with their flocks and herds over vast tracts of grazing lands, for which they paid a nominal rent to the Company. Some of them became mighty hunters of big game—like Nimrod; and even those who herded cattle and sheep were forced to protect themselves and their live stock against lions and leopards and the savage Bushmen who waged a constant warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected. In such circumstances it is not wonderful that the people who [[18]]had in their veins the blended blood of Holland and Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled degree courage, self-reliance and love of independence, coupled with a passion for solitude and isolation.

As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion. But there was no declension of religious fervor. In all their wanderings the Bible went with them as an oracle to be consulted on all subjects, and the altar of family worship never lacked its morning and evening sacrifice. And they retained a passionate love of personal freedom which no effort of the Company’s government could bring under perfect discipline.

Magistrates and assessors were appointed in some of the distant stations, but they failed to control the wandering stockmen, who were called Trek Boers because they “trekked” from place to place. Being good marksmen and inured to conflict with wild beasts and wilder [[19]]men, they formed among themselves companies of fighting men whose duty it was to disperse or destroy the savage Bushmen. These independent military organizations the government recognized and approved by appointing over them a field commander for each district and a subordinate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a district. These officers and their respective commands became permanent features of the system of local government, and the war bands—called commandos—have always been recognized in the records of military operations by the Boers.

The administration, through a governor and council appointed by the Dutch East India Company in Holland, was never popular with the colonists. The governor was in no sense responsible to the people he governed. This was one of the causes which prompted the Boers to go out into the wilderness, where distance from the center of authority secured to them greater freedom.

In 1779 the disaffected colonists sent commissioners to Holland to demand of the States-General redress of the grievances suffered under the rule of the Dutch East India Company and a share in the government of the colony. This action was due, in part, to actual wrongs inflicted [[20]]on a liberty-loving people, and, in part, to the spirit of independence which characterized the temper of the age and had led the British colonists in North America to throw off the control of their mother country.

After prolonged negotiations the States-General sent out two commissioners to investigate the state of affairs in the Cape colony and to recommend measures of reform. The degree of relief proposed was considered inadequate—especially by those who dwelt in the more distant settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of the interior rose up in revolt against the Company’s government—professing, however, unabated loyalty to the mother country. The magistrates appointed by the company were deposed, and little republics were set up, each with a representative assembly. It would have been an easy matter for the government at the Cape to have suppressed these uprisings by cutting off their food supplies. But just then other events claimed the attention of both the governor and the governed—events which drew South Africa into the tumultuous tide of European politics and led to the immediate contact of Boer and Briton, and initiated a struggle between the two [[21]]which has been renewed at intervals, with varying fortunes, for more than a hundred years.

Before going forward to the event of 1795—the first contact of Boer and Briton—it will be well to note some of the more important features of the condition in which that contact found the Boer.

The total Boer population of South Africa in 1795 was about seventeen thousand, with a rapid rate of increase. In the mixed blood of the people the proportions of national elements were: Dutch, a little less than two-thirds; French, one-sixth; the remainder was principally German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities.

The popular language differed largely from that of Holland at the close of the eighteenth century. The amalgamation with a large body of foreigners, the scant instruction in book learning, and above all the necessity of speaking to the slaves and Hottentots in the simplest manner possible had all tended to the destruction of grammatical forms. The language in common use by the Boer had become a mere dialect, having a very limited vocabulary. But the Dutch Bible—a book that every one read—greatly increased the number of words with which he was familiar. With this addition, however, [[22]]most of the uneducated South African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother, of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more.