Two:Afrikanerdom's Growth -- till her "Death" in 1902

We have previously dealt with the roots of South African Afrikaner thought. We now proceed to the fruits of Calvinism in South Africa. We start with the eschatology of victory in the history of the Afrikaner from 1652 through 1902. There is a lot that could be said here, so we shall have to restrict ourselves only to some of the highlights.

As we pointed out, in 1652 Dr. Johan van Riebeeck MD knelt down on the beach near the later Cape Town -- bringing the first colonists with him, and praying that "Thy true Reformed Christian doctrine may be promulgated and disseminated throughout the land." On the ship, he brought with him some Preachers and some special laymen to comfort the sick (the "Sieketroosters"). Just as Pieter Stuyvesant went to New York and established the Dutch Reformed Church -- so did Pieter van der Stal, the first Preacher, arrive in S outh Africa. He established the first Reformed Congregation at the Cape -- on behalf of, and answerable to, the Presbytery of Amsterdam.

Between 1700 and 1800, the colonists began to take root. The Dutch-Germans arrived in 1652. The French Huguenots started pouring in after 1688. More Dutchman and especially more Germans arrived round about 1700. The colony took root. For the first time, we encounter a record of a White South African who truly knew his identity. When asked what he was, he said, "Ek is 'n Afrikaner," (that is, "I am an Afrikaner")

Round about 1700, we find many native White South Africans claiming to be Afrikaners. The word Afrikaner, of course, means one who comes from Africa. It is very interesting that White people in Africa were calling themselves Africans -- long before any Black people in Africa had even heard the word "African" (let alone knew what it means)!

In 1700 and in the subsequent years, we find the native South African Whit es for the first time beginning to struggle against the authoritarianism emanating from far-away Holland. In the United States, after a couple of generations there was a native-born White American population which began to feel distant from England. The British government got out of touch with what was happening in America --so an American consciousness began to develop amongst the American Whites which ultimately led to severe dissatisfaction with England, and finally the American Declaration of Independence. So too in South Africa, from about 1710 onward we begin to find (some sixty years after the establishment of the White colony) the emergence of a South African White consciousness.

These "Afrikaners" objected to the perceived authoritarianism of Holland. They intensely disliked the autocracy of the foreign Dutch government -- and many of the Dutch noblemen and wealthy people who were sent to South Africa from Holland to govern her. This clashed with the frontier-typ e spirit, where every man was regarded as formally the equal of every other civilized man.

Some of these governors that were sent to South Africa were not even real Dutchmen. One such was a very objectionable individual called Willem Adriaan van der Stel. He was born in Indonesia. His father was a Dutchman, but his mother a Malay. He was really autocratic, and quite a tyrant. He much upset the people, who were not large in number.

In North America, the White population rapidly expanded not so much at the cradle but particularly through continuing immigration. The White colonisation of South Africa however -- after its initial establishment in 1652 and the arrival of the French Huguenots in 1688 -- hardly got any new increase whatsoever from Europe.

What preserved a great deal of openness in White Americans toward White Europeans, is the fact that there has -- at any rate until just a few decades ago -- been a constant flow of more and more Europeans to the United States. That has not been the case in South Africa. The South African Whites, once they got rooted, were remote and aloof from Europe. Until about 1820, almost the only new arrivals were autocratic European rulers and Governors. They came there for a five- or ten-year term, not understanding the people. Then they had to be replaced by yet other autocratic and unsympathetic rulers.

So the White population in South Africa expanded chiefly at the cradle. Through immigration from 1700 onward, it increased at a very tiny trickling pace -- compared to the flood of immigrants which then kept on arriving in North America. In fact, by 1700 there were only 1800 Whites in the whole of South Africa -- together with 1100 slaves. None of those slaves were from Africa. All of them had been transported there by Dutch slavers from Indonesia.

Yet we find the White-born people in the Cape becoming increasingly more dissatisfied with the Dutch colonial pressures from Hollan d. Indeed, it was especially the Huguenots -- the people of French Calvinist descent -- who were the most dissatisfied of all.

Huguenots like Adam Tas became more and more involved in moving for increasing measures of South African self-government. They disliked the Dutch control of the Cape. These were people who were sturdy, who had been grounded in Calvin's GaIlic Confession -- which required the government to be godly in terms of the Ten Commandments. They perceived that the far-away Dutch government no longer seemed to be very godly -- at least, not in its dealings with the South Africans. So they began to say so, more and more.

It is interesting that the man who wrote the music for the South African national anthem, Rev. M.L. de Villiers, is of French Huguenot descent. Indeed, the Huguenots were a people that loved freedom.

So, Huguenots like Adam Tas with their strong law-orientation would appeal to Calvin and his GalIic Confession. They objected against the tyranny of wayward Dutch governors and officials at the Cape -- and they resisted it. Throughout the eighteenth century, you had this. In 1740, 1750 and 1760 -- there was more and more dissatisfaction in and around Cape Town. People trekked over the mountains and then across the rolling plains -- on and on into the arid heartland of South Africa.

First of all, there was dissatisfaction round the lush coastal regions -- where alone there was adequate rainfall. There you find the rise of the first White South African nationalism, in a group known as the Cape Patriots. These were people who began first requesting and then demanding initially tokenistic, but later real political representation in their own affairs -- much as the North American colonists began to agitate for this sort of thing also from about 1700 - 1720 onward.

The dates are surprisingly parallel in the two continents. So too the development of events. The White South Africa ns felt that they wanted to be more autonomous in trading. Yet the Dutch mother country followed a closed trading pattern. It wanted to saddle South Africa with Dutch items that White South Africans did not particularly want to buy. They preferred to buy French goods or to make them themselves. This was leading up to a "Boston Tea Party" sort of situation -- comparable with what happened in America from 1770 to 1776.

Round about 1780, just as the Americans were winning their independence, a very major event took place in South Africa. The dissatisfied White settlers, as they moved eastward and northward away from Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa where I grew up, for the first time suddenly encountered Black people that they had never seen before. Thus the Whites had been in South Africa for one hundred and twenty-eight years before they met the first Blacks. They met in the eastern portion of what is now South Africa.

The Whites had moved out eastward and northward from Cape Town. The Blacks had been moving down from East Africa, southbound. They moved on through the southeastern fringe of Africa -- with other Black tribes to the north of them pushing these advancing Black tribes down into what is now South Africa.

One day, as the eastward-moving Whites went over the brow of the next hill and as the westward-moving Blacks came over the brow of the same hill -- they looked at one another, and could not believe their eyes. The two groups did not understand one anothers language or culture. The Whites were Christians and Calvinists, and spoke a Caucasian language. The Blacks were half-naked pagans with some Moslem influence. They did not understand the Whites' language yet the two groups still managed to make a deal.

The point where they met one another on those hills, would be the boundary. The Whites would move no farther to the east nor to the north. The Blacks would move no farther to the west and to the south. Here is the second phase in the development of racial segregation -- as the historical practice of South Africa.

Things might have gone well, if it had not been for a handful of greedy Whites who wanted to grab more land to the east and the north of that border. There was also more than a handful of starving yet greedy Blacks who might well get wiped out in the next famine.

Famines are very frequent in South Africa. Remember, it is desert country. There is very little rain. When the Blacks had a crop failure and when their cattle began to die, they found it most convenient to raid their White neighbours' cattle. "Look, fellows ... meat!"

Of course the Whites were not very happy with having their cows burgled. They undertook reprisals, and this led from 1780 onward over the next couple of decades to the socalled Ten Kaffir Wars.

Now the word "Kaffir" is an Arabic word, meaning infidel or unbeliever -- viz. one who is not a Moslem. When an Arab calls a person a Kaffir, he means that the person to whom he is speaking is not a Moslem. From that point of view, Christian Whites are all Kaffirs! However, when the Whites asked the Blacks what the Blacks were called, the Blacks told the Whites what the Arab slave-traders had told the Blacks. They said: "We are Kaffirs." By this they meant that the light-skinned Semitic Mohammedan Arab slavers had called them Kaffirs (v�z. non-Moslems or pagans).

The word Kaffir in South Africa has become a word of abuse which most Blacks resent. They wrongly think that the Whites calling them Kaffirs are implying they are not Christians, while all that would be implied is that they are not Moslems. In that sense, I myself would certainly want to be a Kaffir or a non-Moslem! Today, however, the word gives offence and should certainly not be used except in a historical sense.

So there were ten "Kaffir Wars," between pagan Blacks and Christian Whites. These ten wars ended rather conclu sively in the destruction of Black military power, and the dominance of the Whites on the eastern frontier. Again, the principle of separation was stressed. Again, there was to be separation between the Black-inhabited area to the northeast of the boundary and the White-inhabited area to the southwest of this boundary.

By 1795, there were 20 000 Afrikaans speaking Whites in South Africa. This is an appropriate place at which to quote the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its articles on South Africa. They are very biased against South Africa. That makes the weight of what I am about to cite, all the more impressive!

The 1973 liberal Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its article on South Africa, says: "Although all the [White] Trekkers who were trekking northward and eastward through South Africa were extreme individualists and some were ruffians, most of them did contrive to preserve a sound domestic morality." In other words, according to the Britanni ca, they had an honourable family life!

They were not unlearned, concedes the Britannica, for "they strove to preserve a smattering of literacy!" Then it adds, apparently trying to deprecate them: "They read almost only the Bible and their Catechism."

I myself cannot think of anything better to read -- than the Bible and the Catechism! Indeed, the Britannica concludes that "they did also preserve a respect for their religion, a rather strict form of Calvinism."

Well, Afrikaner Christians can be proud to be described by Humanists, in the Britannica, that way. Even though these descriptions were hardly intended to be compliments!

These movements of the Trekkers continued. Thus, various Calvinistic republics began to be set up of the frontier -- as the discontent of White South Africans increased toward the far-away and autocratic Dutch mother country.

It is significant that these first Calvinist republics were set u p by White South Africans at the very time Holland succumbed first to the French Revolution and thereafter to Napoleon. I do not believe the White South Africans then had sufficient international insight to understand the terrible plight that "mother Holland" was going through at that time. Indeed, the Dutch Calvinist monarchy was being destroyed and overrun first by liberal leftists -- and then by the autocratic and bizarre and viciously anti-Dutch and anti-Calvinistic Napoleon.

Yet at the very time Holland was going down, the South Africans reached the end of their tether with the Dutch. Many moved farther and farther afield from Cape Town -- up in the desert and the grasslands. There they established what they called the Republic of Swellendam -- approximately a hundred and fifty miles dead east of Cape Town, just over the mountains to the north of which my own parents live in the town called Barrydale.

The Trekkers then also travelled a couple of hundred miles s till further -- and set up a second new state which they called the Republic of Graaff-Reinet. This is a very important town on the edge of the desert. Today it is a powerful centre of Calvinist education. I am sure it became so as a result of the godly Rev. Dr Andrew Murray, whom you have all heard about. I mean the internationally famous writer of devotional literature. He was born in Graaff-Reinet, in the manse of the Reformed Congregation there which his father pastored. They still have a very ancient grapevine growing in the manse garden to this very day. It was already there when Andrew Murray was a little boy, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

This then is the picture which now emerges. Back in the "mother country" -- Holland fell to the French Revolution in 1795; and then, again, later to Napoleon. Calvinist Roman-Dutch Law was then abolished in Holland by the occupying French, and replaced with the Napoleonic Code. That severely amputated South Afr ica from Holland, for South Africa continued with the old Calvinistic Roman-Dutch Law of Calvin and Voetius.

Some of the Dutch conservatives who were not destroyed in Holland, fled to South Africa. There they could continue their Calvinism. Yet in 1806, Holland was so fearful of an expansion of French-Napoleonic influence even as far away as the southern tip of Africa -- that she sold the Cape to the British.

It has been alleged that the British never paid for it! That is a very sore point in South Africa, to this very day. Be that as it may, Holland did try to sell South Africa to the British -- in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of Napoleon's French navy. So the British now arrived in South Africa. They occupied the country, and made many sweeping changes from 1806 through 1820.

The British were no longer the godly Calvinists they had been in the seventeenth century, but had now certainly been transcendentalized and even somewhat liberalis ed by increasing humanism. They brought printing, books, and especially ewspapers to the Cape. This promoted exposure to outside ideas, to British ways of doing things. These were liberal ideas -- a�though ideas that were then far less liberal than those of the French Revolution or even of the "Frenchified" Dutch back in Holland. Be that as it may, this wave of new ideas -- this time under the British -- nevertheless caused ever-increasing dissatisfaction in South Africa.

The British were determined to destroy Afrikaans. They suppressed this language in the schools. They forced little children who couldn't understand a word of it to learn English alone in the schools. They tried to wipe out their past, and their culture.

The British also introduced English Law into the Courts -- at least as far as Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure is concerned. They made English alone the language of the Law Courts. This was highly resented by the Afrikaners, who wanted to pr eserve both their own language as well as their Roman-Dutch system of Law.

To crown it all, the British tried to force the Afrikaners to abandon Afrikaans as the language of their Church. They tried to persuade them to become Episcopalians or Anglicans. But they met with a stern and severe Presbyterian resistance!

So the British then hit upon the next best programme. Seeing they could not episcopalise the Afrikaners, they tried to turn them at least into English-speaking Presbyterians!

For the English suddenly realised that Calvinist Presbyterianism was the dominant religion of both Scotland and South Africa. Accordingly, they then imported hordes of English-speaking Presbyterian Ministers from Scotland -- and shoved them off onto the South African pulpits.

This was highly resented. For up until the British occupation of the Cape, the South African people had been used to having their own Sessions of Elders nominate whom they wanted to call to be thei r Preacher. Indeed, such nominations also needed to be approved by the Congregations. But here was a foreign government now drastically cramming Preachers down the throats of the people -- without even asking them whether they wanted those Preachers. The Preachers from Scotland -- though Calvinist -- could not, of course, speak one single word of Afrikaans.

At first, they started preaching in English from the pulpits. At one stage, more than half of all the Preachers in the South African Reformed pulpits were English-preaching Scots Presbyterians -- and less than half were either Afrikaans-speaking South African trained in Holland, or Dutch Preachers. From 1860 onward, these Preachers began to be trained locally at Stellenbosch Reformed Theological Seminary (where I too received my own ministerial training).

But what the English did not bargain for, and what actually happened, was the very opposite of what the British wanted to happen. It had been their desire tha t the English-speaking Scottish Presbyterian Preachers would persuade their Afrikaans-speaking South African audiences in the pew to abandon the Afrikaans language and accept English. The plan back fired. Instead, the English-speaking Scottish Preachers began to learn Afrikaans. To the horror of the English, most began to preach the Gospel of Calvinism in Afrikaans -- which they then learned, as the language of their parishioners!

So today, if you look at the Preachers in the Reformed Churches of South Africa -- along with the van der Merwes and the van der Westhuizens, you also find the MacGregors and the Robertsons and the MacFarlanes and especially the Murrays.

Of the many preachers in Reformed pulpits in South Africa today, scores of them bear this name of Murray. They are direct descendants of Rev. Andrew Murray Sr., father of the great Dr. Andrew Murray. The elder Murray came from Scotland to South Africa -- to settle there, and to preach the Gospel. Thus, a t this point, we find the absorption of this Scottish element into Afrikanerdom.

But the dissatisfaction continued. The roof finally blew off, when in 1836 -- as a result of the work of William Wilberforce in England -- slavery was abolished throughout what was then called the British Empire. There was an imperial proclamation, requiring slaves to be liberated. Although this proclamation in South Africa made provision for the monetary compensation of the slave-owner who was by no means always compensated, the fact is that the abolition of slavery was forced upon the slave-owners without their being consulted. Sadder still, very few slave-owners received any compensation for the loss of their slaves -- even though they had been promised that this would be so. Saddest of all, the "liberated" slaves themselves were thereby also "liberated" from their Christian masters -- and thus exposed to the enslaving power of primitive neo-paganism and sophisticated British liberalism!
This final difficulty made many Afrikaners explode. They decided to abandon the Western Cape and the British in the southwestern corner of South Africa -- and to trek even more northward into the centre of South Africa, and even more toward the east. Here again, we find in the biased Encyclopaedia Britannica a famous quotation from the Afrikaner woman Anna Steenkamp. She said: "The British have placed our slaves on an equal footing with Christians -- contrary to the Laws of God and the natural distinctions of race and religion. It is intolerable for any decent Christian to bow down beneath such a yoke. This is why we withdraw from the British in Cape Town -- in order to preserve our doctrines in purityl"

You may find a reference to that in James Mitchener's book on the People of the Covenant. But bear in mind that these people had often falsely been promised compensation for the forcible emancipation of their slaves -- many of whom didn't want to be emancipated anyway. The slave-owners had been financially ruined by the British. In other respects too, the Afrikaners were fed up with the British. They had already had their language suppressed; their Roman-Dutch Calvinistic Laws challenged; their churches invaded; and their children Anglicised in the schools. Now many of them had also been ruined financially. They had now had enough -- so off they trekked.

Let me read to you again that poem with which I concluded the last lecture. In the light of these grievances, it will perhaps take on a new meaning to you: "The White child treks into South Africa; treks on into the land both wide and far; as far as he can see until the night. And farther still, when the next dawn gives light. Trek on, we're not yet far enough! Let's trek! How far? As far as God would have us trek!"


Trekking in South Africa

As they trekked on and on, they went and settled in the beautiful and fertile south-east coastal region. There they established the Republic of Natalia -- a Calvinist White Republic. They negotiated for that land, and got it by treaty with the approval of the powerful Black Zulu nation.

Now the Zulu nation had been the scourge of all of the other Black tribes. It had been butchering and annihilating one Black tribe after another -- and driving them further and further south toward the western part of South Africa. Finally, the Zulus themselves arrived in what is now the northern portion of southeastern South Africa.

So Piet Retief, the Afrikaner leader -- together with some seventy other men -- went to the Zulu king's headquarters, and sat down at his invitation to sign a Peace Treaty. But when a signal was given, the Zulu king had all of the Whites murdered -- even while signing the Peace Treaty. Also murdered by the Zulu's were all of the non-Whites wh o were with the Whites -- who were associated with the Whites in colonising this new area.

The Zulu king then sent forth his ferociously and excellently trained troops northward -- and annihilated three hundred defenceless White women. Only one escaped -- with spears sticking out of her body, riding away from that place which thenceforth became known as Weenen ("The Place of Weeping"). It is only about twenty miles from the place where I had my last Pastorate in South Africa -- and about fifteen miles from the place where Sir Winston Churchill was arrested by Afrikaner troops in the Anglo-Boer War some seventy years ago.

(Churchill was captured when the Afrikaners, blew up a British troop train. He was held captive and locked up in a house just three miles away from my old manse. He managed to get disguised as a woman, and escaped -- later to become the Prime Minister of England. But that's another story!)

After this massacre of these three hundred women, it became painfully obvious to the covenant people in South Africa that they would have no peace with the pagan Black Zulu nation which had butchered all the other Black tribes before it. Realising the immanence of slaughter, the godly Reformed Elder Sarel Cilliers, in the company of 536 armed adult males (which is all that the Trekkers had at their disposal), climbed onto a wagon and made the following covenant with Almighty God.

He stood up and asked the people to remove their hats. Then he said: "Here we stand today before a holy God of heaven and earth. But we promise Him that if He will give us the victory in the slaughter tomorrow, we will dedicate that day -- the l6th of December -- to be a holy Sabbath for us and our children unto all future generations. And if He spares us, we will build a temple of worship to His honour on this spot. And we will christianise and evangelise these Black enemies of ours who are bent on annihilating us. For the honour of His Name wil l be served and praised in this way!"

The next day, the Zulu armies attacked. They came hurtling and screaming down across the river -- fifteen thousand of them, against a mere 536 White Afrikaner Calvinists. Early in the morning, there had been a heavy dew. This was very unusual for an arid country like South Africa. The gunpowder was so damp, that it would not work. But in their extremity, the White Afrikaners called out to God for mercy. Soon the sun broke through and the gunpowder dried out. Then the battle was joined.

Not one single Afrikaner was killed. Three were lightly wounded, but thousands of the Zulu troops were slaughtered. They fell into the river until it turned red with their blood. To this day that river is called Blood River ("Umzinyati" in Zulu) and that clash is called: the Battle of Blood River.

Well, you may perhaps agree with Mitchener's cynical analysis of this. But frankly, I see in it something similar to the battles of Joshua and of David's heroes -- against overwhelming odds. It is to be understood in the same light. For the Lord God of our fathers has promised to be faithful unto our children, and unto our children's children.

There is only one special day in South Africa today, apart from Sunday, which is regarded as a Sabbath. That special day is the l6th of December -- the day of the Covenant commemorating not the slaughter of helpless Blacks, but God's preservation of the civilising Calvinists who just so happened to be White.

Not only did these people indeed build a temple to honour Almighty God, as they had promised. They did more. They collected contributions from White Calvinists, and erected at the headquarters of the Zulu king who had murdered their White leaders a Theological Seminary for Black people financed by White money. It is built in the form of an ox-head, the symbol of the Zulu army -- but with a huge cement cross rising up in its midst, to symbolise the triumph of the cross over the powers of darkness.

If that be racism, then I too must confess to being a racist -- without any feeling of shame. But I feel this is the very opposite of racism! For it is the triumph of Christianity and civilisation over the powers of darkness. Indeed, I look forward to a yet happier day in the future -- when White Calvinists and Black Calvinists in South Africa and elsewhere can stand as brothers shoulder to shoulder against the new forces of darkness -- the White atheistic scum of the earth now associated with anti-Christian Black and anti-Christian Yellow non-Christians.

Let the line then be drawn where it needs to be drawn -- in every generation, wherever belief confronts unbelief. And if, incidentally, in a certain day and age the line of belief should then happen to coincide with the line of race -- well then, we'll have to accept that position (at least as the point of departure). But as soon as possible let it be understood that the l ine of belief goes through the heart of every man, regardless of his skin colour -- as the Word of God continues in its onward course, throughout the world, to christianise and to civilise it!

And what shall we say further? From 1840 through 1850, the British annexed the Republic of Natalia. This drove the White South Africans out -- into the very centre of South Africa -- to the Orange River Colony. There, at the Sand River Convention, the British finally signed a Peace Treaty with the White South Africans -- allowing them to set up their independent Afrikaner Calvinist Republic (the Orange Free State). Then, in 1857, the British recognised a second Afrikaner Calvinist Republic -- this one to the north of the Vaal River and south of the Limpopo and known as the South African Republic (alias the Transvaal).

These two Republics had rigid Calvinist constitutions. Even the British constitutional expert, Lord Bryce, in his great book on the constitutions of the British Empire of Nations, admits that the Orange Free State Republic had a model constitution for good government.

Things now went reasonably well in South Africa, until in 1867 diamonds were discovered on the Caledon River. Immediately, the British moved to grab the diamonds. They did this by stirring up a non-White nation called the Griqua's -- to claim that area for themselves (even though they had never been there before). Then the British persuasively "offered" to establish a British "Protectorate" over that area! Thus Griqualand West -- the place where the diamonds were discovered (in what was technically the Orange Free State Republic of the White South African Calvinists) -- was forcibly incorporated into the British Empire as a British Protectorate.

Even the Encyclopaedia Britannica today admits that the British were thus doing wrong at that time. That is how Kimberley, the greatest centre of diamond production in the whole world, was removed from the O range Free State Republic -- and incorporated into the British-controlled Cape Colony!

Some of the Afrikaners moved on, establishing new republics ever farther to the north. These were the Stellaland Republic; the Goshen Republic (the name of which they got from Genesis 45:10); the Republic of Freedom (Vryheid Republic); the Lydenberg Republic; the Rustenburg Republic; the Lichtenberg Republic; the Soutpansberg Republic; and the Far Northern Republic.

In 1886, gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand (the "Ridge of the White Water") near what is now Johannesburg. People poured in from all parts of the world. Exports had trebled over the previous decade. Exports rose again, sevenfold, between then and 1900. By 1910, gold represented 60% of all of the wealth of South Africa -- and diamonds a further 20%.

From 1875 onward, the British plotted, against the Orange Free State Republic. Lord Carnarvon represented the British Government, and Sir Theophilus Shepston e was the Governor of Natal (which the British had annexed uninvitedly from what had been the Calvinistic White South African Natalia Republic). Those two British "noblemen" plotted with one another against the Orange Free State Republic -- even though her freedom from Britain had been guaranteed by the British at the Sand River Convention of 1852!

They attacked the Orange Free State, and even especially the South African Republic to the north of the Vaal River. This led to the First South African War. The British defeated the South Afr�cans, but in 1881 the South Africans rose again against the British. After bloody battles, they defeated the British -- at the battle of Majuba and elsewhere. Wiping out the British armies, the South Africans regained their independence. This was recognised at the London Convention in 1884.

Then a brand new factor entered onto the scene in 1885. All the European powers wanted a slice of Africa. The Portuguese had long colonised A ngola and Mozambique in Southern Africa. The British had grabbed pieces in the southwest (the Cape Colony) and the southeast (Natal). The Belgians grabbed the Congo. The French had carved out for thernselves large portions of West and Central Africa. Now the Germans decided that they wanted a slice of the pie too.

So the Germans started a colony in what is today Tanzania. It was then called Tanganyika -- on the east coast of Africa. Another colony -- German South West Africa -- was established on the west coast of Southern Africa (in the area today called Namibia).

It was the aim of the Germans to drive a wedge from their western colony of South West Africa through central Africa -- in order to link up with their eastern colony in Tanganyika (and to cut off the northward expansion of their British rivals from the Cape Colony). Cecil John Rhodes, the British Governor in Cape Town, wanted to drive his wedge for Britain -- from Cape Town in the south, all the way th rough to Cairo in the north. So the race was now on, as to whether the Germans would cut Africa in two from west to east -- before the British cut Africa in two from north to south (also to prevent the link-up of the German colonies).

Unfortunately for the British, an independent Calvinist Republic stood in the way. It was commanded by the colossal figure of Paul Kruger -- the dour Calvinist President of the South African Republic. It would not permit the British troops to march through its territory -- also on account of the wars of defence it had previously fought against the British on several occasions.


Famous Boer Generals, left to right: Gen. Christiaan de Wet, Gen. Jacobus de la Rey, and Gen. Louis Botha

The British were irked. They saw the time passing away -- as the Germans were linking up Africa from east to west. So finally, as the te nsion constantly increased; and as more and more foreigners seeking gold and making their fortunes poured into the South African Republic; and as discontent was fomented there more and more -- it became dear that a showdown was ahead between the South African Republic and the Orange Free State Republic on the one hand, and the British Empire (of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand) on the other.

War broke out on October 11th 1899. It was a war between the whole British Empire on the one hand, and the tiny little South African Republic and the Orange Free State Republic on the other hand. The war lasted three years. Britain fielded one quarter of a million troops in the course of the three years. There were never more than twenty thousand poorly armed farmers on the side of the South Africans -- to oppose a quarter of a million troops from what was then the greatest military machine in the world.

That's a pretty great dispropor tion! The amazing thing is that the war lasted for as long as three years. Yet General Smuts, of whom I shall say something in the next lecture or two, became so adept at guerilla warfare that he even invaded the Cape -- and got to within sight of Cape Town. But the war finally ground to its end, as the White South Africans were starved out of supplies and food.

The British had moved onto their farms. They had burnt them down to the ground. They had herded up the women and the children of the South African soldiers (who were away fighting at the front) into concentration camps behind barbed wire. Some say they even gave them doses of copper sulphate. At any rate, 26 400 White South African Calvinist women and children perished miserably -- a huge slice of such a tiny nation -- in the British concentration camps. The South Africans were finally defeated, succumbing with just a few armed farmers to the entire cream of the soldiery of the mighty British Empire.

So it seemed in 1902 that Calvinism was finished in South Africa -- at the "Calvary" of the South African and the Orange Free State Republics. Yet, commemorating these events, there are two significant monuments in South Africa today. One is that of a man wounded by a dagger in his side -- with the blood pouring down. Underneath it are the words: "Conquered but not Vanquished." The other is a monument to the 26 400 Calvinist Afrikaner women and children who perished in the concentration camps. The latter were invented not by the Germans in WWII against the Jews, but (for the first time in history) by the British -- and against the Christian White South African nations in 1900.

Outside of Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State (and its University where I had the privilege of getting my second doctoral degree), stands this monument -- to the women and children that perished. It is a very moving monument -- cast in metal. It portrays an Afrikaner woman looking out ahead of her with no husband, holding onto the Bible in her hand -- and with her little children, tattered and torn, clinging to their mother's leg.

At the foot of this monument, there is a tribute to a noble Englishwoman -- a wonderful nurse called Emily Hobhouse. Her name is revered in South Africa to this day. For she took care as best she could of these dying and starving Afrikaner women and children in the British concentration camps.

Yet think the most moving thing of all at that monument, is not even the tribute to this wonderful English Christian nurse. No, excelling even that is a Bible plaque next to the statue of the women and the children in tatters. It is an inspiring source of comfort to this very day, for it bears a quotation from the Word of God (in Hebrews chapter thirteen): "I shall never leave thee, I shall never desert thee."

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