Great Trek
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- This page is about South Africa's Great Trek. See the disambiguation page trek for other senses of this word.
In South African history, the Great Trek was an eastward and north-eastward migration of the segment of Afrikaners (known as Boers or Boere (Dutch/Afrikaans for "farmers")), who as descendants primarily of immigrants from western mainland Europe, lived a semi-nomadic pastoralist life in the eastern frontier region of the Cape where they were known as Trekboers. Those who had settled into the eastern districts of the Cape province where they became established farmers and artisans were soon known as Grensboere (Border Farmers) from which most those who undertook the Great Trek came from and were called Voortrekkers. It began in 1834 as an attempt to escape the recently imposed British rule, its Anglicisation policies, laws on slavery and the perceived indifference of British authorities to border wars conflict on the eastern frontier.
The semi-nomadic/migrating farmers of the eastern frontier were known as Trekboers. Those who lived in the western Cape and did not trek eastward were known as the Cape Dutch. The isolated pioneers from the eastern Cape frontier who trekked / migrated into the interior en masse in a series of migrations later known as the Great Trek were known as Voortrekkers. A small number of Voortrekkers came from the western Cape as well.
In the 1830s and 1840s an estimated 12,000 Voortrekkers penetrated the future Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal provinces to put themselves beyond the reach of British authority. Although most of the pastoralist Trekboers did not own slaves like the Cape Dutch, their more affluent cousins in the western Cape, they felt, at the very least, uncomfortable with British policy towards racial and slave policy. The British promulgation of Ordinance 50 in 1828, which guaranteed equal rights before the law to all "free persons of color", was indeed a factor in Boer discontent, as is well documented by numerous contemporary sources; the various republics founded by the Voortrekkers while prohibiting slavery itself would all enshrine inequality of race into their constitutions.
The Great Trek was mainly the result of the "bursting of the dam" of pent up population migration and population pressures, as Trekboer migrations eastward had come to a virtual stop for at least three decades (though some Trekboers did migrate beyond the Orange River prior to the Great Trek). During the Great Trek they fought with the Zulus after Voortrekker leaders Piet Retief and Gerhard Maritz, along with almost half of their followers, were lured to a feast under the pretence of a land treaty and massacred by King Dingane and his warriors. Dingane's tribe occupied the best land in some of the areas the Boers were attempting to trek into. Retief and the local Voortrekkers had recovered stolen cows from the Swazi for Dingane and thought that in return they would be granted lands in Dingane's kingdom. Dingane changed his mind, killing Retief, his delegation and half of the Natal contingent of Voortrekkers, including all the women and children at Blaauwkrans and Weenen.
These attacks on the Trekboers evoked retaliation, with the 470 strong forces of Andries Pretorius taking on over 10,000 Zulu warriors who attacked their prepared positions at the Battle of Blood River. The Boers suffered only 3 injuries and no fatalities while 3000 Zulus were slain (turning the river red with blood). This could be partially contributed to the Boers' use of guns over the Zulu traditional weapons; the Boers however contributed it to a vow they made to God before the battle that if victorious, they and future generations would commemorate the day as a Sabbath. 16 December was celebrated as a public holiday, Day of the Vow, until it was changed to Day of Reconciliation by the post-apartheid ANC government.
After the defeat of the Zulu forces and the recovery of the treaty between Dingane and Retief, the Voortrekkers proclaimed the Natalia Republic. This Boer state was annexed by British forces in 1843.
Due to the return of British rule, emphasis moved from occupying lands in Natal, east of the Drakensberg mountains, to the west of them and onto the high veld of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, which were lightly occupied due to the devastation of the Mfecane.
The Great Trek would also later become an important narrative in Afrikaner Nationalist mythology - an underpinning story of South African Apartheid.
