Boer History1881 in South Africa: Majuba, Heidelberg, and the Western Border
Stefanus Trichard on Majuba — 1881
Stefanus Trichard fought with the storming party on Majuba in the war of independence of 1880–1881, and so took a prominent part in helping to re-establish the Republic. That sentence is this year’s fact on the mountain. The year before had named a wound at a British fort. This year names a storming on a Drakensberg hill, and names what the storming was for: the state put back. [7]
A British hill to storm existed because, on the 12th of April 1877, the South African Republic had been proclaimed British territory. That proclamation took the state whose capital was Pretoria and named it British ground. Three years later the war of independence was fought to take that name off. Lydenburg in 1880 was a siege against a fort that the proclamation had left standing. Majuba in 1881 was the named storming that helped to close the question the 12th of April had opened. [3] [7]
Stefanus was a son of Carel Trichard, and grandson of the old Voortrekker of Delagoa. That house is why a name on Majuba belongs on this page and not only on a casualty list. Louis Trichard had given his life trying to find a way to the Indian Ocean for his people. His grave sat by that shore. Carel, the son, had stood by those graves, had discovered Zoutpansberg, and had been one of the founders of the Republic. The surviving sons — Carel, Louis, and Pieter — had remained in Natal until after the war with England in 1842, then crossed the mountains with Pretorius, sharing want with the others who were determined to be free and to build a new republic with a flag and a government of its own. In later years, in many a war on the frontier, those Trichards and their sons were among those who stormed the mountain strongholds. Majuba was not a new kind of work for that house. It was the hill on which a grandson helped to put the republic back. [7]
Majuba was not a nameless koppie. It was Amajuba, a huge mass of rock in the Drakensberg, with Spitskop at one end, and thickly wooded slopes falling into steep ravines and frowning krantzes. From the mountain passes to the south, flocks of wood-pigeons over that wooded slope were part of the old view toward Natal. The printed record of these books calls those glens and krantzes predestined to be an eternal monument. Mountain summits — Slachter’s Nek, Chlooma Amaboota, Amajuba — are named as the central supporting pillars of the republic’s edifice. That is why a storming here is not a raid on a random height. It is an assault on the hill those books set beside Blood River and Slachter’s Nek as a foundation stone. [7]
Another son of Carel, Jeremia, had taken part in the siege of the British fort at Lydenburg and had been wounded. That wound is the same war’s earlier named cost in the same house. It is not this heading’s field. This heading’s field is Majuba, and the storming party Stefanus stood in. What hung on that storming was not a new farm title in Zoutpansberg. It was whether Pretoria’s state would remain the British territory of the 12th of April 1877, or whether the house that had crossed from Natal with Pretorius would help to put the republic back. The printed sentence is that Stefanus, on that hill, took a prominent part in helping to re-establish it. [7]
The Republican Executive at Heidelberg — 1881
While the storming sat on Majuba, the Republican Executive sat at Heidelberg. That town is not a Drakensberg pass. It is the inland seat from which the restored state was run while the war was still being fought in the mountains toward Natal. The 16th of December is the date afterwards memorable as the anniversary of the defeat of Dingaan’s army at the Bloed River, of the proclamation of the restoration of the South African Republic at Heidelberg, and of the outbreak of the war of independence at Potchefstroom. Heidelberg is on this page because the executive of 1881 sat the town where that restoration had been proclaimed, and because the Drakensberg news was carried there. [7] [7]
News of the disasters to the British forces in the Drakensberg was brought by African messengers sent by friendly chiefs. Those messengers reached Heidelberg some considerable time before the Transvaal express riders. The riders themselves were known to get over the ground more quickly than English cavalry scouts. The point of the comparison is not a race meeting. It is that the executive of the restored republic learned the mountain result from African runners first, and from its own horsemen second, and that both of those services outran the scouts of the force that had been broken. [7]
That speed had a method. On hilltops African sentinels read a tiny column of smoke — outline, direction, volume — and either repeated it from the next summit or ran the message across the intervening plain to a post of the intelligence service. On ground without hills, express runners carried the chiefs’ messages at a rate equal to that of a good horse. The system had been used by the principal African peoples from time immemorial, and it had, over and over, carried intelligence more rapidly than a European horse-express. The war of independence is the named instance. Heidelberg is the named destination. The Drakensberg disasters are the named contents. [7]
The Drakensberg fields of this war are named in the same printed record: Laing’s Nek, Ingogo, and Majuba. Those names sit with Bronkhorst Spruit as the places at which the republican burghers were later remembered as having tended the enemy’s wounded. Bronkhorst Spruit is the year before, on the highveld, not in the berg. Laing’s Nek, Ingogo, and Majuba are the mountain disasters of which Heidelberg was told. This heading does not retell the storming. It records that the executive at Heidelberg heard that the British force in those mountains had been broken, and heard it by African messengers before its own riders came in. [7]
What hung on that news was not a new capital. Pretoria was still the old seat. Heidelberg was the wartime executive’s town because restoration had been proclaimed there, and because the war that had broken out at Potchefstroom was still being decided in the berg. A messenger who outran the express rider mattered because the restored state had to know, from a room inland, whether the British force on the Natal side of the mountains still stood. The printed fact of 1881 is that Heidelberg knew the Drakensberg result by African runners first. [7] [7]
After Majuba: the western border — 1881
After Majuba, English diplomacy succeeded in detaching from the Transvaal a large portion along the western border. That ground was afterwards used for the British advance to the north, and then became British Bechuanaland. The storming had helped to re-establish the Republic. Diplomacy after the storming still took a strip. That is why the western border belongs to this calendar and not only to an old map of Potchefstroom. [7]
The old district of Potchefstroom was not the later magistracy of that name. It represented the Transvaal of those days. Its western frontier was the edge of the Kalahari, a line running between the 24th and 25th meridians of East longitude. On the south was the Vaal. The east ran, roughly, from a point on the Vaal near the later town of Standerton northward to Rhenoster Poort and on to the Zoutpansberg range. That west, toward the desert, is the strip this heading is about. [7]
That old district included all the later Transvaal except Lydenburg, Piet Retief, Ermelo, a portion of Standerton, Wakkerstroom, Utrecht, Vryheid, and large parts of Zoutpansberg and Middelburg. It also included the territories afterwards occupied by Sechele’s Bakwena and by Montshiwa’s Barolong. All the country subsequently known as Goshen and Stellaland belonged to it. Those names are why a western detachment after Majuba was not a few farms beyond a river. It was the desert-edge belt through which the road to the interior ran. [7]
Andries Hendrik Potgieter’s policy had been to keep open the road to the interior of Africa, in order to safeguard the later northward expansion of the Republic. Andries Pretorius also attached great importance to that road. The sum and substance of the treaty of Sand River in 1852, by which Great Britain guaranteed the independence of the South African Republic, was that there should be no British territory to the north of the Vaal. That guarantee is why a western detachment after Majuba is not a footnote to a desert map. It is a hole in the substance of 1852. [7]
After Majuba that substance was broken on the west. The republic sat again. The western border that had been the Kalahari edge was not left as republican ground. Diplomacy took the belt that later carried a British advance north, and that then sat as British Bechuanaland. What hung on 1881 was therefore two facts, not one. Stefanus Trichard’s storming on Majuba helped to put Pretoria’s state back. English diplomacy after that storming still opened the west. The hill restored the republic. The west was the price that followed. [7] [7]