Who were they?: May 2011

Snippets of people in SA History

1 Colonel Jacob Glen Cuyler

When, in 1815, the landdros of Somerset East attempted to arrest a boer for contempt of court and, while resisting arrest, the boer was shot, some of the disaffected boers of the area again rebelled. This rebellion was quickly and severely suppressed by Colonel Jacob Glen Cuyler, an American in the British army, who hanged five of the rebels at Slagtersnek.

This hanging became something of a cause célèbre as four out of five of the ropes broke. Despite the popular belief that this was an act of God, Cuyler sent away for fresh rope which caused a delay of several hours before the remaining four were hung for the second time.

http://www.bedford.co.za/history.htm

2 Hendrik Biebouw

The first person recorded to have identified himself as an Afrikaner was Hendrik Biebouw, who, in March 1707, stated, Ik ben een Afrikander (I am an African), and did not want to leave South Africa. Biebouw was resisting his expulsion from the Cape Colony, as ordered by the magistrate of Stellenbosch. He was banished and sent to Batavia. The term shows the individual's first loyalty and a sense of belonging to the territory of modern South Africa, rather than to any ancestral homeland in Europe.

3. SJP Kruger

Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger (10 October 1825 – 14 July 1904), better known as Paul Kruger and affectionately known as Uncle Paul (Afrikaans: "Oom Paul") was State President of the South African Republic (Transvaal). He gained international renown as the face of Boer resistance against the British during the South African or Second Boer War (1899–1902).

4 Danie Theron

Theron's most notable single action was in the Battle of Paardeberg, where on 25 February 1900, a Boer Gen. Piet Cronje and several thousand troops were surrounded by British forces. Outnumbered and losing the battle, Theron, acting as a messenger for the other primary Boer commander, sneaked through British lines to convey a plan for a breakout operation - and then sneaked through the lines a second time to bring back Cronje's reply. The TVK = Theron se Verkenningskorps (TVK) (Theron Reconnaissance Corps). brought many Boer civilians and soldiers across the river safely into Boer territory, but in spite of Theron's efforts the planned operation failed and most of the Boer forces surrendered.

"He was, without doubt, one of the finest scouts the Boer nation produced. He repeatedly entered our lines and obtained most valuable information. Again and again he cut off our scouts and patrols, raided our stock, and did all manner of splendid military service for his people.

— Frederick Russell Burnham, Chief of Scouts for the British Army in the Second Boer War (1900).After the British occupied most of the Transvaal in March 1900, Theron and the TVK became well known for the guerrilla campaign they conducted against the British Army. The TVK attacked trails and rail yards, ambushed and captured British soldiers and officers, blew up bridges, and freed captured Boer fighters from British prisons. On two separate occasions while scouting in the veldt in no-mans land, Theron came upon the British Army Chief of Scouts, the American Frederick Russell Burnham.[5] Both times the two men exchanged fire, but only at a distance.

In July 1900, the British dispatched a unit of 4,000 soldiers to find and eliminate the TVK. After one skirmish with this force on 19 July, Theron managed to evade his pursuers and continue raiding, but the TVK was always on the run.

While scouting alone on a koppie at Gatsrand, about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) north of present-day Fochville, he encountered seven members of Marshall's Horse and was killed in action.

On 15 September 1900, the men of the TVK exhumed the body of their Commandant and reburied him in the family cemetery of the Pienaar family near Fochville. But on 10 March 1903, Theron's last will was carried out and his body was once again exhumed to be reburied next to that of his late fiancée Hannie Neethling on her father's farm Eikenhof on the Klip (Rock) River

5. Jan van Riebeeck

In 1651 he was requested to undertake the command of the initial Dutch settlement in the future South Africa. He landed three ships (Drommedaris, Reijger, and Goede Hoop) at the future Cape Town on 6 April 1652 and fortified the site as a way-station for the VOC trade route between the Netherlands and the East Indies. The Walvisch and the Oliphant arrived later, having had 130 burials at sea.

Arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in Cape Town painted by Charles Davidson BellVan Riebeeck was Commander of the Cape from 1652 to 1662; he was charged with building a fort, with improving the natural anchorage at Table Bay, planting fruit and vegetables and obtaining livestock from the indigenous Khoi people

6. Simon van der Stel

Simon was the son of Adriaan van der Stel, an official of the Dutch East India Company (VOC, Verenigde Oos-Indiese Kompanjie), and Maria Lievens, daughter of a freed Indian slave woman known as Monica of the Coast of Goa, or Monica da Costa. Simon was therefore a Eurasian. He is seen by some historians as a Creole, though technically he was not a Creole as he was not born in Mauritius or Cape Colony.

Adriaan was appointed the first Dutch governor of Mauritius in 1639. Simon was born at sea while his father was en route to Mauritius to take up his new posting. Adriaan had a long tenure in Mauritius, and Simon spent seven years there.

Adriaan's governorship ended after five years, and after a few more years, Adriaan left Mauritius for Dutch Ceylon. Adriaan was murdered in Ceylon and Maria also died. Simon went on to Batavia, Dutch East Indies. Simon remained in Batavia until he was 20 years of age.

He then went to the Netherlands, where he associated with the most important members of the VOC, such as Willem Six. In 1663 he married Willem's daughter, Johanna Jacoba Six (1645–1700). They had six children. Simon seems to have been involved in making wine in Muiderberg. In 1679, he was appointed "Commander" of the VOC's colony at the Cape of Good Hope.

7. H F Verwoerd

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (8 September 1901 – 6 September 1966) was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966. Verwoerd was born in the Netherlands and emigrated at age two with his parents to South Africa.

He served as Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until an assassin stabbed him to death in 1966. He was Prime Minister during the establishment of the Republic of South Africa in 1960, thereby fulfilling the Afrikaner dream of an independent republic for South Africans. During his tenure as Prime Minister, anti-Apartheid movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress were banned, and the Rivonia Trial, which prosecuted the struggle's leaders, was held.

Numerous major roads, places and facilities in towns and cities in South Africa were named after Verwoerd, like the H. F. Verwoerd Airport in Port Elizabeth, the Verwoerd Dam in the Free State and the town of Verwoerdburg. In post-apartheid South Africa, most of them have been renamed.

8. JG Strijdom

Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom (15 July 1893 - 24 August 1958), nicknamed the Lion of the North, was Prime Minister of South Africa from 30 November 1954 to 24 August 1958. He was an uncompromising Afrikaner nationalist,[1] and a proponent of segregation that led the way to the establishment of the system of Apartheid.

9. Andries Hendrik Potgieter

Andries Hendrik Potgieter (19 December 1792 - 16 December 1852) was a Voortrekker leader. He served as the first head of state of Potchefstroom from 1840 and 1845 and also as the first head of state of Zoutpansberg from 1845 to 1852.

Potgieter was born in the Tarkastad district of the Cape Colony, the second child of Petronella Margaretha and Hermanus Potgieter. He grew up to be a wealthy sheep farmer and fought in the Fourth and Fifth Frontier Wars. However, like many other Boers – farmers of Dutch, French, and German descent living in the Cape Colony – he decided to leave the colony in 1834. Delayed by the Sixth Frontier War, Potgieter and a group of Voortrekkers under his leadership left in 1835. Other treks under Louis Trichardt and Johannes Hendrik Janse van Rensburg had preceded him. The Voortrekkers' spiritual leader, Sarel Arnoldus Cilliers, later joined Potgieter's trek.

Potgieter and his party moved inland to the present Free State, where they signed a treaty with the leader of the Barolong, Moroka. The treaty stipulated that Potgieter would protect the Baralong against the Matabele raiders, in exchange for land. The tract of land was from the Vet River to the Vaal River.

10. Pieter Mauritz Retief

Pieter Mauritz Retief (November 12, 1780 – February 6, 1838) was a South African Boer leader. Settling in 1814 in the frontier region of the Cape Colony, he assumed command of punitive expeditions in response to raiding parties from the adjacent Xhosa territory. He became a spokesperson for the frontier farmers who voiced their discontent, and wrote the Voortrekkers' declaration at their departure from the colony.

He was as a leading figure during their Great Trek, and at one stage their elected governor. He proposed Natal as the final destination of their migration and selected a location for its future capital, later named Pietermaritzburg. Following the massacre of Retief and his delegation by Zulu king Dingane, the short-lived Boer republic Natalia suffered from ineffective government and succumbed to British annexation.

11. Jan Brand

Sir Johannes Henricus Brand, GCMG (popularly known as Jan Brand and sometimes as John Henry Brand) (6 December 1823, Cape Town – 14 July 1888, Bloemfontein) was a South African lawyer and politician, and the fourth state president of the Orange Free State, from 2 February 1864 until his death in 1888. He was the son of Sir Christoffel Joseph Brand (1797-1875), speaker of the Cape legislative assembly, and Catharina Fredrica Küchler. Johannes Brand married in 1851 to Johanna Sibella Zastron, a daughter of the Registrar of Deeds in Cape Town. The couple had 8 sons and 3 daughters.

12. Harry die Strandloper

Harry de Strandloper ("Harry the Beachcomber", also known as Autshumao) was a Khoi Khoi leader whose tribe was forced to live on the shores of what is now Cape Town, when the Dutch occupied it in 1652. "Strandloper" was a term applied by the colonists to the people living along, and basing their subsistence existence on, the coast of south-western Africa.

Harry's date of birth is unknown, but it is thought that he lived between about 1625 and 1665. His tribe was not a very powerful one, and they fled to the coast of the Cape of Good Hope where they live on fish to survive. On April 2, 1652, Jan van Riebeeck, a Dutchman, and his crew arrived at the Cape to establish a resting place for ships travelling to the east. Van Riebeeck was employed by a shipping company called Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (V.O.C.).

Harry started trading in livestock for small amounts of alcohol, and tobacco with the foreigners. But after the effect of the alcohol had passed, the Khoi Khoi tribesmen became angry and stole from the Dutchmen who had in fact cheated them. Because of this, Harry was eventually banished to Robben Island, an island just off the coast of Cape Town, later used as a jail for such political prisoners like Nelson Mandela. Harry was the first prisoner there, but he managed to escape, using a little boat.

13. Christiaan de Wet

De Wet was one of the leaders in the Maritz Rebellion which broke out in 1914. He was defeated at Mushroom Valley by General Botha on November 12, 1914, taken prisoner by Colonel Brits on December 1, and sentenced to a term of six years imprisonment and to pay a fine of £2000. He was released after one year's imprisonment, however, giving a written promise to take no further part in politics.

14. General Maritz

General Maritz, who was head of a commando of Union forces on the border of German South-West Africa, allied himself with the Germans and issued a proclamation on behalf of a provisional government which stated that "the former South African Republic and Orange Free State as well as the Cape Province and Natal are proclaimed free from British control and independent, and every [all] White inhabitant[s] of the mentioned areas, of whatever nationality, are hereby called upon to take their weapons in their hands and realize the long-cherished ideal of a Free and Independent South Africa." It was announced that Generals Beyers, De Wet, Maritz, Kemp and Bezuidenhout were to be the first leaders of this provisional government. Maritz's forces occupied Keimoes in the Upington area. The Lydenburg commando under General De Wet took possession of the town of Heilbron, held up a train and captured government stores and ammunition. Some of the prominent citizens of the area joined him, and by the end of the week he had a force of 3,000 men. Beyers also gathered a force in the Magaliesberg; in all, about 12,000 rebels rallied to the cause. The irony was that General Louis Botha had around 32,000 troops to counter the rebels and of the 32,000 troops about 20,000 of them were Afrikaners.[citation needed]

The government declared martial law on 14 October 1914, and forces loyal to the government under the command of General Louis Botha and Jan Smuts proceeded to destroy the rebellion. General Maritz was defeated on 24 October and took refuge with the Germans. The Beyers commando was attacked and dispersed at Commissioners Drift on 28 October, after which Beyers joined forces with Kemp, but drowned in the Vaal River on 8 December. General De Wet was captured in Bechuanaland, and General Kemp, having taken his commando across the Kalahari desert, losing 300 out of 800 men and most of their horses on the 1,100 kilometer month-long trek, joined Maritz in German South-West Africa, but returned after about a week and surrendered on 4 February 1915.

15. Louis Botha

Botha was a representative of his countrymen in the peace negotiations of 1902, and was signatory to the Treaty of Vereeniging. After the grant of self-government to the Transvaal in 1907, General Botha was called upon by Lord Selborne to form a government, and in the spring of the same year he took part in the conference of colonial premiers held in London. During his visit to England on this occasion General Botha declared the whole-hearted adhesion of the Transvaal to the British Empire, and his intention to work for the welfare of the country regardless of (inter-white) racial differences (in this era referring to Boers/Afrikaners as a separate race to British South Africans).

He later worked towards peace with the British, representing the Boers at the peace negotiations in 1902. In the period of reconstruction under British rule, Botha went to Europe with de Wet and de la Rey to raise funds to enable the Boers to resume their former avocations.[3] Botha, who was still looked upon as the leader of the Boer people, took a prominent part in politics, advocating always measures which he considered as tending to the maintenance of peace and good order and the re-establishment of prosperity in the Transvaal. His war record made him prominent in the politics of Transvaal and he was a major player in the postwar reconstruction of that country, becoming Prime Minister of Transvaal on 4 March 1907. In 1911, together with another Boer war hero, Jan Smuts, he formed the South African Party, or SAP. Widely viewed as too conciliatory with Britain, Botha faced revolts from within his own party and opposition from James Barry Munnik Hertzog's National Party. When South Africa obtained dominion status in 1910, Botha became the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa.

16. Jan Smuts

He served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948. He served in the First World War and as a British field marshal [1] in the Second World War.

Earlier in his life, Smuts believed in racial separation. Much later on in his life however, Smuts went on to lead his government to issue the Fagan Report, which stated that complete racial segregation in South Africa was not practical and that restrictions on African migration into urban areas should be abolished. In this, the government was opposed by a majority of Afrikaners under the political leadership of the National Party who wished to deepen segregation and formalise it into a system of apartheid. This opposition contributed to his narrow loss in the 1948 general election. He was notable as one of the few South African politicians of the time who believed that blacks had the potential to be equals to the whites but only through the embrace of European culture and morals.

He led commandos in the Second Boer War for the Transvaal. During the First World War, he led the armies of South Africa against Germany, capturing German South-West Africa and commanding the British Army in East Africa. From 1917 to 1919, he was also one of five members of the British War Cabinet, helping to create the Royal Air Force. He became a field marshal in the British Army in 1941, and served in the Imperial War Cabinet under Winston Churchill. He was the only person to sign the peace treaties ending both the First and Second World Wars.

One of his greatest international accomplishments was the establishment of the League of Nations, the exact design and implementation of which relied upon Smuts. He later urged the formation of a new international organisation for peace: the United Nations. Smuts wrote the preamble to the United Nations Charter, and was the only person to sign the charters of both the League of Nations and the UN. He sought to redefine the relationship between the United Kingdom and her colonies, helping to establish the British Commonwealth, as it was known at the time. However, in 1946 the Smuts government was strongly condemned by a large majority in the United Nations Assembly for its discriminatory racial policies.

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Monday, May 9, 2011

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Saturday, May 7, 2011

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