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Boer

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This article is about the Boer people (Boerevolk). For the animal, see Boer goat.

Boer is the Dutch (and Afrikaans) word for farmer which came to denote the descendants of the Afrikaans-speaking pastoralists of the eastern Cape frontier in South Africa as well as those who left the Cape Colony to settle in the Orange Free State, Transvaal and to a lesser extent Natal. Their primary motivation for moving was to escape British rule in the Cape as well as the constant border wars on the eastern frontier. The Trekboere, as they were known, are descended mainly from Dutch Calvinist, Frisian Calvinist, French Huguenot, Flemish and German Protestant origins dating from the 1650s and into the 1700s. Smaller but significant numbers of Scandinavians, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Scots, English, Irish, and Welsh people were absorbed as well. Those Boers who trekked into and inhabited the eastern Cape frontier were semi-nomadic. A significant number in the eastern Cape frontier later became Grensboere or Border Farmers who were the direct ancestors of the Voortrekkers. When used in a historical context, it may refer to an inhabitant of the Boer Republics as well as those who were cultural Boers.

The Boer Nation (Boerevolk) in South Africa is an indigenous nation, and has been internationally recognised as a nation in its own right for approximately two centuries. This is the small nation who defended their independent homeland, the republics of the Transvaal (the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, or ZAR), and the Orange Free State (OFS) against British imperialism on two occasions during the 19th Century.

This nation was devastated in the Second Boer War (1899 – 1902), and was forced, through the concentration camps in which 27 000 non-combatant women and children were killed, and through the barbaric destruction of tens of thousands of farmsteads, livestock, and crops, to surrender to England and to have their country administered by a foreign government. The people were stripped of any representation, and had to collaborate with the Anglophile Afrikaners in a political unit which they did not approve of. They were powerless and had no other representation.

The Afrikaner aimed to integrate the Boerevolk in order to gain political power for themselves. To do this, they used the Boer culture and sentiments, while professing that both Boers and Afrikaners were part of the Afrikaner Group. Any attempts to regain Boer independence as a nation were regarded as rebellion against the Afrikaner and the Afrikaner-dominated state, and were brutally suppressed.

In 1953 the Boer Nation (Boerevolk) were forced into Dr Verwoerd's White South African Republic, together with all other Whites in South Africa, regardless of ethnic origin.


Contents

Nationalism

The Boer nation has been well-known for their strong nationalistic characteristics.

This is what Sir Conan Doyle (Author of the Sherlock Holmes series) said about the Boers at more or less the time of the Anglo-Boer War:

"Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and fortune and left their country for ever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider. Then, finally, put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer – the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain. Our military history has largely consisted in our conflicts with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated us so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles. "Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in the very centre of the British possessions, like the stone in a peach, lies the great stretch of the two republics, a mighty domain for so small a people. How came they there? Who are these Teutonic folk who have burrowed so deeply into Africa? It is a twice-told tale, and yet it must be told once again if this story is to have even the most superficial of introductions. No one can know or appreciate the Boer who does not know his past, for he is what his past has made him."

Modern usage

In more recent times, mainly during the apartheid reform and post-1994 eras, a number of white Afrikaans-speaking people, mainly with "conservative" political views and of trekker descent, have preferred to be called "Boers", rather than "Afrikaners". They feel that there were many people of Voortrekker descent who were not co-opted or assimilated into what they see as the Cape-based Afrikaner identity which began emerging after the Second Anglo-Boer War and the subsequent establishment of the Union of South Africa.

They contend that the Boers of the South African (ZAR) and Orange Free State republics were recognized as a separate people or cultural group under international law by the Sand River Convention (which created the South African Republic in 1852), the Bloemfontein Convention (which created the Orange Free State Republic in 1854), the Pretoria Convention (which re-established the independence of the South African Republic 1881), the London Convention (which granted the full independence to the South African Republic in 1884) and the Vereeniging Peace Treaty, which formally ended the Second Anglo-Boer War on 31 May 1902. Others contend, however, that these treaties dealt only with agreements between governmental entities and do not imply the recognition of a Boer cultural identity per se. Nonetheless, the Boer cultural grouping which began among the trekking pastoralists of the eastern Cape frontier to the modern day descendants of the Voortrekkers is a distinct cultural group which was historically and culturally set apart from those White Afrikaans speakers who remained in the Western Cape region.

The supporters of these views feel that the Afrikaner designation (or label) was used from the 1930s onwards as a means of unifying (politically at least) the white Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape with those of Trekboer and Voortrekker descent (whose ancestors began migrating eastward during the 1690s and throughout the 1700s and later northward during the Great Trek of the 1830s) in the north of South Africa, where the Boer Republics were established.

The supporters of the "Boer" designation view the Afrikaner designation as an artificial political label which usurped their history and culture turning "Boer" achievements into "Afrikaner" achievements. They feel that the Western-Cape based Afrikaners — whose ancestors did not trek eastwards or northwards — took advantage of the republican Boers' destitution following the Anglo-Boer War and later attempted to assimilate the Boers into a new politically based cultural label as "Afrikaners."

See also

Notable Boers

References

Boerevolk still independent entity: BVS

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