All Topics  
South African Republic

 

   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link

 

South African Republic


 
 

The South African republic, often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent BoerBoer

Boer is the Dutch word for farmer which came to denote the descendants of the Afrikaans-speaking pastoralists of the easter...
-ruled country in southern AfricaSouthern Africa

Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics....
 during the second half of the 19th century. It is not to be confused with the present-day South AfricaSouth Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of the African continent....
; rather, it occupied the area later known as the South African provinceProvinces of South Africa

South Africa is currently divided into nine provinces....
 of TransvaalTransvaal

For the Russian theme park, see Transvaal park....
. The ZAR was established in 1852, and was independent from 1856 to 1877, then again from 1881 to 1900 after the First Boer WarFirst Boer War

The First Boer War also known as the Transvaal War, was fought from December 16,1880 until March 23,1881....
, in which the Boers regained their independence from the British EmpireBritish Empire

The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history and for a substantial time was not only a major power but ...
.

In 1900 the ZAR was annexed by the United KingdomUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

| align="center" colspan="2"| United Kingdom ofGreat Britain and Ireland...
 during the Second Boer WarSecond Boer War Summary

The Second Boer War, also known as the South African War , the Anglo-Boer War and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoo...
 although the official surrender of the territory only took place at the end of the war, on 31 May 1902. In 1910 it became the Transvaal Province of the Union of South AfricaUnion of South Africa Summary

The Union of South Africa came into being on 31 May 1910, resulting in the consolidation of the two Boer Republics with the ...
. The first president of the South African Republic was Marthinus Wessel PretoriusMarthinus Wessel Pretorius

Son of Andries Pretorius, Marthinus Wessel Pretorius was the first president of the South African Republic, and also compil...
, elected in 1857, son of the famous Voortrekker leader Andries PretoriusAndries Pretorius

Andries Wilhelmus Jacobus Pretorius was a leader of the Boers who was instrumental in the creation of the Transvaal Republic...
, who commanded the Boers to Victory at the Battle of Blood RiverBattle of Blood River

The Battle of Blood River was fought on 16 December 1838 on the banks of the Blood River in what is today KwaZulu-Natal, Sou...
.

The capital was established at PretoriaPretoria

Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa....
 (founded 1855), though for a brief period Potchefstroom served as the seat of government. The parliament, the VolksraadVolksraad

The Volksraad was the parliament of the former South African Republic, which existed from 1857 to 1902 in part of what is n...
, had 24 members.

History

Early history

The Transvaal region was inhabited by the earliest ancestors of modern South Africans, the Khoisan, for thousands of years, and by iron-age ancestors of modern Bantu-language speaking South Africans, such as the SothoSesotho language

Sesotho is a language spoken in southern Africa. ...
, Tswana, Pedi, VendaVenda language Overview

Venda, also known as Tshivenda, or Luvenda, is a Bantu language....
 and Transvaal-Ndebele peoples since the mid fourth century AD. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the area that would eventually become the South African Republic was home to thousands of human settlements, including chiefdoms, villages and subtantial towns such as Dithakong, whose population was comparable in size to that of contemporary early nineteenth century Cape Town. The residents of these villages, towns and cities engaged in farming, cattle keeping, iron, copper and tin mining, metal tool making, and long distance direct and indirect trade. In 1817, the region was invaded by MzilikaziMzilikazi

Mzilikazi was a Southern African king who founded the Matabele kingdom in what is now Zimbabwe....
, originally a lieutenant of ZuluZulu

The Zulu are an African ethnic group of about 11 million people who live mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Afr...
 King ShakaShaka

Shaka is widely credited with transforming the Zulu tribe from a small clan into the beginnings of a nation that held sway ...
 who was pushed from his own territories to the west by the Zulu armies. After a brief alliance with the Transvaal Ndebele, Mzilikazi became leader of the Ndebele people. (The people of this political and ethnic entity called themselves Ndebele or amaNdebele, but because of linguistic differences, they were called Matebele by the local Sotho-Tswana.) Mzilikazi's invasion of the Transvaal was one part of a vast series of inter-related wars, forced migrations and famines that indigenous people and later historians came to call the Difaqane or mfecane. In the Transvaal, the Difaqane severely weakened and disrupted the towns and villages of the Sotho-Tswana chiefdoms, their political systems and economies, making them very weak, and easy to colonizeColonialism Overview

See colony and colonisation for examples of colonialism which do not refer to Western colonialism....
 by the European settlers who would shortly arrive from the south.

As Ndebele moved into Transvaal, the remnants of the Bavenda retreated north to the Waterberg and Zoutpansberg, while Mzilikazi made his chief kraal north of the Magaliesberg mountains near present day Pretoria, with an important military outpost to guard trade routes to the north at Mosega, not far from the site of the modern town of Zeerust. As the Ndebele conquered the Transvaal they absorbed many members of the conquered Sotho-Tswana and other tribes and established a military despotism. From about 1827 until about 1836, Mzilikazi dominated the southwestern Transvaal. Before that time the region between the VaalVaal River

The Vaal River is the largest tributary of the Orange River in South Africa....
 and LimpopoLimpopo River

The Limpopo River arises in the interior of Africa, and flows generally eastwards towards the Indian Ocean....
 was scarcely known to Europeans, but in 1829, Mzilikazi was visited at Mosega by Robert MoffatRobert Moffat

Robert Moffat was a Scottish Congregationalist missionary to Africa....
, and between that date and 1836 a few British traders and explorers visited the country and made known its principal features.

Colonisation

In the 1830s and the 1840s, descendants of DutchDutch people

The Dutch are the dominant ethnic groupThe ethnic group of the Dutch refers to a human population whose members identi...
 and other settlers, collectively known as BoerBoer

Boer is the Dutch word for farmer which came to denote the descendants of the Afrikaans-speaking pastoralists of the easter...
s (farmers) or VoortrekkersVoortrekkers

The Voortrekkers were emigrants during the 1840s and 1850s from the British Cape Colony into the interior of what is now So...
 (pioneers), left the British Cape ColonyCape Colony

The Cape Colony of the future South Africa was established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, with the founding of Ca...
, in what was to be called the Great TrekGreat Trek

In South African history, the Great Trek was an eastward and north-eastward migration of the segment of Afrikaners, who as d...
. With their military technology, they overcame the local forces with relative ease, and formed several small Boer republics in areas beyond British control, without a central government.

From 1835 until 1838, Boer settlers started to cross the Vaal and they had several skirmishes with the Ndebele. On October 16, 1836, a Boer laager (or fortified circle of wagons) led by Andries Hendrik PotgieterAndries Hendrik Potgieter

Andries Hendrik Potgieter was a Voortrekker leader....
, was attacked by an Ndebele force of about 5,000, who looted all of Potgieter's livestock, but were unable to defeat the laager. One of the Sotho-Tswana chiefs, Chief Moroko of the BarolongBarolong

Barolong is a clan name for the Batswana living in North West in South Africa....
 people, who had earlier fled the Difaqane to the south to create the settlement of Thaba NchuThaba Nchu

Thaba Nchu is a black largely Tswana dominated town just 60km east of Bloemfontein....
, sent fresh livestock to Potgieter to draw his party's wagons back to the safety of the Rolong stronghold of Thaba Nchu, where the Sotho-Tswana chief offered the Boers food and protection. By January 1837, an alliance of 107 Boers, sixty Rolong, and forty Coloured men, organized as a commando under the leadership of Potgieter and Gert Maritz, attacked Mzilikazi's settlement at Mosega, which suffered heavy losses, and early in 1838 Mzilikazi fled north beyond the Limpopo (to current day Zimbabwe), never to return to Tranvaal. Andries Hendrik PotgieterAndries Hendrik Potgieter

Andries Hendrik Potgieter was a Voortrekker leader....
, after the flight of the Ndebele, issued a proclamation in which he declared the country which Mzilikazi had abandoned and forfeited to the emigrant farmers, but also denying land rights to the Sotho-Tswana who had saved him and assisted in the defeat of the Mzilikazi and the Ndebele. After the Ndebele and Sotho-Tswana claims to the territory had been suppressed by the Boer political leadership, many Boer farmers trekked across the Vaal and occupied parts of the Transvaal, often near Sotho-Tswana villages, dividing the population up as forced laborers. Into these areas, still partly populated by remnants of the Ndebele and Sotho-Tswana, there was also a considerable immigration of members of the various Sotho-Tswana chiefdoms who had fled during the Difaqane.

The first permanent European settlement north of the Vaal was made by a party under Potgieter's leadership. That commandant had in March 1838 gone to Natal, and had endeavoured to avenge the massacre of Piet Retief and his comrades by the Zulus. Jealous, however, of the preference shown by the Dutch farmers in Natal to another commandant, Gert Maritz, Potgieter speedily recrossed the Drakensberg, and in November 1838 he and his followers settled by the banks of the Mooi river, founding a town named Potchefstroom in honour of Potgieter. This party instituted an elementary form of government, and in 1840 entered into a loose confederation with the Natalia RepublicNatalia Republic

* South African Republic* Orange Free State...
 Boer, and also with the Boers south of the Vaal, whose headquarters were at WinburgWinburg

Winburg is a small mixed farming town in the Free State Province of South Africa....
. In 1842, however, Potgieter's party declined to go to the help of the Natal Boers, then involved in conflict with the British. Up to 1845 Potgieter continued to exercise authority over the Boer communities on both sides of the Vaal. A determination to keep clear of the British and to obtain access to the outer world through an independent channel led Potgieter and a considerable number of the Potchefstroom and Winburg burghers in 1845 to migrate towards Delagoa Bay. Potgieter settled in the Zoutpansberg, while other farmers chose as headquarters a place on the inner slopes of the Drakensberg, where they founded a village called Andries Ohrigstad. It proved fever-ridden and was abandoned, a new village being laid out on higher ground and named Lydenburg in memory of their sufferings at the abandoned settlement. Meanwhile, the southern districts abandoned by Potgieter and his comrades were occupied by other Boers. These were joined in 1848 by Andries W. J. PretoriusAndries Pretorius

Andries Wilhelmus Jacobus Pretorius was a leader of the Boers who was instrumental in the creation of the Transvaal Republic...
, who became commandant of the Potchefstroom settlers.

On January 17, 1852, the United KingdomUnited Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a country and sovereign state that lies off the northwest coast...
 signed the Sand River ConventionSand River Convention

The Sand River Convention was a convention whereby Great Britain formally recognised the independence of the Boers living be...
 treaty with 5,000 or so of the Boer families (about 40,000 white people), recognizing their independence in the region to the north of the Vaal RiverVaal River

The Vaal River is the largest tributary of the Orange River in South Africa....
, or the Transvaal. The Orange Free StateOrange Free State

The Orange Free State was an independent country in southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, and later a ...
, a sister Boer republic, was granted independence around the same time. But while they had obtained independence, they were far from being a united people. When Pretorius conducted the negotiations which led to the signing of the Sand River Convention he did so without consulting the volksraadVolksraad

The Volksraad was the parliament of the former South African Republic, which existed from 1857 to 1902 in part of what is n...
, and Potgieter's party accused him of usurping power and aiming at domination over the whole country. However, the volksraad, at a meeting held at Rustenburg on March 16, 1852, ratified the convention, Potgieter and Pretorius having been publicly reconciled on the morning of the same day. Both leaders were near the end of their careers; Potgieter died in March and Pretorius in July 1853.

On the death of Andries Pretorius his son Marthinus W. Pretorius (q.v.) had been appointed his successor, and to the younger Pretorius was due the first efforts to end the discord and confusion which prevailed among the burghers - a discord heightened by ecclesiastical strife, the points at issue being questions not of faith but of church government. In 1856 a series of public meetings, summoned by Pretorius, was held at different districts in the Transvaal for the purpose of discussing and deciding whether the time had not arrived for substituting a strong central government in place of the petty district governments which had hitherto existed. The result was that a representative assembly of delegates was elected, empowered to draft a constitution.

Boer Wars

In 1877, before the 1886 Witwatersrand Gold RushWitwatersrand Gold Rush

The Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the establishment of Johannesburg, South Africa are closely connected....
, Britain annexed the Transvaal. The Boers viewed this as an act of aggression, and protested. In December 16, 1880 the independence of the republic was proclaimed again, leading to the First Boer WarFirst Boer War

The First Boer War also known as the Transvaal War, was fought from December 16,1880 until March 23,1881....
. The Pretoria ConventionPretoria Convention

The Pretoria Convention was the peace treaty that ended the First Boer War between the Transvaal Boers and the United Kingdo...
 of 1881 gave the Boers self-rule in the Transvaal, under British oversight, and the republic was restored with full independence in 1884 with the London Convention, but not for long. The Gold rush also brought an influx of non-Boer European settlers (called uitlanders, outlanders, by the Boers), leading to a destabilization of the republic.

In 1895, Cape Premier Cecil Rhodes planned to support an uitlander coup d'etatCoup d'état

A coup d'tat , or simply coup, is the sudden overthrow of a government through unconstitutional means by a part of the...
 against the Transvaal government. Leander Starr JamesonLeander Starr Jameson

Sir Leander Starr Jameson, 1st Baronet KCMG, also known as "Doctor Jim", was a British colonial statesman who was best...
 carried out this plan, without British authorization, in December of that year — in the ill-fated Jameson RaidJameson Raid

The Jameson Raid was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and B...
. After the failed raid, there were rumors that GermanyGermany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in central Europe....
 offered protection to the Boer republic, something which alarmed the British. In 1899 British forces were gathering on the borders of the Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State and fearing Britain's imminent annexation, the Boers launched a preemptive strike against the nearby British colonies in 1899, a strike which became the Second Boer WarSecond Boer War

The Second Boer War, also known as the South African War , the Anglo-Boer War and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoo...
.

The Second Boer War was a watershed for the British ArmyBritish Army

The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces....
 in particular and for the British EmpireBritish Empire

The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history and for a substantial time was not only a major power but ...
 as a whole. It was here that the British first used concentration camps in a war setting (the first general use being by the Spanish during the CubaCuba

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, consists of the island of Cuba, the Isle of Youth and adjacent small islands....
n insurrections of the 1890s).

By May 1902, to prevent further bloodshed the last of the Boer troops surrendered mourning the deaths of 26,000 mainly women and children who died in British concentration camps. The independent Boer republic in the Transvaal was no more - the region became part of the British EmpireBritish Empire

The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history and for a substantial time was not only a major power but ...
. In 1910 the TransvaalTransvaal

For the Russian theme park, see Transvaal park....
 became a provinceProvinces of South Africa

South Africa is currently divided into nine provinces....
 of the newly created Union of South AfricaUnion of South Africa

The Union of South Africa came into being on 31 May 1910, resulting in the consolidation of the two Boer Republics with the ...
, a British DominionDominion

In the British Empire and in the Commonwealth of Nations, a dominion is a current or former overseas territory of the Briti...
.

Politics

Officials

  • President of the South African RepublicPresident of the South African Republic

    List of the presidents of the South African Republic :...
  • State Secretary of the Transvaal
  • State Attorney of the TransvaalState Attorney of the Transvaal

    The State Attorney of the Transvaal was the principal legal officer of the Transvaal, or, as it was also known, the South Af...


Flag

The national flag of the ZAR featured three horizontal stripes of red, white, and blue (mirroring the Dutch national flagFlag of the Netherlands Overview

...
), with a vertical green stripe at the hoist, and was known as the Vierkleur (lit. four colours). The former national flag of South AfricaFlag of South Africa

...
 (from 1927—1994) had, as part of a feature contained within its central white bar, a horizontal flag of the Transvaal Republic (ZAR).

See also

  • South AfricaSouth Africa

    The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of the African continent....
  • Union of South AfricaUnion of South Africa

    The Union of South Africa came into being on 31 May 1910, resulting in the consolidation of the two Boer Republics with the ...
  • TransvaalTransvaal

    For the Russian theme park, see Transvaal park....
  • Orange Free StateOrange Free State

    The Orange Free State was an independent country in southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, and later a ...
  • Natalia RepublicNatalia Republic

    * South African Republic* Orange Free State...
  • VolkstaatVolkstaat

    Volkstaat is a proposal for the establishment of self determination for the Afrikaner minority in South Africa according to ...


External links