Histoire : L’Histoire Afrikaner Page 1 > Page 2 < Page 3 <   HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The only way to successfully communicate with someone, is to get into his world - into his frame of reference, to try to understand his historical perspective, his perceptions of the world. Let us then start by first examining ourselves. Our mother tongue is Afrikaans, spoken only in South Africa. A language that we teach our children with pride. We can trace our forefathers back to the 17th Century when they arrived in South Africa from Europe. That was before most Americans or Australians had set foot in their countries. We therefore see ourselves as Africans. We are proud to be part of Africa as our continent. We know no other home and have no intention of leaving it. We reject any notion that we are settlers. The struggle of our forefathers over the past centuries was a struggle for freedom, liberty, self-determination and independence in our own Republic. The conquest of the Cape by the British in 1795 and events on the frontier of the Eastern Cape in the early nineteenth century caused a dramatic spread northwards by the Boers to the interior. This migration, the Great Trek of 1835 - 1838, by Boer frontier farmers, the Voortrekkers, was a deliberate move by thousands of men and women who left hearth and home in their ox-wagons at great personal sacrifice to put as much distance between themselves and the British government at the Cape as possible. The first Boer Republic was that of Natal on the Indian Ocean seaboard. It lasted only four years before it was annexed by Britain in 1843. Once again the majority of the Boers left Natal to get away from the British. This time they moved to the north of the Orange and Vaal rivers. In 1852 a convention was signed between the British and Boer leaders acknowledging their independence - the Sandriver Convention. This convention stated the following: "The Assistant Commissioners guarantee in the fullest manner on the part of the British Government, to the emigrant farmers beyond the Vaal River, the right to manage their own affairs and to govern themselves according to their own laws, without any interference on the part of the British Government; and that no encroachment shall be made by the said government on the territory beyond, to the north of the Vaal River, with the further assurance that the warmest wish of the British Government is to promote peace, free trade, and friendly intercourse with the emigrant farmers now inhabiting, or who hereafter may inhabit that country." (Eybers GW 1919, Select Constitutional Documents p.358-359)