imperial government ordered that the newly annexed buffer zone be abandoned. It seemed towering folly: the thievery and wars would continue. There was outrage on the frontier. And then the news came that the British government had reneged on its promise to compensate slave-owners fairly: the sum of three million pounds that had been allocated for the purpose was reduced to one million, and would only be given to those who journeyed to London to claim it.
The sense of outrage redoubled on the frontier, amongst Boer and Briton alike, for who would leave his farm unprotected from marauding Xhosa for a year to make an expensive journey to London?
And so the Great Trek began. And Ernest Mahoney, from New York, enters our story.
The Great Trek was not a sudden, stormy mobilization of an angry people, as romantic chroniclers like Ernest Mahoney have suggested, it was the slow culmination of bitter debate that had been going on since the terrible Slagter’s Nek hangings: the thievery, the repeal of the Vagrancy Laws, the ‘ungodly’ attitude of the British towards master-and-servant relationships, the injustice of the missionaries, the Abolition of Slavery Act which defrauded them, the terror and devastation of Kaffir Wars, the British government’s refusal to fight them decisively. The Great Trek was a gradual consensus of people who had been bitterly tried, God-fearing folk who knew little other than the Bible and the gun, who had finally had enough of their incompetent, duplicitous government. In part it was the old trek spirit of their forefathers coming back, the quest for pastures new and the Lekker Lewe, but more important was the resentful determination to set their world to rights. One after another the hardy Boers packed up their wagons, rounded up their herds and set off. Out of the mauve hills of the frontier they rolled northwards, up into the highveld of Trans-Orangia, to find their Promised Land.
It was in Piet Retief that the people found their Moses. It was he who published the Voortrekker Manifesto:
… We despair of saving this country from the threat posed by vagrants ... nor do we see any prospect of peace for our children … Be it known that we are resolved, wherever we go, that we will uphold the just principle of liberty; but whilst no one shall be in a state of slavery, it is our determination to maintain such regulations as may suppress crime and preserve proper relations between master and servant … We shall not molest any people, nor deprive them of the smallest property; but, if attacked, we shall consider ourselves fully justified in defending our persons and effects to the utmost …
It was a profession of faith, an enunciation of constitutional principles for a democratic Boer republic. Much of the turbulent story of South Africa is a betrayal of that manifesto.
Enter Ernest Mahoney of New York, sent thither by the Harker-Mahoney Shipping Company to investigate trading opportunities in this opening-up of the African hinterland. A hundred and twenty years later, when Ernest’s great grandson, Luke Mahoney, read his forebear’s journals of that epic time, he could visualise the meeting of shareholders in New York, the rotund old chairman, Ernest’s grandfather, saying:
‘The Mahoneys were amongst the first to transplant the principles of our magnificent American Revolution across the oceans ... Amongst the first to seize the unspoilt virtue of our frontier heritage and reject the wiliness of the Old World, “its useless memories and vain feuds”, amongst the first to shun the tawdry lures of Europe and export our American Enlightenment by the adventurous prows of the Harker-Mahoney clippers to replace wars and so-called diplomatic treaties with the benign embrace of commerce … the first to join with those Massachusetts poets in their cry:
Preserve your principles, their force unfold
Let nations prove them and let kings behold.
EQUALITY, your first firm-ground stand;
Then FREE ELECTIONS; then your FEDERAL BAND.
‘We were amongst the first to see that political happiness would eventuate throughout the world from the simple principle of free oceans, free trade, and the free dissemination of American inventiveness by Yankee vessels, and that, in return, the world would unfold its treasures … The Mahoneys were amongst the first to turn America’s eyes to the Pacific, and to Africa, to probe dark regions of alien religions which would, through our worthy commerce, fall to the influence of our Enlightenment … And we all know what the result is: Harker-Mahoney has, without firing a shot except in self-defence, an empire upon which the sun never sets … And now there is a new frontier for Harker-Mahoney to add to their empire, brethren shareholders! It is the hinterland of southern Africa!
‘“The hinterland”? you ask. We have traded profitably with the Cape of Good Hope for years, but how do we penetrate the hinterland? Ah … It is being penetrated for us by the Dutch Boers, just as our west is being opened up by our pioneer wagons! Whole new lands that will one day stretch to the Nile, vast new untapped markets for our goods, vast new resources, lands bigger than the whole of China …’
And so now here is nervous Ernest Mahoney, twenty-two years old, lanky, wan – a graduate of a Presbyterian seminary but feeling unable to take holy orders because of lusts of the flesh – disembarking with a big bagful of silver dollars, buying two horses, hiring a Dutch guide (paying twice what he should and thinking it cheap), setting off timidly into the wilderness to spread the American Enlightenment through worthy commerce. Ernest riding up into the highveld, overtaking Boer wagon trains, eventually coming upon the high mountain called Thaba Nchu, the foregathering place. The hundreds of wagons outspanned, the thousands of Boers waiting for their leader, Hendrik Potgieter, who had trekked on to the north to explore, for Piet Retief to come up from the south. There is Ernest fearfully riding on north with his guide to look for Hendrik Potgieter’s wagon train, following his tracks; the veld is littered with evidence of the Mfecane, whitened skeletons, burnt huts. Ernest eventually finds Potgieter and his people feverishly preparing for an imminent attack by Mzilikazi, lashing their wagons into a circle, stuffing thorn branches into the gaps. And so Ernest, four weeks in Africa, never having fired a shot in anger, who just wants to get the hell out of this land, finds himself plunged into one of South Africa’s most famous battles. And he meets Sarie Smit, the feisty Boer girl assigned to him as a loader because she speaks English.
The Battle of Vegkop. The veld black as ink with five thousand of Mzilikazi’s warriors loping across the veld chanting Zhee Zhee, encircling the wagons, sharpening their assegais, humming, humming for hours until Potgieter tied a red rag to a stockwhip and waved it above the wagons as a challenge. Then their terrifying battle charge, thousands of glistening warriors hurling themselves at the laager, stabbing, slashing, hurling, the wagons shaking under their tumult midst the cacophony of the trekkers’ muzzle-loaders, the smoke and stink of gunpowder. And there is Ernest, sick-in-his-guts terrified, blasting straight into the savage faces through the thorn branches, thrusting the spent gun at Sarie and grabbing the reloaded one she thrust back – bang – grab – bang – grab – bang – There is sweaty Sarie Smit and her mother pouring the powder down the hot muzzles, ramming in the lead with a wad of cotton on top, thrusting the gun in Ernest’s trembling, outstretched hand – bang grab bang … For hours the cacophonous battle rages, and the bloody black bodies are piled high around the laager before Mzilikazi’s warriors withdraw, round up all the voortrekkers’ thousands of cattle and drive them off northwards. Potgieter sends horsemen galloping back to Thaba Nchu to call for oxen, and Ernest volunteers to ride with them. It is regarded as a courageous offer, for more Matabele impis may be waiting, but Ernest just wants to get the hell out of there. And when, eight days later, he arrived at Thaba Nchu, he would have kept going, heading south to the faraway sea to take the first ship back to America, except that no way was he going to ride alone through this fearsome country.
Piet Retief had arrived at Thaba Nchu, where he had been elected Governor of the ‘United Laagers’, and he sent oxen up to Vegkop to haul Potgieter’s wagons back. But
