h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi again Rod and Dmitri! I'll say more about religion later, but for now, yes, the thing here is that almost every individual Afrikaner interprets/interpreted the Bible in his/her own way, and we also have a dizzy diversity of groups, and they're splitting all the time, *including* about the issue of 'race'. For instance, a couple of decades ago, the NG (Nether-German Reformed) Church decided they could no longer prohibit non-white people from attending church along with white people. Because of that a new church, the Afrikaans Protestant Church, was formed, in which non-whites were not allowed. My old church, the Reformed Church, did allow non-whites even in the Apartheid years. But that doesn't mean that it's an all right church ...


Anyways I don't want to speak about that now, but continue with the story.

So in 1834 the English abolished slavery. About the same time the Groot (=Great) Trek started, and this is an almost holy occasion for us Afrikaners, it is regarded as one of the foundation stones of our people. Now when we were taught about the Groot Trek in schools, slavery wasn't even mentioned. I only discovered long afterward that it was one of the reasons the Boers trekked away ... that they wanted to keep slaves. In the apartheid times we didn't even acknowledge that the Boers had slaves. We knew the Dutch at the Cape had, we knew the British had, but the Boers were not supposed to have had (they were supposed to be nice people and in apartheid times we did acknowledge that slavery was evil. Apartheid did not condone slavery!). In truth there were probably few slaves owned by Boers simply because the Boers were generally not affluent people. And by the time the Boer Republics were founded, slavery was not allowed in them.

But there were many reasons why a bunch of Boers decided to trek into the hinterland, it's not necessary to name them all. What is more important is what the hinterland was like, and this brings us to another justification AND the origin of a major problem we're still struggling with.

King Shaka of the Zulus has been called the African Napoleon. Born near the end of the eighteenth century, he came to power at the start of the nineteenth. His reign was violent beyond description. Following him, Mzilikazi (we called him Silkaats in Afrikaans) the Matebele king continued the violence and warfare. Lesser rulers and groups contributed to the anarchy. The end result was that at almost exactly the same time as the Voortrekkers started the Trek, the interior of South Africa was almost denuded of people. So the Boers entered what to them seemed an almost empty land. The true inhabitants were mostly refugees elsewhere, or hiding in caves or something, waiting for things to quiet down. But the Boers simply took the 'empty' lands for themselves, and along with lands they got through treaties made with remaining tribes and peoples, these formed the core of what became the Boer Republics.

So there is another thing: the denudation of the interior of the 'Mfecane' (the 'Crushing' or the 'Scattering') left a vacuum into which the Boers stepped. Today it is said they stole the land ... many Afrikaners contend that the land was there for the taking, or had been obtained by legal treaty. It is a problem that won't go away and again it's exactly the same thing as in Israel ... the Israeli's contend that Palestine at the time was almost empty of people, while the Palestinians say no, it was their traditional lands going back for generations. And I would say the problem is as thorny over here as over there, but presently, at least, not quite as violent.

But another parallel is that the Boers also saw themselves as having moved into a 'promised land' as 'God's chosen people'. Next time more about that when I tell of the Battle of Blood River ...

God's Chosen People. I wonder how many of us were or are (without necessarily knowing about it)?

Thanks, Willem

This is fascinating, Willem.

Of course, we've heard of Shaka over here. (People tend to speak admiringly.) The comparison to Napoleon puts it into focus. That also explains a bit about the Matabele Wars, which I read about in school.

This 'Promised Land' motif is also familiar. New England was founded by people like that. At the time when the Puritans arrived, they found entire villages left empty, with crops ripening in the fields. The reason? Plagues spread by sailors along the coast wiped out whole populations.

Of course, the Puritans saw it as a sign from God. They would.

We really do need to learn better.

Hi again Rod and Dmitri! In my view either all of us are God's chosen people or none of us are. (Depends on belief in/about God of course ...)

Over here Shaka is also admired by the Zulus. Well, he did expand the Zulu kingdom enormously ... but he was a profoundly brutal megalomaniac. Nothing to do with his race/ethnicity ... Napoleon was as was Hitler and Stalin and quite a few other white folks, as were many Roman emperors, as were many of the 'great' kings of Babylonia, Persia, Assyria ... this thing goes back a bit and probably will go on into the future as well for a while longer at least. One of our problems as *humans* is that we allow people who are like that to actually rise to positions where they can do the damage on a vast scale.

OK on with the story! The battle of Blood River is the key foundational myth of the Afrikaner people as it saw itself during the apartheid years. The incident that sparked the conflict between the Boers and the Zulus (then governed by Dingane or Dingaan, who was the half brother of Shaka - whom he had assassinated, so much for family ties) happened when they moved into what is today Kwazulu-Natal. That part was still densely settled since it was the Zulu heartland. The Boers wanted land, they wanted to make deals, but the Zulu view of land ownership was that it was communal and not even the King had the right to sell it. But the Boers made some threats along with the demands, since they had fought and won battles with various native peoples over the course of their trek.

So Dingaan invited them for a chat. Now given what he did to his half brother (not to mention other things) you can conclude he was not a very savoury character, but the Boers took the invite in good faith. Piet Retief led a delegation to visit with the Zulu chief. They took their guns with them at any rate. Oh, and they also took some cattle they fetched from another Zulu chief that Dingaan said had been stolen from him, as a token of their good faith.

Then during the parley between Retief and his men, Dingaan suddenly shouted 'Kill the Wizards!' Retief and his men were set upon and slaughtered. Retief was held and forced to watch as his men were killed in front of him, and he was killed last of all and his heart and liver cut out and given to Dingaan.

Dingaan now probably figured the rest of the Boers would not be much impressed by what he did, so he ordered pre-emptive strikes on some Boer encampments in the area ... men, women and children were all killed. But the news went back to many other Boers who survived, and they launched a punitive expedition. Unfortunately it numbered only a bit over 300 Boers, and they met with about 7 000 Zulus, and were badly beaten.

The next step was sending a larger force, and also, making an alliance with Mpande, a rival of Dingaan, to help oust him (does this strategy sound familiar?) Andries Pretorius and about 470 men went in and made a camp next to the Ncome river. Prior the Boers had made a vow to God: if He granted them victory, they would commemorate the day from then onward and make sure their children would do the same. So they camped in a position they believed the could defend. They drew their ox wagons into a ring, as a kind of shield. They had guns and also two cannons.

The battle started on the morning of the 16th December 1838. About 10 000 Zulus had arrived ... perhaps as many as 15 000, but at any rate it was a huge force. They had been prepared by witch doctors who put spells on them to make them invincible (sound familiar?).

Long story short: the Boers won. There were about 3 000 dead Zulus, but only 3 injuries on the side of the Boers. God had come through: spectacularly so.

After this battle Mpande conquered Dingaan and became the new Zulu King, his authority recognised by his Boer allies. Mpande founded a dynasty that lasts to this day.

And as for the Boers, they interpreted the victory not just as God answering their prayers, but as a sign that God was 'for' them, and 'against' the Zulus. They carried divine favour; they had a divine right to the land. The event became holy, and the day a sacred holiday. The oath the Boers under Andries Pretorius took was interpreted to be binding on *all* Afrikaners. I have often wondered about this. How can four hundred something people make an oath that is binding not just on themselves, but also on their children, and on other people who weren't there and their children as well? How I read the Bible: it says it is better not to make oaths, first of all, and second of all, you cannot make an oath on somebody else's behalf.

But anyways. The battle of Blood River was for the Afrikaner THE key event in its existence ... the Oath bound us all together and bound us to God and bound us to this land. You can't get something much more powerful than that ...

Next bit will follow soon.

Wow Willem, that is one heck of a story. Scary scary--what sort of legacy is that to burden your descendants with?

Certainly a gripping story.

Interestingly though, the Apostle Paul seems to interpret the oath taken by the Children of Israel back during the Exodus as binding on their descendants (and yes, I think that's a crock, too).

>>what sort of legacy is that to burden your descendants with?<<
Perhaps just the sort of legacy that starts family feuds, too

Mzilikazi, Dingaan & Shaka (Chaka, T'chaka) are names that resonate. I remember a book (a rip-roaring adventure story) from my youth by, perhaps, Rider Haggard ('Nada the Lily'?)

Keep going, Willem - fascinating.

Hi there folks. Rod, it's quite probable that H. Rider Haggard would have mentioned those people. I have not read any of his books myself, but I know that his story 'She' is based on the Rain Queen of Modjadji, who live(d) not far from where I do! I even know and have drawn portraits of some of the Modjadji family/dynasty. Interestingly Modjadji is a title rather than a name, so every new girl or woman declared the queen adopts the title of Modjadji. There isn't one at the moment ... the last Modjadji died in 2005 and a successor hasn't yet been announced.

Elektra, the 'legacy' ... to me it is a legacy of slaughter and conflict and I don't want to commemorate it. I don't even want to see it as God answering a prayer. In war I cannot see how God would chose sides ... the God I'd like to believe in, would rather weep that such a thing even happened. (I don't want to make this about my religious views ... but I just want to say I think God allows us to do things like these because we are endowed with the freedom to make our own mistakes ... and the responsibility to learn from them. With divine optimism that we *would* eventually learn something ... coupled with divine patience as time and again we don't.)

Anyways. I realised at a very young age the extreme violence and brutality of the history we were taught to revere. It was hard for me to come to terms with it, and I'd say it actually haunts me still.

For instance I drew a picture of the Blood River battle, when I was seven or eight. More accurately, the aftermath. Now I did not mention this but you can use your imagination as to how the name 'Blood River' came to apply, when you think of 3 000 dead Zulu warriors in the vicinity of a river. My picture was of the corpses being stacked in a huge pile, one by one ... some with huge holes in them from the cannon balls ... as an impassive Boer with a notepad stood by and kept a tally.

I was rather obsessed with violence from the age of about five to the age of nine, and there were *so* many violent tales we were being told. In my school books I drew pictures of Samson literally dismembering the Philistines with blows from the ass's jaw; of the Vinyard owner's young son being stabbed and hacked to death by the husbandman he'd put in charge (Jesus' parable), of Cain beating Abel to death ... then also pictures of 'tables being turned', such as an antelope driving a cart, with a smoking rifle by his side, and his 'trophy', a human hunter he'd shot dead, on the back of the cart. And all of these quite realistic, in lurid detail ... no stick figures but quite realistically formed humans suffering these indignities, and with lots and lots of blood. See, I'd seen an antelope being shot and butchered when I was five, and pretty much all my pictures of people getting killed also involved spurting gouts of blood. I got lots and lots of 'Well done!' stars for these pictures.

>>I got lots and lots of 'Well done!' stars for these pictures.<<

I wonder if you remember how you felt about that, at the time? It's left me not knowing whether to be more congratulatory on having pursued your talent or more troubled by what I'm imagining to be the attitudes (of teachers?) of the time.

Anyway, I marvel at your talent and am enjoying your accounts (if enjoying is the word)

Rod

Hi there Rod! Well, my art is the one thing people keeps congratulating me on. I can't remember what I felt at the time, but I know I was trying to come to terms with the violence of the world. The teachers were nice enough, actually. But there was a lot of very violent talk in the classroom even when we kids were still very young. I still don't know if it would be better to be up-front with just how violent our world is, with children, or to sort of whitewash the whole issue. *We* were up-front mostly in those times ... I don't know how it is with kids today. We were of course also very brainwashed. Heck I think the kids and most adults today are still, although the *content* of the brainwashing is different now ... I do think it is a bit better now, but still not OK. But anyways, when I grew up, it was in such a climate of fear of the most extreme kinds of violence. I will come to that in time, the whole atmosphere of the country in the seventies and eighties, as I experienced it.

OK to get back to the thread topic, about *principles*. Currently I love all people, indeed all living things, and this love is a *principle* that I try to live by. I also see humans as worthy of love. This is not a principle I was taught in school or anywhere else ... I had to figure it out, and it wasn't easy. Dmitri's article here about how it's not right to just kill people, not even if you're the president or the king ... that kind of mindset was totally foreign to me in the seventies and the eighties. Us conservative Afrikaners did not really believe in human rights. For us 'humanism' was a dangerous and foolish heresy. I would just like to make it clear that in my view we weren't bad people ... we were misguided. We went through a historical process that brought us to apartheid, but also beyond that, to where we are today. Many of us have learnt. Many still haven't. Those of us who *had* learnt, may still need to learn some other things. But I think most of us *have* learnt a number of valuable lessons here, and others might learn from us.

Let me now come to the next justification. As I've said, the oath taken at the Batlle of Blood River, and the subsequent victory, was seen as a religious covenant between God and the Afrikaners. Now let's talk about religion. I'm going to try and make it as non-controversial as possible. I'm not going to condemn any religion ... but I only wish to say, that a religion most definitely goes *wrong* when it is used to justify harm and injustice. (It may also go wrong on other points ... maybe it is wrong in its entirety ... but here I just want to speak of the justice aspect).

The Boers were very conservative Christians from a Calvinist background, with not a lot of teaching or philosophy from *other* books, and most of the time they understood the Bible in simple terms, according to what made sense to them under their own circumstances. But they were sincere and fervent believers. They often found themselves fighting with native peoples, but they also wished to have peaceful relations with them as much as possible. As I've said, only a few of wealthy Boers had slaves, but others did often persuade native people to work for them. These were then usually christianised ... if they were willing, and many were.

This was where the Boers really saw themselves as doing God's work. After Blood River there were no more really big violent clashes (at least, not with the Boers ... the British indeed fought for a while longer against the Zulus in the Natal region, from which most Boers withdrew and moved still further to the North). In the mind of the Boers, God had given us this 'land of milk and honey' ... but at the price of bringing His Word to the native peoples who were living in ignorance and barbarism. So spreading Christianity was another justification. Wasn't it also used to justify slavery? In other words the slaves were seen as being *better off* than their free relatives who remained in Africa, since they had been given the Truth that would set them free ... *They* were supposedly the free ones, while the folks back in Africa were the *real* slaves, slaves of ignorance and superstition!

Converting people to a religion *per se* might not be a problem, but the problem here was that it was done from a position of assumed superiority. The assumption that the 'white man' automatically 'knew best', when in fact he didn't, not really. And there were some strange conflicts in the ideas. It was all right to win a black man to be a brother in Christ, so long as he didn't expect to sit next to you in Church ... or, in fact, to be in Church with you at all. But this was nothing to what came later, when the Afrikaners really saw themselves as the defenders of God's truth against an entire *world* that was under the sway of Satan. Then suddenly religion justified torturing and killing and many other horrors. Again I think of another situation ... the Inquisition. It was seen as good and right and holy to torture and kill people, because the eternal afterlife was so much more important ... if the body was harmed but the soul was set free, then all was well.

We didn't really realise what we were doing. We thought that our motives were good, and we thought our knowledge was sufficient. I would like this to be a cautionary tale ... mistakes we made, were made by others in the past, and indeed continue to be made. But every time in a somewhat different guise. The key to it is this: we were blinded to *realities* because we were too fond of the ideas we had in our heads. And we thought we couldn't possibly be wrong.

Oh ... quick note, when I said, 'wasn't it also used to justify slavery?' I mean slavery in America!

Well put, Willem.

Fredrick Douglass wrote:

'We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the POOR HEATHEN! ALL FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GOOD OF SOULS! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other...'

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845

The Good Book tells us how to live
I believe in The Good Book
...
...
Therefore how can I be wrong?



Not exactly that but something along those lines perhaps
and
Are we so different today? (allowing, that is, for changes in governance).

How about trying to live by the spirit of the book, rather than making a cargo cult out of it?

Just asking...

Ah, but there's only one true spirit. Or should that be one-third of one?
- and spirits are too easily adulterated

You think so? I do remember the scriptural injunction to 'quench not the spirit'... It's a thought.

I don't really want to go into the problems with the Bible and its various interpretations ... just mention how *some* of the interpretations were used to justify Apartheid.

We already had the one where African people were seen as the descendents of Ham and under the curse of God, destined to be servants of their 'betters'.

Not all Afrikaners believed that. But pretty much all of them did believe the native Africans had to be christianized since their traditional religions would doom them all to Hell. Now, once again I don't want to debate the virtue of one religion over another here, only note that removing native religions as well as native traditions had an 'uprooting' effect, and caused social disintegration. More on that later ...

Then another religious justification: the tower of Babel. Here we understood that God had created not only different languages, but also different peoples. It was God's will that languages and peoples remained different, and *separate* from each other. This was the strongest of the religious justifications of the *system* of apartheid as such.

I'll now have to go search for some other Biblical texts that have been used to justify the idea that God didn't like mixing stuff up, that God preferred things to remain distinct and 'pure'.

So here is the big thing: if you believe in the above as ABSOLUTE truths, and NOTHING can change your mind, then you will be blind for the negative effects that might acrue due to your actually having been wrong. That is the big problem. So ... any and all of the above doctrines, believed with too much certainty, become cast in concrete, and whatever bad effects may result, are simply not seen. If we were just a little less certain of ourselves, we would soon have actually noticed that some bad things were happening and some people were really being harmed, and that situations that were really unfair were being created.

I, for one, can't argue with that

Yes, exactly. That's what I meant by my comment that ignoring the spirit of a thing, and insisting on its 'literal' meaning - which really isn't literal, and in fact, is a reinterpretation - leads to this sort of behaviour. Every time, in every way, and on every continent.

I'd also like to point out that, worldwide, from the late 18th Century through to the 20th, it didn't matter whether you were religious or not. Most people held these views about race.

'Science' was used to back these ideas up. It was called 'scientific racism'. Every western country believed in this stuff.

In the UK and the US, people believed the Irish were a separate and inferior race from the 'Anglo-Saxons'. This was not considered the tinfoil hat theory that it really was. It was considered mainstream thinking.

Okay, so back to justifications for apartheid.