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And even after settling in the Soutpansberg, there is evidence that they
continued to interact with communities around the Makgabeng-Blouberg
vicinity in the form of trading and hunting 216 . The pioneering role of the Buys
people in that area motivated other smaller European groups to continue to
explore the area.
In addition to the Buys people, other early European travellers around the
Makgabeng area included Thomas Baines and Alexander Struben, who
were explorers who were involved in various activities such as hunting and
trading 217 . Individual travellers did not have the same impact like a group
such as the Buys people, hence the need to further look into the origins and
impact of this group in the Makgabeng area. Individual travellers like Baines
and Struben, passed communities in shorter space of time while a group
such as the Buys, took longer periods on the same area, due to the logistics
involved in moving and settling with their belongings which included
livestock.
Coenraad was the great-grandson of a French Huguenot, Jean du Buis who
was a late seventeenth-century Cape settler 218 . Coenraad, together with his
group of Khoi/African women and children crossed the Orange River into
the Highveld from about 1814 after he was banished from the Cape by the
216 T. J. Makhura, The Bagananwa Polity…, p. 72.
217 Ibid, p. 72.
218 Ibid, p. 69.
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