THE CHRISTIAN AFRIKANERS - The Works of F. N. Lee

1760 -- there was more and more dissatisfaction in and around Cape Town. People trekked over themountains and then across the rolling plains -- on and on into the arid heartland of South Africa.First of all, there was dissatisfaction round the lush coastal regions -- where alone there wasadequate rainfall. There you find the rise of the first White South African nationalism, in a groupknown as the Cape Patriots. These were people who began first requesting and then demandinginitially tokenistic, but later real political representation in their own affairs -- much as the NorthAmerican colonists began to agitate for this sort of thing also from about 1700 - 1720 onward.The dates are surprisingly parallel in the two continents. So too the development of events. TheWhite South Africans felt that they wanted to be more autonomous in trading. Yet the Dutchmother country followed a closed trading pattern. It wanted to saddle South Africa with Dutchitems that White South Africans did not particularly want to buy. They preferred to buy Frenchgoods or to make them themselves. This was leading up to a "Boston Tea Party" sort of situation --comparable with what happened in America from 1770 to 1776.Round about 1780, just as the Americans were winning their independence, a very major event tookplace in South Africa. The dissatisfied White settlers, as they moved eastward and northward awayfrom Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa where I grew up, for the first time suddenlyencountered Black people that they had never seen before. Thus the Whites had been in SouthAfrica for one hundred and twenty-eight years before they met the first Blacks. They met in theeastern portion of what is now South Africa.The Whites had moved out eastward and northward from Cape Town. The Blacks had been movingdown from East Africa, southbound. They moved on through the southeastern fringe of Africa --with other Black tribes to the north of them pushing these advancing Black tribes down into what isnow South Africa.One day, as the eastward-moving Whites went over the brow of the next hill and as the westwardmovingBlacks came over the brow of the same hill -- they looked at one another, and could notbelieve their eyes. The two groups did not understand one anothers language or culture. The Whiteswere Christians and Calvinists, and spoke a Caucasian language. The Blacks were half-nakedpagans with some Moslem influence. They did not understand the Whites' language yet the twogroups still managed to make a deal.The point where they met one another on those hills, would be the boundary. The Whites wouldmove no farther to the east nor to the north. The Blacks would move no farther to the west and tothe south. Here is the second phase in the development of racial segregation -- as the historicalpractice of South Africa.Things might have gone well, if it had not been for a handful of greedy Whites who wanted to grabmore land to the east and the north of that border. There was also more than a handful of starvingyet greedy Blacks who might well get wiped out in the next famine.Famines are very frequent in South Africa. Remember, it is desert country. There is very little rain.When the Blacks had a crop failure and when their cattle began to die, they found it mostconvenient to raid their White neighbours' cattle. "Look, fellows ... meat!"Of course the Whites were not very happy with having their cows burgled. They undertookreprisals, and this led from 1780 onward over the next couple of decades to the socalled Ten KaffirWars.