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

with the Dutch. Many moved farther and farther afield from Cape Town -- up in the desert and thegrasslands. There they established what they called the Republic of Swellendam -- approximately ahundred and fifty miles dead east of Cape Town, just over the mountains to the north of which myown parents live in the town called Barrydale.The Trekkers then also travelled a couple of hundred miles still further -- and set up a second newstate which they called the Republic of Graaff-Reinet. This is a very important town on the edge ofthe desert. Today it is a powerful centre of Calvinist education. I am sure it became so as a result ofthe godly Rev. Dr Andrew Murray, whom you have all heard about. I mean the internationallyfamous writer of devotional literature. He was born in Graaff-Reinet, in the manse of the ReformedCongregation there which his father pastored. They still have a very ancient grapevine growing inthe manse garden to this very day. It was already there when Andrew Murray was a little boy, at thebeginning of the nineteenth century.This then is the picture which now emerges. Back in the "mother country" -- Holland fell to theFrench Revolution in 1795; and then, again, later to Napoleon. Calvinist Roman-Dutch Law wasthen abolished in Holland by the occupying French, and replaced with the Napoleonic Code. Thatseverely amputated South Africa from Holland, for South Africa continued with the old CalvinisticRoman-Dutch Law of Calvin and Voetius.Some of the Dutch conservatives who were not destroyed in Holland, fled to South Africa. Therethey could continue their Calvinism. Yet in 1806, Holland was so fearful of an expansion ofFrench-Napoleonic influence even as far away as the southern tip of Africa -- that she sold the Capeto the British.It has been alleged that the British never paid for it! That is a very sore point in South Africa, tothis very day. Be that as it may, Holland did try to sell South Africa to the British -- in order toprevent it from falling into the hands of Napoleon's French navy. So the British now arrived inSouth Africa. They occupied the country, and made many sweeping changes from 1806 through1820.The British were no longer the godly Calvinists they had been in the seventeenth century, but hadnow certainly been transcendentalized and even somewhat liberalised by increasing humanism.They brought printing, books, and especially ewspapers to the Cape. This promoted exposure tooutside ideas, to British ways of doing things. These were liberal ideas -- aîthough ideas that werethen far less liberal than those of the French Revolution or even of the "Frenchified" Dutch back inHolland. Be that as it may, this wave of new ideas -- this time under the British -- neverthelesscaused ever-increasing dissatisfaction in South Africa.The British were determined to destroy Afrikaans. They suppressed this language in the schools.They forced little children who couldn't understand a word of it to learn English alone in theschools. They tried to wipe out their past, and their culture.The British also introduced English Law into the Courts -- at least as far as Criminal Law andCriminal Procedure is concerned. They made English alone the language of the Law Courts. Thiswas highly resented by the Afrikaners, who wanted to preserve both their own language as well astheir Roman-Dutch system of Law.To crown it all, the British tried to force the Afrikaners to abandon Afrikaans as the language oftheir Church. They tried to persuade them to become Episcopalians or Anglicans. But they metwith a stern and severe Presbyterian resistance!