The Dorsland Trek. During the 1870s three separate groups of farmers left the Transvaal to settle in the present Namibia and subsequently in Angola. Participants were driven by what was called the trekgees – a practice that had begun in the refreshment station of the Cape in the 1690s. It saw stockfarmers, called trekboers, roaming about with their livestock beyond the settlement’s boundaries. But the Dorsland trekkers were also driven off by the secular reforms of the liberal president of the ZAR, Thomas François Burgers. He wanted to ban religious instruction during school hours. This greatly shocked the more conservative burghers, especially members of the Reformed (Dopper) church like Paul Kruger. Kruger feared for ‘the fall of Christendom’ and was sorely tempted to join the fi rst trek, but decided to stay to build up a ‘pure’ church in the Transvaal. The trek went on without him. It was close to an utter disaster. Some 500 to 600 people left from Pretoria and Rus ten burg between 1874 and 1880, travelling across the Kalahari desert to South West Africa and the south of present-day Angola on the Dorsland Trek (Thirstland Trek). Between 250 and 300 people perished or turned back.
The ZAR took long to stabilise. During the 1850s and early 1860s, three or four regions, each with their own personal leaders, constantly vied for power. In the northern part of the republic, the dispersed trekker settlements collapsed in the face of Venda hostility and the trekkers had to abandon entire districts. When Kruger called the burghers out for commandos half of them failed to appear. In the early 1870s a Pedi challenge to the white settlement in the eastern part of the republic forced the ZAR to turn to the Swazi under Mswati for help. By the mid-1870s the Pedi under Sekhukhune were raiding farms in the eastern part of ZAR with impunity.
Thomas François Burgers, a liberal minister who had been suspended by the Reformed Church in the Cape for heresy, became president of the ZAR in 1872. An idealist with grand visions, he lacked the patience to win the trust of an ultra-conservative community. His plans to introduce secular education nearly prompted Paul Kruger to join a trek, later called the Dorsland Trek, through the desert to southern Angola in order to preserve their religious and political belief. More than half of those who left perished or turned back.
Burgers borrowed money on a large scale for grand projects to modernise the republic. He planned a railway line to Delagoa Bay, to secure an outlet free from British control. On a visit to Europe he raised only £90 000 and the venture ended in an enormous loss. Paul Kruger made the cruel but apt comment about his ambitious schemes: ‘Burgers wanted to fly, but his wings were clipped in time. Now he has to crawl along with us.’ By early 1877 the state was so deeply in debt that the civil servants could not be paid. Hopelessly divided, the ZAR burghers offered no resistance when Theophilus Shepstone, backed by 25 men, went to Pretoria to annex the state as a British colony.
