Day 336 / 101

Date: 14 March 2023
Sleeping location: Bloed Rivier/Ncome battlefield, South Africa
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 66 / 20791 / 5954
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 500 / 186800 / 68800

Accounts: differing

Day in three words: A little history

After a leisurely departure, mostly spent cooking and eating loads of my interesting food, I headed off after 10, cycled for about five minutes then realised I’d forgotten to look at the big church in town. This wasn’t just any church, it was one of the twelve best churches in Africa according to “The Moguldom Nation” website, so I turned back. The whole think was locked up but when poking around I found a woman called Mara who offered to show me inside. It’s a beautiful building from the late 19th century, made really solidly of golden stone, and I got to go everywhere and see the (original) organ and everything. Mara clearly had such pride in it, although I got the impression that the pool of churchgoers was white, old, Dutch and dwindling.

Back on my way, the road was initially too busy, narrow and bad quality for an hour, but then calmed down and smoothed out. The landscape was one of big open plains with cows and not much else. I was heading for the historical site of Bloed River/Ncome, site of a hugely important battle in the (white) South African cultural psyche, where a small band of “Voortrekker” settlers defeated a huge Zulu army in 1838. This was down a lovely, quiet, well graded dirt road on which I only passed two cars in two hours. The occupant of one of the cars said hello and asked if I wanted a coffee at his house, though I couldn’t because I wanted to get to the museum before it closed. Or rather, museums. 

By now it was becoming clear whether land that I was travelling through had been allocated to whites or blacks during the apartheid years. “White” land is quite empty, fenced off, often containing large scale agriculture and wealthy farmers. “Black” land has scattered houses and way more people, small scale agriculture, few fences and livestock wandering about. I don’t think urban land was allocated in the same way but there are clear differences there too. “White” towns have (or had) a Dutch or English name and have cafes and supermarkets, an orderly street plan and big suburban houses. “Black” towns are a random collection of houses. You see black people in white areas, usually working; you never see white people in black areas unless they are driving through. I had been in white land for most of the day, hence the emptiness and quietness, but it was clear that the other side of the river at the battlefield site was black land, and there was a museum on each side of the river to tell each side of the story. 

I parked up at the Dutch side, Bloed Rivier, and was met by the proprietors Johan and Rina who were very welcoming. Both museums closed at 4 but I could camp here and essentially see the museum out of hours, so I quickly headed over to the Zulu side, Ncome, via the Reconciliation Bridge, which was built between the two museums to encourage people to see both sides - a nice touch. The Ncome museum was small but quite well done and was impressively built in the shape of the Zulu “buffalo horn” battle formation. The Bloed Rivier side was open air and had a big recreation of the laager (see below) in the site of the original battle, plus a series of plaques explaining the history. I thought this was fascinating and have put it in a separate section at the bottom.

Amongst all the stories of violence were a couple of bits of brevity. Firstly, the Zulu regiments had some incredible names, for example: The One Who Eats Without Feeling It; The Big Affair; The Stale Mouldy One; The One Who Ignores The Bushbuck; The One Who Eats With Fierce Impatience* and Persistent Worry. Secondly, a plaque next to a replica cannon in the laager contained the immortal phrase “Historians differ about the presence of a possible third gun at the battle of Blood River, but concur that it would have been a large gun.” 

Back at the Bloed Rivier Johan said I could use one of the rooms for the price of camping, which was appreciated. I did some more fiddling with Maggie’s shifting before it got too dark, then made a nice meal of sausage and cheese pasta made/eaten with a damn fine bottle of wine. It was a wonderfully peaceful place, apart from when the load shedding kicked off and the generator kicked in, and I curled up in bed in a very relaxed state.

*I think I’d have fitted in well in this one

History corner

The facts are:

-The Voortrekkers were fleeing the British, who had taken over the Cape, looking for a new home

-The Zulus lived in this area, having acquired it by force from the previous inhabitants

-The Voortrekkers agreed to help the Zulu king Dingane recover some cattle stolen by another tribe in return for land rights. They recovered the cattle successfully

-Dingane then signed a land settlement treaty with the Voortrekker leader Piet Retief

-Two days later, at a celebratory event, Dingane ordered the murder in cold blood of Retief’s party, shouting “kill the sorcerers”

-Immediately afterwards, Zulu regiments attacked Voortrekker encampments around the area now known as Weenan, killing everyone they encountered, including women and children. Weenan is Afrikaans for “weeping”

-The Voortrekkers regrouped under a new leader, Andreas Pretorius, and ten months later had advanced to Bloed Rivier/Ncome, where 664 of them fought a Zulu army of over 10,000. They gathered their wagons in a circular formation called a laager and shot outwards with guns and cannon, killing thousands. Eventually they Zulu fled and the Voortrekkers then chased them on horseback, killing many more. Not a single Voortrekker was killed and only three were wounded

-The war continued for a year until the Voortrekkers teamed up with a rogue Zulu army led by Dingane’s brother Mpande, defeated Dingane and signed a land settlement treaty with Mpande in his role as the newly crowned king

The Bloed Rivier museum stated these facts but was clearly looking at things from the Voortrekker perspective. The Zulu museum:

-claimed that Zulu land could not be bought or transferred, which probably came as a surprise to the previous inhabitants

-said that the Voortrekkers didn’t return all of the cows that they recovered, which made Dingane angry

-said that the murder of Retief and his party was carried out because the Zulus thought they were witches

-mentioned the Weenan massacres only in passing

I’m not going to dig into the moral side of this, because this is meant to be a travel blog, but I will give one opinion: if your currency is blood, you have no right to be aggrieved when someone outbids you.