Michael Buys in the sources
Michael Buys was a son of the frontiersman Coenraad de Buys who, with his brother Gabriel, became the leading figure of the Buys community of the Soutpansberg. He worked as a hunter and as the Boers’ “Superintendent” over Africans, and he was the man who asked the Dutch Reformed Church for a missionary, which brought Alexander McKidd and then Stephanus Hofmeyr to the Soutpansberg in the 1860s.
What the sources say
His own account. Hofmeyr wrote down what Michael told him and printed it in the Cape church paper De Wekker on 1 December 1866 and 1 January 1867, then reprinted it in Twintig jaren in Zoutpansberg (1890). Michael said that his father, whom Hofmeyr calls Koenraad de Buijs, a white farmer from the Beaufort West district, brought children, among them Piet and Dorha, from a first union; that he then took a wife whom Michael was told was a sister of Mzilikazi, and had by her Doris, Gabriel, Michael, Jan and Baba; and that the family went up-country and came back down, pursued by white policemen of the Cape Corps as far as the Orange River, where his father threatened to shoot (pp. 6 to 8). Hofmeyr adds that the father was banished to Swellendam by the British government, and that he found Michael’s baptism there in an old register; Michael himself said he was baptised “in the upper country”. The two statements do not agree (pp. 6 to 8).
The journey north. Michael remembered the family moving through Moshoeshoe’s country to the Barolong chief Moroko, then Molimotzani, Legouroetze and Makhaba, the father treating a sick chief with medicine, fighting off an attack on their cattle, and reaching the Limpopo (the Crocodile River), where, after five days downriver, the mother died of yellow fever. In grief, the father told his sons he would leave them and that the Lord would care for them, and left in the night; they never saw him again (pp. 8 to 9). Doris and Jan wanted to stay on the river; Dorha, Gabriel and Michael went back to the Bamangwato country (Hofmeyr’s gloss on Michael’s “Monotho”), where Michael lived with its chief, hunted, kept a village under him and married the mother of his sons Andries and Piet; he tells of hunger and lions, and learned from Bushmen how to kill a leopard (pp. 9 to 12).
To the Soutpansberg. Hearing his brothers were in the Zoutpansberg, Michael left with many followers. They told him that after the Crocodile River the family was driven about by Africans until they reached Ohrigstad; when the Ohrigstad and Waterberg burghers fell out, Doris stayed at Ohrigstad and died there, and Gabriel came to the Soutpansberg. Michael says he arrived just as the Boers returned from the commando against Mzilikazi, that Gabriel was “a kind of Superintendent over the Kaffers” and a great friend of the old commandant Hendrik Potgieter, who left him a wagon and a box of gunpowder, that Gabriel was poisoned by Africans, and that Michael took over the office (pp. 12 to 13). This fits Nemudzivhadi, who writes that the Buys clan were entrusted with collecting the tribute known as opgaaf in the time of A. H. Potgieter and Stephanus Schoeman, but that Michael Buys could not discharge the duties effectively, so that Schoeman appointed João Albasini on 9 June 1859 (p. 63). Nemudzivhadi adds that the payment of opgaaf to Michael Buys, Albasini and the field cornets implied, for the Venda, that these officials were usurping the authority of the monarch (p. 65).
Asking for a missionary. Michael said that he longed to hear God’s Word and wept at the church door in Schoemansdal when someone preached, but was not allowed in. The farmer Cornelis Lottering first told him of McKidd and, with his brother Frans, did much to get McKidd to come and later gave a farm for it; and when the former President (printed in the scan as “Rensburg”; probably W. C. Janse van Rensburg) visited, Michael asked if he could not have a missionary, and the President ordered the landdrost to write to the Executive Council. “Many Whites hated and mocked me” for wanting one (pp. 13 to 14). Hofmeyr adds his own comment, which we give as his: that Michael was not spiritually eager; that he told Hofmeyr he had no hope of being anything but a heathen, but had seen something of Christianity through the Whites and did not want his children to fall as low as he and his brothers had; and that the many missionaries’ efforts among the Buys later met disappointment, as some of the young left for the diamond fields (pp. 14 to 15). See Alexander McKidd and Stephanus Hofmeyr.
His family. After the deaths of his brothers Dorha and Gabriel, Michael took in all their children. Hofmeyr says he gave some to white pastors for Christian instruction, one to Ds. Smits of Rustenburg, who would not return the boy when Michael asked in 1867, and that Michael would not allow the young to marry more than one wife and wanted them to marry among themselves; Hofmeyr says Michael had himself had more than twenty wives in his heathen years (pp. 14 to 15).
Later glimpses. In August 1865 Hofmeyr wrote that Michael Buys had been used as an intermediary between the Boers and the chief Madzhie but could do nothing (p. 39), and that he had heard that the Africans who threatened the station had planned to “slaughter me and Michael Buys alive” (p. 42). In chapter 8 Hofmeyr describes “old Michael” as poor and living mostly from hunting, shooting only what he needed, and asking him one Sunday “what must I do to believe in the Lord?” (pp. 75 to 76). A letter in chapter 10 has Makhado asking Michael what he should do about his many wives; Michael answered that he could not say, but that Makhado should accept God’s Word and it would teach him, and later told him to seek a missionary (pp. 123 to 124). Nemudzivhadi says that when Makhado’s trade goods ran short after the Boers left Schoemansdal, “Michael Buys intervened and advised Makhado to find a missionary”, and Hofmeyr was therefore allowed to remain (p. 129; see Makhado).
His brothers
Michael’s brothers have their own pages: Gabriel Buys and Doris Buys; and a younger Gabriel Buys, an evangelist killed in 1883, is on Gabriel Buys, evangelist to the Banyai.
Cornelis Lottering
Michael Buys credited the farmer Cornelis Lottering with first telling him of McKidd; see Cornelis Lottering.
Overview articles
For the opgaaf system he was part of, see Tribute, land and the Boer state in the Soutpansberg, 1855 to 1898.
See The Buys people of the Soutpansberg: an overview for the family as a whole.
Cautions
This is a life told by a missionary from what an old man said, in a book written for children and church supporters; its dates are almost all missing, and the Venda and Sotho placenames are as Hofmeyr spelled them. Michael’s death date is not given in any source we have. Several of his statements about his own parentage, such as his mother being a sister of Mzilikazi, he prefaces as what he was told. The passage about his many wives is Hofmeyr’s, not Michael’s. The Buys people are described in the sources by outsiders: a missionary in 1866 to 1890, a Venda historian in 1998, an anthropologist in 2004 and an unsigned encyclopedia entry. The older sources use words for them and for Africans in general that we do not repeat, and we have found no history written by the community itself.
Izithakazelo and totem
We have found no confirmed totem or praise poem for this page. If you belong to the Buys community and wish to share your family’s history, we would like to record it, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Stefanus Hofmeyr, Twintig jaren in Zoutpansberg (Cape Town: J. H. Rose, 1890), chapters 2 and 8, in Dutch; read in the Internet Archive scan (page numbers below are the book’s, as marked in the scan’s text)
- Mphaya Henry Nemudzivhadi, “The attempts by Makhado to revive the Venda kingdom, 1864-1895”, PhD thesis, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (1998); open access at the North-West University repository (a scanned copy; we read it by OCR, and page numbers cited are the thesis’s printed numbers)
- Michael de Jongh, “The Buysdorp conundrum: constructing and articulating community and identity in Soutpansberg, Limpopo Province”, Anthropology Southern Africa 27(3-4), pp. 86 to 91 (we read only the publisher’s abstract page)
See also Michael Buys, Buys community, Coenraad de Buys, Buysdorp, Stephanus Hofmeyr and Schoemansdal.
Do you belong to the Buys community? Tell us what your family says about its history, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.