Evacuation of Schoemansdal, 1867

Evacuation of Schoemansdal, 1867 in the sources

On 15 July 1867 the Boers of Schoemansdal, with Paul Kruger’s commando, abandoned the town after failed attacks on Makhado at Luatame and Vhulorwa and on Madzhie’s mountain, and Makhado’s people looted and burned it. Nemudzivhadi counts it a Venda victory; the Boers called it a retreat, and the Republic’s president called it the greatest disaster in its history.

What the sources say

The call-out. Nemudzivhadi says the government called a commando of 1,200 in June 1867 and only about half came, because the burghers did not want to fight for the lawless Whites of the north (p. 91); on another page he has President Pretorius calling 2,000 for the end of May and about 500 responding, led into the Soutpansberg by Commandant-General Paul Kruger (p. 94). The two numbers differ, and we give both. Meanwhile, he writes, Madzhie was pressing Makhado to attack the Whites over their forced labour and ill-treatment; Makhado was cautious, consulted his friend Terence Fitzgerald, who advised against provoking the Boers, and eventually yielded to his councillors and uncle (pp. 91 to 92). Wikipedia dates the total breakdown to 1866, after the Boers’ intervention in Ramabulana’s succession dispute, and says Makhado burned an outlying Voortrekker settlement; Nemudzivhadi does not tell it that way.

Kruger’s commando. The commando camped west of the town. Kruger sent a deputation to Makhado’s residence at Makwatambani asking him to come down to Schoemansdal to negotiate; Makhado had already accepted Madzhie’s view that the Boers must go, refused, and sent a party of boys to meet Kruger, which the Boers took as contempt (p. 94). A commando led by Frikkie van Dyk then tried to storm Luatame and, finding the terrain impassable, went to Vhulorwa above the town, where it was defeated, with three Venda fatally injured; the Boer losses were not disclosed (p. 95). Venda tradition, from Makhado’s niece Makhado Dzwedzhi, says the diviners foresaw the attack, Funyufunyu prepared the defence, and bees provoked on the mountain swarmed on the Boers and scattered them; we give this as tradition (p. 95; see Funyufunyu).

Madzhie’s mountain. Kruger then turned west against Madzhie, helped by Davhana, “for his personal benefit as well as payment for Albasini’s protection”, and by Albasini’s Tsonga, with the cannon Grietjie. Four hundred men climbed the mountain, but Madzhie’s warriors fired from cliffs and boulders and the Boers withdrew to defence; by four o’clock Kruger ordered the retreat to Schoemansdal, leaving Madzhie undefeated (pp. 96 to 97; see Madzhie and João Albasini). Nemudzivhadi says the Venda hailed both failures as victories; Kruger’s memoir says the two attacks exhausted his ammunition, while Paul Maré, who took part as a young man, said there was powder and lead in the camp magazine (pp. 97 to 99).

Council of war. Kruger sent A. P. Duvenage to Pretoria for ammunition and 1,500 men. The Schoemansdal residents wanted to stay and the commando wanted to leave; horses and oxen died, provisions ran short, and Kruger judged the site indefensible because its water came from mountains the Venda held. The war council unanimously resolved to abandon the settlement. The pastor, Rev. N. J. van Warmelo, protested that it was a sin and a disgrace to leave a church and school to “heathens” and asked to defend it until the ammunition arrived; a second deputation said there was no chance of staying, having heard a drum of Makhado’s through the night (pp. 99 to 101).

Departure. The inhabitants packed doors, windows and poles to rebuild elsewhere and left on 15 July 1867 by way of Blaauberg, while the Venda watched from the mountains the dust rising near Matshavha’s hills. When all had gone, Makhado’s people rushed in to pillage, and the settlement went up in flames. Nemudzivhadi writes that Makhado “reduced Schoemansdal to ashes” and that it was the only settlement in Boer history from which they were driven by Black people (pp. 101 to 102). Wikipedia says that it was Madzhie, called Katze-Katze, who razed the town, and that the Transvaal government later exonerated Kruger; and the Republic’s Executive Council in 1869 held both Madzhie and Makhado responsible for the burning (p. 120).

After. The refugees formed a laager at Moletsi for five months, then another at the farms of Hans Venter and Gert Emmenis for a year, the start of the Marabastad settlement under D. S. Maré, which Nemudzivhadi says paved the way to Pietersburg in 1886; only six families stayed in the Spelonken area near the Luvuvhu and Muhohodi rivers, among them Koos Botha, W. Grieve, W. Fitzgerald and Albasini in his fortified schans at Luonde, which became a refuge for Whites (pp. 105 to 106). The area between the Muhohodi and Dzanani that the Venda called Tshabwa, Klein Spelonken to the Whites, was a place of asylum, where fugitives could not be followed (p. 106). For Nemudzivhadi the 1867 victory, and the Boer absence for some 31 years, left the Venda north of the Luvuvhu free of Boer authority; for Makhado it brought the name Tshilwavhusiku tsha ha Ramabulana, and the Whites called him the “Lion of the North” (pp. 102 to 104).

Cautions

The Boer sources (Kruger’s memoirs, Maré, Theal and the Volksraad minutes) are cited by Nemudzivhadi and we have not read them directly. His interpretation is that the war was a Venda defence of independence; the Boer accounts call it a lawless frontier breaking down for lack of money and men. Numbers of men and casualties are those he gives. We print no ritual detail from the Venda traditions. The Wikipedia article’s account of the burning differs from his. Nemudzivhadi is a Venda historian whose subject is Makhado’s reign; he built on oral interviews done between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s and on colonial archive papers, and he often says where his informants and the written sources disagree, as do we.

Izithakazelo and totem

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Evacuation of Schoemansdal, 1867 clan names and clan praises