Andries le Fleur
South African History Online gives his name as Andries Abraham Stockenstrom le Fleur, born on 2 July 1867 at Herschel in the Cape Colony, the son of Abraham le Fleur, himself a leading figure in Griqualand East. It calls him a Griqua leader (kaptyn) and visionary, also known as die Hervormer (“the Reformer”), and a legendary figure whose grave is venerated among the Griqua. It says he and his father were extremely active in the 1890s on behalf of Griqua who claimed they had lost their land unfairly, and that in April 1898 he was sentenced to fourteen years’ hard labour for sedition and released early, in 1903.
Don Pinnock’s 2021 Daily Maverick article describes him as a relative of the Koks who campaigned for Griqua land rights in the early 20th century and was jailed for eight years, and says that after his release he led a trek south to Kranshoek near Plettenberg Bay, where Kok descendants live today. The two sources differ on the sentence (fourteen years with early release in 1903, or eight years); we cannot reconcile them.
The Le Fleur clan today
Wikipedia’s Griqua article says the National Khoisan Consultative Conference, formed in 2001, represents Khoisan interests and that the Le Fleur clan is prominent in it. We have not read the Conference’s own account.
What we have not read
The SAHO entry rests on the Dictionary of South African Biography (vol. 5, p. 441) and the Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (vol. 5, p. 357), neither of which we have seen. We have not read the Griqua National Conference or Griqua church sources, or the University of Cape Town’s file of Le Fleur papers, and we have not confirmed the Kranshoek trek dates, which sources give differently.
Izithakazelo and totem
We have found no recorded praises or totem for the Le Fleur family, so we are printing none. If you belong to the Le Fleur family and want its history recorded here, we would like to hear from you.
Sources and further reading
- South African History Online: Griqua leader Andries le Fleur born
- Don Pinnock, Daily Maverick: The Kok family and the longest trek in South Africa (2021)
- Wikipedia: Griqua people
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