Doris Buys in the sources
Doris (also written Doors or Doors Buys) was the first-named of the sons whom Coenraad de Buys had with his wife, Mzilikazi’s sister or niece, an older brother of Michael Buys. Michael remembers him staying on the Limpopo after their father left and living later at Ohrigstad, where he died; Louis Trichardt’s diary puts him in the Soutpansberg in 1836, and Nemudzivhadi mentions a Doors Buys with Ramabulana in the 1830s and another in the Spelonken in 1883. Several men of the name must be kept apart.
What the sources say
The son of Coenraad. Michael named his father’s children as Doris, Gabriel, himself, Jan and Baba, and said Dorha was with the family too (Hofmeyr, p. 7). When their father left them on the Limpopo, “Doris and Jan wanted to stay by the river as our father had said, while Dorha, Gabriel and I went back” (p. 9). Michael was later told by his brothers that they were driven about by Africans after the Crocodile River until they reached Ohrigstad; when the Ohrigstad and Waterberg burghers fell out, “Doris stayed at Ohrigstad” and “Doris is dead there; we went to look for his children there” (pp. 12 to 13).
1836. Schoeman’s 1933 thesis, citing Louis Trichardt’s diary, says Trichardt met Doris and Gabriel in the Soutpansberg in 1836 (ch. 7 notes). That differs from Michael’s story, in which Doris stayed on the Limpopo and later lived at Ohrigstad, which was founded in 1845. See Gabriel Buys.
Doors Buys in Nemudzivhadi. Nemudzivhadi writes that while Ramabulana was at Mount Rida after Ramavhoya drove him out, a link between him and Louis Tregardt probably ran “through Doors Buys, who had accompanied him there and with whom he was on good terms” (p. 13; see Ramabulana and Ramavhoya); and that in February 1883 Commandant Vorster went to rescue Doors Buys, “trapped in the Spelonken with his family” at Begwa’s kraal while Makhado’s army was in the field (p. 153). We do not know whether the man of the 1830s and the man of 1883 are the same, or whether either is Coenraad’s son. 1883 is some fifty years after the 1830s, so two men seem likely.
Descendants. In letters written about the time he returned from the Colony, Hofmeyr names “a Piet, son of Doris, brother of old Michael” among the elder Buys, who stayed behind to pay a debt rather than go north with the missionary and who fell ill after an injury on an elephant hunt (ch. 7); and, in another letter, a “Doris, of Andries Buijs”, whose small child did not recognise his father (ch. 7). Doris was therefore also a family name in the next generation.
In de Jongh. Michael de Jongh’s abstract names Gabriël, Michael and Doris as the three sons of Coenraad who were decisive in the establishment and development of the Buys community in the foothills of the Soutpansberg. See Buys community and Buysdorp.
Overview article
See The Buys people of the Soutpansberg: an overview for the family as a whole.
Cautions
This page cannot decide between several men of the same name; the Hofmeyr, Schoeman and Nemudzivhadi passages come from different generations and different kinds of source. “Dorha” is another name that appears for a brother or half-brother in Michael’s account, who died of measles in the Bamangwato country; Hofmeyr’s later remark that Michael took in the children of “Dorha and Gabriel” may refer to Doris. We give no death date for any of them. Our sources on the family are a missionary’s transcription of an old man’s memory (1866 to 1890), a Venda historian’s thesis and a 1933 master’s thesis; the first and last use words for Africans that we do not repeat, and none of them is by the family.
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), in Dutch; read in the Internet Archive scan (page numbers below are the book’s, as marked in the scan’s text)
- Agatha Elizabeth Schoeman, “Coenraad de Buys”, MA thesis, University of Pretoria (1933), chapter 7 and notes; open access, a poor typescript scan that we read by its machine 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 Gabriel Buys, Doris Buys, Michael Buys, Buys community, Coenraad de Buys and Stephanus Hofmeyr.
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