Episode 74 – The horror story that is Slagter’s Nek of 1816 and its role in Afrikaner nationalism
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Show notes
It’s the second decade of the 19th Century - the trekboers as you heard last episode were alarmed by the British decision to drop loan farms – and using the quit-rent system to reinforce land ownership.
Governor Somerset had arrived to take over the management of this new system, and to oversee the new Circuit Court process where justice was supposed to be provided for the long-suffering Khoe servants and slaves of the farmers.
It was that double change that drove some trekboers on the frontier to rebellion which forms the core of the Afrikaner-nationalist tradition and narrative to this day. The interference of the English, the escalation of human rights to include blacks, and the influence of religion in this saga cannot be underestimated.
A handful of rebellious trekboers had approached the amaXhosa in 1814 then again in 1815 to join them in a plan to overthrow British rule on the frontier. IT was by all accounts, a ramshackle jumble of emotions rolled into a dilapidated strategy undermined by a confused motivatio.
As Johannes Bezuidenhout, Henrick Prinsloo and others fomented the spirit of rebellion, authorities in the Cape were soon briefed about what was going on. It was impossible for this business to be kept secret, the trekboers were prone to panic, rumour and gossip and perhaps all three emotions were part of the blabbing that reached the authorities.
Naturally, ringleader Hendrik Prinsloo was arrested. His sidekick, Johannes Bezuidenhout was on the lamb, still trying to motivate Xhosa leader Ngqika to join his rebellion and had sent another delegation to his Great Place, pleading for support and inviting the Xhosa to reenter the Zuurveld, the Albany region. The British finally were going to make an example of the frontier trekboers, They arrested five of the main ringleaders, including Hendrick Prinsloo, and they were sentenced to death by hanging.
What was to follow was a dreadful scene that drives emotions to the present.
