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— In March 2018, I made available the first five chapters of my online series, Who Stole the Land?. Since then, I added two extensive chapters focusing on:

Chapter 6:  The World of the Black People before the Mfecane: 1816 (added Nov. 2018), and….

Chapter 7: The Mfecane – Twenty years of Hell on Earth: 1816-1836 (added early 2019), describing the horrors suffered by the other Black nations in the wake of the creation of the Zulu nation.

And then I ground to a shuddering halt for a number of reasons, including matters of health in the family, other issues in respect of South Africa, and sheer volume of work in respect of my daily bread. I had no choice but to set this series aside for a while.

I have now returned to the subject, at least in part due to folks having contacted me to inquire as to the rest of the series. In starting on Chapter 8: The Great Trek, I realised that a huge part of what I had just written fits better into Chapter 5, and that a part of the original Chapter 5 fits better with Chapter 8.

I have therefore drastically expanded Chapter 5: The British Cape Frontier before the Great Trek: 1799-1836. (Click Link to read)

I hereby invite the readers of this Blog to return to Chapter 5 and read it again. It has been adapted to take one through a period of considerable upheaval at the Cape Colony between 1799 and 1836. It explains the background to the Great Trek that would ultimately determine the shape of South Africa today. There are certain parallels to South Africa at the present time, in which resentment is starting to reach a boiling point.

Chapter 8 on the Great Trek will pick up exactly where Chapter 5 leaves off to first fetch the story of the Black people by means of chapters 6 and 7. By the end of Chapter 7, in this new arrangement, the reader will be in 1836, both as regards the Black People and as regards the Cape Colony, then governed by Imperial Britain. And then, some weeks from now, I shall set the wheels rolling over the Orange River into the country of bleached human skeletons and cannibals described in Chapter 7.

Enjoy….. or weep, as the case may be. But, remember, history and the truth are often far more outrageous and exciting than fiction. If Hollywood tried to make up the truthful history of the South Africa lived by my ancestors, it simply would not be believed. Then again, since when have people in the Northern Hemisphere believed the history of South Africa? They have always preferred to make it up to suit their narrative.

— Harry Booyens