We collect here AmaBhulu-related subjects that are of more permanent value than regular blog posts. Click on the Titles to follow the links.
♦ Who stole the Land?
In late February 2018 the Black ANC government of South Africa, listed as “Terrorist Organization” by the US State Department in 1986, voted to take property from white people without compensation. This follows on years of ANC leaders singing “Kill the Farmer!” and accusations that White people stole the country from Black people. This series of articles presents the historical South African demographic picture for all to see. Much of the history is described in detail in AmaBhulu.
♦ Senekal, o’ Senekal
The word “Senekal” will live on in South African culture and history. This was the place where the back of the White South African camel finally broke on 6 October 2020 after a quarter century under the yoke of the African National Congress, the Party of Mandela. It is near Senekal that the young farm manager, Brendin Horner, was tortured and then executed by what some call a lynching. At Senekal, non-Black South Africans finally and at last found their Voice.
♦ The 1975 US Congress gave us 9/11
In mid-1975 a cargo jet departed Charleston, SC into an international picture. Twenty-six years later four fuel laden airliners emerged from that same picture and killed 3,000 innocent Americans. This is the painful story connecting the events. Perhaps the surviving members of the 1975 US Congress can explain their thinking to the rest of us and to the loved ones of those who died. The events of 1975 in Angola are described in much more detail in the book AmaBhulu.
♦ The South african Family Booyens
The writing of AmaBhulu required a massive amount of genealogical investigation. Since the publication of the book, the author has been working away at compiling the Booyens genealogy. The building of the family tree is largely complete, filled in up to the early 20th century. This is often enough for interested descendants to recognize where they fit. Work is continuing to add “flesh” to the bare bones of the tree itself. A new dedicated website has been created to serve as online home of this effort. More detail will be added over time.
♦ Black And White South African allies
The impression has somehow been created by the Media in the Western World, aided by the policies and attitudes of Governments in Southern Africa, that White and Black have always been enemies unto death in that part of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this collection of articles we shall focus on the situations and events in the history of Southern Africa when Black and White were allies in war. I venture to say it will also be a revelation to many South Africans.
♦ Radio Interview with Harry Booyens, author of AmaBhulu
On 31 March 2016 Dan Happel (left), host of the program Connecting the Dots on The American Republic blogtalkradio, interviewed Harry Booyens (right), author of AmaBhulu. A link to the transmission is HERE. The conversation ranged from the history of South Africa to parallels with the United States and the reality of life under the ANC in South Africa.
♦ Radio Interview with Harry Booyens, author of AmaBhulu
On 2 March 2016 Northwest Liberty News of Seattle conducted a radio interview with Harry Booyens, author of AmaBhulu – The Birth and Death of the Second America. The interview is available online. It addresses the situation in South Africa, the connection with the United States, and the book AmaBhulu itself.
♦ The First American in Africa
Adriana “Ariaentje” Sterrevelt and her sister Cornelia “Neeltje” were the first American immigrants to South Africa. This topic is presented with special graphics and access to websites that allow the reader to look in detail at the New Amsterdam (New York) of 1660, when Ariaentje was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church in the fort. Her short life in that town coincided with one of the most tumultuous events in American history, and the family found itself wedged among a number of key players in the events. Peter Stuyvesant, the governor, also enters the picture. The story also takes us to the island of Curaçao, which is today still a Dutch Possession in the Caribbean. The page provides access to a very detailed downloadable paper on the subject of the two girls, providing exquisite detail of the family origin in Segwaart near Soetermeer in Holland. It provides some insight into the depth of research that was required to write a work such as AmaBhulu.
♦ The First True European Settler at the Cape of Good Hope
Jacob Cloete, the twentieth of the first free men to get title to land, was the first of those men to stay, bring his family to the Cape, and have children at the Cape—a Real Settler. On this page we get a closer look at Jacob and we go in search of his origins, which we trace to the little Catholic village of Oedt in the Bishopric of Cologne. We also discover that his family name was actually Klauten and that he spoke a Lower Franconian language called Eutsch Plott; something akin to Platt Deutsch. It is now practically extinct, but would be understood with some effort by someone capable of Dutch, Flemish or Afrikaans. This was the first genealogical paper published by the author in his quest for information crucial to the creation of AmaBhulu. This paper was the subject of an award.
♦ God Bless the Good Ship China
The epic tale of the little knot of Vaudois Huguenot refugees who in 1687 fled their farms in the Aigues Valley in Provence, France. They journeyed via Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands to the Cape of Good Hope to escape religious persecution by King Louis XIV. They sailed on the Dutch East India Company ship China. We have always known who arrived at the Cape, but who exactly were the people that boarded this ship? And what exactly happened between Provence and the Cape? Why did the ship China earn such a bad reputation? Was it justified? In AmaBhulu we meet these families many years before they leave France, and we follow them through their trials and tribulations. We track them on their journey as they make their way to the Cape.
♦ Pierre Jourdan de Cabrières and the other man
This is the story of how two men named Pierre Jourdan from two villages in Provence, France were misidentified and their progeny confused in history books. One became a deacon in the Protestant Church and the daughter of the other married the son of a Moslem Indonesian Rajah at a time when faith was all. The Jourdan family is important to the story line of AmaBhulu. In the book we follow them from the mid 1600s. In 1687 they flee their homes and end up at the Cape of Good Hope. We then follow them to the Eastern Frontier and to the capital of an African King. What happens there is is one of the key events in the history of South Africa.
♦ Groot Matewis Schilpadbeen se mense
We trace the origins of the South African family Booyens to 1600s Denmark; far northern Germany in the 21st century. It is the story of how a young man from the wet and windswept polder flats of North Frisia ended up at the Cape of Good Hope. His progeny would eventually strike out into the eastern reaches of the early Cape of Good Hope and settle in the scrubland of the southern Karroo semi-desert; a far cry from the rain-swept Jutland. Matewis’ descendants appear again in AmaBhulu, when they move northward to settle in the two Boer Republics where they and their families end up in British Concentration Camps.
♦ The Cape, the Rabbit, and the Man from Java
This is the story of two remarkable men who, each in his own way, went to extraordinary lengths to secure help for the Afrikaner burghers of Graaff-Reinet in the period 1796-1797, immediately after the British occupied the Cape of Good Hope the first time. In particular, it is the story of how a half-Javanese man undertook the most incredible secret mission against monstrous odds to deliver cannon and powder to the unfortunate frontiersmen. It is also the story of a district surgeon who gave his all to help the frontiersmen by way of a secret trip to Batavia to secure the help the first man sought to deliver. It is a fascinating piece of history that no one is being taught.
AmaBhulu 