Boer War and Great Trek – facts

Racism – during the Boer War – from the side of the English!? uh-oh…..see this link.

http://bobsbooksnz.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/when-empire-calls-by-ken-catran/

I love this entry:

http://politicalvelcraft.org/2012/04/05/rothschilds-british-concentration-camps-a-means-to-usurpdestroy-the-gold-standard-only-then-to-be-replaced-by-rothschilds-keynesian-economics-derivative-fiat-paper/

If you’re English, please take note: the word ‘Boer’ is not pronounced as ‘Boar’ – like some dictionaries will tell you, but ‘oe’ in Boer = ‘oo’ like in school/put.

I have these two pages on my blog. The first link is loaded with other links and info + images+ art + poetry etc. The second link is a new link with more info, images etc. These two links will open in new windows. [unblock pop-ups if your pop-ups are blocked]

http://chessaleeinlondon.wordpress.com/2007/09/23/boer-war-art-poetry-and-history/

http://chessaleeinlondon.wordpress.com/2009/12/29/churchill-makes-me-smile/

This next article can also be read here: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22477

Behind ‘The Third Boer War’
Posted: April 18, 2001
1:00 am Eastern

By Anthony C. LoBaido
© 2010 WorldNetDaily.com

Editor’s note: This column is the story behind Anthony LoBaido’s recently published epic novel, “The Third Boer War.”

The story of how I came to write “The Third Boer War is stranger than the fictional plot of the novel itself. It was a 10-year odyssey that challenged my will and faith at a level I had never before experienced.

Between June and December of 1991 I traveled to South Africa to complete the foreign journalism internship for my master’s degree at Baylor University in Texas — where I had earned a full scholarship for an International Journalism degree. South Africa was the epitome of my youth. While working in South Africa, then still pro-West, Christian and anti-Communist and anti-globalist, I became the first and only journalist in the world to gain entrance into the elite, mercenary-run training camps of South Africa’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement. These investigations produced ground-breaking journalism.

My articles were featured in the South African Sunday Star, Durban Times, Belgium Way Press (translated into French) and Soldier of Fortune magazine. Former South African President F.W. De Klerk even used photographs appearing with my articles in his campaign to dismantle Apartheid in the March 1992 referendum. Nelson Mandela went on national television holding a copy of one of my stories, railing against the anti-communist Afrikaners. Of course the liberal Newsday — my hometown Long Island newspaper which I delivered in rain, snow or sunshine for years as a young boy — rejected all of these stories outright.

Can you imagine that?

Using my Afrikaans language (the Dutch/German hybrid spoken by the Boer/Afrikaners) ability as a gateway, I was able to get inside the Afrikaner mentality in a way that few other foreign/Western journalists had ever been able to. I was given a unique insight into the complexities of South Africa’s contemporary geopolitical situation. Most prominent of these was the 30-year “Border War” the Afrikaners fought in Angola against the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany and other Soviet allies who tried to invade their nation.

Of course most Americans have been totally brainwashed about the Afrikaners and South Africa. In general, the public has been told that the Afrikaners are Nazis who hate blacks. Movies like “Lethal Weapon 2″ have sadly only fueled this propaganda lie of the leftist, Marxist Hollywood elite.

The reality is of course, 180 degree in the opposite direction. The Afrikaners carved the richest and most prosperous nation out of the wilderness of Africa. They fought and bled and died for Great Britain and America in World War I and II. (Despite the fact that the British killed 26,000 Afrikaner women and children in the world’s first concentration camps during the Boer War 1899-1902). Afrikaner pilots fought for South Korea — along with the Rhodesians — during the Korean War. Yet South Korea voted for anti-South Africa and anti-Rhodesia sanctions at the United Nations after all they did for Seoul at their darkest hour.

The Afrikaners even helped Israel to build their own nuclear weapons. Could there be anything more anti-Nazi than arming Jews in Israel with their own atomic arsenal against their Soviet-backed Islamic jihad adversaries?

Of course not.

The Afrikaners in general were and are the greatest people I have ever encountered — and I have lived, worked and traveled to the four corners of the Earth. They are tough and rugged and Christian. Their ruggedness exceeds that even of the Israelis and South Koreans. The Afrikaners were against abortion, which was illegal in their nation from the 1600′s until the ANC took over in 1994. Television was kept out of South Africa until the mid 1970s. Pornographic magazines were also illegal until the late 1980s. Shops in South Africa closed on Saturday afternoon to prepare for the Sunday Sabbath.

All in all, despite the many egregious flaws of Apartheid, South Africa was a maverick, Christian, anti-communist, pro-West nation and the brightest outpost of Christian, European civilization in all of Africa. The Afrikaners were also the key member of an anti-communist alliance during the Cold War featuring El Salvador, Chile, Taiwan and Israel. When America would not help the Contras any longer, it was the Afrikaners who sent arms — and the means and will to take out Marxists like Bishop Romero in El Salvador. When the American Congress lied about helping South Africa stop the Soviets and Cubans in Angola, it was left, as always to the Afrikaners, to handle the communists on their own. And then did — as always.

Yes, the human-rights abuses under Apartheid committed by the government hit squads — led by lunatics like Eugene de Kock and Dr. Wauter Basson — are the epitome of evil. But they represent one tenth of one percent of the Afrikaner nation. These crimes and, in fact, the entire war in South Africa were committed in the suppression of a Marxist terrorist war, launched by the Soviet-trained African National Congress. The truth be known, some of these crimes were so horrible that I would have probably joined the ANC myself had I known about them in the early 1990s.

On the other side of the coin, the ANC’s crimes are legion. These included putting tires filled with petrol around the necks of their enemies and lighting them on fire. Terrorist bombings of Afrikaner women and children – like the infamous Church Street attack — represent the very worst of this asymmetrical campaign. The ANC also tortured and murdered its own black communist cadres — especially in the Angola terrorist training camps. Nelson Mandela even ordered and then covered up the slaughter of unarmed Zulus at the Shell House massacre after he was released from prison.

The Mandela myth
Not many people realize that Nelson and Winny Mandela have a great deal of blood on their hands. Despite the lies spread to the gullible American public on Oprah and Larry King, even Mandela admits in his autobiography that he should have been summarily executed for his crimes. He spent little time at Robbin Island, and actually lived under house arrest in a comfortable estate complete with every amenity imaginable.

Speaking of the Mandela myth, only last week, Harry Wu, perhaps the world’s leading human-rights dissident told me, “When I think of [Nelson] Mandela, I feel very sad. When he became president of South Africa, he abandoned Taiwan and recognized China instead. Taiwan and [anti-communist, Apartheid] South Africa had been close allies. Mandela has extensive human rights knowledge. He may not be a communist, but the new leader of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki is definitely a communist. Recently he went to Cuba to meet with Castro, and he was trained in Moscow.”

Nelson Mandela, upon his ascent to power, legalized abortion and advanced the homosexual agenda. He even put homosexual rights in South Africa’s new constitution — the first time this was done in the history of civilization. The country has been overrun with illegal immigrants, pornography, AIDS and crime. Mandela, in true Marxist fashion, even emptied the jails of all the rapists and murderers. This is known as “anarcho-tyranny,” and has led to a general state of anarchy in “The New South Africa,” just has it has in Venezuela and the New Indonesia under their de facto Marxist governments.

Furthermore, Mandela told his cadres to “burn down their schools,” meaning the whites’, and not to learn Afrikaans, which he called the “language of the oppressor.” Of course Mandela did give his inaugural address when he became president in Afrikaans. In that way he reminds one of Cambodia’s Pol Pot, who spoke French fluently, yet sent anyone else who spoke French to the Killing Fields. Mandela’s illiterate and unemployable minions, who now run the nation, have led South Africa down the slippery slope of anarchy.

Considering Nelson and Winny Mandela’s blood-stained track record — their support of abortion, pornography, Marxism, communism, the homosexual agenda, world government, necklacing, free sex, murder, terrorism, sanctions and propaganda — they stand as a prototype of the Antichrist who is to come. Not only are they not condemned for these actions, they are actually praised for them. When Nelson Mandela traveled to Libya and gave Gadhafi South Africa’s highest medal of honor barely anyone in the West raised an eyebrow. Remnant believers and those not fooled by these lies will immediately call to mind 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2, which speaks of the “Great delusion of the end times.”

And that is really the point of “The Third Boer War.”

The world is out of control and we must look at our own lives and our own sins and repent. We must be preparing for judgment, as Americans, a part of Western Civilization and, human beings on planet Earth. We must realize that most basic lesson of all — there is good and evil in every race, culture, creed, nation and political party.

A strange dark light of evil has swept over the world, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Sometimes that evil can appear as beautiful as Donna Dixon, the star of “Spies Like Us.” And this dark is so powerful that it takes the very call of the Lord to pull us out of this terrestrial world — which Satan has seemingly taken hold over at a frighteningly accelerating pace, leaving one breathless.

I wrote “The Third Boer War” between 1992 and 1994. It took 2,000 hours of research and writing to do so. That is 40 hours per week for 50 weeks. I spent my life savings writing that book. I dropped out of my Ph.D. program at Texas A&M to do so. I lived like an animal with Vietnamese immigrants at one point. I sold my plasma and even took experimental pharmaceuticals in clinical tests for money to buy food. I ruined my back while hunched over the computer all those hours, but I don’t regret one minute of it.

Return to South Africa
In February of 1995, I once again traveled to South Africa to try and sell The Third Boer War. I immediately found a promising lead from Chris Van Rensberg Publishers. When I called them and spoke about my idea for the novel, they were positively ecstatic. They told me, “We will rush right up to Sunnyside [a suburb of Pretoria] and get the book from you. Don’t even show it to any other publisher.”

And true to their word, they did come up almost immediately to my apartment and take the novel for consideration. We even signed a preliminary agreement. They were indeed going to publish it, but then were afraid that the ANC would cancel their government publishing contracts, so they backed off the project.

Later, the head of J.P. Van der Walt and Sons, the oldest publisher in South Africa personally read the novel and loved it. He wanted to publish it in Afrikaans but only if I could first find an English language publisher to publish it in the UK or USA. I tried countless hundreds of publishers in the U.S. and Europe, but only Macmillan was interested in seeing more chapters.

It seems that a novel that was Christian, anti-communist, pro-European, anti-abortion, spoke of the end times, the Antichrist, angels, the UFO delusion and the Mandela myth was against the entire agenda of the liberal transnational elite who have taken almost complete hold of Western Civilization and hence, the world. Since political power cannot be fully achieved until cultural power is fully seized, “The Third Boer War” was shut out.

Yes, my novel had been blocked — first by ANC pressure and then the economic collapse of South Africa. But other wheels were in motion as well.

When I had returned to South Africa in 1995, I was also able to write about Executive Outcomes, a private, mercenary army run by ex-Special Forces members of the SADF. Executive Outcomes fights around Africa and the world on behalf of multinational corporations in search of lucrative mineral rights. Even “60 Minutes” ran a segment on Executive Outcomes, only it came years after my own story, and failed to speak of any of EO’s connections to the DeBeer’s diamond cartel and upper echelons of the Marxist ANC and British government.

During this time I was also asked to speak on Radio Donkerhoek, the last “free” radio station in all of South Africa. This station was run by Commander Willem Ratte, one of the Special Forces leaders of the SADF’s war in Angola against the Soviets. Eeben Barlow, the head of Executive Outcomes, told me personally that Ratte was “the most professional soldier in the history of the SADF.”

Ratte is a national hero who was imprisoned by the ANC on false charges. He is the one man the ANC truly fears. After I spoke on Radio Donkerhoek with Ratte — about the ANC and globalist agenda — two days later, Nelson Mandela sent in the army, complete with helicopters, to shut down the radio station. Such is the ANC’s fear of the truth.

Of course silly me, I had no idea that so many people were paying attention to me. I should have known better. Back in 1991, George Bush Sr. had sent 300 CIA agents to Pretoria to assist De Klerk in betraying the nation to the ANC terrorists. Bush even has a display at his Texas A&M library promoting his “foreign policy achievement” of this betrayal. Ironically, in the summer of 1993, I was hired by Texas A&M and President Bush to produce a documentary on his life to raise the many millions to build that library. That video was featured on CNN on Aug. 8, 1993.

One Afrikaner intelligence agent told me that the ANC had several agents assigned to watching me during my 1995 trip. Back in 1991, a top man at the American embassy, Barry Walkey had even called my little cottage at Rand Afrikaans University to check up on me. British intelligence had called The Sunday Star to raise a fuss about my popular articles.

Of course, the British had long sought to bring back South Africa into the Commonwealth. MI-6 Intelligence understood all too well that once the South African people understood that the Afrikaners were Christians who saw anti communist blacks as brothers, and also hated Nazism, they would no longer be afraid to stand up for what was right.

Membership in the Afrikaner Resistance Movement increased by 50,000 after my articles were run. This multicultural alliance led eventually to the “Freedom Front” which but for a last-minute CIA-inspired split would no doubt have saved South Africa from its current Marxist and globalist anarchy.

During this time, the famous Peter Hawthorne of Time magazine contacted his New York office on my behalf and asked that I be given the chance to write a story on the Afrikaner rightists. Of course, the blue-eyed boys in New York refused.

To me it was just one giant game of wiffle ball in the back yard, a pseudo fantasy in which I had become the character in my own novel. Yet it was all chillingly real and deadly serious.

In the end, “The Third Boer War” challenges the reader to ask many difficult questions. Most prominent of these is the nature of white supremacy and its 21st century agenda. Cuban dictator Fidel Castro — a big fan of Afrikaner military supremacy — has recently stated that the Western-led, one-world global economy has its roots in the Nazi Holocaust. Castro has even requested to hold Nuremberg style trials for the white, transnational corporate elite of the Western World.

A quick perusal of the Nazi agenda in the 1930s and 1940s would include homosexual rights (Hitler used the Brown Shirts, then killed them off in the “Night of the Long Knives”), eugenics, abortion, euthanasia, a corporate-government business alliance and the persecution of Jews and Christians. One cannot forget the alliance with Marxism (Hilter’s pact with Stalin, however brief, mirrors Clinton lunatic and delusional “strategic partnership” with the butchers of Communist China). How sad it must be for liberals in America to see how close their agenda is to Adolf Hitler. Just who are the real Nazis today? Is it the Afrikaners, who gave the Jews the atomic bomb? Or the liberals who run the halls of power in America, Europe, Canada and Australia?

My days in South Africa were the greatest I have ever known. When South Africa died, a part of me died along with it. Yet the Afrikaners did teach me who the real enemy was: China, Russia, Shiite Islam, Marxism, the United Nations, Socialist International, Madison Avenue, Hollywood, the Marxist-leaning U.S. State Department and the Federal Reserve Bank. For that, I will always be grateful to them.

The joy I had standing in the light of the brave Afrikaner Christians, and their Zulu and Indian allies is something I shall never forget. Indeed, since that time, I have devoted my life to helping persecuted non-white Christians like the Karen of Burma, Hmong of Laos, Montagnards of Vietnam, South Lebanon, UNITA in Angola, South Sudan and, of course, the Kurds.

Many readers ask me, “Will there be a Third Boer War?” Certainly that is possible. The murder of white farmers in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia and South Africa is a bad omen. As are the killings of whites recently in Wichita and the Seattle Fat Tuesday riots. Whites have had it too easy and too good for far too long — and certainly Western civilization today stands at its greatest crisis since the days prior to the invasion of Genghis Kahn and the creation of the Magna Carta which turned back the divine right of kings.

There is a prophecy well known to the Afrikaners that says they will once again rule South Africa. The prophet was a man named Nicolaas Siener (Afrikaans for “Seer”) van Rensburg. To even mention this prophecy terrifies the ANC, which has proven to be a total failure at “running” this once great nation.

In the book, “Voice of a Prophet” by Adriaan Snyman, Seer van Rensburg’s prophecies about the Afrikaners were brought to light. Some 100 years ago van Rensburg, had more than 700 visions about the future of South Africa and the rest of the world. He was a modern Nostradamus who became a legend during his lifetime. Between 1899 and his death in 1926 he correctly predicted the outcome of the Boer War, the Great Flu epidemic of 1918, the UK’s loss of all her colonies, Independence for Ireland, the atomic disaster at Chernobyl on April 26 1986, the death of Princess Diana of Wales, plagues in Great Britain, civil war in Bosnia, the assassination of Apartheid’s grand designer, Dr. H.F. Verwoerd, the former Prime Minister of South Africa, the release of Nelson Mandela by ex-President F.W. De Klerk, and high tech warfare waged from the skies and beyond. Finally, van Rensburg predicted a great racial war in South Africa.

Perhaps the anarchy of the 1990s is a punishment on the Afrikaners for having fallen away from the Lord. After all the Afrikaners — who endured the Great Trek away from the British and the eventually won victory over the Zulus at Blood River — stopped their trek at the gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal. Had they continued north, into the heart of Africa, the fate of that glorious continent might have been spared today’s Apocalyptic headlines.

Certainly European civilization is killing itself with mass immigration and abortion — and has never recovered from World Wars I or II when Europe went to war with itself. As Ratte once told me, “Could you imagine South Africa with 30 million whites?” To this I would add, “Could you imagine South Africa today with 50 million whites, blacks, Indians and Asians who love nothing more than God, and hate nothing more than sin and evil?”

However, the Afrikaners have shown the West that we don’t have to settle for home-schooling and hiding in our little alienated world while evil antichrists take our birthright and destroy the minds of our children. It is our God-given right to fight for our civilization, culture, land and future. A future that is free of control from the evil elites which now vex our very souls. To paraphrase Churchill, “They will either be at our throat or [dead] at our feet.”

Indeed, if we would only stand up and fight them, as our forefathers would have done and did in the American Revolutionary War. It would be better to die with honor than to live in shame. The victory is already ours — all we need do is claim it.

Certainly the Hmong, Karen, Montagnards, Sudanese, Angolans, South Lebanese, Kurds and others would stand along side us as we battle the new white supremacy and the Nazi agenda. Then there are the blacks, Mexicans, American Indians, Arabs, Orthodox Jews and others who would surely fight with us against the great evils of our time.

We know that if racism every dies it will die one friendship at a time. And in this spirit we know that a new day will one day dawn over Africa. A better day, free of godless Western corporations, AIDS, ivory poachers and mercenaries.

For Anthony LoBaido, despite my many difficulties in publishing this book, I will always have my memories of adventure in South Africa. I will never forget the colorful characters I met, men like Willem Ratte, Eeben Barlow or the firey Eugene Terreblanche. I’ll certainly find comfort in the memory of listening to South Africa’s radio stations sign off in the wee hours with a reading from the Psalms and a request to God to bless the nation. A Christian South Africa where white people lived free of discrimination — not the occult, New Age, perversion-preferred, Hollywood-cleavage, abortion-mongering, politically correct basket case into which the America I once knew and still love has decayed.

I’ll always remember Aletta, the blonde Afrikaner beauty who once asked me to marry her. And every April Fool’s Day I’ll think of Carina, another beautiful Afrikaner who stole and broke my heart in a way that eclipsed the pain of my novel being blocked. Nor will I ever forget Davison, Louise, Monty, Corne and Henika and all the rest of the Boer/Afrikaners who brought my adventures to life.

——————————————————————————-

I have with me this Longman-History book [GCSE book prescribed for schools in England] and was reading through it, but already within the first 3-5 pages, I couldn’t believe what rubbish [I first used a much stronger word] I was reading and therefore, created this entry on my blog. If you read these quotes – from the given link – you will know what I mean. Ok, you get the picture. So, follow the link – or this one – ot get the facts correct. Poor kiddies in secondary schools, they get the wrong picture, but we know why Martin Roberts wrote what he wrote in this book, unfortunately, he has his facts a bit wrong – poor old soul – and everyone else believes him. It also shows you – after all these years – the British still can’t handle the fact that they couldn’t really defeat the Boers during the Boer War and had to put people in concentration camps to defeat them.

Update: 10th February 2012: Steve Hofmeyr visited my blog last night and this page in particular. I’m glad I could ‘teach’ him something about the Afrikaner!  This is what he said on Twitter. Thanks Steve for visiting my blog! I feel ‘honoured’  Only one thing: I’m not a ‘Sir’! [hehe] Dankie Steve vir jou kommentaar. Ek is bly jy kon iets hier op my blog vind wat ‘nuut’ vir jou was!

http://home.intekom.com/southafricanhistoryonline/pages/classroom/pages/projects/grade5/lesson2/03-transvaal.htm

“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”  Thomas Jefferson

“There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.” — Goethe

“The search for truth is never wrong.  The only sin is to lack the courage to follow where truth leads.” — Duke

“He alone deserves to be remembered by his children who treasures up and preserves the memory of his fathers.” — Edmund Burke

South Africa 1948 – 1994

The Rise and Fall of Apartheid by Martin Roberts [Longman History - Edexcel and OCR - Nationals GCSE]

http://www.saveyourheritage.com/history_of_south_africa.htm

South Africa.  Other than Germany probably the most misunderstood White country in the world.  A country that has now degenerated into anarchy.  Let’s take an unbiased look at their noble history.

“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”  Thomas Jefferson

The Great Trek was organized in resistance to the politics of the Cape government. In 1835, the first groups set out. Under the leadership of Louis Trichardt and Hans van Rensburg, they opened up the north of today’s Mpumalanga. Other groups, under the command of Andries Pretorius, Gert Maritz and Piet Retief followed. In the area around ThabaNchu in what would become the Orange Free State, a huge Boer camp of 5,000 Voortrekkers eventually gathered where the trekkers established a republic.  Following disagreements among their leadership, the various Voortrekker groups split apart.  While some headed north, most crossed the Drakensberg into Natal with the idea of establishing a republic there.

They thought they had found their promised land, vast tracts of apparently uninhabited grazing lands. There was space enough for their cattle to graze and their culture of anti-urban independence to flourish. Little did they know that what they found was disorganized bands of black refugees who had been pushed out of earlier lands. 

Since the Zulus controlled this territory, the Voortrekker leader Piet Retief, paid a visit to King Dingaan. Dingaan promised them land in payment for a favor. A neighboring tribe had stolen cattle from Dingaan and he wanted it back. Retief went to the neighboring tribe and bartered with the king who returned the cattle. After receiving the specified cattle, Dingaan invited Retief and his men into his kraal, where they were given all the land between the Zimvubu and Tugela rivers up to the Drakensberg. The treaty between the two men currently sits in a museum in The Netherlands. As a celebration, Dingaan invited Retief and all his men to come and drink Tswala (Traditional Zulu Beer) in his kraal. While drinking and being entertained by Zulu dancers, Dingaan cried out “Bulala amatakati” (Kill the wizards), as Dingaan couldn’t conceive how it would be possible for Retief to obtain his cattle without using magic. Dingaan’s men, having taken Retief’s men by surprised, dragged the men to a hill “Hloma Mabuto” where, one by one, they were all slaughtered, leaving Retief for last so that he could watch. After the massacre, they went back to the encampment where Retief and his fellow farmers had left their wives, children and livestock. Taken by surprise 500 of the women, children and remaining farmers were also raped and slaughtered.  Those that managed to get away did so without many of their guns and animals. A missionary, Rev. Owen, had seen all of this take place and approached Dingaan in order to give the dead an appropriate burial. While the reverend and a helper of his were burying the dead and reading them their last rights, they happened to come across Retief’s rucksack, still containing the treaty and a few personal belongings. 
 Read more on the given link more of the truth than this book written by an idiot.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/annetteduplessis/2695709310/in/photostream/ – Interesting link found – want to read later more.

Enjoy my favourite pieces of music here:

Elizabethan Serenade by Mantovani and his orchestra

The Mouth Organ boy – by Vicky Leandros

Laurika Rauch – The song of the trains

For a dancer – Jackson Browne
Angelle

Sleepy Time…by Angelle

Hennie Bekker…Tranquil Realms

Villa Rides

Hungarian Rhapsody no2.

The Clock Symphony in 101 in d by Waldo de los Rios

Toy Symphony by
Waldo de los Rios

Beethoven Symphony no 6 in F opus 68 by Waldo de los Rios

The Wind beneath my wings – Bette Midler

Sea of Dreams..by Angelle
The following video is a stop-frame animation about the Boer War and the concentration camps

Prince Nikolay Georgievich Bagrationi of Georgia

This news article is about the Prince of Georgia who fought alongside the Boers in the British/South African war – the Boer War. There is now a Boer War museum in Tbilisi, Georgia – to honour him. This news article is from ‘Die Burger’ – see the source link at the bottom of the entry. ‘Die Burger’ is a South African newspaper – based in Cape Town.
Oplaas hulde aan ‘Niko die Boer’
2012-03-31 02:23

Toe Nikolay Georgievich Bagrationi, die Georgiese prins van Tiflis (nou Tbilisi), einde 1901 uit krygsgevangenskap op die eiland St. Helena deur die Britse militêre vrygelaat is om na Georgië terug te keer, is hy as ’n held verwelkom. En tot vandag toe is sy bynaam, Niko Buri (Niko die Boer), ’n towerwoord in dié land.

Só het ’n joernalis van Landbouweekblad, Hugo Lochner, agtergekom toe hy die land onlangs besoek en heel toevallig gas was by die opening van ’n voorlopige Anglo-Boereoorlog-museum in Tbilisi, hoofstad van Georgië, hoofsaaklik gewy aan Niko die Boer. Die museum- gebou is die Mukhrani-paleis van die adellike Mukhrani- Bagrationi-familie, waarvan Nikolay lid was. Hy is in dié paleis gebore.

In die kommunisties-bolsjewistiese rewolusie, wat in 1917 begin het, het die gepeupel die paleis geplunder en verwoes sodat dit vandag net ’n murasie is. Die regering van Georgië gaan dit nou restoureer om as volwaardige museum en inligtingsentrum te dien. Die hoof- fokus sal op Niko die Boer en die Anglo-Boereoorlog wees.

’n Gedenkplaat met inskripsies in Georgies en Engels is met die samewerking van die Transvaalse Landbou-unie (TLU) aangebring. Dit lui: “Nico Bagrationi (Nico the Boer) was born and lived in this house. The memorial board was put up with the support of South African Boer farmers to honour the memory of Nico Bagrationi, Georgian patriot fighting for their freedom in 1899-1902.”

Die amptelike openingsplegtigheid op 5 November is gesamentlik behartig deur Georgië se minister van diaspora, Mirza (Papuna) Davitaia, en Bennie van Zyl, hoofbestuurder van die Transvaalse Landbou-unie.

Die ABO-uitstalling bestaan tans uit uitstalkaste van glas en staal waarin foto’s, dokumente en inligtingstukke gemonteer is. Dit vertel die verhaal van die Boere se heldhaftige stryd teen die Britse Ryk wat die twee Boererepublieke van Transvaal en die Oranje Vrijstaat aangeval en verower het. Daar is onder meer ook foto’s van Nikolay as krygsgevangene op St. Helena, asook van sy familie. Sy herinneringe, Niko Bagrationi with Boers, saamgestel deur sy vrou, Anna Buchkiashvili, is spesiaal vir die openingsgeleentheid in sagteband heruitgegee. Daarin word ook die verloop van sy kinderjare en opvoeding vertel.

Die Transvaalse Landbou-unie is tans baie betrokke by die vestiging van Afrikaanse boere in Georgië, waar ’n groot behoefte aan landboukundiges bestaan. Hulle word met ope arms verwelkom, want vir die mense van Georgië is dit baie betekenisvol dat Afrikaanse boere verwant is aan die Boere vir wie Niko die Boer uit bewondering gehelp veg het.

Piet Kemp, een van Suid-Afrika se topboere van Mpumalanga en voormalige streekbestuurder van die TLU, het hom reeds permanent in Georgië gevestig nadat politieke intriges, grond-eise, arbeidsprobleme, mynregte en besoedelde water hom uit sy land gedwing het.

Dit is interessant en betekenisvol dat juis die regering van Georgië die TLU verlede Mei gekontak het om kundige Afrikaanse landbouers te werf.

Nikolay is in 1868 gebore en het ’n Franse opvoeding ontvang omdat Frans destyds in Oos-Europa as die belangrikste wêreldtaal gereken is. Synde ’n lid van die adel is hy in 1881 as verteenwoordiger van Georgië na die kroning van tsaar Alexander III van Rusland genooi. (Georgië was toe deel van Rusland.)

In 1899 is hy na Frankryk om die Parys-wêreldskou by te woon. Hy wou daarna op safari in Noordoos-Afrika gaan om onder meer trofee-luiperds te skiet, toe hy in Egipte verneem dat die Anglo-Boereoorlog op hande was. Toe aan hom vertel is dat die Boere voortdurend in konflik met Brittanje verkeer omdat laasgenoemde hul land wil annekseer, het hy daar en dan besluit om per skip na Mosambiek te vaar en van daar per trein na Pretoria te reis. Hy wou die Boere help om die Britte, wat hy gehaat het, te keer. Hulle het voortdurend die Turke aangemoedig en bygestaan om Georgië te bedreig.

In Pretoria het hy hom by kommandant-generaal Piet Joubert aangemeld as vrywilliger. Joubert was diep beïndruk deur die besonder lang, donker vreemdeling met sy uitheemse, kleurryke kleredrag en beervelmus. Trouens, Nikolay het oral aandag getrek met sy tradisionele Georgiese kostuum soos deur die adel gedra. Joubert het hom daarop voorgestel aan pres. Paul Kruger en ander lede van die generale staf van die Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, soos genls. Koos de la Rey en Piet Cronjé.

Kruger was verstom. Hy het nog nooit van Georgië gehoor nie, en hier was ’n prins in sy tradisionele drag in Pretoria om die Boere vir vryheid en reg te help veg.

Hulle het hom welkom geheet, en Joubert het dadelik gereël dat hy as offisier onder De la Rey ingedeel sou word. Toe hy wou vertrek, het die generaals hom om die beurt die hand gegee, maar Kruger het hom omhels en toe genooi om saam met hom na sy ampswoning te stap en saam met sy vrou, Gezina, koffie te drink.

Niko was Franssprekend, en toe hy verneem dat ’n Franse veteraan van die Krimoorlog, kol. Georges de Villebois-Marceuil, die bevelvoerder van die ZAR se Franse Korps was, het hy versoek om daarheen oorgeplaas te word. Die Fransman, wat alles van Georgië en sy adel geweet het, het Niko in sy korps verwelkom en aangestel as sy aide-de-camp (sekretaris te velde).

Niko, ’n uitstekende ruiter en skut, het hom vreesloos goed van sy taak gekwyt in verskeie gevegte teen die Britte. In die Slag van Abrahamskraal op 10?Maart 1900 was hy só dapper dat hy die bewondering van sy kamerade afgedwing het. En toe hy ’n proviand-wa, gelaai met kos en lekkernye, van die Britte kaap, het sy medestryders hom uitbundig op ’n kombers vasgedruk en soos op ’n trampolien daarmee in die lug gebons. Niko, ’n reus van oor die 2 m, wat 130 kg geweeg het, het hulle laat sweet.

Op 24 Maart 1900 het die Franse Korps besluit om ’n trein naby Kimberley, deur die Boere beleër, te kaap en die treinspoor te vernietig. Op 5 April het die voorhoede van die Britse ontsettingsmag onder bevel van lt.genl. Paul Sanford, lord Methuen, onverwags opgedaag en die stryd met die Franse Korps aangeknoop. Die meer as 700 Britte het die betreklik klein korps vasgekeer en verwoed met kanonne, gewere en bajonette aangeval. De Villebois-Marceuil is deur ’n bomskerf getref en is op slag dood. Niko is gevange geneem.

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Methuen en die opperbevelvoerder van die Britse magte, genl. lord H.H. Kitchener, het baie in Niko belang gestel en hom ondervra. Toe Kitchener hom vra waarom hy, ’n Georgiese prins, teen die Britte in Suid-Afrika veg, was sy kordate antwoord: “Uit oortuiging.”

Hy het Kitchener daarvan beskuldig dat sy soldate die Geneefse konvensie oortree deur krygsgevangenes dood te skiet en dat hul onwettige veldtog teen die Boererepublieke deur ongekende wreedheid gekenmerk word.

Kitchener het gelas dat Niko as krygsgevangene na die eiland-tronk St. Helena gestuur word. Daar het Niko sy vernuf met perde aangewend om perdesport onder die Britte en Boere aan te moedig. Hy was ook ’n uitstekende skaakspeler en het ’n skaakstel met die hand uit hout gesny en aan die gevangenes se gemeenskapsentrum geskenk. Sy innemende geaardheid, sportmangees en grootmoedigheid het hom baie gewild by sy kamerade en hul Britse bewakers gemaak. Vir die Boere was hy hul held, en hy is met groot respek behandel.

Sy vrylating op 10 November 1901 is deur die Russiese diplomatieke diens bewerkstellig, maar hy moes self vir sy reis-koste per Engelse skip betaal. Hy moes die geld leen en kon dit eers terugbetaal nadat hy in Frankryk aangekom het en sy familie geld daarheen laat telegrafeer het. By sy terugkeer in Georgië het hy met sy vriende op St. Helena gekorrespondeer totdat ook hulle vrygelaat is.

Hy het in 1902 met Anna Buchkiashvili getrou. Die egpaar het ses kinders gehad, van wie twee jonk dood is.

Toe die rewolusie in 1917 uitbreek, het hy sy kinders na Frankryk gestuur. Hy en sy vrou het al hul besittings verloor en hul laaste dae in uiterste armoede geslyt. Gekleed in sy verslete tradisionele kostuum het hy sigarette op die dorpsplein verkoop om aan die lewe te bly.

Hy is in 1933 oorlede en in ’n onbekende graf begrawe – die kommuniste wou nie toelaat dat hy saam met sy voorsate in die dorpskerk ter ruste gelê word nie. Net die murasie van sy paleis het bly staan.

Die murasie van die Mukhrani-paleis in Tbilisi, Georgië, geboorteplek van Niko die Boer. Dit is verlede November as ABO-museum geopen en gaan gerestoureer word. Die opening is behartig deur Georgië se minister van diaspora, Mirza (Papuna) Davitaia (regs), en Bennie van Zyl (links), hoofbestuurder van die Transvaalse Landbou-unie.

http://www.dieburger.com/By/Nuus/Oplaas-hulde-aan-Niko-die-Boer-20120330-2