Burgersfort

Hate speech?

On the ANC website:

" The notoriously trigger-happy and bloodthirsty Abel Erasmus, who was a ZAR Native Commissioner in the Lydenburg district, "regarded the kaffir as the natural enemy of the Boer, and himself as the Heaven ordained instrument for maintaining the supremacy of the whites." (Wilson, 1901:p201) The selfsame Erasmus also formed close links with JA Winter of the Berlin Missionary Society. In 1880 Winter restarted the work of the mission in the Pedi heartland. He even later founded the Lutheran Bapedi Church. (Beinert, 1986:p186)

Pedi military might was felt everywhere. It is as a direct consequence of being thoroughly defeated by the Bapedi in 1876 that "Die Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek President Thomas Burgers returned to Pretoria with his tail between the legs and never recovered such prestige as he ever possessed and in due course lost his position to Paul Kruger, an illiterate backwoodsman whose ugly statue dominates and disfigures Church Square, Pretoria, to this day." (Sechaba, 1982:p18)

It is an evident result of the Pedi successes in military battles that the Boers and British surrounded the entire Sekhukhuneland in forts. These heavily armed military posts were installed to keep the Bapedi in check.

Some of the Forts were named Weeber, Victoria, Olifants, Edward, Alexandra, Rowlands, Kruger, Wilhelm, Funk and Faugh-a-Ballagh. The most noteworthy of all of them is Fort Burgers, named after the then President of the ZAR Rev Thomas Francois Burgers, which gave birth to the modern town of Burgersfort, which remains an ugly monument of Boer savagery in Tubatse, Sekhukhuneland to this day. It doubtlessly remains a very strong case for name change in line with the country's transformation project."