12. With His protection

12. With His protection

The People of the Vow, with the open Bible in Sarel Cilliers’ hand, would impossibly could have asked the protection by the “holy God”, if they were on their way to annex another’s ground, to rob his gold, to ransack his land. For the forces of the British Empire such performance was not irregular; in their history there was but few speaking of an open Bible.

In the drama in Natal against the Zulus and later the English, but also before that, already one and a half centuries long in the Cape Colony against the Hottentots, Bushmen, Xhosas and English, and then from the second half of the 20th century against the world press and world church, against money power and populace, against capitalism and communism, the People of the Vow redeemed Piet Retief’s promise: “We will not take the slightest property, but will we be attacked, then we will see us completely justified to defend person and property to the utmost against any enemy.”

For this reason there were a Blood River and a Majuba, a Colenso, a Stormberg and a Magersfontein. Therefore the Second Freedom War against the British (1899-1902) could not end before the lives of the 27 000 women and children were sacrificed. “The utmost” is the one limit.