THE BLOOD RIVER VOW

THE BLOOD RIVER VOW


BY THE

VOORTREKKERS OF 1838


---------------


WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO US
IN MODERN TIMES


A condensed translation of the book,
“GELOFTESTERK JOU STAND”
(Vow strong your stand)

by Mossie van den Berg (1999)





Translated by
Hannes van der Merwe

Short history and background preceding the battle of Blood River

Preface
Short history and background preceding the battle of Blood River

Jan van Riebeeck was sent to the Cape of Good hope in 1652 by the Netherlands East Indian Company to establish a commercial station halfway from the Netherlands to India to supply fresh food to ships passing around the Cape to India. After many years this was such a successful undertaking that by the end of the 18th century farming was extended far inland up to the Fish River near the present land of the Xhosa. The whole area from Cape Town eastwards was then uninhabited. It so happened that England annexed the Cape Province in 1806 and established its own government in Cape Town. This government soon passed legislation which were in all not in favour of the farmers. In fact, it totally favoured the Native people. This caused gross dissatisfaction and also grave unrest amongst the farmers resulting amongst others in the Slagtersnek Rebellion and the execution of six farmers. The raids by native tribes on farmers increased to such an extent making farming at the eastern border totally impossible.

Manifesto by Piet Retief, 1837
The dissatisfaction of the farmers is more or less included in the manifesto published in the Graham’s Town Journal on 22 February 1837 which entailed amongst others the following::

We despair to save the Cape Colony from all the evil threatening it by the riotous and dishonest behaviour by vagabonds who are allowed to disrupt the land in all parts. We see no future for peace and happiness for our children in a land so troubled by internal unrest.
We protest against the continued ransacking by the natives causing the destruction of most of the bordering districts of the Colony.
We complain about the unjust blame on us by dishonest persons under the cloak of religion whose witnesses without proof were accepted in England.
We declare solemnly that we leave the land with the desire to have a quieter life to what we had thus far.
We will not molest any people and will not take the least property from anybody. But if attacked, then we will regard us fully justified to defend person and property to the utmost against the enemy.
We will as far as we go make known to all native tribes our intention as well as our desire to live in peace and friendship.
We leave our fruitful native land where we suffered enormous damage with stern trust on the all-seeing, just and merciful God whom we will always fear and obey in all humbleness.

The farmers left the Colony under the leadership of various leaders such as Louis Trichardt, Hendrik Potgieter, Gerrit Maritz, Piet Uys and Piet Retief. Some ended in the Free State and others in the Transvaal, as far north as the Zoutpansberg, but Piet Retief, followed by Maritz, went across the Drakensberg to Natal. There he entered into an agreement with the then Zulu king, Dingaan, to occupy the vacant part of Natal, south of the Umfolozi River.
Dingaan insisted as a condition that Retief’s men must first bring back all the cattle which Sikonyella, king of the Matabele, situated in the west of Transvaal, had stolen from him. Soon after the return of the cattle by Retief, he and 70 of his men were treacherously murdered by Dingaan’s men on 5 February 1838. This was witnessed by a British missionary named Owen. Then followed the barbarous murdering of the people (mainly women, children and old men) who were left behind in the vicinity of the now known towns of Weenen, Colenso and Estcourt. In this process the Voortrekkers (thus called because of their pioneer endeavours to move away from the Cape Colony) suffered severe losses and left the remainder of them with awe and uncertainty. They gathered in various laagers in close vicinity of each other. Maritz died of natural causes, leaving them destitute. Andries Pretorius, a wealthy and well known man from the Colony was called as their leader. It was decided that the severe atrocities by Dingaan will have to be punished. A Punish Commando of about 470 men was formed and approached Dingaan’s kraal, each day forming laager after laager with their oxen and wagons the nearer they came. On their way they decided as God fearing people to make the vow to God. God answered their prayers by giving their enemy “into their hands”.

There were no losses on the side of the Voortrekkers! On the Zulu’s side there were numerous casualties causing them to flee and burn their houses at Dingaan’s kraal. The latter, of course, was not necessary, because it was not the intention to destroy the Zulus, but only to punish them.

With this information, I hope that the book by Mossie van den Berg, will be better understood.

Hannes van der Merwe, translator

Some notes by the translator

Some notes by the translator

A word of deepest and humble thanks to the Lord who gave the knowledge and insight to a man, the Reverend, Mossie van den Berg, to publish such a formidable work on the Blood River Vow.

It was indeed a great privilege to be part of a work which shows such deep insight not only in the Word of God, but also in the thinking of the Voortrekker Leadership of 1838.

This work is definitely not for the faint-hearted. This is a book to be read with tears in the eyes - not because of sorrow, but in great humility before the Great God who answered the prayer of those in need of unthinkable extent.

May there be somebody in this country who thinks that this is not a book for him? Surely this book addresses everybody - leaders, clergymen, laymen, politicians, church-goers, those who drifted away from the church, heathens, etc., etc. and especially those who gather in peoples’ festivals on 16 December each year.

Those who do not believe in the Bible as the Word of the True God of heaven and earth, may have some difficulty to understand this outstanding book by a person who devoted his whole life in extending the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For the convenience of those who would not have the patience to read through the complete text, I decided to dare make a concise extract from the whole book so that the main essence of the message be brought under the attention of more readers at lower cost. This is what you find in this booklet.

All Bible quotations in this text are from the King James (Authorized) Version, 1968.

The content of this work was originally broadcast as a series in 1997 and upon public demand repeated in 1998 on Radio Pretoria (104.2 fm) and published in 1999 in book form.

If you are interested in the complete text of about 120 pages, please contact the translator.

My sincere appreciation to all who supported me in this task, especially my wife, Rika and Lucia, widow of the late Mossie van den Berg.

Hannes van der Merwe
January 2009
P O Box 902
Montana Park0159

The Vow: 16 December 1838

The Vow: 16 December 1838

My brethren and fellow citizens,

Here we are gathered now at one moment

before the holy God of heaven and earth

to promise to Him a vow:

That if He will be with us
with His protection
and will give into our hands our enemy,
that we will conquer him,
that we will keep the day and date each year as a birthday
and as a Thanksgiving day;

as a Sabbath to His honour,

and that we will establish a temple to His honour

wherever it may please Him

and that we will tell it also to our children

so that they must participate therein with us

as remembrance also for our upcoming generations.

For the honour of His name will by that be glorified

that the glory and honour for the triumph are given to Him.

Amen

1 Vow strong

1 Vow strong

A Boerevolk understanding, remembering and live fully with the meaning of the Vow and what happened along with it, will not have to surrender to any power on earth.

We are the only people on earth whose being a People was unmistakably given yes from Heaven, who received a pellucidly clear direction on our winding path through the ages of that kind of People for whom were then given yes and who have an additional Sabbath, to be reminded of it in the presence of the Lord.

The great victory by the Voortrekkers’ Punish Commando is put vividly in this chapter, setting straight some misconceptions. The greatness lies in the answer of God on the prayers of those 470 men who stood against an overwhelming fifteen to twenty thousand brave Zulu warriors whom they would have stood no chance of conquering without God’s help. In military terms it would inevitably be a triumph for the Zulus.
He who has the minimum knowledge to imagine something of the practical situation which may have been prevalent in the laager (battlefield) at Blood River, will have no doubts as to the almighty yes with which God himself answered there on the Vow. Do you know how fragile and timid a “kakebeenwa” ( ox wagon) was, how slender and rare a single row of them between 470 enclosed people on the inside and 15 000 to 20 000 brave Zulu soldiers around it must have been?

· That the finest marksman could impossibly in less than five or six seconds load the correct quantity of gunpowder by hand, followed by the correct amount of lead shot into the front end of the “voorlaaier” (muzzle loader), compressing these lightly in position by a piece of cotton and loading stick, pick up the gun standing on its butt in the upright position, cock it, put it to the shoulder, aim and fire? The late Prof. Felix Lategan, authority in this regard, estimated that a marksman who was able to fire one shot a minute would be exceptionally fast.

· That any marksman would be inexcusably irresponsible to waste irreplaceable ammunition on a target farther than one hundred yards, and that a fit charging Zulu fighter undoubtedly would cover a hundred yards within twelve to thirteen seconds?

· That at the very first charge of 20 000 Zulus at most two times 470, that is 940 shots could be fired, shooting, to the most, 5 000 Zulus before the other 15 000 would have swept like an enormous wave over the wagon tents to get involved in close combat by razor like sharp “assegais”(spears) making short meat of the defenders?

But no, onslaught after onslaught were repulsed, relentless, merciless, again and again . . . There is no explanation for this - except that of the Zulus, namely “uNkulunkulu . . . ,” that means “the Great Great One.”

2. Laager forming

2. Laager forming
There is no person in this country, now and in future, who has no direct interest to ascertain himself anew and continuously of the terms of the Vow’s calling, noted from the history of 16 December 1838...none the least we who call us People of the Vow. Our seriousness with those terms and their implications determine the “Vow strong stand” of the “Small Boer People in this wide land” and with that the future of everybody in South Africa is involved.

Every evening the Punish Commando made sure that they will not be surprised unexpectantly overnight: early in the evening they outspanned on the right place selected by the scouts, let graze the animals, formed the laager, thoroughly bound the wagons together by ox thongs, placed all round the battle gates between the wagons and the wheels, closed all openings with thorn branches, checked and put in place guns and ammunition, mounted the cannon, named Grietjie, brought the animals in at sunset, fastened the whip sticks with lighted lanterns fixed to their ends high above the wagon tents, posted guards, closed the laager gate, enjoyed in between supper prepared by the day’s cooking teams, kept the evening divine worship, repeated the Vow, went into the night, man by man on his post, as if with the finger on the trigger and sleeping with one eye open.

That is faith: you take every precaution to the smallest particulars and infallible thoroughness, as if the result depends solely thereon. Thoroughness was indeed the outstanding characteristic of Andries Pretorius’s leadership throughout the campaign. Then you submit yourself, your undertaking and ultimately your, in any way, poor preparations, together with the result of the whole “exercise”without reserve in the hand of the Lord, knowing and confessing that all depends solely on Him.

You would not ever be so presumptuous to leave it to the Lord to drag your thorn branches, fasten your wagon wheels with ox thongs, go to rest peacefully in such a wide open, enclosed laager, labeling your attitude as being a mighty faith! It would be blatant temptation of the Lord, as what the devil incited Christ on the temple’s roof.

On the one hand the careful preparations for the night (including their prayers) in forming the laager every night is about their part of the deal in the wonder of God’s salvation, but also on the other hand their offering themselves “for total encircling, for ultimate merciless and total obliteration”. They have nowhere to flee, should things go wrong for them. Thus, putting themselves totally in God’s hands. In contrast, the Zulus have the whole world around them to flee.

3. My brethern

3. My brethern

They totally not addressed the Lord, to whom the Covenant was made. The people making the vow spoke to each other.
Their fellowship exists in that they throughout their faith bond with Christ became His brothers and sisters and in Him also each other’s brothers and sisters. Likewise they already in their earthly existence, with one another together, became participants to his resurrection triumph over darkness and evil, over devil and hell.
Through their firm solidarity with one another as culture community in Christ, in other words as people, our Vow Ancestors became a highly favoured implement in the hand of “the holy God of heaven and earth” who wants to let the honour of his Name in his overwhelming love be dwelling over all darkness and evil. This is their intention in the first and last instance in whatever they endeavoured. Exactly this sounds clearly through, especially in the close of the Vow.

4. Fellow citizens

4. Fellow citizens

Here, from 9 to 15 December 1838, where they every time now call themselves “fellow citizens”on the threshold of the evening, beneath the bare heaven, in a carefully fortified wagon laager, they are much more as the case in the Cape Colony, literally exact examples of the basic meaning of the word, distress, that is “out of land,” landlessness, homelessness, alienism, without justice, delivered to alien brutal powers.
They are in their alienism one another’s landless fellows, much more than their fellow citizens.

That they call themselves “fellow citizens,” without anybody finding it absurd or even ludicrous, is evident of what lives in their hearts. That is the unchokable longing for an own land, now here in Natal, after the suffering of the year 1838, much more urgent than ever before.

There, along the path of persistent vow consideration, it is their pious wish to become God’s People, with the face of a Vow People, in every facet of their lives as people, in other words also in their state dispensation.

Nevertheless, justly so they show - amid their common landlessness, in their Vow Union as one another’s fellow citizens, there-above hence - to the Home (capital letter) of God himself on the “new earth,” where the covenant people from every people and tribe and tongue and nation will meet their eternal Home as “his peoples.” (Revelations 21:3)

Our Vow making ancestors, also in their urge for own people ground, are for us a worthy addition to the “great cloud of witnesses” on which the beginning of Hebrews 12 directs our attention.

5. Here we now stand

5. Here we now stand

Here we now stand . . . insultingly unequaled by the woeful result of our majestic undertaking, timidly bashful before the scorn of our own church in the alien state far back from us, ecstatic targets for the bitter venom of the British dominator and his mission-accomplice propaganda and weapon traders.

Here we now stand . . . the elite of the able-bodied manpower of the Voortrekker Community in Natal. There is not much more than our 470 left. In Sooi Laager, back at the Little Tugela, and elsewhere, are our wives and children left in the hands of old men and young fellows . . . with scarcely enough ammunition to shoot a few warning shots. What was left, we mostly have here with us. If this poor wagon laager collapses around us in the dark hour of decision, no one of us will return, and, two days later, then there will in any case be nobody left to peer far off for our return.

Yet, here we stand . . . today, 9 December 1838, and again at dusk another day shift nearer to the hour of decision and the valley of the shadow of death, every moment aware of our impotence and helplessness before the dreadful judgement that can burst out around every corner. What more is there which we can sacrifice?
Therefore: “My brothers and fellow citizens, here we now stand . . . ” in the dusk, an insignificant handful enclosed in a bitter fragile ring of “kakebeen” wagons surrounded by many thousands of savages of whose unquenchable blood thirst we have no uncertainty; determined to pass the night tomorrow evening again, and then above it also a day shift nearer to the hour of decision. Let Him who calls decide.
There lies an undeniable remembrance to Martin Luther’s “Here I stand. I have no alternative. So help me God.” But also St. Paul’s “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free . . . ” (Galathians 5:1) and especially his “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth . . . and . . . taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (Ephesians 6:14-16).

No human stands more firmly than he who “stands before the holy God of heaven and earth,” because he is called thereto like St. Paul and Luther.

6. This moment

6. This moment

This is the decisive moment, the moment of truth for Christianity at the south end of Africa: Will the light shine in the darkness? Or will the darkness conquer it, like twelve centuries before in North-Africa, where the powers of darkness left the only traces of a once flourishing Christianity as embarrassment souvenirs in museums and libraries?

That there had to be such a moment of truth, was a decided matter, already on 6 April 1652, when Jan van Riebeeck prayed that “...under these wild and brutal people in time to come Your true reformed Christian Teachings may be propagated and extended to the praise and honour of Thy Holy Name...”.

This prayer must have sent a shuddering through the empire of the darkness. After thousand years of undisputed supremacy in a still darker becoming Africa, the potentate of the darkness is now dared, ordered, on 6 April 1652, from behind, the south, from his backside, to vacate the throne for the true Lord of Africa!

From that moment, this moment crawled invisibly behind many horizons, unavoidably nearer.

Now the moment arrived for which these 470 men at dawn around an open Bible in a shabby wagon laager, surrounded by murderous heathendom, any moment, the next moment, could be the last moment.
Is the way of Your true Reformed Christian Teachings on Africa ground now a dead end? Is this moment these Christian Teachings’ last moment? Or will this moment continue to the other side?
This moment is also the decisive moment for the civilization in Dark Africa: Will there in this wilderness “Under these great southern stars” be cultivation and ennoblement, fields and parks, science and technic, beauty and arts, word and song?
Or will only that which multiply be the dead bones and the vultures, the blood spilling, the hunger, the hunger cannibals? Will the garden of God be beautified by the humanness of the people? - so that something of the glorious image of its Creator become known here, amid an indeed severely mutilated humanness, but a humanness then in a process of being healed in the light of this Christian teaching? Or will plant and animal totally wither under the violence of dehumanised brutes?
Comes the path more than four thousand years, from Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, from south to north into Africa to a dead end in this moment? Or goes it further through this moment?

7. Before the holy God

7. Before the holy God

In the emphatic mentioning of the holiness of God in the Vow is included the reminding of the warnings in this regard in the Bible, e.g. in Ecclesiastics 5: “Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin . . . ”; do not later come with the excuse “it was an error”; but especially the elucidating admonition: “...for God is in heaven, and thou upon the earth: therefore let thy words (and what you do before his countenance) be few.”

In this the deepest significance of the Biblical idea, holy, comes to the fore, namely the distance between God and what is his on the one side, and man and what belongs to him, on the other side. When St. Peter lost sight of this, the Lord Jesus called him Satan (Matthew 16:23).

In a very sharp awareness of this, every one of those 470 men also days before, namely already from 2 December 1838, was informed and consulted personally on the making of the contents and the complications of the Vow to the Lord. According to Cilliers he at the daily repetition from 9 to 15 December also added: If anyone has any objection to this, “that he then must depart from this place.” Such one was then advised to withdraw. He would not belong here.

In this light the People of the Vow must up to this day realise that it is totally senseless to struggle and to argue on the fulfilment of the Vow with people who are no Bible Believers, for whom the holiness of the God to Whom the Vow was made, means nothing.

Disbelievers can have neither any interest at, nor any understanding of, nor any sensible meaning on the Vow.
Still, more important is rather: he who thinks what has happened on 16 December 1838 is only man’s work, either has no understanding of what happened there, or estimates the generalship of Pretorius and the heroism of those 470 men hopelessly too high. The holy God disposes there . . . and justly for Christianity and civilization at the south end of Africa.

8. ...of heaven and earth

8. ...of heaven and earth

He is the God of heaven. In this term the Bible shows the limitlessness of his reach of power in space and time: He called heavens into being and He let heavens go by: He stretches out the heavens as a curtain and He rolls them up to His liking when time arrives.

He is also the God of the earth, not only the Creator thereof and everything thereon and therein, but also the Keeper of it and the Commander there over, like all thereon and therein happens, in their widest circumference, also of the smallest particle of it.

However, that He would interfere with the fate of a lot of land deserters, lost in the unknown depths of Dark Africa, and their disputes with a barbaric tyrant, is but a totally unworthy accusation to make against the God of the Bible. For that He is once too great!

Some years ago an informant of the South African Council of Churches, completely as if with infallible teaching authority, (and sadly) believably issued a decree “to put it once and for all without a doubt” that God was by no means involved at Blood River.

9. To make to Him

9. To make to Him

The making of the contents of the vow to the Lord was probably the most important subject of discussion between officers and groups of soldiers, as well as soldiers in personal conversations between them for seven days. It was already made public on Sunday 9 December for the first time during the morning service, and just after that confirmed before the countenance of the Lord as a mutual commitment by those 470 men.

Important for our purpose however, is that, when Cilliers on 9 December recited the text for the first time, the men probably had already one-by-one in personal prayer communion with the Lord, committed themselves with respect to every element of the Vow. Hence also the opportunity - and also the admonition - which was offered every time anew to anyone who may have in the meantime changed his opinion and did not want to be part of the commitment, prefering to distance himself from the meeting.

The Vow and the history of the taking of it speak of near shuddering concern with the unbreakable vertical tie. That means the tie to Above, which is brought about by the Vow between the holy God of heaven and earth and those 470 men in a wagon laager surrounded by 20 000 Zulu warriors, and their offspring back at Sooi Laager and elsewhere.

There was probably no other crisis hour in our history, preceded by nearly the same intensity of persevered day and night long individual and joint growing awareness and confession of total dependance on God alone, accompanied by prayer deepening, and followed by ever stronger and surer faith venture for the calling task ahead.
The Vow also speaks with such seriousness, which must be for every upcoming generation also just as shudder wakening of the horizontal bond which tie them and all their physical and spiritual “upcoming generations”, to whom they will presently refer to by name, in reciprocal Vow debt together.

10. ...a vow

10. ...a vow

In our listening to - and recollection of - the Vow we must be extremely careful to work with a system of thought of a reciprocal favour making; as if one asked from the Lord a particular favour, and to make sure that He will answer favourably on your request, promise from your side that you would do Him also a favour. You arrange an exchange transaction with the Lord; a kind of “quid pro quo.”

With such an approach one would commit oneself against the honour of the Lord. You would in fact show that you would by way of a vow put pressure on the Lord to do something that He would otherwise not have done. You turn His arm, by way of speech. Then you make of your vow evidence of disbelief rather than belief. Fact is: we need not to convince the Lord from our side with an offer of a “contra achievement” to be merciful on us, and we must not imagine that we can compensate Him for any favour that He shew to us.

This falls once again under the warning in Ecclesiastes 5: God is in heaven, and thou upon the earth; therefore, let thy words be few.

After He fulfilled this word of vow to us, we owe Him no contra achievement. We are indebted thankfulness only, to Him, thankfulness with all we are and have. We must not imagine that we can pay Him anything more than gratitude. What was implored in the Vow from Him, was nothing more than what He Himself in any case promised to every believing prayer. And what is promised in the Vow, is nothing more than what every believer is in any case indebted to Him, also when his prayer, as he sees it, stays not answered.

Whatever we could have meant to want or to can do as gratitude to Him, is spiritual haughtiness and an assault on his honour. With it we in fact say: “No thanks, we do not ask favours, we can pay. We are no beggars! We are not ‘wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked’(Revalation3:17)!” “We can pay our way!”
However, of our debt in gratitude to Him we have also never paid enough! This is a debt that cannot fully be paid.

11. If He will be with us

11. If He will be with us

Now there are few promises of the Lord that are more repeated in the Bible, than that He will be with the people who belong to Him and trust in Him. To his people He promised it: “I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”(Isaiah 43)

What is promised herein, is clearly not that you who belong to the Lord, will escape the deep waters of tribulation and the flame of depuration, but surely that, if things are meant to be for you, you do not have to fear, and to shrink from them, or to deviate from your course. Let them be coming; meet them fearlessly; they will not put you underneath! Because you are in your wrestling with them not alone. “I am with you.”

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.

13 Our enemy

13 Our enemy

That the Makers of the Vow found themselves in 1838 in Natal and why they found themselves there, meeting every night in a strengthened wagon laager, is so because two great enemy powers threatened to death what would be to them the most precious and dearest on earth.

Behind them there was the merciless power of British Imperialism, who claimed unconditional and blind subjection from all and everybody within its sight.

British imperialism overpowered many peoples, centuries before. His recipe was very simple, but unbelievably effective: “Reject the Tenth, the Eighth, the Sixth and the Ninth Command, consequently in the same order . . . ”

He starts to desire which is not his, and then, after he stole and murdered for the sake of what he desired, he lies unforeseeable into the future therefor, in our case now already one and a half centuries, since the Sand River Convention in 1852. With that he still keeps it on, still long after the British Empire itself is dead, passed away mainly as result of the wounds inflicted by the People of the Vow, namely in February 1881 at Majuba, in December 1899 at Magersfontein, Stormberg and Colenso, and on 31 May 1961 with the People of the Vow’s regaining of its republican freedom.
Then the front end of the Vow makers’ road to calling fulfilment “in the freedom in which Christ made us free,” was barred by the other just as Godless unscrupulous enemy power, Africa Barbarism. This is embodied in the overwhelming overpower number of black peoples. Of this they have already noticed in December 1838 by own acrid experience of Hottentots, Bushmen, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Matabele and Zulu.

14. Give into our hands

14. Give into our hands

Of course the God of heaven and earth may in his wisdom also allow that the Vow Makers be overpowered in the battle like Piet Retief and his fellow men in Dingaanstat, like the 400 defenseless victims of the massive murder in the spread out laagers, like Piet and Dirkie Uys at Italeni, and that the Vow Makers’ own dear ones back in the laagers become victims of still much more suffering as what has already been endured.

Nevertheless, then this changes not a rap to the triumph that has irrevocably once in Christ been obtained over the darkness, and to which they may be participants, also and especially in their hour of death, if it is to be forthcoming for them in the battle.

Their calling task is the completion of the struggle against the powers of the darkness. The darkness is in any case an already conquered enemy. Christ indeed died in God forlornness so that the powers of the darkness will be a conquered enemy for ever - for every one belonging to Him. With this power no negotiations are conducted, reconciliation borne in mind, or peace considered.

Therefore: no prayer to an understanding, an armistice, peace or reconciliation! This battle is a death battle, with the enemy-til-death. It does not end before the enemy’s ability to obstruct the light is destroyed, the triumph of the light is completely “ . . . given into our hands . . . ”

For this the Vow People prayed. His payment of his Vow would be a triumph festival, a thanksgiving festival for a triumph that was not obtained, but which was received in prayer, a triumph that is never clearly settled, which must always in terms of the Vow still be accomplished, a triumph that is celebrated while still “ . . . having seen them afar off and were persuaded of them, and embraced them . . . ”(Hebrews 11:13), a triumph that stays the inescapable responsibility of the Vow People, a triumph that still has to be obtained, in the conquered enemy, as well as again still in the victorious.
Ultimately it is nothing else but the triumph of the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overwhelm it; “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name . . . ”(St. John1:12). This “ . . . true Light . . . lighteth every man...”(St. John 1:9), the conqueror precisely the same as the conquered in the military conflict.

Forgiven conquered also carried this light into the people’s history in the life of unnumbered conquerors in military conflict. On this possibility St. Paul’s word is also significant: “...for when I am weak, then I am strong.”(II Corinthians 11:12)

A triumph festival cannot be a reconciliation festival. A “Reconciliation Festival” says that there was no triumph, a “result,” the battle was halfway given up undecided; the darkness was too mighty to be conquered and must now be appeased.
A reconciliation festival on 16 December would indicate that something was not given present; the situation must be reinstated as before Retief’s first appearance with Dingaan; the Vow was rejected, God refused it.

15. That we conquer him

15. That we conquer him

These four words form the transition between what the Vow Makers implore from the Lord, and what they undertake to do from their side. Please note: “...if He... shall give into our hands our enemy...”, is still part of what the Lord is asked to do; “...that we shall conquer him...”, is what they undertake to do. It forms already part of what they promise to the Lord; naturally especially in the execution thereof also still always deeply dependant from “...that He will be with us...”
They bind themselves not only with respect to clearly stamped doings in their own people’s life. Also their relation to the conquered enemy will be payment of Vow debt to the Lord. If it may please the Lord to give their enemy into their hands, they will utilize it as an opportunity to conquer him. The Vow People also undertook this on behalf of their “upcoming generations”, and remain as Vow Descendants therefore always indebted to the Lord.

To retaliate double ferociously to a defeated enemy who committed ferocious injustice, is to be overcome by the wrong did to you. You make yourself forced from your fixed life course as called “fellow worker” of God. (1 Corinthians 3:9). You increase the wrong in the world in multiples of the wrong committed to you by your enemy. To send him back with what is his to his place with the challenge to another, better, a joyful possibility, like the Vow People the defeated Zulu People who was delivered in their hands, is to overcome the evil with the good of the God who is love, who lets rain over the righteous and unjust (Mathews 5:45), the God whose commandments determine your coming and going. You stop your enemy, carried away in the grip of evil, in his headway from evil to more evil; you change his course into the opposite direction, which will be in accordance with the purpose of the God to whom you belong.

16. That we will keep the day and date each year

16. That we will keep the day and date each year

With these words the commitment starts concerning the day on which they would receive their deliverance, which then after seven daily repetitions thereof, would seem to must be 16 December: “...that we will keep the day and date each year...” on a specific manner. “Day of the Vow” shows on what is decisive for the people by that concerned in remembering what happened. Simultaneously the sustained commemoration of it makes it a dear obligation and a delightful privilege, namely the Vow to the Lord.

The name, Dingaans day, which very soon by itself became current in the people’s mouth for the day and date, was earlier already, but in wide ranks especially around the Symbolic Ox-wagon Trek during the Voortrekker Centenary in 1938, experienced as less satisfying. It was therefore through a purposeful combined effort by the organised Afrikaner cultural society replaced by Day of the Vow(Geloftedag).

What gives eternal meaning to that history, is not a glorious military triumph, but the covenant of grace with God, which have been presented by our ancestors and confirmed by Him.

Simultaneously the name Day of the Vow presents a built-in protection mechanism for the religious character of what Sarel Cilliers called the “keeping” of the day. To connect the day in his name to the person of Dingaan, who came off worst in the commemorated event, could easily open the door for Dingaan’s day celebrations on the manner of the English Guy Fawkes affair. Dingaan’s day would be still a thousand times preferable than Reconciliation day! It would at least have kept the boundaries visible - between light and darkness.

If the Boer People cease to keep the day and date humbly, thankfully, knowingly with wholehearted input of all they are and have, with the re-commitment to what became reality on that day and date in the year 1838 at Blood River, and with that alone, they cease to be Vow People and make themselves totally obsolete at the south end of Africa.