On trek with the Uyses in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal

During the second half of 2006 Getaway will be publishing a series of articles retracing some of the Great Trek routes. Currently photojournalists are crisscrossing the country in the wagon tracks of trek leaders. Each of us is finding it fascinating marrying travel journalism to a history as compelling as this.

I’ve recently returned from the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, where I followed the route of Piet Uys’s commission trek, an early reconnaissance expedition. My journey took me from his farm Brakfontein (St Francis Bay) via Grahamstown, Port St Johns and Durban to Dingaan’s Kraal at Mgungundhlovu.

It was an evocative journey for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that Piet Uys was my first cousin four times removed. So it felt like I was walking in family footsteps.

The most touching moment was when I reached the spot where he and his son Dirkie made their last stand at the battle of Italeni. When 15-year-old Dirkie, who was already galloping free of danger, saw Piet on the ground and Zulus running towards him, he wheeled his horse round shouting, “I will die with my father,” and charged back. He managed to shoot three warriors, but both men were soon overwhelmed.

I felt the Uyses last moments as if it were yesterday. The wounded Piet trying to spur his horse out of the ambush, the shouts of the warriors closing in. I sensed the entrapment as a cold sweat, as nausea. Two of my family had died a terrible death here and their presence still clawed at the air.

My adventure effectively ended at that spot, as had Uys’s. His dreams of a promised land, the possibilities of a peaceful cohabitation with its black keepers, were dashed. The wheels of the Great Trek would inexorably lead to Blood River and nearly two centuries of conflict and misunderstanding.

Join us on Getaway’s Great Trek, starting in the July 2006 edition… .

Justin Fox