Story 2 of 7

The Trek Leaders

Tregardt, Van Rensburg, Potgieter, Maritz, Retief, Uys and Pretorius: the men who led the wagon parties.

The Great Trek had no single commander. It was a series of wagon parties, each following a leader the families trusted, often a man who had served as a field cornet (a local militia and civil officer) in the Cape. The leaders cooperated at times and quarrelled at others. Their disagreements about where to settle and how to govern shaped the Trek as much as any battle.

Louis Tregardt (Trichardt)

Louis Tregardt left the Eastern Cape frontier in 1835, among the very first. He was already at odds with the colonial authorities. His small party travelled far to the north, reaching the Soutpansberg mountains near the Limpopo River. Hoping to open a trade route to the sea, he set out for Delagoa Bay (today Maputo, Mozambique), crossing the low country where malaria was rife. The party reached the Portuguese post in 1838, but fever killed many, including Tregardt himself and his wife. His diary is one of the most valuable first-hand records of the Trek.

Hans van Rensburg

Johannes (Lang Hans) van Rensburg travelled with Tregardt for a time, then pushed on separately toward the north-east. In 1836 his party was wiped out, apparently by warriors of Soshangane’s Gaza kingdom, near the Limpopo. No adult survivor returned to tell the full story, and accounts of their end remain uncertain.

Andries Hendrik Potgieter

Hendrik Potgieter left the Tarka district in 1835–36. A stern, independent man, he led his people onto the highveld north of the Orange River. In October 1836 his laager survived the attack by Mzilikazi’s Ndebele at Vegkop (see the separate story). He later founded Potchefstroom (1838) and moved on to Ohrigstad and the Soutpansberg. Potgieter distrusted the plan to settle in Natal, close to the British-held coast, and he and the other leaders were often at odds. He died in 1852.

Gerrit Maritz

Gerrit Maritz was a well-to-do wagon-maker from Graaff-Reinet who brought a large, well-equipped party in 1836. He was educated, knew something of law, and was elected president of the trekkers’ council and head of their courts. Maritz joined Potgieter against the Ndebele in 1837 and later led his people into Natal. He fell ill and died in September 1838, three months before Blood River.

Piet Retief

Piet Retief, a farmer and field commandant from the Winterberg district, was the best-known leader when he left in 1837. He wrote the manifesto explaining the Trek, and in 1837 the trekkers gathered on the highveld elected him governor. Retief led the move over the Drakensberg mountains into Natal and went to negotiate for land with the Zulu king, Dingane. He was killed at Dingane’s capital in February 1838 (see “Piet Retief and Dingane”).

Piet Uys

Piet Uys came from the Uitenhage district and had already scouted Natal in the commission trek of 1834. He led his party north in 1837. After Retief’s death, Uys and Potgieter led a punitive commando against the Zulu in April 1838. It was ambushed at Italeni, and Uys was killed together with his young son Dirkie, who, the story goes, rode back to die beside his father.

Andries Pretorius

Andries Pretorius, a farmer from Graaff-Reinet, arrived in Natal in late 1838, when the trekkers were in desperate straits. He was chosen as commandant-general and led the Wenkommando (“winning commando”) to victory at Blood River on 16 December 1838. He went on to lead the trekkers north of the Vaal River and, in 1852, negotiated the Sand River Convention, in which Britain recognized their independence. He died in 1853. The city of Pretoria, founded in 1855 by his son Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, is named after him.

Leaders, not generals

These men were not professional soldiers or politicians. They were farmers, chosen by their neighbors, and they could be voted out. That democratic, sometimes fractious spirit, with every man having a say in the krygsraad (council of war) and later in the Volksraad (people’s assembly), became a lasting part of the Afrikaner republics they founded.