The lost history of the Griqua

In the moonlight on an early winter’s evening in 1831, a commando celebrated victory after what they saw as the end of a successful raid. Their fires dotted the plain below a small conical-shaped hill, as they feasted on some of the cattle they had seized. In just a couple of days, they would be back safely across the Vaal River, rich with the herds of cattle they had plundered.

For days the horsemen had met little resistance as they swept through Ndebele territory collecting thousands of head of cattle. King Mzilikazi’s feared army was nowhere in sight. But as the men enjoyed Ndebele beef, some of the women prisoners – glad to be free from the hold of Mzilikazi – approached a captain of the commando named Gert Hooyman.

The women warned him that while Mzilikazi’s main army was away, his older veterans were still around and they would come for them at night. Hooyman was ridiculed when he suggested the men set up pickets. Instead, they went back to their revelry and, the story goes, feasted until after midnight.

Perhaps a sharp-eyed sentry on top of the hill that night might have noticed the impi quietly surrounding the camp. The impi crept to within 200m of the sleeping men before they were spotted. By then, it was too late. The veteran regiment surged through the camp stabbing and clubbing the men, some of them still under their kaross blankets.

By daybreak, as many as a thousand men lay dead. In years to come, travellers visiting the site spoke of the veld white with skeletons. That conical-shaped hill that today sits in the heart of the North West province’s platinum belt was given the name Moordkop, meaning murder hill.

This article was first published by New Frame