Jan Bantjes

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Jan Gerritze Bantjes (Beaufort West, July 8, 1817 – Potchefstroom, March 10, 1887) was a Voortrekker and was also the Secretary General of the Voortrekkers. He was the author of the treaty between the Zulu king Dingane kaSenzangakhona and the Voortrekkers under Andries Pretorius.^[1]

Early life and background[]

Jan Gerritze Bantjes was baptised at the Dutch Reformed Church in Graaff-Reinet on 6 October 1817. Other siblings included Martha Sibella, Racheal Hilletje, Anna Francina, Hendrik Jacobus, and Pieter Andrias. His father, Bernard Louis Bantjes (20.Jul.1788-1849), had a trading store and a farm in the Nieuwveld district of the town and was quite prosperous.^[2] His mother was Isabella Adriana Swanepoel and they had married at Graaff Reinet in 1812.

Ancestral Background. Jan Gerritze Bantjes was descendant of Jan Bantjes (B.Kampen 05.Apr.1700 - D.Kampen 05.Oct.1779) and Jacomina Leussen (B.Kampen 08.Jul.1707 - D.Kampen 29.Oct.1770), who were wealthy Dutch landowners, ship owners, privateers (legal pirating) & financiers at Amsterdam, Kampen and Antwerp. Starting in the late 1500s the Bantjes owned large land properties around Kampen and Amsterdam with farmlands on the Belgium border including trade at far-off Batavia, East Indies, (Official Residence ‘G’ as it was known together with Berenardus (Barend) Bantjes for senior Dutch merchants) and properties at the Cape of Good Hope, with ships (Fluyts - registered at Medemblik Admiralty, Hoorn) operating to and from Batavia (Netherlands India) within the VOC establishment, then on to Persia (sugar/spices/hardwoods), India (silks), Japan (hardwoods/sugar) and Ceylon (Galle, Silks), including privateering interests at Nassau (West Indies) and Guyana plantations near Fort Nassau, Berbice, South America. Bantjes ships of the Medemblik Admiralty participated in most naval encounters with England. Jan & Jacomina were both acquainted with the Governor of Guyana, Stephen Hendrik de la Sabloniere (period 1768-1773) and his wife Beata Schults. Bantjes Caravell privateering ships and crews operated from the Caribbean to S.America and the Atlantic (primary targets - Spanish and English trading vessels). Their wealth was great. They shipped grain from Poland to London, Portsmouth, Le Havre and Nantes. The Bantjes were known as “Patriotten” - meaning, allies of France, and were both French/Dutch speaking. Jan’s two year older brother (also Jan, B.12.Aug.1698) eloped to France with a French Princess (Noble woman) where they married at Orleans in 1722. Jan and Jacomina also operated a ferry service of Cog boats on the lower Rhine with inns and taverns. In addition, they functioned as a Credit Bank lending out numerous loans, including to the Guyana plantations. And when they died at Kampen, were buried inside the Bovenkerk Cathedral, tomb nr.19 below the bell-tower due to their notable status. The Bantjes ships, farmlands and properties would later become the basis of what would be known as "The Bantjes Millions" (TM.21.Jun.1771) and which remained in The Netherlands. The Bantjes first arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in 1720. VOC Governor Rijk Tulbagh of the Cape Colony had Bantjes clerical skills on his staff from the mid 1750s.

Jan Gerritze Bantjes (pioneer, explorer, and Voortrekker scribe) was born on 8 July 1817 in the Nieuveld district of Graaff-Reinet and not Beaufort West as sometimes incorrectly mentioned. He was the third child of Bernard Louis Bantjes (B.20 July 1788 – Stellenbosch) and Isabella Johanna Swanepoel (B.30 Jan.1812, Stellenbosch). Bantjes was historically of mixed descent: his great-grandfather Gerrit (Jan Geerts) Bantjes (Dutch/French speaking son of Jan Bantjes & Jacomina Leussen) arrived at the Cape in 1755 and became as mentioned above an independent (free-burger) VOC representative under Governor Rijk Tulbagh at the Cape Castle collecting rents and taxes for the VOC treasury. Gerrit (Jan Geerts) Bantjes was the eldest son (he had three elder sisters, Jannetje, Berendina and Alida back in The Netherlands) and main heir to the House of Bantjes, Kampen & Amsterdam, a powerful merchant and maritime family since the 1500s. At the original Strooidakkerk, Paarl, Drakenstein, 05.Mar.1758, Gerrit (Jan Geerts) Bantjes married Hilletje Agnieta Jacobse, whose mother was an emancipated Malay slave. Her father was a Frenchman. She was known to be an attractive woman. Bantjes' great-grandson, Jan Gerritze Bantjes was described as being of coloured complexion in 1837 during the Great Trek (1836–1838), but this is not mentioned again in later descriptions. He was one of the first Europeans to explore Port Natal (later Durban) in 1834 with Uys, and due to his better education, documented the journey from Grahamstown to Port Natal, and on their return, wrote the "Natalland Report" which was the catalyst for mobilising the Great Trek. He gave both President Paul Kruger & Marthinus Wessel Pretorius their grounding educations, wrote the Dingaan/Retief land treaty of 06.Feb.1838, wrote the historical Bantjes Journal and documented the Battle of Blood River 16.Dec.1838. Later his son Jan Gerrit Bantjes discovered the first Witwatersrand Gold Reef (Jun.1884) and started the world's greatest gold rush and Johannesburg,^[3] including the first gold mines of Johannesburg, Bantjes Consolidated Mines. His other son Bernard Louis Bantjes (B.19.Oct.1839-D.01.Dec.1911) later became a property developer in Johannesburg.

Career[]

In March 1834 Boer leaders of Uitenhage and Grahamstown discussed a so-called Kommissitrek or “Commission Trek” to explore Port Natal and the region and properly assess its potential as a new homeland for the Cape Boers disenchanted with British rule. Petrus Lafras Uys was chosen as expedition leader and seventeen-year-old Jan Gerritze Bantjes was chosen as secretary and scribe.

In July 1834, Jan Gerritze Bantjes was at Grahamstown studying at the English Albany Freemasons College, (he grew up at Graaff-Reinet), and was offered to join the expedition to Port Natal to investigate the possibility of a new Dutch homeland. His clerical abilities, writing skills, and Dutch/English fluency were deemed crucial in partaking on this adventure. Bantjes wanted to help establish Dutch independence away from British rule at the Cape. J.G.Bantjes was already known as an educated young man fluent in both spoken and written Dutch or English, and due to these skills, was encouraged by Uys to join this expedition to Port Natal. J.G.Bantjes’ writing skills would prove invaluable in recording events as the journey unfolded. Bantjes’ journal of the Kommissitrek is now lost. On return to Grahamstown in Jun.1835, Jan Gerritze Bantjes wrote the glowing "Natalland Report" which portrayed Port Natal as the ideal homeland away from British rule at the Cape. This document unfortunately is also lost to time.

Two years later in October 1836 at the start of the Great Trek, Bantjes and several family members left the Graaff-Reinet district with veldkornet Jacob de Clerq. On New Year's Day 1837, Bantjes joined the main Voortrekker assembly under Andries Pretorius at Thaba Nchu. Bantjes was one of the main intellectual minds behind the Great Trek. The following year after the massacre of Boer Commander Piet Retief and his 70 strong party at the Zulu capital Mgungunhlovu (06.Feb.1838) over a land treaty (that Bantjes wrote) regarding Zulu King Dingaan, Bantjes joined the Wenkommando military campaign against the Zulu King and acted as Pretorius' secretary-general during Nov.-Dec.1838. The original 'Bantjes Journal' of the expedition (Wenkommando) is now lost (but not before it was copied ad-verbatim) which recorded the Battle of Blood River that took place on 16.Dec.1838, resulting in the defeat of King Dingane kaSenzangakhona and his min.25 000 strong army. Some days before the battle (09.Dec.1838) at a place called Wasbank, a vow was taken that should the Boers have the reprisal victory they sought, then a Church of the "Vow" would be built in Pietermaritzburg to honour that victory. On the 15.Mar.1840, the consecration of that church took place by Rev.Erasmus Smit.

From June 1838, Bantjes had settled in Pietermaritzburg, where he was a founder of the town and where he married Thysina Germina Knoetze, 23.Sept.1838. Their first child, Bernard Louise Bantjes, (19.Oct.1839-12.Nov.1911) was one of the firstborn offspring of the new town. Jan Gerritze served as Clerk to the Volksraad (Parliament) of Natal and practiced law. He and the family returned to the Cape Colony in Aug.1840 after the construction of Church of the Vow for which he arranged the financing from the town community. They trekked overland to Beaufort West in the Cape, where they were remarried due to a technical record error made at Pietermaritzburg. In 1848, he acted as teacher and clerk of the church council at Fauresmith. He also appears to have run a shop in Prince Albert for some years.

In 1865, the family moved to Pretoria, where he served as a magistrate's clerk and lawyer and later Postmaster General of the South African Republic. Bantjes gave The South African Republics' first two Presidents (Paul Kruger & Marthinus Wessel Pretorius) and two vice presidents their grounding education and was a close confidant to President Paul Kruger as he trusted Bantjes' perceptions right up until Bantjes died in 1887. During the Great Trek, Bantjes gave the young Paul Kruger his grounding education who would address Jan Gerritze as Meneer Johannes as a sign of respect. After the discovery of the Witwatersrand Gold Fields, the then President of the South African Republic, Paul Kruger, named the up and coming town of Johannesburg after his tutor, mentor, and years-long confidant, who had served the nation in so many ways. During the 1870s–80s, Bantjes was a legal prosecutor in Lichtenburg and Ventersdorp. He died at his son's home at Potchefstroom in 1887. Several streets in Johannesburg are named after Bantjes. In the Discovery suburb of Johannesburg (where the first gold was discovered), Kruger and Bantjes streets are placed in close proximity due to their associations.

The 'Bantjes Consolidated Mines' (the first gold mines of the Witwatersrand) was named after his eldest son, Jan Gerrit Bantjes (1843–1914), a pioneering prospector who discovered the Witwatersrand gold reef in June 1884 and laid down the roots of the first settlement which later became Johannesburg, officially founded, Oct.1886.^[4] Jan Gerrit Bantjes is generally accredited as the Founder of Johannesburg, but it is his father who bears the name.

The city name of Johannesburg. After the gold rush began in June 1884, the start of the fledgling town of Johannesburg in Oct.1886, was laid out on an empty triangular wedge of land "uitvalgrond" (an area excluded when the farms were surveyed) and named Randjeslaagte, situated between the farms Doornfontein to the east, Braamfontein to the west and Turffontein to the south. This land in between belonged to the government. The Surveyor-General of the ZAR issued an instruction that the area was to be surveyed as a township, consisting of 600 stands measuring fifty feet by fifty feet and the first auction of stands took place, 08.Dec.1886. The new fledging settlement is claimed to be named after two officials of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR), Christiaan Johannes Joubert and Johannes Rissik,^{[citation needed]} who both worked in land surveying and mapping. The two men combined the name they shared, adding 'burg', the archaic Afrikaans word for 'fortified city'. This is a false historical claim.

The claim that the two surveyors, Christiaan Johannes Joubert & Johannes Rissik, two officials of the Transvaal Reublic, who worked in land surveying and mapping and are the source to the name of Johannesburg is a complete myth, and which came about in the 1920s long after Johannesburg was founded (October 1886) by someone trying to invent a source to the origins of the name and was never corrected. Both Bantjes and Pres. Kruger had long died by that time to correct that claim. Historically, those two surveyors of Johannesburg had nothing to do with the founding of the town.

How the name of Johannesburg came to be. During The Great Trek (1836-1838) the young student Paul Kruger (later President Paul Kruger) used to call his tutor (Jan Gerritze Bantjes), Meneer (Mr.) Johannes and which is a more formal version of Jan and a sign of respect. Forty-five years later after his son, Jan Gerrit Bantjes had discovered the Witwatersrand Gold Reef (Jun.1884), the new and rapidly expanding town around the goldfields was named ‘Johannesburg’ (in 1886) by President Kruger, using the ‘Johannes’ name as he had always used when addressing Jan Gerritze Bantjes, his peer, confidant, tutor, and father to Jan Gerrit Bantjes. It was a gift and honor bestowed on the Bantjes name for all Meneer Johannes Bantjes (Jan Gerritze) had done for the South African Republic during the 1800s – namely, secretary to Lafras Uys on the Kommissietrek (Commission Trek) to Port Natal (1834–35), the writing of the Natalland Report (1835) that motivated the Great Trek (1836–39), secretary to Piet Retief (Sept.1837-06.Feb.38), the writing of the Dingaan/Retief Land Treaty (04/06.Feb.1838), war secretary to Andries Pretorius during the Wenkommando campaign (Dec.1838 to avenge the murder of Piet Retief), Clerk to the Volksraad at Pietermartizburg (1838–1840) and later Postmaster General at Pretoria. It was President Paul Kruger who decided the name of the new town of Johannesburg, which was the most important revenue source of the new Transvaal Republic and not two employees, (Christiaan Johannes Joubert & Johannes Rissik), of the infant Johannesburg Municipality. Before the gold discovery, the main currency was either the Rixdollar or the Pound, but once gold-based capital started flowing into state coffers, a new currency of the Transvaal Republic was informally named the Rand on printed notes, after the Witwatersrand. Without the Bantjes discovery, there would not have been a South African currency and the Republic would have remained an economic backwater. Thanks to the Bantjes' discovery, that did not occur. Old photos from the 1880s of Meneer Johannes (Jan Gerritze Bantjes) lend support to this fact. The two mentioned surveyors have no historical claim to the name Johannesburg whatsoever. Street names perhaps, but not the city itself.

Bibliography[]

• Johannes Meintjes, The Voortrekkers: The Story of the Great Trek and the Making of South Africa, 1973
• Eily Gledhill, In the Steps of Piet Retief, 1980
• Alf Wannenburgh, Forgotten Frontiersmen, 1980

References[]