As Minister of National Education, de Klerk was a supporter of segregated universities, and as a leader of the National Party in Transvaal, he was not known to advocate reform.

It was described as a new genus and species by Robert Broom of the Transvaal Museum.

The Southern Transvaal Ndebele occupied the river valley, which was to become the location of the city of Pretoria, by around 1600.

Between 1860 and 1994, the city was also the capital of the province of Transvaal, superseding Potchefstroom in that role.

The South African Republic (, or ZAR ), often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century.

The Transvaal region was inhabited by the Khoisan for thousands of years, and by iron-age ancestors of modern Bantu-language speaking South Africans, such as the Sotho, Swati, Tswana, Pedi, Venda and Transvaal-Ndebele peoples since the mid 4th century AD.

) Mzilikazi's invasion of the Transvaal was one part of a vast series of inter-related wars, forced migrations and famines that indigenous people and later historians came to call the Difaqane or mfecane.

In 1856 a series of public meetings, summoned by Pretorius, was held at different districts in the Transvaal for the purpose of discussing and deciding whether the time had not arrived for substituting a strong central government in place of the petty district governments which had hitherto existed.

In December 1856, the Transvaal assembly met at Potchefstroom, and for three weeks was engaged in modelling the constitution 1856 of the country.

He had no sooner left the Transvaal than the-old Lydenburg party, headed by Cornelis Potgieter, landdrost of Lydenburg, protested that the union would be much more beneficial to the Free State than to the people of Lydenburg, and followed this up with the contention that it was illegal for any one to be president of the South African Republic and the Free State at the same time.

When called upon to go to the aid of this settlement, which in 1865 – 1866 was sore pressed by one of the mountain Bantu tribes known as the Baramapulana, the burghers of the southern Transvaal objected that the white inhabitants of that region were too lawless and reckless a body to merit their assistance.

It was also in accord with the desire of the Transvaal Boers to obtain a seaport, a desire which had led them as early as 1860 to negotiate with the Zulus for the possession of St Lucia Bay.

Armed conflict, first with the Ndebele people under Mzilikazi in the area which was to become the Transvaal, then against the Zulus under Dingane, went the Voortrekkers ' way, mostly because of their tactics, their horsemanship and the effectiveness of their muzzle-loading guns.

This flag was used as the flag of the Zoutpansberg Republic until this republic was incorporated into the Transvaal Republic also known as the South African Republic.

The Second Boer War (, or Tweede Boereoorlog ) was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic ( Transvaal Republic ) and the Orange Free State.

After Natal and the Cape Colony were secure, the British were able to invade the Transvaal, and the republic's capital, Pretoria, was ultimately captured in June 1900.

An armistice followed, ending the war, and subsequently a peace treaty was signed with the Transvaal President Paul Kruger.

The influx was such that the uitlanders quickly outnumbered the Boers in Johannesburg and along the Rand, although they remained a minority in the Transvaal as a whole.

( b ) The uitlanders resented the taxes levied by the Transvaal government, particularly when this money was not spent on Johannesburg or uitlander interests, but diverted to projects elsewhere in the Transvaal.

A Reform Committee ( Transvaal ) was formed to represent the uitlanders.

In 1895, a plan was hatched with the connivance of the Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes, Johannesburg gold magnate Alfred Beit, and Sir Alfred Milner ( British High Commissioner for South Africa and Lieutenant Governor of the Cape ) to liberate Johannesburg from the control of the Transvaal government.

One Reform Committee member, Frederick Gray, had committed suicide while in Pretoria gaol, on 16 May, and his death was a factor in softening the Transvaal government's attitude to the remaining prisoners.

Though the Boers accepted British rule without resistance in 1877, they fought two wars in the late 19th century to defend their internationally recognized independent countries, the republics of the Transvaal ( the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, or ZAR ) and the Orange Free State ( OFS ), against the threat of annexation by the British Crown.

They founded republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, mostly in areas of sparse population that had been diminished by the Mfecane / Difaqane.

* Old Transvaal Stories ( 2000 ) edited by Craig MacKenzie ISBN 0-7981-4085-2 Human & Rousseau

The site has been excavated since 1993 by Francis Thackeray of the Transvaal Museum.

Despite political complications that arose from time to time ( such as an ill-fated scheme by the British Colonial Office to enforce a confederation in Southern Africa in 1878, and tensions with the Afrikaner-dominated Government of Transvaal over trade and railroad construction ), economic and social progress in the Cape Colony continued at a steady pace until the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer Wars in 1899.

In the Transvaal, the Difaqane severely weakened and disrupted the towns and villages of the Sotho-Tswana chiefdoms, their political systems and economies, making them very weak, and easy to colonise by the European settlers who would shortly arrive from the south.

Within the Transvaal the forces making for union gained strength notwithstanding these events, and by 1860 Zoutpansberg and Lydenburg had become incorporated with the republic.

The other islands of the group are uninhabited, except for the weather station on Gough Island, which has been operated by South Africa since 1956 ( since 1963 at its present location at Transvaal Bay on the southeast coast ), with a staff of six.

Certain self-appointed uitlanders representatives and British mine owners became increasingly angered and frustrated by their dealings with the Transvaal government.

Paul Kruger, leader of the South African Republic, ( Transvaal ), issued an ultimatum of withdrawal in response to the British ultimatum by Joseph Chamberlain for uitlander rights, which escalated the situation to a state of war

It also had the effect of drawing the Transvaal and the Orange Free State ( led by President Martinus Theunis Steyn ) together in opposition to perceived British imperialism.

However, the nadir of Black Week was the Battle of Colenso on 15 December where 21, 000 British troops commanded by Buller himself, attempted to cross the Tugela River to relieve Ladysmith where 8, 000 Transvaal Boers, under the command of Louis Botha, were awaiting them.

Although hounded by British columns, he succeeded in crossing the Vaal into western Transvaal, to allow Steyn to travel to meet the Transvaal leaders.

There was much sympathy for the Boers on mainland Europe and in October, President Kruger and members of the Transvaal government left Portuguese East Africa on the Dutch warship De Gelderland, sent by the Queen of the Netherlands Wilhelmina, who had simply ignored the British naval blockade of South Africa.

Tensions also escalated with the Boer settlers from the Transvaal.

Boer (,, or ; ) is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for farmer, which came to denote the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State, Transvaal ( which are together known as the Boer Republics ), and to a lesser extent Natal.

The BCVO ( Movement for Christian-National Education ) is a federation of 47 Calvinist private schools, primarily in the Free State and the Transvaal, committed to educating Boer children from grade 0 through to 12.

* 1852 – The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Boer colonies of the Transvaal.

* 1899 – Second Boer War begins: In South Africa, a war between the United Kingdom and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State erupts.

The Second Boer War ( 1899 to 1902 ) resulted in the end of the Transvaal Republic and start of British hegemony in South Africa.

This in turn lead to the Great Trek, spreading farming deeper into the mainland, as well as the establishment of the independent Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

After the retreat of Mzilikazi's Ndebele, many Boer farmers trekked across the Vaal and occupied parts of the Transvaal, bringing with them the laws of their Dutch forebears.

On 17 January 1852, the United Kingdom signed the Sand River Convention treaty with 5, 000 or so of the Boer families ( about 40, 000 white people ), recognising their independence in the region to the north of the Vaal River, or the Transvaal.

Kruger won another presidential election in 1898, but the following year British forces were gathering on the borders of the Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State and fearing Britain's imminent annexation, the Boers launched a preemptive strike against the nearby British colonies in 1899, a strike which became the Second Boer War.

The independent Boer republic became the Transvaal Colony, which in 1910 became the Transvaal Province of the newly created Union of South Africa, a British Dominion.

There they established two independent Boer republics: the South African Republic ( 1852 ; also known as the Transvaal Republic ) and the Orange Free State ( 1854 ).

The British recognised the two Boer republics in 1852 and 1854, but British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 led to the First Boer War in 1880 – 81.

As a result, the Transvaal reluctantly acquiesced to the immigration of uitlanders ( foreigners ), mainly from Britain, who came to the Boer region in search of fortune and employment.

This resulted in the number of uitlanders in the Transvaal potentially exceeding the number of Boers, and precipitated confrontations between the earlier-arrived Boer settlers and the newer, non-Boer arrivals.

The Boer forces finally surrendered on Saturday, 31 May 1902, with 54 of the 60 delegates from the Transvaal and Orange Free State voting to accept the terms of the peace treaty.

In the First Boer War of 1880 – 81 the Boers of the Transvaal Republic had proved skilful fighters in resisting the British attempt at annexation, in causing in a series of British defeats.

The Boers, for their part, recognised that the more concessions they made to the uitlanders the greater the likelihood – with approximately 30, 000 white male Boer voters and potentially 60, 000 white male uitlanders – that their independent control of the Transvaal would be lost and the territory absorbed into the British Empire.

However, the core of the Boer fighters under Botha easily broke back through the Drakensberg mountains into the Transvaal highveld after riding north through the bushveld.