Cows to South Africa

Thursday November 20th, 2025, I went to a lecture in the Frisian provincial archive and library Tresoar by the author Froukje Santing about her book 'Pake en zijn vee, een reis naar Zuid-Afrika in 1911' (Granddad and his cattle, een trip to South-Africa in 1911). I catalogued the book for my library, and added my notes about the lecture. In this blog I add an English translation of my notes. 

Publisher's information (translated from Dutch): In her grandmother's attic, Froukje Santing discovered that her grandfather, Gerben (1883-1942), had left for South Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. What possessed a poor farm hand from Southwest Friesland to travel to the Cape with Frisian breeding cattle? A hundred years later, she retraces his steps, uncovers a lost family history, and more. "Pake and his Cattle" tells the intriguing story of international agricultural ties between Friesland and South Africa in the aftermath of the Boer War (1899-1902), demonstrating the importance of the renowned Frisian breeding cattle worldwide. Froukje Santing (born 1956) studied World Religions in Leiden and Islam in the Modern World at the University of Amsterdam. She lived in Turkey for seventeen years, where she worked as a correspondent for NRC Handelsblad and Radio 1 Journaal. She currently works as a writer and journalist for De Groene Amsterdammer, among others, and for many years was vice-chair of PEN Netherlands, the writers' organization that advocates for endangered writers worldwide.

Lunch lecture by Froukje Santing at Tresoar in Leeuwarden on 20/11/25

Grandfather Gerben Heslinga, born in 1883, died in the cold winter of 1942. During an exhibition of personal letters at the Fries Museum at Leeuwarden, Froukje Santing recalls a notebook or booklet in her grandmother's attic in Oosterwierum (Friesland) with the inscription "Boerenoorlog 1903."  (Boer War). She investigates and discovers that her grandfather Gerben traveled to South Africa as a milking hand in 1911 and returned via Southampton and Germany in 1914. On the archives website AlleFriezen.nl, she finds his government registration card with registration of his departure and return. With great difficulty, she found a 1912 file in the archives of the former municipality of Baarderadeel (Mantgum), titled "Statement of Relocations to Other Countries 1911," which stated that her grandfather had left for South Africa in 1911 to "improve his position" and had left no debts. He departed from Southampton by ship on November 4, 1911, and returned to Southampton by ship on April 22, 1913.

The Frisian Studbook (pedigree) was established in 1879, and from 1881 onward, Frisian pedigree cattle were exported to South Africa. During the Boer War, these exports stalled, but after the war ended in 1902, exports peaked again. Major exporters were the Schaap and Kuperus companies. Advertisements appeared in Frisian magazines for livestock assistants to accompany these exports and care for the animals or to provide instruction to farmers in South Africa. The focus in the Netherlands is primarily on the defeated republics Oranje Vrijstaat (Orange Free State) and Transvaal.

Froukje Santing runs into problems with her archival research, and no one in her family knows anything about her grandfather's journey to South Africa. She decides to travel to South Africa herself. Based on various documents (including an export receipt from the Schaap company in 1905, a dissertation by a South African woman on Frisian breeding cattle, and farm names), she maps out a route past farms in South Africa. (Schaap 1905: Cape Town - Port Elizabeth - to Oranje Vrijstaat and Transvaal). She calls a whole string of travel agencies, but no one can help her until a Dutch travel agency number is answered in Pretoria by a Frisian woman who moved to South Africa ten years ago. She arranges a car and driver and books overnight stays in remote locations. A journey that lasts about a month. However, she can find no evidence that her grandfather Gerben ever visited any of those farms. Emotionally, she comes closest to the story through an old, neglected cow shed from 1902, where she takes photographs. In her book, she describes various stories from her visits to the farms. Upon invitation, she makes a short detour and meets two sisters who own a large farm (plaas) in Volksrust.

Empty-handed, she returns to the Netherlands and faces the choice of abandoning her project or, based on the information she has gathered, telling the general story of the dairy farmhands and the Frisian cattle that left for South Africa shortly after the Boer War. She thinks about it for nearly a year. She decides to accept an invitation from the two women in Volksrust, returns to South Africa, and stays there for about seven weeks. She decides to tell the story of the larger history.

Following her lecture, the author answers a few questions from the audience. She talks about the fear and unrest among white farmers due to the robberies and farm murders. In Volksrust, she was instructed to lock her bedroom and not to come out if a robbery occurred. The farm is secured with gates and access codes. The two sisters inherited the 1,282-hectare farm. They have stopped farming and no longer own livestock, but have leased 1,000 hectares of their farm and another 1,000 hectares of their other nearby farm to a larger company. Based on the 2,000 hectares of leased land to a larger company, one sister works as a manager. The other sister runs a goat farm. To survive on a farm, you need at least 1,000 head of cattle. The farms, fields, and houses are very large, but income is scarce.

She stayed in Volksrust during the summer, but temperatures in this area fluctuate from 5 to 18 degrees Celsius, with heavy rains and even hailstorms, which sometimes damage crops (like maize).

Someone in the audience asks if her grandfather was involved in the church and whether anything about him can be found in the church archives. Froukje Santing points out that her grandfather was only in South Africa for a short time, perhaps even wandering around there, never settling, a "passerby." He traveled on a passenger ship without livestock; she suspects he did have a contract to work at a specific farm. Some farm hands also left with a small travel allowance but had to find work there. Wages were sometimes paid in a gradual buildup of land ownership, but that was only useful for farmers/hands who wanted to stay and eventually build their own farms. She also points out that emigration to South Africa was not large-scale; many more Dutch people left for Canada and the US, where Frisian and Dutch communities emerged. Such Frisian communities are not found in South Africa. Moreover, the South African archives are not very good.