The Weenen massacre was the massacre of Khoikhoi, Basuto and Voortrekkers by the Zulu Kingdom on 17 February 1838. The massacres occurred at Doringkop, Bloukrans River, Moordspruit, Rensburgspruit and other sites around the present day town of Weenen in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province.
Depiction of a Zulu attack on a Boer camp in February 1838. The Weenen Massacre was the massacre of Voortrekkers by the Zulu impis.
The Bloukrans Memorial commemorating the death of the Boers trekkers during the massacre.
The Great Trek was a northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial administration. The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British Empire. It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town. Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers", "pathfinders" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
Trekboers making camp (1804) by Samuel Daniell.
A romanticised depiction of the Great Trek
A stone relief at the Voortrekker Monument, depicting the exodus of farmers from the Cape Colony
Hendrik Potgieter at Delagoa Bay, c. 1851–52
